Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud used in retail sales but also employed in other contexts.
First, customers are "baited" by merchants' advertising products or services at a low price, but
when customers visit the store, they discover that the advertised goods are not available, or the
customers are pressured by sales people to consider similar, but higher priced items
("switching").
While used by all presidential candidate, Obama can be called Prince of Bait and Switch fraud.
Even "Slick
Willy" with his "it's economy stupid" did not reach the higher level of betrayal of the electorate
delivered then Obama with his famous and completely fraudulent "change we can believe it", while serving as a stooge of
military-industrial complex and Wall-Street.
Actually it is proper not to view Obama as a person. Obama is a brand, a puppet created by advertizing. Advertising is the rule of the game.
And during presidential elections cycle Obama managed to outspend republican McCain
due to financial industry contributions. Tell me who is paying for your election and I will tell
what policies you will pursue ;-)
And Obama campaign once again demonstrated old truth: Democratic Party just plays the role of destroyer of radical left, while
Republican Party plays the same role for radical right. This provides stability. Talks about
democracy after 1963, when "shadow government" came in power in the USA is akin to advertizing
trick.
In the late summer of 1983, future
United States PresidentBarack Obama
interviewed for a job at Business International Corporation. He worked
there for "little more than year."[3]
As a research associate in its financial services division, he edited
Financing Foreign Operations, a global reference service, and wrote
for Business International Money Report, a weekly financial newsletter.[4]
His responsibilities included "interviewing business experts, researching
trends in foreign exchange, following market developments. . . . He
wrote about currency swaps and leverage leases. . . . Obama also helped
write financial reports on
Mexico and
Brazil.[5]
After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, Barack Obama went
to work for a firm called Business International Corporation (BIC),
a firm that was linked to economic intelligence gathering for the CIA.
For one year, Obama worked as a researcher in BIC’s financial services
division where he wrote for two BIC publications, Financing Foreign
Operations and Business International Money Report, a weekly newsletter.
An informed source has told WMR that Obama’s tuition debt at Columbia
was paid off by BIC.
In addition, WMR has learned that when Obama lived
in Indonesia with his mother and his adoptive father Lolo Soetoro, the
20-year-old Obama, who was known as “Barry Soetoro,” traveled to Pakistan
in 1981 and was hosted by the family of Muhammadmian Soomro, a Pakistani
Sindhi who became acting President of Pakistan after the resignation
of General Pervez Musharraf on August 18, 2008. WMR was told that the
Obama/Soetoro trip to Pakistan, ostensibly to go “partridge hunting”
with the Soomros, related to unknown CIA business.
The covert CIA program to assist the Afghan mujaheddin was already well
underway at the time and Pakistan was the major base of operations for
the CIA’s support. Obama also reportedly traveled to India, again, on
unknown business for U.S. intelligence. WMR has been told by knowledgeable
sources that Obama has, in the past, traveled on at least three passports:
U.S., Indonesian, and British. BIC also maintained a European subsidiary,
Business International S.A., in Geneva. BIC had long been associated
with CIA activities since being founded by Eldridge Haynes, a self-professed
liberal Democrat. The BIC headquarters was located at the prestigious
address of 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in Manhattan. BIC held a series
of off-the-record, no press, meetings between top U.S. business executives
and top government officials, including the President, and the Secretaries
of State, Defense, Treasury, Commerce, and Labor; the Attorney General,
Senate leadership, and the heads of the Export-Import Bank and the Inter-American
Development Bank. BIC held international meetings in locations like
Brussels and Mexico City.
In 1986, BIC was bought by the Economist
Group in London and its operations were merged with the Economist Intelligence
Unit (EIU). There have been a number of reports that the EIU works as
closely with Britain’s MI-6 intelligence service as BIC once worked
with or for the CIA. One of BIC’s directors was the late Lord Pilkington,
who was also a director of the Bank of England. Obama’s work for a company
having ties to the CIA barely registered a blip on the 2008 presidential
campaign radar screen. At the very least, Obama helped in providing
economic intelligence to the CIA as a contract employee. At most, Obama
was, like previous BIC employees who operated abroad for the CIA, a
full-fledged non-official cover (NOC) agent.
Since President Obama has
backpedaled on CIA renditions and torture, as well as warrantless electronic
surveillance by U.S. intelligence, he owes the American people a full
explanation of the circumstances behind his being hired by BIC, what
his job actually entailed, and whether he continued to have a relationship
with BIC or any other CIA operation while attending Harvard Law School
and thereafter.
In foreign policy Obama is simply Bush III, a stanch neocon, who is never tied of imperial
adventures and bombing brown people (The Bush-Obama-Neocon Doctrine):
It’s official: When it comes to foreign policy, Barack Obama’s first term is really George W.
Bush’s third. Bill Kristol, son of the late neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol and editor of
the Weekly Standard, declared that Obama is “a born-again neocon” during a March 30 appearance on
the Fox News Channel’s Red Eye w/Greg Gutfeld. Kristol’s remark came in the context of a discussion
of Obama’s consultation with Kristol and other influential columnists prior to his March 28 address
to the nation about his military intervention in Libya. Gutfeld quizzed Kristol about the President’s
asking him for “help” with his speech. Kristol denied that Obama had sought his help. Instead, Kristol
said,
In case anyone missed the significance of Kristol’s comment, Gutfeld made it clear: “We’ve got
the drones. We’ve got military tribunals. We’ve got Gitmo. We’re bombing Libya. People who voted
for Obama got four more years of Bush.”
Kristol agreed, adding: “What’s the joke — they told me if I voted for McCain, we’d be going to
war in a third Muslim country…. I voted for McCain and we’re doing it.”
Of course, to Kristol, calling someone a neocon is a compliment. Indeed, Kristol praised Obama’s
speech on the Weekly Standard blog, saying the President “had rejoined — or joined — the historical
American foreign policy mainstream.” The speech was “reassuring,” Kristol explained, saying, “The
president was unapologetic, freedom-agenda-embracing, and didn’t shrink from defending the use of
force or from appealing to American values and interests.” In other words, it was a neocon speech,
cloaking the use of violence in the language of liberty and treating the U.S. military as the President’s
personal mercenaries to reshape the globe rather than as defenders of the territorial United States.
This is not the first time Kristol and other neocons have lauded Obama’s foreign policy. After
Obama made a speech in 2009 announcing he was sending more troops to Afghanistan — that is, he was
replicating Bush’s Iraq “surge” in another location — Michael Goldfarb, a Weekly Standard writer,
asked Kristol for his reaction to the speech. “He said he would have framed a few things differently,”
Goldfarb related, “but his basic response was: ‘All hail Obama!’”
Similarly, when the President last August claimed that “the American combat mission in Iraq has
ended” while asserting that “our commitment to Iraq’s future is not” ending, New York Post resident
neocon John Podhoretz applauded Obama for his “rather neoconservative speech, in the sense that neoconservatism
has argued for aggressive American involvement in the world both for the world’s sake and for the
sake of extending American freedoms in order to enhance and preserve American security.” [Emphasis
in original.]
Sheldon Richman, writing in Freedom Daily, reminded readers of just exactly what neocon policies
have wrought:
Just to be clear, the neocons were among the key architects of the war against Iraq in 1991, followed
by the embargo that killed half a million children. That war and embargo set the stage for the 9/11
attacks, which were then used to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq (an ambition long predating
9/11) and the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, American’s [sic] longest military engagement
— all of which have killed more than a million people, wreaked political havoc, and made life in
those countries (and elsewhere) miserable. Let’s not forget the drone assassination and special ops
programs being run in a dozen Muslim countries. The neocon achievement also has helped drive the
American people deep into debt.
Nice crowd Obama is hanging with these days. And that’s no exaggeration. Frederick Kagan, one
of the top neocon brains and a signatory of the Project of the New American Century imperial manifesto,
now works for Gen. David Petraeus.
Barack Obama, the candidate of “change we can believe in,” turned out to be the President of “more
of the same.” Lest there remain any doubt about this, one need only turn to establishment news organ
Time magazine. There Mark Halperin, explaining “why Obama’s Libya address was strong,” states quite
bluntly: “George W. Bush could have delivered every sentence.”
True, Biden and his picks to run his foreign policy team are aggressive warmongers .But to
compliment Donald Trump for ANYTHING is completely absurd .Both these politicians are rotten
to the core .But as I've remarked before, it seems that OFF-G would be overjoyed to keep
Trump in power .And that shows how OFF-G has in many respects gone from being a responsible
Left-Wing site to the Far-Right.
Trump the Manchurian Populist
He made a joke of foreign policy restraint (his restraint is worse than Obama's 'war') and he
ruined the career of good people like McGregor. McGregor is now toxic because of Trump.
Trump's domestic policies failed. He gave us $8T of new debt.
Operation Warp speed had a warp core
breach . What happened to the 300M doses we were supposed to have in Jan, we only have
30M doses, where did the reserve go?
Yeah, this "America First" so-called "populist" also weaponized space, doubled-down on
Israel and ME idiocy, supported a coup in Venezuela (including seizing Venezuelan State
assets), cut taxes (yet again), and lied about the seriousness of the virus.
Oh, and no pardon for Assange or Snowden to support whistle-blowers and independent
journalism that keep the Deep State (that Trump supposedly fights) in check.
"... After winning the 2016 election Trump caved early and caved often and governed like a neocon, while Sanders let himself get cucked by the DNC in 2016 and folded like a cheap suit during his 2020 campaign. ..."
"... So both of these clowns proved they are no threat to the establishment but it's in the establishment's interest to portray them as dangerous interlopers who threaten the stability of the nation. Why? Because it keeps the "rebellion" in house. As long as the electorate believes a Democrat or Republican POTUS can address their grievances the establishment can sigh in relief knowing that they are still in control. ..."
...Fact is, Trump was never the savior you wanted him to be. Had president Trump respected
candidate Trump's promises he'd at least be a man of his word. But he didn't do that of
course. Trump is a rhetorician (or a windbag, take your pick) and if you focus intently on
his words only while downplaying his actions, you might be able to convince yourself into
believing he is more than a prolific bullshitter.
Fox News is the "conservative" MSNBC. It swings from the GOP's nutsack (as you have
apparently just discovered) and in fact pioneered that style of outrage "journalism." The
American elite need to keep people believing in the two-party duopoly. Fox plays its roll by
keeping its viewers in the Republican fold. Hate the Democrats? Vote GOP! is the message. If
you think MSNBC is trash, why would you cut Fox News any slack? They perform the same
function.
Here's a conspiracy theory for you. What if Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are both
controlled opposition? Start with their affiliation. The supposedly "independent" Sanders is
effectively a Democrat and the supposedly "insurgent" Trump is effectively a Republican. The
media has been in TDS mode for four years and when it looked like Sanders might have some
bipartisan appeal he was quickly slapped down by liberal pundits and commentators.
But what if all that outage is mostly theater designed to get voters believing that
Trump/Sanders are antiestablishment insurgents who present a "real difference" from stale
Democrat/Republican politics? The outrage and slap downs gives the impression that the
establishment really really hates these guys and lets the people who support them think that
they are supporting principled antiestablishmentarians.
The establishment may not like Trump or Sanders very much but as long as they are
controllable they are preferable to a strong third party candidate or a mass revolt against
the duopoly. After winning the 2016 election Trump caved early and caved often and
governed like a neocon, while Sanders let himself get cucked by the DNC in 2016 and folded
like a cheap suit during his 2020 campaign.
So both of these clowns proved they are no threat to the establishment but it's in the
establishment's interest to portray them as dangerous interlopers who threaten the stability
of the nation. Why? Because it keeps the "rebellion" in house. As long as the electorate
believes a Democrat or Republican POTUS can address their grievances the establishment can
sigh in relief knowing that they are still in control.
I don't know if Trump and Sanders are deliberately controlled opposition. But as a theory
it's more plausible than The Saker's undying trust in Trump as a principled POTUS who was
derailed by crafty internal and liberal opposition. If only Trump had been left alone to
govern without undue interference he would be a real hero and America would be saved. Give me
a break, The Saker, you can't have it both ways. Either the Empire and everything it stands
for is rotten, in which case supporting anyone running on a GOP/Democrat ticket is a fool's
errand, or it's not, in which case you can trust the system, roll up your blog and find a new
hobby.
What The Saker and other commentators that serve up predictable and unchallenging opinions
tailored for a specific audience do is provide entertainment. It's stuff for the faithful to
read and collectively reaffirm their beliefs while tsk-tsking at all the fools who "just
don't get it." Occasionally they provide comedic interludes like this piece where The Saker
discovers that Fox News is actually a corporate outlet that supports an established political
party and promotes the sanctity of the American duopoly. lol Thanks for the midweek chuckle,
my dude.
The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagence,
they have two of them.
– Julius Nyerere (former socialist president of Tanzania)
There will be a wipe out of Trumpists and one party Dem state ala California. The Rep
party will divide itself into Trumpists and establishment fighting each other.
The clear changes in the culture of the US population, which is found by numerous surveys,
back up this assessment of the situation.
Trump's biggest fault is that he managed to corrupt many naturally isolationist rank and
file republicans into "I have the biggest dick" imperialism and China/Iran hysteria. He tried
to save the US Empire, corrupted MAGA into Make America Rule the World Again, and for that he
paid the price.
He was triggered by the US decline in the world (Murica is no longer number 1, how can
this be!) and tried to prop up the Empire that will eat him later.
If he tried to run on anti-imperial isolationit platform he still had a chance. But that
required better relations with China, Russia, Iran and others, something impossible for a US
rightoid massively triggered about Murica not being "number 1".
"... Unlike most democracies, the USA is dominated by just two parties that use propaganda to fight for control of the power that Government provides. Republicans stand firmly by Milton Friedman, openly and honestly promoting the best interests of the ruling class and against FDR's New Deal that had transformed the quality of life for hundreds of millions of workers. Republicans are a minority but well organized, well funded and speak with a disciplined message. ..."
"... The Democrat Party leadership has the same agenda because both parties operate in a completely privatized communication system which demands enormous sums of cash to participate. Like everything else in America the two parties can be characterized as businesses that use BS to collect money to give to the mass media, in their endless struggle for political power. Although there are many regional variations across time and geographic regions, Democrats tend to hold a 5% advantage over Republicans, but both parties are rightly held in distain by the 40% of voters who consider themselves to be "independent". Independent or not most elections force American voters back into a choice between Democrat or Republican. ..."
I first became aware of Paul Craig Roberts (PCR) during the depression of 2008 when events
led to my armchair education in economics. PCR contributed to my education along with Michael
Hudson, Steven Keen, Jospeph Stiglitz and others. I learned that economics is an inexact
science full of falsehoods that serve the ruling class in their war against the working
class. A primary falsehood promoted by the Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman is
that unregulated free markets produce the greatest prosperity for the greatest number of
people. Friedman's Chicago School of economics, which dominates US policy under the guise of
freedom and democracy, has actually spread poverty, death and destruction for hundreds of
millions of people throughout the world. Friedman's logic seemingly justifies exploitation of
the working class by the ruling class in the great class war defined by Marx. Most Americans
have benefited from these policies in so far as they were imposed on third world countries
even though they are currently suffering as they have been incrementally imposed on our
domestic population, leading to a growing popularity for political outliers like Donald Trump
and Bernie Sanders.
Unlike most democracies, the USA is dominated by just two parties that use propaganda
to fight for control of the power that Government provides. Republicans stand firmly by
Milton Friedman, openly and honestly promoting the best interests of the ruling class and
against FDR's New Deal that had transformed the quality of life for hundreds of millions of
workers. Republicans are a minority but well organized, well funded and speak with a
disciplined message.
The Democrat Party leadership has the same agenda because both parties operate in a
completely privatized communication system which demands enormous sums of cash to
participate. Like everything else in America the two parties can be characterized as
businesses that use BS to collect money to give to the mass media, in their endless struggle
for political power. Although there are many regional variations across time and geographic
regions, Democrats tend to hold a 5% advantage over Republicans, but both parties are rightly
held in distain by the 40% of voters who consider themselves to be "independent". Independent
or not most elections force American voters back into a choice between Democrat or
Republican.
Trump is not a leader, populist or intellectual thinker. His only concern is himself and
his immediate family. He spends his time tweeting, golfing while eating and promoting junk
food. He seeks immediate profits for himself and his donors in a political system which pays
out 10:1 on investments in successful political candidates, where pay back is realized in tax
benefits. Trump is a successful self promoter who has a few good ideas and the most
substantial following of any Republican politician. But his behavior is too erratic to ever
bring his good ideas to fruition, or you could simply say ge is too lazy to bother.
ump used populist issues, Republican gerrymandering, Republican voter caging and purging
to overcome popular vote losses in 2016 but not 2020. Since 2000 American democratic voting
systems have rightly suffered a credibility gap, which Greg Pallast has documented but is
largely ignored by the mass media and Government which prefers to imagine us as the greatest
democracy ever. Trump has been able to use these problems to sow doubts about the credibility
of the 2020 outcome, even though our voting systems have been much improved on since
2000.
A Princeton Study documented that the USA operates more like an Oligarchy than a Democracy
by studying who benefited from 2000 pieces of legislation. The exclusive beneficiaries of all
that legislation by Democrats and Republicans are the wealthiest Americans that fund the
majority of duopoly activity. This fact helps to explain how wealth is being concentrated
into fewer and fewer hands..
You have to look back as far as Eisenhower and Kennedy to find Presidents dedicated to
promoting the general welfare, one of our constitutional mandates. Since that period,
election results have trapped the US population in a neoliberal economic system where the
vast majority of elected officials are mere figureheads. Biden and Harriss's record is no
exception to that rule. The "establishment" can be characterized as the military industrial
complex, ruling class, .001% or in a variety of other ways. I am not sure how PCR defines
that term, but they write and enforce the laws we all live by:
The use of money, the mass media and propaganda to vilify individuals and wage class war
is a great American past time. That is how Johnson attacked Goldwater and Bush 41 attacked
Dukakis. It is hardly unique to Trump's situation and if anything Trump is a master media
manipulator and name caller.
The history of man is the history of man's enslavement of other men usually under some
form of capitalism. When white people gained certain technological advantages over other
people, they used that technology ruthlessly to gain wealth. This is not unique to white
western culture, but it is an undeniable aprt of human history. Abraham Lincoln said that
capital cannot be accumulated without the contribution of labor, and therefore labor deserves
the first consideration. But we live in a world controlled by capitalists and the only thing
worse than being exploited by capitalists is not being exploited by them
Since the New Deal, the US has been on a path determined by the Friedman school of
economics. This has included the shuttering of mental health hospitals. As a result there are
many white psychotic males running around in a country with more individual guns than the
Chinese Army possesses. There is a real need to control access to these weapons, regardless
of the meaning of the original intent of the second amendment. One legitimate interpretation
of the term "militia" was white armed conscripts used to persistently intimidate and lynch
black slaves which far outnumber wealthy plantation owners. That said hunting is a legitimate
use of firearms even if slavery and war are impossible to justify.
Like Reagan, Trump has fomented racial and gender conflict as a successful political
strategy in a country which still is largely white, even though that proportion is
unsustainable. Whether the Covid-19 epidemic serves a similar political function can be
debated. However, as long as the US and other major powers operate bio-weapons and nuclear
weapons labs life on earth faces unnecessary risks. This website has documented that the 1918
"Spanish Flu" epidemic was most likely started in Kansas from a Rockefeller funded biological
research lab. The post 9-11 anthrax attack through the SU mail was almost certainly a
deliberate attack by a misguided rogue scientist in one of our labs. Bio-weapons and Nuclear
labs should be shut down through international agreements, the initiation of which began
during the Kennedy Presidency. But, unfortunately, the reverse is happening. Trump has even
suggested we should be more willing to use nuclear weapons to get our way, as long as we are
building them.
Overpopulation of the world is a serious problem. Global warming and US war mongering has
created tens of millions of refugees which must immigrate or die. Increases in population
densities everywhere decreases the quality of our lives and needs to be controlled. But to do
so effectively we must attempt to address the underlying causes of mass immigration. Most
people would prefer to live in te culture they were raised in as long as they can make a
decent living.
Under J Edgar Hoover, blacks, liberals, socialists and communists were enemy number one.
Our country has a long history of using the police to contain unrest in the working class.
While Hoover was the most extreme, you are still far more likely to suffer death or other
injury promulgated by the State if you are poor and considered to be part of any of the
groups Hoover vilified. Occupy Wall Street and Black lives Matter protestors were treated
much more brutally than any right wing extremists in support of Trump. Compare the caution
exercised by police during the Ted Bundy grazing conflict standoff and its aftermath with the
Black Panthers and PCR's assertions do not hold up.
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.
@knarf base under the
bus to embrace blacks and hispanics, and they didn't even turn out to vote for him. If back
in 2015, Republican primary, Trump campaigned on a platinum plan for the negro and a Hispanic
plan, said he would keep daca, chain/visa lottery, anchor baby. Trump would never have won
the Republican primary. Utterly shameless pandering to blacks, whilst entirely ignoring his
blue-collar base. His Presidency will go down as a failure. Now he is Persona non Grata on
both sides. Maybe the lame do nothing negro worshipping flake can "Tweet" himself a win.
Smart Whites stayed home than rather vote for a con. Trump's ego got thumped.
But in the meantime, how does this already cooling rhetoric differ from Mr. Trump's
campaign pledges to "drain the swamp" that preceded his appointment of people like Abrams,
Bolton, Haspel, et al. ?
Or the hilarious September 30, 2008, assurances of Mr. Obama in his endorsement of that
year's bailout of Wall Street that
There will be time to punish those who set this fire , but now is the moment for
us to come together and put the fire out.
***
Finally, I will modernize our outdated financial regulations and put in the place the
common-sense rules of the road I've been calling for since March – rules that will
keep our market free, fair, and honest; rules that will make sure Wall Street can never get
away with the stunts that caused this crisis again. And I will take power away from the
corporate lobbyists who think they can stand in the way of these reforms. I've done it in
Illinois, I've done it [in] Washington, and I will do it again as President.
before allowing that same Wall Street to make his roster picks, including an Attorney
General who eventually announced that some of "those who set this fire" were too big to
jail?
People need to reconcile themselves to the truth that everything they're allowed to see is
a Red+Blue puppet show. Only those who effectively interfere -- Assange, Manning, and others
not up there on the stage -- have much to worry about.
Donald Trump entered office with a pledge to "drain the swamp," something that he found
more difficult to actually do rather than just talk about doing.
Especially when Trump himself hired nothing but nevertrumpers and swamp rats and
listened to his know-nothing rat-in-law.
(Didn't this guy have a tv show for 13 years about hiring the best people?)
It's secession time, has been for years before Orange Golfbag. Don't worry about whether
the federal mafia approves of the parting of ways, their new scamulus includes $300,000,000
to bring in more rapefugees aka your replacements.
The administration was locking up witnesses like Susan Lindauer. Various people, we were
told were Muslims, would having bags thrown over their heads and locked into "black sites."
They were saying "you're either with us or with the President." They were holding mass
rallies to burn Dixie Chicks CDs because they had "disrespected" the President.
Plus, of course, they refused to actually investigate 9/11 and gave us a cockamamie
made-for-TV movie explanation with more plot holes than a D-rated Hollywood film.
All Democrats are going to do is call people "racists" and "anti-semites."
These people lecturing anyone about "racism" or "democracy" is of course simply Jewish
"chutzpuh" considering they are all open, apartheid-supporting Zionists – just like
Trump. And Biden.
The white turnout in 2016 that overturned the voter fraud did not happen this election.
Who thought promising 500 billion to the %13 a month before the election was a good idea?
Nonstop tweets about black unemployment? As if I give a fuck about blacks, what about all the
underemployed and unemployed whites? What did he actually accomplish?
None of his campaign promises, we got a ban on a toy though, something even Obama didn't
deem worth outlawing.
His entire presidency was a disaster, martial law January 21st 2017 was our only hope,
that is long gone. At this point I'm not sure it matters...
@AKINDLE ation, as
Biden and wokeness are about to. Trump was trying to slow down the horrors looming ahead, and
a smart person (white or whatever) should have voted for him regardless of his Negro and
Jewish pandering.
Crying that 'he didn't do enough for me, so let's teach him a lesson, is puerile idiocy,
and 'cutting off one's nose to spite one's face'. Because now they're really going to get
anti-White hatred- on acid.
So, you're wrong about him being 'soundly defeated', and you're wrong about the 'smart
white' staying home, so that Kamala and her Deep State crew can get back to sending humanity
spiraling into the abyss.
@Defcon Who would have
thought, a kike lover and a puppet is a scumbag. Truly a master move by the establishment and
the deep state. The Orange kike never did even address his huwhite base. Not once.
Muttmerica deserves this though. No debate. 200 years of serving kike interests will never
end well. Same as the island monkeys of the UK. The trump situation is the same as
(((brexit))). Fractured any hope of solidarity with mainland while the (((EU))) pulls their
pants down and do it raw.
I will never cease laughing at the anglos. They wanted this situation, they fought for
it.
Thank you for using the word "coup" here because I believe it is imperative that every
concerned person realizes that this is what has happened/is happening.
Voting for a guy that spent his entire term in office working for the foreign state of
Israel, while not lifting a finger for Americans – is puerile idiocy.
If a politician won't do anything for ME – why would I vote for him? I'd vote for
the other guy who will do something FOR ME.
But no – you people are like, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what
you can do for Israel."
Are you also going to tell us how CIA Director Gina Haspel was killed in a Deep State
shootout in front of the secret Dominion Voting Machines in Frankfurt Germany as part of
Operation Hammer to steal the election from Trump?
The political left will not succeed with their revenge agenda, simply because President
Donald Trump has had the effect of alerting the American public to the utter corruption of
their politicians, ON BOTH THE LEFT AND THE RIGHT. Notice, Trump was not a Republican
president and in fact, received little support from establishment Republicans during his four
years and even now. Trump was a grass roots elected president, elected by millions of people
who simply have had it with the status quo.
In fact, Trump is not unique. The older generations remember a certain Ross Perot, also a
businessman and grass roots candidate who ran for President along with Clinton and Bush the
elder. He received over 20 million votes and counting when he suddenly withdrew from the
election and tried to re-enter it later. Why did he withdraw? He might have won and instead
took away enough votes from Bush to cause the abominable Bill Clinton and his wife to enter
the White House. Even then, Americans had enough of the "status quo".
Biden is a complete as can be swamp creature and will continue to, along with Harris,
bring this country to its knees. With Trump there was hope of change and a renewed commitment
to focusing on the U.S., instead of on every other country in the world, as the democrats
plan to do. GOOD LUCK AMERICANS
@Greta Handel m was
demonstrated for four long years. Not once did he try to reign in the corporations
(pharmaceuticals, energy, banking etc., preying on the American people.
He really is an obnoxious person. He hasn't pardoned Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and
murdered Solamani and let the Israelis murder an Iranian scientist.
His four years were spent pandering to Zionists and he followed their every diktat. Swamp
creatures were given a second chance, while he again and again bent forward with his rump in
the air for John Bolton, William Barr, AIPAC, etc, etc.
American patriots should have some pride along with rudimentary intelligence.
Is Trump now questioning his servitude to all things Zionist, now that Bibi the Noo Joisey
furniture salesman stabbed him in the back by congratulating Zio Boi Biden immediately after
the sElection ?
If Trump has a Christian epiphany (ref. recent Christmas message directed to just
Christians) wherein things become clarified and resolve strengthened, The New Year could
start with a BANG.
We are given two choices in these elections. That's the way it works. No where in my
comment did I laud Donald Trump. However, I am certain Trump would do less direct damage to
middle class Americans than those who control Biden/Harris will inflict upon that group of
citizens.
And I'm just old fashioned. The idea that a US Presidential election can be so thoroughly
riddled with election fraud is just not acceptable.
"... I don't disagree with the idea that Trump should go (he is clearly incompetent for this position), but to think that Biden (personally also completely incompetent due to his health condition, and even before that; can you imagine this second rate politician summit with Macron, Merkel, or Putin even if we ignore his current health problems ), in some ways, will be an improvement is pretty optimistic. ..."
"... Biden administration will be especially dangerous in foreign policy where Russiagaters mafia clearly returned to power, (and chickenhawks like Nuland are in demand again; as well several other flavors of "national security parasites".) ..."
"... Both are puppets of approximately the same social force -- the union on neoliberal oligarchy and MIC (aka Uniparty.) Biden mafia simply will be slightly more polished, and less "in your face." But both are brutal gangsters, both domestically and on foreign arena. And that's pretty depressing. And one great service of Trump administration was that it exposed what is behind the fake facade. Biden will try to rebuild this fake facade, this Potemkin village again. that's all the difference. ..."
When left becomes right, progressive become regressive, and fascist becomes anti-fascist,
then we have to invent whole new vocabularies just to discuss the problems that humanity is
facing. What is worse though is that upending the language of political society in this
manner makes the amassed knowledge from the past less accessible to the present. I suppose
that is the point though.
This is pretty interesting thought, thank you very much. Kind of Orwellian ""War
is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength," on a new, more sinister level as in
"this manner makes the amassed knowledge from the past less accessible to the present."
But is reality Henry Ford quote "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he
wants so long as it is black." is perfectly applicable to any US elections and political life
in general.
Some commentators here for some reason think that Biden (yes, this semi-senile Biden, a
marionette from the very beginning; senator from credit card companies; the worst enemy of
working class in Congress ) is somehow preferable to Trump (yes, this Trump, a marionette of
Zionists, the President who completely betrayed his electorate, best friend of billionaires
and Pentagon; kind of Bush III replicating both intellectual level of Bush II and his
policies, including a tax cut for the rich).
I don't disagree with the idea that Trump should go (he is clearly incompetent for
this position), but to think that Biden (personally also completely incompetent due to his
health condition, and even before that; can you imagine this second rate politician summit
with Macron, Merkel, or Putin even if we ignore his current health problems ), in some ways,
will be an improvement is pretty optimistic.
Biden administration will be especially dangerous in foreign policy where Russiagaters
mafia clearly returned to power, (and chickenhawks like Nuland are in demand again; as well
several other flavors of "national security parasites".)
Both are puppets of approximately the same social force -- the union on neoliberal
oligarchy and MIC (aka Uniparty.) Biden mafia simply will be slightly more polished, and less
"in your face." But both are brutal gangsters, both domestically and on foreign arena. And
that's pretty depressing. And one great service of Trump administration was that it exposed
what is behind the fake facade. Biden will try to rebuild this fake facade, this Potemkin
village again. that's all the difference.
"When left becomes right, progressive become regressive, and fascist becomes
anti-fascist, then we have to invent whole new vocabularies just to discuss the problems that
humanity is facing. What is worse though is that upending the language of political society
in this manner makes the amassed knowledge from the past less accessible to the present. I
suppose that is the point though."
Yes, that's what the gaslighing is all about, but the problem - as our self-designated
betters are finding out now - is that you cannot run a sucessful competitive modern society
that way, banana republics do not get to rule the world.
Even ... Henry Ford understood he had to take good care of his employees.
Biden is going to have his hands full without looking for any more trouble.
Ironically, the entire contention that Trump pursued an appeasement policy toward Putin was
the opposite of reality. Washington's policy toward Moscow
actually hardened in multiple ways during the Trump years. Numerous measures, including
repeated U.S. arms sales to Ukraine, continued expansion of NATO's membership, an increase in
both the number and size of NATO war games near Russia's borders, U.S. withdrawal from the INF
treaty, and Washington's efforts to unseat Russian client regimes in Syria and Venezuela,
confirmed that point. Some would argue that he did this all under pressure from Congress,
nevertheless, the mythology that Trump spent four years cozying-up to a murderous aggressor now
has a tenacious hold on the collective American psyche.
Right now, the entire world sits in waiting for the final declaration of the victor in the
2020 U.S. Presidential race even if they have already officially congratulated Biden. This
still technically ongoing electoral process has exposed many truths and confirmed a wide range
of suspicions about what is actually going on inside American politics. How "the game is to be
played" going further down the road will be determined by who wins or maybe better yet how they
win. Let's break down everything we should have learned from this very unusual voting year
during this brief window of uncertainty.
Democratic calls for "Healing and Unity" prove
Trump has a strong case
The American Left is now crying out for "
Healing and Unity " across the country which is an obvious middle school ploy to make any
attempts by Trump to get fair final election results look pathetic and divisive. On the surface
one would think that this is an offensive strategy from the dominant side to get the other to
break, but calls for peace generally come from the one with the weaker hand.
If the Democrats were sure that Trump lost, then there would be no need to call for peace
after years of demonizing anyone who doesn't agree with them. This rhetorical change is not one
of triumph, but of fear. When the first partially Black President of the United States came to
power the Left boldly rode this wave of political inertia starting their transformation into
hardcore Progressives and while showing zero concern for the losers and "unity". For them this
was a smug moment of victory, much like Trump's 2016 victory was for the right. So why would
they choose to become so much more friendly all of a sudden this time?
Image: After years of hateful rhetoric why call for healing and unity now?
It seems more likely than not that this guilt tactic is being used because Trump may
actually have a case and be able to get the votes counted accurately, i.e. in his favour. Moral
high ground attacks from the Dems are unlikely to work as Trump has been compared to Hitler
since the start of his previous electoral campaign. Appeasement for the POTUS has thus far
completely failed, why would it start working now?
A Color Revolution in America is
possible and may have occurred
The Old Russian joke that a revolution could "never happen in America because there are no
U.S. Embassies in Washington" has now become obsolete. The media, including even the supposedly
conservative Fox News, has completely and totally given the election
to Biden despite many irregularities. Not to mention, the fact that as these words are
being typed – the election is not officially over.
Image: High journalistic standards in practice in the EU.
If there is one key element to a Color Revolution that must be in place for success it is
control of the media. If every TV channel and news site says candidate X is the winner, then he
has won regardless of votes and regardless of how many people still use said dinosaur media.
They ultimately cast the big final ballot.
The rampant tampering and falsification witnessed (and often self filmed by the
perpetrators) during the election looked like something you would expect to see in a "backwards
third world hellhole" type of country. The manipulation was rampant, blatant and primitive.
This fact can and should be used by the nations at odds with America (Russia, China, Iran,
Cuba, Syria, etc.) in perpetuity as proof that the U.S. never had, nor should have, some sort
of democracy-based moral authority over anyone else. America's own Color Revolution
delegitimizes any attempts to spread regime change via media elsewhere across the globe .
The Dynamic between the Republicans and Democrats has changed forever.
Donald Trump has changed the Republican Party, from the party of Businessmen and a defensive
Upper Middleclass with a sprinkling of Social Conservatism speaking almost exclusively to a
White audience into a populist party that offers a Right Wing emotional vision to the
multi-ethnic America that we live in today.
The shift in concept of the Republican Party is so severe that Trump's influence has had the
same or maybe even a greater effect that "The Southern Strategy" ever did. Around
ten or fifteen years ago it looked like America would evolve into a one-party state due to
demographics and the inability of Republicans to appeal to non-Whites. If polls can be trusted,
at the very least Trump has
doubled the amount of Black Americans who voted for him last time and was able to persuade
⅓ of Latinos to vote for him despite building "The Wall". Looking back on the
2016 election it is easy to see these huge gains, in groups that the Democrats took for
granted as "theirs".
In contrast to Trump's vision of a pro-Consitution, somewhat Libertarian populous party the
Democrats have doubled down on hardcore Progressive positions. If the Dems used to represent
the working man in a White vs. Blue collar America battle, they have now shifted over to being
a Postmodernist circus of race, gender and sexual orientation baiting with a sprinkle of
environmentalism via taxation as icing on the cake.
These are two radically different messages in direct opposition to each other, and the
parties are no longer "two sides of the same coin", being two slightly different takes on the
Liberalism laid down by the Founding Fathers. This is probably why things have gotten so
unusually ugly, American politics may have become truly "winner take all" .
Image: The Enlightenment is dead and we killed it.
Now a " Trump Accountability
Project " has already sprung up based on her words to make sure that everyone who supported
Trump will be somehow punished. From having their noses rubbed in it, to having their lives
ruined by being doxed, harassed, etc.
This idea of creating a Black List of people to punish, is the line where passion for an
ideology turns into a form of Extremism. This along with the intimidation tactics used by
Antifa are proof that the Democratic Left now has demonstrably Extremist views .
The key issue with Extremists is that you cannot make any agreement with them as they see
their opponents as subhuman and/or evil. Trump over the last 4 years has made the massive
mistake of trying to "playball". The problem is that one cannot do so with people who have
fanatical views. Making concessions to those with Extremist views is basically just tightening
the noose around your own neck. Trump, if he survives this needs to understand that this is
political war not political games.
Image: The election results are "counted" by those with the money to broadcast the results.
Trump needs to break the monopoly.
Trump & The Right need to invest in a Media
Empire
The homogeneity of the American news media has become Orwellian. Trump and other like-minded
billionaires need to put together a countervoice on their own dime. The Trump Presidency would
be doing much better if a billion dollar news outlet was on his side fighting back. There are
many media experts with the experience needed (including and especially the author of this
piece) who could get this done quickly and effectively.
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The Million MAGA March will surely turn violent and that violence will be exploited for
political gains.
Image: The big march is coming, but who would honestly expect it to go peacefully?
Leaders that have survived Color Revolution attempts like Venezuela's Maduro and Belarus's
Lukashenko have one thing in common – massive public support. At the very least a massive
public showing for the Dear Orange Leader wouldn't hurt but if Antifa were to show up to fight,
the event could be exploited by the Right for all sorts of political action. Just because
Trump's views seem much more human and reasonable compared to SJWs does not make him a saint.
This event will be manipulated to the utmost.
Congratulating Biden is proof of approval of or submission to Washington.
Image: Weaker and more loyal "allies" jumped at the chance to acknowledge Biden's
victory.
Some nations have already congratulated Biden, whereas America's two "big dog" enemies,
Russia and China, and many other disgruntled parties have not [ZH: China has since
congratulated Biden]. This willingness to congratulate Biden, supporting the legitimacy of the
elections as the Mainstream Media reported them is very telling to say the least.
I do believe that there was a lot of fraud and cheating. Because Biden was as dumb as hell
and didn't he talk in empty places.
A recount is definitely necessary, to expose the corrupt voting system and software that
were used. Because if they are not exposed, they will do it again and again. Just like they
did it to Bernie votes in 2016 primaries.
I don't think that he is the greatest President in US history, he has been Israel first
and has given everything to them. He Made Israel Great Again.
Ancient Handicapper , 2 hours ago
Thinking, I would not be the least surprised to discover the Republicans committed some of
that "fraud" voting you refer to. Republicans are famous for their "Dirty Tricks," and voting
tricks are not beyond their ken. Why are so many people seeing only the Dems as having
possibly cheated?
moonshadow , 1 hour ago
Republicans cheated Ron Paul. So what you say may be true. More likely Democrats, but...no
problem, no prejudice, let's expose it ALL
rphb , 7 hours ago
The problem is, even IF he still can expose this fraud and get 4 more years, the US is
done. The fact that so many thousands of Democrats, from normal postal workers, to governors
and anything in between have felt perfectly justified in cheating to get their way is proof
that the US is broken beyond repair.
...America have long since passed the point of no return. There is only controlled default
or hyperinflation left, and the former requires a fidget of responsibility so the US is sure
to choose the later.
The industrial base is gone, and what made America great, its freedoms, its ethics and its
proud men and women, no longer exist
XanII , 7 hours ago
Called super trends. The youth is corrupted beyond repair and newcomers will come with
specific goals in mind. The ammo box will be the last one remaining unless seccessions
succeed better. i doubt that.
dont stare at the beam , 6 hours ago
The problem is not whether he can expose the fraud or not. The problem is that he is part
of the fraud.
NONSENSE. Are you sleeping? Trump gained black and hispanic voters. He lost whites.
Why? Not one promise was kept. No wall. No Hillary in jail. No treasonous FBI/prosecutors
arrested. Nobody prosecuted for hiring illegals. H1Bs still here. No repeal/replace O-care.
No lockdown of nursing homes/hospitals, but every other business forced to shut down. Big
payday for companies making useless vaccines and ventilators, but no HCQ for those who want
it.
If Trump did what he promised he would have won easily. He is a terrible manager, so now
we are stuck with a drooling hair sniffer. Thanks again and bye bye Don.
TBT or not TBT , 1 hour ago
He lost white males. The rest of his base grew.
not dead yet , 1 hour ago
Ignorant people need to bone up on there are 3 branches of Fed government all with their
own delegated powers and all powers not specifically delegated to the Fed's are the province
of the states. The ignorant want to believe any president can just wave his hand and anything
he wants is done.
The House, which controls all spending, even under the Repubs gave Trump little or no
money for his wall and infrastructure. Trump got as much wall as he could by stealing money
from the War department and the Dems fought him in the courts all the way to the Supreme for
this. It's a big country so how do you know no one was prosecuted for hiring illegals. As
O-care was passed into law by Congress the president can't can it like he can an
administrative order from one of the government departments. It's up to Congress and the
courts. Nursing homes, hospitals, and healthcare are under the control of the states not the
Fed's or Trump as was the orders for shutting down businesses. If they are here legally you
can't legally deport all H1b's. Even if Trump issued an order the courts would toss it out.
Same with putting Hillary and others in jail. It's up to the courts not Trump. As far getting
them into court you are dealing with crooks who know every trick in the book, unlike the
Bidoons, to cover their backsides and can hire the best crooked lawyers in the business so
you can't go into court with a half a$$ case or it gets tossed and can't be prosecuted again.
In real life not every bad person gets what due him unlike a fiction TV show, where it seems
most people get "educated", where the good guys triumph all the time.
The US is one of the largest landmasses on the planet with 330 million people and
operations world wide. The Fed government is over 40 agencies and 2.1 million people. Yet
people who don't even know what their kids are doing in the next room expect one man to know
everything that goes on on the planet. The presidents daily briefing book is in the thousands
of pages and that's just the major stuff and could be full of lies and half truths by those
who write their section. You ill educated brain dead's are the ones who cost Trump the
election by not doing your homework and getting your info from the lying a$$ media. Trumps
accomplishments are considerable but the media buries them to make him look bad which they
have done 24/7 for over 4 years. Many of those "promises" need the cooperation of others
especially in his party and he didn't get it as they wanted him gone and good party man like
Pence in charge who they could control. No matter how good a manager or leader you are "you
can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink" is the case here. Both sides of the
aisle fought him from day one which is why outsider Trump had to listen to their
recommendations and got saddled with so many traitors on his staff and cabinet and is only
now finally getting them weeded out.
Don't you get it yet? The MIC and Wall St choose their guy. That's why we're watching Biden
give his acceptance speech right now. Sure Wall St liked the trillions Trump dumped on them but
they like stability more than the quick payday. They know they'll make more money with Biden
without all of the negative attention that Trump brought them. President's aren't elected,
they're selected and if they don't pass muster with Wall St and the MIC they aren't selected.
If you want to see this change, we need to unite to get money out of politics. It's our only
path forward out this BS we call our political system.
"Sure Wall St liked the trillions Trump dumped on them"
No, it's the Fed that "dumps" money in the form of low interest rates, bond rates, the
various forms of loan programs for financial institutions which creates money. They have
been doing this big time since 2008.
Nor can trump take credit for the tax cut, that was Ryan's and the republican
Congress's doing.
Fine it was the FED, but the FED was Trump's administration so I'm not sure what's the
difference. Do we credit the ACA to Pelosi or to Obama? Can't have it both ways.
Again no. The Fed is an independent agency which overlaps administrations. Oher than
the chairman, its members are appointed by the Fed's board of governors, each of whom
have a great deal of leeway in each fed district. The Chairman is first among equals as
it were and is the public face of the Fed.
It was in the Carter admin that Paul Volker and the Fed raised interest rates, thereby
almost insuring Carter's re-election defeat. Presidents get way too much credit or blame
on the economy.
"Do we credit the ACA to Pelosi or to Obama?"
Hard to tell, but Pelosi was the force behind it. It was the republicans after all
that labeled ACA Obama care.
OMG, and who is the head of the FED? Steve Mnuchin, a man appointed by who? A man that
should be in prison but thanks to our new elected VP he isn't.
Edit: and you're delusional if you think the FED is independent, they are a wholly
owned subsidiary of Wall St banks and the monied interests, the same monied interests
that OWN BOTH PARTIES.
OK, so why should Powell be in jail? After all it's the Fed that made possible the
"Great" trump economy.
"and you're delusional if you think the FED is independent, they are a wholly owned
subsidiary of Wall St banks and the monied interests, the same monied interests that OWN
BOTH PARTIES."
I hope you've included trump in that group. He brags about how rich he is and was born
into money.
I tend to get confused by the abbreviations many people use when there's no antecedent
explanation. Who's this MIC who you allege chooses, along with Wall Street, "their
guy"?
Military industrial complex, our defense contractors. Those that have made trillions
keeping us at war since WW2 and assassinated the only president that dared to undermine
them.
But this is what left are about today, silencing people that dont agree with them on every
topic.
This is also how absurd the left have become, look back past years since Trump was elected
they are now OK with having a neocon foreign policy president Biden to be elected - just
because they hate Trump so much. Have you guys already forgotten 4 years of Russiagate?
Or are you guys watching Rachel Maddow for your foreign policy knowledge?
"If Biden wins, the best-case scenario is that we'll be forced to deal with a Democratic
Party of resurgent centrism, convinced that their path to victory is through vacuous
messaging calibrated to cause the least offense to the maximum number of people. They'll
insist that their future dominance is assured, normalcy has been restored, and that the
nightmare is over. With eyes fixed on a seemingly winning formula, they won't see who's
getting left behind again, or history repeating itself before their very eyes."
Everyone falsely assumes that 'winning' actually involves getting elected. If the term
'winning' is viewed as maintaining the status quo, propping up the rich at the expense of the
poor while robbing the State, then regardless of who is carrying out the agenda, the Dems
leadership and fundraisers are still 'winning'.
Many big corporations have an each way bet in elections and can rest comfortably knowing
that whomever is elected, be they Red or Blue, will always join the ranks of weak and corrupt
politicians, seeking corporate approval for reelection, chasing profits or a board seat once
retired, while regularly selling their voters out. That's how the game is played to 'win'.
Politicians are just pawns on the chessboard, racing to get to the other end with the promise
of being turned into a queen.
The state of Georgia has a runoff system, so there will be another election in January.
Without the presidential election, turnout would presumably be lower. I'm not sure who that
would benefit in this case.
Even with both of the GA Senate seats, the Dem control would be the bare minimum. If you
need only 1 Senator to kill a piece of legislation, then doing so becomes affordable to a
much larger group of donors.
2022 Will have 20 Republican and 12 Democrat Senators up for re-election, and in this case
at most 2 of those Dem Senators will be in competitive races (AZ again, and GA again) - so
any political pressure will almost entirely on Republican Senators. Unless their game is
focused on obstructing their own party (in some places voters like that, and if so it is a
lucrative tactic to extract more federal $$$ for their state), Senators facing a close
re-election race would generally be more inclined to follow the party line.
Anyway, even when most people thought Dems would have 52-53 Senators, Biden already
started backing away from nominal Dem positions on reduction of oil/gas, police reform,
reversing tax cuts. On immigration, the Obama administration's was de-facto anti-immigration
by virtue of the mass deportation policies, only without the Trump DHS's sadistic touch.
Regulation of the internet companies is a big modern issue, and it's hard to see Biden any
different from Republicans on that. With a split Senate, it will certainly go nowhere.
I would maybe dare hope for repairing the disaster-response parts of the government, and
some infrastructure investment, while the extent of economic damage from covid plays out.
Many nationalists plan to vote for Trump, not due to a positive assessment of his first
term, but for the same reason people line up for terrible movie sequels: warm and fuzzy
nostalgia, sometimes inexplicable. Once upon a time the prospect of electing this man made the
people we all hate but who rule us anyway visibly afraid.
Spite for the "coastal elites" in tortoiseshell glasses will likely save the day.
But don't expect the same flood of libtard tears this time around outside of maybe low level
MSNBC watchers. The real elite, the Jews, now realize that Trump's gun had an orange tip spray
painted black the whole time.
Trump began betraying his voters almost as soon as he was sworn into office. The only
figures in Trump's populist campaign who survived the 2016 election were Steve Bannon, who was
banished after Charlottesville and is now facing federal charges at the hands of Trump's own
Department of Justice, and Jeff Sessions, whose political career was destroyed by Trump's
calculated malice.
A victory in 2016 by any of the generic GOP hacks who lost during the primary would've been
indistinguishable from the last four years of Trump, policy-wise.
Draining the swamp and transforming the Republicans into a worker's party? No. Instead, his
cabinet positions
were staffed by the swamp scum at the Heritage Foundation.
Deportation force and a wall? He trots out Stephen Miller
before any big vote , but nothing was accomplished on this front. Barack Obama removed
50% more
illegal aliens in his first term than Trump has. In his first two years of holding the
Presidency and Congress, Trump made no effort to present legislation to combat illegal
immigration or even increase border security. There are more Asian and Central American illegal
aliens in the United States right now than before he took office.
Punishing "LIBERAL DONORS"? Heritage's appointments have helped enable a corporate crime
wave not seen in recent memory, with laughable cases of naked insider trading like the
"paused" loan to Kodak personally protected by Trump's inner circle. Every multi-national
and NGO has been scamming the PPP system, Trump's promise to crack down on this
will never materialized . White collar crime prosecutions have fallen to a
33-year low during this administration.
Is it any wonder these "donors" have so much money laying around they can use it to fund
Black Lives Matter?
This round of American populism has been defeated by the Swamp conservatives, many who were
originally Trump foes and but now gleefully wear MAGA hats and have shoved aside relatively
independent alt-light con artists and
the organic ethno-nationalist movement. The conservatives we thought we canceled, like the Jews
Ben Shapiro, Mark Levine, and Dennis Prager have come back from the dead thanks to Big Tech's
massive crackdown on independent media.
The problem for Trump is that conservatism is widely hated, especially by his voters.
Trump's tax cut for billionaires is one of his administration's only policy achievements, and
it is the
most unpopular thing he has ever done.
What will carry Trump over the finish line is the understandable desire to trigger the
libs just one last time, in a way that won't get you fired from your job or
antagonized by the FBI . The immense power the Judeo-left has amassed by uniting suburban
liberals, big capitalists, permanent bureaucrats and antifa under Trump has contributed to
white working people becoming atomized, thus demoralized, thus susceptible to Trump's campaign
year presentation as The Last White Man .
Seeing the conservative movement peering out from under the mountains of shit we shoveled on
them to dominate the Trump-era is testament to the flexibility and tenacity -- thanks to Jewish
"philanthropy" -- of the phony right. The time-sink, money-sink non-issues of abortion, the
supposed justification for confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, has re-emerged as
a supposedly important issue. Last year the abortion rate fell to the lowest
levels ever, largely due to low rates of sex between young people and the widespread
adoption of contraceptives.
But the Koch brothers know what we're really getting in ACB. The notorious "Americans for
Prosperity"
spent millions to push her through because she will be the most pro-big business justice on
the court (she sided with big business 85% of the time during her
judgeship), which explains the complete lack of a fight from the Democrats. 15 of the last 19
SCOTUS judges have been appointed by the Republican Party, yet the court has become more
pro-business and socially "liberal" anyway.
As Ted Cruz has recently stated, once the election is over and they're no longer under
pressure from voters, Trump and the GOP will be returning to
business as usual : imposing austerity during an unprecedented unemployment crisis,
ratcheting up military tensions with enemies of Israel, and as the
Heritage Foundation predicts in its conclusion of Trump v. Biden on immigration, a massive
amnesty bill that will introduce a new "merit-based immigration system" -- the H1-B program on
steroids.
While nobody thinks Trump's "platinum plan for black America" will ever come to be, the mere
suggestion will be opening up a debate we should not be having. Explicit
no-whites-need-apply social policies are another cultural artifact of the Trump era bound to
become acceptable in his second term.
For establishment Democrats, their second defeat at the hands of Trump will be enormously
discrediting, but they will profit in the short term from their comfortable position as the
opposition party. By running a candidate like Joe Biden, one can only assume they want to
lose.
But the Clinton-Biden-Obama-Pelosi nexus, who planned to fill "Sleepy Joe's" spayed cabinet
with people like John Kasich, Jeff
Flake , and various in-house neo-liberals, will be pressured by actual communists in their
party to step aside. The Republican Party will never be able to meet this challenge, instead
Trump and Charlie Kirk will be riding a helicopter to Botswana to cut the ribbon on a new
bathhouse and dance to the Village People when the next incident occurs and the nation is once
again on fire.
The New York Times has turned this election into a referendum on Woke + Wall
Street. The majority, even many non-whites, will be rejecting America's new official ideology
today.
From the beginning, one side of me has always thought Trump to be too good to be true. My
first doubts about him came when I learned his daughter was married to a powerful Jew and
she's adopted his religion. Trump has turned out to be the most pro-Zionist president ever
and has even moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem...
Best thing I have read on Trump. Here is my one reservation
"The real elite, the Jews, now realize that Trump's gun had an orange tip spray painted
black the whole time."
Forget "now realize". At least Trump's Jews – the ones anti Jewish Power Trump
supporters never report on – have ALWAYS realized that Trump is shabbos goy to the
bone. I am talking about Jews like:
Lew Eisenberg, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Mel Sembler, Ron Weiser, Steve Wynn, Elliott
Brody, Laurie Perlmutter, and Carl Icahn, not to mention Bernie Marcus. Then we have his many
Jewish personal and professional associates, who include, among others, Avi Berkowitz,
Michael Cohen, Gary Cohn, Reed Cordish, Boris Epshteyn, David Friedman, Jason Greenblatt,
Larry Kudlow, Stephen Miller, Steven Mnuchin, Jay Sekulow, David Shulkin, and Allen
Weisselberg. All those Trump-defenders out there in America should be dismayed at his vast
linkage to the people of Israel(See Thomas Dalton, True Q)
These are the big Business Republican Jews and their apparatchiks as opposed to the new
class professionals, academics, intellectuals, mediaist, journalists, and policy wonks who
comprise the neo liberal – liberal and neocon Jews of the Democrat Party. Unlike the
Democrat Jews who don't know Trump existentially – he's too vulgar and undereducated
– and really do think, or perhaps at least thought, that Trump could be the coming of a
new Hitler, the Business Jews have had long actual existential relations with Trump or know
Jews who have. Trump has been up to his ears in Jews of the Big Business type his whole life
and they know he is firmly in the Semophile bag. As Jews , Trump's Jews want Zionism and have
always known he is good for it. But they also want every break they can get for Big Business
because what could be better for Jews who prosper from neoliberalism right across their
higher class status? As Striker argues , Trump will give Jews another round of business
breaks like those he had already given in his first term. And there will go his populist
image but it will have served its purpose
All this could have been easily predicted if someone in our ethnic realism community had
taken a good look at Trump's Jews. Instead Trump was allowed to pose as "the last white
man"
Actually E Michael Jones sort of tried it but he didn't get any support. Why is that?
Well, I don't know who won yet and I doubt that anyone will ever know since everything is
rigged, but Old Joe has most of the alphabet agencies in his pocket, the MSM in his corner
and a whole lot of Obama, Clinton trotskyites lookin after him. That should mean that he
should win by a landslide, unless he lets the popular vote for Trump – into the
election process – which would be shrewd .. lol As far as America goes – SNAFU d
again.
I've been sitting here watching the election maps all night.
The counting stopped around 8:30 – 9:00 Pacific time. It hasn't moved since.
If you go into the counties on the particular states that have stalled, you can do the
math.
Clearly Trump was winning and if counts allowed, they should be able to call it.
Amazingly, they called Arizona when it was only something like 68% complete.
NV was going red but it shows it is swaying blue now it is the only state that has updated
in last 3 hours besides Arizona.
It looks like they might be trying to pull something (the Democrats/Deep state).
I've never seen this happen. There is no reason for it to have happened.
WI, MI, PA, NC and GA are all pending red, along with the 1 electoral vote in ME.
Go to bed. In morning we'll get up and Biden will be declared winner with most of the
above states declared blue (sometime during the night when most people are sleeping).
Superficial article. The author did write a few good sentences, but seems to have missed
that Trump is at most a potential catalyst for white awakening. If that does not happen, you
can't blame him. You can only blame yourself for a combination of spinelessness, stupidity,
cowardice & naivety.
If the central pillar of America, whites, are so immature or so divided, US cannot last.
No empire which was not a nation-state too, did survive in history. It disintegrated &
collapsed.
Too bad Trump is jewish and fully cooperated with his shitty ethnic group and their
endless treasonous schemes many times. The alt-right/Q/MAGA jewish psyop (the real
Russiagate), HARPA, Barr covering up many crimes of the tribe (Epstein, Trump's crimes, big
tech, fake BLM/ANTIFA protests, ), treasonous cooperation with Israel, the coronavirus flu
scam, close ties to illegal mass surveillance contractors and Chabad Lubavich, shady deals
with banks, handing money over to his fellows in "coronavirus aid packages", engaging in
trade wars that seemed to be stupid, but had the objective of imploding the US economy to
pave way for China (same for the flu scam and 2008 crisis)
Biden isn't that different either.
@Anon out civilization
and barbarism that Hudson quite matter-of-factly agreed with me that the book is, to the
extent that it will be understood, " earth-shattering" in both intent and effect .
The movement that Striker is referring to, has have a moral component, otherwise the agents
of Mammon win again. Our (((friends))) have been winning for centuries, because they have
redefined reality using their ill-gotten gains. Clown world is funded.
But whether we get Trump or Biden, we need to organize our own political movement or we
will be getting it anyway.
The point is that there's not a dimes worth of difference between the Democrats and
Republicans and their candidates and therefore voting is a waste of time.
It looks like they might be trying to pull something (the Democrats/Deep state).
Yes, they're trying to cheat, no doubt. Of course, nobody will care enough to do anything
about it. Had Trump actually done something for White people, the erstwhile alt-right might
have organized Charlottesville-style rallies in support of Trump, but he didn't, so they won't.
That's what he gets for being a cuck and throwing his most committed supporters under the
bus.
Trump is like the abusive alcoholic husband and American conservatives(mostly Whites)are
like the battered wife. Deep down we know the beatings will never stop, but we continue to give
our love and support to him. We know we should leave him, perhaps find a new man to share our
love with and help raise our kids. The problem is we are stuck in a neighborhood of crack heads
and heroine addicts, and the new husband would turn out worse than the last...
The old saw that Obama deported more illegals than did Trump in the first term is a lie
exposed many times over. At the border under Bush II, Mexicans caught coming across were simply
sent back on their own recognizance (ORed) and not counted as a deportation. There were
thousands and thousands treated this way by the Border Patrol and Immigration. To get the
deportation numbers up, Obama ordered that ORs be counted as deportations, so therein is the
lie.
I must agree with this article. Trump has largely betrayed his base, and is no more likely
to do better for the average working class American in his second term than he has in his
first. It's painful, I don't want to admit this either, but as they say, optimism is
cowardice.
I must however object to the notion that the Democrats are in any way "communist." Do
communists throw tens of trillions of dollars at Wall Street while starving the real economy of
investment? Do communists support "surprise medical billing?" Do communists allow all important
financial decisions to be made by private corporations? Oh sure, the Democrats will come up
with all sorts of confiscatory taxes and regulations on the middle class, no doubt, and they
will subsidize illegal immigrants – which is to say, they will subsidize cheap labor for
the elites. And yes they will be for transgender bathrooms. But communists? No way no how, the
Democrats are Neoliberal scum just like the Republicans.
Make a new political movement? It would be nice, but I can't see any way that such a thing
will not be suppressed or co-opted or the leadership bought out etc.etc. Look what happened to
"Golden Dawn" in Greece
Sadly I think the last white man is going to lose. The election has been stolen from him
with mass voting fraud, both in vote counting and mass voting by illegal voters. He has also
shot himself in the foot over the last four years with several major blunders, which did not
help, for e.g.:
1) Calling off the voting fraud investigation and disbanded the investigative team soon
after his inauguration in 2016.
2) Too thin skin and incendiary in his tweets, not very Presidential and made unnecessary
enemies.
3) Didn't do enough to reduce legal immigration incl. H1B and OPTs right from the get go,
which lost him a lot of enthusiasm from college educated voters. He only finally began to do
something about it last month, too little too late. Stephen Miller turned out to be a fake
patriot after all, who kept out true patriots like Kris Kobach from running the DHS.
4) Kept/promoted his enemies like Paul Ryan, John Kelly, Rod Rosenstein, James Comey, HR
McMaster, Gina Haspel, Christopher Wray et. al, which came back to haunt him very quickly.
5) Letting wormtongue (Jared Kushner) into the WH and giving him far too much power,
including freeing all the drug dealers.
6) At times it seemed like the only thing he cares about is the stock market, he made lots
of people way richer than they were in 2016, and these are all the people who are now voting
against him, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.
7) Too many Jews and Ziocons in his cabinet. Pandered too much to Israel, making his real
slogan more like MIGA than MAGA.
Come to think of it, Trump is not the last white man. He is the last Ziocon Jew to become
president.
Trump did not win by a landslide as so many hoped. There is a reason for the red wave fail,
and it is Trump himself and his policies.
Trump's biggest enemy is himself, he spent the entire administration making threats and
filling his administration with swamp criminals, he is slavishly whored to Netanyahu and
Israel, he even murdered Soleimani. He didn't remove the troops from a single occupied nation.
Trump's failure as a good administrator is glaring obvious and of no surprise because he had no
previous governmental experience. He just winged it based on being the Donald. What a joke. A
nation ruled by one ego that thinks it is god.
He never went on the offensive with 911 truth, which would put the entire swamp under
investigation and in a fight to stay out of prison. With 911 investigation Israel would be put
on a leash, and the Neocons would ALL be indicted, along with the Jewish newspapers and
lobbies. Because Trump REFUSED to investigate the biggest crime in history because of his god
damned loyalty to Jews and Israel, it is Trump who spent his entire presidency in a defensive
mode.
When asked if he condemns white supremacy Trump did not condemn the interviewer or defend
white people. Pathetic. He's cucked to the Jewish media narrative. And why doesn't he take
legal or military action against the Jewish media? Because he is bed with Kushners and the
Adelsons.
As a result of his own actions Trump who could of won by a landslide is now in a stalemate
with creeper senile Biden, one of the most pathetic candidates ever. Trump failures all center
around his loyalties to Jews and Israel.
So this election is looking more and more like a stalemate and I would like to bring to
everyone's attention that there is a "prophecy" of how this ends:
"The presidents of the U.S., a supposedly free country, have been abusing their power to
an increasingly greater extent. During a time of social unrest even more so than the period
of Viet Nam and Watergate, the electoral college will be evenly split over the election of
the new president. The process will stalemate, with many people clamoring for whichever
candidate they voted for, causing enormous tension in the country. Internationally it will be
a sensitive situation.
Because of the split, and the extremely volatile and explosive social unrest, putting
either candidate in office instead of the other could start a civil war or a revolution.
After a long time of impassioned speeches invoking patriotism and the founding fathers, a
compromise solution of holding another election will be taken, and a candidate will be
installed without disaster."
PS I have no dog in the fight and I don't vote, I will never vote for a lesser of two evils,
if the two pedo candidates is the best the nation can do when we have 337 million people to
pick from then maybe the nation needs to fall.
persistence and evolution of the US two/uni party system is interesting.
It is due to the "winner take all" election rules rather than a proportional system. For the
most part, US voters vote straight party anyway, so I don't see why we can't just go to a
proportional system where you vote for a party, and based upon that party's percentage of vote,
they get to fill X seats. Perhaps that would not work with the Presidential or Senate
elections, but would at least work for the House.
It looks like Republicans will be keeping the Senate. They almost did win House also.
So Biden cannot do too much, except to make some wars, regulate the international trade and
give some money to freeloaders residing in the cities.
In the mean time the rate of debt will significantly increase.
I do not think there could be any negotiations with Russians because Biden is unreliable.
Trump began betraying his voters almost as soon as he was sworn into office. The only
figures in Trump's populist campaign who survived the 2016 election were Steve Bannon, who
was banished after Charlottesville and is now facing federal charges at the hands of Trump's
own Department of Justice, and Jeff Sessions, whose political career was destroyed by Trump's
calculated malice.
Remember Kris Kobach and how he was going to investigate widespread election fraud? that's
something that might have been useful. Whatever happened to him, anyway? Just kind of faded
away. No support from Drumpf. Last I heard, Kobach was held in contempt of court for failing to
adequately advise noncitizens of their "right" to vote:
And Steve King -- sure, he was initially a Cruz supporter, but backed Trump enthusiastically
later on. King's mild civic nationalism and strong support for common sense, patriotic
immigration reform are exactly the agenda that Trump claimed to support. But when the
corporate "news" media and the entire Uniparty attacked Steve King as "inadequately anti-White"
-- Trump did <a href+' https://www.timesofisrael.com/white-house-distances-itself-from-king-comments/"was
quick to disavow. King's longstanding
fanatical
Israel Firstism did nothing to save him. It's not enough to support semitic supremacism in
the current year; you have to be actively anti-White as well, goy.
Zemurray's original name was Schmuel Zmurri. He was born in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Russia
(present-day Chişinău, Moldova) to a poor Jewish family that emigrated
to America when he was fourteen years old.
In early 20th century, he went to Honduras to take over the banana crop business. He hired
pe0ple to do a coup for his business interests in 1910.
@Rufus Clyde Too group
has been around for more than a decade. It was very clever to imply they were deeply involved
and have them seem to be the originators of the predator exposures and firings.
Also, think it a coincidence that so many Repubs in Congress either "retired",
decided to do something else or whose campaigns weren't going to be funded by the RNC in 2018?
NO. They were forced out because they were corrupt.
Think Guliani bothered to go spend weeks in Ukraine just for vacation? NO, he went to get
firsthand evidence of the Biden corruption. Etc, etc ..
@Zarathustra "Trump did
for the jew as much as he could."
How does the cliche go? Live by the jew, die by the jew? Parasites are not known for their
loyalty. The tribe squeezed all it could out of their useful idiot, Donnie the Dummy, and then
deftly jumped to a new host, Joey Depends, who will willingly advance the tribe's self-serving
agenda in ways yet undreamed of even by the political cognoscenti. Donnie appears to be a
vindictive old bitch and might just form a populist third party along the lines of Teddy
Roosevelt's moronic Bull Moose now that the tribe has discarded him like a wad of used stained
toilet paper.
@Zarathustra he Jews and
being vetted by them. He was a loose cannon and had to go.
I further believe that war with China is more likely under Biden than Trump. The U.S. dollar
has been the reserve currency since right after WWII. The rise of China threatens that so China
will eventually have to be dealt with militarily. The Jews must maintain the U.S. dollar as
reserve currency else much of their ill gotten gains tend to evaporate over time.
I am positive that local Jews have large investments in China.
That one I have no information on. It could well be true.
Multiculturalism has always been a stopgap, a temporary pause on the way to disintegration
for empires. The elites always put their hopes in it imagining they will satisfy angry
minorities with minor adjustments. It never works. Just look at the Black armed militias. Not
even systematic Black privilege n Supremacism is enough for them. They won't stop even for
Biden until they ethnically cleanse whites completely from large parts of the country dominate
the rest. We are past elections now. The war has begun.
The stage is set for another false flag with everyone distracted and caught up with the
plandemic and/or political unrest, and regardless of which puppet gets selected, the
Ziocorporate regime is certain to be rolling out more AI and tech to manipulate, control and
frame the masses. The "anti-semitic terrorism" angle of Islamism now colluding with neo-Nazi
white supremacism is as hilarious as it is scary, considering the US/EU Ziocorporate terrorist
regimes' recent interventions in Libya, Syria and Ukraine and the sudden rise in ISlamist
events in NATO/EU countries. This late stage fusion of imperial capitalism with communism in
the West is looking like a complete disaster for mankind.
@Katrinka in droves, but
there is massive fraud going on in GA, NC, NV, AZ, PA, WI and MI, as well as all the blue
states. Not only are votes miscounted, ballots conjured out of thin air for Biden, I suspect
many are also voting illegally since the DMV that registers voters in these states have no
capacity to check their citizenship status. The GOP needs to form an election integrity
committee and conduct a thorough audit of every state to verify their voters' eligibility. It
is a massive undertaking, but it must be done. There is no integrity left in our election
system.
The DNC should rename themselves the EJM, the End Justifies Means party. Democrats are a
bunch of shameless frauds.
It's so simple most don't even see it. American Jews are Trotskyites and Israeli Jews are
Stalinists. That's it Bolshevism 101, come to think of it there is no 102. It seems Mr. Trump
did not choose wisely.
"... Here context matters. The US, or those who control the US, are trying to maintain American hegemony, or near hegemony, over the world. America has 600-800 military bases around the globe depending on what you regard as a military base. While many tens of thousands of America sleep on the sidewalks, while infrastructure crumbles, while standards of living fall and medical care is pricey but poor, the Pentagon always gets its budget. At the level of the White House, the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel, the arms industry, the important thing is to maintain the flow of money. And dominate the world. ..."
"... Trump is the embodiment of this looking-for-a-fight attitude. Not good. He has surrounded himself with over-age Cold Warriors, with generals, with the pathologically aggressive hangers-on from think-tank Washington: John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, Steve Bannon, and minor squibs of like outlook. He has pulled the US out of the arms-control treaties, START, INF, Open Skies. He has pushed NATO against Russian borders. In the Legion halls of Idaho, this may seem virile, the sort of thing that John Wayne would do. Back the commies down. Show them who is boss. No. It is just pointless and dangerous. ..."
"... Worse, there is a new kid on the block. China is growing. It behaves no worse than other countries, does not inflict on the world nearly the destruction and horror that the United States does, but it is growing. For Washington, this makes it not a competitor but an enemy. This is very much Trump's policy. Don't negotiate. Threaten. "Do as I say, or I will break you." ..."
"... Those favoring the continuance of Empire might note that, even at this, Trump has been a disaster. The First Rule of Empire is Don't let your enemies unite. Trump, having made Russia and China into enemies (why?) has forced ..."
"... Then there is Iran, a geopolitical linchpin, having eighty million people, a large and competent military, and lots and lots of oil. Under the JCPOA, the nuke deal, the Iranians were posed happily to integrate themselves into the Western economy -- buy hundreds of airliners from Boeing and Airbus, telecommunications gear, sell oil, have western companies develop its huge hydrocarbon reserves. ..."
"... Then Trump pulled out of the treaty and, led by the egregious Pompeo, tries to starve the Iranians into installing a puppet government. Iran, seeing that the West is not friendly, turns to the East, allies itself tightly with Russia and China. Tehran and Beijing are about to sign a twenty-five year, multimanymuchoslotsa billion dollar development deal. ..."
"... Then Trump had Soleimani, an Iranian hero, murdered. This doubtless played well with his partisans in Joe's Bar in Chicago, being manly and decisive and making America great again. It was also idiotic, making Iranians even less likely to cave to American pressure. ..."
"... With Trump the country elected an attitude, not a President. Truculence, bravado, and an in-your-face aggressiveness are no substitute for competence. ..."
Everybody and his goat has weighed in on the election, so I will too. This will make no
difference to Trump's core followers, for whom he is a cult figure, or to those who detest him.
The undecided may be interested.
Note how insubstantial Trump has been, pretending to be what he isn't and claiming to have
done what he hasn't. Does no one notice? He has heavy support from Evangelicals. Ask him to
name the books of the Pentateuch, or the second book, or what church he regularly attended, or
ever attended, in New York. He was going to end the wars, but what war has he ended? To reduce
the trade deficit, but it has grown . To get rid of
all illegal aliens withing two years, but have they gone? To bring back factories from China
and Mexico, but how many have returned? He is called a law-and-order President. Yet he hid,
besieged, in the White House during the greatest eruption of lawlessness the country has ever
seen, with a statue being pulled down across the street from his house. His handling of the
virus? America remains hardest hit in the world, and it worsens by the day.
Trump, like all Presidents, has fulfilled the two critical jobs expected of him, protecting
Wall Street and the military budget. What else has he done?
Almost nothing. All in good fun. But in the crucial field of international relations, he has
been a disaster. I suspect that few of his followers in Flint and Gary study things beyond the
borders. They should.
Here context matters. The US, or those who control the US, are trying to maintain
American hegemony, or near hegemony, over the world. America has 600-800 military bases around
the globe depending on what you regard as a military base. While many tens of thousands of
America sleep on the sidewalks, while infrastructure crumbles, while standards of living fall
and medical care is pricey but poor, the Pentagon always gets its budget. At the level of the
White House, the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel, the arms industry, the important thing is to maintain
the flow of money. And dominate the world.
Trump is the embodiment of this looking-for-a-fight attitude. Not good. He has
surrounded himself with over-age Cold Warriors, with generals, with the pathologically
aggressive hangers-on from think-tank Washington: John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, Steve
Bannon, and minor squibs of like outlook. He has pulled the US out of the arms-control
treaties, START, INF, Open Skies. He has pushed NATO against Russian borders. In the Legion
halls of Idaho, this may seem virile, the sort of thing that John Wayne would do. Back the
commies down. Show them who is boss. No. It is just pointless and dangerous.
Worse, there is a new kid on the block. China is growing. It behaves no worse than other
countries, does not inflict on the world nearly the destruction and horror that the United
States does, but it is growing. For Washington, this makes it not a competitor but an enemy.
This is very much Trump's policy. Don't negotiate. Threaten. "Do as I say, or I will break
you."
Those favoring the continuance of Empire might note that, even at this, Trump has been a
disaster. The First Rule of Empire is Don't let your enemies unite. Trump, having made Russia
and China into enemies (why?) has forced them to unite. This is -- how shall I
put it? -- stupid. Russia and China are not natural allies. China is a crowded country with 1.4
billion smart, industrious people, rapidly growing influence, and a very long indefensible
border with Russia. Russia has barely 146 million people, a comparatively static economy, vast
empty lands with rich resources. The Russians may have noticed this. The two have had
territorial disputes. This is not a marriage made, as we say, in heaven. Instead of playing
them against each other, allying with one against the other, or leaving them the hell alone,
Trump has forced them into close alliance.
This is Trump's policy, in the sense that if it happens during his presidency, it is his
baby, though it is fairly evident that Pompeo is Trumps brains and Trump is Pompeo's
enabler.
Then there is Iran, a geopolitical linchpin, having eighty million people, a large and
competent military, and lots and lots of oil. Under the JCPOA, the nuke deal, the Iranians were
posed happily to integrate themselves into the Western economy -- buy hundreds of airliners
from Boeing and Airbus, telecommunications gear, sell oil, have western companies develop its
huge hydrocarbon reserves.
Then Trump pulled out of the treaty and, led by the egregious Pompeo, tries to starve
the Iranians into installing a puppet government. Iran, seeing that the West is not friendly,
turns to the East, allies itself tightly with Russia and China. Tehran and Beijing are about to
sign a twenty-five year, multimanymuchoslotsa billion dollar development deal.
Three enemies, united, where none was before. Fucking brilliant, Mike. Just fucking
brilliant.
Then Trump had Soleimani, an Iranian hero, murdered. This doubtless played well with his
partisans in Joe's Bar in Chicago, being manly and decisive and making America great again. It
was also idiotic, making Iranians even less likely to cave to American pressure.
The same counterproductiveness appears in his "trade war" with China, in fact an attempt to
wreck China commercially and technologically. This is packaged by Trump as "standing up to
China," "deterring China," "containing China," but it might as accurately be called
"encouraging the genie to leave the bottle," or "asking for it."
A quick example: Huawei was contentedly using Google's Android operating system on its
smartphones. Android and iOS, both American, dominated the world market for operating systems.
Huawei, with the predictability of sunrise, responded by crash-developing its own OS,
Harmony . With equal predictability and suddenness it will improve it, further grow its app
store (HMS, Huawei Mobile Services) and, on a guess, encourage other companies to use it. It
will be said that a new OS won't work, can't compete, will take decades, and all the things
that are customarily said of things China does. Wait.
Trump's result: A new and, likely, serious competitor to Google. Good job, Don.
There is more to come. Precisely because of Trump's technology-denial policy, China has
launched a massive program to make itself tech-independent. It will take time, but it will
happen. Every time China develops a replacement for an American product, US companies will lose
the Chinese market for it -- and shortly face a competitor.
The root of the matter? With Trump the country elected an attitude, not a President.
Truculence, bravado, and an in-your-face aggressiveness are no substitute for competence.
Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he is blankly ignorant of history, geography,
technology, the military. In Hawaii, when taken to the USS Arizona memorial, he didn't know
what it was. He has opined that the Spanish flu of 1917 (his date)
influenced the end of WWII . It would be instructive for a reporter to ask him what
countries border Iran, where one finds the Strait of Malacca, and why it matters.
The more enthusiastic of his followers seem to be equally ignorant and, worse, have no idea
why a President should know such things. Is this how we choose Presidents, and the sort of
Presidents we choose?
Write Fred at [email protected] Put the letters pdq anywhere in the
subject line to avoid heartless autodeletion.
Check out Fred's splendid
books ! Sedition, outrage, distortion, treason and other amusements. Enjoy accounts of
America, not the disaster by the same name now peddled as the real thing. Cheap at the
price.
This chart is a good reminder why Trump should be re-elected.
Suck it, Fred.
Oh and Mexico's doing worse on Covid when you account for their criminal undercounting of
Covid deaths. When you have one of the lowest testing rates of any large country, then it's
easy to undercount.
This article would read fairly well if you would just replace all instances of "Trump"
with "the US Feral Government". You're gonna blame the continuing stupidity of this huge
Beast of a Government on the one man? Do you think he is King of America? He can hardly get
anything done, which IS, BTW, partly his problem – the one thing you are quite right
about is the stupidity in the President's hiring of swamp creatures to drain the swamp. I
don't understand this myself but chalk it up to a lack of confidence in his own
instincts.
Commenter Bragadocious has already brought up the very encouraging numbers of admitted
"refugees" that I have read on VDare, but there are other below-the-radar good efforts by the
President regarding immigration. Of course, most of us have been disappointed quite a bit,
but lately I've been more gung-ho – anyone interested, please read VDare's "NYT Delivers Unintentional Endorsement Of Trump's Immigration Triumph" . (Hey,
didn't you use to work there, Fred? You ought to at least keep up a bit.)
Peak Stupidity points out "The Bad, the Good, and the Ugly" regarding the President
and this election – see "The Bad" , "The Good" , and
"The
Ugly" .
I honestly don't understand why you're so concerned with what happens to America anyway,
Fred. You live in the great country of Mexico. Is it that everything disparaging you write
makes you feel better about your decision to high-tail it down there?
Presidentially and socially we face two alternatives: an easy anesthetized slide into
certain doom or a panicked descent kicking against the looming walls of our trap. Of course,
that is not what either pretends to be, nor what the masses think they are.
In the end I can't tell a nickel's worth of difference. If someone could guarantee that
one alternative was more likely than another to end in nuclear holocaust than the other I
would allow a difference, but I don't see it. Which ever we "choose" this time, the pendulum
will swing until a tipping point is reached.
It would be nice to have a serious realist in the White House, but I don't see the people
voting for one. Maybe one will ride in on a white horse.
An excellent and accurate article. However, it should note that Biden's history shows he
will probably be worse. Despite his tough talk, Trump never started a new war, which is why
the Deep State hates him. They teed up four excuses to attack Iran: the strange drone attack
on a Saudi oil facility, the strange mines placed on a tanker, flying a drone over Iran that
was shot down, and doing nothing when Iran fired missiles at American bases in Iraq.
Those favoring the continuance of Empire might note that, even at this, Trump has been a
disaster. The First Rule of Empire is Don't let your enemies unite. Trump, having made
Russia and China into enemies (why?) has forced them to unite. This is -- how shall I put
it? -- stupid.
This isn't accurate, letting Russia and China unite was a notable feature of the Obama
administration and probably goes back further than that. Remember the pivot to Asia? Remember
Victoria Nuland handing out cookies at the Maidan? But you are absolutely right about Trump
solely pushing Iran into the arms of Russia and China.
Fred is right, Trump is a hee-haw Jackass who takes the prize for the dumbest, most
delusional, most corrupt and most incompetent POTUS in all history.
He's run America into the ground with his failed trade war, his delusional (un)management
of Covid-19 and all his damn fool gross stupidity. Just like his 6 failed casinos, his Trump
University and his bankrupt listed company DJT.
Everything just fail, fail, and fail. Even an Orangutan taken from the zoo would have done
better as POTUS than him.
Sorry, but to rewrite your comment, Trump, just like all his predecessors, has fulfilled
the Three critical jobs expected of him: 1. Armed and expanded Jewish colonial fascism
in Palestine, 2. Continue to protect the 1% (Wall Street) and 3. Increased U.S. military
budget by continuing to sale arms to fascist regimes.
Yes, he is a blathering, bullshitting salesman who built hotels and had a reality TV show.
But he didn't start any wars. Bombed the odd airstrip, but that was about it. Who was the
last President you could say that about? If he loses, strap in for more wars, possibly even
the Big One. And as for China, before we get too awestruck about their economic 'miracle' --
which was remarkable -- note that their money supply (M2) is 2.5 times their GDP. $2.50 for
every $1 they need for their economy. Why? To prop up a banking system that is a total Ponzi
scheme. To say they have an internal debt problem doesn't begin to cover it. Sure, it allowed
them to build super fast trains and cities with no-one in them, but they can't get Chinese
people to consume because they are all desperately saving for health care. The public health
care is dreadful. It was a miracle, sure, but full of holes (which makes it no less
impressive).
Fred highlights lots of problems, but I don't see why the other two Presidents will be
better at solving them. They certainly won't be, because they don't see them as problems.
They will start more wars, they will ignore the trade deficit, they will bring in millions
of immigrants, they will keep selling off manufacturing to cheaper places indifferently, and
they will be indebted to their BLM fascists when in power, meaning violence will increase
either way.
They are for Empire, and they don't keep to the treaties anyways – at least Trump is
honest when he tears them up. It is, according to Al-Anfal 55-63 at least, up to those who
get betrayed to tear up the treaties, and they should have long done so anyways.
Killing Suleimani? Is there a bigger misstep that could have been done by the Empire, that
cost so little in terms of human life to the ME, and actually improved the reputation of
Trump with the crazies whilst making the wind down accelerate?!
They will be for NATO, which will stop being an NA and will become a World Treaty
Organisation.
He sure ain't perfect – he is a very weak or trusting manager, it seems – but
he tries to move in the right direction often, even if he is prevented from taking even more
than baby steps. The other two Presidents will march into the abyss whilst laughing at their
awesome brilliance!
Why was Trump elected in the first place, Fred? In a well-run country with real options,
Trump would have been laughed at. When your rulers actively sell you out, hate you, and are
in the process of replacing you, a Donald Trump is a realistic option. That is sad. What's
worse is that even after Trump's election, the PTBs are doubling down on the treason and
hatred of Americans. As bad as Trump is, what is the option? And what can one man really
do?
It's too easy to just blame the situation on stupid Trump supporters, as if their votes
created America's problems.
@Weston Waroda rm the Ukraine military. Ukies don't just take their kalashnikovs and send
them to the metal cutters – their corrupt generals sold all the rifles, motors, and
assorted other arms and kept the 35 million. This makes Neo Nazi's much more stronger at the
Maidan, which was delayed because of Yanukovych and his kleptocrazy regime. Thanks to the
African born Obama and Joe the War lover – Ukraine to day is totally CIA,Mossad, Nato
etc. We could dissect Libya and Syria but we would find the same Satanic World Order boys
– Barrack and Joe – doing their thing for the Cabal. Oh – I lived in
Ukraine 08 – 2014 and then had to switch residency – for obvious reasons. Spacibo
You have to give credit to Trump for stopping the anti white brainwashing AKA
as 'diversity training' which was based on the white hating manifesto AKA 'critical
race theory.' It turned out that under the radar big business and many parts of the
government were forcing whites to repent for their racist attitudes and write forced
confessions. President Trump gave the middle finger to that with much deconstructing
still to come.
I can't fathom how a descendant of the illustrious Tidewater Reeds can
turn his back on the accomplishments of his Anglo Saxon people.
America began as a Protestant project which is why we are fortunate to have
the most enlightened system of jurisprudence in the world. Say what you will about
Trump's brash New York City manner but at least he is a defender of Western
Civilization. I most look forward to cleaning house at the DOJ & CIA if he wins.
That and smashing Big Tech into a thousand pieces.
I'm not sure I want someone like you lecturing us on morality, Fred.
You're basically stating over and over, that the US should strive to maintain its 'Only
Empire in the World' approach (which it did since at least Clinton),
but Trump is just doing it wrong.
@Craig Nelsen f stupidity is Mr. Reed's part about Trump causing Russia and China to be
allied. WTH? Trump wanted to ignore the pretension by the Neocons (if they are serious it be
even stupider) that Russia is still the USSR, our arch enemy. The MIC and Neocons blocked his
rapprochement with Russia. President Trump's attempt to end the completely unfair trade deal
the sell-outs handed to China in the mid-1990s is one of his admirable efforts. Relations
have become bad mostly due to that the Chinese don't want a fair deal with trade. They are
used to taking advantage of us in every way possible – even the Great Chinese Visiting Scholar
Scam .
Trump is a symptom of the disease which the author mistakes for the disease itself. That's
why Trump won in 2016 because the white masses who elected him needed to vomit their own
existential angst against the System. The more petulant Trump became, the more love the white
masses have for him because that's how they feel against the System which has betrayed their
own white interests.
The author correctly points out that Trump does exactly what other US Presidents before
him have done which is to promote the economic interests of the US Capitalist Class and the
US Military-Industrial Complex, by cutting income taxes and increasing the defense budget,
respectively. He also mentions Trump's trade war and technology bans against China which has
served more as a "canary in a coal mine" than anything else, hastening the pace by which
Chinese companies have been diversifying away from the USA, since the GFC in 2008, including
developing their own indigenous technologies which have given rise to homegrown tech giants
like Huawei and TikTok. While Trump's anti-China moves were driven by political
self-aggrandizement, China's response was driven by its economic self-interest, which
explains its low-key approach to resolving its trade disputes with the USA.
But the author missed something else which is Trump's hostility to Globalist causes such
as unrestricted immigration, outsourcing of manufacturing and services jobs, foreign wars,
multilateral treaties such as the Paris Climate Accord, international institutions such as
the WHO, trade deals such as the TPP and NAFTA, among others. His most glaring omission is to
avoid any mention of Trump's decision to withdraw US troops out of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Germany as well as preventing another regime-change war against Iran.
While his economic policies range from the patently mediocre (promoting "fracking") to
outright stupid (imposing tariffs), Trump's biggest successes are in fact in the areas of US
foreign policy in which he DID carry out his "America First" strategy which has endeared him
to his white supporters but which has disheartened his enemies in the US Deep State.
Of course, that's exactly why his white supporters elected him in 2016 and why the US Deep
State is doing everything it can to defeat him in 2020 because a second term of Trump would
hasten the decline and fall of the US Empire.
"He has pushed NATO against Russian borders." No, after Reagan assured Gorbachev that NATO
would not move an inch closer to Russia with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Bill
Clinton moved NATO to Russia's borders as a provocation, along with slaughtering Slavs and
proving the inability of Russia to continue its traditional role as protector of the Slavs.
This was followed by BUSH's and OBAMA's continuation of Color Revolutions to establish US
puppets in former Soviets (and more NATO bases).
The Biden/ Nuland-led Maidan Revolution in Ukraine meant that the per capita GDP dropped
over half by deflecting the internal corruption into external Americans' and American
Ukrainians' pockets. For calling out that US corruption and briefly holding up more weapons,
money and provocation with Russia, Trump was impeached. Ukraine lost Crimea BEFORE Trump, and
he was stymied from removing troops by a Congress who refused to accept him as an Elected
President and Commander-in-Chief.
While Trump has lots of issues, calling him out for doing exactly what the last three
Presidents before him did, really undercuts the article's message. Scapegoating Trump doesn't
change reality.
Trump is the embodiment of this looking-for-a-fight attitude.
Wow, you have been asleep for the last four years? The antics of the Democrats and their
female goddess seem to have completely passed you by. Just to fill you in on some basic
detail, the Democrats (what an ironic name) have been waging battle after battle, you could
call it a war, against the President because they just couldn't accept the result of the last
election. They felt they were entitled to the presidency. You say Trump is looking for a
fight, the Democrats didn't just look, they launched the war and lost.
We all know that Trump is bellicose and a blowhard but he said all the right things in
2015-16. My issue with Trump is his betrayals. He threatened to end birthright citizenship
but never followed through. He was working with Tom Cotton to reduce legal immigration and
end chain migration but gave up after less than a year. He should have ended AFFH shortly
after taking office but didn't do so until just two months ago. The list goes on.
Another reason his administration wasn't as successful as we all hoped is that he didn't
know how to staff a government as PCR feared and predicted. He thought he could just ride in
to Washington and wing it and start barking orders it doesn't work that way.
Trump is not a visionary like Obama was. In order to qualify for Obama's administration
you had to think and see the world exactly like he did. Trump seems to get his jollies from
hiring people who disagree with him and work to undermine his agenda.
Now Trump is courting black nationalists like rapper Ice Cube while condemning white
nationalists. This would be like Obama courting David Duke on a plan to help poor and working
class white Americans.
Trump has given us three conservative SCOTUS's justices. He has also exposed the deep
state, the alphabet agencies, and the MSM for what they are. Evil anti American forces.
And all the while, staving off three bullshit coup attempts and constant personal and
political assault!
And what better would we get from proven corrupt and dementia laden career politician Joe
Biden Fred?
Fuck you!
I'm voting for the entertaining one. Politics is interactive theater. Was it George Carlin
who said that if voting mattered they wouldn't let us do it? No truer words. Plus I like the
Melania fashion watch on Breitbart....
BRICS began back in Obama days. More importantly its inception was due to crippling
Russian sanctions due to the bogus Magnitsky Act, which was passed during the W. Bush reign.
BTW do you know who sponsored the act in Congress? McCain, Biden, and Obama. All are/were
Zionists and Necon approved.
Hmm, as disappointing as Trump has been, and believe me, he has been a disappointment, he
is the best President in my lifetime of 59 years. Of course, given the list of empty suits
that we have been given as our leaders over the last 59 years, saying Trump is the best of
the lot is not saying much. Honestly has America elected a decent man to hold the office of
POTUS in the last 120 years?
At the very minimum Trump has exposed the FAKE MEDIA, hell, that is more than the others
ever did while in office because as we all know the American people have been lied to by the
Jew Media for over 100 years and counting. IF anyone can come up with reasons why anyone from
JFK to Obama were better for America than Trump, I am all ears. Personally, I give Trump an
overall D on his report card while the others I give a flat F. Do Whites really want a
Biden/Harris Presidency? I voted Trump, again. No REAL choice as usual.
All the potus have been under zionist control since they had JFK assassinated and then
came the zionist/Israeli and traitors in the ZUS government attack on the WTC on 911 and this
was blamed on the Arabs and gave the zionists the excuse to destroy the middle east for
Israels greater Israel agenda, using the ZUS military and AL CIADA and MOSSAD and MI6 created
mercenaries to to the destruction and the killing.
Trump is just another in a long line of zionist puppets and Biden is the same and the one
ie the libertarian Joanne Jorgensen who is against these wars, is ignored, and the beat goes
on.
Nobody gives a shit in Joe's Bar in Chicago about the killing of the Iranian general but
you may want to check the bars in Tel Aviv to see if they're rejoicing
Now enough about China there are plenty of other sycophants on unz.com without you joining in. Stick to defending wetbacks which
suits you naturally and it's more palatable.
As to Russia and China: first, you outline Chinese population treat to Russia and then
second, you breathlessly claim they're boon companions so, which is it?
Lastly, I noticed that the one group which has most benefited from the orange man
presidency while undercutting his nationalist credentials which would help traditional
Americans isn't even mentioned in the article no names or hints. What gives?
"... We, in Russia, went through a fairly long period where foreign funds were very much the main source for creating and financing non-governmental organisations. Of course, not all of them pursued self-serving or bad goals, or wanted to destabilise the situation in our country, interfere in our domestic affairs, or influence Russia's domestic and, sometimes, foreign policy in their own interests. Of course not. ..."
Genuine democracy and civil society cannot be "imported." I have said so many times. They
cannot be a product of the activities of foreign "well-wishers," even if they "want the best
for us." In theory, this is probably possible. But, frankly, I have not yet seen such a thing
and do not believe much in it. We see how such imported democracy models function. They are
nothing more than a shell or a front with nothing behind them, even a semblance of sovereignty.
People in the countries where such schemes have been implemented were never asked for their
opinion, and their respective leaders are mere vassals. As is known, the overlord decides
everything for the vassal. To reiterate, only the citizens of a particular country can
determine their public interest.
We, in Russia, went through a fairly long period where foreign funds were very much the
main source for creating and financing non-governmental organisations. Of course, not all of
them pursued self-serving or bad goals, or wanted to destabilise the situation in our country,
interfere in our domestic affairs, or influence Russia's domestic and, sometimes, foreign
policy in their own interests. Of course not.
There were sincere enthusiasts among independent civic organisations (they do exist), to
whom we are undoubtedly grateful. But even so, they mostly remained strangers and ultimately
reflected the views and interests of their foreign trustees rather than the Russian citizens.
In a word, they were a tool with all the ensuing consequences.
A strong, free and independent civil society is nationally oriented and sovereign by
definition. It grows from the depth of people's lives and can take different forms and
directions. But it is a cultural phenomenon, a tradition of a particular country, not the
product of some abstract "transnational mind" with other people's interests behind it.
Not that foreign policy is high priority for most of the USA electorate, but still it looks
like some potential Trump voters do not approve this message.
That's why many of them probably will not vote for Trump in 2020, or will not vote at all
because there is no difference in this area between Trump and Biden: you can call the same
Zionist cutlet with two different names. but it is still the same cutlet.
People voted in Trump to be a protector of workers and lower middle class against financial
oligarchy. Instead, they got "Ziotrump", a marionette of Israel lobby who is first and foremost
the protector of Israel, MIC and the billionaire class.
The question is: Is Zionism an official ideology of the USA ruling elite? Zionism as any far right nationalism has it pluses
and minuses, but why this important decision is not discussed?
Notable quotes:
"... I like being energy independent, don't you? I'm sure that most of you noticed when you go to fill up your tank in your car, oftentimes it's below two dollars. You say how the hell did this happen? While I'm president, America will remain the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world. We will remain energy independent. It should be for many many years to come. The fact is, we don't have to be in the Middle East, other than we want to protect Israel. We've been very good to Israel. Other than that, we don't have to be in the Middle East." ..."
"... Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is ..."
For many years the security framework in the Middle East has been described as a bilateral
arrangement whereby Washington gained access to sufficient Saudi Arabian oil to keep the energy
market stable while the United States provided an armed physical presence through its bases in
the region and its ability to project power if anyone should seek to threaten the Saudi
Kingdom. The agreement was reportedly worked out in a February 1945 meeting between
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, just as World War 2 was drawing
to a close. That role as protector of Saudi Arabia and guarantor of stable energy markets in
the region later served as part of the justification for the U.S. ouster of the Iraqi Army from
Kuwait in 1991.
After 9/11, the rationale became somewhat less focused. The United States invaded
Afghanistan, did not capture or kill Osama bin Laden due to its own incompetence, and, rather
than setting up a puppet regime and leaving, settled down to a nineteen-years long and still
running counter-insurgency plus training mission. Fake intelligence produced by the neocons in
the White House and Defense Department subsequently implicated Iraq in 9/11 and led to the
political and military disaster known as the Iraq War.
During the 75 years since the end of the Second World War the Middle East has experienced
dramatic change, to include the withdrawal of the imperial European powers from the region and
the creation of the State of Israel. And the growth and diversification of energy resources
mean that it is no longer as necessary to secure the petroleum that moves in tankers through
the Persian Gulf. Lest there be any confusion over why the United States continues to be
involved in Syria, Iraq, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, President Donald Trump remarkably
provided some clarity relating to the issue when on September 8 th
he declared that the U.S. isn't any longer in the Middle East to secure oil supplies, but
rather because we "want to protect Israel."
The comment was made by Trump during a rally in Winston-Salem, N.C . as part of a
boast about his having reduced energy costs for consumers. He said " I like being energy
independent, don't you? I'm sure that most of you noticed when you go to fill up your tank in
your car, oftentimes it's below two dollars. You say how the hell did this happen? While I'm
president, America will remain the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world. We
will remain energy independent. It should be for many many years to come. The fact is, we don't
have to be in the Middle East, other than we want to protect Israel. We've been very good to
Israel. Other than that, we don't have to be in the Middle East."
The reality is, of course, that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has been all about
Israel for a very long time, at least since the presidency of Bill Clinton, who has been
sometimes dubbed the first Jewish president for his deference to Israeli interests. The Iraq
War is a prime example of how neoconservatives and Israel Firsters inside the United States
government conspired to go to war to protect the Jewish State. In key positions at the Pentagon
were Zionists Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. Feith's Office of Special Plans developed the
"alternative intelligence" linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and also to a mythical nuclear
program that was used to justify war. Feith was so close to Israel that he partnered in a law
firm that had an office in Jerusalem. The fake intelligence was then stove-piped to the White
House by fellow neocon "Scooter" Libby who worked in the office of Vice President Dick
Cheney.
After the fact, former Secretary of State Colin Powell also had something to say about the
origins of the war, commenting that the United States had
gone into Iraq because Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bought into the neoconservative
case made for doing so by "the JINSA crowd," by which he meant the Israel Lobby organization
the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
And if any more confirmation about the origins of the Iraq War were needed, one might turn
to Philip Zelikow, who was involved in the planning process while working on the staff of
Condoleezza Rice. He said "The unstated threat. And
here I criticize the [Bush] administration a little, because the argument that they make over
and over again is that this is about a threat to the United States. And then everybody says:
'Show me an imminent threat from Iraq to America. Show me, why would Iraq attack America or use
nuclear weapons against us?' So I'll tell you what I think the real threat is, and actually has
been since 1990. It's the threat against Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its
name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And
the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it's not a
popular sell."
So here is the point that resonates: even in 2002-3, when the Israel Lobby was not as
powerful as it is now, the fact that the U.S. was going to war on a lie and was actually acting
on behalf of the Jewish State was never presented in any way to the public, even though
America's children would be dying in the conflict and American taxpayers would be footing the
bill. The media, if it knew about the false intelligence, was reliably pro-Israel and helped
enable the deception.
And that same deception continued to this day until Trump spilled the beans earlier this
month. And now, with the special security arrangement that the U.S. has entered into with
Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, the ability to exit from a troublesome region
that does not actually threaten American interests has become very limited. As guarantor of the
agreement, Washington now has an obligation to intervene on the behalf of the parties involved.
Think about that, a no-win arrangement that will almost certainly lead to war with Iran,
possibly to include countries like Russia and China that will be selling it military equipment
contrary to U.S. "sanctions."
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that
seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is[email protected] .
Excellent synopsis of the situation. And if we look into the founding of Israel, we find
it was founded by war profiteers. This would explain why peace has been so "elusive". It has
been relentlessly dodged. "War Profiteers and the Roots of the 'War on Terror'" https://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com/p/war-profiteers-and-roots-of-war-on.html
This declaration is against the will of the American people. Hawkish policies of this
nature, that endanger the American lives should be confirmed by a referendum of the people.
Of course that would be logical step in a democracy but USA is not a democracy but a diktat
of backroom unellected ruling clique.
990. Jews are the scapegoats for all the deficiencies of low-IQ whites just as whites are
the scapegoats for all the deficiencies of low-IQ non-whites. Let me explain how that
works.
Why do we observe Jews at the forefront of many cutting-edge industries? (for example the
media/arts and financial industries are indeed rife with them). The low-IQ answer is, of
course, a simplistic conspiracy theory: Jews form an evil cabal that created all these
industries from scratch to "destroy culture" (or at least what low-IQ people think is
culture, i.e. some previous, obsolete state of culture, i.e. older, lower culture, i.e.
non-culture). And, to be sure, there is a lot of decadence in these industries. But, in an
advanced civilization, there is a lot of decadence everywhere anyway! It's an essential
prerequisite even! So it makes perfect sense that the most capable people in such a
civilization will also be the most decadent! The stereotype of the degenerate
cocaine-sniffing whoremonging or homosexual Hollywood or Wall Street operative belongs here.
Well, buddy, if YOU were subjected to the stresses and temptations of the Hollywood or Wall
Street lifestyles, maybe you'd be a "degenerate" too! But you lack the IQ for that, so of
course you'll reduce the whole enterprise to a simplistic resentful fairy tale that seems
laughable even to children: a bunch of old bearded Jews gathered round a large table planning
the destruction of civilization! Well I say enough with this childish nonsense! The Jews are
simply some of the smartest and most industrious people around, ergo it makes sense that
they'll be encountered at or near all the peaks of the dominant culture, being
overrepresented everywhere in it, including therefore in its failings and excesses! This is
what it means to be the best! It doesn't mean that you are faultless little angels who can do
no wrong, you brainless corn-fed nitwits! There's a moving passage somewhere in Nietzsche
where he relates that Europe owes the Jews for the highest sage (Spinoza), and the highest
saint (Jesus), and he'd never even heard of Freud or Einstein! In view of all the
immeasurable gifts the Jewish spirit has lavished on humanity, anti-semitism in the coming
world order will be a capital offense, if I have anything to say on the matter. The slightest
word against the Jews, and you're a marked man: I would have not only you, but your entire
extended family wiped out, just to be sure. You think you know what the Devil is, but he's
just the lackey taking my orders. Entire cities razed to the ground (including the entire
Middle East), simply because one person there said something bad about "the Jews", that's how
I would have the future! Enough with this stupid meme! To hell with all of you brainless
subhumans! You've wasted enough of our nervous energy on this stupid shit! And the same goes
to low-IQ non-whites who blame all their troubles on whites! And it's all true: Jews and
whites upped the stakes for everybody by bringing into the world a whole torrent of new
possibilities which your IQ is too low to handle! So whatcha gonna do about it? Are you all
bark, or are you prepared to bite? Come on, let's see what you can do! Any of you fucking
pricks bark, and we'll execute every motherfucking last one of you!
Honestly, I like way better out in the open like this. Now there is no reason to worry
about all the other BS excuses, it's all on the table.
So now, as a public, we have been informed; so what are we going to do about it? Or are
they so confident about their position that they know they can announce it to he world openly
and be sure that there will be zero consequences?
Protector, personal armies, saboteurs, financiers, assassin's, propagandists, liars,
thieves, rapists, slavers, and that is just for starters – which includes inside and
outside of the former country called the USA.
No, you are wrong. The problem with the 'industriousness' is that it is characterized by
the principle of profit before all, no matter how immoral the activity. People who do that
don't care about a civilized society and should not be able to reap the benefits of one.
Also high IQ isn't exemplified by trickery, lying, subverting and eroding the morals of
the host society.
The US is not only the protector, but has been the enabler of the mafia from the
start.
Chaim.Weizman and Nathan Sokolow approach the British with a dirty deal. The Zionists
offer to use their international influence to bring the US into the war on Britain's
side, while undermining Germany from within. The price that Britain must pay for U.S.
entry is to steal Palestine from Ottoman Turkey (Germany's ally) and allow the Jews to
settle there. Zionist agitated anti-German propaganda was unleashed in the US while the
Zionists and Marxists of Germany begin to undermine Germany's war effort from within.
Wilson establishes the Committee on Public Information (CPI) for the purpose of
manipulating public opinion in support of the war.
-M.S. King, The Bad War, p 50.
Similar scenario for "WW2" which was little more than a continuation of the previous
biggie. They really ought to be known as the One World Wars since they were obviously part
of the plan for the world to be dominated by the International mafia through such creations
as the League of Subjects and the United Slave Nations with the capitol at Tel Aviv.
Yes, Dr. Giraldi, you hit the nail on the head again.
However, the problem is that most White Middle Class Americans, are satisfied and fully
compliant with this situation where the USA is a Megalethon Vassal and Servile State
for the poor little Israeli state .
Also, let us be honest with ourselves, Blacks and other minorities on more occasions do
dare to speak out on this issue, only to get trounced upon by the MSM and silence and
snickers by the stay safe White American Middle Class. Do you ever find a Main Line
White Politician speaking up for America's interests and placing them first vis a vis our
best little ally ??? Only when it comes to Afro or the Hispanic – Americans
sticking their heads up a little does Middle White Americana get all worked up and
emotionally charged.
The White Middle Class and most certainly the well moneyed Corporate Class of America,
does not mind giving away huge transfers of their tax dollars, national debt, high
technologies, military hardware, and even their uniformed sons and daughter, upon command
from the likes of Trump and their political opportunists managing the country (Rep and Dem
alike). Serving and making America serve the Greater Zio Agenda for their ME and Global
domination has become the norm and unquestionable. Try raising this issue at a dinner party
and see how many people role their eyes and turn their heads away.
I doubt that the RU followers here, who seem more bent on street brawling with the false
bogeymen like BLM and ANTIFA, are the ones that will stand up to the in your face
take over of WDC by AIPAC and the Israel First Crowd, including front man Trump for the
Kushner-Bibi WH.
Let us not forget the thieving and scamming Sunday preachers who tell them it is great
to be in full service of the Zio (Jewish Talmudic based) domination agenda– as it has
become a direct ticket to a Raptured Heaven . Jesus for them was been thrown under
the bus long ago or strangely converted into a gun machine toting Israeli nut case
extremist settler, clearing the land and villages of the indignies children and
all.
Let us be frank, some elements of the America First Jewish intelligentsia are more
likely to call out and the whorishness ( extremes only) of the Washington's ZOG policies
than Middle Americana, who dare not risk their creature comforts, Game Time or corporate
positions.
As the old adage goes, you get the Government That You Deserve .
Are you all bark, or are you prepared to bite? Come on, let's see what you can do! Any
of you fucking pricks bark, and we'll execute every motherfucking last one of you!
Well your tribe has been incredibly effective at genocide and mass murder on an
unprecedented scale of barbarism in the past, and I have no doubt you remain just as
capable of such barbarity and cruelty today. Your rant makes that very clear.
Too bad the high IQ does not seem to correlate in a positive way with morality.
But thanks for the warning! Trust me, many of us are quite aware of your
capabilities.
The only reason Trump "spilled the beans" about how we are in the Middle East to protect
Israel and not to keep oil flowing is to get himself reelected and nothing else. As to war
with China, Zuckerberg alone would be able to bribe the administration in particular, and
both the parties in general, with his extra billions to keep them out of the war being that
he has married a chink, er, Chan. All will be back to business as usual after the election
at least, for four more years.
It means Netanyahu is the de facto president of the US.
Not quite. He is much more powerful than that. The entire Congress of the United States
stands and applauds when he arrives to speak. They would never do that for Trump, or any
president. The fear of being unpersoned keeps them in line.
@Ugetit
endence and freedom but things actually became more messy. Also the "hated" Russian
Romanovs were got rid off, Russia pushed under Communist Jewish dictatorship. Also the
destruction of the Caliph, imagine a united Turko-Arab Empire, no way Israel would have
survived that. Even T.E. Lawrence who helped the Arabs fight the Turks was totally
disappointed with the behaviour of his own Zionist controlled government. He was going to
speak to the British people about the great betrayal to the Arabs and being a war hero they
would have listened to him. But before he could do so he met with an "accident" while
riding his motorcycle. Yeah, very convenient.
@sethster
re good at gathering Nobel Prizes, which is best arranged by jury-rigging and
string-pulling thanks to their talent for networking, but no so good as making real
inventions. In Israel proper the mean Jewish IQ, 94, is not only disappointing but a few
points below even the Palestinian one. Spiritually the Jews have no longer been a chosen
people for ages and most of the intellectual development they knew from about 1850 onwards
was due to their being emancipated en masse from rabbinical authority, not by conforming to
it : now that are falling back under an even worse collective authority with Zionism they
are reversing the intellectual gains they once made.
Back in the second half of the 80s the big war games were all IRAQ IRAQ IRAQ!!1! There
was a strong push from all the interagency pukes with their dotted-lines reports to Langley
– to aim at Iraq, and to suppress any practical considerations that might interfere
with this very lucrative debacle. We watched these moles countering evidence and analysis
with declamatory bullshit they made up. Way back then CIA had decided. April Glaspie's
headfake sprung a trap set in Kuwait by the NOCs infesting Bechtel. That
horizontal-drilling rhubarb was years in preparation.
Iraq was one big war with three phases: beating up on the Iraqi armed forces; ten years
of blowing shit up; the occupation.
It turned out great. CIA got money-laundering nirvana, a chaotic zone where they could
ship pallets of money around. They got an arms entrepot that lasted 20 years.They got a
great network of sites for the torture gulag, with secure impunity – when Iraq tried
to accede to the Rome Statute in 05, the CIA torturers were on the spot to nip it in the
bud. The tame jihadi boogeymen the torture camps produced were invaluable in creating
Rumsfeld's "terrorist corridor" in the Sahel and justifying the P2OG and the Pan-Sahel
Initiative. That put AFRICOM garrisons, US-trained warlords, and CIA torture sites in one
of the most diplomatically recalcitrant regions of the world:
So turn that frown upside down! Your old bosses got a lot out of that charlie
foxtrot.
@sethster
re all conceived and started by Gentiles Henry Ford is a great example and he knew Jews
quite well. The only industries , as you call them, that Jews are involved in are
leech enterprises financial corporations are excellent examples of leech enterprises. The
financial products they contrive are methods to extract value from productive
industries.
A large percent of Jews are devoted obsessed with gaining wealth and power from the efforts
of others which is the reason for their inordinate involvement in the Deep State and also
for the abject loathing by many Gentiles throughout the ages.
Whether the truth is hidden or now out in the open doesn't matter to a people so stupid
as to believe the Creator's offspring walked, eat and crapped on this little planet 2k
years ago.
Exhibit B of their stupidity: Electing Trump (and more than a few of his
predecessors).
The NWO won't come to America as Greta Thunberg marching ahead of the Democrats in Mao
suits under LGBTQ and GND banners and tumbrels of Christians headed for the guillotine, but
as one transnational compliance regime after the other enacted by treaty, such as mandatory
bi-annual vaccinations with largely inefficacious vaccines carrying not just behavior
modifying chemicals and sterilants as adjuvants, but DNA-altering horrors. Anyone want to
argue the threats posed by these DNA- or mRNA-modifying vaccines made from, among other
things, insect DNA?
Some think it's over the top to talk about the NWO that's on the horizon as a
Sino-Judaic, world-hegemonic NWO, but the United States government is itself already little
more than a collection of compliance regimes in service to International Jewry. The 29
standing ovations from a Congress afraid to be the first to stop clapping for a kitchen
cabinet salesman-turned-Caesar made that clear enough. The rest of the story, like the
nonsense that Congress and DJT are voluntarily protecting Israel, is eyewash for
fools when International Jewry owns them all like the trained seals who perform in the
Central Park Zoo.
The Holy Rollers were never going to bail from Trump after the embassy move to
Jerusalem. Jews on the other hand are likely not amused about such a revelation. So his
words were unlikely about the election.
@lavoisier
nd stern conversation, "For me, the new Germany exists only in order to ensure the
existence of the State of Israel and the Jewish people." He's a brilliant intellectual
and a thoughtful politician, and we don't need to worry – he won't give up his
existential friendship so easily. And certainly not because of Bennett or his colleague
Orit Strock, the party whip.
A very symbolic photo posted by the Israel Defence Forces' Twitter account, in the tweet
linked to by user Talha
It is time to be more honest. A foreign war that the US loses may be the only way out of
the political, moral and social impasse that currently afflicts the US. The forces that
control the US government need to be removed and that seems increasingly unlikely to arise
from simply domestic opposition.
It took World War II to remove Adolf Hitler from power in Germany. Why should anyone
expect anything less to change the government of the United States? The US wants a war with
Russia and China. Perhaps it is best that it be granted one? Let's see some articles on this
proposition.
The odd thing is how so many Jews still support immigration despite the fact that a lot of
the immigrants are (from the Jewish/Zionist perspective) at best indifferent to Israel and at
worse outright hostile and want it gone.
Or perhaps they realise democracy is a sham and the Jewish elite have got their backs?
Hence their plans to mongrelise Europeans nations don't really conflict with their Zionist
ambitions.
One thing is for sure, when things start to get hairy in the West, all Jews will have a
nice First World ethnocracy to move to.
Trump's greatest contribution to the US/World might be exposing the naked ambition and
evilness of the Ziocons. Before Trump, Ziocons lurked in the background as puppet masters,
with their many plans obscured behind "diplomacy" and propaganda like "freedom" and "human
rights", now thanks to Trump they are showing their true colors. Trump has managed to expose
to the whole world including all our allies who is really running America and the extent they
will go to destroy their perceived "enemies" to achieve world domination -- the end justifies
the means. It is making our allies esp. Europe think twice about their alliance with
JU.S.A.
Trump's greatest contribution to the US/World might be exposing the naked ambition and
evilness of the Ziocons. Before Trump, Ziocons lurked in the background as puppet masters,
with their many plans obscured behind "diplomacy" and propaganda like "freedom" and "human
rights", now thanks to Trump they are showing their true colors. Trump has managed to expose
to the whole world including all our allies who is really running America and the extent they
will go to destroy their perceived "enemies" to achieve world domination -- the end justifies
the means. It is making our allies esp. Europe think twice about their alliance with
JU.S.A.
You must have been misinformed if you think that "Germany sold Israel submarines". Not
really as you can find out from the link bellow. The first two submarines were donated and
the third was "hawkered" for about half the production cost.
@anon
the empire starts WW3, e.g. the "big one" at Yellowstone, which will do so much damage as to
make it impossible for the evil empire to continue it's pursuit of world domination and
control.
I do think it is game over for quite a while in the West regarding opposition to Israel.
Israel may collapse or have to come to the table or something due to some game changer in the
Middle East, but I don't see it happening due to lack of support from the West anytime
soon.
@Realist
d on him and tried to remove him from office. This is actually the greatest political scandal
in American history, yet nothing will be done about it. The magic negro will never face any
consequences and he and his ugly wife will remain free to race bait for another 30 years
unimpeded.
Trump and the GOP allowed the covid hoax to wreck the economy and allowed massive riots to
go on for many months. They allow the left to run wild while whites live under
anarcho-tyranny.
If Trump wins, which is likely, he will just go right back to blabbing about how much he
loves blacks and mexicans and gays and you will never hear another word about white
people.
@restless94110
p> Obama fired many upper level military and replaced them with leftist cucks.
Besides Trump not getting rid of people he should have gotten rid of, he hired a shitload
of scum, neocons, Goldman alums, etc., people who were obviously not going to promote his
America First agenda.
From the looks of it he never intended to make good on any of his promises.
And as Ann Coulter says, immigration is really the only thing that matters. Trump didn't
deport the 30 million illegals that don't belong here. He didn't do anything about birthright
citizenship, E-verify, etc.
We still face the very same demographic disaster as before.
I don't think anyone was actually trying to remove him from office (they could've added
his war crimes and violations of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to the
impeachment charges if they were serious about removing him). Most likely it's all
political theater to fool the people who need and/or want to be fooled.
This is a charade designed by the Deep State to distract any thought that both
parties are just two sides to the Deep State coin.
@Robert
Dolan did get rid of some military, he clearly didn't get rid of the right people.
You seem to think it's easy. It's not obviously.
I like Ann, but she is hysterical. Yet that is ok in a journalist/editorialist. Her
function is to keep pushing. And she is doing that.
But Trump is moving at his own speed based on his own instincts. Meaning it might be
faster for some, slower for others. Coulter is not able to understand that. But she does not
have to. I still read her. And then I analyze her as a person in fear that the wall won't be
built.
Looks to me like Ann is wrong. It's just not happening quickly enough for her.
In the United States, a great deal of study and energy goes into promoting respect for
democracy, not just to keep it alive here but also to spread it around the world. It embraces
the will of the majority, whether or not its main beneficiaries have more resources than other
citizens do, as shown by the election of President Obama, who promised hope and change for the
suffering majority, but did not sit long in office before being subjected to an economic vote
of no-confidence.
Those who claim we run a plutocracy (government for the rich by the rich) -- or that we're
victims of a conspiracy contrived by a shadow government -- are right while being wrong.
Our government is beyond the reach of ordinary American citizens in terms of economic power.
However, the creation of a system to keep the majority of the populace at the losing end of a
structure which neither promised nor delivered a state of financial equality was a predictable
extension of the economic system the U.S. government was formed to protect.
... .... ...
Forty years of Cold War and the ultimate realization that abuse of the communist system and
a hierarchy of privilege proved that system to be vulnerable to selfishness -- in common with
the triumphant capitalist countries.
Because any desired outcome can be written into an equation to exclude unwanted facts or
inputs by holding some things constant while applying chosen variables that may not hold true
under every historical circumstance, it's considered "falsifiable" and therefore "scientific."
But only if it appeals to the right people and justifies a given political need will it become
sacrosanct (until the next round of "progress").
.... .... ...
Abusive Self- Interest
In 1764, twenty- five years before the embrace of Madame Guillotine (when heads rolled
literally to put the fear of the mob into politics), contempt for the filth and poverty in
which the French commoners lived while the nobility gorged on luxury goods showed how arrogant
they were, not just in confidence that their offices of entitlement were beyond reproach and
unassailable, but that mockery and insult in the face of deliberate deprivation would be borne
with obedience and humility.
It certainly affected Smith's outlook, since he wrote The Wealth of Nations with a
focus on self- interest rather than moral sentiments. And while this may be purely pragmatic,
based on what
he witnessed, he also wrote about the potential for self- interest to become abusive, both
in collusion with individuals and when combined with the power of government. Business
interests could form cabals (groups of conspirators, plotting public harm) or monopolies
(organizations with exclusive market control) to fix prices at their highest levels. A true
laissez- faire economy would provide every incentive to conspire against consumers and attempt
to influence budgets and legislation.
Smith's assertion that self- interest leads producers to favor domestic industry must also
be understood in the context of the period. While it's true that the Enlightenment was a
movement of rational philosophy radically opposed to secrecy, it's important to understand that
this had to be done respectfully , insofar as all arguments were intended to impress the
monarchy under circumstances where the king believed himself God- appointed and infallible, no
matter his past or present policies, and matters were handled with delicacy. Yet, Smith's
arguments are clear enough (and certainly courageous enough) to be understood in laymen's
terms.
In an era when the very industry he's observing has been fostered by tariffs, monopolies,
labor controls, and materials extracted from colonies, he did his best to balance observation
with what he thought was best for society. It's not his fault we pick and choose our recipes
for what we do and don't believe or where we think Smith might have gone had he been alive
today.
The New Double Standard
The only practical way to resolve the contradiction between the existing beneficiaries of
state favoritism in this period and Smith's aversion to it is to observe that the means to
prevent competition and interference with the transition from one mode of commerce to another
that enhances the strength of the favored or provides a new means to grow their wealth is to
close the door of government intervention behind them and burn any bridges to it.
In psychological terms, the practice of "negative attribution" is to assume that identical
behavior is justifiable for oneself but not another. It may not be inconsistent with a system
of economics founded on self- interest, but it naturally begs a justification as to why it
rules out everyone else's self- interest. The beauty of this system is that it will
always have the same answer.
You may have guessed it.
Progress.
Reallocation of Assets
It was always understood that capitalism produces winners and losers. The art of economizing
is to gain maximum benefit for minimum expenditure, which generally translates to asset
consolidation and does not necessarily mean there is minimum sacrifice. There's an opportunity
cost for everything, whether it's human, financial, environmental, or material. But the most
important tenet of free market capitalism is that asset redistribution requires the U. S.
government to go to DEFCON 1, unless assets are being reallocated for "higher productivity," in
which case the entire universe is saved from the indefensible sin of lost opportunity.
Private property is sacred -- up until an individual decides he can make more productive use
of it and appeals to the courts for seizure under eminent domain or until the government
decides it will increase national growth if owned by some other person or entity. In like
manner, corporations can suffer hostile takeovers, just as deregulation facilitates predatory
market behavior and cutthroat competition promotes an efficiency orientation that means fewer
jobs and lower incomes, which result in private losses.
In the varying range of causes underlying the loss of assets, the common threat is progress
-- the "civilized" justification for depriving some other person or entity of their right to
own property, presumably earned by the sweat of their brow, except their sweat doesn't have the
same champion as someone who can wring more profit from it. The official explanation is that
the government manages the "scarcity" of resources to benefit the world. This is also how we
justify war, aggression, and genocide, though we don't always admit to that unless we mean to
avoid it.
Perfectly Rational Genocide
History cooperates with the definition of Enlightenment if we imagine that thoughtfulness
has something to do with genocide. In the context of American heritage, it has meant that when
someone stands in the way of progress, his or her resources are "reallocated" to serve the
pursuit of maximum profit, with or without consent. The war against Native Americans was one in
which Americans either sought and participated in annihilation efforts or believed this end was
inevitable. In the age of rational thought, meditation on the issue could lead from gratitude
for the help early settlers received from Native Americans to the observation they didn't
enclose their land and had no concept of private property,
to the conviction they were unmotivated by profit and therefore irreconcilable savages. But
it takes more than rational thought to mobilize one society to exterminate another.
The belief in manifest destiny -- that God put the settlers in America for preordained and
glorious purposes which gave them a right to everything -- turned out to be just the ticket for
a free people opposed to persecution and the tyranny of church and state.
Lest the irony elude you, economic freedom requires divorcing the state from religion, but
God can be used to whip up the masses, distribute "It's Them or Us" cards, and send people out
to die on behalf of intellectuals and investors who've rationalized their
chosenness.
CHAPTER TWO: INSTILLING THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE
Selfishness may be exalted as the root and branch of capitalism, but it doesn't make you
look good to the party on the receiving end or those whose sympathy he earns. For that, you
need a government prepared to do four things, which each have separate dictums based on study,
theorization, and experience.
Coercion:
Force is illegitimate only if you can't sell it.
Persuasion:
How do I market thee? Let me count the ways.
Bargaining:
If you won't scratch my back, then how about a piece of the pie?
Indoctrination:
Because I said so. (And paid for the semantics.)
Predatory capitalism is the control and expropriation of land, labor, and natural resources
by a foreign government via coercion, persuasion, bargaining, and indoctrination.
At the coercive stage, we can expect military and/ or police intervention to repress the
subject populace. The persuasive stage will be marked by clientelism, in which a small
percentage of the populace will be rewarded for loyalty, often serving as the capitalists'
administrators, tax collectors, and enforcers. At the bargaining stage, efforts will be made to
include the populace, or a certain percentage of it, in the country's ruling system, and this
is usually marked by steps toward democratic (or, more often, autocratic) governance.
At the fourth stage, the populace is educated by capitalists, such that they continue to
maintain a relationship of dependency.
The Predatory Debt Link
In many cases, post- colonial states were forced to assume the debts of their colonizers.
And where they did not, they were encouraged to become in debt to the West via loans that were
issued through international institutions to ensure they did not fall prey to communism or
pursue other economic policies that were inimical to the West. Debt is the tie that binds
nation states to the geostrategic and economic interests of the West.
As such, the Cold War era was a time of easy credit, luring postcolonial states to undertake
the construction of useless monoliths and monuments, and to even expropriate such loans through
corruption and despotism, thereby making these independent rulers as predatory as colonizers.
While some countries were wiser than others and did use the funds for infrastructural
improvements, these were also things that benefited the West and particularly Western
contractors. In his controversial work Confessions of an Economic Hit Man , John Perkins
reveals that he was a consultant for an American firm (MAIN), whose job was to ensure that
states became indebted beyond their means so they would remain loyal to their creditors, buying
them votes within United Nations organizations, among other things.
Predatory capitalists demand export- orientations as the means to generate foreign currency
with which to pay back debt. In the process, the state must privatize and drastically slash or
eliminate any domestic subsidies which are aimed at helping native industry compete in the
marketplace. Domestic consumption and imports must be radically contained, as shown by the
exchange rate policies recommended by the IMF. The costs of obtaining domestic capital will be
pushed beyond the reach of most native producers, while wages must be depressed to an absolute
bare minimum. In short, the country's land, labor, and natural resources must be sold at
bargain basement prices in order to make these goods competitive, in what one author has called
"a spiraling race to the bottom," as countries producing predominantly the same goods engage in
cutthroat competition whose benefactor is the West.
Under these circumstances, foreign investment is encouraged, but this, too, represents a
loaded situation for countries that open their markets to financial liberalization. Since, in
most cases, the
IMF does not allow restrictions on the conditions of capital inflows, it means that
financial investors can literally dictate their terms. And since no country is invulnerable to
attacks on its currency, which governments must try to keep at a favorable exchange rate, it
means financial marauders can force any country to try to prop up its currency using vital
reserves of foreign exchange which might have been used to pay their debt.
When such is the case, the IMF comes to the rescue with a socalled "bailout fund," that
allows foreign investors to withdraw their funds intact, while the government reels from the
effects of an IMF- imposed austerity plan, often resulting in severe recession the offshoot of
which is bankruptcies by the thousands and plummeting employment.
In countries that experienced IMF bailouts due to attacks on their currencies, the effect
was to reset the market so the only economic survivors were those who remained export- oriented
and were strong enough to withstand the upheaval. This means they remained internationally
competitive, which translates to low earnings of foreign exchange. At the same time that the
country is being bled from the bottom up through mass unemployment, extremely low wages, and
the "spiraling race to the bottom," it is in an even more unfavorable position concerning the
payment of debt. The position is that debt slavery ensues, as much an engine of extraction as
any colonial regime ever managed.
The Role of Indoctrination
The fact that it is sovereign governments overseeing the work of debt repression has much to
do with education, which is the final phase of predatory capitalism, concluding in
indoctrination. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lesson to the world was that
socialism can't work, nor were there any remaining options for countries that pursued "the
third way" other than capitalism. This produced a virulent strain of neoliberalism in which
most people were, and are, being educated. The most high- ranking of civil servants have either
been educated in the West or directly influenced by its thinking. And this status of acceptance
and adherence finally constitutes indoctrination. The system is now self- sustaining, upheld by
domestic agents.
While predatory capitalism can proceed along a smooth continuum from coercion to persuasion
to bargaining to formal indoctrination, the West can regress to any of these steps at any point
in
time, given the perceived need to interfere with varying degrees of force in order to
protect its interests.
Trojan Politics
Democracy is about having the power and flexibility to graft our system of government and
predatory capitalism onto any target country, regardless of relative strength or conflicting
ideologies. An entire productive industry has grown up using the tools of coercion, persuasion,
bargaining, and formal indoctrination to maximize their impact in the arena of U. S. politics.
Its actors know how to jerk the right strings, push the right buttons, and veer from a soft
sell to a hard sell when resistance dictates war, whether it's with planes overhead and tanks
on the ground or with massive capital flight that panics the whole world.
When the U. S. political economy goes into warp overdrive, its job proves far more valuable
than anything ever made in the strict material sense because there's never been more at stake
in terms of what it's trying to gain. It's the American idea machine made up of corporations,
lobbyists, think tanks, foundations, universities, and consultants in every known discipline
devoted to mass consumerism, and what they sell is illusory opportunity dressed in American
principles. They embrace political candidates who'll play by elitist rules to preserve the
fiction of choice, and, in this way, they maintain legitimacy, no matter what kind of
"reallocation" is on the economic agenda.
The issue is not whether we'll question it, but who we'll applaud for administering it.
In the Information Age, perception management is king.
What I liked most about this article was the highlighting of impossible-to-counter
narratives, the hypocrisy of Western democracy promotion (even as Western governments fellate
domestic and foreign economic elites), and the denigration of nationalism from 1990-2016.
Sadly, the author does a disservice in suggesting that such manipulations are past. Instead,
the Western power-elite has done what it does best: co-opt a 'winning' narrative
(nationalism) and double-down.
Other deficiencies:
Ignores the fact that the US Deep State, caretakers of the Empire, hasn't accepted
defeat. Since 2014 they have been actively trying to reverse what they see as a major
set-back (not defeat).
Via economic sanctions, trade wars, propaganda, and military tensions the Empire is
waging a hybrid war against what it calls the "revisionist" efforts of Russia and
China.
Plays into the propaganda narrative of Trump as populist.
Fails to see the 1990's 'economic shock therapy' as a deliberate attempt to push
Russia into total capitulation. This, darker view, was confirmed obliquely by Kissinger in
his interview with ft in which he stated that no one could foresee the ability of Russia to
absorb pain.
Sen. Chris Murphy said this the other day: "I have a real belief that democracy is
unnatural. We don't run anything important in our lives by democratic vote other than our
government. Democracy is so unnatural that it's illogical to think it would be permanent. It
will fall apart at some point, and maybe that point isn't now, but maybe it is."
Mini Teaser: Radicals of the democracy-promotion movement embody the very thing they are
fighting against -- a closed-minded conviction that they represent the one true path for all
societies and thus possess a monopoly on social, ethical and political truth.
Democracy is incompatible with the global neoliberal empire ruled from Washington. And the
USA is empire now.
Notable quotes:
"... cancel culture is just fine, as long as it's your side doing the cancelling...or if it's Israel or the national security state doing the cancelling ..."
"The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful
ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy."
This sacred cow of illusion is being threatened from all directions it seems. Democracy is
great for whoever owns it, and whoever owns the media owns democracy. A cow well worth
milking.
Norman Finkelstein must be laughing out loud at the sight of so many hypocritical liberals
opposing cancel. Did anyone in this crowd get 150 people to sign a letter of protest when
Finkelstein got cancelled? Or when Phil Donahue got fired for opposing the Iraq war?
IOW, cancel culture is just fine, as long as it's your side doing the cancelling...or
if it's Israel or the national security state doing the cancelling . CountrPunch, a
victim of blacklisting themselves, has a major takedown of the screaming hypocrisy of some of
the signers: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/10/harpers-and-the-great-cancel-culture-panic/
Just look at the cost of smartphone that they display at the riots and you instantly get a
certain impression about income of their parents
Notable quotes:
"... And their radicalism would be resisted, Lasch predicted, not by the upper reaches of society, or the leaders of Big Philanthropy or the Corporate Billionaires. These latter, rather, would be its facilitators and financiers." ..."
A section quoted by Crooke in the piece karlof1 linked to
"A social revolution that would be pushed forward by radical children of the bourgeoisie.
Their leaders would have almost nothing to say about poverty or unemployment. Their demands
would be centred on utopian ideals: diversity and racial justice – ideals pursued with
the fervour of an abstract, millenarian ideology.
And their radicalism would be resisted, Lasch predicted, not by the upper reaches of
society, or the leaders of Big Philanthropy or the Corporate Billionaires. These latter,
rather, would be its facilitators and financiers."
And Crooke's thoughts..
"So, what can we make of all this? The US has suddenly exploded into, on the one hand,
culture cancelation, and on the other, into silent seething at the lawlessness, and at all
the statues toppled. It is a nation becoming angrier, and edging towards violence.
One segment of the country believes that America is inherently and institutionally
racist, and incapable of self-correcting its flawed founding principles – absent the
required chemotherapy to kill-off the deadly mutated cells of its past history, traditions
and customs.
Another, affirms those principles that underlay America's 'golden age'; which made
America great; and which, in their view, are precisely those qualities which can make it
great again."
It's been nearly four years since the myth of Trump-Russia collusion made its debut in
American politics, generating an endless stream of stories in the corporate press and hundreds
of allegations of conspiracy from pundits and officials. But despite netting scores of
embarrassing admissions, corrections, editor's notes and retractions in that time, the theory
refuses to die.
Over the years, the highly elaborate "Russiagate" narrative has fallen away piece-by-piece.
Claims about Donald Trump's various back channels to Moscow -- Carter Page ,
George Papadopoulos ,
Michael Flynn ,
Paul Manafort ,
Alfa Bank -- have each been thoroughly discredited. House Intelligence Committee
transcripts released in May have revealed that nobody who asserted a Russian hack on Democratic
computers, including the
DNC's own cyber security firm , is able to produce evidence that it happened. In fact, it
is now clear the entire investigation into the Trump campaign was
without basis .
It was alleged that Moscow manipulated the president with " kompromat " and black mail,
sold to the public in a " dossier " compiled by a former British
intelligence officer, Christopher Steele. Working through a DC consulting firm , Steele was hired by
Democrats to dig up dirt on Trump, gathering a litany of accusations that Steele's own primary
source would later dismiss as "hearsay" and "rumor."
Though the FBI was
aware the dossier was little more than sloppy opposition research, the bureau nonetheless
used it to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.
Even the claim that Russia helped Trump from afar, without direct coordination, has fallen
flat on its face. The "
troll farm " allegedly tapped by the Kremlin to wage a pro-Trump meme war -- the Internet
Research Agency -- spent only $46,000 on Facebook ads, or around 0.05 percent
of the $81 million budget of the Trump and Clinton campaigns. The vast majority of the IRA's
ads had nothing to do with U.S. politics, and more than half of those that did were published
after the election, having no impact on voters. The Department of Justice, moreover,
has dropped its charges
against the IRA's parent company, abandoning a major case resulting from Robert Mueller's
special counsel probe.
Though few of its most diehard proponents would ever admit it, after four long years, the
foundation of the Trump-Russia narrative has finally given way and its edifice has crumbled.
The wreckage left behind will remain for some time to come, however, kicking off a new era of
mainstream McCarthyism and setting the stage for the next Cold War.
It Didn't Start With
Trump
The importance of Russiagate to U.S. foreign policy cannot be understated, but the road to
hostilities with Moscow stretches far beyond the current administration. For thirty years, the
United States has
exploited its de facto victory in the first Cold War, interfering in Russian elections in
the 1990s, aiding oligarchs as they looted the country into poverty, and orchestrating Color
Revolutions in former Soviet states. NATO, meanwhile, has been enlarged up to Russia's border,
despite American assurances the alliance wouldn't expand "
one inch " eastward after the collapse of the USSR.
Unquestionably, from the fall of the Berlin Wall until the day Trump took office, the United
States maintained an aggressive policy toward Moscow. But with the USSR wiped off the map and
communism defeated for good, a sufficient pretext to rally the American public into another
Cold War has been missing in the post-Soviet era. In the same 30-year period, moreover,
Washington has pursued one disastrous
diversion after another in the Middle East, leaving little space or interest for another
round of brinkmanship with the Russians, who were relegated to little more than a talking
point. That, however, has changed.
The Crisis They Needed
The Washington foreign policy establishment -- memorably dubbed "
the Blob " by one Obama adviser -- was thrown into disarray by Trump's election win in the
fall of 2016. In some ways, Trump stood out as the dove during the race, deeming "endless wars"
in the Middle East a scam, calling for closer ties with Russia, and even questioning the
usefulness of NATO. Sincere or not, Trump's campaign vows shocked the Beltway think tankers,
journalists, and politicos whose worldviews (and salaries) rely on the maintenance of empire.
Something had to be done.
In the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks
published thousands of emails belonging to then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, her
campaign manager, and the Democratic National Committee. Though damaging to Clinton, the leak
became fodder for a powerful new attack on the president-to-be. Trump had worked in league with
Moscow to throw the election, the story went, and the embarrassing email trove was stolen in a
Russian hack, then passed to WikiLeaks to propel Trump's campaign.
By the time Trump took office, the narrative was in full swing. Pundits and politicians
rushed to outdo one another in hysterically denouncing the supposed election-meddling, which
was deemed the "political equivalent" of the 9/11
attacks , tantamount to
Pearl Harbor , and akin to the Nazis' 1938
Kristallnacht pogrom. In lock-step with the U.S. intelligence community -- which soon
issued a
pair of reports endorsing the Russian hacking
story -- the Blob quickly joined the cause, hoping to short-circuit any tinkering with NATO or
rapprochement with Moscow under Trump.
The allegations soon broadened well beyond hacking. Russia had now waged war on American
democracy itself, and "sowed discord" with misinformation online, all in direct collusion with
the Trump campaign. Talking heads on cable news and former intelligence officials -- some of
them playing both
roles at once -- weaved a dramatic plot of conspiracy out of countless news reports,
clinging to many of the "bombshell" stories long after their key claims were
blown up .
A
large segment of American society eagerly bought the fiction, refusing to believe that
Trump, the game show host, could have defeated Clinton without assistance from a foreign power.
For the first time since the fall of the USSR, rank-and-file Democrats and moderate
progressives were aligned with some of the most vocal Russia hawks across the aisle, creating
space for what many have called a " new Cold War. "
Stress Fractures
Under immense pressure and nonstop allegations, the candidate who shouted "America First"
and slammed NATO as "
obsolete " quickly adapted himself to the foreign policy consensus on the alliance, one of
the first signs the Trump-Russia story was bearing fruit.
Demonstrating the Blob in action, during debate on the Senate floor over Montenegro's bid to
join NATO in March 2017, the hawkish John McCain castigated Rand Paul for daring to oppose the
measure, riding on anti-Russian sentiments stoked during the election to accuse him of "working for Vladimir
Putin." With most lawmakers agreeing the expansion of NATO was needed to "push back" against
Russia, the Senate approved the request nearly
unanimously and Trump signed it without batting an eye -- perhaps seeing the attacks a veto
would bring, even from his own party.
Allowing Montenegro -- a country that illustrates everything wrong with
NATO -- to join the alliance may suggest Trump's criticisms were always empty talk, but the
establishment's drive to constrain his foreign policy was undoubtedly having an effect. Just a
few months later, the administration would put out its National
Security Strategy , stressing the need to refocus U.S. military engagements from
counter-terrorism in the Middle East to "great power competition" with Russia and China.
On another aspiring NATO member, Ukraine, the president was also hectored into reversing
course under pressure from the Blob. During the 2016 race, the corporate press savaged the
Trump campaign for working behind the scenes to " water down " the Republican Party platform after it opposed a
pledge to arm Ukraine's post-coup government. That stance did not last long.
Though even Obama decided against arming the new government -- which his administration
helped to install
-- Trump reversed that move in late 2017, handing Kiev hundreds of Javelin anti-tank missiles.
In an irony noticed by
few , some of the arms went to
open neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian military, who were integrated into the country's National
Guard after leading street battles with security forces in the Obama-backed coup of 2014. Some
of the very same Beltway critics slamming the president as a racist demanded he pass weapons to
out-and-out white supremacists.
Ukraine's
bid to join NATO has all but stalled under President Volodymyr Zelensky, but the country
has nonetheless played an outsized role in American politics both before and after Trump took
office. In the wake of Ukraine's 2014 U.S.-sponsored coup, "Russian aggression" became a
favorite slogan in the American press, laying the ground for future allegations of
election-meddling.
Weaponizing Ukraine
The drive for renewed hostilities with Moscow got underway well before Trump took the Oval
Office, nurtured in its early stages under the Obama administration. Using Ukraine's revolution
as a springboard, Obama launched a major rhetorical and policy offensive against Russia,
casting it in the role of an aggressive ,
expansionist power.
Protests erupted in Ukraine in late 2013, following President Viktor Yanukovych's refusal to
sign an association agreement with the European Union, preferring to keep closer ties with
Russia. Demanding a deal with the EU and an end to government corruption, demonstrators --
including the above-mentioned neo-Nazis -- were soon in the streets clashing with security
forces. Yanukovych was chased out of the country, and eventually out of power.
Through cut-out organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy, the Obama
administration poured millions of
dollars into the Ukrainian opposition prior to the coup, training, organizing and funding
activists. Dubbed the "Euromaidan Revolution," Yanukovych's ouster mirrored similar US-backed
color coups before and since, with Uncle Sam riding on the back of legitimate grievances while
positioning the most
U.S.-friendly figures to take power afterward.
The coup set off serious unrest in Ukraine's Russian-speaking enclaves, the eastern Donbass
region and the Crimean Peninsula to the south. In the Donbass, secessionist forces attempted
their own revolution, prompting the new government in Kiev to launch a bloody "war on terror"
that continues to this day. Though the separatists received some level of support from Moscow,
Washington placed sole blame on the Russians for Ukraine's unrest, while the press breathlessly
predicted an all-out invasion that never materialized.
In Crimea -- where Moscow has kept its Black Sea Fleet since the late 1700s -- Russia took a
more forceful stance, seizing the territory to keep control of its long term naval base. The
annexation was accomplished without bloodshed, and a referendum was held weeks later affirming
that a large majority of Crimeans supported rejoining Russia, a sentiment
western polling firms have since
corroborated . Regardless, as in the Donbass, the move was labeled an invasion, eventually
triggering a raft of sanctions from the
U.S. and the EU (and more
recently, from
Trump himself ).
The media made no effort to see Russia's perspective on Crimea in the wake of the revolution
-- imagining the U.S. response if the roles were reversed, for example -- and all but ignored
the preferences of Crimeans. Instead, it spun a black-and-white story of "Russian aggression"
in Ukraine. For the Blob, Moscow's actions there put Vladimir Putin on par with Adolf Hitler,
driving a flood of frenzied press coverage not seen again until the 2016
election.
Succumbing to Hysteria
While Trump had already begun to cave to the onslaught of Russiagate in the early months of
his presidency, a July 2018 meeting with Putin in Helsinki presented an opportunity to reverse
course, offering a venue to hash out differences and plan for future cooperation. Trump's
previous sit-downs with his Russian counterpart were largely uneventful, but widely portrayed
as a meeting between master and puppet. At the Helsinki Summit, however, a meager gesture
toward improved relations was met with a new level of hysterics.
Trump's refusal to interrogate Putin on his supposed election-hacking during a summit press
conference was taken as irrefutable proof that the two were conspiring together. Former CIA
Director John Brennan declared it an
act of treason , while CNN gravely
contemplated whether Putin's gift to Trump during the meetings -- a World Cup soccer ball
-- was really a secret spying transmitter. By this point, Robert Mueller's special counsel
probe was in full effect, lending official credibility to the collusion story and further
emboldening the claims of conspiracy.
Though the summit did little to strengthen U.S.-Russia ties and Trump made no real effort to
do so -- beyond resisting the calls to directly confront Putin -- it brought on some of the
most extreme attacks yet, further ratcheting up the cost of rapprochement. The window of
opportunity presented in Helsinki, while only cracked to begin with, was now firmly shut, with
Trump as reluctant as ever to make good on his original policy platform.
Sanctions!
After taking a beating in Helsinki, the administration allowed tensions with Moscow to soar
to new heights, more or less embracing the Blob's favored policies and often even outdoing the
Obama government's hawkishness toward Russia in both rhetoric and action.
In March 2018, the poisoning of a former Russian spy living in the United Kingdom was blamed
on Moscow in a highly
elaborate storyline that ultimately fell
apart (sound familiar?), but nonetheless triggered a wave of retaliation from western
governments. In the largest diplomatic purge in US history, the Trump administration expelled
60 Russian officials in a period of two days, surpassing Obama's ejection of 35 diplomats in
response to the election-meddling allegations.
Though Trump had called to lift rather
than impose penalties on Russia before taking office, worn down by endless negative press
coverage and surrounded by a coterie of hawkish advisers, he was brought around on the merits
of sanctions before long, and has used them liberally ever since.
Goodbye INF, RIP
OST
By October 2018, Trump had largely abandoned any idea of improving the relationship with
Russia and, in addition to the barrage of sanctions, began shredding a series of major treaties
and arms control agreements. He started with the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
Treaty (INF), which had eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons -- medium-range missiles
-- and removed Europe as a theater for nuclear war.
At this point in Trump's tenure, super-hawk John Bolton had assumed the position of national
security advisor, encouraging the president's worst instincts and using his newfound influence
to convince Trump to ditch the INF treaty. Bolton -- who helped to detonate a number of arms control
pacts in previous administrations -- argued that Russia's new short-range missile had
violated the treaty. While there remains some dispute over the missile's true range and whether
it actually breached the agreement, Washington failed to pursue available dispute mechanisms
and ignored Russian offers for talks to resolve the spat.
After the U.S. officially scrapped the agreement, it quickly began testing formerly-banned
munitions. Unlike the Russian missiles, which were only said to have a range overstepping the
treaty by a few miles, the U.S. began testing nuclear-capable land-based cruise
missiles expressly banned under the INF.
Next came the Open Skies Treaty (OST), an idea originally floated by President Eisenhower,
but which wouldn't take shape until 1992, when an agreement was struck between NATO and former
Warsaw Pact nations. The agreement now has over 30 members and allows each to arrange
surveillance flights over other members' territory, an important confidence-building measure in
the post-Soviet world.
Trump saw matters differently, however, and turned a minor dispute over Russia's
implementation of the pact into a reason to discard it altogether, again egged on by militant
advisers. In late May 2020, the president declared
his intent to withdraw from the nearly 30-year-old agreement, proposing nothing to replace
it.
Quid Pro Quo
With the DOJ's special counsel probe into Trump-Russia collusion
coming up short on both smoking-gun evidence and relevant indictments, the president's
enemies began searching for new angles of attack. Following a July 2019 phone call between
Trump and his newly elected Ukrainian counterpart, they soon found one.
During the call ,
Trump urged Zelensky to investigate a computer server he believed to be linked to Russiagate,
and to look into potential
corruption and nepotism on the part of former Vice President Joe Biden, who played an
active role in Ukraine following the Obama-backed coup.
Less than two months later, a " whistleblower
" -- a CIA officer detailed to the White House, Eric Ciaramella -- came forward with an "urgent
concern" that the president had abused his office on the July call. According to his
complaint , Trump threatened to withhold U.S. military aid, as well as a face-to-face
meeting with Zelensky, should Kiev fail to deliver the goods on Biden, who by that point was a
major contender in the 2020 race.
The same players who peddled Russiagate seized on Ciaramella's account to manufacture a
whole new scandal: "Ukrainegate." Failing to squeeze an impeachment out of the Mueller probe,
the Democrats did just that with the Ukraine call, insisting Trump had committed grave
offenses, again conspiring with a foreign leader to meddle in a U.S. election.
At a high point during the impeachment trial, an expert called to testify by the Democrats
revived George W.
Bush's "fight them over there" maxim to
argue for U.S. arms transfers to Ukraine, citing the Russian menace. The effort was doomed
from the start, however, with a GOP-controlled Senate never likely to convict and the evidence
weak for a "quid pro quo" with Zelensky. Ukrainegate, like Russiagate before it, was a failure
in its stated goal, yet both served to mark the administration with claims of foreign collusion
and press for more hawkish policies toward Moscow.
The End of New START?
The Obama administration scored a rare diplomatic achievement with Russia in 2010, signing
the New START Treaty, a continuation of the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty inked in
the waning days of the Soviet Union. Like its first iteration, the agreement places a cap on
the number of nuclear weapons and warheads deployed by each side. It featured a ten-year sunset
clause, but included provisions to continue beyond its initial end date.
With the treaty set to expire in early 2021, it has become an increasingly hot topic
throughout Trump's presidency. While Trump sold himself as an expert dealmaker on the campaign
trail -- an artist , even -- his negotiation
skills have shown lacking when it comes to working out a new deal with the Russians.
The administration has
demanded that China be incorporated into any extended version of the treaty, calling on
Russia to compel Beijing to the negotiating table and vastly complicating any prospect for a
deal. With a nuclear arsenal around one-tenth the size of that of Russia or the U.S., China has
refused to join the pact. Washington's intransigence on the issue has put the future of the
treaty in limbo and largely left Russia without a negotiating partner.
A second Trump term would spell serious trouble for New START, having already shown
willingness to shred the INF and Open Skies agreements. And with the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty (ABM) already killed under the Bush administration, New START is one of the few
remaining constraints on the planet's two largest nuclear arsenals.
Despite pursuing massive escalation with Moscow from 2018 onward, Trump-Russia conspiracy
allegations never stopped pouring from newspapers and TV screens. For the Blob -- heavily
invested in a narrative as fruitful as it was false -- Trump would forever be "Putin's puppet,"
regardless of the sanctions imposed, the landmark treaties incinerated or the deluge of warlike
rhetoric.
Running for an Arms Race
As the Trump administration leads the country into the next Cold War, a renewed arms race is
also in the making. The destruction of key arms control pacts by previous administrations has
fed a proliferation powder keg, and the demise of New START could be the spark to set it
off.
Following Bush Jr.'s termination of the ABM deal in 2002 -- wrecking a pact which placed
limits on Russian and American missile defense systems to maintain the balance of mutually
assured destruction -- Russia soon resumed funding for a number of strategic weapons projects,
including its hypersonic missile. In his announcement of the new technology in
2018, Putin deemed the move a response to Washington's unilateral withdrawal from ABM, which
also saw the U.S. develop new weapons .
Though he inked New START and campaigned on vows to pursue an end to the bomb, President
Obama also helped to advance the arms build-up, embarking on a 30-year
nuclear modernization project set to cost taxpayers $1.5 trillion. The Trump administration
has embraced the initiative with open arms, even
adding to it , as Moscow follows suit with upgrades to its own arsenal.
In May, Trump's top arms control envoy promised to spend Russia and China
into oblivion in the event of any future arms race, but one was already well underway.
After withdrawing from INF, the administration began churning
out previously banned nuclear-capable cruise missiles, while fielding an entire new class
of
low-yield nuclear weapons. Known as "tactical nukes," the smaller warheads lower the
threshold for use, making nuclear conflict more likely. Meanwhile, the White House has also
mulled a live bomb test -- America's first since 1992 -- though has apparently shelved
the idea for now.
A Runaway Freight Train
As Trump approaches the end of his first term, the two major U.S. political parties have
become locked in a permanent cycle of escalation, eternally compelled to prove who's the bigger
hawk. The president put up mild resistance during his first months in office, but the
relentless drumbeat of Russiagate successfully crushed any chances for improved ties with
Moscow.
The Democrats refuse to give up on "Russian aggression" and see virtually no pushback from
hawks across the aisle, while intelligence "leaks" continue to flow into the imperial press,
fueling a whole new round of election-meddling
allegations .
Likewise, Trump's campaign vows to revamp U.S.-Russian relations are long dead. His
presidency counts among its accomplishments a pile of new sanctions, dozens of expelled
diplomats and the demise of two major arms control treaties. For all his talk of getting along
with Putin, Trump has failed to ink a single deal, de-escalate any of the ongoing strife over
Syria, Ukraine or Libya, and been unable to arrange one state visit in Moscow or DC.
Nonetheless, Trump's every action is still interpreted through the lens of Russian
collusion. After announcing a troop drawdown in Germany on June 5, reducing the U.S. presence
by just one-third, the president was met with the now-typical swarm of baseless charges. MSNBC
regular and retired general Barry McCaffrey dubbed the move "a gift to
Russia," while GOP Rep. Liz Cheney said the meager troop movement
placed the "cause of freedom in peril." Top Democrats in the House and Senate
introduced bills to stop the withdrawal dead in its tracks, attributing the policy to
Trump's "absurd affection for Vladimir Putin, a murderous dictator."
Starting as a dirty campaign trick to explain away the Democrats' election loss and jam up
the new president, Russiagate is now a key driving force in the U.S. political establishment
that will long outlive the age of Trump. After nearly four years, the bipartisan consensus on
the need for Cold War is stronger than ever, and will endure regardless of who takes the Oval
Office next.
divideand conquer 1. To gain or maintain power by generating tension among others, especially those less powerful,
so that they cannot unite in opposition.
Notable quotes:
"... In its most general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But "fairer" can mean lots of different things. I'm trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal, but I'm hoping I can say something new. ..."
"... The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield to protect neoliberal policies. As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary neoliberalism in which individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this means is that some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in politics and the economy. ..."
"... Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the space to perpetuate the policies of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity. ..."
"... If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ("soft neoliberals") many things became much more clear. Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represents a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their primary voting block: trade union members, who in 2016 "en mass" defected to Trump. ..."
I've been thinking about the various versions of and critiques of identity politics that are around at the moment.
In its most
general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that
members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But "fairer" can mean lots of different
things. I'm trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal,
but I'm hoping I can say something new.
You missed one important line of critique -- identity politics as a dirty political strategy of soft neoliberals.
To be sure, race, gender, culture, and other aspects of social life have always been important to politics. But neoliberalism's
radical individualism has increasingly raised two interlocking problems. First, when taken to an extreme, social fracturing into
identity groups can be used to divide people and prevent the creation of a shared civic identity. Self-government requires uniting
through our commonalities and aspiring to achieve a shared future.
When individuals fall back onto clans, tribes, and us-versus-them identities, the political community gets fragmented. It becomes
harder for people to see each other as part of that same shared future.
Demagogues [more correctly neoliberals -- likbez] rely on this fracturing to inflame racial, nationalist, and religious antagonism,
which only further fuels the divisions within society. Neoliberalism's war on "society," by pushing toward the privatization and
marketization of everything, thus indirectly facilitates a retreat into tribalism that further undermines the preconditions for
a free and democratic society.
The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield to protect neoliberal policies.
As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary
neoliberalism in which individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this means is that
some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they
then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in politics and the economy.
Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the space to perpetuate the policies
of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity.
Of course, the result is to leave in place political and economic structures that harm the very groups that inclusionary neoliberals
claim to support. The foreign policy adventures of the neoconservatives and liberal internationalists haven't fared much better
than economic policy or cultural politics. The U.S. and its coalition partners have been bogged down in the war in Afghanistan
for 18 years and counting. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is a liberal democracy, nor did the attempt to establish democracy in
Iraq lead to a domino effect that swept the Middle East and reformed its governments for the better. Instead, power in Iraq has
shifted from American occupiers to sectarian militias, to the Iraqi government, to Islamic State terrorists, and back to the Iraqi
government -- and more than 100,000 Iraqis are dead.
Or take the liberal internationalist 2011 intervention in Libya. The result was not a peaceful transition to stable democracy
but instead civil war and instability, with thousands dead as the country splintered and portions were overrun by terrorist groups.
On the grounds of democracy promotion, it is hard to say these interventions were a success. And for those motivated to expand
human rights around the world, it is hard to justify these wars as humanitarian victories -- on the civilian death count alone.
Indeed, the central anchoring assumptions of the American foreign policy establishment have been proven wrong. Foreign policymakers
largely assumed that all good things would go together -- democracy, markets, and human rights -- and so they thought opening
China to trade would inexorably lead to it becoming a liberal democracy. They were wrong. They thought Russia would become liberal
through swift democratization and privatization. They were wrong.
They thought globalization was inevitable and that ever-expanding trade liberalization was desirable even if the political
system never corrected for trade's winners and losers. They were wrong. These aren't minor mistakes. And to be clear, Donald Trump
had nothing to do with them. All of these failures were evident prior to the 2016 election.
If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing
of the Democratic Party ("soft neoliberals") many things became much more clear. Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represents a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their primary voting block: trade union members,
who in 2016 "en mass" defected to Trump.
Initially Clinton calculation was that trade union voters has nowhere to go anyways, and it was correct for first decade or so
of his betrayal. But gradually trade union members and lower middle class started to leave Dems in droves (Demexit, compare with
Brexit) and that where identity politics was invented to compensate for this loss.
So in addition to issues that you mention we also need to view the role of identity politics as the political strategy of the
"soft neoliberals " directed at discrediting and the suppression of nationalism.
The resurgence of nationalism is the inevitable byproduct of the dominance of neoliberalism, resurgence which I think is capable
to bury neoliberalism as it lost popular support (which now is limited to financial oligarchy and high income professional groups,
such as we can find in corporate and military brass, (shrinking) IT sector, upper strata of academy, upper strata of medical professionals,
etc)
That means that the structure of the current system isn't just flawed which imply that most problems are relatively minor and
can be fixed by making some tweaks. It is unfixable, because the "Identity wars" reflect a deep moral contradictions within neoliberal
ideology. And they can't be solved within this framework.
"... The objective of the elites was to wrest control of resources eg land and/or timber plus so-called royal warrants that controlled who was allowed to produce, sell export products to who, grab allocation out of the control of the mobs of greedy royal favorites, then into the hands of the new American elites. ..."
"... The bagmen & courtiers grew fat at the expense of the colonists and generally the bagman, who also spied on the locals for obvious reasons, would go back to England once he had made his stash. ..."
"... The American elites wanted and, after the revolution got, the power to control economic development for themselves.Hence the birth of lobbyists simultaneous with the birth of the American nation state. ..."
"... IMO the constitution was about as meaningful to the leaders of the revolution as campaign promises are to contemporary politicians.That is, something to be used as self protection without ever implementing. ..."
I'm always amused, nah that is a little harsh - dumbfounded is more reasonable, when
Americans express dismay that 'their' constitution is not being adhered to by the elites.
The minutiae of American political history hasn't greatly concerned me after a superficial
study at high school, when I realized that the political structure is corrupt and was
designed to facilitate corruption.
The seeming caring & sharing soundbites pushed out by the 'framers' scum such as
Thomas Jefferson was purely for show, an attempt to gather the cannon fodder to one side.
This was simple as the colonial media had been harping on about 'taxation without
representation' for decades.
It wasn't just taxes, in fact for the American based elites that was likely the least of
it. The objective of the elites was to wrest control of resources eg land and/or timber plus
so-called royal warrants that controlled who was allowed to produce, sell export products to
who, grab allocation out of the control of the mobs of greedy royal favorites, then into the
hands of the new American elites.
A well placed courtier would put a bagman into the regional center of a particular colony
(each colony becoming a 'state' post revolution), so that if someone wanted to, I dunno, say
export huge quantities of cotton, the courtier would charge that 'colonial' for getting the
initial warrant, then take a hefty % of the return on the product - all collected by the
on-site bagman then divvied up.
The bagmen & courtiers grew fat at the expense of the colonists and generally the
bagman, who also spied on the locals for obvious reasons, would go back to England once he
had made his stash.
The system was ponderous inaccurate & very expensive. Something had to be done, but
selling revolutionary change to the masses on the basis of the need to enrich the already
wealthy was not likely to be a winner. Consequently the high faulting blather.
The American elites wanted and, after the revolution got, the power to control economic
development for themselves.Hence the birth of lobbyists simultaneous with the birth of the American nation state.
IMO the constitution was about as meaningful to the leaders of the revolution as campaign
promises are to contemporary politicians.That is, something to be used as self protection without ever implementing.
Just like Cornell West suggested, black faces in high places hasn't solved the problem. Obama is a vivid example.
Notable quotes:
"... It is Class Warfare. There are no "Democrats" or "Republicans" .. There are the "Rich and Powerful" and then the "Rest of Us" And when we stand up, they take aim... ..."
"... Dr. Cornel West, "We have tried Black Faces in high places ..." ..."
Krystal Ball calls out D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Dem establishment for surface level support of the Black Lives Matter
movement.
Crush Inverted Totalitarianism, 12 hours ago
Speaking of black faces in high places, the entire black caucus endorsed ELIOT ENGEL over a black educater (Jamaal
Bowman)...this is aclass war, not a race war
Robert Quin, 12 hours ago (edited)
THERE IS NO DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF AMERICA! There is only Repugnican and Repugnican Lite. There is only hard right and soft right
in American politics. There is no left in power.
Electoralism is a scam. You're playing with an unplugged controller. Organise, unionize, protest, riot. If you want to vote,
you should vote third party. The Democratic party isn't part of the solution. They are playing good cop, bad cop with
republicans with both sides working for capital to impoverish the working class.
Krystal forgot one "innovation" Biden has suggested.
When talking to black community leaders in Wilmington, Joe Biden
said, "Instead of standing there and teaching a cop when there's an unarmed person coming at 'em with a knife or
something, shoot 'em in the leg instead of in the heart."
It
is Class Warfare. There are no "Democrats" or "Republicans" .. There are the "Rich and Powerful" and then the "Rest of Us" And
when we stand up, they take aim...
CFR Members And Bilderberg Attendees Appointed By Donald Trump (Taken from the CFR membership and Bilderberg participant lists)
Published: Wednesday, May 31, 2017
CFR Members And Bilderberg Attendees Appointed By Donald Trump
John P. Abizaid, Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (Individual CFR member)
Elliott Abrams, Special Envoy on Venezuela (Individual CFR member)
James H. Baker, Director of the Office of Net Assessment (Bilderberg attendee)
Barbara Barrett, Secretary of the Air Force (Individual CFR member, Bilderberg attendee)
David Bohigian, Executive Vice President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (Individual CFR member)
John Bolton, National Security Advisor (Individual CFR member)
Dan R. Brouillette, Secretary of Energy, Deputy Secretary of Energy (Individual CFR member)
Elaine Chao, United States Secretary of Transportation (CFR Individual member)
Richard Clarida, Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve (CFR Individual member)
Jay Clayton, Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (CFR corporate member)
Gary Cohn, Director of the National Economic Council (CFR corporate member)
Paul Dabbar, Under Secretary of Energy for Science, (Individual CFR member)
Jamie Dimon, Member of Strategic and Policy Forum (CFR corporate member)
Jim Donovan, Deputy Treasury Secretary (CFR corporate member)
Mark T. Esper, Acting Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Army (Individual CFR member, CFR corporate member)
Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) (CFR fellow traveler
and frequent speaker)
Larry Fink, Member of Strategic and Policy Forum (CFR corporate member)
Christopher A. Ford, Assistant Secretary for International Security and Nonproliferation (Individual CFR member)
James S. Gilmore III, United States Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (Individual CFR
member)
Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, National Security Advisor (Individual CFR member, Bilderberg attendee)
Neil M. Gorsuch, Supreme Court Justice (Individual CFR member)
Harry B. Harris Jr., Ambassador to South Korea (Individual CFR member)
Vice Admiral Robert S. Harward, National Security Advisor (declined appointment) (CFR corporate member)
Kevin Hassett, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (CFR fellow traveler)
Robert Wood "Woody" Johnson IV, United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom (Individual CFR member)
Kenneth I. Juster, Ambassador to India (Individual CFR member)
Robert Kadlec, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services (Preparedness and Response), (Individual CFR member)
Lawrence Kudlow, Director of the National Economic Council (Individual CFR member)
Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to the President (Bilderberg attendee)
Christopher Landau, Ambassador to Mexico (Individual CFR member)
Robert Lighthizer, United States Trade Representative (Individual CFR member)
David R. Malpass, World Bank (Individual CFR member)
James Mattis, Secretary of Defense (Bilderberg attendee)
K.T. McFarland, Deputy National Security Adviser (Individual CFR member)
Brent McIntosh, Undersecretary for international affairs, Department of the Treasury and General Counsel of the Department
of the Treasury (Individual CFR member)
Linda McMahon, Administrator of the Small Business Administration (CFR corporate member)
Army Lt. General Herbert Raymond "H. R." McMaster, National Security Advisor (Individual CFR member, Bilderberg attendee)
Jim McNerney, Member of Strategic and Policy Forum (CFR corporate member)
Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury (CFR corporate member)
Justin G. Muzinich, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury (Individual CFR member)
Denise Natali, Assistant Secretary of State for Conflict and Stabilization Operations (Individual CFR member)
Indra Nooyi, Member of Strategic and Policy Forum (CFR corporate member, Bilderberg attendee)
Rick Perry, Secretary of Energy (Bilderberg attendee)
Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State (Bilderberg attendee)
Matthew Pottinger, Senior Director of the National Security Council (Bilderberg attendee)
Dina Powell, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy (CFR corporate member)
Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve (Individual CFR member)
Mira R. Ricardel, Deputy National Security Advisor (Individual CFR member)
Ginni Rometty, Member of Strategic and Policy Forum (CFR corporate member)
William B. Roper Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, Logistics (Individual CFR member)
Jeffrey A. Rosen, Deputy Secretary of Transportation and Deputy Attorney General (Individual CFR member)
Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce (Bilderberg attendee)
Anthony Scaramucci, Director of Communications (Individual CFR member)
Nadia Schadlow, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy (Bilderberg attendee)
Stephen Schwarzman, Member of Strategic and Policy Forum (CFR corporate member)
Patrick Shanahan, Deputy Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Defense (CFR corporate member)
Susan A. Thornton Assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs (Individual CFR member)
Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State (CFR corporate member)
Rick L. Waddell, National Security Advisor (Individual CFR member)
Elizabeth E. Walsh, Director General of the United States Commercial Service and Assistant Secretary of Commerce (Global Markets)
(Individual CFR member)
Ray Washburne, President and CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (Individual CFR member)
Jack Welch, Member of Strategic and Policy Forum (CFR corporate member)
Owen West, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (Individual CFR member)
Robert Wilkie, Secretary of Veterans Affairs (Individual CFR member)
Heather Ann Wilson, Secretary of the Air Force (Individual CFR member)
Cook here represents a tradition of progressive pseudo-democracy which contradicts liberal
democracy.
In progressive pseudo-democracy, men "at the side of history" have a privilege in destroying
other people's values.
In liberal democracy, the defenders of the old system are recognized as a legitimate
opposition with the possibility of becoming the government again. so there are no privileges
for "men at the side of history". Of course there can be changes who are, in hindsight,
consensually accepted by both sides. Nearly nobody sees a reason to reestablish slavery
– but the acceptance of a gollywog or the acceptance of a statue is not slavery, not
even similar to it. The "pain" of people who conflate these matters is self-inflicted.
Any article discussing 'democracy' without defining it is the work of a hack.
Oh yes, it's supposed that everyone knows 'democracy'. He doesn't. It's a bullshit word
meant to gloss around the writer's refusal to reason by way of first principles. It's
cowardice.
We are all supposed to accept as the major premise that democracy's good, and thus
desirable. Ergo, if the writer can somehow tie his conclusion to 'democratic' roots, he's
carried the day.
Shameless fraud. Thousands of words of spittle.
Interesting truth: No form of the word 'democracy' is found in the US Declaration of
Independence or Constitution. To the contrary, democracy is forbidden by Constitution Article
IV Section 4.
The Holocaust memorial museum in Washington should be stormed by Americans outraged by
Israel's theft of US resources and its corruption of US politics, and for Israel's attack on
the USS Liberty.
This may or may not include the defenestration of the directors, the casting of exhibits
into the street, and the bulldozing of the entire structure into a landfill.
Yes, more democratic tradition, please, until justice is done and seen to be done.
"... It is true that there's a difference between Democrats and Republicans, in the same sense that there's a difference between the jab and the cross in boxing. The jab is often used to keep an opponent at bay and set up the more damaging cross, but they're both wielded by the same boxer, and they're both punching you in the face. ..."
It is true that there's a difference between Democrats and Republicans, in the same
sense that there's a difference between the jab and the cross in boxing. The jab is often used
to keep an opponent at bay and set up the more damaging cross, but they're both wielded by the
same boxer, and they're both punching you in the face.
ori Schake
objects to Biden's foreign policy record on the grounds that he is not hawkish enough and
too skeptical of military intervention. She restates a bankrupt hawkish view of U.S. military
action:
This half-in-half-out approach to military intervention also strips U.S. foreign policy of
its moral element of making the world a better place. It is inadequate to the cause of
advancing democracy and human rights [bold mine-DL].
The belief that military intervention is an expression of the "moral element" of U.S.
foreign policy is deeply wrong, but it is unfortunately just as deeply-ingrained among many
foreign policy professionals. Military intervention has typically been disastrous for the cause
of advancing democracy and human rights. First, by linking this cause with armed aggression,
regime change, and chaos, it tends to bring discredit on that cause in the eyes of the people
that suffer during the war. Military interventions have usually worsened conditions in the
targeted countries, and in the upheaval and violence that result there have been many hundreds
of thousands of deaths and countless other violations of human rights.
Destabilizing other countries, displacing millions of people, and wrecking their
infrastructure and economy obviously do not make anything better. As a rule, our wars of choice
have not been moral or just, and they have inflicted tremendous death and destruction on other
nations. When we look at the wreckage created by just the last twenty years of U.S. foreign
policy, we have to reject the fantasy that military action has something to do with moral
leadership. Each time that the U.S. has gone to war unnecessarily, that is a moral failure.
Each time that the U.S. has attacked another country when it was not threatened, that is a
moral abomination.
Schake continues:
Biden claims that the U.S. has a moral obligation to respond with military force to
genocide or chemical-weapons use, but was skeptical of intervention in Syria. The former vice
president's rhetoric doesn't match his policies on American values.
If Biden's rhetoric doesn't match his policies here, we should be glad that the presumptive
Democratic nominee for president isn't such an ideological zealot that he would insist on
waging wars that have nothing to do with the security of the United States. If there is a
mismatch, the problem lies with the expansive rhetoric and not with the skepticism about
intervention. That is particularly true in the Syria debate, where interventionists kept
demanding more aggressive policies without even bothering to show how escalation wouldn't make
things worse. Biden's skepticism about intervention in Syria of all places is supposed to be
held against him as proof of his poor judgment? That criticism speaks volumes about the
discredited hawkish crowd in Washington that wanted to sink the U.S. even more deeply into that
morass of conflict.
One of the chief problems with U.S. foreign policy for the last several decades is that it
has been far too militarized. To justify the constant resort to the threat and use of force,
supporters have insisted on portraying military action as if it were beneficent. They have
managed to trick a lot of Americans into thinking that "doing something" to another country is
the same thing as doing good. Interventionists emphasize the goodness of their intentions while
ignoring or minimizing the horrors that result from the policies they advocate, and they have
been able to co-opt the rhetoric of morality to mislead the public into thinking that attacking
other countries is legitimate and even obligatory. This has had the effect of degrading and
distorting our foreign policy debates by framing every argument over war in terms of righteous
"action" vs. squalid "inaction." This turns everything on its head. It treats aggression as
virtue and violence as salutary. Even a bog-standard hawk like Biden gets criticized for
lacking moral conviction if he isn't gung-ho for every unnecessary war.
As for Mr. Biden's "but was skeptical of intervention in Syria", maybe he was aware of
the actual perpetrators of the gas attacks (as several OPCW whistle-blowers testified) and
was maybe uncomfortable being again the spearhead for another war, like he was with Iraq as
the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Biden has been out of office for four years now. If I recall correctly, he didn't say jack
to support Trump's two failed attempts to pull out from Syria.
Kori Schake writes for the British neocon IISS, which has been secretly funded by the Sunni
dictator in Bahrain, who holds down the Shia majority with imported Pakistanis as soldiers
and police. Ordinary Bahrainis are like occupied prisoners in their own country. Everything
is for the small Sunni elite. Though there are also ordinary Sunnis who oppose them.
Kori Schake is simply paid to promote neocon interests, which the Bahraini dictator is
closely aligned with. The Sunni king dissolved parliament and took all the power, aided by
Saudi tanks crushing protesters, who were tortured and had their lives destroyed. The
dictator even destroyed Bahrain's famous Pearl Monument, near which the protesters had
camped out, so it wouldn't be a symbol of resistance. (Forever making it a symbol of
resistance.) The tower was on all the postcards from Bahrain and it appeared on the coins.
It's like destroying the Eiffel Tower. Kori's Sunni paymasters want Shia Iran destroyed as
it speaks up for the oppressed Shias in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen and the
UAE.
Biden is and for over four decades always was an example of all that is worst in
militarized US foreign policy. The idea that he isn't hawkish enough is itself crazy.
"... Instead of reining in the "globalist elites" he so vociferously ran against or those corporations "who have no loyalty to America," his one legislative achievement has been to award them a massive tax cut. Through it, he has maintained their favorite mix of low revenue intake and high deficits which gives Republicans a pretext to "starve the beast" and induce fiscal anorexia. ..."
"... Trump ran as a populist firebrand -- a fusion of Huey Long and Ross Perot -- and while he never abandoned that style, he has governed for the most part as a milquetoast free market Republican in perfect tandem with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, one whose solution to everything is more tax cuts and deregulation: a kind of turbo-charged "high-energy Jeb." ..."
"... With the outbreak of COVID-19, many on the reformist right are hoping for the emergence of the President Trump they thought they were promised, a leader just as ready to break out of the donor-enforced "small government" straitjacket while in power as he was during the campaign. ..."
"... The heightened rhetoric against China will continue -- the one thing Trump is good at -- but it is unlikely to be matched with the required policy ..."
"... If neoliberalism excused inequality at home by extolling the equalization of incomes across the globe (millions of Chinese raised from poverty, while millions of American workers fall back into it!), the new position must shift emphasis back to ensuring a more equitable domestic distribution of wealth and opportunity across all classes and communities in this country. ..."
"... It is worth pondering what might have happened if the administration had gone the other way and followed the last piece of policy advice given by Steve Bannon before his ouster in August 2017. Bannon suggested raising the top marginal income tax rate to 44 percent while "arguing that it would actually hit left-wing millionaires in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street, and in Hollywood." ..."
"... It might well have put Trump on the path to becoming what Daniel Patrick Moynihan once proposed as a model for Richard Nixon when he gifted the 37th president a biography of Disraeli, namely a Tory Republican who could outsmart the left by crafting broad popular coalitions based on a blending of patriotic cultural conservatism with class-conscious economic and social policy. ..."
"... Then and even more so now, the idea resonates: a Reuters/Ipsos poll from January found that 64 percent of Americans support a wealth tax, a majority of Republicans included. Poll after poll has reaffirmed this. It seems as if there is right-wing populist support for taxing the rich more. ..."
"... There is one more thing to be said about the significance of taxing the rich. Up until very recently, there has been a prevailing tendency among the reformist right (with some important exceptions) to couch criticism of the elites primarily or even exclusively in cultural terms. There seems to have been a polite hesitation at taking the cultural critique to its logical economic conclusions. It is easy to excoriate the excesses of elite identity politics, the "woke" part of woke capitalism; it's something all conservatives -- and indeed growing numbers of liberals and socialists -- agree on. Fish in a barrel. ..."
"... But to challenge the capitalism part, i.e. free market orthodoxy, not in a secondary or tertiary way, but head on and in specific policy terms as Lofgren and a few others have done, would involve confronting difficult truths, namely that the biggest beneficiaries of tax cuts and Reaganite economic policy in general, which most conservatives enthusiastically promoted for four decades, are the selfsame decadent coastal elites they claim to oppose. It is they who more than anyone else thrive on financialized globalization, arbitrage and offshoring. ..."
"... In other words, it amounts to an honest recognition of the complicity of conservatism in the mess we're in, which is perhaps a psychological bridge too far for too many on the right, reformist or not. (Trigger Warning!) This separation of culture and economics has led to the farce of a self-styled nationalist president lining the pockets of his nominal enemies, the globalist ruling class. ..."
"... A conservative call to tax the rich would signal that the right is ready to end this charade and chart a course toward a more patriotic, public-spirited and yes, proudly hyphenated capitalism. ..."
"... Michael Cuenco is a writer on politics and policy. He has also written for American Affairs. ..."
They also left worker wages stagnant and increased the deficit. Where is our more nationalist economic policy?
Much has been written about the disappointment of certain segments of the right in the apparent capitulation of Donald Trump to
the agenda of the conservative establishment.
Instead of reining in the "globalist elites" he so vociferously ran against or those corporations "who have no loyalty to America,"
his one legislative achievement has been to award them a massive tax cut. Through it, he has maintained their favorite mix of low
revenue intake and high deficits which gives Republicans a pretext to "starve the beast" and induce fiscal anorexia.
The president has granted them as well their ideal labor market through an ingenious formula: double down on mostly symbolic raids
(as opposed to systemic solutions like Mandatory E-Verify) and ramp up the rhetoric about "shithole countries" to distract the media,
but keep the supply of cheap, exploitable low-skill labor (legal and illegal) intact for the business lobby.
Trump ran as a populist firebrand -- a fusion of Huey Long and Ross Perot -- and while he never abandoned that style, he has governed
for the most part as a milquetoast free market Republican in perfect tandem with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, one whose solution
to everything is more tax cuts and deregulation: a kind of turbo-charged "high-energy Jeb."
With the outbreak of COVID-19, many on the reformist right are hoping for the emergence of the President Trump they thought they
were promised, a leader just as ready to break out of the donor-enforced "small government" straitjacket while in power as he was
during the campaign.
Despite signs of progress, what's more likely is a return to business as usual. Already the GOP's impulse for austerity and parsimony
is proving to be stronger than any willingness to think and act outside the box.
The heightened rhetoric against China will continue -- the one thing Trump is good at -- but it is unlikely to be matched with
the required policy, such as a long-term plan to reshore U.S. industry (that doesn't just rely on blindly giving corporations the
benefit of the doubt). At this point, we already know where the president's priorities lie when given a choice between the advancement
of America's workers or continued labor arbitrage and carte blanche corporate handouts.
Lest they be engulfed by it like everyone else, the reformist right should ask: is there any way to stand athwart the supply-side
swamp yelling Stop?
Many of these conservatives lament the Trump tax cut not just because it was a disaster that failed to spark reinvestment, left
wages stagnant, needlessly blew up the deficit and served as a slush fund for stock buybacks, but more fundamentally because it betrayed
the overwhelming intellectual inertia and lack of imagination that characterizes conservative policymaking.
More than in any other issue then, a distinct position on taxes would make the new conservatism truly worth distinguishing from
the old: tax cuts were after all the defining policy dogma of the neoliberal Reagan era.
If neoliberalism excused inequality at home by extolling the equalization of incomes across the globe (millions of Chinese raised
from poverty, while millions of American workers fall back into it!), the new position must shift emphasis back to ensuring a more
equitable domestic distribution of wealth and opportunity across all classes and communities in this country.
A reformulation of fiscal policy along populist economic nationalist lines can help with that.
It is worth pondering what might have happened if the administration had gone the other way and followed the last piece of policy
advice given by Steve Bannon before his ouster in August 2017. Bannon suggested raising the top marginal income tax rate to 44 percent
while "arguing that it would actually hit left-wing millionaires in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street, and in Hollywood."
Such a move would have been nothing short of revolutionary: it would have been a faithful and full-blown expression of the populist
economic nationalism Trump ran on; it would have presented a genuine material threat to the elite ruling class of both parties, and
likely would have pre-empted the shock value of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposing a 70 percent top marginal rate.
It might well have put Trump on the path to becoming what Daniel Patrick Moynihan once proposed as a model for Richard Nixon when
he gifted the 37th president a biography of Disraeli, namely a Tory Republican who could outsmart the left by crafting broad popular
coalitions based on a blending of patriotic cultural conservatism with class-conscious economic and social policy.
Not that Trump would have needed to go back to Nixon or Disraeli for instruction on the matter. In 1999, long before Elizabeth
Warren came along on the national scene, a presidential candidate eyeing the Reform Party nomination contemplated the imposition
of a 14.25 percent wealth tax on America's richest citizens in order to pay off the national debt: his name was Donald Trump.
What ever happened to that guy? The Trump of 1999 was onto something. Maybe this could be a way to deal with our post-pandemic
deficits.
Then and even more so now, the idea resonates: a Reuters/Ipsos poll from January found that 64 percent of Americans support a
wealth tax, a majority of Republicans included. Poll after poll has reaffirmed this. It seems as if there is right-wing populist
support for taxing the rich more.
To the common refrain, "the rich are just going to find ways to shelter their income or relocate it offshore," I have written
elsewhere about the concrete policy measures countries can and have taken to clip the wings of mobile global capital and prevent
such an outcome.
I have written as well about how taxing the rich and tightening the screws on tax enforcement have implications that go beyond
the merely redistributive approach to fiscal policy conventionally favored by the left; about how it can be a form of leverage against
an unaccountable investor class used to shopping at home and abroad for the most opaque assets in which to hoard vast amounts of
essentially idle capital.
A deft administration would use aggressive fiscal policy as an inducement for this irresponsible class to make things right by
reinvesting in such priorities as the wages and well-being of workers, the vitality of communities, the strength of strategic industries
and the productivity of the real economy – or else Uncle Sam will tax their wealth and do it for them.
It would also be an assertion of national sovereignty against globalization's command for countries to stay "competitive" by immiserating
their citizens with ever-lower taxes on capital holders and ever more loose and "flexible" labor markets in a never-ending race to
the bottom.
Mike Lofgren has penned a marvelous essay in these pages about the virtual secession of the rich from the American nation, "with
their prehensile greed, their asocial cultural values, and their absence of civic responsibility."
What better way to remind them that they are still citizens of a country and members of a society -- and not just floating streams
of deracinated capital -- than by making them perform that most basic of civic duties, paying one's fair share and contributing to
the commonweal? America need not revert to the 70-90 percent top marginal rates of the bolshevik administrations of Truman, Eisenhower
or Kennedy, but proposals for modest moves in that direction would be welcome.
There is one more thing to be said about the significance of taxing the rich. Up until very recently, there has been a prevailing
tendency among the reformist right (with some important exceptions) to couch criticism of the elites primarily or even exclusively
in cultural terms. There seems to have been a polite hesitation at taking the cultural critique to its logical economic conclusions.
It is easy to excoriate the excesses of elite identity politics, the "woke" part of woke capitalism; it's something all conservatives
-- and indeed growing numbers of liberals and socialists -- agree on. Fish in a barrel.
But to challenge the capitalism part, i.e. free market orthodoxy, not in a secondary or tertiary way, but head on and in specific
policy terms as Lofgren and a few others have done, would involve confronting difficult truths, namely that the biggest beneficiaries
of tax cuts and Reaganite economic policy in general, which most conservatives enthusiastically promoted for four decades, are the
selfsame decadent coastal elites they claim to oppose. It is they who more than anyone else thrive on financialized globalization,
arbitrage and offshoring.
In other words, it amounts to an honest recognition of the complicity of conservatism in the mess we're in, which is perhaps
a psychological bridge too far for too many on the right, reformist or not. (Trigger Warning!) This separation of culture and economics
has led to the farce of a self-styled nationalist president lining the pockets of his nominal enemies, the globalist ruling class.
Already, the White House is proposing yet another gigantic corporate tax cut. Using the exact same discredited logic as the last
one, senior economic advisor Larry Kudlow wants Americans to trust him when he says that halving the already lowered 2017 rate to
10.5 percent will encourage these eminently reasonable multinationals to reinvest. There he goes again.
A conservative call to tax the rich would signal that the right is ready to end this charade and chart a course toward a more
patriotic, public-spirited and yes, proudly hyphenated capitalism.
Michael Cuenco is a writer on politics and policy. He has also written for American Affairs.
"America need not revert to the 70-90 percent top marginal rates of the bolshevik administrations of Truman, Eisenhower or Kennedy,
but proposals for modest moves in that direction would be welcome."
Those tax rates were offset by direct investment in the US economy. So if I invested in the stock market, I'd get a 90% tax
rate because that doesn't produce actual wealth. On the other hand, if I invested in building factories that created thousands
of jobs for American citizens, my tax rate may fall to 0%. And those policies created a fantastic economy that we oldsters remember
as the golden age. That wasn't bolshevism, it was competitive capitalism. What we have today is libertarianism. And as long as
conservatives are going to let the libertarian boogey-man's nose under the tent, we are going to have this ugly, bifurcated economy.
Your choice. Man up.
You ever tell hear of sarcasm, bud? I think that's what the author was going for. Don't think he was trying to say that Ike and
Truman were Bolsheviks but was rather making fun of libertarians who hyperbolically associate high tax rates with socialism and
Soviet Communism...
We absolutely do not have libertarianism operating in this country today. There is simply no evidence that there is any
sort of libertarian economic or political system in place. Oh sure, you'll whine "but globalism without actually defining
what globalism is, or what is wrong about precisely, but just that it's somehow wrong and that libertarians are to blame for it.
There's a good word for such an argument: bullshit.
We have an economy that is extraordinarily dominated by the state via mandates, regulations, and monetary interference that is
most decidedly not libertarian in any way whatsoever. The current system though does create and perpetuate a system of
rent-seeking cronies who conform rather nicely to the descriptions of said actors by Buchanan and Tullock. The problems of the
modern economy are the result of state interference, not its absence, and Cuenco's sorry policy prescriptions do nothing to minimize
the state but instead just create a different set of rent-seeking cronies for which the wealth and incomes of the nation are to
be expropriated.
If you can point to how the current situation is in any way "libertarian" without creating your own perfect little lazy straw
man definition then by all means do so. Until then your retort is without
substance (you see a no true Scotsman reply doesn't work if the facts are in the favor of the person supposedly making such an
argument. Here you fail to establish why what I said is such a case; saying it doesn't make it so). When Kent makes some throwaway
comment that we're somehow living in some sort of libertarian era he's full of it, you know it, and all you can do is provide
some weak "no true Scotsman" defense? Come on and man up, stop appealing to artificial complaints of fallacious argumentation,
and give me an actual solid argument with evidence beyond "this is so libertarian" that we're living in some libertarian golden
age that's driving the oppression of the masses.
Busted unions, contracting out and privatization, deregulation of vast swaths of the economy since the late 1970's (Jimmy Carter
has gotten kudos from libertarian writers for his de-regulatory efforts), lowered tax rates, especially on financial speculation
and concentrated wealth, a blind eye or shrugged shoulder to anti-trust law and corporate consolidation. Yeah, nothing to see
here, no partial victories for the libertarian wings of the ruling class or the GOP, at all. The Koch Brothers accomplished nothing,
absolutely nothing, since David was the Libertarian Party's nominee for Vice President in 1980; all that money gone to waste.
Sure.
So, now some sort of "partial victory" means we're living in some sort of libertarian era? And what exactly was so wonderful about
all the things you listed being perpetuated? So, union "busting" is terrible, but union corruption was a great part of our national
solidarity and should have been protected? Deregulation of vast swathes of the economy? You mean the elimination of government
controlled cartels in the form of trucking and airlines? You mean the sorts of things that have enabled the working class folks
you supposedly favor to travel to places that were previously out of reach for them and only accessible to the rich for their
vacations? Yes, that's truly terrible. Again, you're on the side of the little guy, right? Lowered taxes? Are you seriously going
to argue that the traditional conservative position has been for high tax rates? What are taxes placed upon? People and property.
What do conservatives want to protect? People and property. So... arguing for higher taxes or saying that low taxes are bad or
even especially, libertarian, is really going off the rails. That's just bad reasoning. And regarding financialization, those
weren't especially libertarian in their enacting, but rather flow directly out of the consequences of the modern Progressive implementation
of neo-Keynesian monetary and fiscal policy. Suffice it to say, I don't think you'll find too many arguments from libertarians
that the policies encouraging financialization were good or followed libertarian economic policy prescriptions. Moreover, they
led entirely to the repulsive "too big to fail" situation and if there's one thing that libertarians hold to is that there is
no such thing (or shouldn't be) as "too big to fail." The objection to anti-trust law is that it was regularly abused and actually
created government-protected firms that harmed consumers. If you think anti-trust laws are good things and should be supported
by conservatives then by all means encourage Joe Biden to have Elizabeth Warren as his vice-presidential running mate and go vote
Democrat this fall.
"The problems of the modern economy are the result of state interference, not its absence". That's because the "state interference"
is working as proxy for the interests of vulture capitalist.
What we have today is vulture capitalism as opposed to free enterprise capitalism.
Exactly. The existence of a vulture capitalist or crony capitalist economy, which we have in many sectors, is evidence that "libertarianism"
is nothing more than a convenient totem to invoke as a rationale for complaint against the outcomes of the existing crony capitalist
state of affairs. My contention is that Cuenco, et al are simply advocating for a replacement of the cronies and vultures.
A very similar article(but probably coming at it from a slightly different angle) wouldn't look out of place in a socialist publication.
The culture war really is a pointless waste of time that keeps working class people from working towards a common solution to
shared problems.
I used to think that conservatism was about protecting private property and not, like Cuenco, in coming up with ever more excuses
for expropriating it.
No, that's libertarianism (or more properly propertarianism). Conservatism is first and foremost about responsibility to God,
community, family and self. Property is only of value in its utility towards a means.
As I see it, here are examples of how "conservatives" have actually practiced their "responsibility to God, community, family
and self":
The genocide of Native Americans
The slavery and murder of blacks
Their opposition to child labor laws, to womens' suffrage, etc.
Their support of Jim Crow laws
Their opposition to ending slavery and opposition to desegregation
Opposition to Civil Liberties Laws
Willingness to block, or curtail, voting rights.
Hyping the "imminent threat" of an ever more powerful communist menace bearing
down on us from the late 40s to the "unanticipated" collapse of the
USSR in '91. All of which was little more than endless "threat inflation" used
by our defense industry-corporate kleptocrats to justify monstrous increases
in deficits that have been "invested" in our meddlesome, murderous militarism all around the world, with the torture and deaths
of millions from S. E. Asia, to Indonesia, to Latin America, to the Middle East, to Africa, etc.
Violations of privacy rights (conservative hero J. Edgar Hoover's illegal domestic surveillance and acts of domestic terrorism,
"justified" by
his loopy paranoia about commies on every corner and under every bed.)
Toppling of democracies to install totalitarian despots in Iran
("Ike" '53), Guatemala (Ike, again, '54), Chile (Nixon '73), Brazil (LBJ, '64) and many, many more countries.
Strong support of the Vietnam War, the wars in Laos and Cambodia, and the Iraq War, which, according to conservative W. Bush,
God had inspired.
The myriad "dirty wars" we've fought around the world, and not only in Latin America.
With a few, notable exceptions, conservatives have routinely been on the wrong side of these issues. For the most part, it
has been the left, particularly the "hard left," that has gotten it right.
So conservatism should be entirely about taking people's property "for the good of the country"? That the purpose of a country
is to loot the people? That the people exist for the government and not the government for the people? Seems Edmund Burke and
Russell Kirk would like to have a word with you Adm.
To quote Kirk as just one example of your fundamental error:
Seventh, conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked . [Apparently, Adm. you dispute
Kirk's assertion and accuse him thereby of conflating libertarianism and conservatism. Yes, I know Kirk was a hater of the
idea of patriotism, but he was such a raging libertarian what else could he do?] Separate property from private possession,
and Leviathan becomes master of all. Upon the foundation of private property, great civilizations are built. The more widespread
is the possession of private property, the more stable and productive is a commonwealth. Economic levelling[this
is the outcome of Cuenco's policy prescriptions by the way] , conservatives maintain, is not economic progress. Getting
and spending are not the chief aims of human existence; but a sound economic basis for the person, the family, and the commonwealth
is much to be desired.
So, either "Mr. Conservative" Russell Kirk wasn't really a conservative but a man who horribly conflated libertarianism and
conservatism, or we can say that Kirk was a conservative and that he recognized the protection of private property as crucial
in minimizing the control and reach of the Leviathan state. If the latter holds, then maybe what we've established is that AdmBenson
isn't particularly conservative.
"The more widespread is the possession of private property, the more stable and productive is a commonwealth." This status quo
has produced precisely the opposite of this. Wealth, assets, capital has been captured by the elite. The pitchforks are coming.
See this CBO chart:
View Hide
Conservatives accept taxes as a part of citizenship. Since taxes can't be avoided, a conservative insists on democratic representation
and has a general desire to get maximum bang for their taxpayer buck.
Libertarians, on the other hand, see everything through the lens of an individual's property rights. Taxes and regulation are
infringements on those rights, so a libertarian is always at war with their own government. They're not interested in bang for
their taxpayer buck, they just want the government to go away. I can't fault people for believing this way, but I can point out
that it is severely faulty as the operating philosophy beyond anything but a small community.
As for me not being particularly conservative, ya got me. It really depends on time of day and the level of sunspot activity.
I should have put the /s on my reply, but your response did give me a good chuckle. Besides, for that finger pointing at you,
there were three more pointing back at me.
And somehow people continually fall for the Trickle Down economic theory. George HW Bush was correct when he called this VooDoo
economics. Fiscal irresponsibility at it's finest.
Nah people don't fall for it, republicans do. The rest of us know this stuff doesn't work. We didn't need an additional datapoint
to realize that. The Tax Cuts and Jobs act was the single most unpopular piece of legislation to ever pass since polling began.
It never had support outside of the Republican Party which is why it's never had majority support.
John Kenneth Galbraith called Trickle Down "economics", "Oats and Horse Economics". If you feed the horse a lot of oats, eventually
some be left on the road...
Mitch is fully owned by Trump as is every republican that holds office except Romney. Mitch can't go to the bathroom with out
asking Trumps permission.
Mitch is owned by corporations and he likes it that way. He basically says as much whenever campaign finance reform pops up and
he defends the status quo.
Yep. The guy who declared war on the Tea Party. The guy who changed his tune entirely about China when he married into the family
of a shipping magnate.
I'm eagerly awaiting a GOP plan for economic restructuring. I've been waiting for decade(s). Surely there is someone in the entire
body of think tanks, congressional staffers, and political class that can propose a genuine and comprehensive plan for how to
rebalance production, education, and technology for the better of ALL Americans. Surely...
I honestly wonder if Jack Kemp might have had a "Road to Damascus" conversion away from his pseudo-libertarian and supply side
economic convictions if he had lived through the decade after the Great Recession. Probably not, given his political and economic
activity up until his death.
Trump pushed the tax cut because it saves him at least $20 million each year in taxes, probably closer to $50 million. That's
the only reason he does anything, because he benefits personally.
Thank you very much for posting the link to the wonderful essay by Mike Lofgren. Written 8 years ago it feels even more actual
than then. I have bookmarked it for future reference.
Looking at the US it always comes to my mind the way Rome and then Byzantium fell: a total erosion of the tax-base the rich
refused to pay anything to the imperial coffers, and then some of the rich had land bigger than some modern countries... And then
the barbarians came...
Lofgren: "What I mean by secession is a withdrawal into enclaves, an internal immigration, whereby the rich disconnect themselves
from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well being except as a place to extract loot."
That was in 2012, but that was what struck me about my well-to-do classmates
when I transferred from Cal State Long Beach to Columbia University in 1977 . Suddenly I was among people who saw America,
American laws, and a shared sense of civic responsibility as quaint, bothersome, rather tangential to the project of promoting
oneself and/or one's special interest.
The only way that factories would come back is when Americans start buying made in America. We can't wait for ANY government to
bring those factories and jobs ( and technology) . Only people voting with their pocketbooks can do it.
Still waiting for the day the first American asks "What have WE done wrong?" Rather than just following in Trumps step
and playing the victim card every step of the way and wondering why nothing gets better.
Disagree,
Under Trumps tax plan, a single mother with 2 kids working fulltime at minimum wage gets 75
dollars a YEAR in childcare, about $-1.50 per week.
----------
While the rich, those making up to 400,000 per year get 2000.00 per year child credit off
their taxes.
---------------
Name a benefit for the poor, that the recent tax bill passed by Trump and GREEDY GOP.
-----------------------------------------------------
In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, President Trump promised to deliver on
his populist campaign pledges to protect Americans from globalization. "For too long," he
bemoaned, "we've watched our middle class shrink as we've exported our jobs and wealth to
foreign countries." But now, he asserted, the time has come to "restart the engine of the
American economy" and "bring back millions of jobs." To achieve his goals, Trump proposed
mixing massive tax-cuts and sweeping regulatory rollbacks with increased spending on the
military, infrastructure and border control. This same messy mix of free market
fundamentalism and hyper-nationalistic populism is presently taking shape in Trump's proposed
budget. But the apparent contradiction there isn't likely to slow down Trump's pro-market,
pro-Wall Street, pro-wealth agenda. His supporters may soon discover that his professions of
care for those left behind by globalization are -- aside from some mostly symbolic moves on
trade -- empty.
Just look at what has already happened with the GOP's proposed replacement for Obamacare,
which if enacted would bring increased pain and suffering to the anxious voters who put their
trust in Trump's populism in the first place. While these Americans might have thought their
votes would win them protection from the instabilities and austerities of market-led
globalization, what they are getting is a neoliberal president in populist clothing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/22/dont-let-his-trade-policy-fool-you-trump-is-a-neoliberal/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.94fa9481fd2a
@Al
Lipton He strikes me as just another leader out for his own self image, and legacy. I
took this opinion given his foreign policy – the shows for his isolationist base, and
his continuous almost wars for the MIC. I do say almost wars, and that says something. We're
I a US citizen, and one to vote for humans, I would vote for Trump this time, but he is
imperfect imo, and it's only a coincidence that on some issues what benefits him, aligns with
what benefits the nation.
The timing of ObamaGate for example – we all knew it, it would go from snail's pace
to a decent speed just as the election cycle was heating up. But this is playing politics and
electioneering with the most critical misdirection and criminality of US officials in a long
time. A real leader who worked for the nation and its Constitution only, would bugger all
that and start draining as soon as could be done.
Of course that could be coincidence, and they could have been building a strong case, but
as someone else said, I will take my conspiracy theory over some coincidence theory any
day.
I can't imagine that without ObamaGate, he would have even tried to drain the swamp. Made
showpieces of it sure, but no thing major. But now he can do what he promised and maybe even
wanted to do, without reputational damage, and he will do it.
But how he will be in his second term, through a depression that was on its way in 6
months before corona? Like FDR I'd guess – war war war.
"... former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell admitted in a TV interview he views that the US should be in the business of "killing Russians and Iranians covertly" ). ..."
"... Ironically, Jeffrey's official title has been Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIL, but apparently the mission is now to essentially "give the Russians hell". His comments were made Tuesday during a video conference hosted by the neocon Hudson Institute : ..."
"... He also emphasized that the Syrian state would continue to be squeezed into submission as part of long-term US efforts (going back to at least 2011) to legitimize a Syria government in exile of sorts. This after the Trump administration recently piled new sanctions on Damascus. As University of Oklahoma professor and expert on the region Joshua Landis summarized of Jeffrey's remarks: "He pledged that the United States will continue to deny Syria - international funding, reconstruction, oil, banking, agriculture & recognition of government." ..."
Washington now says it's all about defeating the Russians . While it's not the first time
this has been thrown around in policy circles (recall that a year after Russia's 2015 entry
into Syria at Assad's invitation, former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell
admitted in a TV interview he views that the US should be in the business of "killing
Russians and Iranians covertly" ).
"My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians."
Ironically, Jeffrey's official title has been Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to
Defeat ISIL, but apparently the mission is now to essentially "give the Russians hell". His
comments were made Tuesday during a video conference hosted by the neocon Hudson Institute :
Asked why the American public should tolerate US involvement in Syria, Special Envoy James
Jeffrey points out the small US footprint in the fight against ISIS. "This isn't Afghanistan.
This isn't Vietnam. This isn't a quagmire. My job is to make it a quagmire for the
Russians."
He also emphasized that the Syrian state would continue to be squeezed into submission as
part of long-term US efforts (going back to at least 2011) to legitimize a Syria government in
exile of sorts. This after the Trump administration recently piled new sanctions on Damascus.
As University of Oklahoma professor and expert on the region Joshua Landis summarized of
Jeffrey's remarks: "He pledged that the United States will continue to deny Syria -
international funding, reconstruction, oil, banking, agriculture & recognition of
government."
"My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians."
Special US envoy to Syria - James Jeffery
He pledged that the United States will continue to deny Syria - international funding,
reconstruction, oil, banking, agriculture & recognition of government. https://t.co/MSAkQqAmdh
But no doubt both Putin and Assad have understood Washington's real proxy war interests all
along, which is why last year Russia delivered it's lethal S-300 into the hands of Assad (and
amid constant Israeli attacks). But no doubt both Putin and Assad have understood Washington's
real proxy war interests all along, which is why last year Russia delivered it's lethal S-300
into the hands of Assad (and amid constant Israeli attacks).
As for oil, currently Damascus is well supplied by the Iranians, eager to dump their stock
in fuel-starved Syria amid the global glut. Trump has previously voiced that part of US troops
"securing the oil fields" is to keep them out of the hands of Russia and Iran.
* * *
Recall the CIA's 2016 admission of what's really going on in terms of US action in
Syria:
One of trademarks of Trump administration is his that he despises international law and
relies on "might makes right" principle all the time. In a way he is a one trick pony, typical
unhinged bully.
In a way Pompeo is the fact of Trump administration foreign policy, and it is not pretty
It is mostly, though not only, Trump related or libertarian pseudo "alt media" behind "just
the flu" theories or "China unleashed virus to attack US".
There is a small military/zionist cabal at the White House that is pushing for that
information war in order to prop up the dying US empire as well as US oligarhic business
interests, and to secure Trump reelection prospects.
It is enough to see how Zerohedge have been turned into full blown imperialist media with
many "evil China" outbursts every day.
Beware of Trumptards infiltrating alt media to prop up the dying US Empire and its
business interests.
Trump is the biggest US imperialist for the last 30 years. He made a good job at deceiving
many anti-system voices.
His WTO attacks are too part of US efforts to take over the organisation. His has no
problem with international institutions as long as they are US empire controlled (such as
OPCW, WADA, etc.)
Trump-tards and related libertarians (Zerohedge etc.) made their choice on the side
of global US imperialism (driven by their hidden racism, hence the evil "chinks" making a
good enemy) and are now the enemy of the multipolar world.
Trump is scum. He turned on Russia and Assange after he got into the White House and did
far more against Russia than even Obama. I say that as someone who initially made the mistake
to support him.
"... 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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
Tulsi on mask shortage-"It's hard to imagine how this could be
happening in America." Really? You're surprised the corrupt two-party that you insist we choose between got us here?
Andrew Yang just
admitted that he endorsed Biden cause he got offered a position in his cabinet should Biden become president. Tulsi of
course would never do that XD .
I wonder how
strong the Progressive movement would've been if careerists like Gabbard and Warren stayed away and the front was
unified from the beginning.
When Jimmy started his live video the day she announced
supporting Biden, I said to myself "I bet anything he blames Bernie for her dropping out and supporting Biden." Low
and behold, he did.
6:56
"which is something I always said I would do btw,
that I would support the eventual democratic nominee" Am I living in a parallel dimension? The primary is not
finished yet, you can still endorse Biden when it will be over if he wins the primary but endorse Bernie for the
moment. Is it that hard? Ho right, I forgot, the primary is rigged and we all know that Biden the senile kid diddler
and liar will be the nominee one way or another. Fucked up, but she's not helping. She probably knows she'll be
kicked out of politics if she does not endorse biden and cares more about her career than doing the right thing.
War is ingrained into US society, "Thankyou for your
service" says it all. Heroes in America are obviously those who go to war at the behest of the zionists and the
corporations.
"The scope of
the effects of this are difficult to comprehend at this time..." This is truly amazing that someone in the government
has the audacity to blame a virus for people's inability to "make rent" when it was them that created the current
hysteria and panic. There is a pandemic. I agree. But so far counting all of the cases that we know about, it is no
where even close to the season flue that we see every year! And the government is shutting down businesses! It is a
shame that they are using the current situation to further the idea that people are dependent on the government to
survive! How far we as a nation and a people have fallen from the ideals that created this nation in the first place! I
am disgusted!
Like Bernie,
Tulsi is just another TWO FACED Globalist Presstitute. Tulsi says her platform is to stop regime change and bring are
troops home! Why does she then endorse Biden who supports regime change and keeping troops in the middle east? Tulsi
says she does this to defeat Trump but Trump campaigned to stop regime change and bring are troops home!
Christo Aivalis 20.3K subscribers Earlier
today, Tulsi Gabbard announced she was dropping out of the presidential primary and endorsing Joe Biden for President. Many Tulsi
supporters felt betrayed by this move, but it fits the ideological similarities between Tulsi and Biden. It also shows that like
with Andrew Yang, Gabbard's anti-establishment image was only superficial, and it shows that Bernie Sanders is the only one meaningfully
challenging the political, social, and economic status quo It also shows that those neoliberal democrats who attacked Tulsi as a
Russian Asset seem fine with her now, as long as she falls in line. I wonder how Jimmy Dore is feeling?
I thought she was anti-war, yet she supports Biden, what a shame, I can't believe it, she was so fake all along, it's like
a bad movie twist... is there even one decent politician in USA, besides Bernie?
It's a bummer. She really had so much potential especially after she endorsed Bernie the first time. Now Idk. Williamson is
the only one who genuinely went to the most progressive candidate without hesitating.
#DemocracyDiesInDarkness
R ussia and Saudi Arabia are engaged in an oil price war that has sent shockwaves around
the world, causing the price of oil to tumble and threatening the financial stability, and even
viability, of major international oil companies.
On the surface, this conflict appears to be a fight between two of the world's largest
producers of oil over market share. This may, in fact, be the motive driving Saudi Arabia,
which reacted to Russia's refusal to reduce its level of oil production by slashing the price
it charged per barrel of oil and threatening to increase its oil production, thereby flooding
the global market with cheap oil in an effort to attract customers away from competitors.
Russia's motives appear to be far different -- its target isn't Saudi Arabia, but rather
American shale oil. After absorbing American sanctions that targeted the Russian energy sector,
and working with global partners (including Saudi Arabia) to keep oil prices stable by reducing
oil production even as the United States increased the amount of shale oil it sold on the world
market, Russia had had enough. The advent of the Coronavirus global pandemic had significantly
reduced the demand for oil around the world, stressing the American shale producers.
Russia had been preparing for the eventuality of oil-based economic warfare with the United
States. With U.S. shale producers knocked back on their heels, Russia viewed the time as being
ripe to strike back. Russia's goal is simple: to make American shale oil producers "
share the pain ".
The United States has been slapping sanctions on Russia for more
than six years, ever since Russia took control (and later annexed) the Crimean Peninsula and
threw its weight behind Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. The first sanctions were issued
on March 6, 2014, through Executive
Order 13660 , targeting "persons who have asserted governmental authority in the Crimean
region without the authorization of the Government of Ukraine that undermine democratic
processes and institutions in Ukraine; threaten its peace, security, stability, sovereignty,
and territorial integrity; and contribute to the misappropriation of its assets."
The most
recent round of sanctions was announced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on February 18,
2020, by sanctioning Rosneft Trading S.A., a Swiss-incorporated, Russian-owned oil brokerage
firm, for operating in Venezuela's oil sector. The U.S. also recently targeted the Russian
Nord Stream 2
and
Turk Stream gas pipeline projects.
Russia had been signaling its displeasure over U.S. sanctions from the very beginning. In
July 2014, Russian President Vladimir
Putin warned that U.S. sanctions were "driving into a corner" relations between the two
countries, threatening the "the long-term national interests of the U.S. government and
people." Russia opted to ride out U.S. sanctions, in hopes that there might be a change of
administrations following the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections. Russian President Vladimir
Putin made it clear that he hoped the U.S. might elect someone whose policies would be more
friendly toward Russia, and that once the field of candidates narrowed down to a choice between
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Putin favored
Trump .
"Yes, I did," Putin remarked after the election, during a joint press conference with
President Trump following a summit in Helsinki in July 2018. "Yes, I did. Because he talked
about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal."
Putin's comments only reinforced the opinions of those who embraced allegations of Russian
interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election as fact and concluded that Putin had some
sort of hold over Trump. Trump's continuous praise of Putin's leadership style only reinforced
these concerns.
Even before he was inaugurated, Trump singled out Putin's refusal to respond in kind to
President Obama's levying of sanctions based upon the assessment of the U.S. intelligence
community that Russia had interfered in the election. "Great move on delay (by V. Putin)
– I always knew he was very smart!"
Trump Tweeted . Trump viewed the Obama sanctions as an effort
to sabotage any chance of a Trump administration repairing relations with Russia, and
interpreted Putin's refusal to engage, despite being pressured to do so by the Russian
Parliament and Foreign Ministry, as a recognition of the same.
This sense of providing political space in the face of domestic pressure worked both ways.
In January 2018, Putin tried to shield his relationship with President Trump by calling the
release of a list containing some 200 names of persons close to the Russian government by the
U.S. Treasury Department as a hostile and "stupid"
move .
"Ordinary Russian citizens, employees and entire industries are behind each of those people
and companies," Putin remarked. "So all 146 million people have essentially been put on this
list. What is the point of this? I don't understand."
From the Russian perspective, the list highlighted the reality that the U.S. viewed the
entire Russian government as an enemy and is a byproduct of the "political paranoia" on the
part of U.S. lawmakers. The consequences of this, senior Russian officials warned, "will be
toxic and undermine prospects for cooperation for years ahead."
While President Trump entered office fully intending to "
get along with Russia ," including the possibility of
relaxing the Obama-era sanctions , the reality of U.S.-Russian relations, especially as
viewed from Congress, has been the strengthening of the Obama sanctions regime. These
sanctions, strengthened over time by new measures signed off by Trump, have had a negative
impact on the Russian economy,
slowing growth and
driving away foreign investment .
While Putin continued to show constraint in the face of these mounting sanctions, the recent
targeting of Russia's energy sector represented a bridge too far. When Saudi pressure to cut
oil production rates coincided with a global reduction in the demand for oil brought on by the
Coronavirus crisis, Russia struck.
The timing of the Russian action is curious, especially given the amount of speculation that
there was some sort of personal relationship between Trump and Putin that the Russian leader
sought to preserve and carry over into a potential second term. But Putin had, for some
time now, been signaling that his patience with Trump had run its course. When speaking to
the press in June 2019 about the state of U.S.-Russian relations, Putin noted that "They
(our relations) are going downhill, they are getting worse and worse," adding that "The current
[i.e., Trump] administration has approved, in my opinion, several dozen decisions on sanctions
against Russia in recent years."
By launching an oil price war on the eve of the American Presidential campaign season, Putin
has sent as strong a signal as possible that he no longer views Trump as an asset, if in fact
he ever did. Putin had hoped Trump could usher in positive change in the trajectory of
relations between the two nations; this clearly had not happened. Instead, in the words of
close Putin ally Igor Sechin , the chief executive of Russian oil giant Rosneft, the U.S.
was using its considerable energy resources as a political weapon, ushering in an era of "power
colonialism" that sought to expand U.S. oil production and market share at the expense of other
nations.
From Russia's perspective, the growth in U.S. oil production -- which doubled in output from
2011 until 2019 -- and the emergence of the U.S. as a net exporter of oil, was directly linked
to the suppression of oil export capability in nations such as Venezuela and Iran through the
imposition of sanctions. While this could be tolerated when the target was a third party, once
the U.S. set its sanctioning practices on Russian energy, the die was cast.
If the goal of the Russian-driven price war is to make U.S. shale companies "share the
pain," they have already succeeded. A similar price war, initiated by Saudi Arabia in 2014 for
the express purpose of suppressing U.S. shale oil production, failed, but only because
investors were willing to prop up the stricken shale producers with massive loans and infusion
of capital. For shale oil producers, who use an expensive methodology of extraction known as
"fracking," to be economically viable, the breakeven price of oil
per barrel needs to be between $40 and $60 dollars. This was the price range the Saudi's
were hoping to sustain when they proposed the cuts in oil production that Russia rejected.
The U.S. shale oil producers, saddled by massive debt and high operational expenses, will
suffer greatly in any sustained oil price war. Already, with the price of oil down to below $35
per barrel,
there is talk of bankruptcy and massive job layoffs -- none of which bode well for Trump in
the coming election.
It's clear that Russia has no intention of backing off anytime soon. According to
the Russian Finance Ministry , said on Russia could weather oil prices of $25-30 per barrel
for between six and ten years. One thing is for certain -- U.S. shale oil companies cannot.
In a sign that the Trump administration might be waking up to the reality of the predicament
it faces, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin quietly met with Russia's Ambassador to the U.S.,
Anatoly Antonov. According to a read out from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
the two discussed economic sanctions, the Venezuelan economy, and the potential for "trade
and investment." Mnuchin, the Russians noted, emphasized the "importance of orderly energy
markets."
Russia is unlikely to fold anytime soon. As Admiral Josh Painter, a character in Tom
Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October," famously said , "Russians don't take a dump without
a plan."
Russia didn't enter its current course of action on a whim. Its goals are clearly stated --
to defeat U.S. shale oil -- and the costs of this effort, both economically and politically (up
to and including having Trump lose the 2020 Presidential election) have all been calculated and
considered in advance. The Russian Bear can only be toyed with for so long without generating a
response. We now know what that response is; when the Empire strikes back, it hits hard.
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 several books,
including his forthcoming, Scorpion King:
America's Embrace of Nuclear Weapons From FDR to Trump (2020).
Numerous so-called "front groups" operate in the United States. A front group is very simply
an organization that pretends to have a certain program while at the same time using that
identity as cover to promote a hidden agenda that is something quite different, often opposed
to what is being said publicly. The Global Climate Coalition is, for example, an organization
funded by fossil fuel providers that works to deny climate change and other related issues. The
Groundwater Protection Council does not protect water resources at all and instead receives its
money from the fracking industry, which resists any regulation of water pollution it causes.
The Partnership for a New American Economy has nothing to do with protecting the U.S. economy
and instead seeks to replace American workers with H1B immigrant laborers. Even the benign
sounding National Sleep Foundation, is in reality a Big Pharma creation intended to convince
Americans that they need to regularly use sleep inducing drugs.
Front groups in a political context can be particularly dangerous as they deceive the voter
into supporting candidates or promoting policies that have a hidden agenda. The
Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is, for example, uninterested in
preserving democracies unless that democracy is Israel, which many observers would prefer to
describe as an apartheid state. It is funded by Zionists billionaires and its leadership meets
regularly with Israeli officials. The American Enterprise Institute is likewise a neocon
mouthpiece for economic imperialism and regime change disguising itself as a free market
advocate and the Brookings Institution is its liberal interventionist counterpart.
Front groups are sometimes largely fictional, on occasion creations of an intelligence
agency to give the impression that there exists in a country a formidable opposition to
policies pursued by the governing regime. Recent developments in Venezuela and Bolivia rather
suggest the CIA creation of front groups in both countries while the Ukrainian regime change
that took place in 2014 also benefited greatly from a U.S. created and supported opposition to
the legitimate Viktor Yanukovych government.
Looks like Trump is already lame duck President. And this will not change with the
elections
Notable quotes:
"... I'm not suggesting that President Trump deserves a second term. He didn't deserve a first one. He's a terrible person and an awful president. What I'm saying is that it is more likely than not that he has already done most of the damage that he can do. ..."
"... An achievement-filled second term would be a major reversal of recent historical precedent. Things may get worse under four more years of this idiot, but not much worse as the Democratic doomsday cult warns. ..."
"... I hope Obama enjoyed all those trips to Martha's Vineyard because that's pretty much all he has to show for term number two. ..."
"... George W. Bush screwed up one thing after another during his second four years in office, which was bookended by his hapless non-response to the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and his role in the ineffective and wasteful bailout of Wall Street megabanks during the subprime mortgage financial crisis. What began as an illegal war of aggression against Iraq became, after reelection, a catastrophic quagmire that destroyed America's international reputation. ..."
"... Reagan was both senile and bogged down in Iran Contra. ..."
"... "If Trump wins a second term this November," James Pethokoukis writes in The Week, Trump "might propose more tax cuts, but they are more likely to be payroll tax cuts geared toward middle-class workers instead of income tax cuts for rich people and corporations. ..."
You've heard it so often that you may well believe it's true: Trump's second term would be a
disaster. For the Democratic Party. For the United States. For democracy itself. "The
reelection of Donald Trump," warns Nancy Pelosi, "would do irreparable damage to the United
States."
But would it really?
Exceptions are a normal part of history but the record suggests that Trump would not be one
of the few presidents who get much done during their second terms. There are three reasons for
the sophomore slump:
By definition, political honeymoons expire (well) before the end of a president's first
term. Elections have consequences in the form of policy changes that make good on campaign
promises. But turning a pledge into reality comes at a cost. Capital gets spent, promises are
broken, alliances shatter. Oftentimes, those changes prove disappointing. Recent example:
Obamacare. Voters often express their displeasure by punishing the party that controls the
White House with losses in Congress in midterm elections.
The permanent campaign fed by the 24-7 news cycle makes lame ducks gimpier than ever. Before
a president gets to take his or her second oath of office, news media and future hopefuls are
already looking four years ahead.
Scandals come usually home to roost during second terms. It's tough to push laws through a
Congress that is dragging your top officials through one investigation after another.
I'm not suggesting that President Trump deserves a second term. He didn't deserve a
first one. He's a terrible person and an awful president. What I'm saying is that it is more
likely than not that he has already done most of the damage that he can do.
Pundits and Democratic politicians have been pushing a self-serving narrative that implies
that everything Trump has done so far was merely a warm-up for the main event, that he would
want and be able to go even further if given the chance if November 2020 goes his way.
That doesn't make sense. Who in their right mind thinks Trump has been holding anything
back? Which president has failed to go big within a year or two?
An achievement-filled second term would be a major reversal of recent historical
precedent. Things may get worse under four more years of this idiot, but not much worse as the
Democratic doomsday cult warns.
President Obama didn't get much done during his second term, which began with the bungled
rollout of the federal and state "health exchanges." He signed the Paris climate accord,
renewed diplomatic relations with Cuba and negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran. But the ease
with which his successor canceled those achievements showcased both the ephemerality of
policies pushed through without thorough public propaganda and a general sense that second-term
laws and treaties are easy to annul. I hope Obama enjoyed all those trips to Martha's
Vineyard because that's pretty much all he has to show for term number two.
George W. Bush screwed up one thing after another during his second four years in
office, which was bookended by his hapless non-response to the destruction of New Orleans by
Hurricane Katrina and his role in the ineffective and wasteful bailout of Wall Street megabanks
during the subprime mortgage financial crisis. What began as an illegal war of aggression
against Iraq became, after reelection, a catastrophic quagmire that destroyed America's
international reputation.
Whatever the merits of Bill Clinton's legislative and policy agenda -- welfare reform, NAFTA
and bombing Kosovo would all have happened under a Republican president -- having anything
substantial or positive to point to was well in the rearview mirror by his second term, when he
found himself embroiled in the Monica Lewinsky affair and impeachment.
Reagan was both senile and bogged down in Iran Contra.
Even the most productive and prolific president of the 20th century had little to show for
his second term. FDR's legacy would be nearly as impressive today if he'd only served four
years.
Anything could happen. Donald Trump may use his second term to push dramatic changes. If
there were another terrorist attack, for example, he would probably try to exploit national
shock and fear to the political advantage of the right. Another Supreme Court justice could
pass away. On the other hand, Trump is old, clinically obese and out of shape. He might die.
It's doubtful that Mike Pence, a veep chosen for his lack of charisma, would be able to carry
on the Trump tradition as more than the head of a caretaker government.
Analysts differ on what Trump 2.0 might look like. Regardless of their perspective, however,
no one expects anything big.
"If Trump wins a second term this November," James Pethokoukis writes in The Week, Trump
"might propose more tax cuts, but they are more likely to be payroll tax cuts geared toward
middle-class workers instead of income tax cuts for rich people and corporations. He'll
look for a new Federal Reserve chair less worried about inflation than current boss Jerome
Powell, who deserves at least partial credit for the surging stock market and continuing
expansion. Trump will let the national debt soar rather than trimming projected Medicare and
Social Security benefits. And there will be more protectionism, although it may be called
'industrial policy.'"
"The early outlines of the [second-term] agenda are starting to emerge," Andrew Restuccia
reports in The Wall Street Journal. "Among the issues under consideration: continuing the
administration's efforts to lower prescription drug prices, pushing for a broad infrastructure
bill and taking another crack at reforming the country's immigration system, [White House]
officials said." They also want to reduce the deficit.
Under Trump, immigration reform is never a good thing. But it's hard to imagine anything
major happening without Democratic cooperation.
Internationally, many observers expect Trump to continue to nurture his isolationist
tendencies. But President Bernie Sanders would probably have similar impulses to focus on
America First.
By all means, vote against Trump. But don't freak out at the thought of a second term.
Mourn what happened under the first one instead -- and work to reverse it.
"... 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 "
There
was this moment during the State of the Union Address that I can't stop thinking about.
When President Trump spoke to army wife Amy Wiliams during his speech and told her he'd
arranged her husband's return home from Afghanistan as a "special surprise," it was difficult
to watch.
Sgt. Townsend Williams then descended the stairs to reunite with his family after seven
months of deployment. Congress cheered. A military family's reunion -- with its complicated
feelings that are typically handled in private or on a base -- was used for an applause
line.
That gimmick was the only glimpse many Americans will get of the human reality of our wars
overseas. There is no such window into the lives or suffering of people in Yemen, Somalia,
Afghanistan, or beyond.
That's unacceptable. And so is the myth that Trump is actually ending the wars.
The U.S. has reached a deal with the Taliban to remove 3,400 of the 12,000 U.S. troops
currently in Afghanistan, with the pledge to withdraw more if certain conditions are met.
That's a long overdue first step, as U.S. officials are finally recognizing the war is a
disaster and are negotiating an exit.
But taking a step back reveals a bigger picture in which, from West Africa to Central Asia,
Trump is expanding and deepening the War on Terror -- and making it deadlier.
Far from ending the wars, U.S. airstrikes in Somalia and Syria have skyrocketed under Trump,
leading to more
civilian casualties in both countries. In Somalia, the forces U.S. operations are
supposedly targeting have not been defeated after 18 years of war. It received little coverage
in the U.S., but the first week of this year saw a truck bombing in Mogadishu that killed more
than 80 people.
Everywhere, ordinary people, people just like us except they happen to live in other
countries, pay the price of these wars. Last year saw over 10,000 Afghan civilian casualties --
the sixth year in a row to reach those grim heights.
And don't forget, 2020 opened with Trump bringing the U.S. to the brink of a potentially
catastrophic war with Iran. And he continues to escalate punishing sanctions on the country,
devastating women, children, the elderly, and other vulnerable people.
Trump is not ending wars, but preparing for more war. Over the past year, he has deployed
14,000 more
troops in the Middle East -- beyond the tens of thousands already there.
If this seems surprising, it's in part because the problem has been bipartisan. Indeed, many
congressional Democrats have actually supported these escalations.
In December, 188 House Democrats
joined Republicans in passing a nearly $740 billion military budget that continues the
wars. They passed the budget after abandoning anti-war measures put forward by California
Representative Barbara Lee and the precious few others trying to rein in the wars.
It's worth remembering that State of the Union visual, of Congress rising in unison and
joining the president in applause for his stunt with the Williams family. Because there has
been nearly that level of consensus year after year in funding, and expanding, the wars.
Ending them will not be easy. Too many powerful interests -- from weapons manufacturers to
politicians -- are too invested. But ending the wars begins with rejecting the idea that real
opposition will come from inside the White House.
As with so many other issues -- like when Trump first enacted the Muslim Ban and people
flocked to airports nationwide in protest, or the outpouring against caging children at the
border -- those of us who oppose the wars need to raise our voices, and make the leaders
follow. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Khury Petersen-Smith
I'm going to take my chance while I have it and before having to say "I hate to be that
old Marxist but "
I am 36 years old and therefore the same age as most of those speaking for millenials in
the DSA, writing for Jacobin, and organising for Bernie or those of his satellites on their
respective fool's errands in opposition to the entrenched Democratic Party panjandrums.
Half American and half British, I have also experienced some similar issues with the
Corbyn/Momentum movement and its recent car crash with ruling class reality.
Just as an intro because of course I am going to say, "I hate to say this but "
The DSA and the semi-organised American left are selling their increasingly, justifiably
radical followers a pig in a poke. In a sense, I except Bernie from that condemnation –
running for President, it is what it is. But those who are supposed to be to his left are
performing an invidious game by preventing further political education or raising
consciousness in favour of peddling the myth of reforming the Democratic Party from within
that have been tried, and have failed, so many times in the last 120 years.
The fact that these same groups are doing the same thing when it comes to labour
struggles, endlessly shepherding wildcat momentum behind union leadership and justifying
sell-out deals instead of fostering a realistic preparation for the struggles ahead, suggests
that this is not an accident.
The cognitive dissonance is almost as horrible as that on offer when technocrats like
Obama and Clinton accept the facts of climate change while endlessly sandbagging real
responses to it. Which shouldn't be surprising, since the American and British new left is
engaged in an infernal slow dance with their liberal or corporate beefcakes.
If I sound flippant, I apologise – I don't mean to. I also don't necessarily
disbelieve in the potential for at least some change within existing conditions – but
historically such changes have been won because there was a more radical
extra-electoral/parliamentary movement of workers leveraging their strength, not because it
was all within one cosy political bubble.
And that only happens when workers and students are educated about the struggles involved
in forcing changes in the teeth of ruling class interests, institutions and political heft.
Peddling illusions about the all-encompassing power of the electoral process, or
complaining endlessly about the the latest example of back-stabbing from whichever corporate
liberal stooge last wielded the shank, is increasingly not just useless but something worse
– an expected part of the system itself as it reproduces its frozen dialectics of power
and exploitation.
This is not (at least not entirely) a call for revolution. But I am increasingly certain
that change is impossible without first preparing a broad swathe of people to fight, fight,
fight instead of entrusting the struggle to this or that figurehead (Bernie, AOC), let alone
their clarion-callers in an increasingly cosy upper middle class den of pseudo-leftists.
You might read that Politico article on the DSA. I found it rather encouraging but you
might differ. If so, I'd like to know your opinion of the concrete details.
> peddling the myth of reforming the Democratic Party from within
If the ultimate outcome were to split the Democrats, would you change your mind?
Reading the Politico article now. You're right – it is encouraging, at least in the
sense that it features articulate, radicalised individuals and their early attempts to
organise. It chronicles absolutely necessary early steps in the process. I am very encouraged
with the justified, even pragmatic, way they look beyond presidential politics in a
dialectical way – both the wider context and the more local, direct implications.
So far, so good.
But there are problems. The sudden, total collapse of the International Socialist
Organization is an example of what can happen to a seemingly lively left(ish) group when it
grows on shaky ground. You have chronicled some of the contortions of the DSA in their
regional elections and controversies. Growing pains – or something more
fundamental?
What I'm trying to say is what are they about and how do they reconcile disparate forces
and interests without tearing themselves apart? The DSA has its own particular history in the
wider context of the American left and its sudden expansion doesn't make that go away.
Without adequate theory your praxis will tend to fall apart when it collides with
reality.
To give a concrete example that is suggested in the Politico piece, I'm not sure how they
are discussing and understanding the identity politics education of the (upper)middle class
students drawn to the movement with the different perspectives of the labour movement or,
beyond that, the exciting, potentially revolutionary hinterland of the actual working
class(!!!)
Lenin didn't know what identity politics was but he described it in a different context:
haggling for privileges. I don't want to make this a diatribe on one subject or to suggest
that I'm not sensitive to the discrete forms of oppression facing different groups but
– and I know you write about this brilliantly – without some kind of radical
reckoning with these issues, groups like the DSA are liable to sectarian disasters of exactly
the kind envisioned (I suspect) by those who have most insidiously articulated identity over
class as the most significant feature of our social relations.
I would say similar things about Extinction Rebellion. I have friends who are deeply
involved in it and they are brilliantly committed to its cause. But they struggle when it
comes to connecting the realities they rightly identify with the material pathologies that
produce them. They are not interested in why, for example, the ER leaders ban socialist
sub-groups as "political" while welcoming those for bosses or landlords(?!)
These are, to me, fundamental problems. If you cannot identify your enemy you cannot plan
your campaign. And I worry that the DSA, or ER, dine out on identifying symptoms while
studiously avoiding an uncomfortable meeting with their cause. And that doesn't mean, either,
a schematic link of every social ill with capitalism, nor a demand that everyone be schooled
in the dialectic. Just a plan to educate, to find other forms of solidarity, and gird
ourselves for the struggle to come.
But that's probably more than enough! In answer to your last question -- - I think a
serious split with the Democratic Party is an absolute necessity for anything that follows.
It will come one way or another – even if Bernie wins the nomination, then the
presidency, I fully expect he will be sandbagged by Democrats at every turn. At some point,
it will be necessary to realise that the Democratic Party is not called the graveyard of
social movements for nothing – and that American duopoly is the greatest impediment to
democracy, no different really from the Congress of All-Russian Soviets in its day.
Forget splitting the Democrats. I like the idea I first saw here, of turning to and
leveraging the Republicans as the party of progressive change. Let the Democrat donors hold
their bag of defeated candidates while harnessing progressive populists, like Tucker Carlson,
or Josh Hawley, as an example, to change the country for the better. My vote in November is
for Bernie if he's on the ballot. If not, Tulsi.
The Democrat Establishment may not split (though as I think Taibbi pointed out,
Sanders might have been able to peel off some opportunists with a Texas win).
However, the Democrat base may split. Taking "Bernie Bro" and "He's not a real
Democrat" as a proxies, the Democrat gerontocracy (to use the term for the Breshnev era) is
systematically and openly alienating the Latin vote, youth generally, young blacks, and
younger women. As for the working class, they are not even a mental category for liberals.
That reduces their base to older Blacks and the PMC, especially PMC women. As 2016 showed,
and as the (PMC women) Warren campaign showed, that's barely enough to win an election, and
its certainly not enough to rule.
At some point, the contradictions have to break out into the open, as it becomes obvious
the Democrats have failed to represent -- indeed, have disenfranchised -- too many people. As
Lincoln
wrote to Lyman Trumbull in 1860..
Stand firm. The tug has to come, & better now, than any time hereafter.
The Iron Law of Institutions is looking better every day.
Look, no one knows the future and everyone is always flying by the seat of their pants.
This is always true, only more apparent now. I would speculate that at least half of the
newly motivated DSA membership couldn't really articulate a vision of socialism if you asked
them to. In the future that might be a problem but it is certainly not a problem now. I am
much more skeptical of those people now claiming to have "fundamental" answers.
Most of us have a clear if general sense of the enemy (capitalists) and their henchmen
(politicians, "policy advocates," etc.). On the other hand, as Stoller points out, we are
really bereft of people who actually understand production. I would argue that is our biggest
problem, not lack of ideological clarity. Because once we gain power we need to know how to
wield it.
Fair enough but I'm not really talking about ideological clarity or sectarian strife. I
think we agree – I also mean a thorough understanding of how the world works. But that
also means rigorous critique of where things might go wrong – and, for example when it
concerns identity politics (a phrase I hate and apologise for using!) I think we have a good
example. That doesn't mean class above all, by the way – just not ceding intellectual
ground to liberal formulations of who we are and why we are that way!
(I didn't really mean to harp on about identity stuff but I think of it when I think of,
for example, the DSA, and some of the divisive disputes that have bedevilled them)
I attended one DSA meeting. The order of business was something like this:
Each person declared how they chose to be identified.
The group overruled those who didn't want to do anything until some minorities could be
recruited.
Some movers and shakers volunteer to draw up the chapter charter. As they were all men, they
would recuse themselves from further action so the chapter wouldn't be dominated by men. The
group was about 90% men.
The Patriarchy was soundly denounced.
Yes. I don't see this as malevolent; the impulses are good-hearted (which is exactly what
makes "intersectionality" so dangerous). Kimberle Crenshaw endorsed Warren, by the way. OTOH,
one of the Combahee River Collective founders endorsed Sanders. Of course, Crenshaw's a
lawyer. PMC class solidarity is an impressive thing .
> Lenin didn't know what identity politics was but he described it in a different
context: haggling for privileges . I don't want to make this a diatribe on one
subject or to suggest that I'm not sensitive to the discrete forms of oppression facing
different groups but – and I know you write about this brilliantly – without some
kind of radical reckoning with these issues, groups like the DSA are liable to sectarian
disasters of exactly the kind envisioned (I suspect) by those who have most insidiously
articulated identity over class as the most significant feature of our social relations.
"Brilliant" [lambert blushes modestly]. Back at ya for "haggling for privileges."
> At some point, it will be necessary to realise that the Democratic Party is not
called the graveyard of social movements for nothing
History is a hard teacher. And where its lesson has been sadly confined to a small group
of cadres, as it were, this lesson is now going to be taught to millions by the Democrat
Establishment, and with whacks to the knuckles and expulsions, too. That's why I put up that
link to Mike Duncan on the Russian Revolution of 1905 the other day .
And when you answer that, can you make clear which context you are steeped in? I don't
know which side of the pond you live on, but our hallowed Constitution, in hindsight, pretty
much leads us here. It just ratchets everything rightward.
The claim is – and I am not sophisticated enough to either support or deny it, but
others I respect have made it – that our political structure via said Constitution will
only support more than two parties for only an election cycle or two. Lincoln introduced
himself as a Whig, but had to run as a Republican.
Yes, it goes that far back. Given today's sophisticated hold on the media levers by our
Elites, I think an effective third party is less likely than ever. Sure there's things called
the Working Families Party and stuff here and there, but their job is basically wrenching Dem
primaries.
PS: I actually am registered Green. It's my attempt to signal where my vote is. Little
good that seems to have done me.
In America at least, it's easy to be leftist when your personal well-being is not at stake
-- the left in the US has always had an upper-class tint and co-opted by the
professional-managerial class. BUT their well being does not depend on the outcome like it
does for the working classes. The UK and other countries have stronger social safety nets and
that does make a difference in people's politics.
As an older worker ( I could be your father) I know how these fights go -- it takes
decades of sheer intransigence to get anywhere. In a zillion little ways, every day, for
years. I don't know if Millenials understand this, its not a dress rehearsal. It's real. I do
believe the movement needs solid organizers and figureheads though -- most likely AOC will be
next, I hope. There needs to be a clear method of succession, among people who do *not*
compromise. A single stated set of goals, for a decade. And those who get out and volunteer
and vote.
I agree with some of what you write but I have yet to see any really adequate figureheads
of the sort you suggest as necessary. AOC, after her praise for John McCain is not one of
them.
I know this makes me sound intransigent and sectarian but it is and has always been a
problem in the left to fight beyond just nation-based working class interests. I'm not saying
AOC does that but she, like so many before her, have definitely sacrificed critique of
imperialism for a certain amount of mainstream coverage as far as her social democratic
advocacy goes.
AOC praised John McCain, Bernie has played up to Russiagate and the enduring myths about
Castro's Cuba despite making an obvious, uncontroversial point in the first place. This is
how it goes. And that's what I mean – it is a standard thing for Western politicians to
throw foreign affairs over the side when they are pressed – especially because the Borg
is most concerned with matters of Empire and therefore will attack on that above all else
(knowing, too, that the voting public cares much less about such issues than, say, Medicare
for All). Corbyn did the same thing when it came to Trident renewal, then Iraq, and finally
Israel.
(By the way, such capitulation got him nowhere – he was still slandered as an
anti-semite and I just finished an awful book about Oleg Gordievsky in which it is suggested
he was a useful idiot for the Czech intelligence services, along with Michael Foot!)
Socialism does not exist without a critique of imperialist/capitalist wars is what I
mean.
But I'm sorry, I know this isn't what you were talking about. The reason I brought it up,
however, is to illustrate the insidious ways in which freshly elected, occasionally 'radical'
politicians are institutionalised. It doesn't happen with bread and butter domestic issues
but rather foreign affairs, those distant concerns of experts and spooks.
And yet bringing this up gives a kind of window of opportunity and hope. There is no group
with better understanding of the real-world consequences of Empire than the urban and rural
working class. They are the ones providing sons and daughters for endless wars. The
overextension of empire is always going to provide its weakest points.
Sorry, I've rambled – these are just some thoughts as I try and get to grips with
what is to be done!
Well, no, actually its a good thing that you rambled -- I completely agree but from a
different angle perhaps.
The fact that socialism is even in contention in the US I think is a referendum on
imperialism and capitalism.
And the US way has certainly opened itself to criticism.
Frankly it amazes me that it is even happening at all, being that the Overton window has
been dragged so far to the Right in my lifetime.
I remember watching Nixon on TV, stating that he was not a crook. Today, he would be
considered to be an unelectable liberal, too far left.
I am not completely happy with the way that AOC and Sanders have had to toe the line with
the Establishment regarding foreign policy and etc. (and I don't think McCain was any kind of
saint). But I do believe that AOC and Sanders are trying to please multiple Masters. If they
don't do the whole "red-baiting" routine then they lose credibility with the system they are
part of -- and thereby lose influence. The voters are a different issue -- foreign affairs
are just not on the radar at all for most of the working class. The sole exception is those
who have family in the armed services. And yet without those voters, they wouldn't have any
influence to lose.
So basically, its a chess game. Washington DC has never ran on the truth. I'm pretty sure
AOC was just mouthing the words so she can accomplish some of her own left-wing goals. And
maybe Sanders is too --
If I might inject my two cents into this very interesting discussion, I believe
tempestteacup's ultimate point still stands: the Blob/industrialists/parties will suffer no
contest to their claims on power. Sure, they allow the occasional voice in the wilderness
– to do otherwise would lead to more radical activity I imagine – but the power
structures themselves seem quite robust to disturbances from the likes of Sanders and AOC.
While I agree that they are likely mouthing the words (Sanders once discussed abolishing the
CIA and one does not simply reconsider that view once one has reached that point
ideologically), I question whether it even matters It seems to me that a realistic vision of
socialism must be brought about independently of the existing state. After all, the social
groups that dominate the state also control the media, the military, the educational
institutions, and just about every other organ of power. In this framework, hijacking the
state as it exists is a tall order and actually reforming it within the rules of the game is
even more difficult. Isn't it worth considering the idea that left energy is better devoted
to forming alternative institutions and power structures?
The circle of wagons we are seeing around Biden's husk shows that they will fight tooth
and nail to keep from implementing even the most benign and basic social democratic reforms.
I can only see someone like Bernie or AOC winning real power in the face of a massive
economic meltdown and even then, they can win the social democratic reforms (which are
desirable) but why couldn't that same opportunity + working class radicalism be channeled
into actual systemic change; ie destroying the state as it currently exists and replacing it
with a people's democracy? (not the Chinese type please). This would require decades of hard
work, but so would replacing the democratic party with our version of Labour (and look where
they are).
Isn't it worth considering the idea that left energy is better devoted to forming
alternative institutions and power structures?
Very much agree -- I don't think I'm disagreeing with tempestteacup so much as looking
from a different angle.
For any of it to work, I think we will have to establish parallel institutions on a far
greater scale than Sander's campaign. One favorite of mine is worker co-ops, particularly in
the Rust Belt and Midwest.
I dream of being able to unite and organize existing co-ops and strengthen them to the
point that they could replace the old Sears Roebuck. Effectively workers would have to work
two jobs and participate in two different economies, to the extent that they were able -- but
having a fallback via co-op would certainly give them far more autonomy and power than any
existing structure.
The only reason the existing structures have any power at all, is due to their death grip
on the economy, and directly on peoples lives via economic means. Breaking that grip will
also require economic means I think.
"... It seems to me, though, that running on little more than people's fond memories of the Obama administration won't be enough in de-industrialized, opioid-ravaged Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin (Bernie outperforms Biden in all three, according to current polls). Trump won there by a combined margin of 77,744 votes precisely because of voters who, after eight years of Obama, had nearly lost hope and were hungry for change. ..."
Supporters who were expecting a more radical agenda may feel betrayed, and that could play into the hands of the Democrats.
In its ridiculous dual
endorsement of Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, the New York Times Editorial
Board divided the Democratic field into those candidates who "view President Trump as an
aberration and believe that a return to a more sensible America is possible" and those who
"believe that President Trump was the product of political and economic systems so rotten that
they must be replaced."
I've
already written about how arbitrarily the Board sorted candidates into one group or
another, but the dichotomy itself is useful. Recently, I've found that it helps to make a
parable of it.
Some Democratic candidates think Trump has flipped over the political table. They want to
set it back up, dab at the tablecloth, enforce better manners, reheat the entrées, and
put a second scoop of ice cream on the pie à la mode. Biden and Bloomberg are currently
the frontrunners in this category, but even the supposedly radical Elizabeth Warren, by virtue
of her moderating compromises and general palatability to the party elite, deserves (at least
in part) the label of table re-setter.
For others, though, Trump never actually flipped the table. Sure, he promised to, but as
soon as he sat down and dug into his well-done steak, something changed. Many of his signature
dishes never materialized. And although he continued to insist that the kitchen staff were
defiling the food, he seemed awfully chummy with the management. The management, for their
part, obligingly looked the other way while he belched, used the wrong knife, and generally
flouted the edicts of Emily Post. Those at the far end of the table where pickings were slim,
many of whom had played a part in elevating Trump to his lofty position, wondered what had gone
wrong. Was the table bolted invisibly to the floor? Or had Trump betrayed them? Meanwhile, the
food, rotten long before Trump had sat down, continued to attract flies.
Into this category, I would place Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, and perhaps Tulsi Gabbard, of
whom only Bernie remains standing.
Biden thinks he can still salvage dinner; Bernie wants to go full Gordon Ramsay.
To be clear, neither of these is exactly my position. My question is how Trump will respond
to the latter. Sure, Biden's guy's-guy persona might be enough to take back the Rust Belt and
push him over 270. It seems to me, though, that running on little more than people's fond
memories of the Obama administration won't be enough in de-industrialized, opioid-ravaged
Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin (Bernie outperforms Biden in all three, according to
current polls). Trump won there by a
combined margin of 77,744 votes precisely because of voters who, after eight years of
Obama, had nearly lost hope and were hungry for change.
This feeling of being let down by Obama's messianic promises, what Sarah Palin eloquently
called his "hopey-changey thing," could cut both ways, though. Trump still hasn't built his
wall. Manufacturing jobs have not returned en masse; tariffs on China
have squeezed farmers and failed to produce the speedy victory he promised. The wars he
promised to end still rage, and we've gone to the brink with Iran. Yes, the economy is strong,
and conventional wisdom has it that the incumbent only loses if the economy tanks. But Bernie
makes a strong case that the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the economy are not the same
thing. Six out of 10 Americans feel they're
better off than they were three years ago, but I wonder whether the frustrated
Midwesterners who swung the election in 2016 have gotten what they wanted out of Trump. If not,
they might be willing to try something new . The
distance between left-populism and right-populism is, after all, far shorter than the distance
between the center-left and the center-right. If Obama let you down and Trump let you down, why
not vote Sanders? You've already switched parties once.
Trump shot to the top of the Republican primary polls because he had the energy of a
disruptor. The media showered l'enfant terrible with free advertising. Since the impeachment,
though, it seems like the press's white-hot Trump derangement has cooled at precisely the wrong
time. These days, it's Bernie drawing all the outrage, including accusations of Russian
stoogery and wild speculation about anarchic brokered conventions.
Slowly, a narrative is solidifying: if you're ready to say "the hell with it," vote
Sanders; if you want more of the same, vote Trump. This perception could prove fatal to the
incumbent.
Trump will give Bernie both barrels with "you're a communist" and "how are we supposed to
pay for that?" But those might actually work in Bernie's favor. On the campaign trail, Trump
proposed a number of fanciful policies, from punishing post-abortive women to deporting 12
million people to the possibility of nuking Europe, and all it got him was more free media. He
never explained how the hell he was going to get Mexico to pay for the wall, but nobody cared.
Trump was bold, brash, and unconcerned with breaking rules or offending people. Now Sanders,
less crass but equally brash, has usurped that brand positioning. This move could force Trump
into the role of a brake-pumping Deng Xiaoping, persecuting the authentic radicals while
hollowly insisting that he remains the true custodian of the populist revolution.
Badgering Bernie about his lavish Medicare-for-All plan and his lack of clarity about how
to fund it could induce sticker shock in the American electorate, but it could also solidify
voters' perception that Sanders is the dynamic visionary and Trump the static naysayer. Bernie
seems to actively cultivate this edgy persona. Why else would he call himself a "democratic
socialist" rather than a "social democrat," a term that more accurately describes his policies
and leaves out the scary S-word to boot?
On the debate stage, Bernie will almost certainly castigate Trump for exploiting the
anxieties of those coveted 77,744 and delivering on little of what he promised. If Trump
counters that he's been stymied by the Deep State, he loses again. His die-hard supporters will
buy it, but at least some voters at the end of their rope will think, "Well, if Trump couldn't
hit hard enough to shatter the ossified bureaucracy, maybe Sanders can. Or maybe he'll get it
rolling in the direction he wants, transforming that bureaucratic mass from an immovable object
into an unstoppable force."
I worry that our politics have entered a downward spiral. Hyperpartisan polarization has
ensured that everyone feels precarious all the time, and thanks to the ever-morphing values of
liquid modernity, moderate candidates can no longer run fast
enough to stay in place. If America is no longer great, it must be made great again by
whatever means necessary. If it was never great, it must be radically transformed. As checks,
balances, bureaucrats, and practicalities frustrate the sweeping aims of each successive
political messiah, they prepare the way for one even more extreme to follow. If this happens
enough times, the populists of whichever stripe, thwarted again and again, will finally turn
against the institutions of their own society. Enter Thomas Hobbes, stage right or left.
I recognize that, for all but the most milquetoast of centrists, the status quo has plenty
of problems. I even admit that my own sympathy to populism has grown since 2016. But the trend
I've described in American politics is enough to make me sympathize with C.S. Lewis, who
grew fed up with an electorate that demanded "such qualities as 'vision,' 'dynamism,' [and]
'creativity'" from candidates.
Lewis longed for a political leader "who will do a day's work for a day's pay, who will
refuse bribes, who will not make up his facts, and who has learned his job." He even
sardonically proposed founding "a Stagnation Party -- which at General
Elections would boast that during its term of office no event of the least importance had taken
place."
It's enough to make me miss Jeb Bush.
Grayson Quay is a freelance writer and M.A. at Georgetown University.
US is an oligarchic republic, like the good old Venetian Republic of old. As an outsider of
the US polity, I just get the popcorn and beer during US elections. While the PoTUS has not
that much power in the US (albeit a savvy executive, controlling all the federal agencies and
appointments in various places, and having the appeal of executive power, which is direct
raw), it can be crushing for the outside world. The droned people can attest to that. The
starved people due to sanctions can attest to that, the sick and un-treatable people due to
sanctions can attest to that power of the PoTUS.
Building the wall is itself a lie. It would be simple to reduce immigration by a lot. use
e-verify
The wall is an expensive distraction, that would have zero impact on immigration.
It allows Trump and other elite (who want the low wage workers) to pander. They can tell
their base they are being so, so harsh on immigrants, while doing nothing.
...Make America Great is a revolt of the poor and middle class who want their share of the
economy instead of giving it away to foreign countries and foreign immigrants. That revolt is
not going to go away. However if you are blindly living off the largess of our nation and its
big government social welfare programs then you have no connection to education, to
employment and from your point of view the government provides your living and the living for
your children so as long as you get your check it doesn't matter whether there is 1 person
living off that social safety net or 1 thousand or 1 million or 1 billion.
It was never Trump's revolution to deliver. We the people delivered the revolution in
bringing in DJT to expose and (hopefully) weaken the entrenched Establishment. The former has
been accomplished exceedingly well. And there is more work toward that goal to be done. I'm
more than impressed with the progress that we've made. Captains can be changed quickly but
this ship does not turn easily.
This is a site for GOP establishment types. They suppressed us as deplorables and lied to us
with false promises. So we gave them Trump. May the never Trumper Romney types rot in hell
won't be enough in de-industrialized, opioid-ravaged Pennsylvania, Michigan, and
Wisconsin
Is this 'opioid epidemic' for real? I keep hearing about it. Or is it just like the Global
Warming Hoax and people are just exaggerating this 'epidemic', like the coronavirus
nonsense??
"... If you are holding out hope that Bernie can slay the dragon of the existing system at its belladonna roots, then be my guest. I see too many people spending their hope on Elizabeth Warren, which will only serve to suck power away from Bernie, who is the ONLY Democratic candidate movie that has the potential to actually INSPIRE voters, just as Trump does. Bernie deserves credit too for actually CHANGING the nature of the campaign conversation and who just MIGHT even begin to change it at the national level, assuming that time, tide and tyranny allow him four years safe passage to reach his pending retirement. ..."
"... In any case, after a year of endless media barrage, it is rather late now for the gods to intervene. All I would hope is that a few more of us can open our eyes to see past the silly "lesser of two evils" and "#votebluenomatterwho" memes, to the reality of how every one of these candidates serve as puppets to SOME specific mix of master control forces and thus make our choice in THAT more realistic light, rather than thinking that any of them offer "real" independent solutions or that any of their "heroic" feet are NOT already embedded knee, waist or neck-deep in the Big Muddy river of our dissolute illusions of Democracy. ..."
As people march off to the polls today to pick their
favorite political actor of the year, I hear precious few voices openly asking what seem to me
to be obvious questions, like WHO produced the movie that is their candidacy? Who directed it?
Who wrote the script? Who are the investors that will be expecting to see returns on their
investment, if their movie and their best actor should somehow win? And how far do the networks
of wealth, influence and control extend beyond those public faces inside the campaign? None of
these questions strike me as tangential; rather they are all essential.
Let's imagine for a moment that one of these actors can somehow out-thespian Trump once on
stage which is HIGHLY unlikely – even for folksy Bernie – UNLESS he can somehow win
himself 100% DNC buy-in and 24/7 mainstream "BLUE" media support. But assuming that he (or some
"brokered" candidate) wins, it will still be their production teams (along with their extended
networks) who will be making their presence felt on Day One of any new presidency. These are
the people who will be calling in the favors and calling the shots.
I recall how moved I was by Obama's 2008 election. I was buoyed with hope, because I did not
understand then what I understand now – that NO candidate can exist as an independent
entity, disconnected from the apparatus and networks that support and produce the narratives
that advance them and their agendas. I also recall the day that Obama entered the White House
and instantly handed the keys to the economy (and the recovery) back to Geithner, Summers and
Rubin – the same trio that had helped destroy it just a year earlier. And he did this at
the same moment he was filling his cabinet with the very people "suggested" in that famous
leaked letter from the CEO of Citibank. My hope departed in genie smoke at that moment, to be
followed by eight years of spineless smooth talk and wobbly action, except where the agendas of
Wall Street and pompous Empire were concerned.
Do you see how this works? The game is essentially rigged from the start by virtue of who is
allowed to enter the race, what can and what can't be said by them and by who the media is told
to shine their light on, and who to avoid. Candidates can, of course, say pretty much anything
they want (short of "Building 7, WTF!!" of course) in hopes it will spark a reaction that the
media can seize upon.
But just based on words, we know that NONE of these happy belief clowns will forcefully
oppose existing "Regime Change" plans for Venezuela, Bolivia and Syria. We know that NONE of
them will stand up to Israel – or to a Congress that is, almost to a person, in the
pocket of Israel. We know too that NONE of them will bring more than an angry flyswatter to the
battle with Wall Street or the corporations. We further know that NONE of them will do more
than make modest cuts to military spending or god forbid, call out the secret state's fiscally
unaccountable black budget operations, which by now reach into at least the 30 trillions.
Personally, I'm not FOR any candidate simply because I cannot UNSEE what it has taken me 12
years to get into focus; namely, how everyone of them are compromised by a SYSTEM that talks a
lot about FIXING what's broken, but which is simply INCAPABLE of delivering anything other than
what has been pre-ordained and decreed by the global order of oligarchs, which exists as the
"ghost in the machine" that ultimately controls every part of the political "STATE" – at
high, middle, low and especially at DEEP levels.
I will say in defense of Bernie that his production team early-on made the very unique
decision to crowd-source the campaign's costs. That was a PROFOUND decision, which has paid off
for him and which may well buy him a certain level of lubricated control over what is to come,
even though the significance of that decision is not well appreciated because the DNC and the
MSM simply refuse to discuss it in any depth.
Warren was TRYING to play the populist "people's campaign" game too, until last week when
she must have been startled awake by the "Ghost of Reagan's Past" and decided to take the money
and run as a Hillary proxy which (big surprise) was what she was all along anyway.
Let me just say this about Joe Biden. From his initial announcement, I never felt he was in
his right mind. He seems rather to be teetering on the edge of senility and fast on his way
into dementia. Also, the man has openly sold his soul so many times in his career that we
shouldn't at this point expect any unbought (or even lucid) thought to ever again escape his
remarkably loose lips. Joe might have run with the old skool Dems when he was a big deal on the
Delaware streets, but now, like Bloomberg and Romney, he's just another Republican in a pricey
blue suit.
I understand how people are feeling stressed, obsessed and desperate to get rid of Donald
Trump. It's just that until we take a collective step back and see things at the level from
which they actually operate and NOT at the level from which we are TOLD they operate, then we
will never be successful in turning our public discourse around or in beginning to identify and
eliminate the fascist and anti-human agendas that we associate with Trump, but which actually
lie behind the subservient to power policies and preferences of BOTH parties.
If you are holding out hope that Bernie can slay the dragon of the existing system at
its belladonna roots, then be my guest. I see too many people spending their hope on Elizabeth
Warren, which will only serve to suck power away from Bernie, who is the ONLY Democratic
candidate movie that has the potential to actually INSPIRE voters, just as Trump does. Bernie
deserves credit too for actually CHANGING the nature of the campaign conversation and who just
MIGHT even begin to change it at the national level, assuming that time, tide and tyranny allow
him four years safe passage to reach his pending retirement.
In any case, after a year of endless media barrage, it is rather late now for the gods
to intervene. All I would hope is that a few more of us can open our eyes to see past the silly
"lesser of two evils" and "#votebluenomatterwho" memes, to the reality of how every one of
these candidates serve as puppets to SOME specific mix of master control forces and thus make
our choice in THAT more realistic light, rather than thinking that any of them offer "real"
independent solutions or that any of their "heroic" feet are NOT already embedded knee, waist
or neck-deep in the Big Muddy river of our dissolute illusions of Democracy.
– Yet Another Useful Idiot.
Mark Petrakis is a long-time theater, event and media producer based in San Francisco. He first
broke molds with his Cobra Lounge vaudeville shows of the 90's, hosted by his alter-ego,
Spoonman. Concurrently, he took to tech when the scent was still utopian, building the first
official websites for Burning Man, the Residents and multiple other local arts groups of the
era. He worked as a consultant to a variety of corps and orgs, including 10 years with the
Institute for the Future. He is co-founder of both long-running Anon Salon monthly gatherings
and Sea of Dream NYE spectacles. Read other articles by Mark .
As with any candidate, we can only know the truth about them AFTER they're elected.
DJT IMO, has been a complete failure in fulfilling his uttered promises on the campaign
trail, as most of our recent POTUSes have been also.
We'll only know the truth of Bernie Sanders, IF he's "elected". Which, IMO, is looking
unlikely, because, you must win the nomination first, and THAT, is looking doubtful, as
the
DNC and their minions are lining up against him.
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.
We are saving the world from socialism and communism.
We are energy independent, with innate exceptionalism and #MAGA# will usher in a new era
of American prosperity.
Any and all accusations of USSA imperialism, are made by the "woke" and those jealous of
the greatest Capitalist system in the world.
The swamp is being drained as I speak, and therefore will continue with unwavering
support for my 5x draft dodging, Zionist supporting, multiple times bankrupt, keeper of
broken promises POTUS.
Smedley Butler's book is not worthy of reading once you have the seminal work known as
"The Art Of The Deal"
"... IMHO, Sanders, accused of being a 'self-identified' socialist, should be emphasizing the U.S. is shoulder-deep in socialism for the 1% who have access to free Fed funds. ..."
it's not a lock that Trump will be re-elected. It's the great silent majority of moderates
[RINOs, DINOs] and independents who fear another 4 years of Trump -
The Autocratic President of the United States
a brutal assessment -
Donald Trump can be seen as some sort of a deadly "political virus", which was introduced
accidently into the American body politic in 2016.
Introduction
Wednesday, February 5, 2020 will come to be remembered as a date of historic
significance for the United States. Indeed, this is the date when a Senate majority of 52
Republican Senators (with the notable exception of Sen. Mitt Romney), voted against
convicting President Donald Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of justice, in the
impeachment trial of the latter. That is also the date when Donald Trump interpreted such
exoneration as a blank check to move towards a fully autocratic presidency.
Thus, in open defiance of the American Constitution and of America's checks-and-balances
system, Trump's Republican enablers have placed the American people before a fait accompli
and the only question now is to see if this dangerous drift toward autocracy will be
condoned or reversed in the next presidential election of November 3rd.[.]
IMHO, Sanders, accused of being a 'self-identified' socialist, should be emphasizing the
U.S. is shoulder-deep in socialism for the 1% who have access to free Fed funds. Free as in
ZERO interest (0%) while jim and joe mainstreet struggle to pay interest on debt.
Frankly some people here seem to be living in la-la-land where impossible dreams come true.
How about some realpolitik as practiced by both halves of the amerikan empire party
when the VP decision time comes around. Does anyone imagine Kennedy wanted Johnson as VP or
Bush I, Dan Quayle or Oblamblam the crookedest man in the senate, Joe Biden?
Of course not they were told to take these hacks as a way for 'the party' to keep the
hairy eyeball on 'their' Prez.
Let's just pretend for a moment that Sanders came to conference with sufficient delegates
that the hope of the DNC to override Sanders with superdelegates was simply too much for the
dem party to achieve without alienating a sizable chunk of potential dem voters for life (the
odds of that occurring are slimmer than a 2 year old Yemeni, but let's pretend).
Even if Sanders had sufficient delegates to obviate a brokered conference, it wouldn't
matter, the DNC would still insist on a 'sit down' with the Sanders crew and insist he took a
particular person as his VP. Sanders could refuse, in which case he could expect zero $$$'s
for his campaign from the dems and worse the DNC would tell him that the party money, in many
cases donated to the DNC by naifs who 'wanted to give Bernie a hand', was going to be spent
'down ticket' assisting all the dem pols up for re-election who were committed to opposing
Bernie's favourite policies such as single payer healthcare.
Bernie would be screwed as even if he beat orange moron as he wouldn't stand a shitshow in
hell of getting any of these "radical pinko policies" through, which would be justified by
the rightist dem senators & congress-creeps saying "Democrat voters, voted for a
democratic president not a Marxist president" over and over until the idiots among the public
had been sufficiently indoctrinated to believe that tosh. There is no way Gabbard will be
permitted as Sanders' running-mate unless she has totally sold out already.
Maybe Sanders should open the bidding with Gabbard, after which the DNC might offer up
'Pete the cheat' to ensure Bernie is defeated, or some other less power-hungry, more
malleable dem lick-spittle.
If Sanders is smart enough to play this game, he will already have worded up one or two
slightly conservative DC hacks on the qt, then make out he's making a huge compromise by
selecting her/him.
He could conceivably get away with that as long as the DNC mobsters are blindsided -
remember most of those DC lowlifes will leap at the chance of the veep's gig since it puts
you in the inside running to be the prez after yer running 'mate'. And offering it quietly
early on would give Sanders the right to insist on blind loyalty - which he prolly wouldn't
get totally, but he would have something close to that
Trouble is I don't reckon Sanders has the smarts to pull a rort like that off - we shall
see. Whatever he does do the odds are high of him being stymied every time if he does make
it
"Actually this is not technically correct
and then you quoted Article 2 Section 2 of the Constitution.
You ignored the process
I wrote on the process in which jim and jane mainstreet vote [the 2nd part of the process]
to select the State electors to the Electoral College: from Link (Archives.gov) provided @ 24
and fully detailed below:
November 3, 2020 -- Election Day
During the general election your vote helps determine your State's electors. When you
vote for a Presidential candidate, you aren't actually voting for President. You are
telling your State which candidate you want your State to vote for at the meeting of the
electors. The States use these general election results (also known as the popular vote) to
appoint their electors. The winning candidate's State political party selects the
individuals who will be the electors.[.]
Who selects the electors?
Choosing each State's electors is a two-part process. First, the political parties in
each State choose slates of potential electors sometime before the general election.
Second, during the general election, the voters in each State select their State's electors
by casting their ballots.
The first part of the process is controlled by the political parties in each State and
varies from State to State. Generally, the parties either nominate slates of potential
electors at their State party conventions or they chose them by a vote of the party's
central committee. This happens in each State for each party by whatever rules the State
party and (sometimes) the national party have for the process. This first part of the
process results in each Presidential candidate having their own unique slate of potential
electors.
Political parties often choose individuals for the slate to recognize their service and
dedication to that political party. They may be State elected officials, State party
leaders, or people in the State who have a personal or political affiliation with their
party's Presidential candidate. (For specific information about how slates of potential
electors are chosen, contact the political parties in each State.)
The second part of the process happens during the general election. When the voters
in each State cast votes for the Presidential candidate of their choice they are voting to
select their State's electors. The potential electors' names may or may not appear on
the ballot below the name of the Presidential candidates, depending on election procedures
and ballot formats in each State.
The winning Presidential candidate's slate of potential electors are appointed as the
State's electors -- except in Nebraska and Maine, which have proportional distribution of
the electors. In Nebraska and Maine, the State winner receives two electors and the winner
of each congressional district (who may be the same as the overall winner or a different
candidate) receives one elector. This system permits Nebraska and Maine to award electors
to more than one candidate.[.]
Rob @ 99 - I don't think evidence of this form has been archived anywhere on the Internet. I
would be particularly interested in seeing how much of a favorite Clinton was in 2016. I
doubt she would have been more than 2/3, and the result not as shocking an upset were Trump
actually 1/1. In any event, if the favorite an hour before the books closed always won, who
then would ever consider the price on an underdog as an overlay? I'm not addressing any
prediction of a winner; I'm observing the changes in public opinion as expressed through
those who are willing to take a money position along the way. There would be no other
prominent reason for Sanders to reclaim over Bloomberg in less than a week, the Democratic
candidate top spot in betting odds, than his strong showing Wednesday night.
All of the legal gambling outlets will tend to keep fairly close in sync with changes in
odds offered. Any one of them getting significantly out of sync is taking a position,
attracting layoff action from one of the others. When someone makes an investment in this
type of futures, it's with an eye toward spotting an overlay. That means a current line which
is offering too strong a return on the investment. The books have several ways of adjusting.
They can change the odds offered, lay off action with each other to balance their money
position, or offer early resolution to certain ticket holders. For example, Trump opened at
5/2 and toward the end of 2018 had been bet down to 3/2. He is currently 8/13 which
represents an extreme overlay if someone is holding a ticket with 3/2 odds. When this kind of
situation occurs, all of the books are likely to sustain a loss. So, they will offer early
resolution. A $2000 ticket on Trump at 3/2 will return $5000, however anyone holding this
ticket may be offered $2750 today for early resolution. That's an immediate $750 profit for
giving back their position.
Now to illustrate just how drastic
changes in the futures betting can be, a few hours ago Sanders was 7/2, he's now 10/3.
Bloomberg continues to slide, from 4/1 last week to 11/2 a few hours ago to now 7/1. Perhaps
Bloomberg will be attractive enough to become an overlay at 10/1? I would consider that price
might be worth taking a position on, if one thinks convention shenanigans will place him as
the candidate. At that point (if correct) he'll drop to say 8/5 and will return a good profit
from early resolution.
The changes in the betting lines appear more discernible to me, than a shift of a few
percentage point amongst pollsters. Notice Pence is back on the board, so obviously some
people think there's greater than a 300/1 chance Trump is deceased during this term.
Aren't you being somewhat disingenuous by selectively nitpicking a few sentences out of
Bernie's speech that merely express an opinion, not a declaration of political meddling,
intervention or war, while leaving out the positive 90%, like his criticism of Bolsanaro,
Netanyahu and Israel's racist unjust policies and his concern for the dire situation in Gaza?
He rails against Saudi Arabia and MBS and the war on Yemen. He's critical of Sheldon
Adelson's influence, the Koch brothers and Mercer and the corruption of goverment and the
greed they represent. He's critical of the massive amounts of funding spent on the military.
That's great, no?
He's sympathetic to the unjust imprisonment of Lula da Silva and talks about the necessity
of addressing climate change and poverty and much more. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT??? There's a
Ziofascist in the White House right now who just brought on board Richard Grenell for DNI,
(ironically mentioned in Bernie's speech last October... prophetic? Yes.), yet another
Iranophobe! So you can guess what direction we're headed in?
Out of all the good that Bernie spoke you gripe about that small paragraph and use it to
distort as still too aggressive his entire foreign policy vision and pov on issues few
in Congress have the spine to address?
You think I'm just going to let slide this perversion of his message?
Just see how so many comments reek with that same type of distortion parotting YOUR CUE.
Do you not feel any responsibilty to the truth and to the power your word may have to
influence others to misjudge Bernie Sanders unfairly through your distorted lens?
I am sickened reading the comments that emanated from your small paragraph and bet you NO
ONE BOTHERED TO READ THE ENTIRE SPEECH IN THE LINK AND RELIED INSTEAD ON THAT DROP FROM
POISON PEN TO FORM A TOTALLY IGNORANT, BIASED OPINION.
I'm glad you at least gave him credit for defending well his positions in the midst of
multiple attacks in the debate.
If Bernie can withstand the onslaught of unfair, disproportionate establishment and media
attacks (your's included) and win the Nomination, it won't be thanks to the majority of you,
but you will all in some way benefit from an improvement in foreign policy under a Sanders
administration. OR DO YOU ACTUALLY PREFER TO DISCUSS WAR AND ATROCITY AND CONSPIRACY
MACHINATIONS HERE ALL DAY, EVERY DAY IN PERPETUITY? Maybe that's the problem, maybe with
Bernie as President you'll be less involved as armchair generals and have to settle for
criticizing boring diplomacy for a change!
I don't know about you, but I really welcome most of what Bernie talked about and his
vision for the future on this planet much more than discussing war with Iran, famine and
climate disaster.
Bernie will make it in spite of haters, never Sanders, maligners, and distorters of the
truth.
Oh, and he'll DESTROY Trump in November.
▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪
Jared suggests Bloomberg/Gabbard.
Gobbledygook!
I guess you don't really know what Bloomberg's about. And you especially don't get
Gabbard! She wouldn't be caught dead working for that Neocon warmonger!
SharonM and Jackrabbit
Get a room you professional koo-koo spinbots...preferrably in another Solar System where
you can't damage impressionable minds. Ugh.
I feel bad for the Bernie Bros.
He's gonna sell them out again.
Dude has zero pull with his "party", and is facing a steamroller in Trump.
I would be happy to have a small dinner with Circe and friends after the convention.
We can commiserate over a few wodkas and goulash.
"SharonM and Jackrabbit
Get a room you professional koo-koo spinbots...preferrably in another Solar System where you
can't damage impressionable minds. Ugh."
I'm against war. You're obviously just another loser imperialist.
Since medical care figures so prominently in the election, might be a good idea to know why
it costs so much now:
The Oligarch Takeover of US Pharma and Healthcare by Jon Hellevig
"The Awara study shows https://www.awaragroup.com/blog/us-healthcare-system-in-crisis/
that in addition to the original sin of corporate greed, the exorbitant costs of the US
healthcare system stem from layers upon layers of distortions with which the system is
infested. Each part of the healthcare industry contributes to what is a giant monopoly scam:
the pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment manufacturers, drug wholesalers, drug stores,
group purchasing organizations, health insurance companies, doctors, clinics and hospitals,
and even what should be impartial university research. And on top of that, there's the
government as a giant enabler of monopolized corporations running roughshod over the American
consumer and patient.
"But it is worse than that. All the monopolists (in official parlance, oligopolies) are in
turn owned by the same set of investors in what is called horizontal shareholding. The same
some 15-20. investors have the controlling stake in all the leading companies of the entire
pharma and healthcare industry.
"That's not all. Two of the investors, BlackRock and Vanguard, are the biggest owners in
almost every single one of the leading companies.
"Furthermore, BlackRock is owned by Vanguard, BlackRock's biggest owner being a mystical
PNC Services, whose biggest owner in turn is Vanguard. Vanguard itself is recorded directly
as BlackRock's second biggest owner. Moreover, BlackRock and Vanguard are the two biggest
owners of almost all the other 15-20 biggest investors, which most are cross-owned and
together own the entire US pharma and healthcare sector. Ultimately, then we might have the
situation that the whole healthcare sector and Big Pharma are controlled by one giant
oligarch clan (and the very real people who stand behind them), one single interest group of
oligarch investors." -- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52658.htm
Yesterday some dirty dog, Bloomberg or weasel Buttigieg, brought up the fact that Bernie has
2 million, and 3 homes, one in Washington, a house in Vermont his wife inherited from her
parents and a cabin by a lake! OMG! QUICK! Call the Socialist police! He's 78, has a career
in politics, wrote some bestsellers and he has to live like a monk otherwise, he's a
hypocrite???
The hypocrites are the ones criticizing him and not Warren who appeared in Forbes cause
she has two expensive homes, and 12 MILLION. But, at the debate she was coy and uncommonly
silent when they attacked Bernie for what is perfectly normal given his career, success as an
author and his age!
But Lizabeth, she cares so much about poor mothers and babies, and shares Bernie's
platform, and yet is too chicken to call herself a democratic socialist. Yeah, with 12 Mil in
the bank and different investments she's got a big stake in Capitalism! And someone
mentionned that during the commercial break she was getting quite friendly yacking it up with
Bloomberg, AFTER she put on the Non-disclosure artifice (watch out for hidden mics,
Mike!). And she's not big on democracy either, since she would rather go to a brokered
convention, than give Bernie the nomination when he gets the majority of pledged delegates.
Screw her!
Oh Lizzie, you showed all your true colors!
DONE, put a fork in it!
▪▪▪▪▪
SharonM
Against war and for Trump? 🤣🤣🤣
Trust me, Bernie's not starting any war at his age, and he's from a bucolic state. If you
think Bernie's for war and I'm an imperialist, then must be a real bad judge of
character.
You fool no one. You hate Bernie for some other stupid reason.
Really, the Oligarch party composed of the Republican and Democrat branches will not make any
significant changes to the status quo, even if Sanders is voted in to the presidency.
Sanders' foreign policy is the Oligarch policy; Sanders domestic policy would never get past
the Oligarch house without significant watering down to be totally irrelevant. Sanders only
"threat" to the Oligarchs is that the presidency would give him a 4-year platform to continue
to put forth his semi-socialist domestic views, seeding the brains of the ignorant masses
with dangerous thoughts.
Voting for either branch of the Oligarch party is to vote for the status quo. All that is
guaranteed are a few cosmetic changes of zero significance. Vote, but vote anyone but the
Oligarch Party!
A positive assessment of the chances of Sanders to win the nomination:
"Former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign called on former
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to drop out of the Democratic presidential primary race
in a memo released on Thursday, warning that Bloomberg's presence in the race would propel
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to the Democratic nomination. "
Pete could be more incisive by pointing that unlike his much more financially successful
colleague from the race of nomination, he has no track record on making unwanted passes on
women, or jokes that cannot be revealed to the publics. More seriously, American
establishment is so vast that it is internally divided into various groups or cliques that
detest each other. Pete is a darling of CIA circles, Bloomberg is so rich that he nearly
makes an influence group by himself., but he may be popular among Wall Street denizens who
donate to Metropolitan Opera and snicker at Trump who could not tell Verdi from Barbie doll.
On political positions, I wonder if there is an ounce of difference.
There is a lot of criticism in these comments about Sanders not going all out against the
Democratic Party and playing too nice, but a counterpoint to consider is that we have a
perfect example to contrast his behavior with: Tulsi Gabbard. Tulsi was vice chair of the DNC
and considered one of their "rising stars" in part because of the elites' insipid love of
identity politics, and she is demonstrating the country what happens when you go nuclear
against the establishment. She burned her political capital to back Bernie in 2016 and went
on the attack during the debates she was able to get into. Would Sanders really get better
results doing what Tulsi is doing, and if so, why would he going that course be different?
@95 sharon.. thanks.. that sounds reasonable.. however at present either one of the war
parties is going to win.. i suppose some will think bernie i war party lite or something, but
regardless if he gets the nod - which i highly doubt - the war party is still in control..
something bigger has to happen for this to change.. collapse is a popular fantasy for some..
i am not sure if or when that could happen too.. it is hard being reasonable in this
atmosphere.. i am inclined to more radical thinking as the answer at this point..
"It's time to give the elites a bigger say in electing the President"
Under Trump Bezos lost highly profitable interests, and under a second Trump term he would
likely lose still more. If any of the elites' choices get the Dem nomination, Trump is
certain to win. Perhaps Bezos' reasoning was to try to provoke Dem supporters to reject the
elites because that is the only chance of getting back the business interests he lost.
Bezos is a nasty piece of work indeed, but to his credit, maybe he at least sees the need
of a more acceptable candidate.
"They" have thrown down everything against Sanders yet he continues to rise. His support base
is HUGE. Competition can't touch him. His victories will put him up so much that the DNC is
rendered powerless.
Of all the candidates, Tulsi Gabbard is far away the closest in ideology to Sanders. She
entered the race with Bernie's approval, before Bernie announced. Bernie knows that Tulsi is
the only one (other than Nina Turner) that would totally have his back. I actually believe
that Gabbard is the best candidate that the US has had in a LONG time. If she were selected
as VP she would get a lot more exposure; the more exposure the more support she gets. I don't
believe that Bernie needs to pick a VP in order to garner more votes; that is, it's not as
strategically necessary as other candidates have required: I repeat: Bernie's base is HUGE.
Tulsi is a BIG insurance policy. VP isn't a do-nothing position: it can cast a tie-breaking
vote in the senate; it can act as collaborator with POTUS. In a more correct positioning of
talents it would be Gabbard as POTUS and Sanders as VP. I'd be happy to see Nina Turner as VP
but am worried that the pairing with Sanders would create too stark of a picture, one open to
really ugly attacks: it's hard to attack Tulsi given her military experience (I hate that
this needs to be played, but it's the reality we face). AND there's the VP debates: Tulsi vs
Pence would be one for the history books.
Turkey closed its airspace to russian airplanes flying to Syria and slowed down the so called
Syrian Express. The straights would be closed in case of declared war but the flow can be
slowed down by other means. Hard to think that war will be officially declared with all the
joint projects in energy, but logistics would be a real problem for Russia if things get
uglier. http://www.ng.ru/politics/2020-02-20/1_7800_bosphorus.html
The second question of the 20 series to Putin is about Ukraine, as usual he comes across as
well informed and with ease of verve. https://putin.tass.ru/ru/ob-ukraine/
I guess you don't really know what Bloomberg's about. And you especially don't get
Gabbard! She wouldn't be caught dead working for that Neocon warmonger!
Please advise - What is Bloomberg about.
In my experience he is a conservative moderate.
Do we just describe everyone we dont like as zionist?
- The american writer Thomas Frank has put this way: The Democrats had every opportuniy to
win the presidential election of 2016 by focussing on the people in "fly-over land", on the
people who felt "left bhind" but instead they focussed on the "creative class" (laywers, the
"professional class", hollywood and people from the tech sector (GOOGLE, Facebook, etc.).
- It was the presidential campaign of Trump who saw the chance to win over the people from
"fly-over country".
- Yes, Bloomberg is a moderate republican but he is also an establishment figure/person.
So, he won't be the one that will bring about MAJOR changes that are going to hurt that same
establishment. Including the "zionists" (with or without quotation marks).
- The people who are commenting on this topic should take into account one thing. Over the
years the Republican party has purged the party of "moderate Republicans". As a result of
that Republican party shifted more and more to the right side of the political spectrum.
If you were running a giant organized crime group with cash flow in the hundreds of
$billions, with tentacles deeply penetrating all of the mass media, with connections at the
top of all major western multinational corporations, and you wanted to "manage" the
political system of the country that finances the military that you occasionally need, how
would you do that?
Run you own candidates, of course!
So it is 2015. You've already gotten one of your candidates elected twice, and you are
confident that mass media cultivated "identity politics" played a big part in getting
him into the White House. Because of this you are now running another "identity
politics" compliant candidate, but you have some tricks up your sleeve to guarantee she
wins. Most importantly you have an utter heel running against her who cannot possibly
win.
So you [big mafia don] are confident that you have the 2016 and 2020 elections sewn up,
but even though it is only 2015, now is the time to be thinking about 2024. You've already
used up the woman and Black man identity issues, so what next? The gay man "identity
politics" angle, of course! So now you need to introduce to the public a gay candidate
that is under your control so the public can start to get used to him and he can become
widely known by the time campaigning starts in 2023.
Remind me now when it was that Butt-gig "came out" as gay? Oh, yeah, that's right!
It was 2015. He then "married" in 2018.
"But Butt-gig is so young!"
Sure. Realize that he wasn't supposed to be running until 2024, when he would be in his
forties. 2016 and 2020 were supposed to be Clinton's turn in the White House, but things went
all sideways for some reason. Now you have to move up the timetable.
- Bernie Sanders has promised FREE education/college and FREE Healthcare. Although I have
SERIOUS doubts how he is going to pay for all that FREE stuff, the large support he enjoys
shows very well how Joe Sixpack is thinking about his own economic situation.
- There were A LOT OF voters who voted first for Sanders in the primaries. When it became
clear that Sanders wasn't going to be the Democratic candidate these voters votes for Trump
in november 2016.
Blue Dotterel is not satisfied: >>Sanders only "threat" to the Oligarchs is that the
presidency would give him a 4-year platform to continue to put forth his semi-socialist
domestic views, seeding the brains of the ignorant masses with dangerous thoughts.
Voting for either branch of the Oligarch party is to vote for the status quo. All that is
guaranteed are a few cosmetic changes of zero significance. Vote, but vote anyone but the
Oligarch Party! Sanders only "threat" to the Oligarchs is that the presidency would give him
a 4-year platform to continue to put forth his semi-socialist domestic views, seeding the
brains of the ignorant masses with dangerous thoughts.<<
But the oligarchy and sectors close to oligarchy are already worried exactly about that.
For example, certain David Brook is almost morose. A nightmare that is at least 170 years old
reappeared:
>>Bernie Sanders is also telling a successful myth: The corporate and Wall Street
elites are rapacious monsters who hoard the nation's wealth and oppress working families.
This is not an original myth, either. It's been around since the class-conflict agitators of
1848. It is also a very compelling us vs. them worldview that resonates with a lot of
people.
When you're inside the Sanders myth, you see the world through the Bernie lens.
-----
This brings memories... agitators of 1848, revolution spread around Europe, Hapsburgs
quelling a revolution in Vienna only to watch Hungary, nearly half of the empire, raising in
rebelion that lasted until Czar send help a year later, stimulating dense Romantic poetry
that till today children in Central Europe are forced to learn. Final stanza translated into
English (it has a very compelilng rhytm in the original)
[the funeral of an agitator of 1848 turns into a march of specters that disturb
comfortable city dwellers]
And we shall drag on the funeral procession, saddening sleeping cities
Banging upon gates with urns, whistling into the notches of hatchets
Until the walls of Jericho fall like logs
Fainting hearts shall be revived; nations shall clear their musty eyes
William Gruff:
So, do you basically imply that the next run, after Black, Woman and Gay, would be Latino? In
which case they actually planned well ahead and AOC could be their card for 2032? Or would
that be too far-fetched? (she seems to go a bit too far into leftism for that after all)
"SharonM
Against war and for Trump? 🤣🤣🤣
Trust me, Bernie's not starting any war at his age, and he's from a bucolic state. If you
think Bernie's for war and I'm an imperialist, then must be a real bad judge of character.
You fool no one. You hate Bernie for some other stupid reason."
Here are some relevant questions with Bernie's answers:
*Question: Would you consider military force to pre-empt an Iranian or North Korean
nuclear or missile test?
Sanders: Yes.
*Question: Would you consider military force for a humanitarian intervention?
Sanders: Yes.
*Question: If Russia continues on its current course in Ukraine and other former Soviet
states, should the United States regard it as an adversary, or even an enemy?
Sanders: Yes.
*Question: Should Russia be required to return Crimea to Ukraine before it is allowed back
into the G-7?
Don't care about your dumb opinion, Circe. But I don't want anyone else here to think I'm
some supporter of the U.S. regimes two war parties. Bernie is just like Trump, Obama, the
Bush and Clinton families--warmongering assholes all of them.
@113 James
I agree. An actual revolution here would probably require masses of people on the verge of
starvation. But perhaps there's a trigger event that we can't foresee?
Bernie Sanders has promised FREE education/college and FREE Healthcare. Although I have
SERIOUS doubts how he is going to pay for all that FREE stuff,...
he's not.
and there's the rub, or the common denominator between domestic policy and foreign
policy...i.e. lucre (and hellfire missiles are so much sexier , right?).
if a candidate is not clamoring loudly that the defense budget must be cut by at
least 50%, he or she is being disingenuous, if not downright deceptive, about enacting
any kind of national healthcare, education, or whatnot.
If you were an anti-war candidate running for President of a militarized security state
that is so easily brainwashed by half a billion dollars in ads run by a war-mongering
Ziofascist and one of the highest-circulated Zionist-run propaganda rags asked trap questions
to test their definition of patriotism on you, you too would go through the motions and give
them what they wanna hear so they would leave you the fock alone for the rest of the
campaign.
Now, if you're looking to blow in 15 minutes your years in the making efforts to win the
Presidency and use your power to change that security state mentality, then you would
stupidly answer what you're suggesting.
You're a Trumpbot. AND I COULD GIVE A SHET WHAT YOU THINK.
Bernie wants to restore the Iran deal, and do diplomacy with Iran, and substantially
reduce military spending. Bernie is as anti-war a politicisn as I've seen in my lifetime.
I'll bank on his wisdom over your intellectual dishonesty ANY DAY, ANY TIME, ANY WHERE.
Unlike you, a lousy judge of character, or just plain demonizing Trumpbot on a fool's
mission, I am an excellent judge of character who had Ziofascist Trump pegged from day one
and took two years of flak for it! Today, I've been vindicated in every way. Ziofascist Trump
is the agent provocateur in the Middle East unilaterally, repeatedly resorting to multiple
acts of war against the Palestinians, Syria, Iraq and Iran. If he didn't trigger war yet,
it's not for lack of trying! Everyone is wisely on hold prevailing on their cool-headedness
hoping Americans elect a SANE, and more humane President, and that President will be Bernie
Sanders.
When Bernie shuts the door on that lunatic's orange-cake face the entire planet will
breathe A COLLECTIVE SIGH.
Now go bark your fake purist bullshet at someone stupid enough to fall for it. I'm a
firewall for the truth and you're barking up the wrong tree and messing with someone berning
for justice.
If Sanders actually got into the Presidency and threatened established interests, then he
would be given a non-refusable invitation to vist Dallas and drive past the Texas Shoolbook
Depositary.
Oh sure, Bernie is just playing 4d chess, right? We've been hearing that for years about
Trump as he bombs countries, assassinates people, and overthrows governments. We'll have to
relive it all hearing about Bernie's grand scheme to undermine the MIC by doing exactly what
the MIC wants. You're just another fake following a warmonger.
"But the oligarchy and sectors close to oligarchy are already worried exactly about that.
For example, certain David Brook is almost morose. A nightmare that is at least 170 years old
reappeared"
Well if Sanders does manages to get the Dem. nomination, then go ahead and vote for him.
Just, do not expect anything to change during his administration.
Otherwise, if someone else gets it, Sanders will be put out to pasture, and no one will
hear from him again. He was pretty quiet the past three years. For Sanders, and his domestic
ideas to blossom, he needs to be able to win the presidency, not just run for it. This is why
the Oligarchy will probably tank him. Right now, very few people in the US are politically
active. It is only the primaries after all. They are mostly ignored by the vast majority of
the electorate despite CNN's propaganda polls (which read only 52% interest anyway). In fact,
US elections for pres are regularly ignored by almost half the population, anyway.
If anyone else gets the dem nomination, there is no point voting for the Oligarch
Party.
Do you realize the damage you're doing to your credibility and reputation tooting
Bloomberg's horn here?
Bloomberg is a rabid Zionist who defied a flight ban making a cruel, pompous spectacle of
himself flying into Tel Aviv during Israel's massive criminal assault on Gaza while
vociferously supporting Israel's shelling of children, schools and hospitals.
Bloomberg is a Ziofascist Israel shill Neocon BUSH jr REPUBLICAN. Complete Presidential
disqualification in one sentence.
Now run along with your leaky can of Bloomberg whitewash.
If the State legislature chooses to ignore the vote then your argument is not
valid.
Please see the US Constitution that I linked...
And you continue to ignore Process. Well, in Constitutional Law courses that very scenario
is addressed. In Law, Process matters.
if the State legislature choses to ignore the vote.."[..]
if not members of the Parties elected to the Legislature, pray tell how is the Legislature
comprised?
You do know when (ahead of the general election) the Republicans and Democratic Parties
appoint their respective representative slate of electors they take into account Party
Loyalists who are pledged to vote the presidential ticket?
On pledges of the electors: 29 states have laws forbidding the electors to violate their
pledges.
In recent history: December 2016, Trump had the required electoral votes and the Hillary
Mob attempted a full-throated campaign to have some of the Republican electors switch their
votes at the Electoral College!!
How did that work out?
There were 7 "Faithless electors" who ignored their pledges. Oeps of the 7: five defected
Democratic-loser Clinton and two the Republican president- elect. [Cases are on appeal before
the Supreme Court; to be heard in 2019-2020 term]
When the Electors' switchero campaign did not succeed, Russiagate was the lever to
frustrate Trump's presidency. Russiagate will continue as long as the orangeman occupies the
White House.
WP > "...After a senior U.S. intelligence official told lawmakers last week that Russia
wants to see President Trump reelected..."
UNZ> "...Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Vice President Biden are being
told that if they do not get out of the race and clear the lane for the mayor, they will get
a socialist as their nominee, and the party will deserve the fate November will bring -- a
second term for Trump..."
Now then, when will the intel dudes claim Buttboi and Buyiden and Klob are commie agents?
Why already Wally suspects Putin's on the secret Badenov Shoe-phone with his vast army of
verraters... I mean, there must be Some Truth, right?
And if (mirabele dictu) Burner get's 'lected and avoids Dallas... if that, then how will
they change the story and tell us Burner is a Putin controlled Putin versteher?
("We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public
believes is false." (CIA Director Casey)
Karlofi mooted Beard's "Republic"... A proud attempt by Beard, but, alas (!) it reads like
a sad comic... Painful.
Perhaps one interesting point there though > Lincoln's first inaugural.
I'll leave that for K-Man to discuss, if he likes.
I'm all for disrupting the Democratic Party by voting for Sanders in the Primary.
But anyone that thinks that Sanders will be allowed to actually win the Primary is smoking
something. And anyone that thinks that Sanders isn't working with the Democratic
establishment to accomplish their goals is snorting something.
Sanders is there as window-dressing and to lure young voters into the Democratic Party
fold as a "Democracy Works!" ploy (a form of 'stay in school' PSA) .
The Democratic Party won't actually nominate him because Americans would vote for Bernie's
anti-oligarch program in droves. Anyone with any sense knows that the oligarchs have too much
money and too much power and that government services monied interests instead of the
people.
<> <> <> <> <> <>
We are now in a new Cold War. And we are on the brink of ANOTHER major war in the Middle
East. It's long-past time to see through the bullshit propaganda, fakery, and scheming.
Copy/paste Jackrabbit who hasn't hatched an original thought in quite some time tries to
project his professional troll gig on me. Dembot? Is that all you could come up with?
As with Bernie, I might be more like, hmmm... how would I describe myself?
"...This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever
they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional
right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it..."
Wally is a bit shocked...here's Lincoln saying the Revolution is a Right... And he wuz
smokin...what?
But yes, context matters...read the entire document>
First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln
MONDAY, MARCH 4, 1861
Fellow-Citizens of the United States: (avalon / yale / edu an' all of that)
All the slander being heaped upon Bernie is not going to drain one jot of energy from the
momentum of his campaign. The trolls desire above all for a tide of chaos to wash over the
country. The energy in this movement is going play out on the convention floor and beyond;
and the spirit of the people is not about to be diminished or crushed.
It is best not to give up on the struggle, especially when the stakes have been made so
clear as Bloomberg plants the flag of oligharchy in this election. Only Sanders and Warren
had the decency to react with moral vigor to this outrage.
This is far from over. This is just getting interesting.
Correct, as I see it that would be too far-fetched. I cannot see AOC being managed
opposition, even if her behavior doesn't seem very leftish sometimes. The establishment's
biggest concern with their management of the political process is to make sure that some of
the things that AOC discusses remain outside the scope of acceptable political discourse. See
Willy2 above with his "Free stuff!" narrative for how the establishment wants people
to react... the establishment wants to prevent the public from even considering reallocating
resources away from the military and corporate subsidies to so-called "Free stuff!"
While AOC's ideology and support for Pelosi and such might leave some leftists unimpressed,
the fact that she even discusses free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare and education as well as
living wages strongly suggests that she is not part of the establishment's operation.
I honestly do not think the establishment has any plans for pandering very much to Latin
American identity... there is far too much revolution in that identity. My guess is that the
plans post-Butt-gig are to mix things up... say a Black lesbian or Black transsexual, for
instance. Keep in mind this would be planned for 2028 (previously 2030) so whoever they have
in mind would only be starting to get publicly groomed for the job now. The potential
individuals may not have even had their debutante unveiling to the public yet.
The trolls desire above all for a tide of chaos to wash over the country.
Well, true, but we don't need much help. The Sanders campaign has been a gift to
socialists who can piggy-back off of his demolition of decades of John Birch Society
indoctrination against socialism. But as far as I'm concerned, that's the only good thing
he's done. Him losing will be better for socialists - who can benefit from his supporters
flocking to our organizations - rather than him winning and forcing us to take him in as "our
guy" or us being tarred with any failures of his presidency.
"[Sanders] losing will be better for socialists..." --fnord @143
Not good strategy. People are not ready to go for real revolution yet. They need to try
half measures first and see those half measures fail or be attacked and defeated by the
oligarchs. Sanders losing will cause many people to either drop out of the movement or switch
to the far right. Sanders victory is needed just to show the masses that victory is possible.
People pursue socialist revolution out of a sense of optimism and open possibilities, not
desperation. Desperation leads to fascism.
@ RSH 66
[If] either are nominated - or any other of the current crop of losers - the Democrats will
lose against Trump, despite Trump making all kinds of incredibly stupid statements during the
campaign. Because, let's face it, Trump will do stupid stuff all during the election race -
and his supporters will no doubt ignore them or praise him for them. [;]
There is that Great Silent Majority made up of Independents, RINOs, DINOs, and Moderates
who are embarrassed by and are tired of Trump. Also, throw in those who will refuse to
participate in the rigged system. In 2020 this time it's different.
"But his [Sanders] foreign policies are still too aggressive"
Aye, too aggressive by far to make him any kind of improvement over any other Admin.
Remember, Obama, the worst warmaker of the last imperial dynasties, started as a
self-declared upholder of international law, a Nobel prize-winning one at that.
Now to my point: if foreign policy is imperial, all other improvement is irrelevant.
Health care, better pensions, affordable mortgage, a free hamburger every week, etc. for
the population of the Empire that murders, plunders and generally threatens the health of the
whole world seems like something one should avoid, not cheer for.
I don't think we should be delving on Sanders' foreign policy too much.
Obama was elected on a "hope and change" platform - mentioning removing troops from Iraq,
Afghanistan, closing Guantanamo etc. and then, boom, Libya, drones, private contractors and
Syria happened.
Also, we have the Deep State, which is the true dictator of American foreign policy. This
is the team of "experts" and "advisers" who will "educate" whoever is newly elected to the
WH. So it doesn't really matter what the candidates state about foreign policy at this
point.
It really doesn't matter what Sanders says on the FP front.
And Sanders' 2016 campaigning was also very curious for his amazing deference to
Hillary .
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Feb 20 2020 20:05 utc | 36
I will not defend Sanders from basing his foreign policy on the progressive outliers of
reactionary CAP. There is a distinct danger that he would be malleable on foreign policy, but
also a hope... The hope is that he collected a lot of supporters who are less deferential to
DC consensus than himself.
The deference to Hillary was a good tactical choice in my humble opinion. He leads the
insurgents who do not favor the current DNC and party apparatus. To win a national elections
he does need cooperation across party spectrum. PUMA is a real danger against that (search
PUMA 2008 election). So he can (a) challenge and shame possible repeaters of PUMA (b) give
good example (c) rely on his feared supporters who are guaranteed to be suspicious and
grumpy.
Bloomberg as the champion of moderate democrats reminds me the candidate for Polish
presidency that Nationalists put forth in 1922. He was the top aristocrat, with vast
holdings. Nationalists had hopes of attracting the larger and very moderate peasant party,
but moderate as they were, they just could not vote for Aristocrat Number One. A lot of
Democrats prefer Sanders over Bloomberg, even the moderate ones. If Sanders becomes top in
delegate count and Bloomberg second, brokering the convention against Sanders will be
hard.
I started out to say that Sanders can't compete in the American Political sham reality if he
goes ball to the wall against Israel's aggression's and totally illegal behaviour which is
supported by Democrats and Republican's alike because of the monetary power the Zionist fifth
column in America wields with their "Benjamins"
Hat tip to that tiny girl born in Somalia for calling a spade a spade. Courage should be
rewarded, not attacked by those who disrespect truth and decency.
On Sanders' foreign policy: we shouldn't forget that democracies are belligerent, that the
link between war and high citizen participation in decision-making was the hallmark of
classical antiquity. More recently, the icing on FDR's New Deal was ww2. It doesn't surprise
me that a shift to social democracy does not imply a decrease in external belligerence. In
fact moderate right-wing libertarians tend on the whole to be the least fond of war, unless
it's about protecting their interests. But when the interests at stake are understood by the
deliberative citizen body (e.g. SPQR or ὁ δῆμος) to be
those of the collective citizen body, then war is endemic. I am reminded too that one of the
most left-wing institutions (in spirit at least) in the US is the Marine Corps: the
polis is a warrior-guild (Max Weber)
Even if sanders gets the nomination (a very very big if), don 't expect him to go all
anti-systemic at all, more the opposite I would say. So Tulsi for VC is like a red herring,
he would probably choose a "moderate" for VC.
The following article is a very interesting one, showing the type of socialist sanders is.
His ideas about socialism are closer to the european socialdemocratic system after the 90s ,
and we all know what a trainwreck that is.
Whether he realizes it or not, karlof1 is exposing a version of the establishment-friendly
"best of all worlds" (BOAW) political theory
BOAW was popular when Obama the deceiver was President. It fits well with his neoliberal
hucksterism aka "social choice theory".
BOAW says that if something is wrong or can be improved, it will get attention and be
addressed because people will get behind the change necessary to make it happen.
But the Empire and great wealth disparity has distorted democratic processes into
something garish - like fun house mirrors. BOAW is now recognized as simply hopium propaganda
and is hardly ever even mentioned anymore.
Much noise has been made about Trump being elected due to anti-establishment sentiment. While
certainly true, Trump's election is just one in a long line of seemingly anti-establishment
candidates elected, after which it's more or less "business as usual".
Clearly the establishment has long since caught on to the fact that "the masses" dislike
it, hence why they concentrate on the appearance of being anti-establishment.
Sadly, "the masses" get fooled time and time again. One can only marvel at how it keeps
happening.
Trump is a member of the Deep State which is what I have been saying for almost three years.
The Deep State consists of the very wealthy who are greedy for more wealth and power.
There are 607 billionaires in the US. There is no reason for the Deep State members to
formally collude they all know what needs to be done and how to do it. They use a relatively
small amount of their money to place their minions in positions of power heads of the movie
industry, the media, the federal government, academia. From then on if the lessers in these
groups want to keep their jobs/lives they will toe the line. It becomes self sustaining from
tax money and the Deep State glories in more wealth and power. Here is an excellent example
of the Deep State in action: The SCOTUS has passed down egregious decisions that abridge the
First Amendment and show contempt for the concept of a representative democracy. Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U.S. 1976 and exacerbated by continuing stupid SCOTUS decisions First National
Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v.
Federal Election Commission.
These decisions have codified that money is free speech thereby giving entities of wealth and
power almost total influence in elections. By gaining control of the SCOTUS the Deep State is
able to further their goals.
Let's simplify things a little. We wouldn't all be having to puzzle over who's the most
likely liar in the sandbox if we, uhhhh weren't there in the first place. Looking at you,
Ronnie Ray-gun. And you, Bush the Elder. And you, Crimewave Clinton. And you, Gee-Dumbya. And
you, O-Bomber. And you, Big Orange Tweet-Clown.
Regardless of nominal "party," every nose is docked permanently to the Israeli fundamental
aperture.
Another great Dave Lindorff item , "The Red-Baiting of Bernie Sanders Has Begun and is
Already Becoming Laughable," a topic we all knew was coming. Given his performances, Chris
Matthews would be better off with a lobotomy. Many others are just as bad in their display of
ignorance on the topic.
Meanwhile,
Mnuchin admits before the Senate's Finance Committee that Trump's budget does gut Social
Security and Medicare, proving Trump lied--again:
"Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, tweeted in
response to the exchange that 'Mnuchin admits Trump's budget cuts your earned benefits in
Social Security.'
"'Slowing the rate of increase' is Washington-speak for cutting benefits and breaking the
Social Security and Medicare guarantee,' Wyden added.
"The Trump admin claims there are no cuts to Social Security in the budget. So why
wouldn't Sec Mnuchin answer a simple yes or no question about whether there are billions in
cuts to Social Security, hurting seniors?
"Answer: because there are cuts to Social Security in the budget."
Yes, you can bet Sanders will milk that for all its worth just in time for all those
retirees living in Vegas to cast their primary votes.
"... Qanon suggests that the NSA and military include patriots who are trying to finesse a nonviolent transition away from the criminal pathology that has led the US to become an international vast organized crime organization, and purveyor of boundless atrocities. ..."
Does anyone have any thoughts ideas on the QANON phenomenon. I have swayed between
outright scepticism and then hope that it might be true - that some former high-ranking US
military personnel have hatched a plan and co-opted Trump, to drain the swamp, truth about
9-11 and prosecute all those involved, deal with Israel, End the Fed and restore proper money
etc.
Is it true? Or is it absolute bullshit and if so why?
QAnon=hope porn for Trump supporters. There's a video from a little over a year ago by a
couple of guys who make some good points about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e_e5WI_mjg
Regardless of what one might think of the presenters, they have done their homework.
Is it true? Or is it absolute bullshit and if so why?
Posted by: James McCumiskey | Feb 12 2020 13:59 utc | 1
James, from my perspective Qanon's impact is far greater and more beneficial than
indicated by the disparaging remarks that followed your question.
To be clear, I haven't paid a lot of attention to it, but have paid enough attention to
understand that many tens of thousands of people have 'entered' and benefited from the QAnon
'school'.
Now this is not to pretend to know what the actual results will be or even what the actual
intentions of Qanon are.
People who might be more or less in the process of waking up to, say, that we live in a
kind of upside down world, have been given very many clues and crumbs to follow, to research.
The process of waking up is a lifetime process, but it helps to begin at some point, to no
longer just doze away through life.
Qanon begins with the observation that whereas pathological criminality on high gained
power, became dominant over the vast majority of people, most people are more or less salt of
the earth decent folks in their intentions.
But to 'unbrainwash' the brainwashed previously asleep requires a process of education.
The Qanon process is somewhat reminiscent of a Socratic dialogue, whereby cryptic questions
are posed, hints are given, but in the end, the spur is to 'go down the rabbit holes' and
discover what's really going on.
Qanon suggests that the NSA and military include patriots who are trying to finesse a
nonviolent transition away from the criminal pathology that has led the US to become an
international vast organized crime organization, and purveyor of boundless
atrocities.
Trump then is to be understood as a flawed but handy and workable temporary leadership
means by which the system of tyranny can be decisively undermined.
Again, I'm not writing this as a fan of either Trump or Qanon, but am trying to answer
your question beyond a reflexive jeer that appears common currency among the
'enlightened'.
h/t: jtrue.com - I have an eclectic range on what I read... some I agree with ... some I
don't... but things are getting so weird I 'don't throw the baby out with the
bathwater'...
Does anyone have any thoughts ideas on the QANON phenomenon
Newly senile baby boomers and ideological conservatives psy-oping themselves. One of the
myriad of mental gymnastics routines used by the conservative crowd to justify the
continuation of the Obama presidency under Trump, which itself continued the Bush presidency,
which continued the Clinton presidency... and on and on. A replacement for scientific social
analysis by the equivalent of numerology and astrology, for people who don't know what
science is and are probably distrustful of it to begin with. A good example: a friend of
mine's dad is really hardcore into it. He's also a chiropractor. Not a coincidence. There's a
certain type of cognitive style that will latch onto this kind of absurd shit and it's the
duty of the scientifically minded to inoculate people against it.
Qanon is certainly a psyop. The question is whether it's a wishful thinking deep-state
conspiracy theorist sitting in abasement with Cheetos and Dr. Pepper, or a disaffected rogue
insider spreading crumbs of critical thinking to the dazed and confused mass of "Americans"
who are victims of the greatest psyop in the history of the known universe; propagandized for
90 some years into the cult Baseball, Mom and Apple Pie.
Whatever Qanon is it has allowed white nationalist fascists to believe they are freedom
fighters on a grand quest to cleanse a swamp of corruption that is the true treason of the
"American Dream."
The United States is two-party political monopoly, the two sides serving the same coin of
'the money power.' There is no more useful idiot than the raging stable genius who believes
belligerence is wisdom, and money is love.
The United States is coming to a three-pronged fork in the road:
1. Collapse
2. Totalitarianism
3. Revolution
The billionaires are preparing for collapse and turning to off-world escape. Bill Gates
just ordered a ½ billion dollar hydrogen powered mega-yacht to ride it out in
Waterworld.
QANON is a fraud. See Sessions, now Barr, Bolton, McCain. Frauds. So Q was needed right from
thr beginning to divert people fom seing the Trump family business as usless.
The Trump WONT go after the greatest breaches of USA national security - Hillary and the
unsecured email at her home cupboard or the Awan family spy/blackmail racket in the Dem
congress members. QANON is cover for Trump family inaction.
QANON is useless for most but is a reference for those bloggers and YouTube commentators
to fool people into thinkingthey are 'in the know', have deep information when all they have
is tripe and hot air. So QANON is useful to fool fools, dupe dopes, and elevate the liar in
chief.
How can it be that after three years as president Trump had Vinman and Ciaramela STILL on
the NSC staff advising the White House? Then Bolton appointed was extreme blunder and then he
betrayed Trump. QANON blows smoke over Trump family lightweights while they pick pocket the
audience.
Bernie is not there to be president. his "community" job is to dog herd the progressive
crowds to vote, as a lesser evil, for the Judeo-Zionist corporate candidate, the donors'
choice, as he did servilely in 2016. ask him any question about foreign policy and you will
note, on the spot, where he stands: he approved, as a Senator, the last 3 out of 4 major wars
of the US empire. 95% of his domestic promises are undeliverable. we did love Obama,
didn´t we? we will adore Bernie! for sure.
Qanon is such garbage. Just look at what nietzshe1510 said about Bernie Sanders... The
same crap is being pulled on people that follow Qanon. Its up to you to be the best person
that you can be and make a difference in your family, one small group of people at a time,
all over the planet. Like a tidal wave of good intentions. Never mind Bernie Sanders, Tulsi
Gabbard or the media that support them. It is just a fu*kin gimmick.
@1 "QUANON"
Sounds like a fantasy from a Robert Heinlein novel; try "The Puppet Masters", or "Revolt in
2100". He also was a military officer, until he got invalided out.
The discussion about Qanon was enlightening. I voted for Trump but gave up on him after
Seymour Hersh's article about the first Syria strikes was published in Germany(because,
apparently, no U.S publisher wanted to touch it) I find myself drifting slowly back to the
leftism of my youth since then. As for Bernie, his former comrade Michael Parenti implied in
2015 that Bernie is afraid of the National Security State crowd, and I think that makes
sense. Bernie won't fight the Empire, which makes his domestic promises basically useless,
regardless of his motives. Honestly, I think he mostly is in this for the campaign
contributions, but who knows? He's a lot less relevant than a lot of people are willing to
admit. The empire seems to be running out of steam on its own as far as I can see, as
de-dollarization continues to gain momentum, particularly in Asia. Events in Iraq and places
like the Philippines should be more interesting watch than this boring election
I looked into several of the more detailed predictions and comments - they were uniformly
wrong, albeit loosely based on 1st level internet search results.
Fiction, not fact.
Psyops? Anything is possible, but I personally don't see it. Trump does just fine handling
Twitter himself.
My bet is that Qanon is simply Steve Bannon. Both have/had the same fake discourse and the
same targets.
The revealing clue was for me when I saw his video clip "The great awakening".
Who has ever peddled the Pizzagate without being himself a nuts? I only know Qanon and
Bannon (by means of Cambridge Analytica)
"... Speaking of Trump's donors, we wrote Trump a blank check in the 2016 election to deliver on the MAGA agenda that he had sold us. We voted for big ideas like "nationalism" and "populism." The reasons why I voted for Donald Trump in 2016 were immigration, trade, foreign policy, political correctness and campaign finance and furthering these big ideas of "nationalism" and "populism." He has been a disappointment on all fronts. ..."
"... Orthodox Jews hit the jackpot with the King of Israel and Zionists have been on an unprecedented winning streak. In just the last three months, Trump has issued an executive order to ban anti-Semitism on college campuses, assassinated Qasem Soleimani and has given Bibi Netanyahu the green light to annex large swathes of the West Bank. Trump is even considering allowing Jonathan Pollard to return to Israel. Is it any wonder then that a recent Gallup poll found that Israelis support his "America First" foreign policy over Americans by a whopping 18-point margin? ..."
"... Trump's Chumps have demonstrated in the last two election cycles how easy they are to manipulate. They can be relied on to vote and shill for the GOP no matter what it does. Donald Trump isn't under any pressure from these people to change. He knows his mark better than they know themselves. They are so desperate for acceptance and to participate in elections and to feel like they are "winning" that they will delude themselves like the rest of his cult into believing almost anything. Give a drowning man enough rope and he will hang himself. ..."
I spent months making the case for Trump on
this website. I will be the first to admit that I was wrong and that those who were skeptical of Trump in our
community were right in 2016. In that election, I drank the koolaid and was one of Trump's Chumps. Unlike
AmNats, I have tried to learn something from that experience.
I hate getting fooled by Republicans.
In 2020, we have a far better sense of
Donald Trump. The Trump administration has a record now. Donald Trump's first term is mostly history. We can
now look back with the benefit of hindsight and evaluate our standing after the last three years without being
drunk on Trump koolaid. No one drank the Trump koolaid in our community more deeply than the AmNats. Some of
them remained drunk on the Trump koolaid even after the 2018 midterms. A handful of his most faithful
cheerleaders have never given up faith in their GOD EMPEROR and succumbed to reality.
What is the reality of the Trump presidency?
1.) Those who feared that the Trump
administration would lull the conservative base into a false sense of complacency and put all the normies back
to sleep were right.
Donald Trump has told his base that they are "winning." They wear Q shirts and
"Trust The Plan" at his rallies. They are Making America Great Again simply by having a Republican in the White
House. They are content to go on believing that
even as illegal immigration DOUBLED in FY 2019
and became a far worse problem than it ever was under the
Obama administration. As we saw after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, they are also ready to swallow
Trump's war propaganda against Iran and believe anything their dear leader tells them. It was Julian Assange
and Roger Stone who went to prison under Trump, not Hillary Clinton. Normies are content to have conservatism
in power and
are less willing
to give us an audience with a Republican in the White House.
2.) Those who feared that the Trump
administration would suck all of the energy out of the Alt-Right were right . In the final two years of
the Obama administration (2015 and 2016), the Alt-Right was thriving on social media and was brimming with
energy. Four years later, the country has only gotten worse, but the brand has been destroyed and all the
energy it had back then as an online subculture has been sucked out of the room by Trump and channeled into
pushing the standard conservative policy agenda. The movement has been in disarray and has been divided and
demoralized ever since Trump won the 2016 election. The last few years have been terrible. As soon as Trump won
the 2016 election, conservatives shifted their attention back to policing their right flank. They are far more
successful at policing their right flank when they are in power.
3.) Those who rationalized voting
for Donald Trump on the basis of immigration and changing demographics were proven wrong about that too.
He has refurbished the George W. Bush era fence. Since he has been president, Donald Trump
has built all of three new miles of fence
, which is actually less than W. and Obama. He didn't do anything
about sanctuary cities or pass E-Verify. He has
actually increased
guest worker programs
. There has been no cuts to legal immigration. Instead, Jared Kushner's legal
immigration plan
only proposes to reconfigure the composition of it for big business
so that more high skilled workers and
fewer peons are imported from the Third World. Illegal immigration has remained steady and has surged past the
worst highs of the Obama years. It has recently
fallen back to 2015 levels after peaking in FY 2019
. Trump has vowed to pass an amnesty to save DACA. The
Muslim ban
became an ineffective travel ban
. The only area where he has had any real success is refugee resettlement,
but overall the bottom line is that after four years of Trump there are millions of more illegal aliens and
legal immigrants here. Donald Trump hasn't even
deported as many illegal aliens as Obama
.
AmNats have been purged from Turning Point
USA, banned from its events and reduced to haranguing Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk from the sidewalk. They have
been banned from even attending CPAC. Those who thought that they could work within the system to reform
conservatism were grossly mistaken. Steve King was
condemned by Congress, stripped of his committee assignments and has been treated as a pariah within the
Republican Party
. Michelle Malkin
was deplatformed by Mar-a-Lago
and excommunicated from the synagogue of mainstream conservatism. Ann
Coulter was marginalized in the Trump administration. Jeff Sessions and Steve Bannon were both fired. Donald
Trump hired conservatives and staffed his administration with his enemies. While I won't name any names, I will
just point to all the people who actually worked within the conservative movement who have all been purged and
fired in the Trump era by Conservatism, Inc. as proof that working within the system doesn't work and is a bad
idea and those people would have had more job security doing almost anything else.
5.) What about Antifa and Big Tech
censorship? Aren't those good reasons to vote for Donald Trump in 2020? Neither of these issues were on our
radar screen BEFORE Donald Trump won the 2016 election.
Both of those problems became dramatically
worse
as a result of electing the boogeyman as president
. Far from being a victory for the Dissident
Right, we became identified with Donald Trump and were caught in the backlash while he delivered Jeb Bush's
agenda (the boogeyman wasn't real). Before Trump was elected president, Antifa was a tiny nuisance that
protested Amren conferences and there was still a great deal of free speech on the internet. We could also hold
rallies all over the South without serial harassment from these people. Now, everything from harassment and
doxxing by "journalists" to chronic Antifa violence to police stand down orders to deplatforming to FBI
counterextremism witch hunts has became part of the scenery of life under the Trump administration which is
only interested in these new grievances insofar as they can be milked and exploited to elect more Republicans.
In hindsight, it would have been better NOT to have identified ourselves with the boogeyman in 2016.
6.) Isn't having Donald Trump in
the White House a huge victory for "identitarianism" and big ideas like "nationalism" and "populism." President
Donald Trump's signature policy victories have been passing a huge corporate tax cut, criminal justice reform
and renegotiating and rebranding NAFTA.
Trump is a "populist" in the sense that he has DEEPENED
neoliberalism. When you look at his policies, he has continued and further extended the status quo of the last
forty years which has been tax cuts, deregulation, entitlement cuts, free trade agreements and huge increases
in military spending. Trump's economic agenda has been no different from the last three Republican presidents.
He has been all bark and no bite.
Donald Trump is pointedly NOT a
nationalist, populist or identitarian. He carefully avoids ever mentioning the word "White." Instead, he talks
incessantly about the black, Hispanic, Asian-American, LGBTQ and female unemployment rate. He holds events at
the White House for blacks and Hispanics. He delivers policies for blacks and Hispanics too like criminal
justice reform. The "forgotten man" couldn't be further from Donald Trump's mind when he is schmoozing with the
likes of Steve Schwarzman and boasting about the stock market. Trump is a demagogue who recognized that
nationalist and populist sentiments were growing in the American electorate and he has harnessed and
manipulated and exploited those forces for his donors.
7.) Speaking of Trump's donors, we
wrote Trump a blank check in the 2016 election to deliver on the MAGA agenda that he had sold us.
We
voted for big ideas like "nationalism" and "populism." The reasons why I voted for Donald Trump in 2016 were
immigration, trade, foreign policy, political correctness and campaign finance and furthering these big ideas
of "nationalism" and "populism." He has been a disappointment on all fronts.
Those of us who were duped into believing
that Donald Trump had a team of Jews who were going to craft all of these policies which were going to
stabilize America's demographics should reflect on what has actually happened during the Trump presidency.
Orthodox Jews hit the jackpot with the King of Israel and Zionists have been on an unprecedented winning
streak. In just the last three months, Trump has issued an executive order to ban anti-Semitism on college
campuses, assassinated Qasem Soleimani and has given Bibi Netanyahu the green light to annex large swathes of
the West Bank. Trump is even considering allowing Jonathan Pollard to return to Israel. Is it any wonder then
that a recent Gallup poll found that Israelis support his "America First" foreign policy over Americans by a
whopping 18-point margin?
Trump's Chumps haven't been deterred by any
of this. They want us to write Donald Trump a second political blank check in 2020, which his Jewish donors
intend to cash at the White House,
only this time he won't be restrained by fear of losing his reelection
.
In light of everything he has delivered for them so far, what is Donald Trump going to do in his second term
for his Jewish donors who fund the GOP? Do we trust Trump not to start a war with Iran?
8.) In the last two elections,
Donald Trump has pulled a bait-and-switch and Trump's Chumps are gullible enough to fall for it a third time.
While I was wrong about the 2016 election, I was one of the first voices in our community to wise up to what
was going on. By the 2018 midterms, I saw the bait-and-switch coming and warned our readers about it.
As you might recall, the 2018 midterms were
about tax cuts and the roaring economy, deregulation and putting Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. It
was also full of dire warnings about scary Antifa groups, Big Tech censorship and caravans from Central America
to stir up the base. Trump vowed to issue an executive order to end birthright citizenship. The GOP knows what
its base cares about and shamelessly manipulates its base during election season.
After the 2018 election was over, you
might recall how Trump banned bump stocks and passed criminal justice reform for Van Jones and the Koch
Brothers during the lame duck session of Congress. As we entered 2019, the Republican agenda changed to
overthrowing the government of Venezuela to install Juan Guaidó in power and passing anti-BDS legislation. The
GOP spent the whole year accusing the Democrats of anti-Semitism and promoting Jexodus. Virtually nothing else
was talked about for a whole year in Congress but anti-Semitism until Trump issued his executive order on
anti-Semitism on college campuses after the House and Senate had failed to reach agreement on anti-BDS
legislation. The White House
held its Social Media Summit in July and nothing came out of it
. Antifa disappeared from the agenda and was
replaced by a government crackdown on White Nationalists after El Paso. Ending birthright citizenship was
forgotten about. Illegal immigration soared to its highest level in over a decade last May.
Don't forget how Trump's Chumps told us how
"Chad" it was in 2018 to elect more Republicans to stop Antifa, the caravans and Big Tech censorship and how
those same Republicans once elected to office preferred to fight anti-Semitism for AIPAC.
10.) Trump's Chumps have
demonstrated in the last two election cycles how easy they are to manipulate. They can be relied on to vote and
shill for the GOP no matter what it does.
Donald Trump isn't under any pressure from these people to
change. He knows his mark better than they know themselves. They are so desperate for acceptance and to
participate in elections and to feel like they are "winning" that they will delude themselves like the rest of
his cult into believing almost anything. Give a drowning man enough rope and he will hang himself.
Four years later, Trump's Chumps are still
sitting by the phone waiting for the Donald to call back while he huddles with Steve Schwarzman and Bibi
Netanyahu. They can't see what is front of their own eyes. By going ALL IN for Trump, they wrecked, divided and
demoralized their own movement in order to advance the standard conservative policy agenda. They have been
pushed off the internet and in some cases even to the dark web. In virtually every way, they are worse off than
they were four years ago and have nothing to show for it. Insofar as they are getting more web traffic, it is
because America has only continued to deteriorate under Trump, which would have happened anyway regardless who
won in 2016.
It's not too late for Trump's Chumps to
reclaim one thing that they have lost over the past four years. They can still reclaim their self respect. They
don't have to participate in this charade a second time and mislead people who are less informed because they
now know full well that Sheldon Adelson has bought Donald Trump and the lickspittle GOP Congress.
Note:
Imagine thinking a
New York City billionaire is a "populist." LMAO what were we thinking? He told us what we wanted to hear and we
believed it.
My understanding is that net foreign immigration has gone down in the last few years. Hardly a triumph, I
agree.
There are quite literally hordes of foreigners living here. Even a president who was a combination of
Jesus and Superman would find it excrutiatingly difficult to eliminate immigration under these circumstances.
All this seemed painfully obvious to me in 2016. We all know who Trump had been the first 70 years of his life
– a braggart, a reprobate and a real estate developer who loved celebrities and organized crime figures. He is
married to a high class escort from Slovenia who speaks English worse than a Mexican immigrant. This man is
going to be the savior of Western Civilization? He has always been a fraud.
@MattinLA
Trump has not even made a sincere effort. Where is the effort to stop birth right citizenship? To punish
employers who hire illegals? He doesn't try to build a coalition to stop immigration, he is clearly using it as
political issue to keep his low info base revved up, but Trump doesn't actually want it resolved. It is the
same with abortion, where both Parties are perfectly happy with the status quo because it allows each to fund
raise by pointing at the threat coming from the other side. And at the end of the day it is all about find
raising.
Pretty much an accurate article, but what Democratic Presidential Contender would have been a better choice?
The answer is none. The modern day Democratic Party, and most everyone who identifies with it, is as morally
disgusting and filthy of a political party as has ever existed on this planet. Whatever grievances you have
with DT, wait until the next Democrat gets elected President. The trifecta of Diversity (aka hate and blame
Whitey for everything), LGBTQ insanity, and Climate Change hysteria will be shoved down the throats of this
country like never before. The Obama years were just a warm-up for the cultural destruction that will happen to
this country when the next Dem gets elected.
Actually, just bring the Civil War on. Whites will either get some self-respect and stand up for themselves
before it is too late, or surrender to living in a ghetto trash culture and being ruled over by Jews and their
white hating 'POC' puppets. It's an easy choice in my book.
I started college in 1982 with nothing but high hopes for the future, by 1990 I knew something was terribly
going wrong with this country, and now I know the destruction of this country is virtually guaranteed. No good
choices, indeed, as stated above. WTF happened?
I voted for this executive. I am not ashamed of my vote. However, as someone who voted on agendas and policies,
I disappointed with the results. I knew going in there wasn't much in store for me personally by supporting the
candidate. it was a diversion at the time from the standard fare. The problem with the standard fare is that
they offered more of what were the problems. candidate Trump, actually responded to the issues echoing the same
concerns, even if in a less than civil tenor. He gave as good as he got or better. I would that had been more
substantive, but it was what it was.
There are some things that need to be cleared up in your article, most prominant of which is the fairly
loose use of straw men positions. Just a few:
–the president did not run as a conservative despite comments he made about some conservative aspects of his
own views.
–he never ever abandoned his position on same sex relations and marriage -- both of which are neither
conservative or something he campaigned on, so it was clear from the get go, he had no intention of changing
that game. What he did contend is that religious people have the same protections and they should not be cowed
–the overton window that would permit any president to openly support a condition in which skin color is the
primary or a primary point of view would violate the principles and foundation of the country. but regardless
most of the country sees that as an anathema to the what they want to country to be -- even far right
conservatives are not arguing a white nationalist perspective -- trying to weigh him down with an overton window
position that was never in play, at least not as you suggest it. The president started with a definitive lean
in that direction of sorts, but it probably did not take him, long to figure out -- he was surrounded by whites
in control of the country -- whites are not being pushed around by non-whites, inspite of having elected a
non-white executive. But still he has knee jerk responses to dismantle the nonwhites policies. He remains as
prowhite as any candidate in office. his references to how he claims to have aided nonwhites as pushback
against accusations of being "racist" makes perfect sense. That does not make him "anti-white".
–your bait and switch assail is a tad convoluted. Antifa big tech and tax cuts . . . big tech and antifa
initially responded with the same shock and vitriol as all his opposition when he was elected -- but as time has
worn big tech has moved on seeing the current exec as a nonthreat -- tax cuts proceed unimpeded. The president's
position on Jews and Israel were clear from the start and remain as they were -- one can contend he is
overboard, but there was no bait and switch. The president did not say I was not for Israel and pro limiting
immigration, he made clear he opposed illegal immigration and was proIsrael they are not competing issues . He
has simply abided by one and dragged his feet on the other, if not abandoned it all together.
There are some other issues that need addressing, not the least of which is that many of us who supported
the current executive before and now, have done so calling him out on issues where he has failed or is failing
and have done so from the start -- -
@Priss Factor
the scary part about that is blumpf and the (((deep state))) would do that to you or me too
it was sickening
to see that he seemed to have regained his self confidence from the assassination of Soleimani and was
blathering on at the SOTU as though everything was just fine, better than ever
One good thing Trump did was save us from that shrieking Valkyrie warmongering Hildabeast. If she had been
elected she would have taken it as a mandate to start a war with Russia and/or Iran. Personally I was never
voting for Trump but against Hillary.
Now that the demoncrats no longer have someone like Hillary running it would be pretty safe to vote a third
party which I plan to do this election. Screw King Cyr-ass and his Zionist claque of losers.
@MattinLA
The US economy alone (not to mention the suckiness of the culture and people) has been bad enough going back to
a year or so before the crash that net immigration, I believe, has been outward. Stupid Orange Man yelling at
people "Get outta here! You're fired!" means less when they calmly retort, "I was leaving anyway".
Happened to be in the Emerald city on Wednesday and wandered through the Seattle Convention Center .there were
so many hindoos milling about thought it was some kind of curry cooking convention.
But no .it was something
called Microsoft Ready which is Microsoft's internal marketing, technical, and sales event bringing together
over 21,000 Microsoft staff.
Had to be at least 75% dotheads with a sprinkling of turbanized Sikhs, and maybe
25% whites and asians. Asked one of the dotheads if Paul Allen would be attending this year, but just drew a
quizzical stare.
Noted in the Mr. Softie handouts that these legions of imported cut rate code scribblers are
referred to as "scientists". Trumpstein actually did something about the H1B visa program .he increased it
claiming we need more of these half priced "brainiacs". Can't find enough discount American code scribblers,
you know.
Trump first got my attention when he made those initial comments against the illegal invasion. But later, when
he said that Mexico was going to pay for the wall and talked about putting a "big beautiful door" in it, I
figured he was probably full of it. When he attended AIPAC, I was done.
Congress has actually condemned White Nationalism at least two or three times since Donald Trump has been
president. Far more White Nationalists have gone to prison under Donald Trump than Barack Obama. Trump has
appointed "conservative judges" like Thomas Cullen who put RAM in prison.
After the last 3 years of seditious behavior of lying politicians like Schiff, Nadler and Pelosi and the
traitorous schemes of deep state actors like Weismann, Vindman, Sondland and Yovanovitch I would still vote for
Trump in the hopes that some of these traitors and others in the DOJ/FBI/CIA/NSA would be prosecuted.
Hopefully, Durham will do his job before the election and we will see some of the coup plotters going to jail.
Even if that doesn't happen, a final payback to the treacherous Democrats and their propagandists in the MSM
will be another conservative judge on the Supreme Court; a change that will impact the next 30+ years. That
alone will be enough for me.
I agree with much of the analysis I've read here, but let me offer a somewhat different perspective. The author
notes that, "Donald Trump is pointedly NOT a nationalist, populist or identitarian." This is probably true, but
it's also not necessarily a bad thing at this point if you're a contrarian of this sort.
My read of the
situation is that Donald Trump is almost certainly going to lose the general election, despite the confident
predictions of an incoming Trumpslide by deluded supporters. In his defeat, he'll take the last vestiges of
Reagan conservatism down with him. Even if he doesn't, Trump will almost certainly be the last republican
president due to demographic change, so it doesn't matter either way. It would make sense in that light to let
Mr. Trump run and lose on a platform of standard fare conservatism than have him be closely associated with
populism and discredit that ideology on his way out.
People forget that Donald Trump was only made possible by Mitt Romney's failure in 2012. Romney ran a
standard conservative, milquetoast campaign and lost; he was nevertheless called all manner of vile names by
the left but responded like a gentlemen. His defeat came as quite a shock to many rank and file GOPers. Fox
News had convinced them leading up to election day that they were going to win. How could they not? Romney said
all the same things Ronald Regan did and he won; he talked up the military, he repeated economic platitudes and
denounced socialism, he self-immolated over racial issues and claimed democrats were the real racists. So,
obviously, Mitt Romney should – by all rights – win just as Reagan did. Lost on them was the demographic
situation, among other things. 2012 America was not 1980 America. When Reagan won California in 1980, Los
Angeles was majority white; California had two million more white Caucasians than it does now (Trump and Reagan
received almost exactly the same number of white votes in California but with different results); the economy
for blue collar voters was better, so there was less opposition to Reaganomics.
When Romney ran as a traditional, non-offensive republican and lost, he discredited that ideology and made a
louder, more combative alternative possible. That was Donald Trump. In the minds of many republicans,
conservatism could no longer win elections, so why not go all in with a contrarian radical? I expect that
mentality to return sometime after Trump loses this November. Radical sentiment has been quieted as of late
only because normies sheepishly think they are winning. That's probably why the establishment is freaking out:
they know that won't last. You occasionally see moderate democrats asking for peace and quiet, perhaps
realizing this, but it's unfortunately not a message well-received by the fringe left who control social media
and these divisive late night network shows.
My prediction: on election night 2020, there will be a lot of shell-shocked republican normies. Either the
despised socialist is elected or a man who stokes racial animus for personal gain – Pete Buttigieg – will
become president-elect. In the minds of conservative Boomers, that wasn't supposed to happen; it's as if
someone said they could see inside the event horizon of a black hole – total violation of established physical
reality.
Impossible
or so they thought. Republican operatives are already trying to help Bernie
Sanders in both Iowa and South Carolina. They foolishly think Sanders can't win, but that's not true. I've seen
the polls. On election night, Donald Trump will have to deliver a heart-wrenching speech to his deluded
followers conceding defeat to someone they thought couldn't win.
But the Trumpslide. Qanon said to trust the plan*. We're winning. The wall. MAGA.
All exposed as lies. The sort of lies a defeated people tell themselves. Cerebral comfort food for the
weak-minded.
In the process, Donald Trump will discredit Conservatism Inc. just like Mitt Romney did in 2012. Contrarians
will escape the judgment of history and live to fight another day. Most likely, there are yet more dissident
stars on the right to be made. Some older ones may also return in the aftermath.
Considering circumstances, the best path forward (speaking as devil's advocate) is to critique the man
without vocally supporting his defeat. Let him go down fair and square. Starting in November, there will many
republicans in Trump's former base looking for an alternative. They will seek out dissidents they heard about
but dismissed as blackpillers; MAGA supporters will be sidelined. Third Way Alternatives should consider laying
out a well-reasoned, practical and achievable alternative in the present with the anticipation they will be
called upon in the near future.
However, I wouldn't count on that considering the lack of organization and drive I see on the dissident
right. Mr. Griffith's essay, for example, is filled with a strange defeated tone. It sounds as if he just wants
to go back to business as usual before Trump: do his contrarian thing without being harassed. Certainly, life
would be easier. But you would be no closer to any kind of victory, either. As the author notes, dissidents
were tolerated before Trump. But why? I think laying the full blame on Trump is not warranted. Yes, he failed
to protect his followers – that's one big reason why dissent is now being crushed. There is another reason,
however: you were winning. You were only tolerated before because you were on the wrong side of history. The
establishment didn't fear you because you couldn't challenge them. With Trump's surprise victory, the situation
changed. With that in mind, what's the point of going back to business as usual while being on a certain path
to defeat? unless you want to lose (or don't care), unless you simply want the freedom to be a contrarian
without accomplishing anything. Sounds like a grift to me, pardon the rudeness.
If you want to ineffectually complain about the ruling class on Twitter while being free of harassment, then
supporting the democrat is probably your best bet. They'll tolerate you because you don't threaten them. I
think that's what a lot of guys on the right really want, which is why they went so heavily into Yang's UBI. It
was a sort of early retirement option for them, regardless of how they justified it – get free money and cash
out, let the world burn.
*Well, that and to drink bleach to ward off the wuhan coronavirus. Do NOT trust that plan.
Disclaimer: I'm speaking as a neutral third party who was never involved in any of this stuff.
Idiotic article. Yeah, Trump is a Trojan horse who is making. Israel great again. Yeah, he's a fragile,
narcissistic buffoon. The only unabashed positive I can really offer is that he is in 2020, as he was in 2016,
the least bad option.
The author doesn't seem to quite get numbers. God, as they say, tends to favor the side with the biggest
battalions. Perhaps he should take a look at a demographic plot of the map of the United States circa 2020. The
truth is that, if a hyper-competent, charismatic candidate had formed a consensus around Trump's 2016 platform
in maybe 1975, the demographic trajectory of the country could have been changed. It's way, way too late for
that.
If you were stupid enough to think in 2016 that demographic realities were going to be unwound, or even that
there could consensus to address the issue in a serious unapologetic way, I really don't know what to tell you.
You're probably too stupid to be operating heavy machinery, much less posting articles on Unz. Trump's election
is Prop 187, circa 1980's. Far too little, far too late. But still the least bad option.
All there really is at this point is a rearguard action, and maybe win a skirmish here and there. In terms
of the Long War, we don't have the numbers or the consensus. Grow the fuck up.
I'm often asked by people in the US who learn I've lived outside the US the better part of three decades when I
might return to the US, to which I lightly reply, "When the Republic is restored. I guess that means never."
At the end of the day, who better than Trump can you get behind? I guess it is game over. The only problem is
that the rest of the developed world is going in the same problemmatic direction, and places like Uruguay still
have their occasionally lurches into insanity.
2.) Those who feared that the Trump administration would suck all of the energy out of the Alt-Right were
right.
This is very typical. In the waning days of G.W. Bush there was a very strong hard left anti-war movement in
place, and doing well on the internet, and also had a home on some cable stations. Once Obama was elected it
faded into obscurity with-in hours, and never resurrected even as Obama become more hawkish than Bush – both
expanding the War on Terror, and codifying the Bush Doctrine.
1. Trump was a con man as a businessman. How did anyone imagine he wouldn't be a con man as
president?
2. Trump knows which side his bread is buttered. How long do you imagine he would've lasted if he actually
did the things he promised, especially ending the Amerikastani Empire, before ending like Kennedy? Six weeks?
3. Whether the author of this article, with whom I sympathise, changes any minds with it is irrelevant.
Trump is the Wall Street/military industrial complex/zionist candidate for re election, and his return to power
is being arranged even as I write this. The shambolic Daymockratic Party impeachment circus and the bad jokes
posing as candidates in their primaries have one purpose alone: to ensure a second term for Donald Trump. What
any normal person votes for is irrelevant.
A common trope on the right is that the left gets what it wants. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just
witness the shenanigans the DNC is pulling in the current primaries. When Pelosi theatrically ripped up Trump's
speech in the SOTU, she shortly thereafter voted to support the efforts to destabilise Venezuela and support
the CIA-handpicked Juan Guaido.
Pro-Israel PACs have flooded the primaries attacking Bernie. CIA puppet Pete Buttigieg is against medicare
for all. Democrats do not get what they want. The only thing they get is woke rhetoric but the neoliberal
economic system and the imperialist foreign policy remains the same.
Jimmy Dore's reference to the "uniparty" is apt here. So while Mr Griffin's catalogue of Trump's various
betrayals is useful, keep in mind that the disease is bipartisan. The US is in many ways a sham democracy where
the actors perform kabuki theater. You will never get an honest say on the core principles of the system.
Regardless if you're coming from the right or the left. And the media is in on the charade.
He is so duplicitous it's mind boggling. Nancy Pelosi is right when she calls him a liar,
although she's no angel herself.
The Jewish Power structure is in total control. Trump WILL BE the final nail in USA coffin, because he is
dictating for Israel, now. Israel will make even bigger moves after he is re-elected, for sure. No doubt to
further the Yinon plan along.
I voted for him too; but will not be voting at all this year. I refuse to play into their twisted game.
They purposely caused all this Chaos to keep people distracted while Big Tech companies consolidate their
power over the internet and the Military Industrial Complex plans the next false flag to kick off the next
invasion (Iran & Syria).
My guess is that Jewish Democrats like Schiff, Nader, and proxy Nancy have all been part of this horrible
PsyOp that has been going down the last 3 years.
It doesn't matter which "side" you are on anymore because there is really only ONE SIDE.
I wouldn't feel bad about being a "Trump Chump" – there are millions of you, after all.
As someone who would
be in the Bernie/Tulsi camp if I lived in the USA (but would also be furiously opposed to being swamped by
Somalis), here's a little advice, free of charge:
You will never get anywhere being attached to a Party of Capital. They will always want to bring cheap
labour into your country, and they don't care what those immigrants do to your family. Money rules. Forget the
GOP, and start your own party.
Imagine thinking a New York City billionaire is a "populist." LMAO what were we thinking? He told us what
we wanted to hear and we believed it.
Not just a NY billionaire, but one who profited from (a) mega-banks, and (b) the ZioNazi media.
His first two reality TV stunts were WWE, and then The Apprentice. The third is his crown achievement.
You call them Trump's Chumps, I've called them TrumpTARDs, because they are fucking useless, mindlessly
idiotic fools/rednecks/inbred losers.
Fact is the country doesn't stand a chance, the "resistance" is more pathetic than the globlalists. If the
last three years has taught the world anything, it's not just how mindlessly stupid TrumpTARDs are, but how
uncivil, rude, aggressive, and downright despicable.
Nobody has harmed the conservative cause more than the Orange Satan.
All, of course, by design. What still gets me is that conservatives are to utterly stupid to fall for it. At
least the Liberals caught on that Obama was a fake early on – the TrumpTARDs just can't get enough of sucking
that Orange ZioNazi's dick.
this who thing looks related to me.. .. the Cornoavirus, the pipeline, the bombings in Syria, the libya-turkey
GNA thing, the recent airliner crash in Turkey, I feel something is surfacing
Trump proved that the nation state system is disastrous for those humans governed by it. The nation state
system is great for those few who are the puppet governors of the few that rule the world.
The problem Mr. Griffin is that the article does not recognize that USA citizens who not part of the
electoral college cannot vote for either the President or the Vice President. Amendment 12 read it.
We should Trumpet Trump because if we don't we might be next..
There are quite literally hordes of foreigners living here.
Fact is none of the fake conservatives, from the Orange Satan to the Governor of Texas, is against illegal
immigration. It would be easy enough to prosecute employers who hire illegals, but neither the Orange Satan,
nor any State, be it Wyoming or Texas, so-called "Red" (Communist) states, does anything about it.
But yet the idiot TrumpTARDs wail on and on about how the Orange Satan is their savior and how Republicans
are better than Democrats.
It's amazing how unbelievably, astoundingly stupid Americans are.
You are either stupid or lying, I believe lying. I say this because in each of your substantive attacks, you
blatantly misstate facts, even obvious ones.
Personally I am honestly and eyes open clinging to the hope that
Trump is sincerely doing his best for us, because the alternative is civil war, and if it comes to that, it
will come to that. Trump is the last possible peaceful salvation for America.
Here are your lies, which tell me you are not genuine:
> He has refurbished the George W. Bush era fence. Since he has been president, Donald Trump has built all of
three new miles of fence,
A blatant and obvious lie to anyone who is tracking the wall progress – "refurbished" means replaced
completely ineffective fence, including vehicle barriers which you can literally walk around, with 18-30ft high
steel fence. You may jerk off to the technicality that it isn't "new", but we all see through you. Over 100
miles so far with 350 more planned, and he has done it with congress kicking and screaming. He even diverted
defense spending for this purpose, against all of Washington's whining and complaining. These are the actions
of someone who is sincere.
>there have been no cuts to legal immigration
Bull shit. Blatant lie. 2017 saw a 10% decrease in net migration from 1046 million to 930 million. 2018 down
another 25% to 700 million, and 2019 15% to 600 million. That's God damn good work for a man with an entire
bureaucracy and 2 parties fighting him. He didn't even get a law to sign and he still cut legal immigration by
almost HALF. I can hardly believe it myself it's too good to be true. Why lie?
>Donald Trump hasn't even deported as many illegal aliens as Obama.
You know as well as I do that Obama changed the reporting of deportations to include 'voluntary returns'.
Obama deported virtually no one from the interior. Regardless, more importantly, we both know how aggressively
both parties and the bureaucracy have fought to prevent Trump from taking action, and yet against all odds he
secured agreements with Honduras El Salvador and Guatemala to deport "Asylum seekers" there, making an end run
around the legal labyrinth that was keeping them here. That is HUGE and you completely omit it.
You also omitted –
Starting a trade war with China
Supporting the break up of the EU
Demanding funds from allies under our umbrella
Not starting a war in Syria or Iran, both of which they desperately tried to force him into
But most of all, you ignored the fact that the entire intelligence apparatus, the entire media, the entire
establishment has sacrificed their credibility in the attack on Trump.
That is the main reason I still have hope. Your lies bald face lies are why I do not believe you are
sincere.
I love it that the jew and the fag won in Iowa. Of course, I don't love that Trump will probably win in Nov.
but the options to him are dismal to say the least. No matter what, once he's out of office the days of this
"republic"/empire are surely numbered.
I disagree that voting for Mr Trump was a mistake. American elections are always a choice of evils, but in this
case it was more a choice between rapid extinction of our species and run-of-the-mill evil, killing only the
odd million people now and then.
I personally take this cartoon very seriously indeed:
If Hillary Clinton had become President, I believe she would have found a way to start a war with Russia.
And that would have resulted in the death of all human beings, plus many other species.
Mr Trump is execrable, it is true. But he has one enormous virtue: for whatever reason, he is extremely open
and candid. Whereas US presidents going back to the 19th century did frightful things while smiling genially
and pretending to be kind, Mr Trump openly admits how frightful he and his deeds are.
That is hastening the demise of the US empire, which is in the interests of all human beings.
@MattinLA
There are certainly no easy choices. As a foreigner I am hardly in a position to criticize, let alone to
encourage US citizens. But perhaps I could remind you of an early President during whose 8 years in power not a
single American or foreigner was killed by the US government?
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years
without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be
discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such
misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. What country before ever
existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are
not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The
remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or
two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its
natural manure".
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Stephens Smith (13 November 1787), quoted in Padover's Jefferson On
Democracy
@MattinLA
IOW, you're going to vote again? For Mr. Trump?
"In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will
hose away all of the rot and bloody criminality of the Bush years. He turned out to be a deft move by our
ruling class. Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of our military banking complex.
Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider.
A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as a magnet for
liberal anger. This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war abroad while impoverishing
Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump won't fulfill any of his election promises, and this, too, will be
blamed on bipartisan politics."
Linh Dinh, "Orlando Shooting Means Trump for President," June 12, 2016, @ The Unz Review.
All the system needs is for you to pick Red or Blue, accepting the results until the next Most Important
Election Ever.
As a first time voter in 2016, Trump's relative inaction on all that he promised has made me more aware than
ever of the rot that has set in our political system. I was skeptical that political change could be
accomplished prior to 2016 but optimistic. Now I cannot be anymore pessimistic about the future.
@Chet Roman
" another conservative judge on the Supreme Court; a change that will impact the next 30+ years. That alone
will be enough for me."
Yeah, Right.
Like the impact of all the Republican appointees who issued the ruling in Roe v Wade?
Like the impact of Mr. Kennedy, a Republican choice who helped rewrite the legal definition of marriage?
Like the impact of Mr. Roberts, a Republican choice who nailed down Big Sickness for the pharmaceutical and
insurance industries?
What impact do you honestly expect from Mr. Kavanaugh, Mr. Trump's choice who earned his first robe by
helping President Cheney with the Patriot Act?
Like the "federal" elections held every November in even-numbered years and the 5-4 decrees of the Court,
the partisan judicial nominations and nailbiting confirmation hearings are another part of the RedBlue puppet
show that keeps people like Chet Roman voting in the next Most Important Election Ever.
Your disappointment is the inverse of your expectations. Perhaps you should curb your enthusiasm? So what's
next? Join the Communists? Boycott the system? That will teach them! Trump is the best looking horse in the
glue factory. Do you see a candidate you like better?
The effort to remove Trump from office began before he was even sworn in. In terms of intensity the effort has
been unlike anything any of us have ever seen. And that effort has come relentlessly, from all sides. The
media, the late night comics, the intelligence services, the kritarchy, the bureaucracy they have been united
in thwarting Trump's every move, united in flogging an entirely bogus Russian collusion investigation from his
first day in office. And they IMPEACHED the man over nonsense, for crying out loud.
The most powerful elements in this country have thrown, and continue to throw, everything they've got at
him. They have brought this country to the brink of a cataclysm for their hatred of Donald Trump and their
overriding desire to see him removed from power and his voters punished. Their hatred alone is reason enough to
continue to support Trump.
It was a miracle Donald Trump won the presidency. It is a miracle he is still in office. And a miracle is
the only thing that can save us.
Do you not remember how utterly hopeless things seemed in 2015? How completely we'd been beaten? There was
zero chance the immigration tide could be stopped, for one thing. Do you not realize that it is a miracle that
things are slightly less hopeless now? A miracle that, in 2020, we aren't beaten quite so completely? That, by
some miracle, the chance of achieving an immigration time-out within the next four years is now greater than
zero?
Any Trump supporter who turns on Trump because he disapproves of the job Trump has done as president just
shows his own fractiousness, because, in truth, Trump has not yet had a chance to be president. And
politically, turning on Trump is particularly boneheaded given there is absolutely no alternative and we are
out of miracles.
@Divine Right
The GOP donors would never allow a fully-fledged White populist candidate to slip through the net, Trump was
never such a thing which is why he managed to win the primaries.
By the time the boomers die off, it will be too late and even a White Rights candidate would never won as
the demographics will have shifted so much, and this is assuming Whites start skewing towards GOP on the same
way Blacks skew towards Democrats. In reality the younger Whites still have the virus of individuality in their
minds, thinking that politics is about high-minded ideas instead of group interests.
Poor Brad. I spent all that same time trying desperately to show you how far off you were in the support of an
obvious jew water carrier. Twitter (until they dumped me) and then even signing up for your blog.
I left
comment after comment with valuable information, obvious and thorough.
You ignored it all, even in the face of its blatant OBVIOUSNESS. You were a Drumpfter and with Trump saying
just the right thing, you could probably go back.
It is why I left your site and won't go back. You spent years being totally WRONG.
Reading this is like reading the words of a guilty man who was too stupid to see what was truly right in
front of your face. Or one that knew all along but had a different agenda.
Either way, you have zero credibility or discernment when it comes to politics, so why don't you just keep
it to yourself.
Me, a dumb ole redneck, called it in Aug 2015 and didn't stop trying to warn the world of this OBVIOUSNESS.
You know it and I know it.
Some strong points here, not all of them, but a number.
"He has been a disappointment on all fronts."
No statement could be more accurate.
Trump is a failure, but one with a very loud mouth and a rather twisted psychology that magically converts
all failures into successes. Nothing factual ever fazes him.
And the ability to just keep going is a great asset in politics, even if it means you keep going to do
destructive things. You actions communicate strength and purpose and determination to ordinary people.
After all, much of the ordinary public literally has no idea what is going on, abroad or at home, so poorly
informed are they by the mainline press and the political establishment.
He does a daily war dance of self-praise, finding new phrases to whoop and chant, describing his almost
complete failure in the opposite terms.
But because he is doing overall the power establishment's work – against China, against Iran, against
Russia, for Israel, and in Latin America – they not only do not oppose him, they support him.
He does his work rudely and utterly without grace.
He is a man who wears his ignorance as though it were a finely-tailored suit.
But the power establishment is okay with the grotesque style, so long as they get the results they want. And
they do.
The desired results are mainly negative, not positive, achievements.
But that is the essence of imperial America today, to do harm to others in order to improve its own relative
standing. It does almost nothing positive anymore anywhere. It threatens friends and foes alike. It destroys
international organizations and order. It supports the creation of chaos, as in Syria or Libya or Yemen.
The contrast of America's now-constant threats and hostilities with China's great Belt and Rail Initiative
couldn't be starker. Or with Putin's pragmatic "live and let live" philosophy. We see destruction versus
creation. Coercion versus cooperation. Ignorance versus information. Darkness versus light.
So, Trump, with all of grotesqueries and lies, provides almost the perfect President.
Sorry, America, but that is a very great, if ugly, truth.
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and
the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two
parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election
without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy .Then it should be possible to replace it, every
four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new
vigor, approximately the same basic policies." Carroll Quigley
And so it goes ..at least until enough people
start to understand/believe that the government is their enemy, never their friend , and that a completely
unlimited government [i.e. what we currently endure], regardless of who is president, will continue to take
more of their money and freedom away on a daily basis because:
"Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and counterfeiting
[central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very cores, 100% corrupt criminal scams
which cannot be "reformed"or "improved",simply because of their innate criminal nature." onebornfree
Sadly, it doesn't matter who we vote for as the jewing will continue unabated.
Proof of this is to always
ask, "Who benefits?"
And the answer is ALWAYS the jews, and the answer is NEVER white people.
Once you understand what the jews want, what their interests are, and you see that everything that happens
seems to be good for the jews, you realize that this awful system is anti-white to the core and it's been
engineered by the nose for the nose. There is no other way to explain the fact that the interests of white
people are NEVER honored. In fact, the interests of white people are not even given a passing thought.
I knew it was going south in a hurry when he moved into the white house and turned it into something resembling
a synagogue.
As an outsider, watching media reporting on American politics, I find myself wondering if I'm
not actually viewing Israeli political news. How do Americans not notice this?
Trump's supposed conflict with congress to get funding for the border wall is just a kosher psyop designed to
give off the illusion that he is fighting to uphold his campaign promises, when in reality he's just carrying
out the jews white genocidal program. He's no different than Obama. Black or white, they take orders from the
same political class: the Jews who control the money, the policies, and the media.
But what's most sickening
about all this is that the same congress that unanimously votes to give untold billions to Israel in foreign
military aid is now telling the American people that there is just not enough money to fund a border wall !
Israel first, America last, that's how congress works.
Why don't the Jews want a strong US border wall built ? Because the JEWS want to genocide White Christian
Americans through mass illegal immigration. Why ? Because non-white third world people have lower-iq's and are
easier for the Jews to control and make slaves out of.
( Destabilizing society for political gains- Offering stupid people free everything will always get votes, and
they know this. )
Funding for the US border wall could be solved overnight by removing Jewish control over the monetary system
and cancelling all foreign aid to Israel, but don't except that to happen anytime soon. Nothing has changed
since Trump has become president and nothing will. Illegal immigration, poverty, unemployment and wars will
accelerate under Trump because those are the natural consequences of following the orders of America hating
Jews. Trump isn't playing some 4d chess strategy and all those who still say this are blind, deaf and dumb. The
Jews are still in full control of the Federal Reserve and by extension the media, government, courts, law
enforcement, education etc. Stop living in a fantasy land and face the facts.
As it was with Bush,Clinton and Obama, the United States is still a vassal state of Israel and controlled by
the Jews. We cannot vote ourselves out of this situation. Democracy means Jewish control that breaks down to
which political candidate gets the most jewish money and jewish media coverage. The Jews pick our presidents,
it doesn't matter if a republican or democrat gets elected, each party is only concerned with advancing the
Jewish world government agenda.
@Priss Factor
Regarding Gen. Soleimani, a true martyr, you should have seen how insultingly the moronic ABC World News anchor
David Muir brought up the name of Gen. Soleimani at last night's DNC debate. And none of the candidates
bothered to correct Muir.
@Gleimhart Mantooso
Keep wallowing in hate and ignorance. Muslims are the only people outside of Christians who revere Jesus,
albeit not as god jr. but as as a mighty prophet.
For sure, Trump has been less than impressive on all fronts. At least he hasn't committed the US to an all-out
war with Iran, but I strongly suspect he will do so after he is re-elected.
As far as
actual
unemployment, January 2020 remains at a stable 21% and all the bs about 3.5% is the usual smoke-and-mirrors:
I think the establishment is once again giving the American voter no real alternatives (but isn't that the
point?). Do you want Trump or a Jewish communist, Trump or Indiana's little Peewee Buttfudge? Whatever. The
final result will always be "X" is president in a White House filled with zionists. Everything American
crumbles while the Israelis continue the dance they started on 9/11.
Machiavelli wrote that the best people to take power are not the best people to run the government. The
implication is precisely that: use the chumps and then discard them.
Despite all the technology, some things
haven't changed.
@Divine Right
" My read of the situation is that Donald Trump is almost certainly going to lose the general election, despite
the confident predictions of an incoming Trumpslide by deluded supporters. In his defeat, he'll take the last
vestiges of Reagan conservatism down with him "
Your comment is very interesting. While I didn't like it
emotionally. Intellectually it was excellent.
I have all of the same complaints as Brad Griffin. I have to admit my perfidy as I have at times believed in
Q and other times I haven't. Right now I'm at the, we'll see, stage as I have no idea what is going to happen
and if he so wished Trump could fall on the deep State like a bear trap. If he is going to do this then the
delay til he can get in a more honest set of judges and push out some the worst of the actors makes sense. Even
his wishy washy staffing the place to the gills with Jews and inconsistent policies. He has several times
stated positions and done things that have put his enemies in very awkward positions that are difficult to
weasel out of. He could still take down portions of the deep State. We'll have to see but I admit it doesn't
look good.
Former CIA head William Casey once said, and it is verified, something like that when no one knows what the
truth is the CIA had done it's job. I think we are at that stage now.
If Trump does not reign in the deep State, meaning the Jews for all practical purposes, or even if he loses
the election I suspect strongly that a vast tsunami of Whites will instantly lose faith in government. I think
it likely that if Trump loses it will be a psychic shock.
If Trump has no plan to take on the deep State and Q is just a deep State actor to delay the day of
reckoning I hope Trump does lose.
There's a path, a very scary one, that may be what Q is all about if he is a deep State actor. Computer
power has continued to increase combined with neural nets computing. The time line for a $1,000 computer chip
with the computing power of a human is 2025. It may be off by a little but it will happen. If when this happens
and the Jews are still in control they could, combined with 5G, build what ever robot army they wished for
around 10 or 20 thousand dollars a piece and murder us all. Elon Musk global network in space would also allow
them global dominance. I've always been suspicious of Elon being a Jew while supporting what he is doing as
being good for the country. When he immigrated to Canada from South Africa he first had a job at a bank
supposedly with one of this relatives. He also has been extremely capable in raising vast sums of capital. Jews
are much more able to do this due to nepotism. He denies being a Jew.
Trump is very much a chump and a liar, as pretty much every president has been from the beginning. This will
include supposed great presidents like Lincoln, Wilson, Teddy and FD Roosevelt, Reagan, Obama, and yes, even
the vaunted JFK.
The problem is and always has been "Murkans" find themselves a political party and basically sign up for
life. They never seem to learn no matter who is put into office, the slow slide to a full blown Marxist type
Oligarchy marches on. I cannot fathom why people go to political rallies and wave and cheer for known liars and
charlatans, hanging on their every promise as if it came from God himself.
Nothing is ever going to change in this country until the corporate money is eliminated from politics, until
lobbying for political favors is made illegal, until BOTH corrupt political parties currently running America
are shown the ash heap of history, AND until people realize there is more politics than marking a ballot.
This country will only be made well when the citizens start attending city, county, and state government
meetings and demand the constitution be upheld. Without our involvement at every level of government, it is
easy for the shysters and crooks to grow fat through graft and corruption.
The choice is ours and ours alone, but if history is any indicator of what will be, I say we be in deep
shit.
Bull shit. Blatant lie. 2017 saw a 10% decrease in net migration from 1046 million to 930 million. 2018
down another 25% to 700 million, and 2019 15% to 600 million. That's God damn good work for a man with an
entire bureaucracy and 2 parties fighting him
Where's the link for this claim? At the 2019 SOTU Trump bragged that immigrants would be coming to the USA
in "the largest numbers ever" under his administration.
Candidate Trump vowed to end H1B visas but president Trump now supports expanding the program. Candidate
Trump vowed to deport Dreamers and all other illegal aliens. Candidate Trump says he'll work with Congress to
allow Dreamers to stay in the U.S. and avoid deportation.
But most of all, you ignored the fact that the entire intelligence apparatus, the entire media, the
entire establishment has sacrificed their credibility in the attack on Trump.
Outside of a few of exceptions like Comey, Strzok and McCabe there's been almost no consequences for any
crazy leftists or deep state operatives for attacking Trump. At most, some (((MSM))) talking heads have
suffered decreased viewership, but that hasn't slowed them down one iota while the FBI has viciously retaliated
against high profile Trump supporters like Mike Flynn and Roger Stone.
I thought Trump was going to go after Hillary if elected and "lock her up?" That was just one of his many
lies and dog whistles.
Yes, Trump is an idiot I know well. I spent a day with him.
The real problem has been, when we have a
candidate that would be good for America, the Jews and the Jewish controlled media destroy him, and the people
do not react appropriately.
Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader all offered their talents for the job. See what happened?
Trump is not the problem. He's the symptom.
Go after the root.
Gerhard Menuhin understood this well enough he named his book accordingly.
Because life is relatively short, the people adapt a "go along to get along" mentality. They fear losing
their rice bowl (job) so they act like coolies (slaves).
People need to change the essential failing thinking only of themselves.
Better to be a martyr once than a slave 10,000 times.
Since both parties are hopelessly corrupt enemies of the people, I vote third party if I can, so I didn't vote
for Trump but I was glad he beat Hillary, because Hillary was a known evil, and Trump? I liked his campaign
promises, to make friends with Russia, to get out of NATO, to stop the "stupid" Mideast wars, to echo Lindbergh
by his motto "America First", which promised a kind of paleo-conservative "isolationism", i.e., stay home, mind
our own business, stop policing the world with regime-change wars. I wrote off his Border Fence as unworkable.
And he started off well. He called most TV news Fake News. He said Media was "the enemy of the people". Wow!
What other politician told such a truth? He met with Putin in Helsinki and believed Putin's word over his own
"Intelligence", and Wow!, again. But it didn't last. His enemies were after him (Russia! Russia! Russia!) from
Day One, and after the Putin meeting FBI and CIA and Media all called him a TRAITOR! Media bad-mouthed him 24/7
for months, and I believe Trump finally caved, joined our enemies in the Swamp he had promised to drain,
because he didn't have the balls to stand up to the constant, unrelenting pressure on him. His first choices
for Secty of State,of Defense, were okay, but then he hired the awful Bolton and then the noxious Pompeo, he
surrounded himself with the loyal-to-Israel Neocons, and now Netanyahu is our President, not Trump.
So he has
become just another enemy of the people. If Bernie is screwed out of the Dem nomination, as he was last time, I
hope he starts a Third Party, with Ron Paul as his Vice, and Tulsi Gabbard as Secty of State.
@Gizmo880
Add to that, who would champion any of these changes in either chamber of Congress? This article perfectly
reflects the adolescent whining that permeates the unz site that everything is not going exactly as I want.
You deserve to be drunk on the junk offered by the Drumpf a narcissistic hedonist from Manhattan in real
estate business (where 9 out of 10 largest real estate enterprises are owned by Jews), who was desperate at
times to hold on to that thing which is most dear to him, the title of unmitigated billionaire, and which could
not be hold on to without the blessings of the Central Park "rabbis" and one who had married non-native white
women of dubious origin (possibly Jewish), at least 2 out of 3 times and a man who wasn't known for his
christian (assuming he is one) piety or charity was suddenly the savior of the White nationalists.
You're
right about one thing: give a drowning (White nationalist) man enough rope and he will hang himself!
@nsa
Trumpstein actually did something about the H1B visa program .he increased it claiming we need more of
these half priced "brainiacs". Can't find enough discount American code scribblers, you know.
Bingo.
BTW, back in the mid 00s when I had certifications in C# programming and SQL, my phone was literally ringing
off the hook with job offers and I never went more than 1 week without a contract job. In the following years
working for a large company in the industry, I gained even more experience in other things in IT that
interested me such as machine learning, parallel programming and cloud computing.
When that company went south in 2016 I lost my job. Furiously searching for a job, it took NINE months
before I landed another. When I talked with all the local head-hunting contractor firms and IT placement
companies, they all told me the same story: all the local companies are pretty much only hiring H1B's now in
their IT departments.
Absolutely disgusting.
That along with many other things that I've seen since 2016 have convinced me that my children have no
future here in this shithole country.
In the final two years of the Obama administration (2015 and 2016), the Alt-Right was thriving on social
media and was brimming with energy.
Yes, in service to Hillary and the Democrats. Not all who called themselves alt-right, but beyond question
it was a "movement" that was and still is wholly compromised. I know it's hard for you to hear, and despite
whatever else he peddled, Freud was on to something when it came to Projection.
It doesn't surprise me that this author has memory-holed his movement's high water mark -- Hillary's
alt-right speech. Throughout the 2016 campaign, while little went Hillary's way, she consistently drew royal
straight flushes, with David Duke, Richard Spencer and various other agents-provocateur, going on CNN and MSNBC
declaring their support for Trump.
Here's your buddy Richard Spencer days after Trump won the election:
A word to the wise, anyone who didn't know to whom this character belongs, and long before this moment,
should assiduously avoid the word 'chump.'
I won't paint with a broad brush. To the extent that anyone cares, it was and remains rather easy to figure
out which in the so-called alt-right can't be trusted. Whether because the FBI or someone else has them by the
short-hairs, or they're Leninist/Stalinist filth doing their part for the cause.
That includes those writing articles like this, lamenting that Trump betrayed you after you voted for him by
being a great president for African Americans too.
Timing is rarely coincidental. Thus this jibber jabber comes just after Trump defeated the latest coup
attempt and even Democrat allied-media is finally forced to begin to concede that he'll win reelection.
Trump will do so with historic support from blacks and Hispanics (for a Republican). Which is why Democrats
and their allied-media are again feverishly pushing their "white nationalist" button again.
Any day now the "GOD EMPEROR (!!!)" is going to "UNLEASH THE STORM!!!"
Oh, yeah, sure some Jews get beat up in midtown Manhattan and Trump swings into action quicker than whale
shit thru an ice floe passing EOs that end up practically paving the way to make it illegal to criticize Jews
Um, OK he sure was quick and decisive for them.
But surely he will get around to doing something for the goys too!!!
The reasons why I voted for Donald Trump in 2016 were immigration, trade, foreign policy, political
correctness and campaign finance and furthering these big ideas of "nationalism" and "populism."
Well then you
are
a chump. The only tactical reason to have voted for Trump was
to deny Hillary
Clinton executive power
. That was the sole reason any conservative or rightist had to participate in Our
National Sham. To believe that he was going to reintroduce "nigger" to the national lexicon by 2018 was
head-in-the-clouds foolishness.
Thwarting Soros/Hillary remains his major contribution* to American politics: under Trump, the masks on the
other side have all come off. There is no longer any subterfuge about the Unholy Trinity of the Far Left,
meaning the Democratic Party, the mainstream media and the hostage institutions such as academia and
local/state government. The rabid doubling-down of the anti-white Deep State – unthinkable with a nabob like
McConnell or Romney in the Oval Office – is another plus to the Trump Administration: what the talking heads
all nervously refer to as the "deep divisions" in our country is one of the few signs of mental health and
vitality America has experienced in a half-century's worth of decline.
Nobody was going to reverse that half-century in three or four years – it was a physical impossibility; just
as no one was going to pry off Team Shmuel's death-grip without at least pretending not to. Ten
years
would be insufficient for such tasks. But it doesn't mean you petulantly vow to starve yourself because half a
loaf is an insult.
*= it's rarely brought up but his quietly appointing centrist/conservative judges to the bench, boring as it
may seem to tiki-torch revolutionaries, still represents an important step in the right direction and is
probably his
second
major contribution to the struggle,
Trump is the reincarnation of the Roman emperor Caligula and the present government of the ZUS is a
reincarnation of the later days of the Roman empire, in every way!
@MattinLA
America has faced problem like this in the past It will solve the problem in similar or identical terms . Thats
what it does It provides a ruse . Now the ruse is not covering the corners of the lying lips even before next
set of problems emerge straight from the solution.
Trump isn't a god and there's so much to criticize about his track record, all true. But at minimum, Trump did
delay the socialist takeover of the federal judiciary. As disgusting as his kowtowing has been of the neocons
that control the Deep State, the invasion of Iran has still yet to materialize. How would a Hillary presidency
have fared with Scalia's replacement and a no-fly zone over Syria? Good bye First and Second Amendment. The
alternative to Trump is grim.
@Tom Welsh
As bad as Trumpstein is, and make no mistake, the cuckold for Coco-Zionists is bad, Clinton and company would
have been even worse. In 2020 we have anti-White demsheviks like Butt-Plug, the first openly homosexual
candidate for Prez, Warren, Biden and flat out commie Jew, Sanders, and Jew Bloomberg. I guess the Jew is ready
to come out of the shadows and openly run for Prez just like homosexual Butt-Plug. Of course it could be said
that we have a Jew as POTUS right now, President Baby Nut&Yahoo and his VP Jared Kushner.
The biggest thing
Trumpstein has done as Prez is expose how fake the Jew media is, but lets not kid ourselves, with the exception
of Tucker Carlson ( even Tucker doesn't tell the total truth and he won't touch the JQ) even the neocons at FOX
and OAN don't tell the complete truth, and sometimes they do more harm by telling 90% truth and 10% lies than
commie anti-White networks like CNN, MSNBC and all the rest.
Trumpstein is a native New Yorker, what did you really expect?? The guy has been around criminal Jews all
his life, he has Jew lawyers, his daughter has converted to Judaism and she married an orthodox Jew. As bad as
our past Presidents were, some claim LBJ, FDR, and even Eisenhower might have been Jews or had Jewish blood
flowing through their shabbos goy veins, Trump might be the biggest cuckold yet when it comes to the biggest
shabbos goy Prez of all time.
Until a UNITED STATES PRESIDENT OR OFFICIAL GOES AFTER GEORGE SOROS AND THE LIKE AND SERIOUSLY SEEKS TO
IMPRISON HIM AND OTHERS FOR FLOODING OUR COUNTRY WITH ILLEGAL INVADERS, WE DON'T HAVE A LEGIT PRESIDENT.
Do you think Hitler would have stood by and allowed non-Germans or traitorous Germans to flood Germany with
Turks or Pakis and then went out and told throngs of people how he is keeping Germany first? Come on, man.
Trump is better than the alternative, BUT the new boss isn't much different than the old boss. Just another
cuckold influenced by his Jewish masters and Jewish money.
@Priss Factor
It's amusing to read the rabid Trump haters on the right. They have a better option?
Some of the Trump haters
say we should just let the whole thing burn down and that Trump is controlled opposition delaying the
inevitable and preferred civil war. These are people that won't give up their Netflix, won't give up whatever
outlet Game of Thrones is on and won't even put down their IPhone. It's absurd.
Trump is a fat-assed, baby boomer politician whore for the evil and immoral globalizer treasonites in the
JEW/WASP ruling class of the American Empire.
Trump has been screaming like a three dollar whore politician
about flooding the USA with mass legal immigration "in the largest numbers ever."
Trump has refused to deport the upwards of 30 million illegal alien invaders in the USA.
Trump has kept the American Empire garrisons and bases forward deployed and stuck in muck hole regions of
the globe.
Trump has put the interests of Israel ahead of the interests of the American Empire.
Trump is a bought and paid for three dollar whore politician for Jew billionaires Shelly Adelson and Paul
Singer and Bernie Marcus and other billionaire bastards.
Trump has kept his fat mouth shut about the Fed-created and monetary policy induced asset bubbles in stocks,
bonds and real estate. In 2016, fat ass baby boomer bastard Trumpy was calling these same damn asset bubbles
nothing but "fat, ugly bubbles." In 2016 Trump said "we are in a big, fat, ugly bubble" and the asset bubbles
in stocks, bonds and real estate are only bigger and uglier and fatter now.
I hereby challenge baby boomer fat ass Trumpy -- and Teddy Cruz, Marco Rubio, Dan Crenshaw, Tom Cotton and
any other GOP puke who wants to show up -- to a debate on mass legal immigration and mass illegal immigration,
tax policy, trade policy, foreign policy, monetary policy, American national identity, multicultural mayhem,
White Genocide and any other damn thing.
Vote for CHARLES PEWITT as a Write-In candidate for president in New Hampshire and Nevada and South Carolina
and every other state presidential primary.
Charles Pewitt Immigration Pledge:
IMMIGRATION MORATORIUM NOW!
DEPORT ALL ILLEGAL ALIEN INVADERS NOW!
REMOVE THE FOREIGNERS NOW!
REMOVE ALL WHITES OR OTHERS THAT ARE HOSTILE TO THE EUROPEAN CHRISTIAN ANCESTRAL CORE OF THE USA
Ban The Bat Soup Fever People Now!
The Charles Pewitt write-in campaign for president of the USA has called for the immediate implementation of
a BAT SOUP FEVER BAN which will quarantine the rest of the world, including Canada and Mexico. All foreigners
currently occupying US territory will be immediately removed and they will be put on barges with baloney
sandwiches for sustenance on their long voyage back to wherever the Hell they came from. Those who have
deliberately shredded their identification -- like Pelosi shredding Trumpy's speech -- shall be put in a baloney
sandwich camp in sub-Saharan Africa and kept there indefinitely.
The Charles Pewitt write-in campaign for president has stated numerous times that open borders mass legal
immigration and open borders mass illegal immigration brings infectious diseases to the USA and this new
fangled BAT SOUP FEVER is just EBOLA with more sniffles and the walking pneumonia and the boogie woogie bat
soup fever blues.
The Charles Pewitt ban on the Bat Soup Fever People, plus all the other foreigners for good measure, will
bring massive benefits to the American people.
The Charles Pewitt ban on all foreigners in combination with a massive removal of all foreigners in the USA
will boost wages, lower housing costs, reduce income inequality, lower class sizes, protect the environment,
restore cultural cohesion, give US workers more bargaining power, reduce belly fat, reduce commuting times,
provide relief for overwhelmed hospitals and be good for regular Americans and bad for globalizer banker
money-grubbing nasty people.
The Charles Pewitt presidency will extinguish all student loan debt and pay back all student loan debt ever
paid plus 6 percent interest accrued yearly.
The Pewitt Conjured Loot Portion will grant each American citizen with all blood ancestors born in colonial
America or in the USA before 1924 the sum of ten thousand dollars a month -- tax free.
The Pewitt Tax Pledge will abolish the payroll tax and reduce federal income taxes substantially for all
Americans making below 300, 000 dollars a year. Billionaires will be declared illegal and they will be
financially liquidated and the federal corporate tax rate shall be 80 percent and 100 percent for all
corporations that have gone offshore.
God Bless America And Ban The Bat Soup Fever People Now!
Write In CHARLES PEWITT For President On Your Ballot -- God Bless The USA!
@Divine Right
If the Democrats have Pete steal the nominatin, then you can be sure they want to give Trump the election. I
dont think they control Bliombverg, more likely, he controls them so I would call him a wild card. Sanders
would win the election, but as you can see in Iowa, the criminals running the DNC, aka Hillary, are a much
bigger threat to him then Trump.
@Charles Pewitt
And you actually think that guy has a legit shot at winning? And you actually think he will be able to keep all
of his promises? The more I learn about what Hitler had to overcome to become Chancellor of Germany, you
realize that men like Hitler are rare and only come along once every couple hundreds of years. And Germany
wasn't mixed with every kind of brown and yellow race under the Sun either, America is a different animal
altogether. I am not sure if even a man like Hitler could turn America around in 2020. It will take A LOT OF
WORK TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, odds are unless we do a 180% turn, America is going out with a whimper and
sooner rather than later.
@alex in San Jose AKA Digital
Detroit
Net immigration has definitely NOT been outward. Both legal and illegal migration into the USA are still
massive, larger than the outflow from all appearances. The net result, and this is without reference to the
race or color or religion of the wave of immigrants:
a more crowded, more polluted, more expensive, less
trusting society where tens of millions of people cannot communicate effectively with each other in English and
US citizens whose families have been here for generations or even a couple centuries have a harder and harder
time finding full-time jobs with decent pay, benefits, and HAHA a pension.
@Chet Roman
After the last 3 years of seditious behavior of lying politicians like
Schiff
,
Nadler
and
Pelosi and the traitorous schemes of deep state actors like
Weismann, Vindman, Sondland
and
Yovanovitch
While I agree with your main point, what are you going to do? Vote for lil' Mike Bloomberg? Mayor Pete? LOL.
These clowns are completely controlled. Yes this system has boxed us in but Trump at least gives the illusion
of revolt, and he still isn't 100% controlled, only 99%.(Grin) Others will have to pick up the mantle of revolt
against the 'Deep State' when he is gone.
For the time being thankfully Tucker Carlson, Rand Paul and other America First types will be pushing Trump to
follow his campaign promises, however little he actually does. Because the alternative, Biden, Bloomberg, the
mayor Pete & company, is considerably worse.
The main strikes against Trump are 1. His even more fawning than
anticipated towards the Zionist beast. But most of that was predictable however regrettable. 2. His
acquiescence to the Republi'tard tax cuts which has only benefited the rich. The Republicans lost big in the
mid terms because of those cuts but 'lo and behold' Trump was still there. 3. All the other shit-lib policies
that Trump ignored or even supported, like increases in 'legal' immigration. That's the fault of his dopey
daughter and her weird Zionist/Orthodox Jew husband. With the son-in-law's one sided
'Deal of the Century'
falling flat on its face, hopefully this will hasten the moving of said weird son-in-law and dopey daughter
back to NYC 'one'. Then hopefully Trump will turn to advice from the likes of Carlson and Paul who will appeal
to his inner America First soul.
@Ragno
Thwarting Soros/Hillary remains his major contribution* to American politics: under Trump, the masks on the
other side have all ""
How has he exactly ?
Soros and Hillary occupy certain positions . Now they are gone but taken over by some other guys and gals .
It's a job . New employees still haven't been awarded the best employee award yet . That will come at the
retirement for the next set of people to carry on with the same anonymity.
We all know PNAC. How many will bother to know what the new letter head organizations the same crazy bunch
are heading now with new faces ?
Whether it is the openly anti-White demshevik candidate who wins or Trump, it is a win-win for the Jew. And our
demshevik buddies have already hinted at locking up any White who might have the temerity to whine about his or
her countries being flooded with browns, yellows and other hues of hostile third world biological weapons of
mass destruction or God any White who blasphemes the self avowed "masters of the universe" who control
America's media, much of our judicial system, and apparently own all of our serious candidates for POTUS should
face imprisonment according to some of these certifiable cuckold nutjobs. As I commented earlier, Hitler wasn't
some mentally disturbed madman who munched on carpet when enraged, he was a brilliant and brave man, but even
Hitler didn't have to overcome the odds that anyone elected as the American President has to overcome. The
Jewish dream of making America a polyglot of every kind of race under the sun with more colors than a rainbow
has become true. Hitler only had the Jew to worry about for the most part, while the American President has to
tackle not only Jewish power and influence, he has a country full of Chinese, Arabs, East Indians, Africans,
Hispanics of all sorts, just your common everyday African American with a chip on his shoulder the size of a
boulder, and all other assorted groups of malcontents demanding handouts while at the same time cursing our
nation and thinking Whitey owes them something for nothing.
Jan 20, 2017 Here's how much debt the US government added under President Obama
Based on quarterly data released by the US Treasury, the debt at the end of 2008 – just before Obama took
office – stood at roughly $10,699,805,000,000. As of the third quarter of 2016, the most recent data available,
the debt as Obama is set to leave office stood at $19,573,445,000,000.
@Trinity
The USA will thrive like never before after doing two simple things:
3 measly little hikes to the federal
funds rate and remove all the foreigners and the spawn of the foreigners.
The Pewitt presidential administration shall order the privately-controlled Federal Reserve Bank to raise
the federal funds rate from the current level below 2 percent to 6 percent and then to 10 percent and then to
20 percent. This whole series of asset bubbles the last 40 years can be traced back to 1981 when the federal
funds rate was 20 percent. Deliberate asset bubble implosions now!
Implode the asset bubbles and financially liquidate the greedy White nation wreckers born before 1965.
Young White Core Americans must be free of the DEBT BOMB MILLSTONE destroying their future and their
country.
The Pewitt presidential administration shall order the Fed to begin contracting the Fed's balance sheet and
there will be a complete halt to dollar swaps and liquidity injections and all the other monetary extremism
crud that keeps the asset bubbles in stocks and bonds and real estate inflated.
The Pewitt presidential administration shall order the immediate implementation of an immigration moratorium
and will begin the immediate deportation of all 30 million illegal alien invaders in the USA. All foreigners
and their spawn shall be immediately removed from the USA and the members of the Deportation Force that puts
this policy into action will get 1 million dollars a year for their patriotic efforts.
Politics in the USA Distilled For My Fellow Americans:
DEBT and DEMOGRAPHY
Monetary Policy
Immigration Policy
The USA must get back to a population of 220 million like it was in 1978.
After Iowa, i'm unclear why anyone still thinks the DNC is interested in making any sort of meaningful change
to our system towards socialism; rest assured they are not. They blatantly committed election fraud to support
the mayor from the CIA, Pete. If he fails, they will put their full support behind Bloomberg, the very
definition of a right wing candidate. The threat to our ruling class is not Trump, its Sanders.
Trump
supports Israel, billionaires, Big Corporations, wars for Oil, Wall Street and so will the DNC candidates Pete
and Bloomberg. The rest are just wedge issues to give the masses the illusion of choice.
"... The U.S. must lead the world in improving international cooperation in the fight against climate change, militarism, authoritarianism, and global inequality... ..."
"... So how is the fight against "militarism" and "authoritarianism" not simply code words for regime change, proxy war and sanctions (economic warfare)? ..."
"The U.S. must lead the world in improving international cooperation in the fight against
climate change, militarism, authoritarianism, and global inequality. When we are in the White
House, we will:
•Implement a foreign policy which focuses on democracy, human rights, diplomacy and
peace, and economic fairness.
•Allow Congress to reassert its Constitutional role in warmaking, so that no
president can wage unauthorized and unconstitutional interventions overseas.
•Follow the American people, who do not want endless war. American troops have been
in Afghanistan for nearly 18 years, the longest war in American history. Our troops have been
in Iraq since 2003, and in Syria since 2015, and many other places. It is long past time for
Congress to reassert its Constitutional authority over the use of force to responsibly end
these interventions and bring our troops home.
•End U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, which has created the
world's worst humanitarian catastrophe.
•Rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement and talk to Iran on a range of other issues.
•Work with pro-democracy forces around the world to build societies that work for and
protect all people. In the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, democracy is under threat by
forces of intolerance, corruption, and authoritarianism."
What follows is Bernie's Mantra, and the Billionaire Class includes the DNC:
" This is your movement . [Emphasis Original]
"No one candidate, not even the greatest candidate you could imagine, is capable of taking
on Donald Trump and the billionaire class alone. There is only one way we win -- and that
is together . [My Emphasis]
The first step to halting a runaway train is to get an engineer to pull back the
throttle and apply the brakes before the train can be reorganized and moved to a different
set of tracks. Nothing can get accomplished until that basic effort is won. No, it won't be
easy as we must reach the train and its engines before the attempt to halt it can be made. If
you insist on being cynical, please be my guest, but get the hell out of the way of those
trying to stop the damned thing!!!!!!! Yes, there's some verbiage I don't care for--the
democracy promotion being #1. But Gabbard's plank on Ending the Forever Wars is there. And do
note in his last point that Sanders recognizes and articulates the truth that the USA also
faces the threat of Authoritarianism.
" The U.S. must lead the world in improving international cooperation in the fight
against climate change, militarism, authoritarianism, and global inequality... "
So how is the fight against "militarism" and "authoritarianism" not simply code words
for regime change, proxy war and sanctions (economic warfare)?
@karlof1 #55
Bernie's foreign policy platform, as you posted, is admirable.
I have significant doubts over whether he and/or his movement can enact even a title of
it.
I have zero doubt that the platform guarantees the enmity of the entire political
establishment, on both sides of the aisle.
Imagine a liberal equivalent of Trump, but without the big biz or MIC assistance.
Could well wind up as one of the least effective administrations evah!
Sanders in his pronouncements about evil Russia, the Ukraine, and VZ has basically
messaged to the neocon deep state they can have their policies if they leave him alone on
domestic issues. The neocons could care less about Medicare for All, college tuition, etc so
long as they control the Pentagon, State department, and their budgets.
If any democrat becomes president, including Sanders, it will ratchet up the odds for a
nuclear war with Russia. Any democrat who dares to even talk to Putin will be called a
traitor. Any democratic president will have to prove they are tough on Russia, and I am
afraid sanctions won't do it. Expect some military action.
But Sanders waffles & hedges and talks about too many things without offering
straightforward understandable solutions -
Posted by: A User | Feb 6 2020 22:33 utc | 82
And the Grande Orange, America's Evangelicals Newest Messiah said he was going to drain the
swamp, make mexico pay for the wall, bring jobs back from china to Make America Great Again,
make those factories and Coal Mines hum again!!
Your point was?
ben , Feb 7 2020 1:22 utc |
109krollchem , Feb 7 2020 1:23 utc |
110
Vato@83
Thanks for the post of the Jimmy Dore show. It pointed that Sanders is another Fascist
when it comes to US foreign policy which is the one thing that the President can control as
discussed by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, historian and Middle East
expert, Stephen Kinzer in New Hampshire (time stamp 12:30). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wrf4meoydI
As we all know, Tulsi Gabbard is misinformed when she states Assad is a dictator and was
foolish to volunteer in the Gulf War. At least she calls for an end of regime change wars
unlike any current Republican or Democrat in Congress and is willing to talk to any
leader.
It is a shame when Gabbard is the only choice for those opposed to fascism. Fascism
appears to be the main characteristic of the American way along with the desire for comfort
and conformity.
p.s. Unlike Gabbard I didn't volunteer, but was drafted as Conscious Objector medic,
medical lab specialist and clinical specialist and was born in the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Anyone who believes that Donald Trump was serious about reducing our military adventurism
is deluding themselves.
The theme of forcing other countries to support our aims is central to his foreign
policy, and he escalates all conflicts in hopes of forcing others to concede. None of that
was hidden during 2016. It's also consistent with how his businesses have treated small
vendors. The Trump you see is not some creation of the deep state, or a product of
aggressive investigations. It's the Trump that has always been there. He's a bully. He's
always been a bully, and he always will be a bully.
You might have missed the evidence in 2016, but you can't pretend in 2020 that Trump is
the guy who will minimize the use of force to accomplish his goals.
But how else will the US force the other countries to renounce their sovereign status and
relinquish their economies to the extractive, parasitic greed of Wall Street? Andrew
Mellon's brother, Richard, used to say that being in the business of steel making, one
needs a machine gun... When one seeks to be the Hegemon (ultimate monopolist), one needs
"full spectrum dominance"!
"We need to recognize that our hyper-militarized foreign policy achieves nothing except to
foment more conflict that kills and displaces innocent people in huge numbers."
That's called a "self-licking ice cream cone". The more you spend on something to fix
something else, it only causes an increase in the something else, which causes you to have
to spend more. It is the entire basis of the US defense, healthcare and legal markets.
The diehard Trump fans placed too much hope and faith in the miscreant's foreign policy. They
thought voting for the buffoon was a way of securing rapprochement with Russia and less
militarism. Let's face it, in 2016 the two nominees were reprehensible–there was NO
good choice. The electorate could choose the terrible warmonger Hillary, who would accelerate
Obama's imperialist policies against Russia, China, and the Middle East or they could vote
for the "phony" supposed non-interventionist.
The bottomline as always is that the "winner" is completely subjugated to the foreign
policy whims of the security/surveillance state. It's naive to think otherwise. During the
last three years there's been an internal conflict between various factions of the
military/security/ surveillance state, but generally speaking they've done quite well under
Trump. In fact, when it comes to foreign policy it's almost as if Hillary had been elected
..
I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but I'm a little worried about Donald Trump. I'm
worried he may be on the verge of a sudden, major heart attack, or a stroke, or a fatal golfing
accident.
Food poisoning is another possibility. Or he could overdose on prescription medication. A
tanning bed mishap is not out of the question.
He could accidentally hang himself during autoerotic asphyxiation, or get shot by a
lone-wolf white supremacist terrorist trying to start the RaHoWa. The Russians could spray him
with that Novichok perfume.
There are any number of ways he could snuff it.
I don't mean to sound alarmist, but the Resistance is running out of non-lethal options for
removing Donald Trump from office. Here they are, in no particular order
Cute, but seriously: Trump has been pretty much hammered into toeing the party line. The
oligarchy still doesn't like him, and it has taken a lot of effort to reign in him, but
rhetoric aside he's currently governing a lot like Hilary Clinton would have. The borders are
still open to illegal immigrants and the rich have their cheap labor, we're still wasting
trillions on pointless winless foreign wars, our manufacturing base is pretty much hollowed
out, we're still shoveling trillions of dollars in direct and indirect subsidies to Wall
Street, big medicine is still busy with organized looting ('surprise medical billing',
anyone?), you get the idea.
Trump fought the swamp, and the swamp won. The 2020 election looks to be yet another heads
they win/tails we lose circus. Trump is in no danger, IMHO.
Unless Bernie gets the nomination. Now there's a politician that needs to worry about his
health
You're overlooking the obvious contingency plan for the Dems: Biden will recruit Terry Crews
or Tiny Lister for his VP candidate. Of course the Veep will have to dress transgender and
change their name to Cornpop, but that's a small price to pay. The future of the country is
at stake.
It has become clear to Bernie's supporters that they and the Deplorables have the same
enemies. The more the media demonize Bernie in the same way they demonize Trump the stronger
Bernie will become. Bernie doesn't need to be in Iowa. CNN and the NYT are working for him.
Fake news is also stupid news.
CJ Hopkins has to be one of the best political commentators alive today. His writing is
both hilarious and profound. No easy fete.
Yes, absolutely exquisite use of the language to ridicule the ridiculous "resistance."
Clearly, Andy Kaufmann (aka Latka Gravis) did not die: he slinked away to politics and
took on the mantle of Schifty the Popeyed Crackpot California Congressman.
Hopkins entertainingly finds the black humor in all of this -- but none of it is funny, even
darkly so -- the reason it isn't funny is that millions of decent, hard-working Americans are
chained to this amoral freak show via the coercive tax system.
Well nothing of value would be lost Trump hasn't drained the swamp, locked her up, or built
the wall. In fact the only people that have been arrested are Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.
I was going to add a string of "lols" tied together, but this place is classier than that.
Honestly it might be a good thing, because then Pence would be president. Think about it,
then the Evangelicals who the GoP relies on their vote, but have also been strung along for
decades getting none of the social issues addressed while, and then also being blamed for
everything from war in the Middle East to every social problem. I think it would be good for
them to see the righteous avatar Pence ascend to the throne, and then completely shun and
ignore them. Maybe that will finally wake them up.
When/where did he ever talk about reducing the Federal government to its original
constitutional functions? Never.
When/where did he ever talk about re-enforcing the Bill of Rights on the Feds? Never.
When/where did he ever talk about getting rid of the income tax and the IRS? Never.
When/where did he ever talk about getting rid of the FBI, the CIA, the Federal Reserve,
the NSA, the FDA, the CDC, the EPA [all unconstitutional] etc.etc. etc. ad infinitum? Never,
that's when.
He's just another in a long line of big-mouthed, self-important scam artists –
always, was, and always will be.
I feel sorry for the naive individuals who were fooled, and those who continue to be
fooled. Maybe at least some of them have now learned a valuable lesson.
@TG I said over a
year ago, around the time this Orange Cuck Master gave that SOTU speech and reversed almost
every policy promise he made to his 63 million supporters on his #1 most important issue,
i.e., the border wall, deporting illegals, ending DACA on day one, drastically reducing legal
immigration – which is even more destructive to the future of the GOP to win any more
elections than is illegal immigration, the whole package that got people off their sofas and
down to the polls to vote for him – that it was obvious to me that the globalist deep
state had finally gotten their hands on some kind of leverage over him and had finally put
their dog collar around his Orange lying neck.
Was it related to Jeffrey Epstein? Who knows. I'm sure it is possible, with the way
degenerate behavior seems to now run amok within the super rich and elitist circles. Heck,
the morals of the entire country have pretty much descended into the sewer these days.
I think we are in the last days of this empire's history. I see no White knight waiting in
the wings who will ride to the rescue, and if one did emerge – only half of the country
would support them and the other half of totalitarian, sexual and moral degenerates would
want to kill him.
What we need is a collapse and breakup of America.
@Nancy O'Brien
Simpson Sept 24, 2019: "The future does not belong to the globalists." -Donald
Trump declares during his speech to UN General Assembly
Sept 24 later that day: "The President must be held accountable" -Nancy Pelosi
declares during her official launch of impeachment inquiry
Globalism is the ideological, economic and political platform thru which the 'Empire of
the 0.1%' best achieves the looting and subjugation of the rest.
So in spite of all his other offerings to them, the Elites still desperately want Trump
out. That's why.
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. Influential Jewish
journalists like Bari Weiss and Jeffrey Goldberg, and Ronald Lauder's newly-founded
Anti-Semitism Accountability Project, have been Hitlerizing him, or, rather, Corbynizing
him. Obama has promised to "stop him," if necessary. 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.
Considering that nearly everything described happened to Trump in a similar manner. So two
ways of looking at this: Bernie should be able to easily get above this since Trump managed
to win despite a similar campaign, or accepting that Bernie is screwed and wonder if Trump
was initially treated fairly.
@Dutch Boy I like
some of Bernie's political stances, there are two of them, only two. But, they pale into
insignificance in comparison to the near hundred of other utterly inane and unworkable
political stances / policies which he advocates.
I'm a pretty run of the mill American. And, I'm an independent voter, although I lean
conservative. So, I don't believe my below expressed assessment and prediction is anything
but mainstream.
Bernie's toast and he's toast even without what appears to be a very concerted campaign by
the elites and the Democrats (hahaha, a distinction without a difference) to end any chance
that he'll be nominated.
As the author correctly points out, Trump will be re-elected if he survives the next 9
months to stand for re-election.
That said, Mr. Trump appears to be willing to betray his 2016 campaign position on
opposing America's endless wars as he appears to be willing to start a war with Iran. I feel
betrayed. If I'd have wanted more foreign wars and/or the deepening of already existing
foreign wars I'd have voted for Killary.
So, although I'll vote in the 2020 Federal elections, I'll leave the check boxes for
President on the ballot unchecked.
Trump excoriates Bolton in tweets this morning:
"For a guy who couldn't get approved for the Ambassador to the U.N. years ago, couldn't get
approved for anything since, 'begged' me for a non Senate approved job, which I gave him
despite many saying 'Don't do it, sir,' takes the job, mistakenly says 'Libyan Model' on T.V.,
and ... many more mistakes of judgement [sic], gets fired because frankly, if I listened to
him, we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty &
untrue book. All Classified National Security. Who would do this?"
IMO, Trump is a fantastic POTUS for this day and age, but he wasn't on his A game when he
brought Bolton onboard. He should have known better and, was, apparently, warned. Maybe Trump
thought he could control him and use him as a threatening pit bull. Mistake. Bolton is greedy
as well as vindictive.
"... A chorus of neocons rushed to second his praise: Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer and prominent Never Trumper, lauded Trump's intestinal fortitude, while Representative Liz Cheney hailed Trump's "decisive action." It was Carlson who was left sputtering about the forever wars. "Washington has wanted war with Iran for decades," Carlson said . "They still want it now. Let's hope they haven't finally gotten it." ..."
"... Neoconservatism as a foreign policy ideology has been badly discredited over the last two decades, thanks to the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the blinding flash of one drone strike, neoconservatism was easily able to reinsert itself in the national conversation. It now appears that Trump intends to make Soleimani's killing -- which has nearly drawn the U.S. into yet another conflict in the Middle East and, in typical neoconservative fashion, ended up backfiring and undercutting American goals in the region -- a central part of his 2020 reelection bid . ..."
"... The neocons are starting to realize that Trump's presidency, at least when it comes to foreign policy, is no less vulnerable to hijacking than those of previous Republican presidents, including the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The leading hawks inside and outside the administration shaping its approach to Iran include Robert O'Brien, Bolton's disciple and successor as national security adviser; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook; Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; David Wurmser, a former adviser to Bolton; and Senators Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton. Perhaps no one better exemplifies the neocon ethos better than Cotton, a Kristol protégé who soaked up the teachings of the political philosopher Leo Strauss while studying at Harvard. Others who have been baying for conflict with Iran include Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is now Trump's personal lawyer and partner in Ukrainian crime. In June 2018, Giuliani went to Paris to address the National Council of Resistance of Iran, whose parent organization is the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MeK. Giuliani, who has been on the payroll of the MeK for years, demanded -- what else? -- regime change. ..."
"... The fresh charge into battle of what Sidney Blumenthal once aptly referred to as an ideological light brigade brings to mind Hobbes's observation in Leviathan : "All men that are ambitious of military command are inclined to continue the causes of war; and to stir up trouble and sedition; for there is no honor military but by war; nor any such hope to mend an ill game, as by causing a new shuffle." The neocons, it appears, have caused a new shuffle. ..."
"... the killing of Soleimani revealed that the neocon military-intellectual complex is very much still intact, with the ability to spring back to life from a state of suspended animation in an instant. Its hawkish tendencies remain widely prevalent not only in the Republican Party but also in the media, the think-tank universe, and in the liberal-hawk precincts of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the influence and reach of the anti-war right remains nascent; even if this contingent has popular support, it doesn't enjoy much backing in Washington beyond the mood swings of the mercurial occupant of the Oval Office. ..."
"... The neocons supplied the patina of intellectual legitimacy for policies that might once have seemed outré. ..."
"... But it was the neoconservatives, not the paleocons, who amassed influence in the 1990s and took over the GOP's foreign policy wing. Veteran neocons like Michael Ledeen were joined by a younger generation of journalists and policymakers that included Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol (who founded The Weekly Standard in 1994), Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas J. Feith. The neocons consistently pushed for a hard line against Iraq and Iran. In his 1996 book, Freedom Betrayed, for example, Ledeen, an expert on Italian fascism, declared that the right, rather than the left, should adhere to the revolutionary tradition of toppling dictatorships. In his 2002 book, The War Against the Terror Masters, Ledeen stated , "Creative destruction is our middle name. We tear down the old order every day." ..."
"... Still, a number of neocons, including David Frum, Max Boot, Anne Applebaum, Jennifer Rubin, and Kristol himself, have continued to condemn Trump vociferously for his thuggish instincts at home and abroad. They are not seeking high-profile government careers in the Trump administration and so have been able to reinvent themselves as domestic regime-change advocates, something they have done quite skillfully. In fact, their writings are more pungent now that they have been liberated from the costive confines of the movement. ..."
"... And so, urged on by Mike Pompeo, a staunch evangelical Christian, and Iraq War–era figures like David Wurmser , Trump is apparently prepared to target Iran for destruction. In a tweet, he dismissed his national security adviser, the Bolton protégé Robert O'Brien, for declaring that the strike against Soleimani would force Iran to negotiate: "Actually, I couldn't care less if they negotiate," he said . "Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons and 'don't kill your protesters.'" Neocons have been quick to recognize the new, more belligerent Trump -- and the potential maneuvering room he's now created for their movement. Jonathan S. Tobin, a former editor at Commentary and a contributor to National Review , rejoiced in Haaretz that "the neo-isolationist wing of the GOP, for which Carlson is a spokesperson, is losing the struggle for control of Trump's foreign policy." Tobin, however, added an important caveat: "When it comes to Iran, Trump needs no prodding from the likes of Bolton to act like a neoconservative. Just as important, the entire notion of anyone -- be it Carlson, former White House senior advisor Steve Bannon, or any cabinet official like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo -- being able to control Trump is a myth." ..."
"... One reason is institutional. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Hudson Institute, and AEI have all been sounding the tocsin about Iran for decades. Once upon a time, the neocons were outliers. Now they're the new establishment, exerting a kind of gravitational pull on debate, pulling politicians and a variety of news organizations into their orbit. The Hudson Institute, for example, recently held an event with former Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who exhorted Iran's Revolutionary Guard to "peel away" from the mullahs and endorsed the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign. ..."
"... Meanwhile, Wolfowitz, also writing in the Times , has popped up to warn Trump against trying to leave Syria: "To paraphrase Trotsky's aphorism about war, you may not be interested in the Middle East, but the Middle East is interested in you." With the "both-sides" ethos that prevails in the mainstream media, neocon ideas are just as good as any others for National Public Radio or The Washington Post, whose editorial page, incidentally, championed the Iraq War and has been imbued with a neocon, or at least liberal-hawk, tinge ever since Fred Hiatt took it over in 2000. ..."
"... Above all, Trump hired Michael Flynn as his first national security adviser. Flynn was the co-author with Ledeen of a creepy tract called Field of Fight, in which they demanded a crusade against the Muslim world ..."
"... At a minimum, the traditional Republican hard-line foreign policy approach has now fused with neoconservatism so that the two are virtually indistinguishable. At a maximum, neoconservatism shapes the dominant foreign policy worldview in Washington, which is why Democrats were falling over themselves to assure voters that Soleimani -- a "bad guy" -- had it coming. Any objections that his killing might boomerang back on the U.S. are met with cries from the right that Democrats are siding with the enemy. This truly is a policy of "maximum pressure" at home and abroad. ..."
There was a time not so long ago, before President Donald Trump's surprise decision early this year to liquidate the Iranian commander
Qassem Soleimani, when it appeared that America's neoconservatives were floundering. The president was itching to withdraw U.S. forces
from Afghanistan. He was staging exuberant photo-ops with a beaming Kim Jong Un. He was reportedly willing to hold talks with the
president of Iran, while clearly preferring trade wars to hot ones.
Indeed, this past summer, Trump's anti-interventionist supporters in the conservative media were riding high. When he refrained
from attacking Iran in June after it shot down an American drone, Fox News host Tucker Carlson
declared , "Donald Trump was elected president precisely to keep us out of disaster like war with Iran." Carlson went on to condemn
the hawks in Trump's Cabinet and their allies, who he claimed were egging the president on -- familiar names to anyone who has followed
the decades-long neoconservative project of aggressively using military force to topple unfriendly regimes and project American power
over the globe. "So how did we get so close to starting [a war]?"
he asked. "One of [the hawks'] key allies is the national security adviser of the United States. John Bolton is an old friend
of Bill Kristol's. Together they helped plan the Iraq War."
By the time Trump met with Kim in late June, becoming the first sitting president to set foot on North Korean soil, Bolton was
on the outs. Carlson was on the president's North Korean junket, while Trump's national security adviser was in Mongolia. "John Bolton
is absolutely a hawk,"
Trump
told NBC in June. "If it was up to him, he'd take on the whole world at one time, OK?" In September, Bolton was fired.
The standard-bearer of the Republican Party had made clear his distaste for the neocons' belligerent approach to global affairs,
much to the neocons' own entitled chagrin. As recently as December, Bolton, now outside the tent pissing in, was hammering Trump
for "bluffing" through an announcement that the administration wanted North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. "The
idea that we are somehow exerting maximum pressure on North Korea is just unfortunately not true,"
Bolton told Axios . Then Trump ordered the drone
strike on Soleimani, drastically escalating a simmering conflict between Iran and the United States. All of a sudden the roles were
reversed, with Bolton praising the president and asserting that Soleimani's death was "
the first step to regime change in Tehran ." A chorus of neocons rushed to second his praise: Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former
CIA officer and prominent Never Trumper, lauded Trump's intestinal fortitude, while Representative Liz Cheney hailed Trump's
"decisive action." It was Carlson
who was left sputtering about the forever wars. "Washington has wanted war with Iran for decades,"
Carlson said . "They
still want it now. Let's hope they haven't finally gotten it."
Neoconservatism as a foreign policy ideology has been badly discredited over the last two decades, thanks to the debacles
in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the blinding flash of one drone strike, neoconservatism was easily able to reinsert itself in the
national conversation. It now appears that Trump intends to make Soleimani's killing -- which has nearly drawn the U.S. into yet
another conflict in the Middle East and, in typical neoconservative fashion, ended up backfiring and undercutting American goals
in the region -- a central part of his
2020 reelection bid
.
The anti-interventionist right is freaking out. Writing in American Greatness, Matthew Boose
declared , "[T]he Trump movement, which was generated out of opposition to the foreign policy blob and its endless wars, was
revealed this week to have been co-opted to a great extent by neoconservatives seeking regime change." James Antle, the editor of
The American Conservative, a publication founded in 2002 to oppose the Iraq War,
asked , "Did
Trump betray the anti-war right?"
In the blinding flash of one drone strike, neoconservatism was easily able to reinsert itself in the national conversation.
Their concerns are not unmerited. The neocons are starting to realize that Trump's presidency, at least when it comes to foreign
policy, is no less vulnerable to hijacking than those of previous Republican presidents, including the administrations of Ronald
Reagan and George W. Bush. The leading hawks inside and outside the administration shaping its approach to Iran include Robert O'Brien,
Bolton's disciple and successor as national security adviser; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Special Representative for Iran Brian
Hook; Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; David Wurmser, a former adviser to Bolton; and Senators
Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton. Perhaps no one better exemplifies the neocon ethos better than Cotton, a Kristol protégé who soaked
up the teachings of the political philosopher Leo Strauss while studying at Harvard. Others who have been baying for conflict with
Iran include Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is now Trump's personal lawyer and partner in Ukrainian crime. In
June 2018, Giuliani went to Paris to address the National Council of Resistance of Iran, whose parent organization is the Iranian
opposition group Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MeK. Giuliani, who has been on the payroll of the MeK for years, demanded -- what else? --
regime change.
The fresh charge into battle of what Sidney Blumenthal once aptly referred to as an ideological light brigade brings to mind
Hobbes's observation in Leviathan : "All men that are ambitious of military command are inclined to continue the causes of
war; and to stir up trouble and sedition; for there is no honor military but by war; nor any such hope to mend an ill game, as by
causing a new shuffle." The neocons, it appears, have caused a new shuffle.
Donald Trump has not dragged us into war with Iran (yet). But the killing of Soleimani revealed that the neocon military-intellectual
complex is very much still intact, with the ability to spring back to life from a state of suspended animation in an instant. Its
hawkish tendencies remain widely prevalent not only in the Republican Party but also in the media, the think-tank universe, and in
the liberal-hawk precincts of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the influence and reach of the anti-war right remains nascent; even
if this contingent has popular support, it doesn't enjoy much backing in Washington beyond the mood swings of the mercurial occupant
of the Oval Office.
But there was a time when the neoconservative coalition was not so entrenched -- and what has turned out to be its provisional
state of exile lends some critical insight into how it managed to hang around respectable policymaking circles in recent years, and
how it may continue to shape American foreign policy for the foreseeable future. When the neoconservatives came on the scene in the
late 1960s, the Republican old guard viewed them as interlopers. The neocons, former Trotskyists turned liberals who broke with the
Democratic Party over its perceived weakness on the Cold War, stormed the citadel of Republican ideology by emphasizing the relationship
between ideas and political reality. Irving Kristol, one of the original neoconservatives,
mused in 1985 that " what communists call the theoretical organs always end up through a filtering process influencing a lot
of people who don't even know they're being influenced. In the end, ideas rule the world because even interests are defined by ideas."
At pivotal moments in modern American foreign policy, the neocons supplied the patina of intellectual legitimacy for policies
that might once have seemed outré. Jeane Kirkpatrick's seminal 1979 essay in Commentary, "Dictatorships and Double Standards,"
essentially set forth the lineaments of the Reagan doctrine. She assailed Jimmy Carter for attacking friendly authoritarian leaders
such as the shah of Iran and Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza. She contended that authoritarian regimes might molt into democracies,
while totalitarian regimes would remain impregnable to outside influence, American or otherwise. Ronald Reagan read the essay and
liked it. He named Kirkpatrick his ambassador to the United Nations, where she became the most influential neocon of the era for
her denunciations of Arab regimes and defenses of Israel. Her tenure was also defined by the notion that it was perfectly acceptable
for America to cozy up to noxious regimes, from apartheid South Africa to the shah's Iran, as part of the greater mission to oppose
the red menace.
The neocons supplied the patina of intellectual legitimacy for policies that might once have seemed outré.
There was always tension between Reagan's affinity for authoritarian regimes and his hard-line opposition to Communist ones. His
sunny persona never quite gelled with Kirkpatrick's more gelid view that communism was an immutable force, and in 1982, in a major
speech to the British Parliament at Westminster emphasizing the power of democracy and free speech, he declared his intent to end
the Cold War on American terms. As Reagan's second term progressed and democracy and free speech actually took hold in the waning
days of the Soviet Union, many hawks declared that it was all a sham. Indeed, not a few neocons were livid, claiming that Reagan
was appeasing the Soviet Union. But after the USSR collapsed, they retroactively blessed him as the anti-Communist warrior par excellence
and the model for the future. The right was now a font of happy talk about the dawn of a new age of liberty based on free-market
economics and American firepower.
The fall of communism, in other words, set the stage for a new neoconservative paradigm. Francis Fukuyama's The End of History
appeared a decade after Kirkpatrick's essay in Commentary and just before the Berlin Wall was breached on November 9,
1989. Here was a sharp break with the saturnine, realpolitik approach that Kirkpatrick had championed. Irving Kristol regarded it
as hopelessly utopian -- "I don't believe a word of it," he wrote in a response to Fukuyama. But a younger generation of neocons,
led by Irving's son, Bill Kristol, and Robert Kagan, embraced it. Fukuyama argued that Western, liberal democracy, far from being
menaced, was now the destination point of the train of world history. With communism vanquished, the neocons, bearing the good word
from Fukuyama, formulated a new goal: democracy promotion, by force if necessary, as a way to hasten history and secure the global
order with the U.S. at its head. The first Gulf War in 1991, precipitated by Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, tested the neocons'
resolve and led to a break in the GOP -- one that would presage the rise of Donald Trump. For decades, Patrick Buchanan had been
regularly inveighing against what he came to call the neocon "
amen corner" in and around the
Washington centers of power, including A.M. Rosenthal and Charles Krauthammer, both of whom endorsed the '91 Gulf War. The neocons
were frustrated by the measured approach taken by George H.W. Bush. He refused to crow about the fall of the Berlin Wall and kicked
the Iraqis out of Kuwait but declined to invade Iraq and "finish the job," as his hawkish critics would later put it. Buchanan then
ran for the presidency in 1992 on an America First platform, reviving a paleoconservative tradition that would partly inform Trump's
dark horse run in 2016.
But it was the neoconservatives, not the paleocons, who amassed influence in the 1990s and took over the GOP's foreign policy
wing. Veteran neocons like Michael Ledeen were joined by a younger generation of journalists and policymakers that included Robert
Kagan, Bill Kristol (who founded The Weekly Standard in 1994), Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas J. Feith. The neocons consistently
pushed for a hard line against Iraq and Iran. In his 1996 book, Freedom Betrayed, for example, Ledeen, an expert on Italian
fascism, declared that the right, rather than the left, should adhere to the revolutionary tradition of toppling dictatorships. In
his 2002 book, The War Against the Terror Masters, Ledeen
stated , "Creative destruction
is our middle name. We tear down the old order every day."
We all know the painful consequences of the neocons' obsession with creative destruction. In his second inaugural address, three
and a half years after 9/11, George W. Bush cemented
neoconservative ideology into presidential doctrine: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of
democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." The neocons'
hubris had already turned into nemesis in Iraq, paving the way for an anti-war candidate in Barack Obama.
But it was Trump -- by virtue of running as a Republican -- who appeared to sound neoconservatism's death knell. He announced
his Buchananesque policy of "America First" in a speech at Washington's Mayflower Hotel in 2016, signaling that he would not adhere
to the long-standing Reaganite principles that had animated the party establishment.
The pooh-bahs of the GOP openly declared their disdain and revulsion for Trump, leading directly to the rise of the Never Trump
movement, which was dominated by neocons. The Never Trumpers ended up functioning as an informal blacklist for Trump once he became
president. Elliott Abrams, for example, who was being touted for deputy secretary of state in February 2017, was rejected when Steve
Bannon alerted Trump to his earlier heresies (though he later reemerged, in January 2019, as Trump's special envoy to Venezuela,
where he has pushed for regime change). Not a few other members of the Republican foreign policy establishment suffered similar fates.
Kristol's The Weekly Standard, which had held the neoconservative line through the Bush years and beyond , folded
in 2018. Even the office building that used to house the American Enterprise Institute and the Standard, on the corner of
17th and M streets in Washington, has been torn down, leaving an empty, boarded-up site whose symbolism speaks for itself.
Still, a number of neocons, including David Frum, Max Boot, Anne Applebaum, Jennifer Rubin, and Kristol himself, have continued
to condemn Trump vociferously for his thuggish instincts at home and abroad. They are not seeking high-profile government careers
in the Trump administration and so have been able to reinvent themselves as domestic regime-change advocates, something they have
done quite skillfully. In fact, their writings are more pungent now that they have been liberated from the costive confines of the
movement.
It was Trump -- by virtue of running as a Republican -- who appeared to sound neoconservatism's death knell.
But other neocons -- the ones who want to wield positions of influence and might -- have, more often than not, been able to hold
their noses. Stephen Wertheim, writing in The New York Review of Books, has perceptively dubbed this faction the anti-globalist
neocons. Led by John Bolton, they believe Trump performed a godsend by elevating the term globalism "from a marginal slur
to the central foil of American foreign policy and Republican politics,"
Wertheim argued . The U.S. need not
bother with pesky multilateral institutions or international agreements or the entire postwar order, for that matter -- it's now
America's way or the highway.
And so, urged on by Mike Pompeo, a staunch evangelical Christian,
and Iraq War–era figures like
David Wurmser , Trump is apparently prepared to target Iran for destruction. In a tweet, he dismissed his national security adviser,
the Bolton protégé Robert O'Brien, for declaring that the strike against Soleimani would force Iran to negotiate: "Actually, I couldn't
care less if they negotiate,"
he said . "Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons and 'don't kill your protesters.'" Neocons have been quick to recognize
the new, more belligerent Trump -- and the potential maneuvering room he's now created for their movement. Jonathan S. Tobin, a former
editor at Commentary and a contributor to National Review ,
rejoiced in Haaretz that "the neo-isolationist wing of the GOP, for which Carlson is a spokesperson, is losing the struggle
for control of Trump's foreign policy." Tobin, however, added an important caveat: "When it comes to Iran, Trump needs no prodding
from the likes of Bolton to act like a neoconservative. Just as important, the entire notion of anyone -- be it Carlson, former White
House senior advisor Steve Bannon, or any cabinet official like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo -- being able to control Trump is
a myth."
In other words, whether the neocons themselves are occupying top positions in the Trump administration is almost irrelevant. The
ideology itself has reemerged to a degree that even Trump himself seems hard pressed to resist it -- if he even wants to.
How were the neocons able to influence another Republican presidency, one that was ostensibly dedicated to curbing their sway?
One reason is institutional. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Hudson Institute, and AEI have all been sounding the
tocsin about Iran for decades. Once upon a time, the neocons were outliers. Now they're the new establishment, exerting a kind of
gravitational pull on debate, pulling politicians and a variety of news organizations into their orbit. The Hudson Institute, for
example, recently held an event with former Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who exhorted Iran's Revolutionary Guard to "peel away"
from the mullahs and endorsed the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign. The event was hosted by Michael Doran, a
former senior director on George W. Bush's National Security Council and a senior fellow at the institute, who
wrote in
The New York Times on January 3, "The United States has no choice, if it seeks to stay in the Middle East, but to check
Iran's military power on the ground." Then there's Jamie M. Fly, a former staffer to Senator Marco Rubio who was appointed this past
August to head Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; he previously co-authored an essay in Foreign Affairs contending that it isn't enough to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities: "If the United States seriously considers military action,
it would be better to plan an operation that not only strikes the nuclear program but aims to destabilize the regime, potentially
resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis once and for all."
Meanwhile, Wolfowitz, also writing in the Times , has
popped up to warn Trump against
trying to leave Syria: "To paraphrase Trotsky's aphorism about war, you may not be interested in the Middle East, but the Middle
East is interested in you." With the "both-sides" ethos that prevails in the mainstream media, neocon ideas are just as good as any
others for National Public Radio or The Washington Post, whose editorial page, incidentally, championed the Iraq War
and has been imbued with a neocon, or at least liberal-hawk, tinge ever since Fred Hiatt took it over in 2000.
But there are plenty of institutions in Washington, and neoconservatism's seemingly inescapable influence cannot be chalked up
to the swamp alone. Some etiolated form of what might be called Ledeenism lingered on before taking on new life at the outset of
the Trump administration. Trump's overt animus toward Muslims, for example, meant that figures such as Frank Gaffney, who opposed
arms-control treaties with Moscow as a member of the Reagan administration and resigned in protest of the 1987 Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty, achieved a new prominence. During the Obama administration, Gaffney, the head of the Center for Security Policy,
claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the White House and National Security Agency.
Above all, Trump hired Michael Flynn as his first national security adviser. Flynn was the co-author with Ledeen of a
creepy tract called Field of Fight, in which they demanded a crusade against the Muslim world: "We're in a world
war against a messianic mass movement of evil people." It was one of many signs that Trump was susceptible to ideas of a civilizational
battle against
"Islamo-fascism,"
which Norman Podhoretz and other neocons argued, in the wake of 9/11, would lead to World War III. In their millenarian ardor
and inflexible support for Israel, the neocons find themselves in a position precisely cognate to evangelical Christians -- both
groups of true believers trying to enact their vision through an apostate. But perhaps the neoconservatives' greatest strength lies
in the realm of ideas that Irving Kristol identified more than three decades ago. The neocons remain the winners of that battle,
not because their policies have made the world or the U.S. more secure, but by default -- because there are so few genuinely alternative
ideas that are championed with equal zeal. The foreign policy discussion surrounding Soleimani's killing -- which accelerated Iran's
nuclear weapons program, diminished America's influence in the Middle East, and entrenched Iran's theocratic regime -- has largely
occurred on a spectrum of the neocons' making. It is a discussion that accepts premises of the beneficence of American military might
and hegemony -- Hobbes's "ill game" -- and naturally bends the universe toward more war.
At a minimum, the traditional Republican hard-line foreign policy approach has now fused with neoconservatism so that the
two are virtually indistinguishable. At a maximum, neoconservatism shapes the dominant foreign policy worldview in Washington, which
is why Democrats were falling over themselves to assure voters that Soleimani -- a "bad guy" -- had it coming. Any objections that
his killing might boomerang back on the U.S. are met with cries from the right that Democrats are siding with the enemy. This truly
is a policy of "maximum pressure" at home and abroad.
As Trump takes an extreme hard line against Iran, the neoconservatives may ultimately get their long-held wish of a war with the
ayatollahs. When it ends in a fresh disaster, they can always argue that it only failed because it wasn't prosecuted vigorously enough
-- and the shuffle will begin again.
Jacob Heilbrunn is the editor of The National Interest and the author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons.
@ JacobHeilbrunn
Trump doesn't have a thing to fear he's been a huge asset to the security state, whose
Russiagate theatrics provided mainstream media news with just enough bullshit to distract the
public, so that Trump could never be aggressively attacked from the Left. For the last three
years, all the "resistance oxygen" was sucked up by the warmongering against Russia.
Meanwhile, this enabled Trump to successfully pass a slew of reactionary legislation and
fasttrack numerous lifetime appointments to the federal court without barely a whimper from
the phony Dems. In fact, the Democrats unanimously voted for Trump's military budget. The
same idiot they called unhinged was given the power to start WWIII.
No matter how much liberals complain–the wealthy are happy with the status quo and
the right-wing Evangelicals are as pleased as punch. However, there's quite a large number of
disaffected Trump voters looking at Tulsi, but could eventually come Bernie's way.
Especially, if Tulsi endorses Bernie. This discontented bunch includes the working-poor, the
indebted young, and all the folks who are not doing economically well under Trump's fabulous
stock market. It especially includes the military families who were promised an end to the
miserable foreign interventions. Bernie, has some appeal to these folks. His platform
certainly resonates with all those who can barely pay their health insurance
premiums, and whose salary is NOT nearly considered a living wage. But Bernie could win
hands-down and steal Trump's base, if he only had the courage to UNAPOLOGETICALLY speak out
against US imperialism and connect all the dots explaining how the security state plundered
the treasury for decades f–king over the working-class.
"... This may well be a fatal mistake of his. And while i have thought Trump to be the lesser evil compared to Clinton, i am now at a point where i seriously fear what his ignorance and slavery to the neocon doctrine may bring the world in 4 more years. ..."
"... besides much talk and showmastery, he has not really changed anything substantial in this regard; Nothing that could seriously change the course. ..."
"... So he stripped himself of any true argument to vote for him, besides for ultra neocons and ultra fundamental evangelical Christians. And even they don't seem to trust in his intentions. ..."
Thank you Colonel; I have been waiting for your take on this. And thank you for opening the
comments again. If there is a problem with my post, please point them out to me.
And i agree. This may well be a fatal mistake of his. And while i have thought Trump
to be the lesser evil compared to Clinton, i am now at a point where i seriously fear what
his ignorance and slavery to the neocon doctrine may bring the world in 4 more
years.
Still, immigration is another important issue, but besides much talk and showmastery,
he has not really changed anything substantial in this regard; Nothing that could seriously
change the course.
So he stripped himself of any true argument to vote for him, besides for ultra neocons
and ultra fundamental evangelical Christians. And even they don't seem to trust in his
intentions.
And China? He may have changed some small to medium problems for the better, but nothing
is changed in the overall trend of the US continuing to loose while China emerges as the next
global superpower.
It may have been slowed for some years; It may even have been accelerated, now that China
has been waken up to the extend of the threat posed by the US.
North Korea? They surely will never denuclearize. Even less after how Trump showed the
world how he treats international law and even allies.
With Trump its all photo ops and showmanship. And while he senses what issues are
important, it is worth a damn if he butchers the execution, or values photo ops more than
substantial progress.
Not that i would see a democratic alternative. No. But at least now everyone who wants to
know can see, that he is neither one.
4 years ago, democracy was corrupted, but at least there was someone who presented himself
as an alternative to that rotten establishment.
Now, even that small ray of light is as dark as it gets.
And that is the saddest thing. What worth is democracy, when one does not even have a true
alternative, besides Tulsi on endless wars, and Bernie for the socialist ;) ?
I just have watched again the Ken Burns documentary of the civil war. I know it is not
perfect (Though i love Shelby Foote's parts), but the sense of the divided 2 Americas there,
is still the same today. Today, America seems to break apart culturally, socially and
economically on the fault lines that have sucked it into the civil war over 150 years
ago.
And just like with seeing no real way out politically, i sadly can see no way to heal and
unite this country, as it never was truly united after the civil war, if not ever before. As
you Colonel said some weeks ago, the US were never a nation.
And looking at other countries, only a major national crisis may change this.
A most sad realization. But this hold true also for other western countries, including my
own.
But why are Trump and Pompeo continuing the policy of Obama and Clinton there? Remember
Trump said he would pay off the national debt in 8 years? How about stop spending our money
on the War Party's foreign interventions for a starter.
On January 20, Donald G. Trump completed his third year
in office. My one blog that received five-digit Facebook shares predicted Trump would lose in
2016. I was spectacularly wrong but not alone. Even the Las Vegas bookies thought Clinton was a
shoo-in with her unbeatable two-punch knockout of (1) I'm not Trump and (2) World War III with
the Russians would be peachy at least until the bombs start falling. What could possibly have
gone wrong?
More to the point, the unexpected victory of Trump was the historical reaction to the
bankruptcy of Clinton-Bush-Obama neoliberalism. Now after three years of Mr. Trump, what's
left?
During the George W. Bush years – he's now viewed
favorably by a majority of Democrats – Democrats could wring their tied hands to the
accolades of their base. My own Democrat Representative Lynn Woolsey stood up daily in the
House and denounced Bush's Iraq war. For a while there was a resurgent peace movement against
US military adventures in the Middle East, which was even backed by some left-leaning
liberals.
But the moment that Obama ascended to the Oval Office, the Iraq War became Obama's war,
Bush's secretary of war Gates was carried over to administer it, and Woolsey forgot she was for
peace. No matter, Obama, the peace candidate, would fix it. Just give him a chance. For eight
years, Obama was given a chance and the peace movement went quiescent.
Trump takes office
Surely a Republican president, I thought, would harken a rebirth of the peace movement given
the ever-inflated war budget and the proliferation of US wars. The US is
officially at war with Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Niger. To the
official list are any number of other states subject to drone attacks such as Iran, Pakistan,
and Mali. And then there are some 30 countries targeted with illegal
unilateral coercive measures as form of economic warfare. Yet a funny thing happened on the
way to the demonstration.
With Republicans in control of both Congress and the White House, my expectation was that
Democrats would safely take a giant step to the right in accordance with their Wall Street
funders, while safely keeping a baby step to the left of the Republicans appeasing their
liberal-leaning base. To certain extent, this is what happened with Trump's tax cut for the
wealthy. The Democrats could and did claim that their hands were once again tied wink, wink to
their Wall Street handlers.
Yet on many more fundamental issues, the Democrats did not take advantage of paying lip
service to their base's economic priorities by attacking the Republicans on their weak left
flank. No, the Democrats mounted an assault on the Republicans from the right with what
The Hill
called Pelosi's "fiscally hawkish pay-as-you-go rules," increasing the
war budget , and launching
Russiagate . Instead of appealing to working people on bread and butter issues, the
Democrats gave us turbo-charged identity politics.
Bernie Sanders had raised genuine issues regarding runaway income inequality and plutocratic
politics. However, Sanders was suppressed by a hostile corporate press and an antagonistic
Democratic Party establishment, which arguably preferred to risk a Republican victory in 2016
than support anyone who questioned neoliberal orthodoxy.
Sanders' issues got asphyxiated in the juggernaut of Russiagate. His legacy – so far
– has been to help contain a progressive insurgency within the Democratic Party, the
perennial graveyard of social movements. Had Mr. Sanders not come along, the Democrats –
now the full-throated party of neoliberal austerity at home and imperial war abroad –
would have needed to invent a leftish Pied Piper to keep their base in the fold.
So, after three years of Trump, the more than ever needed mass
movement against militarism has yet to resurrect in force, notwithstanding promising
demonstrations in immediate response to Trump's assassination of Iran's Major General
Soleimani on January 3 with more demonstrations to come.
Imperialism and neoliberalism
Dubya proved his imperialist mettle with the second Iraq war; Obama with the destruction of
Libya. But Trump has yet to start a war of his own. Though, in the case of Iran, it was not
from lack of trying. The last US president with a similar imperialist failing was the one-term
Carter. But Trump has 12 and possibly 60 more months to go.
In his short time in office, Trump has packed his administration with former war industry
executives, increased troops in Afghanistan, approved selling arms to the coup government of
Ukraine, made the largest arms sale in US history to Saudi Arabia, supported the Saudi's war
against Yemen, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and killed more civilians in
drone strikes than "Obomber." In the empire's "backyard," Trump tightened the blockade on Cuba,
intensified Obama's sanctions on Venezuela to a blockade, oversaw the devastation of Puerto
Rico , and backed the right wing coup in Bolivia. The Venezuelan
Embassy Protectors are fighting the US government for a fair trial, while Julian Assange
faces extradition to the US.
Now that Trump has declared the
defeat of ISIS , the US National Defense Strategy is "interstate strategic competition"
with Russia and China. This official guiding document of the US imperial state explicitly calls
for "build[ing] a more lethal force" for world domination. Giving credit where it is due, back
in 2011, Hillary Clinton and Obama had presciently decreed a " pivot to Asia ," targeting
China.
Closer to home Trump has been busy deregulating environmental protections, dismantling the
National Park system, weaponizing
social media , and undoing net neutrality, while withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on
global warming. What's not to despise?
Russiagate and impeachment
Russiagate
– in case you have a real life and are not totally absorbed in mass media – is
about a conspiracy that the Russians and not the US Electoral College are responsible for
Hillary Clinton not getting her rightful turn to be President of the United States.
For the better part of the last three years under the shadow of Trump in the White House, a
spook emerged from the netherworld of the deep state and has toiled mightily to expose
wrongdoers. This man, former head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, we are told is only one miracle
short of being canonized in blue state heaven. Yet even he failed to indict a single American
for colluding with Russia, though he was able to hand out indictments to Americans for other
wrongdoings not related to Russia.
Undeterred by this investigation to nowhere, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi initiated
impeachment proceedings against the sitting president in the Democrat's first successful step
to promote Mike Pence as the next POTUS.
When an unelected and unaccountable CIA operative in secret collusion with opposition
politicians (e.g., Adam Schiff) and with backing from his agency seeks to take down a
constitutionally elected president, that is cause for concern. Operating under the cloak of
anonymity and with privileged access to information, national security operatives skilled in
the craft of espionage have the undemocratic means to manipulate and even depose elected
officials.
What has arisen is an emboldened national security state. The CIA, lest we forget, is the
clandestine agency whose mission is to use any means necessary to affect "regime change" in
countries that dare to buck the empire. Latin American leftists used to quip that the US has
never suffered a coup because there is no US embassy in Washington. There may not be a US
embassy there, but the CIA and the rest of the US security establishment are more than ever
present and pose a danger to democracy.
Now Obama's former Director of National Intelligence and serial
perjurer James Clapper holds the conflicted role of pundit on CNN while still retaining his
top
security clearance . Likewise, Obama's former CIA director, torture apologist, and fellow
perjurer John Brennan holds forth on NBC News and MSNBC with his security
clearance intact .
Class trumps partisan differences
The Democrats and Republicans mortally combat on the superficial, while remaining united in
their bedrock class loyalty to the rule of capital and US world hegemony. The first article of
the Democrat-backed impeachment is the president's "abuse of power." Yet, amidst the heat of
the House impeachment hearings, the Democrats, by an overwhelming majority, helped renew the
Patriot
Act , which gives the president war time authority to shred the constitution.
Contrary to the utterances of the Democratic presidential candidates
on the campaign trail about limiting US military spending, the latest $738 billion National
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is $22 billion over the last. The Democratic Progressive
Caucus didn't even bother to whip members to oppose the bill. On December 11, in an orgy of
bi-partisan love, the NDAA bill passed by a landslide vote of 377-48.
President Trump tweeted "Wow!" Democratic Party leader and House Armed Services Committee
Chairman Adam Smith called the bill "the
most progressive defense bill we have passed in decades."
This bill gifts twelve more Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets than Trump had requested and
green-lights funding of Trump's border wall with Mexico. Stripped from the bipartisan NDAA
"compromise" bill were provisions to prohibit Trump from launching a war on Iran without
Congressional authorization. Similarly dropped were limits to US participation in the genocidal
war in Yemen.
A new Space Force is authorized to militarize the heavens. Meanwhile the Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists has set the doomsday clock at 2 minutes before
midnight. Unfortunately, the Democrat's concern about Trump's abuse of power does not extend to
such existential matters as nuclear war.
Trump's renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (i.e., USMCA), an acknowledged
disaster , was renewed
with bipartisan support. On the domestic front, Trump cut food stamps, Medicaid, and
reproductive health services over the barely audible demurs of the supine Democrats.
Revolt of the dispossessed
Behind the façade of the impeachment spectacle – Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz
are now on Trump's legal team – is a ruling class consensus that trumps partisan
differences. As political economist Rob Urie perceptively observed
:
The American obsession with electoral politics is odd in that 'the people' have so little
say in electoral outcomes and that the outcomes only dance around the edges of most people's
lives. It isn't so much that the actions of elected leaders are inconsequential as that other
factors -- economic, historical, structural and institutional, do more to determine
'politics.'
In the highly contested 2016 presidential contest, nearly half the eligible US voters opted out, not
finding enough difference among the contenders to leave home. 2020 may be an opportunity; an
opening for an alternative to neoliberal austerity at home and imperial wars abroad lurching to
an increasingly oppressive national security state. The campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi
Gabbord and before them Occupy point to a popular insurgency. Mass protests of the dispossessed
are rocking
France , India ,
Colombia
, Chile , and
perhaps here soon.
I'm a former Trump voter who could vote for Warren or Sanders but not Biden. Trump has been
the biggest disappointment of my political life, and I'll never forgive him for the failures
on immigration, but Biden and bis family looks to be at least as personally sleazy and
corrupt as the Trumps, if not as outright sickening.
Well, I'm a non-Democrat leftist (except for conservative leanings on social issues and a
vehemently anti-war posture that is a minority view on both the left and right). I have voted
for third-party candidates for President most of my life (and I'm a septuagenarian). For
reasons of foreign policy and economics, I would probably vote for either Sanders or Warren,
at least if they don't get too bonkers on identity politics. But there is no way I would vote
for any of the other Democratic contenders, and there is no way I would vote for Trump.
For what it's worth, I think the whole frenzy to defeat Trump no matter what is overblown.
Except for the Twitter feed, I don't see how Trump has actually governed much differently
from any other contemporary Republican. The difference between Trump and, say Ted Cruz, or
Marco Rubio, is mostly style, not policy.
That last sentence is true. But it is style that really matters to many Democrats. Obama was
their ideal President almost entirely because of his style.
And Trump's style is what attracts his hard core supporters.
If that means Uncle Joe, then Trump may bloody well already uncork the champagne. Remember
that recent Iranian debacle of his, which is already starting being forgotten? That was the
*only* real chance for Democrats to look solid in the Senate when trying to impeach him. The
only way to make Republican senators look dishonest and partisan when defending him. An
unexpected and unprovoked electoral gift to them from Trump (a would-have-been-serious gift -
read Daniel Larison's articles as to how many American voters, no matter their partisan
leanings, are anti-war now). How did the DNC manage that gift? Exactly. By directly bringing
it to the trash bin without a moment of hesitation and keeping on desperately clinging to the
politically stillborn clownery around Ukraine which will allow the Republican senators to
laugh their Democratic colleagues out of the stage and seal Trump's victory the very moment
the said clownery is brought to the upper chamber of the parliament. Now Democrats look like
a poor feller in front of an insurmountable wall, who, having witnessed a door which
magically/quantumly appeared in that wall, screamed "To battle!/Arriva!/Kovfefe!", slammed
the said door shut, industriously broke the handle so that it could never be opened again in
the quantum dimension he exists and resumed his attempts to - how to put it mildly? - shatter
the reinforced concrete with his forehead.
Trump's increase in the military budget blows every claim about Trump rebelling against the
general out of the water. Also, firing generals from the second career civilian positions
they were never qualified for in the first place simply isn't "firing" them, especially not
in any sense Trump "Your'e fired!" would consider as firing. Trump can be as abusive as he
wants, just like he is with everyone apparently: Some officers will do anything but fight an
equal enemy for high rank, including eating Trump's shit, then smiling. In many respects the
entire US military is a mercenary army and mercenaries are not really good at serious
fighting with real opponents. (In other respects, the lower ranks of the military are turning
into a weird version of Mamelukes or Janissaries, a religiously defined service caste with
temptations to rule. But military rule in a giant country is quite difficult.)
Further, if there is a deep state, the generals who hated Clinton and the FBI who hated
Clinton are just as much a part of it as the CIA professionals who thought Trump was a moron
who'd wreck everything. All deep state theories are either crackpottery or duplicity. The
main supporters of Trump are rich people, not just as contributors to his campaign---after
all, some are billionaires who might want to play president themselves!---but the ones who
keep buying advertising from the mass media who give Trump billions in free publicity, cover
up his criminal career as much as possible and encourage identity politics to keep the loyal
opposition from uniting the mass of people against the billionaires.
Trump's real chances of winning are due partly to lack of opposition from the Democratic
Party, which sharply limits its attacks on Trump to attacks from the right, for the good
reason that in policy terms, there is a huge overlap between Trump and the mainstream
Democrats. (Hence the media's assistance in trashing the Democratic Party during the
primaries.) The intense campaign to keep blacks from turning out is proceeding on all fronts.
And most of all, the mass media are still normalizing Trump, who is actually labeling his
opponents traitors, and hinting at violence. Further, the Weinstein trial is meant to
intimidate Democratic Party Hollywood donors/PR. And the Epstein case may be used to tar the
Pedophile Party at a convenient time. They have already conceded that accusation=conviction,
so it's doubtful they could put up a fight.
US initiated wars have been going on for decades, but I see no indication that US
americans have any issues with it. The political parties are totally aligned on foreign wars,
there are no people protesting in US cities.
"The intense campaign to keep blacks from turning out is proceeding on all fronts."
That, to me (and hopefully for most people), is very disturbing. I have been loosely
following Greg Palast and his team for about 15 years, and it would appear that the rot in
the US electoral system has only escalated since the 2000 election farce.
In my mind it is a class-war, and it is being waged against the most marginalised,
especially if of a darker skin tone (by the 'Elites', and with the acquiescence of the
ever-dwindling middle-classes).
It is a horror-show.
I know it may be old hat to many here, but I would highly recommend to any who are
interested in some of the manouvres (c.2000-present) that have led the US electoral system to
the sewer it resides in to read:
I've joked before that Trump is the most peaceful president since Carter. There is some truth
to this insofar as Trump's narrow cost-benefit analysis (as opposed to incoherently broad,
even internally contradictory, cost-benefit outlook promoted by 'national security'
interests) means he doesn't want to commit to expensive long-term interventionist projects,
which is what unites the right-wing neocons and the liberal interventionists (Pelosi,
Schumer). Trump is happy to throw money at the military (like the recent 750 billion re-up
approved by Congress) but also wants to keep costs down. Like a real estate developer, he
spends the money to maintain the Trump brand (tough guy, not like Carter), while extorting
and cheating 'contractors' (client states like S. Korea) to keep costs down, hence his
wanting to pull back from Syria and Afghanistan, meeting with hysteria-level resistance from
the 'deep state.' It's no Carter, but certainly better than the Bushes, Clinton,
Obama/Hilary. Military still ballooning though.
The problem with the corporate/executive/military theory of elite power is that there are
factions within factions, so the theory has limited explanatory power. The 'corporate'
faction has largely turned against China (hence the push or approval of the trade war) but
there are also important elements like Google and Apple who abhor the trade war and want to
maintain the status-quo. And within the military/CIA/national security, there are vectors
working at cross purposes. In some ways, the complexity can be parsed by neocon versus
liberal interventionist, but these two have more commonalities than differences, while 'Full
Spectrum Dominance' has different interpretations and emphases that, as a whole, can look
incoherent. The rationale behind Afghanistan being one example.
karlof1: "The answer for Afghanistan is multifold: It provides a position that helps
encircle Iran; it prevents the construction of the most logical transportation corridors to
facilitate Eurasian integration; it allows for attacks by the Evil Outlaw US Empire's Foreign
Legions into the soft underbelly of Russia and China via Central Asia; and it allows the CIA
to control the international opium and heroin trade. You should also see why these truths
cannot be told to the public as those aims contradict genuine American Values."
karlof1, thank you for that summary, which is probably the most concise formulation of it
I've seen, and it reminds me of importance of the CIA and the opiate trade. While, taken
individually, those points look like they 'make sense', but as a whole -- especially the
support of proxy groups via opium funds and happily 'mispent' money like US aid -- the net
result is more chaos than actions with discrete goals. If there's anything that can be said
about US foreign policy, it's that the chaos is by design, not so much because it benefits
'national security interests' but because it benefits the MIC. Chaos is the biggest
subsidy.
@ 30 lysander.. "So no, Trump is not at all an anti-interventionist. He's just looking for a
way to make imperialism (even more) profitable and just wants to end the none performing wars
and start money making wars." i tend to think the usa - wall st and the military complex for
sure - make money off these money losing wars as well... why end them either, when it is
working for the top %? what i don't understand is any american thinking they are going to get
anything different with either repubs or dems... i guess that is where all the msm back and
forth bullshit works to keep people brainwashed and unable to see the bigger picture here..
that and americans for the most part seem totally obsessed with their own little exceptional
world with little thought about there foreign policy... to me it is all about fp, but to most
americans it is all about trump or sanders, or football and that is it! they seem quite happy
to stay in that small little loop.. i honestly think it will not be unable they are bombed on
their own soil will the collectively wake the fuck up and even then, i somehow doubt it as
the brainwashing has been so successful..
The 1950's triangle of power was superseded by the oligarch's counter revolution that
led to supranational trade institutions. Democracies were relegated to a secondary status and
run by technocrats for the benefit of oligarchs until Donald Trump. He is a nationalist
plutocrat; admittedly a lower level one, a NY casino owner who went bankrupt. Mike Bloomberg
represents the other side, a globalist billionaire. Elizabeth Warren is a top level
technocrat but no politician.
The endless wars are fought to make a profit for the plutocracy and destabilize nations
to make foreign corporate exploitation possible. That was why Hunter Biden was in Ukraine.
The conflicts are not meant to be won.
Donald Trump is way for over his head and getting old. His competent staff are in jail or
fired. Apparently no one told him about the thousands of ballistic missiles that can destroy
the Gulf States' oil facilities at will and make the buildup for the invasion of Iran
impossible. He makes stupid mistakes. Through the barrage of propaganda, reports of shell
shocked troops, destroyed buildings and 11 concussion causalities from Iran's missile attack
made it into the news. The military must be pissed. The aura of invincibility is gone.
Donald Trump should be removed by the 25th amendment before he mistakenly triggers the
Apocalypse. Except the 1% politician VP, Mike Pence, believes that the End of Time is God's
Will and necessary for his Ascension.
I completely disagree with this article. But to be honest, none of us knows anything for sure
outside our own direct experiences. We all rely on 3rd hand (even 10th hand) information and
pick among the various options beliefs which fit our own biases. So if thats what b chooses
to believe so be it.
All we can do is look at the present and compare it to a point in the past. So lets do
that.
With Trump we are still in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump committed an act of war
against Iran and violated a treaty with Iran. Has has supported MBS carnage in Yemen. He has
attempted regime change in Venezuela and implemented crippling sanctions against Venezuela
and Iran which causes harm to innocent people by denying access to some drugs and makes food
more expensive.
He started a trade war with China that resulted in billions of dollars in tariffs , paid
for by the American consumer, and the loss of income for farmers which he subsidized on the
tax payers dime. His agreement with China offers incentives for US companies to invest in
China and does nothing to bring manufacturing jobs back.
Manufacturing and industrial production is not much higher than when Trump took over. He
gave hundreds of billions in tax cuts to the rich and corporations promising it would trickle
down with more jobs and higher salaries. Its done neither and meanwhile the national debt has
skyrocketed.
Retail sales are plummeting as disposable income of the bottom 90% shrink as asset
inflation caused by the Fed QE make home ownership more expensive or unaffordable and causing
higher rents. Tuitions continue to rise paid by increased debt to students/households and
government paid tuitions for veterans. Drug prices continue to rise despite Trumps commitment
to reign in Big Pharma, as do overall medical costs and insurance premiums taking more out of
the bottom 90% budget.
Fifty percent of those working make less than 33k per year and 50% of households couldn't
come up with 400 dollars for an emergency w/o tapping into their credit (if any). Meanwhile,
while neocons in his administration plot to cut medicare, medicaid and social security,
something Trump promised not to do, while Trump keeps inflating the military budget each
year.
Infrastructure development which was big on his fake agenda is nowhere to be seen, aside
from a partially completed wall Mexico was supposed to pay for but didn't, but was rewarded
with Nafta 2 (Trump promised to scrap Nafta).
Meanwhile there seems to be as many illegal immigrants as before (after all, someone has
to work the farms and slaughter houses for Big Agra) .The great health care plan Trump
promised to replace Obamacare is nowhere to be seen. Relations with Russia don't seem much
better with more sanctions added under Trump.
Israel is pretty happy though, their new Cyrus moved the embassy to Jerusalem as promised
and signed an EO cutting of Federal funding to universities who allow criticism of
Israel.
The sad thing is nobody the Dems are running offer much of a positive change. Any promises
made will be broken and blamed on the other party. The DNC is beholden to the same masters as
the RNC. Presidents are just stage actors.
Trumps main mission besides enriching the elite at the middle class expense, feeding the
MIC beast, kissing Bibis feet is discrediting in the eyes of the rest of the world American
Democracy (an illusion at this point), Capitalism (actually taken over by neoliberalism) and
Christianity (his biggest supporters are Evangelical Christians). Imagine a bankrupted Casino
owner associated with the mafia with multiple divorces and multiple accusations of
inappropriate sexual conduct and convicted of racial discrimination not only becoming
President , but representing the party of the Christian Right?
So when they finally establish the consensus for a new multi-polar global NWO they will be
able to unite the world based on its anti-American sentiment , a feeling induced by the
neocons with Trump as the icing on the cake. Of course, the American elite who are actually
multi-national or globalist will remain unscathed, and the military will be
internationalized, but for those left behind life will be much like those in countries taken
over by the IMF/World Bank with reparations due instead of interest, paid via a Carbon
Tax
In this sense only Sanders, Warren and Tulsi are authentic democrats... Major Pete is
definitely a wolf in sheep clothing.
Notable quotes:
"... Today's Democrats want to destroy those social programs you cite. They have wanted to destroy those social programs ever since President Clinton wanted to conspire with "Prime Minister" Gingrich to privatize Social Security. Luckily Monica Lewinsky saved us from that fate. ..."
"... A nominee Sanders would run on keeping Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid in existence. And he would mean it. A nominee Biden might pretend to say it. But he would conspire with the Republicans to destroy them all. ..."
Today's Democrats want to destroy those social programs you cite. They have wanted to
destroy those social programs ever since President Clinton wanted to conspire with "Prime
Minister" Gingrich to privatize Social Security. Luckily Monica Lewinsky saved us from that
fate.
A nominee Sanders would run on keeping Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid in
existence. And he would mean it. A nominee Biden might pretend to say it. But he would
conspire with the Republicans to destroy them all.
The ClintoBama Pelosicrats have no standing on which to pretend to support some very
popular social programs and hope to be believed any longer. Maybe that is why they feel there
is no point in even pretending any more.
Bearing in mind the fact that the DemParty would prefer a Trump re-election over a Sanders
election, I don't think anyone will be giving Trump any heave ho. The only potential nominee to
even have a chance to defeat Trump would be Sanders. And if Sanders doesn't win on ballot
number one, Sanders will not be permitted the nomination by an evil Trumpogenic DemParty
elite.
Even if Sanders wins the nomination, the evil Trumpogenic Demparty leadership and the
millions of Jonestown Clintobamas in the field will conspire against Sanders every way they
feel they can get away with. The Clintobamas would prefer Trump Term Two over Sanders Term One.
They know it, and the rest of us need to admit it.
If Sanders is nominated, he will begin the election campaign with a permanent deficit of
10-30 million Clintobama voters who will Never! Ever! vote for Sanders. Sanders will have to
attract enough New Voters to drown out and wash away the 10-30 million Never Bernie
clintobamas.
Donald Trump rode to victory in 2016 on a promise to end the useless wars in the Middle East, but he has now demonstrated
very clearly that he is a liar
He also promised a wall. Maybe he meant the Israeli wall?
Trump is such a douchebag. He claims there were no lives lost due to their "early warning system" -- no mention that the "early
warning system" was a phone call!
Now he's once again justifying assassination, etc.
there was no "better choice" between trump and clinton. i still think clinton represented a greater danger than trump of getting
into a war with russia, but they are both warmongers first class. for our next election, we may have a choice between ebola and
flesh eating bacteria, or brain cancer and leprosy. if the game is rigged there's no winning it playing by the game's "rules".
Trump is betraying his voters and threatening millions of lives.
In a full-blown U.S. war
with Iran, up to a million people could die initially.
Hundreds of thousands more could die in the vacuum to follow. Millions would be made
refugees. That's the conclusion of experts surveyed
by Vox reporter Alex Ward . "The worst-case scenarios here are quite serious,"
Middle East scholar Michael Hanna warned.
With the brazen assassination of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in Iraq,
President Trump has brought us leaps and bounds closer to that conflagration -- a decision
Trump appears to have made while
golfing at Mar-a-Lago .
Lawmakers need to move before it's too late.
The Iranians may
respond cautiously , perhaps forestalling a full-blown conflict. But there can be no doubt
the White House has been driving in that direction from day one.
In a few short years, Trump has blown up the Iran nuclear deal, put a horrific economic
stranglehold on the country, and sent a stunning
14,000 new troops to the Middle East since just last spring. Some
3,500 more are now on their way.
"Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran," John Bolton
tweeted about the assassination . Bolton may have left the White House, but clearly his
spirit lives on.
What next? Get ready to hear a lot about what a "
bad guy " Soleimani was, and how Iran is a "state sponsor" of terrorism.
No doubt, Soleimani had blood on his hands -- he was a general. Yet after two decades of
U.S. wars in the Middle East, that's the pot calling the kettle black. It was the U.S. who
invaded Iraq, started a civil war, and paved the way for a literal terrorist state, ISIS, to
occupy the country afterward (a force Soleimani himself was instrumental in dismantling).
That senseless war caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, exploded the terrorist threat,
and is destabilizing the region to this day. Yet somehow, war hawks like Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo can go on TV and -- with a straight face -- predict ordinary Iranians will
essentially thank the U.S. for murdering their general.
"People not only in Iraq but in Iran will view the American action last night as giving them
freedom,"
Pompeo said the morning after the assassination. You couldn't caricature a better callback
to Dick Cheney's infamous prediction that Iraqis would "greet us as liberators" if you
tried.
This war-mongering should be as toxic politically as
it is morally . Trump rode into office promising to end America's wars, winning him crucial
votes in swing states with large military and veteran populations. Huge bipartisan majorities,
including 58 percent of Republicans, say they want U.S. troops out of the Middle East.
Trump is betraying them spectacularly.
Yet too many Democrats are
merely objecting to Trump's failure to consult them. Speaker Nancy Pelosi complained the
strike "was taken without the consultation of the Congress." South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg
offered colorlessly that "there are serious questions about how this decision was made." Others
complained about the apparent lack of a "strategy."
It's illegal for a president to unilaterally launch a war -- that's important. But these
complaints make it sound like if you want to kill a million people for no reason, you just have
to go to the DMV first. As if Trump's base doesn't love it when he cuts the line in
Washington.
Senator Bernie Sanders, who warned that "Trump's dangerous escalation brings us closer to
another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more
dollars," came closer to communicating the real threat.
Millions of lives are at stake. Trump's aggression demands -- and voters will more likely
reward -- real opposition. Call him on it
before it's too late.
Peter Certo is the editorial manager of the Institute for Policy Studies and editor of
Foreign Policy In Focus.
A shadowy Silicon Valley group that, largely unnoticed, bankrolled Democrat candidates up and
down the country in the 2018 midterms, will spend up to $140 million to topple President Trump in 2020, according to
Recode.
The group, called "Mind the Gap," is led by Stanford law school professor Barbara Field, former Obama staffer
Graham Gottlieb, and former Hewlett Foundation president Paul Brest.
The group uses a data-driven approach to target funding to seats where donors' dollars will have the maximum
impact, funded 20 Democrat candidates in 2018, ten of whom won.
Via Recode:
In 2018, the group, which is led by Stanford law school professor
Barbara
Fried
,
raised
about $500,000 for 20 different Democratic congressional challengers
, many of whom were underdogs to win their
bids. Ten of them won. Mind the Gap became a hit in Silicon Valley in particular because it asked tech leaders to
fund races where it had calculated each dollar would have the greatest marginal impact on Democrats taking back
the House, which synced with the industry's data-driven thinking.
This time around, the group is asking its donors to fund three separate voter-registration
programs: the Voter Participation Center (VPC) and the Center for Voter Information (CVI), which in September
alone sent out 7.1 million voter registration applications by mail, according to Mind the Gap. The last endorsed
group is Everybody Votes (EV), which is training organizers to sign up voters in local communities and has used
some of the $35 million that Mind the Gap has already raised to register Democratic voters in Wisconsin, Michigan,
Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. (Future money from the group is going to do the same in Florida, Arizona, and
Nevada.)
In this cycle, the group aims to raise over $100 million to fund get-out-the-vote efforts and other political
activities:
Mind the Gap told prospective donors last fall that it had already raised at least $35 million in
political contributions for voter registration efforts, which is part of a fundraising goal that could stretch to
$100 million, according to a memo obtained by Recode.
Mind the Gap is also seeking another estimated $30 million for get-out-the-vote work along with
another estimated $10 million for "orphan races" -- which means primarily funding candidates for state legislatures
that the group sees as wrongly under-funded.
Are you an insider at Facebook, YouTube, Google, Reddit or any other tech company who wants to
confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email
address
[email protected].
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.
When people thought in 2016 that they are winning against the National Security state, they
were deceived by the candidate who sounded rational during election campaign, but then became
Hillary II in three months after inauguration and brought Bush II neocons into his
Administration.
So voters were deceived with Clinton, deceived with Bush II, deceived with Obama, deceived
with Trump. You now see the tendency...
With all that is happening in the U.S right now I can't help but think that it's past time
for the people to reassert their power over the National security state, as unrealistic as
that might sound.
The Anti war movement is ideologically divided between progressives and
libertarian/paleoconservatives, so a political party would not likely be the answer.
Instead perhaps we should consider a grassroots movement to amend the constitution to
guarantee U.S neutrality in world affairs (banning both the arming or financing of foreign
belligerents) and to ban the Federal government from having a standing military force except
in times of actual war. I don't know what chance either would have of actually being passed,
but it might at least force a debate on these issues in a way that might resonate better with
the average American. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Peace and Solidarity
No Wall has been built in America BUT the U.S. Embassy is in Jerusalem.
No Immigration Solution. Record numbers of f-1's and b1's.
National Debt Level WORSE than in summer 2008 Right Before Financial Meltdown.
No End to the 'Endless' Wars (Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq)
Israel got the Golan Heights. Jews have gotten an E.O. recognizing them as a Nation. All the
big Jew Wall St. Firms have had easy money and tax credits from Trump.
What did America get? How can anyone believe anything other than: 'Israel first, last and
always' from Donald J. Trump? He endlessly blathers about the evils of antisemitism while 80%
of Jews continue to vote Democrat.
I can do nothing except conclude the man's soul has been completely and utterly drained from
him through his never ending fellating of Israel and the incessant pounding BoBo Satanyahoo
gives him.
At this point, it is just an embarrassment to watch Trump. I saw his press conference this
afternoon and I couldn't believe the difference between that monotone, babbling idiot I saw
today and the guy who used to fill Stadiums.
The America government has become the Great Satan.
Israel is it's helper.
Trump is the Great Betrayer.
Trump's legal team reportedly prepared their strategy to challenge articles of
impeachment by House Dems -- yet to be sent to the GOP-controlled Senate for trial.
According to Law Professor Jonathan Turley, "(b)y rushing the impeachment and forcing a vote
before Christmas, the House gave up control over an incomplete and insufficient case for
removal," adding:
"It gave up that control to a chamber controlled by the opposing party."
"Speaker Nancy Pelosi's attempt to game the system has not achieved any concession from
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell."
"Few of us believed it would. Now the House will proceed on the thinnest record ever
presented in a modern presidential impeachment trial."
Clearly it's going nowhere, likely to help Trump's reelection, not undermine it.
Articles of impeachment by House Dems against Trump with no legitimate standing seek
political advantage in November's presidential and congressional elections.
That's what this is all about, ignoring serious Trump wrongdoing, just cause for impeachment
and removal from office. More on this below.
Under the Constitution's Article II, Section 4, impeachment and conviction require proving
"treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
No legitimacy exists to impeach Trump for abuse of power on grounds of seeking interference
from Ukraine to aid his 2020 presidential reelection and obstruction of Congress for defying
House subpoenas.
Clear just cause exists to impeach and remove him from office for crimes of war, against
humanity, and betraying the public trust by serving monied interests exclusively at the expense
of ordinary people he greatly harmed at home and abroad.
Breaching virtually every positive promise made to the American people proved he can never
be trusted and no longer has justification to serve.
Abroad, he escalated crimes of war and against humanity against Syria, Yemen,
Afghanistan, and Somalia. He supports aggression in Libya, Donbass, Ukraine, and Occupied
Palestine. He's waging economic terrorism on Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea,
Russia and other countries. He supports international terrorism while pretending to combat
it.
As US president and commander-in-chief, he's responsible for high crimes at home and abroad,
legitimate impeachable offenses.
He committed acts of war against Iraq and Iran by terror-bombing Iraqi territory, killing
deputy PMU leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and others, along with assassinating IRGC Quds Force
commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
All of the above are high crimes, just cause to impeach and remove him from office, what
Dems and Republicans should support.
Clearly they won't because they share guilt. The vast majority of Washington's political
class is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors -- by supporting aggression, state terrorism,
and other hostile actions
In response to Trump's threat to target dozens of Iranian sites, including cultural ones,
President Rouhani warned him "never (to) threaten the Iranian nation."
In solidarity against imperial USA for assassinating General Soleimani, millions of Iranians
took to the streets over the weekend and Monday to honor him and symbolically stand against the
scourge America represents.
As a nation mourns the loss of its revered Quds Force commander, his assassination an act of
war by any standard, Iran's parliament discussed an appropriate response, the body's spokesman
Asadollah Abbasi saying:
"In reaction to the recent terrorist and cowardly assassination of Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani
and his companions by the US and as decided by the presiding board, the triple-urgency motion
will be put on the agenda of the parliament's open session," adding:
"The latest US action is viewed as 'state-sponsored terrorism' not only by the parliament's
presiding board but also by most world countries, and the ratification of the triple-urgency
motion lends legal credit to this issue."
On Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif denounced the US for its "blatant disregard for
the jus cogens in international law as well as for universally-recognized rights and
immunities," adding:
"This is the same schizophrenic approach that repugnantly threatens, in contravention of
international law, to strike Iran's cultural sites which are part of the shared human cultural
and civilizational heritage."
Killing Soleimani, a "voice of independence-seeking struggles" in the war-torn Middle East,
was a "cowardly" attack on him and the Iranian nation, "a strategic blunder."
The only way forward for restoration of regional peace and stability is "expulsion of the US
from West Asia."
Zarif stressed that Iran remains "the anchor of peace and security" in the Middle East,
along with its development.
Peace and stability defeat US imperial aims. Endless wars and other hostile actions serve it
-- what its imperial scourge is all about.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected] . He is a Research
Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for
Hegemony Risks WW III."
Iran vs. US: The Murder of General Qassem Suleimani
by Peter Koenig / January 7th, 2020
Interestingly, after the US attack on Iraqi Militia
fighters on 31 December 2020, and the assassination of General Qassem Suleimani , on 2
January, the first thing President Trump could come up with was bragging that it was him who
gave the order to murder the popular military leader. General Qassem Suleimani was the
commander of the Iranian special Quds Force. The Quds Force was created during the
Iran –Iraq War as a special unit from the broader Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps ( IRGC ). It has the mission of liberating Muslim land, especially al-
Quds , from which it takes its name – "Jerusalem Force ", in English.
General Suleimani was killed by a US drone. He was not only the most popular and prominent
military officer in Iran, but he was also influential and respected throughout the Middle East.
He was chief in training Iraqi forces who eventually defeated ISIS in Iraq within less than a
year when the US and NATO estimated it would take at least 3 years. General Suleimani, along
with Russia, was also instrumental in training the Syrian armed forces with the objective of
defeating ISIS / IS / DEASH in Syria, and they succeeded. This US act of impunity, the General
Suleimani killing, was unmistakenly targeted with precision and as such a clear declaration of
war on Iran.
Trump expected applause from the public at large. Let's not forget he is entering the year
2020 of his re-election that's what he wants. So, he needs increased popularity and approval
ratings. To be reelected, he, like others before him, doesn't shy away from committing murder
or entering a new war, killing millions. That's what American Presidents do to win elections.
That's what Obama has done. He entered the Presidency with two ongoing US wars –
Afghanistan and Iraq – when he left office the US was engaged in seven wars around the
globe, in Libya, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq.
Plus, numerous proxy-conflicts, meaning they are fought by mercenaries and / or US trained,
funded and armed terrorists; i.e., ISIS / DAESH, Islamic State (IS) and whatever other names
the empire gives its agents of terror to confuse the world. And let's not forget, the
algorithmically manipulated regime-change elections in Latin America and Europe, the steady
NATO advances with new military bases encircling Russia and China, including the stationing of
more than 50% of the US Naval force in the South China Sea.
Most of the US Presidents are elected on the basis of their aggression, planned or ongoing,
on how much they are willing to kill around the world and how well they are representing the
interests of the US War Industry -- and, of course, the Israeli AIPAC (American Israel Public
Affairs Committee). In other words, Americans who go to the polls are duped into believing they
are electing a president, when in reality their president had been pre-selected by a small
group of elitists, representing the key US interests, the War Industry, Big Finance, Big Oil,
Big Pharma – and who else, of course, the State of Israel.
The unarmed Iraqi protests and attack on 31 December on the US Embassy in Baghdad was a
response to a US assault on Militia Iraqi forces on 29 December – leaving at least 25
dead and more than 50 wounded.
The US has absolutely no business in Iraq. Not now, not ever – nor in Syria, nor
anywhere else in the Middle East – for that matter, outside the frontiers of the United
States of America. It's as simple as that.
And the world, the UN, the UN Security Council should act accordingly.
The boundless US aggression must be stopped.
The world has become used to it and, for the most part, is just silent. The ABNORMAL has
become normal. That must be reversed.
Yes, the Iranian Government warned of retaliation. Understandably. However, that is
precisely what Washington and the Pentagon wants; that's what they were provoking, with this
assassination of General Suleimani, and earlier with confiscated oil tankers and tanker attacks
in the Gulf. The US hawks are just waiting for Iran to retaliate, so they can attack in full
force – or ask Israel to attack in full force with US backing, of course.
Knowing how the US is acting around the world with impunity – and especially in the
countries they want to dominate – Iran has to count with the worst. So far, Iran has been
acting wisely with a lot of restraint, not to risk MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction, in
other words, a World War scenario.
A retaliation must be well-thought out – and foremost not be obvious. It must be
strategic with long-term impact not the short-term face-saving military act. In the long-term,
non-aggression, non-confrontation – the contrary of what Washington is seeking –
may prevail. Let the American war hawks continue shadow boxing.
What the Middle East and world is dealing with is a dying beast. That's what the US empire
has become. The beast, in its last breath, is lashing out round itself no matter how many other
countries it pulls with it into the abyss, no matter how many people are killed in the
process.
What will be the world's reaction to this open and flagrant murder? Do not expect much from
the US-submissive West, especially the Europeans.
However, Iran can certainly count on Russia and China and on a number of other allies. And
in the UN on the more than 120 non-aligned countries that also stand behind Venezuela and Cuba,
and now behind Evo Morales.
This is important. These unaligned countries are now in the majority of the UN body of
member states. They have to speak out in the Security Council, as well as in the General
Assembly. This case of US impunity should be elevated to world attention. Therefore, Iran may
want to call a special UN General Assembly Meeting to discuss the case. It would show
where the UN stands and would accordingly provide Iran with more leverage on their
reaction.
Iran cannot elevate this case high enough on the world stage. So that each and every nation
realizes that their own sovereignty is at risk – is every day at risk – of being
annihilated by the wannabe World Hegemon, the self-declared Exceptional Nation, US of A.
Only united can this monster be beaten.
Washington is weak, knows no long-term thinking, no long-term strategy – lives off
instant gratification. This works for a while, by sheer military force, but not forever.
Russia and China have now far advanced precision weaponry and are allies of Iran. Short-term
thinking may be a suicide mission.
Much as been made about Soleimani's alleged responsibility for the deaths of 600 American
servicemen but what people forget is that Iranian military personnel would be legitimate
targets if they invaded Mexico or Canada. That 600 figure is probably a drop in the bucket
compared to the number of people Trump has killed with his unprecedented number of drone
strikes since taking office.
Whatever the case Donald Trump is indeed a pathological liar and monumental fraud and it
seems that the vast majority of his deplorables (I'm an ex-deplorable) have tripled down on
their love and support of him despite his broken promise of ending "these stupid wars".
To some extent it is not relevant if Trump was lying during his campaign, or has been
corrupted/coopted/fooled/pressured/played for a chump by the establishment. He said one thing
and is doing another: that's the bottom line.
However: I note that after Barack Obama got elected, he immediately fired all of his
populist advisors and hired Wall Streeters even before being sworn in. Obama was clearly
lying up front.
Trump, however, initially did start moving in the direction he said he would, he kept his
populist/nationalist advisors, and really did make actual moves to carry out his campaign
promises. And the establishment went total nut job, he was a Russian agent, his populist
advisers were targeted for legal actions, they were replaced with establishment advisors who
hate him Trump was strong on stage berating a political opponent, but against establishment
pressure he has turned out to be weak, caving in to "the Blob" at every turn.
Had she been elected, Hillary would already have started the neocon wet dream of a war
with Iran.
While that may be true, I am tired of giving Trump a free pass, just because Hillary would
have been worse. Being relatively less evil, or a different incarnation of evil, is still
evil.
Frankly, impeachment was just a distraction to divert attention from the real play. The
dagger at his throat is from far more malevolent foes who can wield both blackmail or death
as the circumstances demand to get their way. The jewish mafia is far more dangerous than the
Sicilian boys could ever hope to be. The latter learned from the former.
Congress' constitutional duty is putting Israel first!
House Dems Unanimously Vote to Condemn Withdrawal From Syria - Oct 16, 2019
In a Wednesday vote, the House overwhelmingly backed a resolution expressing opposition to
the end of the US war in Syria, and calling on the US to protect the Syrian Kurds from
Turkey. The vote was 354-60, with the majority of Republicans supporting it, and unanimous
support from Democrats who cast votes .
Positions from Democrat leaders suggested an unconditional opposition to Trump ending
any war and withdrawing any troops under any circumstances. They also objected to the
notion that a president could end a war without their permission .
"... Trump's performance record as president is comprised of an unbroken string of broken promises, opportunities squandered, principles violated, and intentions abandoned. ..."
"... despite another supposedly positive personal relationship, the Trump administration has applied more sanctions on Moscow, provided more anti-Russian aid to Ukraine, further increased funds and troops to NATO Europe, and sent home more Russian diplomats than the Obama administration. ..."
"... Worse, Washington has made no serious effort to resolve the standoff over Ukraine. No one imagines Moscow returning Crimea to Ukraine or giving in on any other issue without meaningful concessions regarding Kiev. Instead of moderating and minimizing bilateral frictions, the administration has made Russia more likely today than before to cooperate with China against Washington and contest American objectives in the Middle East, Africa, and even Latin America. ..."
"... Although Trump promised to stop America's endless wars, as many - if not more - U.S. military personnel are abroad today as when he took office. He increased the number of troops in Afghanistan and is now seeking to negotiate an exit that would force Washington to remain to enforce the agreement. This war has been burning for more than eighteen years. ..."
"... The administration has maintained Washington's illegal deployment in Syria, shifting one contingent away from the Turkish-Kurdish battle while inserting new forces to confiscate Syrian oil fields-a move that lacks domestic authority and violates international law. A few hundred Americans cannot achieve their many other supposed objectives, such as eliminating Russian, Iranian, and other malign influences and forcing Syria's President Bashar al-Assad to resign or inaugurate democracy. However, their presence will ensure America's continued entanglement in a conflict of great complexity but minimal security interest. ..."
"... This is an extraordinarily bad record after almost three years in office. Something good still might happen between now and November 3, 2020. However, more issues are likely to get worse. Imagine North Korean missile and nuclear tests, renewed Russian attempts to influence Western elections, a bloody Chinese crackdown in Hong Kong, increased U.S.-European trade friction, more U.S. pressure on Iran matched by asymmetric responses, and more. At the moment, there is no reason to believe any of the resulting confrontations would turn out well. ..."
Trump's performance record as president is comprised of an unbroken string of broken promises, opportunities squandered, principles
violated, and intentions abandoned.
North Korea may have been the one issue on which President Donald Trump apparently listened to his predecessor, Barack Obama,
when he warned about the serious challenge facing the incoming occupant of the Oval Office. Nevertheless, Trump initially drove tensions
between the two countries to a fever pitch, raising fears of war in the midst of proclamations of "fire and fury." Then he played
statesman and turned toward diplomacy, meeting North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, in Singapore.
Today that effort looks kaput. The North has declared denuclearization to be off the table. Actually, few people other than the
president apparently believed that Kim was prepared to turn over his nuclear weapons to a government predisposed toward intervention
and regime change.
Now that this Trump policy is formally dead, and there is no Plan B in sight, Pyongyang has begun deploying choice terms from
its fabled thesaurus of insults. Democrats are sure to denounce the administration for incompetent naivete. And the bipartisan war
party soon will be beating the drums for more sanctions, more florid rhetoric, additional military deployments, new plans for war.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) already has dismissed the risks since any conflict would be "over there," on the distant Korean Peninsula.
At which point Trump's heroic summitry, which offered a dramatic opportunity to break decades of deadly stalemate, will be judged
a failure.
If the president had racked up several successes-wars ended, peace achieved, disputes settled, relations strengthened-then one
disappointment wouldn't matter much. However, his record is an unbroken string of broken promises, opportunities squandered, principles
violated, and intentions abandoned.
There is no relationship more important than that between the United States and the People's Republic of China. Despite Trump's
supposed friendship with China's Xi Jinping, the trade war rages to the detriment of both countries. Americans have suffered from
both the president's tariffs and China's retaliation, with no end in sight. Despite hopes for a resolution, Beijing is hanging tough
and obviously doubts the president's toughness, given the rapidly approaching election.
Beyond economics, the relationship is deteriorating sharply. Disagreements and confrontations over everything from geopolitics
to human rights have driven the two countries apart, with the administration lacking any effective strategy to positively influence
China's behavior. The president's myopic focus on trade has left him without a coherent strategy elsewhere.
Perhaps the president's most pronounced and controversial promise of the 2016 campaign was to improve relations with Russia. However,
despite another supposedly positive personal relationship, the Trump administration has applied more sanctions on Moscow, provided
more anti-Russian aid to Ukraine, further increased funds and troops to NATO Europe, and sent home more Russian diplomats than the
Obama administration.
Worse, Washington has made no serious effort to resolve the standoff over Ukraine. No one imagines Moscow returning Crimea to
Ukraine or giving in on any other issue without meaningful concessions regarding Kiev. Instead of moderating and minimizing bilateral
frictions, the administration has made Russia more likely today than before to cooperate with China against Washington and contest
American objectives in the Middle East, Africa, and even Latin America.
Although Trump promised to stop America's endless wars, as many - if not more - U.S. military personnel are abroad today as when he
took office. He increased the number of troops in Afghanistan and is now seeking to negotiate an exit that would force Washington
to remain to enforce the agreement. This war has been burning for more than eighteen years.
The administration has maintained Washington's illegal deployment in Syria, shifting one contingent away from the Turkish-Kurdish
battle while inserting new forces to confiscate Syrian oil fields-a move that lacks domestic authority and violates international
law. A few hundred Americans cannot achieve their many other supposed objectives, such as eliminating Russian, Iranian, and other
malign influences and forcing Syria's President Bashar al-Assad to resign or inaugurate democracy. However, their presence will ensure
America's continued entanglement in a conflict of great complexity but minimal security interest.
The Saudi government remains corrupt, incompetent, repressive, reckless and dependent on the United States. Only Washington's
refusal to retaliate against Iran for its presumed attack on Saudi oil facilities caused Riyadh to turn to diplomacy toward Tehran,
yet the president then increased U.S. military deployments, turning American military personnel into bodyguards for the Saudi royals.
The recent terrorist attack by the pilot-in-training-presumably to join his colleagues in slaughtering Yemeni civilians-added to
the already high cost of the bilateral relationship.
The administration's policy of "maximum pressure" has proved to be a complete bust around the world. As noted earlier, North Korea
proved unwilling to disarm despite the increased financial pressure caused by U.S. sanctions. North Koreans are hurting, but their
government, like Washington, places security first.
Russia, too, is no more willing to yield Crimea, which was once part of Russia and is the Black Sea naval base of Sebastopol.
Several European governments also disagree with the United States, having pressed to lighten or eliminate current sanctions. The
West will have to offer more than the status quo to roll back Moscow's military advances.
Before Trump became president, Iran was well contained, despite its malign regional activities. The Islamic regime was hemmed
in by Israel and the Gulf States, backed by nations as diverse as Egypt and America. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA,
sharply curtailed Iran's nuclear activities and placed the country under an intensive oversight regime. Now Tehran has reactivated
its nuclear program, expanded its regional interventions, interfered with Gulf shipping, and demonstrated its ability to devastate
Saudi oil production. To America's consternation, its Persian Gulf allies now are more willing to deal with Iran than before.
Additionally, the Trump administration has largely destroyed hope for reform in Cuba by reversing the Obama administration's progress
toward normalizing relations and discouraging visits by-and trade with-Americans. The entrepreneurs I spoke to when I visited Cuba
two years ago made large investments in anticipation of a steadily increasing number of U.S. visitors but were devastated when Washington
shut off the flow. What had been a steadily expanding private sector was knocked back and the regime, with Raoul Castro still dominant
behind the scenes, again can blame America for its own failings. There is no evidence that extending the original embargo and additional
sanctions, which began in 1960, will free anyone.
For a time, Venezuela appeared to be an administration priority. As usual, Trump applied economic sanctions, this time on a people
whose economy essentially had collapsed. Washington threatened more sanctions and military invasion but to no avail. Then the president
and his top aides breathed fire and fury, insisting that both China and Russia stay out, again without success. Eventually, the president
appeared to simply lose interest and drop any mention of the once urgent crisis. The corrupt, repressive Maduro regime remains in
power.
So far, the president's criticisms of America's alliances have gone for naught. Until now, his appointees, all well-disposed toward
maintaining generous subsidies for America's international fan club, have implemented his policies. More recently, the administration
demanded substantial increases in "host nation" support, but in almost every negotiation so far the president has given way, accepting
minor, symbolic gains. He is likely to end up like his predecessor, whining a lot but gaining very little from America's security
dependents.
Beyond that, there is little positive to say. Trump and India's Narendra Modi are much alike, which is no compliment to either,
but institutional relations have changed little. Turkey's incipient dictator, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, receives a free pass from the
president for the former's abuses and crimes. But even so Congress is thoroughly arrayed against Ankara for sins both domestic and
foreign.
The president's aversion to genuine free trade and the curious belief that buying inexpensive, quality products from abroad is
a negative has created problems with many close allies, including Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and multiple European
states. Perhaps only with Israel are Washington's relations substantially improved, and that reflects the president's abandonment
of any serious attempt to promote a fair and realistic peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
This is an extraordinarily bad record after almost three years in office. Something good still might happen between now and November
3, 2020. However, more issues are likely to get worse. Imagine North Korean missile and nuclear tests, renewed Russian attempts to
influence Western elections, a bloody Chinese crackdown in Hong Kong, increased U.S.-European trade friction, more U.S. pressure
on Iran matched by asymmetric responses, and more. At the moment, there is no reason to believe any of the resulting confrontations
would turn out well.
Most Americans vote on the economy, and the president is currently riding a wave of job creation. If that ends before the November
vote, then international issues might matter more. If so, then the president may regret that he failed to follow through on his criticism
of endless war and irresponsible allies. Despite his very different persona, his results don't look all that different from those
achieved by Barack Obama and other leading Democrats.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and the
author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire.
rshimizu12 • 15 hours ago
Personally I think Trumps foreign policy has had mix results. Part of the problem is that Trump has adopted a ad hoc foreign policy
tactics. The US has had limited success with North Korea. While we have not seen any reductions of nuclear weapons. He probably
has stopped flight testing of ICBM's. The daily back and forth threats of destroying each other countries have stopped. We should
have been making more progress with N Korea, but Trump has not been firm enough. Russia on the other hand is a much tougher country
to deal with. As for China we will have to keep up the pressure in trade negotiations.
WHAT IS DEMOCRACY? Since this deceptively simple question first came into my mind, I haven't
been able to shake it. We think we understand the word, but what are we really referring to
when we talk about a system in which the people rule themselves?
The word democracy is all around us, invoked in almost every
conceivable context: government, business, technology, education, and media. At the same time,
its meaning, taken as self-evident, is rarely given much serious consideration. Though the
headlines tell us democracy is in "crisis," we don't have a clear conception of what it is that
is at risk. The significance of the democratic ideal, as well as its practical substance, is
surprisingly elusive.
For most of my life, the word democracy didn't hold much appeal. I
was of course never against democracy per se, but words such as justice
, equality , freedom , solidarity , socialism , and revolution resonated more deeply. Democracy struck me as
mealy-mouthed, even debased. That idealistic anarchists and authoritarian leaders are equally
inclined to claim "democracy" as their own only demonstrated its lack of depth. North Korea
does, after all, call itself a "Democratic People's Republic," and Iraq was invaded by the U.S.
Army in the name of bringing democracy to the Middle East. But today I no longer see the
opportunistic use of the word as a sign of the idea's vapidity. Those powers co-opt the concept
of democracy because they realize that it represents a profound threat to the established
order, a threat they desperately hope to contain.
After making a documentary film, What Is Democracy? , I now
understand the concept's disorienting vagueness and protean character as a source of strength;
I have come to accept, and even appreciate, that there is no single definition I can stand
behind that feels unconditionally conclusive. Though the practice has extensive global roots,
the word democracy comes to us from ancient Greece, and it conveys a
seemingly simple idea: the people ( demos ) rule or hold power (
kratos ). Democracy is the promise of the people ruling, but a promise
that can never be wholly fulfilled because its implications and scope keep changing. Over
centuries our conceptions of democracy have expanded and evolved, with democracy becoming more
inclusive and robust in many ways, yet who counts as the people, how they rule, and where they
do so remain eternally up for debate. Democracy destabilizes its own legitimacy and purpose by
design, subjecting its core components to continual examination and scrutiny.
Perfect democracy, I've come to believe, may not in fact exist and never will, but that
doesn't mean we can't make progress toward it, or that what there is of it can't disappear. For
this reason, I am more convinced than ever that the questions of what democracy is -- and, more
important, what it could be -- are ones we must perpetually ask.
Right now, many who question democracy do so out of disillusionment, fear, and outrage.
Democracy may not exist, yet it still manages to disappoint. Political gridlock, corruption,
unaccountable representatives, and the lack of meaningful alternatives incense people across
the ideological spectrum; their anger simmers at dehumanizing bureaucracy, blatant hypocrisy,
and lack of voice. Leaders are not accountable and voters rightly feel their choices are
limited, all while the rich keep getting richer and regular people scramble to survive. In
advanced democracies around the world, a growing number of people aren't even bothering to vote
-- a right many people fought and died for fairly recently. Most Americans will say that they
live in a democracy, but few will say that they trust the government, while the state generally
inspires negative reactions, ranging from frustration to contempt and suspicion. The situation
calls to mind Jean-Jacques Rousseau's observation from The Social
Contract : "In a well-ordered city every man flies to the assemblies; under a bad
government no one cares to stir a step to get to them. As soon as any man says of the State
What does it matter to me? the State may be given up for lost."
1
A cauldron of causes generates an atmosphere of corrosive cynicism, social fragmentation,
and unease, with blame too often directed downward at the most vulnerable populations. And it's
not just in the United States. Consider the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union,
the decision known as Brexit; the resurgence of right-wing populism across Europe; coups and
reactionary electoral victories in Brazil; and the rise of fascism in India. Plato's warning
about democracy devolving into tyranny rings chillingly prophetic. The promise of self-rule
risks becoming not a promise but a curse, a self-destructive motor pushing toward destinations
more volatile, divided, despotic, and mean.
But this book isn't about the pitfalls of popular sovereignty, though it certainly has its
perils. Nor is it about the shortcomings of current liberal democratic political systems or the
ways they have been corrupted by money and power -- though they have been. That's a story that
has been told before, and while it will be the backdrop to my inquiry it is not the focus. This
book, instead, is an invitation to think about the word democracy from
various angles, looking back through history and reflecting on the philosophy and practice of
self-rule in hopes that a more contemplative view will shed useful light on our present
predicament. My goal is not to negate the sense of alarm nor deter people from action but to
remind us that we are part of a long, complex, and still-unfolding chronicle, whatever the
day's headlines might be or whoever governs the country.
Taking a more theoretical approach to democracy's winding, thorny path and inherently
paradoxical nature can also provide solace and reassurance. Ruling ourselves has never been
straightforward and never will be. Ever vexing and unpredictable, democracy is a process that
involves endless reassessment and renewal, not an endpoint we reach before taking a rest
(leaving us with a finished system to tweak at the margins). As such, this book is my
admittedly unorthodox, idiosyncratic call to democratize society from the bottom to the top. It
is also an expression of my belief that we cannot re think democracy if
we haven't really thought about it in the first place.
WHAT IS DEMOCRACY? Since this deceptively simple question first came into my mind, I haven't
been able to shake it. We think we understand the word, but what are we really referring to
when we talk about a system in which the people rule themselves?
The word democracy is all around us, invoked in almost every
conceivable context: government, business, technology, education, and media. At the same time,
its meaning, taken as self-evident, is rarely given much serious consideration. Though the
headlines tell us democracy is in "crisis," we don't have a clear conception of what it is that
is at risk. The significance of the democratic ideal, as well as its practical substance, is
surprisingly elusive.
For most of my life, the word democracy didn't hold much appeal. I
was of course never against democracy per se, but words such as justice
, equality , freedom , solidarity , socialism , and revolution resonated more deeply. Democracy struck me as
mealy-mouthed, even debased. That idealistic anarchists and authoritarian leaders are equally
inclined to claim "democracy" as their own only demonstrated its lack of depth. North Korea
does, after all, call itself a "Democratic People's Republic," and Iraq was invaded by the U.S.
Army in the name of bringing democracy to the Middle East. But today I no longer see the
opportunistic use of the word as a sign of the idea's vapidity. Those powers co-opt the concept
of democracy because they realize that it represents a profound threat to the established
order, a threat they desperately hope to contain.
After making a documentary film, What Is Democracy? , I now
understand the concept's disorienting vagueness and protean character as a source of strength;
I have come to accept, and even appreciate, that there is no single definition I can stand
behind that feels unconditionally conclusive. Though the practice has extensive global roots,
the word democracy comes to us from ancient Greece, and it conveys a
seemingly simple idea: the people ( demos ) rule or hold power (
kratos ). Democracy is the promise of the people ruling, but a promise
that can never be wholly fulfilled because its implications and scope keep changing. Over
centuries our conceptions of democracy have expanded and evolved, with democracy becoming more
inclusive and robust in many ways, yet who counts as the people, how they rule, and where they
do so remain eternally up for debate. Democracy destabilizes its own legitimacy and purpose by
design, subjecting its core components to continual examination and scrutiny.
Perfect democracy, I've come to believe, may not in fact exist and never will, but that
doesn't mean we can't make progress toward it, or that what there is of it can't disappear. For
this reason, I am more convinced than ever that the questions of what democracy is -- and, more
important, what it could be -- are ones we must perpetually ask.
Right now, many who question democracy do so out of disillusionment, fear, and outrage.
Democracy may not exist, yet it still manages to disappoint. Political gridlock, corruption,
unaccountable representatives, and the lack of meaningful alternatives incense people across
the ideological spectrum; their anger simmers at dehumanizing bureaucracy, blatant hypocrisy,
and lack of voice. Leaders are not accountable and voters rightly feel their choices are
limited, all while the rich keep getting richer and regular people scramble to survive. In
advanced democracies around the world, a growing number of people aren't even bothering to vote
-- a right many people fought and died for fairly recently. Most Americans will say that they
live in a democracy, but few will say that they trust the government, while the state generally
inspires negative reactions, ranging from frustration to contempt and suspicion. The situation
calls to mind Jean-Jacques Rousseau's observation from The Social
Contract : "In a well-ordered city every man flies to the assemblies; under a bad
government no one cares to stir a step to get to them. As soon as any man says of the State
What does it matter to me? the State may be given up for lost."
1
A cauldron of causes generates an atmosphere of corrosive cynicism, social fragmentation,
and unease, with blame too often directed downward at the most vulnerable populations. And it's
not just in the United States. Consider the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union,
the decision known as Brexit; the resurgence of right-wing populism across Europe; coups and
reactionary electoral victories in Brazil; and the rise of fascism in India. Plato's warning
about democracy devolving into tyranny rings chillingly prophetic. The promise of self-rule
risks becoming not a promise but a curse, a self-destructive motor pushing toward destinations
more volatile, divided, despotic, and mean.
But this book isn't about the pitfalls of popular sovereignty, though it certainly has its
perils. Nor is it about the shortcomings of current liberal democratic political systems or the
ways they have been corrupted by money and power -- though they have been. That's a story that
has been told before, and while it will be the backdrop to my inquiry it is not the focus. This
book, instead, is an invitation to think about the word democracy from
various angles, looking back through history and reflecting on the philosophy and practice of
self-rule in hopes that a more contemplative view will shed useful light on our present
predicament. My goal is not to negate the sense of alarm nor deter people from action but to
remind us that we are part of a long, complex, and still-unfolding chronicle, whatever the
day's headlines might be or whoever governs the country.
Taking a more theoretical approach to democracy's winding, thorny path and inherently
paradoxical nature can also provide solace and reassurance. Ruling ourselves has never been
straightforward and never will be. Ever vexing and unpredictable, democracy is a process that
involves endless reassessment and renewal, not an endpoint we reach before taking a rest
(leaving us with a finished system to tweak at the margins). As such, this book is my
admittedly unorthodox, idiosyncratic call to democratize society from the bottom to the top. It
is also an expression of my belief that we cannot re think democracy if
we haven't really thought about it in the first place.
WHAT IS DEMOCRACY? Since this deceptively simple question first came into my mind, I haven't
been able to shake it. We think we understand the word, but what are we really referring to
when we talk about a system in which the people rule themselves?
The word democracy is all around us, invoked in almost every
conceivable context: government, business, technology, education, and media. At the same time,
its meaning, taken as self-evident, is rarely given much serious consideration. Though the
headlines tell us democracy is in "crisis," we don't have a clear conception of what it is that
is at risk. The significance of the democratic ideal, as well as its practical substance, is
surprisingly elusive.
For most of my life, the word democracy didn't hold much appeal. I
was of course never against democracy per se, but words such as justice
, equality , freedom , solidarity , socialism , and revolution resonated more deeply. Democracy struck me as
mealy-mouthed, even debased. That idealistic anarchists and authoritarian leaders are equally
inclined to claim "democracy" as their own only demonstrated its lack of depth. North Korea
does, after all, call itself a "Democratic People's Republic," and Iraq was invaded by the U.S.
Army in the name of bringing democracy to the Middle East. But today I no longer see the
opportunistic use of the word as a sign of the idea's vapidity. Those powers co-opt the concept
of democracy because they realize that it represents a profound threat to the established
order, a threat they desperately hope to contain.
After making a documentary film, What Is Democracy? , I now
understand the concept's disorienting vagueness and protean character as a source of strength;
I have come to accept, and even appreciate, that there is no single definition I can stand
behind that feels unconditionally conclusive. Though the practice has extensive global roots,
the word democracy comes to us from ancient Greece, and it conveys a
seemingly simple idea: the people ( demos ) rule or hold power (
kratos ). Democracy is the promise of the people ruling, but a promise
that can never be wholly fulfilled because its implications and scope keep changing. Over
centuries our conceptions of democracy have expanded and evolved, with democracy becoming more
inclusive and robust in many ways, yet who counts as the people, how they rule, and where they
do so remain eternally up for debate. Democracy destabilizes its own legitimacy and purpose by
design, subjecting its core components to continual examination and scrutiny.
Perfect democracy, I've come to believe, may not in fact exist and never will, but that
doesn't mean we can't make progress toward it, or that what there is of it can't disappear. For
this reason, I am more convinced than ever that the questions of what democracy is -- and, more
important, what it could be -- are ones we must perpetually ask.
Right now, many who question democracy do so out of disillusionment, fear, and outrage.
Democracy may not exist, yet it still manages to disappoint. Political gridlock, corruption,
unaccountable representatives, and the lack of meaningful alternatives incense people across
the ideological spectrum; their anger simmers at dehumanizing bureaucracy, blatant hypocrisy,
and lack of voice. Leaders are not accountable and voters rightly feel their choices are
limited, all while the rich keep getting richer and regular people scramble to survive. In
advanced democracies around the world, a growing number of people aren't even bothering to vote
-- a right many people fought and died for fairly recently. Most Americans will say that they
live in a democracy, but few will say that they trust the government, while the state generally
inspires negative reactions, ranging from frustration to contempt and suspicion. The situation
calls to mind Jean-Jacques Rousseau's observation from The Social
Contract : "In a well-ordered city every man flies to the assemblies; under a bad
government no one cares to stir a step to get to them. As soon as any man says of the State
What does it matter to me? the State may be given up for lost."
1
A cauldron of causes generates an atmosphere of corrosive cynicism, social fragmentation,
and unease, with blame too often directed downward at the most vulnerable populations. And it's
not just in the United States. Consider the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union,
the decision known as Brexit; the resurgence of right-wing populism across Europe; coups and
reactionary electoral victories in Brazil; and the rise of fascism in India. Plato's warning
about democracy devolving into tyranny rings chillingly prophetic. The promise of self-rule
risks becoming not a promise but a curse, a self-destructive motor pushing toward destinations
more volatile, divided, despotic, and mean.
But this book isn't about the pitfalls of popular sovereignty, though it certainly has its
perils. Nor is it about the shortcomings of current liberal democratic political systems or the
ways they have been corrupted by money and power -- though they have been. That's a story that
has been told before, and while it will be the backdrop to my inquiry it is not the focus. This
book, instead, is an invitation to think about the word democracy from
various angles, looking back through history and reflecting on the philosophy and practice of
self-rule in hopes that a more contemplative view will shed useful light on our present
predicament. My goal is not to negate the sense of alarm nor deter people from action but to
remind us that we are part of a long, complex, and still-unfolding chronicle, whatever the
day's headlines might be or whoever governs the country.
Taking a more theoretical approach to democracy's winding, thorny path and inherently
paradoxical nature can also provide solace and reassurance. Ruling ourselves has never been
straightforward and never will be. Ever vexing and unpredictable, democracy is a process that
involves endless reassessment and renewal, not an endpoint we reach before taking a rest
(leaving us with a finished system to tweak at the margins). As such, this book is my
admittedly unorthodox, idiosyncratic call to democratize society from the bottom to the top. It
is also an expression of my belief that we cannot re think democracy if
we haven't really thought about it in the first place.
Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone is one of those books you
might want to get in its physical form so you can shove it full of bookmarks, highlight
sentences, write notes, stick little sticky arrows to note something special, and generally
leave it in unfit condition for anyone but you, but that will be okay because you will be
going back to it again and again whenever you want to argue about something. Yes, it's that
good.
Astra Taylor does the difficult job examining democracy, something we talk about a lot
without ever completely understanding its full implications. To do this, she examines eight
tensions that pull democracies in different directions and are critical to balance or at
least understand when understanding democracy. These tensions are interrogated in separate
chapters, looking at history, research, and political experience that impinge on them. The
vast research involved in these explorations is astonishing.
In the first chapter she examines the tension between freedom and equality and notes
that once upon a time we thought they went hand in hand, but that they have become
oppositional thanks to political movements that serve the powerful who define freedom in
terms of making money and avoidance of regulation rather than freedom from want, hunger, or
fear. Equality has become, to American eyes, the enemy of freedom. The second chapter looks
at decision-making, the tension of conflict and consensus. This includes the understanding
of loyal opposition, something that seems to be lost with a president who calls his
political opponents traitors. I appreciated her taking on how consensus can become
anti-democratic and stultifying.
The third chapter looks at the tension of inclusion and exclusion, who is the demos, to
whom is the democracy accountable. In the fourth, the balance between choice and coercion
is explored. Pro-corporate theorists talk about government coercion and attacks on liberty
when they are not allowed to poison our drinking water and make government the enemy of the
people. She also explores how we seem to think freedom is the be all, end all except at
work. Chapter Five looks at spontaneity versus structure. This has an important analysis of
organizing versus activism and how the focus on youth movements has weakened social justice
movements overall as the energy dissipates after college without the labor and community
organizations to foster movement energy. Chapter Six explores the balance between mass
opinion and expertise and how meritocracy works against democracy. This chapter looks at
how education functions to keep the powerful powerful from generation to generation, "the
paradoxical, deeply contradictory role of education under capitalism , which facilitates
the ascension of some while preparing a great many more for lowly positions of
servitude."
Chapter Seven looks at the geography of democracy, not just in terms of federalism and
the federal, state, and local levels of participating in democracy but also the
supranational entities like the World Trade Organization and how they undercut democracy
and the integrity of the state. Chapter Eight considers what we inherit from the past, the
traditions and norms of democracy and what we owe the future, including our obligations to
pass on a livable planet.
Needless to say, this is all very discouraging in its totality, but the final chapter
encourages us to balance pessimism with optimism just as democracy must balance all those
other tensions.
It took me forever to read Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone.
That is because after I read a chapter I needed to think about it before I moved on to the
next. I took sixteen pages of notes while reading it. I hate taking notes, but I did not
want to lose the ideas.
This is also a book you might want to read with some other people, perhaps discussing a
chapter at a time. I do not think it is a book you can read passively, without stopping to
talk to someone, tweet, or reread. It's that good.
That does not mean I agree with every word of the book, but then the author does an
excellent job of interrogating her own ideas. She might seem to be asserting an opinion,
and then offer a counter-example because she is rigorous like that. She perhaps places too
much faith in Marxist theory from time to time, but then that may be because like
democracy, it has never really existed except in conceptual form.
Taylor does not offer a simple answer because there are no simple answers. She does not
pretend to know how to, or even if we can, fix democracy. She gives us the questions, the
problems, and some ideas, but as someone who truly believes in government by the people,
she asks us to take up the challenge.
I received an e-galley of Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone from
the publisher through NetGalley.
The Trump Card was and is a masterstroke of scripting live, non-stop, divisive, politically
paralytic distraction while the US oligarchy goes all-tard-in for private power.
Since the whole impeachment farce already has been a political loser for the idiot Democrats,
they'd have to be doubly stupid to double down on political stupidity by obstructing the
transmission to the Senate, when most Americans just want this crap to be over with.
Meanwhile the Senate Republicans, once they get the charges, would be stupid to do
anything but vote them down immediately. Otherwise they'll become complicit in the odious
circus and rightly incur their share of the political blame.
It still amazes me that people actually think impeachment accomplishes anything other than
diverting attention from the Dems giving Trump everything he wants. Kayfabe.
I'm starting to think the whole trump presidency is a con by making him look like a target
for the deep state and anti establishment, he continues the empire while people who want real
change get sunk.
I have had this thought more than once since Trump was selected to play president. He makes
too many unforced errors that are timely for democrats to jump on. He could have nipped Russia
Gate in its tracks by having the NSA show how Russia did not hack into the DNC computers. I'm
sure that there were other things he could have done, but never did. But if the Huber
investigation has legs and someone actually gets held accountable for taking the country on
this 3 year insanity I'll rethink my opinion.
Pelosi risk to turn the case into personal vendetta and DemoRats will be burned as the
result. McConnell just need to wait a couple on months as time works for him.
This pressure from Pelosi actually helps Trump opening interesting lines of the attack:
"McConnell said on the Senate floor that Pelosi and House Democrats "may be too afraid to even
transmit their shoddy work product to the Senate." Trump tweeted as Pelosi spoke Thursday
morning, saying that "Pelosi feels her phony impeachment HOAX is so pathetic she is afraid to
present it to the Senate".
The Deep State Sunk The Democratic Party
Notable quotes:
"... she would delay naming impeachment managers -- who would argue the House case in the Senate -- until the Senate lays out its procedures for the trial. ..."
41 Million people in the US suffer from hunger and lack of food security"--US Dept. of
Agriculture. That number of people constituted a crisis for FDR when he delivered his One-Third
of a Nation speech for his 2nd Inaugural. About four years later, FDR expanded on that issue in
his Four Freedoms speech: 1.Freedom of speech; 2.Freedom of worship; 3.Freedom from want;
4.Freedom from fear.
Faced with a similar situation, Trump advances plans to cut more people from the food stamp
program thus increasing immiseration. One might say Trump's out of step with traditional
American values; but were Obama, Bush, or Clinton any better?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday extended her standoff with Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell over starting President Donald Trump 's impeachment trial,
insisting she's waiting to see whether Republicans will agree to a "fair" process.
Pelosi surprised many House Democrats Wednesday night after the House impeached Trump when
she said she would delay naming impeachment managers -- who would argue the House case in
the Senate -- until the Senate lays out its procedures for the trial.
"When we see what they have, we'll know who and how many we will send over," she said at a
news conference Thursday. Pelosi cast it as a procedural matter and cited the Senate's
ability to come up with a bipartisan trial plan after President Bill Clinton was
impeached.
... ... ...
McConnell and other GOP senators have been indicating they want a quick
trial, with arguments presented by the House managers and Trump's counsel without witnesses.
McConnell was giving no ground.
"It's beyond me how the speaker and Democratic leader in the Senate think withholding the
articles of impeachment and not sending them over gives them leverage," he told reporters at
the Capitol. "Frankly, I'm not anxious to have the trial."
... ... ...
McConnell called the House impeachment process rushed and shoddy.
"If the speaker ever gets her house in order, that mess will be dumped in the Senate's
lap," he said on the Senate floor. "If the nation accepts this, presidential impeachments may
cease being a once-in-a-generation event."
>> On top of this Putin himself has made some critical mistakes due to his Naive
personality, especially his falling for Trumps phoney reset (Trumps policies towards Russia
have been harsher then any president since Pappi Bush) and in the aftermath of that flop,
running into the arms of "Red" China's fake belt and Road which will be used to get Russia
completely dependent on the biggest U$ satellite
I don't agree that China is pro-US, with tome China will grow and the US will diminish,
BRI will leads towards that, but I do agree that Trump has been the most anti-russian
president since the 80s. Be objective. Do not look at what they say, look at what they do,
the maxim says. Defacto, Trump has been far more aggressive and hostile to Russia than Obama.
And he made everything possible to increase military budgets.
She also failed to mention that Trump activated Second Fleet in the Atlantic (that Obama
actually disabled) for Russia containment.
Trump is just a military puppet seeking to prolong the US Empire on the cheap. That is -
no more nation building, and let others pay for propping up the US empire.
@ Posted by: lysias | Dec 16 2019 1:46 utc | 25 and Posted by: Passer by | Dec 16 2019 1:39
utc | 24 writing about who was instrumental in being negative towards Russia.
It was during Obama's term that Russia changed the trajectory of the war in Syria.
But lets get real, there is only one "Party" in America, the private finance/money party
and both Obama and Trump are/were puppets for it. And those folks have know for some time
about the integration of China/Russia geopolitical views so the policy has been "consistent"
for probably a decade or more.
Money quote: "Johnson will have to work superhard on this if he is to re-create not the
Thatcher coalition but the Disraeli nation. That's what he means when he talks about "One Nation
Conservatism." That was Disraeli's reformist conservatism of the 19th century, a somewhat
protectionist, supremely patriotic alliance between the conservative elites and the ordinary man
and woman. It will take a huge amount of charm and policy persistence to cement that coalition if
it is to last more than one election. But if Boris pulls that off, he will have found a new
formula designed to kill off far-right populism, while forcing the left to regroup."
Notable quotes:
"... But just as important, he moved the party sharply left on austerity, spending on public services, tax cuts for the working poor, and a higher minimum wage. He outflanked the far right on Brexit and shamelessly echoed the left on economic policy ..."
Brexit is an eruption of English nationalism, and the Tories are now, under that shambling
parody of a drunk racist English aristo, Johnson, an English nationalist party.
IMHO this is highly questionable statement. Brexit is a form of protest against neoliberal
globalization. The fact that is colored with nationalism is the secondary effect/factor:
rejection of neoliberalism is almost always colored in either nationalist rhetoric, or Marxist
rhetoric.
Here are some quotes from paleoconservative analysis of the elections taken from two recent
articles:
While I do not share their enthusiasm about "Red Tories" rule in the UK, and the bright
future for "Trumpism without Trump" movement in the USA, they IMHO provide some interesting
insights into paleoconservatives view on the British elections results and elements of social
protest that led to them:
[AS] It is clearer and clearer to me that the wholesale adoption of critical race, gender,
and queer theory on the left makes normal people wonder what on earth they're talking about
and which dictionary they are using. The white working classes are privileged? A woman can
have a penis? In the end, the dogma is so crazy, and the language so bizarre, these natural
left voters decided to listen to someone who
does actually speak their language , even if in an absurdly plummy accent.
[AS] But just as important, he moved the party sharply left on austerity, spending on
public services, tax cuts for the working poor, and a higher minimum wage. He outflanked the
far right on Brexit and shamelessly echoed the left on economic policy . ... This is
Trumpism without Trump. A conservative future without an ineffective and polarizing nutjob at
the heart of it. Unlike Trump, he will stop E.U. mass migration, and pass a new immigration
system, based on the Australian model. Unlike Trump, he will focus tax cuts on the working
poor, not the decadent rich. Unlike Trump, he will stop E.U. mass migration, and pass a new
immigration system, based on the Australian model. Unlike Trump, he will focus tax cuts on
the working poor, not the decadent rich. It's very much the same movement of left-behind
people expressing their views on the same issues, who, tragically, put their trust in Trump.
What we've seen is how tenacious a voting bloc that now is, which is why Trumpism is here to
stay. If we could only get rid of the human cancer at the heart of it.
[AS] Trump has bollixed it up, of course. He ran on Johnson's platform but gave almost all
his tax cuts to the extremely wealthy, while Johnson will cut taxes on the poor. Trump talks
a big game on immigration but has been unable to get any real change in the system out of
Congress. Johnson now has a big majority to pass a new immigration bill, with Parliament in
his control, which makes the task much easier. Trump is flamingly incompetent and unable to
understand his constitutional role. Boris will assemble a competent team, with Michael Gove
as his CEO, and Dom Cummings as strategist.
[AS] If Johnson succeeds, he'll have unveiled a new formula for the Western right: Make no
apologies for your own country and culture; toughen immigration laws; increase public
spending on the poor and on those who are "just about managing"; increase taxes on the very
rich and redistribute to the poor; focus on manufacturing and new housing; ignore the woke;
and fight climate change as the Tories are (or risk losing a generation of support).
[RD] I have no idea why the Republicans are so damned silent on wokeness, including the
transgender madness. No doubt about it, the American people have accepted gay marriage and
gay rights, broadly. But the Left will not accept this victory in the culture war. They
cannot help bouncing the rubble, and driving people farther than they are willing to go, or
that they should have to go. It's the elites -- and not just academic elites. Every week I
get at least two e-mails from readers sending me examples of transgender wokeness taking over
their professions -- especially big business. People hate this pronoun crap, but nobody dares
to speak out against it, because they are afraid of being doxxed, cancelled, or at least
marginalized in the workplace.
[RD] My friend said (I paraphrase):
"Can you blame people for not answering pollsters' questions? Everybody is told all the
time that the things they believe, and the things they worry about, are backwards and
bigoted. They have learned to keep it to themselves. It's the same thing here. I hate
Donald Trump, but I'm probably going to end up voting for him, because at least he doesn't
hate my sons. I want a good future for every child -- black, Latino, white, all of them --
but the Left thinks my sons are what's wrong with the world
[RD] Boris (and Sully) style Toryism is better than nothing, isn't it? As a general rule,
in this emerging post-Christian social and political order, we conservative Christians had
better not let the unachievable perfect be the enemy of the common-sense good enough.
Lesson for 2020 -- Trump is a shape and color shifting chameleon. His statement that he "escaped GOP "mainstream republicans"
(read hard core neoliberals) shackles" was a blatant lie. He never escaped and did not even have intent to escape... He did
their bidding, which was most clearly demonstrated in Trump tax cut
Notable quotes:
"... Trump later tweeted "the shackles have been taken off me". ..."
"... It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to. ..."
"... With the exception of cheating Bernie out of the nom the Dems have always proven to be far more loyal to each other than the Republicans! ..."
"... Disloyal R's are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary. They come at you from all sides. They don't know how to win - I will teach them! ..."
Donald Trump is attacking House Speaker Paul Ryan. He's calling him ''very weak and ineffective''
a day after the House speaker said he would not campaign for the Republican nominee.
Ryan told Republican lawmakers on a conference call Monday that he would focus instead on helping
the party keep control of the House.
Trump referred to that call in his tweet Tuesday morning. He said Ryan ''had a bad conference
call where his members went wild at his disloyalty.''
Trump later tweeted "the shackles have been taken off me".
The real estate mogul also claimed Democrats were more loyal to their party than Republicans.
House Speaker Paul Ryan all but abandoned Donald Trump, obliterating whatever bounce he may
have received from Sunday's debate.
It was his second tweet of the morning targeting Ryan. The other said Ryan's ''zero support''
was making it hard for Trump to do well.
Ryan did face some pushback from members upset he was abandoning Trump. The House Speaker continues
to endorse the nominee.
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Despite winning the second debate in a landslide (every poll), it is hard to do well when
Paul Ryan and others give zero support!
8:16 AM - 11 Oct 2016
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members
went wild at his disloyalty.
9:05 AM - 11 Oct 2016
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America
the way I want to.
10:00 AM - 11 Oct 2016
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
With the exception of cheating Bernie out of the nom the Dems have always proven to
be far more loyal to each other than the Republicans!
10:15 AM - 11 Oct 2016 · Queens, NY, United States
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Disloyal R's are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary. They come at you from all
sides. They don't know how to win - I will teach them!
In a bid to end the massive welfare state, the Trump administration is expected to announce
new measures Wednesday that would end food stamp benefits for nearly 750,000 low-income folks.
The new rules will make it difficult for "states to gain waivers from a requirement that
beneficiaries work or participate in a vocational training program," according to
Bloomberg sources.
Republicans have long attempted to abolish the welfare state, claiming that the
redistribution of wealth for poor people keeps them in a state of perpetual poverty. They also
claim the welfare state is a system of command and control and has been used by Democrats for
decades as a political weapon against conservatives, hence why most inner cities vote
Democrat.
House Republicans tried to cut parts of the federal food assistance program last year, but
it was quickly rejected in the Senate.
The new requirements by the Trump administration would only target "able-bodied" recipients
who aren't caring for children under six.
Sources said the measure would be one of three enacted by the Trump administration to wind
down the massive federal food assistance program.
The measures are expected to boot nearly 3.7 million recipients from the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Though it comes at a time when employment is in a
downturn, manufacturing has stumbled into a recession
, and the US economy could be entering a mild recession in the year ahead. As to why President
Trump wants hundreds of thousands of low-income folks off SNAP ahead of an election year while
the economy is rapidly decelerating could be an administrative error that may lead to social
instabilities in specific regions that will be affected the hardest. Then again, no turmoil
could come out of it, and it's hailed as a success during the election year.
The Department of Agriculture estimates that the new measures could save the agency $1.1
billion in year one, and $7.9 billion by year five.
Nearly 36.4 million Americans in the "greatest economy ever" are on food stamps. At least
half of all Americans have low-wage jobs, barely enough to cover living expenses, nevertheless,
service their
credit cards with record-high interest rates . The economy as a whole is undergoing
profound structural changes with automation and artificial intelligence. Tens of millions of
jobs will be lost by 2030. It's likely the collision of these forces means the welfare state is
going nowhere and will only grow in size when the next recession strikes.
Cutting food stamps for low-income folks is the right move into creating a more leaner
government, but there are severe social implications that could be triggered if the new
measures are passed.
And while President Trump wants to slash the welfare state for poor people, his supply-side
policies and bailouts of corporate America have been record-setting in some respects.
Actions by the administration clearly show that corporate welfare for Wall Street elites is
more important than welfare for low-income folks. Perfect Storm: Trump Admin To Cut 750,000
From Food Stamps Ahead Of Recession
this is one of the most shameful acts for any president, especially a billionaire. If he
wants to save a billion/year, cut it from military. Or increase staff at SNAP to check for
fraud, but this is really shameful. I think it would've been better to raise tariff on China
and use that money to increase SNAP not decrease it
What's the need in cutting foodstamps? You can take every able-bodied recipient and have
them work a reasonable number of hours per week in a fair exchange. Plenty of work to be had
and you could do it WPA style where those of certain skills could apply them.
And if you want to cut welfare, START WITH CORPORATE WELFARE
This is a positive development in terms of the nuclear family. Women can't just abscond
with the kids and her husband's alimony if she knows she will have to actually get a job to
pay for her own food. I'm sick of paying taxes to support whore women and their bastard
children.
"The Department of Agriculture estimates that the new measures could save the agency $1.1
billion in year one, and $7.9 billion by year five."
Today's Repo operation by the Fed is $70.1 Billion. The $1.1 Billion in annual savings due
to this cut is about 1.5% of what the Fed pumped into the Repo market just today. I'm all for
cutting out the fraud. If you can work, then you should work. Don't work? Don't eat! But our
economy is a Service Sector for the most part now, and the wages suck for a big part in the
Service Sector. Wages overall have been nearly flat for about 30 years. How about we cut the
welfare **** to the banks, Wall Street? That would save trillions not just billions. Typical
DC. Fix problems while ******* over the little people, and continuing corporate welfare all
the while. This **** so needs to burn up!
great... outsource manufacturing, sign new trade deals to off shore more jobs, ramp up the
stock market for the rich, waste trillions on destabilizing other nations, give israel all
they want, print money to infinity, ask for zero interest rate.. and a billion per year to
feed poor people is too much.. Trump is in touch with the little guy
Trump will lose 2020... give the 750,000 guns and ammo and some food and water... and a
map to DC... Soros can provide the buses...
In a bid to end the massive welfare state, the Trump administration is expected to
announce new measures Wednesday that would end food stamp benefits for nearly 750,000
low-income folks
and yet Trump is crying for negative interest rates so the 0.1% can continue getting the
welfare they deserve ?
The new rules will make it difficult for "states to gain waivers from a requirement that
beneficiaries work or participate in a vocational training program," according to
Bloomberg sources.
And... those are actually the OLD rules, which are still on the books, but which Obama
waived by EO. I'm glad 750,00 are being cut from the roles.
Trump Admin To Cut 750,000 From Food Stamps Ahead Of Recession
OK, so I have to ask: What recession? Well, the coming one, obviously! So let's logic this
out. You wouldn't cut food stamps IN a recession (political suicide), so what's your
alternative? You're either in a recession or you're on your way to the next one which will
happen eventually, right? So, when would you be able to cut food stamps? I guess never by
that logic.
"... A more compelling explanation for the persistence of a large global U.S. military footprint, and the concomitant creep of oversees commitments, is to be found in domestic politics. Trump's rhetoric can diverge sharply from reality without consequence because few in his party have an incentive to hold him accountable. In this hyper-polarized political moment, most voters will stick with their party regardless of how many campaign pledges are broken or foreign policy initiatives end in failure. With an all-volunteer military, flattening taxes, and deficit financing, the vast majority of Americans are insulated from the costs of American foreign policy. So long as most Americans want to look tough and influential without paying for it, politicians won't be punished for living in the same fantasy world as voters. ..."
"... The main reason why America's military commitments remain unchanged under Trump may simply be that the president doesn't really want to reduce them. ..."
aul MacDonald and Joseph Parent
explain in detail that Trump hasn't reduced U.S. military commitments overseas:
But after nearly three years in office, Trump's promised retrenchment has yet to
materialize. The president hasn't meaningfully altered the U.S. global military footprint he
inherited from President Barack Obama. Nor has he shifted the costly burden of defending U.S.
allies. To the contrary, he loaded even greater military responsibilities on the United
States while either ramping up or maintaining U.S. involvement in the conflicts in
Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere. On practically every other issue, Trump departed radically
from the path of his predecessor. But when it came to troop deployments and other overseas
defense commitments, he largely preserved the chessboard he inherited -- promises to the
contrary be damned.
MacDonald and Parent's article complements my earlier
post about U.S. "global commitments" very nicely. When we look at the specifics of Trump's
record, we see that he isn't ending U.S. military involvement anywhere. He isn't bringing
anyone home. On the contrary, he has been sending even more American troops to the Middle East
just this year alone. While he is being excoriated for withdrawals that never happen, he is
maintaining or steadily increasing the U.S. military presence in foreign countries. Many Trump
detractors and supporters are so invested in the narrative that Trump is presiding over
"withdrawal" that they are ignoring what the president has actually done. Trump's approach to
U.S. military involvement might be described as "loudly declaring withdrawal while maintaining
or increasing troop levels." Almost everyone pays attention only to his rhetoric about leaving
this or that country and treats it as if it is really happening. Meanwhile, the number of
military personnel deployed overseas never goes down.
The authors offer a possible explanation for why Trump has been able to get away with
this:
A more compelling explanation for the persistence of a large global U.S. military
footprint, and the concomitant creep of oversees commitments, is to be found in domestic
politics. Trump's rhetoric can diverge sharply from reality without consequence because few
in his party have an incentive to hold him accountable. In this hyper-polarized political
moment, most voters will stick with their party regardless of how many campaign pledges are
broken or foreign policy initiatives end in failure. With an all-volunteer military,
flattening taxes, and deficit financing, the vast majority of Americans are insulated from
the costs of American foreign policy. So long as most Americans want to look tough and
influential without paying for it, politicians won't be punished for living in the same
fantasy world as voters.
Trump is further insulated from scrutiny and criticism because he is frequently described as
presiding over a "retreat" from the world. Most news reports and commentary pieces reinforce
this false impression that Trump seeks to get the U.S. out of foreign entanglements. There are
relatively few people pointing out the truth that MacDonald and Parent spell out in their
article. The main reason why America's military commitments remain unchanged under Trump
may simply be that the president doesn't really want to reduce them.
In his foreign policy Trump looks like a Republican Obama, save Nobel Peace Price. If Obama was/is a CIA-democrat, this guy
is a Deep State controlled republican. Why is the Deep State is attacking him is completely unclear. May be they just do not like unpredictable,
inpulsive politicians
Despite his surrender "Neocon crazies from the basement" still attack his exactly the same way as they attacked him for pretty
mundane meeting with Putin and other fake "misdeeds" like Ukrainegate
And that means that he lost a considerable part of his electorate: the anti-war republicans and former Sanders supporters, who voted
for him in 2016 to block Hillary election.
And in no way he is an economic nationalist. He is "national neoliberal" which rejects parts of neoliberal globalization based on
treaties and prefer to bully nations to compliance that favor the US interests instead of treaties. And his "fight" with the Deep state
resemble so closely to complete and unconditional surrender, that you might have difficulties to distinguish between the two. Most of
his appointees are rabid neocons. Just look at Pompeo, Bolton, Fiona Hill. That that extends far beyond those obvious crazies.
Washington Post stating that he "has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details" of his discussions with Russian President
Vladimir Putin - telling Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in a phone interview that he would be willing to release the details of a private
conversation in Helsinki last summer.
"I would. I don't care," Trump told Pirro, adding: "I'm not keeping anything under wraps. I couldn't care less."
"I mean, it's so ridiculous, these people making up," Trump said of the WaPo report.
The president referred to his roughly two-hour dialogue with Putin in Helsinki -- at which only the leaders and their translators
were present -- as "a great conversation" that included discussions about "securing Israel and lots of other things."
"I had a conversation like every president does," Trump said Saturday. "You sit with the president of various countries. I
do it with all countries." -
Politico
In July an attempt by House Democrats to subpoena Trump's Helsinki interpreter was quashed by Republicans. "The Washington Post
is almost as bad, or probably as bad, as the New York Times," Trump said. When Pirro asked Trump about a Friday night New York
Times report that the FBI had opened an inquiry into whether he was working for Putin, Pirro asked Trump "Are you now or have you
ever worked for Russia, Mr. President?" "I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked," Trump responded. "I think
it's the most insulting article I've ever had written."
Trump went on an
epic tweetstorm Saturday following the Times article, defending his 2017 firing of former FBI Director James Comey, and tweeting
that he has been "FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, &
as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations
with Russia again!"
While Obama organized 2014 coup data that smashed contitutional oder in Ukraine and installed far-right nationalists in power (Nulandgate) Obamam did not suppled arms toUkrains; Trump did
In his foreign policy Trump looks
like a Republican Obama, save Nobel Peace Price. If Obama was/is a CIA-democrat, this guy is a Deep State controlled republican. Why
is the Deep State is attacking him is completely unclear. May be they just do not like unpredictable, impulsive politicians
Despite his surrender "Neocon crazies from the basement" still attack his exactly the same way as they attacked him for
pretty mundane meeting with Putin and other fake "misdeeds" like Ukrainegate
And that means that he lost a considerable part of his electorate: the anti-war republicans
and former Sanders supporters, who voted for him in 2016 to block Hillary election.
And in no way he is an economic nationalist. He is
"national neoliberal" which rejects parts of neoliberal globalization based on treaties and
prefer to bully nations to compliance that favor the US interests instead of treaties. And his "fight" with the Deep state resemble so closely to complete and unconditional
surrender, that you might have difficulties to distinguish between the two. Most of his appointees are rabid neocons. Just look at Pompeo, Bolton, Fiona Hill. That that extends far beyond
those obvious crazies.
Washington
Post stating that he "has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details" of his
discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin - telling Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in a
phone interview that he would be willing to release the details of a private conversation in
Helsinki last summer.
"I would. I don't care," Trump told Pirro, adding: "I'm not keeping anything under wraps. I
couldn't care less."
"I mean, it's so ridiculous, these people making up," Trump said of the WaPo report.
The president referred to his roughly two-hour dialogue with Putin in Helsinki -- at which
only the leaders and their translators were present -- as "a great conversation" that
included discussions about "securing Israel and lots of other things."
"I had a conversation like every president does," Trump said Saturday. "You sit with the
president of various countries. I do it with all countries." -
Politico
In July an attempt by House Democrats to subpoena Trump's Helsinki interpreter was quashed
by Republicans. "The Washington Post is almost as bad, or probably as bad, as the New York Times," Trump
said. When Pirro asked Trump about a Friday night New York Times report that the FBI had opened an
inquiry into whether he was working for Putin, Pirro asked Trump "Are you now or have you ever
worked for Russia, Mr. President?" "I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked," Trump responded. "I think it's
the most insulting article I've ever had written."
Trump went on an
epic tweetstorm Saturday following the Times article, defending his 2017 firing of former
FBI Director James Comey, and tweeting that he has been "FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush
or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often
said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday
we will have good relations with Russia again!"
"... and now Obama weighs in to warn against the real danger to the democrats, Bernie Sanders. that's who they have to beat, and Gabbard. They don't give much of a damn about beating Trump. ..."
"... This pretty much confirms my and many others here hypothesis that the Dems are fighting a "war on two fronts": one against Trump nationalist capitalism and the other against the "democratic socialists" who have been flocking to their party machine since 2014. ..."
"... Clearly, the goal is to prevent the US Polity from clawing back power from the 10% and enacting policies to their benefit. Meanwhile, a new form of Transnational Nationalism continues to take shape that will soon present a serious threat to the Financialized Globalizers and their Cult of Debt. Too many seem to laugh off the entire situation by dismissing it as Kabuki Theatre, which I see as self-serving and shortsighted since there're several very real crises we're in up to our collective armpits. ..."
"... A full blown impeachment trial that exposes the entire Russia-gate/Ukraine-gate/Whatever-gate sham is what this country needs. ..."
"... Bet the MSM sells Ukrainegate this way: Trump is guilty in Ukrainegate and should be impeached, but Democrats are moving on to focus on the election. And besides, Dems will tell us, the dastardly Republicans in the Senate will corruptly block Trump's impeachment. ..."
"... That is what they call a "trial balloon." If there isn't too much of a freakout among the true-believer base, and I don't think there is, it'll be an option they will at least take seriously. Not that I'm encouraging anyone to bet on rational thinking at this point. Anyway I agree it's the best move for congressional Democrats. ..."
"... I am liking all the commenters here that understand that there is only one empire party with two mythical faces. I think this kabuki is necessary if you don't have a major WAR to keep the masses focused on or otherwise distracted from the underlying R2P which I translate to Rape2Protect. ..."
"... If this show should teach people in the US anything (again), it is how both US parties descend like vultures onto countries where they manage to take over the government. Five billion poured into Ukraine with the requisite murder and mayhem, and who knows how many billions come pouring back out. It's a real jackpot for those in the right positions to scoop it into their pockets. ..."
"... The average people in the US don't even have a genuine safety net. Important for all those productive resources to go to pedophile islands and sinecures for coke head sons of politicians, obviously. ..."
"... The GOP is the party of the rich. The Democrats are the party the rich pay to keep the left at bay when the Republicans lose. ..."
"... the deck is stacked even more against independents than it is against actual mildly leftist candidates who run as democrats. there are a substantial number of people who think the only way to change the country is to take over the democratic party. frankly, that isn't going to happen, and nobody is going to win as an independent candidate with all the procedural rules making it so hard to even get on the ballot, while the state government, which is invariably controlled by one of the two parties, throws every roadblock, legal and illegal, in the way. my gut feeling is things are going to have to get quite a bit worse before the citizenry starts to explode, and there's no telling how that process will work out, and no way to control it once it reaches critical mass. ..."
"... the Democrats won't want to censure Trump for matters in which they themselves are equally complicit, as has been discussed here. ..."
"... "The party's true function is thus largely theatrical. It doesn't exist to fight for change, but only to pose as a force which one fine distant day might possibly bestir itself to fight for change. Thus the whole magic of the Dem Party -- the essential service it renders to the US power structure -- lies not in what it does, but in its mere existence: by simply existing, and doing nothing, it pretends to be something it's not; and this is enough to relieve despair & to let the system portray itself as a "democracy." ..."
"... Trump is up against an entrenched powerful bureaucracy and people who buy ink by the 55 gallon barrel. The democrats need to take a hard turn towards Mayor Pete and Tulsi. The rank and file Democrats are tired of the elite political class ..."
"... The real Trump move would be to hit the twitter right before the house impeachment vote and announce that he has instructed the House Republicans to vote for impeachment. ..."
"... He could lay out his story about how the American People never got to hear the full story because of house dems, and how the Senate would fully investigate the 2016 election, Russiagate, Ukraine, and whatever else they want. Maybe even make Hillary testify. Heads would explode and his base would love it. ..."
"... To the people here clamoring for Bernie Sanders to go independent: The American electoral system is very unique. The two parties -- GOP and Dems -- are much more than mere political parties: they are the American electoral machine itself. It is impossible to win the presidency without being the candidate of one of the two, that's why Trump also didn't go as an independent either. ..."
"An impeachment trial in the Senate would be a disaster for the Democrats.
I can not see why the Democrats would want to fall into such a trap. House leader Nancy
Pelosi is experienced enough to not let that happen."
The real reason in my opinion that Pelosi went along with impeachment was that she saw
Bernies message getting through, and even though the DNC pushed all the conserva-dem
candidates they could into the race, Bernie is still doing well and gaining. An impeachment
trial would require Bernie to attend the hearings rather that campaigning. Also Wall Streets
best friend Obama has just stated that Bernie is not a Democrat and that would require Obama
to get on the speaking circuit to campaign against him - you know for the sake of the
corporations - and those 500k speaking thank you gigs. They would rather elect Trump than
Bernie - that is why I think Pelosi would go along with an impeachment trial in the Senate -
Bernie is the greater threat.
The idea to censure Trump and move on has been aired since mid 2017. The latest was
Forbes.com billwhalen 26 September 2019
Link
I ordered a truckload of pop corn to snack on during the trial in the Senate. Just imagine
Joe Biden under cross examination as he flips 'n flops! "Was that me in the Video, I can't
recall."
With interest (even among Democrats) in the impeachment process sliding, the House
Judiciary Committee is set to take over the impeachment probe of President Trump next week,
scheduling a Dec. 4 hearing.
As The Hill reports, behind Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the committee
will hear from legal scholars as Democrats weigh whether the evidence turned up in their
weeks-long impeachment inquiry warrants the drafting of articles aimed at removing the
president from office.
The hearing, scheduled for next Wednesday, will focus on the definition of an
impeachable offense and the formal application of the impeachment process. The panel
will invite White House lawyers to attend and participate.
Ahead of the hearing, Nadler wrote to Trump requesting his participation - or
that of White House counsel - as part of ensuring "a fair and informative process."[.]
Trump will take a page from the other president who campaigned on the "do nothing
congress"
and now Obama weighs in to warn against the real danger to the democrats, Bernie Sanders.
that's who they have to beat, and Gabbard. They don't give much of a damn about beating
Trump.
b, there seems to be a critical flaw in your analysis--you seem to base it on a premise that
the goal of the Democratic establishment is to win elections/gain power/govern. It's not,
it's to ensure the continuing enrichment of themselves and their oligarch peers, financial
industry, military, pharma, etc.
The question people like Pelosi (worth $100 million or so btw along with her husband whose
business she enriches via her position) are pondering isn't "Will doing x, y, z help Trump
win?" It's "Will doing x, y, z ensure Bernie Sanders doesn't win?"
This pretty much confirms my and many others here hypothesis that the Dems are
fighting a "war on two fronts": one against Trump nationalist capitalism and the other
against the "democratic socialists" who have been flocking to their party machine since
2014.
Of all the things that the Democrats could impeach President Trump over, the one thing they
seized upon was the issue that had the most potential to blow back on them and destroy Joe
Biden's chances of reaching the White House. Whoever had that brilliant idea and put it as
the long straw in a cylindrical prawn-chip can along with all the other straws for pulling
out, sure didn't think of all the consequences that could have arisen. That speaks for the
depth (or lack thereof) of the thinking among senior Democrats and their worker bee analysts,
along with a narrow-minded outlook, sheer hatred of a political outsider and a fanatical zeal
to match that hatred and outlook.
The folks who hatched that particular impeachment plan and pitched it to Nancy Pelosi must
have been the same idiots in the DNC who dreamt up the Russiagate scandal and also pursued
Paul Manafort to get him off DJT's election campaign team. Dmitri Alperovich / Crowdstrike,
Alexandra Chalupa: we're looking at you.
Impeachment takes Sanders out of the campaign and that opens things up for the
CIA/establishment's "Identity Politics Candidate #3" , Mayor Butt-gig.
That said, since "Everyone who doesn't vote for our candidate is a deplorable
misogynist!" didn't work as expected, I wonder what makes them think "Everyone who
doesn't vote for our candidate is a deplorable homophobe!" will work any better?
Lots of agreement here with the overall situation becoming clearer with Bloomberg's entrance
and the outing of Obama's plans. I just finished writing my response to Putin's speech before the annual
United Russia Party Congress on the Open Thread and suggest barflies take 10 minutes to
read it and compare what he espouses a political party's deeds & goals ought to be versus
those of the West and its vassals.
Clearly, the goal is to prevent the US Polity from clawing back power from the 10% and
enacting policies to their benefit. Meanwhile, a new form of Transnational Nationalism
continues to take shape that will soon present a serious threat to the Financialized
Globalizers and their Cult of Debt. Too many seem to laugh off the entire situation by
dismissing it as Kabuki Theatre, which I see as self-serving and shortsighted since there're
several very real crises we're in up to our collective armpits.
A full blown impeachment trial that exposes the entire
Russia-gate/Ukraine-gate/Whatever-gate sham is what this country needs.
Obviously, a sufficient number of secure Republican representatives are needed to vote in
favor of impeachment to allow this circus to continue to its bizarrely entertaining,
Democratic Party destroying end.
The MSM will declare Trump guilty - that is, he has earned impeachment for Ukrainegate.
There are Democrats still under the illusion that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the
election. Dems tell us that Trump *obstructed* the Mueller investigation thus Trump could not
be nailed, nonetheless Trump is guilty of collusion until proven innocent.
Back to Ukrainegate. Bet the MSM sells Ukrainegate this way: Trump is guilty in
Ukrainegate and should be impeached, but Democrats are moving on to focus on the election.
And besides, Dems will tell us, the dastardly Republicans in the Senate will corruptly block
Trump's impeachment.
Tulsi
Gabbard Tweet not specifically about impeachment but begs numerous questions:
"My personal commitment is to always treat you and all Americans with respect. Working
side-by-side, we can defeat the divisiveness of Donald Trump, and usher in a 21st century of
peace, human dignity, & true equality. Working side by side, we can make Dr. King's dream
our reality ." [My Emphasis]
Questions: Is Trump divisive, or is it the D-Party and Current Oligarchy that make him so;
and which is more important to defeat? Which party "usher[ed] in the 21st century" with
several wars and abetted the next two? How did Obama, Slick Willie or his wife advance "human
dignity & true equality"? How does her last sentence differ from "Hope you can believe
in"? Hasn't her D-Party worked tirelessly for decades to circumvent the goals she espouses?
Wouldn't Gabbard have a better chance running as an Enlightened Republican than as a Renegade
Democrat if her goal's to defeat Trump?
American Democracy is political professional wrestling, Kabuki Theater, and mediocre Reality
TV all rolled into. by: AK74 @ 4 <= binary divide <=conducted by the USA, is not about
America, Americans or making America great again, its about the welfare of [the few<=
which most Americans would not call fellow Americans].
Sasha.@ 23 I don't understand where you are coming from.. thank Korlof1 @18 for posting
that Putin talk alert. excerpts from the talk.. => The priority [of United Russia has
been] the protection of the people's interests, the interests of [the] Motherland, and
..responsible [approach] to ..country, its security, stability and people's lives in the
long-term perspective.
The party.. offered a unifying agenda based on freedom and well being, patriotism,
..traditional values, a strong civil society and a strong state. The key issue in the party's
work .being together with the people, Karlof1@18 <=this talk suggest change in Russian
leadership that are not congruent with your [Sasha] comment @23. I hope you will make more
clear what you spent sometime writing ( and for that effort I thank you) but it is not yet
clear what you mean.. .
Re: Brenda Lawrence talking about censure rather than impeachment:
That is what they call a "trial balloon." If there isn't too much of a freakout among
the true-believer base, and I don't think there is, it'll be an option they will at least
take seriously. Not that I'm encouraging anyone to bet on rational thinking at this point.
Anyway I agree it's the best move for congressional Democrats.
Yet another other option is to continue the investigation indefinitely. I'm going to say
it is their default move actually. In that case, the House Judiciary Committee would spend a
few weeks putting on their own show, then say they would like more evidence to be really
sure, returning matters to the House Intelligence Committee, and we repeat the cycle.
I am liking all the commenters here that understand that there is only one empire party
with two mythical faces. I think this kabuki is necessary if you don't have a major WAR to
keep the masses focused on or otherwise distracted from the underlying R2P which I translate
to Rape2Protect.
It is sad to see us all talking about which of the lesser of horrible evils will continue
the leadership of American faced empire.....I hope it crashes soon and takes the global elite
down with it.....how many barflies are ready to stand up and say NO to the owners of the
Super-Priority derivatives that will say they own the world because of their casino (no skin
in the game) bets that are currently "legal" in America when the crash comes?
American "Democracy" is a mask for the American Empire and its capitalist
system--including especially the American Military and its Intelligence apparatus (aka The
Deep State). If the American people don't identify with these institutions, you would see
much greater hostility to -- if not outright rebellion against--the American military and
spooks.
Instead, you see the very opposite: the American people saluting, glorifying, "thanking
for their service," and politically fellating the US military and spy agencies every chance
they get. That should tell you all you need to know about Americans.
If this show should teach people in the US anything (again), it is how both US parties
descend like vultures onto countries where they manage to take over the government. Five
billion poured into Ukraine with the requisite murder and mayhem, and who knows how many
billions come pouring back out. It's a real jackpot for those in the right positions to scoop
it into their pockets.
The average people in the US don't even have a genuine safety net. Important for all
those productive resources to go to pedophile islands and sinecures for coke head sons of
politicians, obviously.
Re: #3 Allen – well said. The GOP is the party of the rich. The Democrats are the
party the rich pay to keep the left at bay when the Republicans lose.
The problem with this prediction is that the MSM has been breathlessly pronouncing that THIS
IS EXPLOSIVE EVIDENCE!!!! pretty much every day and after every witness testimony.
So if you are a member of the public who gets their "information" from the MSM (and, be
honest, that is most of the people in the USA) then you have been force-fed is that Trumps
defense against these allegations has already been shredded, and that his guilt has already
been established beyond any reasonable doubt.
How can those opinion-makers then turn around and say "Nah, it'll be fine" and settle for
a mere censure?
Wouldn't the Sheeple respond with a fully-justified "Hey, hang on! What gives?"
The Democrats has leapt on a Tiger. Nobody made them do it, but now they are there I don't
think they are going to be able to leap off.
Some of the first-term nobodies, maybe, but not the Schiffs and the Pelopis and the
Nadlers.
Hang on for dear life and hope for a miracle is probably their only option now.
And, who knows, that trio may be so incompetent that they actually think they are going to
win.
james, the deck is stacked even more against independents than it is against actual
mildly leftist candidates who run as democrats. there are a substantial number of people who
think the only way to change the country is to take over the democratic party. frankly, that
isn't going to happen, and nobody is going to win as an independent candidate with all the
procedural rules making it so hard to even get on the ballot, while the state government,
which is invariably controlled by one of the two parties, throws every roadblock, legal and
illegal, in the way. my gut feeling is things are going to have to get quite a bit worse
before the citizenry starts to explode, and there's no telling how that process will work
out, and no way to control it once it reaches critical mass.
The US is a one party State-- Pepsi _Pepsi Lite. Both parties are capitalist. It is rather
humorous the attention paid to a Dim vs Repug argument. Small thinking for small minds---
As I posted at the beginning of the impeachment process, the Dems would be foolish to hang it
all on the arcane shenanigans in Ukraine but rather should impeach Trump on the numerous more
serious breaches and crimes that he has committed. I also worried that the Democratic Party
leaders would blow the opportunity to demonstrate that Trump and the Republican Party are
rotten to the core and harmful to the country. And so they have blown it. What an inept pack
of asses.
I would think that even censure is still going to be a hot potato for the Democrats. Looking
at the procedure as far as wikipedia describes it, it hasn't done anything of significance
when it comes to being used against a president, especially as the Democrats won't want
to censure Trump for matters in which they themselves are equally complicit, as has been
discussed here.
That means they would be censuring on the same shaky grounds that they would have
impeached him, which only prolongs attention upon the dubious claims of the indictment. It
seems to me Trump will, rather than be shamed by the process, only be saying 'Make my day',
and hopefully have his Attorney General come forward with exonerating revelations on that
issue in the judicial proceeding that it was my contention the impeachment effort had been a
last ditch one to forestall such.
Wishful thinking on that, I know - but at least that probe has merit.
Thanks for your reply! And thanks for linking the Keen video! Made a comment on that
thread.
As I wrote when the possibility of Trump's impeachment arose almost as soon as he was
inaugurated, the entire charade reminds me of Slick Willie's impeachment, trial and
exoneration--the Articles of Impeachment utilized were such that he'd avoid conviction just
as they will be for Trump.
Allen @ 3 said; "The party's true function is thus largely theatrical. It doesn't exist
to fight for change, but only to pose as a force which one fine distant day might possibly
bestir itself to fight for change. Thus the whole magic of the Dem Party -- the essential
service it renders to the US power structure -- lies not in what it does, but in its mere
existence: by simply existing, and doing nothing, it pretends to be something it's not; and
this is enough to relieve despair & to let the system portray itself as a
"democracy."
With very few exceptions, you nailed it..Your description of the Dem. party is sad, but
true.....
Not having much time to watch the show trial it appears to me the Democrats still have a set
of very weak candidates. Anyone who knows Biden knows he in not now and never will be able to
handle a campaign against Trump.
Trump is up against an entrenched powerful bureaucracy and people who buy ink by the
55 gallon barrel. The democrats need to take a hard turn towards Mayor Pete and Tulsi. The
rank and file Democrats are tired of the elite political class in the same fashion that
the rank and file Republicans were tired of the political establishment which caused then to
turn to Trump.
Is the Democrat political establishment smart enough to take a few steps back and push
forward some outsiders? I doubt that but they would not lose much if they did. Any new
leaders would have the same stable of bureaucrats to pick from which will still be there long
after they are gone.
The real Trump move would be to hit the twitter right before the house impeachment vote
and announce that he has instructed the House Republicans to vote for impeachment.
He could lay out his story about how the American People never got to hear the full
story because of house dems, and how the Senate would fully investigate the 2016 election,
Russiagate, Ukraine, and whatever else they want. Maybe even make Hillary testify. Heads
would explode and his base would love it.
The...***The***...core takeaway, the battle at the heart of Russiagate/Ukrainegate, is that
it does not matter who the People elect as President and what platform he was elected on the
Deep State will decide foreign policy.
democrats republicans makes no difference both teams are managed by self serving scum who
refuse to allow "what the people want" to distract them from the big one. "what can I
steal?".
People meed to appreciate two things about both the dems and the rethugs. The first is
they supply a much-needed insight into: "How low can I go as a worthless hang off the wagon
by me fingernails, careerist. The second? That every hack must understand that eventually
every talking head is seen for the ugly sellout which they are.
There is no 'honourable way through this mess', one either quietly resigns pulling the pin
on the worst of us all, or one accepts the previously unacceptable, that we are most likely
both musically n functionally illiterate but it never matters what-u-say, what really counts
is what you do.
Whoever it was the Democrats should shun that person before it creates more damage to
their party.
I would disagree here. If the Democrats continue they will destroy themselves hopefully
leading to Mutually Assured Destruction as they would need to do something very drastic to
destroy the Republicans in return e.g. expose 9/11, Iraq etc, let the swamp / Deep State go
M.A.D. and from the political ashes parties and politicians can rise who are actually working
for the betterment of the USA and its people.
To the people here clamoring for Bernie Sanders to go independent: The American
electoral system is very unique. The two parties -- GOP and Dems -- are much more than mere
political parties: they are the American electoral machine itself. It is impossible to win
the presidency without being the candidate of one of the two, that's why Trump also didn't go
as an independent either.
Bernie Sanders is different from all other independent presidential candidates in American
History because he was the first to really want to win. That's why he penetrated the
Democratic machine, even though he became senator many times as an independent. He read the
conjuncture correctly and, you have to agree, he's been more influential over American
political-ideological landscape than all the other independents put together (not considering
Eugene Debs as an independent).
American "Democracy" is a mask for the American Empire and its capitalist
system--including especially the American Military and its Intelligence apparatus (aka The
Deep State). If the American people don't identify with these institutions, you would see
much greater hostility to--if not outright rebellion against--the American military and
spooks.
Instead, you see the very opposite: the American people saluting, glorifying, "thanking
for their service," and politically fellating the US military and spy agencies every chance
they get.
That should tell you all you need to know about Americans. by: AK74 @ 34
<= No not yet do I agree with you.. The American young people are forced into the
military in order to afford to be educated, and in order to have access to health care and
good-level workforce entry jobs especially the military is default for children of struggling
parents that cannot fund a college education or for the kids who are not yet ready to become
serious students.
The USA has not always discounted America or denied Americans. When I grew up, a college
education was very affordable, health care was available to even the most needy at whatever
they could afford, most of us could work our way through the education and find decent entry
level jobs if we were willing to dedicate ourselves to make the opportunity of a job into a
success (education, degrees, licenses were not needed, just performance was enough).
Unfortunately third party private mind control propaganda was used to extend into fake space,
the belief that the USA provides a valuable service to American interest. As time went on,
the USA had to hid its activities in top secret closets, it then had to learn to spy on
everyone, and it had to prosecute those (whistle blowers) who raised a question. Hence the
predicament of the awaken American dealing with friends that still believe the USA is good
for America.. Others hope the good times will return but the USA tolerance for descent is
dissipating. After the 16th amendment and the federal reserve act in 1913 the USA began to
edge America out in favor of international globalization.
Most of the really important parts of what made the USA great for Americans has been sold
off [privatized] and the protections and umpiring and refereeing that the USA used to provide
to keep the American economic space highly competitive and freely accessible to all
competitors has not only ceased, but now operates as a monopoly factory, churning out laws,
rules and establishing agencies that make the wealthy and their corporate empires wealthier,
richer and more monopolistic at the expense of everyday Americans.
The USA began to drop America from its sights after WWII. The USA moved its efforts and
activities from American domestic concerns to global concerns in 1948, neglected its advance
and protect American ideology; it imposed the continental shelf act in 1954 and the EPA act
in 1972, in order to force American industry out of America (the oil business to Saudi Arabia
and OPEC); by 1985-95 most businesses operating in America were either forced to close or
forced to move to a cheap third world labor force places.. .<=the purpose is now clear, it
was to separate Americans from their industrial and manufacturing know-how and to block
American access to evolving technology . At first most Americans did not notice.
Many Americans are only now waking to the possibility that things topside have changed and
some are realizing just how vulnerable the US constitution has made the USA to outside
influence. .. thanks to the USA very little of good ole America remains. but the humanity
first instinct most Americans are born with remains mostly unchanged, even though the
globalist have decimated religious organizations, most Americans still believe their maker
will not look favorably on those who deny justice, democracy or who abuse mankind. The USA
has moved on, it has become a global empire, operating in a global space unknown to most
Americans. The USA has created a world of its own, it no longer needs domestic America, it
can use the people and resources of anyone anywhere in the world for its conquest.
The last two political campaigns for President were "Change=Obama" and "Make America Great
Again=Trump"; neither of these two would have succeeded if Americans did not feel the
problem.
"... First the constitution emerging from Philadelphia in 1787 did not contain the bill of rights, a fact prominently exposed when the states refused to ratify the constitution their own representatives at the Philadephia convention voted for. The states said, no to ratification unless and until, as a minimum, the first ten amendments were added. <= I assert the founders and their then corporations d\n want the governed to have any privileges or rights. ..."
"... One of the ongoing impediments to broad American public understanding of the US Constitution is its elevation to 'sacrosanct' status, thus placing it above critical discussion. ..."
"... And then you have the mantra of mass continual frequent typically hypocritical/false/programmed swearing of allegiance to it, and also, of all things, the linked elevation into 'symbolic deity' of a flag. ..."
it noted =>America's representative appointed by the electoral college into the
position of CEO of the USA interpreted the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military
Force==> <=to mean=> executive privilege includes the right to assassinate US
Citizens ?
WOW! Does that means person of wealth, corporation or foreign government can pay to get
the USA to assassinate whom ever?
The article says: The democratic institutions, including the press, ..have been neutered.
It notes that the Wealth and power once attributable to Americans is now consoliated inside
and located behind the access controlled walls of privately owned corporate enterprise; where
the dark hole of board room policy establishes how the corporation wealth and power will rape
its next million or so victims...? the article discusses how America's wealth is eqally
divided between 99% (wealth of 350,000,000 Americans) = and 1% (wealth of 35,000 in control
of America) .
But I do not subscribe to the idea that it is deep state that is the problem. I think the
problem lay in the construction of the constitution of the United States.. the deep state is
just using the highly skewed distribution of power [between the governed and the governors
placed in the constitution) to accommodate their for profit purposes. The constitution was
never intended to protect governed Americans from exploitation by those who govern; its
purpose was to protect those with the wealth and power from the Americans its federalism was
designed to govern. Its pure propaganda that the constitution is to be interpreted as a
democratic win for the governed.
First the constitution emerging from Philadelphia in 1787 did not contain the bill of
rights, a fact prominently exposed when the states refused to ratify the constitution their
own representatives at the Philadephia convention voted for. The states said, no to
ratification unless and until, as a minimum, the first ten amendments were added. <= I
assert the founders and their then corporations d\n want the governed to have any privileges
or rights.
Secondly, it was not until the 17th amendment(1913) that Americans were empowered to vote
for who would fill any of the 100 highly paid, very powerful, US Senate jobs, even today, no
American can vote for but 2 senators each. <=to date Americans have no say by vote as to
who shall be paid to be the President or VP of the USA [<=the electoral colleges
determines the President and the states each appoint whomever they wish to the electoral
college]. America is a democracy; the USA is a Republic, the states are trickle down versions
of the USA.
Thirdly, ratification was invented and placed in the constitution to avoid offering all
Americans the chance to decide for themselves if Americans wanted federalism or states
rights, or if the excluded persons (Indians and 3/5 of other persons) wanted to be excluded
or governed by federalism (federalism destroys states rights); had a popular vote been taken,
I believe federalism w\h\b soundly defeated). Ratification (Article VII)<=regime changed
[1788] the Articles of Confederation Government (AOCG: Hanson first President of the USA in
Congress) [it was the AOCG that defeated the British Armies in America [1777] and that
contributed the 1776 Declaration of Independence to the world, not the USA]. After regime
change; USA, old British wealth and corporate cronies were back in charge of governing
America. Today they might be called the deep state.
Fourthly, We, the American public, are spectators. An audience by Jackrabbit @ 36..
Fifthly, no president I am familiar with, has done in office what was promised in the
campaign.
I think the governed must look to the constitution to see how the governors have made this
happen.
My take is that civil liberties never existed in America.. the only civil liberties that
Americans have ever enjoyed were those expressed in contractual promises (offered in the
first 10 <=amendments of the COUS) and that courts were obliged to affirm because it would
defeat the propaganda that such rights actually exist. How enforceable do you think a promise
in a contract are that governors will not infringe the human rights promises made
therein?
Over 200 years, during war time, the governors have suspended such rights and during
normal times the only way to prevent infringement has often been to engage lawyers and costly
expensive courts.. to remind the governors that it is important for propaganda purposes to
honor the promises made in the amendments to the constitution? Its a joke to assume that a
clause in an amended contract would be honored when it is inconvenient to the promissors; ie.
Julian Assange?
even in the 'good articles', even in 'noble efforts' its pretty hard not to slip into,
what? Let's call it, Empire Speak. Or is that Swamp Speak? by: Robert Snefjella @ 42 <=
the mind control weapons that fire bullets made of propaganda are extremely powerful..
One of the ongoing impediments to broad American public understanding of the US
Constitution is its elevation to 'sacrosanct' status, thus placing it above critical
discussion.
Its 'supreme' status renders thoughts of ongoing improvement disabled. And then you
have the mantra of mass continual frequent typically hypocritical/false/programmed swearing
of allegiance to it, and also, of all things, the linked elevation into 'symbolic deity' of a
flag.
This is helped along by a frequent stirring rendition of the national anthem, which has
bombs exploding for the land of the "brave and the free".
(As an aside note of some curiosity and immeasurable impact, in Canada there is much
swearing of allegiance to the very aged titular head of the dysfunctional 'Royal Family' of
the UK.) Sigh.
"... Trying to head off redivision of the world into nationalist trade blocks by removing Trump via dubiously democratic upheavals (like color revolutions) with more or less fictional quasi-scandals as pro-Russian treason or anti-Ukrainian treason (which is "Huh?" on the face of it,) is futile. It stems from a desire to keep on "free" trading despite the secular stagnation that has set in, hoping that the sociopolitical nowhere (major at least) doesn't collapse until God or Nature or something restores the supposedly natural order of economic growth without end/crisis. ..."
"... I think efforts to keep the neoliberal international WTO/IMF/World Bank "free" trading system is futile because the lower orders are being ordered to be satisfied with a permanent, rigid class system ..."
"... If the pie is to shrink forever, all the vile masses (the deplorables) are going to hang together in their various ways, clinging to shared identity in race or religion or nationality, which will leave the international capitalists hanging, period. "Greed is good" mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to be very destructive. Saying "Greed is good," then expecting selflessness from the lowers is not high-minded but self-serving. Redistribution of wealth upward has been terribly destructive to social cohesion, both domestically and in the sense of generosity towards foreigners. ..."
"... The pervasive feeling that "we" are going down and drastic action has to be taken is probably why there hasn't been much traction for impeachment til now. If Biden, shown to be shady in regards to Hunter, is nominated to lead the Democratic Party into four/eight years of Obama-esque promise to continue shrinking the status quo for the lowers, Trump will probably win. Warren might have a better chance to convince voters she means to change things (despite the example of Obama,) but she's not very appealing. And she is almost certainly likely to be manipulated like Trump. ..."
"... I *think* that's more or less what likbez, said, though obviously it's not the way likbez wanted to express it. I disagree strenuously on some details, like Warren's problem being a schoolmarm, rather than being a believer in capitalism who shares Trump's moral values against socialism, no matter what voters say. ..."
The headline will become operative in December, if as expected, the Trump Administration
maintains its refusal to nominate new judges
to the WTO appellate panel . That will render the WTO unable to take on new cases, and
bring about an effective return to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) which
preceded the WTO .
An interesting sidelight is that Brexit No-Dealers have been keen on the merits of trading
"on WTO terms", but those terms will probably be unenforceable by the time No Deal happens (if
it does).
likbez 10.27.19 at 11:22 pm
That's another manifestation of the ascendance of "national neoliberalism," which now is
displacing "classic neoliberalism."
Attempts to remove Trump via color revolution mechanisms (Russiagate, Ukrainegate) are
essentially connected with the desire of adherents of classic neoliberalism to return to the
old paradigm and kick the can down the road until the cliff. I think it is impossible because
the neoliberal elite lost popular support (aka support of deplorables) and now is hanging in
the air. "Greed is good" mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to
be very destructive.
That's why probably previous attempts to remove Trump were unsuccessful. And if corrupt
classic neoliberal Biden wins Neoliberal Dem Party nomination, the USA probably will get the
second term of Trump. Warren might have a chance as "Better Trump then Trump" although she
proved so far to be pretty inept politician, and like "original" Trump probably can be easily
coerced by the establishment, if she wins.
All this weeping and gnashing of teeth by "neoliberal Intelligentsia" does not change the
fact that neoliberalism entered the period of structural crisis demonstrated by "secular
stagnation," and, as such, its survival is far from certain. We probably can argue only about
how long it will take for the "national neoliberalism" to dismantle it and what shape or form
the new social order will take.
That does not mean that replacing the classic neoliberalism the new social order will be
better, or more just. Neoliberalism was actually two steps back in comparison with the New
Deal Capitalism that it replaced. It clearly was a social regress.
John, I am legitimate curious what you find "exactly right" in the comment above. Other than
the obvious bit in the last line about new deal vs neoliberalism, I would say it is
completely wrong, band presenting an amazingly distorted view of both the last few years and
recent history.
Neo-liberalism is not a unified thing. Right wing parties are not following the original
(the value of choice) paradigm of Milton Friedman that won the argument during the 1970s
inflation panic, but have implemented a deceitful bait and switch strategy, followed by
continually shifting the goalposts – claiming – it would of worked but we weren't
pure enough.
But parts of what Milton Friedman said (for instance the danger of bad micro-economic
design of welfare systems creating poverty traps, and the inherent problems of high tariff
rates) had a kernel of truth. (Unfortunately, Friedman's macro-economics was almost all wrong
and has done great damage.)
"In that context it felt free to override national governments on any issue that
might affect international trade, most notably environmental policies."
Not entirely sure about that. The one case where I was informed enough to really know
detail was the China and rare earths WTO case. China claimed that restrictions on exports of
separated but otherwise unprocessed rare earths were being made on environmental grounds.
Rare earth mining is a messy business, especially the way they do it.
Well, OK. And if such exports were being limited on environmental grounds then that would
be WTO compliant. Which is why the claim presumably.
It was gently or not pointed out that exports of things made from those same rare earths
were not limited in any sense. Therefore that environmental justification might not be quite
the real one. Possibly, it was an attempt to suck RE using industry into China by making rare
earths outside in short supply, but the availability for local processing being unrestricted?
Certainly, one customer of mine at the time seriously considered packing up the US factory
and moving it.
China lost the WTO case. Not because environmental reasons aren't a justification for
restrictions on trade but because no one believed that was the reason, rather than the
justification.
I don't know about other cases – shrimp, tuna – but there is at least the
possibility that it's the argument, not the environment, which wasn't sufficient
justification?
Neoliberalism gets used as a generalized term of abuse these days. Not every political and
institutional development of the last 40 years comes down to the worship of the free market.
In the EU, East Asia, and North America, some of what has taken place is the
rationalization of bureaucratic practices and the weakening of archaic localisms. Some of
these developments have been positive.
In this respect, neoliberalism in the blanket sense used by Likbez and many others is like
what the the ancien regime was, a mix of regressive and progressive tendencies. In the
aftermath of the on-going upheaval, it is likely that it will be reassessed and some of its
features will be valued if they manage to persist.
I'm thinking of international trade agreements, transnational scientific organizations,
and confederations like the European Union.
steven t johnson 10.29.19 at 12:29 am
If I may venture to translate @1?
Right-wing populism like Orban, Salvini, the Brexiteers are sweeping the globe and this is
more of the same.
Trying to head off redivision of the world into nationalist trade blocks by removing
Trump via dubiously democratic upheavals (like color revolutions) with more or less fictional
quasi-scandals as pro-Russian treason or anti-Ukrainian treason (which is "Huh?" on the face
of it,) is futile. It stems from a desire to keep on "free" trading despite the secular
stagnation that has set in, hoping that the sociopolitical nowhere (major at least) doesn't
collapse until God or Nature or something restores the supposedly natural order of economic
growth without end/crisis.
I think efforts to keep the neoliberal international WTO/IMF/World Bank "free" trading
system is futile because the lower orders are being ordered to be satisfied with a permanent,
rigid class system .
If the pie is to shrink forever, all the vile masses (the deplorables) are going to
hang together in their various ways, clinging to shared identity in race or religion or
nationality, which will leave the international capitalists hanging, period. "Greed is good"
mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to be very destructive.
Saying "Greed is good," then expecting selflessness from the lowers is not high-minded but
self-serving. Redistribution of wealth upward has been terribly destructive to social
cohesion, both domestically and in the sense of generosity towards foreigners.
The pervasive feeling that "we" are going down and drastic action has to be taken is
probably why there hasn't been much traction for impeachment til now. If Biden, shown to be
shady in regards to Hunter, is nominated to lead the Democratic Party into four/eight years
of Obama-esque promise to continue shrinking the status quo for the lowers, Trump will
probably win. Warren might have a better chance to convince voters she means to change things
(despite the example of Obama,) but she's not very appealing. And she is almost certainly
likely to be manipulated like Trump.
Again, despite the fury the old internationalism is collapsing under stagnation and
weeping about it is irrelevant. Without any real ideas, we can only react to events as
nationalist predatory capitals fight for their new world.
I'm not saying the new right wing populism is better. The New Deal/Great Society did more
for America than its political successors since Nixon et al. The years since 1968 I think
have been a regression and I see no reason–alas–that it can't get even worse.
I *think* that's more or less what likbez, said, though obviously it's not the way
likbez wanted to express it. I disagree strenuously on some details, like Warren's problem
being a schoolmarm, rather than being a believer in capitalism who shares Trump's moral
values against socialism, no matter what voters say.
It is a particular mutation of the original concept similar to mutation of socialism into
national socialism, when domestic policies are mostly preserved (including rampant
deregulation) and supplemented by repressive measures (total surveillance) , but in foreign
policy "might make right" and unilateralism with the stress on strictly bilateral regulations
of trade (no WTO) somewhat modifies "Washington consensus". In other words, the foreign
financial oligarchy has a demoted status under the "national neoliberalism" regime, while the
national financial oligarchy and manufactures are elevated.
And the slogan of "financial oligarchy of all countries, unite" which is sine qua
non of classic neoliberalism is effectively dead and is replaced by protection racket of
the most political powerful players (look at Biden and Ukrainian oligarchs behavior here
;-)
> I think every sentence in that comment is either completely wrong or at least
debatable. And is likbez actually John Hewson, because that comment reads like one of John
Hewson's commentaries
> Most obviously, to define Warren and Trump as both being neoliberals drains the
term of any meaning
You are way too fast even for a political football forward ;-).
Warren capitalizes on the same discontent and the feeling of the crisis of neoliberalism
that allowed Trump to win. Yes, she is a much better candidate than Trump, and her policy
proposals are better (unless she is coerced by the Deep State like Trump in the first three
months of her Presidency).
Still, unlike Sanders in domestic policy and Tulsi in foreign policy, she is a neoliberal
reformist at heart and a neoliberal warmonger in foreign policy. Most of her policy proposals
are quite shallow, and are just a band-aid.
> Neoliberalism gets used as a generalized term of abuse these days. Not every
political and institutional development of the last 40 years comes down to the worship of
the free market.
This is a typical stance of neoliberal MSM, a popular line of attack on critics of
neoliberalism.
Yes, of course, not everything political and institutional development of the last 40
years comes down to the worship of the "free market." But how can it be otherwise? Notions of
human agency, a complex interaction of politics and economics in human affairs, technological
progress since 1970th, etc., all play a role. But a historian needs to be able to somehow
integrate the mass of evidence into a coherent and truthful story.
And IMHO this story for the last several decades is the ascendance and now decline of
"classic neoliberalism" with its stress on the neoliberal globalization and opening of the
foreign markets for transnational corporations (often via direct or indirect (financial)
pressure, or subversive actions including color revolutions and military intervention) and
replacement of it by "national neoliberalism" -- domestic neoliberalism without (or with a
different type of) neoliberal globalization.
Defining features of national neoliberalism along with the rejection of neoliberal
globalization and, in particular, multiparty treaties like WTO is massive, overwhelming
propaganda including politicized witch hunts (via neoliberal MSM), total surveillance of
citizens by the national security state institutions (three-letter agencies which now
acquired a political role), as well as elements of classic nationalism built-in.
The dominant ideology of the last 30 years was definitely connected with "worshiping of
free markets," a secular religion that displaced alternative views and, for several decades
(say 1976 -2007), dominated the discourse. So worshiping (or pretense of worshiping) of "free
market" (as if such market exists, and is not a theological construct -- a deity of some
sort) is really defining feature here.
This is too idealizing Trump coverage. Whel thestrggle with the Deep state is real, Trump
like Obama before him proved to be "betrayer of his election promises in chief" rather then the
fighter. Also the oligarchs who financed his election such as Adelson were most argent
Zionists, which exclude any real change from day one.
The New York Times on Thursday published a remarkable piece that essentially
acknowledged the existence of an American "deep state" and its implacable hostility to Donald
Trump. The Times writers (fully five on the byline: Peter Baker, Lara Jakes, Julian E.
Barnes, Sharon LaFraniere, and Edward Wong) certainly don't decry the existence of this deep
state, as so many conservatives and Trump supporters do. Nor do they refrain from the kinds
of value-charged digs and asides against Trump that have illuminated the paper's consistent
bias against the president from the beginning.
But they do portray the current impeachment drama as the likely denouement of a struggle
between the outsider Trump and the insider administrative forces of government. In so doing,
they implicitly give support to those who have argued that American foreign policy has become
the almost exclusive domain of unelected bureaucrats impervious to the views of elected
officials -- even presidents -- who may harbor outlooks different from their own.
This is a big deal because, even in today's highly charged political environment, with a
sitting president under constant guerrilla attack, few have been willing to acknowledge any
such deep state phenomenon. When in the spring of 2018, The National Interest asked 12
presumed experts -- historians, writers, former government officials, and think tank mavens
-- to weigh in on whether there was in fact such a thing as a deep state, eight said no, two
waffled with a "sort of" response, and only two said yes. Former Colorado senator Gary Hart
made fun of the whole concept, warning of "sly devils meeting in the furnace room after
hours, passing out assignments for subverting the current administration."
But now the Times ' Baker et al weigh in with an analysis saying that, yes, Trump
has been battling something that some see as a deep state, and the deep state is winning. The
headline: "Trump's War on the 'Deep State' Turns Against Him." There's an explanatory subhed
that reads: "The impeachment inquiry is in some ways the culmination of a battle between the
president and the government institutions he distrusted and disparaged."
As the Times reporters put it in the story text, "The House impeachment inquiry into
Mr.Trump's efforts to force Ukraine to investigate Democrats is the climax of a 33-month
scorched-earth struggle between a president with no record of public service and the
government he inherited but never trusted." Leaving aside the requisite rapier thrust at the
president ("with no record of public service"), this is a pretty good summation of the Trump
presidency -- the story of entrenched government bureaucrats and a president who sought to
curb their power. Or, put another way, the story of a president who sought to rein in the
deep state and a deep state that sought to destroy his presidency.
Baker and his colleagues clearly think the president is on the ropes. They quote
Virginia's Democratic Representative Gerald Connolly as saying the nation is headed toward a
kind of "karmic justice," with the House impeachment inquiry now giving opportunity to
once-anonymous officials to "speak out, speak up, testify about and against."
Connolly and the Times reporters are probably right. The House seems headed
inexorably toward impeachment. The president's struggle against the deep state appears now to
be a lost cause. To prevail, he needed to marshal far more public support for his agenda --
including curtailment of the deep state -- than he proved capable of doing. He is a
beleaguered president and is likely to remain so throughout the remainder of his term.
The reporters note that Trump sought from the beginning to minimize the role of career
officials. He gave more ambassadorships to political appointees -- "the highest rate in
history," say the reporters (without noting that Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon
Johnson, and Ronald Reagan weren't far behind). The result, they write, has been "an exodus
from public service." They quote a "nonpartisan organization" saying the Trump
administration lost nearly 1,200 senior career service employees in its first 18 months --
roughly 40 percent more than during President Barack Obama's first year and a half in
office.
The reporters reveal a letter from 36 former foreign service officers to Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo complaining that he had "failed to protect civil servants from political
retaliation" and citing the removal of U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Another
letter signed by more than 270 former employees of the U.S. Agency for International
Development expressed anger at the treatment of public servants and the president's "cavalier
(and quite possibly corrupt) approach to making foreign policy."
The tone of the Times piece seems to suggest these expressions and actions constitute a
kind of indictment of Trump. But a more objective appraisal would be that it is merely the
outward manifestation of that "33-month scorched-earth struggle" the Times was talking
about. Does a president have a right to fire an ambassador? How serious an offense is it
when he appoints political figures to ambassadorships at a rate slightly higher than some
previous presidents? If foreign policy careerists decide to leave the government because they
don't like the president's effort to rein in foreign policy careerists, is that a black mark
on the president -- or merely the natural result of a fundamental intragovernmental
struggle?
But the Times reporters give the game away more explicitly in cataloguing a list of
instances where those careerists sought to undermine the president because they found his
policy decisions contemptible. "While many career employees have left," writes the
Times , " some of those who stayed have resisted some of Mr. Trump's initiatives."
When the president canceled large war games with South Korea, the military held them anyway
-- only on a smaller scale and without fanfare. Diplomats negotiated an agreement before a
NATO summit to foreclose any Trump action based on a different outlook. When the White House
ordered foreign aid frozen this year, agency officials quietly worked with Congress to get it
restored. State Department officials enlisted congressional allies to hinder Trump's efforts
to initiate weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and other nations.
Further, as the Times writes, "When transcripts of [Trump's] telephone calls with the
leaders of Mexico and Australia were leaked, it convinced him that he could not trust the
career staff and so records of subsequent call were stashed away in a classified
database." And that was very early in his presidency, about the time Trump also
learned there was a nasty dossier out there that was designed to provide grist for anyone
interested in undermining or destroying his presidency.
And of course, now governmental officials are lining up before the House impeachment panel
to slam the president over his effort to get Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rival Joe
Biden and Biden's son, Hunter, and his apparently related decision to hold up $391 million in
security aid to Ukraine. As I have written in this space previously, this outlandish
action by Trump constituted a profound lapse in judgment that was a kind of dare for
opposition Democrats to fire off the impeachment cannon. And fire it off they have. "Now,"
writes the Times , "[Trump] faces the counteroffensive."
But that doesn't take away from the central point of the Times story -- that Trump and the
deep state have been in mortal combat since the beginning of his administration. And the
stakes are huge.
Trump wanted to restore at least somewhat cordial relations with Russia,
whereas the deep state considered that the height of folly. Trump wanted to get out of
Afghanistan, whereas the deep state totally opposed such a move. Trump viewed America's role
in Syria as focused on defeating ISIS, whereas the deep state wanted to continue favoring the
overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Trump was wary of letting events in Ukraine
draw America into a direct confrontation with Russia, whereas the deep state wants to wrest
Ukraine out of Russia's sphere of influence even if it means opening tensions with the Bear.
Trump wanted to bring China to account for its widespread abuse of normal trading practices,
whereas the deep state clung to "free trade'' even in the face of such abuse.
These are big issues facing America. And the question hovering over the country as the
impeachment drama proceeds is: are these matters open to debate in America? Or will the deep
state suppress any such debate? And can a president -- any president -- pursue the Trump
policy options without being subjected to the powerful yet subtle machinations of a wily
bureaucracy bent on preserving its status and outlook?
Trump has been the boss for 33 months. He promised to "lock up corrupt Hillary and drain
the swamp". All he has done is play the victim as though he is a powerless outsider. That
is what Democrats do. Maybe, Trump is really a Democrat ?
If Obama was CIA, and GW Bush was CIA (via daddy Bush), and Clinton was CIA (via Arkansas
drug-running and the Presidency), and Bush Sr was CIA ... then what can we conclude about
Trump? 1) he's also CIA, or 2) he's a willing stooge
Trump at first threw down the gauntlet to the spies and proclaimed his autocratic
prerogative when God held off the rain for his inauguration (!) but now he would gladly get
on his knees between Gina Haspel's legs if the CIA would only help him stay in power.
What distinguishes Obama from other presidents is the degree to which he was manufactured.
He made it to the WH without much of a political base. Control of the political context,
media and process, launched Obama to the top. It was fulfillment of the liberal American
dream. It was a great coup. Talk about the "deep state"! It's staring us all in the face.
And now, according to the latest news, Trump will send tanks into Syria to help the Kurds
secure the oil for Israel. It's hard to understand why the Elders of the Deep State want to
impeach Trump. He has done everything they wanted, moved the embassy, gave Syria's Golan
Heights to Israel, never criticizes the illegal settlements in Palestine. What else do they
want from him?
"... This "man" has never been anything else but a grifter and giant con. Virtually everything he has done, he's done to enrich himself and his family. That is, besides deconstruct the U$ govt. to enrich his class of people, (the malignantly rich) by dialing back regulations that protect everyday Americans from the greed of the mega-corporations. ..."
"... Trump had long announced that the U.S. military will leave Syria. He had made no promises to the Kurds. The State Department official did not do his job but contradicted Trump's policies. ..."
Commentator ben and others
critizised yesterday's post:
b, I've been a participant at this site for 14yrs, and I don't believe I've ever seen your
take on any subject more "off base", than your take on DJT.
This "man" has never been anything else but a grifter and giant con. Virtually everything
he has done, he's done to enrich himself and his family. That is, besides deconstruct the U$
govt. to enrich his class of people, (the malignantly rich) by dialing back regulations that
protect everyday Americans from the greed of the mega-corporations.
He's a sycophant for the corporate monsters who now own the U$A. Anything and everything
he's done, isn't because he is such an egalitarian, it's for his personal enrichment, and the
monsters he works for.
When they're done with him, they'll throw him under the bus, just like all the rest of
us...
I agree with ben's characterization of Trump. I dislike most of his policies. But
that does not change the fact that Donald Trump is the elected president of the United States
and that he is thereby entitled to direct its foreign policies as he sees fit.
Ben's and my opinion about Trump do not invalidate the point I made. Trump policies,
especially in international relations, are getting sabotaged or co-opted by the Borg ,
the unelected establishment in the various departments and think tanks. This is a dangerous
phenomenon that, more or less, hinders every elected president, especially those who want to
make peace. It should be resisted.
The people in leading positions of the executive work "at the pleasure of the president".
Their task is to execute his policies. When they refrain from doing so or implement their own
preferences they create a mess.
Consider two additional examples, both published yesterday, which describe how James
Jeffrey, the Special Representative for Syria Engagement, tried to
sabotage Trump's decision to leave Syria and, while doing that, misled the Kurds:
A State Department official told a senior Syrian Kurdish leader during a meeting in
Washington that the United States would not fully withdraw its forces from northeast Syria
and advised her administration not to engage with Bashar al-Assad's government or with
Russia.
According to two sources familiar with the Monday, October 22 meeting, a senior member of
Washington's diplomatic team is said to have become angry and told Ilham Ahmed, President of
the Executive Committee of the Syrian Democratic Council, that the U.S. will not allow the
SDC to arrange a deal with the Assad regime or Russia for protection against the Turkey-led
attack.
...
SDC officials told The Defense Post that American officials in the past have promised they
would not withdraw U.S. forces until a political settlement was in place to secure their
future in the Syrian political system.
Trump had long announced that the U.S. military will leave Syria. He had made no promises to
the Kurds. The State Department official did not do his job but contradicted Trump's
policies.
The National Interest has learned from multiple sources about tense meetings between
SDC diplomats and State Department officials who oversee the Trump administration's policy on
Syria. The State Department repeatedly pushed for the SDC to work with Turkish-backed
Islamist rebels while berating Syrian Kurdish officials and refusing to listen to their
concerns, according to multiple sources.
One source with firsthand knowledge of the screaming session told the National
Interest that Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Joel Rayburn, who is a special envoy
for Syria, yelled at SDC officials and broke a pencil in a translator's face. Two sources
with secondhand knowledge confirmed this version of events.
"[Rayburn] loves the Syrian Islamist groups," one of the three sources said. "He thinks
they can counter Iran. He is dreaming."
"He is pushing [the SDC] to meet with jihadists," the source added.
To tell the anarcho-marxist YPG/PKK Kurds to unite with Erdogan's Jihadis is an absolutely
crazy idea. Neither the Kurds nor Erdogan would ever agree to a partnership. These were
impossible policies. They made no sense at all.
Jeffrey and his shop clearly worked against Trump's orders and against U.S. interests.
Jeffrey clearly favors Turkey where he once worked as U.S. ambassador and, above all,
Israel:
In addition to the uptick in tense verbal exchanges, the three different sources described to
the National Interest how State Department officials attempted to condemn the brutal
murder of Kurdish-Syrian politician Hevrin Khalaf only to have their efforts waylayed by
Ambassador James Jeffrey, who oversees anti-ISIS efforts. Jeffrey blocked the statement, they
said.
...
Now, even as U.S. troops are stepping aside to allow Turkey to attack U.S.-backed Syrian
Kurdish forces, Jeffrey's team is floating plans to peel off Arab components of the Syrian
Democratic Forces to build a counter-Iran force far from the Turkish border.
It is Jeffrey who is pressing for a continued U.S. occupation of Syria's oilfields. These
are not Trump's policies, but contradictions to them.
When [Trump in December 2018] told his advisers that he wanted to withdraw U.S. forces from
Syria, he meant it. The message should have been clear: devise an orderly withdrawal plan.
But that is not what happened. Instead, efforts and attention were geared towards U.S.
forces remaining indefinitely in Syria.
One can criticize Trump for not selecting advisors and envoys who follow his directions. But
Trump is a New Yorker businessman and not a politician with decades of experience in
Washington. He does not know who he can trust. He has to proceed by trial and error until he
finds people who are willing to go work with him against those permanent powers that usually
drive U.S. foreign policy.
In a congress hearing yesterday James Jeffrey
admitted (vid) that Trump did not consult him before his phone call with Erdogan.
Erdogan could show that he was fighting against the PKK terrorists and prevented their
attempts to become a proto-state. Trump could hold his campaign promise of removing U.S.
troops from useless foreign interventions. Syria regained its northeast and the important
economic resources of that area. Russia gained global prestige and additional influence in
the Middle East.
We will have to wait for Trump's (and Putin's) memoir to learn how much of this has been
coordinated behind the scenes.
I for one count this as a major foreign policy achievement for Trump and I am happy with
this
outcome .
"... As in every election we're now being bombarded with propaganda about how "your vote makes a difference" and associated nonsense. According to the official version ordinary citizens control the state by voting for candidates in elections. The President and other politicians are supposedly servants of "the people" and the government an instrument of the general populace. This version is a myth. ..."
"... It does not matter who is elected because the way the system is set up all elected representatives must do what big business and the state bureaucracy want, not what "the people" want. Elected representatives are figureheads. ..."
"... Politicians' rhetoric may change depending on who is elected, but they all have to implement the same policies given the same situation. Elections are a scam whose function is to create the illusion that "the people" control the government, not the elite, and to neutralize resistance movements. All voting does is strengthen the state & ruling class, it is not an effective means to change government policy. ..."
"... What a politician says to win an election and what he actually does in office are two very different things; politicians regularly break their promises. This is not just a fluke but the outcome of the way the system is set up. Bush the second said he wouldn't engage in "nation-building" (taking other countries over) during the 2000 election campaign but has done it several times. He also claimed to support a balanced budget, but obviously abandoned that. Clinton advocated universal health care during the 1992 election campaign but there were more people without health insurance when he left office than when he took office. Bush the first said, "read my lips – no new taxes!" while running for office but raised taxes anyway. Reagan promised to shrink government but he drastically expanded the military-industrial complex and ran up huge deficits. Rather than shrinking government, he reoriented it to make it more favorable to the rich. ..."
"... Carter promised to make human rights the "soul of our foreign policy" but funded genocide in East Timor and backed brutal dictators in Argentina, South Korea, Chile, Brazil, Indonesia and elsewhere. During the 1964 elections leftists were encouraged by Democrats to vote for Johnson because Goldwater, his Republican opponent, was a fanatical warmonger who would escalate US involvement in Vietnam. ..."
"... Johnson won, and immediately proceeded to escalate US involvement in Vietnam. FDR promised to maintain a balanced budget and restrain government spending but did the exact opposite. Wilson won reelection in 1916 on the slogan "he kept us out of war" but then lied us into World War One. Hoover pledged to abolish poverty in 1928 but instead saw it skyrocket. ..."
I have no Idea when this article was printed, but it matters
not. This holds true for every election ever held in America.
If voting mattered they
wouldn't let us do it.
As in every election we're now being bombarded with propaganda about how "your vote makes a
difference" and associated nonsense. According to the official version ordinary citizens
control the state by voting for candidates in elections. The President and other politicians
are supposedly servants of "the people" and the government an instrument of the general
populace. This version is a myth.
It does not matter who is elected because the way the system
is set up all elected representatives must do what big business and the state bureaucracy want,
not what "the people" want. Elected representatives are figureheads.
Politicians' rhetoric may
change depending on who is elected, but they all have to implement the same policies given the
same situation. Elections are a scam whose function is to create the illusion that "the people"
control the government, not the elite, and to neutralize resistance movements. All voting does
is strengthen the state & ruling class, it is not an effective means to change government
policy.
From the same article, a list of campaign promises never kept (needs to be updated with
Obama/Trump).
What a politician says to win an election and what he actually does in office are two
very different things; politicians regularly break their promises. This is not just a fluke
but the outcome of the way the system is set up. Bush the second said he wouldn't engage in
"nation-building" (taking other countries over) during the 2000 election campaign but has
done it several times. He also claimed to support a balanced budget, but obviously abandoned
that. Clinton advocated universal health care during the 1992 election campaign but there
were more people without health insurance when he left office than when he took office. Bush
the first said, "read my lips – no new taxes!" while running for office but raised
taxes anyway. Reagan promised to shrink government but he drastically expanded the
military-industrial complex and ran up huge deficits. Rather than shrinking government, he
reoriented it to make it more favorable to the rich.
Carter promised to make human rights the "soul of our foreign policy" but funded
genocide in East Timor and backed brutal dictators in Argentina, South Korea, Chile, Brazil,
Indonesia and elsewhere. During the 1964 elections leftists were encouraged by Democrats to
vote for Johnson because Goldwater, his Republican opponent, was a fanatical warmonger who
would escalate US involvement in Vietnam.
Johnson won, and immediately proceeded to escalate
US involvement in Vietnam. FDR promised to maintain a balanced budget and restrain government
spending but did the exact opposite. Wilson won reelection in 1916 on the slogan "he kept us
out of war" but then lied us into World War One. Hoover pledged to abolish poverty in 1928
but instead saw it skyrocket. https://www.bigeye.com/elections.htm
With awareness and foresight, this incisive article on the US empire and the concurrent
demise of democracy in America was published on February 15, 2017 shortly after Trump's
presidential inauguration.
In the words of Julius Caesar , "you cannot build an Empire with a Republic."
" In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not
likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and
cruelty. Without exalting self and abasing others, without hypocrisy, lying, prisons,
fortresses, penalties, killing, no power can arise or hold its own." Leo Tolstoy
(1828-1910), (in 'The Kingdom of God is Within You' 1894.)
"The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful
rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many
lunatics and most of the great men of history." Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), (in The
Conquest of Happiness, ch. 1, 1930.)
" Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him
power. " Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th President of the United States, 1861-65; (N. B.:
Originally found and attributed to Lincoln in a biography entitled " Abraham Lincoln, the
Backwoods Boy " by Horatio Alger Jr., pub. in 1883.)
"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged
against provisions against danger, real or pretended from abroad." James Madison
(1751-1836), Father of the US Constitution, 4th American President, (in a letter to Thomas
Jefferson, May 13, 1798.)
" When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the
cross." Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), (It Can't Happen Here, 1935, a novel about the election
of a fascist to the American presidency.)
When 46.1% of Americans who
voted , in November 2016, to elect a real estate magnate in the person of Donald Trump as
U.S. President, they did not know precisely what they were buying, because, as the quote above
says, we really know how a politician will behave only once he or she assumes power. Americans
surely did not expect that the promised "change" the Republican presidential candidate
envisioned and promised was going to be, in fact, "chaos" and "turmoil" in the U.S.
government.
President Donald Trump
(1946- ) has surrounded himself with three politically inexperienced Rasputin-like advisers,
i.e. his young pro-Israel Jewish son-in-law Jared
Kushner (1981- ), advising on foreign policy and acting as a speech writer, and his far
right media executive and chief political strategist Steve
Bannon (1953- ) with an apocalyptic worldview, who is, moreover, a voting permanent member
of the National Security Council (
NSC ).
Stephen Miller (1985- ), 31, also a young inexperienced senior White House adviser,
completes the trio. He is working with Jared Kushner for domestic affairs and is also a Trump
speechwriter.
Stephen Miller (1985- ) Jared Kushner (1981- )
Three weeks after his inauguration, President Trump has turned out to be a much more erratic
politician than could have been expected, even after all the inanities he uttered during the
U.S. Presidential campaign.
I, for one, thought that once elected president and installed in the White House, he would
abandon his tweeting eccentricities. -- I was wrong .
Stephen Bannon (1953- )
In fact, for a few weeks after inauguration day, on January 20, 2017, before the nominated
secretaries of various government departments were confirmed by the Senate, and anxious to "
get the show going ", the Trump White House behaved like an imperial junta, issuing a
string of executive
orders and memos . The objective, seemingly, was to force the hands of the responsible
departments and of the elected Congress, and to bend the entire U.S. bureaucracy to its agenda.
It may have gone too far.
Indeed, when the heads of important departments
like the Department of Defense ( James Mattis, right) and the State Department ( Rex Tillerson
) were confirmed and assumed their functions, President Trump changed his mind on many policies
about Israel ,
China ,
the Iran
Deal etc.
U.S. courts have also thrown a monkey wrench in the blanket executive order closing the
U.S. borders without recourse to the citizens of seven Muslim countries (Iraq, Syria, Iran,
Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen), for spurious " security reasons ".
Let us recall how the inexperienced Trump White House has created chaos during the first
weeks following inauguration day.
President Donald Trump has shown a propensity to govern by decree with a minimum input from
government departments and from the elected Congress
A dangerous and potentially disastrous approach to government, in a democracy, occurs when a
leader adopts the practice of
governing by decree , without constitutional constraints, thus forcing the hands of
responsible departments, of the elected Congress and submitting the entire U.S. bureaucracy to
his will by governing as an autocrat. If it were to continue on that road, the Trump
administration could turn out to be more like a would-be imperial presidency than a
responsible democratic government.
This term was first coined by historian Arthur Schlesinger
Jr. in his 1973 book The Imperial Presidency , in
response to President Richard Nixon's attempt to extend the power of the U.S. president,
declaring " when the president does it, that means it is not illegal ". In my own 2003
book The New
American Empire , I dealt with the issue of American presidents having usurped over time
the power to adopt a policy of global intervention, and the power to launch wars of aggression
at will, with a minimum input from Congress.
President Trump seems to want to outdo President Nixon in considering the White House as the
primary center of political power within the American government, contrary to what the
U.S.
Constitution says about the separation of powers.
To be sure, other American presidents have issued executive orders and presidential memos
early in their administration, but this was mainly to re-establish procedures that a previous
administration had abandoned. They usually did not deal with fundamental and complex policies
without debate, although many did
.
In the case of President Trump, his executive orders and presidential memos have not only
been multiple, they also have dealt with fundamental policies, without consulting and
requesting the professional input of the Secretary and of the department responsible, be it on
healthcare, abortion, international trade, immigration, oil exploration, justice, etc., and
without producing policy papers to explain the rationale behind the policy changes and without
outlining the objectives being pursued.
When such a development of governing by decree has occurred in other countries, democracy
was the loser, and the consequences for the leader and his country turned out to be
disastrous.
President Donald Trump seems to be anxious to find pretexts to pick fights with other
countries: For him, it seems to be the U.S. against the world
In a March 2007 interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, the future
presidential candidate Donald Trump said that President George W. Bush had been a disaster in
foreign relations and that he was " the worst American president in the history of the
United States ", adding that he " should have been impeached " because he lied his
way into a war of aggression against Iraq and sent thousands of people to their death. This is
an assessment that he has repeated on numerous occasions.
However, ironically, President Donald Trump seems to be on the same track as George W. Bush
regarding the country of Iran, using lies and
false
claims to pick a fight with that country, and in so doing, echoing the hysterical rhetoric
of Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu . He has also recklessly insulted the heads of a half dozen countries , even going so far as to
threaten the President of Mexico to invade his
country. As to his criticism of President George W. Bush, it seems that really, " it takes
one to know one "!
President Trump should be reminded of what he promised
as a presidential candidate. In a foreign policy speech delivered on Wednesday April 27, 2016,
he declared "Unlike other candidates for the presidency, war and aggression will not be my
first instinct. You cannot have a foreign policy without diplomacy. A superpower understands
that caution and restraint are really truly signs of strength. Although not in government
service, I was totally against the war in Iraq, very proudly, saying for many years that it
would destabilize the Middle East."
President Donald Trump has been less than candid regarding the influence of the Wall Street
lobby on politicians, including himself
During the 2016 Presidential political campaign, candidate Donald Trump was very critical of
politicians who do the heavy lifting for Wall Street firms in Washington D.C. On many
occasions, Mr. Trump said that Wall Street is a symbol of a corrupt establishment that has been
robbing America's working class and enriching the elite. He also tweeted point blank, on July
28, 2016, that Secretary Hillary Clinton was " owned
by Wall Street " and that Wall Street banks had " total,
total control " over his rivals Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz, implying that they were
unfit for the Office of the President. On October 19, 2016, Mr. Trump tweeted that " crooked
Hillary is nothing more than a Wall Street Puppet ", thus presenting himself as the
populist defender of the working class against the financial elite.
But guess what? One of Mr. Trump's first moves as President was to order the undoing of the
banking regulations known as the Dodd-Frank legislation , which was adopted in 2010, after the
2008 subprime financial crisis. President Trump thus quickly answered the main request made by
the very Wall Street mega banks that he had accused previously of corrupting Washington
politicians. He went even further when he named a former Goldman Sachs banker,
Steven Mnuchin ,(right) as his Treasury Secretary.
Also, Mr. Trump has reached to the mega-bank Goldman Sachs for help and support. He name Mr.
Gary Cohn (1960- ), president of
Goldman Sachs , head of the President's National Economic Council, thus making sure that
Wall Street bankers will have a big say in his administration's economic and financial
policies.
Was his lambasting of his opponents as Wall Street banks' puppets simply campaign rhetoric
without substance? That is certainly a question worth asking.
President Donald Trump's continuous attacks against the free press and against independent
judges who rule against his policies is an authoritarian approach to government and is a
violation of the separation of powers
On Monday February 6, President Trump launched a barrage of
off-the-cuff intimidating insults at the American news media, accusing them of "
refusing to report on terrorist attack s", without providing any evidence to back up
such serious accusations. He has also attempted to
intimidate judges who have to rule on the constitutionality of some of his decrees and
threatened their judiciary
independence .
Such behavior is a violation of, and contempt for the separation
of powers clause in the U.S. Constitution and is a frontal attack against the
free press .
This is not a trivial matter, because when an authoritarian regime wants to establish itself
and avoid accountability, it usually attacks the legislative and the judiciary branches of
government to pressure them to toe the line of the executive branch, and it tries to silence
the very institutions that can put the false statements of politicians to the test.
President Donald Trump has a mercantilist view of international trade, which is rejected by
nearly all economists
President Donald Trump seems to think that his country should have trade surpluses on goods
and services vis-à-vis other countries, the latter being saddled with trade deficits,
whatever the overall balance of payments of the United
States, especially its capital account, and whatever the domestic and foreign economic
circumstances. This is economically false. That is not the way adjustments in the balance of
payments of a country work, in a multilateral world.
When Donald Trump places all the emphasis on only one part of the balance of payments, the
trade balance, he misses the point. For example, if a country lives beyond its means and
borrows money from abroad, such foreign borrowing appears as an inflow of foreign capital in
the country. Such an inflow of foreign capital causes an excess of domestic spending over its
production, and that helps finance an excess of imports over exports of goods and services with
the rest of the world. The capital account of the country shows a surplus, while the trade
balance (more precisely the current account) indicates a deficit, thus balancing more or less
each other.
The main reason why the United States is registering trade deficits is because it borrows
too much from abroad.
This is partly due to the fact that the U.S. government runs huge fiscal deficits ,
spending more than its tax revenues, and borrowing money both from the private sector and from
foreigners, thus increasing the public debt. Such deficits often are the result of tax
reductions and of increased military expenditures. The fact that the world economy uses
the
U.S. dollar as a
reserve currency represents an interest-free loan that the rest of the world makes to the
United States, which allows the USA to have a chronic trade deficit. Mr. Trump and his advisers
would be wise to understand these truths of international finance.
If his administration wants to reduce the annual U.S. trade deficit with the rest of the
world, the U.S. government should balance its books and reduce its foreign borrowings.
Trade wars will not
improve the U.S. trade balance if the country keeps over-spending and keeps borrowing from
abroad. They would only make matters worse.
For many decades now, the U.S. government has piled up debt upon debt
while running continuous fiscal
deficits , mainly due to the fact that it has been waging costly wars abroad, while financing such
interventions with foreign money. This is a problem that American politicians must understand
if they don't want their country to go bankrupt. This has happened in the past to other
overextended empires ,
and there is no reason why it should not happen today when a country continuously spends more
than it produces. And wars do not produce anything, except death and destruction.
Hopes of putting an end to the Middle East chaos have greatly diminished
One of the positive results of the Trump election was the promise to end the deadly chaos in
the Middle East. During the presidential campaign and once in power, Mr. Trump threw some cold
water on that promise.
Firstly, in his March 21, 2016 speech to AIPAC , he
flattered his rich Zionist donors by announcing his intention to break with the half-century
policy of most western nations that considers the city of Jerusalem a United Nations protected
zone and an international city occupied by Arabs, Christians and Jews. He declared " we will
move the American embassy [from Tel Aviv] to the eternal capital of the Jewish people,
Jerusalem ."
Secondly, on Thursday December 15, 2016, to make sure that everybody understands that he is
one-sided in the more than half a century old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, President-elect
Trump announced his choice of a hardliner pro-Israeli settlements on privately-owned
Palestinian lands for
U.S. ambassador to Israel (in fact, David Friedman , his
former bankruptcy lawyer). The new ambassador didn't waste any time in professing that he was
looking forward to doing his job " from the U.S. embassy in Israel's eternal capital,
Jerusalem ."
And, thirdly, seemingly forgetting that he had criticized Secretary Clinton for proposing a
similar dangerously reckless policy, President Trump announced, on January 25, that he "
will absolutely do safe
zones in Syria ", seemingly without considering if it was legal to do so without the
consent of the Syrian government, and without consulting with the three principal countries
(Russia, Turkey and Iran), which had just concluded a peace plan for Syria. He opted instead to
talk to leaders of Saudi Arabia and of the United Arab Emirates -- two countries known to be
sponsoring terrorism in Syria.
The world is afraid of President Donald Trump: Doomsday Clock scientists have concluded that
humanity is just two-and-a-half minutes from the apocalypse
Late in January, the scientists in charge of the
Doomsday Clock set the clock at just two-and-a-half minutes from the apocalypse, allegedly
because of Donald Trump. They said that the businessman turned politician, with his disturbing
and ill-considered pronouncements and policies, has the potential to drive the Planet to
oblivion.
This means that they consider that the Earth is now
closer to oblivion than it has ever been since 1953, at the height of the nuclear
confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union.
The existential threats facing the Earth now come from the loose talk about using nuclear
weapons and the proliferation of such weapons, as well as the observed acceleration of climate
change.
Conclusion
All considered, the turn of events since the election of Donald Trump has raised a number of
fears that a lot of things could go wrong in the coming years. Many of the policies advanced by
the Trump administration are the wrong remedies for the problems facing the United States and
the world. In fact, many of these ill-conceived policies are more likely to make matters worse,
possibly much worse, than to improve them.
Things seem to have begun to change somewhat with the arrival of newly confirmed secretaries
in the decision-making process and new advisers. Let us hope that cooler heads will bring
experience, knowledge and competence to a Trump administration that cruelly needs it.
*
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It is true that hate of financial oligarchy fuels anti-Semitism but here Trump is just one
small step since 1980 to make this situation happen. The neoliberal elite achieves some success
by trying to substitute anti-Semitism with Russophobia, but the essence of Russophobia, as
displayed anti-Semitism is the same -- this is an attempt to deflect critique of neoliberal elite
and patch the cracks in the neoliberal facade of the US society.
The problem is not Trump but neoliberalism. Krugman who is neoliberal stooge would never
admit that. In essence he is a useful idiot for financial oligarchy in in Lenin's terminology.
And always was.
The real situation is that Wall Street banks and financial oligarchs despite
overrepresentation of a particular nationality in them are interested in imposing the neo-fascist
regime on the country and will finance the leader and the party which strive to do that because
they are afraid to lose the power and money as the result of the collapse of neoliberalism. So
this 1920 in the new colorful, gadget filled packaging. Few US citizens would name US business
moguls who help the rise of Hitler. They include some well known families.
Notable quotes:
"... It's true that Trump (breaking all his campaign promises) has indeed cut taxes on the wealthy, and will surely cut them further if re-elected. By contrast, whoever the Democrats nominate is likely to raise those taxes if she or he wins the general election, perhaps substantially. ..."
"... People who've studied the extremely rich argue that money, for them, is largely not about being able to buy things but is instead a way of keeping score; their satisfaction comes not from more consumption but from overtaking their perceived peers. ..."
"... And tax cuts don't help on that dimension, since your peers get the same tax breaks you do. ..."
It's true that Trump (breaking all his campaign promises) has indeed cut taxes on the
wealthy, and will surely cut them further if re-elected. By contrast, whoever the Democrats
nominate is likely to raise those taxes if she or he wins the general election, perhaps
substantially.
But let's get real. If you're a billionaire, you don't need the extra money. At that level,
purchasing power has nothing to do with the quality of life; having a 45,000-square-foot house
instead of just 40,000, or flying to one of your multiple other residences in a bigger private
jet, won't make you significantly happier.
People who've studied
the extremely rich argue that money, for them, is largely not about being able to buy
things but is instead a way of keeping score; their satisfaction comes not from more
consumption but from overtaking their perceived peers.
And tax cuts don't help on that dimension, since your peers get the same tax breaks you
do.
More to the point, Trumpism is about much more than tax cuts: It's an attempt to end the
rule of law and impose an authoritarian, white nationalist regime. And even billionaires should
be terrified about what their lives will be like if that attempt succeeds.
...Ross is
Jewish -- and anyone Jewish has to be completely ignorant of history not to know that when
bigotry runs free, we're always next in line for persecution.
In fact, the ingredients for an American pogrom are already in place. The El Paso shooting
suspect, like many right-wing terrorists, is a believer in " replacement
theory " -- the claim that immigration is part of a vast conspiracy to replace whites with
people of color. And who's behind that conspiracy? You know who: "Jews will not replace us,"
declared the torch-carrying marchers in Charlottesville.
Is Trump a replacement theory guy? The replacement theorists think so.
... ... ...
By the way, the greed part is obvious. But it has also been clear since the Obama years that
a fair number of the superrich aren't satisfied with being immensely wealthy; they also want
adulation. They expect to be praised as heroic job creators and are enraged at any suggestion
that some of their number may have behaved badly, let alone that they may have benefited from a
rigged system.
Hence the hatred for even reasonable, pro-market progressives like, say, Elizabeth Warren.
It's not just that these progressives might make billionaires a bit poorer, but that they make
them feel small.
There is abundant academic research demonstrating that the rich are not nice people. People
driving luxury cars are more likely to cut off other cars and pedestrians instead of waiting
their turn at an intersection or crosswalk. The wealthiest 20% of Americans give
significantly less to charity as a fraction of income (1.4%) than the poorest 20 % do (3.5%),
according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Researchers have found that wealthier people
are more likely to believe that selfishness is a virtue. They are more likely to agree with
statements that say that being greedy is justified, even beneficial. The rich have a people
problem; they don't like people. Greed is a disease, but there is one good way to treat it:
with fair taxation. America's income tax, payroll tax and sales tax codes are giant Christmas
buffets for the rich that allow them to systematically dodge taxes while feigning
persecution. And the truly perverted part is that the 2017 Trump-GOP 0.1% Welfare Tax Cut Act
not only gave the 0.1% untold billions in gravy, but the 0.1% then proceeded to 're-invest'
part of that 0.1% welfare right back into the Trump-GOP corrupt campaign coffers, creating a
sickening loop of 0.1% Republican corruption of the tax code and campaign finance corruption.
In short, you can support the Grand Oligarch Party or you can support a decent American
civilization, but you can't do both. It's well past time to evict the Greed Over People party
from the American politiscape. 25 Replies
One of the most interesting things about the modern British Royal Family is how often its
members have served in the military. Another notable thing is how much they do for charity.
They needn't do anything but it seems that they take their responsibilities as the Royal
Family to heart. They do, for the most part, try to set an example to the nation they lead.
(Yes, it's a constitutional monarchy and most of the power resides in Parliament but the
family doesn't have to set any examples at all if it doesn't want to.) Here in America a
great many of our richest families do not serve the country in any way, shape or form except
one: they form PACS with innocuous names like Americans For Prosperity or Citizens for a
Sound Economy and use them to push an agenda that hurts 99% of us. We had a vice president,
Dick Cheney, who was quite happy to have a war in Iraq even though he avoided the draft
during the Vietnam War. In other words, he liked the sound of war but had no idea about what
was involved in running a war or anything else associated with a war. In America we confuse
riches with intelligence, being virtuous, and wisdom. In truth all being very rich does is to
insulate a person from the worst hardships of life. There is no reason to offer the rich
generous tax breaks. They do not spend the money; they invest it and it's not invested in us.
If they are true patriots they will pay their taxes. 8/12/2019 10:29pm
This "so called democracy" here in the U.S. has long ago been superseded by a monetized
democracy. Those making large monetary contributions to elected officials rule the day. Look
at the NRA, Big Pharma, Big Ag, etc. Stephen Ross is doing what many of the moneyed class in
the U.S.A does today in order to be heard. Time for a big change, bring back the voice of the
voting public.
"People who've studied the extremely rich argue that money, for them, is largely not about
being able to buy things but is instead a way of keeping score; their satisfaction comes not
from more consumption but from overtaking their perceived peers." Veblen would find that to
be an interesting observation. If the scoring can't be seen (like having one's tenth
Citation) does it generate the same impact on one's dopamine "wealth" receptors. The truth is
that extreme wealth turns just about everyone into somewhat of a sociopath, unable to have
any empathy for "the lower orders". Oh sure, they give a lot to charity but that too is
simply a variant of conspicuous consumption. When I was an executive in a health insurance
company back in the 90's, the compensation consultants would come in and say that if the
executive team did not get more money, they would all leave to go to higher paying companies.
While this was really not true by any objective measure, the board bought it an our salaries
and bonuses exploded even though we really didn't work all that much harder. It was just free
money. So the marginal utility of that added money did not result in actually harder work.
Now think of the poor person who IS working so much harder, often multiple jobs. They
actually deserve more money. But no, it goes to the enabled wealthy. What would Marx say? Oh,
and what would Jesus say?
Rich industrialists financed the Nazis for sure and I think the other fascist governments in
Italy and Spain as I recall. They are drawn to fascism like flies. Money does not equal
brains except in tech.
Story yesterday on Marketwatch that the Walton family's wealth increases by $100 million per
day. Meanwhile many of their workers have to apply for public assistance to stay alive. A
charming time, ours.
Employee rights advocates say this Labor Day's family barbecues and union solidarity picnics
will take place in the shadow of a Trump administration that has quietly stacked the National
Labor Relations Board with anti-labor members. The federal agency is far less well-known than
the IRS or EPA, but its five presidential appointees issue rulings with often far-reaching
consequences for America's working men and women. The NLRB was created in 1935 to oversee
collective bargaining and protect labor standards; the majority of its current board have
worked for years with pro-employer firms or
on behalf of industry.
Under the Trump administration, says Henry Willis , a veteran employment rights attorney at
Schwartz, Steinsapir, Dohrmann & Sommers, "They are rolling back rights as fast as they
can."
Even before Trump was elected president, labor advocates had long lamented an NLRB process
weighted towards employers who have the power of the paycheck and an array of tactics to shut
down union organizing drives. A 2009 study , published by the liberal
Economic Policy Institute think tank, found that during 57 percent of union election processes,
employers threatened to shut down their workplaces; and during 34 percent of those organizing
drives, employers fired workers and used one-on-one meetings with employees to threaten
them.
Study author Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research and a senior lecturer
at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, says those numbers have
remained steady since 2009.
Moreover, Bronfenbrenner adds, when an administration changes it's not uncommon for boards
to reverse some preceding labor decisions, but that "there's a different tone to this board in
that it is reversing long-held law. Not just changing rules but reversing decisions that had
been agreed upon for a long time."
In other words, the NLRB under Trump represents a tectonic shift in the way the agency has
traditionally operated.
Bronfenbrenner cites a recent decision that allows employers to
stop bargaining and call for a new union election each time a contract approaches
expiration -- in effect, inviting company employees to decertify their union. "[Employers] can
just say, 'I no longer believe the union has support, and then there will be an election," she
says. "Employers can do that every single time a contract expires."
Willis, who litigates on the front lines, ticks off a list illustrating a piece-by-piece
dismantling of employee rights.
"The current board has been attacking Obama board decisions on issues such as [establishing]
who's an independent contractor and who's an employee," he says, referring to a
January 2019 revision of the standard used to determine whether independent contractors are
covered by the National Labor Relations Act, which, the NLRB proclaims on its
website , was passed by Congress in 1935 "to protect the rights of employees and employers,
to encourage collective bargaining, and to curtail certain private sector labor and management
practices, and which can harm the general welfare of workers, businesses and the U.S.
economy."
The January decision makes it less likely that the contractors will be given the same rights
as employees.
"That's a big issue," Willis says. "Especially with the gig economy."
Another 2017 NLRB decision upended the
definition of bargaining units . An employer no longer has to recognize or bargain with
smaller units within a single work location, forcing a union to do large-scale organizing.
Organizing a shoe department, Willis notes, is less daunting than organizing an entire
department store.
The Obama NLRB strove to proactively extend protections to unorganized shops -- where
workers are less likely to know their rights. "The Trump board is taking a reactionary approach
-- pulling back wherever possible," Willis says.
* * *
Currently operating with a vacant seat , the five-member board consists of three Republicans
and Obama appointee Lauren McFerran, and it's set to term out in December. Conservative
interests have urged President Trump to wait until McFerran leaves and then to fill the two
empty seats to lock in a unanimous pro-employer majority.
Also in the works is a restructuring of the NLRB that would centralize decision-making in
Washington and bring decisions now investigated and adjudicated at the regional level under
scrutiny there.
Trump general counsel appointee Peter Robb issued a 2017 memo directing NLRB regional
offices to submit to his Division of Advice for review cases
involving "significant legal issues
.
" In
2018
Robb
announced an intention to reorganize the agency's 26 regional offices into a smaller number
of districts that report directly to Robb -- who could then present the issues to the NLRB in a
way to give cover to the board to reverse local decisions and create precedent.
"The current general counsel has been trying to shift decision-making power from the regions
to D.C. and creating a new layer of administration to give him more control over how the
regions handle unfair labor practice charges," says Willis. "It hasn't been carried out, but
the general counsel certainly has a big foot and brings it down much more frequently these
days."
It's not all bleak news for labor, however. Unions are now organizing and representing
contract workers, including hundreds of thousands of janitors, whether or not the NLRB
designates them as employees, says Bronfenbrenner.
She sees the most vibrant aspects today's labor movement in industries where the majority
are women and men and women of color -- and notes that those constituencies were largely
shunned by organized labor when it was at the height of its strength.
"Organized labor only started getting a move on when their density had gone down below down
to 12 percent and that's a little late. If they had done it when their density was 50 percent
or 45 percent, they could have used their bargaining power."
"... Almost four decades ago then-candidate George H.W. Bush used the phrase "voodoo economic policy" to describe Ronald Reagan's claim that cutting taxes for the rich would pay for itself. He was more prescient than he could have imagined. ..."
"... For voodoo economics isn't just a doctrine based on magical thinking. It's the ultimate policy zombie, a belief that seemingly can't be killed by evidence. It has failed every time its proponents have tried to put it into practice, but it just keeps shambling along. In fact, at this point it has eaten the brains of every significant figure in the Republican Party. Even Susan Collins, the least right-wing G.O.P. senator (although that isn't saying much), insisted that the 2017 tax cut would actually reduce the deficit. ..."
"... During the 2016 campaign Donald Trump pretended to be different, claiming that he would actually raise taxes on the rich. Once in office, however, he immediately went full voodoo. In fact, he has taken magical thinking to a new level. ..."
"... My favorite until now came from Art Laffer, the original voodoo economist and recent recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Why did George W. Bush's tax-cutting presidency end not with a boom, but with the worst economic slump since the Great Depression? ..."
"... But Trump has gone one better. As it has become increasingly clear that the results of his tax cut were disappointing -- recent data revisions have marked down estimates of both G.D.P. and employment growth, to the point where it's hard to see more than a brief sugar high from $2 trillion in borrowing ..."
"... Officials have floated, then retracted, the idea of a cut in payroll taxes -- that is, a tax break for ordinary workers, rather than the corporations and wealthy individuals who mainly benefited from the 2017 tax cut. But such action seems unlikely, among other things because top administration officials denounced this policy idea when Obama proposed it. ..."
"... The truth is that Trump doesn't have a Plan B, and probably can't come up with one. On the other hand, he might not have to. Who needs competent policy when you're the chosen one and the king of Israel? ..."
From Voodoo Economics to Evil-Eye Economics
Are Democrats hexing the Trump boom with bad thoughts?
By Paul Krugman
Almost four decades ago then-candidate George H.W. Bush used the phrase "voodoo economic
policy" to describe Ronald Reagan's claim that cutting taxes for the rich would pay for
itself. He was more prescient than he could have imagined.
For voodoo economics isn't just a doctrine based on magical thinking. It's the ultimate
policy zombie, a belief that seemingly can't be killed by evidence. It has failed every time
its proponents have tried to put it into practice, but it just keeps shambling along. In
fact, at this point it has eaten the brains of every significant figure in the Republican
Party. Even Susan Collins, the least right-wing G.O.P. senator (although that isn't saying
much), insisted that the 2017 tax cut would actually reduce the deficit.
During the 2016 campaign Donald Trump pretended to be different, claiming that he would
actually raise taxes on the rich. Once in office, however, he immediately went full voodoo.
In fact, he has taken magical thinking to a new level.
True, whenever tax cuts fail to produce the predicted miracle, their defenders come up
with bizarre explanations for their failure.
My favorite until now came from Art Laffer, the original voodoo economist and recent
recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Why did George W. Bush's tax-cutting
presidency end not with a boom, but with the worst economic slump since the Great Depression?
According to Laffer, blame rests with Barack Obama, even though the recession began more than
a year before Obama took office. You see, according to Laffer, everyone lost confidence upon
realizing that Obama might win the 2008 election.
But Trump has gone one better. As it has become increasingly clear that the results of his
tax cut were disappointing -- recent data revisions have marked down estimates of both G.D.P.
and employment growth, to the point where it's hard to see more than a brief sugar high from
$2 trillion in borrowing -- Trump has invented ever more creative ways to blame other people.
In particular, he's now claiming that the promised boom hasn't arrived because his opponents
are hexing the economy with bad thoughts: "The Democrats are trying to 'will' the Economy to
be bad for purposes of the 2020 Election."
Can opposition politicians really cause a recession with negative thinking? This goes
beyond voodoo economics; maybe we should call it evil-eye economics.
To be fair, the claim that Democrats are hexing his boom is a secondary theme in Trump's
ranting. Mostly he has been blaming the Federal Reserve for its "crazy" interest rate hikes.
And the truth is that last year's rate increases pretty clearly were a mistake.
But blaming the Fed for the tax cut's fizzle won't wash. For one thing, the Fed has
actually raised rates less than in previous economic recoveries. Even more to the point, the
Trump economic team was expecting Fed rate hikes when it made its extravagantly optimistic
forecasts. Administration projections from a year ago envisioned 2019 interest rates
substantially higher than what we're actually seeing.
Put it this way: The Trump tax cut was supposed to create a boom so powerful that it would
not only withstand modest Fed rate hikes, but actually require such hikes to prevent
inflationary overheating. You don't get to turn around and claim betrayal when the Fed does
exactly what you expected it to do.
Aside from blaming everyone but himself, however, how will Trump deal with the failure of
his economic promises? He has taken to demanding that the Fed roll the printing presses,
slashing interest rates and buying bonds -- the actions it normally takes in the face of a
serious recession -- even as he claims that the economy remains strong, and unemployment is
in fact near a historic low.
As many people have noted, these are exactly the actions Republicans, including Trump,
denounced as "currency debasement" when unemployment was far higher than it is today and the
economy desperately needed a boost.
Since the Fed is unlikely to oblige, what else might Trump do? Officials have floated,
then retracted, the idea of a cut in payroll taxes -- that is, a tax break for ordinary
workers, rather than the corporations and wealthy individuals who mainly benefited from the
2017 tax cut. But such action seems unlikely, among other things because top administration
officials denounced this policy idea when Obama proposed it.
Trump has also suggested using executive authority to reduce taxes on capital gains (which
are overwhelmingly paid by the wealthy). This move would have the distinction of being both
ineffectual and illegal.
What about calling off the trade war that has been depressing business investment? This
seems unlikely, because protectionism is right up there with racism as a core Trump value.
And merely postponing tariffs might not help, since it wouldn't resolve the uncertainty that
may be the trade war's biggest cost.
The truth is that Trump doesn't have a Plan B, and probably can't come up with one. On the
other hand, he might not have to. Who needs competent policy when you're the chosen one and
the king of Israel?
"But blaming the Fed for the tax cut's fizzle won't wash. For one thing, the Fed has actually
raised rates less than in previous economic recoveries. Even more to the point, the Trump
economic team was expecting Fed rate hikes when it made its extravagantly optimistic
forecasts. "
Yes the Trump economic team is insane and clueless. But the Fed has been tightening since
2013 when Bernanke began tapering QE.
So now all good liberals are crying recession (which would hurt Trump in the election) but
the Fed is blameless?
Monetary policy is ineffective. Then why don't we get rid of the Fed's vaunted
independence? Then why does it matter if Trump tweets at Powell?
This isn't directed at Anne but at the general comment reader and Krugman admirer.
Done nothing EVIL bar fire 100 cruise missiles into Syria and attempting to starve
millions in Venezuela & Iran, while sucking on Bibi's ****, emboldening him to continue
on a genocidal path in the ME among other twisted fuckery.
I think Trump administration will face several defeats on may fronts they have opened very
soon. Their major issue is that they have tried to tackle many things at once, which has
created a cohesive opposition: China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and many other countries that
don't like his unilateral decisions and moves. The major blow would be from dedollaraization
down in the road. If he had problem with China, he should have dealt with it at a different
time in a different manner. Pushing Iran at the same time was a major error. One wonders what
is he thinking. On the issue of Iran; if they would have got along with Iran, they would have
made major gains. Picking wrong partners always is the issue for these in the power.
I just got this email which I think appropriate to share with fellow MoA barflies
"
Since Day 1, this administration has been seeking out opportunity after opportunity to
benefit the powerful and the privileged -- the very wealthiest Americans and big
corporations. From the $1.7 trillion tax break for giant corporations and their wealthy
executives, to allowing more pollution by oil and gas companies, to allowing insurance
companies to once again discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, the
giveaways to billion dollar corporations have been endless, while working families pay the
price.
This week, the Trump administration added another critical item to the list of attacks on
working families: Gutting the Volcker Rule firewall, a critical safeguard that protects
Americans from the consequences of high-risk Wall Street gambling.
Make no mistake. This move is a brazen attempt by big banks and their Trump-appointed
allies to reopen the Wall Street casino that led us into the Great Recession, no matter the
cost to working Americans who will lose their homes, jobs and savings when the casino goes
belly-up. That's not just unethical, it's dangerous.
Working Americans should not have to foot the bill for the big banks' casino games. That's
why I co-authored the Volcker Rule and fought to include it in the landmark Dodd-Frank Wall
Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, which Congress passed to prevent Wall
Street from repeating the causes of the Great Recession. The reality is, if we let big banks
go back to the days of making huge bets on things like future stock values, foreign exchange
rates, or interest rates, working families will ultimately be the ones to pay the price.
I believe that our economy is only as strong as the bottom lines of our working families,
and that big banks shouldn't be calling the shots. Please know that I'm going to keep
fighting for an economy that works for all of us -- not just the powerful and the
privileged.
All my best,
Jeff (Merkley - Oregon Senator)
"
Our government is now controlled by the elite but not entirely silenced.
"... So far, that wager has netted Americans nothing. No money. No deal. No bridges, roads or leadless water pipes. And there's nothing on the horizon since Trump stormed out of the most recent meeting. That was a three-minute session in May with Democratic leaders at which Trump was supposed to discuss the $2 trillion he had proposed earlier to spend on infrastructure. In a press conference immediately afterward, Trump said if the Democrats continued to investigate him, he would refuse to keep his promises to the American people to repair the nation's infrastructure. ..."
"... Candidate Donald Trump knew it was no joke. On the campaign trail, he said U.S. infrastructure was "a mess" and no better than that of a "third-world country. " When an Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia in 2015, killing eight and injuring about 200 , he tweeted , "Our roads, airports, tunnels, bridges, electric grid -- all falling apart." Later, he tweeted , "The only one to fix the infrastructure of our country is me." ..."
"... Donald Trump promised to make America great again. And that wouldn't be possible if America's rail system, locks, dams and pipelines -- that is, its vital organs -- were "a mess." Trump signed what he described as a contract with American voters to deliver an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his administration. ..."
"... He mocked his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton's proposal to spend $275 billion. "Her number is a fraction of what we're talking about. We need much more money to rebuild our infrastructure," he told Fox News in 2016 . "I would say at least double her numbers, and you're going to really need a lot more than that." ..."
"... In August of 2016, he promised , "We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, seaports and airports that our country deserves. American cars will travel the roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol the seas. American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring. We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation." ..."
"... That contract Trump signed with American voters to produce an infrastructure plan in the first 100 days: worthless. It never happened. He gave Americans an Infrastructure Week in June of 2017, though, and at just about the 100-day mark, predicted infrastructure spending would "take off like a rocket ship." Two more Infrastructure Weeks followed in the next two years, but no money. ..."
"... This year, by which time the words Infrastructure Week had become a synonym for promises not kept, Trump met on April 30 with top Democratic leaders and recommended a $2 trillion infrastructure investment. Democrats praised Trump afterward for taking the challenge seriously and for agreeing to find the money. ..."
"... Almost immediately, Trump began complaining that Democrats were trying to hoodwink him into raising taxes to pay for the $2 trillion he had offered to spend. ..."
"... Trump and the Republicans relinquished one way to pay for infrastructure when they passed a tax cut for the rich and corporations in December of 2017. As a result, the rich and corporations pocketed hundreds of billions -- $1 trillion over 10 years -- and Trump doesn't have that money to invest in infrastructure. Corporations spent their tax break money on stock buybacks, further enriching the already rich. They didn't invest in American manufacturing or worker training or wage increases. ..."
"... I have seen this movie before. A State builds a highway, it then leases that highway to a corporation for a bucket of cash which it uses to bribe the electorate to win the next election or two. The corporation shoves brand new toll booths on the highway charging sky high rates which puts a crimp in local economic activity. After the lease is up after twenty years, the State gets to take over the highway again to find that the corporation cut back on maintenance so that the whole highway has to be rebuilt again. Rinse and repeat. ..."
"... Promises by any narcissist mean nothing. You cannot hang your hat on any word that Trump speaks, because it's not about you or anyone else, but about him and only him. ..."
"... Here is a heads up. If any infrastructure is done it will be airports. The elite fly and couldn't give a crap about the suspension and wheel destroying potholes we have to slalom around every day. They also don't care that the great unwashed waste thousands of hours stuck in traffic when a bridge is closed or collapses. ..."
Yves here. In a bit of synchronicity, when a reader was graciously driving me to the Department of Motor Vehicles (a schlepp in
the wilds of Shelby County), she mentioned she'd heard local media reports that trucks had had their weight limits lowered due to
concern that some overpasses might not be able to handle the loads. Of course, a big reason infrastructure spending has plunged in
the US is that it's become an excuse for "public-private partnerships," aka looting, when those deals take longer to get done and
produce bad results so often that locals can sometimes block them.
No problem, though. President Donald Trump promised to fix all this. The great dealmaker, the builder of eponymous buildings,
the star of "The Apprentice," Donald Trump, during his campaign, urged Americans to bet on him because he'd double what his opponent
would spend on infrastructure. Double, he pledged!
So far, that wager has netted Americans nothing. No money. No deal. No bridges, roads or leadless water pipes. And there's
nothing on the horizon since Trump stormed out of the most recent meeting. That was a three-minute session in May with Democratic
leaders at which Trump was supposed to discuss the $2 trillion he had proposed earlier to spend on infrastructure. In a press conference
immediately afterward, Trump said if the Democrats continued to investigate him, he would refuse to keep his promises to the American
people to repair the nation's infrastructure.
The comedian Stephen Colbert described the situation best, saying Trump told the Democrats: "It's my way or no highways."
The situation, however, is no joke. Just ask the New York rail commuters held up for more than 2,000 hours over the past four
years by bridge and tunnel breakdowns. Just ask the
American Society of Civil Engineers , which gave the nation a D+ grade for infrastructure and estimated that if more than $1
trillion is not added to currently anticipated spending on infrastructure, "the economy is expected to lose almost
$4 trillion in GDP , resulting in a loss of 2.5 million jobs in 2025."
Donald Trump promised to make America great again. And that wouldn't be possible if America's rail system, locks, dams and
pipelines -- that is, its vital organs -- were "a mess." Trump signed
what he described as a
contract with American voters to deliver an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his administration.
He mocked his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton's proposal to spend $275 billion. "Her number is a fraction of what we're
talking about. We need much more money to rebuild our infrastructure,"
he told Fox News in 2016 . "I would say at least double her numbers, and you're going to really need a lot more than that."
In August of 2016, he promised
, "We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, seaports and airports that our country deserves. American
cars will travel the roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol the seas. American steel will
send new skyscrapers soaring. We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation."
In his victory speech and both of his State of the Union addresses, he pledged again to be the master of infrastructure. "We are
going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, school, hospitals. And we will put millions of
our people to work," he said the night he won.
That sounds excellent. That's exactly what
75 percent of respondents
to a Gallup poll said they wanted. That would create millions of family-supporting jobs making the steel, aluminum, concrete, pipes
and construction vehicles necessary to accomplish infrastructure repair. That would stimulate the economy in ways that benefit the
middle class and those who are struggling.
That contract Trump signed with American voters to produce an infrastructure plan in the first 100 days: worthless. It never
happened. He gave Americans
an Infrastructure Week
in June of 2017, though, and
at just about the 100-day mark, predicted infrastructure spending would "take off like a rocket ship." Two more Infrastructure
Weeks followed in the next two years, but no money.
Trump finally announced
a plan in February of 2018, at a little over the 365-day mark, to spend $1.5 trillion on infrastructure. It went nowhere
because it managed to annoy both Democrats and Republicans.
It was to be funded by only $200 billion in federal dollars -- less than what Hillary Clinton proposed. The rest was to come from
state and local governments and from foreign money interests and the private sector. Basically, the idea was to hand over to hedge
fund managers the roads and bridges and pipelines originally built, owned and maintained by Americans. The fat cats at the hedge
funds would pay for repairs but then toll the assets in perpetuity. Nobody liked it.
That was last year. This year, by which time the words
Infrastructure Week had
become a synonym for promises not kept,
Trump met on April 30 with top Democratic leaders and recommended a $2 trillion infrastructure investment. Democrats praised
Trump afterward for taking the challenge seriously and for agreeing to find the money.
Almost immediately, Trump
began complaining that Democrats were trying to hoodwink him into raising taxes to pay for the $2 trillion he had offered to
spend.
Trump and the Republicans relinquished one way to pay for infrastructure when they passed a tax cut for the rich and corporations
in December of 2017. As a result, the rich and corporations pocketed hundreds of billions --
$1 trillion over 10 years -- and Trump doesn't
have that money to invest in infrastructure. Corporations spent their tax break money on stock buybacks, further enriching the already
rich. They didn't invest in American manufacturing or worker training or wage increases.
Three weeks after the April 30 meeting, Trump snubbed Democrats who returned to the White House hoping the president had found
a way to keep his promise to raise $2 trillion for infrastructure. Trump dismissed them like naughty schoolchildren. He told them
he wouldn't countenance Democrats simultaneously investigating him and bargaining with him -- even though Democrats were investigating
him at the time of the April meeting and one of the investigators -- Neal -- had attended.
Promise not kept again.
Trump's reelection motto, Keep America Great, doesn't work for infrastructure. It's still a mess. It's the third year of his presidency,
and he has done nothing about it. Apparently, he's saving this pledge for his next term.
In May, he promised Louisianans
a new bridge over
Interstate 10 -- only if he is reelected. He said the administration would have it ready to go on "day one, right after the election."
Just like he said he'd produce an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his first term.
He's doubling down on the infrastructure promises. His win would mean Americans get nothing again.
The whole thing seems so stupid. The desperate need is there, the people are there to do the work, the money spent into the
infrastructure would give a major boost to the real economy, the completed infrastructure would give the real economy a boost
for years & decades to come – it is win-win right across the board. But the whole thing is stalled because the whole deal can't
be rigged to give a bunch of hedge fund managers control of that infrastructure afterwards. If it did, the constant rents that
Americans would have to pay to use this infrastructure would bleed the economy for decades to come.
I have seen this movie before. A State builds a highway, it then leases that highway to a corporation for a bucket of cash
which it uses to bribe the electorate to win the next election or two. The corporation shoves brand new toll booths on the highway
charging sky high rates which puts a crimp in local economic activity. After the lease is up after twenty years, the State gets
to take over the highway again to find that the corporation cut back on maintenance so that the whole highway has to be rebuilt
again. Rinse and repeat.
When President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act in 1956, can you imagine how history would have gone
if they had been handed over to a bunch of corporations who would have built toll booths over the whole network? Would have done
wonders for the American economy I bet.
One of the things discussed at our town hall meeting the other night, was a much needed $481k public bathroom, and that was
the low bid.
It has to be ADA compliant with ramps, etc.
$48,100 seems like it'd be plenty to get 'r done, as you can build a house with a couple of bathrooms, and a few bedrooms,
a kitchen and living room for maybe $200k.
And if toll revenues don't come as high as expected, mother state will come to the rescue of those poor fund managers. I find
it amazing that Trump uses the stupid Russia, Russia, Russia! fixation of democrats as an excuse to do nothing about infrastructure.
Does this work with his electorate?
Promises by any narcissist mean nothing. You cannot hang your hat on any word that Trump speaks, because it's not about
you or anyone else, but about him and only him.
Here is a heads up. If any infrastructure is done it will be airports. The elite fly and couldn't give a crap about the
suspension and wheel destroying potholes we have to slalom around every day. They also don't care that the great unwashed waste
thousands of hours stuck in traffic when a bridge is closed or collapses.
Well, fix the airports and you've still got Boeing, self-destructing as fast as it can. And Airbus can't fill all the orders
no matter how hard it tries. Guess everybody will just have to . stay home.
Are all the coal jobs back? How about the manufacturing? NAFTA been repealed and replaced with something better yet? How's
the wall coming and has Mexico sent the check yet? Soldiers back from Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria yet?
Got that tax cut for rich people and a ton of conservative judges through though, didn't he?
"It couldn't have gone any better," Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal, D-Mass., told the Washington Post,
even though Neal was investigating Trump for possible tax fraud.
What a surprise. It's simply "amazing" that the insane status quo jihad that has been waged against Trump since he announced
his candidacy had real consequences for the country. Who would have thought that calling ANY president ignorant, ugly, fat, a
liar, a traitor, a cheater, an agent of Putin, a racist, a misogynist, a xenophobe, a bigot, an isolationist and an illegitimate
occupant of the White House 24/7 since he or she won the election would make actual accomplishment nearly impossible.
The mere mention of his name on college campuses has even been legitimized as a fear-inducing, "safety"-threatening "microagression."
It's just so rich that having determined to prevent Trump from doing absolutely anything he promised during the campaign by
any and all means, regardless of what the promise was or how beneficial it may have been, his numerous, bilious "critics" now
have the gonads to accuse him of not getting anything done.
With all due respect to the author of this piece, the result he laments was exactly the point of this relentless nightmare
of Trump derangement to which the nation has been subjected for three years. I tend to think that the specific promise most targeted
for destruction was his criticism of NATO and "infrastructure" was collateral damage, but that's neither here nor there.
The washington status quo has succeeded in its mission to cripple a president it could not defeat electorally, and now tries
to blame him for their success. Cutting off your nose to spite your face has always been a counterproductive strategy.
Donald Trump will win reelection, or not, based primarily on his performance in office. The voters will ask, in their
collective judgment, such questions as: has he scored at least one major accomplishment in domestic policy? Has he
maintained strong economic growth? Has he avoided major foreign policy failures? Has he presided over a major foreign
policy victory? Is he scarred by scandal? Are Americans better off than they were before his inauguration? Is the
country better positioned in the world?
Looking at the Trump presidency through the prism of such questions, it is
possible to produce a kind of preliminary report card. Recognizing that the voters won't render their own grades for
more than a year, we can still compile a general overview of the president's likely standing when the votes are counted.
This overview suggests that he resides upon a knife's edge of political fate. Events between now and November of next
year could easily push him into defeat, though he could also squeak through to victory. But defeat is more likely.
Before we get to the report card, two general points need to be made. First, irrespective of Trump's fate next year,
he is and will remain a significant figure in American political history. He transformed the national debate by exposing
the chasm in political sensibilities between the elites of the coasts and angry Americans in the heartland. In spite of
his crude and often distasteful ways (and sometimes because of them), he created a tight knot of political sentiment
that stands antagonistic toward the elite vision of globalism, diversity, open borders, overseas dominance, and free
trade -- most of it enforced with the cudgel of political correctness.
The heartland ethos, by contrast, includes an end to illegal immigration, a more restrictionist legal immigration
system to foster the absorption of those already here, a trade system attuned to industrial America, realism and
restraint in foreign policy, respect for the country's cultural heritage, and a hostility to the insidious impact of
identity politics.
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This is a huge chasm, yet when the 2016 campaign began, hardly a politician on the scene perceived it or understood
its ramifications. Trump did, and that got him (barely) elected. The result now is that we all now know about the chasm,
and it will be America's defining political pivot for years to come.
But if this political sagacity got Trump elected, it won't help him much in 2020. Challengers can win on talk if it
resonates sufficiently with the electorate; incumbents can only win on performance.
The second point is that, while the president enjoys the solid support of a highly loyal and unwavering contingent of
Americans, he has proven incapable of building a governing coalition. Throughout his presidency, his approval rating,
based on the aggregate numbers pulled together by the political web site FiveThirtyEight, has hovered between 39 percent
and 43 percent. This doesn't mean he can't get up to the 50 percent or so needed for reelection. Ronald Reagan's rating
was just 45 percent at this point in his presidency, and he went on to a landslide reelection win. But Trump's level of
approval has been so consistent that it is difficult to see how he might rise above it during his final months in
office.
Further, state-by-state poll numbers indicate that the president has lost considerable ground in key states needed
for reelection. According to surveys conducted by the online polling firm Civiqs, his approval rating is in negative
numbers in 10 states he carried in 2016, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Texas. None of the
states carried by Hillary Clinton seem poised to flip to the president.
This reflects Trump's general standing with the American people, and it means that he doesn't have sufficient
political juice to dominate the national debate on major issues and get Congress to take action. Trump supporters no
doubt will blame the Democrats, as presidential loyalists always do when their man can't get the job done. But in our
presidential system, chief executives don't get a pass by pointing fingers at the opposition.
Richard Nixon, a 43 percent victor in 1968, had to contend with a hostile Democratic majority in both houses of
Congress, and still amassed a record that buoyed him to a massive reelection victory in 1972. Reagan had a hostile House
Democratic majority and yet managed to galvanize the American people to such an extent that the House leadership lost
control of its own chamber, as frightened Democrats crossed over to Reagan's positions on major issues, particularly
fiscal ones.
How do presidents manage to overcome a hostile opposition? By shrewdly selecting issues to be pursued; by presenting
brilliant and coherent narrations on what those issues mean; and by deftly negotiating at the end to bring along just
enough of the opposition to carry the day. After his Democratic Party lost both houses of Congress in 1994, Bill Clinton
embarked on his brilliant "triangulation" strategy. Trump hasn't demonstrated any such capacity.
Which brings us to the report card:
Health care:
Trump failed all three of the tests for political success on this issue. He chose it
before it was ripe for serious legislative action (GOP lawmakers wanted to repeal and replace Obamacare but didn't have
anything approaching a viable replacement); he didn't explain it well because it wasn't well joined and because he
didn't seem to understand it; and he didn't seek any compromise with opposition members. Grade: D.
Immigration:
A massive Trump failure. He was the first president in decades who had enough
credibility with restrictionists to fashion a grand bargain that might have included legal status for the so-called
Dreamers (and perhaps their immediate families; not cousins and uncles). He might have also taken serious action on
other illegals in the country, on stemming the inward flow through every means possible, and on overhauling current
immigration policies, including ending family-based migration and the lottery, instituting a merit-based system, and
curbing the inflow enough to get the percentage of foreign-born people in America returned to more historical levels.
Was this even remotely possible? Perhaps not. But Trump campaigned as a man who would address the country's festering
immigration problem. That required that the issue be presented with sensitivity and clarity as to the harm that decades
of neglect have done to America. Nobody wants the United States to be a heartless country, but polls also indicate that
Democrats have come too close to open borders for the comfort of most. Therein was the opportunity.
But Trump didn't even talk to the American people about the issue; he communicated only to his base, thus ensuring
that the immigration chasm would continue with no end in sight. Grade: D.
Economic growth:
We can't issue a final grade here until the end of the semester, but prospects are
good for solid marks, even if an A doesn't appear likely. If growth continues through the third quarter of next year,
Trump will merit a solid B; if it slows, perhaps a B-; if it picks up, a B+. But an A would require the kind of growth
seen in Reagan's last six years in office (including annual percentages of 7.9, 5.6, 4.2, 4.5, and 3.8) or Clinton's
second term (4.4, 4.5, 4.9, 4.8). That isn't likely. Further, if the economy slips into recession, all bets are off.
This is a wait-and-see category. Grade: B, based on midterms, though the final exam will determine the outcome.
Trade:
Trump has taken a riverboat gamble on his trade dispute with China, which has been a commerce
thug for years -- stealing intellectual property, forcing U.S. companies in China to transfer technology, dumping goods
into U.S. markets, subsidizing state-owned companies, and manipulating its currency. White House aide Peter Navarro says
these "deadly sins" have destroyed some 70,000 factories in America and five million manufacturing jobs. China has been
bilking the United States in part to cadge vast sums of money to finance its geopolitical ambitions in Asia. There's a
strong argument that something had to be done, and only Trump among recent presidents had the fortitude to join the
issue.
In doing so, Trump has emphasized a central reality of American geopolitics, which his critics refuse to
accept -- namely that China, and not Russia, represents America's greatest long-term threat. But will the American people
and Congress accept the sacrifices that will likely be necessary to force China to change its ways? That may be
difficult for the president to pull off, given his less-than-robust standing with the American people. He's doing the
right thing in demanding reciprocal trade behavior from the Chinese, but his inability to forge a national consensus may
retard his prospects for success. Grade: Incomplete.
Foreign Policy:
Trump has not presided over any serious foreign policy failures, such as George W.
Bush's Iraq fiasco or Barack Obama's Libyan misadventure. Indeed, he has not led the country into any serious foreign
wars at all, which may be a significant accomplishment in comparison to his three predecessors. At the same time, he has
kept U.S. troops in Syria and Afghanistan beyond any worthwhile rationale. And he has not scored any significant foreign
policy successes -- nothing approaching Nixon's outreach to China or Jimmy Carter's Camp David Accords or Reagan's Cold War
breakthrough. The problem has been that he doesn't seem to possess any kind of coherent view of the world in our time.
He seems to have an instinctive understanding that the old global order is crumbling. But he doesn't have any idea of
what could or should replace this fading status quo or how America should operate in a changing world.
And Trump's decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement and seek to bring Iran to its knees economically
through "maximum pressure" could destabilize the entire Middle East even beyond George W. Bush's mindless Iraq invasion.
If so, the combustion likely won't occur until after Trump's current term, under whomever is president at the time. But
the burden of responsibility for any untoward developments emanating from that questionable policy will rest firmly upon
Trump. Grade: C-.
Scandal:
Any serious scandal that attaches to the upper reaches of an administration becomes a net
negative in the next election. It's difficult to assess the full political impact of the Russian scandal that has roiled
the nation since even before Trump was sworn in. On the one hand, the allegation of electoral "collusion" has been
exposed as a fraud. On the other, opponents have continued assaulting Trump for supposedly seeking to obstruct the
investigation. Their arguments are largely specious, but politics unfolds on the margin, and the marginal impact of all
this is likely to redound to Trump's detriment at reelection time. Besides, Trump doesn't seem to care much about how he
is perceived or about the old-style niceties of political discourse. That provides an opening for opposition arguments
about his loose ethics. Grade: C+.
General national welfare:
On those questions regarding whether Americans are better off today than
they were four years ago and whether America stands taller in the world, it's a bit of a mixed bag. The economic
statistics (growth, unemployment, job market participation, productivity, inflation, the stock market) are solid,
stemming largely from Trump's tax and regulatory policies. If they continue, the president will get general kudos from
the electorate on this crucial area of performance.
The voters' view of America's global standing is more difficult to assess. No doubt Trump's base is comfortable with
his performance on the world stage, but has he conducted himself in a way that will capture those swing voters who will
be crucial to his reelection prospects? It doesn't seem likely.
And that's reflective of the overall Trump presidency. This utterly unconventional politician who got elected in
utterly unconventional ways had an opportunity to fashion an unconventional brand of conservative politics -- wary of big
business and the nexus between government and big finance; hostile to coastal elites; protective of working class
Americans who have been abandoned and slandered by the Democratic Party; concerned about economic inequality; suspicious
of vehement libertarianism; opposed to promiscuous foreign policy adventurism; anti-globalist; nationalist; and
enthusiastic about the looming epic task of forging a new political order at home and a new geopolitical order in the
world.
Trump has demonstrated a vague sense of this opportunity, but he never seemed to grasp its complexities and nuances
or show any ability to forge a coherent strategy to make it a reality. The result: an overall grade of C. It would be a
gentleman's C if Trump were a gentleman. The question is whether the voters will grade on a curve.
"Trump has demonstrated a vague sense of this opportunity, but he never
seemed to grasp its complexities and nuances or show any ability to
forge a coherent strategy to make it a reality."
I don't think any national politician today, not Trump, not Bernie, not anyone,
really grasps just how seething with rage the public is right now.
Wanna know why
we have mass shootings? Think of those people that snap as a sort of warning sign of
the public mood. Expect to see a lot more of them, no matter who is in office.
For that matter, the election of Trump is a similar indicator. Think of Trump as
the "
Roll the dice, we've got nothing to lose!
" candidate, compared to the
establishment darling HRC.
Of course, long after Trump is gone from office, the forces that gave rise to
Trump will still be there. That said, the establishment will tar every populist for
years to come with Trump's weakness, stupidity, recklessness and incompetence. "
Remember
what happened the last time you didn't vote as instructed?
"
Already, Trump has proven the best campaign ad the European establishment could
ask for. He prevented the election of Le Pen in France, and prevented the German
establishment parties from complete meltdown. The campaign slogan goes something
like this: "
Vote for us, unless you want a buffoon like *him* in office!
"
I agree. For the first time in my life I am seriously concerned about the
future of this country. We are one serious financial or foreign policy
calamity away from serious social breakdown.
Robert: Thank you this very sober, very reasonable assessment. I hate Trump's stinking
rotten guts with the white hot fury of a thousand suns, and I disagree strongly with some
of the points you are making here, but this is a terrific piece.
He gets a "C" in foreign policy, but everything domestic is so bad that he may as well not
even call himself right wing at all. The illegal and legal immigration problems have
exacerbated under Trump (look up the numbers). Of course he has deported very few and now
advocates for increased legal immigration.That is not what anyone voted for. He
incessantly proclaims how much he has done for demographics that will never vote for him,
while even openly making fun of the struggles that working class white men (his base) face
in society. He has now come out in support of red flag laws as well because of one event
presumably. He even gave us a "criminal justice reform bill" to let out criminals to be
even more of a plague on society. Why?
"fashion a grand bargain that might have included
legal status for the so-called Dreamers (and perhaps their immediate families; not cousins
and uncles)." --> This is not acceptable. This is not reform, but merely a concession of
the inability of our country to have laws or moral legitimacy.
A solid F. Trump's weakness has failed to lead to any major policy successes, even when he
had majorities in both houses of Congress. Trump's incompetence has given the
establishment loads of ammunition and recruits that they didn't have a few years ago.
Hell, Trump has made even doofus Uncle Joe Biden look like a viable alternative. Sad!
One major problem with the author's analysis of the Trump Administration's scandals is
that it is limited entirely to the Russia scandal. Ignored are a host of acts of
corruption that have marked the Administration of the man who constantly bragged that he
would appoint "only the best people." So let's examine just a few of them. His National
Security Advisor Michael Flynn was convicted of felonies and sent to prison. His Secretary
of HHS Tom Price resigned in the wake of insider trading investigations. Interior
Secretary Ryan Zinke left the Trump administration amid mounting federal investigations
into his travel, political activity and potential conflicts of interest. EPA Administrator
Scott Pruitt was facing more than a dozen investigations into his taxpayer-funded travel,
questionable spending decisions, use of aides to conduct personal errands and other
matters when he resigned. Labor Secretary Alex Acosta resigned over his scandalous
granting of a sweetheart plea deal to Jeffrey Epstein. I could go on to the other members
of Trump's inner circle who are in prison or who have been forced to resign under a cloud
of scandal. I could point to New York State shutting down the Trump Foundation as a
fraudulent charity that scammed people out of their denotations. I could note the Trump
University scam whose victims received a $25 Million dollar payment from Trump after he
was elected. The author gives Trump a grade of C+ on scandals? An F would be more
accurate.
Healthcare: I actually don't blame Trump on this one. All he really did was trust his
party when they said they had plans and just needed the power to do them. It would've been
great if HE had a plan himself but in the end that's Congress' job more than anything. So
he gave them that power, said "DO IT!" and they failed him. He should've struck at
immigration first but as far as healthcare itself.
So I give him a B for effort.
Republicans get an F.
Immigration: "A massive Trump failure. He was the first president in decades who had
enough credibility with restrictionists to fashion a grand bargain that might have
included legal status for the so-called Dreamers (and perhaps their immediate families;
not cousins and uncles). He might have also taken serious action on other illegals in the
country, on stemming the inward flow through every means possible, and on overhauling
current immigration policies, including ending family-based migration and the lottery,
instituting a merit-based system, and curbing the inflow enough to get the percentage of
foreign-born people in America returned to more historical levels."
Remotely not possible? Legal Status for Dreamers, push for more efficient deportations,
merit based systems, and curbing the visa system?
That is VERY much possible to get all of most of that. The first is what the opposition
is wanting and most of his side wouldn't scream against. He didn't even provide it as a
bargaining chip (at best a "we'll revisit it later" delay).
Higher deportations would bring it to Obama levels. It just becomes hard to do when you
open the debate with blasting all latinos as criminals sparking off the PC bee hive.
Though that's moot since he could've, instead of a symbolic wall he could've asked for
more funding for more centers and more judges to speed up the deportation trials (since
isn't the point to actually DEPORT them, not lock them up for months under the pay of
taxpayers). he used up his capital to maintain a marketing gimmick. By the time we got
serious, he had moderates so pissed they tune the whole thing out and the left so angry
they'll contemplate decriminalizing the whole thing just to snub him.
A merit based system WOULD'VE been a decent sell before all that mess or simply done
when republicans had Congress. It also requires snubbing the "merit=europe" peanut
gallery. Now no one is even listening.
The visa issue would've been an easy sell to both sides. It brings in a mass of
non-citizens specifically to fill up job slots and then leaves them to be abused by their
employers under threat of deportation if they don't comply. I can throw that exact line up
in almost any forum and get a mob of support from the radical left to the far right.
There's insanely difficult topics about immigration. Most of your wish list was low
hanging fruit in 2015. Trump turned it into the third rail. He didn't spark debate or open
anything up. He got everyone so angry they aren't even discussing it properly anymore.
Lastly, if he wanted a wall that badly, he should've tried it in the first two years of
his election. Trying it RIGHT AFTER it became impossible reeks of wanting to LOOK like he
wanted it, sort of like if I waited until someone filled a box with cement then tried to
lift it and said "I'll try HARD to make this happen."
Pure F.
I agree with you on Economics. On Trade I'm not as "China BAD" as you but overall I'm
willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one, though I'm not a farmer.
Foreign Policy, There's no really any further places to GO to spark a war other than
Iran itself. And as you said he's not doing well there. That said it's probably close to
what you said, though I'd put him a D+ as we're not in war with Iran just yet (sadly that
is an accomplishment) but I can't see any way to really fix what we ruined at this point.
At BEST they'll go the way of North Korea.
Scandal: If this is on how he's handled scandal I'd give him a B-. He know how to
handle angry people and keep them barking with no bite. It would've been a B+ but I think
the current racial ones was a big overreach especially since it's causing his party to
throw their feet into their mouths 2008 style and further souring immigration issues.
Overall: Trump's big advantage is that he touched on an area that Americans desperately
needed but everyone wanted to ignore. Republicans wanted to go back to Bush. Democrats
forgot that they won on "Change" not on "more of the same".
His disadvantage is that he doesn't have much to actually offer to fix it. He touched
on immigration but sparks the fears of racism from the left and focuses on a symbolic, but
less effective, wall. He touches on poor workers but taxes rarely affect them and the
corporate elite is still tightening their grip just as effectively. He spoke of wars but
his biggest accomplishment is that we've run out of places to invade-except Iran which
we're 1 misfire from entering.
All he has is an economy that was rising before he joined in and is slowing down 1-2
years after his main policies have taken effect. Thankfully that's the most important. Not
thankfully, presidents have the least amount of control over it.
Which means he's mostly banking on a car that was built without a steering wheel and
hoping it doesn't slam into a tree.
Meanwhile I glance at the whiplash the size of a tornado that's to my left and wonder
just how insane things get when they grab the reigns again.
Very, very good analysis. I am a former Republican that now votes Democrat since the
lunatics are running the Republican asylum. I was the only one, of all my
progressive friends, that said maybe Trump can actually get something done. He owed
the Republicans nothing. Nada. Zip. He beat them all, without the help of the
Republican machine.
Trump could have formed a center right coalition. Starting
with infrastructure that wasn't a wall. Then he could have gone after Big Pharma and
the Medical Industrial Complex.
But no..... He immediately jumped as far right as possible. He went after every
right wing wet dream he could. He was like a drunken 4 year old that was thrilled to
break every toy of his sandbox rival (Obama). Now everything that he says that might
be somewhat reasonable is drowned out and eclipsed by his insanity, narcissism, and
general idiocy.
The Republicans are going to really, really hate 2020. Can't say it happened to a
more deserving bunch of folk though. Bless their little hearts.
This is a good point; the only Republican who could have actually broken the
consensus within the Republican Party and suggested that a) healthcare should
be improved for everyone b) the rich could be taxed more, and the poor less
and c) foreign wars of aggression are a bad thing got in to office and cut
taxes massively for the rich, tried to simply repeal the only step forward in
healthcare for decades, and antagonised everyone abroad (Israel and Saudi
excepted)
"The first [Dreamers] is what the opposition is wanting and most of his side
wouldn't scream against."
I cannot echo this loudly enough. I live right in the
middle of what has become red-meat hard-right Republican land -- but you can still
find support for the Dreamers here. They're not
desperate
for those kids
(illegal spouses of immigrants currently in military service dominate that
conversation), but they're absolutely willing to keep them -- at least as legal,
lifelong residents. And particularly if their families receive no similar benefit.
If you can swing that here, from people who're beginning to lean somewhat
xenophobic and feel strongly that illegal immigration is hurting them -- then man,
you have a powerful foundation from which to build.
Immigration is a massive Trump failure? Where was the GOP when he got elected? They have
said for years if they got the House, Senate, and White House they would build the wall
and fix immigration. They did nothing. Zero.
Obama/Hillary "misadventure" in Libya? Wow....talk about putting a sugar coating on a
disaster. They put 1 million plus "refugees" into Europe and created a thriving slave
market in Libya. Way to go!
No foreign policy success? How about calling out various NATO members for being dead
beats? Especially Germany. How about getting out of that fraud "Paris Accord?". Out of the
Iran Nuke Deal? Getting NK to Singapore? Taking on the failed NAFTA "deal?" Dumping TPP?
...And the big one...defeating ISIS!!!....Something the "glory boy", Obama could not
accomplish.
Russian scandal? No, Coup attempt by members of Deep State, i.e. Justice Dept.,
Intelligence agencies and the MSM. Trump failed in not having midnight SWAT team raids on
hundreds of coup plotters.
As far as I know, President Trump is the first person elected to the Presidency with
little to no support in any national political Party or organization.
Nor any experience in any form of government at all.
The only President that comes close is General Eisenhower.
Frankly, When I voted for him
in 2016.
I did not expect him to last this long. Two years max was my guess.
As Hillary Clinton was far, far worst than any alternative.
So I am surprised he is far better that what I was lead to believe.
I will be voting for President Trump in 2020.
Because he has no support in any of the current major political parties.
But has been relatively successful despite that political situation.
As both major political parties have proven themselves not to be working in the
interests of the American People. And have longstanding histories of working against the
American Middle-Class. And exploiting their political positions for their political and
monetary gain. At the public's expense.
Its Donald Trump or the Asteroid Strike as old the joke goes.
President Trump will do if I can not get two Asteroids striking Washington DC and New York
City simultaneously.
Trump's presidency is a failure and you don't have to be a Democrat to see that. In many
ways, Trump was a man ahead of his time, but a major part of his failures is his inability
to personally invest any of his time into the issues. Take Afghanistan - he keeps saying
he wanted out from the moment he took office, yet here we are, over two years later, with
still no end in sight. The fact is, Trump's an empty vessel. I've never gotten the sense
he's a true believer and, even if he were, he's become more worried about re-election,
which means he's become just another politician.
I'd never vote for a Democrat, with the
possible exception of Andrew Yang, in 2020. But it's time to face the music - Trump's
going to lose re-election. And maybe that's a good thing, for it's not the establishment
that needs to be broken up yet, it's the American right. We need to replace the Mitch
McConnells and Lindsay Grahams with the Matt Gaetz and Josh Hawleys. The greatest thing
Trump will ever have done is kickstart this nationalist moment, but he won't be able to
sustain it. That's up to the people willing and able to do the work we expected him to do
as president.
Trump proved to be Hillary in disguses "very much a hawk." I would say reckless hawk. Stephen Cohen
characterization of Hillary is fully applicable to him now if you substitute Russia for China "Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, was
very much a hawk. When she said publicly that Vladimir Putin has no soul, you could not commit
or utter a more supreme statement of ant i-diplomacy, and particularly addressing the Russians,
who put a lot of stock in soul. "
Notable quotes:
"... Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, was very much a hawk. When she said publicly that Vladimir Putin has no soul, you could not commit or utter a more supreme statement of anti-diplomacy, and particularly addressing the Russians, who put a lot of stock in soul. ..."
PAUL JAY: Well, my question is, I think when you are saying positive things about
Trump diminishing tensions with Russia, which I think is correct, but I think you need to add
this guy does not have peaceful intentions, he's very dangerous.
STEPHEN COHEN: I live in a social realm–to the extent that I have any social
life at all anymore– where people get very angry if I say, or anybody says, anything
positive about Donald Trump. When Trump was campaigning in 2016, he said, "I think it would be
great to cooperate with Russia." All of my adult life, my advocacy in American foreign
policy–I've known presidents, the first George Bush invited me to Camp David to consult
with him before he went to the Malta Summit. I've known presidential candidates, Senators and
the rest, and I've always said the same thing. American national security runs through Moscow,
period. Nothing's changed.
In the era of weapons of mass destruction, not only nuclear, but primarily nuclear, ever
more sophisticated, the Russians now have a new generation of nuclear weapons–Putin
announced them on March 1, they were dismissed here, but they're real–that can elude any
missile defense. We spent trillions on missile defense to acquire a first strike capability
against Russia. We said it was against or Iran, but nobody believed it. Russia has now thwarted
us; they now have missile defense-evading nuclear weapons from submarines, to aircraft, to
missiles. And Putin has said, "It's time to negotiate an end to this new arms race," and he's
100 percent right. So when I heard Trump say, in 2016, we have to cooperate with Russia, I had
already become convinced–and I spell this out in my new book, War with Russia?–that
we were in a new cold war, but a new cold war more dangerous than the preceding one for reasons
I gave in the book, one of them being these new nuclear weapons.
So I began to speak positively about Trump at that moment–that would have been
probably around the summer of 2016–just on this one point, because none of the other
candidates were advocating cooperation with Russia. And as I told you before, Paul, all my life
I've been a detente guy. Detente means cooperate with Russia. I saw in Trump the one candidate
who said this is necessary, in his own funny language. Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, was
very much a hawk. When she said publicly that Vladimir Putin has no soul, you could not commit
or utter a more supreme statement of anti-diplomacy, and particularly addressing the Russians,
who put a lot of stock in soul. To say somebody has no soul and then go on to equate him with
Hitler, I found that so irresponsible. I didn't vote for Trump, but I did begin to write and
broadcast that this was of vital importance that we have this discussion, that we needed a new
detente because of the new and more dangerous Cold War.
Since he's been president, I think he's been ineffective in regard to pursuing detente with
Russia for a couple of reasons. I think that the people who invented Russiagate were the
enemies of detente, and they piled on. So they've now demonized Russia, they've crippled Trump.
Anything he does diplomatically with Putin is called collusion. No matter what Mueller says,
it's collusion. This is anti-democracy, and detente is pursued through democracy. So whatever
he really wants to do–it's hard to say–he's been thwarted. I think it's also one of
the reasons why he put anti-detente people around him.
"... The real concern is the US Senate. Currently, the GOP holds a six-seat majority (if you count the two Independent senators, who caucus with Democrats, as Democrats). Thirty-four seats are up in 2020. According to this analysis , at this point, 18 of them are in play, and four of those 18 are toss-ups ..."
"... An anti-Trump landslide at the top of the ticket could wash the GOP Senate majority away. We would then have a Democratic president and Congress -- and they would be in a score-settling mood. ..."
"... a recession, which is growing more likely by the day, would be something extremely hard for Trump to overcome. The new Fox poll has Trump at 56 percent unfavorable, with only 42 percent favorable -- and this is in good economic times. ..."
"... UPDATE: Douthat speculates today on what a recession would mean for the country , starting with the presidency: ..."
"... First, the easy part: Donald Trump loses re-election . It will be ugly and flailing and desperate and -- depending on recession-era geopolitics -- potentially quite dangerous, but there is no way a president so widely disliked survives the evaporation of his boom. ..."
"... But, as Douthat points out, getting rid of Trump doesn't do much to address the factors that led to his rise in the first place. ..."
"... The real truth is that the Republicans have a problem their rich globalist donors have abandoned them for Democrats blue Dog Dems as they are called, while their base will support them if they lead. Leading means angering their mega donors. ..."
"... Normally Republican Funder Hedge fund billionaire Seth Klarman said Democrats need to regain control of Congress "for the good of the country". His money has had found its way to 56 Democrats running for House seats and 22 Democrats running for the U.S. Senate. This is millions. His reason was a tax cut he neither needed nor wanted, Huh? ..."
"... if it is business as usual they will lose the Senate and not gain the house. ..."
( PBS News Hour screenshot ) Anything could
happen between now and November 2020, but this new Fox News poll is not good news for the president. If the vote were held today,
Joe Biden would clobber him, which is no surprise. But also, a geriatric New England socialist would beat the stuffing out of Trump.
So would a preachy Harvard professor and a militantly progressive black woman from the San Francisco Bay Area:
Again, anything could happen, but you know what's probably going to happen between now and Election Day? A recession. That's hard
for any incumbent president to overcome, but this one will already be starting out in a deep hole, and I think most of us can agree
that in the event of an economic downturn, is unlikely to dazzle with his scintillating competence.
New from the AP:
The financial markets signaled the possibility
of a U.S. recession this week, sending a jolt of anxiety to investors, companies and consumers. That's on top of concerns
over Trump's plans to impose punishing tariffs on goods from China and word from the United Kingdom and Germany that their economies
are shrinking.
Though a pre-election recession here is far from certain, a downturn would be a devastating blow to the president, who has
made a strong economy his central argument for a second term. Trump advisers fear a weakened economy would hurt him with moderate
Republican and independent voters who have been willing to give him a pass on some his incendiary policies and rhetoric. And White
House economic advisers see few options for reversing course should the economy start to slip.
Trump has taken to blaming others for the recession fears, mostly the Federal Reserve, which he is pushing for further interest
rate cuts. Yet much of the uncertainty in the markets stems from his own escalation of a trade war with China, as well as weakened
economies in key countries around the world.
If the economy goes into recession, what's the compelling argument for voting Trump? I know what the argument is for social and
religious conservatives: judges. But only a minority of American voters care so strongly about judges.
The real concern is the US Senate. Currently, the GOP holds a six-seat majority (if you count the two Independent senators,
who caucus with Democrats, as Democrats). Thirty-four seats are up in 2020. According to
this analysis , at this point, 18 of them are in play,
and four of those 18 are toss-ups. Only one of those four toss-ups -- Doug Jones in Alabama -- is a Democrat. Jones will probably
lose no matter what -- Alabama went for Trump by 30 points, and Jones only won because his GOP opponent was creepy Roy Moore.
An anti-Trump landslide at the top of the ticket could wash the GOP Senate majority away. We would then have a Democratic
president and Congress -- and they would be in a score-settling mood.
One more time: anything could happen between now and Election Day 2020. But a recession, which is growing more likely by the
day, would be something extremely hard for Trump to overcome. The new Fox poll has Trump at 56 percent unfavorable, with only 42
percent favorable -- and this is in good economic times.
First, the easy part: Donald Trump loses re-election . It will be ugly and flailing and desperate and -- depending on recession-era
geopolitics -- potentially quite dangerous, but there is no way a president so widely disliked survives the evaporation of his
boom. The rules of politics have changed, but they haven't been suspended. Polarization will keep Trump from being defeated
in a landslide, but not from being beaten handily, and in a recession the Democrats can nominate any of their candidates and expect
to evict the president with ease.
Having guaranteed Trump's removal from office, in other words, the recession would also set the stage for Trumpism's eventual
return.
I see a number of pro-Trump commenters below are pointing out that the pundits didn't see Trump coming, so their forecasts of
Trump's defeat in 2020 shouldn't be taken seriously. Sure, that's true -- but Trump in 2016 was elected in a booming economy. Had
the economy not been in good shape, Trump might have been elected anyway, riding high on economic anxiety. Neither of these factors
will be present should Trump have to run for re-election in a recessionary economy. And, Trump was running against a candidate representing
the incumbent White House party. Now, he is a member of the incumbent White House party.
But, as Douthat points out, getting rid of Trump doesn't do much to address the factors that led to his rise in the first
place.
Let me point out for the hundred-eleventieth time: anything can happen between now and November 2020. Polls aren't worth much
now. But they do remind us that Trump is extremely unpopular, and will have trouble getting re-elected even if the economy is in
good shape next year. If it's not, what, exactly, will he run on?
Trump has had historically awful numbers since about a month after he was inaugurated. The Fox News poll is coming as a wake-up
call because for a long time, the liberal media were too busy hanging out in Rust Belt diners interviewing Trump voters -- the
alleged "Real Americans" -- to pay much mind to the fact that much of the actual country detests the guy. Not saying he can't
win in '20, but recessions aside, one thing he won't have going for him this time is the element of surprise: Everyone will know
that it's obviously possible for him to win, and that if your main goal is to prevent that then you simply have to vote
for the Democrat -- no staying home, no Jill Stein or Evan McMullin-type nonsense, at least not if you're in a state whose outcome
is remotely in doubt. Eight years of Obama had made too many voters complacent, and Trump has helpfully focused people's minds.
I will gladly vote for the Democratic nominee, regardless of who it is. (Unless he/she is worse than Trump, which is probably
impossible, since Genghis Khan is not available.) I would vote for the toad in my back garden if he/she gets the nomination. Everyone
reading this knows why. Some people are able to overlook the obvious, but I find that I can't.
Unhappily I am in California, so it really doesn't matter who I vote for.
Yea, I think part of the reason Trump won in 2016 was because he took everyone by surprise. Few people thought he could win (except
Nate Silver and the LA Times, I guess, and a few of the commenters here): even he didn't think he was going to win until the Michigan
results started coming in.
Another weak story board based on polls that already in question. Fox is not above the fold to skew polls to keep stories going.
The left and the media has made a pseudo state of fear of even wearing a MAGA hat in public. This pseudo state has armed low information
and low IQ Americans willing to attack Senators while they are mowing their lawn, or enabling professors swinging bike locks at
rallies against Trump supporters.
The Senate and the House will loose not on the coattails of Trump, but based on their own silence and failures, and business
as usual. Again and Again these articles throw up the importance of saving the Republican party, but before Trump the party was
over. The party knew that as they went after rigging of the polls rather than winning the votes through addressing problems.
The real truth is that the Republicans have a problem their rich globalist donors have abandoned them for Democrats blue
Dog Dems as they are called, while their base will support them if they lead. Leading means angering their mega donors. Trump
has 65 percent individual donors, far above any of the Dems, even combined. Tom Steyer is paying millions to get thousands that
are from individual donors.
Normally Republican Funder Hedge fund billionaire Seth Klarman said Democrats need to regain control of Congress "for the
good of the country". His money has had found its way to 56 Democrats running for House seats and 22 Democrats running for the
U.S. Senate. This is millions. His reason was a tax cut he neither needed nor wanted, Huh?
Uihlein gave $2.5 million to Ives in a single week this past January -- essentially bankrolling her campaign to defeat Rauner
in a Republican primary on Tuesday.
Koch Brothers also followed the same suit. I could go naming more and more that switch sides, but also tried to finance Trump
Inauguration where things were more laxed and flooded in, and tried to line up on his door step. Instead he closed the door.
Trump showed that Campaign funds don't really matter if you have heart and the desire to win, having a bad candidate to run
against doesn't hurt either, but the Dems have tons of bad candidates.
With Harvesting Vote laws California is lost, but the rest of the country is in play. If they lead and lead for the people
they will win, if it is business as usual they will lose the Senate and not gain the house.
At this point who cares? Tweets aside Trump has turned into the corporate/donor class
Republican he ran against in 2016 and in some cases even worse with his recent about face on
the second amendment which I've been predicting since he banned bump stocks. He's now bought
the lie that as long as the U.S. enjoys sustained economic growth the multiracial madhouse
that is contemporary murica won't ever derail.
Trump the candidate promised:
* A strong economy which he's partially delivered on
* A wall on our Southern border
* A drastic reduction in H1B and other work visas that allow American elites to displace
Americans from the work force
* Decreases in legal immigration
* Unwavering support for the 2nd amendment
* Law and order
Trump the president has given us:
* More moral, material and financial support to Israel than ever
* Moved the embassy to Jerusalem
* Forcing foreign nations to decriminalize homosexual sodomy
* Letting Antifa and other assorted left wing crazies run wild and attack people in the
streets while prosecuting his right of center supporters for fighting back
* Early prison release for violent black and other felons
* Potentially the largest influx of legal immigrants and illegal aliens in U.S. history
coupled with the lowest number of deportations
* No wall (yet)
* Formally condemned white nationalism and so called white supremacy but not black and brown
supremacy or left wing terrorism
* Potentially infringing upon the 2nd amendment even more than Bill Clinton and far more than
Barack Obama
At this rate Trump will probably give us the green new deal, black slave reparations, a
white privilege tax and deny "anti-semites" first and second amendment rights should he win a
second term. History has shown that the radical left makes some of its greatest political
gains under Republican presidents and Trump has done nothing to buck that trend.
America was and is looted by wealthy Americans looking for a quick buck. Globalization and
offshoring in the 19080's was all about greedy wealthy Westerners, especially Americans,
wanting to make more money. To blame the looting in others just demonstrates Buchanan's
stupidity.
@Hanrahan Notice the
continued exclusion of Representative Gabbard and her criticism of the destructive Empire --
despite focusing on Beltway politics, he hasn't typed her name since June 28. He wants the
"Elizabeth Warren-Bernie Sanders-AOC Democrats" to go even kookier because this website's
"Mr. Paleoconservative" has become a Beltway fixture, cheerleading for Team Red in the next
Most Important Election Ever.
"the Great Arsenal of Democracy was looted by" the military-industrial complex Arsenal &
it's unending wars & nothing short of nuclear annihilation is going to change that. There
is no Democrat who is willing to bet their chance at the presidency on pulling it down. And
the American public, by and large, is put to sleep by lengthy discussions of the intricacies
of trade policy. The election will be waged, like the primaries, around race-baiting. Biden
will be the first victim. The other white candidates are running scared & becoming more
shrill in their denunciations of whites in general by the hour. There's no telling where it
all may lead but it's becoming clearer day by day that the hostility will outlast the
primaries & the general election will be a very ugly affair. There's no turning back to
the soothing center now, it will be an us-vs.-them type election & hopefully, Pat
Buchanan, still America's shrewdest pundit, will keep us fully apprised.
@Charles Pewitt
Basically I agree with Erebus's comment.
What you don't seem to get is that the China situation is of the US's own making. US Co's in
the 90's & naughtier literally salivated at getting there production into China (or
Mexico) Then -- they were happy to accept Chinese conditions, as was the US government.
So, your ridiculous, punitive tariffs are going to HURT the thousands of US companies who
happily moved production to China. Nor will US Co's move home (unless the government acts
aggressively) -- they'll move to Vietnam or where ever.
Of course such punitive tarrifs will justify the Chinese into further devaluing their
currency.
Would be interesting to see the affects on US inflation were your program followed.
Implied in your comment is the apparent fact that you do not understand this US/China
issue.(which is OK, because Trump & CO certainly don't understand the imperatives
here)
You seem to think it's about trade. Actually it about China's sovereignty. The US position is
that China NOT become a leading economy such as the US, Japan & Germany are. The US
demands China cease it's drive to lead in high tech'. The Chinese simply can not give-in. US
demands amount to China becoming a second rate power, essentially a US vassal.
How could any country, let alone China with its humiliating history of being a victim of
western imperialism, do anything else but fight?
President Donald Trump's reelection hopes hinge on two things: the state of the economy
in 2020 and the identity of the Democratic nominee.
That's the first sentence and that's where I should have stopped reading. This is the kind
of out of touch political insider horse trading irradiated bullshittery that no one should
waste their time on anymore.
Trump's is finished if he doesn't fulfil his US immigration promises from 2016. He's also
finished if he doesn't stop channelling his Jewish handlers with embarrassingly stupid
anti-white rhetoric. That's it. That's where "reelection hopes" should focus on.
Trump's most obvious failed promise is not putting the deep state under constitutional
control, after the Obama/Clinton escapades.
"Justice, FBI and ICE are turning into partisan organizations."
Wrong! The deep state is in the DNC's pocket. Barr is fixing the extent Obama attempted to
coup the 2016 election using the DNC' deep state.
BTW your Leninist DNC armed appendage aka antifa is now responsible for 4 attacks on IC
offices. The latest a gun shot through a window of an ICE office in San Antonio, Tx.
That the deep state has not closed them is deep state obeisance to the DNC.
President Donald Trump saw the same day that bombs must have been used on the WTC towers on
9/11/2001.
From his experience building steel sky scrapers, he knew they were built to be strong,
even against a jet. He stated to the reporter that bombs must also have been involved.
What I have yet to see satisfactorily explained is how a huge (or even yuuuge) skyscraper can
fall – within its footprint – when subjected to asymmetrical forces.
Put aside whether the jets had enough fuel, burned hot or long enough, etc. Taking the
footage at face value, the buildings were SLAMMED from one direction. There is no way that
could have caused symmetrical damage. Any structural component closer to impact received
orders of magnitude of force more than those on the opposite side, resulting in unequal
weakening. Yet what everyone saw was a symmetrical collapse within footprint, as though all
structural components were equally and simultaneously weakened.
Who you gonna believe, the gubmint, or your own lying eyes?
"... The establishment's "Democracy Works!" propaganda seeks to stifle such Movements, directing attention to establishment candidates voice those concerns. But those candidates invariably prove to be ineffective because they can never get enough support to win and their efforts largely end with the election. ..."
Well you don't trust any of them, but you vote for the ones pushing policy you want to see happen, and you vote for the
ones that try to make that happen, and you abandon them immediately if they renege.
Obama's election and betrayal proved that this strategy doesn't work.
Tulsi is not anti-war', she's anti- dumb wars . Just as Colin Powell was ('Powell Doctrine' LOL). Just as
Obama was ("don't do stupid stuff"). Just as Trump is (amid howls of "isolationist!" LOL).
The fact is, every candidate will salute the flag as soon as the requisite false flag outrage occurs.
Furthermore, even if you ardently support Tulsi because she voices something that appears to be anti-war, you have to contend
with passionate supporters of other candidates: those who want a candidate of color, those who want an older
more experienced candidate, those who want a women candidate; those who want a socialist candidate, etc. In this way the electorate
is played against each other and in the end the establishment's favored candidate emerges naturally as the "democratic choice"
(with the help of establishment money and media support) .
Relying on voting for change is not enough . There has to be independent Movements for each fundamental change:
Democracy, Anti-war; Economic fairness. Like the Yellow Vest Movement.
The establishment's "Democracy Works!" propaganda seeks to stifle such Movements, directing attention to establishment candidates
voice those concerns. But those candidates invariably prove to be ineffective because they can never get enough support to win
and their efforts largely end with the election.
Donald Trump: billionaire of the people. When he ran for office,
he said , "The American worker will finally have a president who will protect them and
fight for them."
And how's that working out for the American worker? Not very well, actually, not very well.
When it comes down to picking sides -- standing up for workers' rights or lining the pockets of
CEOs and shareholders -- Trump aligned himself and his policies with the fat cats. This cost
workers money and safety. The truth is that American corporations got a president who protected
them and fought for them
"In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will hose away all of the rot and bloody criminality of the Bush years.
He turned out to be a deft move by our ruling class. Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of our military
banking complex. Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider.
A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as a magnet for liberal anger. This
will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war abroad while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump
won't fulfill any of his election promises, and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politics."
Linh Dinh, "Orlando Shooting Means Trump for President," @ The Unz Review (June 12, 2016).
Note how the 'free press' of the US has been not only complicit in all this every step of the way but is coordinated with it,
staying silent about things in front of its nose and launching propaganda campaigns on cue. Obviously the media is in close cooperation
with elements of the political establishment. Oh, but we have the freest media in the world. I know so because I read it in the
newspaper.
"... This isn't a glitch. It's a pattern. Although Trump is fond of surrounding himself with union members and asserting that they love him, he doesn't really like unions, especially ones that challenge him or dare to question his lies. Remember how he personally attacked Steelworker Chuck Jones who exposed Trump and Pence for claiming to save 1,100 jobs at Carrier when they really preserved only about half that many -- and then only after a grant of $7 million from the taxpayers of Indiana? ..."
"... A president who supported organized labor would oppose freeriders who won't pay their fair share but still want all the benefits of union membership. A president who supported unions would not issue executive orders crippling unions representing federal workers. A president who supported unions would not delay or eliminate health and safety regulations designed to protect workers from sickness and death. ..."
"... That's not Donald Trump. He supported Mark Janus, an Illinois government employee who wanted everything for nothing. Janus was fine with collecting the higher wages that the labor union representing him secured for workers, but Janus didn't want to contribute one red cent for that representation. ..."
"... So with right-wing corporate billionaires picking up the tab for him, Janus took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered unions to provide workers like Janus with essentially a free lunch. That is, the court said unions must represent freeloaders like him, but those workers don't have to pay anything for all they get -- no dues, no fees, nothing. ..."
"... And then there are his labor secretary choices. First he wanted Andy Puzder, CEO of the restaurant corporation that owns Hardee's and Carl's Jr., an opponent of raising the minimum wage who said he preferred machines to humans. Puzder withdrew, and Alexander Acosta took over until he was forced to resign last month as a result of the unconscionable plea deal he gave an accused molester a decade ago when Acosta was a federal prosecutor. ..."
"... Now the interim secretary is Patrick Pizzella, who lobbied for years to prevent Congress from extending minimum wage requirements to the Northern Mariana Islands , a commonwealth of the United States, where workers were paid as little as $1 an hour but the corporate bosses got to mark the merchandise produced there as Made in America. I guess that's how you Make America Great Again, huh? ..."
"... Now, Trump has picked Scalia, son of the late, anti-worker Supreme Court justice. This is the guy who killed a proposed ergonomics rule to protect workers against injuries from repetitive motions, denigrating the research as "junk science" and "quackery." ..."
"... This is the guy who stopped the fiduciary rule that would have required brokers to act in clients' best interest rather than brokers' personal financial benefit by forbidding brokers from recommending investments that paid brokers big commissions but provided clients with low returns. This corrupt practice costs workers and retirees about $17 billion a year . ..."
"... Scalia is a corporate shill. And he'd be reporting to Trump, whose slavish support of corporate bosses over working Americans has revealed he's nothing more than a poser in a red MAGA baseball cap. ..."
"... The decline of the unions has been 50 years in the making under Democrats and Republicans. Blaming Trump is a convenient scapegoat and pinata for the left, but just the icing on the cake for decades of bad DC policies. Trump didn't create the Rust Belt or sign NAFTA. ..."
"... The strange thing is that with the Trump administration attacking all of the American friends/allies, no one is willing to step in and help America with curtailing Chinese trade abuses. ..."
"... I think the point they're making is by no means that this started with Trump, or that the Democrats have been all that great. Merely that he's been significantly worse (and many of the examples are egregiously anti-labor actions that would not have been done under a Clinton ((or a Bush or Romney for that matter)) and that the preposterousness of his thin pretence at being a friend of labor is an order of magnitude greater even than Biden's. ..."
By Tom Conway, the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW) . Produced by the Independent Media
Institute
Donald Trump: billionaire of the people. When he ran for office,
he said , "The American worker will finally have a president who will protect them and
fight for them."
And how's that working out for the American worker? Not very well, actually, not very well.
When it comes down to picking sides -- standing up for workers' rights or lining the pockets of
CEOs and shareholders -- Trump aligned himself and his policies with the fat cats. This cost
workers money and safety. The truth is that American corporations got a president who protected
them and fought for them.
The proof is in Trump'slegislation, regulation and secretary selections. The most recent
example is Trump's Twitter
appointment of Eugene Scalia as Secretary of Labor. This is the department specifically designated to "foster,
promote, and develop the welfare of wage earners, job seekers, and retirees." Scalia, though,
has made his fortune over decades by fighting to ensure that the big guys -- corporations --
don't, in fact, have to abide by regulations intended to foster, promote, and develop the
welfare of the little guys -- wage earners, job seekers, and retirees.
That is who Trump chose to protect wage earners -- a corporatist so egregious that when
former President George W. Bush wanted Scalia as Labor Department solicitor, Bush had to give
him a recess appointment because
Republicans in the Senate balked at approving him.
This isn't a glitch. It's a pattern. Although Trump is fond of surrounding himself with
union members and asserting that they love him, he doesn't really like unions, especially ones
that challenge him or dare to question his lies. Remember how he
personally attacked Steelworker Chuck Jones who exposed Trump and Pence
for claiming to save 1,100 jobs at Carrier when they really preserved only about half that
many -- and then only after a grant of $7 million from the taxpayers of Indiana?
A president who supported organized labor would oppose freeriders who won't pay their
fair share but still want all the benefits of union membership. A president who supported
unions would not issue executive orders crippling unions representing federal workers. A
president who supported unions would not delay or eliminate health and safety regulations
designed to protect workers from sickness and death.
That's not Donald Trump. He supported Mark Janus, an Illinois government employee who
wanted everything for nothing. Janus was fine with collecting the higher wages that the labor
union representing him secured for workers, but Janus didn't want to contribute one red cent
for that representation.
So with right-wing corporate billionaires picking up the tab for him, Janus took his
case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered unions to provide workers like Janus with
essentially a free lunch. That is, the court said unions must represent freeloaders like him,
but those workers don't have to pay anything for all they get -- no dues, no fees,
nothing.
Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The whole point of Janus' and the
billionaires' court crusade was to bankrupt and try to kill unions. And Trump was on their
side.
If Trump really were the billionaire of the people, he'd have stood with the union. That's
who Trump promised that he would protect, the organization of average people trying to earn an
honest living and standing up to big government and big corporations.
But he didn't.
That was in June of last year.
Just last week , Trump went to court seeking enforcement of his executive orders
restricting unions representing federal workers and enabling him to quickly fire workers. The
unions contend Trump does not have this authority. This is not settled in court yet, but Trump
is asking a judge to let him impose the orders before it is.
That sounds like a president using all of the power of big government to step on the tens of
thousands of little guys who do the grueling work, day after day, to ensure the federal
government serves the American people reasonably well.
There's even more. So much more.
Trump slow-walked implementation of silica
and beryllium
exposure safeguards intended to save workers' lives and
delayed a rule requiring mine operators to identify potential hazards before workers begin
their shifts. He helped
thwart an attempt to extend overtime pay to 4 million
workers. Trump
blocked a rule that would have made it harder for corporations that violate labor laws to
get federal contracts. Trump lifted not one finger to help those crushed by a starvation $7.25
minimum wage not raised
in a decade .
And then there are his labor secretary choices. First he wanted Andy Puzder, CEO of the
restaurant corporation that owns Hardee's and Carl's Jr., an opponent of raising the minimum
wage who said
he preferred machines to humans. Puzder withdrew, and Alexander Acosta took over until he
was forced to resign last month as a result of the unconscionable plea deal he gave an
accused molester a decade ago when Acosta was a federal prosecutor.
Now, Trump has picked Scalia, son of the late, anti-worker Supreme Court justice. This
is the guy who killed a proposed ergonomics rule to protect workers against injuries from
repetitive motions, denigrating the research as "junk
science" and "quackery."
This is the guy who argued that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), an
agency of the Labor Department, had no authority to regulate worker safety at SeaWorld after a
12,300-poundorca that had
killed twice before attacked and drowned a trainer
in front of hundreds of horrified children.
This is the guy
who stopped the fiduciary rule that would have required brokers to act in clients' best
interest rather than brokers' personal financial benefit by forbidding brokers from
recommending investments that paid brokers big commissions but provided clients with low
returns. This corrupt practice costs workers and retirees about $17
billion a year .
This guy is among the lawyers representing a petroleum producers' trade association that is
suing to overturn a California regulation calling for worker participation to improve refinery
safety. The state passed the legislation after a refinery fire in Richmond, California, sent
15,000 nearby residents to hospitals and doctor's offices for treatment, mostly for breathing
problems. The lawsuit was filed in July, just days before an explosion and fire at an Exxon
Mobil refinery in Texas that injured 37 people.
Scalia is a corporate shill. And he'd be reporting to Trump, whose slavish support of
corporate bosses over working Americans has revealed he's nothing more than a poser in a red
MAGA baseball cap.
So this is whats exasperating, if the Democrats actually hammered on these issues the
would have so much support, instead its Russia Russia Russia all the time. "Inauthentic
opposition" its like they don't want to win.
Come on, nobody likes dealing with unions, not even Bernie. I suspect he's been hoist by his
own petard because he's now on the horns of the pay dilemma of private enterprise due to his
campaign workers unionizing and making pay demands.
Dealing with a labor union presents me with a conundrum. While I agree with the philosophy
of a labor union, and for them having a voice because they 'should', I break with them in favor
of management's view of union labor. Why? It's because the union members aren't good team
players.
Sadly – and proving my pay grade doesn't extend high enough to have all the answers
– I also break with one of management practices. This because I feel management are also
poor team players because they pay themselves so darned much it seems unfair.
Basically I feel like one for all and all for one works for Musketeers and teams, the spirit
falls apart with private capital. And that Marx business of, "from each according to their
ability, to each according to their need" is a proven loser.
I theorize each time it's because labor and management aren't really working for one team.
How is Southwest's vaunted employee owned doing? Everybody happy? I doubt it. I almost wish
there were privately held companies where there's an owner and employees, and employee-owned
only. And publicly held must be accountable to government oversight to prevent abuses.
Why? I suspect if 'all' shares of Southwest were owned by the employees 'only' then the
collectively 'they' would be rich in fact because only they owned the means of production
(moving people and cargo via air for lucre).
Anyway, the key part everybody forgets about Marx is he prefaced the above in part with . .
."after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want."
This is an important point being overlooked because it presupposes people 'want' to go to
work. Don't know about you but I don't really know many who want to work. Most would rather sip
margaritas on the beach instead of going into work. Thus, as long as this is the case, the
Marxist dream is just that, a pipe dream because most folks are 'lazy' – or put another
way – don't want to exist only to work. Don't really blame them.
Anyway, if we recognize the truth of this (that many don't especially want to work), then it
follows we also receive less productive work from some vs. others, then paying everybody the
same is inherently unfair. And by extension, setting a minimum pay means everybody at that
level is worth the same, and we know this isn't true!
So if you here are are forced to accept the validity of some of this, e.g. some who will
show up and be a warm body – but – won't be a team player and give their heart to
doing the best job, and others won't show up for a paycheck at all if not forced by want, then
everybody isn't worth the same wage! In fact, is it unreasonable to presuppose some simply
aren't worth a minimum amount of pay? Further to the point, forcing a minimum pay becomes in
some terms, almost immoral and the antithesis of freedom because we don't receive some fair bit
of labor in exchange from some.
Could this be why so many, especially amongst the working poor, are simply against
Socialism/Communism/Marxism even if they can't put the 'why they're against it' into words?
Yes, I know they're not the same but they'll be tarred with the same brush by Capitalist forces
so the answers needs must.
Anyway, circling back, I am delighted with Bernie's newfound union involvement from
management's perspective. Why? It's because I very much look forward to see how his views
evolve.
I think the American neoliberal matrix has shifted social perspectives during its decadal
tenure E.g. there is only the Market where one can become a Kardashian, Entertainment, IT,
YouTube Vloger, et al and Brand Name Commodity for sale . individual needs and wants expressed
in a manner Marx never envisioned.
The financial elites are already on Mars for all intents and purposes .
Oh please, all this team player talk and some people don't deserve a minimum wage do you
have any idea how massively the US employee is exploited and trashed by the "team players" in
management?
Everyone, even those who don't want to work, deserve to live. You have apparently imbibed
the capitalist mantra that work defines moral value so fully that anyone who can't or won't
work should starve.
The fact is our society produces so much surplus value it could (and does) afford to support
a substantial number who don't work for various reasons (mainly disability due to working
physically demanding jobs for decades that ruin their bodies). Work doesn't equal morality. Try
to dig yourself out of the neoliberal mindset, its inhumane and morally hollow.
+1000 even those who don't want to work, deserve to live.
Besides the fact that I suspect there are actually VERY FEW who don't want to do any work.
The beef isn't actually with this tiny minority but that they don't work to some capitalists
definition of optimum (explotation). When a medieval peasant spent less time working than we
do. So maybe they are working like medieval peasants which should actually be MORE THAN
possible, if technology has done anything, but oddly since all the wealth funneled to the top,
it's not.
Anyway, if we recognize the truth of this (that many don't especially want to work),
then it follows we also receive less productive work from some vs. others, then paying
everybody the same is inherently unfair. And by extension, setting a minimum pay means
everybody at that level is worth the same, and we know this isn't true!
No doubt some workers do more and/or better work than others but, for almost all jobs, it is
a myth that there is an economically fair way to pay workers based on their productivity.
Because outside of a few truly solo occupations, all output is collective output – there
is no way to distinguish each individual worker's contribution to that output. So pay is always
a socio-economic outcome, based as much on social convention and bargaining power as any
putative economic contribution. At one time, this was well and truly understood. But economists
have massively obfuscated this common-sense point.
The fairest pay for production workers (regardless of what industry they work in or what
goods or services they produce) is the pay that those workers, via their union, determine to be
most fair. The reason why unions always push for equal pay for the same job is because they
view favoritism as a more serious offense against fairness than someone not as talented getting
the same pay as someone more talented.
Well, defacto, President Trump doesn't actually have a problem with such a recession because
he's on Mars with the rest of the elites. It's 'we the people' who have the problem because
we're the ones who actually suffer in a recession.
" Not very well, actually, not very well. When it comes down to picking sides --
standing up for workers' rights or lining the pockets of CEOs and shareholders -- Trump
aligned himself and his policies with the fat cats . "
Oh, if only Democrats were in complete control of the White House, Senate and House at some
point within the past 10 years!
The decline of the unions has been 50 years in the making under Democrats and
Republicans. Blaming Trump is a convenient scapegoat and pinata for the left, but just the
icing on the cake for decades of bad DC policies. Trump didn't create the Rust Belt or sign
NAFTA.
NAFTA is a big nothing. It helped boost capital flows which capital needs for production. US
growth is running above shrinking supply, which rejects your point.
The post-war era is the only time in is history, workers made such gains. Pretty clear
why.
The USA has had trade surpluses with Canada under NAFTA:
The United States has a $12.5 billion trade surplus with Canada in 2016. Canada has
historically held a trade deficit with the United States in every year since 1985 in net
trade of goods, excluding services. The trade relationship between the two countries crosses
all industries and is vitally important to both nations' success as each country is one of
the largest trade partners of the other.
And yet Trump blackmailed Canada into the USMCA which is far worse than NAFTA for both
countries, and provides more benefits to large multi-national corporations.
Lets hope that the American congress kills USMCA, and leaves NAFTA in place.
The strange thing is that with the Trump administration attacking all of the American
friends/allies, no one is willing to step in and help America with curtailing Chinese trade
abuses.
I think the point they're making is by no means that this started with Trump, or that
the Democrats have been all that great. Merely that he's been significantly worse (and many of
the examples are egregiously anti-labor actions that would not have been done under a Clinton
((or a Bush or Romney for that matter)) and that the preposterousness of his thin pretence at
being a friend of labor is an order of magnitude greater even than Biden's.
"... you cannot fight the establishment with the establishment and Trump -who is a billionaire FFS- is another one who represents that. If he didn't he would not have been allowed to run. ..."
"... It is strange and telling that the discourse within the American public over the last 40 years or so allowed themselves to discuss and tackle to various levels of success issues like sexism, racism, institutional racism, misogyny, xenophobia, even sexuality and yes, even gun laws but one thing that is an absolute no-no in discourse is the economical and subsequentially political system. ..."
"... As long as people believe the American Dream is within reach to them, just like they believe it was for individuals like Trump, the economic system will remain its status quo and that is: riches for a few, struggles for many. ..."
"... You correctly state that you cannot fight the establishment with Trump. But I suggest he is the best choice. You assume a choice has been made to get that single person to help them. I suggest a choice has been made to plant a suicide bomber in the establishment. ..."
"... With Trump in that position, the entire credibility of the establishment has been destroyed. Trump is a clown. An idiot. Every time he spouting something misogynistic or racist he became a better weapon for the public to use to against the establishments structures. No better place for him than to have him as the Icon of the establishment. The (now) unacceptable face. ..."
"... As you say, the power is with the people. But they first must be angry and disgusted at the establishment. Clinton was not distasteful enough to rally the lefts anger. Trump is perfect. ..."
"... Trump will not stop the wars. All anyone had to do was look at the voting records of the republicans in office( that were reelected) that voted for more war equipment. They also wanted TTIP. Until the public realizes we have to change our state representatives nothing will change. ..."
This election will spawn losers all over the place; the most tragic losers will be those
that voted a supposed maverick into the high office in order to fight the 'liberal' or
whatever establishment hoping to bring jobs back to the people.
However, you cannot fight the
establishment with the establishment and Trump -who is a billionaire FFS- is another one who
represents that. If he didn't he would not have been allowed to run.
Just for the same reason
that Bernie was squeezed out, not that I think he is a real socialist but one who would have
come too close to do some real change. To quote Rosa Luxemburg: If an election would mean
real change it would have been abolished
It is strange and telling that the discourse within the American public over the last 40
years or so allowed themselves to discuss and tackle to various levels of success issues like
sexism, racism, institutional racism, misogyny, xenophobia, even sexuality and yes, even gun
laws but one thing that
is an absolute no-no in discourse is the economical and subsequentially political system.
As
long as people believe the American Dream is within reach to them, just like they believe it
was for individuals like Trump, the economic system will remain its status quo and that is:
riches for a few, struggles for many.
The establishment will see for that and always find ways to maintain. One thing that has
always worked perfectly fine is to find scapegoats like foreigners, immigrants, people on
welfare, coloured people , minorities and so on. Can't even say this is typically American,
it has worked most recently in the UK within the brexit discussion and in Germany and other
places.
The power is with people, I remain optimistic; an election, though, will not change
anything
You correctly state that you cannot fight the establishment with Trump. But I suggest he
is the best choice. You assume a choice has been made to get that single person to help them.
I suggest a choice has been made to plant a suicide bomber in the establishment.
The problem has been that Obama has put an empathetic, intelligent and articulate face on
the front of a deeply corrupted system. To attack the system one appears to be attacking him
and that can be awkward.
With Trump in that position, the entire credibility of the establishment has been
destroyed. Trump is a clown. An idiot. Every time he spouting something misogynistic or
racist he became a better weapon for the public to use to against the establishments
structures. No better place for him than to have him as the Icon of the establishment. The
(now) unacceptable face.
As you say, the power is with the people. But they first must be angry and disgusted at
the establishment. Clinton was not distasteful enough to rally the lefts anger. Trump is perfect.
One thing particular about Killery: I believe she was meant to deliver more war for her
Davos employers. I've had enough of 'Mericuh's wars for profit, and to protect the Bankers
fortunes. At this point I'm ready to vote for Idi Amin, if it stops the banker wars being
waged for them by their proxy the United States.
Trump will not stop the wars. All anyone had to do was look at the voting records of the
republicans in office( that were reelected) that voted for more war equipment. They also
wanted TTIP. Until the public realizes we have to change our state representatives nothing
will change.
"... Just like Dubya. Just like Obomber. Just like the Orange Baboon. Whilst simultaneously begging for shekels from Adelson, Saban, Singer, Marcus. ..."
Same old, same old, same old, same old. Prospective candidates spewing out the same tired
old hot air about how, this time, it really, really, really, really will be different.
There won't be any more crazy multitrillion wars for Israel. Honest.
Just like Dubya. Just like Obomber. Just like the Orange Baboon. Whilst simultaneously
begging for shekels from Adelson, Saban, Singer, Marcus.
You guys don't need a peace candidate you need a War Consigliere like the Godfather had! You
people are being attacked from all angles and you are evaluating which Dem or Rep is going to
fix the problems you face. Remember Bush Senior, (Iraq, Granada, Panama and CIA drug
trafficking), Clinton, (Oklahoma City, Waco, Yugoslavia, Mena, AR Drug Money Laundering), Bush
Junior, (9-11, Iraq, Afghanistan), Obama (Syria, Libya and Fast & Furious), Trump (Yet to
be seen).
What does that tell you people? They are all the same! ...
They tell you what they are going to do, (conspiracy theories, movies and fake news). They
bet on you do nothing and dependent on the fake elections.
Tulsi was the only participant who said something sensible. Which means that she won't be
a presidential candidate from any of the two main parties. Deep State won't let it
happen.
Was LBJ the same as JFK? Was Nixon the same as Carter? Was Bush II the same as Reagan? Was
Bush I the same as Gerald Ford?
No.
Why did Obama go through all the trouble of the JCPOA with Iran only to have orange clown
trash it?
Why didn't Obama deliver Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine? Why didn't the Jerusalem Boys
Choir sing praises to Obama?
I'll tell you why: Because they're NOT all the same. And as we get closer and closer to
planetary extinction, those differences become very significant.
This dude (Trump) has spent more than two years, and a ton of money, trying to pull the
undercurrent of dissent in the American population into his camp and under his wing.
In all of his 'fighting with the establishment' he has managed to change exactly nothing
and bring exactly nobody to justice. He has gathered the entirety of the Bush/Rumsfeld
faction directly into his tent, while miraculously failing to so much as arrest a single
member of the Clinton faction. And to top it off he just ordered an armed attack on an
independent nation (which failed in spectacular fashion as thr first targeting drone was
vaporized while he was watching the livestream). Come on dude.
"... "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy" - Alexis de Toqueville ..."
The problem is that as De Toqueville realises (his quote below) most of the people
commenting here are simply living a parasitic existence benefiting from state largesse -
sucking the teat of a bloated and overburdened state caring not whether their sustenance is
remotely sustainable and just voting for ever more
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the
voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that
moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the
public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy" -
Alexis de Toqueville
"... There are differences between the parties, but they are mainly centered around social issues and disputes with little or no consequence to the long-term path of the country. The real ruling oligarchs essentially allow controlled opposition within each party to make it appear you have a legitimate choice at the ballot box. Nothing could be further from the truth. ..."
"... There has been an unwritten agreement between the parties for decades where the Democrats pretend to be against war and the Republicans pretend to be against welfare. Meanwhile, spending on war and welfare relentlessly grows into the trillions, with no effort whatsoever from either party to even slow the rate of growth, let alone cut spending. The proliferation of the military industrial complex like a poisonous weed has been inexorable, as the corporate arms dealers place their facilities of death in the congressional districts of Democrats and Republicans. In addition, these corporate manufacturers of murder dole out "legal" payoffs to corrupt politicians of both parties in the form of political contributions. The Deep State knows bribes and well-paying jobs ensure no spineless congressman will ever vote against a defense spending increase. ..."
"... Of course, the warfare/welfare state couldn't grow to its immense size without financing from the Wall Street cabal and their feckless academic puppets at the Federal Reserve. The Too Big to Trust Wall Street banks, whose willful control fraud nearly wrecked the global economy in 2008, were rewarded by their Deep State patrons by getting bigger and more powerful as people on Main Street and senior citizen savers were thrown under the bus. ..."
"... When these criminal bankers have their reckless bets blow up in their faces they are bailed out by the American taxpayers, but when the Fed rigs the system so they are guaranteed billions in risk free profits, they reward themselves with massive bonuses and lobby for a huge tax cut used to buy back their stock. With bank branches in every congressional district in every state, and bankers spreading protection money to greedy politicians across the land, no legislation damaging to the banking cartel is ever passed. ..."
"... I voted for Trump because he wasn't Hillary. ..."
"... If the Chinese refuse to yield for fear of losing face, and the tariff war accelerates, a global recession is a certainty. ..."
"... These sociopaths are not liberal or conservative. They are not Democrats or Republicans. They are not beholden to a country or community. They care not for their fellow man. They don't care about future generations. They care about their own power, wealth and control over others. They have no conscience. They have no empathy. Right and wrong are meaningless in their unquenchable thirst for more. They will lie, steal and kill to achieve their goal of controlling everything and everyone in this world. This precisely describes virtually every politician in Washington DC, Wall Street banker, mega-corporation CEO, government agency head, MSM talking head, church leader, billionaire activist, and blood sucking advisor to the president. ..."
"... The problem is we have gone too far. The "American Dream" has become a grotesque nightmare because people by the millions sit around and dream about being a Kardashian. Makes me want to puke. ..."
"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. "I think the puppet on the
right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking." "Hey, wait a
minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!"" – Bill Hicks
Anyone who frequents Twitter, Facebook, political blogs, economic blogs, or fake-news
mainstream media channels knows our world is driven by the "Us versus Them" narrative. It's
almost as if "they" are forcing us to choose sides and believe the other side is evil. Bill
Hicks died in 1994, but his above quote is truer today then it was then. As the American Empire
continues its long-term decline, the proles are manipulated through Bernaysian propaganda
techniques, honed over the course of decades by the ruling oligarchs, to root for their
assigned puppets.
Most people can't discern they are being manipulated and duped by the Deep State
controllers. The most terrifying outcome for these Deep State controllers would be for the
masses to realize it is us versus them. But they don't believe there is a chance in hell of
this happening. Their arrogance is palatable.
Their hubris has reached astronomical levels as they blew up the world economy in 2008 and
successfully managed to have the innocent victims bail them out to the tune of $700 billion,
pillaged the wealth of the nation through their capture of the Federal Reserve (QE, ZIRP),
rigged the financial markets in their favor through collusion, used the hundreds of billions in
corporate tax cuts to buy back their stock and further pump the stock market, all while their
corporate media mouthpieces mislead and misinform the proles.
There are differences between the parties, but they are mainly centered around social
issues and disputes with little or no consequence to the long-term path of the country. The
real ruling oligarchs essentially allow controlled opposition within each party to make it
appear you have a legitimate choice at the ballot box. Nothing could be further from the
truth.
There has been an unwritten agreement between the parties for decades where the
Democrats pretend to be against war and the Republicans pretend to be against welfare.
Meanwhile, spending on war and welfare relentlessly grows into the trillions, with no effort
whatsoever from either party to even slow the rate of growth, let alone cut spending. The
proliferation of the military industrial complex like a poisonous weed has been inexorable, as
the corporate arms dealers place their facilities of death in the congressional districts of
Democrats and Republicans. In addition, these corporate manufacturers of murder dole out
"legal" payoffs to corrupt politicians of both parties in the form of political contributions.
The Deep State knows bribes and well-paying jobs ensure no spineless congressman will ever vote
against a defense spending increase.
Of course, the warfare/welfare state couldn't grow to its immense size without financing
from the Wall Street cabal and their feckless academic puppets at the Federal Reserve. The Too
Big to Trust Wall Street banks, whose willful control fraud nearly wrecked the global economy
in 2008, were rewarded by their Deep State patrons by getting bigger and more powerful as
people on Main Street and senior citizen savers were thrown under the bus.
When these criminal bankers have their reckless bets blow up in their faces they are
bailed out by the American taxpayers, but when the Fed rigs the system so they are guaranteed
billions in risk free profits, they reward themselves with massive bonuses and lobby for a huge
tax cut used to buy back their stock. With bank branches in every congressional district in
every state, and bankers spreading protection money to greedy politicians across the land, no
legislation damaging to the banking cartel is ever passed.
I've never been big on joining a group. I tend to believe Groucho Marx and his cynical line,
"I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member". The "Us vs. Them" narrative
doesn't connect with my view of the world. As a realistic libertarian I know libertarian ideals
will never proliferate in a society of government dependency, willful ignorance of the masses,
thousands of laws, and a weak-kneed populace afraid of freedom and liberty. The only true
libertarian politician, Ron Paul, was only able to connect with about 5% of the voting public.
There is no chance a candidate with a libertarian platform will ever win a national election.
This country cannot be fixed through the ballot box. Bill Hicks somewhat foreshadowed the last
election by referencing another famous cynic.
"I ascribe to Mark Twain's theory that the last person who should be President is the one
who wants it the most. The one who should be picked is the one who should be dragged kicking
and screaming into the White House." ― Bill Hicks
Hillary Clinton wanted to be president so badly, she colluded with Barack Obama, Jim Comey,
John Brennan, James Clapper, Loretta Lynch and numerous other Deep State sycophants to ensure
her victory, by attempting to entrap Donald Trump in a concocted Russian collusion plot and
subsequent post-election coup to cover for their traitorous plot. I wouldn't say Donald Trump
was dragged kicking and screaming into the White House, but when he ascended on the escalator
at Trump Tower in June of 2015, I'm not convinced he believed he could win the presidency.
As the greatest self-promoter of our time, I think he believed a presidential run would be
good for his brand, more revenue for his properties and more interest in his reality TV
ventures. He was despised by the establishment within the Republican and Democrat parties. The
vested interests controlling the media and levers of power in society scorned and ridiculed
this brash uncouth outsider. In an upset for the ages, Trump tapped into a vein of rage and
disgruntlement in flyover country and pockets within swing states, to win the presidency over
Crooked Hillary and her Deep State backers.
I voted for Trump because he wasn't Hillary. I hadn't voted for a Republican since
2000, casting protest votes for Libertarian and Constitutional Party candidates along the way.
I despise the establishment, so their hatred of Trump made me vote for him. His campaign
stances against foreign wars and Federal Reserve reckless bubble blowing appealed to me. I
don't worship at the altar of the cult of personality. I judge men by their actions and not
their words.
Trump's first two years have been endlessly entertaining as he waged war against fake news
CNN, establishment Republicans, the Deep State coup attempt, and Obama loving globalists. The
Twitter in Chief has bypassed the fake news media and tweets relentlessly to his followers. He
provokes outrage in his enemies and enthralls his worshipers. With millions in each camp it is
difficult to find an unbiased assessment of narrative versus real accomplishments.
I'm happy he has been able to stop the relentless leftward progression of our Federal
judiciary. Cutting regulations and rolling back environmental mandates has been a positive.
Exiting the Paris Climate Agreement and TPP, forcing NATO members to pay their fair share, and
renegotiating NAFTA were all needed. Ending the war on coal and approving pipelines will keep
energy costs lower. His attempts to vet Muslims entering the country have been the right thing
to do. Building a wall on our southern border is the right thing to do, but he should have
gotten it done when he controlled both houses.
The use of tariffs to force China to renegotiate one sided trade deals as a negotiating
tactic is a high-risk, high reward gamble. If his game of chicken is successful and he gets
better terms from the Chicoms, while reversing the tariffs, it would be a huge win. If the
Chinese refuse to yield for fear of losing face, and the tariff war accelerates, a global
recession is a certainty. Who has the upper hand? Xi is essentially a dictator for life
and doesn't have to worry about elections or popularity polls. Dissent is crushed. A global
recession and stock market crash would make Trump's re-election in 2020 problematic.
I'm a big supporter of lower taxes. The Trump tax cuts were sold as beneficial to the middle
class. That is a false narrative. The vast majority of the tax cut benefits went to
mega-corporations and rich people. Middle class home owning families with children received
little or no tax relief, as exemptions were eliminated and tax deductions capped. In many
cases, taxes rose for working class Americans.
With corporate profits at all time highs, massive tax cuts put billions more into their
coffers. They didn't repatriate their overseas profits to a great extent. They didn't go on a
massive hiring spree. They didn't invest in new facilities. They did buy back their own stock
to help drive the stock market to stratospheric heights. So corporate executives gave
themselves billions in bonuses, which were taxed at a much lower rate. This is considered
winning in present day America.
The "Us vs. Them" issue rears its ugly head whenever Trump is held accountable for promises
unkept, blatant failures, and his own version of fake news. Holding Trump to the same standards
as Obama is considered traitorous by those who only root for their home team. Their standard
response is that you are a Hillary sycophant or a turncoat to the home team. If you agree with
a particular viewpoint or position of a liberal then you are a bad person and accused of being
a lefty by Trump fanboys. Facts don't matter to cheerleaders. Competing narratives rule the
day. Truthfulness not required.
The refusal to distinguish between positive actions and negative actions when assessing the
performance of what passes for our political leadership by the masses is why cynicism has
become my standard response to everything I see, hear or he read. The incessant level of lies
permeating our society and its acceptance as the norm has led to moral decay and rampant
criminality from the White House, to the halls of Congress, to corporate boardrooms, to
corporate newsrooms, to government run classrooms, to the Vatican, and to households across the
land. It's interesting that one of our founding fathers reflected upon this detestable human
trait over two hundred years ago.
"It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental
lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity
of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has
prepared himself for the commission of every other crime." – Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine's description of how moral mischief can ruin a society was written when less
than 3 million people inhabited America. Consider his accurate assessment of humanity when over
300 million occupy these lands. The staggering number of corrupt prostituted sociopaths
occupying positions of power within the government, corporations, media, military, churches,
and academia has created a morally bankrupt empire of debt.
These sociopaths are not liberal or conservative. They are not Democrats or Republicans.
They are not beholden to a country or community. They care not for their fellow man. They don't
care about future generations. They care about their own power, wealth and control over others.
They have no conscience. They have no empathy. Right and wrong are meaningless in their
unquenchable thirst for more. They will lie, steal and kill to achieve their goal of
controlling everything and everyone in this world. This precisely describes virtually every
politician in Washington DC, Wall Street banker, mega-corporation CEO, government agency head,
MSM talking head, church leader, billionaire activist, and blood sucking advisor to the
president.
The question pondered every day on blogs, social media, news channels, and in households
around the country is whether Trump is one of Us or one of Them. The answer to that question
will strongly impact the direction and intensity of the climactic years of this Fourth Turning.
What I've noticed is the shunning of those who don't take an all or nothing position regarding
Trump. If you disagree with a decision, policy, or hiring decision by the man, you are accused
by the pro-Trump team of being one of them (aka liberals, lefties, Hillary lovers).
If you don't agree with everything Trump does or says, you are dead to the Trumpeteers. I
don't want to be Us or Them. I just want to be me. I will judge everyone by their actions and
their results. I can agree with Trump on many issues, while also agreeing with Tulsi Gabbard,
Rand Paul, Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi on other issues. I don't prescribe to the cult of
personality school of thought. I didn't believe the false narratives during the Bush or Obama
years, and I won't worship at the altar of the Trump narrative now.
In Part II of this article I'll assess Trump's progress thus far and try to determine
whether he can defeat the Deep State.
"The scientific and industrial revolution of modern times represents the next giant
step in the mastery over nature; and here, too, an enormous increase in man's power over
nature is followed by an apocalyptic drive to subjugate man and reduce human nature to the
status of nature. Even where enslavement is employed in a mighty effort to tame nature, one
has the feeling that the effort is but a tactic to legitimize total subjugation. Thus,
despite its spectacular achievements in science and technology, the twentieth century will
probably be seen in retrospect as a century mainly preoccupied with the mastery and
manipulation of men. Nationalism, socialism, communism, fascism, and militarism,
cartelization and unionization, propaganda and advertising are all aspects of a general
relentless drive to manipulate men and neutralize the unpredictability of human nature. Here,
too, the atmosphere is heavy-laden with coercion and magic." --Eric Hoffer
If you don't agree with everything Trump does or says, you are dead to the
Trumpeteers
That's not true. When Trump kisses Israeli ***, most "Trumpeteers" are outraged. That does
not mean they're going to vote for Joe "I'm a Zionist" Biden, or Honest Hillary because of
it, but they're still pissed.
These predators (((them))) need to fear the Victims, us! That is what the 2ND Amendment is
for. It's coming, slowly for now, but eventually it speeds up.
Any piece like this better be littered with footnotes and cited sources before I'm
swallowing it.
I'll say it again: this is the internet, people. There's no "shortage of column space" to
include links back to primary sources for your assertions. Otherwise, how am I supposed to
distinguish you from another "psy op" or "paid opposition hit piece"?
"The question pondered every day on blogs, social media, news channels, and in households
around the country is whether Trump is one of Us or one of Them."
If you still ponder this question, then you are pretty frickin' thick. It is obvious at
this point, that he betrayed everything he campaigned on. You don't do that and call yourself
one of "us".......damn sure aren't one of "me".
If I couldn't keep my word and wouldn't do what it takes to do what is right.....then I
would resign. But I would not go on playing politics in a world that needs some real
leadership and not another political hack.
The real battle is between Truth and Lie. No matter the name of your "team" or the "side"
you support. Truth is truth and lies are lies. We don't stand for political parties, we stand
for truth. We don't stand for national pride, we take pride in a nation that is truthful and
trustworthy. The minute a "side" or "team" starts lying.....and justifying it.....that is the
minute they become them and not one of us.
Any thinking person in this country today knows we are being lied to by the entire
complex. Until someone starts telling the truth.....we are on our own. But I be damned before
I am going to support any of these lying sons of bitches......and that includes Trump.
Dark comedy. All the elections have been **** choices until the last one. Take a look at
Arkancide.com and start counting the
bodies.
Anyone remember the news telling us how North Korea promised to turn the US into a sea of
fire?? Trump absolutely went to bat for every single American to de-escalate that
situation.
Don't tell me about Arkancide or the Clintons. I grew up in Arkansas with that sack of
**** as my governor for 12 years.
NK was never a real threat to anyone. Trump didn't do ****. NK is back to building and
shooting off missiles and will be teaming up with the Russians and Chinese. You are a duped
bafoon.
I don't think anybody thought NK was an existential threat to the US. It has still been
nice making progress on bringing them back into the world and making them less of a threat to
Japan and S. Korea. Trump did that.
Dennis Rodman did that, or that is to say, Trump an extension thereof ..
Great theater..
Look, i thought it was great that Trump went Kim Unning. I mean after all, i had talked
with a few elderly folks that get their news directly from the mainstream of mainstream,
vanilla news reportage. Propaganda central casting. I remember them being extremely
concerned, outright petrified about that evil menace, kim gonna launch nukes any minute now.
If the news would have been announced a major troop mobilization, bombing campaigns, to begin
immediately they would have been completely onboard, waving the flag.
Frankly, it is only a matter of time, and folks can speculate on the country of interest,
but it is coming soon to a theater near you. So many being in the crosshairs. Iran i suspect
.. that's the big prize, that makes these sociopaths cream in their panties.
Probably. In the second term .. and so far, if ones honestly evaluates the "brain trust" /
current crop of dimwit opposition, and in light of their past 2 plus years of moronic
posturing with their hair on fire, trump will get his second term ..
Until the last one? You are retarded, the last election was a masterpiece of Rothschilds
Productions. The Illuminati was watching you at their private cinema when you were voting for
Trump and they were laughing their asses off.
The author does not realize that everyone in America, except Native American Indians, were
immigrants drawn towards the false promise of hope that is the American Dream, turned
nightmare..
Owning your own home, car, & raising a family in this country is so damn expensive
& risky, that you'd have be on drugs or an idiot to even fall for the lies.
I don't see an us vs them, I see the #FakeMoney printers monetized every facet of life,
own everything, & it truly is RENT-A-LIFE USSA, complete with bills galore, taxes galore,
laws galore, jails & prisons galore, & the worst fkn country anyone would want to
live in poverty & homelessness in.
At least in many 3rd world nations there is land to live off of & joblessness does not
= a financial death sentence.
Sure. Lets all go back to living in huts.....off the land....no cars.....no
electricity.....no running water......no roads....
There is a price to pay for things and it is not always in the form of money. We have
given up some of our freedom for the ease and conveniences we want.
The problem is we have gone too far. The "American Dream" has become a grotesque nightmare
because people by the millions sit around and dream about being a Kardashian. Makes me want
to puke.
There is a balance. Don't take the other extreme or we never find balance.
This article is moronic. One can easily prove that Trump is not like all the others in the
poster. Has this author been living under a rock for the last 2.5 yrs? The past 5 presidents
represent a group that has been literally trying to assassinate Trump, ruin his family, his
reputation, his buisness and his future, for the audacity to be an ousider to the power
network and steal (win) the presidency from under their noses. He's kept us OUT of war. He's
dissolved the treachery that was keeping us in the middle east through gaslighitng and a
proxy fake war that is ISIS, the globalists' / nato / fiveys / uk's fake mercenary army
The greatest threat to the USA is its own dumbed down drugged up citizens who cannot
compete with anyone. America is a big military powerhouse but that doens't make successful
countries
Notice how modern narrative is getting manipulated. What is being reported and referenced
is completely different from how things are. And knowing that we can assume that the entire
history is a fabricated lie, written by the ruling class to support its status in the minds
of obedient citizens.
This article is garbage propaganda that proves that they think we aren't keeping score or
paying attention. The gaslighting won't work when it relies on so much counterthink, willful
ignorance, counterfacts and weaponized omissions
The reality is the de-escalation of wars, the stability of our currency and our economy,
and the moral re-grounding of our culture does not occur until we do what over 100 countries
have done over the centuries, beginning in Carthage in 250AD.
The congress are statusquotarians. If they solved the problems they say they would,they'd
be out of a job. and that job is sitting there acting like a naddler or toxic post turtle
leprechaun with a charisma and skill level of zero. Their staff do all the work, half of them
barely read, though they probably can
I still think 1st and 2nd ammedment is predicated on which party rules the house. If a Dem
gets into the WH, we're fucked. Kiss those Iast two dying amendments goodbye for good.
If we rely on any party to preserve the 1st or 2nd Amendments, we are already fucked. What
should preserve the 1st and 2nd Amendments is the absolute fear of anyone in government even
mentioning suppressing or removing them. When the very thought of doing anything to lessen
the rights advocated in these two amendments, causes a politician to piss in their pants,
liberty will be preserved. As it is now citizens fear the government, and as a result tyranny
continues to grow and fester as a cancer.
You may very well be right. I still hold out hope, but upon seeing what our society is
quickly morphing into, that hope seems to fade more each and every day.
If you think the 1st and 2nd amendments are reliant on who is in office, then you are
already done. Why don't you try growing a pair and being an American for once in your
life.
I will always have a 1st and 2nd "amendment" for as long as I live. Life is meaningless
without them.....as far as I am concerned. Good thing the founders didn't wait for king
George to give them what they "felt" was theirs.....by the laws of Nature and Nature's
God.
I hope the democrats get the power......and I hope they come for the guns......maybe then
pussies like you will finally have to **** or get off the pot......for once in your life.
There are worse things than dying.
This country cannot be fixed through the ballot box. Unless we get rid of *** influencing
from abroad and domestically. Getting rid of English King few hundred years ago was a joke!
this would be a challenge because dual-citizens masquerading as locals.
Last revolution (1776) we targeted the WRONG ENEMY.
We targeted King George III instead of the private bankers who owned of the Bank of
England and the issued of the British-pound currency.
George III was himself up to his ears in debt to them by 1776, when the bankers installed
George Washington to replace George III as their middleman in the American colonies, by way
of the phony revolution.
Phony because ownership of the central bank and currency (Federal-Reserve Banks,
Federal-Reserve notes) we use, remains in the same banking families' hands to this day. The
same parasite remains within our government.
It is this strangely incomplete calculus that creates the shifting Loser world of
rifts and alliances. By operating with a more complete calculus, Sociopaths are able to
manipulate this world through the divide-and-conquer mechanisms. The result is that the
Losers end up blaming each other for their losses, seek collective emotional resolution,
and fail to adequately address the balance sheet of material rewards and losses.
To succeed, this strategy requires that Losers not look too closely at the non-emotional
books. This is why, as we saw last time, divide-and-conquer is the most effective means for
dealing with them, since it naturally creates emotional drama that keeps them busy while
they are being manipulated.
In 2014, lawyers for Kamala Harris argued in court that if minimum-custody inmates were
released early, the state of California would "lose an important labor pool." These inmates
included firefighters, who are paid
$1 an hour to confront some of the deadliest blazes in California history. Harris later
argued that she was
unawareher own office argued in favor of keeping parolees in jail so they could
serve as the state's on-call cheap labor.
A breakthrough profile in the New York Times referred to Harris as a "top cop" prosecutor
who, according to critics, "failed to take on prosecutorial misconduct." The profile noted in
2015 her office was called out for "defending convictions obtained by local prosecutors who
inserted a false confession into the transcript of a police interrogation, lied under oath, and
withheld crucial evidence from the defense."
Police crimes were largely ignored by Harris. Oakland police officer Miguel Masso shot and
killed Alan Blueford in 2012. Multiple witnesses said Blueford had no weapon, did not pose a
threat to the officer, and was running away from the officer.
The Justice For Alan Blueford Coalition wrote a letter to Harris and demanded she do her job
by bringing charges against Masso. Supporters engaged
in civil disobedience in 2014, after she refused to meet with them. They were arrested (and
police even swept up their legal observer in the arrests).
Harris' book "Smart On Crime," published in 2009, was a testament to a deeply capitalist,
dystopian political ideology shared by even the most "progressive" Democrats.
The public is often referred to as "consumers" (examples: "consumers of safety," "consumer
education"). They are urged to support a crime policy which relentlessly focuses on violent
crime, "and the prosecution of violent criminals."
"The opportunity before us encourages transformation and empowerment of communities: rather
than people feeling like helpless victims of crimes, they can become educated consumers of
safety."
Harris characterizes policing as a "service" and suggests:
[W]e can find and are finding more effective ways to reduce the sheer volume of nonviolent
crime and recidivism, so that those nonviolent offenders don't escalate their behavior and
become so enmeshed in the crime cycle that we end up having to pay attention to them -- and
frankly pay for them -- for the rest of their lives. The money we save can be used to put
more police officers on the street, solve more crimes, attack more high-tech and
identity-theft crimes with better technology, and provide services to victims. [emphasis
added]
In 2010, Harris pushed a heavy-handed truancy initiative that went into effect in 2011. This
anti-truancy bill -- SB 1317 -- made it so that parents of truant children who miss more than
10 percent of their classes can be
charged with a misdemeanor and given a $2,000 fine or a year in prison "if, after being
offered state support and counseling, their kids still fail to improve their attendance."
This wasn't Harris' first dance with anti-truancy measures, by any means. In 2009, Harris
wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle that she had already prosecuted 20 parents for truancy,
thereby introducing, or reintroducing, children and their families to a criminal justice system
that is already stacked against them.
During her 2010 campaign, Harris touted
a record of what she described as tough, affirmative crime prevention. Her official
campaign page bragged that her felony conviction rate surpassed the years before -- "from
52 percent in 2003 to 67 percent in 2006, the highest in a decade."
Harris played a role in the wider United States drug war, increasing convictions for drug
dealers from 56 percent to 74 percent in just three years.
Despite forming the first Mortgage and Investment Fraud Unit in the San Francisco District
Attorney's Office, Harris refused to go after "foreclosure king" Steven Mnuchin,
a decision she defended as recently as January. Mnuchin, who oversaw some 36,000
foreclosures between 2009 to 2015,
violated numerous state foreclosure laws, and yet Harris refused to concede that his record
should keep him from serving as President Donald Trump's Treasury Secretary.
Harris' record with police departments and the California prison industry is not simply a
result of her job as attorney general. She played a key role in expanding the horizon of state
violence.
Now, rather than diversifying the ranks of state actors responsible for oppression, it is
critical to force Senator Kamala Harris to reckon with her neoliberal record, regardless of how
her "K-Hive" may respond to such efforts.
"... Railing against Trump only sets up the next smooth-talking stooge who will start a fresh new con. ..."
"... Dore traces the problem primarily to Democratic Party's turning to identity politics instead of representing the working class. They sold us out. Clinton and Obama are just "Republican light" aka "Centrist" "Third Way" Democrats. "Centrist" = establishment-serving con artists. ..."
"... "Managed democracy" or "guided democracy" : is a formally democratic government that functions as a de facto autocracy. Such governments are legitimized by elections that are free and fair, but do not change the state's policies, motives, and goals. ..."
Dore makes the same point I have: "Trump is a Symptom of 40 years of NeoLiberalism and
the Corporate Capture of the U.S. government."Railing against Trump only sets up the
next smooth-talking stooge who will start a fresh new con.
Dore traces the problem primarily to Democratic Party's turning to identity politics
instead of representing the working class. They sold us out. Clinton and Obama are just
"Republican light" aka "Centrist" "Third Way" Democrats. "Centrist" = establishment-serving
con artists.
"Managed
democracy" or "guided democracy" : is a formally democratic government that functions as a de facto autocracy. Such
governments are legitimized by elections that are free and fair, but do not change the
state's policies, motives, and goals.
In other words, the government controls elections so that the people can exercise all
their rights without truly changing public policy. While they follow basic democratic
principles, there can be major deviations towards authoritarianism. Under managed
democracy, the state's continuous use of propaganda techniques prevents the electorate from
having a significant impact on policy.
The concept of a "guided democracy" was developed in the 20th century by Walter
Lippmann in his seminal work Public Opinion (1922) and by Edward Bernays in his work
Crystallizing Public Opinion.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <>
RT has a good video on Yellow Vest protestors (on rt.com homepage). It's kind long for the
info that it provides. I suggest skipping some parts.
"... To be perfectly honest with you PL, when Trump was elected I thought to myself, WoW! for the first time since JFK or LBJ ..."
"... I thought he was going to be the first non-neoconservative president, possibly a crude 2016 resurgence of paleoconservatism, hence his intense focus on immigration, culture wars and identity politics mixed with authentic economic nationalism and non-interventionism (hence his lively attacks on the very ideology of neoconservatism) but obviously his admin is significantly more hawkish than the old Vulcans(!) back in the Bush days. ..."
"... One could even argue that from 2006 to 2008, Bush somewhat learned the ropes and distanced itself from the crazy Vulcans and more toward Realism, hence Condi Rice's handling of the 33-day war between Israel and Lebanon, as well dismissing the like of Perle, Wolfowitz, and others later on. But with Trump, given his knack for indifference to what is right and wrong and his method of shilling for whoever is willing to chip in the most, any progression toward common sense inside Donald Trump is highly unlikely to happen. ..."
To be perfectly honest with you PL, when Trump was elected I thought to myself, WoW! for
the first time since JFK or LBJ (possibly as far back as Truman) someone "new" has become
president of the U.S. who does not come from the Washington elite circle/Borg/Blob. I
remember watching the debates and the way he politically neutralized the likes of Bush,
Rubio, and Ted Cruz and on top of that, Hilary Clinton.
I thought he was going to be the first non-neoconservative president, possibly a crude
2016 resurgence of paleoconservatism, hence his intense focus on immigration, culture wars
and identity politics mixed with authentic economic nationalism and non-interventionism
(hence his lively attacks on the very ideology of neoconservatism) but obviously his admin is
significantly more hawkish than the old Vulcans(!) back in the Bush days.
One could even argue that from 2006 to 2008, Bush somewhat learned the ropes and
distanced itself from the crazy Vulcans and more toward Realism, hence Condi Rice's handling
of the 33-day war between Israel and Lebanon, as well dismissing the like of Perle,
Wolfowitz, and others later on. But with Trump, given his knack for indifference to what is
right and wrong and his method of shilling for whoever is willing to chip in the most, any
progression toward common sense inside Donald Trump is highly unlikely to happen.
In terms of the admin's policy in the ME, I think the immediate focus of the U.S-Israel
policy in the region is "Lebanon" and Trump's ME policies among other things is deeply
attached to Lebanon and that specific patch of land. Even Hassan Nasrallah has sounded the
alarm and in his recent TV speech during which he warned the Lebanese people of a possible
incoming war in the Summer with Israel that would be devastating to the people in the
region.
Regarding Russia, in the past 1+ years it has become clear that Russia is going to play a
stronger role in the ME, possibly even replacing the U.S. there, especially given the warm
relations between Putin and Netanyahu where the former has not raised any objection against
the latter's constant illegal bombings in Syria and Iraq among other things.
The false impression was that Putin is going to stand up to Netanyahu and form some sort
of diplomatic and even military resistance to its aggression in the ME, but that is clearly
not the case. Andrew Korybko of Eurasiafuture has written extensively on this interesting and
unfolding new dynamic between the two. All in all I hope a shred of common sense prevails
inside the head of these Hard Neocons and Trump himself and stop its belligerence against
Iran and other ME countries. Nobody wants war and nobody needs war
P.S. I am an avid reader of your valuable analyses and I would like to offer my deepest
thanks to you for this great website.
The new narrative is that of an embattled president trying against the odds to do the
right thing
the new narrative is they got him, Watergate 2.0
*if* that is correct the changes to expect are
– media going easier on him
– corporate dems going easier on him (while smirking a lot)
– more war
– more corporate donors as they might prefer a controlled Trump to a Sanders
– they might throw him a symbolic bone on immigration to help him win in 2020
– more corporate donors as they might prefer a controlled Trump to a Sanders
– they might throw him a symbolic bone on immigration to help him win in 2020
The Deep State will never allow an uncontrolled candidate to win.
I see that there are mainly two opposing explanations:
a) Donald Trump really wanted to break with the neocons, but he is under such enormous
pressure that he had to give in to them (at least temporarily, maybe, according to that
interpretation, there is still hope)
b) Donald Trump wanted to behave this way from the start, and if there is a conspiracy, he
is a part of it. He just said some things about not involving the US in conflicts that are
not in its interest because that was popular in order to get elected, but he never had any
intentions of going through with it.
I think there are problems with both explanations.
The main problem with a):
Even if Trump had to make concessions because he was under such enormous pressure, it is
hardly plausible that there really was a need to surround himself with neocons to such a
degree and go much further with neoconservative policies in some areas than many mainstream
Republicans would probably have gone.
The main problem with b):
If Trump really belongs to the inner circle, it does not seem very plausible that
intelligence services and establishment politicians would go to such lengths constructing a
conspiracy theory (setting up meetings of Papadopoulos with Mifsud and Downer, the Steele
dossier, campaign surveillance), which is not only a lot of effort, but also lays bare some
elements of the "deep state" they would normally prefer to keep hidden.
How one might attempt to save a):
While the neocons are generally very influential in the US, they normally operate in the
background. They don't have full control over lawmakers. However, some members of Congress
are very close to neocons, and many of them (in both parties) were among the strictest
anti-Trumpers. The most concrete danger of impeachment for Trump was that some Republicans
closely connected with neocons would unite with Democrats against him. Appointing lots of
neocons and increasing their influence might have been the best option of placating these
neoconservative Republican anti-Trumpers (or even to make these Republican neocons stop being
anti-Trumpers).
How one might attempt to save b):
While the whole Russiagate conspiracy theory is somewhat risky for the (overt and deep)
establishment, it is also a great distraction. Furthermore, I think Russiagate was not
primarily directed against Trump, but more against Russia and in favor of increasing military
spending from which many in the establishment profit. Generally, Democrats used to be
somewhat less hawkish than Republicans, and since they already hate Trump fervently (but
mostly didn't care much about Russia), Russiagate was a great opportunity for making
Democrats even more ardent supporters of the new cold war, the intelligence services, and the
security state. One could hardly invent such an efficient means for making Democrats hate
Russia and support the surveillance state except by associating their boogeyman with Russia.
Many Republicans would go along with the new cold war, anyway, winning over Democrats for the
CIA, anti-Russian hatred and military spending was particularly valuable.
So, I think both a) and b) are probably partially true.
I don't think Trump was really a part of an inner circle. As someone from the outside,
some of the bipartisan neoconservative dogmas were probably alien to him. There are some
leaks (e.g. in the book by Bob Woodward) that show that Trump questioned the large number of
expensive military bases around the world. He probably looked at it from a business
perspective, and it seems hard to justify such enormous expenses. Furthermore, he had some
ideas about the rivalry with China, and the idea of alienating and antagonizing Russia,
China, and some medium-sized countries (and to some degree even Western Europe, though it
mostly still follows the US) all at once, which pushes them into closer collaboration
probably seems odd to someone from the outside who has not been surrounded by people from
neoconservative think tanks for most of his life. On the other hand, I don't think there were
any deep convictions behind the things Trump said in his campaign. He just said things that
a) seemed to be popular and b) he probably mostly agreed with himself, but when it became
clear to him that it was more convenient for him to do something very different from what he
had said during the campaign, he hardly hesitated.
I think that for the (both overt and deep) establishment someone "naïve" from the
outside was seen as a threat. On the other hand, they probably also understood that Trump
hardly has strong convictions and therefore would give in relatively easily under pressure.
So, the Russiagate conspiracy theory was probably a good idea from the perspective of the
(overt and deep) establishment for bringing Trump into line.
Then, I would also distinguish some things. Trump probably was very pro-Israeli from the
start. But being pro-Israeli does not have to mean being anti-Russian, after all the Israeli
and Russian government have relatively good relations, even though their interests diverge in
many areas.
"Your analysis fails to account for the fact that Trump essentially ran as a third party
candidate."
Deep state sleeper agent Trump ran as an "outsider" opposed to everything that deep state
agent Hillary Clinton stood for. His candidacy was a carefully calculated bait and switch
fraud which leveraged his non-career-politician status.
"His original agenda of sealing up the border and ending Bush-Obama regime change ran
counter to both parties."
Since his campaign strategy was to present himself as an outsider, of course he had to
pretend to take positions that ran counter to both parties. It's now painfully obvious that
his "original agenda" was nothing but disingenuous BS.
"There's been no one more hostile to Trump since Jan. 2017 than Paul Ryan and Mitch
McConnell, both Republicans."
Talk is cheap.
"As Darren Beattie said, McConnell's tactic with Trump all along has been to block him
on everything except for federal judges. And McConnell's winning."
Everything, or just the things that Trump pretends to want but doesn't really want? Funny
that nobody's been able to deter him from his war crimes and his provocations and his
apparent drive to start WW3.
"Now you'll probably say, it's all theater, they're all in on it together, wake up &
smell the coffee."
How will smelling coffee change the fact that it is all political theater?
"I don't believe it."
LOL! You think Trump is honest? Seriously?
"Trump could have run as a Jeb Bush Republican and done just fine, but he didn't."
Or so you barely assert; and so you barely assert without explaining how Jeb Bush lost the
primary to Trump.
"He took a huge risk saying the stuff he did, and won."
He won because agent Obama, agent Clinton and their deep state handlers helped him win. Or
do you think it was just a coincidence that Obama attacked the Syrian army at Deir Ezzor in
Sept. 2016, for example, which greatly escalated tensions with Russia just as the election
was coming into the home stretch?
To understand what the Deep State will and will not tolerate answer these questions.
What do both parties agree on? If they appear to disagree, look to see if anything changes
when one party has the power to cause change or does the party in power make excuses to avoid
change? Those things that the populus is against but never change or get worse are what the
Deep State wants
The Deep State wants a constant state of tension with 'hostile' countries (Iran, Russia,
Venezuela, China, Syria and others). This scares the crap out of ignorant Americans and
allows unjustifiable spending on war matériel.
The Deep State wants a steady supply of cheap foreign labor to provide wealth to the
supporters of the Deep State.
The Deep State wants our financial institutions to never fail (FED 2009) even at the
expense of 90% of Americans. The Deep State wants financial institutions to provide financial
products to the wealthy which cripples the vast majority of Americans.
The silly internecine squabbles within the Deep State are a ruse to misdirect the public
from important issues like constant war, legal and illegal immigrants taking jobs from
Americans and the increased transfer of wealth for the 90% to the supper weathy.
There will never be a wall and illegal immigration will continue to be a problem.
All the investigations into Trump, the DNC, Hillary and all the rest will never come to
justice.
The wealth transfer will not stop
Until Americans realize these diversions for what they are and put an end to it through
what ever means necessary
it was successful as Trump was likely forced to turn his back on his better angels and
subsequently hired Pompeo, Bolton and Abrams.
Oh plezzze .you sound like you've been drugged.
Trump never had any better angels as any reporter and journalist whoever interviewed or
investigated him would tell you.
And come on! .You know damn well Adelson sent Bolton and you should also know damn well
why the Orange Boy staffed his adm with Zio Jews. .no one in NY except Jews would associate
with Trump.
i think some of the conspiracy was about controlling Trump's foreign policy going forward but
i also think some of it was people like Brennan worried CIA collusion with Saudi funded
jihadist groups since 9/11 (and possibly before) might come out.
Trump biggest regret is going to be that he ever ran for President. Impeached or not
impeached all his dirty laundry is going to be exposed. Even if he secured a second term
there is no statute of limitations on what he could be prosecuted for .so the minute he steps
down from the WH he's going to have to spend everything he's got on lawyers fighting the
charges the SDNY is going to bring against him.
David Cay Johnston: What Is Trump Hiding in His Tax Returns?
The Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter explains what's likely in Trump's
returns.
By Jon WienerTwitter
David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter who previously
worked at The New York Times. He's the founder and editor of DCReport.org.
Jon Wiener: The chair of the House Ways and Means Committee formally requested six years
of Trump's personal and business tax returns earlier this month. Trump, of course, refused to
comply, and said the law is "100 percent" on his side. Does the IRS have to hand over Trump's
tax returns to the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee?
David Cay Johnston: If they follow the law, they absolutely have to hand them over. Under
a 1924 anti-corruption law that was passed because of Teapot Dome, a Harding-administration
scandal, Congress can look at anybody's tax return at any time. In the 85-year history of
this law, the IRS has always responded appropriately to the request and turned over
everything that was requested.
[Hide MORE]
JW: What are the exceptions to this law?
DCJ: There aren't any. It says, "Congress shall provide upon written request." That's it.
Well, they have a written request, it's a specific request, and therefore they shall provide.
The statement by Donald Trump that the law is 100 percent on his side is just classic
Trumpian lying: Take something that is true, and state the exact opposite.
JW: Does the IRS commissioner have any alternative to handing over Trump's tax returns?
What happens if he doesn't comply?
DCJ: There's another section of the tax code which says that any federal employee dealing
with any aspects of the tax code who either does not comply, or who fails to act -- covering
both sins of omission and commission -- "shall be removed from office, and is subject to
prosecution and upon conviction, five years in prison and a $10,000 fine."
JW: Who enforces this law? It's not just up to Attorney General William Barr -- is that
right?
DCJ: That's correct. First of all, a US Attorney's office could enforce the action,
although that seems unlikely in this administration. But the next administration, if it
chooses, could go back, and even if the IRS commissioner has left, prosecute him for failure
to turn over the documents. Of course, Congress can hold the commissioner in contempt, and
Congress can also go to federal court to enforce its orders. It can. And has in the distant
past even tried people itself.
JW: The IRS commissioner is a man named Charles Rettig, and he's a Trump appointee. Tell
us a little about Charles Rettig.
DCJ: At DCReport we call him "Donald Trump's man at the IRS." Almost every IRS
commissioner has been a tax lawyer, but Charles Rettig is not like most of those other tax
lawyers. He isn't in the business of tax planning. He's in the business of representing tax
cheats who get caught, and his specialty is keeping them from being indicted. As we put it,
"He's one of the foxes who is not just in charge of the hen house. He's in a position to
redesign the hen house."
JW: Trump's personal lawyer last week urged the Treasury Department not to hand over
Trump's tax returns. He said that to comply with their request would turn the IRS into a
political weapon of the radical Democrats. Is that a good legal argument?
DCJ: No. It may be a good political argument with Trump's base, but as a legal matter, if
my students at Syracuse Law were to bring that up, I would have to work hard not to laugh at
them -- because it's a ridiculous argument. There is no limit in Section 6103 that says you
can only ask for a tax return if you're a Republican, or if you hew to certain political
views. It simply says, "Upon written request, the return shall be provided." It could not be
more clear.
JW: The boss of the IRS commissioner is the treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin. He said
sort of the opposite of what Trump's personal lawyer said. He said, "Our intent is to follow
the law." How do you explain the difference between the legal positions of Trump's personal
lawyer and Trump's treasury secretary?
DCJ: This is exactly what got me onto this story. I noticed that Trump, his lawyers, and
the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, were making these wild, reckless,
lawless statements. But Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, and Rettig, the IRS commissioner,
both made nuanced statements, and carefully avoided refusing to comply, and instead said,
"We're trying to understand how to comply with law. It is our intent to comply with the law,
but we need more time to learn what the law says." It should take you literally about 10
seconds to learn what the law says. That's when I thought, "What's going on here?" It's what
got me on to the section of the tax code that says, in effect, that any federal employee who
interferes, obstructs, or fails to act, is subject to removal, prosecution, and fine. I think
what Mnuchin is trying to do here is thread a needle. He wants to continue to show his
loyalty to Trump. Not to our Constitution, as his oath of office requires, but to Trump. He's
trying to evade the law that says there must be compliance with the request, without going to
jail.
JW: The New York Times news story on this reported that "The fight over Mr. Trump's tax
returns is expected to turn into a protracted legal battle that will likely make its way to
the Supreme Court." Do you think that's right, and does the Republican majority on the court
have a way to rule in Trump's favor?
DCJ: It may lead to a protracted fight. It's also possible that this will get fast-tracked
and get right to our Supreme Court. As someone who reads Supreme Court decisions, I don't
particularly care for the jurisprudence of John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United
States, but nothing in his opinions suggests that he would sell the soul and the integrity of
the court to favor Donald Trump. Every indication is that he would uphold the law. I would
not be surprised if you got a 7-2 or 9-0 decision from the Supreme Court that the IRS has to
turn over the documents.
JW: The really interesting question is, what do you think is in Trump's tax returns? Why
do you think he's trying so hard to keep them secret?
DCJ: There are at least three reasons here. Number one, Trump's tax returns will show that
he is not anywhere near as wealthy as he claimed. Remember during the campaign he kept saying
he was worth more than $10 billion. But after he became president, he signed under oath his
financial disclosure statement, and 90 percent of his wealth vanished. Even that statement,
which I've analyzed, overstates his wealth. There's never been a scintilla of verifiable
evidence that Trump is a billionaire. And I'm the guy who revealed, back in 1990 when he said
he was worth $3 billion, that he wasn't a billionaire. We eventually found that he had
negative net worth of about $295 million -- minus $295 million.
Secondly, Donald Trump is a tax cheat. He had two civil trials for income tax fraud, one
by the State of New York and the other by the City of New York. In both cases he lost. In one
of those trials, his own long-time tax attorney and accountant, Jack Mitnick, testified
against him. Mitnick was shown the filed tax return, which was a photocopy, and testified,
"That's my signature on the return, but neither I nor my firm prepared that tax return."
That's as good a badge of fraud as you're ever going to find. It indicates that Donald Trump
took the tax return that was prepared, changed it, and then with a photocopy machine put the
signature of Jack Mitnick on it. Donald Trump is also a confessed sales tax cheat. Mayor Ed
Koch of New York said he should have served 15 days in jail for his crime. Trump has a long
history of hiding records from auditors, cheating governments, using two sets of numbers. So
his tax returns are highly likely to show tax cheating.
Finally, the returns may well establish how much money he has been getting from Russians,
Saudis, people from the Emirates, and elsewhere. They may show whether he has been engaged in
money laundering for these people through real estate transactions and other actions that
make no business sense, but, when closely examined, show exactly what we see when there's
money laundering. I think the record is pretty clear that he has been doing that.
JW: A technical question: Where do you report payments from Russian oligarchs on your tax
return?
DCJ: Trump has over 500 business entities, and the tax return is the beginning point for
an audit. You then would examine the books and records that are behind it. Now, Trump has a
long history of destroying or claiming he destroyed business records to thwart auditors. This
happened particularly with the City of New York when he tried to cheat the city out of about
$2.9 million. But there may actually be transactions reported right in the tax return that
would tell you where money came from–because it may list entities to which he is
obligated, or is in partnership with, or received money from, or shared profits with. The
request by Chairman Neal of the House Ways and Means Committee was very targeted. It cited
six specific Trump businesses -- out of over 500 businesses. That suggests to me that they
know what they were looking for .
JW: What do you think the political effect would be if voters learned from Trump's tax
return that he has been a tax cheat? As I recall, this was a huge issue in the final downfall
of Richard Nixon.
DCJ: That's right. This was a big scandal in 1974. Nixon was pardoned, so nothing happened
to him, but his tax lawyer went to prison. By the way, the very law that exposed Nixon as a
tax cheat is the same law that the Trump people are now trying to resist. I frankly think
that among people who are strong Trump supporters, this will have little impact. The impact
that would matter is on people on the margin. People who have been with Trump but are uneasy
with him because of all of his other behavior. And if he has committed federal tax crimes,
then he has committed New York State tax crimes, because New York State tax law hews very
closely to federal law. ".
how do you explain his hiring so many Deep State denizens Bolton, Pompeo et al.?
I would suggest, they have "great guy" Epstein dirt on Trump. Seems so obvious to me, the
entire swamp is either bought or blackmailed with this kind of dirt.
If the masses would find out about this kind of dirt, there was probably a violent purge
taking place, a lynching of the entire swamp.
Btw, you are right, Us political circus works like WWE.
It's just an opinion, but mine is that boat has already sailed. Trump has been giving the
finger to his "base" from the outset, and his ego-driven government shutdown was probably the
last straw. There are always going to be a few knuckleheads who will love him forever, and my
estimate of that group would be on the order of 25%. Unless the Democrats put up a candidate
who is even worse, the man is a goner in political terms.
This means Pompeo has to move quickly. If the fat slug picked up anything at West
Point, he understands that to mobilize the US requires the other side to shoot first. In the
case of his nominal boss, you can put that in neon lights. Trump is a gullible old man, and
Pompeo needs to be able to point to something 'drastic' so as to galvanize Trump into
action.
The CIA torture woman found faked pictures of dead ducks (!) and sick children worked.
Pompeo would find a sizable number of US military men or women in body bags extremely
useful in his desperate efforts to suck up to the pissant apartheid state and hopefully pull
the ripcord of The Second Coming.
On the other side of this, Iran needs to avoid starting the shooting, no matter what! The
Confederates attacked a US fort to start the Civil War. It was about the most stupid thing
possible for them to have done. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor - again the dumbest thing
imaginable. I'd expect Iran has been consulting with India and China about its options. China
probably has every storage tank in the country topped off, and will be immune to an "oil
shock" for a long time.
In any event, it can afford to outbid everybody else is things came to that. Just off the
top of my head, Iran mining the Strait of Hormuz, then making a public announcement about it
looks like a workable plan. The US mine-sweeping capability is beyond-belief awful - and why
that is I don't understand. Any mines there which are found and destroyed can be easily and
quickly be replaced by small boats, submarines, or aircraft dropping them.
For anyone of a social democratic (or lefter) persuasion, and/or see war as something that
should only be used as an absolute last resort (due to it invariably being a moral horror),
then the Democrats have indeed been the lesser of two evils, and Republican-lite.
Take Obama for instance. He ran a cleverly ambiguous campaign where he sounded to many as
being progessive and left, a breath of fresh air, something finally that would put a stop to
limitless capitalism and unwind the Bush era. But in fact he's a 'centrist', which really means
thoroughly neoliberal. He's prepared to file some of the sharp edges off capitalism, but he
neither promised nor offered a genuine alternative to a lightly regulated free market.
I mean, look at his most famous legacy: the health care reforms. This is a thoroughly
market-based solution that leaves the marketplace largely as it was. Nationalization was
nowhere in sight. And the policy was based on one his elecotoral opponent enacted when he was
governing Massachusetts! It is literally the case that voting in Democrats at the national
level gets you the policy of Republican presidential candidates.
Also, he's quite happy to unilaterally blow up stuff, including innocent people, in other
countries, in order to crush his enemies and to look good domestically. We have no problems in
calling this 'evil' when our enemies do anything like this.
Brian 04.21.19 at 2:43 pm (no link)
I think the real question is not whether Trump is successful or not. That question is a red
herring in American politics today. The real question is whether or not the Democratic
"leadership" can allow nomination of a candidate that the Democrat rank and file want. Bernie
Sanders should have won the nomination last time. But the superdelegate system gives a
literal handful of mandarins the ability to fake the primary process. (I say that as someone
who has significant issues with some of Sanders positions.)
Trump won because Hillary was a horrific candidate. Voters stayed home, disgusted. Trump
won because the Obama administration didn't deliver hope nor change. He delivered a
government of the corporate criminal bankers for them. Middle and working class America got
screwed. Black people got screwed worst. Trump won because the utter corruption at the heart
of the DNC was exposed for all to see in the emails. Trump win because of the Obama
administration making a trade deal top secret classified and trying to force a vote through
congress. Not seeing any point in voting, Democrats didnt.
All the evidence since shows the DNC leadership didn't learn anything. They are just as
contemptuous of voters, just as manipulative with their window dressing as ever. The
Democratic party is the party of endless war even more than the Republicans. It's a party
that stopped every effort by Trump to wind down or end war posture with Russia and North
Korea. There's now 2 parties in Netanyahu's pocket implementing Likuds insane middle east
ideas.
Put some solar energy and LGBTQ butter on it with a side of women's rights bullshit and
it's "Democrat". But the politicians are just as venal. The legislature just as wildly right
wing war mongering.
The 1960's is long over. The Democratic party hasn't seen a new idea since and has
converted to govern to the right of Nixon. Way to Nixon's right. The Democratic party is the
tool of the Uber-ization of not just America, but the whole world. Flour and break the law to
pauperize the working class, and suck money to a few in the SF Bay Area. That's policy
now.
You can see it already. Sanders is ahead. But Buttigieg is being anointed. He's the
perfect candidate. He's gay! He's out of the closet! And he's a corporate tool who can talk
smoothly without speaking a clear word. Best of all, he has ZERO foreign policy experience or
positions. So he'll be putty in the hands of the corporations that want endless war for
profits. Wall Street wants him. And the street owns the Democratic party. Will he give a
flying f*@k about the middle and working class? Will he be anything but another neo-liberal
who can be differentiated from a neo-conservative only by mild difference in racism? (Overt
vs.covert)
At least Buttigieg isn't Beto O'Rourke, the most completely empty skin in Congress.
There's that.
All the evidence I see is no. The Democrat "leadership" don't understand. I predict a
Trump win, or else a squeaker election that barely scrapes by with a win.
No matter what, the idiot Democrats won't get it. Pelosi will do her best to cast the
Republicans anti-tax anti-government (federal) government culture war in concrete with
balanced budget horse manure. The Democrats will continue to force a new cold war on Russia.
They will keep backing companies that steal from the middle and working class. (Yes, Uber and
Lyft are massive theft operations. They implemented taxi service without licenses. Those
licenses cost a lot of money to those who bought them. They put the public at risk causing
multiple deaths and assaults from unlicensed taxi drivers.)
Trump's appeal is that he at least talks a game of "f*@k you". Domestically it's all lies
on all sides. He lies to everyone. But at least he doesn't lie smoothly like the "good
Democrat" candidates do.
The Trump administration is poised to tell five nations, including allies Japan, South
Korea and Turkey, that they will no longer be exempt from U.S. sanctions if they continue to
import oil from Iran.
U.S. officials say Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans to announce on Monday that the
administration will not renew sanctions waivers for the five countries when they expire on
May 2.
Refusing to offer new sanctions waivers is the latest sign that Trump is once again giving
in to the most extreme Iran hawks. When sanctions on Iran's oil sector went into effect last
November, the administration initially granted waivers to the top importers of Iranian oil to
avoid a spike in the price of oil, but that is now coming to an end. The economic war that the
U.S. has been waging against Iran over the last year is about to expand to include some of the
world's biggest economies and some of America's leading trading partners. It is certain to
inflict more hardship on the Iranian people, and it will damage relations between the U.S. and
other major economic powers, including China and India, but it will have no discernible effect
on the Iranian government's behavior and policies. India, China, and Turkey are practically
guaranteed to ignore U.S. demands that they eliminate all Iranian oil imports.
The decision to end waivers has implications for world oil markets, which have been
eagerly anticipating President Trump's decision on whether to extend waivers. The officials
said market disruption should be minimal for two reasons: supply is now greater than demand
and Pompeo is also set to announce offsets through commitments from other suppliers such as
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Trump spoke about the issue Thursday with the
UAE's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.
Between the administration's Venezuela and Iran oil sanctions and increased instability in
Libya (also supported by the Trump administration), oil prices are nonetheless likely to rise.
Even if they don't, Trump's Iran obsession is causing significant economic dislocation for no
good reason as part of a regime change policy that can't and won't succeed. It cannot be
emphasized enough that the reimposition of sanctions on Iran is completely unwarranted and
represents a betrayal of previous U.S. commitments to Iran and our allies under the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action. The decision to refuse any new sanctions waivers is a clear sign
that the most fanatical members of the Trump administration have prevailed in internal debates
and U.S. Iran policy is held hostage to their whims.
Maybe Trump will reap the benefits of this if oil prices go up a lot and it torpedos his
reelection in 2020.
One thing I'm really not clear on how are these proposed sanctions against third parties
(e.g. Japan, etc etc) not a violation of trade agreements? Are there escape clauses in those
agreements that allow the US to do these things, or is it merely that these other countries
are (usually) not willing to rely on the trade agreements' protections because, at the end of
the day, it would mean a trade war with the US, which they're not willing to countenance?
Iran policy ??? What about foreign policy in general ?? Interventionism is NOT what Americans
want, or can afford! No more lives & limbs (and dollars) for foreign countries!!
"Between the administration's Venezuela and Iran oil sanctions and increased instability
in Libya (also supported by the Trump administration), oil prices are nonetheless likely to
rise. Even if they don't, Trump's Iran obsession is causing significant economic dislocation
for no good reason "
But there is a good reason. Forcing up oil prices is a shot in the arm for the Saudi
economy. Remember "Israel first, and Saudi Arabia second". That formula explains most of
Trump's foreign policy, the rest being a jumble of random impulses and the consequences of
infighting among his advisors.
Gas is already $3.20 in the Chicago suburbs, and we are not into the summer driving season
yet. Overseas – India is going to the poll. India imports most of its oil, and Iran is
a major supplier. Yes, the Saudis have been trying to get India to switch over to more Saudi
imports – but it would look like "strong" Modi is giving in to Trump and MBS.
We are going to sanction China for buying Iranian oil? Does anyone seriously think they are
going to submit to that gracefully? Japan and Korea might, they are much smaller and stuck
with us. But China?
And I seriously doubt that sanctioning India for buying Iranian oil will advance our
strategic alliance with them, either.
Here we need to look at the candidate political history, their actions before the election. "Trump scam" like "Obama
scam" was based on the fact that they do not have political history, they were what Romans called "Tabula
rasa". A "clean state" politician into which
voters can project their wishes about domestic and foreign policy. That was a dirty. but very effective trick.
But the most important factor in Trump win was the he was competing against despicable warmonger Hillary Clinton, the
establishment candidate who wanted to kick the neoliberal globalization can down the road. So the "lesser evilism" card was
also in play consciously or unconscionably as well. So with Hillary as the opposition candidate it was a kind of
implementation of the USSR style elections on a new level. but with the same with zero choice. Effectively the US
electorate was disenfranchised when FBI has thrown Sander under the bus by exonerating Hillary. In a way FBI was the
kingmaker in 2016 elections.
And please note that the Deep State launched a color revolution against Trump to keep him in check. Only later it became
evident that he from the very beginning was a pro-Israel neoconservative, probably fully controlled by pro-Israel forces. That Trump
electorate bought MIGA instead of MAGA from the day one.
Notable quotes:
"... The question is even if we got a candidate against the War Party & the Party of Davos, would it matter? Trump, the candidate who campaigned on the wasteful expenditures in our endless wars has surrounded himself with neocons and continues to do Bibi's bidding ratcheting up tensions in Latin America, Middle East and with Russia. What's changed even with a candidate that the Swamp disliked and attempted to take down? ..."
In a recent call from Trump requesting his opinion on China, Jimmy Carter noted that China
has not spent a dime on war since 1979, whereas we've spent trillions & continue to spend
even more.
China invested trillions in their infrastructure while ours crumbles. They've invested in
building the world's manufacturing capacity while we dismantled ours. We spend twice per
capita on healthcare compared to any other western country, yet chronic diseases like
diabetes keeps growing. We spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined yet
how superior is our weaponry compared to the Russians who spend one-tenth of what we spend?
We've financialized our economy and socialized speculative losses of Wall St mavens but when
some politicians talk about spending on the commons then socialism is labeled bad.
The question is even if we got a candidate against the War Party & the Party of Davos,
would it matter? Trump, the candidate who campaigned on the wasteful expenditures in our
endless wars has surrounded himself with neocons and continues to do Bibi's bidding
ratcheting up tensions in Latin America, Middle East and with Russia. What's changed even
with a candidate that the Swamp disliked and attempted to take down?
STEPHEN COHEN: But the point here is that Russia has been torn between East and the West forever. Its best policy, in its
own best interest, is to straddle East and West, not to be of the East or the West, but it's impossible in this world today. And
U.S.-led Western policy since the end of the Soviet Union, and particularly since Putin came to power in 2000, has persuaded the
Russian ruling elite that Russia can not count any longer, economically, politically, militarily, on being part of the West. It has
to go elsewhere. So all this talk about wanting to win Russia to an American position that's anti-Iranian and anti-Chinese is conceived
in disaster and will end in disaster. They should think of some other foreign policy.
...Haven't these people learned anything from the implosion of their pathetic Russiagate hysteria? The Russophobes won't be
happy until we're at war with a nuclear power and the nukes are about to land.
Here are things Trump has actually done, as opposed to red-limned fantasies drawn from the fever-dreams of Putin haters:
Unilaterally abandoned 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty
Expelled 60 diplomats and closed 3 Russian diplomatic annexes
Bombed Syria, a Russian ally, with Russian troops in country
Sold arms to Ukraine, which is actively at war with Russia
Threatened Germany to cancel a new Russian pipeline through the Baltic (effort failed)
Even more sanctions against Russia and Russian nationals
Stationed missile defense systems on the Russian border in violation of arms treaties
Massive military exercises in Europe on the Russian border
Stationed troops in Poland
Negotiating with Poland to build a permanent US military base in Poland
Yet another delusional remark at odds with reality. Haven't these people learned anything from the implosion of their pathetic
Russiagate hysteria? The Russophobes won't be happy until we're at war with a nuclear power and the nukes are about to land.
Here are things Trump has actually done, as opposed to red-limned fantasies drawn from the fever-dreams of Putin haters:
And the neocon-ization of the Trump administration continues.
While The Donald is packing away Big Macs and Diet Cokes, his neocon secretary of state is
appointing likeminded warmongers.
Ortagus has been a fixture of the GOP foreign policy establishment for more than a decade.
She has served as a press officer at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a
financial intelligence officer at the Treasury Department and an intelligence officer in the
US Naval Reserve. She has also worked with several political campaigns, as well as a
political action committee, and has experience working on Wall Street and in foreign policy
consulting.
In addition to working with spooks and a federal agency that undermines elections
and foments coups in foreign lands, Ortagus "served on the boards" at the Institute for the
Study of War (ISW), a coven of warmongers run by Kimberly Kagan, wife of notorious neocon
Frederick Kagan.
ISW is funded by the death merchants -- Raytheon, General Dynamics, DynCorp, and others --
and it pushes the concept of the indispensable nation engaged in forever war around the world,
a conflict promoted in the name of "democracy," which is code for mass murder campaigns waged
by the financial elite in its quest for total domination and theft of everything valuable on
planet Earth.
Naturally, some folks over on the so-called "New Right" support the appointment of an ardent
neocon -- a former pretty face from Fox News -- at the State Department, thus demonstrating
they are little different than establishment Republicans, or for that matter Democrats.
I don't know about others on SST but while he may not have been a good DIA man or the best
NSA, Gen. Flynn was thrown under the bus by Trump and Pence and railroaded by Mueller.
Shameful!
Trump previously also voiced doubts about official narrative of 9/11. Now he emerged as an avid supporter of the official
narrative. Nice metamorphose.
No matter where you personally stand on 9/11 events Trump is double dealer.
Notable quotes:
"... Today, some of their names – Zbigniew Brzezinski, Ronald Reagan, H.W. Bush – are prominently engraved on airports, federal offices, and library halls around the country. Others became the subject of rowdy bestsellers such as "Charlie Wilson's War," or saw their exploits dramatized in Cold War kitsch productions like "Rambo III." And then there were those who waged America's dirty wars from the shadows, and whose names will scarcely ever be known. ..."
"... Today, as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard – the lone foreign policy dissenter within the Democratic presidential field – pointed out , they are doing it all over again through their protection of the world's largest Al Qaeda franchise in Syria's Idlib province, which came into being thanks in large part to U.S. intervention in the country. ..."
"... These people were so hellbent on smashing the Soviet Union that they made common cause with the Islamist dictatorship of Pakistan's Zia-ul-Haq and the House of Saud. With direct assistance from the intelligence services of these U.S. allies, Osama bin Laden, the scion of Saudi wealth, set up his Services Bureau on the Afghan border as a waystation for foreign Islamist fighters. ..."
"... These people were in the CIA, USAID, and the National Security Council. Others, with names like Charlie Wilson, Jesse Helms, Jack Murtha, and Joe Biden, held seats on both sides of the aisle in Congress. ..."
"... "Can you imagine what the world would be like today if there was still a Soviet Union?" remarked Zbigniew Bzezinski, the former NSC director who sold President Jimmy Carter on the Afghan proxy war. "So yes, compared to the Soviet Union, and to its collapse, the Taliban were unimportant." ..."
A s Donald Trump sharpens his re-election messaging, he has sought to make a foil out of
freshman Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar, homing in on her identity as a black Muslim immigrant and
her brazen defiance of what was once a bipartisan pro-Israel consensus. Trump's most recent
attack was the most inflammatory to date, implying through a characteristically dishonest
Twitter video that Omar had played some role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Trump was referencing comments Omar made this month during a banquet of the Los Angeles
chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR): "CAIR was founded after 9/11,
because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose
access to our civil liberties," Omar said during a 20-minute-long denunciation of public
bullying and violent attacks against Muslims living in the West. (CAIR was founded in 1994,
contrary to Omar's claim).
As innocuous as Omar's comments might have seemed, they were easily spun by a right-wing
bigot-sphere seeking to portray her as not merely insensitive to the deep wound Americans
suffered on 9/11, but as a possible terror-sympathizer. As Bernard Kerik, the disgraced former
NYPD commissioner and convicted felon , said of Omar
on Fox News, "she's infatuated with Al Qaeda, with Hamas, with Hezbollah."
For Trump, the manufactured outrage offered yet another opportunity to advance his rebranded
version of the Southern Strategy, painting Omar as the face of a Democratic Party overrun by
socialists, Muslims, MS13 and trans radicals – as a clear and present danger to the
reactionary white exurbanites commonly referred to in mainstream media as "swing voters."
Amid an onslaught of menacing condemnations and online death threats triggered by Trump's
tweet, prominent Democrats mobilized to defend Omar. However, many were too timid to mention
her by name, apparently fearing that doing so would play into Trump's cynical strategy. Some
refused to defend her at all. And among those willing to speak up, most felt compelled to lead
their defense by reinforcing the quasi-theological understanding of 9/11 that leaves
anti-Muslim narratives unchallenged. "The memory of 9/11 is sacred ground, and any discussion
of it must be done with reverence," insisted House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi.
In Washington, 9/11 is understood as an act of inexplicable evil that materialized out of a
clear blue sky. "They hate us because we're free," Americans are still told in a semi-official
drone, conveniently excising the attacks that took place on 9/11 from their historical context.
This ruthlessly enforced interpretation has had the effect of displacing blame from those who
bear direct or indirect responsibility for the attacks onto much more convenient scapegoats
like the Islamic faith and its diverse mass of adherents.
In my new book, " The Management of
Savagery ," I explain which people did what things to lay the groundwork for the worst
terror attack on U.S. soil. Not all of those people were Muslim, and few have faced the kind of
scrutiny Omar has for her seemingly benign comment about 9/11. As I illustrate, many of them
maintained lustrous reputations well after the ash was cleared from Ground Zero. Today, some of
their names – Zbigniew Brzezinski, Ronald Reagan, H.W. Bush – are prominently
engraved on airports, federal offices, and library halls around the country. Others became the
subject of rowdy bestsellers such as "Charlie Wilson's War," or saw their exploits dramatized
in Cold War kitsch productions like "Rambo III." And then there were those who waged America's
dirty wars from the shadows, and whose names will scarcely ever be known.
While these figures lay claim to the mantle of "national security," their true legacy was
the callous abandonment of that concept in order to advance imperial objectives. During the
Cold War, they forged partnerships with theocratic monarchies and armed Islamist militants,
even distributing jihadist textbooks to children in the name of defeating the Soviet scourge.
Today, as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard – the lone foreign policy dissenter within the Democratic
presidential field – pointed out , they are doing
it all over again through their protection of the world's largest Al Qaeda franchise in Syria's
Idlib province, which came into being thanks in large part to U.S. intervention in the
country.
To effectively puncture Trump's demagogic ploys, the discussion of 9/11 must move beyond a
superficial defense of Omar and into an exploration of a critical history that has been
suppressed. This history begins at least 20 years before the attacks occurred, when "some
people did something." Many of those people served at the highest levels of U.S. government,
and the things they did led to the establishment of Al Qaeda as an international network
– and ultimately, to 9/11 itself.
Back in 1979, some people initiated a multi-billion-dollar covert operation to trap the Red
Army in Afghanistan and bleed the Soviet Union at its soft underbelly. They put heavy weapons
in the hands of Islamist warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, dispatched Salafi clerics such
as "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman to the battlefield, and printed millions of dollars worth
of textbooks for Afghan children that contained math equations encouraging them to commit acts
of violent martyrdom against Soviet soldiers. They did anything they could to wreak havoc on
the Soviet-backed government in Kabul.
These people were so hellbent on smashing the Soviet Union that they made common cause with
the Islamist dictatorship of Pakistan's Zia-ul-Haq and the House of Saud. With direct
assistance from the intelligence services of these U.S. allies, Osama bin Laden, the scion of
Saudi wealth, set up his Services Bureau on the Afghan border as a waystation for foreign
Islamist fighters.
These people even channeled funding to bin Laden so he could build training camps along the
Afghan-Pakistan border for the so-called freedom fighters of the mujahideen. And they kept
watch over a ratline that shepherded young Muslim men from the West to the front lines of the
Afghan proxy war, using them as cannon fodder for a cold-blooded, imperial operation marketed
by the Wahhabi clergy in Saudi Arabia as a holy obligation.
These people were in the CIA, USAID, and the National Security Council. Others, with names
like Charlie Wilson, Jesse Helms, Jack Murtha, and Joe Biden, held seats on both sides of the
aisle in Congress.
When they finally got what they wanted, dislodging a secular government that had provided
Afghan women with unprecedented access to education, their proxies plunged Afghanistan into a
war of the warlords that saw half of Kabul turned to rubble, paving the way for the rise of the
Taliban. And these people remained totally unrepentant about the monster they had created.
"Can you imagine what the world would be like today if there was still a Soviet Union?"
remarked Zbigniew Bzezinski, the former NSC director who sold President Jimmy Carter on the
Afghan proxy war. "So yes, compared to the Soviet Union, and to its collapse, the Taliban were
unimportant."
Trump previously also voiced doubts about official narrative of 9/11. Now he emerged as an avid supporter of the official
narrative. Nice metamorphose.
No matter where you personally stand on 9/11 events Trump is double dealer.
Notable quotes:
"... Today, some of their names – Zbigniew Brzezinski, Ronald Reagan, H.W. Bush – are prominently engraved on airports, federal offices, and library halls around the country. Others became the subject of rowdy bestsellers such as "Charlie Wilson's War," or saw their exploits dramatized in Cold War kitsch productions like "Rambo III." And then there were those who waged America's dirty wars from the shadows, and whose names will scarcely ever be known. ..."
"... Today, as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard – the lone foreign policy dissenter within the Democratic presidential field – pointed out , they are doing it all over again through their protection of the world's largest Al Qaeda franchise in Syria's Idlib province, which came into being thanks in large part to U.S. intervention in the country. ..."
"... These people were so hellbent on smashing the Soviet Union that they made common cause with the Islamist dictatorship of Pakistan's Zia-ul-Haq and the House of Saud. With direct assistance from the intelligence services of these U.S. allies, Osama bin Laden, the scion of Saudi wealth, set up his Services Bureau on the Afghan border as a waystation for foreign Islamist fighters. ..."
"... These people were in the CIA, USAID, and the National Security Council. Others, with names like Charlie Wilson, Jesse Helms, Jack Murtha, and Joe Biden, held seats on both sides of the aisle in Congress. ..."
"... "Can you imagine what the world would be like today if there was still a Soviet Union?" remarked Zbigniew Bzezinski, the former NSC director who sold President Jimmy Carter on the Afghan proxy war. "So yes, compared to the Soviet Union, and to its collapse, the Taliban were unimportant." ..."
A s Donald Trump sharpens his re-election messaging, he has sought to make a foil out of
freshman Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar, homing in on her identity as a black Muslim immigrant and
her brazen defiance of what was once a bipartisan pro-Israel consensus. Trump's most recent
attack was the most inflammatory to date, implying through a characteristically dishonest
Twitter video that Omar had played some role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Trump was referencing comments Omar made this month during a banquet of the Los Angeles
chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR): "CAIR was founded after 9/11,
because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose
access to our civil liberties," Omar said during a 20-minute-long denunciation of public
bullying and violent attacks against Muslims living in the West. (CAIR was founded in 1994,
contrary to Omar's claim).
As innocuous as Omar's comments might have seemed, they were easily spun by a right-wing
bigot-sphere seeking to portray her as not merely insensitive to the deep wound Americans
suffered on 9/11, but as a possible terror-sympathizer. As Bernard Kerik, the disgraced former
NYPD commissioner and convicted felon , said of Omar
on Fox News, "she's infatuated with Al Qaeda, with Hamas, with Hezbollah."
For Trump, the manufactured outrage offered yet another opportunity to advance his rebranded
version of the Southern Strategy, painting Omar as the face of a Democratic Party overrun by
socialists, Muslims, MS13 and trans radicals – as a clear and present danger to the
reactionary white exurbanites commonly referred to in mainstream media as "swing voters."
Amid an onslaught of menacing condemnations and online death threats triggered by Trump's
tweet, prominent Democrats mobilized to defend Omar. However, many were too timid to mention
her by name, apparently fearing that doing so would play into Trump's cynical strategy. Some
refused to defend her at all. And among those willing to speak up, most felt compelled to lead
their defense by reinforcing the quasi-theological understanding of 9/11 that leaves
anti-Muslim narratives unchallenged. "The memory of 9/11 is sacred ground, and any discussion
of it must be done with reverence," insisted House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi.
In Washington, 9/11 is understood as an act of inexplicable evil that materialized out of a
clear blue sky. "They hate us because we're free," Americans are still told in a semi-official
drone, conveniently excising the attacks that took place on 9/11 from their historical context.
This ruthlessly enforced interpretation has had the effect of displacing blame from those who
bear direct or indirect responsibility for the attacks onto much more convenient scapegoats
like the Islamic faith and its diverse mass of adherents.
In my new book, " The Management of
Savagery ," I explain which people did what things to lay the groundwork for the worst
terror attack on U.S. soil. Not all of those people were Muslim, and few have faced the kind of
scrutiny Omar has for her seemingly benign comment about 9/11. As I illustrate, many of them
maintained lustrous reputations well after the ash was cleared from Ground Zero. Today, some of
their names – Zbigniew Brzezinski, Ronald Reagan, H.W. Bush – are prominently
engraved on airports, federal offices, and library halls around the country. Others became the
subject of rowdy bestsellers such as "Charlie Wilson's War," or saw their exploits dramatized
in Cold War kitsch productions like "Rambo III." And then there were those who waged America's
dirty wars from the shadows, and whose names will scarcely ever be known.
While these figures lay claim to the mantle of "national security," their true legacy was
the callous abandonment of that concept in order to advance imperial objectives. During the
Cold War, they forged partnerships with theocratic monarchies and armed Islamist militants,
even distributing jihadist textbooks to children in the name of defeating the Soviet scourge.
Today, as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard – the lone foreign policy dissenter within the Democratic
presidential field – pointed out , they are doing
it all over again through their protection of the world's largest Al Qaeda franchise in Syria's
Idlib province, which came into being thanks in large part to U.S. intervention in the
country.
To effectively puncture Trump's demagogic ploys, the discussion of 9/11 must move beyond a
superficial defense of Omar and into an exploration of a critical history that has been
suppressed. This history begins at least 20 years before the attacks occurred, when "some
people did something." Many of those people served at the highest levels of U.S. government,
and the things they did led to the establishment of Al Qaeda as an international network
– and ultimately, to 9/11 itself.
Back in 1979, some people initiated a multi-billion-dollar covert operation to trap the Red
Army in Afghanistan and bleed the Soviet Union at its soft underbelly. They put heavy weapons
in the hands of Islamist warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, dispatched Salafi clerics such
as "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman to the battlefield, and printed millions of dollars worth
of textbooks for Afghan children that contained math equations encouraging them to commit acts
of violent martyrdom against Soviet soldiers. They did anything they could to wreak havoc on
the Soviet-backed government in Kabul.
These people were so hellbent on smashing the Soviet Union that they made common cause with
the Islamist dictatorship of Pakistan's Zia-ul-Haq and the House of Saud. With direct
assistance from the intelligence services of these U.S. allies, Osama bin Laden, the scion of
Saudi wealth, set up his Services Bureau on the Afghan border as a waystation for foreign
Islamist fighters.
These people even channeled funding to bin Laden so he could build training camps along the
Afghan-Pakistan border for the so-called freedom fighters of the mujahideen. And they kept
watch over a ratline that shepherded young Muslim men from the West to the front lines of the
Afghan proxy war, using them as cannon fodder for a cold-blooded, imperial operation marketed
by the Wahhabi clergy in Saudi Arabia as a holy obligation.
These people were in the CIA, USAID, and the National Security Council. Others, with names
like Charlie Wilson, Jesse Helms, Jack Murtha, and Joe Biden, held seats on both sides of the
aisle in Congress.
When they finally got what they wanted, dislodging a secular government that had provided
Afghan women with unprecedented access to education, their proxies plunged Afghanistan into a
war of the warlords that saw half of Kabul turned to rubble, paving the way for the rise of the
Taliban. And these people remained totally unrepentant about the monster they had created.
"Can you imagine what the world would be like today if there was still a Soviet Union?"
remarked Zbigniew Bzezinski, the former NSC director who sold President Jimmy Carter on the
Afghan proxy war. "So yes, compared to the Soviet Union, and to its collapse, the Taliban were
unimportant."
Trump essentially rules as Bush III with Bush II coterie of neocons in his administrations
and an unusual level of pandering to Isreal. All he election promises were fake.
People in other countries, meanwhile, will be looking on with awe and anxiety. For seventy
years, the United States has led a global order based on mutual interest, enhanced trade, and,
ultimately, America's role as the global hegemon (co-hegemon until 1989). Rhetorically, at
least, Trump's accession to power marks a break with this order. Describing himself as an
America Firster, he has talked scathingly about many of the institutions that have girded the
Pax Americana, including NATO , the European Union, and the World Trade Organization. He
has criticized American military interventions -- sometimes, it must be said, with good cause.
And he has pledged to renegotiate trade deals, and, if he deems it necessary, to slap heavy
tariffs on goods from Mexico, China, and other countries
Surveying Trump's victory and the
rise of xenophobic populism in many other Western countries, Martin Wolf, the Financial
Times' senior economics commentator, recently pronounced , "We are, in
short, at the end of both an economic period -- that of western-led globalisation -- and a
geopolitical one -- the post-cold war 'unipolar moment' of a US-led global order."
That judgment could still turn out to be premature. The world economy is so closely
integrated these days that it would take huge shocks, or policy changes, to turn the clock
back. American multinational companies, like Apple and Facebook and General Motors, are some of
globalization's biggest beneficiaries and supporters. To his Cabinet, Trump has appointed both
Rex Tillerson, the former head of ExxonMobil, the world's biggest oil company, and Gary Cohn,
the former president of Goldman Sachs, the world's leading investment bank. Trump himself
claims to favor trade, but what he terms "fair trade."
In his Inaugural Address, however, Trump made clear that he will at least try to tilt
globalization in favor of American manufacturing workers. Reverting to the populist rhetoric
that had propelled his campaign, he said, "The wealth of the middle class has been ripped from
their homes and redistributed across the world," adding, "From this day forward, it's going to
be only America first, America first. Every decision will be made to protect American workers
and American families."
On the geopolitical front, it is far less clear what Trump will do, and that's the greatest
concern for many people, here and around the world. Despite his claims that America's armed
services have been run down, the United States remains by far the world's biggest military
power, the only country able to project its will anywhere on the globe. But how will Trump live
up to this responsibility? In his speech, he pledged to "reinforce old alliances and form new
ones" and to "eradicate" Islamic terrorism "completely from the face of the earth." But he also
sounded some of the neo-isolationist themes that he put forward during the campaign, saying
that America had "subsidized the armies of other countries" and "defended other nations'
borders while refusing to defend our own." His language and tone suggested that the days when
America viewed itself as the benevolent global leader, willing to make sacrifices to the mutual
benefit of all countries, were coming to an end.
"People get into a lot of conversations about political strategies I might get in trouble for saying this, but what does
it matter if we beat Donald Trump, if we end up with someone who will perpetuate the very same crony capitalist policies, corporate
policies, and waging more of these costly wars?"
And just to drive home this point, quote:
"This is not a joke. This is not about me. This about all of us. This is about our future. About making sure we have
one."
Tulsi did get in to trouble. A day after the video posted on Twitter, it had been deleted by Twitter without explanation
Mark Dierking , April 18, 2019 at 15:53
Thanks to you any everyone that has responded for the thoughtful comments. If you are able to edit yours, a more accessible
link for the Safari browser is:
IRT B's request not to waste effort on challenges likely not to make a difference. I
observe no Trumpy program yet, promises to improve America nor reverse the ever declining
quality of life Americans are experiencing (As wages double, costs triple as federal grants
increase, the corporations are getting wealthier). Make the USA Oligarchs Wealthier programs
all expose Americans to more risk and greater loss of wealth. Fracking, 5g energies, wars,
better internal surveillance tailored to capture the most minute behaviors of every American,
and foreign management of Americans via the USA as a conduct.
In a statement to the Senate released by the White House, Trump called the joint resolution
"unnecessary", warned it represents a "dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional
authorities" and argued it would negatively affect U.S. foreign policy. What he really meant is
that the US military-industrial complex stood to lose billions in potential revenue from the
biggest US weapons client. As a result countless innocent civilians will continue to die for an
unknown period of time but at least the stock price of Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon
will not be put in jeopardy.
... ... ...
As a reminder, last month the Senate voted 54-46 to pass a resolution requiring the
president to withdraw any troops in or "affecting" Yemen within 30 days unless they are
fighting al Qaeda. The House passed the measure earlier this month with a 248-177 vote. Neither
was enough to override Trump's veto.
If Trump pardoned Assange, I would consider that draining the swamp. But Orange Jewlius is
a Deep State **** socket, so the swamp has grown to a lagoon
Clearly the US government has zero respect for Australia, Australian Law or Australian
citizens. The case is shite, else they would allow Assange to be deported to Australia and
the extradition hearing to be heard there. They refuse because they know their case is shite
and they would have to prove it in Australia before they could get extradition.
The USA is not an ally of Australia because it does not respect Australian law, not in the
least. Prove US respect of Australians by deporting Assange to Australia and holding the
extradition hearings there, else look as guilty as shite and never ever to be trusted by
Australians.
The US Govt respects NOBODY but its own Interests. It's the Australian Govt that's
complicit in this travesty of Nil justice. The Gutless Australian Govt has NO interest in
helping Julian Assange because they were persuaded NOT to by their American masters. It hurts
that your own Govt are total A$$holes & follow USA into Crimes with out question. The
Australian Govt has a History of lip service only when assistance Overseas is required. ****
them !
Assange probably is a narcissist. So what? All the people criticizing him are, too. At
least he's an honest narcissist. In everything he's published, not a single item has even
been allegedly false. Can any of these other so-called "journalists" demonstrate that level
of accuracy?
Here is a good article on Assange. Explains the cat. Things were okay for him under the
real elected president of Ecuador, except no sunlight thanks to US spooks.
It is normal that others see weakness in the U.S. before we do. The notion in the United
States is that what we want to be true is true. Fantasy is a comforting mechanism but it sure
is painful when everything falls apart. Our reality gap has not slammed shut but it will.
Disappointing but not surprising. I do hope at some point his mind will be changed. Give
full credit to the 16 Republicans in the House and 7 Republican Senators for supporting this
resolution.
It is possible, now that Assange has been arrested, that the American charge against him is
relatively minor only in order to encourage the UK to extradite him. Once he is in American
custody those charges may well change.
btw Trump suddenly dropping any love for Wikileaks after enthusiastically stating his
approval of them over 100 times during the last election is going to cause a lot of damage to
his chances of being reelected.
Wikileaks is probably already putting him under the microscope, and there are all the
Wikileaks fans to contend with as well.
Bad move Donald, you just sacrificed a bishop to no advantage and placed yourself in
danger of checkmate. More people are starting to see your 'veracity' as the facade it is.
"... Is the NYT promoting Gina Haspel as someone who deserves a more influential position than the nation's top torturer? She wouldn't be the first such criminal being subtly encouraged to try for DJT's job in the future. ..."
"... And there was a video of him bringing her to the microphone on the subject of 5G which amazed me: Trump Invites Ivanka To Talk About 5G Deployment In The U.S. I think Trump truly believes Ivanka is presidential material! ..."
"... Tinfoil-hat opinion time: if you have a credible threat against Ivanka, you control Trump. If you want to gain a different kind of leverage - like to talk him into quitting in 2020 - promise him you'll work hard to put her in the White House. ..."
"... Still tin-foiling, but I think a version of this happened in 1992. Iran Contra was closing in, and the Democrats had the goods on Bush Senior. I buy into the conspiracy notion Bush Sr. was offered a deal where the matter would be dropped if he left office, and with a "sweetener" that one of his boys would be advanced to the White House. This didn't hurt the Powers That Be, for the chosen democrat was a rare Pro-Choice Republican posing as a democrat. ..."
"... Bill Clinton was a warmongering neocon nut who governed domestically as a Republican. ..."
"... The problem lies with people in generation after generation being fooled by the same or similar ruses used before, which is why The Who exhorted people to not let themselves "get fooled again." ..."
"... The UK & EU both face crises caused by their adherence to Neoliberal economics, but Neoliberal governments hold sway in almost every EU nation and UK despite the damage they've caused. ..."
"... Here's a link for anyone who still doesn't believe Trump is on the dark side: Trump vetoes resolution ending U.S. involvement in Yemen ..."
"... Looks like Trump is only a compassionate humanitarian on behalf of Syrian kids. With 14 school children killed in Yemen a week ago, not so much. ..."
"... Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives. ..."
"... The Brits were lying, Haspel was lying, and either Trump believed her or pretended to. ..."
By "meaningful intellectual activity", Craig Murray is referring to critical thinking skills, having an open mind and being
able to consider all options and possibilities. We can agree that Theresa May and the people who make up her Cabinet and government,
and a sizeable proportion of the Tories, may well be deficient in these activities.
I have read something of how David Cameron worked his way up to leadership of the British Conservatives years ago. Coming from
a wealthy family (his father was a stockbroker who enjoyed posthumous notoriety when his name surfaced in the Panama Papers),
Cameron went to the "right" schools (which count Prince Andrew and Prince Edward as former students, btw), Eton College and then
Oxford University where he enrolled in the politics / economics course that prepares students for careers in politics - it's popularly
called "PPE". After university he went to work for the Conservative Party.
You could say Cameron's path had already been mapped out for him and the decision was not his to deviate from it. Probably
the same can be said of some other people in Theresa May's Cabinet.
And what can be said of a UK Defence Secretary of whom the love of his life is a pet Mexican tarantula?
You are being sarcastic, tongue in cheek, correct? I also wonder who could have done such a thing?
But seriously, the value of Solzhenitsyn is not in the quality of his prose, which is very difficult to read, then in the relevance
of his topics. He did document how power over others and ultimately totalitarianism manifest themselves in the fallible human
nature. Humans cannot rule themselves properly, but usually psychopaths must rule (use & abuse) others. A whole system can be
created on top of psychopathy of a few individuals (does this ring a bell?). Of course, the claim that Solzhenitsyn was a critic
of Communism is equivalent to the claim that Animal Farm is a description of Communism. Both are good social critique turned into
yet another political/brainwashing tool. It is art because it describes human nature across artificial boundaries, especially
the ideological one: left versus right.
On another matter, I have started skipping comments where Trump is being bashed. In addition to being leftist TDS, this is
a perfect indication that the commenter has got no clue what is really going on, so how could he/she explain anything to others?
Is the NYT promoting Gina Haspel as someone who deserves a more influential position than the nation's top torturer? She
wouldn't be the first such criminal being subtly encouraged to try for DJT's job in the future.
If an idea like that ever gets into Trump's head, Haspel is a goner. Have you noticed how he said he considered Ivanka for
the World bank?
"Donald Trump reveals he considered making Ivanka head of World Bank because she's 'good with numbers'"
Tinfoil-hat opinion time: if you have a credible threat against Ivanka, you control Trump. If you want to gain a different
kind of leverage - like to talk him into quitting in 2020 - promise him you'll work hard to put her in the White House.
Still tin-foiling, but I think a version of this happened in 1992. Iran Contra was closing in, and the Democrats had the
goods on Bush Senior. I buy into the conspiracy notion Bush Sr. was offered a deal where the matter would be dropped if he left
office, and with a "sweetener" that one of his boys would be advanced to the White House. This didn't hurt the Powers That Be,
for the chosen democrat was a rare Pro-Choice Republican posing as a democrat.
Bill Clinton was a warmongering neocon nut who governed domestically as a Republican.
As it turns out, the "smart one" (Jeb) lost his first step by not immediately getting to be Governor of Florida. That left
the Codpiece Commander, and all his sins were airbrushed away, the Supreme Court intervened, and he entered the White House. Good
deal for Pappy Bush, BTW. Him and Reagan got to keep their gold shine, and President Dumbya did all which was expected of him.
Thanks Jen & Piotr for your comments regarding my take on Murray's missive.
The problem lies with people in generation after generation being fooled by the same or similar ruses used before, which
is why The Who exhorted people to not let themselves "get fooled again."
The UK & EU both face crises caused by their adherence to Neoliberal economics, but Neoliberal governments hold sway in
almost every EU nation and UK despite the damage they've caused.
It's certainly a muddle. Trump vetoing the legislation to cease supporting Saudi in Yemen will further help the turn to the
East. And tomorrow will bring something else.
400 children killed since January 2019 in Yemen and 85,000 have died from malnutrition in the past 3 and a half years and Trump
vetoes resolution to end U.S. involvement.
So far as I understand your question, the Neocon York Times link from above had this about the kids and the ducks:
Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened
by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were
inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives.
The Brits were lying, Haspel was lying, and either Trump believed her or pretended to.
"... Therefore, both individuals were both an admission that the change in the system is needed and that the ruling regime is into life-extension by means of "whatever it takes". Once the "change" potential is exhausted, repression must take over as the principal life extension mechanism; clearly, these methods do not have a sharp start-over points in time - they overlap. ..."
"... It is an interesting connection of dots that Bloody Gina is Brennan's protégée and thus that Trump has truly stacked up his administration with former i.e. current enemies, But this only shows that Trump works for the same masters as his political enemies. Again, nothing new. ..."
Trump is like a voodoo doll into which every sh**bag sticks pins. Firstly, it is
irrelevant whether he was a swamp creature before election or was coopted into it after.
Secondly, Trump was transparently chosen to be the "agent of change" for the other half of
the US population, just as Obama before.
Therefore, both individuals were both an admission that the change in the system is needed
and that the ruling regime is into life-extension by means of "whatever it takes". Once the
"change" potential is exhausted, repression must take over as the principal life extension
mechanism; clearly, these methods do not have a sharp start-over points in time - they
overlap.
This is where we are now, Assange was the most prominent member of the real
opposition to the regime, where they try to confuse with plenty of faux opposition.
Therefore, the Assange's head had to be chopped off publicly and his slowly rotting corpse
will now be on display through "courts of justice" for the next couple of years as a warning
to the consumers of alternative media. Go back to reading the approved "journalism" or ... To
understand better one just needs to read/re-read Solzhenitsyn.
The other major ongoing life-extension activity, overlapping with repression, is the
confiscation of guns from the last remaining armed Western population (lots of leftist oxen
pulling that cart). Having too many guns amongst the population is bad for resolving personal
conflicts peacefully, but it is even worse for the abusive, exploitative regime. Thus, taking
the guns away is doing the right thing for a totally wrong reason.
It is an interesting connection of dots that Bloody Gina is Brennan's
protégée and thus that Trump has truly stacked up his administration with
former i.e. current enemies, But this only shows that Trump works for the same masters as his
political enemies. Again, nothing new.
Therefore, where is a Western Solzhenitsyn to document artistically what transpires in a
society deeply in debt and in social & moral decline?
@The
Alarmist Trump doesn't strike me as someone with principles or opinions of his own. He
will say and do whatever his base of "deplorables" likes to hear and whatever helps him get
what he wants.
Tears came to my eyes - happy tears - when you were elected! A seemingly impossible feat was accomplished that day in November.
I understood when you faced tremendous resistance in your first 200 days from Demorats. It seemed you were unphased and determined
- all was good.
You called the stock market a bubble when you were campaigning, but just a few months after you won the election you called
the stock market a great accomplishment of your administration. What changed? I got confused. Worse, you cursed when the Fed
raised interest rates to 2.5% and the market started to crash. That doesn't sound like an awesome economy. It sounds like a
highly manipulated one by central actors.
You lobbed some Tomahawks into Syrian sand - that worried me.
Then you lobbed a hundred or so more after a couple of Wahhabists wearing white hats, funded by Britain and the CIA, staged
a fakenews chemical attack and put it on social media. Dear Donald, were these missiles close to their expiry date? Were you
playing 4D chess? Some of those failed missiles flew near a major Russian base, were you at all concerned that one or two of
them might malfunction and accidentally bomb the Russians? I guess not. The Russians however were concerned -- which
is why they prepared to attack your fleet, along with the French and Canadian boats - just in case. But I guess it was just
another day at the Oval Office.
You said Hillary should be in jail. It is nearly three years since you said that. She's not in jail. Instead, several patriots
were dragged through the mud by Mueller and/or the Democrats - all you've had to say is that it was terrible! You can't even
seem to properly handle retarded people like Maxine and Nancy.
You claimed you were winning, but you lost the lower House to the Dems in the midterms.
You said America is leaving Syria for others to deal with -- which probably was a reference to Saudi Wahhabists and Israeli
Zionists. Why are you still there protecting Al Q'aida?
You seem to be eager to wreak havoc against Iran - was that part of the deal to bring home our troops?
You brought NK and the rest of the world to the brink of nuclear war. Luckily NK started packing-up their nuke program.
It wont be for long though. You've done nothing since, except appoint John Bolton. If I were the leader of NK I wouldn't really
trust you.
You campaigned on bringing home troops from all the useless wars. Now you're thinking of attacking Venezuela. What gives?
I'm more confused.
You said working with Russia would be a good thing - you've hit Russia fairly hard with sanctions and diplomatic retribution.
Maybe we can blame the fakenews MSM and the Dems and forgive you for playing into their whims.
You offered tax credits for corporations, they fraudulently bought back their own stocks. You offered tax credits to the
people, they used most of it to pay down their overdue credit cards. Some apparently used the money as a down-payment on a
new pickup that they'll either have to sell soon or risk repo - nothing changed in the long-run.
You promised a wall paid for by Mexico....
Why does the American military require three-quarters of a trillion dollars per year? Yet you're willing to pay even more.
Most of all, you kept referring to Wikileaks, and its publication of the HRC emails, as proof of a corrupt DNC. Two years
later, you jailed its editor. It doesn't end there. It really does look like you want to drag this Australian/Ecuadorian to
America to imprison, torture, and possibly execute, someone who hasn't committed any crime (except skipping bail on a highly
questionable extradition to Sweden in response to a 'she said / he said' accusation that the complainants and the Swedish prosecutors
dropped, much like those lobbed at your SCOTUS pick that you vehemently and rightly criticized).
Mr. President, if that's how you treat your allies and friends, I'd rather be your enemy. At least your enemies so far
seem to get away with everything and anything. your friends on the other hand get fired or jailed or both.
Mr. President, sir if you are a populist, you sure don't act like one surrounding yourself with the Deep State...
Please note that unz.com used be forum of stalwart Trump supporters. Times change.
Notable quotes:
"... This will at least wake up those morons at places like Breitbart that Trump is nothing more than a neocon swine. I mean how much more evidence do they need to see that he is invite the world, invade the world. ..."
"... One doesn't have to be stupid to support Trump but it helps. The same can be said for his prominent enemies though. To unconditionally and faithfully support Trump, Hillary Clinton, or Nancy Pelosi, one would have to be stupid or totally controlled by one's emotions. ..."
"... You and I are voting right now just by publicly engaging in politics. Voting on election day is worth it in the same way posting comments online is worth it. ..."
"... Wouldn't a smart person recognize that falling for a grifter who cares not about Heritage America and who dances to Bibi's tune is never a good option? ..."
"... Yes. But during the election, Trump was the least bad option who sometimes seemed like a good option. That's still true today. ..."
This will at least wake up those morons at places like Breitbart that Trump is nothing more
than a neocon swine. I mean how much more evidence do they need to see that he is invite the
world, invade the world.
On top of that mass censorship being unleashed under Trump, how can anyone still be conned
into supporting him.
@Colin
Wright For one, its not reposing any confidence, faith, and trust in DJT. He is a
charlatan who appeals to low IQ whites.
Why do so many intelligent people delude themselves into rationalizing their support and
vote for Trump upon the basis of the lesser of two evils loser mindset?
Look at the labor participation numbers. Worse under Trump than under the Kenyan
mulatto.
Look at the rate the debt is increasing. Look at the total increase in the debt since the
serial adulterer took office.
Look at the surge in immigration under this congenital prevaricator.
One doesn't
have to be stupid to support Trump but it helps. The same can be said for his prominent
enemies though. To unconditionally and faithfully support Trump, Hillary Clinton, or Nancy
Pelosi, one would have to be stupid or totally controlled by one's emotions.
That being said, a smart person could still support Trump. A smart person could recognize
Trump finishing his term as the least bad option. In 2020, this same smart person might
recognize that, amazingly, a Trump second term had become the least bad option. People can
scream and throw around insults or they can present an alternative to Trump.
Wouldn't a smart person recognize that his vote does not matter?
Wouldn't a smart person recognize that Stalin's maxim, "its not who votes that counts, its
who counts the votes" controls?
Wouldn't a smart person recognize that falling for a grifter who cares not about Heritage
America and who dances to Bibi's tune is never a good option?
@Liberty MikeWouldn't
a smart person recognize that his vote does not matter?
You and I are voting right now just by publicly engaging in politics. Voting on election
day is worth it in the same way posting comments online is worth it.
Wouldn't a smart person recognize that falling for a grifter who cares not about Heritage
America and who dances to Bibi's tune is never a good option?
Yes. But during the election, Trump was the least bad option who sometimes seemed like a good
option. That's still true today.
This will at least wake up those morons at places like Breitbart that Trump is nothing more
than a neocon swine. I mean how much more evidence do they need to see that he is invite the
world, invade the world. On top of that mass censorship being unleashed under Trump, how can
anyone still be conned into supporting him.
This is why Anglo-Saxon propaganda is so very effective. They have freedom of speech,
see? Though of course saying politically incorrect things might socially kill you, so it's
understood you won't do that. You will say PC (including anti-Russian, etc.) platitudes
always. So people will not even notice PC propaganda, like fish don't notice they're wet.
And when trying to convince a normie, you have to break a very long, almost infinite chain
of assumptions, which you won't know how to do.
Take a look at the career of Charles Austin Beard, for example.
He was one of the single most highly-regarded historians in America; his contributions to
the field were well-known and massively important. But even he could not break through the
pillars of propaganda when he published his book about the folly of Franklin Roosevelt's
foreign policy. The "court historians" like Samuel Eliot Morison and Schlesinger, et al,
blackballed his work and dismissed it with the most flippant arrogance and lack of care for
detail. The major newspapers and periodicals followed suit. Overnight he became all but a
pariah. Only a few regional newspapers were willing to treat his work with serious care. To
his credit, Beard had anticipated this reaction, but published his works anyway.
After World War 1, revisionism became par for the course in America – the vast
majority of historians, journalists, together with the public as a whole, came to agree that
America's entry into that conflict had been a selfish mistake. But during and after World War
Two, what you call "Anglo-Saxon propaganda" tightened up to a remarkably successful degree,
and to this day the pro-interventionist myth of the "great crusade" is all but unimpeachable
among the masses. In fact, the anti-revisionists, the "court historians," even managed to
defeat the old inter-war consensus about World War One, so that even it is now regarded as an
idealistic crusade for democracy! Very remarkable stuff, though sad!
I would probably do the same thing in Putin's situation. At a very basic level you simply
cannot trust people like Assange. Giving refuge to a spy is one thing; you're not going to
let him near any state secrets so it's not like he could betray you even if he wanted to (and
it's easy to keep an eye on him). For somebody like Assange there's the constant threat that
he could turn against you: acquire damaging information and use it as leverage, or simply
release it for the sake of his own ego or murky ideals. Too much potential for embarrassment.
Snowden was closer in spirit to a spy imo; Assange is more like bin Laden or a mafia boss,
the head of a shadowy international organization with significant reach and resources.
It's sort of like the French Foreign Legion: they take a dim view of British and American
recruits and generally won't let them join unless they speak French or have prior military
experience. The reason is psychological unsuitability: no sensible British or American person
interested in a military career would volunteer to be a mercenary for a foreign country over
serving in his own country's well-funded armed forces. Romantics and escapists are inherently
flaky and unreliable people. That's also why Brazilians are regarded as the best Legion
soldiers: they just do it to get EU citizenship
Ecuador rented a house opposite their main offices in Knightsbridge, and had three agents
in the house to permanently monitor Assange on cameras (for a cost of $1 million a year).
So they might be more intelligent than we think?
At the same time, Ecuador's politicians had problems justifying the costs of this to their
media.
Perhaps it seems more like this was perceived by Ecuador, as an intelligence operation, to
monitor Assange, and get intelligence information they could would use as leverage with the
Americans.
Today, the Ecuadorian interior minister is suddenly boasting about how they monitored and
have knowledge about two hackers who worked with Assange.
@reiner Tor Scotland yard
tried to play down their own costs of hanging outside the Ecuadorian embassy, which in 2015
was already estimated to be well over £10m over the prior three years, by saying that a
lot of that cost was money they would have spent on policing anyway: Tell that to the rapidly
increasing numbers of families of murder victims in the Capital. Oops, careful about saying
that in the UK, as the police there will pick you up for a thought-crime.
Elites around the globe protect each other more than they protect the interests of non-elites
in their own nations and any who side with non-elites in any non-trivial way, so it makes
sense that Latin American elites side with US elites who favor the mass immigration that has
driven down wages for 40 years and the mass exportation of US jobs to Latin American since it
1) boosts the profits of American elites and 2) relieves pressure on Latin American elites.
Ecuador seemed to get fed up with Assange – cutting him off from the world, badmouthing
him in MSM, etc – early 2018 when he was mostly tweeting about Catalonia. Spain is
supposedly Ecuador's closest partner in Europe. The timing could've been coincidental but
probably not.
@neutral He was always
scum but he was still the better choice than Hillary Clinton. He may still be better than his
opponent in 2020. That's how bad things are at the centre of the American empire.
Trump had the potential to be better than he is now but Washington has pushed his back
against the wall and his shitty character has thus shown itself in full. He could have been a
better President under different circumstances; even with these same character flaws.
@neutral Trump was and
still is the chaos candidate. When a better option than sabotage presents itself, then Trump
will become the second best choice.
Many, if not most, people knew he was the sabotage candidate when they supported him.
Hillary was understood to be worse because she'd maintain and even strengthen a bad system
while Trump would bugger it up.
@Thorfinnsson The Deep
State might already be beyond repair. So perhaps, come the Revolution, new, revolutionary
state organs will need to be set up in a clean break with the obscurantist blank slatist
regime. The state secrets of these new, revolutionary organs should be protected by any means
necessary. But then we'll have free countries for ourselves.
Until then, we don't need to protect the secrets of the oppressive obscurantist
regime.
Disagree here, he's energised the left to a degree that wouldn't have happened had he not
been elected and his policies are now no different to what Clinton's would have been. In
American politics, what you say appears to matter much more than what you do, so we've now
got the perfect storm of someone who talks like a right wing populist, and the resulting
backlash, but nothing to show for it. I remember ak mentioning that the only saving grace of
his administration being that it had alienated allies, but even that hasnt materialised. The
guy is a conman and a sellout, but he's very clearly noticed the fact that European
governments will unquestionably obey the US, so it's pointless to treat them with any respect
whatsoever: THATs the one and only positive thing I can say about him. Still not looking
forward to his successor.
@The
Alarmist Trump said he liked Wikileaks at that time, because they released some
embarrassing emails about Hilary Clinton during the 2016 Presidential election.
If they released embarrassing emails about Trump, he would have said the opposite.
Trump will not have any specific principles that would make him support asylum for
leakers, or generalized protection for dissidents, unless it might specifically be explained
that it would help him in some way (and unless there are emails to leak about his opponent in
2020, how will it help him?).
@reiner Tor But Trump
would say anything that would get him elected, and he would do many of these things. But, as
plutocrat surrounded by plutocrats, he'll never open the market for housing (allow easier
re-zoning), or transportation (dismantle the dealership racket), or hospitals / doctors.
Yeah, apparently he lacks the levers to reduce housing costs, but he can always fix, or
promise to fix, something about Assange, or about Christian-Obamacare conflicts –
despite them being equally remote from his mandate. Watch the idiotic boomers drooling all
over unz.com about Trump's "efforts" to fix immigration.
These being the highest expenses of an American, I can see who is the idiot here.
@simple_pseudonymic_handle
The most obvious parallel was the UK's refusal to extradite Gary McKinnon to the US.
McKinnon gained access to 97 US military and NASA networks between early 2001 and 2002. he
was also very very shit at covering his tracks.
The US sought extradition; McKinnon's lawyers challenged it on a bunch of grounds;
McKinnon won.
Part of the range of stuff that got him off was the refusal of the US to make guarantees
that he would not be housed in a SuperMax and that he would not be placed in solitary
confinement, That, plus McKinnon's "Asperger's" (diagnosed after he was arrested), was
enough for the system to tell the US government to pound sand.
I as among the people who warned JA not to go to the UK when he was leaving Sweden. (I've
known the guy as a nodding acquaintance since the 1980s and WANK; I'm in he & Suelette's
book, under a different pseudonym).
He was warned against one of the classic blunders.
The first two classic blunders are known to all –
① never start a land war in Asia , and
② never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line .
The third is less well-known:
③ when you've been honeypotted, DO NOT SEEK REFUGE ON A FUCKING ISLAND
.
When he ignored us, he was dropped from several DMSes.
For a very smart bloke, his judgement was always suspect: he allowed a fucking nappy like
Dumb Shitberg (Domscheit-Berg) inside his circle of confidants.
This whole damn country is a pile of lies. I don't know how you guys keep your sanity.
I think America may crack in the next ten years.
I live in a "minority-majority" area. It is all bullshit.
Hey, let's take all the worlds nations, races, ethnicities, religions, cultures, lifestyles,
sexual orientations, etc and stick them in one place!
On top of this we have a government that doesn't listen, ruled by special interest group.
My god, how long America?
I can't stand this place anymore.
It's going to be very interesting to see the next 10 years. The country is cracking up.
For my part, I'm learning a foreign language right now, it will come in handy when I have
enough money to bail.
Gentleman, there is nothing here worth left of preserving, only rot.
I miss a consideration, that wikileaks could be a Mossad/Unit8200 operation.
If I look at the wikileak's site, menu "partners", all is clear to me, "Der Spiegel" and
truth are mutually exclusive.
Wikileaks "revealed" an EU plan to use military against the poor human traffickers and
Israeli NGOs who bring in these Africans and "refugees". Fascinating, they have once in their
evil life a good plan in Brussels, and wikileaks shoots against it.
I think the question for Russian asylum is the same question why Russia did not spell the
beans on 911.
@Meimou The leader of
progressives, the dual-loyalty opportunist and CIA stooge Schumer:
Chuck Schumer
@SenSchumer
Now that Julian Assange has been arrested, I hope he will soon be held to account for his
meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government.
@Hyperborean Trumpstein
and his sleazy family keep delivering for the vile jooies and the JudenPresse, JudenTV, and
JudenNet will make sure he gets reelected especially if he attacks Iran. Where is Titus now
that we need him?
"... Trump has reneged on all these promises and in many cases done the exact opposite. I suspect that part of this was deliberate lying on Trump's part but a lot of it is due to his sheer, mind-boggling incompetence, coupled with modest intelligence, and some rather severe personality disorders that have manifested themselves more clearly over time. ..."
"... In his own words, Donald Trump reveals his hypocrisy about Iraq, immigration, health care, abortion, Libya, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and more. ..."
@WorkingClass
Alex Graham is right. I voted for Trump because he promised:
(1) to end the wars the US is fighting as a sock puppet of Israel and her domestic agents,
the so-called neocons and the traitorous Zionist fifth column in this country, exemplified by
Adelson, Saban, Kushner, et al.;
(2) to restore the rule of law regarding illegal aliens in this country by removing these
criminals post haste;
(3) to restore order at the border and end the massive stream of illegals and contraband
entering our country every day;
(4) to establish reasonable laws and policies regulating immigration and naturalization so
that new immigrants and citizens improve rather than diminish the quality of life for current
citizens; and
(5) to eliminate and/or restructure trade agreements so they are bilateral and not
destructive of the USA's industrial and economic base.
Trump has reneged on all these promises and in many cases done the exact opposite. I
suspect that part of this was deliberate lying on Trump's part but a lot of it is due to his
sheer, mind-boggling incompetence, coupled with modest intelligence, and some rather severe
personality disorders that have manifested themselves more clearly over time.
By all means, do not vote for Trump ever again. I don't intend to. But please don't
consider voting for a Democrat. They will just more efficiently screw us than Trump is doing
now.
Of course it's a Trump thing as well. The 'deep state' IS the state! TRump serves the
purpose of 'opening doors' for the rest of the gangsters, much the same way as successive
Labour govts, here in the UK, opened the door for even more reactionary Tory govts.
It's an issue of style versus substance. Ignore Trump's 'style', not that he has much, and
concentrate on events. They're seamless. The process continues as it has done for
decades.
"... Trump's failure here is his alone. Closing the border could be accomplished with a simple executive order. It has happened before: Reagan ordered the closing of the border when DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was murdered on assignment in Mexico in 1985, for instance. ..."
"... Trump's empty threats over the past two years have had real-world consequences, prompting waves of migrants trying to sneak into the country while they still have the chance. His recent move to cut all foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador is another empty gesture that will probably have similar consequences. The funds directed to those countries were used for programs that provided citizens with incentives not to migrate elsewhere. (The situation was not ideal from an isolationist point of view, but a wiser man would have built the wall before cutting off the aid.) ..."
"... Trump's betrayal of American workers is perhaps best encapsulated by the fact that one of the members of the advisory board of his National Council for the American Worker (which claims to "enhance employment opportunities for Americans of all ages") is the CEO of IBM, a company that has expressed a preference for F-1 and H-1B visa holders in its job postings. ..."
"... There are more former Goldman Sachs employees in the Trump White House than in the Obama and Bush administrations combined. ..."
"... It is hard to escape the conclusion that Trump is not actually interested in curbing immigration and reversing America's demographic decline. He is a con artist and a coward who is willing to betray millions of white Americans so that he can remain in the good graces of establishment neoconservatives ..."
"... As Ann Coulter has put it, "He's like a waiter who compliments us for ordering the hamburger, but keeps bringing us fish. The hamburger is our signature dish, juicy and grilled to perfection, you've made a brilliant choice . . . now here's your salmon. " ..."
"... Third, he put an end to American funding for Palestinians. This coincided with the passing of a bill that codified a $38 billion, ten-year foreign aid package for Israel. Trump also authorized an act allocating an additional $550 million toward US-Israel missile and tunnel defense cooperation. ..."
"... Trump's track record on Israel shows that he is capable of exercising agency and getting things done. But he has failed to address the most pressing issue that America currently faces: mass immigration and the displacement of white Americans. The most credible explanation for his incompetence is that he has no intention of delivering on his promises. There is no "Plan," no 4-D chess game. The sooner white Americans realize this, the better. ..."
"... We elected America's first Jewish president, nothing more" ..."
"Unlike other presidents, I keep my promises," Trump boasted in a
speech delivered on Saturday to the Republican Jewish Congress
at a luxury hotel in Las Vegas. Many in the audience wore red yarmulkes emblazoned with his name. In his speech, Trump condemned
Democrats for allowing "the terrible scourge of anti-Semitism to take root in their party" and emphasized his loyalty to Israel.
Trump has kept some of his promises. So far, he has kept every promise that he made to the Jewish community. Yet he has reneged
on his promises to white America – the promises that got him elected in the first place. It is a betrayal of the highest order: millions
of white Americans placed their hopes in Trump and wholeheartedly believed that he would be the one to make America great again.
They were willing to endure social ostracism and imperil their livelihoods by supporting him. In return, Trump has turned his back
on them and rendered his promises void.
The most recent example of this is Trump's failure to keep his promise to close the border. On March 29, Trump threatened to close
the border if Mexico did not stop all illegal immigration into the US. This would likely have been a highly effective measure given
Mexico's dependence on cross-border trade. Five days later, he suddenly retracted this threat and said that he would give Mexico
a " one-year warning
" before taking drastic action. He further claimed that closing the border would not be necessary and that he planned to establish
a twenty-five percent
tariff on cars
entering the US instead.
Trump's failure here is his alone. Closing the border could be accomplished with a simple executive order. It has happened
before: Reagan ordered the closing of the border when DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was murdered on assignment in Mexico in 1985,
for instance.
Trump's empty threats over the past two years have had real-world consequences, prompting waves of migrants trying to sneak
into the country while they still have the chance. His recent move to cut all foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador
is another empty gesture that will probably have similar consequences. The funds directed to those countries were used for programs
that provided citizens with incentives not to migrate elsewhere. (The situation was not ideal from an isolationist point of view,
but a wiser man would have built the wall before cutting off the aid.)
The past two years have seen a surge in illegal immigration without precedent in the past decade. Since late December, the Department
of Homeland Security has released 125,565 illegal aliens into the country. In the past two weeks alone,
6,000 have been admitted. According to current projections, 2019 will witness around 500,000 to 775,000 border crossings. Additionally,
about 630,000 illegal aliens will be added to the population after having overstayed their visas. By the end of the year,
more than one million illegal aliens will have been added to the population:
These projections put the number of illegal aliens added to the U.S. population at around one to 1.5 million, on top of the
11 to
22 million illegal aliens who are already living across the country. This finding does not factor in the illegal aliens who
will be deported, die over the next year, or leave the U.S. of their own will. As DHS data has revealed, once border crossers
and illegal aliens are released into the country, the overwhelming majority are never deported.
In February, Trump signed a
bill allowing the DHS
secretary to add another 69,320 spots to the current H-2B cap of 66,000. On March 29, DHS began this process by announcing that it
would issue an additional
30,000 H-2B visas this year. The H-2B visa program allows foreign workers to come to the US and work in non-agricultural occupations.
Unlike the H-1B program, a Bachelor's degree is not required; most H-2B workers are employed in construction, maintenance, landscaping,
and so on. The demographic most affected by the expansion of the H-2B program will be unemployed working-class Americans. This flies
in the face of Trump's promise to protect American workers and stop importing foreigners.
Trump has indicated that he has plans to expand the H-1B visa program as well. "We want to encourage talented and highly skilled
people to pursue career options in the U.S.," he said in a
tweet in January.
Trump's betrayal of American workers is perhaps best encapsulated by the fact that one of the members of the advisory board
of his National Council for the American Worker
(which claims to "enhance employment opportunities for Americans of all ages") is the CEO of IBM, a company that has
expressed a preference for F-1 and H-1B visa holders
in its job postings.
Trump has been working on legal immigration with Jared Kushner, who has quietly been crafting a
plan to grant
citizenship to more "low- and high-skilled workers, as well as permanent and temporary workers" (so, just about everyone). Kushner's
plan proves the folly of the typical Republican line that legal immigration is fine and that only illegal immigration should be opposed.
Under his plan, thousands of illegal aliens will become "legal" with the stroke of a pen.
There is a paucity of anti-immigration hardliners in Trump's inner circle (though Stephen Miller is a notable exception). Trump
has surrounded himself with moderates: the Kushners, Mick Mulvaney, Alex Acosta, and others. There are more former Goldman Sachs
employees in the Trump White House than in the Obama and Bush administrations combined.
The new DHS secretary, Kevin McAleenan, who was appointed yesterday following Kirstjen Nielsen's resignation, is a middle-of-the-road
law enforcement official who served under Obama and Bush and is responsible for the revival of the "
catch-and-release " policy, whereby
illegal aliens are released upon being apprehended. It was reported last week that Trump was thinking of appointing either Kris Kobach
or Ken Cuccinelli to a position of prominence (as an "
immigration czar "),
but this appears to have been another lie.
Trump's failure to deliver on his promises cannot be chalked up to congressional obstruction. Congress. As Kobach said in a recent
interview , "It's not like we're powerless and it's not like we have to wait for Congress to do something. . . . No, we can actually
solve the immediate crisis without Congress acting." Solving the border crisis would simply demand "leadership in the executive branch
willing to act decisively." Kobach recently outlined an intelligent
three-point plan that Trump could implement:
Publish the final version of the regulation that would supersede the Flores Settlement. The initial regulation was
published by the Department of Homeland
Security in September 2018. DHS could have published the final regulation in December. Inexplicably, DHS has dragged its feet. Finalizing
that regulation would allow the United States to detain entire families together, and it would stop illegal aliens from exploiting
children as get-out-of-jail free cards. Set up processing centers at the border to house the migrants and hold the hearings in one
place. The Department of Justice should deploy dozens of immigration judges to hear the asylum claims at the border without releasing
the migrants into the country. FEMA already owns
thousands of travel trailers and mobile homes that it has used to address past hurricane disasters. Instead of selling them (which
FEMA is currently doing), FEMA should ship them to the processing centers to provide comfortable housing for the migrants. In addition,
a fleet of passenger planes should deployed to the processing centers. Anyone who fails in his or her asylum claim, or who is not
seeking asylum and is inadmissible, should be flown home immediately. It would be possible to fly most migrants home within a few
weeks of their arrival. Word would get out quickly in their home countries that entry into the United States is not as easy as advertised.
The incentive to join future caravans would dissipate quickly. Publish a proposed Treasury regulation that prohibits the sending
home of remittances by people who cannot document lawful presence in the United States. This will hit Mexico in the pocketbook: Mexico
typically brings in well over $20 billion a year in
remittances , raking in
more than $26 billion in 2017. Then, tell the government of Mexico that we will finalize the Treasury regulation unless they do two
things to help us address the border crisis: (1) Mexico immediately signs a "safe third country agreement" similar to our agreement
with Canada. This would require asylum applicants to file their asylum application in the first safe country they set foot in (so
applicants in the caravans from Central America would have to seek asylum in Mexico, rather than Canada); and (2) Mexico chips in
$5 billion to help us build the wall. The threat of ending remittances from illegal aliens is a far more powerful one than threatening
to close the border. Ending such remittances doesn't hurt the U.S. economy; indeed, it helps the economy by making it more likely
that such capital will be spent and circulate in our own country. We can follow through easily if Mexico doesn't cooperate.
It would not be all that difficult for Trump to implement these proposals. Kobach still has faith in Trump, but his assessment
of him appears increasingly to be too generous. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Trump is not actually interested in
curbing immigration and reversing America's demographic decline. He is a con artist and a coward who is willing to betray millions
of white Americans so that he can remain in the good graces of establishment neoconservatives . At the same time, he wants to
maintain the illusion that he cares about his base.
As Ann Coulter has put it, "He's like a waiter who compliments us for ordering the hamburger, but keeps bringing us fish.
The hamburger is our signature dish, juicy and grilled to perfection, you've made a brilliant choice . . . now here's your salmon.
"
Nearly everything Trump has done in the name of restricting immigration has turned out to be an empty gesture and mere theatrics:
threatening to close the border, offering protections to "Dreamers" in exchange for funding for the ever-elusive wall, threatening
to end the "anchor baby" phenomenon with an executive order (which never came to pass), cutting off aid to Central American countries,
claiming that he will appoint an "immigration czar" (and then proceeding to appoint McAleenan instead of Kobach as DHS secretary),
and on and on.
While Trump has failed to keep the promises that got him elected, he has fulfilled a number of major promises that he made to
Israel and the Jewish community.
First, he moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump claimed that the move would only cost $200,000, but in
reality it will end up being more than
$20 million . The construction
of the embassy also led to a series of bloody protests; it is located in East Jerusalem, which is generally acknowledged to be Palestinian
territory.
Second, he pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal. Netanyahu
claimed on Israeli TV that Israel was responsible for convincing him to exit the deal and reimpose sanctions on Iran. (Both Trump
and Netanyahu falsely alleged that Iran lied about the extent of its nuclear program; meanwhile, Israel's large arsenal of chemical
and biological weapons has escaped mention.) Third, he put an end to American funding for Palestinians. This coincided with the
passing of a
bill that codified a $38 billion, ten-year foreign aid package for Israel. Trump also authorized an act allocating an additional
$550 million toward US-Israel missile and tunnel defense cooperation.
Fourth, he recognized Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights (in defiance of the rest of the world, which recognizes the
Golan Heights as Syrian territory under Israeli occupation). Trump's Golan Heights proclamation was issued on March 21 and was celebrated
by Israel. Trump's track record on Israel shows that he is capable of exercising agency and getting things done. But he has failed
to address the most pressing issue that America currently faces: mass immigration and the displacement of white Americans. The most
credible explanation for his incompetence is that he has no intention of delivering on his promises. There is no "Plan," no 4-D chess
game. The sooner white Americans realize this, the better.
If you haven't picked up a copy of Vicky Ward's book, Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story
of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump , you really should.
I haven't read Mr. Graham's essay yet, but I thought those two links would fit in nicely. I stay in a low boil, like it is,
and having plodded through both those reviews, I can't stand reading too much on this topic at once.
Something's gotta give. Or are the brainless goy just going to let themselves be led off a cliff?
Oh, yes. There's an interview with Ward on
BookTV .
Yep. Trump's a lying POS pond scum like the rest of the DC swamp that he said he was going to drain, turns out he is one of them
all along. We elected America's first Jewish president, nothing more. He needs to change his campaign slogan to MIGA, Make Israel
Great Again, that was the plan of his handlers all along.
What I want to know is, who are those idiots who still keep showing up at his rallies? Are they really that dumb?
Even Sanders came out and said we can't have open borders. I've also heard him said back in 2015 that the H1b visa program
is a replacement program for American workers. If he grows a pair and reverts back to that stance, teams up with Tulsi Gabbard,
I'll vote for them 2020. Fuck Trump! Time for him and his whole treasonous rat family to move to Israel where they belong.
His "implicitly white" supporters would have abandoned him in droves, not wanting to be associated with a racist, thus pointing
up the weakness of implicit whiteness as a survival strategy. And is it actually a survival strategy? A closer look at it makes
me think it's more of a racial self-extermination strategy. After all, what kind of a survival strategy is it that can't even
admit its goals to itself? And it's exactly this refusal of whites to explicitly state that they collectively want to continue
to exist as a race that is the greatest impediment to their doing so. It's an interesting problem with no easy solution. How
do you restore the will to live to a race that seems to have lost it? And not only lost its will to live, but actually prides
itself on doing so? Accordingly, this "betrayal" isn't a betrayal at all. It's what American whites voted for and want. Giving
their country away and accepting their own demographic demise is proof of their virtue; proof of their Christian love for all
mankind.
You are definitely onto something here.
Still, I feel it's not that deep and complicated. It could be that they simply don't believe that the danger is closing in.
Boils down to wrong judgment. People who haven't had the need to think hard about serious things tend to develop that weakness.
I guess that boils down to "good times make weak men."
Hard times are coming and they'll make hard men.
The catch is simple: will be enough of them in time ?
Switching to the Democrats is no solution. The DNC has proven itself to be a criminal organization through sabotaging Sander's
campaign and then being instrumental in creating Russophobia, in collusion with Obama, the CIA, the FBI, and the DoJ. The DNC
has rules in place stating that super delegates – elitists aligned with the DNC – can vote if one nominee does not win on the
first ballot at the National Convention.
Because we have a HUGE number of hats in the Democratic ring, the chances that the nomination
will not be decided on a first vote are extremely high, with the result being that the Democratic nominee is not going to be decided
by voters in the primaries but by super delegates, i.e., the elitists and plutocrats.
Democracy exists when we vote to support
candidates chosen by the elites for the elites; when we stop doing that, the elites turn on democracy. It is a sham; we will have
a choice in 2020: between Pepsi and Coke. You are free to choose which one you prefer, because you live in a democracy. For more
on the rigging of the democratic primaries for 2020, see
Odd thing, but suddenly I remember how John McCain came out of nowhere back in 2008.
Polling in single digits, suddenly the man is hyped like hell and becomes the candidate.
Perfect foil for Obama, I suppose.
Somehow reminds me of 2016, but then Obama was an unknown, not the most hated politician
in the US.
^^^
As for "why now" on the arrest of Assange, it diverts attention from a lot of other
topics. Some of those will probably never re-surface.
"... He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague ..."
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from
within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner
openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling
through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.
For the traitor appears
not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and
their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.
He rots
the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of
the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to
fear. The traitor is the plague."
Trump betrayed white workers because he knows he can get away with it. For the last thirty years of the 20th century millions of
white families were wrenched out of the middle class without a squeak out of any major news outlet or national level politician. Trump
himself stiffed his workers in those days and got away with it.
Notable quotes:
"... “In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will hose away all of the rot and bloody criminality of the Bush years. He turned out to be a deft move by our ruling class. Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of our military banking complex. Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider. ..."
"... A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as a magnet for liberal anger. This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war abroad while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump won’t fulfill any of his election promises, and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politics.” ..."
"... Yes, it would have been worse with the Cackling Hyena, but what does that tell ya? ..."
I'm not sure why the author of this article seems to be surprised by the actions of Trump and his administration. The collective
image of him as a blood-thirsty racist whose hatred of all peoples queer 'n' colored runs marrow and generations-deep -- think
of a cross between a street corner John Galt and Ian Smith, daubed with vague overtones of Archie Bunker mingling with Clint Eastwood
-- is purely an invention of the media, the left as well as that of the right.
Why or how he became the impromptu pope of white nationalism escapes me. Anyone with ears to listen and eyes to see could find
for themselves that he never so much as intimated even muted sympathy for that movement, not during his campaign and certainly
not as head of state, media accusations of "dog whistles" and the like notwithstanding.
But a demoralized white working and middle class were willing to believe in anything, deluding themselves into reading between
the barren eruptions of his blowzy proclamations. They elevated him to messianic heights, ironically fashioning him into that
which he publicly claims to despise: an Obama, a Barry in negative image, "hope and change" for the OxyContin and Breitbart set.
Like his predecessor, Trump never really says anything at all. There are grand pronouncements, bilious screeds targeting
perceived enemies, glib generalities, but rarely are any concrete, definitive ideas and policies ever articulated. Trump, like
Obama, is merely a cipher, an empty suit upon which the dreams (or nightmares) of the beholder can effortlessly be projected,
a polarizing figurehead who wields mostly ceremonial powers while others ostensibly beneath him busy themselves with the actual
running of the republic.
To observe this requires no great research or expenditure of effort -- he lays it all out there for anybody to hear or read.
Unfortunately, the near totality of this country's populace is effectively illiterate and poorly equipped to think critically
and independently, preferring to accept the verdicts of their oleaginous talking heads at face value without ever troubling themselves
to examine why. (The dubious products of the glorified diploma mills we call "higher education" are often the most gullible and
dim-witted.) Trump is the dark magus of racism and bigotry -- boo! Trump is the man of sorrows who will carry aloft Western Civilization
resurgent -- yay!
Just as the hysterical left was quickly shattered by the mediocrity that was Barack Obama, so too does the hysterical right
now ululate the sting of Donald Trump's supposed betrayal. As with their ideological antipodes, they got what they deserved. Pity
that the rest of us have to be carted along for the ride.
Politics, at least at the national level, is a puppet show to channel and periodically blow off dissent.
“In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will hose away all of the rot and bloody criminality of the Bush
years. He turned out to be a deft move by our ruling class. Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of
our military banking complex. Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider.
A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as a magnet for liberal anger.
This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war abroad while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump
won’t fulfill any of his election promises, and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politics.”
Linh Dinh, “Orlando Shooting Means Trump for President,” published at The Unz Review, June 12, 2016.
"... Then, flayed and pillaged by these gentry as they never were by the old-time professionals, they go back in despair to the latter, and are flayed and pillaged again." ..."
Reed was wrong here. The American voter, for the most part, still doesn't realize any of
this.
In June 1922 the Zionist halter was firmly reaffixed
round the neck of American State policy, and though American voter only slowly
realized this, it became immaterial to him which party prevailed at elections.
"First the poor taxpayers, robbed by the politicians of one great party and then by
those of the other, turn to a group of free-lance rogues in the middle ground --
non-partisan candidates, Liberals, reformers, or what not: the name is unimportant.
Then, flayed and pillaged by these gentry as they never were by the old-time
professionals, they go back in despair to the latter, and are flayed and pillaged
again."
Trump is attacked relentlessly by Israel firsters (both left and right) prior to, and after
his investiture as POTUS. How does he respond? How has he responded to relentless attacks on
his base? The man has no spine, and no sense of gratitude or morality.
'Not worth feeding' my late grandfather would have said. Although he has made a lot of
wealthy petulant people (who despise him and laugh behind his back) even wealthier.
What is needed is a billionaire who has genuine sense of noblesse oblige. Hopeless!
Of course Trump was a gamble. I clearly remember him saying he wanted to get out of Syria,
put an end to the endless wars, and he declared himself neutral on the Israel/Palestine
issue–those were the biggest reasons I voted for him. Turns out he lied big time.
Now what? Looking at the clown car of presidential candidates just induces political
nausea. No matter who gets elected it will be a government of, by, and for
Jewish/Israeli/Zionist interests.
In the meantime I see no real progress on putting the brakes on illegals flooding the
country. I see no economic miracles in spite of all the spin. Actual unemployment in the US
was at 21.2% in March, really not much better than it has been since the 2008 crash (
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
), and record numbers of people are behind on mortgages and car payments, suicide and drug
casualties have been skyrocketing.
Our political system is not going to bring any solutions, it has been far too corrupt for
far too long.
"... When Trump officials insisted that the 2017 tax cut would lead to a decade of miraculous growth, their claim made no sense in terms of the underlying economics, and it flew in the face of decades of evidence. But it was a prediction, not a statement of fact, and it's conceivable (barely) that Trump's people actually believed it. ..."
"... But when Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, went on TV Sunday to declare that "every single plan" Trump has put forward "covered pre-existing conditions," that was just a lie. ..."
Republican Health Care Lying Syndrome: Even Trump supporters don't believe the party's
promises.
By Paul Krugman
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and Republican claims about health
care.
O.K., it's not news that politicians make misleading claims, some more than others.
According to a running tally kept by Daniel Dale of The Toronto Star, as of Monday morning,
Donald Trump had said 4,682 false things as president.
But G.O.P. health care claims are special, in several ways. First, they're outright,
clearly intentional lies -- not dubious assertions or misstatements that could be attributed
to ignorance or misunderstanding. Second, they're repetitive: Rather than making a wide
variety of false claims, Republicans keep telling the same few lies, over and over. Third,
they keep doing this even though the public long ago stopped believing anything they say on
the subject.
This syndrome demands an explanation, and I'll get there eventually. Before I do, however,
let's document the things that make G.O.P. health care lies unique.
First, as I said, I'm not talking about mere dubious claims. When Trump officials insisted
that the 2017 tax cut would lead to a decade of miraculous growth, their claim made no sense
in terms of the underlying economics, and it flew in the face of decades of evidence. But it
was a prediction, not a statement of fact, and it's conceivable (barely) that Trump's people
actually believed it.
But when Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, went on TV Sunday to
declare that "every single plan" Trump has put forward "covered pre-existing conditions,"
that was just a lie.
Here's what the Congressional Budget Office said in its assessment of the Republicans'
American Health Care Act, which would have caused 23 million to lose coverage, and would have
passed if John McCain hadn't voted "No": "People who are less healthy (including those with
pre-existing or newly acquired medical conditions) would ultimately be unable to purchase
comprehensive nongroup health insurance at premiums comparable to those under current law, if
they could purchase it at all."
But Mulvaney's pre-existing conditions lie, along with his lie about nobody losing
coverage if the lawsuit against Obamacare succeeds, was normal by G.O.P. standards. Which
brings me to the second reason this particular form of lying is exceptional: Republicans just
keep telling the same lies, over and over. Again and again they have promised to maintain
coverage and protect pre-existing conditions -- then offered plans that would cause tens of
millions to lose health insurance, with the worst impact on those already suffering from
health problems.
The funny thing -- which is my third point -- is that almost nobody seems to believe these
lies. On the eve of last year's midterm elections, the public trusted Democrats over
Republicans to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions by 58 percent to 26 percent. A
margin this big tells us that even Trump supporters knew their man was lying on this
issue.
So what's behind the persistence of R.H.L.S. -- Republican health care lying syndrome?
Well, public opinion here is clear: Americans want everyone to have access to health care.
There isn't even that much of a partisan divide: An overwhelming majority of Republicans
don't believe insurance companies should be allowed to deny coverage or charge more to those
with pre-existing conditions.
This public near-unanimity is one reason Medicare is so popular. Getting older -- and thus
joining a group with much higher average health costs than the rest of the population -- is,
after all, the ultimate pre-existing condition.
But there are only two ways to cover people with pre-existing conditions, and both are
anathema to conservative ideology.
One is to have taxpayers pay the bills directly, which is what Medicare does.
The other combines regulation and subsidies. Insurance companies must be prohibited from
discriminating based on medical history -- a prohibition that must include preventing them
from issuing bare-bones policies that will appeal only to those in good health -- but that
won't do the job by itself. Healthy people must also be induced to sign up, to provide a good
risk pool, which means subsidizing premiums for those with lower incomes and, preferably
although not totally necessary, imposing a penalty on those without insurance.
If the second option sounds familiar, it should. It's what countries like the Netherlands
and Switzerland do; it's also a description of, you guessed it, Obamacare.
But Republicans cannot admit that the only way to protect pre-existing conditions is to
emulate Democratic policies. The party of Eisenhower, or even the party of Nixon, might have
been able to do such a thing, but the party of Fox News cannot.
Nor, however, do Republicans dare admit that they have no interest in providing protection
that a vast majority of voters demands. So they just keep lying.
You may, by the way, have heard talk about G.O.P. members of Congress opposed to Trump's
new health care push. But they share his goals; they're just questioning his timing. The
whole party still wants to take away your health care. It just hopes to get through the next
election before you find out.
"If the second option sounds familiar, it should. It's what countries like the Netherlands
and Switzerland do; it's also a description of, you guessed it, Obamacare."
Not quite:
"Unlike insurers offering the basic coverage plan, private insurers can be for-profit.
Often an insurance company in Switzerland will have a non-profit branch offering mandatory
public insurance and a for-profit branch offering additional private medical insurance. ...
"
"Most hospitals and health insurers in the Netherlands are privately run, non-profit
foundations, whereas most healthcare insurers are non-profit companies."
Why do hide the big difference between the US and other countries; that US health
insurance and the majority of providers are "for profit", while most other countries that use
non government insurers deny them profit?
List the US' not for profit insurers and a link to a description of their "business model".
I have worked with a few of DoD's federally funded R&D corps, They have no profits but
their loaded rates are half again the customary and reasonable..........
Exploitation by extraction
of a share of the value created
by an organization's job force
can be conducted by non profits
No profits can be
profit producers
distributing the profits
by other means
Then share holder dividends
As we noted previously, The Hill reports , Woolsey, who was a senior advisor to President-elect Donald Trump , said: "I don't think people ought to say they know for sure there's only one. I don't think they're likely to be proven correct. It
shouldn't be portrayed as one guilty party," "It's much more complicated than that. This is not an organized operation that is hacking into a target. It's more like a bunch
of jackals at the carcass of an antelope ."
Woolsey suggested China and Iran could be behind cyber breaches in the U.S. Is it Russian? Probably some," he said. "Is it Chinese and Iranian? Maybe. We may find out more from Mr. Trump coming up today." This follows Trump's comments on Sunday hinting he would reveal new information about alleged Russian hacking during a New Year's
Eve celebration at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.
"[I know] things that other people don't know," he said. "I just want them to be sure because it's a pretty serious charge. I
think it's unfair if they don't know."
To which Woolsey contentiously also commented:
"There's a possibility that he is [playing us] a little bit."
But as is clear, Woolsey's belief that the Russians "were in there" still goes further than what Trump has said about the hacks
... which may be why Woolsey has announced in a formal statement
"Effective immediately, Ambassador Woolsey is no longer a Senior Adviser to President-elect Trump or the transition," Woolsey's
spokesman, Jonathan Franks, wrote in a statement that was first reported by CNN's Jeremy Diamond.
"He wishes the President-elect and his Administration great success in their time in office."
Furthermore, The Washington Post's Philip
Rucker reports, Woolsey resigned after being cut out of intelligence talks with Trump and his national security adviser, retired
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Here we go, this is from Buzzfeed so according to the NYT's and Washington Post this source would qualify as "fake news"...lol...but!...
"The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI's Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department
of Justice's National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney's Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation,
but the FBI never requested access to the DNC's computer servers," Eric Walker, the DNC's deputy communications director, told
BuzzFeed News in an email."
...but!...just looky here...we've got an actual non-anonymous, real life, people-type person who is not speaking from the shadows
in an underground parking garage its, Eric Walker, the DNC's deputy communications director.
I still think it is independent patriots assited by patriotic insiders who exposed the DNC's criminal activity.
Anyway, when do we get the criminal investigation into the contents of the leaks? That's where the meat is. Not that someone
exposed the crimes; they deserve a medal.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey, was a vocal advocate of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq who promoted allegations that
Saddam Hussein harbored illegal weapons of mass destruction.
No he does not. The claim of Trump desire to cut Neocon Deep State sounds like humor now
But the idea of dual personalities of the US Deep State with "Neocon-Neoliberal Deep State" as the dominant personality
-- "We came, we saw, he died" personality is still valid.
Notable quotes:
"... I have long held that America's Deep State --the unelected National Security State often referred to as the Shadow Government-- is not a unified monolith but a deeply divided ecosystem in which the dominant Neocon-Neoliberal Oligarchy is being challenged by elements which view the Neocon-Neoliberal agenda as a threat to national security and the interests of the United States. ..."
"... I call these anti-Neocon-Neoliberal elements the progressive Deep State ..."
"... If you want a working definition of the Neocon-Neoliberal Deep State, Hillary Clinton's quip-- we came, we saw, he died --is a good summary: a bullying, arrogance-soaked state-within-a-state pursuing an agenda of ceaseless intervention while operating a global Murder, Inc., supremely confident that no one in the elected government can touch them. ..."
I have long held that America's Deep State --the unelected National Security State often referred to as the Shadow Government--
is not a unified monolith but a deeply divided ecosystem in which the dominant Neocon-Neoliberal Oligarchy is being challenged by
elements which view the Neocon-Neoliberal agenda as a threat to national security and the interests of the United States.
I call these anti-Neocon-Neoliberal elements the progressive Deep State.
If you want a working definition of the Neocon-Neoliberal Deep State, Hillary Clinton's quip-- we came, we saw, he died --is
a good summary: a bullying, arrogance-soaked state-within-a-state pursuing an agenda of ceaseless intervention while operating a
global Murder, Inc., supremely confident that no one in the elected government can touch them.
Until Trump unexpectedly wrenched the presidency from the Neocon's candidate. The Neocon Deep State's response was to manufacture
a mass-media hysteria that Russia had wrongfully deprived the Neocon's candidate (Hillary Clinton) of what was rightfully hers: the
presidency. (The Neocons operate their own version of the divine right of Political Nobility .)
The Neocon-Neoliberals' strategy was to delegitimize Trump's victory by ascribing it to "Russian Hacking," a claim that remains
entirely unsubstantiated. Now that this grasping-at-straws Hail Mary coup attempt by a politicized CIA and its corporate media mouthpiece
has failed, the Neocon Deep State is about to find out the Progressive Deep State finally has a president who is willing and able
to cut the Neocon-Neoliberals off at the knees.
If you want documented evidence of this split in the Deep State--sorry, it doesn't work that way. Nobody in the higher echelons
of the Deep State is going to leak anything about the low-intensity war being waged because the one thing everyone agrees on is the
Deep State's dirty laundry must be kept private.
As a result, the split is visible only by carefully reading between the lines, by examining who is being placed in positions of
control in the Trump Administration, and reading the tea leaves of who is "retiring" (i.e. being fired) or quitting, which agencies
are suddenly being reorganized, and the appearance of dissenting views in journals that serve as public conduits for Deep State narratives.
I have also long held that Wall Street's political dominance is part and parcel of the Neocon-Neoliberal ideology , and the progressive
elements in the Deep State also want to (finally) limit the power of the big banks and the rest of the Wall Street crowd.
The split in the Deep State is a reflection of the profound political disunity that is occurring in the U.S. In other words, it
isn't just disunity in the masses or the political elites--it's a division in all levels of our society.
The cause is not difficult to discern: the concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of the few is generating levels
of inequality that threaten democracy, the social order and the vitality of the economy:
As someone who has studied the Deep State for 40 years, I find it ironic that so many self-identified "progressives" do not understand
that the U.S. military is now the Progressive element and it's the civilian leadership--the Neocon-Neoliberals-- who are responsible
for leading the nation into quagmires and handing the keys to the chicken coop to the wolves of Wall Street.
When military leaders such as Eric Shinseki questioned the Neocon's insane "strategy" in Iraq--essentially a civilian fantasy
of magical-thinking--the Neocons quickly cashiered him (Shinseki was a wounded combat veteran of Vietnam who rose through the ranks--the
exact opposite of the coddled never-get-my-hands-dirty Elites in the civilian Neocon-Neoliberal leadership.)
To the degree that the U.S. has become a Third World Oligarchy owned and controlled by a financial-political Elite, then the U.S.
military is one of the few national institutions that hasn't been corrupted by top-down politicization and worship of Wall Street.
Shinseki et al. did not amass a fortune from Wall Street like Bill and Hillary Clinton. The simple dictum-- follow the money --maps
the lay of the land rather neatly.
The Neocon-Neoliberals have run the nation into the ground. They must be fired and put out to pasture before they do any more
harm. That includes the Fake-"Progressives" and the fake-"Conservatives" alike who have enriched themselves within the Neocon-Neoliberal
Oligarchy.
If you are surprised that the Democratic Party, the CIA and Wall Street are all hugging each other in the same cozy Neocon-Neoliberal
Oligarchic embrace, you shouldn't be. Open your eyes.
The problem is that the deep state owns most if not all the wet workers.
They will do whatever the DS says since their paychecks depend upon it.
Best thing would be to ID the wet workers and give them X amount of time to come in from the cold, then give them the choice
of taking a payoff and staying out of trouble or getting their wings clipped for violating parole, or turning state's evidence
in exchange for a job or getting their spawn into good schools/jobs.
If they miss the deadline they default into "problems" and get dealt with accordingly.
If Trump can cut the neo-fascist deep-state off at the knees, America can be great again!
The Spanish-American Inquisition : Mexican propaganda was the reason that people voted for Hillary Clinton. NYT largest shareholder
is Carlos Slim who has lost 40% of his net worth in the last 2 years as a result of the peso. Trump would diminish his own personal
empire by further devaluation of the peso and by reducing Mexican manufacturing.
The Mexican propaganda was not merely limited to the NYT. Telemundo also played a large part in this. The infiltration of Mexican
spies and propagandists through telemundo owned by Comcast, the country's largest media organization has completely compromised
Comcast! All of their companies endorsed Hillary in order to benefit the Mexican economy!
Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in order to spread Cuban propaganda. His adopted father was from Cuba. Since Jeff Bezos
purchased WaPo, Obama has restored relations with Cuba. Coincidence?! We think not!!!
CNN is Chilean propaganda -- What lengths will they go to in order to mislead the public as the Chilean president owns Chilevisian
which is a Time Warner subsidiary and Time Warner owns CNN?! Trump's plan of rewriting NAFTA would be less favorable to Chile
than it is in its current form! CNN is trying to get people to put the needs of the Chilean people above the needs of American
people!
Congress has the right to declare war, but the president is the commander in chief. Let congress declare war on Russia and
go and fight the Russians themselves. They can declare war, but there will be nobody to fight it, unless they do it themselves!
The Fed and the TBTF banks run Deep State, and according to the latest article in the WSJ, Trump is beyond indebted to the
TBTF banks. If true, this is scary and gives Trump a pretty serious reason for putting so many Goldmanites in positions of power
in his Administration.
(Wall Street Journal)
"More than 150 financial institutions hold debt from President-elect Donald Trump's businesses or businesses in which he is
at least a 30 percent stakeholder, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
That amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars in potential conflicts of interest as Trump prepares to begin his presidency.
When Trump submitted a required financial disclosure form with the Federal Election Commission in May 2015, he listed 16 loans,
collectively worth $315 million in debt, that his businesses had received from 10 companies, according to the newspaper.
The Journal's analysis goes beyond those loans and includes debt held by companies in which Trump is at least a 30 percent
stakeholder, including, for example, the companies which control 1290 Avenue of the Americas.
That building, owned by a partnership of companies that is 30 percent owned by Trump, received $950 million in loans in 2012
from UBS Group AG, Bank of China, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank, according to the report.
Deutsche Bank, a German institution, is currently under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for its equity trading
with wealthy Russian clients.
In the case of Goldman Sachs, the bank now counts several its former employees among the highest levels of the incoming Trump
administration, including former bank president Gary Cohn, who was appointed director of Trump's National Economic Council."
"The Neocon-Neoliberals have run the nation into the ground. They must be fired and put out to pasture before they do any more
harm. That includes the Fake-"Progressives" and the fake-"Conservatives" alike who have enriched themselves within the Neocon-Neoliberal
Oligarchy."
My ass!!!!! Mr Trump is the right man at the right time to send these war criminals to hell where they belong! HW, W, Bozo,Their
globalists war cabinets,Their corrupt underlings, #MAGA #Drain the Swamp
Trump needs to distract them quickly. So I have given this a few quick moments of thought and came up with what should be Trump's
first executive order. Congress and all Federal employees are now required to use Obamacare as their health plan.
Standard Disclaimer: Aside from watching Congressional critter's heads explode, the disaster known as Obamacare would be either
repealed or fixed in a NY minute.
There were high hopes after Trump election. now they all dissipated. He betrayed his electorate and should be fired.
Notable quotes:
"... I was one of the millions of people that believed in you. Believed what you said. Heard you. You got "hired" by 60 MILLION people. WE are your boss. YOU BECAME THE EMPLOYEE. Something you are not used to. I myself convinced nearly 20 people to vote for you over these last two years. Know what I said? "He's NOT a politician. He's a business man. He's an outsider – something Washington, D.C. SORELY needs. He's NOT the same 'business as usual' guy. Mr. Trump will change things for the better in Washington. Clean it up. Make peace with Russia – not war. Trump is a BUILDER – not a destroyer. He'll negotiate FAIR deals with countries. Install sensible immigration policies. Reverse the stranglehold on health care policies that have bankrupted millions." I made them see how biased the media was against you. How they lied by omission – and sometimes outright lied about you. (To a person, they NO LONGER WATCH, TRUST, OR HEED the media anymore.) ..."
I was one of the millions of people that believed in you. Believed what you said. Heard you. You got "hired" by 60 MILLION people. WE are your boss. YOU BECAME THE EMPLOYEE. Something you are not used to. I myself convinced nearly 20 people to vote for you over these last two years. Know what I said? "He's NOT a politician. He's a business man. He's an outsider – something Washington, D.C. SORELY needs. He's NOT the same
'business as usual' guy. Mr. Trump will change things for the better in Washington. Clean it up. Make peace with Russia – not
war. Trump is a BUILDER – not a destroyer. He'll negotiate FAIR deals with countries. Install sensible immigration policies. Reverse
the stranglehold on health care policies that have bankrupted millions." I made them see how biased the media was against you.
How they lied by omission – and sometimes outright lied about you. (To a person, they NO LONGER WATCH, TRUST, OR HEED the media
anymore.)
He'll change the culture of Washington – because that's EXACTLY WHAT IT NEEDS. CHANGE."
Washington has become a den of vipers. Self-enriching criminals that have sucked the life blood out of US – YOUR EMPLOYERS
. The phrase; "You're FIRED" must be repeated often to MANY people over the next few years. People that have engorged themselves
because of the previous employees, who have mismanaged the nation, and lied to it's people.
Your very words from your speeches that convinced us to hire you. Your platform. Your slogans;
"Make America Great Again." "I'll take back this country for you".
You said that to 60 MILLION of us – and we hired you based on it.
We hired you because we're SICK AND TIRED OF CAREER POLITICIANS. We hired you because we are sick of the GREED, DUPLICITY,
THE CORRUPTION of Congress and the past administrations that have enriched the elite, while robbing from the American taxpayer.
Already, the public has noticed that you have had a LOT of the old-guard/same ol' same ol' Republican Washington "insiders"
advising you. We understand that you will need some guidance in the first few months. All "apprentices" do.
However, we, as your employers, will NOT TOLERATE THE SAME OL' SAME OL' ANYMORE.
We hired YOU to do the right THINGS. "Drain The Swamp" "Take Our Country BACK".
Commencing January 21, 2017, that's exactly what we demand of you – our new employee.
WE WILL WANT RESULTS. ACTIONS. CHANGE.
WE WILL WANT INVESTIGATIONS. ARRESTS. PROSECUTIONS OF THE PEOPLE THAT WRONGED THIS NATION. STOLE FROM IT. CORRUPTED IT. DAMAGED
IT.
Just like you monitored your "apprentices", and judged them on their performances, WE ARE JUDGING YOU. And we are NOT going
to be fooled, like the oppositions legions were and are; by a biased media that lies to them. No one is going to get a "pass"
anymore. Especially like your immediate predecessor.
That's over. On January 21, 2017, your official duties commence. We all wish you the best, and are with you. The last thing we want to do is tell you;
Concern that President-Elect Trump may not have foreseen what a Medusas' head of Snakes the .gov is. Think Ron Paul has forewarned him. It's a nasty and corrupt business.
What!? How does the last line jive with the rest above it?
You must have meant "If you don't perform and deliver as promised, then You're Fired! In the meantime, You're Hired! Welcome
Aboard."
Read it again.
"On January 21, 2017, your official duties commence. We all wish you the best, and are with you. The last thing we want to do is tell you;
You're Fired."
-----------------------------
IF Trump even reads it (doubtful), he'll get it. I get your point though Captain.
it was just yesterday that I had posted the following to a friend... very similar.
I know, well the Internet people that elected him may and can put tremendous pressure on him to do the right thing... And I
expect that to happen...I expect the people to demand through social media that they keep their promises and that they do what
they are told by the people that elected them.....can you imagine the damage that could happen if the trump supporters starting
to Diss him because he didn't do what he was told by the people that elected him.
I think in the very near future countries will be run by the people of the country via the Internet where everybody's voice
counts and the people that want to share their voice will be the actual leaders of the country and the people that want to watch
sports and stick their head in the sand will be sheeple.
I think referendums will be a much more common item
I wrote that in the hopes that someone on the "TTT" (Trump Transition Team) reads it, and maybe, maybe, shows Trump himself. We all know he trolls different sites - and I'll bet he trolls ZH.
I agree with you; the "internet people" elected him. The "alt-right" (which IS the new media) elected him. If we had no internet, and had to rely on the MSM, Clinton would have been elected.
Or worse. But they are now the "old guard ". It is funny....sickening...and sad to watch them flail away like they have relevancy -
THEY don't.
In a big way, this election was a wake up call to THEM (like the NYT piece on here shows), to clean up THEIR act.
NO MORE business as usual. CFR meets and Washington insider parties of poo.
I actually DID convince 18 people to switch from Clinton to Trump (really, it was 12 from Cruz/Bush/Sanders, and 6 outright
flip Clinton to Trump).. and ALL of them HAD been a daily staple of watching the MSM.
Getting them to stop was akin to getting a smoker off cigarettes. Some still do - but they NOW know how the MSM LIES.
(One way I showed them? A tape on YouTube of 60 Minutes "editing techniques", linked below, which REALLY opened some eyes)
The video embedded in this thread - when Ann Coulter was on Bill Maher and got mocked for her backing Trump - in several instances
- was me in 2014 and 2015. I got laughed at by many for coming out for Trump back then.
However, what I wrote is true. I literally changed 18 people into Trump supporters from then to now.
The reasons are many - but the MAIN one is;
I'm. PISSED. OFF.
I'm angry as to the mis-management, lies and over-regulation that has killed the little guy in businesses. I'm angry as to
the lies and deceit from the bought of main stream media. A whole LOT of other reasons as well.
I am giving free reign for anyone here to re-post this on ANY internet forum they want; Brietbart, Drudge, and ANY online newspaper
comment op-ed section they wish.
I only am a commenter here. I choose not to become one on any other forum.
Please copy and paste it anywhere you'd like.
I'm just a little guy. A "peon". However, I did work hard for Trump. I expect no compensation. No recognition.
I DO expect Trump however - to DO WHAT he said. As a political outsider.
I am concerned as to the vipers, old guard Washington insiders, and of course, the Deep State - along with Israel - getting
to Trump.
WE didn't elect them. We elected HIM.
So please - have at it. Post away.
I hope my post inspires others to do their own "Apprentice" type open letters to Trump.
He needs to hear from us (and I bet he does troll ZH and other finanical sites.)
Some people understood the situation in 2017, when most Trump voters were still full of illutions.
Notable quotes:
"... you like most losers are driven by your own projections. You projected your hopes and wishful thinking on Trump and it worked perfectly for him. He got elected. ..."
"... now after firing Bannon there is nothing left. He was the last and the only guarantor of your hopes. That's why MSM hated Bannon so much. ..."
"... torture, Guantanamo and stealing their oil ..."
This turn of events is the biggest challenge ever to my support of Trump. If he really goes the way he is indicating, he will
lose the support of people like me -- and there may be millions like me. We have no alternative candidate, but we will never
again be led down this road.
If Trump turns, that is the end of everything.
" we will never again be led down this road." You will, you will because you like most losers are driven by your own projections.
You projected your hopes and wishful thinking on Trump and it worked perfectly for him. He got elected.
But now after firing Bannon there is nothing left. He was the last and the only guarantor of your hopes. That's why MSM
hated Bannon so much.
The only pre-election promises that actually will be retained are torture, Guantanamo and stealing their oil. Did you vote
for these items? Anyway, that is all you are left with. Get used to it:
That never materialized... Also appointment of Pompeo show that Trump is a marionette
I was actually surprised by the amount of Trump hating comments to this article.... What is so criminal in trying to reorganize
two of 12 Us intelligence agencies. Which might become too bloated and deviate from their original purposes. Is not how restructuring
is used in business world ? And the number of commenters blaclmpousing Putin and Russia create great alarm. Looks like the US MSM managed
to brainwash the US population like in 50th during "Red Scare". Some comments looks like hate sessions from 1984.
Notable quotes:
"... Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 - Amends the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 to authorize the Secretary of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to provide for the preparation and dissemination of information intended for foreign audiences abroad about the United States, including about its people, its history, and the federal government's policies, through press, publications, radio, motion pictures, the Internet, and other information media, including social media, and through information centers and instructors. ..."
"... This use of propaganda on the American public effectively nullified the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which explicitly forbids information and psychological operations aimed at influencing U.S. public opinion. ..."
"... The NDAA in its current form allows the State Department and Pentagon to go beyond manipulating mainstream media outlets to directly disseminate campaigns of misinformation to the U.S. public. ..."
"... They refused to brief Congress. They were never allowed to release their findings publicly, because they still haven't. They leaked their conclusions. All to attempt to undermine the stability of their own country. And you don't see this. ..."
"... This is why Wikileaks exists. What the MSM can no longer deliver (the TRUTH and credible news), Wikileaks can deliver to the American people. ..."
"... Are you claiming the US hasn't done all it can to destabilize and destroy Russia? ..."
"... This blame Russia frenzy is a loser strategy. The sole purpose is to deligitimize Trump's victory. Can't wait for Trump to start firing a**es. ..."
"The view from the Trump team is the intelligence world [is] becoming completely politicized," an individual close to Trump's
transition operation said. "They all need to be slimmed down. The focus will be on restructuring agencies and how they interact."
Trump is targeting the CIA and the ODNI as he publicly wars with the U.S. intelligence community over its conclusion that Russia
interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump wants to shrink the ODNI, as he believes the agency established in 2004 as a response to the 9/11 terror attacks has become
bloated and politicized.
Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 - Amends the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 to authorize
the Secretary of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to provide for the preparation and dissemination of information
intended for foreign audiences abroad about the United States, including about its people, its history, and the federal government's
policies, through press, publications, radio, motion pictures, the Internet, and other information media, including social media,
and through information centers and instructors.
The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 passed Congress as part of the NDAA 2013 on December 28, 2012.
This use of propaganda on the American public effectively nullified the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which explicitly forbids
information and psychological operations aimed at influencing U.S. public opinion.
The NDAA in its current form allows the State Department and Pentagon to go beyond manipulating mainstream media outlets
to directly disseminate campaigns of misinformation to the U.S. public.
But the US public learned quickly and they are not buying the misinformation anymore.
1) Renewables: "I know more about renewables than any human being on Earth." - April 2016
2) Social media: "I understand social media. I understand the power of Twitter. I understand the power of Facebook maybe better
than almost
anybody, based on my results, right?" - November 2015
3) Debt: "Nobody knows more about debt. I'm like the king. I love debt." - May 2016
4) Taxes, again : "I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world. Nobody knows more about
taxes." - May 2016. I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can
fix them. #failing@nytimes
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2016
They refused to brief Congress. They were never allowed to release their findings publicly, because they still haven't. They
leaked their conclusions. All to attempt to undermine the stability of their own country. And you don't see this.
No, we haven't, and we didn't. In fact, his former boss -- Yeltsin -- hired Republican political consultants to help his campaign.
Putin would like the world to believe that Russians fed up with bribery, extortion, the fall of the ruble, and the fact that their
votes don't count rising up and protesting was about outside meddling, but it was internal.
And he responded by making protests illegal, getting rid of the election of governors (he appoints them now), closing down
critical reporting outlets, and some journalists were murdered.
You moron, I served the US for 20 years in the military, but facts are facts and we need to butt the he!! out of other countries
business, and until we do, they will continue to come after us. How long were you in?
Trump has described his son-in-law as a "great guy". The president-elect has also reportedly taken the unprecedented step of requesting
security clearance for Kushner to attend top-secret presidential briefings, the first one of which was on Tuesday. It's unclear if
the request will be approved. It marks an astonishing departure and invites the accusation of nepotism.
Kushner's options for a White House job are limited given his family ties to the president, Richard Painter, who served as President
George W Bush's White House ethics lawyer, told the Associated Press. Congress passed an anti-nepotism law in 1967 that prohibits
the president from appointing a family member – including a son-in-law – to work in the office or agency they oversee. The measure
was passed after President John F Kennedy appointed his brother, Robert Kennedy, as attorney general.
But the law does not appear to prevent Kushner from serving as an unpaid adviser, and few doubt that Kushner will play a decisive
role in shaping the Trump presidency, acting as policy adviser and gate-keeper. As
Trump and Barack Obama met privately at the White House last week, Kushner strolled the mansion's South Lawn, deep in conversation
with Obama's chief of staff. As Kushner walked through the bustling West Wing during Trump's visit last week, he was heard asking
Obama aides: "How many of these people stay?", apparently blissfully unaware that the entire West Wing staff will leave at the end
of Obama's term.
His contacts already include Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch; he has received foreign ambassadors. Like Trump, Kushner has
never had a formal role in government, but he now appears set to be more important than many who do.
Comey was a part of the coup -- a color revolution against Trump with Bremmen (possibly assigned by Obama) pulling the strings. That's right. This is a banana republic with nukes.
Notable quotes:
"... "Earlier this week, I met separately with FBI [Director] James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election," the message said, according to officials who have seen it. ..."
"... Comment: The FBI now flip-flops from its previous assessment: FBI rejects CIA assessment that Russia influenced presidential election ..."
FBI and National
Intelligence chiefs both agree with the CIA assessment that Russia interfered with the 2016 US presidential elections partly in an
effort to help Donald Trump win the White House, US media report.
FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper are both convinced that Russia was behind cyberattacks
that targeted Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman, John Podesta,
The Washington Post and reported Friday, citing a message sent by CIA Director John Brennan to his employees.
"Earlier this week, I met separately with FBI [Director] James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among
us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election," the message said, according to officials
who have seen it.
"The three of us also agree that our organizations, along with others, need to focus on completing the thorough review of this
issue that has been directed by President Obama and which is being led by the DNI," it continued.
If if 2016 there were some hope not we know that Trump folded. Completely. He actually is not a President. he is a marionette.
Notable quotes:
"... Bankers & Trump: Bankers know you capture catch more flies with money honey. ..."
"... " former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who has known Trump socially for decades and is currently advising the president-elect on foreign policy issues " - I really, really hope this is just Hammerin' Hank tooting his own horn, as he and his sycophants in the FP establishment and MSM are wont to do. ..."
"... "Trump dumps the TPP: conservatives rue strategic fillip to China" (Guardian) Another wedge angle for Trumps new-found RINO "friends" to play. Trump will have as many problems with Ayn Ryan Congress as Obama/Clinton on economic issues. ..."
"... And if Abe's Japan were really an independent country, they'd pick up the TPP baton and sell it to China. ..."
"The Trump campaign, meanwhile, delved into message tailoring, sentiment manipulation and machine learning." - Oh, please,
this sounds like a stereotypical Google-centric view of things. They of course left out the most important part of the campaign,
the key to its inception, which could be described in terms like "The Trump campaign, meanwhile, actually noticed the widespread
misery and non-recovery in the parts of the US outside the elite coastal bubbles and DC beltway, and spotted a yuuuge political
opportunity." In other words, not sentiment manipulation – that was, after all, the Dem-establishment-MSM-wall-street-and-the-elite-technocrats'
"America is already great, and anyone who denies it is deplorable!" strategy of manufactured consent – so much as actual *reading*
of sentiment. Of course if one insisted on remaining inside a protective elite echo chamber and didn't listen to anything Trump
or the attendees actually said in those huge flyover-country rallies that wasn't captured in suitably outrageous evening-news
soundbites, it was all too easy to believe one's own hype.
" former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who has known Trump socially for decades and is currently advising the president-elect
on foreign policy issues " - I really, really hope this is just Hammerin' Hank tooting his own horn, as he and his sycophants
in the FP establishment and MSM are wont to do.
"Trump dumps the TPP: conservatives rue strategic fillip to China" (Guardian) Another wedge angle for Trumps new-found
RINO "friends" to play. Trump will have as many problems with Ayn Ryan Congress as Obama/Clinton on economic issues.
"The TPP excludes China, which declined to join, proposing its own rival version, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership
(RCEP), which excludes the US." You see, it is all China's fault. No info presented on why China "declined" to join.
And if Abe's Japan were really an independent country, they'd pick up the TPP baton and sell it to China.
One of the rare early realistic assessments of Trump foreign policy. most were wrong. Circe was right in major points. The
appointment of CIA director was the litmus test and Trump failed it by appointing neocon Pompeo.
Trump foreign policy is a typical neocon foreign policy. People just tried to overlook it in vain hopes that Trump will change the US
foreign policy
Notable quotes:
"... 95% or more of the individuals Trump is considering for his administration, including those already picked have a deep-seated obsession with Iran. This is very troubling. It's going to lead to war and not a regular war where 300,000 people die. This is a catastrophic error in judgment I don't give a sh...t who makes such an error, Trump or the representative from Kalamazoo! This is so bad that it disqualifies whatever else appears positive at this time. ..."
"... And one more deeply disturbing thing; Pompeo, chosen to head the CIA has threatened Ed Snowden with the death penalty, if Snowden is caught, and now as CIA Director he can send operatives to chase him down wherever he is and render him somewhere, torture him to find out who he shared intelligence with and kill him on the spot and pretend it was a foreign agent who did the job. He already stated before he was assigned this powerful post that Snowden should be brought back from Russia and get the death penalty for treason. ..."
"... Pompeo also sided with the Obama Administration on using U. S. military force in Syria against Assad and wrote this in the Washington Post: "Russia continues to side with rogue states and terrorist organizations, following Vladimir Putin's pattern of gratuitous and unpunished affronts to U.S. interests,". ..."
"... Aside: I find those who talk about "factions" in foreign policy making to be un-credible. Among these were those that spoke of 'Obama's legacy'. A bullshit concept for a puppet. The neocons control FP. And they could only be unseated if a neocon -unfriendly President was elected. ..."
"... Trump is turning animosity away from Russia and toward Iran. But I doubt that it will result in a shooting war with Iran. The 'deep-state' (arms industry and security agencies) just wants a foreign enemy as a means of ensuring that US govt continues to fund security agencies and buy arms. ..."
"... And really, Obama's "peace deal" with Iran was bogus anyway. It was really just a placeholder until Assad could be toppled. Only a small amount of funds were released to Iran, and US-Iranian relations have been just as bad as they were before the "peace deal". So all the hand-wringing about Trump vs. Iran is silly. ..."
"... What is important is that with Iran as the nominal enemy du jour plus Trump's campaign pledge to have the "strongest" military (note: every candidate was for a strong military), the neocons have no case to make that Trump is weak on defense. ..."
"... he is close to Jews/Zionists/Israel or even Jewish himself. Funny that Trump wasn't attacked like that before the election, huh? ..."
95% or more of the individuals Trump is considering for his administration, including those already picked have a deep-seated
obsession with Iran. This is very troubling. It's going to lead to war and not a regular war where 300,000 people die. This is
a catastrophic error in judgment I don't give a sh...t who makes such an error, Trump or the representative from Kalamazoo! This
is so bad that it disqualifies whatever else appears positive at this time.
And one more deeply disturbing thing; Pompeo, chosen to head the CIA has threatened Ed Snowden with the death penalty, if Snowden
is caught, and now as CIA Director he can send operatives to chase him down wherever he is and render him somewhere, torture him
to find out who he shared intelligence with and kill him on the spot and pretend it was a foreign agent who did the job. He already
stated before he was assigned this powerful post that Snowden should be brought back from Russia and get the death penalty for
treason.
Pompeo also sided with the Obama Administration on using U. S. military force in Syria against Assad and wrote this in the
Washington Post: "Russia continues to side with rogue states and terrorist organizations, following Vladimir Putin's pattern
of gratuitous and unpunished affronts to U.S. interests,".
That's not all, Pompeo wants to enhance the surveillance state, and he too wants to tear up the Iran deal.
Many of you here are extremely naïve regarding Trump.
b's speculation has the ring of truth. I've often wondered if Trump was encouraged to run by a deep-state faction that found
the neocons to be abhorrent and dangerous.
Aside: I find those who talk about "factions" in foreign policy making to be un-credible. Among these were those that spoke
of 'Obama's legacy'. A bullshit concept for a puppet. The neocons control FP. And they could only be unseated if a neocon-unfriendly
President was elected.
Trump is turning animosity away from Russia and toward Iran. But I doubt that it will result in a shooting war with Iran. The
'deep-state' (arms industry and security agencies) just wants a foreign enemy as a means of ensuring that US govt continues to
fund security agencies and buy arms.
And really, Obama's "peace deal" with Iran was bogus anyway. It was really just a placeholder
until Assad could be toppled. Only a small amount of funds were released to Iran, and US-Iranian relations have been just as bad
as they were before the "peace deal". So all the hand-wringing about Trump vs. Iran is silly.
What is important is that with Iran as the nominal enemy du jour plus Trump's campaign pledge to have the "strongest" military
(note: every candidate was for a strong military), the neocons have no case to make that Trump is weak on defense.
And so it is interesting that those that want to undermine Trump have resorted to the claim that he is close to Jews/Zionists/Israel
or even Jewish himself. Funny that Trump wasn't attacked like that before the election, huh?
The profound changes and profound butt-hurt lead to the following poignant questions:
>> Have we just witnessed a counter-coup?
>> Isn't it sad that, in 2016(!), the only check on elites are other elite factions?
An enormous cultural failure that has produced a brittle social fabric.
>> If control of NSA snooping power is so crucial, why would ANY ruling block ever allow the another to gain power?
Indeed, the answer to this question informs one's view on whether the anti-Trump protests are just Democratic Party ass-covering/distraction
or a real attempt at a 'color revolution'.
Trump failed his electorate in this critical metric. And as such does not deserve a reelection
Notable quotes:
"... Trump's success of failure will be measured by one thing: number of factory jobs added or lost, series MANEMP at the St. Louis FRED website.* If he doesn't create at least about 100,000 a year, he's in trouble. ..."
"... Disruption of neoliberal status quo and sending Hillary and some other neocon warmongers packing is already an achievement, not matter how you slice it. ..."
"... And a hissy fit that some factions of CIA demonstrated just before inauguration (it should not be considered as a monolithic organization; more like feudal kingdom of competing and often hostile to each other and to Pentagon and FBI factions ) was a reaction to this setback to neoconservatives in Washington. ..."
"... If Trump does what he promised in foreign policy: to end the wars for the expansion of neoliberal empire and to end of Cold War II with Russia it will be a huge achievement, even if the US economics not recover from Obama's secular stagnation (oil prices probably will go higher this year, representing an important headwind) . ..."
"... While we are writing those posts nuclear forces of both the USA and Russia are on high alert, and if something happen (and proliferation of computers make this more rather then less likely), the leaders of both countries have less then 20 minutes to decide about launching a full scale nuclear war. Actually Russia now has less time because of forward movement of NATO forces. ..."
Trump's success of failure will be measured by one thing: number of factory jobs added or lost, series MANEMP at the St. Louis
FRED website.* If he doesn't create at least about 100,000 a year, he's in trouble.
*assuming the data continues to be reported if it goes south on him, or he doesn't insist that the method of measuring change.
Something that is a real fear.
Slightly OT, there is one well-known wonky government data site I am watching. I think there are better than 50/50 odds it
disappears within the next two weeks.
Disruption of neoliberal status quo and sending Hillary and some other neocon warmongers packing is already an achievement,
not matter how you slice it.
And a hissy fit that some factions of CIA demonstrated just before inauguration (it should not be considered as a monolithic
organization; more like feudal kingdom of competing and often hostile to each other and to Pentagon and FBI factions ) was a reaction
to this setback to neoconservatives in Washington.
If Trump does what he promised in foreign policy: to end the wars for the expansion of neoliberal empire and to end of
Cold War II with Russia it will be a huge achievement, even if the US economics not recover from Obama's secular stagnation (oil
prices probably will go higher this year, representing an important headwind) .
No further escalation in geopolitical conflicts represents an important tailwind and might help.
While we are writing those posts nuclear forces of both the USA and Russia are on high alert, and if something happen (and
proliferation of computers make this more rather then less likely), the leaders of both countries have less then 20 minutes to
decide about launching a full scale nuclear war. Actually Russia now has less time because of forward movement of NATO forces.
Professor Stephen Cohen thinks that this is worse then Cuban Missile Crisis and he is an expert in this area.
"... Define unprecedented. What are your standards for a "major western nation"? Any moral standard? Do they include blowing up countries, using militarized spooks with unlimited secret funding? ..."
"... If you side with the devil what are you? In tilting with the CIA, Trump is a saint. ..."
"... Don't worry. Be happy. Nothing can be done now. The voters wanted someone to "shake things up." Trump will be applying creative destruction to government ..."
"... Obama failed to drive the NeoCons out of government. Trump may do so, but the replacement might be fundamentally more corrupt. ..."
"... Looters on the other hand love destruction. The resulting chaos affords them more opportunity to get windfalls. Trump will give the voters the radical change they think they want. But Trump will use the destruction as an opportunity for personal gain. The public will be left with a gutted government that will need to be rebuilt before it will function again ..."
"... One quibble: The destruction he applies will not be creative. It will be thorough but entirely unimaginative. ..."
"... Why do you think a war is brewing? What do you think is going to happen? They'll give him bad intel like they did with Bush? ..."
"... The meme that Trump will "get US into war" is a Clinton loser-whiner meme! Delusional and misleading; the neocon Clinton would have done Putin first CIA fictional, regime change excuse the yellow press could spread. ..."
"... Because they are already reportedly telling some of their contacts not to trust the government with information in case it ends up with hostile governments. Maybe using the word "war" is misleading. Maybe "cold war" is more accurate, but in general I mean a state of mutual distrust. ..."
Just as an aside - not really economics, but I am really worrying about what the war between the future white house team and the
CIA that seems to be brewing. I don't see good solutions to this. It is sort of unprecedented in a major western country. Can
you think of a similar case (where the intelligence services - and perhaps the military as well regarded there own government
head as an enemy agent)?
Define unprecedented. What are your standards for a "major western nation"? Any moral standard? Do they include blowing up
countries, using militarized spooks with unlimited secret funding?
If you side with the devil what are you? In tilting with the CIA, Trump is a saint.
Don't worry. Be happy. Nothing can be done now. The voters wanted someone to "shake things up." Trump will be applying creative
destruction to government
Obama failed to drive the NeoCons out of government. Trump may do so, but the replacement might be fundamentally more corrupt.
As with Obamacare, the idea is to destroy it and replace it with something better. Most revolutions find it easy to destroy
and very much harder to build Most sane leaders recognize this difficulty and modify the existing rather than destroy and never
getting around to replacement or find the replacement to be worse than the existing.
Looters on the other hand love destruction. The resulting chaos affords them more opportunity to get windfalls. Trump will
give the voters the radical change they think they want. But Trump will use the destruction as an opportunity for personal gain.
The public will be left with a gutted government that will need to be rebuilt before it will function again
I don't believe in "creative destruction", I believe in "destructive creation" which is something quite different. But that is
not the point. This is not about the government as such, it is about the security apparatus in itself. It could get very nasty
if that ends up either totally alienated or politicized.
If I were President, provoking an organization whose specialty is covert operations and which has track record of bringing about
the demise of insufficiently agreeable leaders would not be high on my to-do list.
The meme that Trump will "get US into war" is a Clinton loser-whiner meme! Delusional and misleading; the neocon Clinton would
have done Putin first CIA fictional, regime change excuse the yellow press could spread.
Trump is an isolationist who repeatedly said the Iraq war was a disaster, which it was. If the CIA is going after Trump they're
doing a bad job. The worst they could come up with is some unverified accounts that Trump likes pee-pee parties.
Because they are already reportedly telling some of their contacts not to trust the government with information in case it
ends up with hostile governments. Maybe using the word "war" is misleading. Maybe "cold war" is more accurate, but in general
I mean a state of mutual distrust.
This commenter Libezkova was right: Trump folded. And probably he was a phony fighter with neoliberalism and globalization from
the very beginning. So voters were deceived exactly like they were with Obama.
Notable quotes:
"... It's hilarious that the progressive neoliberals like DeLong, Krugman, Drum, Yglesias etc have said exactly nothing about Trump's tweets at Congressional Republicans over the independent ethics committee. ..."
"... There is a propaganda technique where you describe straw-person characterizations then undermine them. When in fact the whole longwinded campaign depends on readers and listeners not bothering or too tired to focus and see the mischaracterizations in the straw. ..."
"... This whole thing is an apologia, for propaganda purposes, as I see it. We all need to take care. It takes a lot of money and effort to organize such propaganda exercises. Please take care in using and reusing these type things. ..."
"... Theoretically that might give Democrats a chance, but I think the Clintonized Party is too corrupt to take this chance. "An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought." ;-) ..."
"... In any case, 2018 elections will be very interesting as I think that the process of a slow collapse of neoliberal ideology and the rise of the US nationalist movements ("far right") will continue unabated. ..."
"At every point of the race, Mr. Trump was doing better among white voters without a college degree than Mitt Romney did
in 2012 - by a wide margin. Mrs. Clinton was also not matching Mr. Obama's support among black voters."
"Mrs. Clinton's gains were concentrated among the most affluent and best-educated white voters, much as Mr. Trump's gains
were concentrated among the lowest-income and least-educated white voters."
Trump won the Republican primary and general election.
""Trump dominated - in the primary and general elections - those districts represented by Congress's most conservative members,"
Tim Alberta wrote in National Review (he is now at Politico):
They once believed they were elected to advance a narrowly ideological agenda, but Trump's success has given them reason to
question that belief.
Among these archconservatives, who in the past had been fanatical in their pursuit of ideological purity, the realization that
they can no longer depend on unfailing support from their constituents has provoked deep anxiety."
These archconservatives who say that Trump's flimsy mandate is just based on just 80,000 votes in the rustbelt are in for a
rude awakening. He won the primary. In Northern States. In Southern States. Everywhere.
It's hilarious that the progressive neoliberals like DeLong, Krugman, Drum, Yglesias etc have said exactly nothing about
Trump's tweets at Congressional Republicans over the independent ethics committee.
There is a propaganda technique where you describe straw-person characterizations then undermine them. When in fact the whole
longwinded campaign depends on readers and listeners not bothering or too tired to focus and see the mischaracterizations in the
straw.
This whole thing is an apologia, for propaganda purposes, as I see it. We all need to take care. It takes a lot of money
and effort to organize such propaganda exercises. Please take care in using and reusing these type things.
"Trump has converted the GOP into a populist, America First party" is an overstatement. He definitely made some efforts
in this direction, but it is premature to declare this "fait accompli".
If we consider two possibilities: "GOP establishment chew up Trump" and "Trump chew up GOP establishment" it is clear that
possibility is more probable.
Theoretically that might give Democrats a chance, but I think the Clintonized Party is too corrupt to take this chance.
"An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought." ;-)
In any case, 2018 elections will be very interesting as I think that the process of a slow collapse of neoliberal ideology
and the rise of the US nationalist movements ("far right") will continue unabated.
This is the same process that we see in full force in EU.
"... It was possible to say, before Warren G. Harding was elected, that he wasn't particularly well-qualified to be president. And he did turn out as president to have, as we say nowadays, some issues. But his administration was stocked with (mostly) well-qualified men who served with considerable distinction. ..."
"... To succeed in business, the brand only gets you so far. Quality matters. To succeed in the presidency, getting elected only gets you so far. Governing matters. ..."
"... But how Hegelian it would be if the thesis of the Bush and Clinton dynasties, followed by the antithesis of a Trump victory over first a Bush and then a Clinton in 2016, were to produce an unanticipated synthesis: a Trump administration marked by the reconstruction of republican normalcy in America. In its own way, that would be a genuine contribution to making America great again. ..."
"... Kristol is mad Trump lambasted the Iraq war. Was Putin against the Iraq war? I think the whole world was except for the "Coalition of the Willing." You'll never see the UK back another war like that. ..."
"... "Socialist feminist Liza Featherstone and others have denounced Clinton's uncritical praise of the "opportunity" and "freedom" of American capitalism vis-à-vis other developed nations. "With this bit of frankness," Featherstone explains, referring to the former Secretary of State's "Denmark" comments, "Clinton helpfully explained why no socialist-indeed, no non-millionaire-should support her. She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of the idea that the United States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the Democratic Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism." ..."
"... Of course the progressive neoliberals in this forum regularly resort to ad hominem to any ideas or facts that don't line up with the agreed-upon party line. ..."
The Trump Administration http://tws.io/2iFd3rC
via @WeeklyStandard
Nov 28, 2016 - William Kristol
Who now gives much thought to the presidency of Warren G. Harding? Who ever did? Not us.
But let us briefly turn our thoughts to our 29th president (while stipulating that we're certainly no experts on his life or
times). Here's our summary notion: Warren G. Harding may have been a problematic president. But the Harding administration was
in some ways an impressive one, which served the country reasonably well.
It was possible to say, before Warren G. Harding was elected, that he wasn't particularly well-qualified to be president.
And he did turn out as president to have, as we say nowadays, some issues. But his administration was stocked with (mostly) well-qualified
men who served with considerable distinction.
Andrew Mellon was a successful Treasury secretary whose tax reforms and deregulatory efforts spurred years of economic growth.
Charles Dawes, the first director of the Bureau of the Budget, reduced government expenditures and, helped by Mellon's economic
policies, brought the budget into balance. Charles Evans Hughes as secretary of state dealt responsibly with a very difficult
world situation his administration had inherited-though in light of what followed in the next decade, one wishes in retrospect
for bolder assertions of American leadership, though in those years just after World War I, they would have been contrary to the
national mood.
In addition, President Harding's first two Supreme Court appointments -- William Howard Taft and George Sutherland -- were
distinguished ones. And Harding personally did some admirable things: He made pronouncements, impressive in the context of that
era, in favor of racial equality; he commuted the wartime prison sentence of the Socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs. In these ways,
he contributed to an atmosphere of national healing and civility.
The brief Harding administration-and for that matter the eight years constituting his administration and that of his vice president
and successor, Calvin Coolidge-may not have been times of surpassing national greatness. But there were real achievements, especially
in the economic sphere; those years were not disastrous; they were not dark times.
President-elect Donald J. Trump probably doesn't intend to model his administration on that of President Warren G. Harding.
But he could do worse than reflect on that administration's successes-and also on its failures, particularly the scandals that
exploded into public view after Harding's sudden death. These were produced by cronies appointed by Harding to important positions,
where they betrayed his trust and tarnished his historical reputation.
Donald Trump manifestly cares about his reputation. He surely knows that reputation ultimately depends on performance. If a
Trump hotel and casino is successful, it's not because of the Trump brand-that may get people through the door the first time-but
because it provides a worthwhile experience thanks to a good management team, fine restaurants, deft croupiers, and fun shows.
If a Trump golf course succeeds, it's because it has been built and is run by people who know something about golf. The failed
Trump efforts-from the university to the steaks-seem to have in common the assumption that the Trump name by itself would be enough
to carry mediocre or worse enterprises across the finish line.
To succeed in business, the brand only gets you so far. Quality matters. To succeed in the presidency, getting elected only
gets you so far. Governing matters.
It would be ironic if Trump's very personal electoral achievement were followed by a mode of governance that restored greater
responsibility to the cabinet agencies formally entrusted with the duties of governance. It would be ironic if a Trump presidency
also featured a return of authority to Congress, the states, and to other civic institutions. It would be ironic if Trump's victory
led not to a kind of American Caesarism but to a strengthening of republican institutions and forms. It would be ironic if the
election of Donald J. Trump heralded a return to a kind of constitutional normalcy.
If we are not mistaken, it was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (though sadly unaware of the phenomena of either Warren G. Harding
or Donald J. Trump) who made much of the Irony of History.
But how Hegelian it would be if the thesis of the Bush and Clinton dynasties, followed by the antithesis of a Trump victory
over first a Bush and then a Clinton in 2016, were to produce an unanticipated synthesis: a Trump administration marked by the
reconstruction of republican normalcy in America. In its own way, that would be a genuine contribution to making America great
again.
(Harding-Coolidge-Hoover were a disastrous triumvirate that ascended to power after the Taft & Wilson administrations, as the
GOP - then the embodiment of progressivism - split apart due to the efforts of Teddy Roosevelt.)
Peter K. -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
Kristol is mad Trump lambasted the Iraq war. Was Putin against the Iraq war? I think the whole world was except for the
"Coalition of the Willing." You'll never see the UK back another war like that.
It is the neocon's taking a back seat! Kristol is co-founder of PNAC along with a Clinton mob long time foggy bottom associate's
husband.. Trump is somewhat less thrilled with tilting with Russia for the American empire which is as moral as Nero's Rome.
ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
Prescient: dumping Kristol's PNAC will strengthen the republic.
"Socialist feminist Liza Featherstone and others have denounced Clinton's uncritical praise of the "opportunity" and "freedom"
of American capitalism vis-à-vis other developed nations. "With this bit of frankness," Featherstone explains, referring to the
former Secretary of State's "Denmark" comments, "Clinton helpfully explained why no socialist-indeed, no non-millionaire-should
support her. She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity
than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of
the idea that the United States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the Democratic
Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism."
Is it better to ignore this fault line and try to paper it over or is it better to debate the issues in a polite and congenial
manner?
Of course the progressive neoliberals in this forum regularly resort to ad hominem to any ideas or facts that don't line
up with the agreed-upon party line.
Kristof panic was premature and just shows that he is a really has no political analyst
talent whatsoever. Trump was quickly co-opted by neocons.
It is interesting that Kristof, even at such an early stages of Russiagate was already
"FullOfSchiff"
"... The CIA says it has "high confidence" that Russia was trying to get Trump elected, and,
according to The Washington Post, the directors of the F.B.I. and national intelligence agree
with that conclusion. ..."
"... Now we come to the most reckless step of all: This Russian poodle is acting in character
by giving important government posts to friends of Moscow, in effect rewarding it for its attack
on the United States. ..."
"... Rex Tillerson, Trump's nominee for secretary of state, is a smart and capable manager.
Yet it's notable that he is particularly close to Putin, who had decorated Tillerson with
Russia's "Order of Friendship." ..."
In 1972, President Richard Nixon's White House dispatched burglars to bug Democratic Party
offices. That Watergate burglary and related "dirty tricks," such as releasing mice at a
Democratic press conference and paying a woman to strip naked and shout her love for a
Democratic candidate, nauseated Americans - and impelled some of us kids at the time to pursue
journalism.
Now in 2016 we have a political scandal that in some respects is even more staggering.
Russian agents apparently broke into the Democrats' digital offices and tried to change the
election outcome. President Obama on Friday suggested that this was probably directed by
Russia's president, saying, "Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin."
In Watergate, the break-in didn't affect the outcome of the election. In 2016, we don't know
for sure. There were other factors, but it's possible that Russia's theft and release of the
emails provided the margin for Donald Trump's victory.
The CIA says it has "high confidence" that Russia was trying to get Trump elected, and,
according to The Washington Post, the directors of the F.B.I. and national intelligence agree
with that conclusion.
Both Nixon and Trump responded badly to the revelations, Nixon by ordering a cover-up and
Trump by denouncing the CIA and, incredibly, defending Russia from the charges that it tried to
subvert our election. I never thought I would see a dispute between America's intelligence
community and a murderous foreign dictator in which an American leader sided with the
dictator.
Let's be clear: This was an attack on America, less lethal than a missile but still
profoundly damaging to our system. It's not that Trump and Putin were colluding to steal an
election. But if the CIA is right, Russia apparently was trying to elect a president who would
be not a puppet exactly but perhaps something of a lap dog - a Russian poodle.
In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair was widely (and unfairly) mocked as President George
W. Bush's poodle, following him loyally into the Iraq war. The fear is that this time Putin may
have interfered to acquire an ally who likewise will roll over for him.
Frankly, it's mystifying that Trump continues to defend Russia and Putin, even as he
excoriates everyone else, from CIA officials to a local union leader in Indiana.
Now we come to the most reckless step of all: This Russian poodle is acting in character
by giving important government posts to friends of Moscow, in effect rewarding it for its
attack on the United States.
Rex Tillerson, Trump's nominee for secretary of state, is a smart and capable manager.
Yet it's notable that he is particularly close to Putin, who had decorated Tillerson with
Russia's "Order of Friendship."
Whatever our personal politics, how can we possibly want to respond to Russia's interference
in our election by putting American foreign policy in the hands of a Putin friend?
Tillerson's closeness to Putin is especially troubling because of Trump's other Russia
links. The incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, accepted Russian money to attend
a dinner in Moscow and sat near Putin. A ledger shows $12.7 million in secret payments by a
pro-Russia party in Ukraine to Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort. And the Trump
family itself has business connections with Russia.
In two years neocons completely occupied Trump administration.
Notable quotes:
"... It's a cliche to say that the cushiest positions of influence in any US administration go to figures who were seen to have brought something to the table during the campaign. ..."
"... a lot of high-ranking neoconservatives are expecting the exact opposite, figuring that they can step right into positions of power and influence despite openly campaigning against Trump. ..."
"... There are more than a few people who would normally be in line for top positions in a Republican White House, but who were very publicly part of the "Never Trump" crowd, attacking him throughout the primary and the general election. These same people are now making public their "willingness" to work with Trump. ..."
"... In other words, they want the usual spoils of victory, but having positioned themselves as so firmly in opposition to Trump's worldview, and to Trump in general, it's not at all clear how willing Trump's transition team is to consider such candidates for important positions. ..."
"... For many of the neocons, this is likely less about getting cushy jobs or fancy titles and more about ensuring that the US remains aggressively interventionist abroad. Indeed, many of these people split with Trump in the first place over concerns he was insufficiently hawkish, and now want jobs that would put them in a position to shift his new administration in those same hawkish directions. ..."
There are more than a few people who would normally be in line for top positions in a Republican White House, but who were
very publicly part of the "Never Trump" crowd, attacking him throughout the primary and the general election. These same people are
now making public their "willingness" to work with Trump.
In other words, they want the usual spoils of victory, but having positioned themselves as so firmly in opposition to Trump's
worldview, and to Trump in general, it's not at all clear how willing Trump's transition team is to consider such candidates for
important positions.
The early indications are that a lot of the foreign policy-related positions are going to be led by high-ranking former military
officials who backed Trump's candidacy, with officials noting that long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left them with a lot of
such officials to choose from.
For many of the neocons, this is likely less about getting cushy jobs or fancy titles and more about ensuring that the US
remains aggressively interventionist abroad. Indeed, many of these people split with Trump in the first place over concerns he was
insufficiently hawkish, and now want jobs that would put them in a position to shift his new administration in those same hawkish
directions.
"... Each new president inherits a sea of problems from his predecessor. Donald Trump's biggest legacy headaches and priority will be in the Mideast, a disaster area on its own but made far, far worse by the bungling of the Obama administration and its dimwitted attempts to put the US and Russia on a collision course. ..."
"... Thanks to George W. Bush – who dared show his face at the inauguration – and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama, Trump inherits America's longest war, Afghanistan, with our shameful support of mass drug dealing, endemic corruption and war crimes. Add the crazy mess in Iraq and now Syria. ..."
"... This week US B-2 heavy bombers attacked Libya. US forces are fighting in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and parts of Africa. For what? No one is quite sure. America's foreign wars, fueled by its $1 trillion military budget, have assumed a life of their own. Once a great power goes to war, its proponents insist, 'we can't be seen to back down or our credibility will suffer.' ..."
"... If President Trump truly wants to bring some sort of peace to the explosive Mideast, he will have to reject the advice of the hardline Zionists with whom he has chosen to surround himself. Their primary interest is Greater Israel, free of Arabs, not in a Greater America. Trump is too smart not to know this. But he may also listen to his blood and guts former generals who lost the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. ..."
"... Trump should be reminded that the 9/11 attackers cited two reasons for their attack: 1. Occupation of Saudi Arabia by the US; 2. Continued US-backed occupation of Palestine. Persistent attacks on western targets that we call terrorism are, in most cases, acts of revenge for our neo-colonial actions in the Muslim world, the 'American Raj' as I term it. ..."
What I found most impressive this time was the reaffirmation of America's dedication to the peaceful transfer of political power.
This was the 45th time this miracle has happened. Saying this is perhaps banal, but the handover of power never fails to make me
proud to be an American and thankful we had such brilliant founding fathers.
This peaceful transfer sets the United States apart from many of the world's nations, even Britain and Canada, where leaders under
the parliamentary system are chosen in a process resembling a knife fight in a dark room. The US has somehow managed to retain its
three branches of government in spite of the best efforts of self-serving politicians to wreck it.
Each new president inherits a sea of problems from his predecessor. Donald Trump's biggest legacy headaches and priority will
be in the Mideast, a disaster area on its own but made far, far worse by the bungling of the Obama administration and its dimwitted
attempts to put the US and Russia on a collision course.
Thanks to George W. Bush – who dared show his face at the inauguration – and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama, Trump inherits
America's longest war, Afghanistan, with our shameful support of mass drug dealing, endemic corruption and war crimes. Add the crazy
mess in Iraq and now Syria.
This week US B-2 heavy bombers attacked Libya. US forces are fighting in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and parts of Africa. For what?
No one is quite sure. America's foreign wars, fueled by its $1 trillion military budget, have assumed a life of their own. Once a
great power goes to war, its proponents insist, 'we can't be seen to back down or our credibility will suffer.'
Trump will struggle to find a face-saving retreat from these unnecessary conflicts and shut his ears to the siren songs of the
war party and deep state which just failed to stage a 'soft' coup to block his inauguration. Waging little wars against weak nations
is a multi-billion dollar national industry in the US. America has become as addicted to war as it has to debt.
If President Trump truly wants to bring some sort of peace to the explosive Mideast, he will have to reject the advice of the
hardline Zionists with whom he has chosen to surround himself. Their primary interest is Greater Israel, free of Arabs, not in a
Greater America. Trump is too smart not to know this. But he may also listen to his blood and guts former generals who lost the wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Trump appears to have been gulled into believing the canard that Mideast-origin violence is caused by what he called in his inaugural
speech, radical Islamic terrorism. This is a favorite device promoted by the hard right and Israel to de-legitimize any resistance
to Israel's expansion and ethnic cleansing. The label of 'terrorism' serves the same purpose.
Trump should be reminded that the 9/11 attackers cited two reasons for their attack: 1. Occupation of Saudi Arabia by the
US; 2. Continued US-backed occupation of Palestine. Persistent attacks on western targets that we call terrorism are, in most cases,
acts of revenge for our neo-colonial actions in the Muslim world, the 'American Raj' as I term it.
Unfortunately, President Trump is unlikely to get this useful advice from the men who now surround him, with the possibly exception
of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Let's hope that Tillerson and not Goldman Sachs bank ends up steering US foreign policy.
(Reprinted from EricMargolis.com by permission
of author or representative)
"... And, as I wrote last week, the biggest indicator as to whether or not he is truly going to follow through with his rhetoric is who he selects for his cabinet and top-level government positions. So far, he has picked Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff and Stephen Bannon as White House chief strategist. ..."
"... Reince Priebus is an establishment insider. He did NOTHING to help Trump get elected until toward the very end of the campaign. He is the current chairman of the Republican National Committee. ..."
"... On the other hand, Stephen Bannon is probably a very good pick. He headed Breitbart.com, which is one of the premier "alt-right" media outlets that has consistently led the charge against the globalist, anti-freedom agenda of the political establishment in Washington, D.C. Albeit, Bannon is probably blind to the dangers of Zionism and is, therefore, probably naïve about the New World Order. I don't believe anyone can truly understand the New World Order without being aware of the role that Zionism plays in it. ..."
"... To be honest, the possible appointments of Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, John Bolton and especially Newt Gingrich are MORE than troubling. Rudy Giuliani is "Mr. Police State," and if he is selected as the new attorney general, the burgeoning Police State in this country will go into hyperdrive. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is already warning us about this. Chris Christie is a typical New England liberal Republican. His appointment to any position bodes NOTHING good. And John Bolton is a Bush pro-war neocon. But Newt Gingrich is the quintessential insider, globalist, and establishment hack. ..."
"... Newt Gingrich is a HIGH LEVEL globalist and longtime CFR member. He is the consummate neocon. And he has a brilliant mind (NO morals, but a brilliant mind--a deadly combination, for sure). ..."
"... You cannot drain the swamp by putting the very people who filled the swamp back in charge. And that's exactly what Trump would be doing if he appoints Gingrich to any high-level position in his administration. ..."
"... Trump is already softening his position on illegal immigration, on dismantling the EPA, on repealing Obamacare, on investigating and prosecuting Hillary Clinton, etc. ..."
"... What we need to know right now is that WE CANNOT GO TO SLEEP. We cannot sit back in lethargy and complacency and just assume that Donald Trump is going to do what he said he would do. If we do that, we might as well have elected Hillary Clinton, because at least then we would be forever on guard against her forthcoming assaults against our liberties. ..."
"... The difference in this election is that Donald Trump didn't run against the Democrats; he ran against the entire Washington establishment, including the Republican establishment. Hopefully that means that the people who supported and voted for Trump will NOT be inclined to go into political hibernation now that Trump is elected. ..."
After my post-election column last week, a lady wrote to me and said, "I have confidence he [Trump] plans to do what is best for
the country." With all due respect, I don't! I agree wholeheartedly with Thomas Jefferson. He said, "In questions of power, then,
let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
If Donald Trump is going to be anything more than just another say-anything-to-get-elected phony, he is going to have to put raw
elbow grease to his rhetoric. His talk got him elected, but it is going to be his walk that is going to prove his worth.
And, as I wrote last week, the biggest indicator as to whether or not he is truly going to follow through with his rhetoric is
who he selects for his cabinet and top-level government positions. So far, he has picked Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff
and Stephen Bannon as White House chief strategist.
Reince Priebus is an establishment insider. He did NOTHING to help Trump get elected until toward the very end of the campaign.
He is the current chairman of the Republican National Committee. If that doesn't tell you what he is, nothing will. Trump probably
picked him because he is in so tight with House Speaker Paul Ryan (a globalist neocon of the highest order) and the GOP establishment,
thinking Priebus will help him get his agenda through the GOP Congress. But ideologically, Priebus does NOT share Trump's anti-establishment
agenda. So, this appointment is a risk at best and a sell-out at worst.
On the other hand, Stephen Bannon is probably a very good pick. He headed Breitbart.com, which is one of the premier "alt-right"
media outlets that has consistently led the charge against the globalist, anti-freedom agenda of the political establishment in Washington,
D.C. Albeit, Bannon is probably blind to the dangers of Zionism and is, therefore, probably naïve about the New World Order. I don't
believe anyone can truly understand the New World Order without being aware of the role that Zionism plays in it.
To be honest, the possible appointments of Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, John Bolton and especially Newt Gingrich are MORE
than troubling. Rudy Giuliani is "Mr. Police State," and if he is selected as the new attorney general, the burgeoning Police State
in this country will go into hyperdrive. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is already warning us about this. Chris Christie is a typical
New England liberal Republican. His appointment to any position bodes NOTHING good. And John Bolton is a Bush pro-war neocon. But
Newt Gingrich is the quintessential insider, globalist, and establishment hack.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the globalist elite gave Newt Gingrich the assignment of cozying up to (and "supporting")
Trump during his campaign with the sole intention of being in a position for Trump to think he owes Gingrich something so as to appoint
him to a key cabinet post in the event that he won. Gingrich could then weave his evil magic during a Donald Trump presidential administration.
Newt Gingrich is a HIGH LEVEL globalist and longtime CFR member. He is the consummate neocon. And he has a brilliant mind
(NO morals, but a brilliant mind--a deadly combination, for sure). If Donald Trump does not see through this man, and if he
appoints him as a cabinet head in his administration, I will be forced to believe that Donald Trump is clueless about "draining the
swamp." You cannot drain the swamp by putting the very people who filled the swamp back in charge. And that's exactly what Trump
would be doing if he appoints Gingrich to any high-level position in his administration.
Trump is already softening his position on illegal immigration, on dismantling the EPA, on repealing Obamacare, on investigating
and prosecuting Hillary Clinton, etc. Granted, he hasn't even been sworn in yet, and it's still way too early to make a true
judgment of his presidency. But for a fact, his cabinet appointments and his first one hundred days in office will tell us most of
what we need to know.
What we need to know right now is that WE CANNOT GO TO SLEEP. We cannot sit back in lethargy and complacency and just assume
that Donald Trump is going to do what he said he would do. If we do that, we might as well have elected Hillary Clinton, because
at least then we would be forever on guard against her forthcoming assaults against our liberties.
There is a reason we have lost more liberties under Republican administrations than Democratic ones over the past few decades.
And that reason is the conservative, constitutionalist, Christian, pro-freedom people who should be resisting government's assaults
against our liberties are sound asleep because they trust a Republican President and Congress to do the right thing -- and they give
the GOP a pass as our liberties are expunged piece by piece. A pass they would NEVER give to a Democrat.
The difference in this election is that Donald Trump didn't run against the Democrats; he ran against the entire Washington
establishment, including the Republican establishment. Hopefully that means that the people who supported and voted for Trump will
NOT be inclined to go into political hibernation now that Trump is elected.
I tell you again: this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the course of a nation. Frankly, if this opportunity is squandered,
there likely will not be another one in most of our lifetimes.
"... "kicked India and Turkey out of a decades-old US program that allows developing countries to export thousands of goods to the United States without paying duties," in a scheme known as the Generalized System of Preferences or GSP. ..."
"... The reasons given by the US Trade Representative for Trump's orders were that India had failed "to provide the United States with assurances that it will provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets in numerous sectors" while "Turkey's termination from the GSP follows a finding that it is sufficiently economically developed and should no longer benefit from preferential market access to the United States market." ..."
"... In the case of India, Washington has been trying for years to wean India away from its defense and trade association with Russia, concurrent with encouraging it to join the Pentagon in confronting China. The US Defence Department stated in September 2018 that "A decade ago, US arms sales to India amounted to virtually nothing. Today, the United States is the second-largest arms supplier to India, and US officials say they hope to increase that business," and the US focus on China has resulted in stronger military ties, with a joint statement last December indicating the intention "to further strengthen bilateral defence cooperation as a key pillar of the strategic partnership between India and the US." ..."
"... There is a Russia factor in the US-Turkey relationship, because Ankara has placed an order for world-beating S-400 surface-to-air missiles, which has riled Washington, as has India's forthcoming acquisition of the same system. The Military-Industrial Establishment in Washington made its feelings known on March 8, when chief Pentagon spokesman Charlie Summers told reporters that "If Turkey takes the S-400, there would be grave consequences in terms of our relationship, military relationship with them." But this doesn't seem to worry President Erdoğan, who had already made it clear that "The S-400 is a done deal, there can be no turning back. We have reached an agreement with the Russians. We will move toward a joint production. Perhaps after the S-400, we will go for the S-500." ..."
There is
a saying in the worlds of politics and business that most people who come to prominence are those who in defeat bear malice and in
victory seek revenge. It is therefore unsurprising that President Donald Trump displays both characteristics in international as
well as domestic affairs, although his targets vary erratically between friend and foe. His near-psychotic concentration on achieving
the destruction of Iran is understandably malicious and revengeful, given the nature of the man, but his latest exhibitions of would-be
superiority involve allies, which even for Trump is dramatically misguided.
The Trumpian United States has few friends, mainly because in his two years in the White House Trump has gone out of his way to
belittle, demean and insult long-standing partners and antagonise those who may have been considering seeking closer ties with Washington.
His announcement
last December that "America is respected again" was wide of the mark, because, unfortunately, America has become a global joke --
but a dangerous joke whose president may be a raving booby, but is still powerful and appears intent on upsetting what little tranquillity
remains in this turmoil-stricken world.
One recent diatribe
was unprecedented in length, vulgarity and volatility. When he spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 2 he
set a new low for absurdity in what the commentator Stephen Colbert described as being an "epically weird" harangue which The
Atlantic said was
the longest presidential oration in history . Moving on from this bizarre performance, Trump turned to international affairs
and, as Politicoreported
on March 5, "kicked India and Turkey out of a decades-old US program that allows developing countries to export thousands of goods
to the United States without paying duties," in a scheme known as the Generalized System of Preferences or GSP.
The reasons given by
the US Trade Representative for Trump's orders were that India had failed "to provide the United States with assurances that
it will provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets in numerous sectors" while "Turkey's termination from the GSP follows
a finding that it is sufficiently economically developed and should no longer benefit from preferential market access to the United
States market."
In the case of India, Washington has been trying for years to wean India away from its defense and trade association with Russia,
concurrent with encouraging it to join the Pentagon in confronting China. The US Defence Department
stated
in September 2018 that "A decade ago, US arms sales to India amounted to virtually nothing. Today, the United States is the second-largest
arms supplier to India, and US officials say they hope to increase that business," and the US focus on China has resulted in stronger
military ties, with a
joint statement last December indicating the intention "to further strengthen bilateral defence cooperation as a key pillar of
the strategic partnership between India and the US."
Washington has been intensifying its confrontation with China in the South China sea, where in addition to overflights by nuclear-capable
bombers it conducts what are absurdly
called "freedom of navigation patrols" in waters where there has never been a single case of interference with any of the vast
number of merchant ships that pass though every year. The rationale is given as support for the Convention on the Law of the Sea
which, most ironically, Washington
refuses to ratify . Nevertheless,
the US has been trying hard to persuade the Indian government that it should contribute warships to join US patrols in the South
China Sea, which, so far, India has
refused
to do . So it might be thought that the Trump Administration would do its best to encourage India to buy more US weapons and
to cooperate in its anti-China antics (however unwise that would be) by keeping their relationship friction-free. But this isn't
the way Trump works.
Washington's unfortunate timing of the announcement that it will penalise India in trade arrangements extends to India's domestic
circumstances, because there are national elections due in April, and the party of Prime Minister Modi (an arch-nationalist and no
mean war-drummer himself) was already having difficulties, and is looking shakier day-by-day. Indeed the whole bizarre affair was
well summed-up by Professor Harsh Pant of King's College London when he said "the discourse in this country has been that America
needs India to balance China, and the question will be: Why is America doing this to India?"
But there doesn't seem to be a sensible answer to that question.
The same holds for Washington's treatment of NATO ally Turkey, whose President
said on February 26 that Ankara might buy the US Patriot missile system "if you [the US] provide us good conditions." But it's
blindingly obvious that the US declaration that Turkey "should no longer benefit from preferential market access to the United States
market" is not going to make President Erdoğan keen on buying Patriot missiles -- or anything else stamped "made in the USA."
There is a Russia factor in the US-Turkey relationship, because Ankara has placed an order for world-beating S-400 surface-to-air
missiles, which has riled Washington, as has India's
forthcoming acquisition of the same system. The Military-Industrial Establishment in Washington made its feelings known on March
8, when chief Pentagon spokesman Charlie Summers
told reporters that "If Turkey takes the S-400, there would be grave consequences in terms of our relationship, military relationship
with them." But this doesn't seem to worry President Erdoğan, who had already
made it clear that "The S-400 is a done deal, there can be no turning back. We have reached an agreement with the Russians. We
will move toward a joint production. Perhaps after the S-400, we will go for the S-500."
The signals are that Turkey is moving further away from the US and is possibly considering leaving NATO. After all, the US has
torn up favourable trade arrangements, and NATO has done nothing for Turkey which is working with Russia in many spheres. The most
recent example of regional military cooperation was on March 6-8 when four Turkish and Russian vessels conducted a
minor
exercise in the Black Sea, aimed at demonstrating and sharing techniques involved in mine-avoidance.
Trust is fostered by cooperation based on preparedness to understand differing viewpoints. Even more importantly, it is stimulated
by adopting pragmatic policies aimed at establishing confidence, rather than by ceaselessly confronting and confounding others. For
so long as Trump considers that "Make America Great Again" depends on confrontation and malevolence then his country will achieve
neither trust nor cooperation world-wide. And when he casts allies aside with sneering condescension, taking revenge for what he
considers to be unwarranted favouritism in the past, he is destroying America's path to Greatness.
A version of this piece appeared in Strategic Culture Foundation on March 12.
That's a devastating for Trump post by Ann Coilter. She was his supporter in previous election cucle.
Notable quotes:
"... NUMBER OF MILES OF WALL BUILT ON OUR SOUTHERN BORDER SINCE TRUMP HAS BEEN PRESIDENT: ZERO. ..."
"... NUMBER OF TIMES TRUMP HAS CLAIMED ON TWITTER HE'S ALREADY BUILDING THE WALL: 16 BY MY COUNT. ..."
"... NUMBER OF EXECUTIVE ORDERS ENDING THE ANCHOR BABY SCAM -- AS TRUMP PROMISES WHENEVER AN ELECTION IS COMING: ZERO. ..."
"... NUMBER OF EXECUTIVE ORDERS ISSUED BY TRUMP RESCINDING OBAMA'S UNCONSTITUTIONAL AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL ALIEN "DREAMERS": ZERO. ..."
"... NUMBER OF EXTENSIONS OF THE E-VERIFY SYSTEM TO PREVENT ILLEGALS FROM BEING HIRED OVER AMERICANS: ZERO. ..."
"... NUMBER OF H1-B FOREIGN WORKERS IN THIS COUNTRY WHEN TRUMP TOOK OFFICE: APPROXIMATELY 1 MILLION. ..."
"... NUMBER OF H1-B FOREIGN WORKERS IN THIS COUNTRY TODAY: APPROXIMATELY 1 MILLION. ..."
"... NUMBER OF ASYLUM LOOPHOLES CLOSED: ZERO. ..."
"... NUMBER OF CARRIED INTEREST LOOPHOLES ELIMINATED BY PRESIDENT TRUMP: ZERO. ..."
"... NUMBER OF GOLDMAN SACHS EMPLOYEES PUT IN TOP ADMINISTRATION POSITIONS BY PRESIDENT TRUMP: 7 -- or "more than Presidents Bush and Obama combined." ..."
"... (For someone unable to fulfill the most basic of his immigration promises, Trump has been amazingly competent in accomplishing the things Wall Street wanted, but no one else did.) ..."
"... PERCENTAGE OF THE BASE THAT TRUMP CAN AFFORD TO LOSE IN 2020, AFTER MILLIONS OF OLDER, WHITER AMERICANS HAVE DIED OFF, AND MILLIONS OF IMMIGRANTS HAVE TURNED 18 AND BEGUN VOTING: ZERO. ..."
It is now clear that Trump isn't waiting for a better moment. This was not an anomaly. It's not an accident.
After he signed his third spending bill with no wall funding, which he claims to need, all sentient beings were forced
to conclude that the president has no intention of ever doing anything we wanted on immigration.
In fact, Trump is steadily moving in the precise opposite direction of what he promised.
Illegal immigration is on track to hit the highest levels in more than a decade, and Trump has willfully decided to keep amnesty
advocates Jared, Ivanka, Mick Mulvaney, Marc Short and Mercedes Schlapp in the White House. For all his talk about immigration, did
he ever consider hiring people who share his MAGA vision?
A (diminishing) percentage of the base is annoyed when I point this out. They think that the moment something comes out of Trump's
mouth, IT HAS HAPPENED.
Yes, Trump talks a good game. He's like a waiter who compliments us for ordering the hamburger, but keeps bringing us fish.
The hamburger is our signature dish, juicy and grilled to perfection, you've made a brilliant choice ... now here's your salmon.
If he refuses to do what we hired him to do, he's not getting a good Yelp review.
I've decided to discuss the Trump presidency in purely mathematical terms. It's not his fault! He's trying! Never has a president
been under such attack! -- these are more in the nature of "excuses," not facts.
Under my new approach, I will provide a numerical evaluation of the Trump presidency, which I call:
TRUMP BY THE NUMBERS!
No editorializing, no invective, no opinion.
** ** **
NUMBER OF MILES OF WALL BUILT ON OUR SOUTHERN BORDER SINCE TRUMP HAS BEEN PRESIDENT: ZERO.
** ** **
NUMBER OF MILES OF FENCE, BOLLARD OR GARDEN TRELLIS BUILT ALONG OUR 2,000-MILE BORDER SINCE TRUMP HAS BEEN PRESIDENT: 26.
** ** **
NUMBER OF TIMES TRUMP HAS CLAIMED ON TWITTER HE'S ALREADY BUILDING THE WALL: 16 BY MY COUNT.
** ** **
NUMBER OF TIMES TRUMP HAS COMPLAINED ON TWITTER THAT CONGRESS WON'T GIVE HIM FUNDS TO BUILD THE WALL THAT HE SAYS HE'S ALREADY
BUILDING: AT LEAST 30 BY MY COUNT.
** ** **
NUMBER OF WALL "PROTOTYPES" DESTROYED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: ALL OF THEM.
** ** **
NUMBER OF EXECUTIVE ORDERS ENDING THE ANCHOR BABY SCAM -- AS TRUMP PROMISES WHENEVER AN ELECTION IS COMING: ZERO.
** ** **
NUMBER OF EXECUTIVE ORDERS ISSUED BY TRUMP RESCINDING OBAMA'S UNCONSTITUTIONAL AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL ALIEN "DREAMERS": ZERO.
** ** **
NUMBER OF ILLEGAL ALIENS WHOSE PRESENCE HAS BEEN EXCUSED BY TRUMP: 11 TO 50 MILLION (depending on whether you believe the propaganda
or the facts).
** ** **
NUMBER OF EXTENSIONS OF THE E-VERIFY SYSTEM TO PREVENT ILLEGALS FROM BEING HIRED OVER AMERICANS: ZERO.
** ** **
NUMBER OF H1-B FOREIGN WORKERS IN THIS COUNTRY WHEN TRUMP TOOK OFFICE: APPROXIMATELY 1 MILLION.
** ** **
NUMBER OF H1-B FOREIGN WORKERS IN THIS COUNTRY TODAY: APPROXIMATELY 1 MILLION.
** ** **
NUMBER OF ASYLUM LOOPHOLES CLOSED: ZERO.
... ... ...
Apart from immigration, probably the single most important campaign promise Trump made was to end the carried interest loophole.
Most Republicans would break out into a cold sweat if asked to raise taxes on George Soros. FINALLY, we had a Republican (or Democrat)
who wasn't beholden to Wall Street!
During the campaign, Trump said this tax scam allowed hedge fund managers to "get away with murder" and vowed to eliminate it.
Americans who hadn't voted for 30 years said: How do I register to vote?
Let's take out the slide rule!
** ** **
NUMBER OF CARRIED INTEREST LOOPHOLES ELIMINATED BY PRESIDENT TRUMP: ZERO.
** ** **
TOTAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS IN 2016 GIVEN BY GOLDMAN SACHS TO HILLARY CLINTON: $388,000.
** ** **
TOTAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS GIVEN BY GOLDMAN SACHS TO TRUMP: $5,607 (or 70 times less than Goldman gave to Hillary).
** ** **
NUMBER OF GOLDMAN SACHS EMPLOYEES PUT IN TOP ADMINISTRATION POSITIONS BY PRESIDENT TRUMP: 7 -- or "more than Presidents Bush
and Obama combined."
(For someone unable to fulfill the most basic of his immigration promises, Trump has been amazingly competent in accomplishing
the things Wall Street wanted, but no one else did.)
** ** **
NUMBER OF ACTIONS TAKEN TO DEFEND THE FREE SPEECH RIGHTS OF TRUMP'S BIGGEST SUPPORTERS BEING DEPLATFORMED AND CENSORED, SUCH AS
MILO YIANNOPOULOS, GAVIN MCINNES, LAURA LOOMER AND ALEX JONES:
ZERO.
** ** **
PERCENTAGE OF THE BASE THAT TRUMP CAN AFFORD TO LOSE IN 2020, AFTER MILLIONS OF OLDER, WHITER AMERICANS HAVE DIED OFF, AND
MILLIONS OF IMMIGRANTS HAVE TURNED 18 AND BEGUN VOTING: ZERO.
Comey was a part of the coup -- a color revolution against Trump with Bremmen (possibly assigned by Obama) pulling the strings. That's right. This is a banana republic with nukes.
Notable quotes:
"... "Earlier this week, I met separately with FBI [Director] James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election," the message said, according to officials who have seen it. ..."
"... Comment: The FBI now flip-flops from its previous assessment: FBI rejects CIA assessment that Russia influenced presidential election ..."
FBI and National
Intelligence chiefs both agree with the CIA assessment that Russia interfered with the 2016 US presidential elections partly in an
effort to help Donald Trump win the White House, US media report.
FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper are both convinced that Russia was behind cyberattacks
that targeted Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman, John Podesta,
The Washington Post and reported Friday, citing a message sent by CIA Director John Brennan to his employees.
"Earlier this week, I met separately with FBI [Director] James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among
us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election," the message said, according to officials
who have seen it.
"The three of us also agree that our organizations, along with others, need to focus on completing the thorough review of this
issue that has been directed by President Obama and which is being led by the DNI," it continued.
"... Donald Trump is about to break the record of withdrawing his promises faster than any other US president in history. It's not only the fact that his administration has been literally taken over by Goldman Sachs, the top vampire-bank of the Wall Street mafia. ..."
"... The 'anti-establishment Trump' joke has already collapsed and the US middle class is about be eliminated by the syndicate of the united billionaires under Trump administration. ..."
"... Paul Singer whose nickname is "the vulture", he didn't get that nickname because he is a sweet an honest businessman. This is the guy who closed the Delphi auto plants in Ohio and sent them to China and also to Monterrey-Mexico. Donald Trump as a candidate, excoriated the billionaires who sent Delphi auto parts company down to Mexico ..."
"... Paul Singer has two concerns: one of them is that we eliminate the banking regulations known as Dodd–Frank. He is called 'the vulture' cause he eats companies that died. He has invested heavily in banks that died. He makes his billions from government bail-outs, he has never made a product in his life, it's all money and billions made from your money, out of the US treasury ..."
"... The Mercers are the real big money behind Donald Trump. When Trump was in trouble in the general election he was out of money and he was out of ideas and he was losing. It was the Mercers, Robert, who is the principal at the Renaissance Technologies, basically investment banking sharks, that's all they are. They are market gamblers and banking sharks, and that's how he made his billions, he hasn't created a single job as Donald Trump himself like to mention. ..."
"... Both the vulture and the Mercers, they don't pay the same taxes as the rest. They don't pay regular income taxes. They have a special billionaires loophole called 'carried interest'. ..."
"... They were two candidates who said that they would close that loophole: one was Bernie Sanders and the other, believe it or not, was Donald Trump, it was part of his populist movie, he said ' These Wall Street sharks, they don't build anything, they don't create a single job, when they lose we pay, when they win, they get a tax-break called carried interest. I will close that loophole. ' Has he said a word about that loophole? It passed away. ..."
Donald Trump is about to break the record of withdrawing his promises faster than any other US president in history. It's
not only the fact that his administration has been literally taken over by Goldman Sachs, the top vampire-bank of the Wall Street
mafia.
Recently, Trump announced another big alliance with the vulture billionaire, Paul Singer, who, initially, was supposedly against
him. It looks like the Trump big show continues.
The 'anti-establishment Trump' joke has already collapsed and the US middle class is about be eliminated by the syndicate of the
united billionaires under Trump administration.
As Greg Palast told to Thom Hartmann:
Paul Singer whose nickname is "the vulture", he didn't get that nickname because he is a sweet an honest businessman. This
is the guy who closed the Delphi auto plants in Ohio and sent them to China and also to Monterrey-Mexico. Donald Trump as a candidate,
excoriated the billionaires who sent Delphi auto parts company down to Mexico.
Paul Singer has two concerns: one of them is that we eliminate the banking regulations known as Dodd–Frank. He is called 'the
vulture' cause he eats companies that died. He has invested heavily in banks that died. He makes his billions from government bail-outs,
he has never made a product in his life, it's all money and billions made from your money, out of the US treasury.
He is against what Obama created, which is a system under Dodd–Frank, called 'living wills', where if a bank starts going bankrupt,
they don't call the US treasury for bail-out. These banks go out of business and they are broken up so we don't have to pay for the
bail-out. Singer wants to restore the system of bailouts because that's where he makes his money.
The Mercers are the real big money behind Donald Trump. When Trump was in trouble in the general election he was out of money
and he was out of ideas and he was losing. It was the Mercers, Robert, who is the principal at the Renaissance Technologies, basically
investment banking sharks, that's all they are. They are market gamblers and banking sharks, and that's how he made his billions,
he hasn't created a single job as Donald Trump himself like to mention.
Both the vulture and the Mercers, they don't pay the same taxes as the rest. They don't pay regular income taxes. They have a
special billionaires loophole called 'carried interest'.
They were two candidates who said that they would close that loophole: one
was Bernie Sanders and the other, believe it or not, was Donald Trump, it was part of his populist movie, he said ' These Wall
Street sharks, they don't build anything, they don't create a single job, when they lose we pay, when they win, they get a tax-break
called carried interest. I will close that loophole. ' Has he said a word about that loophole? It passed away.
His political activities include funding the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and he has written against raising taxes
for the 1% and aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act. Singer is active in Republican Party politics and collectively, Singer and others affiliated
with Elliott Management are "the top source of contributions" to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
A number of sources have branded him a "vulture capitalist", largely on account of his role at EMC, which has been called a vulture
fund. Elliott was termed by The Independent as "a pioneer in the business of buying up sovereign bonds on the cheap, and then going
after countries for unpaid debts", and in 1996, Singer began using the strategy of purchasing sovereign debt from nations in or near
default-such as Argentina, ]- through his NML Capital Limited and Congo-Brazzaville through Kensington International Inc. Singer's
business model of purchasing distressed debt from companies and sovereign states and pursuing full payment through the courts has
led to criticism, while Singer and EMC defend their model as "a fight against charlatans who refuse to play by the market's rules."
In 1996, Elliott bought defaulted Peruvian debt for $11.4 million. Elliott won a $58 million judgment when the ruling was overturned
in 2000, and Peru had to repay the sum in full under the pari passu rule. When former president of Peru Alberto Fujimori was attempting
to flee the country due to facing legal proceedings over human rights abuses and corruption, Singer ordered the confiscation of his
jet and offered to let him leave the country in exchange for the $58 million payment from the treasury, an offer which Fujimori accepted.
A subsequent 2002 investigation by the Government of Peru into the incident and subsequent congressional report, uncovered instances
of corruption since Elliott was not legally authorized to purchase the Peruvian debt from Swiss Bank Corporation without the prior
approval of the Peruvian government, and thus the purchase had occurred in breach of contract. At the same time, Elliott's representative,
Jaime Pinto, had been formerly employed by the Peruvian Ministry of Economy and Finance and had contact with senior officials. According
to the Wall Street Journal, the Peruvian government paid Elliott $56 million to settle the case.
After Argentina defaulted on its debt in 2002, the Elliott-owned company NML Capital Limited refused to accept the Argentine offer
to pay less than 30 cents per dollar of debt. With a face value of $630 million, the bonds were reportedly bought by NML for $48
million, with Elliott assessing the bonds as worth $2.3 billion with accrued interest. Elliott sued Argentina for the debt's value,
and the lower UK courts found that Argentina had state immunity. Elliott successfully appealed the case to the UK Supreme Court,
which ruled that Elliott had the right to attempt to seize Argentine property in the United Kingdom. Alternatively, before 2011,
US courts ruled against allowing creditors to seize Argentine state assets in the United States. On October 2, 2012 Singer arranged
for a Ghanaian Court order to detain the Argentine naval training vessel ARA Libertad in a Ghanaian port, with the vessel to be used
as collateral in an effort to force Argentina to pay the debt. Refusing to pay, Argentina shortly thereafter regained control of
the ship after its seizure was deemed illegal by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Alleging the incident lost Tema
Harbour $7.6 million in lost revenue and unpaid docking fees, Ghana in 2012 was reportedly considering legal action against NML for
the amount.
His firm... is so influential that fear of its tactics helped shape the current 2012 Greek debt restructuring." Elliott was termed
by The Independent as "a pioneer in the business of buying up sovereign bonds on the cheap, and then going after countries for unpaid
debts", and in 1996, Singer began using the strategy of purchasing sovereign debt from nations in or near default-such as Argentina,
Peru-through his NML Capital Limited and Congo-Brazzaville through Kensington International Inc. In 2004, then first deputy managing
director of the International Monetary Fund Anne Osborn Krueger denounced the strategy, alleging that it has "undermined the entire
structure of sovereign finance."
we wrote that " Trump's rhetoric is concentrated around a racist delirium. He avoids to take direct position
on social matters, issues about inequality, etc. Of course he does, he is a billionaire! Trump will follow the pro-establishment
agenda of protecting Wall Street and big businesses. And here is the fundamental difference with Bernie Sanders. Bernie says no more
war and he means it. He says more taxes for the super-rich and he means it. Free healthcare and education for all the Americans,
and he means it. In case that Bernie manage to beat Hillary, the establishment will definitely turn to Trump who will be supported
by all means until the US presidency. "
Yet, we would never expect that Trump would verify us, that fast.
Carlson is saying Trump's not "capable" of sustained focus on the sausage-making of right-wing policy.
The clickbait (out of context) headline makes it sound like a more general diss. I'm not supporting Trump here [standard disclaimer],
but these gotcha headlines are tiresome.
"... Until the Crash of the Great Recession, after which we entered a "Punitive" stage, blaming "Those Others" for buying into faulty housing deals, for wanting a safety net of health care insurance, for resurgent terrorism beyond our borders, and, as the article above indicates, for having an equal citizen's voice in the electoral process. ..."
"... What needs to be restored is the purpose that "the economy works for the PEOPLE of the nation", not the other way around, as we've witnessed for the last four decades. ..."
Just finished reading this excellent book on how corporatist NeoLiberalism and the Xristianists merged their ideologies to form
the Conservative Coalition in the 1970s, and to then hijack the RepubliCAN party of Abe, Teddy, Ike (and Poppy Bush).
The author describes three phases of the RepugliCONs' zero-sum game:
The "Combative" stage of Reagan sought to restore "family values" (aka patriarchal hierarchy) to the moral depravity of Sixties
youth and the uppity claims to equal rights by blacks and feminists.
In the "Normative" stage of Gingrich and W Bush, the NeoConservatives claimed victory over Godless Communism and the NeoLibs
took credit for an expanding economy (due mostly by technology, not to Fed policy). They were happy to say "Aren't you happy now?"
with sole ownership of the Free World and its markets, yet ignoring various Black Swan events and global trends they actually
had no control over.
Until the Crash of the Great Recession, after which we entered a "Punitive" stage, blaming "Those Others" for buying into
faulty housing deals, for wanting a safety net of health care insurance, for resurgent terrorism beyond our borders, and, as the
article above indicates, for having an equal citizen's voice in the electoral process.
What was unexpected was that the libertarian mutiny by the TeaParty would become so nasty and vicious, leading to the Pirate
Trump to scavenge what little was left of American Democracy for his own treasure.
What needs to be restored is the purpose that "the economy works for the PEOPLE of the nation", not the other way around,
as we've witnessed for the last four decades.
"... The Druze minority that lives in occupied Golan was critical of the move, saying that even with Israel, and now the US, considering the Golan Heights to be part of Israel, would still be considered to have "Syrian" blood under Israeli law. ..."
"... Jordan also opposed the move , saying they still consider Golan part of Syria. It's clear why in this case, as Israel occupied parts of Syria and Jordan in the same war, and the US recognition of the annexation of the Syrian part may open Israel to annexing the West Bank and getting US approval for that as well. ..."
The Druze minority that lives in occupied Golan was critical of the move, saying that even
with Israel, and now the US, considering the Golan Heights to be part of Israel, would still be
considered to have "Syrian" blood under Israeli law.
Jordan
also opposed the move , saying they still consider Golan part of Syria. It's clear why in
this case, as Israel occupied parts of Syria and Jordan in the same war, and the US recognition
of the annexation of the Syrian part may open Israel to annexing the West Bank and getting US
approval for that as well.
The most direct opposition was from Syria, who echoed Russia and Iran in saying it violates
several UN resolutions on Golan's status.
Syria also added that they intend to ultimately recover the territory from Israel, whether
the US recognizes it or not.
Chickenhawks are usually more militaristic then people who served. This is kind of inferiority complex compensation. Trump
is a chichenhawk.
Notable quotes:
"... One set of moral priorities – a different one – would end our endless wars and use the vast wealth of this nation to end poverty and lead to true security for all of us. It would invest in healthcare, well-paying jobs, affordable higher education, safe drinking water and clean air for all of us. ..."
"... With this budget, Trump takes more than $1tn in taxpayer money and disperses fully $750bn to the military. Out of every taxpayer dollar , in other words, 62 cents go to the military and our militarized Department of Homeland Security. (Veterans' benefits take another seven cents.) ..."
"... The budget falsely claims to adhere to strict spending limits set by Congress for the military. But it hides an extra $174bn for the Pentagon in plain sight by adding it to a war spending account – despite the fact that the president has said he wants to bring back thousands of troops from Syria and Afghanistan. This gimmick brings total military spending all the way up to $750bn, even while the administration claims it is cutting the base Pentagon budget ..."
Donald Trump recently unleashed his dark vision for our
nation and our world, in the form of his
budget request to Congress
.
A budget shows our values more clearly than any
tweet, campaign speech or political slogan. It's what
marries detailed, dollar-and-cents policy decisions to
deeper political – and moral – priorities.
One set of moral priorities – a different one – would
end our endless wars and use the vast wealth of this
nation to end poverty and lead to true security for all
of us. It would invest in healthcare, well-paying jobs,
affordable higher education, safe drinking water and
clean air for all of us.
The proposed Trump budget drops bombs on that vision
– almost literally.
With this budget, Trump takes more than $1tn in
taxpayer money and disperses fully $750bn to the
military. Out of
every taxpayer dollar
, in other words, 62 cents go
to the military and our militarized Department of
Homeland Security. (Veterans' benefits take another
seven cents.)
... ... ...
At every turn, the Trump budget finds vast billions for
militarization, while it cuts much smaller poverty and
other programs, claiming the goal is to save money.
It
includes $164bn in war funding, but it cuts $4.7bn in
economic development and food assistance to other
nations. It finds $14bn for a vanity project military
branch called the space force, while it cuts $1.2bn for
a program that's built and preserved more than 1m
affordable homes. It includes $11bn for contractor
Lockheed Martin to build more F-35 jet fighters, but it
cuts $3.7bn in heating and cooling assistance for 6m
poor households.
And it includes more than $12bn for a wall at our
border, while it cuts $1bn for Job Corps, the program
that provides yearly training and work experience to
50,000 poor (and mostly black) youths.
The budget falsely claims to adhere to strict
spending limits set by Congress for the military. But it
hides
an extra $174bn
for the Pentagon in plain sight by
adding it to a war spending account – despite the fact
that the president has said he wants to bring back
thousands of troops from Syria and Afghanistan. This
gimmick brings total military spending all the way up to
$750bn, even while the administration claims it is
cutting the base Pentagon budget
"... At Netanyahu's behest, Flynn and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly took the lead in the lobbying to derail the U.N. resolution, which Flynn discussed in a phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (in which the Russian diplomat rebuffed Flynn's appeal to block the resolution). ..."
"... In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on the resolution and it passed 14-0. ..."
"... But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role. ..."
"... While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated, probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value. ..."
"... In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968. ..."
"... Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US. ..."
"... It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm. ..."
"... "Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing their best to provoke Russia into one. ..."
"... The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak). ..."
"... So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel. ..."
"... So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first. ..."
"... Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will simply ignore the Israeli connection. ..."
"... Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference. ..."
"... I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy. "Nothing to see here folks, move along." ..."
"... The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy. ..."
"... FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy (against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End of story. ..."
"... God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact. ..."
"... I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy. If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote, arguably, perpetual war. ..."
"... Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's influence. ..."
The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate December 23, 2017
While unproven claims of Russian meddling in U.S. politics have whipped Official Washington
into a frenzy, much less attention has been paid to real evidence of Israeli interference in
U.S. politics, as Dennis J Bernstein describes.
In investigating Russia's alleged meddling in U.S. politics, special prosecutor Robert
Mueller uncovered evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressured the Trump
transition team to undermine President Obama's plans to permit the United Nations to censure
Israel over its illegal settlement building on the Palestinian West Bank, a discovery
referenced in the plea deal with President Trump's first National Security Adviser Michael
Flynn.
At Netanyahu's behest, Flynn and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly took
the lead in the lobbying to derail the U.N. resolution, which Flynn discussed in a phone call
with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (in which the Russian diplomat rebuffed Flynn's appeal
to block the resolution).
I spoke on Dec, 18 with independent journalist and blogger Richard Silverstein, who writes
on national security and other issues for a number of blogs at Tikun Olam .
Dennis Bernstein: A part of Michael Flynn's plea had to do with some actions he took before
coming to power regarding Israel and the United Nations. Please explain.
Richard Silverstein:
The Obama administration was negotiating in the [UN] Security Council
just before he left office about a resolution that would condemn Israeli settlements.
Obviously, the Israeli government did not want this resolution to be passed. Instead of going
directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to
Trump instead. They approached Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner became involved in this. While
they were in the transition and before having any official capacity, they negotiated with
various members of the Security Council to try to quash the settlement resolution.
One of the issues here which is little known is the Logan Act, which was passed at the
foundation of our republic and was designed to prevent private citizens from usurping the
foreign policy prerogatives of the executive. It criminalized any private citizen who attempted
to negotiate with an enemy country over any foreign policy issue.
In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign
policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because
that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on
the resolution and it passed 14-0.
But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the
Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to
derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and
disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role.
This speaks to the power of the Israel lobby and of Israel itself to disrupt our foreign
policy. Very few people have ever been charged with committing an illegal act by advocating on
behalf of Israel. That is one of the reasons why this is such an important development. Until
now, the lobby has really ruled supreme on the issue of Israel and Palestine in US foreign
policy. Now it is possible that a private citizen will actually be made to pay a price for
that.
This is an important development because the lobby till now has run roughshod over our
foreign policy in this area and this may act as a restraining order against blatant disruption
of US foreign policy by people like this.
Bernstein: So this information is a part of Michael Flynn's plea. Anyone studying this would
learn something about Michael Flynn and it would be part of the prosecution's
investigation.
Silverstein:
That's absolutely right. One thing to note here is that it is reporters who
have raised the issue of the Logan Act, not Mueller or Flynn's people or anyone in the Trump
administration. But I do think that Logan is a very important part of this plea deal, even if
it is not mentioned explicitly.
Bernstein: If the special prosecutor had smoking-gun information that the Trump
administration colluded with Russia, in the way they colluded with Israel before coming to
power, this would be a huge revelation. But it is definitely collusion when it comes to
Israel.
Silverstein: Absolutely. If this were Russia, it would be on the front page of every major
newspaper in the United States and the leading story on the TV news. Because this is Israel and
because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby and they have so much influence
on US policy concerning Israel, it has managed to stay on the back burner. Only two or three
media outlets besides mine have raised this issue of Logan and collusion. Kushner and Flynn may
be the first American citizens charged under the Logan Act for interfering on behalf of Israel
in our foreign policy. This is a huge issue and it has hardly been raised at all.
Bernstein: As you know, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has made a career out of investigating the
Russia-gate charges. She says that she has read all this material carefully, so she must have
read about Flynn and Israel, but I haven't heard her on this issue at all.
Silverstein:
Even progressive journalists, who you'd think would be going after this with a
vengeance, are frightened off by the fact the lobby really bites back. So, aside from outlets
like the Intercept and the Electronic Intifada, there is a lot of hesitation about going after
the Israel lobby. People are afraid because they know that there is a high price to be paid. It
goes from being purely journalism to being a personal and political vendetta when they get you
in their sights. In fact, one of the reasons I feel my blog is so important is that what I do
is challenge Israeli policy and Israeli intervention in places where it doesn't belong.
Bernstein: Jared Kushner is the point man for the Trump administration on Israel. He has
talked about having a "vision for peace." Do you think it is a problem that this is someone
with a long, close relationship with the prime minister of Israel and, in fact, runs a
foundation that invests in the building of illegal Israeli settlements? Might this be
problematic?
Silverstein:
It is quite nefarious, actually. When Jared Kushner was a teenager, Netanyahu
used to stay at the Kushner family home when he visited the United States. This relationship
with one of the most extreme right political figures in Israel goes back decades. And it is not
just Kushner himself, but all the administration personnel dealing with these so-called peace
negotiations, including Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, the ambassador. These are all
orthodox Jews who tend to have very nationalist views when it comes to Israel. They all support
settlements financially through foundations. These are not honest brokers.
We could talk at length about the history of US personnel who have been negotiators for
Middle East peace. All of them have been favorable to Israel and answerable to the Israel
lobby, including Dennis Ross and Makovsky, who served in the last administration. These people
are dyed-in-the-wool ultra-nationalist supporters of [Israeli] settlements. They have no
business playing any role in negotiating a peace deal.
My prediction all along has been that these peace negotiations will come to naught, even
though they seem to have bought the cooperation of Saudi Arabia, which is something new in the
process. The Palestinians can never accept a deal that has been negotiated by Kushner and
company because it will be far too favorable to Israel and it will totally neglect the
interests of the Palestinians.
Bernstein: It has been revealed that Kushner supports the building of settlements in the
West Bank. Most people don't understand the politics of what is going on there, but it appears
to be part of an ethnic cleansing.
Silverstein:
The settlements have always been a violation of international law, ever since
Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967. The Geneva Conventions direct an occupying power to
withdraw from territory that was not its own. In 1967 Israel invaded Arab states and conquered
the West Bank and Gaza but this has never been recognized or accepted by any nation until
now.
The fact that Kushner and his family are intimately involved in supporting
settlements–as are David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt–is completely outrageous. No
member of any previous US administration would have been allowed to participate with these
kinds of financial investments in support of settlements. Of course, Trump doesn't understand
the concept of conflict of interest because he is heavily involved in such conflicts himself.
But no party in the Middle East except Israel is going to consider the US an honest broker and
acceptable as a mediator.
When they announce this deal next January, no one in the Arab World is going to accept it,
with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia because they have other fish to fry in terms of
Iran. The next three years are going to be interesting, supposing Trump lasts out his term. My
prediction is that the peace plan will fail and that it will lead to greater violence in the
Middle East. It will not simply lead to a vacuum, it will lead to a deterioration in conditions
there.
Bernstein: The Trump transition team was actually approached directly by the Israeli
government to try to intercede at the United Nations.
Silverstein:
I'm assuming it was Netanyahu who went directly to Kushner and Trump. Now, we
haven't yet found out that Trump directly knew about this but it is very hard to believe
that Trump didn't endorse this. Now that we know that Mueller has access to all of the emails
of the transition team, there is little doubt that they have been able to find their smoking
gun. Flynn's plea meant that they basically had him dead to rights. It remains to be seen what
will happen with Kushner but I would think that this would play some role in either the
prosecution of Kushner or some plea deal.
Bernstein: The other big story, of course, is the decision by the Trump administration to
move the US embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. Was there any pre-election collusion in that
regard and what are the implications?
Silverstein:
Well, it's a terrible decision which goes against forty to fifty years of US
foreign policy. It also breaches all international understanding. All of our allies in the
European Union and elsewhere are aghast at this development. There is now a campaign in the
United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the announcement, which we will
veto, but the next step will be to go to the General Assembly, where such a resolution will
pass easily.
The question is how much anger, violence and disruption this is going to cause around the
world, especially in the Arab and Muslim world. This is a slow-burning fuse. It is not going to
explode right now. The issue of Jerusalem is so vital that this is not something that is simply
going to go away. This is going to be a festering sore in the Muslim world and among
Palestinians. We have already seen attacks on Israeli soldiers and citizens and there will be
many more.
As to collusion in all of this, since Trump always said during the campaign that this was
what he was going to do, it might be difficult to treat this in the same way as the UN
resolution. The UN resolution was never on anybody's radar and nobody knew the role that Trump
was playing behind the scenes with that–as opposed to Trump saying right from the get-go
that Jerusalem was going to be recognized as the capital of Jerusalem.
By doing that, they have completely abrogated any Palestinian interest in Jerusalem. This is
a catastrophic decision that really excludes the United States from being an honest broker here
and shows our true colors in terms of how pro-Israel we are.
As most regular readers of CN already know, some dynamite books on the inordinate amount
of influence pro-Israel zealots have on Washington:
1.) 'The Host and the Parasite' by Greg Felton
2.) 'Power of Israel in the United States' by James Petras
3.) 'They Dare to Speak Out' by Paul Findley
4.) 'The Israel Lobby' by Mearsheimer and Walt
5.) 'Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of U.S. Power' by James Petras
I suggest that anyone relatively knew to this neglected topic peruse a few of the
aforementioned titles. An inevitable backlash by the citizens of the United States is
eventually forthcoming against the Zionist Power Configuration. It's crucial that this
impending backlash remain democratic, non-violent, eschews anti-Semitism, and travels in a
progressive in direction.
Annie , December 23, 2017 at 5:47 pm
Which one would you suggest? I already read "The Israel Lobby."
Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:38 pm
Findley and Mearsheimer are certainly worthwhile. I will look for Petras.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:38 pm
If you haven't already read them, the end/footnotes in "The Israel Lobby" are more
illuminating.
That influence is also shown, of course, by the fact that Obama waited until the midnight
hours of his tenure and after the 2016 election to even start working on this resolution.
While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated,
probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value.
In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think
he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew
calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968.
Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:41 pm
Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case
against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel
collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will
awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US.
JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:32 am
It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention
from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind
the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm.
The leaked emails showed the corruption
plainly, and based on the ACTUAL evidence (recorded download time), most likely came from a
highly disgruntled insider. The picture was starting to spill into public view. I'd estimate
the real huge worry was that if this stuff came out, it could bring out other Israeli
secrets, like their involvement in 9/11. That would mean actual jail time. Might be hard to
buy your way out of that no matter how much money you have.
Annie , December 23, 2017 at 10:48 pm
The Logan act states that anyone who negotiates with an enemy of the US, and Israel is not
defined as an enemy.
Annie , December 23, 2017 at 6:59 pm
The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would. I don't think anyone has
been convicted based on this act, and they were part of a transition team not to mention the
Logan act clearly states a private citizen who attempts to negotiate with an enemy state, and
that certainly doesn't apply to Israel. In this administration their bias is so blatant that
they can install Kushner as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestine peace process while his
family has a close relationship with Netanyahu, and he runs a foundation that invests in the
building of illegal settlements which goes against the Geneva conventions. Hopefully Trump's
blatant siding with Israel will receive a lot of backlash as did his plan to make Jerusalem
the capital of Israel.
I also found that so called progressive internet sites don't cover this the way they
should.
Al Pinto , December 24, 2017 at 9:16 am
@Annie
"The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would."
You and me both .
From the point of starting to read this article, it has been in my mind that the Logan act
would not apply here. After reading most of the comments, it became clear that not many
people viewed this as such. Yes, Joe Tedesky did as well
The UN is the "clearing house" for international politics, where countries freely contact
each other's for getting support for their cause behind the scene. The support sought after
could be voting for or against the resolution on hand. At times, as Israel did, countries
reach out to perceived enemies as well, if they could not secure sufficient support for their
cause. This is the normal activity of the UN diplomacy.
Knowing that the outgoing administration would not support its cause, Israel reached out
to the incoming administration to delay the vote on the UN resolution. I fail to see anything
wrong with Israel's action even in this case; Israel is not an enemy state to the US. As
such, there has been no violation of any acts by the incoming administration, even if they
tried to secure veto vote for Israel. I do not like it, but no action by Mueller in this case
is correct.
People, just like the article in itself, implying that the Logan Act applies in this case
are just plain wrong. Not just wrong, but their anti-Israel bias is in plain view.
Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an
enemy state. Even then, Russia contacting the incoming administration is not a violation of
the Logan Act. That is just normal diplomacy in the background between countries. What would
be a violation is that the contacted official acted on the behalf of Russia and tried to
influence the outgoing administration's decision. That is what the Mueller investigation
tries to prove hopelessly
"Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an
enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and
therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with
Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing
their best to provoke Russia into one.
Annie , December 24, 2017 at 1:55 pm
Thanks for your reply. When I read the article and it referenced the Logan Act, which I am
familiar with in that I've read about it before, I was surprised that Bernstein and
Silverstein even brought it up because it so obviously does not apply in this case, since
Israel is not considered an enemy state. Many have even referenced it as flimsy when it comes
to convictions against those in Trump's transition team who had contacts with Russia. No one
has ever been convicted under the Logan Act.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:41 pm
The Logan Act either should apply equally, or not apply at all. This "Russia-gate" hype
seems to apply it selectively.
mrtmbrnmn , December 23, 2017 at 7:36 pm
You guys are blinded by the light. The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer
hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak).
There is no doubt that Trump is Bibi's and the Saudi's ventriloquist dummy and Jared has
been an Israel agent of influence since he was 12.
But half the Dementedcrat Sore Loser Brigade will withdraw from the field of battle (not
to mention most of the GOP living dead too) if publically and noisily tying Israel to Trump's
tail becomes the only route to his removal. Which it would have to be, as there is no there
there regarding the yearlong trumped-up PutinPutinPutin waterboarding of Trump.
Immediately (if not sooner) the mighty (pro-Israel) Donor Bank of Singer (Paul), Saban
(Haim), Sachs (Goldman) & Adelson (Sheldon), would change their passwords and leave these
politicians/beggars with empty begging bowls. End of $ordid $tory.
alley cat , December 23, 2017 at 7:45 pm
So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What
of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are
orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator
bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel.
Mueller can use that evidence of sabotage and/or obstruction of justice to try to coerce
false confessions from Kushner and Flynn. But what are the chances of that, barring short
stayovers for them at some CIA black site?
So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem
witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and
Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's
flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first.
Leslie F. , December 23, 2017 at 8:28 pm
He used it, along with other info, to turn flip Flynn and possibly can use it the same way
again Kusher. Not all evidence has end up in court to be useful.
JWalters , December 23, 2017 at 8:40 pm
This is an extremely important story, excellently reported. All the main "facts" Americans
think they know about Israel are, amazingly, flat-out lies.
1. Israel was NOT victimized by powerful Arab armies. Israel overpowered and victimized a
defenseless, civilian Arab population. Military analysts knew the Arab armies were in poor
shape and would not be able to resist the zionist army.
2. Muslim "citizens" of Israel do NOT have all the same rights as Jews.
3. Israelis are NOT under threat from the indigineous Palestinians, but Palestinians are
under constant threats of theft and death from the Israelis.
4. Israel does NOT share America's most fundamental values, which rest on the principle of
equal human rights for all.
Maintaining such a blanket of major lies for decades requires immense power. And this
power would have to be exercised "under the radar" to be effective. That requires even more
power. Both Congress and the press have to be controlled. How much power does it take to turn
"Progressive Rachel" into "Tel Aviv Rachel"? To turn "It Takes a Village" Hillary into
"Slaughter a Village" Hillary? It takes immense power AND ruthlessness.
War profiteers have exactly this combination of immense war profits and the ruthlessness
to victimize millions of people. "War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror" http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com
Vast war profits easily afford to buy the mainstream media. And controlling campaign
contributions for members of Congress is amazingly cheap in the big picture. Such a squalid
sale of souls.
And when simple bribery is not enough, they ruin a person's life through blackmail or
false character assassination. And if those don't work they use death threats, including to
family members, and finally murder. Their ruthlessness is unrestrained. John Perkins has
described these tactics in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man".
For readers who haven't seen it, here is an excellent riff on the absurdly overwhelming
evidence for Israel's influence compared to that of Russia, at a highly professional news and
analysis website run by Jewish anti-Zionists. "Let's talk about Russian influence" http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/about-russian-influence/
mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:44 pm
Hitler and Mussolini, Trump and Netanyahoo – matches made in Hell. These characters
are so obviously, blatantly evil that it is deeply disturbing that people fail to see that,
and instead go to great lengths to find some complicated flaws in these monsters.
mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:49 pm
Keep it simple folks. No need for complex analyses. Just remember that these characters as
simply as evil as it gets, and proceed from there. These asinine shows that portray mobsters
as complex human beings are dangerously deluding. If you want to be victimized by these
types, this kind of overthinking is just the way to go.
Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 9:00 pm
There is a modern theory of fiction that insists upon the portrayal of inconsistency in
characters, both among the good guys and the bad guys. It is useful to show how those who do
wrongs have made specific kinds of errors that make them abnormal, and that those who do
right are not perfect but nonetheless did the right thing. Instead it is used by commercial
writers to argue that the good are really bad, and the bad are really good, which is of
course the philosophy of oligarchy-controlled mass publishers.
Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:54 pm
A very important article by Dennis Bernstein, and it is very appropriate that non-zionist
Jews are active against the extreme zionist corruption of our federal government. I am sure
that they are reviled by the zionists for interfering with the false denunciations of racism
against the opponents of zionism. Indeed critics face a very nearly totalitarian power of
zionism, which in league with MIC/WallSt opportunism has displaced democracy altogether in
the US.
backwardsevolution , December 23, 2017 at 9:18 pm
A nice little set-up by the Obama administration. Perhaps it was entrapment? Who set it
up? Flynn and Kushner should have known better to fall for it. So at the end of his
Presidency, Obama suddenly gets balls and wants to slap down Israel? Yeah, right.
Nice to have leverage over people, though, isn't it? If you're lucky and play your cards
right, you might even be lucky enough to land an impeachment.
Of course, I'm just being cynical. No one would want to overturn democracy, would
they?
Certainly people like Comey, Brenner, Clinton, Clapper, Mueller, Rosenstein wouldn't want
that, would they?
Joe Tedesky , December 23, 2017 at 10:33 pm
I just can't see any special prosecutor investigating Israel-Gate. Between what the
Zionist donors donate to these creepy politicians, too what goods they have on these same
mischievous politicians, I just can't see any investigation into Israel's collusion with the
Trump Administration going anywhere. Netanyahu isn't Putin, and Russia isn't Israel. Plus,
Israel is considered a U.S. ally, while Russia is being marked as a Washington rival. Sorry,
this news regarding Israel isn't going to be ranted on about for the next 18 months, like the
MSM has done with Russia, because our dear old Israel is the only democracy in the Middle
East, or so they tell us. So, don't get your hopes up.
JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:33 am
It's true the Israelis have America's politicians by the ears and the balls. But as this
story gets better known, politicians will start getting questions at their town meetings.
Increasingly the politicians will gag on what Israel is force-feeding them, until finally
they reach a critical mass of vomit in Congress.
Joe Tedesky , December 24, 2017 at 11:12 am
I hope you are right JWalters. Although relying on a Zionist controlled MSM doesn't give
hope for the news getting out properly. Again I hope you are right JWalters. Joe
Actually, Netanyahu was so desperate to have the resolution pulled and not voted on that
he reached out to any country that might help him after the foreign minister of New Zealand,
one of its co-sponsors refused to pull the plug after a testy phone exchange with the Israeli
PM ending up threatening an Israeli boycott oturnef the KIwis.
He then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin, who owed him a favor for having Israel's UN
delegate absent himself for the UNGA vote on sanctioning Russia after its annexation of
Crimea.
Putin then called Russia's UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, since deceased, and asked him to
get the other UNSC ambassadors to postpone the vote until Trump took over the White House but
the other ambassadors weren't buying it. Given Russia's historic public position regarding
the settlements, Churkin had no choice to vote Yes with the others.
This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the US which,
due to Zionist influence on the media, does not want the American public to know about the
close ties between Putin and Netanyahu which has led to the Israeli PM making five state
visits there in the last year and a half.
Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US veto. That
Netanyahu apparently knew in advance that the US planned to veto the resolution was, I
suspect, leaked to the Israelis by US delegate Samantha Power, who was clearly unhappy at
having to abstain.
Abe , December 24, 2017 at 12:39 am
The Israeli Prime Minister made five state visits to Russia in the last year and a half to
make sure the Russians don't accidentally on purpose blast Israeli warplanes from the sky
over Syria (like they oughtta). Putin tries not to snicker when Netanyahu bloviates ad
nauseum about the purported "threat" posed by Iran.
He thinks Putin is a RATS ASS like the yankee government
JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:34 am
"This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the
US"
We've just had a whole cluster of big stories involving Israel that have all been
essentially blacked out in the US press. e.g. "Dionne and Shields ignore the Adelson in the room" http://mondoweiss.net/2017/12/jerusalem-israels-capital
This is not due to chance. There is no doubt that the US mainstream media is wholly
controlled by the Israelis.
alley cat , December 24, 2017 at 4:49 am
"He [Netanyahu] then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin "
Jeff, that characterization of Putin and Netanyahu's relationship makes no sense, since
the Russians have consistently opposed Zionism and Putin has been no exception, having
spoiled Zionist plans for the destruction of Syria.
"Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US
veto."
Not sure where you're going with that, since the US vote was up to Obama, who wanted to
get some payback for all of Bibi's efforts to sabotage Obama's treaty with Iran.
For the record, Zionism has had no more rabid supporter than the Dragon Lady. If we're
going to make assumptions, we could start by assuming that if she had won the White House
we'd all be dead by now, thanks to her obsession (at the instigation of her Zionist/neocon
sponsors) with declaring no-fly zones in Syria.
Brendan , December 24, 2017 at 6:18 am
Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves
their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will
simply ignore the Israeli connection.
Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as
evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone
call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of
this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference.
Skip Scott , December 24, 2017 at 7:59 am
I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would
never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy.
"Nothing to see here folks, move along."
The zionist will stop at nothing to control the middle east with American taxpayers
money/military equiptment its a win win for the zionist they control America lock stock and
barrel a pity though it is a great country to be led by a jewish entity.
What will Israel-Palestine look like twenty years from now? Will it remain an apartheid
regime, a regime without any Palestinians, or something different. The Trump decision, which
the world rejects, brings the issue of "final" settlement to the fore. In a way we can go
back to the thirties and the British Mandate. Jewish were fleeing Europe, many coming to
Palestine. The British, on behalf of the Zionists, were delaying declaring Palestine a state
with control of its own affairs. Seeing the mass immigration and chafing at British foot
dragging, the Arabs rebelled, What happened then was that the British, responding to numerous
pressures notably war with Germany, acted by granting independence and granting Palestine
control of its borders.
With American pressure and the mass exodus of Jews from Europe, Jews defied the British
resulting in Jewish resistance. What followed then was a UN plan to divide the land with a
Jerusalem an international city administered by the UN. The Arabs rebelled and lost much of
what the UN plan provided and Jerusalem as an international city was scrapped.
Will there be a second serious attempt to settle the issue of the land and the status of
Jerusalem? Will there be a serious move toward a single state? How will the matter of
Jerusalem be resolved. The two state solution has always been a fantasy and acquiescence of
Palestinians to engage in this charade exposes their leaders to charges of posturing for
perks. Imagined options could go on and on but will there be serious options placed before
the world community or will the boots on the ground Israeli policies continue?
As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and
the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both
parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.
Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 1:34 pm
As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and
the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both
parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.
The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with
the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to
both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:56 pm
Truly mind-boggling. Ahistorical, and as you say, fantasy.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:48 pm
FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy
(against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End
of story.
$50K of Facebook ads about puppies pales in comparison to that blatant, prima facia,
public manipulation. God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:11 pm
Just for the record, Richard Silverstein blocked me on Twitter because I pointed out that
he slammed someone who was suggesting that the Assad government was fighting for its
(Syria's) life by fighting terrorists. Actually, more specifically, because of that he read
my "Free Palestine" bio on Twitter and called me a Hamas supporter (no Hamas mentioned) and a
"moron" for some seeming contradiction.
I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy.
If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria
and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving
their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing
brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote,
arguably, perpetual war.
Silverstein is probably not a good (ie. consistent) arbiter of Israeli impact on US
politics. Just sayin'.
This may be a tad ot but it relates to the alleged hacking of the DNC, the role debbie
wasserman schultz plays in the spy ring (awan bros) in house of rep servers: I have long
suspected that mossad has their fingers in this entire mess. FWIW
Good site, BTW.
Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 7:35 pm
I can't recall why I removed the Tikun Olam site from my bookmarks – it happened
quite a while back. Generally I do that when I feel the blogger crossed some kind of personal
red line. Something Mr. Silverstein wrote put him over that line with me.
In the course of a search I found that at the neocon NYT. Mr. Silverstein claims several
things I find unbelievable, and from that alone I wonder about his ultimate motives. I may be
excessively touchy about this, but that's how it is.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 8:51 pm
Yeah Zachary, "wondering about ultimate motives" is probably a good way to put it/his
views. He's obviously conflicted, if not deferential in some aspects of Israeli policy. He
really was a hero of mine, but now I just don't get whether what he says is masking something
or a true belief. He says some good stuff, but, but, but .
P. Michael Garber , December 24, 2017 at 11:54 pm
Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than
reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel
lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible
relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was
manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's
influence.
And then Trump administration supplied weapons to Ukraine
Notable quotes:
"... This is not much of a dissent from the hawkish line on foreign policy, but it is a rejection of one of the more thoughtless and irresponsible foreign policy proposals out there. The report predictably puts the most negative spin possible on this move, perhaps because this is the first sign in months that Trump and his allies aren't just going to roll over for whatever the most hawkish Republicans want. Whatever their reasons for doing this, it happens to be the right call as a matter of policy. ..."
Daniel DePetris observes that most of the Republican platform on foreign policy and national
security shows that the hawks remain firmly in charge of the party's agenda, and I agree. It is
worth noting, though, that the Trump campaign has gone against the hawkish consensus on at least
one issue. Josh Rogin reports that Trump campaign operatives managed to work with pro-Trump
delegates to delete language that called for sending weapons to Ukraine:
The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican
platform won't call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces,
contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington.
This is not much of a dissent from the hawkish line on foreign policy, but it is a
rejection of one of the more thoughtless and irresponsible foreign policy proposals out there.
The report predictably puts the most negative spin possible on this move, perhaps because this is
the first sign in months that Trump and his allies aren't just going to roll over for whatever
the most hawkish Republicans want. Whatever their reasons for doing this, it happens to be the
right call as a matter of policy.
Note that the candidate swears to be "faithful" to the "interests, welfare and success of
the Democratic Party," but not to its principles. That's because there aren't any.
Readers may enjoy picking through the bafflegab, because I think you could drive a whole
fleet of trucks through the loopholes. Here, for example, is Benjamin
Studebaker's view : "A Second Term for Trump is Better Than Beto."
Nobody, after all, said that success had to be immediate ; perhaps a short term
failure improves the ultimate welfare and prospects for success for the party.
In a way, this McCarthy-ite armraising is a kludge, another symptom of a fraying system:
Exactly as we can no longer, apparently, trust voters to pick a President, and so must give
veto power to the intelligence community, so we can no longer trust primary voters to pick a
candidate, and the "National Chairperson" must step in if they somehow get the wrong answer.
Pesky voters!
"... I'll be honest here and admit that Democrats irritate me more than Republicans for this one simple reason. ..."
"... I've come to expect Republicans to be malicious -- there is honesty in their advertisement. However, it's the Democrats who smile like foxes as they pretend to be our allies only to stab us in our backs the minute they get elected. ..."
"Foxes and wolves usually are of the same breed. They belong to the same family -- I think
it's called canine. And the difference is that the wolf when he shows you his teeth, you know
that he's your enemy; and the fox, when he shows you his teeth, he appears to be smiling. But
no matter which of them you go with, you end up in the dog house."
It took a mean mugging by reality -- one that shook me out of cognitive dissonance -- for me
to realize that Democrats are no different than Republicans. They differ in their methods, but
in the end they feast on us regardless of their gang affiliation. Both parties are subsidiaries
of corporations and oligarchs; our entire political system is based on two factions bamboozling their
respective bases while manufacturing dissension on all sides.
... ... ...
Now that I've shed my political blinders, I see how this game is played. I'll be honest here
and admit that Democrats irritate me more than Republicans for this one simple reason.
I've
come to expect Republicans to be malicious -- there is honesty in their advertisement. However,
it's the Democrats who smile like foxes as they pretend to be our allies only to stab us in our
backs the minute they get elected.
They have maintained power for decades by successfully
treading on the pains of marginalized groups as they concurrently enact legislation and
regulations that inflame the very injustices they rail against.
If there is one group that has been leveraged the most by Democrats, it's the descendants of slaves and "black" diaspora
as a whole. For generations, supposed liberals -- who now call themselves progressives -- have
cunningly used the pains of "African-Americans" to further their own agendas. The Democrat's
most loyal voting bloc have time and time again been taken advantage of only to be tossed to
the side as soon as Democrats gain power. They talk a good game and pretend to be for us right
up until election day, soon as the last ballot is counted, they are nowhere to be found.
"... He quickly adapted and learned the art of duplicity; Obama perfected his ability to talk eloquently about our issues and suffering as a means to an end. ..."
"... Barack Obama was not an outlier but the norm when it comes to the tokens who are paraded by Democrats to represent faux-progress and counterfeit diversity. Kamala Harris is the next black bourgeoisie in line who is hoping to use the plight of African-Americans and the tribulations of "black" folk to win the White House. After spending a career locking up brown and "black" folk with impunity and resurrecting the ugly legacy of penal slavery, she is now shamelessly pretending to be the next coming of Sojourner Truth -- hers is the audacity of trope. ..."
"... Trump uses the same playbook of feigned concern to dupe their respective side ..."
"... Identity has been weaponized, instead of addressing the structural nature of racism and sexism, folks like Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton and identity politics shysters across the political spectrum are turning the victims of systematic oppression into human shields to intimidate anyone who dares to question their record. Enough is enough! ..."
"... There is a broader problem beyond these two-faced grifters ..."
"... What is true of "African-Americans" is true of society as a whole. In this richest nation, there exists a breathtaking chasm between the few who have much and the many who have little. Keeping this dynamic in place is a pyramid scheme that transfers wealth upward being kept by the greed of politicians and the indifference of the proletariat. We are being swindled by hustlers to keep this most depraved system intact. ..."
He
railed against the select few "negroes" who willingly stepped on their own people in order to
advance their own selfish ambitions. Malcolm X was against integration for this reason; he
realized that a modification of a racist system that benefits a fraction of society while
keeping the majority repressed was morally bankrupt. This same realization eventually
dawned on
Martin Luther King Jr when he confided to his closest advisers that he might have
"integrated his people into a burning house."
Fast forward fifty years and it's evident that the bourgeoisie "negroes" who Malcolm X
talked about have been unleashed by the establishment to work against the interests of their
people. As the majority of "African-Americans" suffer economic inequalities and are burdened by
financial uncertainties, black politicians, pundits and so-called "activists" are enriching
themselves while they pretend to be fighting injustice.
Forget Plymouth Rock, the biggest hoodwink of them all that landed on us was a boulder named
Barack. After losing a Congressional primary to Bobby Rush in 2000, Obama's inner circle
realized that he was not embraced by "African-Americans" in Chicago because many did not see
him as one of them . He
quickly adapted and learned the art of duplicity; Obama perfected his ability to talk
eloquently about our issues and suffering as a means to an end. The end was his unabated ego.
After he scaled the heights of politics, he ended up enacting policies that exacerbated the
wealth gap. For his brazen act of betrayal, Obama was rewarded
handsomely .
The Audacity of Trope
Barack Obama was not an outlier but the norm when it comes to the tokens who are paraded by
Democrats to represent faux-progress and counterfeit diversity. Kamala
Harris is the next black bourgeoisie in line who is hoping to use the plight of
African-Americans and the tribulations of "black" folk to win the White House. After spending a
career locking up brown and "black" folk with impunity and resurrecting the ugly legacy of
penal slavery, she is now shamelessly pretending to be the next coming of Sojourner Truth --
hers is the audacity of trope.
Given the fact that too many are conditioned to think in binary fashion, I must take a pause
here to clarify one thing. This is in no way to excuse the pernicious nature of Republicans and
the vile racism of Donald Trump. After all, not only are Republicans insidious when it comes to
the way they treat "African-Americans" and minorities as a whole, the party of Trump uses the
same playbook of feigned concern to dupe their respective side. However, the more I observe the
rank opportunism of the Democrat front-runners, the more I appreciate the sagacity of Malcolm
X.
It's not only politicians like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris who traffic in this most
insincere form of paternalism, there is a whole cottage industry of black opinion leaders and
gate-keepers who actively work against our interests while passively speaking against
injustice. They abound on TV, in the press and throughout social media; the surest way to make
a name for oneself is to be a part of the "woke" intelligentsia who lull their people into
collective comas.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that these same bourgeoisie mouthpieces are not only
using the pains of the oppressed to advance themselves, they are now employing the injuries of
the masses to deflect well-deserved criticism. Identity has been weaponized, instead of
addressing the structural nature of racism and sexism, folks like Kamala Harris, Hillary
Clinton and identity politics shysters across the political spectrum are turning the victims of
systematic oppression into human shields to intimidate anyone who dares to
question their record. Enough is enough!
The Talented Tenth
There is a broader problem beyond these two-faced grifters. The truth is that the "black"
community has become bifurcated; the bourgeoisie class feeling the blessings of capitalism and
enterprise while the vast majority are burdened by consumerism and debt. DuBois once talked
about the "talented tenth", an educated sector of blacks leading the bottom 90% out of bondage.
Sadly, the talented tenth has been convinced to seek self-enrichment and forget about
collective wellness.
What is true of "African-Americans" is true of society as a whole. In this richest nation,
there exists a breathtaking chasm between the few who have much and the many who have little.
Keeping this dynamic in place is a pyramid scheme that transfers wealth upward being kept by
the greed of politicians and the indifference of the proletariat. We are being swindled by
hustlers to keep this most depraved system intact.
... ... ...
Teodrose Fikre is the editor and founder of the Ghion Journal . A published author and prolific writer, a once
defense consultant was profoundly changed by a two year journey of hardship and struggle. Going
from a life of upper-middle class privilege to a time spent with the huddled masses taught
Teodrose a valuable lesson in the essence of togetherness and the need to speak against
injustice. Originally from Ethiopia with roots to Atse Tewodros II , Teodrose is a former
community organizer whose writing was incorporated into Barack Obama's South Carolina primary
victory speech in 2008. He pivoted away from politics and decided to stand for collective
justice after experiencing the reality of the forgotten masses.
tNot so puzzling if you buy into the "Fake Wrestling" theory. Since Bill Clinton
each party gets 8 years on the throne then hands off to the other party. Dems just playing
their part as they did in the 2016 election. Both parties controlled by the corporate and
cognitive elites pursuing their globalist agenda thats occasionally masked by nationalism to
appease the herd.
China has multiple parties within the CCP. The CCP is the visible face of authority. In
the West the CCP equivalent is hidden, preferring to allow each party in turn to accept the
blame for executing their agenda. Every 8 years the herd votes for Hope and Change or the
lesser evil and watches in amazement as nothing changes and lesser evil becomes more, only to
try again in the next cycle. Kind of like Groundhog Day.
When half the population has an IQ under 100, its easy for those with IQ's 4-6 SD above
average to manipulate the herd given the tools they have today. People can be made to believe
anything and much of what people believe is not true.
"Every 8 years the herd votes for Hope and Change or the lesser evil and watches in
amazement as nothing changes and lesser evil becomes more, only to try again in the next
cycle. Kind of like Groundhog Day.....When half the population has an IQ under 100, its
easy for those with IQ's 4-6 SD above average to manipulate the herd given the tools they
have today. People can be made to believe anything and much of what people believe is not
true."
My guess is that this contempt for "the herd" must be accompanied by a very generous
estimation of your own independence of mind and superiority of intellect.
My question, is how can democracy work in the world which you describe? Or would it just
consist of the idiotic "herd" listening to your ideas, applauding and carrying out
orders?
A popular narrative in the West is that the world would be a much better place if all
countries just look and act more like the Western world. Indeed, the West has enjoyed great
wealth and growth over the years. But growing instability in the Western world has also raised
doubts about the Western-style of democratic governance.
In fact, there is a tendency to put Western-style democracy on a pedestal; but by doing so,
we overlook its faults and even potential dangers. From the never-ending gridlock in
Washington, to chaos in the House of Commons of United Kingdom over the Brexit mess, to people
rioting on the streets of Paris, more and more people are calling into question the
effectiveness of Western-style democracy.
Brexit, for some at least, encapsulates the perils and pitfalls of this style of democracy.
In June 2016, the people of the UK voted to leave the European Union and, for now at least, the
UK will leave the EU by March 29 this year, with or without a plan in place. The irrational
jump into the unknown and the chaos that followed has created a troubling situation for the
country, as well as other parts of the world, raising serious questions about the effectiveness
and legitimacy of UK-style democracy.
Whether to leave or stay in the EU is a complicated issue that requires careful study and
rational decisions from knowledgeable, well-informed people. It is irresponsible to just drag
people off the streets for a vote on a major policy issue like Brexit. For example, days after
the UK voted to leave the EU, a commentary on TIME's website wrote that the referendum was not
a triumph of democracy, but an ugly populist fiasco.
Thus, there is good reason why more and more people feel like Western-style democracy has
become a big joke. In the UK, the people voted to "take back control" of their country -- but
without a plan. In the United States, politics has become a soap opera and the system is
pitting Americans against Americans, splitting the country further apart. In fact, the US
government has become so divided and dysfunctional that it recently broke the record for the
longest shutdown in US history, which forced many government employees to turn to food banks to
feed their families.
Yet, a very different story is unfolding in Asia. During the more than month-long government
shutdown in the United States, China made history, too -- by landing the Chang'e-4 spacecraft
on the far side of the moon. As a US senator pointed out during the shutdown, China has
quadrupled its GDP since 2001, but the United States cannot even keep the government up and
running. He called the situation in the United States "ludicrous."
Clearly, Western-style democracy is not "the end of history," as some have predicted and
hoped for. This is not to say that the Western system is a failure or that China's system is
superior to Western-style democracy, but it is fair to say that China's own system is a good
fit for the country and it achieves the best results for the Chinese people.
For example, China has built the largest, most advanced high-speed train network in the
world. It is the envy for many in the world, even for many Americans, including former
President Barack Obama, who, nearly a decade ago, unveiled a plan for a national network of
high-speed passenger rail lines that was envisioned to transform travel in America. The plan,
like many others, turned out to be an American Dream that never came true. Just recently in
California, for example, the state's new governor killed the high-speed rail program that would
link Los Angeles to San Francisco -- a project beloved by the just-retired four-term Governor
Jerry Brown.
And then there is US President Donald Trump's ambitious plan to "Rebuild America," which he
has been unable to deliver. Stuck in an endless battle with Democrats over funding for the
border wall, Trump declared a national emergency to fulfill his pledge to construct a wall
along the US-Mexico border. His decision reflects a difference between the two countries'
models. Whereas the Chinese model is people-centered, the American model is vote-centered. With
regard to the "security and humanitarian crisis" on the country's southern border, the people
are asking, "where is the crisis?" And herein lies the dilemma: Decisions, like Trump's
decision to declare a national emergency, are essentially political stunts for votes. The
Western model reduces people to a source of votes, essentially turning democracy into a game of
likes.
This kind of decision-making is in stark contrast to the decision-making process in China,
which makes annual, five-year, and long-term plans to guide the country forward and conducts
extensive consultations to reach a broad consensus on major issues. A clear advantage of the
Chinese system is that it is constantly exploring ways to adapt to the changing times,
including large-scale reform of Party and government institutions to adapt to internal and
external changes.
Perhaps there was a time when one could argue that the Western model produced the best
results, but that is no longer the case. What we are seeing now is that it is increasingly
difficult for Western countries to reach a consensus on major issues and to form a strategic
plan. Western-style of democracy has become too rigid and Western democratic institutions are
in a state of degradation, making it next to impossible to carry out any substantial reform.
This can be seen in the fact that democracy in the Western world has increasingly become a
fight for money and a game of manipulating people for votes.
In China's socialist democracy, there is a strong and stable political force that represents
the interests of the great majority of the Chinese people. The Chinese government takes a
people-centered approach to politics and good governance ensures that results can be delivered.
It should be no wonder, then, that the Western model is barreling toward a cliff, while China
is making great progress in various aspects, including the nation's ambitious plan to eradicate
poverty by 2020. In a world of turmoil, there is reason for China and the Chinese people to be
confident in its path.
--it is fair to say that China's own system is a good fit for the country and it achieves
the best results for the Chinese people--
Putting it broadly 'One Size does not fit All' - as such values of the society, history of
the society and potential of the society are different everywhere - as such state management
be different. Moroever governance methods be flexible enough so that the decisions be adopted
according to the national and international requirements.
In some Western countries it's not the political system itself that is necessarily bad. In
the case of the present "sole superpower", for example, refusal to change policies based on
the extermination of over 95% of its indigenous population and centuries of inhuman slavery
of black people have perpetuated the present war against oppressed minorities. Further, the
continuation of aggressive wars overseas, a habit that prompted Martin Luther King Jr to call
his country "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world" has ensured the neglect of
infrastructure, healthcare, and quality of disenfranchised minorities, especially the
Afro-Americans. It's not surprising that in poll after poll, the US have garnered the most
votes for being the most dangerous country in the world. The much-maligned North Korea was
second.
Millions of poor people of all colours. The Africans used slaves long before the Arabs/
Europeans went to Africa and bought them from Africans, who used them for centuries, rounded
them up, for sale to anyone with trinkets. The A-rabs were real big slavers, real big. Russia
used Swedish slaves as did all nations use their fellow humans as slaves, only the US Negros
get all the publicity.
The problem with your views is that there is no liberals in the USA per se. Most are in
reality neoliberals and as such are the part of the right, if we define right as those who
want to increase the power of capital vs. labor.
This flavor of democracy for top 1% the they promote (one dollar one vote) should be
property called "oligarchy" or at best "polyarchy" (the power of the top 10%).
The rest (aka "Debt slaves") are second class citizens and are prevented from political
self-organization, which by-and-large deprives them of any form of political participation.
In best Roman tradition it is substituted with the participation in political shows ("Bread
and circuses"). In a way US election is the ultimate form of "bait and switch" maneuvers of
the ruling elite.
The two party system invented by the elite of Great Britain proved to be perfect for
neoliberal regimes, which practice what Sheldon Wolin called inverted totalitarism.
The latter is the regime in which all political power belongs to the financial oligarchy
which rules via the deep state mechanisms, and where traditional political institutions
including POTUS are downgraded to instruments of providing political legitimacy of the ruling
elite. Population is discouraged from political activity. "Go shopping" as famously
recommended Bush II to US citizens after 9/11.
It did not take long before we knew there was no hope of change from President Obama. But at least he went into his inauguration
with an unprecedented number of Americans on the Mall showing their support for the President of Change. Hope was abundant.
But with Trump, we are already losing faith, if not yet with him, at least with his choice of those who comprise his government
even before Trump is inaugurated.
Trump's choice for Secretary of State not only sounds like the neoconservatives in declaring Russia to be a threat to the United
States and all of Europe, but also sounds like Hillary Clinton in declaring the South China Sea to be an area of US dominance. One
would think that the chairman of Exxon was not an idiot, but I am no longer sure. In his confirmation hearing, Rex Tillerson said
that China's access to its own South China Sea is "not going to be allowed."
Here is Tillerson's statement: "We're going to have to send China a clear signal that first, the island-building stops, and second,
your access to those islands also not going to be allowed."
I mean, really, what is Tillerson going to do about it except get the world blown up. China's response was as pointed as a response
can be:
Tillerson "should not be misled into thinking that Beijing will be fearful of threats. If Trump's diplomatic team shapes future
Sino-US ties as it is doing now, the two sides had better prepare for a military clash. Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear power
strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories."
So Trump is not even inaugurated and his idiot nominee for Secretary of State has already created an animosity relationship with
two nuclear powers capable of completely destroying all of the West for eternity. And this makes the US Senate comfortable with Tillerson.
The imbeciles should be scared out of their wits, assuming they have any.
One of the reasons that Russia rescued Syria from Washington's overthrow is that Russia understood that Washington's next target
would be Iran and from a destroyed Iran terrorism would be exported into the Russian Federation. There is an axis of countries threatened
by US supported terrorism-Syria, Iran, Russia, China.
Trump says he wants to normalize relations with Russia and to open up business opportunities in the place of conflict. But to
normalize relations with Russia requires also normalizing relations with Iran and China.
Judging from their public statements, Trump's announced government has targeted Iran for destabilization. Trump's appointees as
National Security Advisor, Secretary of Defense, and Director of the CIA all regard Iran incorrectly as a terrorist state that must
be overthrown.
But Russia cannot allow Washington to overthrow the stable government in Iran and will not allow it. China's investments in Iranian
oil imply that China also will not permit Washington's overthrow of Iran. China has already suffered from its lost investments in
Libyan oil as the result of the Obama regimes overthrow of the Libyan government.
Realistically speaking, it looks like the Trump Presidency is already defeated by his own appointees independently of the ridiculous
and completely unbelievable propaganda put out by the CIA and broadcast by the presstitute media in the US, UK, and Europe. The New
York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and BBC have lowered themselves below the National Enquirer.
If the Chairman of Exxon and a Lt. General are not capable of standing up to the imbecilic Congress, they are unfit for office.
That they did not stand up is an indication that they lack the strength that Trump needs if he is to bring change from the top.
If Trump is unable to change US foreign policy, thermonuclear war and the destruction of Earth are inevitable.
"... I like the use of "careerist" ; it should be used more often, as it describes the motivation of a rather large number of decision-makers I've met. ..."
"... I would hate to see it used more often. I have heard of its being applied to a grad student who–wait for it!–actually hoped to have an academic career and recognized the forms that had to be gone through to achieve that. There are places where it is an appropriate description, but it is one of those vogue words (like narcissistic) which become void of meaning through overuse. ..."
Team Trump is working on a plan "to restructure the Central
Intelligence Agency, cutting back on staffing at its Virginia
headquarters and pushing more people out into field posts around the
world,"
And the main reason Clinton Democrats are jumping on this bandwagon is
that they want to blame their gross electoral failure on "external forces",
not their own terrible record of sabotaging the middle class in favor of
elite Wall Street interests. Their current fear is progressive Sanders
Democrats kicking them out of the DNC and other party organization
leadership positions (which just happened in California); hence their
willingness to get behind bogus claims on DNC hacking and Russians running
Trump.
As far as the FBI's Comey, notably he acted to protect Clinton when the
great fear was that she'd be defeated by Sanders; notably the FBI didn't
access DNC servers to look for evidence of a hack (it was probably an
internal leak), and Comey's refusal to recommend criminal charges for
Clinton during the primary was a service to the Clinton Democrats.
And the DNC was just so sleazy, no wonder they alienated all the Sanders
supporters for the general election:
It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to
ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has
a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make
several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would
draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.- DNC CFO Brad
Marshall
I would hate to see it used more often. I have heard of its being applied
to a grad student who–wait for it!–actually hoped to have an academic career
and recognized the forms that had to be gone through to achieve that. There
are places where it is an appropriate description, but it is one of those
vogue words (like narcissistic) which become void of meaning through
overuse.
"... I gather our President lectured our President Elect on the necessity to stand up to Russia. (My first thought is that like that stupid charitable campaign to Stand Up to Cancer!, another place where the phrase was either meaningless or foolhardy.) ..."
"... IF Russia ever started actually interfering in our relations with our neighbors or attempted to get us thrown out of our legal bases in foreign nations, I would say that Barack Obama might have a point. Since we are the party guilty of such actions, he would do better to clean up his own administration's relations with Russia, apologize to Russia, and then STFU. ..."
"... 'Obama Urges Trump to Maintain Pointless, Hyper-Aggresive Encirclement of Russia Strategy, Acknowledge Nuclear Apocalypse "Inevitable"' ..."
"... In the best of circumstances, Obama in his post-presidency will be akin to Jimmy Carter and stay out of politics, less or less. (I think he has exhausted all trust and value.) If he goes the Jimmy Carter route; he is bound to do worse and will fade away. I don't think he'll go the Clinton route unless Michelle tries to run for office. ..."
"... The good people of the US are awaiting DHS' final report on Russia's attempts to hack our elections. We deserve as much. ..."
"... If there's any basis to the allegations it's about time someone provided it. Up till now it's been unfounded assertions. Highly suspect at that. ..."
"... My guess is the whole Russian boogeyman was a ploy to attract those "moderate Republicans" who liked Romney. ..."
"... "My hope is that the president-elect coming in takes a similarly constructive approach, finding areas where we can cooperate with Russia where our values and interests align, but that the president-elect also is willing to stand up to Russia when they are deviating from our values and international norms," Obama said. "But I don't expect that the president-elect will follow exactly our approach." ..."
"... Yes, because "U.S. values" as defined by the actions of the last 16 years have been so enlightened and successful and because the U.S. is a sterling example of adhering to international norms ..."
"... Just how deluded, ignorant or sociopathic does a person need to be that they can say things like that without vomiting? ..."
I gather our President lectured our President Elect on the necessity to stand up to Russia.
(My first thought is that like that stupid charitable campaign to Stand Up to Cancer!, another
place where the phrase was either meaningless or foolhardy.)
IF Russia ever started actually interfering in our relations with our neighbors or attempted
to get us thrown out of our legal bases in foreign nations, I would say that Barack Obama might
have a point. Since we are the party guilty of such actions, he would do better to clean up his
own administration's relations with Russia, apologize to Russia, and then STFU.
Which I am sure he will do once everyone recognizes that that is the appropriate thing to do.
But as we well know everyone else will have to do the heavy lifting of figuring that out before
he will even acknowledge the possibility.
In the best of circumstances, Obama in his post-presidency will be akin to Jimmy Carter
and stay out of politics, less or less. (I think he has exhausted all trust and value.) If he
goes the Jimmy Carter route; he is bound to do worse and will fade away. I don't think he'll go
the Clinton route unless Michelle tries to run for office.
In this case, Obama is probably too vain and Michelle being the saner of the two might rein
him in? Best of any world would, as you say, STFU. (As the Ex Prez. Obamamometer, that is probably
not in the cards.)
Maybe he will end up like Geo Bush, sitting in the bathtub drooling while he paints childish
self-portraits
Or maybe he will end up like OJ, where he tries to go hang out with all his cool friends and they
tell him to get lost
Ppl still mention him as a master orator, etc. Lots of post presidency speaking engagements
I suppose. I'd prefer him not to but then again if he makes enough annually from it to beat the
Clintons we might get the satisfaction of annoying them
"My hope is that the president-elect coming in takes a similarly constructive approach,
finding areas where we can cooperate with Russia where our values and interests align, but that
the president-elect also is willing to stand up to Russia when they are deviating from our values
and international norms," Obama said. "But I don't expect that the president-elect will follow
exactly our approach." What Obama is saying is he wants Russia to join America in bombing
hospitals, schools, children, doctors, public facilities like water treatment plants, bridges,
weddings, homes, and civilians to list just few – while arming and supporting terrorists for regime
change. And if anyone points this out, Russia like the US is supposed to say "I know you are but
what am I?"
Yes, because "U.S. values" as defined by the actions of the last 16 years have been so
enlightened and successful and because the U.S. is a sterling example of adhering to international
norms
Just how deluded, ignorant or sociopathic does a person need to be that they can say things
like that without vomiting?
Is this the same Russia that just hacked our election and subverted our fine democracy? Why,
President Obama, I believe it behooves you to stand up to Russia yourself. Show President-Elect
Trump how it is done sir!
Once again, I remind everyone that we saw THE EXACT SAME THING with Obama. Failures were
NEVER attributed to Obama despite the fact that Obama kept "failing" over and over again.
What is "failure" to us is success for the establishment.
That's how the faux populist leader psyop works. I've been writing about Trump as a
faux populist like Obama for about 18 months. But those who hope that Trump is their
hero refuse to see what they don't want to see . And then there are those that
deliberately want to push the pretense that hero Trump is repeatedly confounded by his
advisors.
steven t johnson @6 has it right: Believing Trump is or ever was open to breaking with
US imperialism is Trumpery.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <>
Anyone trying to excuse Trump is a fool or worse. Trump is not hero, he's a member of the
team. He is is part and parcel of the anti-democratic scam. He is the Empire's spokesperson,
and a tool of the Deep State.
Trump's 11 dimensional chess is a lot like Obama's 11 dimensional chess. Neither could figure
out a way to keep warmongers and hateful pricks out of their cabinets, or curtail the war
machine in any way, or to stop handing out tax giveaways to people who don't need them.
Interview is about forthcoming book "Peak
Trump" In "Peak Trump", Stockman goes after all the sacred cows: Military spending, entitlement spending, MAGA, Trump's tax cut,
the intelligence budget, and the Wall. Trump is a symptom of the problem. He wanted to drain the swamp but failed to do so. He never
really had a good chance of doing that, but he failed to make the most of the chance he had. We are where we are because of decades
of Congressional and monetary mismanagement
All in the name of empire... the Deep state in non-particular and Trump proved to be a "naked king"
At 15:49 min Ron Paul asks the question about Tulsi... She positioned herself as noninterventionists and has similar foreign policy
as Ron Paul used to have. Stockman answer was very interesting and informative.. MSM journalists are essentially federal contractor,
lobbyists of MIC.
He also mentioned that Trump falls from the bait. And the appointment of Elliot Abrams was real betrayal of his voters.
Notable quotes:
"... He was smart enough to understand that the commonplace observation codified as the Laffer Curve, while true, didn't mean that DC could just go on an endless spending spree and expect increased tax revenues to exceed the avarice of politicians, though. ..."
"... No, I don't think Stockman's rhetoric was a lie. He did end up getting shoved out of the Reagan regime, after all, precisely because he resisted giving every cabinet secretary all the money they wanted and, as you say, insisted that the tax cuts needed to be accompanied by spending cuts. ..."
"... But supply-side economics is, perversely, a departure from sound economic policy in the direction of central planning . Its premise is that instead of production being driven by diffuse demand, money should be concentrated in the hands of a few who "know better" what should be produced. ..."
"... And in practice, the "entrepreneurs" intended to benefit were the businesses who already had the clout to make themselves part of the political class, not the guy in his garage designing a better mousetrap. ..."
"... The Laffer Curve is an interesting but much over-used (and badly used) observation: There is a tax revenue curve with a top to it. That is, as you raise taxes, revenues go up ... until the taxation gets onerous enough that additional earnings beyond bare subsistence strike people as not worth the input, beyond which point tax INcreases produce revenue DEcreases. ..."
David Stockman was one of my conservative heroes during the Reagan years. He was the one person in the Administration who seemed
to have an honest understanding of economics. It's nice to see that his experiences with the reality of the DC swamp have made
him go all the way to describing himself as a libertarian, rather than a conservative.
He could have sold out, given up any modicum of principle, and simply become a multi-millionaire Republican Party establishment
hack.
I would venture to say he and I have some policy differences, but it's always nice to see when someone embraces their best,
rather than their worst, instincts.
My recollection of Stockman's economics from those years (based on e.g. The Triumph of Politics) was that he was all-in on
"supply side" economics, which is twaddle. He was smart enough to understand that the commonplace observation codified as
the Laffer Curve, while true, didn't mean that DC could just go on an endless spending spree and expect increased tax revenues
to exceed the avarice of politicians, though.
Yes, supply side is bogus, but my observations were that Stockman was quite critical of the spending increases that the Administration
put forth. He approved of the so called tax-cuts, but he did so with the understanding that there would be spending cuts along
with them.
My own recollections (I was alive back then, but not as politically conscious as I am now) were that Stockman was not endorsing
the supply side theory so much as his own idea that cuts in government spending were necessary, and that tax cuts would put pressure
on Congress and the administration to cut spending. The irony is that, for whatever reason, tax revenues overall increased by
60% in Reagan's two terms, yet spending increased almost 100%. This certainly disproves the idea that there was ever a revenue
problem, and that it has always been a spending problem.
In any event, Stockman was just about the only person with an official capacity in DC, who actually worked toward spending
cuts. Unless you are saying that his rhetoric was a lie, and he was just like all the others. If that is the case then, of course,
you could always be right.
No, I don't think Stockman's rhetoric was a lie. He did end up getting shoved out of the Reagan regime, after all, precisely
because he resisted giving every cabinet secretary all the money they wanted and, as you say, insisted that the tax cuts needed
to be accompanied by spending cuts.
But supply-side economics is, perversely, a departure from sound economic policy in the direction of central planning .
Its premise is that instead of production being driven by diffuse demand, money should be concentrated in the hands of a few who
"know better" what should be produced.
True, the central planning class in question was, broadly and not very honestly defined, "entrepreneurs" rather than government
bureaucrats, but the principle was the same. And in practice, the "entrepreneurs" intended to benefit were the businesses
who already had the clout to make themselves part of the political class, not the guy in his garage designing a better mousetrap.
"But supply-side economics is, perversely, a departure from sound economic policy"
Perhaps the most damning thing about it was that the stated goal was to increase the federal government's revenue. What person
in their right mind would wish to give even more money and power to the federal government?
The Laffer Curve is an interesting but much over-used (and badly used) observation: There is a tax revenue curve with a
top to it. That is, as you raise taxes, revenues go up ... until the taxation gets onerous enough that additional earnings beyond
bare subsistence strike people as not worth the input, beyond which point tax INcreases produce revenue DEcreases.
"... Voters support Elizabeth Warren's proposed tax on large fortunes by a three-to-one majority. Only a small minority want to see cuts in Medicaid, even though such cuts have been central to every G.O.P. health care proposal in recent years. ..."
Donald Trump, who ran on promises to expand health care and
raise taxes on the rich , began betraying his working-class supporters the moment he took
office, pushing through big tax cuts for the rich while trying to take health coverage away
from millions.
... ... ...
Meanwhile, the modern Republican Party is all about cutting taxes on the rich and benefits
for the poor and the middle class. And Trump, despite his campaign posturing, has turned out to
be no different.
... ... ...
Polling is unambiguous here. If you define the "center" as a position somewhere between
those of the two parties, when it comes to economic issues the public is overwhelmingly left of
center; if anything, it's to the left of the Democrats. Tax cuts for the rich are the G.O.P.'s
defining policy, but two-thirds of voters believe that taxes on the rich are actually too low,
while only 7 percent believe that they're too high.
Voters support Elizabeth Warren's proposed tax on large fortunes by a three-to-one
majority. Only a small minority want to see cuts in Medicaid, even though such cuts have been
central to every G.O.P. health care proposal in recent years.
Why did Republicans stake out a position so far from voters' preferences? Because they
could. As Democrats became the party of civil rights, the G.O.P. could attract working-class
whites by catering to their social and racial illiberalism, even while pursuing policies that
hurt ordinary workers.
... ... ...
In any case, if there's a real opening for an independent, that candidate will look more
like George Wallace than like Howard Schultz. Billionaires who despise the conventional parties
should beware of what they wish for.
I consider myself socially conservative and economically liberal and I very bitterly
reject the idea that I am a "racist". The left has to stop tossing around the word "racist"
to essentially mean "anything they dislike" and "anyone they disagree with". I am not a
racist, and I defy anyone to prove I am. Dr. Krugman, if you are going to call 50% of the
voters in the US "racists"....well, consider what happened when your pal Hillary called us
"deplorables in a basket". How'd that work out for her?
Democrats love to eat their own. We have one of the most racist presidents to ever hold
office in modern times, yet some Democrats are going after Northam over some dumb stunt that
happened decades ago. Is he a good leader NOW? Does he support good policies NOW? Is
Northam's behavior really any worse (blackface versus sexual misconduct) than someone who
just got a seat on the Supreme Court? Wow, this is like watching an episode of The Twilight
Zone. Republicans have a strategic advantage because, while Democrats get all twisted up in
identity politics, Republican leaders are only tightly focused on serving the rich and
powerful at the expense of average Americans. No party disunity there. Democrats need to
start focusing on the basic, kitchen table issues that average Americans care about, like
affordable health care, affordable housing and affordable higher education. With that strong
streak of self-destruction that runs through Democrats, Nancy Pelosi is needed more than ever
in the people's House where badly needed legislation has to move forward.
A Democrat could beat Trump if he was pro-single payer, pro family, pro-union, anti-war,
and for the aggressive taxing of ultra high wealth if he could just shut down the flagrant
abuse of our immigration laws and border. That candidate can't win the primary though because
not welcoming the infinite number of suffering illegal immigrants to share these expensive
benefits or wanting law and order to immigration earns a label of "racist" in the Democratic
Party. Trump will win in 2020 unless dems stop with the wild misuse of the word racist.
"Racial hostility" is what I, a white male, feel from the Democrats. It's a common thread
among the reluctant Trump supporters I know - they are disgusted by Trump, but they won't
support the Democrats for that reason. My 66-year-old father recently said to me, for the
first time, "well, you know, I'm a racist."
This man voted for Obama, but I wouldn't be surprised if he casts his vote for Trump in
2020 because the left has lost all credibility in his eyes. They call my dad a racist over
and over, but he knows he's a fair person, so he's accepted that the "racist" label isn't
that big of a deal.
Trump has tried to turn his presidency into a personality cult rather than MAGA. That is a mistake because Trump's campaign positions
were more popular than Trump and it doesn't lift the entire party.
Every Hillary voter I meet, male or female, buys every one of the stupid narratives being pushed and are fired up to vote.
The Bernie voters don't automatically buy every narrative but they despise Trump and want him out and Democrats to regain control.
I agree with Derb that the hearing may make up some of the enthusiasm gap. A lot of conservative men had to have been looking
at that hearing and thinking how easy it would be for them to get similar treatment at work or school.I imagine a good number
of conservative women don't want their husbands and sons to face similar inquisitions.
@NoseytheDuke
Face it -- he neither believed nor understood those Stephen Miller speeches. Coming from the
mouth of Donald Trump, they were lies.
Why do so many of you intelligent people still buy into the political puppet show,
expecting BigGov to fix itself? Electoral politics, judicial confirmations, etc, are
orchestrated conflict to keep dissidence channeled and harmlessly blown off as the Empire
lurches along.
There are other columnists here at Unz who have been calling the Beltway BS for years. For
example:
"In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will hose away all of the rot and
bloody criminality of the Bush years. He turned out to be a deft move by our ruling class.
Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of our military banking
complex. Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider.
A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as
a magnet for liberal anger. This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war
abroad while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump won't fulfill any of his
election promises, and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politics."
"... The imperialists want to grab the rich oil fields for the US big oil cartel ..."
"... Venezuela must not become an example for other countries in the region on social-programs policy ..."
"... Venezuela must not turn to cooperation with rival powers like China and Russia. Such a prospect may give the country the ability to minimize the effects of the economic war ..."
"... So, when Trump declared the unelected Juan Guaido as the 'legitimate president' of Venezuela, all the main neoliberal powers of the West rushed to follow the decision. ..."
"... Donald Trump is the personification of an authoritarian system that increasingly unveils its true nature. The US empire makes the Venezuelan economy 'scream hard', as it did in Chile in 1973. The country then turned into the first laboratory of neoliberalism with the help of the Chicago Boys and a brutal dictatorship. So, as the big fraud is clear now, neoliberalism is losing ground and ideological influence over countries and societies, after decades of complete dominance. ..."
Even before the 2016 US presidential election, this blog supported that Donald Trump is
apure sample of neoliberal barbarism . Many almost laughed at this perception because Trump was being already promoted,
more or less, as the 'terminator' of the neoliberal establishment. And many people, especially in the US, tired from the economic
disasters, the growing inequality and the endless wars, were anxious to believe that this was indeed his special mission.
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.
In 2017 , Trump bombed Syria for the first time, 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 the confrontation with Russia.
Indeed, a year later, Trump built a pro-war team that includes the most bloodthirsty, hawkish neocons. And then, he ordered a
second airstrike against Syria, together with his neocolonial friends.
In the middle of all this 'orgy' of pro-establishment moves, Trump offered a controversial withdrawal of US forces from Syria
and Afghanistan to save whatever was possible from his 'anti-interventionist' profile. And it was indeed a highly controversial action
with very little value, considering all these US military bases that are still fully operational in the broader Middle East and beyond.
Not to mention the various ways through which the US intervenes in the area (training proxies, equip them with heavy weapons, supporting
the Saudis and contribute to war crimes in Yemen, etc.)
And then , after this very short break, Trump returned to 'business as usual' to satisfy the neoliberal establishment with a 'glorious'
record. He achieved a 35-day government shutdown, which is the
"longest shutdown in US history"
.
Trump conducted the longest experiment on neoliberals' ultimate goal: abolishing the annoying presence of the state. And this
was just a taste of what Trump is willing to do in order to satisfy all neoliberals' wet dreams.
And now, we have the Venezuela issue. Since Hugo Chavez nationalized PDVSA, the central oil and natural gas company, the US empire
launched a fierce economic war against the country. Yet, while all previous US administrations were trying to replace legitimate
governments with their puppets as much silently as possible through slow-motion coup operations, Trump has no problem to do it in
plain sight.
And perhaps the best proof for that is a statement by one of the most warmongering figures of the neocon/neoliberal cabal, hired
by Trump . As John Bolton cynically and openly
admitted recently,
" It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and
produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela. "
Therefore, one should be very naive of course to believe that the Western imperialist gang seriously cares about the Venezuelan
people and especially the poor. Here are three basic reasons behind the open US intervention in Venezuela:
The imperialists want to grab the rich oil fields for the US big oil cartel, as well as the
great untapped
natural resources , particularly gold (mostly for the Canadian companies).
Venezuela must not become an example for other countries in the region on social-programs policy, which is mainly funded by
the oil production. The imperialists know that they must interrupt the path of Venezuela to real Socialism by force if necessary.
Neoliberalism must prevail by all means for the benefit of the big banks and corporations.
Venezuela must not turn to cooperation with rival powers like China and Russia. Such a prospect may give the country the ability
to minimize the effects of the economic war. The country may find an alternative to escape the Western sanctions in order to fund
its social programs for the benefit of the people. And, of course, the West will never accept the exploitation of the Venezuelan
resources by the Sino-Russian bloc.
So, when Trump declared the unelected Juan Guaido as the 'legitimate president' of Venezuela, all the main neoliberal powers of
the West rushed to follow the decision.
This is something we have never seen before. The 'liberal democracies' of the West - only by name - immediately, uncritically
and without hesitation jumped on the same boat with Trump towards this outrageously undemocratic action. They recognized Washington's
puppet as the legitimate president of a third country. A man that was never elected by the Venezuelan people and has very low popularity
in the country. Even worse, the EU parliament
approved this action
, killing any last remnants of democracy in the Union.
Yet, it seems that the US is finding increasingly difficult to force many countries to align with its agenda. Even some European
countries took some distance from the attempted constitutional coup, with Italy even
trying to
veto EU's decision to recognize Guaido.
Donald Trump is the personification of an authoritarian system that increasingly unveils its true nature. The US empire makes
the Venezuelan economy 'scream hard', as it did in Chile in 1973. The country then turned into the first laboratory of neoliberalism
with the help of the Chicago Boys and a brutal dictatorship. So, as the big fraud is clear now, neoliberalism is losing ground and
ideological influence over countries and societies, after decades of complete dominance.
This unprecedented action by the Western neoliberal powers to recognize Guaido is a serious sign that neoliberalism returns to
its roots and slips towards fascism. It appears now that this is the only way to maintain some level of power.
"... This reminds me of the gerontocrats of the Soviet Politburo in the worst stagnation years who had to appoint the likes of Chernenko to top positions. ..."
"... The one thing the Mr MAGA's administration has in common with the late Brezhevian Politburo is its total inability to get anything done. My wife refers to the folks in the White House (since Dubya came to power) as the " gang that couldn't shoot straight " and she is right (she always is!): they just can't really get anything done anymore – all their half-assed pseudo-successes are inevitably followed by embarrassing failures. ..."
Remember the almost universal reaction of horror when Bolton was appointed as National
Security Advisor? Well, apparently, either the Neocons completely missed that, which I doubt,
or they did what they always do and decided to double-down by retrieving Elliott Abrams from
storage and appointing him US Special Envoy to Venezuela. I mean, yes, of course, the Neocons
are stupid and sociopathic enough not to ever care about others, but in this case I think that
we are dealing with a "Skripal tactic": do something so ridiculously stupid and offensive that
it places all your vassals before a stark choice: either submit and pretend like you did not
notice or, alternatively, dare to say something and face with wrath of Uncle Shmuel (the
Neocon's version of Uncle Sam).
And it worked, in the name of "solidarity" or whatever else, the most faithful lackeys of
the Empire immediate fell in line behind the latest US aggression against a sovereign nation in
spite of the self-evident fact that this aggression violates every letter of the most sacred
principles of international law. This is exactly the same tactic as when they make you clean
toilets with a toothbrush or do push-ups in the mud during basic training: not only to
condition you to total obedience, but to make you publicly give up any semblance of
dignity.
...Finally, these appointments also show that the senior-Neocons are frightened and paranoid
as there are still plenty of very sharp junior-Neocon folks to chose from in the US, yet they
felt the need to get Abrams from conservation and place him in a key position in spite of the
strong smell of naphthalene emanating from him. This reminds me of the gerontocrats of the
Soviet Politburo in the worst stagnation years who had to appoint the likes of Chernenko to top
positions.
The one thing the Mr MAGA's administration has in common with the late Brezhevian
Politburo is its total inability to get anything done. My wife refers to the folks in the White
House (since Dubya came to power) as the " gang that couldn't shoot straight "
and she is right (she always is!): they just can't really get anything done anymore – all
their half-assed pseudo-successes are inevitably followed by embarrassing failures.
"... Why does everyone make Trump out to be a victim, poor ol Trump, he's being screwed by all those people he himself appointed, poor ol persecuted Trump. Sounds like our Jewish friends with all the victimization BS. ..."
"... I think Israel is just a capitalist creation, nothing to do with Jews, just a foothold in he middle east for Wall St to have a base to control the oil and gas there, they didn't create Israel until they discovered how much oil was there, and realized how much control over the world it would give them to control it. ..."
"... It is the love of money, the same thing the Bible warned us about. Imperialism/globalism is the latest stage of capitalism, that is what all of this is about, follow the money. ..."
I heartily dislike and find despicable the socialist government of Maduro, just as I did
Hugo Chavez when he was in power. I have some good friends there, one of whom was a student
of mine when I taught in Argentina many years ago, and he and his family resolutely oppose
Maduro. Those socialist leaders in Caracas are tin-pot dictator wannabees who have wrecked
the economy of that once wealthy country; and they have ridden roughshod over the
constitutional rights of the citizens. My hope has been that the people of Venezuela,
perhaps supported by elements in the army, would take action to rid the country of those
tyrants.
Hard to take this guy seriously when he spouts Fox News level propaganda.
Why does everyone make Trump out to be a victim, poor ol Trump, he's being screwed by
all those people he himself appointed, poor ol persecuted Trump. Sounds like our Jewish
friends with all the victimization BS.
Its clear that voting no longer works folks, this is an undemocratic and illegitimate
"government" we have here. We let them get away with killing JFK, RFK, MLK, Vietnam, we let
them get away with 9/11, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria. They've made a mess in Africa. All
the refugees into Europe, all the refugees from Latin America that have already come from CIA
crimes, more will come.
We wouldn't need a wall if Wall St would stop with their BS down there!
You can't just blame Jews, yes there are lots of Jews in Corporate America, bu t not all
of them are, and there are lots of Jews who speak out against this. We were doing this long
before Israel came into existence. You can't just blame everything one one group, I think
Israel/Zionist are responsible for a lot of BS, but you can't exclude CIA, Wall St,
Corporations, Banks, The MIC either. Its not just one group, its all of them. They're all
evil, they're imperialists and they're all capitalists.
I think Israel is just a capitalist creation, nothing to do with Jews, just a foothold
in he middle east for Wall St to have a base to control the oil and gas there, they didn't
create Israel until they discovered how much oil was there, and realized how much control
over the world it would give them to control it.
Those people moving to Israel are being played, just like the "Christian Zionists" here
are, its a cult. Most "Jews" are atheists anyhow, and it seems any ol greedy white guy can
claim to be a Jew. So how do you solve a "Jewish Problem" if anybody can claim to be a Jew? I
think solving the capitalist problem would be a little easier to enforce.
All of the shills can scream about communists, socialists and marxists all they want.
Capitalism is the problem always has been always will be. Its a murderous, immoral,
unsustainable system that encourages greed, it is a system who's driving force is maximizing
profits, and as such the State controlled or aligned with Corporations is the most advanced
form of capitalism because it is the most profitable. They're raping the shit out of us,
taking our money to fund their wars, so they can make more money while paying little to no
taxes at all. Everything, everyone here complains about is caused by CAPITALISM, but nobody
dares say it, they've been programmed since birth to think that way.
We should nationalize our oil and gas, instead of letting foreigners come in and steal it,
again paying little or no taxes on it, then selling the oil they took from our country back
to us. Russia and Venezuela do it, Libya did it, Iraq did it, and they used the money for the
people of the country, they didn't let the capitalists plunder their wealth like the traitors
running our country. We're AT LEAST $21 trillion in the hole now from this wonderful system
of ours, don't you think we should try something else? Duh!
It is the love of money, the same thing the Bible warned us about.
Imperialism/globalism is the latest stage of capitalism, that is what all of this is about,
follow the money. Just muh opinion
The opposition hates me. I can do no right. The
Trumptards blindly support me. I can do no wrong. There are not enough independent thinkers
to make a difference as the two main sides bitterly fight each other over every minute,
meaningless issue. I can pretty much do as I please without consequence ..like pay off all my
buddies and pander to the jews/globalist/elites.
I'd add: and by doing the last, I could cut a deal with the real TPTBs as to for what happens
after I leave White House.
This article from 2017 looks like it was written yesterday. Trump betrayal of his elctorate on multiple levels, essentially on all
key poin of his election program mkes him "Republican Obama".
What is interesting about Trump foreign policy is his version of neoliberal "gangster capitalism" on foreign arena:
might is right principle applied like universal opener. Previous administrations tried to put a lipstick on the pig. Trump
does not even bother.
In terms of foreign policy, and even during the transition before Trump's inauguration, there were other, more disturbing signs
of where Trump would be heading soon. When Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016,
Trump seemed jubilant as if he had somehow been vindicated, and took the opportunity to slander Castro as a "brutal dictator" who
"oppressed his own people" and turned Cuba into a "totalitarian island".
Notable quotes:
"... However, when he delivered his inaugural address on January 20, 2017, Trump appeared to reaffirm his campaign themes of anti-interventionism. In particular he seemed to turn the government's back on a long-standing policy of cultural imperialism , stating: "We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone". In addition he said his government would "seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world," and he understood the importance of national sovereignty when he added, "it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first". ..."
"... Yet when it came to Russia, Trump could have instantly removed sanctions that were imposed by Obama in his last weeks in office -- an irresponsible and dangerous act by Obama, where foreign policy was used as a partisan tool in the service of shoring up a crummy conspiracy theory about "Russian hacking" in order to deny the Democrats any culpability in their much deserved defeat. ..."
"... The entire conflict with Russia that has developed in recent years, on the US side, was totally unnecessary, illogical, and quite preventable. ..."
"... Just two weeks after violating his promise to end the US role as the world's policeman and his vow to extricate the US from wars for regime change, Trump sold out again. "I love WikiLeaks -- " -- this is what Trump exclaimed in a speech on October 10, 2016. Trump's about-face on WikiLeaks is thus truly astounding. ..."
"... AP: If I could fit a couple of more topics. Jeff Sessions, your attorney general, is taking a tougher line suddenly on Julian Assange, saying that arresting him is a priority. You were supportive of what WikiLeaks was doing during the campaign with the release of the Clinton emails. Do you think that arresting Assange is a priority for the United States? ..."
"... AP: But that didn't mean that you supported what Assange is doing? ..."
"... AP: Can I just ask you, though -- do you believe it is a priority for the United States, or it should be a priority, to arrest Julian Assange? ..."
"... While there is no denying the extensive data about the severe impacts of NAFTA on select states and industries in the US, witnessed by the closure of tens of thousands of factories and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, there is little support for the claim that Canada and Mexico, as wholes, have instead fared well and that the US as a whole has been the loser thanks to them. ..."
"... Since NAFTA was implemented, migration from Mexico to the US skyrocketed dramatically. US agricultural industries sent millions of Mexican farmers into food poverty, and ultimately drove them away from agriculture ..."
"... As for per capita GDP, so treasured by economists, NAFTA had no positive impact on Mexico -- in fact, per capita GDP is nearly a flat line for the entire period since 1994. Finally, Trump does not mention that in terms of the number of actual protectionist measures that have been implemented, the US leads the world . ..."
"... To put Trump's position on NAFTA in bold relief, it is not that he is decidedly against free trade. In fact, he often claims he supports free trade, as long as it is "fair". However, his notion of fairness is very lopsided -- a trade agreement is fair only when the US reaps the greater share of benefits. ..."
"... As argued in the previous section, if Trump is to be the newfound champion of this imperialism -- empire's prodigal son -- then what an abysmally poor choice he is ..."
"... On the one hand, he helped to unleash US anti-interventionism (usually called "isolationism" not to call it anti-imperialism, which would then admit to imperialism which is still denied by most of the dominant elites). On the other hand, in trying to now contain such popular sentiment, he loses credibility -- after having lost credibility with the groups his campaign displaced. ..."
"... As for Trump's domestic opposition, what should be most pertinent are issues of conflict of interest and nepotism . Here members of Trump's base are more on target yet again, when they reject the presence of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the White House ("we didn't elect Ivanka or Jared"), than are those distracted by identity politics. ..."
"... As Trump leverages the presidency to upgrade the Trump family to the transnational capitalist class, and reinforces the power of US imperialism which that class has purchased, conflict of interest and nepotism will be the main political signposts of the transformation of the Trump presidency, but they could also be the targets for a refined strategy of opposition. ..."
Trump could have kept quiet, and lost nothing. Instead what he was attacking -- and the irony was missed on his fervently right
wing supporters -- was someone who was a leader in the anti-globalist movement, from long before it was ever called that. Fidel Castro
was a radical pioneer of independence, self-reliance, and self-determination.
Castro turned Cuba from an American-owned sugar plantation and brothel, a lurid backwater in the Caribbean, into a serious international
actor opposed to globalizing capitalism. There was no sign of any acknowledgment of this by Trump, who instead chose to parrot the
same people who would vilify him using similar terms (evil, authoritarian, etc.). Of course, Trump respects only corporate executives
and billionaires, not what he would see as some rag-tag Third World revolutionary. Here Trump's supporters generally failed, using
Castro's death as an opportunity for tribal partisanship, another opportunity to attack "weak liberals" like Obama who made minor
overtures to Cuba (too little, too late).
Their distrust of "the establishment" was nowhere to be found this time: their ignorance of Cuba and their resort to stock clichés
and slogans had all been furnished to them by the same establishment they otherwise claimed to oppose.
Just to be clear, the above is not meant to indicate any reversal on Trump's part regarding Cuba. He has been consistently anti-communist,
and fairly consistent in his denunciations of Fidel Castro. What is significant is that -- far from overcoming the left-right divide
-- Trump shores up the barriers, even at the cost of denouncing others who have a proven track record of fighting against neoliberal
globalization and US interventionism. In these regards, Trump has no track record. Even among his rivals in the Republican primaries,
senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul had more of an anti-interventionist track record.
However, when he delivered his inaugural address
on January 20, 2017, Trump appeared to reaffirm his campaign themes of anti-interventionism. In particular he seemed to turn the
government's back on a long-standing policy of
cultural imperialism
, stating: "We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone". In addition he said his government would "seek friendship and goodwill
with the nations of the world," and he understood the importance of national sovereignty when he added, "it is the right of all nations
to put their own interests first".
Russia
Yet when it came to Russia, Trump could have instantly removed sanctions that were imposed by Obama in his last weeks in office
-- an irresponsible and dangerous act by Obama, where foreign policy was used as a partisan tool in the service of shoring up a crummy
conspiracy theory about "Russian hacking" in order to deny the Democrats any culpability in their much deserved defeat.
Instead, Trump continued the sanctions, as if out of meek deference to Obama's policy, one founded on lies and antagonism
toward Trump himself. Rather than repair the foul attempt to sabotage the US-Russian relationship in preparation for his presidency,
Trump simply abided and thus became an accomplice. To be clear,
Trump has done precisely nothing
to dampen the near mass hysteria that has been manufactured in the US about alleged -- indeed imaginary -- "Russian intervention".
His comments, both during the electoral campaign and even early into his presidency, about wanting good relations with Russia,
have been replaced by Trump's admissions that US relations with Russia are at a low point (Putin agreed: "I would say the level of
trust [between Russia and the US] is at a workable level, especially in the military dimension, but it hasn't improved. On the contrary,
it has degraded " and his spokesman called
the relations " deplorable ".)
Rather than use the power of his office to calm fears, to build better ties with Russia, and to make meeting with Vladimir Putin
a top priority, Trump has again done nothing , except escalating tensions. The entire conflict with Russia that has
developed in recent years, on the US side, was totally unnecessary, illogical, and quite preventable. Russia had actively facilitated
the US' war in Afghanistan for over a decade, and was a consistent collaborator on numerous levels. It is up to thinking American
officials to honestly explain what motivated them to tilt relations with Russia, because it is certainly not Russia's doing. The
only explanation that makes any sense is that the US leadership grew concerned that Russia was no longer teetering on the edge of
total socio-economic breakdown, as it was under the neoliberal Boris Yeltsin, but has instead resurfaced as a major actor in international
affairs, and one that champions anti-neoliberal objectives of enhanced state sovereignty and self-determination.
WikiLeaks
Just two weeks after violating his promise to end the US role as the world's policeman and his vow to extricate the US from
wars for regime change, Trump sold out again.
"I love WikiLeaks --
" -- this is what Trump exclaimed in a speech on October 10, 2016. Trump's about-face on WikiLeaks is thus truly astounding.
After finding so much use for WikiLeaks' publication of the Podesta emails, which became incorporated into his campaign speeches,
and which fuelled the writing and speaking of journalists and bloggers sympathetic to Trump -- he was now effectively declaring WikiLeaks
to be both an enemy and a likely target of US government action, in even more blunt terms than we heard during the past eight years
under Obama. This is not mere continuity with the past, but a dramatic escalation. Rather than praise Julian Assange for his work,
call for an end to the illegal impediments to his seeking asylum, swear off any US calls for extraditing and prosecuting Assange,
and perhaps meeting with him in person, Trump has done all of the opposite. Instead we learn that Trump's administration may
file arrest charges against Assange
. Mike Pompeo ,
chosen by Trump to head the CIA, who had himself
cited WikiLeaks as a reliable source of proof about how the Democratic National Committee had rigged its campaign, now declared
WikiLeaks to be a "
non-state hostile intelligence service ," along with vicious personal slander against Assange.
Trump's about-face on WikiLeaks was one that he defended in terms that were not just a deceptive rewriting of history, but one
that was also fearful -- "I don't support or unsupport" WikiLeaks, was what Trump was now saying in his dash for the nearest exit.
The backtracking is so obvious in this
interview
Trump gave to the AP , that his shoes must have left skid marks on the floor:
AP: If I could fit a couple of more topics. Jeff Sessions, your attorney general, is taking a tougher line suddenly on
Julian Assange, saying that arresting him is a priority. You were supportive of what WikiLeaks was doing during the campaign with
the release of the Clinton emails. Do you think that arresting Assange is a priority for the United States?
TRUMP: When Wikileaks came out never heard of Wikileaks, never heard of it. When Wikileaks came out, all I was just saying
is, "Well, look at all this information here, this is pretty good stuff." You know, they tried to hack the Republican, the RNC,
but we had good defenses. They didn't have defenses, which is pretty bad management. But we had good defenses, they tried to hack
both of them. They weren't able to get through to Republicans. No, I found it very interesting when I read this stuff and I said,
"Wow." It was just a figure of speech. I said, "Well, look at this. It's good reading."
AP: But that didn't mean that you supported what Assange is doing?
TRUMP: No, I don't support or unsupport. It was just information .
AP: Can I just ask you, though -- do you believe it is a priority for the United States, or it should be a priority, to
arrest Julian Assange?
TRUMP: I am not involved in that decision, but if Jeff Sessions wants to do it, it's OK with me. I didn't know about that decision,
but if they want to do it, it's OK with me.
First, Trump invents the fictitious claim that WikiLeaks was responsible for hacking the DNC, and that WikiLeaks also tried to
hack the Republicans. Second, he pretends to be an innocent bystander, a spectator, in his own administration -- whatever others
decide, is "OK" with him, not that he knows about their decisions, but it's all up to others. He has no power, all of a sudden.
Again, what Trump is displaying in this episode is his ultimate attachment to his class, with all of its anxieties and its contempt
for rebellious, marginal upstarts. Trump shuns any sort of "loyalty" to WikiLeaks (not that they ever had a working relationship)
or any form of gratitude, because then that would imply a debt and therefore a transfer of value -- whereas Trump's core ethics are
those of expedience and greed (he admits that much).
This move has come with a cost , with members of Trump's support base openly denouncing the betrayal. 6
NAFTA
On NAFTA , Trump claims he has not changed his position -- yet, from openly denouncing the free trade agreement and promising
to terminate it, he now vows only to seek modifications and amendments, which means supporting NAFTA. He appeared to be
awfully quick to obey the diplomatic pressure of Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and Mexico's President, Enrique Peña
Nieto. Trump's entire position on NAFTA now comes into question.
While there is no denying the extensive data about the severe impacts of NAFTA on select states and industries in the US,
witnessed by the closure of tens of thousands of factories and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, there is little support
for the claim that Canada and Mexico, as wholes, have instead fared well and that the US as a whole has been the loser thanks to
them.
This really deserves to be treated at length, separately from this article. However, for now, let's keep in mind that when
Trump complains about Canadian softwood lumber and dairy exports to the US, his argument about NAFTA is without merit. Neither commodity
is part of the NAFTA agreement.
Moreover, where dairy is concerned, the problem is US overproduction.
Wisconsin alone has more
dairy cows than all of Canada . There is a net surplus , in the US' favour, with respect to US dairy exports to Canada.
Overall,
the US has a net surplus in the trade in
goods and services with Canada. Regarding Mexico, the irony of Trump's denunciations of imaginary Mexican victories is that he
weakens his own criticisms of immigration.
Since NAFTA was implemented,
migration from Mexico to
the US skyrocketed dramatically. US agricultural industries sent millions of Mexican farmers into food poverty, and ultimately
drove them away from agriculture.
As for per capita GDP, so treasured by economists, NAFTA had no positive impact on Mexico -- in fact,
per capita GDP is nearly a flat
line for the entire period since 1994. Finally, Trump does not mention that in terms of the number of actual protectionist measures
that have been implemented, the
US leads the world .
To put Trump's position on NAFTA in bold relief, it is not that he is decidedly against free trade. In fact, he often claims
he supports free trade, as long as it is "fair". However, his notion of fairness is very lopsided -- a trade agreement is fair only
when the US reaps the greater share of benefits.
His arguments with respect to Canada are akin to those of a looter or raider. He wants to block lumber imports from Canada, at
the same time as he wants to break the Canadian dairy market wide open to absorb US excess production. That approach is at the core
of what defined the US as a "new empire" in the 1800s. In addition, while Trump was quick to tear up the TPP, he has said nothing
about TISA and TTIP.
Mexico
Trump's argument with Mexico is also disturbing for what it implies. It would seem that any
evidence of production
in Mexico causes Trump concern. Mexico should not only keep its people -- however many are displaced by US imports -- but it should
also be as dependent as possible on the US for everything except oil. Since Trump has consistently declared his antagonism to OPEC,
ideally Mexico's oil would be sold for a few dollars per barrel.
China
Trump's turn on China almost provoked laughter from his many domestic critics. Absurdly, what figures prominently in most renditions
of the story of Trump's change on China (including his own), is a big piece of chocolate cake. The missile strike on Syria was, according
to Wilbur Ross, the "
after-dinner entertainment ". Here, Trump's loud condemnations of China on trade issues were suddenly quelled -- and it is not
because chocolate has magical properties. Instead it seems Trump has been willing to settle on
selling out citizens' interests , and
particularly those who voted for him, in return for China's assistance on North Korea. Let's be clear: countering and dominating
North Korea is an established favourite among neoconservatives. Trump's priority here is fully "neocon," and the submergence of trade
issues in favour of militaristic preferences is the one case where neoconservatives might be distinguished from the otherwise identical
neoliberals.
North Korea
Where North Korea is concerned, Trump chose to manufacture a "
crisis ". North Korea has actually done nothing
to warrant a sudden outbreak of panic over it being supposedly aggressive and threatening. North Korea is no more aggressive than
any person defending their survival can be called belligerent. The constant series of US military exercises in South Korea, or near
North Korean waters, is instead a deliberate provocation to a state whose existence the US nearly extinguished. Even last year the
US Air Force publicly boasted of having
"nearly destroyed" North Korea -- language one would have expected from the Luftwaffe in WWII. The US continues to maintain roughly
60,000 troops on the border between North and South Korea, and continues to refuse to formally declare an end to the Korean War and
sign a peace treaty
. Trump then announced he was sending an "armada" to the Korean peninsula, and boasted of how "very powerful" it was. This was in
addition to the US deploying the THAAD missile system in South Korea. Several of his messages in Twitter were written using highly
provocative and threatening language. When asked if he would start a war, Trump glibly replied: "
I don't know. I mean, we'll see ". On another occasion Trump stated, "There is a chance that we could end up having a
major, major conflict with North
Korea. Absolutely". When the world's leading military superpower declares its intention to destroy you, then there is nothing you
can do in your defense which anyone could justly label as "over the top". Otherwise, once again Trump posed as a parental figure,
the world's chief babysitter -- picture Trump, surrounded by children taking part in the "Easter egg roll" at the White House, being
asked about North Korea and responding "they gotta behave". Trump would presume to teach manners to North Korea, using the only tools
of instruction that seem to be the first and last resort of US foreign policy (and the "defense" industry): bombs.
Syria
Attacking Syria , on purportedly humanitarian grounds, is for many (including vocal supporters) one of the most glaring contradictions
of Trump's campaign statements about not embroiling the US in failed wars of regime change and world policing. During the campaign,
he was in favour of Russia's collaboration with Syria in the fight against ISIS. For years he had condemned Obama for involving the
US in Syria, and consistently opposed military intervention there. All that was consigned to the archive of positions Trump declared
to now be worthless. That there had been a change in Trump's position is not a matter of dispute --
Trump made the point himself :
"I like to think of myself as a very flexible person. I don't have to have one specific way, and if the world changes, I go
the same way, I don't change. Well, I do change and I am flexible, and I'm proud of that flexibility. And I will tell you, that
attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me -- big impact. That was a horrible, horrible thing. And I've been watching
it and seeing it, and it doesn't get any worse than that. And I have that flexibility, and it's very, very possible -- and I will
tell you, it's already happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much. And if you look back over the last
few weeks, there were other attacks using gas. You're now talking about a whole different level".
Bending to the will of the prevailing Cold War and neo-McCarthyist atmosphere in the US, rife with anti-Russian conspiracy theories,
Trump found an easy opportunity to score points with the hostile media, ever so mindful as he is about approval ratings, polls, and
media coverage. Some explain Trump's reversals as arising from his
pursuit
of
public adulation -- and while the media play the key role in purveying celebrity status, they are also a stiff bastion of imperialist
culture. Given his many years as a the host of a popular TV show, and as the owner of the Miss Universe Pageant, there is some logical
merit to the argument. But I think even more is at work, as explained in paragraphs above.
According to Eric Trump it was at the urging of Ivanka that Donald Trump decided to strike a humanitarian-militarist pose. He
would play the part of the Victorian parent, only he would use missiles to teach unruly children lessons about violence. Using language
typically used against him by the mainstream media, Trump now felt entitled to pontificate that Assad is "evil," an "
animal ," who would
have
to go . When did he supposedly come to this realization? Did Assad become evil at the same time Trump was inaugurated? Why would
Trump have kept so silent about "evil" on the campaign trail? Trump of course is wrong: it's not that the world changed and he changed
with it; rather, he invented a new fiction to suit his masked intentions. Trump's supposed opponents and critics, like the Soros-funded
organizer of the women's march Linda Sarsour, showed her
approval of even more drastic
action by endorsing messages by what sounded like a stern school mistress who thought that 59 cruise missiles were just a mere "slap
on the wrist". Virtually every neocon who is publicly active applauded Trump, as did most senior Democrats. The loudest
opposition
, however, came from Trump's
own base , with a number of articles
featuring criticism from Trump's
supporters , and one conservative publication calling him outright a "
weakling
and a political ingrate ".
Members of the Trump administration have played various word games with the public on intervention in Syria. From unnamed officials
saying the missile strike was a "one off," to named officials
promising more if there
were any other suspected chemical attacks (or use of barrel bombs -- and this while the US dropped the biggest non-nuclear bomb in
existence on Afghanistan); some said that
regime change was not the goal,
and then others made it clear that was the ultimate
goal ; and then Trump saying, "Our policy is the same, it hasn't changed.
We're not going into Syria " -- even
though
Trump himself greatly increased the number of US troops he deployed to Syria , illegally, in an escalation of the least
protested invasion in recent history. Now we should know enough not to count this as mere ambiguity, but as deliberate obfuscation
that offers momentary (thinly veiled) cover for a
renewal of neocon policy .
We can draw an outline of Trump's liberal imperialism when it comes to Syria, which is likely to be applied elsewhere. First,
Trump's interventionist policy regarding Syria is one that continues to treat that country as if it were terra nullius ,
a mere playground for superpower politics. Second, Trump is clearly continuing with the
neoconservative agenda and its hit list of
states to be terminated by US military action, as famously confirmed by Gen. Wesley Clark. Even Trump's strategy for justifying the
attack on Syria echoed the two prior Bush presidential administrations -- selling war with the infamous "incubator babies" myth and
the myth of "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs). In many ways, Trump's presidency is thus shaping up to be either the seventh term
of the George H.W. Bush regime, or the fifth straight term of the George W. Bush regime. Third, Trump is taking ownership of an extremely
dangerous conflict, with costs that could surpass anything witnessed by the war on Iraq (which also continues). Fourth, by highlighting
the importance of photographs in allegedly changing his mind, Trump has placed a high market value on propaganda featuring dead babies.
His actions in Syria will now create an effective demand for the pornographic trade in pictures of atrocities. These are matters
of great importance to the transnational capitalist class, which demands full global penetrability, diminished state power (unless
in the service of this class' goals), a uniformity of expectations and conformity in behaviour, and an emphasis on individual civil
liberties which are the basis for defending private property and consumerism.
Venezuela
It is very disturbing to see how Venezuela is being framed as ripe for US intervention, in ways that distinctly echo the lead
up to the US war on Libya. Just as disturbing is that Trump's Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has a clear conflict of interest
regarding Venezuela, from his recent role as CEO of
Exxon
and its conflict with the government of Venezuela over its nationalization of oil. Tillerson is, by any definition, a clear-cut
member of the transnational capitalist class. The Twitter account of the
State
Department has a battery of messages sternly lecturing Venezuela about the treatment of protesters, while also pontificating
on the Venezuelan Constitution as if the US State Department had become a global supreme court. What is impressive is the seamless
continuity in the nature of the messages on Venezuela from that account, as if no change of government happened between Obama's time
and Trump's. Nikki Haley, Trump's neocon ambassador to the UN, issued
a statement that read like it had been written by her predecessors, Samantha Power and Susan Rice, a statement which in itself
is an unacceptable intervention in Venezuelan internal affairs. For Trump's part, from just days
before the election, to a couple of weeks
after his inauguration, he has sent explicit
messages of support for anti-government
forces in Venezuela. In February, Trump
imposed sanctions on Venezuela's
Vice President. After Syria and North Korea, Venezuela is seeming the likely focus of US interventionism under Trump.
NATO
Rounding out the picture, at least for now (this was just the first hundred days of Trump's presidency), was Trump's outstanding
reversal on NATO -- in fact, once again he stated the reversal himself, and without explanation either: "
I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete ". This came just days after the US missile strike against Syria, and just as
Ivanka Trump was about to represent
his government at a meeting of globalist women, the
W20 . NATO has served as
the transnational military alliance at the service of the transnational capitalist class, and particularly the military and political
members of the TCC. 7
Saving Neoliberalism?
Has Trump saved neoliberal capitalism from its ongoing demise? Has he sustained popular faith in liberal political ideals? Are
we still in the dying days of liberalism
? If there had been a centrally coordinated plan to plant an operative among the ranks of populist conservatives and independents,
to channel their support for nationalism into support for the persona of the plant, and to then have that plant steer a course straight
back to shoring up neoliberal globalism -- then we might have had a wonderful story of a masterful conspiracy, the biggest heist
in the history of elections anywhere. A truly "rigged system" could be expected to behave that way. Was Trump designated to take
the fall in a rigged game, only his huge ego got in the way when he realized he could realistically win the election and he decided
to really tilt hard against his partner, Hillary Clinton? It could be the basis for a novel, or a Hollywood political comedy. I have
no way of knowing if it could be true.
Framed within the terms of what we do know, there was relief by the ousted group of political elites and the liberal globalist
media at the sight of Trump's reversals, and a sense that
their vision had been vindicated.
However, if they are hoping that the likes of Trump will serve as a reliable flag bearer, then theirs is a misguided wishful thinking.
If someone so demonized and ridiculed, tarnished as an evil thug and racist fascist, the subject of mass demonstrations in the US
and abroad, is the latest champion of (neo)liberalism, then we are certainly witnessing its dying days.
Is Trump Beneficial for Anti-Imperialism?
Once one is informed enough and thus prepared to understand that anti-imperialism is not the exclusive preserve of the left (a
left which anyway has mostly shunned it over the last two decades), that it
did not originate with the
left , and that it has a long and distinguished history
in the US itself , then we can move
toward some interesting realizations. The facts, borne out by surveys and my own online immersion among pro-Trump social media users,
is that one of the
significantreasons
why Trump won is due to the growth in popularity of basic anti-imperialist principles (even if not recognized under that name): for
example, no more world policing, no transnational militarization, no more interventions abroad, no more regime change, no war, and
no globalism. Nationalists in Europe, as in Russia, have also pushed forward a basic anti-imperialist vision. Whereas in Latin America
anti-imperialism is largely still leftist, in Europe and North America the left-right divide has become blurred, but the crucial
thing is that at least now we can speak of anti-imperialism gaining strength in these three major continents. Resistance against
globalization has been the primary objective, along with strengthening national sovereignty, protecting local cultural identity,
and opposing free trade and transnational capital. Unfortunately, some anti-imperialist writers (on the left in fact) have tended
to restrict their field of vision to military matters primarily, while almost completely neglecting the economic and cultural, and
especially domestic dimensions of imperialism. (I am grossly generalizing of course, but I think it is largely accurate.) Where structures
such as NAFTA are concerned, many of these same leftist anti-imperialists, few as they are, have had virtually nothing to say. It
could be that they have yet to fully recognize that the transnational capitalist class has, gradually over the last seven decades,
essentially purchased the power of US imperialism. Therefore the TCC's imperialism includes NAFTA, just as it includes open borders,
neoliberal identity politics, and drone strikes. They are all different parts of the same whole.
As argued in the previous section, if Trump is to be the newfound champion of this imperialism -- empire's prodigal son --
then what an abysmally poor choice he is. 8
On the one hand, he helped to unleash US anti-interventionism (usually called "isolationism" not to call it anti-imperialism,
which would then admit to imperialism which is still denied by most of the dominant elites). On the other hand, in trying to now
contain such popular sentiment, he loses credibility -- after having lost credibility with the groups his campaign displaced.
In addition to that, given that his candidacy aggravated internal divisions in the US, which have not subsided with his assumption
of office, these domestic social and cultural conflicts cause a serious deficit of legitimacy, a loss of political capital. A declining
economy will also deprive him of capital in the strict sense. Moreover, given the kind of persona the media have crafted, the daily
caricaturing of Trump will significantly spur anti-Americanism around the world. If suddenly even Canadian academics are talking
about boycotting the US, then the worm has truly turned. Trump can only rely on "hard power" (military violence), because "soft power"
is almost out of the question now that Trump has been constructed as a barbarian. Incompetent and/or undermined governance will also
render Trump a deficient upholder of the status quo. The fact that nationalist movements around the world are not centrally coordinated,
and their fortunes are not pinned to those of Trump, establishes a well-defined limit to his influence. Trump's antagonism toward
various countries -- as wholes -- has already helped to stir up a deep sediment of anti-Americanism. If Americanism is at the heart
of Trump's nationalist globalism, then it is doing all the things that are needed to induce a major heart attack.
As for Trump's domestic opposition, what should be most pertinent are issues of conflict of interest and nepotism
. Here members of Trump's base are more on target yet again, when they reject the presence of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner
in the White House ("we didn't elect Ivanka or Jared"), than are those distracted by identity politics.
As Trump leverages the presidency to upgrade the Trump family to the transnational capitalist class, and reinforces the power
of US imperialism which that class has purchased, conflict of interest and nepotism will be the main political signposts of the transformation
of the Trump presidency, but they could also be the targets for a refined strategy of opposition.
"... My 95 year old aunt here in NL lived thru the NAZI occupation. She said its sad that the nice decent Americans of 1945 have now become like the people we fought. ..."
The launch of INSTEX -- "Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges" -- by France, Germany, and the UK
this week
to allow "legitimate trade" with Iran, or rather effectively sidestep US sanctions and bypass SWIFT after Washington was able
to pressure the Belgium-based financial messaging service to cut off the access of Iranian banks last year, may be too little too
late to salvage the Iran nuclear deal .
Tehran will only immediately press that more than just the current "limited humanitarian" and medical goods can be purchased on
the system, in accordance with fulfilling the EU's end of the 2015 JCPOA -- something which EU officials have promised while saying
INSTEX will be "expansive" -- while European companies will likely continue to stay away for fear of retribution from Washington,
which has stated it's "closely following" reports of the payment vehicle while reiterating attempts to sidestep sanctions will "risk
severe consequences" .
As a couple of prominent Iranian academics
told Al Jazeera this week: "If [the mechanism] will permanently be restricted to solely humanitarian trade, it will be apparent
that Europe will have failed to live up to its end of the bargain for Iran ," said political analyst Mohammad Ali Shabani. And another,
Foad Izadi, professor at the University of Tehran, echoed what is a common sentiment among Iran's leaders: "I don't think the EU
is either willing or able to stand up to Trump's threat," and continued, "The EU is not taking the nuclear deal seriously and it's
not taking any action to prove to Iran otherwise... People are running out of patience."
But Iranian leadership
welcomed the new mechanism as merely a small first step: "It is a first step taken by the European side... We hope it will cover
all goods and items," Iranian Deputy FM Abbas Araqchi told state TV, referencing EU promises to stick to its end of the nuclear deal.
The European side also acknowledged it as a precondition to keeping the nuclear deal alive, which EU leaders sea as vital to their
security and strategic interests : "We're making clear that we didn't just talk about keeping the nuclear deal with Iran alive, but
now we're creating a possibility to conduct business transactions," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas
told reporters on
Thursday . "This is a precondition for us to meet the obligations we entered into in order to demand from Iran that it doesn't
begin military uranium enrichment," Maas said.
What is INSTEX?
A "special purpose vehicle" that will allow European businesses to trade with Iran, despite strict US sanctions.
According to media reports, INSTEX will be based in Paris and will be managed by German banking expert Per Fischer, a former
manager at Commerzbank. The UK will head the supervisory board.
The European side intends to use the channel initially only to sell food, medicine and medical devices in Iran. However,
it will be possible to expand it in the future. --
DW.com
Technically US sanctions allow some limited humanitarian trade and limited goods; however the White House's "maximum pressure"
campaign on Iran has still scared away European giants like Seimens, Maersk, Total, Daimler, Peugeot, Renault, and others.
This brings up the central question of whether skittish European countries will actually return to doing business with Iran, the
entire purpose on which the new mechanism rests. The dilemma was summarized at the start of this week by outspoken Iran hawk Sen.
Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who told the AP
"The choice is whether to do business with Iran or the United States." He warned, "I hope our European allies choose wisely."
Thus far a number of analysts and observers have remained far less optimistic than the European sponsors of INSTEX. One particular
interview with geopolitical analyst and journalist Luc Rivet, cited in Russian media, outlines
the likelihood for failure of the new payment
vehicle : "I don't know what companies will make use of that mechanism to sell to Iran," Rivet said, noting that countries still
consider it "dangerous" to be caught working with Iran.
Addressing the current restriction of INSTEX facilitating medical and pharmaceutical goods transactions, he continued:
Who produces this equipment? You think that Siemens will sell to Iran? Never, because they sell to America many other things
as well And Siemens is afraid of losing the American market.
No matter if a handful of companies resume or continue business with Iran he explained that an "incredible number of companies"
won't. He added: "It's much easier for Chinese and Russian companies to make deals with Iran. The Europeans are scared in an incredible
way. The companies are afraid by ricochet of being in the eye of the storm with the Americans."
He concluded, "That's very dangerous for European companies," and repeated, "I don't know anybody who will dare to go with this
Instex system."
And the New York Times in asking the same question --
But Will Anyone Use
It? -- concludes similarly that "given that most large companies have significant business in the United States, very few --
if any -- are likely to use the trading mechanism for fear of incurring Washington's wrath."
However, the test will be whether or not a steady trickle of small companies gives way to bigger companies. The NYT report
continues :
But the financial mechanism could make it easier for smaller companies with no exposure in the United States to trade with
Iran and could promote trade in medicine and food, which are not subject to sanctions. European diplomats say that, in the beginning,
the concentration will be on goods that are permitted by Washington, to avoid an early confrontation .
But much could also depend on just how fierce the White House reaction will be. If the past months' Trump administration rhetoric
is any indicator, it will keep large companies scared and on the sidelines.
Europe has had double the tariffs on American cars than we had for theirs. It's time for us to quadruple the tariff on European
cars, to make up for the tariff imbalance that Europe has taken advantage of for decades.
Before World War II the question was, "Who will stand up to the demands of Germany?" Now the question is, "Who will stand up
to the demands of the United States?" It is clear that as far as means and methods are concerned Washington flies the swastika.
History has come full circle.
The following quote from J. R. R. Tolkien makes the point, "Always after a defeat and a respite," says Gandalf, "the shadow
takes another shape and grows again." The irony of our times is that the shadow has moved from Germany to the US.
Consternation and craven refusal to confront the reality of our times is again in vogue. We are walking towards madness crying,
"Let the other fellow fix this!"
My 95 year old aunt here in NL lived thru the NAZI occupation. She said its sad that the nice decent Americans of 1945
have now become like the people we fought.
"... UN should be probing Washington and allies for regime-change crimes Identical condemnations from the US and allies and the synchronicity show that Venezuela is being targeted for regime change in a concerted plot led by Washington. ..."
"... It is so disappointing that Americans yet to come to realization that this criminal Jewish Mafia does not standing at the end of the old republic. He is DEEPLY involved, but his STYLE is different. He kills and terrorize the same as Regan, Carter, Clinton, Bush, Obama who have killed millions of people. His sanction is the KILLING MACHINE to topple governments TO STEAL THEIR RESOURCES FOR THE DUMMIES. I have NO respect for the liars who are trying to paint a criminal as someone 'standing against' the deep state. TRUMP IS PART OF THE DEEP STATE, ONLY DUMMIES DO NOT GET IT. ..."
"... No matter the situation in Venezuela, whatever the US government and media are saying is just hostile propaganda as they couldn't give a rat's ass about the people living there. The Libyan people were doing well out of their oil, as were the Iraqis, living in reasonable wealth and security, and look at them now after the US decided to meddle in their affairs. Now after all that, even if something the US government says may be true, why believe it? How many times do you need to be fooled to stop being a fool? ..."
"... The nuttiest member of the Trump administration is UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. Her latest neo-nazi stunt was to join protestors last week calling for the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Venezuela. She grabbed a megaphone at a tiny New York rally and told the few "protesters" (organized by our CIA) to say the USA is working to overthrow their President. This was so bizarre that our corporate media refused to report it. ..."
"... Why does everyone make Trump out to be a victim, poor ol Trump, he's being screwed by all those people he himself appointed, poor ol persecuted Trump. Sounds like our Jewish friends with all the victimization BS. ..."
"... By now Trump must be near bat shit crazy. Imagine hundreds of vampires descending on every exposed artery and vein. Does he have a chance in 2020? Not with the people who are around him today ..."
"... Regardless of what the MSM reports, the population is fed-up with all the malarkey, and the same old faces. ..."
"... If he can he should issue an executive order allowing important items like immigration to go directly to public referendum, by passing congress. We're tired of idiots with personal grudges holding our President hostage. Stern times calls for sterner measures. ..."
"... Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington's elite regime change trainers. While posing as a champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization. ..."
Agent76 says:
January 30, 2019 at 7:21 pm GMT 100 Words Jan 24, 2019 Catastrophic Consequences What's Really Happening in Venezuela
In this video, we give you the latest breaking news on the current situation in Venezuela with Maduro, the election, and Trump's
response.
UN should be probing Washington and allies for regime-change crimes Identical condemnations from the US and allies and the
synchronicity show that Venezuela is being targeted for regime change in a concerted plot led by Washington.
@Sergey Krieger Negotiations are not necessarily a sign of weakness. However, Maduro should negotiate with the puppet masters,
not with the puppet. I don't think that killing that pathetic Guaido is a good strategy: you don't want to make a martyr out of
nonentity.
And, in effect, I wish for the success of Juan Guaido in his struggle with Maduro, and I support American diplomatic and
economic pressure on Maduro to step down. After all, Venezuela is in our back yard with huge oil reserves.
FUCK YOU! Venezuela is not "our" back yard. And the oil does not belong to "us".
[Donald Trump, for all that and for his various faults and miscues, is in reality the only thing standing in the way of the end
of the old republic. ]
It is so disappointing that Americans yet to come to realization that this criminal Jewish Mafia does not standing at the
end of the old republic. He is DEEPLY involved, but his STYLE is different. He kills and terrorize the same as Regan, Carter,
Clinton, Bush, Obama who have killed millions of people. His sanction is the KILLING MACHINE to topple governments TO STEAL THEIR
RESOURCES FOR THE DUMMIES. I have NO respect for the liars who are trying to paint a criminal as someone 'standing against' the
deep state. TRUMP IS PART OF THE DEEP STATE, ONLY DUMMIES DO NOT GET IT.
The ignorant Jewish mafia 'president' IS MORE DANGEROUS because he like his 'advisors' is totally ILLITERATE. It is a family
business dummies.
Are dummies going to hold petty people like Bolton who lie to get money from MEK to buy a new suit and new shoes, is responsible
for the policy of the Trump regime where he wages WARS, economic sanction, to starve children to surrender? Then NO ONE Trusts
you. MEK people are not more than 20, but are funded by the US colony, Saudi Arabia where MBS transfers money to the Jewish mafia
family funding US wars.
Maduro has EVERY SINGLE RIGHT to arrest Juan Guiado, a gigolo who is taking orders from a US and an illiterate 'president',
where its dark history known to every living creature on earth. US has massacred millions of people in all continents including
Latin America.
Maduro has every single right to arrest him and put on trail and execute him as a traitor and an enemy of the state. How many
years the people in Venezuela should suffer for the US 'regime change' and its crimes against humanity in Venezuela to STEAL ITS
RESOURCES.
"So let me get this straight: The Russians brought America to its knees with a few facebook ads, but Uncle Sam's concerted and
ongoing efforts to overthrow governments around the world and interfere with elections is perfectly fine? Because democracy? Riiiiiiight."
:
[The last Venezuelan Presidential election was a joke. ]
YOU ARE A JOKE ZIONIST IDIOT.
The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela's Coup Leader
[Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington's elite regime change trainers. While posing as
a champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization.]
Illiterate Jewish Mafia 'president' must be kicked out of the office. Hands of Israel is all over the SELECTION.
The ignorant 'president' is MORE DANGEROUS THANT OTHER CRIMINAL US REGIMES because on top of being a criminal, he is ILLITERATE
as well.
[In 2009, the Generation 2007 youth activists staged their most provocative demonstration yet, dropping their pants on public
roads and aping the outrageous guerrilla theater tactics outlined by Gene Sharp in his regime change manuals.This far-right group
"gathered funds from a variety of US government sources, which allowed it to gain notoriety quickly as the hardline wing of opposition
street movements," according to academic George Ciccariello-Maher's book, "Building the Commune."
That year, Guaidó exposed himself to the public in another way, founding a political party to capture the anti-Chavez energy
his Generation 2007 had cultivated.]
@By-tor See, this is the typical lie. Socialism fails, so the socialist blames the outside wrecker for causing the problem.
If Moscow freezes, then it is because of the wreckers. If Moscow starves, then it is because of the wreckers.
If Venezuela collapses, then it is because of "sanctions," not the failure of the new socialist economy.
America has the right to lock anyone out of its economy that it wants, for whatever reasons. This should not matter because
that nation can still trade with the rest of the world, like China. Venezuela could get everything it wants by simply selling
oil to China in exchange for goods. The problem is, there is not enough oil production to do so and other nations are reluctant
to replace American investment for fear of losing their assets as well.
Think about how wrong-headed the Chavez policy has been. If the Venezuelans have problems with their local ruling class and
want to get rid of them fine do so. But, why go after the American oil company? The Americans don't care who rules Venezuela as
long as their contracts are honored. Chavez could have then been a true socialist an allocate a greater dividend to Venezuelans
that was previously being hoarded by the ruling class an arrangement similar to what Alaskans have with American oil companies.
But no there was an immediate seizure of assets because the only purpose of socialism is to make the socialist leaders rich.
And Chavez and Maduro became very rich indeed.
@AnonFromTN I would happily martyr gorbachov , Yeltsin and all their gang. I think everybody would have been far better of
then. Same is applied to the puppet. Nikolai II was martyred and things got a lot better. What is important is winning and final
outcome, while making some martyrs in the process.
@Harold Smith Trump's personnel picks are mind-boggling. I cannot see how he disapproves Eliot Abrams for deputy SoS with
one breath, then blandly allows Pompeo to appoint him an envoy to a trouble-spot. Bolton, Pompeo, Goldberg et al.
NEOCON America does not want Russian bombers in South America.
Real America doesn't give a f*ck. Bombers are so last century, might as well put up machine-gun equipped Union Pacific Big
Boys to make it marginally more steampunk and become a real danger for the USA.
@Tyrion 2 There is not a single complaint here that did not exist before the election or before Pres Chavez.
There are poor management leaders all over the globe. That';s their business. Hey we have some right here in the US I take
it your solution is a military coup or better yet a coup fostered by the EU or the OAS, or maybe ASEAN or SDG . . .
It would be nice if someone simply asked Trump why it is he originally wanted to get along with Russia and pull out of the middle
east and generally opposed the "neoconservative" approach and now seems to be hiring neocons and doing what they want. Is he trying
to placate Sheldon Adelson and Adelson's lackeys, or what? I don't know of his being asked about this directly.
Venezuelan lawmaker Jose Guerra dropped a bombshell on Twitter Tuesday: The Russian Boeing 777 that had landed in Caracas the
day before was there to spirit away 20 tons of gold from the vaults of the country's central bank. Guerra is a former central
bank economist who remains in touch with old colleagues there. A person with direct knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg News
Tuesday that 20 tons of gold have been set aside in the central bank for loading. Worth some $840 million, the gold represents
about 20 percent of its holdings of the metal in Venezuela.
No matter the situation in Venezuela, whatever the US government and media are saying is just hostile propaganda as they
couldn't give a rat's ass about the people living there. The Libyan people were doing well out of their oil, as were the Iraqis,
living in reasonable wealth and security, and look at them now after the US decided to meddle in their affairs. Now after all
that, even if something the US government says may be true, why believe it? How many times do you need to be fooled to stop being
a fool?
No, Chavez had popular legitimacy. Maduro has nothing but force to keep himself in power now. Yes, there's easy definition
for the above but Chavismo is decrepit.
Pressure for a reasonable Presidential election is based on that.
The Trumptards blindly support me. I can do no wrong.
There are not enough independent thinkers to make a difference as the two main sides bitterly fight each other over every
minute, meaningless issue.
I can pretty much do as I please without consequence ..like pay off all my buddies and pander to the jews/globalist/elites.
I'd add: and by doing the last, I could cut a deal with the real TPTBs as to for what happens after I leave White House.
Chavez had popular support . He felt the need to intimidate opponents from the beginning. Like Bill Bellicheck and Tom
Brady feeling the need to cheat.
Makes sense. They owe a big chunk of money to Russia and a payment of 100 million is coming due. Russia gets security for future
payments while it holds their gold in a safe place. They may ship the rest to China if they are smart
The nuttiest member of the Trump administration is UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. Her latest neo-nazi stunt was to join
protestors last week calling for the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Venezuela. She grabbed a megaphone
at a tiny New York rally and told the few "protesters" (organized by our CIA) to say the USA is working to overthrow their
President. This was so bizarre that our corporate media refused to report it.
She's being paid no doubt by the usual suspects. She is personally 1 million in debt and has signed with a Speakers agency
to give speeches for 200,000 a pop.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCIV)
"Haley is currently quoting $200,000 and the use of a private jet for domestic speaking engagements, according to CNBC
In October 2018, when Haley resigned, she said, she would be taking a "step up" into the private sector after leaving the U.N.
According to a public financial disclosure report based on 2017 data, at the rate quoted for her engagements, just a handful would
pay down more than $1 million in outstanding debt that was accrued during her 14 years
3. There are not enough independent thinkers to make a difference as the two main sides bitterly fight each other over every
minute, meaningless issue.
Well people you need to explore this move to take over Venezuela in the context of what having that oil control will mean for
the US and Israel in the increasingly likely event we blow up Iran and up end the ME for Israel.
So what could happen that might make control of oil rich Venezuela necessary? Why has Venezuela become a Bolton and Abrams
project? Why is Netanyahu putting himself into the Venezuela crisis ?
We, otoh, would need all the oil we could get if we blew up the ME, specifically Iran, figuratively or literally. The US signed
a MOU with Israel in 1973 obligating us to supply Israel with oil ( and ship it to them) if they couldn't secure any for themselves.
@Hibernian I hate those two guys so much, and the owner Kraft also. I'm hoping for a helmet to helmet collision for Brady
early in the second quarter with his bell ringing for the rest of the game. (Evil grin)
@Tyrion 2 Yes, the int'l monitors said the elections were fair as Maduro received over 60% of the vote. You think the 'deplorables'
of venezuela elected the known US-Wall Street neo-liberal puppet Guaido? No, the US Tape Worm groomed this twerp, all-the-while
his backers and paymasters in the American neo-Liberal ruling class claim Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections. The shamelessness
and hypocrisy is astounding.
@Tyrion 2 Pres Hugo Chavez's admin was very controversial. And the conditions you speak of have plagued Venezuela even before
Pres Chavez came to government.
This really is none of our affair. We don't have a mandate to go about the planet tossing out whoever we think is crazy. He
is not a threat to the US. There's no indication that he intends to harm US businesses.
Their polity means their polity. You'll have to do better than he's crazy, mean, a despot, etc. That's for them to resolve.
@Commentator Mike Seems some will never learn the definition of insanity, especially the NeoCons who have been running America
for far too long. I recommend John Perkins "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" for the less informed among us here today. Maybe
at some point they will get a clue.
I heartily dislike and find despicable the socialist government of Maduro, just as I did Hugo Chavez when he was in power.
I have some good friends there, one of whom was a student of mine when I taught in Argentina many years ago, and he and his
family resolutely oppose Maduro. Those socialist leaders in Caracas are tin-pot dictator wannabees who have wrecked the economy
of that once wealthy country; and they have ridden roughshod over the constitutional rights of the citizens. My hope has been
that the people of Venezuela, perhaps supported by elements in the army, would take action to rid the country of those tyrants.
Hard to take this guy seriously when he spouts Fox News level propaganda.
Why does everyone make Trump out to be a victim, poor ol Trump, he's being screwed by all those people he himself appointed,
poor ol persecuted Trump. Sounds like our Jewish friends with all the victimization BS.
Its clear that voting no longer works folks, this is an undemocratic and illegitimate "government" we have here. We let them
get away with killing JFK, RFK, MLK, Vietnam, we let them get away with 9/11, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria. They've made a
mess in Africa. All the refugees into Europe, all the refugees from Latin America that have already come from CIA crimes, more
will come.
We wouldn't need a wall if Wall St would stop with their BS down there!
You can't just blame Jews, yes there are lots of Jews in Corporate America, bu t not all of them are, and there are lots of
Jews who speak out against this. We were doing this long before Israel came into existence. You can't just blame everything one
one group, I think Israel/Zionist are responsible for a lot of BS, but you can't exclude CIA, Wall St, Corporations, Banks, The
MIC either. Its not just one group, its all of them. They're all evil, they're imperialists and they're all capitalists. I think
Israel is just a capitalist creation, nothing to do with Jews, just a foothold in he middle east for Wall St to have a base to
control the oil and gas there, they didn't create Israel until they dicovered how much oil was there, and realized how much control
over the world it would give them to control it. Those people moving to Israel are being played, just like the "Christian Zionists"
here are, its a cult. Most "Jews" are atheists anyhow, and it seems any ol greedy white guy can claim to be a Jew. So how do you
solve a "Jewish Problem" if anybody can claim to be a Jew? I think solving the capitalist problem would be a little easier to
enforce.
All of the shills can scream about communists, socialists and marxists all they want. Capitalism is the problem always has
been always will be. Its a murderous, immoral, unsustainable system that encourages greed, it is a system who's driving force
is maximizing profits, and as such the State controlled or aligned with Corporations is the most advanced form of capitalism because
it is the most profitable. They're raping the shit out of us, taking our money to fund their wars, so they can make more money
while paying little to no taxes at all. Everything, everyone here complains about is caused by CAPITALISM, but nobody dares say
it, they've been programmed since birth to think that way.
We should nationalize our oil and gas, instead of letting foreigners come in and steal it, again paying little or no taxes
on it, then selling the oil they took from our country back to us. Russia and Venezuela do it, Libya did it, Iraq did it, and
they used the money for the people of the country, they didn't let the capitalists plunder their wealth like the traitors running
our country. We're AT LEAST $21 trillion in the hole now from this wonderful system of ours, don't you think we should try something
else? Duh!
It is the love of money, the same thing the Bible warned us about. Imperialism/globalism is the latest stage of capitalism,
that is what all of this is about, follow the money. Just muh opinion
@Tyrion 2 From the people fool not by the C.I.A. declaring that well we like the other fellow best for president,after all
using the logic you fail to have Hillary could have said call me madam president and leave the orange clown out in the dark,stupid,stupid
people
"And, in effect, I wish for the success of Juan Guaido in his struggle with Maduro, and I support American diplomatic and
economic pressure on Maduro to step down. After all, Venezuela is in our back yard with huge oil reserves."
OMG, Cathey really said that. Is he always such a shit? He certainly has Venezuela completely wrong.
@AnonFromTN This phylosophical questions should not led to no actions. Modern Russia is actually in much better position now
than it was in 1913. True. There is never final. Sorry for wrong words choice. Dialectics.
@Wizard of Oz The scenario you describe is an accurate. And requires me to make judgments about a dynamic I am unfamiliar
with -- no bite. Several sides to this tale and I have heard and seen it before.
I may however make a call.
In 2017 2/3 of the states in the region chose not to interfere. They have not changed their minds on intervention.
ohh by the way I did ask and here's the familial response:
But reading the data sets makes it clear that what they want is some humanitarian relief. B y and large I have the family telling
me to mind my own business, but they would like a meal, some medicine and some water.
By now Trump must be near bat shit crazy. Imagine hundreds of vampires descending on every exposed artery and vein. Does he
have a chance in 2020? Not with the people who are around him today.
Regardless of what the MSM reports, the population is fed-up with all the malarkey, and the same old faces.
In Trump's remaining 2 years he must throw off the parasites, bring in real men, and go to work on infrastructure, health
care, and real jobs. He has to out the naysayers, the creeps and the war mongers. Throw Bolton from the train, and divorce Netanyahu
and Israel. Appeal directly to the public.
If he can he should issue an executive order allowing important items like immigration to go directly to public referendum,
by passing congress. We're tired of idiots with personal grudges holding our President hostage. Stern times calls for sterner
measures.
@RobinG That would be an easy, almost optimistic explanation: some people are venal enough to say or write anything for money.
Pessimistic explanation is that some people who can read and write are nonetheless dumb or brainwashed enough to sincerely believe
the BS they are writing.
Can you define what capitalism is ? Once that idea is refined, finessed, and compared to multiple color changes of capitalism,
it becomes easier who to fit in the plastic infinitely expandable box of ideas of capitalism starting with the chartered company
to patient laws to companies making military hardwares paid by tax payers to tax cut by government to seizure of foreign asset
by US-UK to protection of the US business by military forces to selling military gadgets to the countries owned by families like
Saudi royals Gulf monarchs and to the African ( American installed ) dictators to printing money .
A great article I posted in another thread few days ago dives deep into who Juan Guaido is and his past grooming for the past
10+ years:
Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington's elite regime change trainers. While posing
as a champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization.
Just one more to a long list of Trump appointments. I believe Trump is some kind of pervert,
like the ones that like to get whipped, only Trump likes to get stabbed in the back.
Betrayed
He does what Sheldon and Bibi tell him.
You think you're so ******* smart, but this some how eludes you?
napper , 3 hours ago (Edited)
Donald Trump's House of Cons, Clowns, Crappolas, Criminals, and Conspirators:
Mike Pence
Mike Pompeo
Steven Mnuchin
John Bolton
Elliot Abrams
Nikki Haley
Gina Haspel
Peter Navarro
Wilbur Ross
Kirstjen Nielsen
Robert Lighthizer
Dan Coats
and Donkey Drumpf managed to convince a big bunch of brainless sheeple that he's going to
make America great again with the help of those career swamp dwellers???
Gotta give it to the Donkey. He's good at acting at least.
TGF Texas, 3 hours ago
Shitty appointment, you bet! Regime Change, back on, after a 2 yr vacation, time will tell,
but it sure looks that way! Remembering, Seth Rich, and the Guy who shot himself in the head,
twice with a revolver, and the Clintons had the cops rule it a suicide, or the fact that she
actually asked people if we could drone Assage...
As George Carlin observed, it's a big club and you aren't in it. Hiring Elliott Abrams makes Trump a variation on theme of Bush II: the more things change that more they
stay the same. BTW Bush also campaigned on withdrew troops and no national building .
Notable quotes:
"... When did he hire Hillary? ..."
"... There is not much difference between Hillary and Pompeo. Pompeo is basically Hillary with a **** and a religious twist ..."
"... Who knew that in electing Trump we were electing the ultimate politician? His "art of the deal" is nothing but politics 101: Blame both sides, apologize for your side, and immediately surrender your stronger points while praising the weak points of your opponent. And when you have a chance, give up; sacrifice your friends and appoint their enemies, and, last but not least, look everybody in the eye and say, "I didn't steal the money, "mistakes were made." ..."
Trump is a psychopath and he loves to hire even bigger psychopaths. Your whole admin is a swamp of sociopaths, psychopaths
and other sick deranged people.
There is not much difference between Hillary and Pompeo. Pompeo is basically Hillary with
a **** and a religious twist
bshirley1968, 2 hours ago
Thinking? Well that's a stretch of the imagination, but let me suggest this......
The opposition hates me. I can do no right.
The Trumptards blindly support me. I can do no wrong.
There are not enough independent thinkers to make a difference as the two main sides bitterly fight eachother over
every minute, meaningless issue.
I can pretty much do as I please without consequence.....like pay off all my buddies and pander to the jews/globalist/elites.
That could be what he is thinking. But I can bet you anything that there isn't a Trumptard out there that can comment
here and give us a rational reason for this appointment. Oh, they can down vote because they don't like being called
Trumptards. .....but they don't mind being one.
NAV, 2 hours ago
Who knew that in electing Trump we were electing the ultimate politician? His "art of the deal" is nothing but
politics 101: Blame both sides, apologize for your side, and immediately surrender your stronger points while praising the
weak points of your opponent. And when you have a chance, give up; sacrifice your friends and appoint their enemies, and,
last but not least, look everybody in the eye and say, "I didn't steal the money, "mistakes were made."
"... Trump's recent tax cuts are a good example. Most of the actual cuts go toward the corporations and ultra-wealthy, which just increases the deficit while shifting the proportion of taxes paid onto the middle class. It's a con that many Americans are inexplicably susceptible to believing, for some reason. ..."
Didn't help that the ostensibly neutral DNC was sending emails saying that they should play
up Bernie Sanders' Jewish faith (among other attack strategies), fed debate questions to the
Clinton campaign or tried to limit opportunities for Bernie and Hillary to share a stage
together.
Bernie Sanders is widely considered by many to be one of the most popular American
politicians, more than Trump and certainly more popular than Hillary. I think an interesting
phenomenon to notice is the lengths the GOP, in particular, will go to in order to convince
the average voter that anything that cuts taxes is inherently good for the 'little guy,'
while anything that raises taxes is bad.
Trump's recent tax cuts are a good example. Most of
the actual cuts go toward the corporations and ultra-wealthy, which just increases the
deficit while shifting the proportion of taxes paid onto the middle class. It's a con that
many Americans are inexplicably susceptible to believing, for some reason.
"... We saw the exact same dynamic when Obama was the populist hero. As Obama betrayed his base and acted against what people had expected from him, Obamabots insisted that Obama was playing 11-dimensional chess and that their hero's intentions were pure. It was all bullshit. ..."
"... Trump brought on Nikki Haley, Bolton, and Pompeo. Trump nominated Gina Haspel, acolyte of his supposed nemesis Brennan, for CIA director. Trump approved termination of JCPOA. ..."
"... And Trump's duplicity extends beyond Russia and Syria. He pretended to make a peace deal with North Korea but refuses to complete it. He railed against TPP but included TPP provisions in the new North America free-trade agreement. He said he would prosecute Hillary but backed within days of being elected saying: "the Clintons have been through enough" (what have they been through?!?), he said he would "drain the swamp" but has added to it, he put Jared Kushner - a supporter of illegal settlement building - in charge of Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, etc. ..."
"... It was obvious from jumpstreet what Obama was all about! I never for once believed anything ..."
"... It is very unusual for a populist to win office in USA. I would say that today it is virtually impossible due to the money-based US electoral system. Once this fact is understood, it becomes clear that BOTH Trump and Obama are each faux populists ..."
"... The faux populist leader model is actually well suited for an inverted totalitarian government like USA. And I've previously described a number of elements that make up this model such as the need for partisans (Obamabots/Trumptards) that vehemently defend the popular hero as he betrays his base while bogus accusations from political opponents spark a knee-jerk reaction in the hero's base and prepare the ground for the next faux populist leader. ..."
"... In 2008, the Deep State needed to "turn the page" from Bushes militarism and Obama embodied that "change". In 2016, the Deep State needed a nationalist that could revive patriotism in order to meet the challenge from Russia and China. I don't think this was accidental. ..."
There are other signs a confrontation is coming soon. The U.S. has objected to Iran's
pending launch of two space satellites, saying these look like tests of missiles designed
to deliver nuclear warheads....
In short, forces are moving in this country and in Israel to bring about a U.S.
confrontation with Iran -- before our troops leave Syria [NYT says troop withdrawal is
estimated to take 4-6 months] .
But the real questions here are not about Bolton or Pompeo.
They are about Trump .
We saw the exact same dynamic when Obama was the populist hero. As Obama
betrayed his base and acted against what people had expected from him, Obamabots insisted
that Obama was playing 11-dimensional chess and that their hero's intentions were pure. It
was all bullshit.
Trump brought on Nikki Haley, Bolton, and Pompeo. Trump nominated Gina Haspel, acolyte
of his supposed nemesis Brennan, for CIA director. Trump approved termination of
JCPOA.
And Trump's administration claims to have defeated ISIS. They say that USA actions were
responsible for 99% of the anti-ISIS effort. Why make such a claim after Trump said in his
campaign: "Let Russia take care of ISIS"? My best guess: They want to portray
themselves as the 'good guy' to Western audiences and when they act against Syria in the
future, they will attempt to convince the Syrian people that the 'Assad must go'
Coalition was responsible for eliminating ISIS.
And Trump's duplicity extends beyond Russia and Syria. He pretended to make a peace
deal with North Korea but refuses to complete it. He railed against TPP but included TPP
provisions in the new North America free-trade agreement. He said he would prosecute Hillary
but backed within days of being elected saying: "the Clintons have been through enough" (what
have they been through?!?), he said he would "drain the swamp" but has added to it, he put
Jared Kushner - a supporter of illegal settlement building - in charge of Israeli-Palestinian
peace efforts, etc.
We saw the exact same dynamic when Obama was the populist hero. As Obama betrayed his base
and acted against what people had expected from him, Obamabots insisted that Obama was
playing 11-dimensional chess and that their hero's intentions were pure. It was all
bullshit.
It was obvious from jumpstreet what Obama was all about! I never for once believed
anything he said but I looked at what he did. A gangster from Chicago. In some
respects he was a black Carter, designed to act as an interregnum. It was Carter who
kickstarted the occupation of Afghanistan. It was Carter who bumped up the nuclear weapons
programme.
Trump is just a naked version of every prior US prez.
Trump is just a naked version of every prior US prez.
It is very unusual for a populist to win office in USA. I would say that today it is
virtually impossible due to the money-based US electoral system. Once this fact is
understood, it becomes clear that BOTH Trump and Obama are each faux populists.
The faux populist leader model is actually well suited for an inverted totalitarian
government like USA. And I've previously described a number of elements that make up this
model such as the need for partisans (Obamabots/Trumptards) that vehemently defend the
popular hero as he betrays his base while bogus accusations from political opponents spark a
knee-jerk reaction in the hero's base and prepare the ground for the next faux populist
leader.
"Untethered from any political responsibility whatsoever, he can be expected to capitalize fully on his new status as
political martyr and leader of a new "resistance" that will make today's look supine."
Trump campaigned as a populist, the principal time the term applies, and also as
president. Witness the current impasse over a border wall which is an appeal to the ordinary
people who elected Trump, and he often wears that silly MAGA cap which appeals to his
electorate.
populist: a person, especially a politician, who strives to appeal to ordinary
people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.
Trump on the campaign trail was a populist as you admit at your link: "Trump was the ONLY
populist on the Republican side (out of 19 contenders!)." That's how he got nominated and
then elected in a huge upset, appealing to ordinary people which the other candidates
couldn't do. Trump wasn't chosen by anybody, but he was (and is) ridiculed by many.
How Trump and Obama got elected is clear. But just because they ran as populists doesn't
mean that they have a populist agenda. I think I've been pretty clear that they have each
made decisions and taken actions that furthered the establishment over the people.
And running as a populist doesn't mean an automatic 'win'. For example, voters are going
to be skeptical about the motives of a billionaire running for office, question the ability
of a novice politician, and be distrustful of a man who has had 3 wives and 4
bankruptcies.
In 2008, the Deep State needed to "turn the page" from Bushes militarism and Obama
embodied that "change". In 2016, the Deep State needed a nationalist that could revive
patriotism in order to meet the challenge from Russia and China. I don't think this was
accidental.
@ karlof1 | Jan 15, 2019 8:29:05 PM | 30 Which are more salient--domestically: The attacks on Russia or those against
Trump?
Of course the attacks against Trump by the establishment are more important, designed to
bring him down. The American people have been conditioned by the press in American
Exceptionalism, so they expect that those people in the world who were not wise enough to be
born Americans ought to suffer for it especially if they are -- yuk -- Russian. So anything
the US government does against Russia is accepted as a given, no big deal, run-of-the-mill.
When is Trump's "delivering" for Israel (i.e. not Russia) going to be examined?
Let's examine it -- Trump is delivering a crushing defeat to Israel by backing out of Syria,
and thereby conceding the "Shia Crescent" to Iran, backed by Russia and Turkey.
Thanks b that sets out the nature of the great distraction and the transparent BS that it
represents. So now that USAians can see the nonsense could they please get on with the
substance of making change and making USA great again by taking to the streets. Its about
time for a large wage increase and dropping taxes that impact on low to medium wage people.
Given the special role played by France in the USA struggle for independence, its about
time the the Gillet Jaune manifested in the USA. The low and middle income people already
Occupy the nation so now they should demand reform. Those few old and new progressive leftish
congresscritters should don the yellow vest and meet their allies on the street corners for
discussions and talk of equity and wage and tax justice. Its Rules for Radicals time or its
going nowhere time. Will they choose? May I suggest the first Rule for Radicals could be the
wearing of a yellow vest by the Congressional and Senate supporters of wage and tax justice
at the next and all subsequent pressers and attendances.
If not I gather they have all guzzled the cool aid and are content with the noise emitted
from the great distractor.
I've made a substantial case for Trump's having been chosen to follow Obama. I look forward
to any comments you may have regarding that the argument that I've set forth.
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 15, 2019 6:20:14 PM | 24
That was a joke, right?
Anyone so hampered by dotage that he forgets, several times a day, that he's already repeated
the substance of his 'newest' meme several times in the same thread, and a majority of
others, should probably consider getting a good night's sleep as an anti-dote.
"crushing defeat"? what utter provocative BS Don! Trump withdrawal leaves all the local
belligerents and malign Syria haters to do the job any way they wish. This fantasy that Trump
has abandoned Israel's regional domination is totally unsupported by fact and sounds to me
like a typical AIPAC alarmist trope.
Trump has being saying for some years now that others need to shoulder the burden.
Lets look at what the burden in Syria is shall we. Not only does USA give billions to
Israel to guarantee the colony but it also fights its wars for it in Syria. Then there are
all those charities raising money in the USA for the IDF. Then there is all the armaments
transfers by numerous clandestine channels to head choppers trying to destroy the Syrian
people's government and society. Many of those armaments transfers are paid with by USA black
dollars possibly to be accounted for in that $21 trillion fund that the USA Defense
Department has been wallowing in.
It is bleedingly obvious to me that Israel in not being crushingly defeated by anyone.
Syria nearly was!!!!!
When a self professed progressive country such as Israel is incapable of getting on with
the most religiously diverse border nation as Syria or Lebanon then there is a hoax somewhere
in the dialogue. The manifestation of a Shia crescent (a BS straw man)is because the
belligerent nations self defeated their allies: the Sunni murderers.
Mind you Don, I don't see any Shia crescent, I see a few nations bombed and shot to hell
desperately trying to establish normalcy of some sort BECAUSE of the manipulations of Saudi
and Israel governments and their pawns.
If he can only succeed in a positive environment then there's not much hope for him, he needs to be able to fight and prove
he's got what it takes. As it is I'm not sure he's got it.
That's not what I said at all and you know it.
Last time, the only stories that the NYTimes and (mostly) the Guardian could manage to run were Bernie-negative
stories. The NYTimes has already begun the exact same campaign for the 2020 cycle. By comparison, the Guardian
has been providing balanced Bernie coverage.
Do not count on the mainstream media to support him. They're already hard at work smearing him and he hasn't even announced yet.
Half the time they dont even mention him as being a likely contender. It's Biden all day, all night. Might as well be Hillary
again.
Expect 2020 to be quite contentious, possibly even more than 2016. That just means as a supporter of Bernie you'll have to
work twice, maybe three times as hard. The corporate media is going to suppress and challenge him as much as possible. They don't
even mask it anymore.
Trump was elected using Adelson money. That;s probably is what is wrong with Trump.
Is Trump a Republican Obama? As in "Brain dead Dems kept saying Obama would do the right thing by the nation, that he was
playing 4D chess, up till the moment he was no longer president, and in the end he was a
narcisstic, self-aggrandizing politician who transferred trillions to the 0.1% and made
America worse by any standard."
Notable quotes:
"... The struggle between the neocons and Trump over control of foreign policy has become ridiculous. One must remember that he can dismiss them all with the stroke of a pen, just he can dismiss his non civil service tormentors in the justice department and the FBI. ..."
"... Bolton has tried to countermand Trump's decision in Syria. His attempt and that of Jeffrey were rebuked in Ankara and DoD then announced an immediate commencement of the withdrawal. ..."
"... And yet the unholy trio of Pompeo (first in the hearts of his USMA class), Jeffrey, a career neocon hack at State, and Bolton (the mustachioed menace) are still in their jobs? Say what? ..."
"... And then there is the Great Southern Border Crisis. The Democrats have repeatedly voted for a great deal of money for barrier systems on the border. Chancy (Chuck and Nancy) were in the lead in such votes over the years. Now Nancy (who may not remember her votes) is denying Trump "a single dollar" for border barriers. ..."
"... To say that barriers are ineffective is dishonest. By now Trump knows that he can declare a national emergency and fund the barriers after however much litigation the Dems can arrange. There is ample money available for the purpose. So, why does he not do it? ..."
"... I voted for Trump. He lost me when he filled his cabinet with swamp creatures and then further when he replaced the generals with neo-cons like Bolton. You cant change the government if you don't understand how the government works - its not a real estate business that you can declare bankruptcy to make a buck. ..."
"... Brain dead Dems kept saying Obama would do the right thing by the nation, that he was playing 4D chess, up till the moment he was no longer president, and in the end he was a narcisstic, self-aggrandizing politician who transferred trillions to the 0.1% and made America worse by any standard. ..."
"... If he cared about illegal immigration, how about enforcing laws against employing illegal immigrants ..."
According to Hido, Washington's Special Representative for Syria, James Jeffrey, delivered
several messages to the leadership of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) demanding them to slow
down the negotiations with Damascus and promising to discuss the idea of establishing a no-fly
zone over northeastern Syria.
The Kurdish political described Jeffery's messages as "disturbing" and called on the Kurdish
leadership to deal with them in careful manner.
Furthermore, Hido stressed that the SDF should take a decision on the talks with the
Damascus government as soon as possible and regretted that some Kurdish officials are still
pinning their hopes on a possible change in the
U.S. decision to withdraw from Syria .
"Talks with the Syrian government are still ongoing in a positive atmosphere," RT quoted
Hido as saying.
Jeffrey made a visit to Turkey recently, where he tried to strike a deal with Ankara over
northeastern Syria. However, Turkey's plans to attack US-backed Kurdish forces and invade the
region hindered his efforts.
It appears to be that the SDF's only real option is the deal with Damascus as any U.S.
solution would likely involve Turkey, which has demonstrated its agressive attitude towards
Syrian Kurdish groups during its operation in Afrin in 2018." SF
------------
The struggle between the neocons and Trump over control of foreign policy has become
ridiculous. One must remember that he can dismiss them all with the stroke of a pen, just he
can dismiss his non civil service tormentors in the justice department and the FBI.
Bolton has
tried to countermand Trump's decision in Syria. His attempt and that of Jeffrey were rebuked in
Ankara and DoD then announced an immediate commencement of the withdrawal.
What could that have
been other than a renewed presidential order to the Defense Department? And yet the unholy trio
of Pompeo (first in the hearts of his USMA class), Jeffrey, a career neocon hack at State, and
Bolton (the mustachioed menace) are still in their jobs? Say what?
And then there is the Great Southern Border Crisis. The Democrats have repeatedly voted for
a great deal of money for barrier systems on the border. Chancy (Chuck and Nancy) were in the
lead in such votes over the years. Now Nancy (who may not remember her votes) is denying Trump
"a single dollar" for border barriers.
BTW, any soldier will tell you that the purpose of
barriers IS NOT to stop all movement. No, it is to slow up movement and canalize it so that
Quick Reaction Forces (QRF) can get there first with the most. To say that barriers are
ineffective is dishonest. By now Trump knows that he can declare a national emergency and fund
the barriers after however much litigation the Dems can arrange. There is ample money available
for the purpose. So, why does he not do it?
On Smerconish's show today, Bob Baer, spy extraordinaire, (read his books) asserted that the
various bits and pieces of circumstantial "evidence" about Trump's contacts with and attitude
toward Russia, as well as those of his flunkies and relatives amount to a "good enough" case
for Trump being a Russian agent of influence. That is how a HUMINT spook judges such things. It
is a matter of probabilities, not hard evidence. Assets of an alien government are not always
witting (understanding) of their status from the POV of the foreign government, but that does
not necessarily make other than agents. Sometimes they think they are merely cooperating in a
good and normal way when, in fact, the relationship is much deeper. Jane Fonda in North Vietnam
would be an example.
OTOH the president is responsible for the conduct of US foreign policy and is not under an
obligation to accept the perhaps hackneyed views of his subordinates. Perhaps his world view is
quite different and he is not mesmerized by the group think of the Borg. If that is so ...
But, how does one explain his lack of action on the border? Does someone or some thing in
Russia, Israel, the UK, his former business associates, have something really juicy on Trump,
something that he fears to unleash through decisive action? pl
Sir, I think he's just being cautious and exhausting all other options because half of the
country has been made to believe he's a dictator. He's being sensitive to that. He will act.
Give it time.
Sensitive? Cautious? Caring about Americans not in his base (whatever his base means)? Doesnt
sounds like president Donald Trump the last two years. He acts more like he is confused about what the president's powers are while the
wormtongues he appointed and replaces with more of the same continue to whisper in his
ear.
Contrary to all the TDS out there, maybe he prefers to do things the right way and have
Congress make laws and budgets that work for all of us whether or not we all understand how.
If that was the case, why so many signing statements (particularly since republicans control
congress ). He is on target to pass Obama. who also preferred not to do things by laws.
http://www.coherentbabble.c... Its just that the trend towards an imperial, unitary presidency keeps getting worse with
full acquiescence of congress who suckles on the corporate money teat, under both Dems and
Repubs.
I voted for Trump. He lost me when he filled his cabinet with swamp creatures and then
further when he replaced the generals with neo-cons like Bolton. You cant change the
government if you don't understand how the government works - its not a real estate business
that you can declare bankruptcy to make a buck.
Brain dead Dems kept saying Obama would do the right thing by the nation, that he was
playing 4D chess, up till the moment he was no longer president, and in the end he was a
narcisstic, self-aggrandizing politician who transferred trillions to the 0.1% and made
America worse by any standard.
-----
Here's a nice plot - US apprehensions comparable to 1970 when the US had a much smaller
population.
Now if Trump shut the govt down until congress did something about big pharma and the opioid
crisis because Congress is in their pocket he would have my support. But then the republicans
and dems would jointly impeach him to keep the money spigot flowing.
Decreasing life expectancy is what happens in the sh-tholes to use his term. If he cared about illegal immigration, how about enforcing laws against employing illegal
immigrants. Don't republicans who theoretically support capitalism (as opposed to crony
capitalism) understood supply and demand? (If there is a demand, then supply will meet
it)
Oh, because illegal immigrants are good for the bottom line of people, like, well,
Trump:
"... Yes, plus they could have at least tied in the Rosenstein attempt to wear a wire to trap Trump via the 25th amendment as hatched by McCabe too. Lousy article. ..."
Yes, plus they could have at least tied in the Rosenstein attempt to wear a wire to trap
Trump via the 25th amendment as hatched by McCabe too. Lousy article.
"... As it happens, neocons are in luck. Most Americans know little of the ideas that animated their country's founding. They're more likely to hold ideas in opposition to the classical-liberal philosophy of the Founders, and, hence, wish to see the aggrandizement of the coercive, colossal, Warfare State. That's just the way things are. ..."
"... If past is prologue, Ron Paul is probably right when he says the CIA is likely meddling in Iranian politics. ..."
"... Then US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, a woman as dumb and dangerous as Nikki Haley, was cool with the carnage. (One almost misses Henry Kissinger's realpolitik . At least the man was highly educated and deeply knowledgeable about history and world affairs. Second only to Jared Kushner, of course.) ..."
"... No one would deny the largely neoconservative nature of Trump's National Security Strategy . Tucked in there somewhere is the Trumpian theme of "sovereignty," but in watered-down words. The promised Wall has given way to "multilayered technology"; to the "deployment of additional personnel," and to the tried-and-tested (not!) "vetting of prospective immigrants, refugees, and other foreign visitors." ..."
"... These are mouthfuls Barack Obama and Genghis Bush would hardly oppose. ..."
"... "It's often said that the Trump administration is 'isolationist,'" wrote historian Andrew J. Bacevich, in the UK Spectator. Untrue. "In fact, we are now witnessing a dramatic escalation in the militarization of US foreign policy in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan. This has not been announced, but it is happening, and much of it without any debate in Congress or the media." ..."
"... To some, the normalizing of neoconservatism by a president who ran against it is a stroke of genius; of a piece with Bill Clinton's triangulation tactics. To others, it's a cynical sleight of hand. ..."
"... So Trump did morph into Hillary. Actually, it was something I was afraid of once I got the good news of Hillary losing, but expected, considering that I view presidents as empty suits, and the National Security State calling the shots. ..."
"... The Trump holdouts that maintain his turncoat buffoonery is actually 5d chess are the 2018 equivalent of the 2009 hopey changey Obots and can't accept their big daddy is a liar and a spineless turncoat. The system is broken and cannot be fixed from within. ..."
"... The signs were already there before the election, too many people were hoping that this time it will be different (it never is) and ignored them. He has jewish children and did say how he was anti Iran, he was always a neo cohen servative. ..."
"... I'm a little more sanguine about a Zionist President who approaches problems from a business and deal-making position than from one who comes a neocon political position (e.g., Hillary, every other GOP candidate except Rand Paul). The former are pragmatic and will avoid conflict, especially stupid conflict, at all costs. While the latter believe they are virtuous in going to war and/or attacking countries. Did you hear Hillary threaten to shoot down Russian planes in Syria during the campaign (WTF??!). ..."
It's fact: Neoconservatives are pleased with President Trump's foreign policy.
A couple of months back, Bloomberg's Eli Lake let it know he was in neoconservative
nirvana:
" for Venezuela, [Donald Trump] came very close to calling for regime change. 'The United
States has taken important steps to hold the regime accountable,' Trump said. 'We are prepared
to take further action if the government of Venezuela persists on its path to impose
authoritarian rule on the Venezuelan people.'"
"For a moment,"
swooned Lake , "I closed my eyes and thought I was listening to a Weekly Standard
editorial meeting."
Onward to Venezuela! Mr. Lake, a neoconservative, was loving every moment. In error, he and his kind confuse an
expansionist foreign policy with "American exceptionalism." It's not.
As it happens, neocons are in luck. Most Americans know little of the ideas that animated
their country's founding. They're more likely to hold ideas in opposition to the
classical-liberal philosophy of the Founders, and, hence, wish to see the aggrandizement of the
coercive, colossal, Warfare State. That's just the way things are.
So, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have enlisted the West in "a proxy Sunni-Shia
religious war," Riyadh's ultimate aim. Donald Trump has been perfectly willing to partake. After a campaign of "America First," the president sided with Sunni Islam while demonizing
Iran. Iranians have killed zero Americans in terrorist attacks in the US between
1975-2015; Saudi Arabians
murdered 2369 !
Iranians recently reelected a reformer. Pray tell who elected the Gulf petrostate
sheiks?
Moderates danced in the streets of Tehran when President Hassan Rouhani was reelected.
Curiously, they're currently rioting.
If past is prologue, Ron Paul is probably right when he says the CIA is likely meddling in
Iranian politics. For the Left and the pseudo-Right, this is a look-away issue. As the
left-liberal establishment lectures daily, to question the Central Intelligence Agency -- its
spooks are also agitating against all vestiges of President Trump's original "America First"
plank -- is to "undermine American democracy."
Besides, "good" Americans know that only the Russians "meddle."
In Saudi Arabia, a new, more-dangerous regime is consolidating regional power. Almost
overnight has the kingdom shifted from rule by family dynasty (like that of the Clintons and
the Bushes), to a more authoritarian style of one-man
rule .
When it comes to the Saudi-Israeli-American-Axis-of-Angels, the Kushner-Trump Administration
-- is that another bloodline in-the-making? -- has not broken with America's ruling dynastic
families (the Clintons and the Bushes, aforementioned).
It's comforting to know Saudi Arabia plays a crucial role in the UN's human rights affairs.
In January of last year, the Kingdom executed 47 people in one day, including a rather benign
Shiite cleric. Fear not, they went quickly,
beheaded with a sword .
Then US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, a woman as dumb and dangerous as Nikki Haley,
was cool with the carnage. (One almost misses Henry Kissinger's realpolitik . At
least the man was highly educated and deeply knowledgeable about history and world
affairs. Second only to Jared Kushner, of course.)
Our bosom buddies, the Saudi's, are currently
barricading Yemeni ports. No aid gets through her hermetically sealed ports. Yemenis are
dying. Some Twitter followers twittered with joy at the sight of starving Yemeni babies, like
this
one . Oh well, Yemeni babies can be sinister.
No one would deny the largely neoconservative nature of
Trump's National Security Strategy . Tucked in there somewhere is the Trumpian theme of
"sovereignty," but in watered-down words. The promised Wall has given way to "multilayered
technology"; to the "deployment of additional personnel," and to the tried-and-tested (not!)
"vetting of prospective immigrants, refugees, and other foreign visitors."
These are mouthfuls Barack Obama and Genghis Bush would hardly oppose.
"It's often said that the Trump administration is 'isolationist,'" wrote
historian Andrew J. Bacevich, in the UK Spectator. Untrue. "In fact, we are now witnessing a
dramatic escalation in the militarization of US foreign policy in the Middle East, Africa and
Afghanistan. This has not been announced, but it is happening, and much of it without any
debate in Congress or the media."
Indeed, while outlining his "new" Afghanistan plan, POTUS had conceded that "the American
people are weary of war without victory." (Make that war, full-stop.) Depressingly, the
president went on to promise an increase in American presence in Afghanistan. By sending 4000
additional soldiers there, President Trump alleged he was fighting terrorism, yet not
undertaking nation building.
This is tantamount to talking out of both sides of one's mouth.
Teasing apart these two elements is near-impossible. Send "4,000 additional soldiers to add
to the 8,400 now deployed in Afghanistan," and you've done what Obama and Bush before you did
in that blighted and benighted region: muddle along; kill some civilians mixed in with some bad
guys; break bread with tribal leaders (who hate your guts); mediate and bribe.
Above all, spend billions not your own to perfect the credo of a global fighting
force that doesn't know Shiite from Shinola .
The upshot? It's quite acceptable, on the Left and the pseudo-Right, to casually quip about
troops in Niger and
Norway . "We have soldiers in Niger and Norway? Of course we do. We need them."
With neoconservatism normalized, there is no debate, disagreement or daylight between our
dangerously united political factions.
This is the gift President Trump has given mainstream neoconservatives -- who now
comfortably include neoliberals and all Conservatism Inc., with the exceptions of Pat Buchanan,
Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson.
How exactly did the president normalize neoconservatism: In 2016, liberals accused candidate
Trump of isolationism. Neoconservatives -- aka Conservatism Inc. -- did the same.
Having consistently complained of his isolationism , the Left and the phony Right
cannot but sanction President Trump's interventionism . The other option is to admit
that we of the callused
Old Right, who rejoiced at the prospects and promise of non-interventionism, were always
right.
Not going to happen.
To some, the normalizing of neoconservatism by a president who ran against it is a stroke of
genius; of a piece with Bill Clinton's triangulation tactics. To others, it's a cynical sleight
of hand.
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but
you cannot fool all the people all the time.
But you can fool the whole country all the time in American bi-partisan system. Clinton,
Bush, Obama, Trump each were brought to power by fooling their electorate.
So Trump did morph into Hillary.
Actually, it was something I was afraid of once I got the good news of Hillary losing, but
expected, considering that I view presidents as empty suits, and the National Security State
calling the shots.
I'm waiting for another one of those "Trump's Truth in Action" moments when describes the
real political atmosphere in Washington.
Trump was asked about something he said in a previous interview: "When you give, they do
whatever the hell you want them to do." "You'd better believe it," Trump said. "If I ask them, if I need them, you know, most of
the people on this stage I've given to, just so you understand, a lot of money."
I think its time to dump the label "neoconservative". The appropriate term is
"interventionists without a cause" (IWAC or IWC) or some other descriptor.
The real problem that Pres Trump has and I remain a Pres Trump supporter is two fold:
1. He seems to have forgotten he won the election.
2. He seems to have forgotten what he was elected to do.
And nearly everyone of these issues on foreign policy the answer rests in respecting
sovereignty – that of others and our own.
I didn't need to read,"Adios, America" to comprehend the deep state damage our careless
immigration policy has on the country. I don't need to reread, "Adios, America" to grasp that
our policies of intervening in the affairs of other states undermines our own ability to make
the same case at home.
If I weren't already trying to plow my way through several other books, documentaries and
relapsing to old school programming such as The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and now the Dick
Van Dyke show, i would reread,
"Adios , America."
In Col. Bacevich's book,
Washington Rules, he posits a distressing scenario that the foreign policy web is so
tangled and entrenched, the executive branch is simply out his league. The expectation was
that Pres trump had the will to turn the matter. I hold out hope, but maybe not. There's
time.
@J.RossThe Trump holdouts that maintain his turncoat buffoonery is actually 5d chess are the 2018
equivalent of the 2009 hopey changey Obots and can't accept their big daddy is a liar and a
spineless turncoat. The system is broken and cannot be fixed from within.
The signs were already there before the election, too many people were hoping that this time
it will be different (it never is) and ignored them. He has jewish children and did say how
he was anti Iran, he was always a neo cohen servative.
I have a question for all the Trump supporters still in denial, what will it take to break
your delusions? He is not going to build a wall, mass immigration is up, the left wing are
mass censoring and essentially running everything now, his foreign policy is now endorsed by
the all the never Trumpers – so what is your limit, is there anything he must do to
lose your support?
Jews and the Jewish Media normalized Jewish NeoCons by guaranteeing that they always
have a voice and airtime in American culture and media. Never called out by the
WashingtonPost and NY Times for their previous blunders, they continue to shape American
foreign policy. And, of course, the end game here is Israel and the Israeli agenda at all
costs, you Jews are one issue folk. And You definitely do your part, with the subtle
subterfuge at work in the articles that you write.
No one should be surprised by Trump promoting Israeli interests über alles. For
decades he was so involved in Israel events in New York I debated whether he was actually
Jewish or not. Bannon said the embassy move to Jerusalem was at the behest of Adelson,
Trump's old casino buddy. In the campaign Trump got a lot of support from NY Jewish
billionaires (Icahn, Feinberg, Paulson, et al.). They know him and how he operates.
But being pro-Israel doesn't necessarily equate to neocon. The neocons are the dumb Jews
with serious inadequacy issues who could never make it in business and instead went into
politics and journalism. The latter are still staunchly opposed to Trump even after a lot of
pro-Israel moves. They might warm up to Trump's bellicosity towards a lot of Israel's enemies
(a long list with degrees of separation), but so far they've simply moved left.
I'm a little more sanguine about a Zionist President who approaches problems from a
business and deal-making position than from one who comes a neocon political position (e.g.,
Hillary, every other GOP candidate except Rand Paul). The former are pragmatic and will avoid
conflict, especially stupid conflict, at all costs. While the latter believe they are
virtuous in going to war and/or attacking countries. Did you hear Hillary threaten to shoot
down Russian planes in Syria during the campaign (WTF??!).
Lastly, I like to think Trump surrounded himself with neocons (McMaster, Haley, et al.) to
placate the GOP establishment because he knows he has to play the game.
People are inclined to believe that any activity -- in this instance, voting for the
red/blue puppets in Washington -- in which their participation is patronized must be
legitimate and effectual. Many duped in November 2016, even those who now feel betrayed by
that farce, were still around here a few weeks ago acting like a Senator Moore in Alabama
would be pivotal to reform, his defeat devastating.
That's how Ms. Mercer and her pundit ilk
(Buchanan, Napolitano, etc.) thrive -- supporting the Empire by never questioning its
legitimacy, just taking sides within the Establishment. And they'll be buying into the 2018
congressional contests, ad nauseum.
Of course, what is done to us, and to others in our name and with our money, never changes
to any meaningful degree. Americans might realize this if they thought critically about it,
so they don't. Instead, they lap up the BS and vote for who tells them the lie they like to
hear. When there are identity politics involved, the delusion seems even deeper. There are
self-styled "progressives" who used to advocate single-payer, nationalized health care who
are elated over the retention of so-called "Obamacare," the legislation for which was written
by and for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
Me? I cope by boycotting national elections and mass media, participating in forums like
this, and hoping that when the tottering tower of debt and gore tips over, as few innocents
and as many guilty as practicable are among those crushed.
The Zionist neocons and Israel did 911 and got away with it and everyone in the U.S. gov
knows it and they tried to sink the USS LIBERTY and got away with it and so normal is an
Orwellian society where Zionists can kill Americans and destroy the Mideast and nobody does
jack shit about it.
The neocons are Satanists warmongers and will destroy America.
Neocons are about as evil as proudly proclaimed Leftists, and they are obviously more
duplicitous.
Either Neocons will be refuted and publicly rebuked and rejected, or Neocons will
eventually destroy the country. Their long term fruits are destruction of that which they
have used to destroy so many others.
@anonymous
Far from all Neocons are Jews. However, virtually all Neocons are militantly pro-Israel to
the point of making Israel's foreign policy desires central to their assessment of what
America needs in foreign policy.
And the source is Anglo-Saxon Puritanism, which was a Judaizing heresy. Judaizing heresy
necessarily produces pro-Jewish culture. WASP culture is inherently pro-Jewish, as much as it
is anti-Catholic and anti-French and and anti-Spanish and anti-Irish, etc.
And all that means that WASP is opposed to the nest interests of the vast majority of
white Christians while being pro-Jewish.
Jews did not cause any of that. Anglo-Saxon Puritan heretics did.
@neutral
Pres Trump is a situational leader. It's a rare style, for good reason. However, he is openly
situational. That was clear during the campaign season. however,
I thought his positions were sincere. I don't think that this was any kind of slight of
hand, "watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat". His positions on Israel, same sex behavior,
marijuana, healthcare remain what they were going in. His foreign policy and immigration
positions have been buffered and he seems incapable of standing where he came in.
It was no secret he intended an assertive military. However, he seems easily convinced
that strong means aggressive, and that needlessly aggressive policy is a substitute for a
strong US -- that is a mistake. Syria cruise strike was the first sign that he was giving in
to the men whom he chose as advisers. As it it turns out winning the election has been easier
than governing. I assumed he had a much stronger backbone, than he has been willing to
exhibit in office.
@Jake
The Israeli/AIPAC bribery of American bible thumper preachers, especially in the
fundamentalist southern American states has more to do with it than the reformation.
The preachers get huge donations to pay for their churches and TV shows. They get free
trips to Israel for themselves and their families all the time.
On their Israel trips they pay more attention to the OT Jewish and holocaust sites than
the Christian ones
It's true that the reformation was a return to Judaism and a rejection of Christianity,
but that was 500 years ago.
What's important now is the vast amounts of money the Israeli government and the lobby
funnels into those fundamentalist churches.
If the southern fundamentalists only knew what Jews think of them. I really got an earful
of Jewish scorn and hate for southerners and fundamentalists during the recent Roy Moore
election.
Read Jewish publications if you want to learn what they think of southern
fundamentalists
@Twodees
Partain Trump appointed Haley because Sheldon Adelson told him to.
And contrary to the myth of trump funding his own campaign he did not the only money he put
in his campaign was a 1o million loan to it. Adelson was his biggest contributor just like
Saban was Hillary's.
Not coincidentally, however, neocon hopes may lie as well with the generous political
funding provided to Haley by Sheldon Adelson, the GOP's and Trump's single biggest donor.
Between May and June, 2016, Sheldon Adelson contributed $250,000 to Haley's 527 political
organization, A Great Day, funds that she used to target four Republican state senate rivals
in primaries. (Only one was successfully defeated.) Adelson was the largest contributor to
her group,
which raised a total of $915,000.
This powerful Adelson-funded Israel lobby could soon rival AIPAC's https://www.haaretz.com › U.S.
News
Oct 31, 2017 – Sheldon Adelson(L), The 3rd annual IAC National Conference, in
September, 2016, and Nikki Haley. . will feature, for the first time ever, a prominent
speaker from the ranks of the U.S. government: U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, who is
a favorite among the right-leaning "pro-Israel" crowd.
The Jews have bought this government and trump and Haley are nothing but junk yard
dogs.
Not that there are good alternatives but anyone who stills supports trump is as crazy as he
is.
The title is ridiculous. Neo conservatives have been normal for decades.
The neocon movement was normalized in 2001 by the PATRIOT Act. The domestic side of the
neocon worldview -- or world-system -- was joined with the international or interventionist
side, just as anti-Palestinian actions by Israel were joined by way of repression of free
speech with the Charlottesville protest by conservatives of the desecration of monuments.
@renfro
I'm sure the evangelical preachers con their followers into donating money to Israel. I've
seen those late night ads begging for donations to feed ancient old holocaust survivors in
Israel.
But the Israelis pay for all those luxury trips to Israel And a lot of the money to start
those TV shows and for the big salaries come from Israel and AIPAC so does the money to set
up those big churches that just appear from nowhere
@Grandpa
Charlie I have always wondered why its okay to say WASP but not Jew in public.
One is more pc, the other is not allowed.
I have seen some articles about Jews replacing wasp, even from Jewish authors.
As for Neoconservatives. It depends how we define it.
I see it as a case of American imperialism fused with pro Israel sentiment. Large overlap,
but not always.
From what I know modern Neoconservativism started somewhere around the 70s,80s? Became
dominant around the Bush years. (during Reagan years they got rid of many Paleocons).
@Twodees
Partain Not only Nikki is a prank, she is also a godsend. Now the world get to see USG
naked without usual pretension.
Trumps is probably the most honest Potus with highest integrity & bravery in American
history(stupid aside). He means what he said without mind boggling hypocrite lies, he tried
fulfilling all his election promises, fighting bravely with his only little weapon tweeter
besiege by entire states organs, CIA/FBI, both parties, MSM, world allies,
He put US Embassy in Jerusalem that all other Potus promised but never keep, he tried to
revise immigration policy that people blocked, building prototype wall now, try befriend
Russia become a treason act, reneged nuclear agreement with Iran, make US military great(of
course need hyper tension like nuclear NK), scraped Obacare, TTP, Climate deal, try to grab
Killary, bring back jobs with tax heaven .
Mann, this is really a man of his word. Didn't these are what you people voted him for, to
drain the swamp? He gotta shock the entire MSM brainwashed nation up to see the deeply
corrupted USG, collapse it quickly for a new one to move in(by whoever after his prank). As
Trumps had asked:"what you got to lose to vote me?"
@Twodees
Partain Yes..ues i admit, don't shoot. Im just been sarcastic, USG is in such a laughing
stock to the world now, many americans probably are exasperated if not yet numb. I am not
judging he is good, DT is just less evil typical business man..imo
But frankly, i do see why people are voting DT now. He is at least more entertaining and
blunt to screw up WH deep states show. Per msm (fake news), he is honouring all his campaign
promises rt? So that make him above hypocrite liar Obama who speak on peace(Nobel prize), but
drenched in Libyan and Syrians blood.
US msm brainwashed people need lot of shock & awe to wake up to reality, then they
might have hope to drain the swamp in unity or just await to implode and suck down whole
world.
Believing that the current world system no longer sufficiently advances American
interests ever since Washington lost control of its institutional tools, and that the
eventual outcome of this increasingly multipolar state of affairs is that the US will in
turn lose its global empire, Trump has decided to become the Agent of Chaos in bringing
about its destruction.
I know with certainty that Hillary is a beast from depth of hell.
Meh, hyperbole.
Hillary is no different from most politicians. She's in it for the wealth and power. She
got herself a real smart, duplicitous, pussy-chasing beast of a husband, and made the most of
the opportunity.
People -- the American people -- should be able to see this rather-evident characteristic
of politicians. They should be adequately educated, at least to the extent of being able to
detect the base chicanery and corruption that radiates from political personalities.
But, they don't. They don't see the evil. The media deftly conceals it, because the beasts
of the media, like jackals, feed on the morsels of wealth that fall to the ground as the
politicians devour the carcass of well, hell, freedom and democracy is as useful a metaphor
as any.
In this context, I am reminded of British comedian Alexei Sayle. When asked what he does
when he watches a really talented satirist performing, Sayle replied: "I go back stage and
tell him he'll never make it."
Indeed, the attitude to my work over 20 years has been the best proof of its quality.
If the Comments threads about "ilana mercer," on the Unz Review, prove anything (other
than that anti-Semitism lives), it is that mediocre "men" (for the most) hate a woman who can
out-think them. As a defender of men, this saddens me, but it is, nevertheless, true.
Ron Unz, our wonderful editor, chose the image appended to the column. (The brilliant Mr.
Unz is one of the few intellectually honest individuals I know in this biz. He, columnist
Jack Kerwick, and a handful of others.)
In reply to kunckle-dragger's sniveling: I'll continue to refrain from interacting with
his ilk ("fanboys") on my column's thread. But this particular dreadful cur (with apologies
to dogs, which I love) further embarrasses himself when he offers up the non sequitur that
engaging him is the litmus test for being a "good writer."
I see it as a case of American imperialism fused with pro Israel sentiment. Large
overlap, but not always.
Agreed. American imperialism has a long long history (going back to at least the mid-19th
century). That's why the neocons were able to gain so much influence. They were appealing to
a pre-existing imperialist sentiment.
There is a large group of US politician non Jews
who also are pushing this policies. So these two groups together would be called
Neocons.
There is a large group in US population, that find this idea very appealing.
That's why Make America Great Again was such a popular slogan. It appeals to mindless
American jingoism and imperialism.
@dfordoom
Edward Dutton stated that it was a trade-off between intelligence on one side and instinct on
another – both are necessary for survival. For me, intelligence does not seem to
correlate directly to wisdom.
If so, that reinforces my view that Trump doesn't know anybody in the Swamp
You are exactly right.
Trump really knew no one to hire or appoint to anything except his NY cronies , mainly his
Jewish lawyers and Kushner contacts.
So he appointed anyone they and his biggest donors recommended to him.
His ego and insecurity demanded he surround himself with his NY cohorts and close family.
" It appeals to mindless American jingoism and imperialism" = "Make America great
again"
So you would prefer : "Make America powerless and insignificant again"
How about "Make America a normal nation that respects other nations' sovereignty, that
doesn't plant military bases on foreign soil, that doesn't bomb other people's countries,
doesn't try to impose its views and its culture on the rest of the world, doesn't undermine
the governments of other countries and doesn't threaten any country that dares to disagree
with it." Would that be too much to ask?
I would have thought that someone "Mensa" qualified since 1973 could understand that
greatness should not be equated with behaving like a thug or a schoolyard bully. America's
aggression does tend to look like the manifestation of a massive inferiority complex.
I commend Ms. Mercer for publishing this which will no doubt bring to light an ugly truth
about many of her own tribesmen since there many of her other views which I wholly or
partially disagree with
And as was said sometime before, the thought process of earlier elites (the banking,
Hollywood and the neo-con, neo-lib crowd which was almost exclusively Zio-Jewish and is
disproportionately still is) has creeped into the very being of what constitutes to be an
"elite" in the west these days. Unlimited warfare and welfare using fraudulent money,
disturbing the social and sexual fabric of a society! Satan would be quite proud of this scum
bunch
So the zionist cabal still calls the shots and the slavish goyim second tier elites now
willingly go along and in fact share the same mentality
"... Behind the candidate's rhetoric there never was enough strategic sense, necessary knowledge, or even caring about foreign affairs to ward off the maneuvers of a determined hawk like Bolton once he was in position to do damage. ..."
Pillar
comments on Bolton's maneuvers to keep us at war in Syria:
The episode involving withdrawal and non-withdrawal of U.S. troops in Syria should be a
lesson for those who mistakenly placed hopes in Trump for a more restrained and less
militaristic U.S. foreign policy. Applause lines on the campaign trail have been mistaken for
deeper thought. Behind the candidate's rhetoric there never was enough strategic sense,
necessary knowledge, or even caring about foreign affairs to ward off the maneuvers of a
determined hawk like Bolton once he was in position to do damage.
If the first two years of Trump's presidency didn't already make it clear, the last few
weeks should have laid to rest any suspicions that the Trump administration is going to put an
end to unnecessary foreign wars. It isn't happening. For one thing, everyone around Trump
doesn't want those wars to end and will go to considerable lengths to ensure that they
continue. That is a result of Trump's own poor personnel choices and bad judgment. It isn't
possible to have a "more restrained and less militaristic U.S. foreign policy" when the
president's national security team is dominated by reflexive hawks that have never seen a
military intervention they didn't want to support. Trump put Bolton in the position he now
occupies, and unless he wants to start in on his fourth National Security Advisor within two
years we are going to be stuck with the unfortunate consequences of that bad decision for a
while longer.
Pillar writes:
The de facto reversal of Trump's withdrawal decision is a victory only for those who --
like Bolton, who still avers that the Iraq War was a good idea -- never met a U.S. military
intervention in the Middle East they didn't like and never stop seeing regimes they would
like to change with force.
One big problem with the Trump administration is that it is filled with the people who never
met an intervention they didn't like. People like that have been the ones shaping
administration policies in the region for the last two years, and on Syria they have prevailed
once again. It could scarcely be otherwise when there is essentially no one willing or able to
make the arguments for the other side of these issues. It is extremely difficult for hawks to
lose an internal administration debate when there is no one in the administration that opposes
hawkish policies.
Obama strategy in Syria was replica of Clinton strategy in Yugoslavia during the Balkan Wars. Divide everybody up by ethnicity
or religion (Croats are Catholics, Serbians are Orthodox not to mention the various Muslims and Albanians lurking about), arm
them, create false flags to set them at each other's throats. Enjoy the results.
Obama like Clinton before him was a real wolve in sheep's clothing
Notable quotes:
"... Jackrabbit, I agree with Bevin. Obama was really useful to the deep state because, as the "First Black President" he was widely popular, not just inside the US but outside it as well. Before the 2016 election, there was a widespread hope inside the US elite that Hillary Clinton, as the "First Woman President" would be able to serve a similar function in giving US imperialism a pleasing face. ..."
"... Trump, by contrast, hurts the US deep state because his true nature as a greedy, incompetent egotist is just too blatantly obvious to too many people. And he won't follow a script, the way GW Bush usually did. That's why we see major sections of the US deep state going out of their way to be publically hostile towards Trump. ..."
But the notion that it is part of a complex and tightly scripted conspiracy in which he
plays his public part and the deep state play theirs, pretending to be at odds with each
other, is bizarre.
I would've agreed with you before Obama. I followed the criticisms of Obama from true
progressives closely. It was clear within 2 or 3 years that Obama was betraying his 'base'.
His lofty rhetoric didn't match his actions. His Nobel Peace Prize can only be viewed
today as a ruse. He talked of peace and fairness but worked behind the scenes to further the
establishment.
Fast forward to the 2016 election where Sanders was a sheepdog and Hillary ran a terrible
campaign. It's difficult to look back and not be at least somewhat suspicious of the 2016
election. A populist nationalist was what the Deep State NEEDED to face the threat from
Russia and China to their NWO project. And that is what they got. After recognizing the
threat in 2013-14 (when Russia countered the Empire in Syria and Ukraine).
Similar excuses are made for both Obama and Trump. We are told that they were FORCED to
succumb to Deep State scheming and political power. But a much more logical view is that
these "populists" know exactly what they are doing: they know what their 'job' is to serve
the establishment and act as the leader of the Deep State's political arm. In return they get
financial gain, social standing, and life long protection. Sweet.
Obama 'turned the page' on the Bush Administration's warmongering. He promised a more
peaceful USA. But he conducted covert wars and bragged of his drone targeting.
Trump 'turned the page' on Obama's deceitfulness. He promised to put 'America First' but
within months attacked Syria with missiles "for the babies". Evidence that his first attack
was prompted by a false flag didn't deter him from attacking AGAIN - also based on a false
flag. Trump is still helping the Saudis in Yemen. And he's not doing what's necessary to get
peace in Korea.
Obama promised 'transparency' ("Sunlight is the best disinfectant") but 'no drama' Obama
protected CIA torturers, NSA spies, and bankers. Trump promised to "drain the swamp" but has
welcomed oligarchs and neocons into his Administration.
How much sly BS do we have to see before people connect the dots? A real populist will
NEVER be elected in USA unless there is a revolution; USA political elites are fully
committed to a neoliberal economics that make society neofeudal, and a neoconservative-driven
foreign policy that demands full spectrum dominance that brooks no opposition to its NWO
goals.
Anyone who believes otherwise has drunk the Kool-Aid, an addictive, saccharine concoction,
provided without charge and in abundance.
Glenn Brown | Jan 5, 2019 10:27:14 PM |
39@ 10 17
Jackrabbit, I agree with Bevin. Obama was really useful to the deep state because, as the "First Black President" he
was widely popular, not just inside the US but outside it as well. Before the 2016 election, there was a widespread hope
inside the US elite that Hillary Clinton, as the "First Woman President" would be able to serve a similar function in giving
US imperialism a pleasing face.
Trump, by contrast, hurts the US deep state because his true nature as a greedy, incompetent egotist is just too
blatantly obvious to too many people. And he won't follow a script, the way GW Bush usually did. That's why we see major
sections of the US deep state going out of their way to be publically hostile towards Trump.
Yes, their public rejection of Trump is partly motivated by the need to be able to claim that Trump is an aberration from
all previous US Presidents, as opposed to Trump and his policies being just a particularly explicit continuation of the same
underlying trends.
But I see no reason to doubt that the US elites really wish they had someone as President who was better at supplying the
right propaganda and less obviously an incompetent fool. So I don't understand why you think the US oligarchy and deep state
would have thought they needed someone like Trump, or would have greatly preferred him to Hillary Clinton.
Numerous MSM articles appear about Trump's standing up to the Generals: Mattis, Kelly, Dunford, etc. Yet Bolton feels free to
conspire against the President's agenda? The narrative that Trump is fighting for his campaign promises, but allows Bolton and
Pompeo to scheme against him does not make any sense.
A more realistic take is that rump is a faux populist. He is the Republican Obama - pretending to be a populist
peacemaker while working for the establishment. The "populist hero" is a gimmick that reinforces people's belief in USA democracy
and the righteousness of USA actions. The Trump/Deep-State conflict is a propaganda psy-op.
The major inconsistency here is why the Deep State is hell bent of deposing him. Is The Trump/Deep-State conflict
is a propaganda psy-op? I do no not think so.
Trump is certainly a 'faux populist' as all right wing populists are: promises to the people while promoting the interests of
the 1%. But there is a genuine struggle going on within the ruling class due to the crisis of neoliberal governance. The world is
a complex place and Washington's influence is declining. No surprise that parts of the US elite that got used to "full spectrum
dominance" are panicking. And it is all real.
Notable quotes:
"... "The president's statement offered the latest illustration of the dramatic gyrations that have characterized his foreign policy and fueled questions about whether his senior advisers are implementing his policies or pursuing their own agendas." ..."
"... Here we have the question asked, in effect: Are Trump's senior people going rogue? Does the master of spin Washington Post, by putting the question in a manner sympathetic to Trump and unsympathetic to Bolton and Pompeo, and by extension the hordes denouncing Trump's decision to reduce US involvement in Syria suggest a new orientation in the Mockingbird media? ..."
The Washington Post article that b links to ("never signed off") has the headline " 'They
can do what they want' Trump's Iran comments defy his top aids"
The "They" in the quote in the headline is a reference to Iran in Syria. "President Trump
stuck a dagger in a major initiative advanced by his foreign policy team:
Iran's leaders, the president said, "can do what they want" in Syria.
With a stray remark, Trump snuffed out a plan from his national security adviser, John
Bolton, who this fall vowed that the United States would not leave Syria
"as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders." Pompeo has of course also obsessed
over Iran.
Now the next paragraph in the WP piece is I think quite remarkable: "The president's
statement offered the latest illustration of the dramatic gyrations that have characterized
his foreign policy and fueled questions about whether his senior advisers are implementing
his policies or pursuing their own agendas."
Here we have the question asked, in effect: Are Trump's senior people going rogue? Does
the master of spin Washington Post, by putting the question in a manner sympathetic to Trump
and unsympathetic to Bolton and Pompeo, and by extension the hordes denouncing Trump's
decision to reduce US involvement in Syria
suggest a new orientation in the Mockingbird media?
Also note that acting Defense Sec Patrick Shanahan, who was injected immediately into his
position when Trump gave Mattis the boot, is becoming part of the strategic scene.
From the NYT: "He is the brightest and smartest guy I worked with at Boeing," said Carolyn
Corvi, a former executive at the company. "He has the ability to see over the horizon and
{implement needed change]."
"Ana Mari Cauce, the president of University of Washington, worked with Mr. Shanahan ....
She said his outsider perspective was helpful in questioning old practices,
forcing people to look at problems in different ways."
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
"The last two Democratic presidencies largely involved talking progressive while serving
Wall Street and the military-industrial complex. The obvious differences in personalities and
behavior of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama diverted attention from their underlying political
similarities. In office, both men rarely fought for progressive principles -- and routinely
undermined them."
"Presidents, prime ministers, congresspersons and parliamentarians worldwide regularly negate
the democratic will of their nation's voters by refusing to support legitimate election
results. Strangely, their treasonous actions continue without serious reprisal or punishment
by the voter. This emboldens them. The reality of votes cast and "democracy" past does not
does bode well for the people of the United Kingdom, their future as a nation or their
hopeful return to sovereignty once called, "Brexit."
Dynamite opening paragraph by Brett Redmayne-Titley.
It defines the vital issue of -To be or not to be – for our Planet's citizens who
struggle (or aught to), for functioning Democratic Republics founded upon the ideal of
Liberty and Justice for All.
Titley's ending mention of the trials of the Greek nation, and others, is well placed and
a tribute to his worldview, that is key to analyzing the situation in any particular
corner.
"Britains should consider this arbitrary bullying of Italy and of the UK. Then they should
consider the sad EU imposed current condition of Greece. Next, they might dwell on the failed
outcomes of previous elections within the nearby EU nations, and how similar movements were
defeated in their nation as well. Last, they must pay closest of attention to what is
actually in the souls of their own politicians and what they truly support."
In America, we lost our Democratic Republic and our last Constitutional President, John
F. Kennedy , in a hail of bullets in the Coup D'état of November 22, 1963.
The Citizen Yellow Vests in France , supported by their 2 leading Resistance
Fighters, Dieudonné , and Alain Soral , display the next step forward in
the Resistance to Tyranny.
Step 1 – Committees of Correspondence (mainstream media free – websites, &
communications).
2. Step away from the TVs – & breathe the free air outside as the Citizen
Militia Yellow Vests(Minutemen), regain the streets and stretch their muscles.
3. Final Step: We are Joined by free police, military, even CIA & other police agency
employees, in the act of regaining their Countries, with their Sovereignty, and their Honor.
We Restore Our Republics!
a. Zionist imperialist/racists to jail and awaiting Trial.
b. Cleanup & rebuilding.
c. Unbought electoral process - no $ allowed in the process (equal media access for
all candidates), Debates between the candidates. Let a hundred flowers bloom (what democrat
said that?)?
It has become all too easy for democracy to be turned on its head and popular nationalist
mandates, referenda and elections negated via instant political hypocrisy by leaders who show
their true colours only after the public vote. So it has been within the two-and-a-half year
unraveling of the UK Brexit referendum of 2016 that saw the subsequent negotiations now provide
the Brexit voter with only three possibilities. All are a loss for Britain.
One possibility, Brexit, is the result of Prime Minister, Theresa May's negotiations- the
"deal"- and currently exists in name only. Like the PM herself, the original concept of Brexit
may soon lie in the dust of an upcoming UK Parliament floor vote in exactly the same manner as
the failed attempt by the Greeks barely three years ago. One must remember that Greece on June
27, 2015 once voted to leave the EU as well and to renegotiate its EU existence as well in
their own "Grexit" referendum. Thanks to their own set of underhanded and treasonous
politicians, this did not go well for Greece. Looking at the Greek result, and understanding
divisive UK Conservative Party control that exists in the hearts of PMs on both sides of the
House of Commons, this new parliamentary vote is not looking good for Britain. Brexit:
Theresa May Goes Greek! "deal" -- would thus reveal the life-long scars of their true
national allegiance gnawed into their backs by the lust of their masters in Brussels. Brexit:
Theresa May Goes Greek!, by Brett Redmayne-Titley - The Unz Review
Ironically, like a cluster bomb of white phosphorous over a Syrian village, Cameron's Brexit
vote blew up spectacularly in his face. Two decades of ongoing political submission to the EU
by the Cons and "new" labour had them arrogantly misreading the minds of the UK
voter.
So on that incredible night, it happened. Prime Minister David Cameron the Cons New Labour
The Lib- Dems and even the UK Labour Party itself, were shocked to their core when the
unthinkable nightmare that could never happen, did happen . Brexit had passed by popular
vote!
David Cameron has been in hiding ever since.
After Brexit passed the same set of naïve UK voters assumed, strangely, that Brexit
would be finalized in their national interest as advertised. This belief had failed to
read
Article 50 - the provisos for leaving the EU- since, as much as it was mentioned, it was
very rarely linked or referenced by a quotation in any of the media punditry. However, an
article published four days after the night Brexit passed,
" A Brexit Lesson In Greek: Hopes and Votes Dashed on Parliamentary Floors," provided
anyone thus reading Article 50, which is only eight pages long and double-spaced, the info to
see clearly that this never before used EU by-law would be the only route to a UK exit.
Further, Article 50 showed that Brussels would control the outcome of exit negotiations along
with the other twenty-seven member nations and that effectively Ms May and her Tories
would be playing this game using the EU's ball and rules, while going one-on-twenty-seven
during the negotiations.
In the aftermath of Brexit, the real game began in earnest. The stakes: bigger than
ever.
Forgotten are the hypocritical defections of political expediency that saw Boris Johnson and
then Home Secretary Theresa May who were, until that very moment, both vociferously and very
publicly against the intent of Brexit. Suddenly they claimed to be pro- Brexit in their quest
to sleep in Cameron's now vacant bed at No. 10 Downing Street. Boris strategically dropped out
to hopefully see, Ms May, fall on her sword- a bit sooner. Brexit: Theresa May Goes Greek!, by
Brett Redmayne-Titley - The Unz Review
So, the plucky PM was left to convince the UK public, daily, as the negotiations moved on,
that "Brexit means Brexit!" A UK media that is as pro-EU as their PM chimed in to help
her sell distortions of proffered success at the negotiating table, while the rise of "old"
Labour, directed by Jeremy Corbyn, exposed her "soft" Brexit negotiations for the
litany of failures that ultimately equaled the "deal" that was strangely still called
"Brexit."
Too few, however, examined this reality once these political Chameleons changed their
colours just as soon as the very first results shockingly came in from Manchester in the wee
hours of the morning on that seemingly hopeful night so long ago: June 23, 2016. For thus would
begin a quiet, years-long defection of many more MPs than merely these two opportunists.
What the British people also failed to realize was that they and their Brexit victory would
also be faced with additional adversaries beyond the EU members: those from within their own
government. From newly appointed PM May to Boris Johnson, from the Conservative Party to the
New Labour sellouts within the Labour Party and the Friends of Israel , the
quiet internal political movement against Brexit began. As the House of Lords picked up their
phones, too, for very quiet private chats within House of Commons, their minions in the British
press began their work as well.
Brexit: Theresa May Goes Greek!, by Brett Redmayne-Titley -
The Unz Review
This article by Brett Redmayne is certainly right re the horrific sell-out by the Greek
government of Tsipras the other year, that has left the Greek citizenry in enduring political
despair the betrayal of Greek voters indeed a model for UK betrayal of Brexit voters
But Redmayne is likely very mistaken in the adulation of Jeremy Corbyn as the 'genuine
real deal' for British people
Ample evidence points to Corbyn as Trojan horse sell-out, as covered by UK researcher
Aangirfan on her blogs, the most recent of which was just vapourised by Google in their
censorship insanity
Jeremy Corbyn was a childhood neighbour of the Rothschilds in Wiltshire; with Jeremy's
father David Corbyn working for ultra-powerful Victor Rothschild on secret UK gov scientific
projects during World War 2
Jeremy Corbyn is tied to child violation scandals & child-crime convicted individuals
including Corbyn's Constituency Agent; Corbyn tragically ignoring multiple earnest complaints
from child abuse victims & whistleblowers over years, whilst "child abuse rings were
operating within all 12 of the borough's children's homes" in Corbyn's district not very
decent of him
And of course Corbyn significantly cucked to the Israel lobby in their demands for purge
of the Labour party alleged 'anti-semites'
The Trojan Horse 'fake opposition', or fake 'advocate for the people', is a very classic
game of the Powers That Be, and sadly Corbyn is likely yet one more fake 'hero'
My theory is, give "capitalism" and financial interests enough time, they will consume any
democracy. Meaning: the wealth flows upwards, giving the top class opportunity to influence
politics and the media, further improving their situation v.s. the rest, resulting in ever
stronger position – until they hold all the power. Controlling the media and therefore
the narrative, capable to destroy any and all opposition. Ministers and members of
parliaments, most bought and paid for one way or the other. Thankfully, the 1% or rather the
0.1% don't always agree so the picture can be a bit blurred.
You can guess what country inspired this "theory" of mine. The second on the list is
actually the U.K. If a real socialist becomes the prime minister of the U.K. I will be very
surprised. But Brexit is a black swan like they say in the financial sector, and they tend to
disrupt even the best of theories. Perhaps Corbin is genuine and will become prime minister!
I am not holding my breath.
However, if he is a real socialist like the article claims. And he becomes prime minister
of the U.K the situation will get really interesting. Not only from the EU side but more
importantly from U.K. best friend – the U.S. Uncle Sam will not be happy about this
development and doesn't hesitate to crush "bad ideas" he doesn't like.
Case in point – Ireland's financial crisis in 2009;
After massive expansion and spectacular housing bubble the Irish banks were in deep
trouble early into the crisis. The EU, ECB and the IMF (troika?) met with the Irish
government to discuss solutions. From memory – the question was how to save the Irish
banks? They were close to agreement that bondholders and even lenders to the Irish banks
should take a "haircut" and the debt load should be cut down to manageable levels so the
banks could survive (perhaps Michael Hudson style if you will). One short phone call from
the U.S Secretary of the treasury then – Timothy Geithner – to the troika-Irish
meeting ended these plans. He said: there will be no haircut! That was the end of it.
Ireland survived but it's reasonable to assume this "guideline" paved the road for the
Greece debacle.
I believe Mr. Geithner spoke on behalf of the financial power controlling – more or
less-our hemisphere. So if the good old socialist Corbin comes to power in the U.K. and
intends to really change something and thereby set examples for other nations – he is
taking this power head on. I think in case of "no deal" the U.K. will have it's back against
the wall and it's bargaining position against the EU will depend a LOT on U.S. response. With
socialist in power there will be no meaningful support from the U.S. the powers that be will
to their best to destroy Corbin as soon as possible.
My right wing friends can't understand the biggest issue of our times is class war. This
article mentions the "Panama papers" where great many corporations and wealthy individuals
(even politicians) in my country were exposed. They run their profits through offshore tax
havens while using public infrastructure (paid for by taxpayers) to make their money. It's
estimated that wealth amounting to 1,5 times our GDP is stored in these accounts!
There is absolutely no way to get it through my right wing friends thick skull that
off-shore accounts are tax frauds. Resulting in they paying higher taxes off their wages
because the big corporations and the rich don't pay anything. Nope. They simply hate taxes
(even if they get plenty back in services) and therefore all taxes are bad. Ergo tax evasions
by the 1% are fine – socialism or immigrants must be the root of our problems.
MIGA!
Come to think of it – few of them would survive the "law of the jungle" they so much
desire. And none of them would survive the "law of the jungle" if the rules are stacked
against them. Still, all their political energy is aimed against the ideas and people that
struggle against such reality.
I give up – I will never understand the right. No more than the pure bread
communist. Hopeless ideas!
" This is because the deal has a provision that would still keep the UK in the EU Customs
Union (the system setting common trade rules for all EU members) indefinitely. This is an
outrageous inclusion and betrayal of a real Brexit by Ms May since this one topic was the
most contentious in the debate during the ongoing negotiations because the Customs Union is
the tie to the EU that the original Brexit vote specifically sought to terminate. "
Here I stopped reading, maybe later more.
Nonsense.
What USA MSM told in the USA about what ordinary British people said, those who wanted to
leave the EU, I do not know, one of the most often heard reasons was immigration, especially
from E European countries, the EU 'free movement of people'.
"Real' Britons refusing to live in Poland.
EP member Verhofstadt so desperate that he asked on CNN help by Trump to keep this 'one of
the four EU freedoms'.
This free movement of course was meant to destroy the nation states
What Boris Johnson said, many things he said were true, stupid EU interference for example
with products made in Britain, for the home market, (he mentioned forty labels in one piece
of clothing), no opportunity to seek trade without EU interference.
There was irritation about EU interference 'they even make rules about vacuum cleaners', and,
already long ago, closure, EU rules, of village petrol pumps that had been there since the
first cars appeared in Britain, too dangerous.
In France nonsensical EU rules are simply ignored, such as countryside private sewer
installations.
But the idea that GB could leave, even without Brussels obstruction, the customs union,
just politicians, and other nitwits in economy, could have such ideas.
Figures are just in my head, too lazy to check.
But British export to what remains of the EU, some € 60 billion, French export to GB,
same order of magnitude, German export to GB, far over 100 billion.
Did anyone imagine that Merkel could afford closing down a not negligible part of Bayern car
industry, at he same time Bayern being the Land most opposed to Merkel, immigration ?
This Brexit in my view is just the beginning of the end of the illusion EU falling
apart.
In politics anything is connected with anything.
Britons, again in my opinion, voted to leave because of immigration, inside EU
immigration.
What GB will do with Marrakech, I do not know.
Marrakech reminds me of many measures that were ready to be implemented when the reason to
make these measures no longer existed.
Such as Dutch job guarantees when enterprises merged, these became law when when the merger
idiocy was over.
The negative aspects of immigration now are clear to many in the countries with the imagined
flesh pots, one way or another authorities will be obliged to stop immigration, but at that
very moment migration rules, not legally binding, are presented.
As a Belgian political commentator said on Belgian tv 'no communication is possible
between French politicians and French yellow coat demonstrators, they live in completely
different worlds'.
These different worlds began, to pinpoint a year, in 2005, when the negative referenda about
the EU were ignored. As Farrage reminded after the Brexit referendum, in EP, you said 'they
do not know what they're doing'
But now Macron and his cronies do not know what to do, now that police sympathises with
yellow coat demonstrators.
For me THE interesting question remains 'how was it possible that the Renaissance
cultures manoevred themselves into the present mess ?'.
@Digital
Samizdat Corbyn, in my opinion one of the many not too bright socialists, who are caught
in their own ideological prison: worldwide socialism is globalisation, globalisation took
power away from politicians, and gave it to multinationals and banks.
@niceland The
expression class war is often used without realising what the issue is, same with tax
evasion.
The rich of course consume more, however, there is a limit to what one can consume, it takes
time to squander money.
So the end of the class war may make the rich poor, but alas the poor hardly richer.
About tax evasion, some economist, do not remember his name, did not read the article
attentively, analysed wealth in the world, and concluded that eight % of this wealth had
originated in evading taxes.
Over what period this evasion had taken place, do not remember this economist had reached a
conclusion, but anyone understands that ending tax evasion will not make all poor rich.
There is quite another aspect of class war, evading taxes, wealth inequality, that is
quite worrying: the political power money can yield.
Soros is at war with Hungary, his Open University must leave Hungary.
USA MSM furious, some basic human right, or rights, have been violated, many in Brussels
furious, the 226 Soros followers among them, I suppose.
But since when is it allowed, legally and/or morally, to try to change the culture of a
country, in this case by a foreigner, just by pumping money into a country ?
Soros advertises himself as a philantropist, the Hungarian majority sees him as some kind of
imperialist, I suppose.
For me THE interesting question remains 'how was it possible that the Renaissance cultures
manoevred themselves into the present mess ?'.
Well , I am reading " The occult renaissance church of Rome " by Michael Hoffman ,
Independent History and research . Coeur d`Alene , Idaho . http://www.RevisionistHistory.org
I saw about this book in this Unz web .
I used to think than the rot started with protestantism , but Hoffman says it started with
catholic Renaissance in Rome itself in the XV century , the Medici , the Popes , usury
This whole affair illustrates beautifully the real purpose of the sham laughingly known as
"representative democracy," namely, not to "empower" the public but to deprive it of
its power.
With modern means of communication, direct democracy would be technically feasible even in
large countries. Nevertheless, practically all "democratic" countries continue to delegate
all legislative powers to elected "representatives." These are nothing more than consenting
hostages of those with the real power, who control and at the same time hide behind those
"representatives." The more this becomes obvious, the lower the calibre of the people willing
to be used in this manner – hence, the current crop of mental gnomes and opportunist
shills in European politics.
I would only shout this rambling ignoramus a beer in the pub to stop his mouth for a while.
Some of his egregious errors have been noted. and Greece, anyway, is an irrelevance to the
critical decisions on Brexit.
Once Article 50 was invoked the game was over. All the trump cards were on the EU side.
Now we know that, even assuming Britain could muster a competent team to plan and negotiate
for Brexit that all the work of proving up the case and negotiating or preparing the ground
has to be done over years leading up to the triggering of Article 50. And that's assuming
that recent events leave you believing that the once great Britain is fit to be a sovereign
nation without adult supervision.
As it is one has to hope that Britain will not be constrained by the total humbug which
says that a 51 per cent vote of those choosing to vote in that very un British thing, a
referendum, is some sort of reason for not giving effect to a more up to date and better
informed view.
@Digital
Samizdat Hypothesis: The British masses would fare better without a privatized
government.
"Corbyn may prove to be real .. .. old-time Labour platform [leadership, capable to]..
return [political, social and financial] control back to the hands of the UK worker".. [but
the privateers will use the government itself and mass media to defeat such platforms and to
suppress labor with new laws and domestic armed warfare]. Why would a member of the British
masses allow [the Oligarch elite and the[ir] powerful business and foreign political
interests restrain democracy and waste the victims of privately owned automation revolution?
.. ..
[Corbyn's Labour platform challenges ] privatized capitalist because the PCs use the
British government to keep imprisoned in propaganda and suppressed in opportunity, the
masses. The privateers made wealthy by their monopolies, are using their resources to
maintain rule making and enforcement control (via the government) over the masses; such
privateers have looted the government, and taken by privatization a vast array of economic
monopolies that once belonged to the government. If the British government survives, the
Privateers (monopoly thieves) will continue to use the government to replace humanity, in
favor of corporate owned Robots and super capable algorithms.
Corbyn's threat to use government to represent the masses and to suppress or reduce
asymmetric power and wealth, and to provide sufficient for everyone extends to, and alerts
the masses in every capitalist dominated place in the world. He (Corbyn) is a very dangerous
man, so too was Jesus Christ."
There is a similar call in France, but it is not yet so well led.
Every working Dutch person is "owed" 50k euro from the bailout of Greece, not that Greece
will ever pay this back, and not as if Greece ever really got the money as it just went
straight to northern European banks to bail them out. Then we have the fiscal policy creating
more money by the day to stimulate the economy, which also doesn't reach the countries or
people just the banks. Then we have the flirting with East-European mobsters to pull them in
the EU sphere corrupting top EU bureaucrats. Then we have all of south Europe being extremely
unstable, including France, both its populations and its economy.
It's sad to see the British government doesn't see the disaster ahead, any price would be
cheaper then future forced EU integration. And especially at this point, the EU is so
unstable, that they can't go to war on the UK without also committing A kamikaze attack.
@Brabantian
Thank you for your comment and addition to my evaluation of Corbyn. I do agree with you that
Corbyn has yet to be tested for sincerity and effectiveness as PM, but he will likely get his
chance and only then will we and the Brits find out for sure. The main point I was hoping to
make was that: due to the perceived threat of Labour socialist reform under Corbyn, he has
been an ulterior motive in the negotiations and another reason that the EU wants PM May to
get her deal passed. Yes, I too am watching Corbyn with jaundiced optimism. Thank you.
I agree Jilles, and with many other of the commenters.
Read enough to see that the article has many errors of fact and perception. It is bad
enough to suspect *propaganda* , but Brett is clearly not at that level.
An important point that you hint at is that the Brits were violently and manipulatively
forced to accept mass immigration for many years.
Yet strangely, to say anything about it only became acceptable when some numbers of the
immigrants were fellow Europeans from within the EU, and most having some compatibility with
existing ethnicity and previous culture.
Even people living far away notice such forced false consciousness.
As for Corbyn, he is nothing like the old left of old Labour. He tries to convey that
image, it is a lie.
He may not be Blairite-Zio New Labour, and received some influence from the more heavily
Marxist old Labour figures, but he is very much a creature of the post-worst-of-1968 and
dirty hippy new left, Frankfurt School and all that crap, doubt that he has actually read
much of it, but he has internalised it through his formal and political education.
By the way, the best translation of the name of North Korea's ruling party is 'Labour
Party'. While it is a true fact, I intend nothing from it but a small laugh.
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.
Trump most probably will be a one time President... The American people will elect the next time another bullshit artist
but this time probably from Democratic Party..
Notable quotes:
"... I'll give the congressman all of that, especially ..."
"... When the economy is bad, nobody wants a bullsh*t artist in the White House. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... "He came to our community and said, 'Don't sell your house. These jobs are coming back,' " Green said. "We've seen nothing but job losses around here." ..."
"... What you can blame Trump for is exploiting the hopes of Rust Belt people by telling them that he could bring those jobs back. ..."
Part of the retrenchment is a response to a slowdown in new-car sales that has prompted automakers to slim their operations
and shed jobs. And earlier bets on smaller cars have had to be unwound as consumers have gravitated toward pickup trucks and sport-utility
vehicles in response to low gasoline prices.
In addition, automakers have paid a price for the trade battle that Mr. Trump set in motion. In June G.M. slashed its profit
outlook for the year because tariffs were driving up production costs, raising prices even on domestic steel. Rising interest
rates are also generating headwinds.
Ms. Barra said no single factor had prompted G.M.'s cutbacks, portraying them as a prudent trimming of sails. "We are taking
these actions now while the company and the economy are strong to stay in front of a fast-changing market," she said on a conference
call with analysts.
More:
But demand for small and midsize cars has plunged. Two-thirds of all new vehicles sold last year were trucks and S.U.V.s. That
shift has hit G.M.'s Lordstown plant hard. Just a few years ago, the factory employed three shifts of workers to churn out Chevy
Cruzes. Now it is down to one. In 2017 the plant made about 180,000 cars, down from 248,000 in 2013.
More broadly, the years long boom in car and truck sales in North America appears to be ending, said John Hoffecker, vice chairman
at AlixPartners, a global consulting firm with a large automotive practice. "Sales have held up well this year, but we do see
a downturn coming," he said. AlixPartners forecast that domestic auto sales will fall to about 15 million cars and light trucks
in 2020, from about 17 million this year.
Watching cable news tonight at the gym, I heard an Ohio Democratic Congressman blast the president over this. He ripped Trump
for having made promises to industrial workers in his state in 2016, about how he would bring jobs back. He ripped Trump over the
steel tariffs that have driven up costs of production. And he ripped Trump for not taking his job seriously, for caring more about
Twitter than coming up with a strategy that might save jobs.
I'll give the congressman all of that, especially on Trump being a lazy, golfing-and-tweeting buffoon who doesn't
care about his job. Trump can get away with that when the economy is booming, but now it looks like things might be turning downward.
In Lordstown, workers planned to pray for a miraculous reversal of the company's decision, according to David Green, president
of United Auto Workers Local 1112.
"It's like someone knocks the wind out of you," he said of GM's announcement. "You lose your breath for a minute."
About 40 percent of the local's members voted for Trump, Green said. Now workers want to see the president keep his promises,
he said.
"He came to our community and said, 'Don't sell your house. These jobs are coming back,' " Green said. "We've seen nothing
but job losses around here."
Indeed, even before Monday's announcement, Lordstown had been bleeding jobs. Since Trump took office, GM has eliminated two
shifts and roughly 3,000 jobs at the plant, according to John Russo, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University's Kalmanovitz
Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
But we have to face some facts. People aren't buying what GM is making. Aside from the move away from small cars, an effect of
lower gasoline prices, sedan sales have been declining across all manufacturers. This summer, I got a good deal on a 2018 Honda Accord,
a car I really love, and that received rapturous praise from the automobile press when it came out. Honda struggled to sell the cars.
It's not because they're lousy cars. They're actually terrific cars. It's that consumers are losing interest in sedans. What good
does it do GM to manufacture cars that people will not buy?
You can't blame Trump for that.
What you can blame Trump for is exploiting the hopes of Rust Belt people by telling them that he could bring those jobs back.
The Rust Belt made the crucial difference for Trump in 2016. Unless the Democrats' 2020 nominee is someone who is more or less a
space alien, it's going to be hard to win those voters' support when you've improved your Twitter game and your golf score, but those
plants are idle.
"... Despite the animals' increasingly desperate circumstances on the farm, Squealer's barrage of untruths ultimately convince the lowly, overworked animals that "things were getting better." ..."
"... Anymore, whether it's in the company of dictators Trump keeps or among the multi-millionaires and billionaires that our purported Capitol Hill representatives mingle with at home and abroad, it's becoming increasingly harder to tell "which is which." ..."
If the demogagic President Donald Trump and his greedy loyalist Republican abettors had
their way, the American citizenry would be consigned to a life of Farm -like
drudgery.
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" becomes the leader
pigs' contorted "Commandment" to the rest of the farm animals by the end of Animal
Farm .
... ... ...
Orwell himself, indicated that his simplistic foreboding fairtale held "a wider application"
about "power-hungry people."
"I meant the moral to be that revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses
are alert.." Orwell writes Politics magazine founder Dwight Macdonald in a 1946 letter.
"What I was trying to say was," Orwell continues, "'You can't have a revolution unless you
make it for yourself; there is no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship.'"
Disillusioned Americans, who weren't so much "alert" as they were desperate, clearly were
swindled by Trump's disingenous populous revolution of sorts.
Now, in the flotsam wake of the midterm election's Democratic blue wave -- demonstrating a
new found citizen alertness that will flood the House in January -- the mistake of ever
allowing a Trump Presidency, is coming into sharp, unsettling focus.
Oppression is oppression. Greed and abuse of power produce essentially the same result
whatever the misanthropic ideology – Communism or Fascism or some other hybrid demagogic
"ism" to which Trump and his loyalists aspire.
If Washington D.C's plutocratic pigs had their druthers, Americans would be so dumbed down
by the con-in-chief's exhaustive lies and grating vitriol, endorsed by congressional majority
party Republicans, that we would have about as much say in our Republic's affairs as Animal
Farm 's befuddled barnyard animals had on the farm under the pigs.
"Napoleon is Always Right"
Trump is akin to Farm 's ruthless ruling pig, Napoleon, a Berkshire boar who, Orwell
writes, has a knack for "getting his own way."
Napoleon counted on his propagandist pig, Squealer, who "could turn black into white" to
brainwash the farm animals with lies about their tyrannical leader's supposed benevolence.
Even Clover the mare, who notices the changes the pigs sneakily make to Animalism's
Commandments, eventually is lulled into a sense of complacency, convincing herself that she
must have "remembered it wrong."
As the Farm animals work harder for less, the beloved, but dim-witted carthorse Boxer
declares, "I will work harder" and routinely motivates himself by extolling the pigs' most
controlling lie of all: "Napoleon is always right."
To advance his doubtless premeditated assault on truth and civility from the start of 2017,
President Trump has employed his own tag team versions of Squealer – in imaginative
mouthpieces Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Sanders, White House press secretary, seems eternally lost in an alternate reality where if
President Trump "says it, it must be true" – just as Farm's animals were
programmed to parrot of Napoleon, no matter how absurd the lie.
... ... ...
And we Americans, like Farm 's flock of mindless sheep taught by Squealer to
obediently bleat "Four legs good, two legs better ," are supposed to believe it all.
... ... ...
Pigs Hoarded Milk and Apples; Repubs, Tax Cuts For Rich
Just as Farm 's pigs reason early on that they need all of the farm's "milk and
apples" to lead the rest of the animals, Trump and his complicit Republican chums insisted at
the outset that billionaires' tax breaks are the key to economic revival for all.
Never mind that Reaganomics trickled down – and out, decades ago. Never mind that
corporate profits are soaring, while workers' wages have stagnated.
And that now, in order to pay for corporate big wigs' tax cuts, Republicans contrive to
carve up the people's Medicare and Medicaid, while sinisterly eyeing social security
benefits.
Who is the real "enemy of the people"?
"The turning-point of the story was supposed to be when the pigs kept the milk and apples
for themselves," Orwell writes in the 1946 letter to Macdonald, published in George Orwell: A
Life In Letters , 2013.
"If the other animals had had the sense to put their foot down then," Orwell continues, "it
would have been all right."
At the first sign of feebleness, Boxer, the farm's hardest worker -- instrumental in the
farm's success from which the pigs alone capitalized -- is hauled off to the
slaughterhouse.
Despite the animals' increasingly desperate circumstances on the farm, Squealer's barrage of
untruths ultimately convince the lowly, overworked animals that "things were getting
better."
Think of Trump's grandiose claims of new plant openings and soaring jobs numbers. When Fox
News' asked him this past weekend how he would grade his job as President so far, Trump
offered, "A plus."
And look no further than Trump's scripted, dictator-esque, brainwashing rallies, where
gullible Reality TV "fans" pathetically worship a snake oil salesman, cheering on command and
smiling idiotic smiles.
Which is Which?
In Farm' s last pages, the pigs have rewritten Animalism's "Seven Commandments" to
suit them, embracing the ways of the animals' sworn enemy humans.
"Comrade Napoleon" and his fellow privileged porkers have moved into overthrown (Manor Farm)
owner Mr. Jones' farm house, are dressed in his clothes and are walking upright on their two
hind legs.
By then, the incoherent sheep under the absolute sway of Napoleon's propagandist pig
Squealer, no longer are sounding off on command: "Four legs good, two legs bad," but rather,
"Four legs good, two legs better ."
Animal Farm leaves us with the animals peering through the farm house dining room
window as the pigs inside schmooze and toast mugs of beer with neighboring farmer, Mr.
Pilkington and his associates.
The pigs and humans end up squabbling over a card game in which Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington
each play an ace of spades.
Who is cheating?
In the novella's last line, the baffled animals at the window look from face to face, from
the humans to the pigs, but: "It was impossible to say which was which."
Anymore, whether it's in the company of dictators Trump keeps or among the
multi-millionaires and billionaires that our purported Capitol Hill representatives mingle with
at home and abroad, it's becoming increasingly harder to tell "which is which."
Trump administration policy on Ukraine is also strictly adhere yo the neocon playbook. As if
Victoria Nuland is strill working in State Departemetn and Cheney is the vice president.
Notable quotes:
"... in style and substance, there was no greater avatar for Trump's statement Tuesday than Gaffney's worldview. ..."
"... Trump explicitly namechecked the Muslim Brotherhood, a career-long hobby horse of Gaffney's, and depicted the Middle Eastern theater as straightforward. ..."
The controversial Washington think-tanker denied
to me in August 2017 that he'd directly advised the administration. To the contrary, he'd
actually endorsed and counseled Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump's bitter primary rival, in the late
stretches of the trench warfare 2016 primary (something, like most who have come over to Trump
after the primary, he has sought to minimize). But in style and substance, there was no
greater avatar for Trump's statement Tuesday than Gaffney's worldview.
Trump explicitly namechecked the Muslim Brotherhood, a career-long hobby horse of
Gaffney's, and depicted the Middle Eastern theater as straightforward. David Reaboi, an
alumnus of Gaffney's Center for Security Policy and now with the administration-friendly
Security Studies Group, fleshed the statement out Wednesday morning in an illuminating radio
interview. Reaboi has commented to
me in this publication before; there should be no reason to doubt his sincerity. But for
Reaboi, the joint action of last week's indictments in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia coupled with
U.S. sanctions was sufficient, and it's time to get back to business.
... ... ...
Curt Mills is a foreign-affairs reporter at the National Interest. Follow him on
Twitter: @CurtMills .
The same things were said when the Queen of Great Britain as Head of State requested
President Eisenhower American Support for their Plans to overthrow an Iranian Democracy
in 1953 to save British Anglo-Persian Oil Revenues for Britons.
Or when Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle requested President Truman
American Millions in late 1944-45 intended to hold on to France's Indochina Vietnam,
Cambodia, and Laos Colonies to consolidate French control of the territory against Ho Chi
Minh determination for independence. Leading to the French 7 year war largely funded by
the United States few recall America refusing them costing another 2 Decades and another
5 Presidents inheriting this French Fiasco Imperialism.
Or when America Allied with Communists Joseb Besarionis Dze Jughashvili known as
Joseph (Koba) Stalin, murdered and imprisoned over 30 million Kulaks, Eastern Slavic
Europeans, and Soviet Union Subjects after making Peace with Adolph Hitler to carve up
Poland, and then required American Assistance of Billions to save Stalin's Communism from
Hitler no one objected?
All Presidents must weigh and decide past, current and future Alliances whether it be
President Carter and Reagan freezing American Iranian Assets and later returns by
President Obama in the Billions while Iran used the money to fund more Middle Eastern
Chaos and terror elsewhere. While President Trump reversed that signed Agreement and
added Sanctions to challenge Iranian Behavior. As well as promoting an Arabian Coalition
in the Middle East after 39 years of failure by the Aaytiollah's Regimes.
These controversies, policies, and outcomes are always up for debate, spin, and
accusations, and often depends on America being force to act and react Deeds of Deception
caused by other Nations Leaders especially, Absolute Monarchs, Communist, Socialist,
Fascist Dictators, and Theocratic Ayatollahs.
Saudi Arabia hosts US military bases. Saudi Arabia buys $billions upon $billions of US
weapons. Saudi Arabia is a major oil producer that aligns its activities with US oil
interests. Saudi Arabia is a big investor in the US. Saudi Arabia is a strong ally in the
Middle East. Murder is murder. It's never OK, and God will judge. However, the US has
massive vital interests at stake.
Trump administration is complicit in Khashoggi murder.
The US intelligence had intercepted calls between Riyadh, Washington and Istanbul about
Khashoggi a few days before the killing. It was aware of MbS plans to abduct or kill the
Journalist.
Instead of alerting Khashoggi, the American government let him walk in the Saudi
Consulate and be butchered there.
If this is Trump policy, then Trump is 100% pure neocon. It took just three months for the Deep state to turn him.
Notable quotes:
"... Bolton shrugged off the reality that Iran is still doing business internationally, saying that he believes Iran is "under real pressure" from the sanctions, and that he's determined to see it keep getting worse. ..."
With the newly reimposed US sanctions against
Iran having little to no perceivable economic impact, national security adviser John Bolton
is talking up his plans to continue to escalate the sanctions track, saying he will "
squeeze
Iran until the pips squeak ."
Bolton shrugged off the reality that Iran is still doing business internationally, saying
that he believes Iran is "under real pressure" from the sanctions, and that he's determined
to see it keep getting worse.
Bolton went on to predict that the European efforts to keep trading with Iran would
ultimately fail. He said the
Europeans are going through the six stages of grief , and would ultimately led to
European acceptance of the US demands.
Either way, Bolton's position is that the US strategy will continue to be
imposing new sanctions
on Iran going forward. It's not clear what the end game is, beyond just damaging
Iran.
"... [Don't miss Barndollar discussing the forever war, the military industrial complex, and military reform at our fifth annual foreign policy conference on November 15 in Washington, D.C. Full schedule and free registration here] ..."
"... Gil Barndollar is Director of Middle East Studies at the Center for the National Interest and Military Fellow-in-Residence at the Catholic University of America's Center for the Study of Statesmanship. He served as a U.S. Marine infantry officer from 2009 to 2016. ..."
Flickr As we near the halfway point of President Donald Trump's first term, U.S. foreign
policy is being widely portrayed as off the rails. Yet when one looks past the Trumpian
bluster, the predetermined media narrative, and the serial incompetence of an understaffed and
often inexperienced administration, one finds a foreign policy agenda that differs far more in
style than in substance from its predecessors'.
Donald Trump ran for president as a foreign policy Buchananite in all but name. Thoughhe
made pro forma genuflections before the altars of primacy and American military supremacy,
Trump repeatedly bemoaned America's disastrous interventions in the Greater Middle East. The
South Carolina Republican presidential debate in February 2016 seemed like a watershed moment:
Trump attacked George W. Bush's war leadership and proclaimed the Iraq war a disaster, a bold
stance in a Republican Party that still refused to acknowledge reality more than a decade after
the invasion. Despite being booed by some in the audience, Trump won the state easily and drove
"Low Energy" Jeb Bush out of the race.
Candidate Trump offered a radical break with the U.S. foreign policy establishment. He said
was NATO obsolete and warned of the danger of a third world war with Russia. He rightly
declared the Libyan intervention to be another fiasco, and an illegal one at that. Hillary
Clinton, by comparison, bragged about Muammar Gaddafi's death and compared Vladimir Putin to
Hitler. Foreign policy realists and restrainers were understandably receptive to a Trump
presidency, warts and all.
Much of Trump's rhetoric revolved around the undeniable fact that our allies are prospering
under an American security umbrella they do not pay enough to support. He famously said that
the United States should "take Iraq's oil" as payback for the American blood and treasure
invested there. Trump seemed to sum up his view of America in the world when he told The
Washington Post in March 2016: "We certainly can't afford to do this anymore."
Two years later, it is clear that "America First" was negotiable. U.S. troops aren't coming
home, entangling alliances are expanding not contracting, and American client states are even
more likely to drag us into war in the Middle East. When one pushes the media and the
president's personality out of view, the most remarkable thing about Trump's foreign policy is
how unremarkable it is. Beneath the rhetoric, American foreign policy these past two years has
remained shackled to the traditional pillars of primacy, interventionism, and hubris.
Afghanistan: The war in Afghanistan offers the clearest evidence of business as usual
in American foreign policy. The administration's brief attempt at unconventional thinking on
Afghanistan was the risible Prince plan, whereby the U.S. would continue to prosecute the war
but outsource it to a "modern East India Company." Erik Prince, formerly head of the Blackwater
security firm and more recently a logistics provider in Africa and trainer of Chinese security
services, proposed to turn Afghanistan over to a brigade of contractors and a "viceroy" with
total command of the U.S. war effort. Though many of Prince's critiques of the current strategy
are sound, mercenaries cannot fix a country with massive culture and governance problems. This
idea was thankfully rejected. More creative thinking, like a real effort to work with Russia,
China, and Pakistan to stabilize Afghanistan, or a withdrawal and a pledge to return in force
if necessary, appears to have been unwelcome.
Instead, a vaunted new strategy offered little substantive change. U.S. forces in
Afghanistan were increased by 4,000 troops, and the number of airstrikes shot up. But the
situation there has only gotten worse. Casualties for both civilians and Afghan security forces
have risen dramatically in the past year while Pakistan still shelters and abets the Taliban.
The Afghan military is still not able to hold territory without U.S. assistance. In fact,
independent assessors like the Long War Journal believe that nearly 60 percent of Afghanistan's
districts are either under Taliban control or contested. The Department of Defense even briefly
trotted out enemy body counts as a metric for progress before The New York Times rightly
invoked the Vietnam War.
Meanwhile, 17 years after 9/11, the Pentagon claims there are now upwards of 20 terror
groups operating in Afghanistan, including what's left of ISIS, the heir to al Qaeda. For that
reason, Americans are told we cannot leave.
Europe: Early in his presidency Trump briefly declined to endorse NATO's Article 5,
provoking predictable hysteria on both sides of the Atlantic. A year later, he gave America's
European allies a tongue-lashing in Brussels, calling them delinquent in their contributions to
collective defense. Germany received special attention, with the president labeling Europe's
largest economy a "captive of Russia." In Helsinki a few days later, Trump appeared to dismiss
charges of Russian meddling in U.S. elections, igniting yet another firestorm of criticism.
Back stateside, he concurred during an interview with Fox News's Tucker Carlson that starting a
war over Montenegro, NATO's newest member, would be folly.
Yet when the dust finally settled, little had changed. The United States continues to
support Ukraine in its war against Russian-backed separatists, even selling Kiev Javelin
anti-tank missiles and other "lethal aid" that the more cautious President Barack Obama had
refused to provide. Sanctions against Russia pile up, dampening that country's long-term
economic development. European armies remain largely impotent while mindless NATO expansion
continues apace. Despite what he said on Fox News, Trump and the GOP-controlled Senate had
already signed off on the addition of Montenegro (and its tiny army of fewer than 2,000
soldiers) to NATO in 2017. Macedonia, another mouse that roared, is next. Poland has recently
entertained the idea of a "Fort Trump" to permanently house U.S. troops on its soil -- yet
another American tripwire force.
The Middle East: Iran remains the Trump administration's abiding foreign policy
obsession. Here, at least, one cannot blame false advertising. The president was explicit about
his plans to tear up Obama's Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that limited Iran's
nuclear ambitions, and make a better deal.
Once in office, the president's instincts on the regime were further fortified by the Saudis
and Israelis, to whom he has clung more tightly than any previous administration. He surrounded
himself with paid advocates of the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK), a cult that is hated in Iran.
Trump's lawyer and national security advisor, Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton respectively, have
spoken on MEK's behalf, despite it being a U.S.-designated terrorist organization until 2012.
Bolton now officially abjures regime change, but in July 2017 he promised an MEK gathering in
Paris that they would celebrate together in Tehran in 2019.
[Don't miss Barndollar discussing the forever war, the military industrial complex, and
military reform at our fifth annual foreign policy conference on November 15 in Washington,
D.C. Full schedule
and free registration here]
In May, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo presented Iran with a list of 12 demands that bring
to mind Austria-Hungary and Serbia on the eve of World War I. Pompeo's conditions were not a
starting point for negotiations or normalization; they were a call for surrender. The
administration now believes it can crush Iran through economic sanctions and force it to the
negotiating table.
Trump's Iran obsession has had baleful effects beyond the Persian Gulf. U.S. sanctions on
Iran are damaging relations with a host of other nations by restricting their trade, even as
the president extolled the primacy of sovereignty at the United Nations General Assembly in
September.
Tethered to the increasingly reckless Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the U.S. has
continued to fuel, arm, and otherwise aid the Saudi-led coalition's brutal, stalemated war in
Yemen -- a policy begun by Barack Obama.
In Syria and Iraq, the U.S. can take credit for a successful campaign against the Islamic
State. Yet in the wake of this victory, U.S. troops seem to be staying put in Syria, despite a
promise by Trump to pull them out earlier this year. Top officials announced in September that
American forces will not be leaving Syria until the Iranians do. The risk of our presence in
Syria dragging us into a war with either Iran or Russia is more real than ever.
In Israel, Trump has doubled down on support of Benjamin Netanyahu and the hardline Likud
party. The U.S. finally moved its embassy to Jerusalem, as promised to pro-Israel donors during
the campaign, and cut off all funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA),
the UN's Palestinian refugee agency. These moves only cemented a growing impression that Trump
never planned to be an honest broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Many now
believe that the peace process is dead.
North Korea: North Korea dominated headlines and fears of during 2017 and early 2018.
While the president tweeted about "fire and fury" and "Little Rocket Man" Kim Jong-un,
ultra-hawks in Washington pushed for a "bloody nose" preventive attack or even full-on regime
change in North Korea. Thankfully, this was one case where Trump's status quo foreign policy
prevented conflict. Both sides climbed down, conducted a historic summit in Singapore, and made
over-hyped and easily reversible concessions. The president's personalization of diplomacy
resulted in a victory, albeit in a verbal conflict that he had done much to create.
Substantively, little has changed. North Korea will keep its nuclear weapons and ballistic
missiles, American troops will remain in South Korea, and further negotiations are
promised.
This is a good thing: a preventive war with North Korea would be the ultimate expression of
Bismarck's line about "committing suicide out of fear of death." It appears that North Korea
wants to slowly open itself to the world, a prospect that has South Korean businessmen quietly
ecstatic and China relieved. Nonetheless, this is basically business as usual: North Korea
threatens, is granted concessions, and the status quo is preserved. We have seen this before.
We may be on the cusp of a permanent change in relations with North Korea, but the jury is
still out.
China: There is one shining exception to the Trump administration's conventional
foreign policy: China. Trump, unencumbered by free trade ideology, is challenging China's
economic ascent. Gone is the mindless determinism of Clinton, Bush, and Obama, the
evidence-free belief that free trade would somehow gradually end Chinese totalitarianism and
mercantilism. The Chinese have never competed on a level playing field and as a result we have
spent 20 years ceding American industry and supply chains to China. The hour is late, but there
is still time for the United States to fundamentally reorient its relationship with China.
Despite the chimera of a 355-ship navy, America will not win or lose this fight in a
Gotterdammerung in the South China Sea. The contest with China may be existential, but it is
primarily an economic, technological, and political battle. For all of the deep structural
problems in the U.S. economy, China has more to lose from a trade war right now than America
does.
It is not clear, though, if we are in the midst of a trade war or a trade bluff. If it is
the latter, we are likely to get a slightly better arrangement for U.S. businesses and then
proceed towards the same endpoint. If we are fighting a real trade war, however, there is an
opportunity to unwind "Chimerica" and bring manufacturing, if not necessarily jobs, home. It is
an open question whether the president has the stomach for the economic and political pain that
this will entail, as his oft-invoked roaring stock market tanks and Americans feel the bite of
tariffs in their wallets.
As with most things this administration does, competence is also an enormous question mark.
A trade war with China may be necessary and prudent. Simultaneously battling the Europeans and
our NAFTA partners while conducting a trade war with China is neither. If we want to
fundamentally reorder our economic relationship with China, for reasons of both national
security and long-term prosperity, we need to do it in concert with the other liberal
democracies, especially our North American neighbors. They could benefit greatly from a
reorientation of American trade. A strategy is needed, not an impulse and a series of tactical
tariffs.
How did America First so quickly become business as usual, China excepted? Diehard Trumpists
are inclined to defend the president's foreign policy U-turns by painting him as a prisoner of
his own administration, surrounded by conventional Republicans who subvert his
non-interventionist instincts. The writing was on the wall immediately, they claim, as a trio
of generals -- John Kelly, James Mattis, and H. R. McMaster -- were chosen to drive national
security policy. As veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, all three were unlikely to support any
radical reexamination of America's place in the world. Steve Bannon, who would and did support
such a change, was forced out of the White House within a year.
Personnel is policy, as the cliché goes, and the administration's foreign policy team
is dominated by men who are conventional internationalists at best, unrepentant
neoconservatives at worst. Rex Tillerson presided over a State Department in unprecedented
disarray and often found himself focused on limiting the damage of the president's bombast. His
successor has been a reliable agent of foreign policy orthodoxy, dutifully dealing with North
Korea on the one hand and threatening Iran on the other.
There is undoubtedly something to the narrative of internal betrayal, as Bob Woodward's
Fear and the recent anonymous New York Times editorial attest. America may not
have a true Deep State, but Trump's personality and some of his policies have provoked
unprecedented resistance from within government bureaucracies and even from his own political
appointees. Realigning American foreign policy in the face of an obdurate establishment was
always going to be a significant challenge. Succeeding in this task without a united team is
likely impossible.
But this is not an entirely tenable defense. These are men the president chose, and they are
doing his bidding, inasmuch as he knows and communicates what that is. The bench of realists
and non-interventionists may be small, but the president has put some of the worst warmongers
in Washington into positions of real power and influence.
So those who believe in foreign policy realism and restraint are left with the worst of both
worlds: a presidency that espouses an America First agenda but then proceeds to sabotage
support for these policies through reckless rhetoric, incompetent implementation, and a refusal
to carry out anything approaching a thoughtful, non-interventionist strategy.
Perhaps the next two years will see a drastic change in American foreign policy. Hope
springs eternal -- but there is scant reason for anything more than hope.
Gil Barndollar is Director of Middle East Studies at the Center for the National
Interest and Military Fellow-in-Residence at the Catholic University of America's Center for
the Study of Statesmanship. He served as a U.S. Marine infantry officer from 2009 to
2016.
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.
"... For his first two years in office, he sunk nearly all his political capital into enacting huge tax cuts for the rich, wholesale Wall Street deregulation, large increases in military spending, and an extremely pro-Israel foreign policy -- exactly the sort of policies near-and-dear to the establishment conservative candidates whom he had crushed in the Republican primaries. Meanwhile, his jilted grassroots supporters have had to settle for some radical rhetoric and a regular barrage of outrageous Tweets rather than anything more substantive. ..."
"... With Republicans in full control of Congress, finding excuses for this widespread betrayal was quite difficult, but now that the Democrats have taken the House, Trump's apologists can more easily shift the blame over to them. ..."
"... Both Trump's supporters and his opponents claim that his presidency represents a drastic break from Republican business-as-usual, and surely that was the hope of many of the Americans who voted for him in 2016, but the actual reality often seems rather different. ..."
"... Although the net election results were not particularly bad for the Republicans, the implications of several state races seem extremely worrisome. The highest profile senate race was in Texas, and Trump may have narrowly dodged a bullet. ..."
Perhaps the loss of the House may actually prove to be a mixed blessing for Trump. Democrats
will achieve control of all the investigative committees and their accusations and subpoenas
will make Trump's life even more miserable than it was before, while surely removing any chance
that significant elements of Trump's remaining agenda will ever be enacted.
However, although Trump had reached the presidency by advocating a radical
populist-nationalist agenda, he has hardly governed in those terms. For his first two years in
office, he sunk nearly all his political capital into enacting huge tax cuts for the rich,
wholesale Wall Street deregulation, large increases in military spending, and an extremely
pro-Israel foreign policy -- exactly the sort of policies near-and-dear to the establishment
conservative candidates whom he had crushed in the Republican primaries. Meanwhile, his jilted
grassroots supporters have had to settle for some radical rhetoric and a regular barrage of
outrageous Tweets rather than anything more substantive.
With Republicans in full control of
Congress, finding excuses for this widespread betrayal was quite difficult, but now that the
Democrats have taken the House, Trump's apologists can more easily shift the blame over to
them.
Meanwhile, a considerably stronger Republican Senate will certainly ease the way for Trump's
future court nominees, especially if another Supreme Court vacancy occurs, and there will be
little chance of any difficult Kavanaugh battles. However, here once again, Trump's supposed
radicalism has merely been rhetorical. Kavanaugh and nearly all of his other nominees have been
very mainstream Republican choices, carefully vetted by the Federalist Society and other
conservative establishment groups, and they would probably have been near the top of the list
if Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio were sitting in the Oval Office.
Both Trump's supporters and his opponents claim that his presidency represents a drastic
break from Republican business-as-usual, and surely that was the hope of many of the Americans
who voted for him in 2016, but the actual reality often seems rather different.
Although the net election results were not particularly bad for the Republicans, the
implications of several state races seem extremely worrisome. The highest profile senate race
was in Texas, and Trump may have narrowly dodged a bullet. Among our largest states, Texas
ranks as by far the most solidly Republican, and therefore it serves as the central lynchpin of
every Republican presidential campaign. The GOP has won every major statewide race for more
than twenty years, but despite such seemingly huge advantages, incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz faced a
very difficult reelection race against a young border-area Congressman named Beto O'Rourke, who
drew enormous enthusiasm and an ocean of local and national funding.
Perhaps the loss of the House may actually prove to be a mixed blessing for Trump. Democrats
will achieve control of all the investigative committees and their accusations and subpoenas
will make Trump's life even more miserable than it was before, while surely removing any chance
that significant elements of Trump's remaining agenda will ever be enacted.
However, although Trump had reached the presidency by advocating a radical
populist-nationalist agenda, he has hardly governed in those terms. For his first two years in
office, he sunk nearly all his political capital into enacting huge tax cuts for the rich,
wholesale Wall Street deregulation, large increases in military spending, and an extremely
pro-Israel foreign policy -- exactly the sort of policies near-and-dear to the establishment
conservative candidates whom he had crushed in the Republican primaries. Meanwhile, his jilted
grassroots supporters have had to settle for some radical rhetoric and a regular barrage of
outrageous Tweets rather than anything more substantive. With Republicans in full control of
Congress, finding excuses for this widespread betrayal was quite difficult, but now that the
Democrats have taken the House, Trump's apologists can more easily shift the blame over to
them.
Meanwhile, a considerably stronger Republican Senate will certainly ease the way for Trump's
future court nominees, especially if another Supreme Court vacancy occurs, and there will be
little chance of any difficult Kavanaugh battles. However, here once again, Trump's supposed
radicalism has merely been rhetorical. Kavanaugh and nearly all of his other nominees have been
very mainstream Republican choices, carefully vetted by the Federalist Society and other
conservative establishment groups, and they would probably have been near the top of the list
if Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio were sitting in the Oval Office.
Both Trump's supporters and his opponents claim that his presidency represents a drastic
break from Republican business-as-usual, and surely that was the hope of many of the Americans
who voted for him in 2016, but the actual reality often seems rather different.
Although the net election results were not particularly bad for the Republicans, the
implications of several state races seem extremely worrisome. The highest profile senate race
was in Texas, and Trump may have narrowly dodged a bullet. Among our largest states, Texas
ranks as by far the most solidly Republican, and therefore it serves as the central lynchpin of
every Republican presidential campaign. The GOP has won every major statewide race for more
than twenty years, but despite such seemingly huge advantages, incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz faced a
very difficult reelection race against a young border-area Congressman named Beto O'Rourke, who
drew enormous enthusiasm and an ocean of local and national funding.
I was actually in Texas just a couple of days before the vote, speaking at a Ron
Paul-related conference in the Houston area, and although most of the libertarian-leaning
attendees thought that Cruz would probably win, they all agreed with the national media that it
would probably be close. Cruz's final victory margin of less than three points confirmed this
verdict.
But if things had gone differently, and O'Rourke had squeaked out a narrow win, our national
politics would have been immediately transformed. Any Republican able to win California has a
near-lock on the White House, and the same is true for any Democrat able to carry Texas,
especially if the latter is a young and attractive Kennedyesque liberal, fluent in Spanish and
probably very popular with the large Latino populations of other important states such as
Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado. I strongly suspect that a freshman Sen. O'Rourke
(R-Texas) would have been offered the 2020 Democratic nomination almost by acclamation, and
barring unexpected personal or national developments, would have been a strong favorite in that
race against Trump or any other Republican. Rep. O'Rourke raised an astonishing $70 million in
nationwide donations, and surely many of his contributors were dreaming of similar
possibilities. A shift of just a point and a half, and in twenty-four months he probably would
have been our next president. But it was not to be.
"... You know something is fundamentally wrong when the average high school drop-out MAGA-hat-wearing Texan or Alabaman working a blue collar job has more sense, can SEE much more clearly, than the average university-educated, ideology-soaked, East Coast liberal. ..."
"... Trump is a "nationalist". More or less every administration previous to his, going back at least 100 years, was "globalist". For much of its history, the USA has been known around the world as a very patriotic (i.e., nationalist) country. Americans in general had a reputation for spontaneous chants of "USA! USA! USA!", flying the Stars And Stripes outside their houses and being very proud of their country. Sure, from time to time, that pissed off people a little in other countries but, by and large, Americans' patriotism was seen as endearing, if a little naive, by most foreigners. ..."
"... Globalism, on the other hand, as it relates to the USA, is the ideology that saturates the Washington establishment think-tanks, career politicians and bureaucrats, who are infected with the toxic belief that America can and should dominate the world . This is presented to the public as so much American largess and magnanimity, but it is, in reality, a means to increasing the power and wealth of the Washington elite. ..."
"... Consider Obama's two terms, during which he continued the massively wasteful (of taxpayer's money) and destructive (of foreigners' lives and land) "War on Terror". Consider that he appointed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who proceeded to joyfully bomb Libya back to the stone age and murder its leader. Consider that, under Obama, US-Russia relations reached an all-time low, with repeated attacks (of various sorts) on the Russian president, government and people, and the attempted trashing of Russia's international reputation in the eyes of the American people. Consider the Obama regime's hugely destructive war waged (mostly by proxy) on the Syrian people. Consider the Obama era coup in Ukraine that, in a few short months, set that country's prospects and development back several decades and further soured relations with Russia. ..."
"... The problem however, is that the Washington elite want - no, NEED - the American people to support such military adventurism, and what better way to do that than by concocting false "Russian collusion" allegations against Trump and having the media program the popular mind with exactly the opposite of the truth - that Trump was a "traitor" to the American people. ..."
"... The only thing Trump is a traitor to is the self-serving globally expansionist interests of a cabal of Washington insiders . This little maneuver amounted to a '2 for 1' for the Washington establishment. They simultaneously demonized Trump (impeding his 'nationalist' agenda) while advancing their own globalist mission - in this case aimed at pushing back Russia. ..."
"... The US 'Deep State' did this in response to the election of Trump the "nationalist" and their fears that their globalist, exceptionalist vision for the USA - a vision that is singularly focused on their own narrow interests at the expense of the American people and many others around the world - would be derailed by Trump attempting to put the interests of the American people first . ..."
Billed as a 'referendum on Trump's presidency', the US Midterm Elections drew an
unusually high number of Americans to the polls yesterday. The minor loss, from Trump's
perspective, of majority Republican control of the lower House of Representatives, suggests, if
anything, the opposite of what the media and establishment want you to believe it means.
An important clue to why the American media has declared permanent open season on this man
transpired during a sometimes heated post-elections press conference at the White House
yesterday. First, CNN's obnoxious Jim Acosta insisted on bringing up the patently absurd
allegations of 'Russia collusion' and refused to shut up and sit down. Soon after, PBS reporter
Yamiche Alcindor joined her colleagues in asking Trump another loaded question , this time on the 'white
nationalism' canard:
Alcindor : On the campaign trail you called yourself a nationalist. Some people saw
that as emboldening white nationalists...
Trump : I don't know why you'd say this. It's such a racist question.
Alcindor : There are some people who say that now the Republican Party is seen as
supporting white nationalists because of your rhetoric. What do you make of that?
Trump : Why do I have among the highest poll numbers with African Americans?
That's such a racist question. I love our country. You have nationalists, and you have
globalists . I also love the world, and I don't mind helping the world, but we have to
straighten out our country first. We have a lot of problems ...
The US media is still "not even wrong" on Trump and why he won the 2016 election.
You know something is fundamentally wrong when the average high school drop-out
MAGA-hat-wearing Texan or Alabaman working a blue collar job has more sense, can SEE much more
clearly, than the average university-educated, ideology-soaked, East Coast liberal.
Trump is a "nationalist". More or less every administration previous to his, going back at
least 100 years, was "globalist". For much of its history, the USA has been known around the
world as a very patriotic (i.e., nationalist) country. Americans in general had a reputation
for spontaneous chants of "USA! USA! USA!", flying the Stars And Stripes outside their houses
and being very proud of their country. Sure, from time to time, that pissed off people a little
in other countries but, by and large, Americans' patriotism was seen as endearing, if a little
naive, by most foreigners.
Globalism, on the other hand, as it relates to the USA, is the ideology that saturates the
Washington establishment think-tanks, career politicians and bureaucrats, who are infected with
the toxic belief that America can and should dominate the world . This is presented to the
public as so much American largess and magnanimity, but it is, in reality, a means to
increasing the power and wealth of the Washington elite.
Consider Obama's two terms, during which he continued the massively wasteful (of taxpayer's
money) and destructive (of foreigners' lives and land) "War on Terror". Consider that he
appointed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who proceeded to joyfully bomb Libya back to
the stone age and murder its leader. Consider that, under Obama, US-Russia relations reached an
all-time low, with repeated attacks (of various sorts) on the Russian president, government and
people, and the attempted trashing of Russia's international reputation in the eyes of the
American people. Consider the Obama regime's hugely destructive war waged (mostly by proxy) on
the Syrian people. Consider the Obama era coup in Ukraine that, in a few short months, set that
country's prospects and development back several decades and further soured relations with
Russia.
These are but a few examples of the "globalism" that drives the Washington establishment.
Who, in their right mind, would support it? (I won't get into what constitutes a 'right mind',
but we can all agree it does not involve destroying other nations for profit). The problem
however, is that the Washington elite want - no, NEED - the American people to support such
military adventurism, and what better way to do that than by concocting false "Russian
collusion" allegations against Trump and having the media program the popular mind with exactly
the opposite of the truth - that Trump was a "traitor" to the American people.
The only thing
Trump is a traitor to is the self-serving globally expansionist interests of a cabal of
Washington insiders . This little maneuver amounted to a '2 for 1' for the Washington
establishment. They simultaneously demonized Trump (impeding his 'nationalist' agenda) while
advancing their own globalist mission - in this case aimed at pushing back Russia.
Words and their exact meanings matter . To be able to see through the lies of
powerful vested interests and get to the truth, we need to know when those same powerful vested
interests are exploiting our all-too-human proclivity to be coerced and manipulated by appeals
to emotion.
So the words "nationalist" and "nationalism", as they relate to the USA, have never been
"dirty" words until they were made that way by the "globalist" element of the Washington
establishment (i.e., most of it) by associating it with fringe Nazi and "white supremacist"
elements in US society that pose no risk to anyone, (except to the extent that the mainstream
media can convince the general population otherwise). The US 'Deep State' did this in response
to the election of Trump the "nationalist" and their fears that their globalist, exceptionalist
vision for the USA - a vision that is singularly focused on their own narrow interests at the
expense of the American people and many others around the world - would be derailed by Trump
attempting to put the interests of the American people first .
This is somewhat naive, but still useful stance of US elections.
Notable quotes:
"... In 2004 Tom Frank, a Kansas author, wrote: "The poorest county in America isn't in Appalachia or the Deep South. It is on the Great Plains, a region of struggling ranchers and dying farm towns, and in the election of 2000, George W. Bush carried it by a majority of greater than 75 percent." Inattentive voters are vulnerable to voting against their own interests. They are vulnerable to voting for politicians who support big business and ignore their interests as farmers, workers, consumers, patients, and small taxpayers. Big Business will not spur change in a political system that gives the fatcats every advantage. ..."
"... President Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress are masters at flattering voters and lying about their positions on issues ranging from health care to the minimum wage. Before you vote, rid yourself of all preconceived, hereditary, ideological, and political straitjackets. Use two general yardsticks for candidates for elective office: Are they playing fair and are they doing right? ..."
"... Ask candidates to speak of Solutions to the major problems confronting our country. Politicians often avoid defining solutions that upset their commercial campaign contributors. ..."
"... Ask about a range of issues, such as energy efficiency, livable wages, lower drug prices, massive government contractor fraud, corporate crimes against consumers, workers and investors, reducing sprawl, safer food, and clean elections. ..."
Let's face it. Most politicians use the mass media to obfuscate.
Voters who don't do their homework, who don't study records of the politicians, and who can't
separate the words from the deeds will easily fall into traps laid by wily politicians.
In 2002, Connecticut Governor John Rowland was running for re-election against his
Democratic opponent, William Curry. Again and again, the outspent Curry informed the media and
the voters about the corruption inside and around the governor's office. At the time, the
governor's close associates and ex-associates were under investigation by the U.S. attorney.
But to the public, Rowland was all smiles, flooding the television stations with self-serving,
manipulative images and slogans. He won handily in November. Within weeks, the U.S. attorney's
investigation intensified as they probed the charges Curry had raised about Rowland. Rowland's
approval rating dropped to record lows, and impeachment initiatives and demands for his
resignation grew. He was prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned. Unfortunately, enough voters
were flattered, fooled, and flummoxed to cost Bill Curry the race.
In 2004 Tom Frank, a Kansas author, wrote: "The poorest county in America isn't in
Appalachia or the Deep South. It is on the Great Plains, a region of struggling ranchers and
dying farm towns, and in the election of 2000, George W. Bush carried it by a majority of
greater than 75 percent." Inattentive voters are vulnerable to voting against their own
interests. They are vulnerable to voting for politicians who support big business and ignore
their interests as farmers, workers, consumers, patients, and small taxpayers. Big Business
will not spur change in a political system that gives the fatcats every advantage. Change must
come from the voters, and here's how:
President Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress are masters at flattering voters and
lying about their positions on issues ranging from health care to the minimum wage. Before you
vote, rid yourself of all preconceived, hereditary, ideological, and political straitjackets.
Use two general yardsticks for candidates for elective office: Are they playing fair and are
they doing right?
Stay open-minded. Avoid jumping to conclusions about candidates based solely on their
stance on your one or two top issues. Pay attention to where these politicians are on the many
other issues that profoundly affect you and your family. If you judge them broadly rather than
narrowly, you will increase your influence by increasing your demands and expectation levels
for public officials. There are numerous evaluations of their votes, easily available on the
Internet.
Know where you stand. A handy way to contrast your views with those of the incumbents and
challengers is to make your own checklist of twenty issues, explain where you stand and then
compare your positions, the candidates' votes and declarations. Seeing how their positions or
their actual record matches up to your own positions makes it harder for politicians to play
you. Compare candidates with their votes or declarations.
Ask the tough questions. These are many issues that politicians like to avoid. They
include questions about whether candidates are willing to debate their opponents and how often,
why they avoid talking about and doing something about corporate power and its expanding
controls over people's lives, or how they plan specifically to shift power from these global
corporate supremacists to the people. After all, the Constitution starts with "We the People"
not "We the Corporations." The words "corporations" and "company" are never mentioned in our
Constitution!!
Ask candidates to speak of Solutions to the major problems confronting our country.
Politicians often avoid defining solutions that upset their commercial campaign
contributors.
Ask about a range of issues, such as energy efficiency, livable wages, lower drug
prices, massive government contractor fraud, corporate crimes against consumers, workers and
investors, reducing sprawl, safer food, and clean elections.
Ask members of Congress to explain why they keep giving themselves salary increases and
generous benefits, and yet turn cold at doing the same for the people's frozen minimum wage,
health insurance, or pension protections.
All in all, it takes a little work and some time to become a super-voter, impervious to
manipulation by politicians who intend to flatter, fool,and flummox. But this education can
also be fun, and the pursuit of justice can offer great benefits to your pursuit of
happiness.
Such civic engagement will help Americans today become better ancestors for tomorrow's
descendants.
Unfortunately, Debsisdead is correct. The United States cannot be fixed. It could be
that Trump knows what's needed and is deliberately trying to set the US on a course towards
sanity using shock treatment, and is deliberately trying to wean America from the petrodollar
in such a manner that Americans have no other country to blame/bomb, thus saving civilization
from America's inevitable spasm of ultraviolence when the BRICS succeed in taking the
petrodollar down. This seems unlikely, though.
The sad reality is that the delusion Americans suffer from (result of their universal
cradle-to-grave brainwashing that I mentioned earlier) is too deeply rooted as a core
component of their identities.
That mass-based delusion must be overcome before America's psychotic behavior on the world
stage can be addressed, but I see no forces within the US making any progress in that
direction at all.
Even the brightest and most humanistic Americans are horribly twisted to appalling
evil by unquestionable faith in their own exceptionalism. As a consequence it could be
that the only hope for humanity lies in a radical USA-ectomy with the resulting stump being
cauterized.
I certainly wish there were some other way, but I don't see one.
The question is why the Deep State still is trying to depose him, if he essentially obeys the dictate of the Deep State ?
Notable quotes:
"... The Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Actually that's Trump. He demands total and utter loyalty from his people and gives none in return. ..."
"... The significance here is that Bolton and Pompeo represent just about everything Trump ran against during his 2016 presidential campaign. He ran against the country's foreign policy establishment and its rush to war in Iraq; its support of NATO's provocative eastward expansion; its abiding hostility toward Russia; its destabilization of the Middle East through ill-conceived and ill-fated activities in Iraq, Libya, and Syria; its ongoing and seemingly endless war in Afghanistan; and its enthusiasm for regime change and nation-building around the world. Bolton and Pompeo represent precisely those kinds of policies and actions as well as the general foreign policy outlook that spawned them. ..."
"... Trump gave every indication during the campaign that he would reverse those policies and avoid those kinds of actions. He even went so far, in his inimitable way, of accusing the Bush administration of lying to the American people in taking the country to war in Iraq, as opposed to making a reckless and stupid, though honest, mistake about that country's weapons of mass destruction. He said it would be great to get along with Russia and criticized NATO's aggressive eastward push. He said our aim in Syria should be to combat Islamist extremism, not depose Bashar al-Assad as its leader. In promulgating his America First approach, he specifically eschewed any interest in nation-building abroad. ..."
"... Still, generally speaking, anyone listening to Trump carefully before the election would have been justified in concluding that, if he meant what he said, he would reverse America's post-Cold War foreign policy as practiced by George W. Bush and Barack Obama. ..."
"... Thus any neutral observer, at the time of Mattis's selection as defense secretary, might have concluded that he was more bent on an adventurous American foreign policy than his boss. But it turned out to be just the opposite. There are two reasons for this. First, Mattis is cautious by nature, and he seems to have taken Trump at his word that he didn't want any more unnecessary American wars of choice. Hence he opposed the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal prior to Trump's decision to pull America out of it. That action greatly increased the chances that America and Iran could find themselves on a path to war. Mattis also redeployed some military resources from the Middle East to other areas designed to check actions by Russia and China, which he considered greater threats to U.S. security. ..."
"... That seems to have presented a marvelous opportunity to Bolton and Pompeo, whose philosophy and convictions are stark and visible to all. Bolton has made clear his desire for America to bring about regime change in Iran and North Korea. He supported the Iraq war and has never wavered in the face of subsequent events. He has advocated a preemptive strike against North Korea. Pompeo harbors similar views. He favored withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and has waxed bellicose on both Iran and Russia. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Bolton was put in power to ensure unswerving loyalty to the dictates of Bibi Netanyahu and local neocons. Have we forgotten Iraq and endless wars since? ..."
"... this is all about Israel's hold on the Oval Office. Bolton and Pompeo are far, far closer to Israel than Mattis and that's a problem for him. Sorry Robert Merry, but you clearly didn't catch Trump's first foreign "policy" speech in 2016. He suddenly revealed his priorities for all to see. There are four words that Trump apologists simply cannot bring themselves to utter: "Trump is a neo-con". Suckers. ..."
"... Military adventurism is another disappointment. We can't afford more neocon disasters. We don't need to be the world's police force. We should be shrinking the military budgets. It is dismaying to watch the neocons gaining power after the catastrophic failures of recent decades. ..."
"... "Still, generally speaking, anyone listening to Trump carefully before the election would have been justified in concluding that, if he meant what he said, he would reverse America's post-Cold War foreign policy as practiced by George W. Bush and Barack Obama." ..."
"... Come on, anyone listening to Trump before the election realized that he said whatever drew the most applause from the crowd. He never, in his entire life, has meant what he said. ..."
"... He will continue down the neo-con line until Fox News and NY Times run front-page articles about how Bolton and Pompeo are manipulating him and actually running US foreign policy, at which time he will dump them and make up something else. ..."
"... Arrest the warmongering "leaders" who create havoc around the world ..."
"... I guess DJT offered you a "Bad Deal" then? Past performance does predict future results. ..."
In covering President Donald Trump's recent pregnant comments about Defense Secretary Jim
Mattis, The Wall Street Journal tucked away in its story an observation that hints at
the president's foreign policy direction. In an interview for CBS's 60 Minutes , the
president described Mattis as "sort of a Democrat if you want to know the truth" and suggested
he wouldn't be surprised if his military chief left his post soon. After calling him "a good
guy" and saying the two "get along very well," Trump added, "He may leave. I mean, at some
point, everybody leaves . That's Washington."
Actually that's Trump. He demands total and utter loyalty from his people and gives none in
return. In just his first 14 months as president, he hired three national security advisors,
reflecting the unstable relationships he often has with his top aides. Following the 60
Minutes interview, Washington was of course abuzz with speculation about what all this
might mean for Mattis's fate and who might be the successor if Mattis were to quit or be fired.
It was just the kind of fodder Washington loves -- human drama revealing Trump's legendary
inconstancy amid prospective new turmoil in the capital.
But far more significant than Mattis's future or Trump's love of chaos was a sentence
embedded in the Journal 's report. After noting that recent polls indicated that
Mattis enjoys strong support from the American people, reporter Nancy A. Youssef writes: "But
his influence within the administration has waned in recent months, particularly following the
arrival of John Bolton as national security adviser and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo as
secretary of state."
The significance here is that Bolton and Pompeo represent just about everything Trump ran
against during his 2016 presidential campaign. He ran against the country's foreign policy
establishment and its rush to war in Iraq; its support of NATO's provocative eastward
expansion; its abiding hostility toward Russia; its destabilization of the Middle East through
ill-conceived and ill-fated activities in Iraq, Libya, and Syria; its ongoing and seemingly
endless war in Afghanistan; and its enthusiasm for regime change and nation-building around the
world. Bolton and Pompeo represent precisely those kinds of policies and actions as well as the
general foreign policy outlook that spawned them.
Trump gave every indication during the campaign that he would reverse those policies and
avoid those kinds of actions. He even went so far, in his inimitable way, of accusing the Bush
administration of lying to the American people in taking the country to war in Iraq, as opposed
to making a reckless and stupid, though honest, mistake about that country's weapons of mass
destruction. He said it would be great to get along with Russia and criticized NATO's
aggressive eastward push. He said our aim in Syria should be to combat Islamist extremism, not
depose Bashar al-Assad as its leader. In promulgating his America First approach, he
specifically eschewed any interest in nation-building abroad.
The one area where he seemed to embrace America's post-Cold War aggressiveness was in his
attitude toward Iran. But even there he seemed less bellicose than many of his Republican
opponents in the 2016 primaries, who said they would rip up the Iran nuclear deal on their
first day in office. Trump, by contrast, said it was a bad deal but one he would seek to
improve.
Still, generally speaking, anyone listening to Trump carefully before the election would
have been justified in concluding that, if he meant what he said, he would reverse America's
post-Cold War foreign policy as practiced by George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Now we know he didn't mean what he said, and the latest tiff over the fate of Mattis
crystallizes that reality. It's not that Mattis represents the kind of anti-establishment
outlook that Trump projected during the campaign; in fact, he is a thoroughgoing product of
that establishment. He said Iran was the main threat to stability in the Middle East. He
supported sending arms to the Syrian rebels. He decried Russia's intent to "break NATO
apart."
Thus any neutral observer, at the time of Mattis's selection as defense secretary, might
have concluded that he was more bent on an adventurous American foreign policy than his boss.
But it turned out to be just the opposite. There are two reasons for this. First, Mattis is
cautious by nature, and he seems to have taken Trump at his word that he didn't want any more
unnecessary American wars of choice. Hence he opposed the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal
prior to Trump's decision to pull America out of it. That action greatly increased the chances
that America and Iran could find themselves on a path to war. Mattis also redeployed some
military resources from the Middle East to other areas designed to check actions by Russia and
China, which he considered greater threats to U.S. security.
And second, it turns out that Trump has no true convictions when it comes to world affairs.
He brilliantly discerned the frustrations of many Americans over the foreign policy of the
previous 16 years and hit just the right notes to leverage those frustrations during the
campaign. But his actual foreign policy has manifested a lack of consistent and strong
philosophy. Consider his approach to NATO. During the campaign he criticized the alliance's
eastward push and aggressive approach to Russia; then as president he accepted NATO's inclusion
of tiny Montenegro, a slap at the Russians; then later he suggested Montenegro's NATO status
could force the U.S. into a major conflagration if that small nation, which he described as
aggressive, got itself into a conflict with a non-NATO neighbor. Such inconsistencies are not
the actions of a man with strong convictions. They are hallmarks of someone who is winging it
on the basis of little knowledge.
That seems to have presented a marvelous opportunity to Bolton and Pompeo, whose
philosophy and convictions are stark and visible to all. Bolton has made clear his desire for
America to bring about regime change in Iran and North Korea. He supported the Iraq war and has
never wavered in the face of subsequent events. He has advocated a preemptive strike against
North Korea. Pompeo harbors similar views. He favored withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and
has waxed bellicose on both Iran and Russia.
Thus a conflict was probably inevitable between Mattis and these more recent administration
arrivals. The New York Times speculates that Bolton likely undermined Mattis's
standing in Trump's eyes. Writes the paper: "Mr. Bolton, an ideological conservative whose
views on foreign policy are more hawkish than those of Mr. Mattis, appears to have deepened the
president's suspicions that his defense secretary's view of the world is more like those of
Democrats than his own."
The paper didn't clarify the basis of this speculation, but it makes sense. Bolton and
Pompeo are gut fighters who go for the jugular. Trump is malleable, susceptible to obsequious
manipulation. Mattis is an old-style military man with a play-it-straight mentality and a
discomfort with guile. Thus it appears we may be seeing before our eyes the transformation of
Trump the anti-establishment candidate into Trump the presidential neocon.
Bolton was put in power to ensure unswerving loyalty to the dictates of Bibi Netanyahu and
local neocons. Have we forgotten Iraq and endless wars since? We need more folks like Phil
Giraldi at TAC. Love him or hate him – but please bring him back. The First Amendment
needs him. And many of us still long for his direct and well-informed comments.
"Come on now!" as sports analysts say in a sarcastic segment about football blunders on ESPN.
Did GWB really make just an honest mistake based upon faulty intelligence? Does this writer
really believe his assertion? This intellectually dishonest essay comes on the heels of a
puff piece by another so-called "conservative" writer who asserted that had JFK not been
assassinated and won a second term, he would have surely withdrawn American soldiers from
South Vietnam. And then later in this essay the writer finally admits that these wars in the
global war on terror, excluding the war in Afghanistan, were unnecessary. But if these other
wars were unnecessary, then it historically follows they were illegal wars of aggression
against humanity. That was the legal basis under which we tried Nazi leaders as war criminals
at Numenberg. By the way, if Trump does get rid of Mattis, there are plenty more, one could
even say they are a dime a dozen, at the Pentagon who would be willing to toe the line under
Trump. They're basically professional careerists, corporate suits with misto salads of
colorful medals on their uniforms. They take their marching orders from the
military/industrial complex. I'm a Vietnam vet and realized long ago how clueless these
generals actually are when we crossed our Rubicon in Vietnam. The war on terror now rivals
the Vietnam War as a major foreign policy debacle. All these other unnecessary wars are part
of the endgame as we continue our decline as a constitutional republic and we eventually hit
bottom and go bankrupt by 2030.
Absolutely right General Manager, this is all about Israel's hold on the Oval Office. Bolton and Pompeo are far, far closer to Israel than Mattis and that's a problem for
him. Sorry Robert Merry, but you clearly didn't catch Trump's first foreign "policy" speech in
2016. He suddenly revealed his priorities for all to see. There are four words that Trump apologists simply cannot bring themselves to utter: "Trump is a neo-con". Suckers.
When was Trump's foreign policy anything but Neo-con? Oh, he had a few good lines when he was
running – that was the "con" part. I didn't fall for it but many did. But since he took
office, he's been across-the-board anti-Russian, anti-Iran, pro-Saudi, uber-Zionist, and
enthusiastic shill for the military-industrial complex.
Trump surprised many of us with some very positive conservative actions but has also
disappointed smaller government conservatives. The deficits and debt grows as the economy
improves. What in the world happens in the next recession?
Military adventurism is another disappointment. We can't afford more neocon disasters. We
don't need to be the world's police force. We should be shrinking the military budgets. It is dismaying to watch the neocons gaining power after the catastrophic failures of
recent decades.
"Still, generally speaking, anyone listening to Trump carefully before the election would
have been justified in concluding that, if he meant what he said, he would reverse America's
post-Cold War foreign policy as practiced by George W. Bush and Barack Obama."
Come on, anyone listening to Trump before the election realized that he said whatever drew
the most applause from the crowd. He never, in his entire life, has meant what he said.
He will continue down the neo-con line until Fox News and NY Times run front-page articles
about how Bolton and Pompeo are manipulating him and actually running US foreign policy, at
which time he will dump them and make up something else.
And second, it turns out that Trump has no true convictions when it comes to world
affairs.
Fixed:
And second, it turns out that Trump has no true convictions.
This is another article that attempts to overlay some sort of actual logical policy or
moral framework over the top of Trumps actions. Please stop. Next week or next month this
whole line of reasoning will be upended again and you will have to start over with another
theory that contradicts this one.
Are are you implying that Mattis is a slacker? Like, he isn't doing a good job? And,
specially, what is he failing to do?
Even if he wasn't doing anything at all, you don't fire Mattis. He is beloved among the
military. While a fair number revere and maybe even keep their own little "St. Mattis" shrine
as a joke, it is only half a joke.
Mattis is one of the few modern military generals with a cult of personality who, I have
little doubt, could declare crossing the Rubicon and would get a good number of veterans and
active marching in support.
I believe a good peaceful and appropriate "Foreign Policy" would be to:
"Arrest Them"
Arrest all those responsible for the plight of the Refugees
These people are in camps, or drowning in unfriendly seas
And when these unwanted, reach "safety," or a foreign land
They are treated like garbage and the rulers want them banned
Arrest these "rulers" who created this hell on earth
Who act, that human lives, don't have any worth
They are examples of evil and should not be in power
They really are disgraceful and an awful bloody shower
Arrest the warmongering "leaders" who create havoc around the world
Authorizing bombings and killings these "leaders" should be reviled
Instead we give them fancy titles and homes to park their asses
Will there ever be a day of reckoning and a rise up of the masses?
Arrest the financiers of these bloody wars of destruction
This is how these blood sucking parasites get their satisfaction
Drag them away in chains and handcuffs, and orange prison attire
These are the corporate cannibals who set the world on fire
Arrest the fat and plump little "honourable" Ministers of Wars
They are the "useful idiots" for the leading warmongering whores
They never fight in battle or sacrifice any of their rotten lives
They get others to do their evil work while they themselves thrive
Arrest the corporate chieftains who feed off death and destruction
And who count their bloodstained profits with smiling satisfaction
These are the well dressed demons who call their investments "creating jobs"
Meanwhile, around the world the oppressed are crying, and nobody hears their sobs
Arrest the uniformed generals who blindly obey their marching orders
To bomb, kill, maim and destroy: they are the brainwashed enforcers
Years ago there were trials for war crimes committed by those in charge
Now we need them again for we have war criminals at large
Arrest all the aforementioned, and help clean up the world
We cannot afford these people in power: Are they mentally disturbed?
They are a danger to all of us and we better wake up
Is it time to arrest all of them: Have you had enough?
[more info at links below]
"The significance here is that Bolton and Pompeo represent just about everything Trump ran
against during his 2016 presidential campaign. "
Yes. Those two names are the main reason that this lifelong Republican is voting against
Trump and the GOP in a few weeks. I voted against this kind of crap in 2016.
"[G]enerally speaking, anyone listening [..] before the election would have been justified in
concluding [Trump] would reverse America's post-Cold War foreign policy as practiced by
George W. Bush and Barack Obama."
What did Judas Goat 43 say again?
"Fool me once, shame on me. Full me twice in the long run we'll all be dead."
I guess DJT offered you a "Bad Deal" then?
Past performance does predict future results.
If Trump loses at least one house of Congress this year, he can put it down to 1) failure on
immigration and border control, 2) failure to control government spending, and 3) failure to
get us out of the Middle East.
His new neocon friends are responsible for 3) and couldn't care less about 1) and 2).
No, Mr. Merry. We knew that long ago. I don't know how much attention you've been paying,
but it's been so obvious for so long. But better late than never, I suppose.
It's nearly impossible to read major newspapers, magazines, or online publications in recent months without
encountering a
plethora
of articles
contending that the United States is
turning
inward
and "going alone," "abandoning Washington's global leadership role" or "retreating from the world."
These
trends
supposedly herald
the
arrival
of a new "isolationism." The chief villain in all of these worrisome developments is, of course, Donald
Trump. There is just one problem with such arguments; they are vastly overstated bordering on utterly absurd.
President Trump is not embracing his supposed inner isolationist. The policy changes that he has adopted regarding
both security and international economic issues do not reflect a desire to decrease Washington's global hegemonic
status. Instead, they point to a more unilateral and militaristic approach, but one that still envisions a
hyper-activist U.S. role.
For instance, it's certainly not evident that the United States is abandoning its security commitments to dozens of
allies and clients. Despite the speculation that erupted in response to Trump's negative comments about the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other alliances during the 2016 election campaign (and occasionally since
then), the substance of U.S. policy has remained largely unchanged. Indeed, NATO has continued to expand its
membership with Trump's blessing -- adding Montenegro and
planning
to
add Macedonia.
Indeed, Trump's principal complaint about NATO has always focused on European free-riding and the lack of
burden-sharing, not about rethinking the wisdom of the security commitments to Europe that America undertook in the
early days of the Cold War. In that respect, Trump's emphasis on greater burden-sharing within the Alliance is simply
a less diplomatic version of the message that previous generations of U.S. officials have tried sending to the
allies.
Moreover, Trump's insistence at the July NATO summit in Brussels that the European nations
increase
their military budgets
and do more for transatlantic defense echoed the comments of President Obama's Secretary
of Defense
Chuck
Hagel
in 2014. Hagel warned his European counterparts that they must step up their commitment to the alliance or
watch it become irrelevant. Declining European defense budgets, he emphasized, are "not sustainable. Our alliance can
endure only as long as we are willing to fight for it, and invest in it." Rebalancing NATO's "burden-sharing and
capabilities," Hagel stressed, "is mandatory -- not elective."
Additionally, U.S. military activities along NATO's eastern flank certainly have not diminished during the Trump
administration. Washington has sent forces to participate in a growing number of exercises (war games) along Russia's
western land border -- as well as in the Black Sea -- to demonstrate the U.S. determination to protect its alliance
partners. Trump has even escalated America's "leadership role" by authorizing the sale of
weapons
to Ukraine
-- a very sensitive step that President Obama carefully avoided.
Trump even seems receptive to establishing permanent U.S. military bases in Eastern Europe. During a state visit
to Washington in mid-September, Poland's president, Andrzej Duda, promised to provide $2 billion toward construction
costs if the United States built a military base in his country. Duda
even
offered
to name the base "Fort Trump." Trump's reaction was revealing. Noting that Poland "is willing to make a
very major contribution to the United States to come in and have a presence in Poland," Trump stated that the United
States would take Duda's proposal "very seriously."
American Conservative
columnist Daniel Larison
notes
that
while Trump often is accused of wanting to "retreat" from the world, "his willingness to entertain this proposal
shows that he doesn't care about stationing U.S. forces abroad so long as someone else is footing most of the bill."
U.S. military activism does not seem to have diminished outside the NATO region either. Washington persists in its
futile regime-change campaign in Syria, and it continues the shameful policy of
assisting
Saudi Arabia
and its Gulf allies pursue their atrocity-ridden war in Yemen. Both of those Obama-era ventures
should have been prime candidates for a policy change if Trump had wished to decrease America's military activism.
There are no such indications in Europe, the Middle East, or anywhere else. The U.S. Navy's
freedom
of navigation patrols
in the South China Sea have actually increased in size and frequency under Trump -- much to
China's
anger
. Washington's diplomatic support for Taiwan also has
quietly
increased
over the past year or so, and National Security Advisor John Bolton is on record suggesting that the
United States move some of its
troops
stationed on Okinawa
to Taiwan. The
U.S.
military presence
in Sub-Saharan Africa is increasing, both in overall size and the number of host countries.
Those are all extremely strange actions for an administration supposedly flirting with a retreat from the world to
be adopting. So, too, is Trump's push for increases in America's already bloated military budget, which now exceeds
$700 billion -- with even higher spending levels on the horizon.
Accusations of a U.S. retreat from the world on non-military matters have only slightly greater validity. True,
Trump has shown little patience for multilateral arrangements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris
climate agreement, or the United Nations Human Rights Council that he concluded did not serve America's national
interests. On those issues, the president's actions demonstrated that his invocation of "America First" was not just
rhetoric. However, regarding such matters, as well as the trade disputes with China and North Atlantic Free Trade
Agreement partners, the administration's emphasis is on securing a "better deal" for the United States, not
abandoning the entire diplomatic process. One might question the wisdom or effectiveness of that approach, but it is
a far cry from so-called isolationism.
Indeed, Americans would have been better off if Trump had been more serious about challenging the policy status
quo, especially with respect to security issues. A reconsideration of Washington's overgrown and often obsolete
security commitments to allies and clients around the world is long overdue. Abandoning the disastrous twin
strategies of humanitarian military intervention and regime-change wars is a badly needed step. And waging a new cold
war against Russia is the height of dangerous folly that needs to be reversed.
But contrary to Trump's shrill -- and sometimes hysterical -- critics, America has had no meaningful reconsideration of
such misguided policies or a willingness to adopt a more focused, limited, and prudent U.S. role in the world.
Notions that there has been a pell-mell U.S. retreat from global leadership -- i.e., Washington's hegemonic
pretentions -- under Donald Trump are a myth. What Trump has adopted is merely a more unilateral and militarized version
of a stale foreign policy that does not benefit the American people.
White people who voted for Trump for his Supreme Court list have been duped so many times.
First, when Trump promised us "America First!" Voters, apparently content to trust mere
words, have ignored Trump's apparent definition of "America First!" as "America has the right
to antagonize Iran and Russia, and launch pointless attacks upon Syria." Second, when Trump
added Kavanaugh's name to a list of judges after he had gotten into office. Third, when Trump
negotiated with scum Anthony Kennedy, who obviously demanded a Kavanaugh nomination in
exchange for his retirement.
Christine Ford is, quite frankly, a distraction from the real intrigue: how Donald Trump
motivated his base to support a candidate from the elitist wing.
But good luck finding conservatives with the balls to publicly point out the truth: the
President we elected has stabbed us in the back with an establishment nomination.
This is a really apt quote: "America's two mainstream political parties agree furiously with
one another on war, neoliberalism, Orwellian surveillance, and every other agenda which increases
the power and profit of the plutocratic class which owns them both."
Notable quotes:
"... The buzzword "bipartisan" gets used a lot in US politics because it gives the illusion that whatever agenda it's being applied to must have some deep universal truth to it for such wildly divergent ideologies to set aside their differences in order to advance it, but what it usually means is Democrat neocons and Republican neocons working together to inflict new horrors upon the world. ..."
"... America's two mainstream political parties agree furiously with one another on war, neoliberalism, Orwellian surveillance, and every other agenda which increases the power and profit of the plutocratic class which owns them both. The plutocrat-owned mass media plays up the differences between Democrats and Republicans to hysterical proportions, when in reality the debate over which one is worse is like arguing over whether a serial killer's arms or legs are more evil. ..."
If there's one thing that brings a tear to my eye, it's the inspiration I feel when watching
Republican-aligned neoconservatives and Democrat-aligned neoconservatives find a way to bridge
their almost nonexistent differences and come together to discuss the many, many, many, many,
many, many many many things they have in common.
In a conference at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, "Resistance" leader and
professional left-puncher Neera Tanden met with Iraq-raping neocon Bill Kristol to discuss
bipartisanship and shared values. While leprechauns held hands and danced beneath candy
rainbows and gumdrop Reaper drones, the duo engaged in a friendly, playful conversation with
the event's host in a debate format which was not unlike watching the Pillsbury Doughboy have a
pillow fight with himself in a padded room after drinking a bottle of NyQuil.
To get the event started, the host whose name I refuse to learn asked the pair to discuss
briefly what common ground such wildly different people could possibly share to make such a
strange taboo-shattering dialogue possible.
"Issues around national security and believing in democratic principles as they relate to
foreign policy," replied
Tanden . "And opposing authoritarianism, and opposing the kind of creeping populism that
undermines democracy itself."
Neera Tanden, in case you are unaware, is a longtime Clinton and Obama insider
and CEO of the plutocrat-backed
think tank Center for American Progress. Her emails featured prominently in the 2016
Podesta drops by WikiLeaks, which New Republic described as revealing "a
pattern of freezing out those who don't toe the line, a disturbing predilection for someone who
is a kind of gatekeeper for what ideas are acceptable in Democratic politics." Any quick glance
at Tanden's political activism and Twitter presence will render this unsurprising, as she often
seems more concerned with attacking the Green Party and noncompliant progressive Democrats than
she does with advancing progressive values. Her entire life is dedicated to keeping what passes
for America's political left out of the hands of the American populace.
Kristol co-signed Tanden's anti-populist rhetoric and her open endorsement of
neoconservative foreign policy, and went on to say that another thing he and Tanden have in
common is that they've both served in government, which makes you realize that nothing's black
and white and everything's kinda nebulous and amorphous so it doesn't really matter if you, say
for example, help deceive your country into a horrific blunder that ends up killing a whole lot
of people for no good reason.
"I do think if you've served in government -- this isn't universally true but somewhat true --
that you do have somewhat more of a sense of the complexity of things, and many of its
decisions are not black and white, that in public policy there are plusses and minuses to
most policies," Kristol said
.
"There are authentic disagreements both about values, but also just about how certain
things are gonna work or not work and that is what adds a kind of humility to one's belief
that one is kind of always right about everything."
I found this very funny coming from the man who is notoriously always wrong about
everything, and I'd like to point out that "complexity" is a key talking point that the
neoconservatives who've been consistently proven completely wrong about everything are fond of
repeating. Everything's complicated and nothing's really known and it's all a big blurry mess
so maybe butchering a million Iraqis and destabilizing the Middle East was a good thing . Check
out this short clip of John
Bolton being confronted by Tucker Carlson about what a spectacular error the Iraq invasion was
for a great example of this:
I listened to the whole conference, but it was basically one long smear of amicable
politeness which was the verbal equivalent of the color beige, so I had difficulty tuning in.
Both Tanden and Kristol hate the far left (or as those of us outside the US pronounce it, "the
center"), both Tanden and Kristol hate Trump, and hey maybe Americans have a lot more in common
than they think and everyone can come together and together together togetherness blah blah. At
one point Kristol said something about disagreeing with internet censorship, which was weird
because his Weekly Standard
actively participates in Facebook censorship as one of its authorized "fact checkers".
The buzzword "bipartisan" gets used a lot in US politics because it gives the illusion that
whatever agenda it's being applied to must have some deep universal truth to it for such wildly
divergent ideologies to set aside their differences in order to advance it, but what it usually
means is Democrat neocons and Republican neocons working together to inflict new horrors upon
the world.
America's two mainstream political parties agree furiously with one another on war,
neoliberalism, Orwellian surveillance, and every other agenda which increases the power and
profit of the plutocratic class which owns them both. The plutocrat-owned mass media plays up
the differences between Democrats and Republicans to hysterical proportions, when in reality
the debate over which one is worse is like arguing over whether a serial killer's arms or legs
are more evil.
Neera Tanden and Bill Kristol are the same fucking person. They're both toxic limbs on the
same toxic beast, feeding the lives of ordinary people at home and abroad into its gaping mouth
in service of the powerful. And populism, which is nothing other than support for the
protection of common folk from the powerful, is the only antidote to such toxins. Saying
populism undermines democracy is like saying democracy undermines democracy.
Keyser , 29 minutes ago
The only thing the neocons care about is money and dead brown people, in that order,
because the more dead people, the more $$$ they make...
Jim in MN , 28 minutes ago
You mean, neolibcon globalist elite sociopath traitors, right?
bshirley1968 , 38 minutes ago
I am confident that if I ever spent time around Caitlin there would be a whole host of
things we would disagree about......but this,
" America's two mainstream political parties agree furiously with one another on war,
neoliberalism, Orwellian surveillance, and every other agenda which increases the power and
profit of the plutocratic class which owns them both. The plutocrat-owned mass media plays up
the differences between Democrats and Republicans to hysterical proportions, when in reality
the debate over which one is worse is like arguing over whether a serial killer's arms or
legs are more evil."
.....is something we can absolutely agree on. This FACT needs to be expounded and driven
down the sheeple throats until they are puking it up. Why don't they teach that in screwls?
Because school is where the foundation for this lie of two parties is laid .
DingleBarryObummer , 29 minutes ago
It's funny that you say that. I was just thinking about how high school was a microcosm of
how the world is.
The football stars were the "protected class." They could park like assholes, steal food
from the cafeteria, and show up late, and wouldn't get in trouble.
That's just one of a multitude of examples. That's a whole nother article in itself.
DingleBarryObummer , 39 minutes ago
Tucker Carlson made Bolton look like the dingus he is in that interview. We all know
(((who))) he works for.
+1 to tucker
WTFUD , 43 minutes ago
Campaigns are funded, career Politicians become made-men, conduits for the scramble of
BILLIONAIRES gorging bigly on-the-public-teat, with a kick-back revolving door supernova
gratuity waiting at the end of the rainbow.
Of course they can ALL AGREE . . . eventually.
Chupacabra-322 , 54 minutes ago
"How many people have Kristol and his ilk murdered in their endless wars for israel?"
Countless.
ChiangMaiXPat , 58 minutes ago
As a Trump voter, I believe I have more in common with Caitlin Johnstone then "any"
Neocon. Her articles and writing are mostly "spot on." I imagine I would disagree on a couple
key social issues but on foreign policy I believe most conservatives are on the same page as
her.
ChiangMaiXPat , 54 minutes ago
I thought her piece was "spot on," she's a very good writer. The Neo CONS will be the
death of this country.
If you don't know all the local issues and controversies -- and I'll admit I don't -- it
makes the mid-terms hard to call.
In general–about 80% of the time–midterms go against a sitting president. But
in this case, I agree with the Derb: I think the Dims are in a rude awakening.
It's nice that our Israeli embassy has been moved to Jerusalem
Nice? Speak for yourself!
It's nice that Senator Graham has found his high dudgeon at last. Now that he's found
it, though, how long will it be before he turns it against immigration patriots?
That's probably the only reason Graham was chosen to publicly throw a fit: he's
inside-the-Beltway safe. He can huff and puff and talk tough on this hearing, precisely
because the Establishment knows he'll never really go against them on issues like immigration
or foreign policy. Remember the Clarence Thomas hearings? Remember how Arlen Specter was the
Republican standard-bearer back then? Nuff said.
@ advancedatheist It is difficult in these trying times to find good entertainers.
I thought confirmation hearings,were to test for qualifications required to be a
Supreme?
Such things as ability to write, understanding of the complexities of the constitution,
beliefs and past rulings, convictions about the bill of rights, and things like that? The
Constitution is supposed to create the structure of government, authorize payment of fat
salaries to 527 elected entertainers and limit the scope of the personal financial activities
while in office. I can't image a confirmation hearing that would review the judicial history
of the past rulings and professional activities of a candidate. The audience would not be
interested to hear what those who practice law and interact with the candidate had to say
about him and his legal abilities. When and in which tent are those hearings to begin?
Where are the opinions by Judge Kavanaugh? Why have they not been produced for inspection
in the hearings? What does this man think? Why did Trump select Judge Kavanaugh to be a
supreme? At the moment it looks like the the hearings have been conducted to cover for the
attacks by Israel on Russian Airplanes in Syria. I can think of no other reason for such a
circus?
What I have seen, heard and read describe another propaganda guided privately owned media
production with side shows by two of the best known acts in circus life ( shows by the Gods
of poop and by the Democraps were featured).
I still don't know anything about Judge Kavanaugh do you?
I hereby claim that Lindsey Graham and Larry Kudlow are horrible whores for the GOP Cheap
Labor Faction. Both Lindsey Graham and Larry Kudlow push wage-reducing open borders mass
immigration and amnesty for illegal alien invaders.
I also strongly suggest that Larry Kudlow and Lindsey Graham were big backers of the Iraq
War debacle.
Larry Kudlow and Lindsey Graham both push sovereignty-sapping trade deal scams.
Larry Kudlow has no memory whatsoever of any guest ever at his house. Is Larry Kudlow a
ruling class louse?
Trump brought on board his ship of state all sorts of louts such as Larry Kudlow, Gary
Cohn, Steve Mnuchin, Nikki Haley, John Bolton and many other no good bastards. Trump invited
the swamp into the White House.
"... Christine Ford has taken the false allegations racket a bit too far. She is probably lying, as how come she did not call 911 or file a police report if this happened? She comes from a family of lawyers. She has an army of attorneys who would have rushed and filed police reports and filed civil suits if any man had dared touch her. ..."
Christine Ford has taken the false allegations racket a bit too far. She is probably
lying, as how come she did not call 911 or file a police report if this happened? She comes
from a family of lawyers. She has an army of attorneys who would have rushed and filed police
reports and filed civil suits if any man had dared touch her.
That did not happen for 3 decades for one reason -- nothing happened on the night in
question.
The Democrats, who are a criminal party, must have coached her and offered her a few 100K
under the table, disguised as speaking fees, or scholarship, for manufacturing this
racket.
Kavanaugh has proved himself unfit for the position of supreme court justice. Under heavy
fire, he has shown that he is a spineless coward, a crying baby incapable of fighting back
like a man. Moreover, he is a total idiot.
What did he expect, that the baby killers were going to accept even the possibility of a
supreme court justice who may vote to overturn Wade VS Roe and the end of Planned Parenthood?
He has shown that this totally expected attack took him by surprise. What a fool!
Courage under fire? Call the Marines, but not Kavanaugh.
The key word there is of course "gentlemanly." Could any concept be more at odds with
the zeitgeist than gentlemanliness? It's hard not to think there's a demographic dimension
to this. That older style of courtesy, forbearance, and compromise that used to inform our
politics was a white-European thing, perhaps particularly an Anglo-Saxon-Celtic thing.
I agree that politics in the US is coarsening like our pop culture and increasingly
looking like 3rd world politics. This is where America is headed as we become more culturally
enriched:
The neocons and neolibs has always been the indignant, end justifies the means crowd.
Since Trump's election they've completely gone off the rails....
You're right about Trump being a big disappointment so far in immigration. Caving here and
calling for an FBI investigation makes him look as stupid as Flake. Fat chance FBI will close
it in a week. This is the same agency that gave us Mueller, Comey, McCabe, Ohr, Strzok, Page,
the Steele Dossier, owned by Deep State and corrupt to the core. These GOP fools are once
again playing right into the hands of the (((Dems))) – Feinstein, Blumenthal, Schumer
and Ford's lawyer Bromwich, already complaining about the 'artificial timeline'. No one can
ever outcon the financial elite.
"... Trump's nationalist fans are sick of the globalist wars that America never seems to win. They are hardly against war per se. They are perfectly fine with bombing radical Islamists, even if it means mass innocent casualties. But they have had enough of expending American blood and treasure to overthrow secular Arab dictators to the benefit of Islamists; so, it seemed, was Trump. They also saw no nationalist advantage in the globalists' renewed Cold War against Assad's ally Russian president Vladimir Putin, another enemy of Islamists. ..."
"... The Syrian pivot also seemed to fulfill the hopes and dreams of some antiwar libertarians who had pragmatically supported Trump. For them, acquiescing to the unwelcome planks of Trump's platform was a price worth paying for overthrowing the establishment policies of regime change in the Middle East and hostility toward nuclear Russia. While populism wasn't an unalloyed friend of liberty, these libertarians thought, at least it could be harnessed to sweep away the war-engineering elites. And since war is the health of the state, that could redirect history's momentum in favor of liberty. ..."
"... But then it all evaporated. Shortly after Bannon's ouster from the NSC, in response to an alleged, unverified chemical attack on civilians, Trump bombed one of Assad's airbases (something even globalist Obama had balked at doing when offered the exact same excuse), and regime change in Syria was top priority once again. The establishment media swooned over Trump's newfound willingness to be "presidential." ..."
"... Since then, Trump has reneged on one campaign promise after another. He dropped any principled repeal of Obamacare. He threw cold water on expectations for prompt fulfillment of his signature promise: the construction of a Mexico border wall. And he announced an imminent withdrawal from NAFTA, only to walk that announcement back the very next day. ..."
"... Poor white people, "the forgotten men and women of our country," have been forgotten once again. Their "tribune" seems to be turning out to be just another agent of the power elite. ..."
"... Who yanked his chain? Was there a palace coup? Was the CIA involved? Has Trump been threatened? ..."
"... Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy ..."
"... Even in a political system based on popular sovereignty, Michels pointed out that, "the sovereign masses are altogether incapable of undertaking the most necessary resolutions." This is true for simple, unavoidable technical reasons: "such a gigantic number of persons belonging to a unitary organization cannot do any practical work upon a system of direct discussion." ..."
"... " while Trump might be able to seize the presidency in spite of establishment opposition, he will never be able to wield it without establishment support." ..."
Did the Deep State deep-six Trump's populist revolution?
Many observers, especially among his fans, suspect that the seemingly untamable Trump has already been housebroken by the Washington,
"globalist" establishment. If true, the downfall of Trump's National Security Adviser Michael Flynn less than a month into the new
presidency may have been a warning sign. And the turning point would have been the removal of Steven K. Bannon from the National
Security Council on April 5.
Until then, the presidency's early policies had a recognizably populist-nationalist orientation. During his administration's first
weeks, Trump's biggest supporters frequently tweeted the hashtag #winning and exulted that he was decisively doing exactly what,
on the campaign trail, he said he would do.
In a flurry of executive orders and other unilateral actions bearing Bannon's fingerprints, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, declared a sweeping travel ban, instituted harsher deportation policies, and more.
These policies seemed to fit Trump's reputation as the "
tribune of poor white people
," as he has been called; above all, Trump's base calls for protectionism and immigration restrictions. Trump seemed to be delivering
on the populist promise of his inauguration speech (thought to be written by Bannon), in which he said:
"Today's ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration
to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American
People.
For too long, a small group in our nation's Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.
Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories
closed.
The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their
triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling
families all across our land.
That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.
It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America. This is your day. This is your celebration.
And this, the United States of America, is your country.
What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people. January
20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country
will be forgotten no longer.
Everyone is listening to you now." [Emphasis added.]
After a populist insurgency stormed social media and the voting booths, American democracy, it seemed, had been wrenched from
the hands of the Washington elite and restored to "the people," or at least a large, discontented subset of "the people." And this
happened in spite of the establishment, the mainstream media, Hollywood, and "polite opinion" throwing everything it had at Trump.
The Betrayal
But for the past month, the administration's axis seems to have shifted. This shift was especially abrupt in Trump's Syria policy.
Days before Bannon's fall from grace, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley declared that forcing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad
from power was no longer top priority. This too was pursuant of Trump's populist promises.
Trump's nationalist fans are sick of the globalist wars that America never seems to win. They are hardly against war per se. They
are perfectly fine with bombing radical Islamists, even if it means mass innocent casualties. But they have had enough of expending
American blood and treasure to overthrow secular Arab dictators to the benefit of Islamists; so, it seemed, was Trump. They also
saw no nationalist advantage in the globalists' renewed Cold War against Assad's ally Russian president Vladimir Putin, another enemy
of Islamists.
The Syrian pivot also seemed to fulfill the hopes and dreams of some antiwar libertarians who had pragmatically supported Trump.
For them, acquiescing to the unwelcome planks of Trump's platform was a price worth paying for overthrowing the establishment policies
of regime change in the Middle East and hostility toward nuclear Russia. While populism wasn't an unalloyed friend of liberty, these
libertarians thought, at least it could be harnessed to sweep away the war-engineering elites. And since war is the health of the
state, that could redirect history's momentum in favor of liberty.
But then it all evaporated. Shortly after Bannon's ouster from the NSC, in response to an alleged, unverified chemical attack
on civilians, Trump bombed one of Assad's airbases (something even globalist Obama had balked at doing when offered the exact same
excuse), and regime change in Syria was top priority once again. The establishment media swooned over Trump's newfound willingness
to be "presidential."
Since then, Trump has reneged on one campaign promise after another. He dropped any principled repeal of Obamacare. He threw cold
water on expectations for prompt fulfillment of his signature promise: the construction of a Mexico border wall. And he announced
an imminent withdrawal from NAFTA, only to walk that announcement back the very next day.
Here I make no claim as to whether any of these policy reversals are good or bad. I only point out that they run counter to the
populist promises he had given to his core constituents.
Poor white people, "the forgotten men and women of our country," have been forgotten once again. Their "tribune" seems to be turning
out to be just another agent of the power elite.
Who yanked his chain? Was there a palace coup? Was the CIA involved? Has Trump been threatened? Or, after constant obstruction,
has he simply concluded that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em?
The Iron Law of Oligarchy
Regardless of how it came about, it seems clear that whatever prospect there was for a truly populist Trump presidency is gone
with the wind. Was it inevitable that this would happen, one way or another?
One person who might have thought so was German sociologist Robert Michels, who posited the "iron law of oligarchy" in his 1911
work Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy .
Michels argued that political organizations, no matter how democratically structured, rarely remain truly populist, but inexorably
succumb to oligarchic control.
Even in a political system based on popular sovereignty, Michels pointed out that, "the sovereign masses are altogether incapable
of undertaking the most necessary resolutions." This is true for simple, unavoidable technical reasons: "such a gigantic number of
persons belonging to a unitary organization cannot do any practical work upon a system of direct discussion."
This practical limitation necessitates delegation of decision-making to officeholders. These delegates may at first be considered
servants of the masses:
"All the offices are filled by election. The officials, executive organs of the general will, play a merely subordinate part,
are always dependent upon the collectivity, and can be deprived of their office at any moment. The mass of the party is omnipotent."
But these delegates will inevitably become specialists in the exercise and consolidation of power, which they gradually wrest
away from the "sovereign people":
"The technical specialization that inevitably results from all extensive organization renders necessary what is called expert
leadership. Consequently the power of determination comes to be considered one of the specific attributes of leadership, and is gradually
withdrawn from the masses to be concentrated in the hands of the leaders alone. Thus the leaders, who were at first no more than
the executive organs of the collective will, soon emancipate themselves from the mass and become independent of its control.
Organization implies the tendency to oligarchy. In every organization, whether it be a political party, a professional union,
or any other association of the kind, the aristocratic tendency manifests itself very clearly."
Trumped by the Deep State
Thus elected, populist "tribunes" like Trump are ultimately no match for entrenched technocrats nestled in permanent bureaucracy.
Especially invincible are technocrats who specialize in political force and intrigue, i.e., the National Security State (military,
NSA, CIA, FBI, etc.). And these elite functionaries don't serve "the people" or any large subpopulation. They only serve their own
careers, and by extension, big-money special interest groups that make it worth their while: especially big business and foreign
lobbies. The nexus of all these powers is what is known as the Deep State.
Trump's more sophisticated champions were aware of these dynamics, but held out hope nonetheless. They thought that Trump would
be an exception, because his large personal fortune would grant him immunity from elite influence. That factor did contribute to
the independent, untamable spirit of his campaign. But as I
predicted
during the Republican primaries:
" while Trump might be able to seize the presidency in spite of establishment opposition, he will never be able to wield it
without establishment support."
No matter how popular, rich, and bombastic, a populist president simply cannot rule without access to the levers of power. And
that access is under the unshakable control of the Deep State. If Trump wants to play president, he has to play ball.
On these grounds, I advised his fans over a year ago, " don't hold out hope that Trump will make good on his isolationist rhetoric
" and anticipated, "a complete rapprochement between the populist rebel and the Republican establishment." I also warned that, far
from truly threatening the establishment and the warfare state, Trump's populist insurgency would only invigorate them:
"Such phony establishment "deaths" at the hands of "grassroots" outsiders followed by "rebirths" (rebranding) are an excellent
way for moribund oligarchies to renew themselves without actually meaningfully changing. Each "populist" reincarnation of the power
elite is draped with a freshly-laundered mantle of popular legitimacy, bestowing on it greater license to do as it pleases. And nothing
pleases the State more than war."
Politics, even populist politics, is the oligarchy's game. And the house always wins.
Dan Sanchez is the Digital Content Manager at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), developing educational and inspiring
content for FEE.org , including articles and courses. The originally appeared on the
FEE website and is reprinted with the author's permission.
"... Luckily there are still groups of our species that don't live totally controlled by the Western way and the cancer it represents to humanity. They on the outside and "us" on the inside are trying our hardest to shine lights on all the moving parts in hopes that humanity can throw off the shackles of ignorance about private/public finance. ..."
Which is the cohort of voters who allegedly are leaning toward voting Republican in the
mid-terms but who allegedly would refrain if Trump accepted Rosenstein's resignation? And
which is the cohort not already motivated to turn out to vote Democrat but who allegedly
would be motivated by a Rosenstein resignation? Is there real data on these?
I think if I had been a 2016 Trump voter I'd be feeling pretty disappointed about how he's
unable to enforce the most basic discipline and loyalty even among his closest administration
members, and this Rosenstein episode would be yet another egregious example.
If the Republicans do lose either/both houses, the main reason will be that for once
they've taken on the normal Democrat role of being confused and feckless about what they want
to do (they can't bring themselves to whole-heartedly get behind Trump; but a major
Republican strength has been how they normally do pull together an present a united front).
And Trump himself, in his inability to control his own immediate administration, also gives
an example of this fecklessness.
@ Circe who is writing that any who like any of what Trump is doing must be Zionists.
Get a grip. I didn't vote for Trump but favored him over Clinton II, the war criminal.
Trump represents more clearly the face of the ugly beast of debauched patriarchy, lying,
misogyny, bullying and monotheistic "everybody else is goyim" values. Trump very clearly
represents the folks behind the curtain of the Western private finance led "culture". He and
they are both poor representations of our species who are in power because of heredity and
controlled ignorance over the private finance jackboot on the lifeblood of the species.
Luckily there are still groups of our species that don't live totally controlled by
the Western way and the cancer it represents to humanity. They on the outside and "us" on the
inside are trying our hardest to shine lights on all the moving parts in hopes that humanity
can throw off the shackles of ignorance about private/public finance.
I am taking a beginning astronomy class and just learned that it took the monotheistic
religions 600 years to accept the science of Galileo Galilei. We could stand to evolve a bit
faster as we are about to have our proverbial asses handed to us in the form of extinction,
IMO.
In my own words then. According to Cook the power elites goal is to change its
appearance to look like something new and innovative to stay ahead of an electorate who are
increasingly skeptical of the neoliberalism and globalism that enrich the elite at their
expense.
Since they do not actually want change they find actors who pretend to represent change
, which is in essence fake change. These then are their insurgent candidates
Trump serves the power elite , because while he appears as an insurgent against the
power elite he does little to change anything
Trump promotes his fake insurgency on Twitter stage knowing the power elite will counter
any of his promises that might threaten them
As an insurgent candidate Trump was indifferent to Israel and wanted the US out of
Syria. He wanted good relations with Russia. He wanted to fix the health care system,
rebuild infrastructure, scrap NAFTA and TTIPS, bring back good paying jobs, fight the
establishment and Wall Street executives and drain the swamp. America First he said.
Trump the insurgent president , has become Israel's biggest cheerleader and has launched
US missiles at Syria, relations with Russia are at Cold War lows, infrastructure is still
failing, the percentage of people working is now at an all time low in the post housewife
era, he has passed tax cuts for the rich that will endanger medicare, medicaid and social
security and prohibit infrastructure spending, relaxed regulations on Wall Street, enhanced
NAFTA to include TTIPS provisions and make US automobiles more expensive, and the swamp has
been refilled with the rich, neocons , Koch associates, and Goldman Sachs that make up the
power elites and Deep State Americas rich and Israel First
@34 pft... regarding the 2 cook articles.. i found they overly wordy myself...
however, for anyone paying attention - corbyn seems like the person to vote for given how
relentless he is being attacked in the media... i am not so sure about trump, but felt cook
summed it up well with these 2 lines.. "Trump the candidate was indifferent to Israel and
wanted the US out of Syria. Trump the president has become Israel's biggest cheerleader and
has launched US missiles at Syria." i get the impression corbyn is legit which is why the
anti-semitism keeps on being mentioned... craig murrary is a good source for staying on top
of uk dynamics..
(a) talk coherently
(b) have some kind of movement consisting of people that agree with what is says -- that
necessitates (a)
Then he could staff his Administration with his supporters rather than a gamut of
conventional plutocrats, neocons, and hacks from the Deep State (intelligence, FBI and
crazies culled from Pentagon). As it is easy to see, I am describing an alternate reality.
Who is a Trumpian member of the Administration? His son-in-law?
The swamps been filled with all kinds of vile creatures since the Carter administration.
This is when the US/UK went full steam ahead with neoliberal globalism with Israel directing
the war on terror for the Trilateral Empire (following Bibis Jerusalem conference so as to
fulfill the Yinon plan). 40 years of terror and financial mayhem following the coup that took
place from 1963-1974. After Nixons ouster they were ready to go once TLC Carter/Zbig kicked
off the Trilateral era. Reagan then ran promising to oust the TLC swamp but broke his
promise, as every President has done since .
"... It does seem to me that Rosenstein is an agent of those opposed to Trump or is another part of the Jewish control apparatus in the US. He is the one who appointed Mueller as the Special Prosecutor. Mueller is definitely a minion of the "Deep State". ..."
"... It seems obvious to me that Trump had real estate dealings with the Russian Mafia. This will never be investigated. These would mostly be about money. So this would be the Jewish Russian Mafia contingent. ..."
I assume the Awan brothers and their scandalous spying on the US congress through all
those democrats has been bipartisanly removed from public eye. If Trump has the cards to
play to keep his team in majority NOW is the time to play them.
This is the biggest scandal since Hillary and her crappy email server.
The USA is a dopes circus.
it is obvious that Trump is not in charge. Or he is as stupid as the Dems would
like to think he is. It would be obvious to most politicians that Sessions was a terrible
choice as attorney General. Just like Agnew was deposed as VP before Nixon was deposed as
President, Rosenstein would have to go before Sessions would be replaced. It would take quite
a while to get the new AG confirmed. Rosenstein would then be acting AG.
It does seem to me that Rosenstein is an agent of those opposed to Trump or is another
part of the Jewish control apparatus in the US. He is the one who appointed Mueller as the
Special Prosecutor. Mueller is definitely a minion of the "Deep State".
It seems obvious to me that Trump had real estate dealings with the Russian Mafia.
This will never be investigated. These would mostly be about money. So this would be the
Jewish Russian Mafia contingent.
There is Israeli collusion in meddling with American election outcomes. Somehow this will
never be investigated.
"... Trump's worldview is dominated by a zero-sum view of international relations in which the U.S. is constantly being ripped off by everyone. ..."
"... Trump is a militarist by instinct and as a matter of policy, and his progressive critics repudiate that as well. ..."
"... Trump's critique of past U.S. foreign policy boils down to complaining that other countries don't pay us for protection and that the U.S. doesn't plunder resources from the countries it invades. This is not, to put it mildly, what progressives consider to be wrong with U.S. foreign policy. ..."
"... The key failing in Brands' column is that he buys into the falsehood that Trump is in favor of "global retreat," and so he worries that both parties will soon be led by candidates advocating for that. For one thing, there has been no "retreat" under Trump, and everything he has done since taking office has been to mire the U.S. more deeply in the multiple wars he inherited. ..."
"... Literally never heard a Democratic Socialist advocate for anything other than what you summarized – threat de-escalation, reduce US military footprint abroad, don't use the threat of military force as a "diplomatic tool", stop the drone war, end the war in Afghanistan, etc. ..."
"... Of course right now Dem Socialists are just as marginalized within the Democratic party as you are within the Trumpian Neocon hellscape of the current Republican leadership. Maybe one day the Senate will have more Rand Pauls and Chris Murphys but right now we've just got a bunch of Grahams and Schumers perfectly happy to let Trump continue down this dark path. ..."
According to Brands, "the ideas at the heart of Trump's critique of U.S. foreign policy are also the ideas at the heart of the
progressive critique," but that's also simply not true. Trump's worldview is dominated by a zero-sum view of international relations
in which the U.S. is constantly being ripped off by everyone.
The progressive critics he cites specifically reject that assumption and emphasize the importance of international institutions.
Trump is a militarist by instinct and as a matter of policy, and his progressive critics repudiate that as well.
Trump's critique of past U.S. foreign policy boils down to complaining that other countries don't pay us for protection and
that the U.S. doesn't plunder resources from the countries it invades. This is not, to put it mildly, what progressives consider
to be wrong with U.S. foreign policy.
The key failing in Brands' column is that he buys into the falsehood that Trump is in favor of "global retreat," and so he
worries that both parties will soon be led by candidates advocating for that. For one thing, there has been no "retreat" under Trump,
and everything he has done since taking office has been to mire the U.S. more deeply in the multiple wars he inherited.
For another, progressives aren't calling for a "retreat" from international engagement, either. They are opposed to certain aggressive
and destructive policies, but they don't eschew engagement and cooperation with other states.
On the contrary, they are advocating
for more of that while rejecting the militarism that Trump embraces. Indeed, Bessner anticipates Brands' silly criticism and explicitly
says, "None of this means the United States should retreat from the world."
Anthony M says: September 26, 2018 at 5:30 pm
Literally never heard a Democratic Socialist advocate for anything other than what you summarized – threat
de-escalation, reduce US military footprint abroad, don't use the threat of military force as a "diplomatic tool", stop the
drone war, end the war in Afghanistan, etc.
Of course right now Dem Socialists are just as marginalized within the Democratic party as you are within the Trumpian
Neocon hellscape of the current Republican leadership. Maybe one day the Senate will have more Rand Pauls and Chris Murphys
but right now we've just got a bunch of Grahams and Schumers perfectly happy to let Trump continue down this dark path.
"It is past time for Donald Trump to fulfill his campaign promise to pull the plug on
American engagement in Syria and terminate the seemingly endless cycle of wars in the Middle
East."
Orange Clown's a liar whose presidential campaign was a calculated bait and switch fraud
from the beginning. Our presidential poseur obviously had no intention of following through
on most of his pre-election intimations and campaign promises.
Netanyahu might have considered it all a win-win either way, with the Russian plane
masking and enabling the Israeli attack without consequence for Israel or, perversely,
producing an incident inviting retaliation from Moscow, which would likely lead to a
shooting war with the United States after it inevitably steps in to support Israel's
government.
There we go! Glad someone gets it.
I had to read Saker's article suggesting that just maybe it could have been an
actual accident on Israel's part through my fingers as I could not manage to lift my face
from my palm the entire time.
It is past time for Donald Trump to fulfill his campaign promise to pull the plug on
American engagement in Syria and terminate the seemingly endless cycle of wars in the
Middle East.
I'd love to see this happen, but let's be real. If we pulled out of Israel's terror wars,
Mossad would stage a false flag to bring us right back in less than 12 months later. There's
only one way to stop fighting wars for Israel and that's to end Israel. We've got to strike
at the roots, not the branches.
If
Russia shot down Israeli aircraft or bombed the airbase from which they took off, or even
obliterated Israel, America would do nothing but bitch and complain. The American military
does not want a war with Russia, because they know they cannot win a conventional war with
Russia. I would go so far as to say that even if Russia sank American warships including an
aircraft carrier America would not go to war.
America does not go to war with countries that have nuclear weapons and the means to
deliver them to the continental United States. That is why she would bend over backwards to
prevent a war with countries like Russia, China or North Korea, and the reason these
countries need not fear America. The prevention of nuclear war is the underlying premise of
American foreign policy. It has been since the nuclear age began. America would only use its
nuclear weapons if the American mainland is hit with nuclear weapons.
America would accept the loss of hundreds or even thousands of its servicemen rather than
have the continental USA turned into a wasteland. I'm inclined to agree with your assessment
of US unwillingness to fight a nuclear power, but .I also can't forget that the US ruling
elites are pathological. Psychotic with hubris, greed & egoism. The "exceptional", the
"indispensable" nation .& worse, the wagging dog to the Israeli tail.
Trump
is owned by israel, I wish I was wrong, but there is no way around it. I mean, I expect him
any day to convert to judaism.
No way around it. Trump's infamous campaign slogan of MAGA
quickly mutated into MIGA which is the originally intended version anyways. Obedience to
Israel has become a norm in presidential election campaigns. Even the disenfranchised
minority caucuses, including and especially the Black one is firmly in Israel's pockets now.
The Black leadership role has now been essentially reduced to making the odd noise after the
shooting of an unarmed Black by a White cop.
Trump is presently at the U.N. repeating all the American foreign policy propaganda. The hubris he's delivering is off the
charts. Disgusting doesn't begin to cover how deceptive and slimy his zionist-authored rhetoric is. He's a sad, pathetic
mouthpiece for his masters in Israel.
If Trump is a Deep State puppet, then why Deep stat fight it with such intensity. Why "Steele dossier", w3hy Mueller, why "Mistressgate"
But it is true that Trump essentially conduct typical Republican President policy, like Obama betraying his electorate.
Notable quotes:
"... So the Deep State which is far more than entrenched bureaucrats as the naive define it (it includes the ruling elite in finance, MIC, oil, MSM, retired intelligence/military/state/congress, etc), brought in a controlled Trojan horse pretending to be a populist who was all about the working class and anti establishment, anti war and anti globalist while those he served were opposites. Look at what he has done and who he has surrounded himself with. Lol ..."
"... offshore money coming home due to tax breaks and of course the plunge protection team removing the risk of a major drop until after the mid term elections. We are already seeing the beginning of the next housing market collapse. ..."
Stormy Daniels supposedly said she was surprised to hear Trump was running for President
because he had said to her he didnt want to be be President. After all, why would he? Rich
guy with maybe 5 years left to live. Who needs it?
So why did he run. He had no choice. Look at the ease in which government can bring dawn
anyone with tax and money laundering charges and look at his partners and a number of his
dodgy financial dealings not to mention the ongoing audit firing his campaign. His buddy
Felix Sater cut a deal and so didn't Trump. Run and serve and keep your wealth and stay out of
jail, and make a few billion with insider deals while you are at it.
So the Deep State which is far more than entrenched bureaucrats as the naive define it (it
includes the ruling elite in finance, MIC, oil, MSM, retired
intelligence/military/state/congress, etc), brought in a controlled Trojan horse pretending
to be a populist who was all about the working class and anti establishment, anti war and
anti globalist while those he served were opposites. Look at what he has done and who he has
surrounded himself with. Lol
So what is the endgame for this Russiagate and this phony Deep State vs Trump nonsense?
Why Trump?
Not sure I know for sure. Polarizing and dividing the US with perhaps a civil war when
Trump gets impeached and resigns, or at least imposition of permanent martial law. Get
support for massive censorship which all authoritarian regimes need. And of course as the US
goes down this path its puppet states in EU, UK and elsewhere will follow. I guess we will
have to wait and see.
In the meantime, Trump will feed the beast (tax cuts for rich, tarrifs for middle class,
higher Military spending, cuts to Medicare/Medicaid/social security, higher insurance
premiums/HC costs, phony economic figures to mask deteriorating economic conditions for the
median (remember when Trump said the same of Hillary using the same bogus figures)
Fewer people are working in the US under Trump as more people are disappeared from the
work force. GDP growth per MH is due to higher extraction of wealth from middle class by the
rentier class, and stock market growth is due to central bank purchases, offshore money
coming home due to tax breaks and of course the plunge protection team removing the risk of a
major drop until after the mid term elections. We are already seeing the beginning of the
next housing market collapse.
"... If the so-called "Resistance" to Trump was ever actually interested in opposing this administration in any meaningful way, this would be the top trending news story in America for days, like how "bombshell" revelations pertaining to the made-up Russiagate narrative trend for days. Spoiler alert: it isn't, and it won't be. ..."
"... The US Senate has just passed Trump's mammoth military spending increase by a landslide 92–8 vote . The eight senators who voted "nay"? Seven Republicans, and Independent Bernie Sanders. Every single Democrat supported the most bloated war budget since the height of the Iraq war . Rather than doing everything they can to weaken the potential damage that can be done by a president they've been assuring us is a dangerous hybrid of equal parts Benedict Arnold and Adolf Hitler, they've been actively increasing his power as Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen. ..."
"... They're on the same team, wearing different uniforms. ..."
"... US politics is pretty much the same; two mainstream parties owned by the same political class, engaged in a staged bidding war for votes to give the illusion of competition. ..."
"... In reality, the US political system is like the unplugged video game remote that kids give their baby brother so he stops whining that he wants a turn to play. No matter who they vote for they get an Orwellian warmongering government which exists solely to advance the agendas of a plutocratic class which has no loyalties to any nation; the only difference is sometimes that government is pretending to care about women and minorities and sometimes it's pretending to care about white men. In reality, all the jewelers work for the same plutocrat, and that video game remote won't impact the outcome of the game no matter how many buttons you push. ..."
"... The only way to effect real change is to stop playing along with the rigged system and start waking people up to the lies. As long as Americans believe that the mass media are telling them the truth about their country and their partisan votes are going somewhere useful, the populace whose numbers should give it immense influence is nullified and sedated into a passive ride toward war, ecocide and oppression. ..."
"... Reprinted with author's permission from Medium.com . ..."
"... Support Ms. Johnstone's work on Patreon or Paypal ..."
A new article from the Wall Street
Journal reports that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
lied to congress about the measures Saudi Arabia is taking to minimize the civilian
casualties in its catastrophic war on Yemen, and that he did so in order to secure two billion
dollars for war profiteers.
This is about as depraved as anything you could possibly imagine. US-made bombs have
been conclusively tied to civilian deaths in a war which has caused the single worst
humanitarian crisis on earth, a crisis which sees
scores of Yemeni children dying every single day and has
placed five million children at risk of death by starvation in a nation where families are
now eating
leaves to survive . CIA veteran Bruce Riedel
once said that "if the United States of America and the United Kingdom tonight told King
Salman that this war has to end, it would end tomorrow, because the Royal Saudi Airforce cannot
operate without American and British support." Nobody other than war plutocrats benefits from
the US assisting Saudi Arabia in its monstrous crimes against humanity, and yet Pompeo chose to
override his own expert advisors on the matter for fear of hurting the income of those very war
plutocrats.
If the so-called "Resistance" to Trump was ever actually interested in opposing this
administration in any meaningful way, this would be the top trending news story in America for
days, like how "bombshell" revelations pertaining to the made-up Russiagate narrative trend for
days. Spoiler alert: it isn't, and it won't be.
It would be so very, very easy for Democratic party leaders and Democrat-aligned media to
hurt this administration at the highest level and cause irreparable political damage based on
this story. All they'd have to do is give it the same blanket coverage they've given the
stories about Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort which
end up leading nowhere remotely near impeachment or proof of collusion with the Russian
government. The footage of the starving children is right there, ready to be aired to pluck at
the heart strings of rank-and-file Americans day after day until Republicans have lost all hope
of victory in the midterms and in 2020; all they'd have to do is use it. But they don't. And
they won't.
The US Senate has just passed Trump's mammoth military spending increase by
a landslide 92–8 vote . The eight senators who voted "nay"? Seven Republicans, and
Independent Bernie Sanders. Every single Democrat supported the most bloated war budget
since the
height of the Iraq war . Rather than doing everything they can to weaken the potential
damage that can be done by a president they've been assuring us is a dangerous hybrid of equal
parts Benedict Arnold and Adolf Hitler, they've been actively increasing his power as
Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen.
The reason for this is very simple: President Trump's ostensible political opposition does
not oppose President Trump. They're on the same team, wearing different uniforms. This is the
reason they attack him on Russian collusion accusations which the brighter bulbs among them
know full well will never be proven and have no basis in reality. They don't stand up to Trump
because, as Julian Assange once said , they are
Trump.
In John Steinbeck's The Pearl, there are jewelry buyers set up around a fishing community
which are all owned by the same plutocrat, but they all pretend to be in competition with one
another. When the story's protagonist discovers an enormous and valuable pearl and goes to sell
it, they all gather round and individually bid far less than it is worth in order to trick him
into giving it away for almost nothing. US politics is pretty much the same; two mainstream
parties owned by the same political class, engaged in a staged bidding war for votes to give
the illusion of competition.
In reality, the US political system is like the unplugged video game remote that kids give
their baby brother so he stops whining that he wants a turn to play. No matter who they vote
for they get an Orwellian warmongering government which exists solely to advance the agendas of
a plutocratic class which has no loyalties to any nation; the only difference is sometimes that
government is pretending to care about women and minorities and sometimes it's pretending to
care about white men. In reality, all the jewelers work for the same plutocrat, and that video
game remote won't impact the outcome of the game no matter how many buttons you push.
The only way to effect real change is to stop playing along with the rigged system and start
waking people up to the lies. As long as Americans believe that the mass media are telling them
the truth about their country and their partisan votes are going somewhere useful, the populace
whose numbers should give it immense influence is nullified and sedated into a passive ride
toward war, ecocide and oppression.
If enough of us keep throwing sand in the gears of the lie
factory, we can wake
the masses up from the oligarchic lullaby they're being sung. And then maybe we'll be big
enough to have a shot at grabbing one of the real video game controllers.
Reprinted with author's permission from
Medium.com .
Actually, it was b h o who opened the Fed borrowing window to the Wall Street
investment crowd who were able to borrow at 1/4 % interest so that they could play the
markets with impunity.
b h o played both sides against the middle telling folks to vote for him and 'hope and
change' bullshit and to shake his fist at Wall Street -- all the while enabling them to make
more money than they thought existed.
Like so many of his predecessors in the White House, Trump has surrounded himself with
Zionists in almost every important position imaginable and they're more than willing to screw us
into the ground -- just because they can.
That's true only in sense of using "bait and switch" with the electorate. Trump partially
destroyed previous model created by Clinton-Bush-Obama and introduced "national naoliabralism" --
neoliberalism without globalization. He also openly rely on brute force.
Notable quotes:
"... Partisan battles focusing on personalities get people to invest emotionally in "the system". A system which is NOT democratic and doesn't work for the people. ..."
"... Draining the Swamp cannot be taken seriously. Trump installed in the Trump Cabinet, Swamp Creatures through and through, most notably Goldman Sachs dudes we've seen in Dubya Bush, Obama and now Drumpf. ..."
"... Trump is his own man and just like Obama he has minions spread garbage that he is being undermined and the bad stuff is not his fault. Trump showed his true colors when he stocked up on neocons and warmongers and gave the military $100 billion when they were asking for 50. ..."
"... His meetings with Kim and Putin were just theater as Trump gleefully puts more sanctions on Russia and has done nothing but threaten pain for those cheating on sanctions to help North Korea. ..."
Partisan battles focusing on personalities get people to invest emotionally in "the
system". A system which is NOT democratic and doesn't work for the people.
Agree completely. There's nothing political about these "politics", fake-populist
politicians are just another kind of celebrity (thus Trump fits in well), cable news is a
(highly toxic) genre of entertainment, and partisan Repbots and Dembots aren't political people
at all, but competing celebrity or sports fan clubs. None of them cares about any aspect of
reality, which is why the system can commit such horrendous real-world crimes; for the
political class these crimes aren't real. They're all sociopaths, which is the only way it's
possible to be a partisan of either flavor of the Corporate One-Party.
And that's how unelected operatives and the NYT can openly express such contempt for
democracy and the open society without fear of provoking any significant reaction from the
people: For the kinds of people who read the NYT, such things are meaningless abstractions. Any
of them would happily endorse Hitler-level crimes (which the US is very close to anyway) on the
part of their "team".
If Trump is a fourth of fifth grader, looks like we have a third grade coup d etat. As you
pointed out, these people are not the brightest lights but perhaps the most easily
bribed/threatened? I suspect a hidden hand behind the insurrection rather than a stunning
example of bureaucratic unity. Ditto for the rash of anti Trump 'literature'. Woodward crawled
in bed with the ruling elite decades ago.
Trump is probably not the first president to be 'Trumped' by his bureaucratic minions?n
Obama didn't keep a single campaign promise.during his eight disappointing years. Perhaps not
all of his betrayal of the electorate is because he was just another lying weasel.
Jr @ 19 said:"Trump and Obama are only heros if you believe that USA is democracy and the
democratically elected 'populist' truely represents his/her base. That is a fantasy."
"Partisan battles focusing on personalities get people to invest emotionally in "the
system". A system which is NOT democratic and doesn't work for the people."
Jr, you nailed it.
Forget ideology, follow the $, you'll understand more..
Draining the Swamp cannot be taken seriously. Trump installed in the Trump Cabinet, Swamp
Creatures through and through, most notably Goldman Sachs dudes we've seen in Dubya Bush, Obama
and now Drumpf.
Also, we see nothing of any draining at this point and but simply an assault on the commons
(and a gift giving for the rich) as would be expected from any boilerplate Republican
asshole.
Now foreign policy may be his strong suit but, there has been nothing much to impress here
either. Just follow Israel.
Trump is his own man and just like Obama he has minions spread garbage that he is being
undermined and the bad stuff is not his fault. Trump showed his true colors when he stocked up
on neocons and warmongers and gave the military $100 billion when they were asking for
50.
His meetings with Kim and Putin were just theater as Trump gleefully puts more sanctions
on Russia and has done nothing but threaten pain for those cheating on sanctions to help North
Korea.
His body language and emphatic delivery, and sometimes glee, when announcing these new
sanctions, and his telling Russia to get out of Syria and give back Crimea, belie the fiction
that Trump is being forced to do so.
If that was the case he could have had his minions announce it. One can see the insincerity
when he claims the US is getting out of Syria and his confident matter of fact delivery when
threatening to bomb Syria over what he knows is a fake gas attack. It was no accident that
Trumps 2 hurried missile strikes on Syria happened as Israel was butchering Palestinians thus
diverting attention from the dastardly deeds. Trump has been best buddies with Israel and Saudi
Arabia and stays mum on Israel bombing Syria and Saudi Arabia killing over tens of thousands of
innocent people in Yemen and creating the humanitarian crisis there.
There's the bonus of weapons sales to those "humanitarian" regimes. Up until recently
organizations have ignored the inhumane UN sanctions that forbade sending medicines into North
Korea and nothing was said. Suddenly last month ALL of them stopped. Somebody gave them the
word stop or else. Trump says nothing of the efforts to scuttle better relations between the US
and North Korea or the fake news that the Norks are still making missiles and nukes offered
with no proof.
While the US is sabotaging the efforts North and South Korea are making great progress which
makes me expect South Korea is going to be hit sanctions for "unfair trade." South Korea could
defuse the whole thing and announce they are taking possession of the Norths nukes but they
know the US would punish them badly as the the US does not want any nukes in the Korea's and
needs a boogie man north to justify it's out sized military presence in the area.
Once Trump sat in the big boy chair in the oval office the focus of Making America Great
Again switched to continue the drive for US world domination by destroying the economies of the
competition and create world wide chaos with sanctions, tariffs, and local currency destruction
making the world come crawling to the US to save them. Thus turning the cleanest dirty shirt in
the laundry to snow white.
b: "Why is no public figure expressing concern about this subversion of democracy? How
come no one protests?"
Trump is the Republican Obama.
'Trumptards' blame others for the failings of their hero just like 'Obamabots' did. This
is not an accident. Apologists are an important part of the faux populist leadership
model.
Trump and Obama are only heros if you believe that USA is democracy and the
democratically elected 'populist' truely represents his/her base. That is a fantasy.
Partisan battles focusing on personalities get people to invest emotionally in "the
system". A system which is NOT democratic and doesn't work for the people.
I have made these points many times over the last year. Sadly, people nod their heads
and continue to engage on terms set by the establishment.
You don't have to get into any deep conspiratorial rabbit hole to consider the
possibility that all this drama and conflict is staged from top to bottom. Commentators
on all sides routinely crack jokes about how the mainstream media pretends to attack
Trump but secretly loves him because he brings them amazing ratings. Anyone with their
eyes even part way open already knows that America's two mainstream parties feign intense
hatred for one another while working together to pace their respective bases into
accepting more and more neoliberal exploitation at home and more and more neoconservative
bloodshed abroad. They spit and snarl and shake their fists at each other, then
cuddle up and share candy when it's time for a public gathering. Why should this
administration be any different?
...
The more I study US politics, the less useful I find it to think of it in political
terms. The two-headed one party system exists to give Americans the illusion of choice
while advancing the agendas of the plutocratic class which owns and operates both
parties , yes, but even more importantly it's a mechanism of narrative control. If
you can separate the masses into two groups based on extremely broad ideological
characteristics, you can then funnel streamlined "us vs them" narratives into each of the
two stables, with the white hats and black hats reversed in each case. Now you've got
Republicans cheering for the president and Democrats cheering for the CIA, for the FBI,
and now for a platoon of covert John McCains alleged to be operating on the inside of
Trump's own administration. Everyone's cheering for one aspect of the US power
establishment or another .
"... A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as a magnet for liberal anger. This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war abroad while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump won't fulfill any of his election promises, and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politics." ..."
"In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will hose away all of the rot and
bloody criminality of the Bush years. He turned out to be a deft move by our ruling class.
Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of our military banking
complex. Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider.
A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while
serving as a magnet for liberal anger. This will buy our ruling class time as they continue
to wage war abroad while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump won't fulfill
any of his election promises, and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politics."
Linh Dinh, as published at The Unz Review, June 12, 2016
The election's only apparent benefit to the people of this country has been the exposure
of corruption and sedition within the Establishment. But that, too, may be part of the show,
another way to channel dissidence into another meaningless election. Even here at The Unz
Review, some columnists and many commenters tell the readership that this November is
critical to protecting President Trump and his agenda, blah, blah, blah.
@Diversity Heretic I applied through the GreatAgain website and never received the
courtesy of a reply despite having conributed to the Trump campaign before Iowa, nine years
working on Capitol Hill (for Republicans) and seven years in a regulatory commission (working
for a Republicaén commissioner), a JD and an MBA. So I'm not surprised to hear that
applications through the website were not even considered and jobs filled with Washington
insiders. (The first inclination that I had that something was seriously wrong in the
staffing area was when Calista Gingrich was named as ambassador to the Vatican.) Trump has
the classic problem of the outsider: no institutional mechanism to staff an administration.
(Jesse Ventura had a similar problem when he was elected as governor of Minnesota as an
independent). He compounds that problem by making poor choices that involve his personal
judgment and consideration (e.g., John Bolton and Nikki Haley?!).
Increasingly, I see no electoral way to influence or remove the Deep State. I think we're
in for a rough ride and hope that things don't get nuclear with Russia.
Increasingly, I see no electoral way to influence or remove the Deep State. I think
we're in for a rough ride and hope that things don't get nuclear with Russia.
It is astonishing that after all the fraudsters and con masters masquerading as politicians
there are huge numbers who claim to believe in the system where humans have voluntarily given
away their freedoms.
Hope and Change, replaced by MAGA.
Do you honestly believe that your Founding Fathers would rebel against King's Tyranny if it
were possible to change it by peaceful means?
@anonymous None of this should have come as a surprise.
"In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will hose away all of the rot and
bloody criminality of the Bush years. He turned out to be a deft move by our ruling class.
Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of our military banking
complex. Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider.
A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as
a magnet for liberal anger. This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war
abroad while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump won't fulfill any of his
election promises, and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politics."
Linh Dinh, as published at The Unz Review, June 12, 2016
The election's only apparent benefit to the people of this country has been the exposure
of corruption and sedition within the Establishment. But that, too, may be part of the show,
another way to channel dissidence into another meaningless election. Even here at The Unz
Review, some columnists and many commenters tell the readership that this November is
critical to protecting President Trump and his agenda, blah, blah, blah. Voting in our
national elections has become another example of evil paraded before us as a moral duty. It
ironically results in disenfranchisement by perpetually legitimizing a federal government as
much at war with its own citizens as with every other people who oppose the new American
Proposition -- the antithesis of a fulfilling human culture wherever it's found, and which
today amounts to claiming that freedom and democracy equate to owning stuff and vicariously
participating in unbridled avarice, sexual depravity, war, torture, and mass murder. Either
party and all that horror is a constant.
So, instead of girding middle America mentally, spiritually, and physically to fight to
the death for what's worth living for, and while there's still some chance to save ourselves
and our nation, we get the Republican leadership, Fox News, and Conservatism Inc blowing
smoke in our eyes, temporizing on behalf of the Deep State by pretending these veiled and
overt calls for white genocide are just in bad taste or that curtesy and cowardice are an
effective policy toward a wildly homicidal left.
This is a very weak article, but it raises several important questions such as the role or neoliberal MSM in color revolution
against Trump and which social group constituted the voting block that brought Trump to victory. The author answers incorrectly on
both those questions.
I think overall Tremblay analysis of Trump (and by extension of national neoliberalism he promotes) is incorrect. Probably the largest group
of voters which voted for Trump were voters who were against neoliberal globalization and who now feel real distrust and aversion to
the ruling neoliberal elite.
Trump is probably right to view neoliberal journalists as enemies: they are tools of intelligence agencies which as agents of
Wall Street promote globalization
At the same time Trump turned to be Obama II: he instantly betrayed his voters after the election. His
election slogan "make Ameraca great again" bacem that same joke as Obama "Change we can believe in". And he proved to be as
jingoistic as Obama (A Nobel Pease Price laureate who was militarists dream come true)
In discussion of groups who votes for Trump the author forgot to mention part of professional which skeptically view neoliberal
globalization and its destrction of jobs (for example programmer jobs in the USA) as well as blue color
workers decimated by offshoring of major industries.
Notable quotes:
"... "Just stick with us, don't believe the crap you see from these people [journalists], the fake news Just remember, what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. " ..."
"... Donald Trump (1946- ), American President, (in remarks made during a campaign rally with Veterans of Foreign Wars, in Kansas City, July 24, 2018) ..."
"... "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." ..."
"... This is a White House where everybody lies ..."
"... I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power ..."
"... The second one can be found in Trump's artful and cunning tactics to unbalance and manipulate the media to increase his visibility to the general public and to turn them into his own tools of propaganda. ..."
"... ad hominem' ..."
"... Donald Trump essentially has the traits of a typical showman diva , behaving in politics just as he did when he was the host of a TV show. Indeed, if one considers politics and public affairs as no more than a reality show, this means that they are really entertainment, and politicians are first and foremost entertainers or comedians. ..."
"... He prefers to rely on one-directional so-called 'tweets' to express unfiltered personal ideas and emotions (as if he were a private person), and to use them as his main public relations channel of communication. ..."
"... checks and balance ..."
"... The centralization of power in the hands of one man is bound to have serious political consequences, both for the current administration and for future ones. ..."
"Just stick with us, don't believe the crap you see from these people [journalists], the fake news Just remember, what
you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. "
Donald Trump (1946- ), American President, (in remarks made during a campaign rally with Veterans of Foreign Wars, in Kansas
City, July 24, 2018)
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) (1903-1950), English novelist, essayist, and social critic, (in '1984', Ch. 7, 1949)
" This is a White House where everybody lies ." Omarosa Manigault Newman (1974- ), former White House aide to President
Donald Trump, (on Sunday August 12, 2018, while releasing tapes recording conversations with Donald Trump.)
" I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power ." Benjamin Franklin (
1706 –
1790 ), American inventor and US Founding Father, (in 'Words of
the Founding Fathers', 2012).
***
In this day and age, with instant information, how does a politician succeed in double-talking, in bragging, in scapegoating and
in shamefully distorting the truth, most of the time, without being unmasked as a charlatan and discredited? Why? That is the mysterious
and enigmatic question that one may ask about U. S. President Donald Trump, as a politician.
The most obvious answer is the fact that Trump's one-issue and cult-like followers do not care what he does or says and whether
or not he has declared a
war on truth and reality , provided he delivers the political and financial benefits they demand of him, based on their ideological
or pecuniary interests. These groups of voters live in their own reality and only their personal interests count.
1- Four groups of one-issue voters behind Trump
There are four groups of one-issue voters to
whom President Donald Trump has delivered the goodies:
Christian religious right voters, whose main political issue is to fill the U. S. Supreme Court with ultra conservative
judges. On that score, Donald Trump has been true to them by naming one such judge and in nominating a second one.
Super rich Zionists and the Pro-Israel Lobby, whose obsession is the state of Israel. Again, on that score, President
Donald Trump has fulfilled his promise to them and he has unilaterally moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in addition
to attacking the Palestinians and tearing up the 'Iran Deal'.
The one-percent Income earners and some corporate owners, whose main demand to Trump was substantial tax cuts and
deregulation. Once again, President Trump has fulfilled this group's wishes with huge tax cuts, mainly financed with future public
debt increases, which are going to be paid for by all taxpayers.
The NRA and the Pro-Gun Lobby, whose main obsession is to have the right to arm themselves to the teeth, including
with military assault weapons, with as few strings attached as possible. Here again President Donald Trump has sided with them
and against students who are increasingly in the line of fire in American schools.
With the strong support of these four monolithic lobbies -- his electoral base -- politician Donald Trump can count on the indefectible
support of between 35 percent and 40 percent of the American electorate. It is ironic that some of Trump's other policies, like reducing
health care coverage and the raising of import taxes, will hurt the poor and the middle class, even though some of Trump's victims
can be considered members of the above lobbies.
Moreover, some of Trump's supporters regularly rely on
hypocrisy and on excuses to exonerate their favorite
but flawed politician of choice. If any other politician from a different party were to say and do half of what Donald Trump does
and says, they would be asking for his impeachment.
There are three other reasons why Trump's rants, his
record-breaking lies , his untruths, his deceptions and his dictatorial-style attempts to
control information , in the eyes of his fanatical supporters, at least, are like water on the back of a duck. ( -- For the record,
according to the
Washington Post , as of early August, President Trump has made some 4,229 false claims, which amount to 7.6 a day, since his
inauguration.)
The first reason can be found in Trump's view that politics and even government business are first and foremost another form
of
entertainment , i.e. a sort of TV reality show, which must be scripted and acted upon. Trump thinks that is
OK to lie
and to ask his assistants to
lie
. In this new immoral world, the Trump phenomenon could be seen a sign of
post-democracy .
The second one can be found in Trump's artful and cunning tactics to unbalance and
manipulate the media to increase his visibility to the general public and to turn them into his own tools of propaganda.
When Trump attacks the media, he is in fact coaxing them to give him free coverage to spread his
insults , his fake accusations, his provocations, his constant
threats , his denials or reversals, his convenient
changes of subject or his political spins. Indeed, with his outrageous statements, his gratuitous accusations and his attacks
' ad hominem' , and by constantly bullying and insulting adversaries at home and foreign heads of states abroad, and
by issuing threats in repetition, right and left, Trump has forced the media to talk and journalists to write about him constantly,
on a daily basis, 24/7.
That suits him perfectly well because he likes to be the center of attention. That is how he can change the political rhetoric
when any negative issue gets too close to him. In the coming weeks and months, as the Special prosecutor
Robert Mueller's report is likely to be released, Donald Trump is not above resorting to some sort of "
Wag the Dog " political trickery, to change the topic and to possibly push the damaging report off the headlines.
In such a circumstance, it is not impossible that launching an illegal war of choice, say against Iran (a
pet
project of Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton), could then look very convenient to a crafty politician like Donald
Trump and to his warmonger advisors. Therefore, observers should be on the lookout to spot any development of the sort in the
coming weeks.
That one man and his entourage could whimsically consider launching a
war of aggression is a throwback to ancient times
and is a sure indication of the level of depravity to which current politics has fallen. This should be a justified and clear
case for impeachment .
Finally, some far-right media outlets, such as
Fox News and
Sinclair Broadcasting , have taken it upon themselves to systematically present Trump's lies and misrepresentations as some
'alternative' truths and facts.
Indeed, ever since 1987, when the Reagan administration abolished the
Fairness Doctrine for licensing public radio
and TV waves, and since a Republican dominated Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed for the
mass conglomeration of local broadcasting
in the United States, extreme conservative news outlets, such as the Fox and Sinclair networks, have sprung up. They are well
financed, and they have essentially become powerful
political propaganda machines , erasing the line between facts and fiction, and regularly presenting fictitious alternative
facts as the truth.
In so doing, they have pushed public debates in the United States away from facts, reason and logic, at least for those listeners
and viewers for whom such outlets are the only source of information. It is not surprising that such far-right media have also
made Donald Trump the champion of their cause, maliciously branding anything inconvenient as 'fake' news, as Trump has done in
his own anti-media campaign and his sustained assault on the free press.
2- Show Politics and public affairs as a form of entertainment
Donald Trump does not seem to take politics and public affairs very seriously, at least when his own personal interests are involved.
Therefore, when things go bad, he never volunteers to take personal responsibility, contrary to what a true leader would do, and
he conveniently
shifts the blame on somebody else. This is a sign of immaturity or cowardice. Paraphrasing President Harry Truman, "the buck
never stops at his desk."
Donald Trump essentially has the traits of a typical
showman diva , behaving
in politics just as he did when he was the host of a TV show. Indeed, if one considers politics and public affairs as no more than
a reality show, this means that they are really entertainment, and politicians are first and foremost entertainers or comedians.
3- Trump VS the media and the journalists
Donald Trump is the first U.S. president who rarely holds scheduled press conferences. Why would he, since he considers journalists
to be his "enemies"! It doesn't seem to matter to him that freedom of the press is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution by the First
Amendment. He prefers to rely on one-directional so-called 'tweets' to express unfiltered personal ideas and emotions (as if
he were a private person), and to use them as his main public relations channel of communication.
The ABC News network
has calculated that, as of last July, Trump has tweeted more than 3,500 times, slightly more than seven tweets a day. How could he
have time left to do anything productive! Coincidently, Donald Trump's number of tweets is not far away from the number of outright
lies and misleading claims that he has told and made since his inauguration.
The Washington Post has counted no less than 3,251 lies or misleading claims of his, through the end of May of this year, --
an average of 6.5 such misstatements per day of his presidency. Fun fact: Trump seems to accelerate the pace of his lies. Last year,
he told 5.5 lies per day, on average. Is it possible to have a more cynical view of politics!
The media in general, (and
not only American ones), then serve more or less voluntarily as so many resonance boxes for his daily 'tweets', most of which
are often devoid of any thought and logic.
Such a practice has the consequence of demeaning the public discourse in the pursuit of the common good and the general welfare
of the people to the level of a frivolous private enterprise, where expertise, research and competence can easily be replaced by
improvisation, whimsical arbitrariness and charlatanry. In such a climate, only the short run counts, at the expense of planning
for the long run.
Conclusion
All this leads to this conclusion: Trump's approach is not the way to run an efficient government. Notwithstanding the U.S. Constitution
and what it says about the need to have " checks and balance s" among different government branches, President Donald Trump
has de facto pushed aside the U.S. Congress and the civil servants in important government Departments, even his own
Cabinet
, whose formal meetings under Trump have been little more than photo-up happenings, to grab the central political stage for himself.
If such a development does not represent an ominous threat to American democracy, what does?
The centralization of power in the hands of one man is bound to have serious political consequences, both for the current
administration and for future ones.
'Hypocrisy', though a tendentious sort of word, is the key, I think. In electoral politics
40% on either side are going to vote the way they vote regardless of how persuasive the
electoral campaign of candidate A, or the unfittedness of candidate B; so the game is:
persuading those 20% who used to be called 'floating voters'.
And the way you do that is by blank-screening yourself and letting the electors project
onto you, by presenting yourself as Conservative even though you're Labour (as Blair did), or
conversely presenting yourself as radical even though you're a straight-down-the-line
tax-cutting defense-budget-ballooning Republican.
Trump's campaign persuaded many that he would in no way 'conserve', but would rather tear
down the establishment.
Brexit was masterminded by a group of elite hard right wingers who somehow managed to
persuade a large tranche of the electorate that it Remain were all metropolitan elites and
that they were the true voice of the people.
The real challenge is not finding a definition of conservatism that can bracket a genius
like Burke with a moron like Sarah Palin; it's finding a definition that enables a
billionaire playboy to define himself as a man of the people; that allows him to promise eg
free healthcare for all and kicking Wall Street out of politics on the campaign trail without
losing his Conservative bona fides.
Mostly reflexively, not always consciously, The Powers That Be seek to retain and
enlarge their sphere of influence. Nothing, not even the venerated vote, is allowed to
alter that "balance."
That's why the 'Deep State' or whatever one wants to call that malignant organism that has
taken over DC–and much of the West–needs professional toadies like Woody, who
will dutifully report whatever smelly lump of fertilizer the PTB are trying to sell. Bet
Woody's the best paid stenographer in the world, doing a good job of confusing Americans,
keeping them anxious of the unknown, so the PTB can keep herding us towards the NWO
slaughterhouse.
The washed-out journalist then blurted out this in disbelief: "Trump said the 'World
Trade Organization is the worst organization in the world.'"
Another bit of propaganda, as those central banks–like the toxic FED–keep the
world under their thumb by controlling the money flow, printing currencies out of thin air,
then getting paid outrageous sums of interest each year–around 500 Billion in the
US–for their counterfeiting scheme.
That kind of power can and does crash stock markets and wreck economies, as the FED has
been doing since it was spawned in 1913. They and their buddies then buy homes, businesses,
MSM outlets and costly toys for pennies on the dollar, while us 'deplorables' wonder if
they're going to be able to keep making their mortgage payments if they lose their job.
To repeat, this was promised on the campaign trail and in Trump position papers. We now
know who stole those promises from the American people.
"We know?" Some do, but many don't, as they rally around Tubby the Grifter to protect
their savior from those nasty Democrats.
"Drain the Swamp" and "MAGA" were skillfully crafted psyops, most likely from the inner
sanctum of the most pernicious lobbying outfit on Capitol Hill, AIPAC. RT, a news outlet, got
mugged by a sold-out Congress and forced to register as a lobbying outfit, but not AIPAC. No
Sir, why that would be anti-Semitic and only foul, Jew hating Neo-Nazis would even think
about making AIPAC follow the law.
What AIPAC has and continues to do needs to be kept hidden from the American public, lest
they engage in the dangerous behavior of actually wondering if Israel is an ally or a
well-disguised enemy.
Trump was bought and paid for a LONG time ago, and 2016 was when the bill came due. He was
'Chosen,' not be We the People, but AIPAC and Israel as the best POTUS to do their bidding,
since Hillary carried way too much baggage.
Trump has been the best POTUS for Israel since the traitorous liar LBJ.
All Trump has to do to get rid of the Op Ed guy is to fire all those who want to go to war
withRussia. That would leave him with no staff.
But Trump is not fooling me. You do not make a campaign promise to cooperate with Russia,
and then hire all these people who want to go to war with Russia.
It tells me that Trump was lying during his campaign.
He told us Iraq was the wrong decision, and now he has bombed Syria twice and is ready to
bomb them again; he told us that he wants out of the mid-east; he told us he wanted to
cooperate with Russia.
So I voted for him, but he was lying. I already found out he is a brazen liar. He took
those Clinton women to his debate to humiliate Hillary and Bill Clinton, when all the while
he was doing the same thing with women. That is what I call a brazen liar.
He is a pawn of the State of Israel, nothing more and nothing less. They probably told him
to hire Bolton and all the other war-mongers around him. He's not surrounded by the enemy. He
is surrounded by his friends.
The biggest mystery of this whole presidency is why the guy who went to battle against the
GOP foreign policy establishment turned over those policy positions to them, instead of
putting people into office who actually looked favorably on him and shared areas of agreement
with him (paleocons, realists, non-interventionists, etc.). The only foreign policy promise
he's kept is the one that happened to align with the neocon preferences: backing out of the
Iran deal.
I guess it must come down to Jared Kushner and his close ties with Israel and the Gulf
Arabs, but still find it bizarre that Trump never reached out to Pat Buchanan, Rand Paul,
Steve Bannon, etc., in selecting foreign policy officials.
@Admiral
Assbar The biggest mystery of this whole presidency is why the guy who went to battle
against the GOP foreign policy establishment turned over those policy positions to them,
instead of putting people into office who actually looked favorably on him and shared areas
of agreement with him (paleocons, realists, non-interventionists, etc.). The only foreign
policy promise he's kept is the one that happened to align with the neocon preferences:
backing out of the Iran deal.
I guess it must come down to Jared Kushner and his close ties with Israel and the Gulf
Arabs, but still find it bizarre that Trump never reached out to Pat Buchanan, Rand Paul,
Steve Bannon, etc., in selecting foreign policy officials. "The biggest mystery of this whole
presidency is why the guy who went to battle against the GOP foreign policy establishment
turned over those policy positions to them "
It seems fairly clear that, whenever a new President is sworn in, he immediately receives
a "pep talk" in which he is informed what he will and will not say and do, and what will
happen to him, his family, their pets, and everyone they have ever spoken to if he disobeys.
Probably this "offer that he can't refuse" is concluded by words along the lines of: " and if
you want to get what the Kennedys got, just try stepping out of line".
J. Edgar Hoover used to do something of the kind when he was head of the FBI, but that was
relatively benign – just a threat of blackmail accompanied by kindly advice never to
fight the FBI.
@AlbionRevisited I was
referring to the campaign, of course we're in a different situation now. It's amazing the way
in which they were able to co-oped his administration. AlbionRevisted wrote: "It's amazing
the way in which they (Neoconservatives) were able to co-oped his (Trump)
administration."
Greetings AlbionRevisited!
Many were disappointed with Trump and that might even include a percentage of the voting bloc
known as "Deplorables."
Nonetheless, after honing into candidate Donald Trump's awful 2017 homage to AIPAC, it
becomes dramatically less amazing how Neoconservatives crept into the White House.
Recall how rabid leftist Neoconservatives wanted Hillary, and how suddenly the naysayer,
Extra-Octane Neoconservative, John Bolton, stuck with the phoney populist, "America
First-After-Israeli-Interests," talkin' Donald J. Trump?
The essence of American presidential campaigns/elections boil down to powerful international
Jewry needs & timing, and disemboweled citizens must take-it or leave-it. Uh, support the
immoral wars and pay the bill!
Thanks, AlbionRevisted.
Herald says: September 12, 2018 at 10:53 am GMT • 100 Words
@Tom Welsh
I am not convinced that Trump started out with good intentions but quickly bowed to threats. Trump was never a principled
person and it seems much more likely that he was always a stooge for the Israel lobby and the MIC.
I used to think that things would have been worse under Hillary but these days I'm even beginning to have doubts on that
score.
jacques sheete, September 12, 2018 at 11:19 am GMT • 100 Words
@Admiral Assbar
The biggest mystery of this whole presidency is why the guy who went to battle against the GOP foreign policy establishment
turned over those policy positions to them
No mystery at all. It was all campaign rhetoric like the Shrub's promises of "a humble foreign policy" and "compassionate
conservatism," O-bomba-'s "hope and change"and Woody 'n Frankies promises to keep the US out of war.
KenH, September 12, 2018 at 12:20 pm GMT
Trump is now becoming more "patriotic" by the day with his willingness to get us into another no-win, forever war in Syria
for Israel. I say we air drop John Brennan into Idlib so he can fight and die like a real man.
"Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday
at getting back at you" – Chuck Schumer. maybe Schumer's protective scare-mongering
goes to a deeper matter; the matter of the most powerful intelligence agency operating in the
USA is MOSSAD, an entity which has penetrated every aspect of American governance.
AIPAC is one of MOSSAD's favorite playgrounds
Did Sanders' people challenge 'the Russians did it' propaganda line, demand the DNC
servers be examined by forensic specialists and investigate Crowdstrike? No.
no U.S. intelligence agency has performed its own forensic analysis on the [Clinton's] hacked
servers. Instead, the bureau and other agencies have relied on analysis done by the
third-party security firm CrowdStrike [Dm. Alperovitch, of the CrowdStrike fame, is a vicious
Russophobe and loyal zionist fed and cared for by the ziocon Atlantic Council.] In actuality
we know it was the assassinated Seth Rich took the DNC emails with a thumbdrive.
Vladimir Putin, the man standing in the way of Syria's breakup and working to keep the
Iran agreement intact and avert a war, must be demonized to realize Bibi Netanyahu's goals.
In fact, Israel's intelligence services focus has historically prioritized Russia, first, and
the USA second "
– The Jewish Bolsheviks are in arms against Russia and the US because this is what
the Jewish Bolsheviks are best for -- at the destruction of functioning human societies.
"... I agree that this is possibly the case, but what about Rosenstein's Monster? ..."
"... IOW, why is Mueller being allowed to run amok? Does Trump have a plan to contain the damage, however fabricated, other than (rightly) criticizing Jeff Sessions for recusing himself? ..."
"... I agree with Bob. It's all of them. Dump them all, including Trump, his creepy family and cronies, and the garbage GOP who passed the biggest deficit budget in US history. ..."
"... Trump already totally betrayed voters like me, who wanted our troops out of the Middle East and our resources and focus back on America, Americans, and American infrastructure. ..."
"... Liam, the "suckers who voted for Trump" happen to be the electorate. A similar group of suckers voted for Obama, Bush and Clinton. This trio who preceded Trump were not golden gods of leadership as I recall. The last two doubled and redoubled the total national debt, and squandered trillions in pointless wars. ..."
"But a savvy Donald Trump saw the conspiracy right away. And he realized immediately that in
order to carry his campaign agenda to Make America Great Again he must of necessity first
preserve his presidency from the conspiracy of the Deep State, the mainstream media, and the
establishment elites of both political parties"
I agree that this is possibly the case, but what about Rosenstein's Monster?
IOW, why is Mueller being allowed to run amok? Does Trump have a plan to contain the
damage, however fabricated, other than (rightly) criticizing Jeff Sessions for recusing
himself?
I agree with Bob. It's all of them. Dump them all, including Trump, his creepy family and
cronies, and the garbage GOP who passed the biggest deficit budget in US history.
Trump already totally betrayed voters like me, who wanted our troops out of the Middle
East and our resources and focus back on America, Americans, and American infrastructure.
The smell coming from Washington, Wall Street, the MSM, and Silicon Valley is
overpowering.
Liam, the "suckers who voted for Trump" happen to be the electorate. A similar group of
suckers voted for Obama, Bush and Clinton. This trio who preceded Trump were not golden gods
of leadership as I recall. The last two doubled and redoubled the total national debt, and
squandered trillions in pointless wars.
Trump had the sense to encourage development and transport of natural resources. He
slashed mindless regulations and reduced taxes. The economy is growing after the long Obama
depression. His was the worst economy in my lifetime. In the Carter years of stagflation
companies would not hire young grads. In the Obama years that was also the case but many
middle aged workers were let go as well. We might now be seeing real wage increases across
the board. If Trump is a clown, as so many describe, perhaps we should recruit future
presidents from clown schools.
The negligence with which he selected his cabinet is pretty telling
Notable quotes:
"... I've been saying for over a year that Trump is the Republican Obama. He is a faux populist front man. ..."
"... Just like "Obamabots", "Trumptard" apologists blame hardliners for the failings of their hero. It's all a game. It's part of the faux populist political model. Faux populists SERVE THE ESTABLISHMENT so they destined to betray their 'base'. ..."
"... Party and Personality are the masks used to keep us divided and maintain the illusion of democracy. ..."
At some point even the most ardent Trump acolyte will have to admit this [Syria]
is now Trump's policy. It is not something done by the neocons, the deep state, the
anonymous resister or the ghost of John McCain without Trump's acquiescence. [And]
He is not ... clueless, oblivious ...
Pat is half right.
I've been saying for over a year that Trump is the Republican Obama. He is a faux
populist front man.
Just like "Obamabots", "Trumptard" apologists blame hardliners for the failings of
their hero. It's all a game. It's part of the faux populist political model. Faux populists
SERVE THE ESTABLISHMENT so they destined to betray their 'base'.
There are two other fallacies that keep cropping up to confuse things:
1) Triumph of Democracy. While some may recognize that USA is no longer a democracy, others continue to insist that
"Trump won" and are incline to suspect Russian interference (even while acknowledging the
flaws in that theory). Few care to delve much deeper (i.e. engage brain cells).
2) President's Constitutional power. You see this mistake made as Pat Lang declares that Trump 'owns' the Syrian mess now. The
President has great power in the US Constitutional system and (sadly) that is why it is so
important to the establishment that it be controlled. Trump was SELECTED, not ELECTED.
Party and Personality are the masks used to keep us divided and maintain the illusion of
democracy.
"... "Just get rid of Trump and you'll have a nice, neat, ultra-right-wing Republican as President." No need for that Diana – for what you describe is what we presently enjoy in the form of the current President, most especially as it relates to his efforts to bring "peace" to regions such as the Mideast. ..."
"... It is becoming something of a dark joke listening to Trump's apologists endlessly repeat the meme that those opposed to him represent "war" – while he is our hope for "peace" (despite his never demonstrating one iota of that sort of behavior). ..."
"... With every further, obvious display of the President's shocking belligerence towards countries that do not threaten the United States and in areas and matters where it possesses no valid security interests, the Diana Johnstones of this world spin the prayer wheel faster, repeat their mantras more urgently and come up with some silly excuses for why what we observe from Trump is not really what we observe. "It's not Trump – it's every one around him. You must believe us!" ..."
"... There's no need for 4- and 5-D chess masters to interpret Trump – what we sees is what we gots. If there's a "conspiracy" anywhere, it's among those unwilling to remark the obvious ..."
We gave Trump the presidency, what he does with it is his responsibility. He was warned
repeatedly about the neocons et al, but has chosen to staff up with the same swamp creatures
he ostensibly meant to expurgate.
We are left to wonder how much of this "reality" TV?
"Just get rid of Trump and you'll have a nice, neat, ultra-right-wing Republican as
President." No need for that Diana – for what you describe is what we presently enjoy in the
form of the current President, most especially as it relates to his efforts to bring "peace"
to regions such as the Mideast.
It is becoming something of a dark joke listening to Trump's apologists endlessly repeat
the meme that those opposed to him represent "war" – while he is our hope for "peace"
(despite his never demonstrating one iota of that sort of behavior).
With every further, obvious display of the President's shocking belligerence towards
countries that do not threaten the United States and in areas and matters where it possesses
no valid security interests, the Diana Johnstones of this world spin the prayer wheel faster,
repeat their mantras more urgently and come up with some silly excuses for why what we
observe from Trump is not really what we observe. "It's not Trump – it's every one
around him. You must believe us!"
There's no need for 4- and 5-D chess masters to interpret Trump – what we sees is
what we gots. If there's a "conspiracy" anywhere, it's among those unwilling to remark the
obvious.
(theverge.com)Sanders' Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act
(abbreviated "Stop BEZOS") -- along with Khanna's House of Representatives counterpart, the
Corporate Responsibility and Taxpayer Protection Act --
would institute a 100 percent tax on government benefits that are granted to workers at large
companies . The bill's text characterizes this as a "corporate welfare tax," and it would
apply to corporations with 500 or more employees. If
workers are receiving government aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), national school lunch and breakfast programs, Section 8
housing subsidies, or Medicaid, employers will be taxed for the total cost of those benefits.
The bill applies to full-time and part-time employees, as well as independent contractors that
are de facto company employees.
Another sign that the political divisions are 'pretend' is that the 'Dems', the ostensive
losers re. Trump, have not behaved like a political party who loses. These generally disband,
retire, fold, or make efforts at reform, re-orientation etc. Renewal may be tough but they
often try. (As did the Repubs after Obama's election, though the effort was incredibly weak.)
Nothing like that is going on, because the fight is not political. It is based on tribal
desperate angst at the 'surprise' election of an outsider who holds cards in his hands nobody
can speak about.
To 'True Believers', if [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] seems equivocal, or even confused, about
the nature of (Democratic) socialism or expresses anodyne, conformist, safe positions, they
will justify this as sensible reticence. AOC has to appeal to the elusive "center", and
charm skeptical voters by not appearing unduly extreme or, God forbid, radical.
As with Obama and others similarly situated, they pretend that once the ostensible Third
Way newcomer is accepted and established, they can and will gradually disclose their true
political selves, and act accordingly. Regardless of how often this scenario fails to work
as hoped, they remain convinced that it's both unavoidable and prudent.
Ocasio-Cortez is merely a willing actress poster-babe (she will earn a LOT). The role is
not different from prancing about in lovely swish skirts on some MSM-TV series. She was
selected for her looks / background (not the best re. the background, but there aren't many
candidates, which is very hopeful imho), her naiveté, ignorance, and submissive
stance. Some 'fake' younger figures -only women and male gays, girls are more acceptable to
the general public- have to be pictured as up-n-coming Dems, in a kind of sketchy and
unconvincing parade of 'diversity' and so on.
Posted by b on August 30, 2018 at 01:07 PM | Permalink
JR is spot on; The Orange Buffoon and the "witchhunt" against him (just like the "Qanon"
Hollywood-style drama-thriller) are smoke and mirrors to keep the peasants occupied with
bullcrap, while the
cleptofascists are done robbing you blind...
The simple truth is that all "western" societies and democracies are hijacked by
(((Transformer Borgs))) and, contrary to what (((snake-oil salesmen))) in $5 000 suits tell
you, there is no way out of this mess through a ballot.
"... The "soft" neoliberal bloc in the US, individuals and organizations alike, have become so pathologically consumed with the conviction that Donald Trump is the Great Orange Satan who must be removed from office forthwith, and by any means necessary, that they hysterically embrace any public figure who opposes (opposed) Trump. ..."
"... Now, the Democratic Party establishment and fellow-traveling organizations have realigned– flipped their lids– to a point in which they reflexively support everything that purports to oppose and undermine Trump. They even regard the nefarious state-security apparatchiks in the FBI and CIA, and the "brutal fixers" in the Department of "Justice" who have been assiduously working to construct a frame-up job, or crucifix upon which to hang Trump, as heroes. ..."
"... As with Obama and others similarly situated, they pretend that once the ostensible Third Way newcomer is accepted and established, they can and will gradually disclose their true political selves, and act accordingly. Regardless of how often this scenario fails to work as hoped, they remain convinced that it's both unavoidable and prudent. ..."
The "soft" neoliberal bloc in the US, individuals and organizations alike, have
become so pathologically consumed with the conviction that Donald Trump is the Great Orange
Satan who must be removed from office forthwith, and by any means necessary, that they
hysterically embrace any public figure who opposes (opposed) Trump.
I frequent prog-lib sites in the US, where I live, principally to read and post in the
comments threads. The prog-lib moderates are not really of the "left", a term which has
become a semantic placeholder for anyone or anything that doesn't explicitly identify as
right-wing or politically conservative.
But before they were traumatized by, in their view, the abominable Trump usurping the
imperial Oval Office Throne, they used to be reliably antiwar, anti-imperialist,
anti-military, anti-police state, etc.
Now, the Democratic Party establishment and fellow-traveling organizations have
realigned– flipped their lids– to a point in which they reflexively support
everything that purports to oppose and undermine Trump. They even regard the nefarious
state-security apparatchiks in the FBI and CIA, and the "brutal fixers" in the Department of
"Justice" who have been assiduously working to construct a frame-up job, or crucifix upon
which to hang Trump, as heroes.
@ karlof1 | 15
The self-proclaimed Social-Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's words praising the late
War Criminal John McCain prove she's not what she declares. _____________________________
So many bees have accumulated in my bonnet that by now I should be drenched in a
perpetually-flowing coating of honey. One of the bees is what I call Progressive-Liberal
Electoral Politics 101.
This refers to the tendency of "lesser-evil" moderates to rebut and reject doubts and
criticisms of politicians with supposedly knowing, savvy "inside politics" rationales that
explain away the criticisms.
It really hit home during Obama's 2008 campaign, when an intelligent but moderate
"progressive" relative, "Joe", became infatuated with Bonnie Prince Barry; he vainly hoped
I'd become enthralled too. Just a couple of examples:
I was outraged (but not surprised) when Obama reneged on his repeated "vows" to oppose
draconian FISA legislation that gave carte blanche to government/corporate surveillance, and
immunized corporations who'd illegally and illicitly assisted in conducting such
surveillance. Joe responded to my outrage by superciliously explaining, "Oh, he had to
do that! He can't just say and do things to keep progressives happy-- he has to reassure a
fearful and desperate public that he's 'tough' on national security issues!"
Joe also whipped out this "Oh, he had to do that!" justification at the drop of a
hat every time Obama did or didn't do something that seemed to conflict with his progressive
"Third Way" image; when nominee and president-elect Obama packed his transition team and
cabinet with reactionary Clintonista retreads and Goldman-Sachs banksters, Joe praised this
as a shrewd "pragmatic" gambit to "consolidate his support within the party". There was
always some pat prog-lib catechism blurb explaining why "he had to do that", case closed.
I've seen exactly this logic applied to AOC. To True Believers, if she seems equivocal, or
even confused, about the nature of (Democratic) socialism-- or, as here, expresses anodyne,
conformist, safe positions, they will justify this as sensible reticence. AOC has to
appeal to the elusive "center", and charm skeptical voters by not appearing unduly extreme
or, God forbid, radical.
As with Obama and others similarly situated, they pretend that once the ostensible Third
Way newcomer is accepted and established, they can and will gradually disclose their true
political selves, and act accordingly. Regardless of how often this scenario fails to work as
hoped, they remain convinced that it's both unavoidable and prudent.
Trump definitely is hell-bent of destroying the dollar system. He
created four powerful allied: China, Russia, Iran and Turkey that will work
to weaken dollar hegemony and create alternative systems. It is unclear why.
Smartphones present a viable alternative to credit cards and it is just
a matter of time that credit cards became obsolete.
Despite his promises of restraint, America has become a cat's paw in a Middle East intrigue
likely to lead to war.
Notable quotes:
"... Editor's note: This is the editorial from the July/August 2018 print edition of ..."
"... So now Israel and those Gulf states want to put Iran back in its box, and they want America to supply the muscle. Pompeo demonstrated Trump is prepared to do so with demands that no sovereign nation could accept. As our Dan Larison wrote, they would require Iran "to surrender its foreign policy decision-making to Washington and U.S. clients and to abandon all of the governments and groups that have relied on its support." ..."
"... The New Yorker piece leaves no doubt that Trump and his team welcome the new alliance aborning among Israel, the Saudis, and the UAE, pulled together by their fear and animosity directed at Iran ..."
"... So America under Trump has become a cat's paw in a Middle East intrigue that is very likely to lead to war. This is not how he campaigned in 2016, and it is not what the American people want. If Trump doesn't veer away from this path to war and the result is further Mideast blood and woe, he likely will go down in flames. That would be fitting and proper. But the rest of the world wouldn't deserve the result. ..."
Editor's note: This is the editorial from the July/August 2018 print edition of The
American Conservative.
We must confess that we never read Donald Trump's famous book, The Art of the Deal .
And we don't know if there is a chapter called "Bait and Switch." But that's precisely what
Trump perpetrated upon the American people when he crafted a campaign decrying America's
destructive and costly military Middle East involvement -- and then, as president, set in
motion events seemingly calculated to get us into another war there.
The president also promised to pull the United States out of the Iranian nuclear deal.
However foolish, it was at least an honest representation of what his intention. And ultimately
he did it. Thus it was possible to conclude that Trump was sincere on both his resolve to avoid
further Mideast wars and his intention to exit the Iranian deal. Voters could draw their own
conclusions about whether the two campaign promises were mutually exclusive or not.
But voters had no reason to conclude during the campaign that he would deal with Iran so
aggressively as to force a dangerous showdown. Two significant developments suggest Trump's
intentions far surpass his campaign rhetoric. One is the recent ultimatum delivered to Iran by
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He listed 12 demands on what Iran must do to avoid
"unprecedented" economic pressure designed to crush Iran's ability to play a major role in its
home region. The other is a remarkable New Yorker story by Adam Entous detailing how the
Trump administration has joined hands with Iran's regional enemies -- Israel, Saudi Arabia, and
the United Arab Emirates -- to strip Iran of its regional influence.
As Pompeo put it, "Iran will never again have carte blanche to dominate the Middle East." Of
course Iran has not dominated the region in any serious way for centuries, but it does have
significant influence there by dint of its size, population, economy, and military. And its
geopolitical influence expanded exponentially when America destroyed Iraq's Sunni regime and
removed a major impediment to Iran's freedom of action.
So now Israel and those Gulf states want to put Iran back in its box, and they want America
to supply the muscle. Pompeo demonstrated Trump is prepared to do so with demands that no
sovereign nation could accept. As our Dan Larison wrote, they would require Iran "to surrender
its foreign policy decision-making to Washington and U.S. clients and to abandon all of the
governments and groups that have relied on its support."
Indeed, they are reminiscent of Austria's 1914 demands of Serbia after the assassination of
Arch-Duke Ferdinand and the aggressive ultimatum delivered to Japan by U.S. Secretary of State
Cordell Hull on November 26, 1941. Both were were designed to induce war.
The New Yorker piece leaves no doubt that Trump and his team welcome the new alliance
aborning among Israel, the Saudis, and the UAE, pulled together by their fear and animosity
directed at Iran. The headline: "How the President, Israel, and the Gulf states plan to fight
Iran -- and leave the Palestinians and the Obama years behind." One Trump friend said
Netanyahu, mastermind of the anti-Iranian alliance, encountered at the White House a "blank
canvas" for his bold brush strokes. This person added: "Israel just had their way with us."
So America under Trump has become a cat's paw in a Middle East intrigue that is very
likely to lead to war. This is not how he campaigned in 2016, and it is not what the American
people want. If Trump doesn't veer away from this path to war and the result is further Mideast
blood and woe, he likely will go down in flames. That would be fitting and proper. But the rest
of the world wouldn't deserve the result.
"... 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.
"... Thus ends another episode in the seemingly interminable serial, "Bernie Sanders Tries, and Fails, to Put a Progressive Coat of Paint on the Democratic Party." Since he rocketed to political prominence in 2016 in his challenge to Hillary Clinton, the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, Sanders has played this role again and again. ..."
"... First, he appeals to the idealism of young people and the economic grievances of working people, claiming to represent a genuine alternative to the domination of American politics by the oligarchy of "millionaires and billionaires." Then he diverts those who have responded to his campaign back into the existing political framework, endorsing whatever right-wing hack emerges from the Democratic wing of the corporate-controlled two-party system. ..."
"... In the 2018 campaign, where he is not a candidate except for reelection in Vermont, Sanders has endorsed and campaigned for a number of supposedly left-wing candidates in the Democratic primaries, always based on the same pretense, that the Democratic Party can be reformed and pushed to the left, that this party of corporate America can be transformed into an instrument of social reform and popular politics. ..."
"... The requirements for receiving Sanders' support and that of "Our Revolution," the political operation formed by many of his 2016 campaign staffers, are not very demanding. The self-proclaimed socialist does not demand that his favored candidates oppose capitalism or pay lip service to socialism -- and almost none of them do. ..."
"... In other words, Sanders uses the image of radicalism and opposition to the status quo that surrounded his 2016 campaign to lend support to very conventional, pro-capitalist candidates, whose policies are well within the mainstream of the Democratic Party -- a party whose leadership has embraced most of the measures cited above, secure in the knowledge that it will not keep a single one of these promises and can always blame the Republicans for blocking them. ..."
"... In Michigan, Sanders spoke at rallies for El-Sayed, and his supporters were quite active on college campuses and on social media, mobilizing support among young people. But as in 2016, there was little effort to reach the working class, particularly minority workers in Detroit, Flint, Saginaw and other devastated industrial cities. ..."
"... Sanders and the supposedly "left" Democrats he promotes all fervently support the trade union bureaucracy, which is working overtime this year to prevent strikes by angry and militant workers -- as at United Parcel Service -- and to isolate, terminate and betray them where they break out -- as with the state-wide teachers' strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona earlier this year. ..."
"... Under these conditions, the Democratic Party is not a party that can or will can carry out social reforms in order to save capitalism, as in Roosevelt's day. It is a party that will carry out the dictates of the ruling class for war and austerity while using the services of "left" politicians like Sanders to confuse and disorient working people and youth. ..."
Michigan gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed went down to a double-digit defeat Tuesday in the Democratic primary, overwhelmed
by the near-unanimous support of the Democratic Party establishment for former state senator Gretchen Whitmer. The daughter of
former Blue Cross/Blue Shield CEO Richard Whitmer won every county in the state and will go on to face Republican State Attorney
General Bill Schuette in the November general election.
In a tweet to his supporters, El-Sayed declared: "The victory was not ours today, but the work continues. Congratulations to
@gretchenwhitmer on her primary win. Tomorrow we continue the path toward justice, equity and sustainability."
When tomorrow came, however, that "path" led to a unity luncheon at which El-Sayed and the third candidate in the race, self-funding
millionaire Shri Thanedar, pledged their full support to Whitmer. "Today we all retool and figure out how we make sure that Bill
Schuette does not become governor. I'm super committed to that," El-Sayed said. "Never has it been more important to have a Democrat
lead state government."
Thus ends another episode in the seemingly interminable serial, "Bernie Sanders Tries, and Fails, to Put a Progressive
Coat of Paint on the Democratic Party." Since he rocketed to political prominence in 2016 in his challenge to Hillary Clinton,
the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, Sanders has played this role again and again.
First, he appeals to the idealism of young people and the economic grievances of working people, claiming to represent
a genuine alternative to the domination of American politics by the oligarchy of "millionaires and billionaires." Then he diverts
those who have responded to his campaign back into the existing political framework, endorsing whatever right-wing hack emerges
from the Democratic wing of the corporate-controlled two-party system.
In 2016, this involved appealing to his supporters to back Hillary Clinton, the candidate of Wall Street and the military-intelligence
apparatus. The Clinton campaign refused to make the slightest appeal to the working class in order to preserve its support within
corporate America and, in the process, drove millions of desperate workers to stay home on Election Day or vote for Trump, allowing
the billionaire demagogue to eke out an Electoral College victory.
In the 2018 campaign, where he is not a candidate except for reelection in Vermont, Sanders has endorsed and campaigned
for a number of supposedly left-wing candidates in the Democratic primaries, always based on the same pretense, that the Democratic
Party can be reformed and pushed to the left, that this party of corporate America can be transformed into an instrument of social
reform and popular politics.
The requirements for receiving Sanders' support and that of "Our Revolution," the political operation formed by many of
his 2016 campaign staffers, are not very demanding. The self-proclaimed socialist does not demand that his favored candidates
oppose capitalism or pay lip service to socialism -- and almost none of them do.
Their platforms usually include such demands as raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, implementing "Medicare for all," interpreted
in various fashions, establishing free public college education for families earning less than $150,000 a year, and enacting universal
pre-K education. They usually promise not to accept corporate money and to support campaign finance reform.
These Sanders-backed candidates, like Sanders himself in 2016, have very little to say about foreign policy and make no appeal
whatsoever to the deep anti-war sentiment among American youth and workers. There is no discussion of Trump's threats of nuclear
war. As for trade war, most, like Sanders himself, embrace the economic nationalism that is the foundation of Trump's trade policy.
In other words, Sanders uses the image of radicalism and opposition to the status quo that surrounded his 2016 campaign
to lend support to very conventional, pro-capitalist candidates, whose policies are well within the mainstream of the Democratic
Party -- a party whose leadership has embraced most of the measures cited above, secure in the knowledge that it will not keep
a single one of these promises and can always blame the Republicans for blocking them.
In Michigan, Sanders spoke at rallies for El-Sayed, and his supporters were quite active on college campuses and on social
media, mobilizing support among young people. But as in 2016, there was little effort to reach the working class, particularly
minority workers in Detroit, Flint, Saginaw and other devastated industrial cities.
Sanders and the supposedly "left" Democrats he promotes all fervently support the trade union bureaucracy, which is working
overtime this year to prevent strikes by angry and militant workers -- as at United Parcel Service -- and to isolate, terminate
and betray them where they break out -- as with the state-wide teachers' strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona earlier
this year.
The real attitude of Sanders and El-Sayed to genuine socialism was made clear when they sought to ban supporters of the Socialist
Equality Party and SEP candidate for Congress Niles Niemuth from distributing leaflets and holding discussions outside campaign
rallies for El-Sayed.
This year, Sanders has been campaigning with a sidekick, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of
America who won the Democratic congressional nomination in the 12th District of New York, defeating incumbent Representative Joseph
Crowley, the fourth-ranking member of the Democratic leadership in the House.
Ocasio-Cortez campaigned for El-Sayed in Michigan and also for several congressional candidates, including Brent Welder in
Kansas and Cori Bush in Missouri, who also went down to defeat on August 7. Like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez claims that the Democratic
Party can be transformed into a genuinely progressive "party of the people" that will implement social reforms.
But at age 28, Ocasio-Cortez has less practice in performing the song-and-dance of pretending to be independent of the Democratic
Party establishment while working to give it a left cover and prop it up. She was clumsier in her execution, attracting notice
as she walked back a campaign demand to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and sought to downplay her previous
criticism of Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people.
After her campaign swing through the Midwest, Ocasio-Cortez traveled to the Netroots Nation conference in New Orleans, an annual
assemblage of the left flank of the Democratic Party. She told her adoring audience that her policies were not radical at all,
but firmly in the Democratic mainstream. "It's time for us to remember that universal college education, trade school, a federal
jobs guarantee, a universal basic income were not all proposed in 2016," she said. "They were proposed in 1940, by the Democratic
president of the United States."
The reference to Franklin D. Roosevelt was inadvertently revealing. Roosevelt adopted reform policies, including many of those
suggested by the social democrats of his day such as Norman Thomas. He was no socialist, but rather a clever and conscious bourgeois
politician who enacted limited reforms in a deliberate effort to save the capitalist system.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez likewise seek to save the capitalist system, but under conditions where no such reforms are possible.
The American ruling class no longer dominates the world economy, but is beset by powerful rivals in both Europe and Asia. It is
pouring resources into the military to prepare for world war. And at home, even the most modest measures run up against the intransigent
opposition of the super-rich, who control both parties and demand even greater wealth for themselves at the expense of working
people.
Under these conditions, the Democratic Party is not a party that can or will can carry out social reforms in order to save
capitalism, as in Roosevelt's day. It is a party that will carry out the dictates of the ruling class for war and austerity while
using the services of "left" politicians like Sanders to confuse and disorient working people and youth.
Thus, at Netroots Nation, the assembled "left" Democrats gave a loud ovation to Ocasio-Cortez, but also to Gina Ortiz Jones,
the Democratic nominee in the 23rd Congressional District of Texas, also young, nonwhite and female. Ortiz Jones has another characteristic,
however. She is a career Air Force intelligence officer who was deployed to Iraq, South Sudan and Libya -- all the scenes of US-instigated
bloodbaths.
Ortiz Jones is one of nearly three dozen such candidates chosen to represent the Democratic Party in contested congressional
districts around the country. Another such candidate is Elissa Slotkin, who won the Democratic nomination Tuesday in Michigan's
Eighth Congressional District. Slotkin served three tours with the CIA in Baghdad before being promoted to high-level positions
in the Pentagon and the Obama-era National Security Council.
The fake leftism of Bernie Sanders in alliance with the CIA: That is the formula for the Democratic Party in 2018.
"National Socialism made use of various means in dealing with various classes, and made
various promises depending upon the social class it needed at a particular time. In the spring
of 1933, for example, it was the revolutionary character of the Nazi movement that was
given particular emphasis in Nazi propaganda in an effort to win over the industrial workers,
and the first of May was "celebrated," but only after the aristocracy had been appeased in
Potsdam. To ascribe the success solely to political swindle, however, would be to become
entangled in a contradiction with the basic idea of freedom, and would practically exclude the
possibility of a social revolution. What must be answered is: Why do the masses allow
themselves to be politically swindled? The masses had every possibility of evaluating the
propaganda of the various parties. Why didn't they see that, while promising the workers that
the owners of the means of production would be disappropriated, Hitler promised the capitalists that
their rights would be protected?"
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"... The identity politics phenomenon sweeping across the Western world is a divide and conquer strategy that prevents the emergence of a genuine resistance to the elites. ..."
"... Each subgroup, increasingly alienated from all others, focuses on the shared identity and unique experiences of its members and prioritises its own empowerment. Anyone outside this subgroup is demoted to the rank of ally, at best. ..."
"... Precious time is spent fighting against those deemed less oppressed and telling them to 'check their privilege' as the ever-changing pecking order of the 'Oppression Olympics' plays out. The rules to this sport are as fluid as the identities taking part. One of the latest dilemmas affecting the identity politics movement is the issue of whether men transitioning to women deserve recognition and acceptance or 'whether trans women aren't women and are apparently " raping ..."
"... It is much easier to 'struggle' against an equally or slightly less oppressed group than to take the time and effort to unite with them against the common enemy - capitalism. ..."
"... There is a carefully crafted misconception that identity politics derives from Marxist thought and the meaningless phrase 'cultural Marxism', which has more to do with liberal culture than Marxism, is used to sell this line of thinking. Not only does identity politics have nothing in common with Marxism, socialism or any other strand of traditional left-wing thought, it is anathema to the very concept. ..."
"... 'An injury to one is an injury to all' has been replaced with something like 'An injury to me is all that matters'. No socialist country, whether in practice or in name only, promoted identity politics. Neither the African and Asian nations that liberated themselves from colonialist oppression nor the USSR and Eastern Bloc states nor the left-wing movements that sprung up across Latin America in the early 21st century had any time to play identity politics. ..."
"... The idea that identity politics is part of traditional left-wing thought is promoted by the right who seek to demonise left wing-movements, liberals who seek to infiltrate, backstab and destroy said left-wing movements, and misguided young radicals who know nothing about political theory and have neither the patience nor discipline to learn. The last group seek a cheap thrill that makes them feel as if they have shaken the foundations of the establishment when in reality they strengthen it. ..."
"... Identity politics is typically a modern middle-class led phenomenon that helps those in charge keep the masses divided and distracted. ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
"... Tomasz Pierscionek is a doctor specialising in psychiatry. He was previously on the board of the charity Medact, is editor of the London Progressive Journal and has appeared as a guest on RT's Sputnik and Al-Mayadeen's Kalima Horra. ..."
The
identity politics phenomenon sweeping across the Western world is a divide and conquer strategy
that prevents the emergence of a genuine resistance to the elites. A core principle of
socialism is the idea of an overarching supra-national solidarity that unites the international
working class and overrides any factor that might divide it, such as nation, race, or gender.
Workers of all nations are partners, having equal worth and responsibility in a struggle
against those who profit from their brain and muscle.
Capitalism, especially in its most evolved, exploitative and heartless form - imperialism -
has wronged certain groups of people more than others. Colonial empires tended to reserve their
greatest brutality for subjugated peoples whilst the working class of these imperialist nations
fared better in comparison, being closer to the crumbs that fell from the table of empire. The
international class struggle aims to liberate all people everywhere from the drudgery of
capitalism regardless of their past or present degree of oppression. The phrase 'an injury
to one is an injury to all' encapsulates this mindset and conflicts with the idea of
prioritising the interests of one faction of the working class over the entire collective.
Since the latter part of the 20th century, a liberally-inspired tendency has taken root
amongst the Left (in the West at least) that encourages departure from a single identity based
on class in favour of multiple identities based upon one's gender, sexuality, race or any other
dividing factor. Each subgroup, increasingly alienated from all others, focuses on the
shared identity and unique experiences of its members and prioritises its own empowerment.
Anyone outside this subgroup is demoted to the rank of ally, at best.
At the time of writing there are apparently over
70 different gender options in the West, not to mention numerous sexualities - the
traditional LGBT acronym has thus far grown to LGBTQQIP2SAA
. Adding race to the mix results in an even greater number of possible permutations or
identities. Each subgroup has its own ideology. Precious time is spent fighting against
those deemed less oppressed and telling them to 'check their privilege' as the ever-changing
pecking order of the 'Oppression Olympics' plays out. The rules to this sport are as fluid as
the identities taking part. One of the latest dilemmas affecting the identity politics movement
is the issue of whether men transitioning to women deserve recognition and acceptance or
'whether trans women aren't women and are apparently " raping "
lesbians'.
The ideology of identity politics asserts that the straight white male is at the apex of the
privilege pyramid, responsible for the oppression of all other groups. His original sin
condemns him to everlasting shame. While it is true that straight white men (as a group) have
faced less obstacles than females, non-straight men or ethnic minorities, the majority of
straight white men, past and present, also struggle to survive from paycheck to paycheck and
are not personally involved in the oppression of any other group. While most of the world's
wealthiest
individuals are Caucasian males, millions of white men exist who are both poor and
powerless. The idea of 'whiteness' is itself an ambiguous concept involving racial profiling.
For example, the Irish, Slavs and Ashkenazi Jews may look white yet have suffered more than
their fair share of famines, occupations and genocides throughout the centuries. The idea of
tying an individual's privilege to their appearance is itself a form of racism dreamed up by
woolly minded, liberal (some might say privileged) 'intellectuals' who would be superfluous in
any socialist society.
Is the middle-class ethnic minority lesbian living in Western Europe more oppressed than the
whitish looking Syrian residing under ISIS occupation? Is the British white working class male
really more privileged than a middle class woman from the same society? Stereotyping based on
race, gender or any other factor only leads to alienation and animosity. How can there be unity
amongst the Left if we are only loyal to ourselves and those most like us? Some 'white' men who
feel the Left has nothing to offer them have decided to play the identity politics game in
their search of salvation and have drifted towards supporting Trump (a billionaire with whom
they have nothing in common) or far-right movements, resulting in further alienation, animosity
and powerlessness which in turn only strengthens the position of the top 1%. People around the
world are more divided by class than any other factor.
It is much easier to 'struggle' against an equally or slightly less oppressed group than
to take the time and effort to unite with them against the common enemy - capitalism.
Fighting oppression through identity politics is at best a lazy, perverse and fetishistic form
of the class struggle led by mostly liberal, middle class and tertiary-educated activists who
understand little of left-wing political theory. At worst it is yet another tool used by the
top 1% to divide the other 99% into 99 or 999 different competing groups who are too
preoccupied with fighting their own little corner to challenge the status quo. It is ironic
that one of the major donors to the faux-left identity politics movement is the privileged
white cisgender male billionaire
George Soros , whose NGOs helped orchestrate the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine that gave
way to the emergence of far right and neo-nazi movements: the kind of people who believe in
racial superiority and do not look kindly on diversity.
There is a carefully crafted misconception that identity politics derives from Marxist
thought and the meaningless phrase 'cultural Marxism', which has more to do with liberal
culture than Marxism, is used to sell this line of thinking. Not only does identity politics
have nothing in common with Marxism, socialism or any other strand of traditional left-wing
thought, it is anathema to the very concept.
'An injury to one is an injury to all' has been replaced with something like 'An injury
to me is all that matters'. No socialist country, whether in practice or in name only, promoted
identity politics. Neither the African and Asian nations that liberated themselves from
colonialist oppression nor the USSR and Eastern Bloc states nor the left-wing movements that
sprung up across Latin America in the early 21st century had any time to play identity
politics.
The idea that identity politics is part of traditional left-wing thought is promoted by
the right who seek to demonise left wing-movements, liberals who seek to infiltrate, backstab
and destroy said left-wing movements, and misguided young radicals who know nothing about
political theory and have neither the patience nor discipline to learn. The last group seek a
cheap thrill that makes them feel as if they have shaken the foundations of the establishment
when in reality they strengthen it.
Identity politics is typically a modern middle-class led phenomenon that helps those in
charge keep the masses divided and distracted. In the West you are free to choose any
gender or sexuality, transition between these at whim, or perhaps create your own, but you are
not allowed to question the foundations of capitalism or liberalism. Identity politics is the
new opiate of the masses and prevents organised resistance against the system. Segments of the
Western Left even believe such aforementioned 'freedoms' are a bellwether of progress and an
indicator of its cultural superiority, one that warrants export abroad be it softly via NGOs or
more bluntly through colour revolutions and regime change.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Tomasz Pierscionek is a doctor specialising in psychiatry. He was previously on the
board of the charity Medact, is editor of the London Progressive Journal and has appeared as a
guest on RT's Sputnik and Al-Mayadeen's Kalima Horra.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily represent those of RT. Read more
"... While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than " a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. ..."
"... So you plan to continue this McCarthy Russian BS? You didn't speak out when you got cheated in the primaries, and you didn't seem to care that Hillary was using her own paid troll army. Integrity matters Bernie and you are losing yours. ..."
"... You stopped speaking for me and millions of others when you caved to crooked HRC. No it was NOT clear that Russia was "deeply involved in the election. What is CLEAR is your betrayal of your followers and cover up of the election fraud perpetrated by DNC! Everybody knows... ..."
"... Bernie, that's MIC propaganda. Stop helping it. There are millions of reasons Trump should not be president. We don't need a hyped up corporate fairytale to make that point https://t.co/7FAwb47LtB ..."
"... Democratic party jingoism in 2020 will be extra-ordinary with candidates each trying to out do each other how they will fuck over Putin and the Russian nation. There will be a shit load of public loyalty testing against any third party candidate by the democrats. ..."
It has been clear to everyone (except Donald Trump) that Russia was deeply involved in the 2016 election and intends to be
involved in 2018. It is the American people who should be deciding the political future of our country, not Mr. Putin and the
Russian oligarchs.
However, Sanders had already committed the unforgivable
sin of criticizing the Democratic establishment candidate from the left. There is simply no way of coming back from that treason.
Despite his stance, Sanders has also been constantly presented as another Russian agent, with the Washington Post (11/12/17) asking
its readers, "When Russia interferes with the 2020 election on behalf of Democratic nominee Bernie Sanders, how will liberals
respond?" The message is clear: The progressive wave rising across America is and will be a consequence of Russia, not of the
failures of the system, nor of the Democrats.
It isn't just progressive politicians that are all traitors. Movements like Black Lives Matter are also traitors for Russia.
It is the American people who should be deciding the political future of our country, not Mr. Putin and the Russian oligarchs.
Hey, Bernie. The American people were the ones who should have decided who won the primary, not Hillary, the DNC and the delegates.
That you are blaming Her loss on Russia instead of admitting that the American people rejected her makes you nothing more than
a democratic puppet. How embarrassing for you.
Every Black voter should abandon the DP until they apologize for their disrespect for the BLM and saying that they only started
protesting cops killing Blacks because Russia manipulated them into doing so.
Eichenwald thinks that our intelligence agencies are patriots who have spent their lives working on keeping us safe does he?
I agree with Dmitry Orlov's take on them.
The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its allies and pocket as much of it as
possible while pretending to defend it from phantom aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on
ineffective and overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they are specially
organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and so on.
....
the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial,
economic and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile conflicts -- the largest
single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your
own country, for any conceivable definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself.
While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than
" a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. "
And let's not forget how many
coups
and false flag events they had a hand in creating that have cost so much misery and death.
One major advancement in their state of the art has been in moving from real false flag operations, à la 9/11, to fake false
flag operations, à la fake East Gouta chemical attack in Syria (since fully discredited). The Russian election meddling story
is perhaps the final step in this evolution: no New York skyscrapers or Syrian children were harmed in the process of concocting
this fake narrative, and it can be kept alive seemingly forever purely through the furious effort of numerous flapping lips.
It is now a pure confidence scam. If you are less then impressed with their invented narratives, then you are a conspiracy
theorist or, in the latest revision, a traitor.
The real puppets are the ones who believe in this silly story that Russia is pulling Trump's strings and that the GOP are also
Russian puppets. Good grief!
The others show that there are others out there that have seen through this propaganda crap. I'd like to see the breakdown
of Hillary supporters that believe Russia Gate and the Bernie supporters that don't. Most of the Trump supporters think it's phony
so what made Hillary's believe in something that everyone should be laughing at?
You deserve a lot of credit. Russia interfered in your favor, yet you are man enough to admit that they interfered. Thank
you Bernie!
So you plan to continue this McCarthy Russian BS? You didn't speak out when you got cheated in the primaries, and you
didn't seem to care that Hillary was using her own paid troll army. Integrity matters Bernie and you are losing yours.
You stopped speaking for me and millions of others when you caved to crooked HRC. No it was NOT clear that Russia was
"deeply involved in the election. What is CLEAR is your betrayal of your followers and cover up of the election fraud perpetrated
by DNC! Everybody knows...
Bernie, that's MIC propaganda. Stop helping it. There are millions of reasons Trump should not be president. We don't
need a hyped up corporate fairytale to make that point https://t.co/7FAwb47LtB
Democratic party jingoism in 2020 will be extra-ordinary with candidates each trying to out do each other how they will
fuck over Putin and the Russian nation. There will be a shit load of public loyalty testing against any third party candidate
by the democrats.
The democrats (and media cohorts) have become an apocolyptic death cult. The language that comes from them is infused with
the language of conspiracies, violence, treason, aggression and demonization.
And here is the thing, Bernie to survive electorally will have to become a cult member. Effectively he will have to be pro-war
with Russia. He will be giving from the the Left supposed support for aggressive action andmilitarism toward Russia.
I fear that if a democrat becomes president in 2020 (it won't be Bernie), is elected president that in the year of the midterms
in 2022, the US will start a real war with Russia which has a highly likehood of going nuclear.
One thing I don't understand about MAGA. The rallying cry is to make America great again,
but the actions are to revert the government and tax system to when America wasn't that
great.
The height of American civilization was the 50s or 60s, but all the actions are to bring
the state back to how it was in pre-WW1 or the 1920s. It was the stronger labour controls and
high taxes of the 50s that coincided with American dominance. The kind that if someone tried
to introduce them today they'd be called socialist.
" Indeed, socialism sounds good but, when practiced, leads to disaster"
Im sure the author is thinking of Venezuela. But Venezuela, like all of South America, is
a cartel infested, militaristic, corrupt country run by a megalomaniac. It's more oligarch
than socialist.
He should ask the question: if socialism in a stable society, like say Sweden, means free
health care & education, why do people say the US has a low tax rate? Just add that cost
right to your taxes, and bim bam boom the US tax rate is probably more than a 100%, because,
lets be honest, the average $55k/year for a family of 4 will NEVER EVER cover the $1 million
it would take to send your kids to college debt free.
"... Sanders's support for the anti-Russia and anti-Wikileaks campaign is all the more telling because he was himself the victim of efforts by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party leadership to block his 2016 campaign. In June and July 2016, Wikileaks published internal Democratic emails in which officials ridiculed the Sanders campaign, forcing the DNC to issue a public apology: "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email." ..."
"... In the aftermath of his election campaign, Sanders was elevated into a top-level position in the Democratic Party caucus in the US Senate. His first response to the inauguration of Trump was to declare his willingness to "work with" the president, closely tracking remarks of Obama that the election of Trump was part of an "intramural scrimmage" in which all sides were on the same team. As the campaign of the military-intelligence agencies intensifies, however, Sanders is toeing the line. ..."
"... The Sanders campaign did not push the Democrats to the left, but rather the state apparatus of the ruling class brought Sanders in to give a "left" veneer to a thoroughly right-wing party. ..."
"... There is no contradiction between the influx of military-intelligence candidates into the Democratic Party and the Democrats' making use of the services of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to give the party a "left" cover. Both the CIA Democrats and their pseudo-left "comrades" agree on the most important questions: the defense of the global interests of American imperialism and a more aggressive intervention in the Syrian civil war and other areas where Washington and Moscow are in conflict. ..."
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders appeared on the CBS interview program "Face the Nation"
Sunday and fully embraced the anti-Russia campaign of the US military-intelligence apparatus,
backed by the Democratic Party and much of the media.
In response to a question from CBS host Margaret Brennan, Sanders unleashed a torrent of
denunciations of Trump's meeting and press conference in Helsinki with Russian President
Vladimir Putin. A preliminary transcript reads:
SANDERS: "I will tell you that I was absolutely outraged by his behavior in Helsinki, where
he really sold the American people out. And it makes me think that either Trump doesn't
understand what Russia has done, not only to our elections, but through cyber attacks against
all parts of our infrastructure, either he doesn't understand it, or perhaps he is being
blackmailed by Russia, because they may have compromising information about him.
"Or perhaps also you have a president who really does have strong authoritarian tendencies.
And maybe he admires the kind of government that Putin is running in Russia. And I think all of
that is a disgrace and a disservice to the American people. And we have got to make sure that
Russia does not interfere, not only in our elections, but in other aspects of our lives."
These comments, which echo remarks he gave at a rally in Kansas late last week, signal
Sanders' full embrace of the right-wing campaign launched by the Democrats and backed by
dominant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus. Their opposition to Trump is centered
on issues of foreign policy, based on the concern that Trump, due to his own "America First"
brand of imperialist strategy, has run afoul of geostrategic imperatives that are considered
inviolable -- in particular, the conflict with Russia.
Sanders did not use his time on a national television program to condemn Trump's persecution
of immigrants and the separation of children from their parents, or to denounce his naming of
ultra-right jurist Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, or to attack the White House
declaration last week that the "war on poverty" had ended victoriously -- in order to justify
the destruction of social programs for impoverished working people. Nor did he seek to advance
his supposedly left-wing program on domestic issues like health care, jobs and education.
Sanders' embrace of the anti-Russia campaign is not surprising, but it is instructive. This
is, after all, an individual who presented himself as "left-wing," even a "socialist." During
the 2016 election campaign, he won the support of millions of people attracted to his call for
a "political revolution" against the "billionaire class." For Sanders, who has a long history
of opportunist and pro-imperialist politics in the orbit of the Democratic Party, the aim of
the campaign was always to direct social discontent into establishment channels, culminating in
his endorsement of the campaign of Hillary Clinton.
Sanders's support for the anti-Russia and anti-Wikileaks campaign is all the more
telling because he was himself the victim of efforts by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic
Party leadership to block his 2016 campaign. In June and July 2016, Wikileaks published
internal Democratic emails in which officials ridiculed the Sanders campaign, forcing the DNC
to issue a public apology: "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and
sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the
inexcusable remarks made over email."
In the aftermath of his election campaign, Sanders was elevated into a top-level
position in the Democratic Party caucus in the US Senate. His first response to the
inauguration of Trump was to declare his willingness to "work with" the president, closely
tracking remarks of Obama that the election of Trump was part of an "intramural scrimmage" in
which all sides were on the same team. As the campaign of the military-intelligence agencies
intensifies, however, Sanders is toeing the line.
The experience is instructive not only in relation to Sanders, but to an entire social
milieu and the political perspective with which it is associated. This is what it means to work
within the Democratic Party. The Sanders campaign did not push the Democrats to the left,
but rather the state apparatus of the ruling class brought Sanders in to give a "left" veneer
to a thoroughly right-wing party.
New political figures, many associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are
being brought in for the same purpose. As Sanders gave his anti-Russia rant, Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez sat next to him nodding her agreement. The 28-year-old member of the DSA last
month won the Democratic nomination in New York's 14th Congressional District, unseating the
Democratic incumbent, Joseph Crowley, the fourth-ranking member of the Democratic leadership in
the House of Representatives.
Since then, Ocasio-Cortez has been given massive and largely uncritical publicity by the
corporate media, summed up in an editorial puff piece by the New York Times that
described her as "a bright light in the Democratic Party who has brought desperately needed
energy back to New York politics "
Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders were jointly interviewed from Kansas, where the two appeared
Friday at a campaign rally for James Thompson, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the
US House of Representatives from the Fourth Congressional District, based in Wichita, in an
August 7 primary election.
Thompson might appear to be an unusual ally for the "socialist" Sanders and the DSA member
Ocasio-Cortez. His campaign celebrates his role as an Army veteran, and his website opens under
the slogan "Join the Thompson Army," followed by pledges that the candidate will "Fight for
America." In an interview with the Associated Press, Thompson indicated that despite his
support for Sanders' call for "Medicare for all," and his own endorsement by the DSA, he was
wary of any association with socialism. "I don't like the term socialist, because people do
associate that with bad things in history," he said.
Such anticommunism fits right in with the anti-Russian campaign, which is the principal
theme of the Democratic Party in the 2018 elections. As the World Socialist Web
Site has pointed out for many months, the
real thrust of the Democratic Party campaign is demonstrated by its recruitment as
congressional candidates of dozens of former CIA and military intelligence agents, combat
commanders from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and war planners from the Pentagon, State
Department and White House.
There is no contradiction between the influx of military-intelligence candidates into
the Democratic Party and the Democrats' making use of the services of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez
to give the party a "left" cover. Both the CIA Democrats and their pseudo-left "comrades" agree
on the most important questions: the defense of the global interests of American imperialism
and a more aggressive intervention in the Syrian civil war and other areas where Washington and
Moscow are in conflict.
Rand Paul blocks Sanders's Russia resolution, calls it 'crazy hatred' against Trump
By Jordain Carney
Sen.
Rand Paul
(R-Ky.) on Thursday
blocked a resolution from Sen.
Bernie
Sanders
(I-Vt.) that backed the intelligence community's assessment of Russian election interference and demanded
President Trump
speak with special
counsel
Robert Mueller
.
Sanders
asked for unanimous consent to try to pass his resolution, saying senators "must act" if they are "serious about
preserving American democracy."
"The Congress must make it clear that we accept the assessment of our intelligence community with regard to
Russian election interfering in our country and in other democracies," Sanders said during a Senate floor speech.
Under Senate rules, any one senator could block his request.
"The hatred for the president is so intense that partisans would rather risk war than give diplomacy a chance," he
said.
Paul questioned why senators would not want to have relations with Russia.
"We should stand firm and say 'Stay the hell out of our elections,' but we should not stick our head in the ground
and say we're not going to talk to them," he said.
But Sanders fired back that Paul's objection was unrelated to
his resolution, which he noted doesn't push for cutting off talks with the Russians.
"What the senator said is totally irrelevant to what is in this resolution," Sanders said.
The resolution comes as Congress is weighing how to push back against Russia after Trump sparked bipartisan backlash
during his meeting with Putin on Monday in Helsinki, Finland.
Trump refused to condemn Russia for interfering in
the 2016 presidential election during a joint press conference on Monday. He then tried to walk back his comments on
Tuesday, saying he accepted the intelligence community's findings but added that "other people" could have been
involved too.
"... This short communiqué is to my friends who are trapped in hating Donald Trump so much that any "alternative fact" (as long as it is against President Trump) is virtue to them. They are not realizing that the feud among the 1%, regardless of their Party affiliation is a family feud. The extreme right wing politicians and billionaires run both the Democratic and Republican parties. Their arguments are not about our state of healthcare, education or jobs. ..."
"... Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. ..."
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above
This short communiqué is to my friends who are trapped in hating Donald Trump so
much that any "alternative fact" (as long as it is against President Trump) is virtue to them.
They are not realizing that the feud among the 1%, regardless of their Party affiliation is a
family feud. The extreme right wing politicians and billionaires run both the Democratic and
Republican parties. Their arguments are not about our state of healthcare, education or
jobs.
Friends who are dissatisfied with the current political situation (instead of organizing
against the reactionary policies of the current administration or question the congress for
approving the Tax Cut for the rich) are competing in posting the Democratic Party
hysteria against Russia on the social media. They are distracted by the false narrative that
"American Democracy" is under "attack" by one man in Russia, President Putin who has Mr. Trump
in his "pocket".
Those who believe such an absurd storyline rely on the U.S. Intelligence agencies reports
and findings! These are the same agencies that informed Americans that Saddam Hussein had
Weapons of Mass Destruction. They are the same people who justified war against Iraq in 2003
which opened the gates of hell in that region for decades. Now, after they had succeeded in
blowing up people and countries in the Middle East on false information, the ladies and
gentlemen of the U.S. intelligence agencies have found a new bogeyman to scare the American
people. This is just another DISTRACTION , period.
The fascistic minded President of the U.S. is not in anybody's pocket. As a matter of fact,
today it is the political pocket pickers in Washington who are robbing the American working
people and holding us as hostages. When was the last time that you saw the White House or
Congress address the working people's real needs and problems? Some friends are mesmerized by
the nastiness of the 1% cultural values. However exposing Mr. Trump sexual affair with a "Porn
Star" will not help the American people's struggle for the Minimum Wage or Protecting
Environment, Immigration and so on. This is just another DISTRACTION .
Under bright light, President Trump and his opponents play out their childish, embarrassing
show against each other in front of the corrupt media, while in the shadow of
DISTRACTION they are limiting our FREEDOM OF SPEECH and taking away our democratic
rights. Both parties are afraid of the energy and determination of workers, farmers, women and
youth which eventually could challenge the entire existing miserable system. Historically, they
are well aware of the potential of revolt by people who are organized and conscious. The ladies
and gentlemen in charge of the U.S. foreign and domestic policy are incapable of solving our
social or political problems; the only thing they are good at is to create decoys and
DISTRACTION . The gossip shows on the corporate media are blindfolding us to see the
slaughters in Gaza or Yemen or the devastating consequences of the Trump administration Trade
War drive against the EU and China 1 on American farmers and workers.
Independent and democratic minded people SHOULD NOT take any side between the different
factions of the 1%. We should not allow the 1% use us as their pawns to propagate their hate
and disunity among people.
The White House and Congress are obsolete. Independent and democratic minded people should
UNITE, ORGANIZE and seek a new operating system – a system that puts people's need over
profit.
*
Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the
United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
"... The wing of the Democratic Party that looks for the dollars instead of the votes is called "The Third Way" and it presents itself as representing the supposedly vast political center, nothing "extremist" or "marginal." But didn't liberal Republicanism go out when Nelson Rockefeller did? Conservative Democrats are like liberal Republicans -- they attract flies and billionaires, but not many votes. And didn't the Rockefeller drug laws fill our prisons with millions of pathetic drug-users and small drug-dealers but not with the kingpins in either the narcotics business or the bankster rackets (such as had crashed the economy in 2008 -- and the Third Way Democrat who had been the exceptional politician and liar that was so slick he actually did attract many votes, President Barack Obama, told the banksters privately, on 27 March 2009, "I'm not out there to go after you. I'm protecting you." And, he did keep his promise to them, though not to his voters .) ..."
"... They want another Barack Obama. There aren't any more of those (unless, perhaps, Michelle Obama enters the contest). But, even if there were: How many Democrats would fall for that scam, yet again -- after the disaster of 2016? ..."
"... Maybe the Third Way is right, and there's a sucker born every minute. But if that's what the Democratic Party is going to rely upon, then America's stunningly low voter-participation rate is set to plunge even lower, because even more voters than before will either be leaving the Presidential line blank, or even perhaps voting for the Republican candidate (as some felt driven to do in 2016). ..."
"... Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity . He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. ..."
The wing of the Democratic Party that looks for the dollars instead of the votes is
called "The Third Way" and it presents itself as representing the supposedly vast political
center, nothing "extremist" or "marginal." But didn't liberal Republicanism go out when Nelson
Rockefeller did? Conservative Democrats are like liberal Republicans -- they attract flies and
billionaires, but not many votes. And didn't the Rockefeller drug laws fill our prisons with
millions of pathetic drug-users and small drug-dealers but not with the kingpins in either the
narcotics business or the bankster rackets (such as had crashed the economy in 2008 -- and the
Third Way Democrat who had been the exceptional politician and liar that was so slick he
actually did attract many votes, President Barack Obama, told the banksters privately, on 27
March 2009, "I'm not out there to go after you.
I'm protecting you." And, he did
keep his promise to them, though not to his voters .)
They're at it, yet again. On July 22nd, NBC News's Alex Seitz-Wald headlined
"Sanders' wing of the party terrifies moderate Dems. Here's how they plan to stop it." And
he described what was publicly available from the 3-day private meeting in Columbus Ohio of The
Third Way, July 18-20, the planning conference between the Party's chiefs and its billionaires.
Evidently, they hate Bernie Sanders and are already scheming and spending in order to block
him, now a second time, from obtaining the Party's Presidential nomination. "Anxiety has
largely been kept to a whisper among the party's moderates and big donors, with some of the
major fundraisers pressing operatives on what can be done to stop the Vermonter if he runs for
the White House again." This passage in Seitz-Wald's article was especially striking to me:
The gathering here was an effort to offer an attractive alternative to the rising
Sanders-style populist left in the upcoming presidential race. Where progressives see a rare
opportunity to capitalize on an energized Democratic base, moderates see a better chance to
win over Republicans turned off by Trump.
The fact that a billionaire real estate developer, Winston Fisher, cohosted the event
and addressed attendees twice, underscored that this group is not interested in the class
warfare vilifying the "millionaires and billionaires" found in Sanders' stump speech.
"You're not going to make me hate somebody just because they're rich. I want to be
rich!" Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, a potential presidential candidate, said Friday to
laughs.
I would reply to congressman Ryan's remark: If you want to be rich, then get the hell out of
politics! Don't run for President! I don't want you there! And that's no joke!
Anyone who doesn't recognize that an inevitable trade-off exists between serving the public
and serving oneself, is a libertarian -- an Ayn Rander, in fact -- and there aren't many of
those in the Democratic Party, but plenty of them are in the Republican Party.
Just as a clergyman in some faiths is supposed to take a vow of chastity, and in some faiths
also to take a vow of poverty, in order to serve "the calling" instead of oneself, anyone who
enters 'public service' and who aspires to "be rich" is inevitably inviting corruption
-- not prepared to do war against it . That kind of politician is a Manchurian
candidate, like Obama perhaps, but certainly not what this or any country needs, in any case.
Voters like that can be won only by means of deceit, which is the way that politicians like
that do win.
No decent political leader enters or stays in politics in order to "be rich," because no
political leader can be decent who isn't in it as a calling, to public service, and as a
repudiation, of any self-service in politics.
Republican Party voters invite corrupt government, because their Party's ideology is
committed to it ("Freedom [for the rich]!"); but the only Democratic Party voters who at all
tolerate corrupt politicians (such as Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York State) are actually
Republican Democrats -- people who are confused enough so as not really to care much about what
they believe; whatever their garbage happens to be, they believe in it and don't want to know
differently than it.
The Third Way is hoping that there are
enough of such 'Democrats' so that they can, yet again, end up with a Third Way Democrat being
offered to that Party's voters in 2020, just like happened in 2016. They want another Barack
Obama. There aren't any more of those (unless, perhaps, Michelle Obama enters the contest).
But, even if there were: How many Democrats would fall for that scam, yet again -- after the
disaster of 2016?
Maybe the Third Way is right, and there's a sucker born every minute. But if that's what the
Democratic Party is going to rely upon, then America's stunningly low voter-participation rate
is set to plunge even lower, because even more voters than before will either be leaving the
Presidential line blank, or even perhaps voting for the Republican candidate (as some felt
driven to do in 2016).
The Third Way is the way to the death of democracy, if it's not already dead . It is no answer
to anything, except to the desires of billionaires -- both Republican and Democratic.
The center of American politics isn't the center of America's aristocracy. The goal
of groups such as The Third Way is to fool the American public to equate the two. The
result of such groups is the contempt that America's
public have for America's Government . But, pushed too far, mass disillusionment becomes
revolution. Is that what America's billionaires are willing to risk? They might get it.
Note: The term Progressive is now so mutilated that it's no longer effective as an identifier
of political affiliation. To be a real Progressive: one must be Anti-War, except in the most dire
of circumstances, which includes being Anti-Imperialist/Anti-Empire; 2nd, one must be Pro-Justice
as in promoting Rule of Law over all else; 3rd, one must be tolerant and willing to listen to
others; and 4th, work for Win-Win outcomes and denounce Zero-sum as the smoke screen for
increasing inequality
The so-called "insurgents" are no such thing. That's a standard Democrat scam to keep
potential apostates roped in. Bernie Sanders always has been a con artist. Not that it's any
secret: His entire senate record is of worthless grandstanding and zero real monkey-wrenching
or grid-locking action .
As for his campaign, from day one he proclaimed he was a loyal Democrat soldier and that
he would support Clinton and do all he could to deliver his supporters to her. He dutifully
kept that promise. Along the way and since the 2016 election he's done zero toward building
any kind of grassroots alternative. That's because he never intended to be part of any real
alternative in the first place. And that's why the DNC always has supported his "independent"
senate campaigns - he does an excellent con-job on behalf of their agenda.
And today he's fully on board with the Russiagate campaign, doing all he can to rope in
"progressives" who might be having doubts about the anti-Russia lunacy. His usual job.
As for the latest wave of progressive heroes, for just one typical example I'll observe
that Ocasio-Cortez immediately after her primary win lost no time scrubbing the anti-war
plank from her site and publicly retracting her previous statements on behalf of the
Palestinians. The Democrat con always runs like clock-work.
And as the post describes, with Russiagate the fake insurgents provide a new service to
the Party: To serve as bogeymen for internally-directed Party propaganda, as an
organizational vehicle to "get out the vote" among establishment loyalists.
There's no way forward with the Democrat Party. It always has been a death trap for all
progressive, let alone radical aspirations. The Party and its partisans must politically
perish completely, as a prerequisite for any good transformation of America.
"... Dave Lindorff is an award-winning US journalist, former Asia correspondent for Business Week, and founder of the collectively-owned journalists' news site ThisCantBeHappening.net. ..."
Socialism as a political force has never had an easy time in the US, a country that
mythologizes the go-it-alone entrepreneur and the iconoclastic loner. For a brief time in the
period between the two world wars, socialism was popular enough among US workers that American
Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs was able to win almost a million votes for president in 1912
(about 6 percent of the popular vote at that time). But after two brutal government anti-red
campaigns in the '20s and '50s that included Debs' arrest, the blacklisting of many actors,
teachers and journalists in the 1950s on charges of being Communists, and finally decades of
government and media propaganda equating socialism with Communism, Bolshevism and Maoism,
socialism has had few adherents and little public acceptance among most Americans.
Until now, that is.
Things started to change in late 2015 and the spring of 2016 when the independent US Senator
Bernie Sanders, who has long called himself a "democratic socialist," surprised
everyone by running a popular grass-roots primary campaign that nearly defeated Hillary Clinton
for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. (Many believe hidden favoritism and
sabotage by the leadership of the Democratic Party may have stolen that primary from
Sanders.)
Now, in part because the Sanders campaign has made socialist ideas like national healthcare
and free college education – once not on any Democratic candidate's campaign agenda
– suddenly acceptable topics for political discourse, his millions of enthusiastic
youthful supporters from that campaign are openly considering socialism as a possible answer to
the economic problems they face.
And as those young people, and older folks too, look for answers, more and more candidates
are willing to espouse them. And like Ocasio-Cortez and the four socialists who won primaries
in Pennsylvania, they are showing that proposing or supporting socialist programs, and even
calling oneself a socialist, can be a winning strategy.
One sign that this sudden popularity of socialist politics and ideas is not just a
short-time phenomenon is that it's showing up most among younger people, many of whom hadn't
shown much interest in politics before. A Harvard University study
published in April for example, found that 51 percent of those between the ages of 18-29
disliked capitalism, with a majority preferring socialism as a political system. A year
earlier, the conservative magazine National Review wrote with alarm that in the wake of the
Sanders campaign, a
poll by the conservative American Culture and Faith Institute had found 40 percent of
Americans saying they favored socialism over capitalism.
... ./.. ...
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Dave Lindorff is an award-winning US journalist, former Asia correspondent for Business
Week, and founder of the collectively-owned journalists' news site
ThisCantBeHappening.net.
Bernie Town Hall Tonight: Changing The Narrative Again By Using His Platform To Give People's Stories A Chance to Be Heard
Where Corporate Media Utterly Fails
Mark from Queens on Mon, 07/16/2018 - 9:18pm This is gonna be quick. I just remembered that Bernie Sanders is holding another
one of his excellent town halls tonight. This one is called "CEO's vs. Workers."
Before the negativity comes in, let me say clearly that this isn't a Bernie is our savior bit or arguing for electoral salvation
or whatever. It's simply a recognition of someone with a platform putting in the time to make sure these stories are seen and documented
for posterity, despite whatever limitations inherent in the broadcast's reach. I see this as highly commendable - and potent.
The story here that made me turn on the computer and hit "new essay" was from a young woman working for Disneyland in Anaheim,
who tells of how brutal it is trying to survive on $12 an hour, having to cram roommates in to barely make the rent.
Then she mentions that some of her co-workers are living in their cars. Many have lost their homes and/or living in motels.
There's also a Tent City, which extends to a larger Orange County problem, where more Disney co-workers are living. One of here co-workers
was so ashamed of her situation that she told nobody that she was living in her car - and went missing and later found dead in it.
She then admits a great fear of losing her home, saying there are no resources to be found if you're in that position. (Her story
begins around the 18min mark).
Quite frankly, it's fucking heartbreaking and angering to listen to these people humbly tell their stories to the public without
shame.
People in this country are not hearing these stories . And because of it, are easily kept distracted by corporate media
manufactured controversy and divide and conquer by partisan ideologues. They're not having their own realities reflected back to
them; are instead bred to be in a constant state of fear about things that don't effect their everyday lives and led to believe relatively
inconsequential things are more important than fundamental ones that do effect their daily lives.
Every one of these Bernie townhalls (I've seen two others) have been riveting. This guy is single-handedly trying to give a platform
to marginalized and dispossessed voices. Nothing like this ever gets on tv. Anytime there's a corporate attempt to do something similar
it's a highly controlled, stilted affair. His are the opposite.
To me this is an example of how to change the narrative, which is the linchpin to everything. Why can't we get more people at
a quicker pace to align themselves in solidarity to what we think and espouse here? Because there isn't a forum for the downtrodden,
the castaways, the ripped off, the overworked and underpaid, the isolated, to tell their stories on a large scale. When people here
stories firsthand there is a much better chance of building the kid of empathy and compassion at the heart of forming coalitions
and/or support for those outside of one's life's station or class.
Of course it's all relative. And Bernie, despite being the most popular politician by far, doesn't have the reach of CNN. But
it is something. And if this could inspire more of these types of panel discussion that dignify the working class it could revolutionize
how narratives
get built.
This is the difference between people reading about this stuff and moving on, and having to look into the eyes of the afflicted
and being moved to act.
If this can't work on the American public to rile up indignation and compassion we're completely hopeless.
Simply put, firsthand stories are so potent. He's really onto something with these townhalls giving folks the opportunity to
speak their truth. No pundits, annoying talking heads, slick stage set.
No matter what you think of him, there's nobody in politics who comes close to what he's done to change the narrative. He continues
to impact and expand it to include the real issues of people's lives (lack of healthcare, joblessness, being underpaid and overworked,
etc.) that are completely ignored by the MSM.
Change The Narrative. Propaganda. What is the public corralled into talking about next? Almost always something to distract
from how bad things really are.
Simply put, firsthand stories are so potent. He's really onto something with these townhalls giving folks the opportunity to
speak their truth. No pundits, annoying talking heads, slick stage set.
No matter what you think of him, there's nobody in politics who comes close to what he's done to change the narrative. He continues
to impact and expand it to include the real issues of people's lives (lack of healthcare, joblessness, being underpaid and overworked,
etc.) that are completely ignored by the MSM.
Change The Narrative. Propaganda. What is the public corralled into talking about next? Almost always something to distract
from how bad things really are.
But Burnme is not.
Once again he refuses to broadcast the spectacle of american political corruption while laying the blame on russia.
Rather than make clear that interference in our elections is unacceptable, Trump instead accepted Putin's denials and cast
doubt on the conclusions of our intelligence community. This is not normal.
@Pricknick is the phrase "This is not normal." We are a fascist state, and it IS normal, just as the kidnapping and torturing
small children by Trump's Gestapo is normal. (We might want to do something about it?)
Ditto Trump's obsequious ass kissing of Putin in Helsinki, proving he is a Russian asset the same way Frank Burns (on MASH)
was a North Korean asset.
Bernie, however, points out the obvious (or what would be obvious if anyone cared to look), that even "blue states" hide an
economic hellscape. Obama's bailout of the banks and reinflation of the housing bubble enriched the One Percent but left everyone
else behind. Those who can't afford $750,000 crap shacks either end up homeless or get stuck with hours-long commutes to reach
their jobs. Here in Portland we have so many tent cities you would think you stepped back into the 1930s.
Welcome to Hell. Maybe Bernie and others can show us the way out. If only we listen this time.
But Burnme is not.
Once again he refuses to broadcast the spectacle of american political corruption while laying the blame on russia.
Rather than make clear that interference in our elections is unacceptable, Trump instead accepted Putin's denials and cast
doubt on the conclusions of our intelligence community. This is not normal.
@SancheLlewellyn
And PLEASE don't misunderstand me, I'm NOT dismissing their plight. I'm glad that someone is showing the desperation of people
whose problems are NOT from their life choices i.e. prison, drugs, dropping out of High School.
Move to the Midwest. Housing is expensive here too, but $750,000 is a mansion. In my Chicago Suburb there are still houses
under $150,000, usually small (1200-1500 sq ft) 1950's tract houses. There are 20 houses right now for sale between $250,000 and
$300,000, quite nice houses built in the last thirty years. There are even 14 houses between $400,000 and $500,000 that look so
upscale I can only dream about them (and dream of affording them). Illinois minimum wage is only $8.25 but even McDonald's is
paying $12.
Taxes are regressive and horrendous. And the Weather sucks big time. But it's better than trying to live on $12 an hour in California.
The coasts are now only for the elite and their servants.
The weather is better in the South, but society and politics are extremely conservative.
#2 is the phrase "This is not normal." We are a fascist state, and it IS normal, just as the kidnapping and torturing small
children by Trump's Gestapo is normal. (We might want to do something about it?)
Ditto Trump's obsequious ass kissing of Putin in Helsinki, proving he is a Russian asset the same way Frank Burns (on MASH)
was a North Korean asset.
Bernie, however, points out the obvious (or what would be obvious if anyone cared to look), that even "blue states" hide an
economic hellscape. Obama's bailout of the banks and reinflation of the housing bubble enriched the One Percent but left everyone
else behind. Those who can't afford $750,000 crap shacks either end up homeless or get stuck with hours-long commutes to reach
their jobs. Here in Portland we have so many tent cities you would think you stepped back into the 1930s.
Welcome to Hell. Maybe Bernie and others can show us the way out. If only we listen this time.
@SancheLlewellyn I'm sorry but come on now. As for this being normal you'd be correct but it surely wasn't only Trump
that normalized this, it's been normalized for a long damned time but most simply don't look at it, especially when it's a "Democrat"
at the helm with a pretty smiling face assuring us that everything will be fine as long as we play along with them.
Hell is already here but buying into that Russia crapola is a cop out - Russia didn't cut high end taxes repeatedly while the
rest of the country went to shit. Russia didn't bail out the banks at taxpayer expense and tell the taxpayers to pound sand and
STFU. Russia is not fighting wars for global domination all over the planet and it does not have almost 1000 foreign bases all
over the world.
Can Bernie save us? He'd best get off that Russia crap as even he knows good and damned well that our continued "defense" budgets
cannot continue alongside Medicare for All, etc, etc, etc. THAT is the elephant in the room that apparently even Bernie is simply
not willing to address.
#2 is the phrase "This is not normal." We are a fascist state, and it IS normal, just as the kidnapping and torturing small
children by Trump's Gestapo is normal. (We might want to do something about it?)
Ditto Trump's obsequious ass kissing of Putin in Helsinki, proving he is a Russian asset the same way Frank Burns (on MASH)
was a North Korean asset.
Bernie, however, points out the obvious (or what would be obvious if anyone cared to look), that even "blue states" hide an
economic hellscape. Obama's bailout of the banks and reinflation of the housing bubble enriched the One Percent but left everyone
else behind. Those who can't afford $750,000 crap shacks either end up homeless or get stuck with hours-long commutes to reach
their jobs. Here in Portland we have so many tent cities you would think you stepped back into the 1930s.
Welcome to Hell. Maybe Bernie and others can show us the way out. If only we listen this time.
@lizzyh7
That part is disputable but the rest is absolutely correct.
Remember, in politics, whether local or global, there doesn't have to be a good guy and a bad guy. Most often there are two
(or more) bad guys.
#2.1 I'm sorry but come on now. As for this being normal you'd be correct but it surely wasn't only Trump that normalized
this, it's been normalized for a long damned time but most simply don't look at it, especially when it's a "Democrat" at the helm
with a pretty smiling face assuring us that everything will be fine as long as we play along with them.
Hell is already here but buying into that Russia crapola is a cop out - Russia didn't cut high end taxes repeatedly while the
rest of the country went to shit. Russia didn't bail out the banks at taxpayer expense and tell the taxpayers to pound sand and
STFU. Russia is not fighting wars for global domination all over the planet and it does not have almost 1000 foreign bases all
over the world.
Can Bernie save us? He'd best get off that Russia crap as even he knows good and damned well that our continued "defense" budgets
cannot continue alongside Medicare for All, etc, etc, etc. THAT is the elephant in the room that apparently even Bernie is simply
not willing to address.
This comment is just another example of the trump hysteria that has taken over.
#2 is the phrase "This is not normal." We are a fascist state, and it IS normal, just as the kidnapping and torturing small
children by Trump's Gestapo is normal. (We might want to do something about it?)
Ditto Trump's obsequious ass kissing of Putin in Helsinki, proving he is a Russian asset the same way Frank Burns (on MASH)
was a North Korean asset.
Bernie, however, points out the obvious (or what would be obvious if anyone cared to look), that even "blue states" hide an
economic hellscape. Obama's bailout of the banks and reinflation of the housing bubble enriched the One Percent but left everyone
else behind. Those who can't afford $750,000 crap shacks either end up homeless or get stuck with hours-long commutes to reach
their jobs. Here in Portland we have so many tent cities you would think you stepped back into the 1930s.
Welcome to Hell. Maybe Bernie and others can show us the way out. If only we listen this time.
expressing what I also believe is Bernie's intent. The deep state might be able to keep him from being president, but they
have not yet silenced him. They ensure the msm doesn't cover his town halls, but they are found and spread far and wide anyway.
When I was a manager, I would tell my employees that if I didn't know something was broken, I couldn't fix it. Bernie continues
to publicize what is broken.
It is up to we, the people, to fix it through revolution. It's the only way.
I'm glad you posted this. Bernie is one of a handful of D.C. politicians that addresses the plight of the working poor. Most
Democrats talk about the difficulties of the middle class since that's a "safe" topic.
@karl pearson
Most of the working poor think they are lower middle class and not at all like welfare people. Often, they are the most conservative.
It's easy to have that outlook when things are always going against you. Most haven't caught on that the Democrats are no longer
their friends and haven't been for around half a century. Some realize that the Republicans never have been. Others think if one
side (D) has a black hat the other (R) must have a white hat. They actually think that Trump is their friend. "If he's Hillary's
enemy, he must be my friend."
The problem is everyone is stuck in the "lesser over greater evil" construct and that's
what makes the American Zionist-influenced duopoly so powerful. Trump is part of that failed
system that Americans are so dependent on and that always leads to the same place. People
should fight this lesser vs greater evil construct, even if Americans are too stupid at this
time to get out of it. It means they'd have to choose outside the box, outside the media's
choices example Fox and other Rightist outlets for Trump. CNN, MSNBC - Hillary, but the media
is all Zionist run and specializes in the brainwash on both sides. It's all part of the same
sham. The duopoly.
It starts with primaries for representatives and choosing a candidate that demonstrates
independence and integrity; especially those that the media wants to ignore; that's not
beholden to special interests or financed by Zionists.
Most importantly when America goes wrong and it's royally f...cked up right now, the rest
of the world, the web has to push back against their ignorance and their stupid choices,
because those choices hurt others as much as they hurt them only they're still too
brainwashed to see it. Americans had the right idea to turn on the establishment, but Trump
was the perfect Zionist anti-establishment decoy, a fraud, a pretender just like Obama was
for the Left.
In the past election, the only viable contender was Bernie who got railroaded by
Democratic Zionists like Wasserman and Podesta. I think Bernie was more authentic than the
two evils, Hillary and Trump, and although his Zionist roots are always a concern; he was run
out precisely because he was a rogue Jew and Zionists couldn't trust him. He wasn't in the
pocket of Zionist financiers although he was running with the Democrats, but in the current
status quo he had no choice but to use the Democratic Party as a means to an end and they did
him in. If Hillary were not on the ticket who knows what could have been. He was a start in
the right direction away from the Zionist financed duopoly.
This is one of the reasons Americans of all colors and stripes will not receive the the benefits of the powers of economic equality,
transparency, literal meanings of the health of the economy and economic freedom.
Because they will remain blinded by partisan worship of the presidents. We agree with Obama's criticism of big banks or of Bush's
conducts of the war. We agree with Trump's criticism of the wars raging in the ME . We agree with his take on illegal immigrants.
Instead of holding their feet to the fire, we condone, ignore, and then come out in support of them when they fail miserably and
intentionally on other vital areas or when they go against the election promises.
We believe he shits about economy coming out of FOX CNN MSNBC NYT NY POST because we worship the candidates they support or don't
support , or because the support or don't support our views on other areas .
American economy has been growing without the accompanying growth of the worker's compensation for 45 years . Nothing new . Presidents
have no role for the existing condition of the economy . Presidents may claim some success down the line years after presidency is
over . Our economic knowledge is doled out by the same psychopaths who dole us out the knowledge and the faith about wars and about
other countries from the unclean perches of the media . Yes its a handout Its a dole because we have all along built up our world
view and our view of US as told by these guys dictated to us and shoved down us . The folks whose income have suffered and hours
have increased don't have the time or the brains to explore and verify . They are just happy to know that they heard this "Trust
but verify " and heard this " make America Great Again " . They are happy to go to war because a lesbian was killed in Uganda or
in Syria or a girl was raped in Libya or gas was smelt in Dara and Hara , Sara Bara and Laora - just throw some names any name, and
these folks will lend their names and sign up .
This is the underlying mindset and the intellectual foundation which explain our deepest attachment to liar like Obama and to
Trump. Combined with helplessness ,this experience of reality can be disorienting and can lead to Stockholm Syndrome .
If this president wants no immigration to EU, he should stop supporting France's exploitation and military adventures in Africa,
stop adding to war efforts in ME and will pay the restitution for ravaging those countries . He should focus on US and stop talking
about EU's immigration.
" If this president wants no immigration to EU, he should stop supporting France's exploitation and military adventures
in Africa, stop adding to war efforts in ME and will pay the restitution for ravaging those countries. He should focus on US
and stop talking about EU's immigration. "
THE great cause of migrants coming to Europe is the USA, the wars in and destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria Mali,
as far as I know hardly anyone comes from Mali to us. Sudan was split by the USA, oil, the USA is building a drone base in Nigeria,
oil again...
Possibly Brussels now understands that an attack on Iran will cause a new flood of migrants, Netanyahu has been warned. A new
flood is the deadsure end of the EU.
""We must speak with one voice in making clear to Vladimir Putin: 'We will not allow you
to interfere in our democratic processes or those of our allies,'" Sanders wrote in a tweet
on Friday."
Gee, I seem to recall the HRC Campaign and the DNC doing far more proven damage to
the electoral process than anything Russia's allegedly done. Where was Sanders denouncement
of HRC and the DNC then?! Clearly, even more than in 2016, Bernie Sanders is a gigantic
fraud every bit as disgusting as HRC, perhaps even more so given the number of people
deluded by his actions. People like him a big part of the problem and have no part in the
solution.
Newly popular Democratic politician hero and nominee for a seat in the U.S. Congress
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used to have these words on her website:
A Peace Economy
"Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States has entangled itself in war and
occupation throughout the Middle East and North Africa. As of 2018, we are currently
involved in military action in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and
Somalia. According to the Constitution, the right to declare war belongs to the Legislative
body, not the President. Yet, most of these acts of aggression have never once been voted
on by Congress. Alex believes that we must end the forever war by bringing our troops home
and ending the air strikes and bombings that perpetuate the cycle of terrorism and
occupation throughout the world."
Now they're gone. Asked about it on Twitter, she replied:
"Hey! Looking into this. Nothing malicious! Site is supporter-run so things happen --
we'll get to the bottom of it."
It will be interesting to see if Ocasio-Cortez will/can maintain her position on Israeli
crimes. Public figures have a long history of backpedaling after getting the riot act read to
them from the hebrew masters.
The general adaptation syndrome, he said, unfolded in three stages: alarm, resistance,
and exhaustion.
First thought was that's what political party elites use to keep their base from changing
their party elites policies: 'alarm' the base about the horribleness of the 'other side',
rally the base to 'resist' any actions by 'the other side' (while not changing course and not
offering policies the base wants/needs), and finally, 'exhaust' the base with resistance
movements designed not to succeed politically but to exhaust the base so they'll 'adapt' to
whatever the party elites dictate as policy.
OK, I'm trying to force a comparison here, straining the metaphor, which is stressful.
;)
Debsisdead @43. I love your piece detailing things I've seen you post here. You've got my CT
juices flowing more this time, though.
But regarding your query about CounterPunch, I've been a reader for a long time. Then,
shortly after Bernie Sanders announced his campaign, CP began running what ended up being
dozens of articles denouncing him.
Now, I was very slow in endorsing Sanders. I was aware of his record, and once he announced,
I really dug into it, and found even more troubling stuff. Mostly it was his rather spotty
foreign policy record. But eventually, I decided that he was not so much a 'lesser evil" as the
"best good" that the Democratic Party could ever nominate. Having campaigned for alternative
candidates many times, I decided to give this "Occupy the DP" thing a chance.
But since I was delving into his record as CP was writing these articles, I noticed that
they misstated, exaggerated and sometimes out and out lied about Sanders. I won't f*ckbook, so
didn't reply to them, but did post their statements with citations to the correct information
all over the place.
For everywhere I went, I conversed with other lefties about giving Bernie a chance in the
Primaries. Sure, maybe he'll sheepdog if he loses, but why not help him win and not have to
deal with that? Surely getting even a "democratic socialist" in would awaken much of the public
who would then say "I'll have some more of that, thank you very much." But everywhere I came
across people citing CP and other "lefty" sites that denounced him as "not pure" enough.
Just before the actual election, St. Clair
actually wrote an entire book on how " Sanders campaign faltered, undone by the missteps of
its leader and by sabotage from the elites of the Democratic Party."
Well, the DP and the lefties who denounced Sanders and ridiculed his followers might have
played a role, eh?
They did publish an "In Defense of
Caitlin Johnstone" the next week, but the meme that Johnstone was some sort of shill for
the alt-right had been planted, and is still sprouting shoots to this day.
But even though they'd published Johnstone before, they refused to publish the rebuttal she
and Cobb wrote to the piece smearing them.
And of course, as regards your post, Caitlin is one of the most active defenders/supporters
of Julian Assange.
Then there was that whole thing where they were publishing articles written by an avatar going
by the name of Alice Donovan. I don't know what to make that whole thing. I will say that some
of her articles did discuss inconvenient truths that the MSM tries to play up as "conspiracy
theories" (eg. Obama Administration sent weapons to Syria that ISIL received). But, she also
wrote really bizarre stuff indicating she was not whom she claimed to be.
"... Trump was trumped up as the foil, same as Sanders, to sweep up all the anti-establishment sentiment on the other side of the isle, and really as an ace in the hole for Hillary, as he was considered a completely unelectable buffoon who would do nothing but make a laughingstock out of all Republicans. If you recall, Hillary and the establishment press were actually giving Trump all the love early, to make him the strongest poison pill possible. Of course, much later when there began to be fears that he was actually a threat (largely because of Hillary being so painfully phony and unlikeable), all political and press guns were turned against him, but since he had positioned himself as anti-establishment, this had the unexpected effect of actually increasing his popularity. ..."
"... Any time Trump gets off script (which is what makes me think he might have had some actual populist tendencies), he is quickly "corrected." So in the end, the Deep State doesn't have to actively field sleeper candidates; it has become so entrenched that it knows it can ultimately control whoever wins, and so while it has its preferences (Hillary), and will actively assist them, I don't think it feels the need to fear those it doesn't control at the outset. ..."
As early as January, Catlin voiced suspicion when she tweeted:
There's good conspiracy theory and there's bad conspiracy theory. #QAnon is bad
conspiracy theory. It's either a really good LARPer or a really bad psyop. Informed
insiders do not leak via 4chan. Does not happen. It's an anonymous message board for
trolls. Always has been.
But Catlin recently goes a bit further, warning that:
This administration is advancing longstanding neoconservative agendas with increasing
aggression, perpetuating the Orwellian surveillance state of Bush and Obama, and actively
pursuing the extradition and imprisonment of Julian Assange. Ignore the narratives and
watch the behavior, and he [Trump] looks very much like his predecessor. So cut out the
narratives. Cut out the manipulators. Cut out QAnon from the equation and look at what's
really happening here.
My take [on Qanon] : it is similar to the Obamabots promising good things to
come. Those 'good things' never came, of course.
Further proof, IMHO, that Trump is the Republican Obama. The play book is the
same.
I've written, here and at my blog (over a year ago!), that Trump and Obama both follow
the same political model , that of the faux populist leader . They both claimed to
be outsiders. They both faced crazy opposition that called into question their loyalty to
America. They both had amorphous apologists (Obamabots, Trumptards) that excuse any
betrayal.
Furthermore, I've said that it is logical to assume that the election of these faux
populists have been arranged (by the Deep State). We have many tantalizing clues that
this is so, like:
The nature of the US political system.No real populist has a chance in our
money-driven political system
Non-starter opponents.McCain, Hillary are the embodiment of the
establishment that everyone loves to hate.
Clear manipulations.In a time of great dissatisfaction, there were only
TWO populists that ran for President in 2016 - Trump and Sanders. Sanders was a
'sheepdog' (bogus candidate) who pulled many punches and betrayed his base.
Very different stated agendas, yet staying true to Deep State goals.Tax
cuts, military adventures, etc.
Forgiveness."No drama Obama" refused to pursue legal action against Bush
Administration officials and, immediately upon his election, Trump said that he would not
pursue Hillary, saying that they Clintons had been thru enough.
@ Jackrabbit
"I've said that it is logical to assume that the election of these faux populists have been
arranged (by the Deep State)."
While this is of course possible, and likely sometimes happens (might have been true with
Obama's first run), I think the Deep State has such firm grip on power they aren't really
worried about their ability to co-opt and control whoever wins. It's more about bleeding off
steam from the masses, preserving the illusion of democracy. So "populists" serve a useful
function, dividing would-be contenders, which along with general voter disgust means it
actually takes a very small number of votes to control the ultimate outcome of the
election.
Sanders was allowed to continue to energize pissed off people of the left, with the PTB
knowing that when he was eventually canned and turned the vast bulk of his voters would
either not vote at all or vote for their completely owned Hillary. But his presence in the
Democratic mix meant the Democrats could at least pretend to have some relation to the more
socially minded Dems of old.
Trump was trumped up as the foil, same as Sanders, to sweep up all the
anti-establishment sentiment on the other side of the isle, and really as an ace in the hole
for Hillary, as he was considered a completely unelectable buffoon who would do nothing but
make a laughingstock out of all Republicans. If you recall, Hillary and the establishment
press were actually giving Trump all the love early, to make him the strongest poison pill
possible. Of course, much later when there began to be fears that he was actually a threat
(largely because of Hillary being so painfully phony and unlikeable), all political and press
guns were turned against him, but since he had positioned himself as anti-establishment, this
had the unexpected effect of actually increasing his popularity.
No worries. Plenty of preemptive sabotage had been implanted prior to the election, such
that long before he was even sworn in any actual populist tendencies he may have had (I
suspect some were real, some were electioneering) were completely hamstrung. The Deep State
flexed its muscles, and once again the US had its "populist," but the Deep State was again
holding the reigns. Any time Trump gets off script (which is what makes me think he might
have had some actual populist tendencies), he is quickly "corrected." So in the end, the Deep
State doesn't have to actively field sleeper candidates; it has become so entrenched that it
knows it can ultimately control whoever wins, and so while it has its preferences (Hillary),
and will actively assist them, I don't think it feels the need to fear those it doesn't
control at the outset.
J Swift,
I dont' know if that is completely true. Although maybe the higher ups believe that. You can
tell by the texts they really didn't want Trump. At least the lower level grunt workers in
the deep state. Probably because they aren't completely sure he won't go off script. I do
believe if they thought he would be a problem they would just kill him.
...
Incidentally, along the same lines and to revive some of the Korea discussion, here's an
interesting article discussing how the Deep State is ramping up its opposition to real peace
in Korea.
(link omitted by HW)
Posted by: J Swift | Jun 24, 2018 12:57:43 PM | 14
That thought bubble seems to contradict the paragraph immediately preceding it.
i.e. The Deep State/ Swamp wants to perpetuate tensions with NK/ China to keep arms
sales flourishing and it's worried that Trump will cause peace to break out (which he will do
- and make it look like either an accident, or (that old Right Wing Chestnut) Someone Else's
Fault.
You make some good points. There was a time when I also believed that Hillary and her
cronies had masterfully set up the election so that she could win. But as it became clear how
much Trump's politics resembled Obama's, I began to believe that TRUMP was meant to win all
along.
My view is underscored by what I believe was a need to turn the page on the Obama years.
Hillary could not have done that because she was so closely associated with Obama. This is
especially true wrt USA's support for extremist proxies. A 'political reversal' can best
excuse what many extremist supporters would otherwise see as a 'betrayal'. (Note: The
elevation of MbS may also be a part of the necessary 'shift' - the alternative was conflict
with Russia/WWIII) .
I think the Deep State has such firm grip on power they aren't really worried about
their ability to co-opt and control whoever wins.
That may be. But even that mild view indicates that the US govt has a legitimacy
problem. A problem that they would be acutely aware of.
It seems very likely to me that the role of the President is so key that it must be
secured by someone that is sure to "play ball". That means an ambitious money-driven,
narcissist social climber that explicitly agrees to serve the establishment (as per
our 'inverted totalitarian' form of government).
Trump was trumped up as the foil, same as Sanders ...
Maybe. One could make a case that this is how it was planned to be but Hillary's email
troubles (and the need to "turn the page" on the Obama years) caused the establishment
to turn on her. In fact, the efforts to paint Trump as a dupe of Putin via the 'Trump
dossier' began in earnest in Spring 2016 after it was clear that Hillary's email troubles
could not be swept under the rug (which prompted Bloomberg's offer to run so as to prevent
the 'disaster' of Trump or Sanders winning the Presidency) .
By June 2016 Trump was no longer a foil (if he ever was). Trump pushed back HARD on
Hillary after the Orlando Pulse Nightclub attack. He didn't defer to Hillary's experience and
the Democratic Party's ties to the gay community.
In July 2016, Hillary made herself even more hated by hiring a disgraced DWS into a high
position in her campaign. That is as self-defeating as using a private email server for State
Dept business. Such 'sloppiness' calls into question her desire to win the Presidency.
Trump also said, at one point, that he could kill someone in Times Square without
consequence. That is a very strange statement to make. Anyone that says such a thing is
either looney or believes that he has full and complete support from powerful interests.
Lastly, Hillary is simply not a populist and has too much baggage. The 'smart move' for a
Deep State that is fully in control is to 'hire' someone that can perform as a faux populist.
In fact, Hillary might be viewed as dangerous because Clinton loyalists that constitute a
political machine.
Jackrabbit. The very best I can say to defend the narrative we were told during and about the
2016 election is that the 0.01% were going to win whether Trump or HRC moved into the White
House.
But like you, I long ago came to think it more likely that Trump was the chosen one from
before he even took his escalator ride down into history (where paid actors wearing MAGA gear
given to them cheered and jeered on cue).
Everyone knew this was the "election of rejection." Establishment politics was no longer
acceptable by either the "left" or the "right." The Democratic Primary was so crooked that
even many Democratic partisans couldn't bring themselves to support HRC. Especially after she
doubled down with DWS and Tim Kaine.
In retrospect, the entire show appears to have been what they call in professional
wrestling, "a work." A brilliant piece of propaganda.
No, Trump was not the chosen one. Hillary had been schooled and trained specifically for
this. Trump was considered perfect opposition - dumb-ass but clever and likely to score with
a few punches - unlike the miserable row of other Republicans. Trump is merely a symbol of an
Empire coming to an end. Do you not get this?
Yep, Lockhearn @29, I read all that stuff, and totally believed it myself right up until
about the time of the Conventions.
There it was right there, HRC's team demanding MSM to promote Trump as the "pied
piper."
It was all laid out so brilliantly. We were almost all led down that pied piper path,
following all the bread crumbs laid out for us to "discover," and feel so smart for having
read the "hacked" emails and DNC documents (the latter of which were actually published by
that Guccifer 2.0 creation).
We're to believe that CNN's Jeff Zucker did everything in his power to stop Trump. The
same Jeff Zucker who broke into live programming to show Trump's escalator ride (the ONLY
candidate who got live coverage of his announcement). Then, CNN aired hour after hour of live
and uninterrupted coverage of Trump rallies.
"Uninterrupted" is the key word there as it puts to lie the claim he did it for "ratings."
No advertising sold means ratings were not the goal. Besides, Sanders was drawing larger
crowds, so if Jeff wanted ratings, he would have shown Sanders rallies, too.
Oh, and that same Jeff Zucker used to be CEO of NBC, back when it was wholly owned by GE
(one of the world's largest military contractors). And he gave Trump his very own Reality TV
Show which imprinted the Trump character on the minds of USAmerica. And even though its
ratings dropped year after year, Jeff kept pumping more and more resources into the Trump
Project.
Oh, but Jeff made fun of Trump you say. And he also ridiculed Trump supporters.
Bearing in mind that polls before the Primaries showed that at best 1/3 of USAmericans
trusted the MSM, and hated MSM for condescending to us and telling us what to believe and
do....
How would the brilliant propagandists behind MSM expect voters to react to being ridiculed
on national TV?
You're quite intelligent enough to engage your critical thinking and reconsider the past
few years of MSM coverage on all things leading up to the campaign and the campaign and Trump
Administration.
Once again I ask, "what would a propaganda designed for people who know the MSM is
propaganda look like?"
I think it's important to note that even within the clever and long practiced trickery of
the powers that be, everything changes. Every move that they make means one less time that
the same move can be made in the future.
Every time they perceive how the people feel, and run another lie to accord with this
feeling, they come closer to burning out the entire system of trickery and foolery. And no
one knows quite how burned it is today.
To think that the PTB have it all under control is - in my opinion - an error on the same
scale of magnitude as thinking that the people of the US are going to keep taking it forever.
Actually, no one knows what will happen. There's a lot of calculation of risk that goes into
deception, and frankly I don't see the current elites as possessing much acumen in this risk
evaluation. Hubris saturates deep into the bone, as deep as the state.
I haven't seen the PTB do one thing right in the last few years. They misunderstand the
forces of history marching against them. Or rather, they are completely wary of these forces
but don't know how to learn new ways to triumph in the face of them. They are separated from
the source-beds and aquifers of real experience which feed learning. So they keep screwing
up. In my view, although I don't think it matters much either way, it's more likely that
Trump is in office because they screwed up than because they brilliantly planned and executed
it that way.
Grieved @39. I absolutely agree that TPTSB are quite ready and willing to make changes to
their tactics in response to reactions "on the ground." Of course, as both Milton Friedman
and Rahm Emanuel said, a crucial part of their planning is to have alternative plans already
in place. Like in chess, it's often a matter of how many possible moves ahead they have
planned.
But if a plan really "goes south" on them, they are quite able to step in and do whatever
is necessary. And yet, no matter how much we're told the "Deep State" hates Trump, well,
there he is. And his supporters even get to use the Obama-bots' 8-year long apologia that The
President is being FORCED to continue/escalate US policies by those dark forces.
Similarly, I think it wrong to assume that TPTSB are some sort of monolith. Within any
group there are competitions and sometimes those are very severe differences. Recently we
reread Winston Churchill's 1920s oped about the "International Jewish Conspiracy." He posited
that even they were divided into the globalist Bolsheviks and the nationalistic Zionists (and
that Britain should back the Zionists).
You write, "I haven't seen the PTB do one thing right in the last few years."
But of course, you are assuming you know what were their goals. I don't pretend to know.
I'm mostly listing facts - things we can all see that have happened. And I ask cui bono?
Again, the 0.01% were going to win whichever of their candidates was (s)elected. But
looking back at everything from the suddenly greatly increased MSM racial divisionism and
Russia-demonizing starting in 2013/2014, right up to the present non-stop hysteria about the
latest shocking Tweet (while no one notices Congress pass another record-breaking military
budget), and I am suspicious of the official MSM narrative.
And I find it fascinating that both Trump supporters and Trump haters are completely
sucked into the story the MSM presents us.
But having us divided over everything sure does help TPTSB.
Debsisdead @43. I love your piece detailing things I've seen you post here. You've got my CT
juices flowing more this time, though.
But regarding your query about CounterPunch, I've been a reader for a long time. Then,
shortly after Bernie Sanders announced his campaign, CP began running what ended up being
dozens of articles denouncing him.
Now, I was very slow in endorsing Sanders. I was aware of his record, and once he
announced, I really dug into it, and found even more troubling stuff. Mostly it was his
rather spotty foreign policy record. But eventually, I decided that he was not so much a
'lesser evil" as the "best good" that the Democratic Party could ever nominate. Having
campaigned for alternative candidates many times, I decided to give this "Occupy the DP"
thing a chance.
But since I was delving into his record as CP was writing these articles, I noticed that
they misstated, exaggerated and sometimes out and out lied about Sanders. I won't f*ckbook,
so didn't reply to them, but did post their statements with citations to the correct
information all over the place.
For everywhere I went, I conversed with other lefties about giving Bernie a chance in the
Primaries. Sure, maybe he'll sheepdog if he loses, but why not help him win and not have to
deal with that? Surely getting even a "democratic socialist" in would awaken much of the
public who would then say "I'll have some more of that, thank you very much." But everywhere
I came across people citing CP and other "lefty" sites that denounced him as "not pure"
enough.
Just before the actual election, St. Clair
actually wrote an entire book on how " Sanders campaign faltered, undone by the missteps
of its leader and by sabotage from the elites of the Democratic Party."
Well, the DP and the lefties who denounced Sanders and ridiculed his followers might have
played a role, eh?
They did publish an "In Defense of
Caitlin Johnstone" the next week, but the meme that Johnstone was some sort of shill for
the alt-right had been planted, and is still sprouting shoots to this day.
But even though they'd published Johnstone before, they refused to publish the rebuttal
she and Cobb wrote to the piece smearing them.
And of course, as regards your post, Caitlin is one of the most active
defenders/supporters of Julian Assange.
Then there was that whole thing where they were publishing articles written by an avatar
going by the name of Alice Donovan. I don't know what to make that whole thing. I will say
that some of her articles did discuss inconvenient truths that the MSM tries to play up as
"conspiracy theories" (eg. Obama Administration sent weapons to Syria that ISIL received).
But, she also wrote really bizarre stuff indicating she was not whom she claimed to be.
To think that the PTB have it all under control is - in my opinion - an error ...
"PTB" is a shorthand that conflates many different power centers (Banks, MIC,
AIPAC, etc.).
While its true that they can't control everything, they don't have to. They don't have to
control every member of Congress, for example. But the Presidency - which is the linchpin of
foreign policy as well as holder of the "bully pulpit" - is important enough that some degree
of control would make sense. Especially when the country is stressed and discontent is high.
Then, MAYBE, you don't want to leave anything to chance. MAYBE, you want a guy that will lie
well, and do what he's told.
J Swift @14 tempers Jack's post and goldhoarder @16 goes one step further. (No criticism,
just another view. See also Jack @26.) More:
The expression Deep State: implies a 'state' which the various strands of power behind the
scenes are not; the word 'deep' implies hidden, again, not specially, at least some vague
description can be made.
The US is a corporate oligarchy and the politicians are brokers of influence and votes (in
congress, senate, and from their constituents..) They are paid to 'support' or 'champion'
this or that in a complex criss-cross of relationships and money/favor exchanges. The
complexity makes for obscurity. The fake Dem-Rep duopoly in fine rests only on a kind of
tribal preference linked to cultural issues (abortion, sex, race, identity politics, hate of
communism, religion, splinter oddities, etc.) as touted to Joe Public.
Behind the scenes, in no order of importance:
Banking and Finance, Big Energy/Oil, Military-industrial (entwined with the two previous),
Social (medical, insurance, Big Pharma, education, all partly controlled by non-Gov. and/or
privatised to the max), Real Estate + Territorial (linked to banking and finance, water
control, mining, energy and transport), Big Agri (Monsanto, etc.) Manufacturing is not up
there (see Trump trying to correct) except in small splintered stakes. For ex. one might
speak of a Security Industry which includes TSA employees (fastest growing employment)
to airbags (car industry) to anti-virus programs to Guns sales who are they supposed to pay?
etc.
The joker in the pack is the MSM coupled with a section of the performance arts
(Hollywood) and communications in general (internet, Silicon Valley, etc.)
Overall, the free-wheeling secretive corrupt system of deal-making and pretend-governance
makes it that the USA has not a Gvmt for the people and is thus, it follows
inexorably, extremely vulnerable to any outside influence. First is of course the Israel
lobby/infiltration, but others, very varied, try the same tricks and succeed. Globalisation,
in a kind of supposedly 'more moral', purely greed-based, i.e. commercial vein, move, is
implemented to re-create a better, different Empire (as compared to the British, too heavy
handed..) is another facet of the picture. That is now failing.
Noirette@62 - Well said. Deep state is a hopelessly nebulous term, but one I have
grown fond of using lately precisely because of the qualifier deep . The 'problem'
with the U.S. government should be defined by the mechanism of it's vulnerability to
usurpation , not the individual psychopathic oligarchs or agents of foreign
governments/potentates that invariably line up to exploit that vulnerability. Start listing
all the players, and US citizens' eyes will glaze over in - oh - 15 seconds, give or take.
That mechanism is beyond the comprehension (or the willingness to comprehend) of most of
us in the US. No matter, as we would only try to fix the problem with the two tools of
democracy intentionally corrupted to be incapable of fixing it: voting and the law.
That's not to say that concepts of voting and the law are inherently flawed - that's just an
observation of their current debased and useless form in the US for fixing our government.
Which is why the Deep State has no problem encouraging a mindless, religiously slavish
devotion to them, i.e., "We are a nation of laws. It's your responsibility to vote. How
dare you question the power of the divine tools bestowed upon you by the magnanimous God of
State!"
Deep State at least emphasizes the intentionally hidden aspect. I'll settle for the
effect of that less-than-precise, but comic book-simple single concept to stick in the
minds of my fellow Americans. Where we would go from there is anyone's guess, but we're in no
danger (at least in the US) of having to worry about that anytime soon. I mean, if there ever
was a treasonous, seditious deep state here, then the FBI would be furious and arrest them
all. Thank God! See? Impossible...
Guerrero @66: WHAT is the source of the badness of the current system?
You're right that corruption is not new. IMO What's different is the extent of
mal-investment, disenfranchisement, and control.
>> ME wars : trillions of dollars, thousands of US lives lost and millions of
local lives lost or disrupted
>> New Cold War : trillions to upgrade nukes and maintain an aggressive
posture;
>> Ponzi Finance : Global Financial Crisis is estimated to have cost on the
order of 1 year of global gdp (trillions)
>> "I got mine!" price gouging and corporate welfare :
- healthcare It is estimated that Americans pay four times as much for healthcare as other
developed countries;
- environment: Monsanto, and other chemical/agricuture companies destroy our environment (bye bye
bees, hello gmo); global warming (or the potential for global warming) is largely
ignored;
- finance: legal usury in the form of payday loans and credit card interest rates; Dodd-Frank
rules were mostly written by the financial industry and even those weak protections are
now being rolled back.
- defense: over-priced weapons systems; virtually impossible to close bases or reduce the defense
budget;
- and more! Virtually every industry gets their profit-maximizing perks.
Furthermore, I've said that it is logical to assume that the election of these faux populists
have been arranged (by the Deep State). We have many tantalizing clues that this is so, like:
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jun 24, 2018 10:38:59 AM | 10
I have several objections here. One is "nature or nurture" problem, how political leaders
divert from popular positions that they were promising, were they already
"brainwashed/trained" before political campaigns in which they claimed those positions or
afterwards. I do not have enough empirical data either way, but upon reaching an elected
office politicians are swamped with information and they must rely on "filters" in the form
of staff etc., moreover they get media attention with concomitant media pressure. And under
that pressure and perceived "consensus" their positions evolve in the rotten direction.
Rather painfully, many "training moments" are well documented. As the First Lady, Hillary
Clinton was polite when hosting the wife of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafats which got her
vilified for years. Giving speeches to AIPAC meetings is much less traumatic. Obama tried to
move Israel/Palestinian situation in a positive direction for something like a year, and then
he gave up when it look futile and seemed to conflict with "other priorities". Very recently
we could observe "training" of Jeremy Corbyn resulting in admission that "of course he does
not trust Russia" and some perfunctory purge of "anti-Semites".
Basically, without a supporting and lasting political movements solidifying their
positions, politicians abandon those positions or are eliminated. This allows to keep some
hopes about "Corbynism", and in the case of USA, a more remote hope that a wider progressive
and/or sensitive movements will grow beyond their current narrow niches.
I have no intention to promote populism/nationalism. I am simply stating that when one
strips a population of its sovereignty and democracy, as the 'Globalist' project does,
eventually it leads to a revolt.
At this point the revolt is being led by the 'populists/nationalists'. As the devastation
that is being caused by the 'Globalist' project continues there will be fewer and fewer
people who to drink the 'Globalism' kool-aid.
"... 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.
"... 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. ..."
I saw a compelling statistic the other day. Apparently, 12% of Sanders supporters
eventually went on to vote Trump. If true, a very good argument can be made that this is by
far the biggest "upset factor" in the election. So why can't our MSM see that?
My initial reaction to Russia-gate still holds true today: It's an easy way to deflect
self-examination by the Dems on "why" they lost the election, while simultaneously smearing
Trump and the Russians all in the same sentence! I felt that, in a word, Russia-gate was
"bullshit".
Al Pinto , June 8, 2018 at 2:01 pm
Here's a link the referenced voting statistics for SOS (Sell Out Sanders):
"More important, in the three critical states that tipped the election, Sanders-to-Trump
voters ultimately gave Trump the margin he needed to win:
-- In Wisconsin, roughly 51K Sanders voters backed Trump in a state he won by just 22K
votes.
-- In Michigan, roughly 47K Sanders voters backed Trump in a state he won by just 10K
votes.
-- In Pennsylvania, roughly 116K Sanders voters backed Trump in a state he won by just 44K
votes."
Yes, Sanders could have run as independent and probably still won the election over RHC
and DJT, at least in my view
Disclaimer: I've changed my party affiliation just to vote for Sanders in the primary. To
say that I've been disappointed in him to cave in for HRC is an understatement .
mbob , June 8, 2018 at 3:01 pm
Sanders would *not* have won. The US and the media were not ready for a third-party
candidate in 2016. (Yes I know that Ross Perot won 19% of the vote in 1992. Sanders might
have done better, but not enough better to win.)
Given that, he was damned either way. Had he run, your own numbers show he would have
taken more from Clinton than from Trump. Trump would still have won. And Sanders (and his
supporters) would have been blamed. There'd be no Russiagate: there'd be a Sandersgate. Given
the magnitude of the purely made up Russiagate hysteria, can you begin to imagine what the
democrats and the media would have done to Sanders and his supporters?
His political career would be over, but much more importantly, the Sanders-inspired
progressive movements would have been stopped before they could even start. The democratic
party would be even more Clinton-controlled and even more attached to their
neoliberal/globalist agenda. Instead, Sanders is the most popular politician in the US and
his supporters are growing in numbers and in strength. Sanders-inspired candidates and
Sanders-inspired initiatives are making inroads.
Given the failure in 2016 of the two-party system to produce a candidate that the public
wanted, it's even possible the US will be ready for a third-party candidate in 2020. It'd be
terrific if that candidate was Sanders or someone who shares his agenda.
irina , June 8, 2018 at 3:36 pm
Alaska's 2018 race for governor is shaping up to be an actual 3-way race,
after former Senator Mark Begich threw his hat in the ring at the last minute,
filing as a Democratic candidate. Now the incumbent team of Bill Walker and
Byron Mallot are planning to run as Independents (they would have run on the
Democratic ticket if nobody filed). And there are several candidates jostling for
the Republican nomination. This will be an interesting litmus test for 2020 !
Al Pinto , June 8, 2018 at 4:36 pm
You are probably correct and it's been just my wishful thinking
On the other hand, the media had not been ready to accepted DJT for POTUS and yet, he has
been elected. This indicates that people have their own evaluation method, at least a sizable
number of them, instead of listening to the media.
Knowing that the MSM media is owned outright by oligarchs, it's hard to imagine that it
will ever be ready for a third-party candidate. While this might be acceptable on the state
level, the federal level probably requires more time than couple of years.
And even if the MSM will be ready in 2020, I would not vote for Sander. As the old saying
goes, "If you burn me once, shame on you "
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 4:45 pm
You spell out Sander's realistic decision with crystal clarity, something I've not seen
done so lucidly before. Sanders would have destroyed the progressive movement had he bolted
from the Democratic party, which he promised to support when he entered the campaign, thereby
giving the election to Trump. Trump won without any help from Bernie. In fact, all
indications are that Bernie would have won as a Democrat, but not yet as an independent.
Still far too much mindless loyalty (and chits owed) to the party. The Dems screwed
themselves by sabotaging his campaign to secure the nomination for the unpopular acid-tongued
Clinton. Now is when he should become the truthteller and deliver a full broadside against
Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff and the other party insiders who are the actual culprits in
destroying the party's future with their attempted soft coup.
Sam F , June 8, 2018 at 7:56 pm
I suspect that Sanders knows that the DNC would not back him, because he is not pleasing
to their oligarchs. Likely he will continue to sheepdog liberals to the zionist/WallSt/MIC
candidate. So he is not what he seems, which is his job.
mbob , June 8, 2018 at 11:04 pm
Thank you. I agree that Sanders would likely have won had he been the Democratic nominee,
but not otherwise. I understand and share the profound disappointment many have that he's not
our president. But I don't understand the anger directed at him. Given that he wasn't
nominated, he had no choice but to do what he did. He didn't betray anyone. Nor did he cost
Clinton the election.
On the other hand, I *do* think that the Democratic party did betray us. So, after 40+
years of being a registered Democrat, I left the party and registered as Independent.
Lastly, why does Obama get a pass, but not Sanders? Sanders gets criticized in ways Obama
never was. Obama is an admitted globalist and neoliberal. The TPP he pushed so vigorously
would have been a betrayal of all Americans who work. Obama blatantly favored Clinton,
another neoliberal/globalist, as his successor.
Sanders, while admittedly imperfect, was on the right side of the TPP and most other
issues. He's worked with amazing vigor to revive the progressive movement that languished
under Obama. His efforts are receiving tangible results. Obama never did anything of the
sort. Neither did Biden, who may be Democrat's 2020 presidential candidate.
So why so much hostility toward Sanders and so little toward Obama?
Realist , June 9, 2018 at 1:35 am
I'm with you again on your analysis, mbob. I've been a registered Dem myself for fifty
years in three different states. I haven't changed my registration because I want to give
them a message in their primaries that the direction they have been taking is distinctly
wrong and will not be rewarded in the general elections. I don't think I will have much
impact in the coming campaign, however, based on the analysis by Mike Whitney (below) that
the Dems are currently skewing towards hard core military and intelligence agency candidates
and running away from progressives:
"The Democratic Party has made a strategic decision to bypass candidates from its
progressive wing and recruit former members of the military and intelligence agencies to
compete with Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections. The shift away from liberal
politicians to center-right government agents and military personnel is part of a broader
plan to rebuild the party so it better serves the interests of its core constituents, Wall
Street, big business, and the foreign policy establishment. Democrat leaders want to
eliminate left-leaning candidates who think the party should promote issues that are
important to working people and replace them with career bureaucrats who will be more
responsive to the needs of business. The ultimate objective of this organization-remake is to
create a center-right superparty comprised almost entirely of trusted allies from the
national security state who can be depended on to implement the regressive policies required
by their wealthy contributors. Here's more background from Patrick Martin at the World
Socialist Web Site " (Citation attached)
Whitney doesn't give Sanders a pass, basically characterising him as a Judas goat
misleading progressives to vote for neoliberal Wall Street candidates, as SamF says. But
then, he doesn't give Obama or Biden a pass either. Actually, there is a lot of "dislike" out
there for Obama and the whole crew he recruited into his administration, e.g., Biden,
Clinton, Gates, Rice, Power, Carter and Nuland, gangsters all. They campaigned as progressive
peaceniks but proved themselves to be neoliberal warmongers. I will never vote for their ilk
again even if Bernie begs pretty please. I don't follow messiahs or party orders. Bernie
still has the support of his people who are NOT mainstream Dems of this era, but that faction
of the party has little clout regardless of their appeal at the ballot box.
Skip Scott , June 9, 2018 at 7:05 am
Mbob-
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.
"... our government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They are the rule ..."
"... The problem here isn't just liberal hypocrisy and double standards. The deeper issue is that, as the great American iconoclast Mark Twain knew, you cannot maintain democracy at home while conducting an authoritarian empire abroad. ..."
"... "It was impossible," Twain wrote, "to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home." ..."
"... "Just a decade after Twain wrote those prophetic words," the historian Alfred W. McCoy has observed , "colonial police methods came home to serve as a template for the creation of an American internal security apparatus in wartime." The nation's first Red Scare, which crushed left and labor movements during and after World War One, drew heavily on the lessons and practices of colonial suppression in the Philippines and Cuba. As McCoy shows in his latest book, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power , ..."
"... "The fetters imposed on liberty at home," James Madison wrote in 1799 , "have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers abroad." Those are wise words well worth revisiting amidst the current endless Russiagate madness, calculated among other things to tell us that the FBI, the CIA, and the rest of the nation's vast and ever more ubiquitous intelligence and surveillance state are on our side. ..."
A final matter concerns the problem of imperial chickens coming home to roost. Liberals
don't like to hear it, but the ugly, richly documented historical fact of the matter is that
their party of binary and tribal choice has long joined Republicans in backing and indeed
crafting a U.S. foreign policy that has imposed
authoritarian regimes (and profoundly undemocratic interventions including invasions and
occupations) the world over . The roster of authoritarian and often-mass murderous
governments the U.S. military and CIA and allied transnational business interests have backed,
sometimes even helped create, with richly bipartisan support, is long indeed.
Last fall, Illinois Green Party leader Mike Whitney ran some fascinating numbers on the 49
nation-states that the right-wing "human rights" organization Freedom House identified as
"dictatorships" in 2016. Leaving aside Freedom House's problematic inclusion of Russia, Cuba,
and Iran on its list, the most remarkable thing about
Whitney's research was his finding that the U.S. offered military assistance to 76 percent
of these governments. (The only exceptions were Belarus, China, Central African Republic, Cuba,
Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria.). "Most
politically aware people," Whitney wrote:
"know of some of the more highly publicized instances examples of [U.S. support for
foreign dictatorships], such as the tens of billions of dollars' worth of US military
assistance provided to the beheading capital of the world, the misogynistic monarchy of Saudi
Arabia, and the repressive military dictatorship now in power in Egypt apologists for our
nation's imperialistic foreign policy try to rationalize such support, arguing that Saudi
Arabia and Egypt are exceptions to the rule. But my survey demonstrates that our
government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They
are the rule ."
The Pentagon and State Department data Whitney used came from Fiscal Year 2015. It dated
from the next-to-last year of the Obama administration, for which so many liberals recall with
misplaced nostalgia. Freedom House's list should have included Honduras, ruled by a vicious
right-wing government that Obama and his Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton helped install in a June 2009 military coup .
The problem here isn't just liberal hypocrisy and double standards. The deeper issue is
that, as the great American iconoclast Mark Twain knew, you cannot maintain democracy at home
while conducting an authoritarian empire abroad. During the United States' blood-soaked
invasion and occupation of the Philippines, Twain penned an imaginary history of the
twentieth-century United States. "It was impossible," Twain wrote, "to save the Great Republic.
She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the
helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at
home."
"Just a decade after Twain wrote those prophetic words," the historian
Alfred W. McCoy has observed , "colonial police methods came home to serve as a template
for the creation of an American internal security apparatus in wartime." The nation's first Red
Scare, which crushed left and labor movements during and after World War One, drew heavily on
the lessons and practices of colonial suppression in the Philippines and Cuba. As McCoy shows
in his latest book, In the Shadows of the
American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power , the same basic process --
internal U.S. repression informed and shaped by authoritarian and imperial practices abroad and
justified by alleged external threats to the "homeland" -- has recurred ever since. Today, the
rise of an unprecedented global surveillance state overseen by the National Security Agency has
cost the US the trust of many of its top global allies (under Bush43 and Obama44, not just
under Trump45) while undermining civil liberties and democracy within as beyond the
U.S.
"The fetters imposed on liberty at home," James Madison wrote in 1799 , "have ever
been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary
dangers abroad." Those are wise words well worth revisiting amidst the current endless
Russiagate madness, calculated among other things to tell us that the FBI, the CIA, and the
rest of the nation's vast and ever more ubiquitous intelligence and surveillance state are on
our side.
Half the population prefers a politics that is racist and unethical, that demonises the poor
and idolises the rich, that eschews community and embraces amoral individuality. These people
don't care about the economic inconsistencies of neo-liberalism, they are far more attracted
to the divisive societal aspects of free market fundamentalism.
Lemmings get what they deserve.
Almost always as the iron law of oligarchy implies. Period of
revolution and social upheaval are probably the only exceptions.
In 2018 there is no doubt that Trump is an agent of Deep State, and
probably the most militant part of neocons. What he the
agent from the beginning or not is not so important. He managed to
fool electorate with false promises like Obama before him and get
elected.
Ask yourself why Sessions ordered Rosenstein to resign and Trump
declined his resignation? Likely because Sessions was recused from
Russia investigation and could not be told Rosenstein was working for
Trump from day 1.
(Mueller also met with Trump the day before Rosenstein appointed him
SC.)
Also relevant, Rosenstein is Republican and in 2007/8 was blocked
from getting a seat on appeals court by Dems. Doesn't seem he would be
loyal to the Obama crowd and trying to take down Trump with a phony
investigation.
You better
believe it. What's happened to the NYC detectives who viewed
the "insurance policy" on Weiner's laptop? The kiddie stuff is
the real hot potato here. The power "elite" are pure
unadulterated filth.
Yes....when you start to add up various facts coming from this
investigation it is easy to argue that the prime beneficiary has
been Trump. Why would Trump even consider firing this guy? The
more Mueller digs the more crap surfaces about the Dems, and they
are in full support of it without any seeming awareness of the
results. They are so blinded by their hatred they cannot see
reality.
The info from Weiner's computer is really going to make for
major popcorn sales. All Hitlery's "lost" emails are in there. All
the names in his address book will also make for some interesting
reading. Just a guess but there are a lot of very nervous NYC
elected officials and pedos making sure their passports are up to
date. The Lolita Express to Gitmo....
You guys see everything through Trump colored glasses. Trump is dirty and just
because the evidence hasn't been shown to you doesn't mean it isn't there.
Mueller has the dirt on Trump. It will show. Does everyone here forget that
Watergate took 2 1/2 years to play out?
Being in the business he is in, there is little doubt that Trump has paid
out millions of dollars over the years in bribes and payoffs to greedy
politicians, regulators, and zoning commissioners given to filthy lucre in
return for building permits, zoning variances, and law changes.
I know he
is but what are they? This could be one reason the politicians, regulators,
and zoning commissioners hate him so much. He knows what they know.
Trump is no dirtier than other politicians and much less than some.
He is just dirty in a way (he was usually the payer, they were the payees)
that bothers the other ones.
There is no man or
woman who has or ever will run for office that is not dirty.
As Dershowitz so acutely pointed out, every one of them with an
opposition Special Counsel on his case, can find at least 3 crimes they
committed.
The only reason theBamster wasn't probed at all is because no one dared
go after the only black man to ever run and win for POTUS. HE instead, was
protected from any probes.
You're an idiot that doesn't know anything about what this is really all
about. Or pretending to. Or a troll. Fuck you for being any of them.
Obama has a history of taking out his opponents in their personal life, so
that he doesnt have to meet them in the political arena, just look at his
state campaigns, and then his senate campaign. Look at how he used the
bureaucracy during his admin to preempt opposition, not allowing opposition
groups to get tax exempt status and sending osha/fbi/treasury etc to harrass
people that were more than marginally effective.
With that context set I would like to know the following.
1. Did the brennan/comey/clapper cabal have investigations running on all
the gop primary front runners?
2. Did they promote Trump to win the GOP primary, to eliminate those
rivals from consideration, just to attempt to destroy him in the general with
the russian collusion narrative and his own words.
3. Was Comey's failure to ensure Hillary's victory due to incompetence or
arrogance? I say arrogance, because his little late day announcement of the
new emails was obviously ass covering so that he could pass whatever senate
hearing that would be required for his new post in the hillary administration.
Having to learn how to deal with mobbed-up lawyers and unions in NYC turns out
the be pretty damned good preparation to be President Of The United States. I
love watching this guy work.
The illegitimate liberal MSM is sucking all the oxygen out of the room for
legitimate criticism of Trump. This Russian Collusion stormy daniels stuff is
a bunch of bologna, and it's making a smokescreen for Trump to carry out his
zio-bankster agenda.
Hegelian dialectic, Divide and conquer, kabuki
theater
For the most part I like Peter Schiff. I don't think he talks
enough about the criminal manipulation of commodities by the
banksters and the seemingly endless reluctance by our glorious
leaders to prosecute them.
On this topic: The lawlessness of
the 17 agencies is beyond the pale. They have set themselves
apart and for this they will have to pay eventually. I have no
doubt that in the minds of the Bureau principals there was motive
and there was opportunity. I don't believe anything that comes
out of their mouths. Robert Mueller is a three letter word for a
donkey. He is a criminal and a totally owned puppet of the deep
and dark state. Last I heard, the FBI planted a mole in the Trump
campaign. Iff true, that speaks volumes...
It is amazing that President Trump is still standing on his feet and still out
there swinging. The man is no coward. I'm glad I voted for him, although I am
disappointed in some of his failings.
"although I am disappointed in some of his failings."...
Yeah I know
just what ya mean...
The treason of war crimes he's committed exceeding all of his
predecessor(s) in his short assed existence as President and threatening
war on two nuclear superpowers that could easily wipe his office and 4
thousand square miles of CONUS "
off the map
"!...
Endorsing a torturer murder to head the CIA condoning her efforts in
public "thumbing his nose" at Article 3 Geneva the U.S. Constitution and
for his military to tacitly continue disobeying the UCMJ as a response
to that "selection"!...
Telling the parasitic partner that owns him through blackmail that
Jerusalem is the Capital of IsraHell as over 200 Palestinians are
murdered and 3 thousand others injured in joyous celebration of that
violation of international law which is the equivalent of pouring
"gasoline" on a building that has already been reduced to "ash"...
They didn't really think things through when they plotted against Trump and
figured Hillary would win and they could sweep this under the rug and then she
lost. Funnier is that many expected her to lose as she never won an election
in her life despite her being "The Most Qualified" candidate as her parrots in
the media lovingly called her. Now Trump and his team will stomp them all into
the ground. My guess is that he'll pinch others in her gang who have big egos
so that they'll talk and drop a dime which they will. The libtards are turning
on themselves in every area now. Look at Hollywood and the sexual harassment
cases in the pipeline.
It's just so pleasurable watching your enemy fall on their sword while you
sit back and enjoy life and smile....
Was the Trump campaign "Set-up"? It's just another way the oligarchy
is deflecting what the real problem is. Americans are fed up with the
political status quo in this country, and wanted a change. Neither political
party offers any change for the better. It is also why Bernie Sanders had a
huge following, but no one is calling his campaign a "set-up", and he would
have been the more likely choice the Russians would have helped.
It really doesn't make any sense why the Russians would have selected
Trump, but it makes a lot of sense why the oligarchy would want to discredit
Trump any means availble to them. And since they have always hated Russia so
much, that is the big tip-off of who comes up with these stupid stories about
Russians meddling in our elections.
We voted against the powers that be. With Truman, we got a decent man that
was manipulated by the Deep State. With Trump, we got a not-so-decent man,
but still manipulated by the Deep State. Sigh.
there needs to be a schedule drawn up of charges against individuals. it's
all very well talking and talking anf talking around the water cooler, but
until the charges are drawn up and a grand jury empowered, it is all
pissing into the wind.
the individuals range from obama through clinton,
through the loathsome slimebags in the alphabet soup, through foundations,
through DNC leaders/politicians, through Weiner, Abedin, Rice and the
witches cabal (Wasserstein Schulz etc), UK intel agencies, awan brothers,
pakistan intel supplying Iran with classified documents and so on.
there are charges (of treason, sedition, wilful mishandling of classifed
documents, bribery, corruption, murder, child trafficking, election
rigging, spying for/collusion with foreign powers, funding terrorism, child
abuse, election rigging/tampering, misappropriation of federal funds, theft
etc as well as general malfeasance, failure to perform duties and so on)
that are not being brought that are so obvious, only a snowflake would miss
them.
what charges can be brought against the MSM for propaganda,
misdirection, lying, fabrication and attempting to ovetthrow a legitimately
elected president using these techniques to further their own ends? there
is no freedom of the press to lie and further civil unrest.
a list of charges against individuals in the DNC/alphabet soup is what
is needed. if the DoJ is so incompetent or corrupt that it is unable to do
its job, private law suits need to be brought to get all the facts out in
the open.
someone needs to write the book and make it butt hole shaped to shove up
all those that try to make a living out of making up gossip in the NYT,
WaPo, CNN, BBC, Economist, Madcow, SNL, Oliver and so on.
these people are guilty of being assholes and need their assholes
(mouths) plugged with a very think fifteen inch book.
Trump might become a deep stater but he definitely wasn't one of
them. Google "offer to pay trump to drop out of election" and see
how many stories there were. Here is one of them.
I hope someone writes a book on this with all of the timing and all of the
"little" things that happened on the way to the coronation of Hillary.
Comey "interviews" Hillary on 4th of July weekend. Wraps up case by 9am
Tuesday after 4th of July. By noon, Hillary and Obama are on Air Force 1
to begin campaign. Within a few weeks Seth Rich is dead and DWS avoids
being "killed in an armed robbery gone bad" when she steps down as head of
DNC. Above article forgets to mention that GPS also hired the wife of
someone in the government as part of the "fact gathering" team.
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 .
4) When Obama was President, he was kept in line by the "Birthers".
His cabinet was handpicked by Citibank! He didn't need to be "kept in line" at all.
Sanders was arguably a moderate populist hoping to ameliorate the bad effects of
capitalism by addressing its more obvious social consequences of its logic in a way that has
already been done by every other developed nation. In all these nations he is a somewhat
hawkish centrist. But he did raise a TON of money without needing to take donations from mega
super PACs and oligarchs; hence his candidacy was a threat to the oligarchy's total ownership
of US politics. This ownership is what enables the Israel lobby and others to take hold so
easily in the first place, and so it was never going to end well for Sanders -- even assuming
he was not just a sheep dog.
I could live in a country where actual left leaning and right leaning people worked out
their differences via the democratic process. I am left leaning--well, way left leaning--but
I am perfectly willing to engage right leaning people in the procedures of political
compromise. But there is no such compromise available because the US is not a democratic
representative republic but an oligarchy, pure and simple.
"... disgusting how anti-war pre-president trump becomes military pandering trumpanyahoo after election...his handlers, knowing he will need them in the near future, set him to constantly stroke the military every opportunity he has... ..."
"... The Western globalist billionaires and elites are ultimately responsible for any aggression coming from Israel. If they can conquer and control Iran and take over its oil and gas reserves, risking the fate of the millions of people in Iran, Syria and in Israel, then the losses to them will be incidental. ..."
"... I'm sure I'm missing some of the many "dots" but it logic suggests that both Obama and Trump are faux populists that - at least in foreign policy (where Presidential powers are greatest) - are greatly influenced by foreign(albeit "allied") interests. ..."
"... IMO Apologists for the faux populists also play an important part. They respond voraciously to the "crazy opposition" and thereby keep alive faith in the faux hero. ..."
"... Faux populist leaders seem to be a natural fit for our inverted totalitarian form of government. Perhaps any Empire will naturally gravitate to such a compromised government? Funny thing is, most Americans would say that USA is NOT an Empire. ..."
Not that there was much doubt who was behind it, but two days after "enemy" warplanes
attacked a Syrian military base near Hama on Sunday, killing at least 11 Iranians and dozens of others, and nobody had yet "claimed
responsibility" the attack, US officials
told
NBC that it was indeed Israeli F-15 fighter jets that struck the base,
NBC News
reported .
Ominously, the officials said Israel appears to be preparing for open warfare with Iran and is seeking U.S. help and support .
"On the list of the potentials for most likely live hostility around the world, the battle between Israel and Iran in Syria is
at the top of the list right now," said one senior U.S. official.
The US officials
told
NBC that Israeli F-15s hit Hama after Iran delivered weapons to a base that houses Iran's 47th Brigade, including surface-to-air
missiles. In addition to killing two dozen troops, including officers, the strike wounded three dozen others. The report adds that
the U.S. officials believe the shipments were intended for Iranian ground forces that would attack Israel.
Meanwhile, as we reported yesterday, the Syrian army said early on Monday that "enemy" rockets struck military bases belonging
to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime. According to several outlets, the strikes targeted the 47th Brigade base in the southern
Hama district, a military facility in northwestern Hama and a facility north of the Aleppo International Airport.
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Tuesday that Israel on Tuesday morning had four problems, one more than
the day before: "Iran, Iran, Iran and hypocrisy." The comment came one day after Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu "revealed" a cache
of documents the Mossad stole from Iran detailing the country's nuclear program, which however critics said were i) old and ii) not
indicative of Iran's current plans.
"This is the same Iran that cracks down on freedom of expression and on minorities. The same Iran that tried to develop nuclear
weapons and entered the [nuclear] deal for economic benefits," Lieberman said.
"The same Iran is trying to hide its weapons while everyone ignores it. The state of Israel cannot ignore Iran's threats, Iran,
whose senior officials promise to wipe out Israel," he said. "They are trying to harm us, and we'll have a response.
Iran's Defense Minister Amir Khatami threatened Israel on Tuesday, saying it should stop its "dangerous behavior" and vowing that
the "Iranian response will be surprising and you will regret it." Khatami's remarks came Following Netanyahu's speech which Khatami
described as Israeli "provocative actions," and two days after the strikes in Syria.
* * *
Meanwhile, in a potential hint at the upcoming conflict,
Haaretz writes that two and a half weeks after the bombing in which seven members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards were killed
at the T4 base in Syria, Israel is bracing for an Iranian retaliation for the Syrian strikes (and if one isn't forthcoming, well
that's what false flags are for).
As Haaretz writes, the Iranians' response, despite their frequent threats of revenge, is being postponed, screwing up Iran's war
planning. It's also possible that as time passes, Tehran is becoming more aware of the possible complex consequences of any action.
Still, the working assumption of Israeli defense officials remains that such a response is highly probable.
The Iranians appear to have many options. Revenge could come on the Syrian border, from the Lebanese border via Hezbollah,
directly from Iran by the launch of long-range missiles, or against an Israeli target abroad. In past decades Iran and Hezbollah
took part, separately and together, in two attacks in Argentina, a suicide attack in Bulgaria and attempts to strike at Israeli
diplomats and tourists in countries including India, Thailand and Azerbaijan.
In any case, Lebanon seems all but out of bounds until the country's May 6 parliamentary elections, and amid Hezbollah's fear
of being portrayed as an Iranian puppet. The firing of missiles from Iran would exacerbate the claims about Tehran's missile project
a moment before a possible U.S. decision on May 12 to abandon the nuclear agreement. Also, a strike at a target far from the Middle
East would require long preparation.
* * *
For now, an Israeli war with Iran in Syria is far from inevitable: the clash of intentions is clear: Iran is establishing itself
militarily in Syria and Israel has declared that it will prevent that by force. The question, of course, is whether this unstable
equilibrium will devolve into a lethal escalation, or if it will somehow be resolved through peaceful negotiation. Unfortunately,
in the context of recent events, and the upcoming breakdown of the Iran nuclear deal, the former is looking like the most likely
outcome.
disgusting how anti-war pre-president trump becomes military pandering trumpanyahoo after election...his handlers, knowing
he will need them in the near future, set him to constantly stroke the military every opportunity he has...
The Western globalist billionaires and elites are ultimately responsible for any aggression coming from Israel. If they
can conquer and control Iran and take over its oil and gas reserves, risking the fate of the millions of people in Iran, Syria
and in Israel, then the losses to them will be incidental. The Western-globalist-Zio-hawk Axis no doubt feels it has to act
now against Iran in case everything settles down in the ME with the Syrian war cooling off. Any expansion of Israeli turf or getting
control of resources to the north would be stymied with further waiting and allowing both Syrian and Iranian defense systems to
be further fortified. The Israelis appear to be completely confident that if they can instigate a war with Iran that it will be
backed by the US, the UK, France and other NATO nations.
That confidence could only come from the Western elites running things. However, after their last fizzled false-flag poison-gas
attack in Syria, the support by many NATO nations for more Axis aggression may not be that solid. So what does the Israeli tough
talk and threats mean at this time? Perhaps it means that Israel is in the process of concocting a massive and much more sophisticated
false-flag attack, like the taking out of a US war ship and blaming Iran for starting the war.
Remember Five points:
Isreal will fight to the very last American Soldiers Death.
The Zionist screams in Pain as he Stikes you.
The Yinon Plan.
Operation TALPIOT.
Qatari Pipeline Petro Dollar Vs. Russia / China Petro Yaun.
One bright aspect is the Anti-Isreal / Jew Zionist movement is gaining steam. More & more Individuals are speaking openly against
Israel's War Crimes, False Flag involvements, The Yinon Plan along with Pro Zionist immigrantion policy of migrating Muslim's
& Arabs to the EU & US without fear of retribution. Pro migration policy which supports territory boarder expansion via the Yinon
Plan & ethnic cleansing & migration of Arabs & Muslim's.
Not to mention the Billions in US foreign aid, AIPAC, ZioNeoConFascist NGO's & dual Israeli Citizen's which hold Political
Office in CONgress. Which must be outlawed.
As people become more disillusioned with Trump I think it's worthwhile to spend a moment to take stock of what happened in th
2016 election.
1) The US President is the primary determinant of US foreign and military power. The President is much weaker when addressing
domestic policy / internal affairs. Any small, paranoid nation with ambitious plans in its neighborhood would want ensure that
they have the President's ear ( or his balls). Too much at stake to take chances. And political influence is even easier when
you've developed close relation with an oil-rich ally (Saudis) with deep pockets.
2) US democracy is money-driven and no real populist stands much of a chance.
3) Despite a groundswell of discontent on both the left and the right, here were only two populists that ran in the election
(note: I'm not counting Rand Paul's because he didn't make an outright populist appeal - he merely spoke in a sensible way.
4) When Obama was President, he was kept in line by the "Birthers". Trump is kept in line by the allegation of Russian interference.
5) "Never Trump-ers" were mainly Jewish (AFAIK) and almost certainly pro-Israel. The Never Trump campaign began in earnest
with Kagan's Op-Ed in February 2016 ( some might date it to Bloomberg's public statement in January 2016 that neither Sanders
or Trump could be allowed to win).
6) AFAIK Pro-Israel oligarchs (like Saban, Soros, Bloomberg) are big donors to Democratic Party. Hillarry and DNC are known
to have colluded against 'sheep-dog' Sanders. Wouldn't Hillary just as easily collide FOR Trump (the Cinton's And Trump's are
known to have had close ties - and their daughters are still close).
I'm sure I'm missing some of the many "dots" but it logic suggests that both Obama and Trump are faux populists that -
at least in foreign policy (where Presidential powers are greatest) - are greatly influenced by foreign(albeit "allied") interests.
IMO Apologists for the faux populists also play an important part. They respond voraciously to the "crazy opposition" and
thereby keep alive faith in the faux hero.
Faux populist leaders seem to be a natural fit for our inverted totalitarian form of government. Perhaps any Empire will
naturally gravitate to such a compromised government? Funny thing is, most Americans would say that USA is NOT an Empire.
I should point out that "kept in line" (point #4) appears to be a convenience needed to excuse the faux populist's betrayals.
Both Obama and Trump seem more than willing to do as they are told.
And don't bother citing Obama's Iran deal as "proof" that Obama was independent. IMO That deal was made simply to buy time
because regime-change in Syria was taking longer than expected. It is foolish to think that Obama did everything the establishment
wanted but refused IN THAT ONE MATTER.
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.
Trump betrayal of his voters is as staggering as Obama betrayal. May even more so.
Notable quotes:
"... It is fitting that one of the first things that will happen during Pompeo's tenure as chief diplomat is the repudiation of a successful diplomatic agreement solely for reasons of spite and ideology. That reflects the contempt for diplomacy and compromise that Pompeo shares with the president. It is an early reminder why having Pompeo in charge of U.S. diplomacy is so dangerous and why it would have been better not to confirm him. ..."
"... North Korea wasn't going to give up its nuclear weapons anyway, and now it will look at Trump's reneging on the nuclear deal as proof that they are right to keep them. ..."
"... Pompeo's recent statements are those of an ignorant and incompetent jackass. Barely two weeks in and sane Americans are already nostalgic for Tillerson. ..."
"... Instead, as Pompeo's current trip and whereabouts make very clear, he's aping the same old tired Bush/Obama Middle East crap and still running errands for the corrupt rulers of Israel and Saudi Arabia. ..."
"... And if Trump doesn't stop betraying his voters with all this pointless, staggeringly expensive Middle East crap, he'll be gone in 2020. ..."
It is fitting that one of the first things that will happen during Pompeo's tenure as chief
diplomat is the repudiation of a successful diplomatic agreement solely for reasons of spite
and ideology. That reflects the contempt for diplomacy and compromise that Pompeo shares with
the president. It is an early reminder why having Pompeo in charge of U.S. diplomacy is so
dangerous and why it would have been better not to confirm him.
Pompeo also
said this weekend that he didn't think North Korea would care if the U.S. withdrew from the
agreement:
"I don't think Kim Jong Un is staring at the Iran deal and saying, 'Oh goodness, if they
get out of that deal, I won't talk to the Americans anymore,'" Pompeo told reporters
traveling on his plane en route from Saudi Arabia to Israel. "There are higher priorities,
things that he is more concerned about than whether or not the Americans stay in the
[agreement]."
It is obvious that North Korea has bigger concerns than U.S. adherence to the JCPOA, but it
doesn't follow that they won't take U.S. withdrawal as another sign that negotiating with
Washington is pointless. North Korea already has other reasons to doubt U.S. trustworthiness.
John Bolton's
endorsement of using negotiations with Libya as a model couldn't be more tone-deaf, since
North Korean officials frequently cite the overthrow and death of Gaddafi as a cautionary tale
of what happens when a government makes a deal with the U.S. It is possible that North Korea
won't put much stock in what happens to the JCPOA one way or another for a very different
reason: unlike Iran, North Korea has no intention of making significant concessions, and it is
engaged in talks with the U.S. to get as much as it can out of the fact that it is now a
full-fledged nuclear weapons state.
North Korea wasn't going to give up its nuclear weapons
anyway, and now it will look at Trump's reneging on the nuclear deal as proof that they are
right to keep them.
Our involvement in international "diplomacy", already weird, embarrassing, and destabilizing
because of Trump's random behavior, now seems to be spinning out of control. Pompeo's
recent statements are those of an ignorant and incompetent jackass. Barely two weeks in and
sane Americans are already nostalgic for Tillerson.
Wake me up when any senior member of this government turns out to be something other than
crooked, stupid, vulgar, incompetent, or some kind of foreign agent. We voted for Trump
hoping for a radical re-dedication to American interests. Instead, as Pompeo's current
trip and whereabouts make very clear, he's aping the same old tired Bush/Obama Middle East
crap and still running errands for the corrupt rulers of Israel and Saudi Arabia.
November 2018 is already slated to be a Republican bloodbath, in great part because our
government, the Congress in particular, is serving foreign interests and Wall Street instead
of America. And if Trump doesn't stop betraying his voters with all this pointless,
staggeringly expensive Middle East crap, he'll be gone in 2020.
I suspect Goad is verboten on UR, but allow me to excerpt from "I Didn't Vote for
This" of recent Goad production.
I voted for Trump because he promised to build a wall. Fifteen months into his
presidency, the wall has not been built.
He promised to repeal Obamacare. It has not been repealed.
He promised to focus on domestic rather than foreign issues and pledged a huge program
to rebuild the nation's crumbling infrastructure. No such program has materialized.
He promised to remove the nation's millions of illegal aliens. They are still here.
He promised to defund sanctuary cities. They have not been defunded.
He promised a complete ban on new Muslim immigration.
He promised to eliminate the massive federal debt in eight years. Rather than even
beginning to leave a dent in the debt, it is now over $1.1 trillion higher than it was the
day he took office.
One of the keystones of his campaign was that China was a currency manipulator and
therefore needed to be dealt with harshly. Only three months into his presidency, he
reneged and declared that China was not a currency manipulator.
On the campaign trail, he relentlessly hammered the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Only
three days into his presidency, he withdrew the US from the TPP. And now he's openly
considering rejoining it.
Cogent points, in Reed's context. The only consolation is recognition that a Clinton
presidency would have been much worse. Maybe so, huh?
Yes, but the order of magnitude ebbs. Not that I would make the trade, but dammit, what
happened to America? We've been fucked, and fucked ROYAL, yet all that climbs out of the
political woodwork is flying monkeys.
Aye, clobbering time it may well come to. But pray do not leave out the media whores when
loving ministrations are being meted out. The whole bunch of these lying, whoring, war
drumbeating progeny of Satan need special ministrations, perhaps even more care than the
flying monkeys. Stringing these bastards upside down from meat hooks in public squares may be
too ordinary a ministration, so better and brighter ideas need to be supplied by minds keener
than mine.
Trump's actions have not matched his election rhetoric. Just like faux populist Obama. Obama also "caved" to pressure, and
even set himself up for failure by emphasing "bipartisanship".
That is how the political mechanism of faux populism works.
Obama: Change you can believe in
Trump: Make America Great Again
Obama: Most transparent administration ever
Trump: Drain the Swamp
Obama: Deceiver: "Man of Peace" engaging in covert ops
Trump: Distractor: twitter, personal vendettas
Weakened by claims of unpatriotic inclinations:
Obama: Birthers (led by Trump who was close to Clinton's) - "Muslim socialist"!
Trump: Russia influence (pushed by 'NeverTrump' Clinton loyalists) - Putin's bitch!
Ed Schultz: I was fired from MSNBC because I supported Bernie SandersThe
former anchor claims the network was in the tank for Hillary Clinton
MSNBC anchor-turned-Russia Today host, Ed Schultz, told National Review Monday that he believes
he was fired from the left-leaning cable news network because he openly supported Bernie
Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary. The network, he claims, was in the tank for
Hillary Clinton.
The interview itself is fascinating and a shocking look at the inner workings of MSNBC, even if
Schultz isn't exactly a reliable narrator. Schultz claims that MSNBC took a heavy hand in
dictating what went on air, and that he was often pushed in the direction of a story by
higher-ups, even if he felt his audience wouldn't be interested.
Schultz says his trouble at MSNBC started when he informed his bosses that he planned to cover
Bernie Sanders' campaign announcement live from Vermont, and that he would be airing the first,
exclusive, cable network interview with the progressive presidential candidate. They objected,
and even went so far as to tell Schultz to drop the story.
He refused. And was forced to cover a boring news story in Texas, he says.
Schultz is clear on whom he blames: Hillary Clinton.
" I think the Clintons were connected to [NBC's] Andy Lack, connected at the hip, "
Schultz told NRO host Jamie Weinstein. " I think that they didn't want anybody in their
primetime or anywhere in their lineup supporting Bernie Sanders. I think that they were in the
tank for Hillary Clinton, and I think that it was managed, and 45 days later I was out at
MSNBC. "
Schultz's stint at MSNBC came to a screeching halt in July 2015, just as the Democratic
primaries were heating up. That same week, the network also axed other underperforming shows,
but Schultz maintains that he was given the boot because they didn't want him speaking out
against Clinton in the heat of the primaries.
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 ...
In reality Trump proved again that POTUS does not matter and presidential elections matter very little. In was he is like
drunk Obama, reckelss and jingoistic to the extreme. Both foreign and domestic policy is determined by forces, and are outside POTUS control, with very little input
possible. But the "deep state"
fully control the POTUS, no matter who he/she are.
Notable quotes:
"... To Trump apologists: Trump is the Republican Obama. The follow the same model of government: faux populist leader dogged by crazy critics that want to derail a righteous agenda. ..."
"... Obamabots gave similar excuses. Real populists simply don't get have a chance of being elected in US money-driven elections. ..."
"... Why was there only two populists running for President in 2016? Sanders, Hillay's sheepdog, destroyed the movement that would been the best check on the establishment and the rush to war. That movement was never going to be allowed to take root. Trump, a friend of the Clinton's was probably meant to prevail. ..."
To Trump apologists: Trump is the Republican Obama. The follow the same model of government: faux populist leader
dogged by crazy critics that want to derail a righteous agenda.
Obamabots gave similar excuses. Real populists simply don't get have a chance of being
elected in US money-driven elections.
Why was there only two populists running for President in 2016? Sanders, Hillay's sheepdog, destroyed the movement that would been the best check on the
establishment and the rush to war. That movement was never going to be allowed to take root.
Trump, a friend of the Clinton's was probably meant to prevail.
Rome had bread and circuses. We've got crumbs and tweets.
Vermont Senator says business model of Democratic Party has been a failure for 15
years
Bernie Sanders has triggered a backlash by making comments interpreted as an attack on [Wall
Street/CIA troll] Barack Obama on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther
King. The senator for Vermont appeared to criticise the first black US President as he branded
the Democratic Party a "failure".
Speaking in Jackson, Mississippi, he said Democrats had lost a record number of legislative
seats. "The business model, if you like, of the Democratic Party for the last 15 years or so
has been a failure,'' said the Vermont Senator...Mr Sanders's comments were quickly branded
"patronising" and "deplorable".
"... 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.
In order for him [Sanders] 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.
The rapid rise of oligarchy and wealth and income inequality is the great moral, economic, and political issue of our time. Yet,
it gets almost no coverage from the corporate media.
How often do network newscasts report on the 40 million Americans living in poverty, or that we have the highest rate of childhood
poverty of almost any major nation on earth? How often does the media discuss the reality that our society today is more unequal
than at any time since the 1920s with the top 0.1% now owning almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%? How often have you heard the
media report the stories of millions of people who today are working longer hours for lower wages than was the case some 40 years
ago?
How often has ABC, CBS or NBC discussed the role that the
Koch brothers and other billionaires play in creating
a political system which allows the rich and the powerful to significantly control elections and the legislative process in Congress?
We need to ask the hard questions that the corporate media fails to ask
Sadly, the answer to these questions is: almost never. The corporate media has failed to let the American people fully understand
the economic forces shaping their lives and causing many of them to work two or three jobs, while CEOs make hundreds of times more
than they do. Instead, day after day, 24/7, we're inundated with the relentless dramas of the Trump White House, Stormy Daniels,
and the latest piece of political gossip.
We urgently need to discuss the reality of today's economy and political system, and fight to create an economy that works for
everyone and not just the one percent.
We need to ask the hard questions that the corporate media fails to ask: who owns America, and who has the political power? Why,
in the richest country in the history of the world are so many Americans living in poverty? What are the forces that have caused
the American middle class, once the envy of the world, to decline precipitously? What can we learn from countries that have succeeded
in reducing income and wealth inequality, creating a strong and vibrant middle class, and providing basic human services to everyone?
We need to hear from struggling Americans whose stories are rarely told in newspapers or television. Unless we understand the
reality of life in America for working families, we're never going to change that reality.
Until we understand that the rightwing Koch brothers are more politically powerful than the Republican National Committee, and
that big banks, pharmaceutical companies, and multinational corporations are spending unlimited sums of money to rig the political
process, we won't be able to overturn the disastrous US supreme court decision on Citizens United, move to the public funding of
elections and end corporate greed.
Until we understand that the US federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage and that people cannot make it on $9
or $10 an hour, we're not going to be able to pass a living wage of at least $15 an hour.
Until we understand that multinational corporations have been writing our trade and tax policies for the past 40 years to allow
them to throw American workers out on the street and move to low-wage countries, we're not going to be able to enact fair laws ending
the race to the bottom and making the wealthy and the powerful pay their fair share.
Until we understand that we live in a highly competitive global economy and that it is counterproductive that millions of our
people cannot afford a higher education or leave school deeply in debt, we will not be able to make public colleges and universities
tuition free.
Until we understand that we are the only major country on earth not to guarantee healthcare to all and that we spend far more
per capita on healthcare than does any other country, we're not going to be able to pass a Medicare for all, single-payer program.
Until we understand that the US pays, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs because pharmaceutical companies
can charge whatever price they want for life-saving medicine, we're not going to be able to lower the outrageous price of these drugs.
Until we understand that climate change is real, caused by humans, and causing devastating problems around the world, especially
for poor people, we're not going to be able to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into sustainable forms of energy.
We need to raise political consciousness in America and help us move forward with a progressive agenda that meets the needs of
our working families. It's up to us all to join the conversation -- it's just the beginning.
Trump's game looks more and more like a V2.0 of Obama's "bait and switch" game... Another "change we can believe in" scam to
artificially extend the shelf life of neoliberal as a social system.
Notable quotes:
"... My take on his support: DT support is far higher than one would expect (duh.. it just isn't visible in the MSM, remember I predicted he would win when he threw his hat in). ..."
"... DT has lost some who voted for him, typically 'anything but Hillary' types, "give him a chance", who are disapointed at his poor performance on some/any/all issues. Some others have checked out of any involvement in MS pols. and have joined Doomsters, Refusniks, and even (imho) to my surprise, quasi-anarchists (who lack a platform.) ..."
"... The rapidly degrading US socio-economic landscape is no doubt responsible, more so than the person of DT. (Arguably he is contributing to the decline, other story.) Poverty, sagging life expectancy, opioid crisis, homelessness, student debt, crumbling infrastructure, cuts in social aid or 'benefits' as the brits say, no future generation, etc. ..."
"... On the other hand, DT supporters have become more 'radical and committed' ..."
"... The USA has become completely a-political, an oligarchy run by a convoluted circuit of top-dogs and gals, fights going on at the top (mafia 1 vs. team 2) for grabbing the leftovers of power/revenue/capture/ etc., not new but now evident. ..."
"... The top 20% chooses sides, as they have to, merely in function of who is paying them, where their status comes from, what hopes for children. The rest can check out and face their fate, or choose a cult, a tribe The next question is, what are the attitudes to civil war? How is that going to play out? ..."
I keep vague track of Trump support by consulting various sites. DT enthusiasts are all very
keen on GAB, the censorship on twitter - reddit - youtube and other pop. drives them totally
crazy.
My take on his support: DT support is far higher than one would expect (duh.. it just isn't
visible in the MSM, remember I predicted he would win when he threw his hat in).
DT has lost
some who voted for him, typically 'anything but Hillary' types, "give him a chance", who are disapointed at his poor performance on some/any/all issues. Some others have checked out of any
involvement in MS pols. and have joined Doomsters, Refusniks, and even (imho) to my surprise,
quasi-anarchists (who lack a platform.)
Technotopists are going out of fashion (> global warming disasters.) -- The rapidly
degrading US socio-economic landscape is no doubt responsible, more so than the person of DT.
(Arguably he is contributing to the decline, other story.) Poverty, sagging life expectancy,
opioid crisis, homelessness, student debt, crumbling infrastructure, cuts in social aid or
'benefits' as the brits say, no future generation, etc.
On the other hand, DT supporters have become more 'radical and committed' as is always the
case in these kind of 'tribal' belonging scenes, they have dragged in family members / friends,
through the usual conduits of social influence in micro-circles. Which has been made
exceptionally easy by the terminal idiocy, blindness and contradictions of the MSM, Dems and
the PTB (incl. top Republicans, corporations, etc.) generally. Authoritarian impulses (which DT
embraces in part - the WALL is a good ex. - for the rest, hmm..) will flourish up to a
point.
The USA has become completely a-political, an oligarchy run by a convoluted circuit of
top-dogs and gals, fights going on at the top (mafia 1 vs. team 2) for grabbing the leftovers
of power/revenue/capture/ etc., not new but now evident.
The top 20% chooses sides, as they have to, merely in function of who is paying them,
where their status comes from, what hopes for children. The rest can check out and face their
fate, or choose a cult, a tribe The next question is, what are the attitudes to civil war? How
is that going to play out?
About non-posts, I was going to go into the murder of Kim Jong-Nam (brother of today's Kim)
which ties two threads together - NKorea and murder by nerve gas. (Hoarse mentioned this in the
other thread.)
Posted on
March 10, 2018 by Yves Smith Yves here. As depressing and
predictable as it is to see Democrats yet again prostituting themselves to financiers, payback
may finally be coming. From Lambert in Water Cooler
yesterday :
Senate: Poll: Five Senate Dems would lose to GOP challenger if elections held today" [
The Hill ]. "New polls published Thursday morning in Axios show Sens. Claire McCaskill
(D-Mo.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and Heidi
Heitkamp (D-N.D.) would all lose reelection to GOP challengers if voters were heading to the
polls this week." Blue Dogs all. Why vote for a fake Republican when you can vote for a real
one?
So these Blue Dogs who are gutting the already underwhelming Dodd Frank may not be with us
much longer, at least politically. And even though the party is remarkably insistent on
adhering to a strategy of corporate toadying that has led it to hemorrhage seats at all levels
of government, if these seats all go red, it might be a message even the Democrats might not be
able to ignore.
By Marshall Auerback is a market analyst and commentator. Originally published at
Alternet
This act of regulatory vandalism highlights everything that is corrupt about our
political system.
As if to maximize the possibility of another major financial crisis, the Trump
administration and the GOP have recently been busy undercutting the limited safeguards
established a decade ago via Dodd-Frank. The latest example of this stealth attack on Wall
Street reform is the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act,
appropriately sponsored by Republican Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho, chairman of the Senate
Banking Committee. Appropriate, because this is literally a "crapo" bill. It provides a few
"technical tweaks" to Dodd-Frank in the same way in which protection payouts to organized crime
provide businesses with "insurance" against property damage. In reality, it is an act of
regulatory vandalism, which highlights everything that is corrupt about our political
system.
We have grown to expect no less from the GOP, whose sole r aison d'etre these days
seems to be filling the trough from which America's fat cats can perpetually gorge themselves.
What is truly disturbing, however, is that the Republican effort is being given bipartisan
cover by more than a dozen Democratic senators: Doug Jones (Ala.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Heidi
Heitkamp (N.D.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Mark Warner and Tim Kaine (both from Va.), Claire
McCaskill (Mo.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Chris Coons
(Del.), and Tom Carper of Delaware. To this esteemed group, we should also add Senator Angus
King (ME), an Independent who regularly caucuses with the Democrats. So, in reality, it's a
filibuster-proof "Baker's Dirty Dozen." Digging into the details, perhaps this is what Senator
Mitch McConnell had in mind when he predicted
more bipartisanship in Congress this year . In co-sponsoring this bill, the 13 senators are
providing cover for the GOP when the inevitable fallout comes, dissipating the Democrats'
political capital with the electorate in the process.
Yes, we get it: some of these senator incumbents are in red states that voted heavily for
Donald Trump in the last election. And
the latest polls suggest many are vulnerable in this year's elections. But the last time we
checked, there didn't seem to be an overwhelming wave of populist protest demanding regulatory
relief for banks. All 50 states -- red and blue -- suffered from the last financial crisis, and
it's hard to believe voters in Montana, West Virginia, North Dakota, Indiana or Missouri would
be more likely to support Senators Tester, Manchin, Heitkamp, Donnelly or McCaskill because
they backed a bank deregulation bill (which in reality goes well beyond helping small community
banks). Nor do the 2018 races factor as far as Senators Warner, Coons, or Bennet are concerned,
given that none are up for re-election this year.
No, the more likely answer is money, plain and simple. The numbers aren't in for 2017, but
an analysis of the Federal Election Commission data from the 2016 election appears to explain
what is driving this newfound solicitousness toward the banks. The
Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) points out that "nine of the twelve Democrats
supporting the deregulatory measure count the financial industry as either their biggest or
second-biggest donor." (At least now we have a better understanding as to why Hillary Clinton's
" responsibility
gene " induced her to select running mate Tim Kaine, who
received "large contributions from Big Law partners that represent Wall Street," as opposed
to a genuine finance reformer, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren. Senator Warren is vigorously
opposing the new bill.)
"included among his 20 largest donors the mega Wall Street banks Goldman Sachs and
JPMorgan Chase. Goldman's employees and PACs gave Warner's campaign $71,600 while JPMorgan
Chase gave the Warner campaign committees $50,566 Senator Heidi Heitkamp is also up for
reelection this year and her number one contributor at present is employees and/or PACs of
Goldman Sachs which have contributed $79,500 thus far."
Naturally, all of the senators claim their motives are pure. With no hint of irony, a
spokesman
for Tim Kaine suggested that , "Campaign contributions do not influence Senator Kaine's
policy positions." Likewise, an aide for Mark Warner vigorously
contested the idea that campaign donations from Wall Street ever influenced the Virginia
senator's decision-making on policy matters. Sure, and it was shocking to find out that
gambling took place in Rick's Café.
It is true, as Senator Jon Tester (another co-sponsor)
notes , that the proposed changes introduced in the Crapo bill (notably the increase in the
asset size from $50 billion to $250 billion of those banks that are considered "systemically
important" and therefore subject to greater oversight and tighter rules) do not affect the
likes of Wall Street banks such as Citigroup, JP MorganChase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs
and Morgan Stanley, all of which are still covered by the most stringent oversight provisions
of Dodd-Frank. But the increased asset threshold does exempt the U.S. bank holding companies of
systemically significant foreign banks: Deutsche Bank, UBS and Credit Suisse, all of whom were
implicated in multiple violations of both American and international banking laws in the
aftermath of the 2008 crisis.
Deutsche Bank alone has paid billions of dollars for its role in perpetuating mortgage
fraud,
money-laundering and interest rate manipulation (the LIBOR scandal), which ideally should
invite more regulatory scrutiny, not less. Instead, a new law ostensibly crafted to provide a
few "technical fixes" for Dodd-Frank is now reducing the regulatory oversight of a bank that
has been
cited in an IMF report as one of Germany's "global systemically important financial
institutions." Translating the couched-IMF-speak, the report suggests that Deutsche Bank on its
own has the potential to set off a new global contagion, given the scale of its derivatives
exposure. Not only too big to fail, but evidently too big to regulate properly either, aided
and abetted by members of a party who claim to be appalled at the level of corruption in the
Trump administration.
Another side-effect of raising the regulatory threshold to $250 billion in assets is that it
diminishes the chance of obtaining an early warning detection signal from somewhat smaller
financial institutions. As the experience of Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns illustrated,
smaller problems that remain hidden in the shadows can ultimately metastasize if left alone,
and become much bigger -- and more systemically dangerous -- later.
So when Senator Kaine nobly suggests
that he is merely providing relief for "small community banks and credit unions" in his home
state, or Jon Tester argues that he is only helping local banks suffering from Dodd-Frank's
regulatory overkill, both are being extraordinarily disingenuous. The reality is that
increasing the oversight threshold by 500 percent does not just help a few "small community
banks and credit unions" crawl out from a thicket of onerous and costly regulation. Even former
Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who favored some regulatory relief for community banks, felt that
$250 billion threshold
was excessive ly lax.
In fact, (
per the Americans for Financial Reform ), the increase "removes the most severe mandate for
25 of the 38 largest banks," which
together "account for over $3.5 trillion in banking assets, more than one-sixth of the U.S.
total." Additionally, as Pat Garofalo
writes : "The bill also includes an exemption from capital standards -- essentially the
amount of money that banks need to have on hand in case things go south -- that benefits some
big financial firms, and even more are lobbying to be included." In other words, this isn't
just George Bailey's friendly neighborhood bank that is getting some regulatory relief
here.
All of this newfound regulatory laxity comes at a time when many of the largest Wall Street
banks have again resurrected the same practices that almost destroyed them a decade ago. Bank
credit analyst Chris Whalen
observes : "The leader of this effort is none other than Citigroup (NYSE:C), which has
surpassed JP MorganChase (NYSE:JPM) to become the largest derivatives shop in the world. Citi
has embraced the most notorious product of the roaring 2000s, the synthetic collateralized debt
obligation or 'CDO' security, a product that fraudulently leverages the real world and
literally caused the bank to fail a decade ago."
Another example: Trump and his henchman, Mick Mulvaney, have also joined the big banks in
attacking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which by virtue of the Crapo act, will be
blocked "from collecting key data showing when and where families of color are being
overcharged for home loans or steered into predatory products."
Let's be honest here: even in its original form, Dodd-Frank was the bare minimum the
government could have done in the wake of the 2008 disaster. But lobbyists, paid-for
politicians and co-opted bank-friendly regulators have been busy "applying technical fixes" to
the bill virtually from the moment it was passed a decade ago. The upshot is that the
much-trumpeted Wall Street reform is a joke when compared to the comprehensive legislation
passed in the aftermath of the Great Depression (which set the stage for decades of relative
financial stability). Under Dodd, the banks are purportedly subject to "meaningful stress
tests" (
in the words of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell ), but the tests are neither
particularly stressful, nor do they adequately reflect today's twin dangers of off-balance
sheet leverage and the concentration of big banks' on-balance sheet assets in relatively
low-return loans.
What should have been done after the global financial crisis? Professors Eric Tymoigne and
Randall Wray
proposed the following :
"Any of the 'too big to fail' financial institutions that needed funding should have been
required to submit to Fed oversight. Top management should have been required to proffer
resignations as a condition of lending (with the Fed or Treasury holding the letters until
they could decide which should be accepted -- this is how Jessie Jones resolved the bank
crisis in the 1930s). Short-term lending against the best collateral should have been
provided, at penalty rates. A comprehensive 'cease and desist' order should have been
enforced to stop all trading, all lending, all asset sales, and all bonus payments until an
assessment of bank solvency could have been completed. The FDIC should have been called-in
(in the case of institutions with insured deposits), but in any case, the critically
undercapitalized institutions should have been dissolved according to existing law: at the
least cost to the Treasury and to avoid increasing concentration in the financial
sector."
A number of conclusions can be drawn from this whole sordid episode. An obvious one is that
our model of campaign finance is completely broken. While it is encouraging to see some
Democratic politicians increasingly adopting the Sanders model of fundraising,
swearing off large corporate donations , not enough are doing so. Democrats are united in
their concern pertaining to foreign threats that pose risks to the integrity of U.S. elections,
but the vigorous opposition to Vladimir Putin and the Russians isn't extended to the domestic
oligarchs destroying American democracy (and the economy) from within.
The whole history behind Senator Crapo's bill shows how quickly bank lobbyists can
routinely exploit their financial muscle to turn a seemingly innocuous bill into something
which pokes yet more holes into the Swiss Cheese-like rules already in place for Dodd. The
Baker's Dirty Dozen have accepted donations from Wall Street that not only constrain their
ability to implement genuine reforms in finance (and other areas) but also discourage the
mobilization of voters, who see this legislative horror show, and consequently opt out of
showing up to vote at elections because they know that the system is rigged and dominated by
corporate cash (making their votes irrelevant).
Ironically, no less a figure than Donald Trump exploited that voter cynicism in 2016. In
striking contrast to every other Republican presidential nominee since 1936, he attacked
globalization, free trade, international financiers, and Wall Street (and made effective
mockery of Hillary Clinton's ties to Goldman Sachs) and thereby mobilized blue-collar voters in
marginal Rust Belt states, giving him his path to the presidency. Of course, we now know that
this was all bait-and-switch politics, likely facilitated by forces outside the U.S., along
with large corporation donations from domestic elites. We've probably reached the endgame as
far as this "
investment approach to politics " as it disintegrates into a cesspool of corruption and
further financial fragility. It may take another crash before this problem is truly fixed.
In the meantime, this bipartisan subversion of Wall Street reform not only risks making the
next crisis at least as bad as 2008, but also reinforces the notion that both parties are
equally corrupt,
catalyzing the collapse of the American political order . In a further sick twist of fate,
the twin corrosive forces of "golden rule politics" (i.e., he who has the gold rules) and a
rapidly deflating "bubble-ized" economy could all come to a head under the watch of Donald the
Unready. But he won't own this disaster alone, thanks to the help of compromised Wall Street
Democrats.
Jen
Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan from my deep purple state of NH both, voted to allow the bill
to proceed. And of course my esteemed congress critter, Annie Kuster, did her bit in congress. Only 968
days until I can exact my retribution on Shaheen at the polls, first and foremost for her vote in favor of
fast track, but damned if she doesn't give me another good reason on almost a daily basis.
"... the four largest banks in America are on average 80% bigger today than they were before we bailed them out because they were "too big to fail". Incredibly, the six largest banks in America have over 10 trillion dollars in assets, equivalent to 54% of the GDP of this nation . This is wealth, this is power, this is who owns America. ..."
"... Very conservative, anti-regulatory people hold the White House and key positions in the House and the Senate, and the first thing the industry does is gut regulation. Why? Because it makes the CEOs so wealthy to run these frauds and predation. It's not necessarily good for the banking industry, but it is extremely good for the most senior leaders and they are the ones, of course, who hire and fire the lawyers and the lobbyists, and effectively hire and fire key members of Congress. ..."
"... Apparently, our memories are indeed so short that we have learned nothing from the 2008 Wall Street crash. Bernie Sanders (and probably Elizabeth Warren to some extend), are left alone again to fight against the Wall Street mafia because, apparently, the rest of the US political class has been bought from it. ..."
The six largest banks in America have over 10 trillion dollars in assets,
equivalent to 54% of the GDP of this nation. This is wealth, this is power, this is who owns
America.
Ten years after the big crash of 2007-08, caused by the Wall Street mafia, sending waves of
financial destruction around the globe, the awful Trump administration that literally put the
Goldman Sachs banksters in charge of the US economy, wants to reset the clock bomb of another
financial disaster by deregulating the financial sector! And guess what: the corporate
Democrats followed again!
Putting aside that Russiagate fiasco, Bernie Sanders was one more time the only voice of
resistance against the Wall Street mafia in a hypnotized by the banking-corporate money US
senate.
As Bernie stated:
Just ten years ago, as a result of greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street,
this country was plunged into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The official unemployment rate soared up to 10% and the real unemployment rate jumped to over
17%. At the height of the financial crisis more than 27 million Americans were unemployed,
underemployed or stopped working altogether because they could not find employment. 15 million
families - as a result of that financial crisis - lost their homes to foreclosure, as more and
more people could not afford to pay their mortgages. As a result of the illegal behavior of
Wall Street, American households lost over 13 trillion dollars in savings. That is what Wall
Street did 10 years ago.
Believe it or not - and of course we are not going to hear any discussion of this at all -- the four largest banks in America are on average 80% bigger today than they were before we
bailed them out because they were "too big to fail". Incredibly, the six largest banks in
America have over 10 trillion dollars in assets, equivalent to 54% of the GDP of this
nation . This is wealth, this is power, this is who owns America.
If any of these financial institutions were to get into a financial trouble again, there is no
doubt that, once again, the taxpayers of this country will be asked to bail them out. Except
this time, the bail out might even be larger than it was in 2008.
Bernie is right, the facts are all there, except that, again, he is the only one who speaks
about it.
Recall that according to chapter 20 conclusions of the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, "As a result of the rescues and consolidation of financial institutions through failures
and mergers during the crisis, the U.S. financial sector is now more concentrated than ever in
the hands of a few very large, systemically significant institutions."
Recall
also that in December 1, 2010, the Fed was forced to release details of 21,000 funding
transactions it made during the financial crisis, naming names and dollar amounts. Disclosure
was due to a provision sparked by Bernie Sanders. The voluminous data dump from the notoriously
secret Fed shows just how deeply the Federal Reserve stepped into the shoes of Wall Street and,
as the crisis grew and the normal channels of lending froze, the Fed effectively replaced Wall
Street and money centers banks in terms of financing. The Fed has thus far reported, without
even disclosing specifics of its lending from its discount window, that it supplied, in
total, more than $9 trillion to Wall Street firms, commercial banks, foreign banks,
corporations and some highly questionable off balance sheet entities. (Much smaller amounts
were outstanding at any one time.)
Bill Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, states:
In the savings loan debacle, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, George Akerlof and Paul Romer, who
until recently was Chief Economist to the World Bank, wrote that economists didn't realize -
because they lacked any theory of fraud - that deregulation was bound to create widespread
fraud and a crisis. Now, we know better if we learn the lessons of this crisis, we need not
recreate it.
Very conservative, anti-regulatory people hold the White House and key positions in the House
and the Senate, and the first thing the industry does is gut regulation. Why? Because it makes
the CEOs so wealthy to run these frauds and predation. It's not necessarily good for the
banking industry, but it is extremely good for the most senior leaders and they are the ones,
of course, who hire and fire the lawyers and the lobbyists, and effectively hire and fire key
members of Congress.
Apparently, our memories are indeed so short that we have learned nothing from the 2008 Wall
Street crash. Bernie Sanders (and probably Elizabeth Warren to some extend), are left alone
again to fight against the Wall Street mafia because, apparently, the rest of the US political
class has been bought from it.
the problem with the clain that "Bernie is a fraud and Trump is the only real opposition to
the entrenched neocon thieves and murderers in Washington"this that Trump quickly became neocon
in foreign policy.
While Bernie of course proved to be not a fighter and he just gave Hillary the top spot
without any fighting. I started to suspect that he is a "corral dog" from the moment he dismissed
"private email server" scandal. Moreover he tried to crush the fighting that his supporters
intent to launch. In this sense he is still a fraud.
But Trump himself was quickly neutered (in just three month) and now does not represents "Trumpism" (rejection of neoliberal
globalization, unrestricted immigration for suppression of wages, rejection of elimination of jobs via outsourcing and offshoring
of manufacturing, rejection of wars for enlargement and sustaining of neoliberal empire, especially NATO role as global policemen
and wars for Washington client Israel in Middle east, detente with Russia etc) in any meaningful way. He is just an aging
Narcissist in power.
CPAC shows the conservative grassroots are with the president and that the Beltway
elites are cowed.
I was good with Kucinich and Nader. I'm neither Conservative nor Republican. I voted for
McGovern. Yet I am a card carrying deplorable. Bernie is a fraud and Trump is the only real
opposition to the entrenched thieves and murderers in Washington. Your Conservative grass
roots have a significant cohort of fellow travelers. Trump could not have won the upper
midwest without us.
I thought Trump's offer of amnesty in exchange for moving toward a sane immigration policy
WAS leadership. It's easier to stop immigration than to reverse it. And he exposed the
Democrats. They have lost the dreamers as a political tool.
Where Trump is losing me is with his stupid and dangerous foreign policy. That's where I
would like to see some leadership.
Looks like neoliberals decided to equate widespread anti-neoliberalism and anti-globalization sentiment with pro-Russian
propaganda. A very clever and very dirty trick.
What is funny is that Steele dossier and FBI Mayberry Machiavellians machinations actually deprived Sanders a chance to
represent Democratic Party. nt that he wanted this badly, he folded eve without major pressure (many be under behind the scenes
intimidation due to business dealing of his wife)
Notable quotes:
"... Instead of standing up to the crazies – by which I mean the Democratic party Establishment – and saying that the whole Russia-phobic campaign is based on nothing but hot air and fantasy, he's kowtowing to the very people who are trying to smear him as a Russian agent. Here he is signing on to the Clintonite canon of faith that poor Hillary " had to run against the Russian government " as well as Trump. ..."
"... This is laughable: there's no evidence for this other than Mueller's comical "indictment," which shows that something called the "Internet Research Agency," run by an out-of-work chef, spent a grand total of $100,000 – mostly after the election – on Facebook ads that were both anti-Clinton and anti-Trump. Michael Moore attended one "Russian-sponsored" event – a rally of thousands targeting Trump Tower, and, by the way, the only successful "Russian" event (the pro-Trump events were flops). ..."
"... Not only is Bernie buying into Russia-gate, now that the case for it is collapsing – nearly two years later and there's still no evidence of "collusion" – but he's calling for a full-fledged witch-hunt: ..."
"... Sanders' followers have taken up the hate-on-Russia battle cry with alacrity, with material by the fraudulent fanatic Luke Harding all over the web site of the Democratic Socialists of America. And being the left edge of the Democratic party, DSA will be supporting the very Democratic officeholders and officials who are shouting the loudest about Russia. ..."
"... Oh, he's got money-laundering charges on Paul Manafort and associates, but that has nothing to do with the Trump campaign: it all happened years before Trump ran. He's got Carter Page pleading guilty to lying to the FBI – but it's not clear what this means, exactly, since he's not been charged with a crime after all this time. ..."
"... So no matter what you may think of Trump and his policies, the real question is: will the Deep State and their allies in the media succeed in their bid for power? Will they oust a sitting President and institute a new era in our politics, one in which the political class can exercise its veto over the democratic will of the people? ..."
"... A SPECIAL NOTE : Yes, our matching funds have arrived: a group of donors has gotten together and pledged $30,000 – but there's a catch. We have to match that amount in smaller donations. So now it's up to you. We need your support so we can get back to doing our job – exposing the lies of the War Party. But we can't do it without your tax-deductible donations. ..."
One by one, the plaster gods fall,
cracked and crumbled on the ground: the latest is Bernie Sanders, the Great Pinko Hope of the
(very few) remaining Democrats with a modicum of sense who reject the "Russia! Russia! Russia!"
paranoia of Rep. Adam Schiff and what I call the party's California Crazies. The official
Democratic leadership seems to have no real commitment to anything other than fealty to a few
well-known oligarchs, who provide the party with needed cash, a burning hatred of Russia
– an issue no ordinary voter outside of the Sunshine State loony bin and Washington, D.C.
cares about – and exotic issues of interest only to the upper class virtue-signalers who
are now their main constituency (e.g., where will trans people go to the bathroom?). Overlaying
this potpourri of nothingness, the glue holding it all together, is pure unadulterated hatred:
of President Trump, of Trump voters, of Middle America in general, and, of course, fear and
loathing of Russia and all things Russian.
And now the one supposedly bright spot in this pit of abysmal darkness has flickered out,
with Bernie Sanders, the Ron Paul of the Reds, jumping
on the Russia-did-it bandwagon and cowering in the wake of Robert Mueller's laughable
"indictment," in which the special prosecutor avers that $100,000 in Facebook ads were designed
to throw the election to Trump – and to help Bernie!
Oh no, says Bernie, from his place of exile in the wilds of Vermont, where the
Russians
did not take over the electrical grid: It wasn't me!
Instead of standing up to the crazies – by which I mean the Democratic party
Establishment – and saying that the whole Russia-phobic campaign is based on nothing but
hot air and fantasy, he's kowtowing to the very people who are trying to smear him as a Russian
agent. Here he is signing on to the Clintonite canon of faith that poor Hillary " had to run against
the Russian government " as well as Trump.
This is laughable: there's no evidence for this other than Mueller's comical
"indictment," which shows that something called the "Internet Research Agency," run by an
out-of-work chef, spent a grand total of $100,000 – mostly after the election – on
Facebook ads that were both anti-Clinton and anti-Trump.
Michael Moore attended one "Russian-sponsored" event – a rally of thousands targeting
Trump Tower, and, by the way, the only successful "Russian" event (the pro-Trump events were
flops).
Not only is Bernie buying into Russia-gate, now that the case for it is collapsing –
nearly two years later and there's still no evidence of "collusion" – but he's calling for a
full-fledged witch-hunt:
"The key issues now are: 1) How we prevent the unwitting manipulation of our electoral
and political system by foreign governments. 2) Exposing who was actively consorting with the
Russian government's attack on our democracy."
This is the real goal of anti-Trump groups like the "
Alliance for Securing Democracy " and their "Hamilton dashboard," which purports to track
"pro-Russian" sentiment online: it's the explicit intention of #TheResistance to censor the
media with the cooperation of the tech oligarchs like Google, Twitter, and Facebook. It's back
to the 1950s, folks, only this time the Thought Police are "liberals," and "socialists" like
Bernie and the Bernie Bros.
Sanders' followers have taken up the hate-on-Russia battle cry with alacrity, with material
by the fraudulent fanatic
Luke Harding all over the web site
of the Democratic Socialists of America. And being the left edge of the Democratic party, DSA
will be supporting the very Democratic officeholders and officials who are shouting the loudest
about Russia.
Coming soon: a congressional "investigation" into "pro-Russian" Americans using the
"Hamilton dashboard" and the Southern Poverty Law Center as templates. Remember the House
UnAmerican Activities Committee? Well, it's coming back. That's always been in the cards, and
now those cards are about to be dealt.
I'll tell you one thing: I would have colluded with the Klingon Empire to prevent Hillary
and her band of authoritarian statists and warmongering nutcases from taking the White House.
If only the Russians had intervened, they'd have been doing this country – and the
world – a great service. Alas, there's not one lick of solid evidence – forensic,
documentary, witness testimony – that shows this. Which is what the Mueller investigation
is all about: the Democrats are claiming there was interference, and Mueller is out to find
corroboration. Except it's been over a year and he's come up with nothing.
Oh, he's got money-laundering charges on Paul Manafort and associates, but that has nothing
to do with the Trump campaign: it all happened years before Trump ran. He's got Carter Page
pleading guilty to lying to the FBI – but it's not clear what this means, exactly, since
he's not been charged with a crime after all this time.
The Deep State's bid for power has hit several roadblocks recently, but it could yet
succeed. First, Mueller could indict the President for "obstruction of justice" – a
charge derived not from any real criminal activity, but from the investigation itself. I think
this is the most probable outcome of all this.
Barring that, however, there is one road they could and probably would go down, given the
intensity of their hatred for this President and their overweening power lust. Having gone this
far in an attempt to overthrow a sitting President, they can't just stop halfway to their goal.
They have to go all the way, or else suffer the consequences – public exposure, and
possible criminal charges. In short, if they fail to get Trump on some semi-legal basis, I
think they'd welcome his assassination.
The Deep State cannot allow the Trump administration to stand for a number of reasons, the
chief one being that the coup is already in progress and there's no stopping it now. The
President's enemies are legion, they are powerful, and they are abroad as well as here on
American shores. They cannot allow his brand of "America First" nationalism to succeed, or seem
to succeed: it conflicts too violently with their globalist vision of a borderless
America-centric empire ruled by a coalition of oligarchs, technocrats, and Deep State
operatives who've been shaping world events from the shadows for generations.
So no matter what you may think of Trump and his policies, the real question is: will the
Deep State and their allies in the media succeed in their bid for power? Will they oust a
sitting President and institute a new era in our politics, one in which the political class can
exercise its veto over the democratic will of the people?
That's the issue at hand and that's why I spend so much time writing about Trump and his
enemies' efforts to destroy him. Because if the Deep State succeeds, the America we knew and
loved will be no more. Something else will take its place – and believe me, it won't be
pretty.
A SPECIAL NOTE : Yes, our matching funds have arrived: a group of donors has gotten
together and pledged $30,000 – but there's a catch. We have to match that amount in
smaller donations. So now it's up to you. We need your support so we can get back to doing our job –
exposing the lies of the War Party. But we can't do it without your tax-deductible
donations.
If we all get together and make that final push we can make our goal. Every donation counts,
no matter the amount. This is how we'll finally win the battle for peace: by uniting, despite
superficial differences, to support the institutions that are in the front lines of the
struggle for a rational foreign policy. And leading the charge is Antiwar.com.
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here . But please note that my tweets are sometimes
deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
Perry, a member of the Homeland Security subcommittee on cyber security, said Tuesday that the House Office of Inspector General
tracked the network usage of Awan and his associates on House servers and found that a "massive" amount of data was flowing from the
networks.
Notable quotes:
"... Attorneys for the Plaintiffs in the case, Jared and Elizabeth Beck, and appears to argue that if the Democratic Party did cheat Sanders in the 2016 Presidential primary race, then that action was protected under the first amendment. Twitter users were quick to respond to the brief, expressing outrage and disgust at the claims made by representatives of the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. ..."
"... This author was shocked to find that despite the characterization of the Becks as peddlers of conspiracy theory, the defense counsel failed to mention the motion for protection filed by the Becks earlier in the litigation process. They also failed to note the voice-modulated phone calls received by the law offices of the Becks which contained a caller-ID corresponding to the law offices of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a defendant in the case. In light of this context, the Becks hardly appear to be peddlers of conspiracy theory. ..."
"... It appears that the defendants in the DNC Fraud Lawsuit are attempting to argue that cheating a candidate in the primary process is protected under the first amendment. ..."
"... If all that weren't enough, DNC representatives argued that the Democratic National Committee had no established fiduciary duty "to the Plaintiffs or the classes of donors and registered voters they seek to represent." ..."
"... It seems here that the DNC is arguing for its right to appoint candidates at its own discretion while simultaneously denying any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the belief that the DNC would act impartially towards the candidates involved. ..."
"... If Wikileaks' publication of DNC emails are found to be similarly admissible in a United States court of law, then the contents of the leaked emails could be used to argue that, contrary to the defendant's latest brief, the DNC did favor the campaign of Hillary Clinton over Senator Sanders and that they acted to sabotage Sanders' campaign. ..."
"... Seth Rich murder and DHS investigation into 2016 election tampering soon to expose this party's contempt for the law, and all other forms of ethical conduct. ..."
"... Bernie is more than happy to yammer on about Russian bots swarming Facebook and other social media platforms in some insidious plot to rig the election -- and yet he fails to say a word about the actual attempts to rig the election by the DNA and Hillary. ..."
"... Don't forget in their twisted minds that the lies they tell to support their corrupt agenda are "protected free speech". There are no further examples one needs to show that these fuckers are nothing but malignant sociopaths. The death of the Rule of Law is why sociopaths flourish. ..."
"... They are without shame, without remorse, without ethics or morals, feeling or caring. Yet they still try to defend their indefensible actions where contrition and humbleness would be much better long term..."politically". The rank & file snowflakes would eat up a simple apology because they have been brought up to think thats all it takes to right wrongs. ..."
The ongoing litigation of the DNC Fraud Lawsuit and the appeal regarding its dismissal took a stunning turn yesterday. The defendants
in the case, including the DNC and former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, filed a response brief that left many observers
of the case at a loss for words. The
document , provided by the
law offices of the Attorneys for the Plaintiffs in the case, Jared and Elizabeth Beck, and appears to argue that if the Democratic
Party did cheat Sanders in the 2016 Presidential primary race, then that action was protected under the first amendment.
Twitter users were quick to respond to the brief, expressing outrage and disgust
at the claims made by representatives of the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The Defense counsel also argued that because of Jared Beck's outspoken twitter posts, the plaintiffs were using the litigation
process for political purposes: "For example, Plaintiffs' counsel Jared Beck repeatedly refers to the DNC as "shi*bags" on Twitter
and uses other degrading language in reference to Defendants." Fascinatingly, no mention is made regarding the importance of First
Amendment at this point in the document.
The defense counsel also took issue with Jared Beck for what they termed as: " Repeatedly promoted patently false and deeply offensive
conspiracy theories about the deaths of a former DNC staffer and Plaintiffs' process server in an attempt to bolster attention for
this lawsuit."
This author was shocked to find that despite the characterization of the Becks as peddlers of conspiracy theory, the defense
counsel failed to mention the motion for protection filed by the Becks earlier in the litigation process. They also failed to note
the voice-modulated phone calls received by the law offices of the Becks which contained a caller-ID corresponding to the law offices
of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a defendant in the case. In light of this context, the Becks hardly appear to be peddlers of conspiracy
theory.
The DNC defense lawyers then argued that: " There is no legitimate basis for this litigation, which is, at its most basic, an
improper attempt to forge the federal courts into a political weapon to be used by individuals who are unhappy with how a political
party selected its candidate in a presidential campaign ."
The brief continued: " To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege based on their animating theory would run
directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by
political parties, especially when it comes to selecting the party's nominee for public office. "
It appears that the defendants in the DNC Fraud Lawsuit are attempting to argue that cheating a candidate in the primary process
is protected under the first amendment.
If all that weren't enough, DNC representatives argued that the Democratic National Committee had no established fiduciary duty
"to the Plaintiffs or the classes of donors and registered voters they seek to represent."
It seems here that the DNC is arguing for its right to appoint candidates at its own discretion while simultaneously denying
any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the belief that the DNC would act impartially
towards the candidates involved.
Adding to the latest news regarding the DNC Fraud Lawsuit was the recent
finding by the UK Supreme Court, which stated
that Wikileaks Cables were admissible as evidence in legal proceedings.
If Wikileaks' publication of DNC emails are found to be similarly admissible in a United States court of law, then the contents
of the leaked emails could be used to argue that, contrary to the defendant's latest brief, the DNC did favor the campaign of Hillary
Clinton over Senator Sanders and that they acted to sabotage Sanders' campaign.
The outcome of the appeal of the DNC Fraud Lawsuit remains to be seen. Disobedient Media will continue to report on this important
story as it unfolds.
Even on a practical level, beyond the "fraud is free speech" argument, they don't seem to have considered that this argument
is a lose/lose proposition. Even if they (DNC) win legally, they are going to lose as people turn away from the finger they're
giving them.
Notice this is a civil suit brought by a citizen. The Bern is silent and not suing anybody although he was the target
of the scam, or maybe a party to it. The DOJ is silent and not looking to put anybody in jail for what appears to be an
obvious violation of criminal law.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
- - Jeff Sessions
Not so for murder, and rigging the general election. Seth Rich murder and DHS investigation into 2016 election tampering
soon to expose this party's contempt for the law, and all other forms of ethical conduct.
What is the difference? There is no any justice in America. It is all gone.
The US people are polarized and, thanks to Hollywood and mainstream media, with the culture of lawless, violence, and hatred
of everybody. America is a very sick country with a fake President and the utterly corrupt US Congress. It will not end good or
bloodless.
The US military reliance on super-technology is poorly thought of since these high-tech military systems require very highly-educated
and intelligent people to operate these systems while the US educational system being a total failure cannot produce.
Bernie is more than happy to yammer on about Russian bots swarming Facebook and other social media platforms in some insidious
plot to rig the election -- and yet he fails to say a word about the actual attempts to rig the election by the DNA and Hillary.
But, hey, if he can shave a few hundred dollars off of my monthly health insurance premiums he can call for a first-strike nuclear
attack on Russia!
Clearly we have laws for little people while the owners do whatever the fuck they want.
... the State Department completed its review and determined that 2,115 of the 30,490 emails contain information that is presently
classified Out of these 2,115 emails, the State Department determined that 2,028 emails contain information classified at the
Confidential level; 65 contain information classified at the Secret level; and 22 contain information classified at the Top Secret
level....
I think this is the exact reason election boards exists. They should be suing the DNC over this as well, but are full of party
officials. If there was any sane form of democracy, the DNC would be bared from campaigning in most states.
It's a sewer, the whole fucking system is just a cesspool filled with the most reprehensible, self-serving people in the country
outside of Wall Street. But everybody just keeps playing along.
Don't forget in their twisted minds that the lies they tell to support their corrupt agenda are "protected free speech". There
are no further examples one needs to show that these fuckers are nothing but malignant sociopaths. The death of the Rule of Law
is why sociopaths flourish.
They don't live in the same reality as us and never have.
They are without shame, without remorse, without ethics or morals, feeling or caring. Yet they still try to defend their indefensible
actions where contrition and humbleness would be much better long term..."politically". The rank & file snowflakes would eat up
a simple apology because they have been brought up to think thats all it takes to right wrongs.
My take was Bernie was supposed to cat herd the millennials to the Hillary camp but that blew up in their face when the millennials
decided to put down their cell phones and proceeded to give Hillary the bird.
Wouldn't doubt a large majority still ended up voting for but they probably won't admit it.
Doesn't this make the whole candidate selection process, and all the rules and regulations governing a party's whole nomination
process meaningless? If what DEMS did within their own party to Bernie is moot, then what Trump may have done via his "Russian
collusion" is mooted also. Can't have it both ways.
They used the same argument before the appeal... and the corrupt judge agreed with "The Crooks" and closed the case. NOT ONE media outlet covered the fact they actually said in open court that the DNC had no legal obligation to be fair.
One year later we can say with confidence, yes he morphed into a neocon in foreign policy.
What is especially bad is that Trump executed "bait and switch" maneuver as smoothly as Obama. Devastating.
Notable quotes:
"... So now it gets me thinking like this: Who are Mr. Bandow's clients today? ..."
"... Some say that the reason for Trump's total reversal of his campaign-position on Russia is the American Deep State (the U.S. aristocracy and its agents). I agree with that view. ..."
"... I believe the American people are beginning to realize the CIA has the obsession for multiple, unending wars all for the benefit of Wall Street. ..."
"... It appears "military-industrial complex" or "deep state" refuses to take step back and insists on sucking more money from taxpayers. On first glance all is great for them, bombing of Middle East will continue, and so will military expansion at cost of civilian programs. However, ramifications to rest of the world should not be dismissed. EU countries are divided on following Washington hard line against Russia or diverge with USA. Currently, EU is cracking and might fall apart. Some in USA would cheer it but in long run it will mean loss of strongest US supporter against China. Regarding Middle East, Trump punished victims of AlQaeda and did nothing against financiers of AlQaeda, which will only increase local tensions. So indeed, not a great start... ..."
"... While I basically agree that Trump is not following through on his campaign, we must keep in mind that the campaign of his opponent was for MUCH more of the same, new wars, vastly increased fighting in current wars. So more of the same is in fact a big step down from the alternative. ..."
"... Stop those wars. They don't serve us. ..."
"... Trump's a liar, and his whole campaign was a calculated fraud from the beginning. We're the victims of a "bait-and-switch" scam. ..."
"... Because he lied. Just like he lied about draining the swamp and just restocked it with new varmints from Goldman Sachs and even an ex-Soros employee. Nothing new for me. Been watching elections for about 60 years and this is same ole. America can't take much more of this before it collapses and splits apart. The world isn't going to take much more from dc either. God help us. We are in a pickle! ..."
Candidate Donald Trump offered a sharp break from his predecessors. He was particularly critical of neoconservatives, who
seemed to back war at every turn.
Indeed, he promised not to include in his administration "those who have perfect resumes but very little to brag about except
responsibility for a long history of failed policies and continued losses at war." And he's generally kept that commitment, for
instance rejecting as deputy secretary of state Elliot Abrams, who said Trump was unfit to be president.
Substantively candidate Trump appeared to offer not so much a philosophy as an inclination. Practical if not exactly realist, he
cared more for consequences than his three immediate predecessors, who had treated wars as moral crusades in Somalia, the
Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. In contrast, Trump promised: "unlike other candidates for the presidency, war and
aggression will not be my first instinct."
Yet so far the Trump administration is shaping up as a disappointment for those who hoped for a break from the liberal
interventionist/neoconservative synthesis.
The first problem is staffing. In Washington people are policy. The president can speak and tweet, but he needs others to turn
ideas into reality and implement his directives. It doesn't appear that he has any foreign policy realists around him, or anyone
with a restrained view of America's international responsibilities.
Rex Tillerson, James Mattis and H. R. McMaster are all serious and talented, and none are neocons. But all seem inclined toward
traditional foreign policy approaches and committed to moderating their boss's unconventional thoughts. Most of the names
mentioned for deputy secretary of state have been reliably hawkish, or some combination of hawk and centrist-Abrams, John Bolton,
the rewired Jon Huntsman.
Trump appears to be most concerned with issues that have direct domestic impacts, and especially with economic nostrums about
which he is most obviously wrong. He's long been a protectionist (his anti-immigration opinions are of more recent vintage). Yet
his views have not changed even as circumstances have. The Chinese once artificially limited the value of the renminbi, but
recently have taken the opposite approach. The United States is not alone in losing manufacturing jobs, which are disappearing
around the world and won't be coming back. Multilateral trade agreements are rarely perfect, but they are not zero sum games.
They usually offer political as well as economic benefits. Trump does not seem prepared to acknowledge this, at least
rhetorically. Indeed he has brought on board virulent opponents of free trade such as Peter Navarro.
The administration's repudiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership was particularly damaging. Trump's decision embarrassed
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who had offered important economic concessions to join. More important, Trump has abandoned
the economic field to the People's Republic of China, which is pushing two different accords. Australia, among other U.S. allies,
has indicated that it now will deal with Beijing, which gets to set the Pacific trade agenda. In this instance, what's good for
China is bad for the United States.
In contrast, on more abstract foreign policy issues President Trump seems ready to treat minor concessions as major victories and
move on. For years he criticized America's Asian and European allies for taking advantage of U.S. defense generosity. In his
March foreign policy speech, he complained that "our allies are not paying their fair share." During the campaign he suggested
refusing to honor NATO's Article 5 commitment and leave countries failing to make sufficient financial contributions to their
fate.
Yet Secretaries Mattis and Tillerson have insisted that Washington remains committed to the very same alliances incorporating
dependence on America. Worse, in his speech to Congress the president took credit for the small uptick in military outlays by
European NATO members which actually began in 2015: "based on our very strong and frank discussions, they are beginning" to "meet
their financial obligations." Although he declared with predictable exaggeration that "the money is pouring in," no one believes
that Germany, which will go from 1.19 to 1.22 percent of GDP this year, will nearly double its outlays to hit even the NATO
standard of two percent.
Trump's signature policy initiative, rapprochement with Russia, appears dead in the water. Unfortunately, the president's strange
personal enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin undercut his desire to accommodate a great power which has no fundamental, irresolvable
conflicts with the America. Contrary to neocon history, Russia and America have often cooperated in the past. Moreover, President
Trump's attempt to improve relations faces strong ideological opposition from neoconservatives determined to have a new enemy and
partisan resistance from liberal Democrats committed to undermining the new administration.
President Trump also appears to have no appointees who share his commitment on this issue. At least Trump's first National
Security Adviser, Mike Flynn, wanted better relations with Russia, amid other, more dubious beliefs, but now the president seems
alone. In fact, Secretary Tillerson sounded like he was representing the Obama administration when he demanded Moscow's
withdrawal from Crimea, a policy nonstarter. Ambassador-designate Huntsman's views are unclear, but he will be constrained by the
State Department bureaucracy, which is at best unimaginative and at worst actively obstructionist.
"Unfortunately, the president's strange personal enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin undercut his desire to accommodate a great power
which has no fundamental, irresolvable conflicts with the America."
I did my due diligence on the writer after this absolutely baffling argument that has no basis on certain fundamental laws
of geopolitics. Referring to this:
https://www.bloomberg.com/n...
So now it gets me thinking like this: Who are Mr. Bandow's clients today? Figures...
Some say that the reason for Trump's total reversal of his campaign-position on Russia is the American Deep State (the U.S.
aristocracy and its agents). I agree with that view.
And other say you're a sap for believing a bunch of half-baked one-liners that Trump often contradicted in the same sentence...
He never had a coherent policy on anything, no less foreign policy... so don't complain now that he's showing his true colors
The USA should FORCE other nations to use DIPLOMACY as a means to preventing wars. If they don't, they lose all support, financial
and otherwise, from the USA. This would include Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The only thing Trump should take a look at in all this
is the INHUMANE policies that previous administrations have used to placate the military/industrial clique's appetite for money
and blood! If it's going to be "America First" for Trump's administration, it better start diverting this blood money to shore
up America's people and infrastructures!
Most of these issues come down to the fact that President Trump doesn't have anything resembling a "grand strategy", or even
a coherent foreign policy. His views are often at odds with each other (his desire to counter China economically and his opposition
to the TPP, for example), and I suspect that most were motivated by a desire to get votes more than any kind of deep understanding
of global affairs.
Most of his supporters, at least from what I can tell, are actually quite resolutely against entering a new war, and are strongly
condemnatory of the neo-conservatism that involved the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In fact, according to the polls taken at the time, more Democrats favored military intervention in Syria than Republicans did.
It appears "military-industrial complex" or "deep state" refuses to take step back and insists on sucking more money from taxpayers.
On first glance all is great for them, bombing of Middle East will continue, and so will military expansion at cost of civilian
programs. However, ramifications to rest of the world should not be dismissed. EU countries are divided on following Washington
hard line against Russia or diverge with USA. Currently, EU is cracking and might fall apart. Some in USA would cheer it but in
long run it will mean loss of strongest US supporter against China. Regarding Middle East, Trump punished victims of AlQaeda and
did nothing against financiers of AlQaeda, which will only increase local tensions. So indeed, not a great start...
While I basically agree that Trump is not following through on his campaign, we must keep in mind that the campaign of his
opponent was for MUCH more of the same, new wars, vastly increased fighting in current wars. So more of the same is in fact a
big step down from the alternative.
That does not excuse doing more of the same, but just asserts that we did get some of what we voted for/against.
We should get the rest of it. Stop those wars. They don't serve us.
There are similarities between Trump and Putin . The GOP and its rich corporate members have decided to use Trump as the oligarchs
in Russia used Yeltsin. The oligarchs used a drunken Yeltsin to pry the natural resources out of the public commons for the grabbing
by the oligarchs. Likewise, our rich are going to use an unwitting Trump to lower their taxes to nothing while delivering austerity
to the 99%.
To the oligarchs' surprise and dismay, Yeltsin's incompetence led to Putin and his scourge of the oligarchs. So will Trump's incompetence
lead to the end of our system of crony capitalism and the rebirth of socialism such as the New Deal, and higher taxes.
The crooked bastards can never be satisfied even with 3/4 ths of the whole pie, so no-one should pity them for being hoisted on
their own petard.
I'm sorry --- Trump had a foreign policy? As near as I can tell, he just said whatever the crowd in front of him wanted to
hear. Or do you have evidence to the contrary? Remember that this is a man who can be shown, in his own words, to have been on
all sides of almost every issue, depending on the day of the week, and the phase of the moon.
He, they, the US, that is, must obey Israel. Israel wants Assad gone in the end for their territorial expansion. It also helps
the oil companies and isolates Russia further into a geostrategic corner.
This headline is way over the top. The first and foremost foreign policy statement which brought numerous voters to Trump was
the US-Mexico wall and at least some of that wall will be constructed. Hence it is the only promise which has not (yet) changed
except for who will pay for it.
Why must we give Trump the benefit of the doubt and assume that his campaign presentations were made in good faith? That is
a very generous assumption.
There's a simple and more logical explanation for what's going on with "foreign policy" in the "Trump" administration:
Trump's
a liar, and his whole campaign was a calculated fraud from the beginning. We're the victims of a "bait-and-switch" scam.
Because he lied. Just like he lied about draining the swamp and just restocked it with new varmints from Goldman Sachs and
even an ex-Soros employee. Nothing new for me. Been watching elections for about 60 years and this is same ole. America can't
take much more of this before it collapses and splits apart. The world isn't going to take much more from dc either. God help
us. We are in a pickle!
The fundamental problem of exonerating Trump and blaming this non-reversal on the non-existing "deep state" is believing that
anything a candidate said on the campaign trail can be executed when that candidate becomes president. Such reversal has happened
so frequently in our history that it is truly amazing that " he does not do what he promised" still has adherents.
There is no reversal. I see reality clashing with words. I do not blame Trump for reversals. I see some shift from unrealistic
to more realistic. It is called learning on the job.
Every political position on the planet is stuck in the 80s. There is no one with a will to change what is happening, mostly
because no one wants to get tarred and feathered once the:
a) economy implodes upon itself in the most glorious Depression to
ever happen, and;
b) world war 3 erupts but engaging such a variety of opponents, from Islam to China and Russia and even minor
trivial players such as North Korea, and;
c) civil disobedience in the western world rivals that of even third world revolutions
as people revolt against a failure to protect them from Islamic violence, to preserve their standard of living and their perceived
futures. Lots of change coming, but nothing that any politician is promising.
Politicians are dinosaurs. We are entering a world
where large numbers of people will make things happen. It's called Democracy.
Trump will remain close to Putin ideologically and he might continue to admire the man as a strong leader BUT there is one
thing that neither Putin nor Trump can change and it is that Russia and America are natural rivals. Geopolitics. Land vs Sea.
Eurasia vs Atlantic. Heartland vs Outer Rim.
Trump is hawk, don't be mislead. You cannot have a great country if you're not willing
to kill and die for it. Russia knows that. Which is why Putin made Russia great again after the horror of the Yeltsin years. Now
America knows that too.
A video has shown up on
Senator Bernie Sanders' Facebook page, with his name on it and his face in it making all the
familiar (to a small number of people) points about U.S. military spending (how much it is, how
it compares to the rest of the world, how it does not produce jobs, what wonders could be
achieved with a small fraction of it, etc.).
I wish there were mention of the fact that it kills huge numbers of people, or that it risks
apocalypse, or that it damages the earth's environment. I wish the alternatives proposed were
not all of the bring-our-war-dollars-home variety, as if the amount of money under
consideration were not enough to radically transform this and every other country.
Still, had Sanders put out this video in 2015, tens of thousands of people wouldn't have had
to petition him in
vain to oppose militarism, to fill the glaring gap in his website . I wouldn't have had to write
this or this or even
this
.
Sanders willingly subjected himself to endless accusations of raising taxes, rather than
declare that he would push for a small cut in military spending. Jeremy Corbyn has had greater
success -- albeit in a different country -- by taking the other approach. I continue to think
Sanders is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
It's not as if Sanders doesn't know the issues. A half-century back he would have said
something very close to what I want to hear. There's no reason why he can't do so now. But I'm
afraid that this video may have slipped through because there's not a presidential election
this year, and that such things will be nowhere to be found in the years ahead.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope that Sanders actually declares himself in favor of a serious
transfer of resources from militarism to human and environmental needs. As soon as he does,
I'll start advocating for all of us to work for his election. He can keep promoting the
Russiagate nonsense that was primarily invented to distract from the story of the DNC cheating
him. He can publicly commit to allowing the DNC to cheat him again. He can ask Saudi Arabia
again to kill even more people. But if he comes out against the military budget, that's the big
one. He will deserve the support he could have had last time.
Watch: Bernie Sanders' Response to Trump State of the Union
"Here's the story that Trump failed to mention "
Following President Donald Trump's State of the Union address on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) offered a response.
"I want to take a few minutes of your time to respond to Trump's State of the Union speech," Sanders announced. "But I also want
to talk to you about the major crises facing our country that, regrettably, Trump chose not to discuss."
And, he added, "I want to offer a vision of where we should go as a nation which is far different than the divisiveness, dishonesty,
and racism coming from the Trump Administration over the past year."
Watch:
... ... ...
The complete text of Sanders' prepared remarks follow:
Good evening. Thanks for joining us.
Tonight , I want to take a few minutes of your time to respond to President Trump's State of the Union speech. But I want
to do more than just that. I want to talk to you about the major crises facing our country that, regrettably, President Trump chose
not to discuss. I want to talk to you about the lies that he told during his campaign and the promises he made to working people
which he did not keep.
Finally, I want to offer a vision of where we should go as a nation which is far different than the divisiveness, dishonesty,
and racism coming from the Trump Administration over the past year.
President Trump talked tonight about the strength of our economy. Well, he's right. Official unemployment today is 4.1 percent
which is the lowest it has been in years and the stock market in recent months has soared. That's the good news.
But what President Trump failed to mention is that his first year in office marked the lowest level of job creation since
2010. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 254,000 fewer jobs were created in Trump's first 11 months in office
than were created in the 11 months before he entered office.
Further, when we talk about the economy, what's most important is to understand what is happening to the average worker. And
here's the story that Trump failed to mention tonight .
Over the last year, after adjusting for inflation, the average worker in America saw a wage increase of, are you ready for
this, 4 cents an hour, or 0.17%. Or, to put it in a different way, that worker received a raise of a little more than $1.60 a week.
And, as is often the case, that tiny wage increase disappeared as a result of soaring health care costs.
Meanwhile, at a time of massive wealth and income inequality, the rich continue to get much richer while millions of American
workers are working two or three jobs just to keep their heads above water. Since March of last year, the three richest people in
America saw their wealth increase by more than $68 billion. Three people. A $68 billion increase in wealth. Meanwhile, the average
worker saw an increase of 4 cents an hour.
Tonight , Donald Trump touted the bonuses he claims workers received because of his so-called "tax reform" bill. What he forgot
to mention is that only 2% of Americans report receiving a raise or a bonus because of this tax bill.
What he also failed to mention is that some of the corporations that have given out bonuses, such as Walmart, AT&T, General
Electric, and Pfizer, are also laying off tens of thousands of their employees. Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex and Huggies,
recently said they were using money from the tax cut to restructure -- laying off more than 5,000 workers and closing 10 plants.
What Trump also forgot to tell you is that while the Walton family of Walmart, the wealthiest family in America, and Jeff
Bezos of Amazon, the wealthiest person in this country, have never had it so good, many thousands of their employees are forced onto
Medicaid, food stamps, and public housing because of the obscenely low wages they are paid. In my view, that's wrong. The taxpayers
of this country should not be providing corporate welfare to the wealthiest families in this country.
Trump's Broken Promises
Now, let me say a few words about some of the issues that Donald Trump failed to mention tonight , and that is the difference
between what he promised the American people as a candidate and what he has delivered as president.
Many of you will recall, that during his campaign, Donald Trump told the American people how he was going to provide "health
insurance for everybody," with "much lower deductibles."
That is what he promised working families all across this country during his campaign. But as president he did exactly the
opposite. Last year, he supported legislation that would have thrown up to 32 million people off of the health care they had while,
at the same time, substantially raising premiums for older Americans.
The reality is that although we were able to beat back Trump's effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, 3 million fewer Americans
have health insurance today than before Trump took office and that number will be going even higher in the coming months.
During his campaign, Trump promised not to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
As president, however, he supported a Republican Budget Resolution that proposed slashing Medicaid by $1 trillion and cutting
Medicare by $500 billion. Further, President Trump's own budget called for cutting Social Security Disability Insurance by $64 billion.
During Trump's campaign for president, he talked about how he was going to lower prescription drug prices and take on the
greed of the pharmaceutical industry which he said was "getting away with murder." Tonight he said "one of my greatest priorities
is to reduce the price of prescription drugs."
But as president, Trump nominated Alex Azar, a former executive of the Eli Lilly Company -- one of the largest drug companies
in this country -- to head up the Department of Health and Human Services.
Trump spoke about how in other countries "drugs cost far less," yet he has done nothing to allow Americans to purchase less
expensive prescription drugs from abroad or to require Medicare to negotiate drug prices – which he promised he would do when he
ran for president.
During the campaign, Donald Trump told us that: "The rich will not be gaining at all" under his tax reform plan.
Well, that was quite a whopper. As president, the tax reform legislation Trump signed into law a few weeks ago provides 83
percent of the benefits to the top one percent, drives up the deficit by $1.7 trillion, and raises taxes on 92 million middle class
families by the end of the decade.
During his campaign for president, Trump talked about how he was going to take on the greed of Wall Street which he said "has
caused tremendous problems for us.
As president, not only has Trump not taken on Wall Street, he has appointed more Wall Street billionaires to his administration
than any president in history. And now, on behalf of Wall Street, he is trying to repeal the modest provisions of the Dodd-Frank
legislation which provide consumer protections against Wall Street thievery.
What Trump Didn't Say
But what is also important to note is not just Trump's dishonesty. It is that tonight he avoided some of the most important
issues facing our country and the world.
How can a president of the United States give a State of the Union speech and not mention climate change? No, Mr. Trump, climate
change is not a "hoax." It is a reality which is causing devastating harm all over our country and all over the world and you are
dead wrong when you appoint administrators at the EPA and other agencies who are trying to decimate environmental protection rules,
and slow down the transition to sustainable energy.
How can a president of the United States not discuss the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision which allows billionaires
like the Koch brothers to undermine American democracy by spending hundreds of millions of dollars to elect candidates who will represent
the rich and the powerful?
How can he not talk about Republican governors efforts all across this country to undermine democracy, suppress the vote and
make it harder for poor people or people of color to vote?
How can he not talk about the fact that in a highly competitive global economy, hundreds of thousands of bright young people
are unable to afford to go to college, while millions of others have come out of school deeply in debt?
How can he not talk about the inadequate funding and staffing at the Social Security Administration which has resulted in
thousands of people with disabilities dying because they did not get their claims processed in time?
How can he not talk about the retirement crisis facing the working people of this country and the fact that over half of older
workers have no retirement savings? We need to strengthen pensions in this country, not take them away from millions of workers.
How can he not talk about the reality that Russia, through cyberwarfare, interfered in our election in 2016, is interfering
in democratic elections all over the world, and according to his own CIA director will likely interfere in the 2018 midterm elections
that we will be holding. How do you not talk about that unless you have a very special relationship with Mr. Putin?
What Trump Did Talk About
Now, let me say a few words about what Trump did talk about.
Trump talked about DACA and immigration, but what he did not tell the American people is that he precipitated this crisis
in September by repealing President Obama's executive order protecting Dreamers.
We need to seriously address the issue of immigration but that does not mean dividing families and reducing legal immigration
by 25-50 percent. It sure doesn't mean forcing taxpayers to spend $25 billion on a wall that candidate Trump promised Mexico would
pay for. And it definitely doesn't mean a racist immigration policy that excludes people of color from around the world.
To my mind, this is one of the great moral issues facing our country. It would be unspeakable and a moral stain on our nation
if we turned our backs on these 800,000 young people who were born and raised in this country and who know no other home but the
United States.
And that's not just Bernie Sanders talking. Poll after poll shows that over 80 percent of the American people believe that
we should protect the legal status of these young people and provide them with a path toward citizenship.
We need to pass the bi-partisan DREAM Act, and we need to pass it now.
President Trump also talked about the need to rebuild our country's infrastructure. And he is absolutely right. But the proposal
he is bringing forth is dead wrong.
Instead of spending $1.5 trillion over ten years rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, Trump would encourage states to
sell our nation's highways, bridges, and other vital infrastructure to Wall Street, wealthy campaign contributors, even foreign governments.
And how would Wall Street and these corporations recoup their investments? By imposing massive new tolls and fees paid for
by American commuters and homeowners.
The reality is that Trump's plan to privatize our nation's infrastructure is an old idea that has never worked and never will
work.
Tonight , Donald Trump correctly talked about the need to address the opioid crisis. Well, I say to Donald Trump, you don't
help people suffering from opioid addiction by cutting Medicaid by $1 trillion. If you are serious about dealing with this crisis,
we need to expand, not cut Medicaid.
Conclusion/A Progressive Agenda
My fellow Americans. The simple truth is that, according to virtually every poll, Donald Trump is the least popular president
after one year in office of any president in modern American history. And the reason for that is pretty clear. The American people
do not want a president who is compulsively dishonest, who is a bully, who actively represents the interests of the billionaire class,
who is anti-science, and who is trying to divide us up based on the color of our skin, our nation of origin, our religion, our gender,
or our sexual orientation.
That is not what the American people want. And that reality is the bad news that we have to deal with.
But the truth is that there is a lot of good news out there as well. It's not just that so many of our people disagree with
Trump's policies, temperament, and behavior. It is that the vast majority of our people have a very different vision for the future
of our country than what Trump and the Republican leadership are giving us.
In an unprecedented way, we are witnessing a revitalization of American democracy with more and more people standing up and
fighting back. A little more than a year ago we saw millions of people take to the streets for the women's marches and a few weeks
ago, in hundreds of cities and towns around the world, people once again took to the streets in the fight for social, economic, racial
and environmental justice.
Further, we are seeing the growth of grassroots organizations and people from every conceivable background starting to run
for office – for school board, city council, state legislature, the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate.
In fact, we are starting to see the beginning of a political revolution, something long overdue.
And these candidates, from coast to coast, are standing tall for a progressive agenda, an agenda that works for the working
families of our country and not just the billionaire class. These candidates understand that the United States has got to join the
rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all as a right, not a privilege, through a Medicare for All, single-payer
program.
They understand that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when the top one-tenth of one percent now owns almost
as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, we should not be giving tax breaks for billionaires but demanding that they start paying
their fair share of taxes.
They know that we need trade policies that benefit working people, not large multi-national corporations.
They know that we have got to take on the fossil fuel industry, transform our energy system and move to sustainable energies
like wind, solar and geothermal.
They know that we need a $15 an hour federal minimum wage, free tuition at public colleges and universities, and universal
childcare.
They understand that it is a woman who has the right to control her own body, not state and federal governments, and that
woman has the right to receive equal pay for equal work and work in a safe environment free from harassment.
They also know that if we are going to move forward successfully as a democracy we need real criminal justice reform and we
need to finally address comprehensive immigration reform.
Yes. I understand that the Koch brothers and their billionaire friends are planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars
in the 2018 mid-term elections supporting the Trump agenda and right-wing Republicans. They have the money, an unlimited amount of
money. But we have the people, and when ordinary people stand up and fight for justice there is nothing that we cannot accomplish.
That has been the history of America, and that is our future.
That was always one of the things that most unnerved me about Trump from the start: what,
exactly, motivated him to run? (The other thing about him that bothered me was his
overweening Zionism.) The idea that he was some kind of plant certainly did occur to me, but
the MSM didn't treat him the way they usually treat 'The Chosen One'. Compare him with the
treatment the MSM gave that other 'outside, nontradional' candidate, Emmanuel Macron.
So what did motivate Trump? Ego? Vainglory? Some burning conviction somewhere? I
still don't know. One way or the other, though, I'm pretty sure that MAGA is dead.
"So what did motivate Trump? Ego? Vainglory? Some burning conviction somewhere? I still
don't know."
Several lines of reasoning point me to the conclusion that Orange Clown is a "deep cover"
or "sleeper" agent that's been "waiting in the wings" for his Zionist masters' call.
I believe that the political ascendancy of Orange Clown should be seen as a sign of
Zionist desperation.
Anyway, one valid line of reasoning, IMO, is to rule out anything else. At 70 years old,
Orange Clown is no spring chicken. So why would he run run NOW?
If he had actually followed through on his campaign rhetoric, or at least some of it, he'd
be considered a true American hero, IMO. He's going to finally get us out of NATO? He's going
to pull out of the hopeless war in Afghanistan and cut out the costly and self-destructive
nation building crap? He's going to collaborate with Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth
and finally investigate the worst crime in U.S. history?
If so he'd go down in history as a modern American revolutionary. The guy that
single-handedly saved America from the "beast". And he's going to begin this herculean task
at the age 70 years old? Seriously? How many historical examples are there where a 70 year
old all of a sudden became a political visionary and led a revolution?
He's at the age where most people suffer cognitive decline, prostate problems, etc., but
he's going to square off against "the powers that be", put himself at risk of assassination
and lead a revolution in American politics? I just can't accept that.
Okay, but what about if he wanted to be president "just for a taste of power"? And that's
a fair question, IMO.
That may explain why he wouldn't necessarily give a damn about following through on his
campaign promises, but it doesn't explain why he would reverse himself on everything of
major
"... Stop right there. Rather than the generously imply that Trump had good intentions in the first place, isn't it time to at least consider the possibility that Trump's campaign was a calculated "bait and switch" fraud from the beginning? ..."
"... Not "paranoid" but "PNAC" as in PNAC manifesto for world domination and control ..."
"... "It is plainly obvious that the Neocons are now back in total control of the White House, Congress and the US corporate media. Okay, maybe things are still not quite as bad as if Hillary had been elected, but they are bad enough to ask whether a major war is now inevitable next year." ..."
"... "Rather than generously imply that Trump had good intentions in the first place, isn't it time to at least consider the possibility that Trump's campaign was a calculated "bait and switch" fraud from the beginning?" ..."
"... A point that cannot be made often enough, IMO. Trump is the Republican Bill Clinton. ..."
"... Maybe it's time for Americans to admit that their quadrennial Mr. America contest amounts to little more than a "suck Satan's c *** " audition for the deep state, and that the contestants have no qualms about getting on their knees. It is far more comforting to believe that "your" guy was subverted after the (s)election, but that's not how it actually works. ..."
"... I'm imagining a bumper sticker with Trump's laughing face and a sad-looking deplorable in a baseball cap, with the caption "Bait and Switch- the American Way." Someone also once suggested "There are two kinds of Republicans: millionaires and suckers." ..."
"Not only has the swamp easily, quickly and totally drowned Trump "
Stop right there. Rather than the generously imply that Trump had good intentions in the first place, isn't it time to
at least consider the possibility that Trump's campaign was a calculated "bait and switch" fraud from the beginning?
"Furthermore, the Trump Administration now has released a National Security Strategy which clearly show that the Empire
is in 'full paranoid' mode."
Not "paranoid" but "PNAC" as in PNAC manifesto for world domination and control.
"It is plainly obvious that the Neocons are now back in total control of the White House, Congress and the US corporate
media. Okay, maybe things are still not quite as bad as if Hillary had been elected, but they are bad enough to ask whether a
major war is now inevitable next year."
Maybe Trump was the "deep state" candidate of choice? Maybe that's why they ran Clinton against him rather than the more electable
Sanders? Maybe that's why Obama started ramping up tensions with Russia in the early fall of 2016 – so as to swing the election
to Trump (by giving the disgruntled anti-war Sanders voters a false choice between Trump or war with Russia?
"Rather than generously imply that Trump had good intentions in the first place, isn't it time to at least consider
the possibility that Trump's campaign was a calculated "bait and switch" fraud from the beginning?"
A point that cannot be made often enough, IMO. Trump is the Republican Bill Clinton.
Maybe it's time for Americans to admit that their quadrennial Mr. America contest amounts to little more than a "suck Satan's
c *** " audition for the deep state, and that the contestants have no qualms about getting on their knees. It is far more comforting
to believe that "your" guy was subverted after the (s)election, but that's not how it actually works.
I'm imagining a bumper sticker with Trump's laughing face and a sad-looking deplorable in a baseball cap, with the caption
"Bait and Switch- the American Way." Someone also once suggested "There are two kinds of Republicans: millionaires and suckers."
"... In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on the resolution and it passed 14-0. ..."
"... But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role. ..."
"... While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated, probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value. ..."
"... In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968. ..."
"... Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US. ..."
"... It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm. ..."
"... "Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing their best to provoke Russia into one. ..."
"... The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak). ..."
"... So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel. ..."
"... So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first. ..."
"... Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will simply ignore the Israeli connection. ..."
"... Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference. ..."
"... I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy. "Nothing to see here folks, move along." ..."
"... The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy. ..."
"... FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy (against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End of story. ..."
"... God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact. ..."
"... I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy. If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote, arguably, perpetual war. ..."
"... Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's influence. ..."
The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate December 23, 2017
While unproven claims of Russian meddling in U.S. politics have whipped Official Washington
into a frenzy, much less attention has been paid to real evidence of Israeli interference in
U.S. politics, as Dennis J Bernstein describes.
By Dennis J Bernstein
In investigating Russia's alleged meddling in U.S. politics, special prosecutor Robert
Mueller uncovered evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressured the Trump
transition team to undermine President Obama's plans to permit the United Nations to censure
Israel over its illegal settlement building on the Palestinian West Bank, a discovery
referenced in the plea deal with President Trump's first National Security Adviser Michael
Flynn.
President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the United
Nations General Assembly (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
At Netanyahu's behest, Flynn and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly took
the lead in the lobbying to derail the U.N. resolution, which Flynn discussed in a phone call
with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (in which the Russian diplomat rebuffed Flynn's appeal
to block the resolution).
I spoke on Dec, 18 with independent journalist and blogger Richard Silverstein, who writes
on national security and other issues for a number of blogs at Tikun Olam .
Dennis Bernstein: A part of Michael Flynn's plea had to do with some actions he took before
coming to power regarding Israel and the United Nations. Please explain.
Richard Silverstein:
The Obama administration was negotiating in the [UN] Security Council
just before he left office about a resolution that would condemn Israeli settlements.
Obviously, the Israeli government did not want this resolution to be passed. Instead of going
directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to
Trump instead. They approached Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner became involved in this. While
they were in the transition and before having any official capacity, they negotiated with
various members of the Security Council to try to quash the settlement resolution.
One of the issues here which is little known is the Logan Act, which was passed at the
foundation of our republic and was designed to prevent private citizens from usurping the
foreign policy prerogatives of the executive. It criminalized any private citizen who attempted
to negotiate with an enemy country over any foreign policy issue.
In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign
policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because
that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on
the resolution and it passed 14-0.
But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the
Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to
derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and
disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role.
This speaks to the power of the Israel lobby and of Israel itself to disrupt our foreign
policy. Very few people have ever been charged with committing an illegal act by advocating on
behalf of Israel. That is one of the reasons why this is such an important development. Until
now, the lobby has really ruled supreme on the issue of Israel and Palestine in US foreign
policy. Now it is possible that a private citizen will actually be made to pay a price for
that.
This is an important development because the lobby till now has run roughshod over our
foreign policy in this area and this may act as a restraining order against blatant disruption
of US foreign policy by people like this.
Bernstein: So this information is a part of Michael Flynn's plea. Anyone studying this would
learn something about Michael Flynn and it would be part of the prosecution's
investigation.
Silverstein:
That's absolutely right. One thing to note here is that it is reporters who
have raised the issue of the Logan Act, not Mueller or Flynn's people or anyone in the Trump
administration. But I do think that Logan is a very important part of this plea deal, even if
it is not mentioned explicitly.
Bernstein: If the special prosecutor had smoking-gun information that the Trump
administration colluded with Russia, in the way they colluded with Israel before coming to
power, this would be a huge revelation. But it is definitely collusion when it comes to
Israel.
Silverstein: Absolutely. If this were Russia, it would be on the front page of every major
newspaper in the United States and the leading story on the TV news. Because this is Israel and
because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby and they have so much influence
on US policy concerning Israel, it has managed to stay on the back burner. Only two or three
media outlets besides mine have raised this issue of Logan and collusion. Kushner and Flynn may
be the first American citizens charged under the Logan Act for interfering on behalf of Israel
in our foreign policy. This is a huge issue and it has hardly been raised at all.
Bernstein: As you know, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has made a career out of investigating the
Russia-gate charges. She says that she has read all this material carefully, so she must have
read about Flynn and Israel, but I haven't heard her on this issue at all.
Silverstein:
Even progressive journalists, who you'd think would be going after this with a
vengeance, are frightened off by the fact the lobby really bites back. So, aside from outlets
like the Intercept and the Electronic Intifada, there is a lot of hesitation about going after
the Israel lobby. People are afraid because they know that there is a high price to be paid. It
goes from being purely journalism to being a personal and political vendetta when they get you
in their sights. In fact, one of the reasons I feel my blog is so important is that what I do
is challenge Israeli policy and Israeli intervention in places where it doesn't belong.
Bernstein: Jared Kushner is the point man for the Trump administration on Israel. He has
talked about having a "vision for peace." Do you think it is a problem that this is someone
with a long, close relationship with the prime minister of Israel and, in fact, runs a
foundation that invests in the building of illegal Israeli settlements? Might this be
problematic?
Silverstein:
It is quite nefarious, actually. When Jared Kushner was a teenager, Netanyahu
used to stay at the Kushner family home when he visited the United States. This relationship
with one of the most extreme right political figures in Israel goes back decades. And it is not
just Kushner himself, but all the administration personnel dealing with these so-called peace
negotiations, including Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, the ambassador. These are all
orthodox Jews who tend to have very nationalist views when it comes to Israel. They all support
settlements financially through foundations. These are not honest brokers.
We could talk at length about the history of US personnel who have been negotiators for
Middle East peace. All of them have been favorable to Israel and answerable to the Israel
lobby, including Dennis Ross and Makovsky, who served in the last administration. These people
are dyed-in-the-wool ultra-nationalist supporters of [Israeli] settlements. They have no
business playing any role in negotiating a peace deal.
My prediction all along has been that these peace negotiations will come to naught, even
though they seem to have bought the cooperation of Saudi Arabia, which is something new in the
process. The Palestinians can never accept a deal that has been negotiated by Kushner and
company because it will be far too favorable to Israel and it will totally neglect the
interests of the Palestinians.
Bernstein: It has been revealed that Kushner supports the building of settlements in the
West Bank. Most people don't understand the politics of what is going on there, but it appears
to be part of an ethnic cleansing.
Silverstein:
The settlements have always been a violation of international law, ever since
Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967. The Geneva Conventions direct an occupying power to
withdraw from territory that was not its own. In 1967 Israel invaded Arab states and conquered
the West Bank and Gaza but this has never been recognized or accepted by any nation until
now.
The fact that Kushner and his family are intimately involved in supporting
settlements–as are David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt–is completely outrageous. No
member of any previous US administration would have been allowed to participate with these
kinds of financial investments in support of settlements. Of course, Trump doesn't understand
the concept of conflict of interest because he is heavily involved in such conflicts himself.
But no party in the Middle East except Israel is going to consider the US an honest broker and
acceptable as a mediator.
When they announce this deal next January, no one in the Arab World is going to accept it,
with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia because they have other fish to fry in terms of
Iran. The next three years are going to be interesting, supposing Trump lasts out his term. My
prediction is that the peace plan will fail and that it will lead to greater violence in the
Middle East. It will not simply lead to a vacuum, it will lead to a deterioration in conditions
there.
Bernstein: The Trump transition team was actually approached directly by the Israeli
government to try to intercede at the United Nations.
Silverstein:
I'm assuming it was Netanyahu who went directly to Kushner and Trump. Now, we
haven't yet found out that Trump directly knew about this but it is very hard to believe
that Trump didn't endorse this. Now that we know that Mueller has access to all of the emails
of the transition team, there is little doubt that they have been able to find their smoking
gun. Flynn's plea meant that they basically had him dead to rights. It remains to be seen what
will happen with Kushner but I would think that this would play some role in either the
prosecution of Kushner or some plea deal.
Bernstein: The other big story, of course, is the decision by the Trump administration to
move the US embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. Was there any pre-election collusion in that
regard and what are the implications?
Silverstein:
Well, it's a terrible decision which goes against forty to fifty years of US
foreign policy. It also breaches all international understanding. All of our allies in the
European Union and elsewhere are aghast at this development. There is now a campaign in the
United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the announcement, which we will
veto, but the next step will be to go to the General Assembly, where such a resolution will
pass easily.
The question is how much anger, violence and disruption this is going to cause around the
world, especially in the Arab and Muslim world. This is a slow-burning fuse. It is not going to
explode right now. The issue of Jerusalem is so vital that this is not something that is simply
going to go away. This is going to be a festering sore in the Muslim world and among
Palestinians. We have already seen attacks on Israeli soldiers and citizens and there will be
many more.
As to collusion in all of this, since Trump always said during the campaign that this was
what he was going to do, it might be difficult to treat this in the same way as the UN
resolution. The UN resolution was never on anybody's radar and nobody knew the role that Trump
was playing behind the scenes with that–as opposed to Trump saying right from the get-go
that Jerusalem was going to be recognized as the capital of Jerusalem.
By doing that, they have completely abrogated any Palestinian interest in Jerusalem. This is
a catastrophic decision that really excludes the United States from being an honest broker here
and shows our true colors in terms of how pro-Israel we are.
As most regular readers of CN already know, some dynamite books on the inordinate amount
of influence pro-Israel zealots have on Washington:
1.) 'The Host and the Parasite' by Greg Felton
2.) 'Power of Israel in the United States' by James Petras
3.) 'They Dare to Speak Out' by Paul Findley
4.) 'The Israel Lobby' by Mearsheimer and Walt
5.) 'Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of U.S. Power' by James Petras
I suggest that anyone relatively knew to this neglected topic peruse a few of the
aforementioned titles. An inevitable backlash by the citizens of the United States is
eventually forthcoming against the Zionist Power Configuration. It's crucial that this
impending backlash remain democratic, non-violent, eschews anti-Semitism, and travels in a
progressive in direction.
Annie , December 23, 2017 at 5:47 pm
Which one would you suggest? I already read "The Israel Lobby."
Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:38 pm
Findley and Mearsheimer are certainly worthwhile. I will look for Petras.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:38 pm
If you haven't already read them, the end/footnotes in "The Israel Lobby" are more
illuminating.
That influence is also shown, of course, by the fact that Obama waited until the midnight
hours of his tenure and after the 2016 election to even start working on this resolution.
While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated,
probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value.
In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think
he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew
calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968.
Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:41 pm
Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case
against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel
collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will
awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US.
JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:32 am
It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention
from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind
the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm.
The leaked emails showed the corruption
plainly, and based on the ACTUAL evidence (recorded download time), most likely came from a
highly disgruntled insider. The picture was starting to spill into public view. I'd estimate
the real huge worry was that if this stuff came out, it could bring out other Israeli
secrets, like their involvement in 9/11. That would mean actual jail time. Might be hard to
buy your way out of that no matter how much money you have.
Annie , December 23, 2017 at 10:48 pm
The Logan act states that anyone who negotiates with an enemy of the US, and Israel is not
defined as an enemy.
Annie , December 23, 2017 at 6:59 pm
The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would. I don't think anyone has
been convicted based on this act, and they were part of a transition team not to mention the
Logan act clearly states a private citizen who attempts to negotiate with an enemy state, and
that certainly doesn't apply to Israel. In this administration their bias is so blatant that
they can install Kushner as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestine peace process while his
family has a close relationship with Netanyahu, and he runs a foundation that invests in the
building of illegal settlements which goes against the Geneva conventions. Hopefully Trump's
blatant siding with Israel will receive a lot of backlash as did his plan to make Jerusalem
the capital of Israel.
I also found that so called progressive internet sites don't cover this the way they
should.
Al Pinto , December 24, 2017 at 9:16 am
@Annie
"The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would."
You and me both .
From the point of starting to read this article, it has been in my mind that the Logan act
would not apply here. After reading most of the comments, it became clear that not many
people viewed this as such. Yes, Joe Tedesky did as well
The UN is the "clearing house" for international politics, where countries freely contact
each other's for getting support for their cause behind the scene. The support sought after
could be voting for or against the resolution on hand. At times, as Israel did, countries
reach out to perceived enemies as well, if they could not secure sufficient support for their
cause. This is the normal activity of the UN diplomacy.
Knowing that the outgoing administration would not support its cause, Israel reached out
to the incoming administration to delay the vote on the UN resolution. I fail to see anything
wrong with Israel's action even in this case; Israel is not an enemy state to the US. As
such, there has been no violation of any acts by the incoming administration, even if they
tried to secure veto vote for Israel. I do not like it, but no action by Mueller in this case
is correct.
People, just like the article in itself, implying that the Logan Act applies in this case
are just plain wrong. Not just wrong, but their anti-Israel bias is in plain view.
Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an
enemy state. Even then, Russia contacting the incoming administration is not a violation of
the Logan Act. That is just normal diplomacy in the background between countries. What would
be a violation is that the contacted official acted on the behalf of Russia and tried to
influence the outgoing administration's decision. That is what the Mueller investigation
tries to prove hopelessly
"Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an
enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and
therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with
Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing
their best to provoke Russia into one.
Annie , December 24, 2017 at 1:55 pm
Thanks for your reply. When I read the article and it referenced the Logan Act, which I am
familiar with in that I've read about it before, I was surprised that Bernstein and
Silverstein even brought it up because it so obviously does not apply in this case, since
Israel is not considered an enemy state. Many have even referenced it as flimsy when it comes
to convictions against those in Trump's transition team who had contacts with Russia. No one
has ever been convicted under the Logan Act.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:41 pm
The Logan Act either should apply equally, or not apply at all. This "Russia-gate" hype
seems to apply it selectively.
mrtmbrnmn , December 23, 2017 at 7:36 pm
You guys are blinded by the light. The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer
hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak).
There is no doubt that Trump is Bibi's and the Saudi's ventriloquist dummy and Jared has
been an Israel agent of influence since he was 12.
But half the Dementedcrat Sore Loser Brigade will withdraw from the field of battle (not
to mention most of the GOP living dead too) if publically and noisily tying Israel to Trump's
tail becomes the only route to his removal. Which it would have to be, as there is no there
there regarding the yearlong trumped-up PutinPutinPutin waterboarding of Trump.
Immediately (if not sooner) the mighty (pro-Israel) Donor Bank of Singer (Paul), Saban
(Haim), Sachs (Goldman) & Adelson (Sheldon), would change their passwords and leave these
politicians/beggars with empty begging bowls. End of $ordid $tory.
alley cat , December 23, 2017 at 7:45 pm
So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What
of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are
orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator
bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel.
Mueller can use that evidence of sabotage and/or obstruction of justice to try to coerce
false confessions from Kushner and Flynn. But what are the chances of that, barring short
stayovers for them at some CIA black site?
So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem
witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and
Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's
flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first.
Leslie F. , December 23, 2017 at 8:28 pm
He used it, along with other info, to turn flip Flynn and possibly can use it the same way
again Kusher. Not all evidence has end up in court to be useful.
JWalters , December 23, 2017 at 8:40 pm
This is an extremely important story, excellently reported. All the main "facts" Americans
think they know about Israel are, amazingly, flat-out lies.
1. Israel was NOT victimized by powerful Arab armies. Israel overpowered and victimized a
defenseless, civilian Arab population. Military analysts knew the Arab armies were in poor
shape and would not be able to resist the zionist army.
2. Muslim "citizens" of Israel do NOT have all the same rights as Jews.
3. Israelis are NOT under threat from the indigineous Palestinians, but Palestinians are
under constant threats of theft and death from the Israelis.
4. Israel does NOT share America's most fundamental values, which rest on the principle of
equal human rights for all.
Maintaining such a blanket of major lies for decades requires immense power. And this
power would have to be exercised "under the radar" to be effective. That requires even more
power. Both Congress and the press have to be controlled. How much power does it take to turn
"Progressive Rachel" into "Tel Aviv Rachel"? To turn "It Takes a Village" Hillary into
"Slaughter a Village" Hillary? It takes immense power AND ruthlessness.
War profiteers have exactly this combination of immense war profits and the ruthlessness
to victimize millions of people. "War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror" http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com
Vast war profits easily afford to buy the mainstream media. And controlling campaign
contributions for members of Congress is amazingly cheap in the big picture. Such a squalid
sale of souls.
And when simple bribery is not enough, they ruin a person's life through blackmail or
false character assassination. And if those don't work they use death threats, including to
family members, and finally murder. Their ruthlessness is unrestrained. John Perkins has
described these tactics in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man".
For readers who haven't seen it, here is an excellent riff on the absurdly overwhelming
evidence for Israel's influence compared to that of Russia, at a highly professional news and
analysis website run by Jewish anti-Zionists. "Let's talk about Russian influence" http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/about-russian-influence/
mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:44 pm
Hitler and Mussolini, Trump and Netanyahoo – matches made in Hell. These characters
are so obviously, blatantly evil that it is deeply disturbing that people fail to see that,
and instead go to great lengths to find some complicated flaws in these monsters.
mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:49 pm
Keep it simple folks. No need for complex analyses. Just remember that these characters as
simply as evil as it gets, and proceed from there. These asinine shows that portray mobsters
as complex human beings are dangerously deluding. If you want to be victimized by these
types, this kind of overthinking is just the way to go.
Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 9:00 pm
There is a modern theory of fiction that insists upon the portrayal of inconsistency in
characters, both among the good guys and the bad guys. It is useful to show how those who do
wrongs have made specific kinds of errors that make them abnormal, and that those who do
right are not perfect but nonetheless did the right thing. Instead it is used by commercial
writers to argue that the good are really bad, and the bad are really good, which is of
course the philosophy of oligarchy-controlled mass publishers.
Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:54 pm
A very important article by Dennis Bernstein, and it is very appropriate that non-zionist
Jews are active against the extreme zionist corruption of our federal government. I am sure
that they are reviled by the zionists for interfering with the false denunciations of racism
against the opponents of zionism. Indeed critics face a very nearly totalitarian power of
zionism, which in league with MIC/WallSt opportunism has displaced democracy altogether in
the US.
backwardsevolution , December 23, 2017 at 9:18 pm
A nice little set-up by the Obama administration. Perhaps it was entrapment? Who set it
up? Flynn and Kushner should have known better to fall for it. So at the end of his
Presidency, Obama suddenly gets balls and wants to slap down Israel? Yeah, right.
Nice to have leverage over people, though, isn't it? If you're lucky and play your cards
right, you might even be lucky enough to land an impeachment.
Of course, I'm just being cynical. No one would want to overturn democracy, would
they?
Certainly people like Comey, Brenner, Clinton, Clapper, Mueller, Rosenstein wouldn't want
that, would they?
Joe Tedesky , December 23, 2017 at 10:33 pm
I just can't see any special prosecutor investigating Israel-Gate. Between what the
Zionist donors donate to these creepy politicians, too what goods they have on these same
mischievous politicians, I just can't see any investigation into Israel's collusion with the
Trump Administration going anywhere. Netanyahu isn't Putin, and Russia isn't Israel. Plus,
Israel is considered a U.S. ally, while Russia is being marked as a Washington rival. Sorry,
this news regarding Israel isn't going to be ranted on about for the next 18 months, like the
MSM has done with Russia, because our dear old Israel is the only democracy in the Middle
East, or so they tell us. So, don't get your hopes up.
JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:33 am
It's true the Israelis have America's politicians by the ears and the balls. But as this
story gets better known, politicians will start getting questions at their town meetings.
Increasingly the politicians will gag on what Israel is force-feeding them, until finally
they reach a critical mass of vomit in Congress.
Joe Tedesky , December 24, 2017 at 11:12 am
I hope you are right JWalters. Although relying on a Zionist controlled MSM doesn't give
hope for the news getting out properly. Again I hope you are right JWalters. Joe
Actually, Netanyahu was so desperate to have the resolution pulled and not voted on that
he reached out to any country that might help him after the foreign minister of New Zealand,
one of its co-sponsors refused to pull the plug after a testy phone exchange with the Israeli
PM ending up threatening an Israeli boycott oturnef the KIwis.
He then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin, who owed him a favor for having Israel's UN
delegate absent himself for the UNGA vote on sanctioning Russia after its annexation of
Crimea.
Putin then called Russia's UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, since deceased, and asked him to
get the other UNSC ambassadors to postpone the vote until Trump took over the White House but
the other ambassadors weren't buying it. Given Russia's historic public position regarding
the settlements, Churkin had no choice to vote Yes with the others.
This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the US which,
due to Zionist influence on the media, does not want the American public to know about the
close ties between Putin and Netanyahu which has led to the Israeli PM making five state
visits there in the last year and a half.
Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US veto. That
Netanyahu apparently knew in advance that the US planned to veto the resolution was, I
suspect, leaked to the Israelis by US delegate Samantha Power, who was clearly unhappy at
having to abstain.
Abe , December 24, 2017 at 12:39 am
The Israeli Prime Minister made five state visits to Russia in the last year and a half to
make sure the Russians don't accidentally on purpose blast Israeli warplanes from the sky
over Syria (like they oughtta). Putin tries not to snicker when Netanyahu bloviates ad
nauseum about the purported "threat" posed by Iran.
He thinks Putin is a RATS ASS like the yankee government
JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:34 am
"This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the
US"
We've just had a whole cluster of big stories involving Israel that have all been
essentially blacked out in the US press. e.g. "Dionne and Shields ignore the Adelson in the room" http://mondoweiss.net/2017/12/jerusalem-israels-capital
This is not due to chance. There is no doubt that the US mainstream media is wholly
controlled by the Israelis.
alley cat , December 24, 2017 at 4:49 am
"He [Netanyahu] then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin "
Jeff, that characterization of Putin and Netanyahu's relationship makes no sense, since
the Russians have consistently opposed Zionism and Putin has been no exception, having
spoiled Zionist plans for the destruction of Syria.
"Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US
veto."
Not sure where you're going with that, since the US vote was up to Obama, who wanted to
get some payback for all of Bibi's efforts to sabotage Obama's treaty with Iran.
For the record, Zionism has had no more rabid supporter than the Dragon Lady. If we're
going to make assumptions, we could start by assuming that if she had won the White House
we'd all be dead by now, thanks to her obsession (at the instigation of her Zionist/neocon
sponsors) with declaring no-fly zones in Syria.
Brendan , December 24, 2017 at 6:18 am
Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves
their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will
simply ignore the Israeli connection.
Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as
evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone
call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of
this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference.
Skip Scott , December 24, 2017 at 7:59 am
I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would
never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy.
"Nothing to see here folks, move along."
The zionist will stop at nothing to control the middle east with American taxpayers
money/military equiptment its a win win for the zionist they control America lock stock and
barrel a pity though it is a great country to be led by a jewish entity.
What will Israel-Palestine look like twenty years from now? Will it remain an apartheid
regime, a regime without any Palestinians, or something different. The Trump decision, which
the world rejects, brings the issue of "final" settlement to the fore. In a way we can go
back to the thirties and the British Mandate. Jewish were fleeing Europe, many coming to
Palestine. The British, on behalf of the Zionists, were delaying declaring Palestine a state
with control of its own affairs. Seeing the mass immigration and chafing at British foot
dragging, the Arabs rebelled, What happened then was that the British, responding to numerous
pressures notably war with Germany, acted by granting independence and granting Palestine
control of its borders.
With American pressure and the mass exodus of Jews from Europe, Jews defied the British
resulting in Jewish resistance. What followed then was a UN plan to divide the land with a
Jerusalem an international city administered by the UN. The Arabs rebelled and lost much of
what the UN plan provided and Jerusalem as an international city was scrapped.
Will there be a second serious attempt to settle the issue of the land and the status of
Jerusalem? Will there be a serious move toward a single state? How will the matter of
Jerusalem be resolved. The two state solution has always been a fantasy and acquiescence of
Palestinians to engage in this charade exposes their leaders to charges of posturing for
perks. Imagined options could go on and on but will there be serious options placed before
the world community or will the boots on the ground Israeli policies continue?
As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and
the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both
parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.
Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 1:34 pm
As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and
the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both
parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.
The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with
the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to
both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:56 pm
Truly mind-boggling. Ahistorical, and as you say, fantasy.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:48 pm
FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy
(against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End
of story.
$50K of Facebook ads about puppies pales in comparison to that blatant, prima facia,
public manipulation. God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:11 pm
Just for the record, Richard Silverstein blocked me on Twitter because I pointed out that
he slammed someone who was suggesting that the Assad government was fighting for its
(Syria's) life by fighting terrorists. Actually, more specifically, because of that he read
my "Free Palestine" bio on Twitter and called me a Hamas supporter (no Hamas mentioned) and a
"moron" for some seeming contradiction.
I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy.
If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria
and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving
their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing
brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote,
arguably, perpetual war.
Silverstein is probably not a good (ie. consistent) arbiter of Israeli impact on US
politics. Just sayin'.
This may be a tad ot but it relates to the alleged hacking of the DNC, the role debbie
wasserman schultz plays in the spy ring (awan bros) in house of rep servers: I have long
suspected that mossad has their fingers in this entire mess. FWIW
Good site, BTW.
Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 7:35 pm
I can't recall why I removed the Tikun Olam site from my bookmarks – it happened
quite a while back. Generally I do that when I feel the blogger crossed some kind of personal
red line. Something Mr. Silverstein wrote put him over that line with me.
In the course of a search I found that at the neocon NYT. Mr. Silverstein claims several
things I find unbelievable, and from that alone I wonder about his ultimate motives. I may be
excessively touchy about this, but that's how it is.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 8:51 pm
Yeah Zachary, "wondering about ultimate motives" is probably a good way to put it/his
views. He's obviously conflicted, if not deferential in some aspects of Israeli policy. He
really was a hero of mine, but now I just don't get whether what he says is masking something
or a true belief. He says some good stuff, but, but, but .
P. Michael Garber , December 24, 2017 at 11:54 pm
Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than
reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel
lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible
relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was
manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's
influence.
India was naughty as well and Nimrata Nikki Randhawa Haley ought to have taken the Indian
ambassador's name down as well. Maybe she'll even declare she won't ever set foot in India
again. Her relatives there will breathe sighs of relief!
"... 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.
Presstitutes from guardian have no shame. Look, for example, at the following statement "The former
Clinton staffers – among them high-profile figures such as Huma Abedin, Jennifer Palmieri and campaign
manager Robby Mook, the target of stringent criticism from Brazile – wrote: "It is particularly troubling
and puzzling that she would seemingly buy into false Russian-fueled propaganda, spread by both the Russians
and
our opponent , about our candidate's health."
It is widely suspected that Hillary Clinton has second stage
of Parkinson or some other serious neurological diseases?
It is telling that Guardian is afraid to open comments on this article.
Notable quotes:
"... Regarding the primary, in which Sanders – a Vermont independent – mounted a surprisingly strong challenge, Brazile writes in her book that a joint fundraising agreement between Clinton and the DNC "looked unethical" and she felt Clinton had too much influence on the party. ..."
She also said she "got sick and tired of people trying to tell me how to spend money" as DNC chair,
when she "wasn't getting a salary. I was basically volunteering my time".
"I'm not Patsey the slave," Brazile said, referring to a character in the Oscar-winning film 12
Years a Slave.
In her book, Brazile writes that she did not ultimately try to make the change of candidate because:
"I thought of Hillary, and all the women in the country who were so proud of and excited about her.
I could not do this to them."
On ABC, she admitted she had not had the power to make the change but said: "I had to put in on
the the table because I was under tremendous pressure after Secretary Clinton fainted to have a quote-unquote
plan B. I didn't want a plan B. Plan A was great for me. I supported Hillary and I wanted her to
win. But we were under pressure."
Brazile writes that on 12 September 2016, Biden's chief of staff called saying the vice-president
wanted to speak with her. Her thought, she writes, was: "Gee, I wonder what he wanted to talk to
me about?"
On ABC, she said she did not mention the possible switch. "I mean, look, everybody was called
in to see, do you know anything? How is she doing? And of course my job at the time was to reassure
people, not just the vice-president but also reassure the Democratic party, the members of the party,
that Hillary was doing fine and that she would resume her campaign the following week."
It is unclear if Biden was ever willing to step into the race. The former vice-president, who
many believe could a run for the presidency in 2020, made no immediate comment.
Asked if she still thinks a Biden-Booker ticket could have won, Brazile equivocated, saying: "Well,
you know, I had a lot of other combinations. This was something you play out in your mind."
Regarding the primary, in which Sanders – a Vermont independent – mounted a surprisingly strong
challenge, Brazile writes in her book that a joint fundraising agreement between Clinton and the
DNC "looked unethical" and she felt Clinton had too much influence on the party.
Like Obama before him Trump proved to be a very talented "bat and switcher".
Notable quotes:
"... Donald Trump's presidential campaign took this cynical strategy farther than any of his Republican predecessors, openly reaching out to alienated working-class voters, the backbone of so many left-wing protest movements. ..."
"... Trump told us he was going to do something about Nafta, a left-wing bête noir since the 1990s. He promised to revive Glass Steagall. He claimed to care so very, very much about the people of the deindustrialized zones whose sufferings have been so thoroughly documented by left-wing authors. ..."
"... When Sanders decided to support HRC, I figured nothing will ever change. He built up a lot of hope (as did Obama), only to pull the rug out at the eleventh hour. ..."
"... Moving to the far towards the "progressive" left, the Democratic party abandoned the working and middle classes in favor of the coastal well to do city dwellers while trying to appeal to the "oppressed identity" single issue "groups". ..."
"... People got tired of losing their jobs to "globalization", with the government deciding what they can do with policies of "diversity", which is essentially a quota system, and with having ideologues and bureaucrats decide what is good or bad for them. ..."
"... If we lost the base of the Democratic party it wasn't because it was stolen from us. It was because it was given away. We started giving it away when we learned the wrong lesson after Ronald Reagan and thought that we had to move to the right with Bill Clinton to win the presidency. ..."
"... Clinton is the ultimate Swamp Creature,and large reason for her loss is that she spent more time with her high dollar donors then in swing states. How do you think the "Clinton Foundation" got so big? ..."
"... So the Democrats embraced the moneyed establishment because they felt they had to to win, while the Republicans denounced that same establishment but only as part of a bait-and-switch strategy. Meanwhile the establishment hedges their bets and wins no matter what the election outcome. ..."
"... I agree, the New Deal was quite leftist, in the sense that it acknowledged the crisis which had struck the working class. It's atypical in the history of the Democratic Party, which has been devoted to advancing the interests of U.S. corporations and since the Clinton years, those of multinational business consortia. But even the New Deal was a far cry from a revolutionary call to arms. In fact, it was meant to curtail such agitation. Roosevelt said as much. ..."
"... There is no left movement in Washington. Each is going after money from lobbyists. I just see the USA rapidly consuming itself and fragmenting. It has poor social, medical, policing programs. And it continues to digest itself in petty hate between the Democrats and Republicans. It really has no serious governance and worse its flagship superior court is now being sold to capitalism ..."
"... Identity politics is what the oligarchy is using to divide us. I just think it is counterproductive to battle each other when the upward mobility is being taken from us. I wish others could see it. ..."
"... Immigration restrictionists in the US have for decades fought the corporate establishment. In fact, we have fought what are probably the most powerful coalitions of special interests in human history, coalitions of corporate predators, Big Labor, Big Religion, Big Media, and Big Government. ..."
"... There are plenty of populists in the Republican Party, but the governing portion of the party is solidly neocon. Hence the battle between President Trump and the "17 intelligence agencies," and the remarkable undermining of Trump's foreign policy proposals by his own cabinet. ..."
"... Just as the progressive base of the Democratic Party is suppressed by the corporatists at the DNC and other centralized party organs, the Republican base is a captive to its Washington elite power brokers. ..."
"... Apparently 'isolationism' now means simply advocating for some restraint on endless global US military interventionism, hundreds and hundreds of bases in 80+ countries, and trillion dollar 'defence' budgets. ..."
"... I'll take an isolationist over a neo-con any day. ..."
"... The "traditional base" of the Democratic Party was destroyed long ago by de-industrialisation, hollowing of labor law, and now by opioids of the masses. The present day DNC is run by and for their army of contractors, lobbyists, bunglers, and wreckers. ..."
"... I hate to say it to you, but Trump voters who live in Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Iowa weren't looking for upscale living and calling for lower corporate taxes etc. One out of four WV residents are living under economic distress. They just want decent jobs and a government that represents working people, not the wealthy. ..."
here's was a moment in Steve Bannon's recent
60 Minutes interview when the former presidential advisor was asked what he's done to
drain "the swamp," the Trumpists' favorite metaphor for everything they hate about Washington DC.
Here was Bannon's reply: "The swamp is 50 years in the making. Let's talk about the swamp. The swamp
is a business model. It's a successful business model. It's a donor, consultant, K Street lobbyist,
politician ... 7 of the 9 wealthiest counties in America ring Washington, DC."
With a shock of recognition I knew immediately what Bannon meant, because what he was talking
about was the subject matter of my 2008 book, The Wrecking Crew – the interconnected eco-system of
corruption that makes Washington, DC so rich.
The first chapter of my book had been a description of those wealthy counties that ring Washington,
DC: the fine cars, the billowing homes, the expense-account restaurants. The rest of the book was
my attempt to explain the system that made possible the earthly paradise of Washington and – just
like Steve Bannon
– I did it by referring to a business model: the political donors and the K Street lobbyists, who
act in combination with politicians of the Tom DeLay variety.
My critique of Washington was distinctly from the left, and it astonished me to hear something
very close to my argument coming from the mouth of one of the nation's most prominent conservatives.
But in fact, Bannon has a long history of reaching out to the left – you might say, of swiping its
populist language and hijacking its causes.
In this space back in February, for example,
I described Bannon's bizarre 2010 pseudo-documentary about the financial crisis, which superficially
resembles actual documentaries, but which swerves to blame this failure of the deregulated financial
system on the counterculture of the 1960s.
Bannon's once-famous denunciation of Wall Street banks for their role in the financial crisis
is another example. His fondness for the author
Christopher Lasch is also revealing. As was his
admiring phone call
with Robert Kuttner, a well-known liberal editor, which happened just before Bannon left his high-ranking
White House job in August.
Mimicry is supposed to be a form of flattery, right
Dig a little deeper, and it sometimes seems like the history of the populist right – with its
calls to "organize discontent" and its endless war against "the establishment" and the "elites" –
is nothing but a history of reformatting left-wing ideas to fit the needs of the billionaire class.
Think of Ronald Reagan's (and Mike Pence's) deliberate reprise of Franklin Roosevelt. Or the constant
echoes of Depression-era themes and imagery that one heard from the Tea Party movement.
Donald Trump's presidential campaign took this cynical strategy farther than any of his Republican
predecessors, openly reaching out to alienated working-class voters, the backbone of so many left-wing
protest movements.
Trump told us he was going to do something about Nafta, a left-wing bête noir since the 1990s.
He promised to revive Glass Steagall. He claimed to care so very, very much about the people of the
deindustrialized zones whose sufferings have been so thoroughly documented by left-wing authors.
So many fine, militant words. So many clarion calls rousing the people against corrupt elites.
And now comes Steve Bannon, the terror of the Republican establishment, hectoring us about "the swamp"
with ideas so strikingly similar to my own.
Look at deeds rather than words, however, and it seems as though Trump and his gang have been
using The Wrecking Crew more as a how-to guide than anything else. In that book, for example, I pointed out that one of the hallmarks of modern conservative governance
is the placement of people who are hostile to the mission of federal agencies in positions of authority
in those very agencies.
This is an essential component of the Washington corruption Bannon loves to deplore – and yet
this is precisely what Bannon's man Trump has done. Betsy DeVos, a foe of public schools, is running
the Department of Education. Scott Pruitt, a veteran antagonist of the EPA, has been put in charge
of the EPA. Rick Perry now runs the Department of Energy, an agency he once proposed to abolish.
Another characteristic of the DC wrecking crew is a war on competence within the Federal bureaucracy
– and that, too, is back on, courtesy of the folks who rallied you against corruption so movingly
last year.
Lobbying ? The industry
appears to be gearing up for a return of its Reagan-era golden age. In the early days of the administration,
lobbyists were appointed en masse to team Trump and a brigade of brash new K Street personalities
is rising up to replace the old guard.
Privatization? The people in DC are trying it again, and this time on a gigantic scale. Trump's
ultra-populist infrastructure promise now seems to be little more than a vast scheme for encouraging
investment firms to take over the country's highways and bridges. Even the
dreams of privatized war are back, brought to you courtesy of the enterprising Erik Prince, a
familiar face from the worst days of the Iraq war.
Above it all towers the traditional Republican ideal of business-in-government. "The government
should be run like a great American company," is how Jared Kushner puts it this time around; and
with his private-jet-set cabinet Donald Trump is going to show the nation exactly what that philosophy
looks like.
All the elements are here. The conclusion is unquestionable. The wrecking crew is back.
And why is it back? Because, among other things,
Republicans are better
at fulminating against the wrecking crew than are Democrats. Maybe that's because Democratic leaders
feel it's inappropriate to use such blunt and crude language.
Maybe that's because, for 40 years or so, the leadership faction of the Democratic Party has been
at war with its own left wing, defining us out of the conversation, turning a deaf ear to our demands,
denouncing populism even as the right grabbed for it with both hands. Either way, the
Democrats seem to have
no intention of changing their approach now.
Maybe we on the left should take consolation in the things Steve Bannon says. Our own team may
not listen to us, but at least there's someone out there in a position of power who apparently does.
And mimicry is supposed to be a form of flattery, right?
No. All this is happening for one reason only: to steal the traditional base of the Democratic
Party out from under us. That it will also enrich countless contractors and lobbyists and bunglers
and wreckers is just a bonus.
On running the government like a business: That is exactly what the Trump regime is doing. Their
business model is the mob. And to be fair, the idea of running government like a business makes
precisely as much sense as running a business like a government.
Steve Bannon is part of the plan to de-democratize the USA and Republicans can only do that by
lying on an industrial scale, which they do very efficiently and effectively. Why the need? Because
although they are good at destruction, they are no good at all at building the nation or government.
The First Rule of Marketing says that if you give people what they want, they will give you
dollars. The billionaires who fund the Republicans again and again do so not because they believe
in good government, or have the slightest concern for the wealth, health and defense of the nation,
but because they get what they want. It's a purchasing contract.
"....to steal the traditional base of the Democratic Party out from under us"
They aren't your servants to do your bidding and wait your table. Nor your political property.
There is no more similarity of average working blokes to self-infatuated intellectuals of "the
left" than a potato to a hubcap.
Working people left the party because they plainly are no longer welcome except during the
brief hours when the polls are open.
I haven't the vaguest idea. When Sanders decided to support HRC, I figured nothing will ever
change. He built up a lot of hope (as did Obama), only to pull the rug out at the eleventh hour.
Moving to the far towards the "progressive" left, the Democratic party abandoned the working and
middle classes in favor of the coastal well to do city dwellers while trying to appeal to the
"oppressed identity" single issue "groups". The only answer it presented to all problems was more
government control over the economy and over all aspects of people's life. People got tired of
losing their jobs to "globalization", with the government deciding what they can do with policies
of "diversity", which is essentially a quota system, and with having ideologues and bureaucrats
decide what is good or bad for them.
TPP was a secret deal, which had written into it, its own right to trump the legal systems of
signatory countries with TPP-sponsored arbitration and even mediation judgments. Trump saw that
off on his first day.
If we lost the base of the Democratic party it wasn't because it was stolen from us. It was because
it was given away. We started giving it away when we learned the wrong lesson after Ronald Reagan
and thought that we had to move to the right with Bill Clinton to win the presidency.
It was later given away when we didn't accomplish much when we had the majorities in the House,
Senate and Presidency back in 2008. If Trump picked up our message it was because he took it,
it was because it was just sitting there waiting to be picked up.
Nonsense. Clinton is the ultimate Swamp Creature,and large reason for her loss is that she spent
more time with her high dollar donors then in swing states. How do you think the "Clinton Foundation"
got so big?
So the Democrats embraced the moneyed establishment because they felt they had to to win, while
the Republicans denounced that same establishment but only as part of a bait-and-switch strategy.
Meanwhile the establishment hedges their bets and wins no matter what the election outcome.
That is a good message. I'll be more supportive of the conservatives when they actually practice
what they preach. But please don't get me wrong. Not all conservatives are into white supremacy.
The problem I see is that if one is a white supremacist, the conservatives don't publicly denounce
that position. It makes many people of color feel alienated by conservatism. At least the left
openly denounces white supremacy. The right praises MLK but doesn't condemn those in Charlotteville.
They had a right to protest and the left shouldn't have tried to silence them. However it was
identity politics. They wouldn't be protecting the open display of the confederacy if they weren't
into identity politics. That message seems to get lost as conservatism frowns on identity politics.
I don't know what that refers to.
NAFTA passed under Clinton , but more importantly, so did the Uruguay Round of GATT. When the
Senate passed that (the House passed it to but technically the House doesn't ratify treaties),
it severely curtailed the USA's ability to negotiate our own trade deals. All members of the WTO
are vulnerable to financial penalties if any member nation tries to override the rulings set by
the WTO. Not only did Ralph Nader recognize this as a problem and try to run for president because
of it, so did Pat Buchanan. Buchanan saw this as lost sovereignty (in his words). Both Nader and
Buchanan were of course unsuccessful because we vote in an FPTP voting system which tends to eliminate
third parties form being successful.
The point is that Clinton forced Congress to pass the legislation just like Paulson forced
Congress to approve a bailout of the banks during the financial crisis. It wasn't really all the
republicans fault, but the oligarchy would have taken down the global economy if it didn't get
bailed out. Anyway the WTO has a policy on dumping:
both dems and reps rant and rave about China dumping steel but nothing ever gets done to stop
it because the WTO is there protecting China (or american companies making steel in China). Either
way the american steel worker gets screwed in the process and that is why populists hate globalism.
The American worker knows he's getting screwed but he may not be aware of the mechanism by which
he is getting screwed. The media rarely talks about the WTO because if the American worker knew
how he was getting screwed, he'd be screaming to get out of the WTO. Typically he only knows his
jobs are gone and where they are. However it was Clinton who did this and the idea that anybody
would even think of putting HRC back in the white house while she is still married to that dude
is due to utter ignorance of the fact of what he did when he was there the first time.
I think both Clinton and W should be in jail, but this isn't about W.
I agree, the New Deal was quite leftist, in the sense that it acknowledged the crisis which had
struck the working class. It's atypical in the history of the Democratic Party, which has been
devoted to advancing the interests of U.S. corporations and since the Clinton years, those of
multinational business consortia. But even the New Deal was a far cry from a revolutionary call
to arms. In fact, it was meant to curtail such agitation. Roosevelt said as much.
There is no left movement in Washington. Each is going after money from lobbyists. I just see
the USA rapidly consuming itself and fragmenting. It has poor social, medical, policing programs.
And it continues to digest itself in petty hate between the Democrats and Republicans. It really
has no serious governance and worse its flagship superior court is now being sold to capitalism.
Capitalism will fail as predicted by Marx and those who really know about it. It is our children
who will pick up the tab if they can survive.
> Identity politics is what the oligarchy is using to divide us.
Conservatives argue against identity politics. I don't know what the oligarchy is supposed to
be, in the context of the US. People in power often came from varied backgrounds, not usually
all that rich backgrounds.
> upward mobility is being taken from us
Upward from what? If you are poor, there's a lot of upward that might be possible, but if you
are middle class, whatever that means, you can't have everyone moving up or the definition of
middle class would change to them.
> The worst thing that happened to us, happened under Clinton
I don't know what that refers to. Welfare reform? Various changes to banking regulations? Allowing
bin Laden to hit us again and again but instead of doing what needed to be done, frolicking with
a young frisky intern in the Oval Office? I doubt Bush Sr would've done that.
> However if you stand up for the rights of one group and ignore the rights of another today some people still don't "get it".
They don't get what? When someone protests in the street, whether they are sweetness and light
or racist or whatever, they have the right to protest. Plenty of people would argue that "hate
speech" should be banned, them defining what "hate speech" means, of course. These people are
arguing against settled constitutional law.
> I tend to think the US citizen should be protected by the bill of rights and not necessarily those here illegally.
Yet not protecting everyone with due process, for example, is a violation of constitutional law.
I consider myself a populist. Not exactly from the left but certainly more left that right. Identity
politics is what the oligarchy is using to divide us. I just think it is counterproductive to
battle each other when the upward mobility is being taken from us. I wish others could see it.
The worst thing that happened to us, happened under Clinton, but rest assured; HW Bush would have
done it had he won the election in 92.
My point was that calling the Democratic Party a leftist party requires a notion of that term
drained of real meaning. The Democratic Party has always upheld the supremacy of capital and the
necessity of forestalling a revolution. I realize that in the United States plenty of people regard
President Obama and Hillary Clinton as communists, but that's simply a measure of how far to the
right political discourse stands there. The American left was eliminated from public life in the
1940s and 1950s with the suppression of the Communist Party, the purging of the unions and professions,
and strict mass indoctrination of the citizenry. And whenever new manifestations of leftist energy
have appeared, they have been met with unremitting hostility from liberal and conservative centers
of power.
Finally, the Democratic Party is a party not just of capital, but of empire. This was never
more true than in last year's election, in which Donald Trump was able to appeal to marginal voters
on the ambiguous claim that he was less warlike than Secretary Clinton. No, there's nothing in
the two party set-up which expresses the basic demands of the modern left- an end to imperialism,
nationalization of key industries, and so on. And when people restrict their political thinking
to the narrow range offered by a business oligopoly, they're going to be misreading their own
reality.
The Republican Party has a big problem in that its agenda has at best a small grassroots following
of perhaps 10% of the populace.
Meantime, populist-nationalism is in sync with the views of I would estimate at least 50% of
the US citizenry and perhaps as much as 60%. (the other 30% of the public are "progressives")
The establishment has maintained power by default. When our political system offers only a
choice between a "progressive" Democrat and an establishment Repubilcan, many voters choose the
latter as the lesser evil.
If and when voters actually are offered a genuine choice at the ballot box, watch out. I think
you will start seeing this played out on a grand scale in the 2018 and 2020 Republican primaries.
Fighting the corporate establishment has never been the exclusive province of the left.
Immigration restrictionists in the US have for decades fought the corporate establishment.
In fact, we have fought what are probably the most powerful coalitions of special interests in
human history, coalitions of corporate predators, Big Labor, Big Religion, Big Media, and Big
Government.
This movement is one of the grassroots pillars fueling Bannonism.
There are plenty of populists in the Republican Party, but the governing portion of the party
is solidly neocon. Hence the battle between President Trump and the "17 intelligence agencies,"
and the remarkable undermining of Trump's foreign policy proposals by his own cabinet.
Just as the progressive base of the Democratic Party is suppressed by the corporatists at the
DNC and other centralized party organs, the Republican base is a captive to its Washington elite
power brokers.
Thomas Frank's interesting and thoughtful pieces on the failure- or refusal- of the Democratic
Party to come to terms with the depths of voter disaffection form an interesting contrast with
the Guardian's DNC-supplied outlook. I suppose that's why he's been hired, to take up all that
slack as the paper trudges ever rightward. Here's a link to an extended recent interview he gave
with Paul Jay at The Real News.
Populist movements typically tend to involve more focus on complaining and raging about problems
than coming up with any real solutions for them, so it doesn't really matter whether members self-identify
as coming from the left or right. Given the Trump campaign was all about manipulation anyway,
with Trump just a puppet to distract the public from seeing the corprate take-over of the state,
it's not surprising they used a populist rhetoric, as seen in shock doctrine, that inherent rage
blinds them from seeing they are being manipulated.
The last time the Democrats actually offered something to the American people was the War on Poverty
and Civil Rights legislation by President Johnson in the 1960s. Other than the Democrats have
been acting like an extended PR arm of corporate America by performing sideshows on social issues
while failing to address the needs of working families. I clearly don't buy into the notion that
the Democrats are a tad better than the Republicans. No, the Democrats need to be radically to
the left like Bernie Sanders, not moderate Republican lite such as Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
This country simply cannot continue electing conservative governments all the time in Washington
DC.
Apparently 'isolationism' now means simply advocating for some restraint on endless global US
military interventionism, hundreds and hundreds of bases in 80+ countries, and trillion dollar
'defence' budgets.
A broken clock is right twice a day. Yes, Republican isolationists are the only ones in their
primarily interventionist party to ever make a principled critique of endless U.S. wars abroad.
Sadly, the Democrats are, with some honorable exceptions like Dennis Kucinich, as committed to
these endless wars as their partners across the aisle. This is one of the many reasons why Hillary
Clinton lost. However, Buchanan's xenophobia makes his brand of anti-imperialism shallow--he still
thinks "Western civilization" is superior to other cultures, and has denied the genocide against
Native Americans. His views about Jews are also rather creepy. That said, I'll take an isolationist
over a neo-con any day.
There is divisive manipulation on the left and the right, the pundits blame each other to keep
America divided. The right stereotypes the left while the left stereotypes the right . The working
class crazy white guy is oppressing the hispanic and blacks while the blacks and hispanic oppress
the working class white. The left pundits make fun of the working class while the right pundits
make fun of the left pundits. Both sides are entralled by business interests aka socoio-political
interests. Afterall, this is a business world where ppl have to put food on the table.America
is on the verge of becoming as divided as america was prior to the civil war. What am i supposed
to do? Join the resistence of division taking place on the left and the right? Protest against
another american at a divided left vs. right rally? Resistence is futile because resistence leads
to more division.
Excuse my unedites grammar semtence structure lack of sense and not serious online comment
Trump can't stop calling others
names - with the absurd stance
that he must bully people to create a sense of self respect.
Those who support Trump or Bannon generally have in common a refusal to see any viewpoint other
than their own.
They'll find a way to make most any belief, policy or decision which T&B uphold, look justified
or non-offensive in motives.
Trump runs every which way, so, there are bound to be a few things one finds agreeable (even from
the left). Bannon thinks democracy does not work. He'd like to see the federal government crash.
In fact, The USA has no true democracy. Like many developed
nations we are under the total
rule of organized business. Profit
is superior and normalized whereas basic human needs are
for the highest bid competition.
Greed older than Methuselah's
first breakfast. Bannon doesn't
have a vision for the betterment and uplift of society any more than anyone else. Who cannot can
see corporate greed has its tentacles around us? The common person on the street
knows the scheme. What to do about it finds us in the land of inertia. Next crash (it is coming)
the panicked cry for bailouts will
be near impossible to put-up with. With billions on the planet
we are in new territory, as to
resources and competition. A system which cannot survive with its hand in our pocket while claiming
free market enterprise
will even out the system on balance - meaning for investors, and head in sand more of the same.
The "base" of the Democratic party is now the same get rich ideologues of Clinton-ism who are
happy to lobby and privatise with as much enthusiasm as any right wing Republican/Conservative/Tea
Party ideologue. Every administration, Republican or Democratic, from Clinton, to Bush, to Obama,
has held to the same policies of the Reagan administration. The "traditional base" of the Democratic
Party was destroyed long ago by de-industrialisation, hollowing of labor law, and now by opioids
of the masses. The present day DNC is run by and for their army of contractors, lobbyists, bunglers,
and wreckers.
Yep - the big mistake with critters like Bannon is to ignore or dismiss everything they say and
fail to detect what resonance they are striking with what audience.
But it's awkward when you just read them and recognise grains of truthiness - they see the
same problems it's just their solutions are all wrong. But they are actually cutting the left's
grass - pinching the alienation and discontent that rightly belongs to progress, no? Now the NRA
have got 'em - not even the GOP.
Be yer unfinished civil war this... grinding away slowly ... so now the whole place is riven
by fear and suspicion - of race, wealth, cities, the guvvermint, of anything and everything really.
A deeply traumatised culture you've got sitting down there - victims real and imagined wandering
about and none of it getting fixed at all..
Not everyone or everywhere - but the most fearful and angry cluster are centred on the underlying
issues of the era of Lincoln. Trump is speaking for and to them. There can be no more nonsense
about lone gunmen - this is now part of US culture - systemic and systematic.
Yer 500 kiddies are just the price of open-carry freedoms according to the Vegas mayor. All
the same old folk-wisdoms: can't have laws that stop bad people being bad?... why should the 1%
of evildoers dictate our liberties?
But of course they do. That is how all laws work, whether murder or shoplifting - everyone
shows their bags. In fact they are arguing for lawlessness - vigilantism and John Wayne cowboy
myths. That's the Trump/Bannon audience ... National Enquirer readers packing heat .
#TheHouseAlwaysWins The author gets so close to putting his finger on the problem and then at
the last moment swerves off into partisan rhetoric. Wake up dude! Both of the things you think are opposite sides are out to get us.
The list below delineates the policies and initiatives that Hillary Clinton supported over course
of her political career (including as a loyal First Lady to Bill Clinton). They help explain the
depressed voter enthusiasm and turnout for the Dems among many of the groups to whom you say Frank,
as a "well-to-do white man" pining for "white working class revolution," owes an apology:
--Deregulation of the investment banks (and against reinstatement of Glass--Steagall)
--Deregulation of the telecommunications industry
--Deregulation of derivatives
--The destruction of welfare (which has caused the numbers living in extreme poverty to double
since its passage)
--The Omnibus Crime Bill (increased the prison population massively)
--NAFTA
--The sanctions regime against Iraq of the 1990s that killed 500,000 Iraqi children ("it was worth
it," said her friend Madeline Albright)
--The Defense of Marriage Act
--CAFTA (granted stealthy support)
--TPP
--Fracking
--The objectively-racist death penalty
--The private prison industry
--The Patriot Act
--The Iraq War
--The bombing of Libya
--Military intervention in Syria
--Israel's starvation blockade and blitzkrieg against Gaza
--The right-wing coup in Honduras
--Investor-friendly repression and cronyism in Haiti
--A 31 cents/hour minimum wage in Haiti (and against attempts to raise it)
--The recently announced 20 year, $1,000,000,000,000 (trillion) upgrade of the US's nuclear arsenal
--Historically-high numbers of deportations under the Obama Adm.
--Oil drilling in the Arctic
--The fight against free public university tuition
--The fight against single-payer health care
--Acceptance of tens of millions of dollars of corporate money
--Credit-card industry favored bankruptcy laws
--The bail-out of Wall Street
If you think America is bad, then try living in the UK.
The UK is a hotbed of religious nutters. Just look at Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, David
Cameron, and Theresa May.
The UK still has a "state-established" church (the Church of England). The UK's national anthem
' God Save the Queen ' mentions 'God' over 30 different times. And most British schools
are still faith-based and funded by the church. Also, abortion and gay marriage are still banned
in some parts of the UK, such as Northern Ireland.
Forget Donald Trump.... the UK is far more religious & dangerous.
Lol, yeah it's only the Rs that do bad stuff in DC. HRC was the Queen of the system described
above. An article designed to confuse those without eyes to see.
The interesting thing for me is the hate levels on the left which appear to be almost off the
scale at the moment. Identity politics seems to have a deep hold on your hearts.
The U.S. is more liberal & secular than ever. The election of Trump doesn't change that. According to a
2011 Pew Report , the U.S. now has the 3rd largest atheist population in the
world -- after China & Japan. On top of that, a
2015 Gallup Poll found that 60% of Americans would vote for an atheist President
-- a record number that continues to grow every year.
Additionally, gay marriage is legal in all
50 U.S. states. Marijuana is legal & taxed in
8 U.S. states. Euthanasia (assisted suicide) is legal in
6 U.S states -- including California (the largest state in America with over 40 million
people). Even prostitution is legal & regulated in some U.S. states, such as Nevada!
*Sign into Youtube to watch this video about legal
American brothels.
The U.S. constitution guarantees separation of Church & State -- unlike the UK, which still
has a "state-established" church (the Church of England).
Not really. They will be defeated in the next election and they are already facing charges and
prison time. This will not end with a bang, but with a whimper and whining like you've never heard.
There are many more in the one percent and the top 10% who are already disgusted with Mercer,
Koch, Trump and the whole Putin cabal. Evil is evil and splashing some fake christianity on their
hitler speeches is not fooling anyone but the already fooled; and they are a small lot getting
smaller every single day.
Most of Bannon's story about dear old dad is pure crap. He was already a right wing film-maker
before the 2008 meltdown, and dear old dad would still have his money if he had listened to his
two financier sons instead of the cable TV idiot Cramer. AT&T, in case you haven't heard, came
through the crash intact.
15 billion dollars worth of missiles being sold to Saudi Arabia ........ while a few days ago
Saudi Arabia goes to Moscow and talks to putin which is the first tie ever.......... so we sold
them weapons to what , aim at us........
So, do you preferred two thirds of the American population to live on welfare aid like Medicaid
which doesn't even covered dental and eye exams? As much you don't like the GOP approach to healthcare
reform, the Democrats would rather bailed out the insurance industry by making consumers to buy
unaffordable coverage and public assistance programs and refused to embraced Bernie Sanders approach
to universal healthcare. The Democratic Party simply has no ideas, just empty tough talk against
the President.
I hate to say it to you, but Trump voters who live in Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and Iowa weren't looking for upscale living and calling for lower corporate taxes
etc. One out of four WV residents are living under economic distress. They just want decent jobs
and a government that represents working people, not the wealthy.
So, you're suggesting that Frank's political instincts are all wrong when he first wrote his
book thesis on "What's the matter with Kansas," which lays out the scanting indictment of the
pro-corporate wing of the Democratic Party and their wealthy supporters. Here's the reality
that you Clinton bots don't understand: the rest of the country is like Kansas, not glamour
LA or Wall Street NYC. People work in blue collar and grey collar professions, have modest
wealth, and some are involved in trade unions. Many don't have a college degree; many also
have no desires to go to a liberal arts school or state public university. Nearly eighty
percent of middle America have a high school diploma. Only thirty percent have a college BA
degree, and less than five percent have a advanced degree in Law or PH'D. Those numbers
haven't changed since the 1960s. And yet, the corporate ruling class which showers money to
both political parties have been selling the public a bill of false promises and lies about
the necessary of getting a college degree in order to find gainful employment with living
wages. Sorry, there isn't no living wage jobs. Our industrialized state has been devalued by
NAFTA, a pro-corporate trade deal signed by Bill Clinton in the 1990s, had destroyed the
fabric of mostly blue collar communities in middle America. Both Democrats and Republicans
all conspired to gut the entire working classes out of the middle class status and into the
underclass welfare state as a whole---first with welfare reform in the 1990s, followed by
Bush era tax cuts, getting rid of Glass-Stegeall, awarding companies with job outsourcing,
failure to provide affordable housing to the needy while selling risky sub-prime mortgages,
making our higher educational system as a luxury commodity, destroying our pension system and
replacing it with an inadequate 401K retirement package, allowing the one percent to hide
their money overseas in tax haven accounts, subsidizing the rich, and control the media
through corporate consolidation. We no longer have the ability to innovate, produce, or
create a thriving working class middle. Instead, corporate dominance in our politics and our
legal system makes it almost impossible to generate a fair, diverse, and expanding
opportunities economy on the basis of progressive regulations that is desperately needed.
What Frank had in mind is what the donor class within the Democratic Party is scared
about. That is, working people are being shoved aside due to the power of money in
government, and yet the Democratic Party has to changed its tune in order to regain the
working class voters in middle America.
Well, Bannon is partly right given the fact that our government has been at the wheel of
powerful lobbyists and wealthy donors for so long. However, given the dysfunctional and
unfortunate circumstances surrounding the Trump Administration in DC, the Democrats seem to
appear as aloof and tone deaf with the American people----a state of utter denial regarding a
major political party that just lost the Presidential election to a dingbat D list reality tv
star and real estate tycoon who has the mindset of a spoiled child.
The true reason behind Bannon's conquest for political votes is that the working class
here in the US have been totally neglected and left behind by eight years of Obama and the
last two terms of Bush Jr from the previous decade. Working people want actual middle class
jobs and a shot of a decent life in retirement, not welfare checks from the government.
The Left in English-speaking countries has been overtaken by upper-middle class people who
are obsessed with sexual identity and race. They are snobby towards working class people and
will abuse them as racist when they talk about problems with immigration or other social
groups with different coloured skin. I moved from the first group into the second, and I know
working class people are no more prejudiced than upper-middle class, but they don't have the
vocabulary to express it in a way that "educated" people will recognise.
This snobbery towards possible complexities in the life of working class people is damning
leftwing parties to continual oblivion.
(Working class people use blunt language, but they apply it to themselves equally. Those
higher up the social ladder are not used to hearing that type of language.)
Did anything I say indicate I support Trump? I described his administration as an
economically centrist "kleptocracy". Trump Jr. taking thinly veiled payoffs on the
speaking/grift circuit is par for the course.
In fact, Breitbart gets criticism on the right for being too gung ho in embracing Israel.
Steve Bannon quotes that give some of his supporters pause are things like "no media outlet
is more pro-Israel than Breitbart". I guess politics is a factor but most of us don't like
all the money we give them and how a major reason that the Muslim world is so angry at the
Western one is it's unflinching backing of Israel, no matter how much of the West Bank they
encroach upon, among other things.
The idea that Breitbart is anti-Semitic is an absurd Media Matters talking point going
back to an article calling Bill Kristol a "Renegade Jew". The article was, obviously, written
by a Jew. And the thrust of the article was that Bill Kristol (and others) making attempts to
steal the Republican nomination from Trump (as the Dems had from Bernie Sanders) would
ultimately harm Israel. So it was a Jew calling a Jew a Renegade Jew for making a decision he
believed was bad for the Jewish homeland.
I know it's all very confusing but hopefully that's cleared up now.
"I did it by referring to a business model: the political donors and the K Street lobbyists,
who act in combination with politicians of the Tom DeLay variety."
There are almost no members of Congress who are of any other sort than the "Tom Delay"
variety you refer to. Very nearly every single member is corrupt. The game is ruined. Perhaps
an end to gerrymandering (if we shoudl be so fortunate) will allow some mechanism for
changing the guard in Congress. We need to remove them all. They sold us out and we need to
exile them for life.
Don't think your rep is any better. This keeps us stuck.
I don't JUST yell Hillary. I also mentioned Obama and the rest of the criminals who make up
the Democratic Party. Whose list of proven criminality is simply staggering enough before you
get in to the mountains of very damning circumstantial stuff that begs investigation.
And when I mention the Democrats, you act as if it's some irrelevent non sequitur. IT IS
NOT. Please remember that the choice was Trump OR Hillary. So whenever people lament how
apparently terrible the President who has brought us 3.1% GDP growth for the first time in
years and well over a million new jobs along with finally insisting that the law needs to be
enforced for the first time in 8 years, the issue of the alternative to this IS of course
relevant.
As I said: Clinton is a part of the establishment. A real swamp monster. One of the really
big stinking ones, with huge wads of cash stuck to her blood soaked claws. Trump is not. And
by the very low bar set by the past few Presidents, just not being more of the same is an
improvement.
And by the way, Hillary Clinton did commit multiple felonies. The private server = felony
(whether "intent" was there or not, that was an irrelevant muddying of the waters). The
storing and forwarding of classified info on this server = felony (whether or not she, after
decades in government understood that (C) meant classified as it always had all along).
You seem to be taking Clinton Cash as evidence of something, but that is just a piece of
propaganda meant to sway the election. Where are your reputable sources?
There are some great videos on Youtube where he talks about economics.
HAHA yes where he deliberately lies about the cause of 2008.
Where he is now silent on cohn who is now in charge of economic policy.
So, while Cohn was overseeing one team inside Goldman Sachs preoccupied with
implementing the big short, he was in regular contact with others scrambling to offload its
subprime inventory. One Goldman trader described the mortgage-backed securities they were
selling as "shitty." Another complained in an email that they were being asked to "distribute
junk that nobody was dumb enough to take first time around." A December 28 email from Fabrice
"Fabulous Fab" Tourre, a Goldman vice president later convicted of fraud, instructed traders
to focus on less astute, "buy and hold" investors rather than "sophisticated hedge funds"
that "will be on the same side of the trade as we will." https://theintercept.com/2017/09/17/goldman-sachs-gary-cohn-donald-trump-administration
/
Then there is Mnuchin( Treasury secretary) the foreclosure king, who made a fortune on
taking peoples home, some for $1 mistake.
Why did republicans mot make up some laws to put them into prison. Why are they silent now
when trump is deregulating by executive order.
Talk about fake outrage putting in the people who caused the problems as the
solutions.
Spoken from someone who has obviously never listened to what Steve Bannon said or his
message.
You obviously don't know, for example, that his Dad - a union guy - lost half of his life
savings in the crash of 2008.
And you do not have a single quote where you can attribute "master race" stuff to Bannon.
That's literally a smear based on nothing, created by the Clinton people as revenge for his
role in the absolutely devastating expose Clinton Cash.
Those of us paying attention understand what he is: an unbelievably bright guy who was the
first man who successfully harnessed the informed outrage of the alternative media to have an
impact in national politics. He and Trump beat the rigging and achieved for the socially
conservative anti-deepstate people what Bernie Sanders was unable to achieve on the Left...
if he ever really had the stomach for the fight in the first place.
"That it will also enrich countless contractors and lobbyists and bunglers and wreckers is
just a bonus." Mmmm, maybe not a bonus so much as the objective, perhaps? As an aside, the
method of installing nomenclature to control agencies, such as the agency responsible for
granting broadcast licences, was described, if I recall correctly, in Josef Korbel's 1959
"The Communist Subversion of Czechoslovakia, 1938-1948". For a funny take on the
privatisation of perpetual military conflict, Christopher Buckley's "They Eat Puppies, Don't
They?" might provide a laugh, if you don't think about how closely it matches reality.
The proletariat, or at least the opioid threatened, white and marginalized cadre on show in
the Rust belt states, probably thought they had their man in DJT because he said what it took
to get himself elected in the vernacular they prefer, feeling its authenticity made them look
honest.. Ha! But look! They are no different from other vulnerables after all, and they will
be and are, being screwed over accordingly. Turkeys and Christmas, Foxes and henhouses, its
all been said and now its being done: educate yourselves, folks.. before its too late.
Yep, judge em solely on their actions. Trump is about entrenching the corporate coup d'etat.
Expanding the swamp, not draining it. The question is now, after Citizens United and with a
conservative SCOTUS in perpetuity, whether it's too wide and deep ever to be drained.
It is impossible to understand the current wave of the US militarism without understanding
neoliberalism and, especially, neoconservatism -- the dominant force in the US foreign policy since
Reagan.
Many of my colleagues, Republican colleagues, here in the Senate, for example, disparage the United
Nations, he says, sitting across the table from me, in front of a wall of Vermont tourism posters.
While clearly the United Nations could be more effective, it is imperative that we strengthen international
institutions, because at the end of the day, while it may not be sexy, it may not be glamorous, it
may not allow for great soundbites, simply the idea of people coming together and talking and arguing
is a lot better than countries going to war.
... ... ...
The senator makes clear that unilateralism, the belief that we can simply overthrow governments
that we dont want, that has got to be re-examined. After referencing the Iraq War -- one of the great
foreign policy blunders in the history of this country -- the senator touches on another historic
blunder which, to his credit, few of his fellow senators would be willing to discuss, let alone critique.
In 1953, the United States, with the British, overthrew [Mohammed] Mossadegh, the prime minister
of Iran – and this was to benefit British oil interests, he reminds me. The result was the shah came
into power, who was a very ruthless man, and the result of that was that we had the Iranian Revolution,
which takes us to where we are right now.
...So far this year, Sanders has hired
Matt Duss , a respected foreign affairs analyst and former president of the Foundation for Middle
East Peace (FMEP), as his foreign policy adviser, and has given speeches at the liberal Jewish lobbying
group, J Street, where he condemned
Israels continued occupation of Palestinian territories as being contrary to fundamental American
values, and at the centrist Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, where he
rebuked Russian President
Vladimir Putin for trying to weaken the transatlantic alliance.
Last week, my colleague Glenn Greenwald penned a column in The Intercept headlined,
The Clinton Book Tour Is Largely Ignoring the Vital Role of Endless War in the 2016 Election Result.
Greenwald argued that Clintons advocacy of multiple wars and other military actions pushed some swing
voters into the arms of both Donald Trump and third-party candidates, such as Jill Stein. I ask Sanders
whether he agrees with this analysis.
I mean, thats a whole other issue. And I dont know the answer to that. I persist. Surely hed concede
that foreign policy was a factor in Clintons defeat? He doesnt budge. I want to talk about
my speech, not about Hillary Clinton. So foreign policy plays no role in elections?
... ... ...
The U.S. funding plays a very important role, and I would love to see people in the Middle East
sit down with the United States government and figure out how U.S. aid can bring people together,
not just result in an arms war in that area. So I think there is extraordinary potential for the
United States to help the Palestinian people rebuild Gaza and other areas. At the same time, demand
that Israel, in their own interests in a way, work with other countries on environmental issues.
He then, finally, answers my question: So the answer is yes.
It is -- by the depressingly low standard of modern U.S. politics -- a remarkable and, dare I
say it, radical response from Sanders. Aid to Israel in Congress and the pro-Israel community has
been sacrosanct, the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted earlier this year, and no president has seriously proposed cutting
it since Gerald Ford in the mid-1970s.
"... The Trump administration's foreign policy often resembles a Mad Hatter's Tea Party or a loose cannon on a ship deck. But every now and then, a good idea emerges from the fracas. Such is the case with a reform that could sharply reduce America's piety exports. ..."
"... this is like presuming that any preacher who fails to promise to eradicate sin is a tool of the devil. Instead, it is time to recognize the carnage the US has sown abroad in the name of democracy. ..."
"... In his 2005 inaugural address, President George W. Bush proclaimed that the US would "seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." While Bush's invocation thrilled Washington, the rest of the world paid more attention to his support for any tyrant who joined his War on Terror. ..."
"... In 2011, Obama portrayed the US bombing of Libya as a triumph of democratic values. After Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi was killed, Obama speedily announced that Libyans "now have the opportunity to determine their own destiny in a new and democratic Libya." But violence spiraled out of control and claimed thousands of victims (including four Americans killed in Benghazi in 2012). Similarly, Obama administration officials invoked democracy to justify arming quasi-terrorist groups in Syria's civil war, worsening a conflict that killed hundreds of thousands and created millions of refuges. ..."
"... Democracy promotion gives US policymakers a license to meddle almost anywhere on Earth. The National Endowment for Democracy , created in 1983, has been caught interfering in elections in France, Panama , Costa Rica , Ukraine , Venezuela, Nicaragua, Russia, Czechoslovakia , Poland , Haiti and many other nations. The State Department has a long list of similar pratfalls, including pouring vast amounts of money in vain efforts to beget democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan . ..."
"... Rather than abandoning all moral goals in foreign policy, Washington could instead embrace a strict policy of "honesty in democracy promotion." Under this standard, the US government would cease trying to covertly influence foreign elections, cease glorifying tinhorn dictators who rigged elections to capture power, and cease bankrolling authoritarian regimes that blight democratic reforms in the bud. But the odds of Washington policymakers abiding by those restraints is akin to the chances that all of Trump's tweets will henceforth be edifying. ..."
"... Rather than delivering political salvation, US interventions abroad more often produce "no-fault carnage" (no one in Washington is ever held liable). At a minimum, we should get our own constitutional house in order before seeking to rescue benighted foreigners. Ironically, many of the same people who equate Trump with Hitler still insist that the US government should continue its political missionary work during his reign. ..."
The Trump administration's foreign policy often resembles a Mad Hatter's Tea Party or a loose
cannon on a ship deck. But every now and then, a good idea emerges from the fracas. Such is the case
with a reform that could sharply reduce America's piety exports.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is revising the State Department mission statement to focus on
promoting "the
security, prosperity and interests of the American people globally." Washington pundits are aghast
that "democracy promotion" is no longer trumpeted as a top US foreign policy goal. Elliott Abrams,
George W. Bush's "democracy czar," complained, "We used to want a just and democratic world, and
now apparently we don't the message being sent will be a great comfort to every dictator in the
world."
But this is like presuming that any preacher who fails to promise to eradicate sin is a tool
of the devil. Instead, it is time to recognize the carnage the US has sown abroad in the name of
democracy.
The US has periodically pledged to spread democracy ever since President Woodrow Wilson announced
in 1913: "I am going to
teach the
South American republics to elect good men!" Democracy is so important that the US government
refuses to stand idly by when foreign voters go astray. Since 1946, the US has intervened -- usually
covertly -- in
more than 80 foreign elections to assist its preferred candidate or party.
In his 2005 inaugural address, President George W. Bush proclaimed that the US would "seek and
support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the
ultimate goal of
ending tyranny
in our world." While Bush's invocation thrilled Washington, the rest of the world paid more attention
to his support for any tyrant who joined his War on Terror.
President Barack Obama was supposed to redeem the honor of US foreign policy. In 2011, Obama portrayed
the US
bombing of Libya as a triumph of democratic values. After Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi was
killed, Obama speedily announced that Libyans "now have the opportunity to
determine their own destiny in a new and democratic Libya." But
violence spiraled out of control and claimed thousands of victims (including four
Americans killed in Benghazi in 2012). Similarly, Obama administration officials
invoked democracy to justify arming quasi-terrorist groups in Syria's civil war, worsening a
conflict that killed hundreds of thousands and created millions of refuges.
But the Obama team, like prior administrations, did not permit its democratic pretensions to impede
business as usual. After Egyptian protestors toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak, Obama pledged to assist
that nation "pursue a credible
transition to a democracy ." But the US government disapproved of that nation's first elected
leader, Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi. After the Egyptian military deposed Morsi in
2013, Secretary of State John Kerry bizarrely praised Egypt's generals for "
restoring democracy ." Similarly, many Ethiopians were horrified when Obama visited their country
in 2015 and praised its regime as "
democratically elected " -- despite a sham election and its brutal suppression of journalists,
bloggers and other critics.
Democracy at its best is a wonderful form of government but many so-called democracies
nowadays are simply elective despotisms. Elections abroad are often herd counts to determine who
gets to fleece the herd. Many democracies have become kleptocracies where governing is indistinguishable
from looting.
In some nations, election victories legitimize destroying voters en masse. This is exemplified
by the Philippines, where the government has
killed 7,000
suspected drug users and dealers , including
several mayors . After President Rodrigo Duterte publicly declared that he would be "
happy to slaughter " three million drug users, Trump phoned him and, according to a leaked transcript,
said, "I just
wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job [you're doing] on the
drug problem." Similarly, Trump
congratulated Turkish president Recep Erdogan after he won a referendum that awarded him quasi-dictatorial
powers.
It is time to admit that America lacks a Midas touch for spreading democracy. Freedom House reported
that, even prior to Trump's election, more than 100 nations have seen
declines in democracy since 2005.
Rather than abandoning all moral goals in foreign policy, Washington could instead embrace
a strict policy of "honesty in democracy promotion." Under this standard, the US government would
cease trying to covertly influence foreign elections, cease glorifying tinhorn dictators who rigged
elections to capture power, and cease bankrolling authoritarian regimes that blight democratic reforms
in the bud. But the odds of Washington policymakers abiding by those restraints is akin to the chances
that all of Trump's tweets will henceforth be edifying.
Rather than delivering political salvation, US interventions abroad more often produce "no-fault
carnage" (no one in Washington is ever held liable). At a minimum, we should get our own constitutional
house in order before seeking to rescue benighted foreigners. Ironically, many of the same people
who equate Trump with Hitler still insist that the US government should continue its political missionary
work during his reign.
"... "If you [Americans] are sincere in your desire for peace and security... and if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book Rogue State." ..."
William Blum's Cri de Coeur
A review of "America's Deadliest Export: Democracy" by William Blum (Zed Books, London/New York,
2013.)
(As it has appeared at DissidentVoice, OpEdNews, etc.):
In activist-author-publisher William Blum's new book, America's Deadliest Export: Democracy, he
tells the story of how he got his 15 minutes of fame back in 2006. Osama bin Laden had released an
audiotape, declaring:
"If you [Americans] are sincere in your desire for peace and security... and if Bush decides
to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book Rogue
State."
Bin Laden then quoted from the Foreword of Blum's 2000 book, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's
Only Superpower, in which he had mused:
"If I were... president, I could stop terrorist attacks [on us] in a few days. Permanently.
I would first apologize... to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished and the tortured,
and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would then announce that
America's global interventions... have come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no
longer the 51st state of the union but... a foreign country. I would then reduce the military
budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims. ... That's what
I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I'd be assassinated."
Unfortunately, Blum never made it to the White House! But, fortunately, for those who have read
his books or follow his "Anti-Empire Reports" on the Web, he was not assassinated! And now he has
collected his reports and essays of the last dozen years or so into a 352-page volume that will not
only stand the test of time, but will help to define this disillusioned, morose, violent and unraveling
Age.
America's Deadliest... is divided into 21 chapters and an introduction--and there's something
to underline or memorize on every page! Sometimes it's just one of Blum's irrepressible quips, and
sometimes it's a matter of searing American foreign or domestic policiy that clarifies that Bushwhackian
question of yore: "Why do they hate us?"
Reading this scrupulously documented book, I lost count of the times I uttered, "unbelievable!"
concerning some nefarious act committed by the US Empire in the name of freedom, democracy and fighting
communism or terrorism. Reading Blum's book with an open mind, weighing the evidence, will bleach
out any pride in the flag we have planted in so many corpses around the world. The book is a diuretic
and emetic!
Blum's style is common sense raised to its highest level. The wonder of America's Deadliest ...
is that it covers so much of the sodden, bloody ground of America's march across our post-Second-World-War
world, yet tells the story with such deftness and grace-under-fire that the reader is enticed--not
moralized, not disquisitionally badgered--, but enticed to consider our globe from a promontory of
higher understanding.
Some of the themes Blum covers (and often eviscerates) include:
Why they hate us;
America means well;
We cannot permit a successful alternative to the capitalist model to develop anywhere in the
world;
We will use whatever means necessary--including, lies, deception, sabotage, bribery, torture
and war--to achieve the above idea.
Along the way, we get glimpses of Blum's experientially rich life. A note "About the Author" tells
us that, "He left the State Department in 1967, abandoning his aspiration of becoming a Foreign Service
Officer because of his opposition to what the US was doing in Vietnam. He then became a founder and
editor of the Washington Free Press, the first "alternative" newspaper in the capital."
In his chapter on "Patriotism," Blum relates how, after a talk, he was asked: "Do you love America?"
He responded with what we may take for his credo: "I don't love any country. I'm a citizen of the
world. I love certain principles, like human rights, civil liberties, meaningful democracy, an economy
which puts people before profits."
America's Deadliest... is a book of wisdom and wit that ponders "how this world became so unbearably
cruel, corrupt, unjust, and stupid?" In a pointillistic approach, sowing aphoristic seeds for thought,
Blum enumerates instances of that cruelty, often with wry, pained commentary. "War can be seen as
America's religion," he tells us. Reflecting on Obama's octupling Bush's number of drones used to
assassinate, collaterally kill and terrorize, he affirms:
"Obama is one of the worst things that has ever happened to the American left." And, he avers,
"Capitalism is the theory that the worst people, acting from their worst motives, will somehow
produce the most good." And then turns around and reminds us--lest we forget--how the mass media
have invaded our lives, with memes about patriotism, democracy, God, the "good life": "Can it
be imagined that an American president would openly implore America's young people to fight a
foreign war to defend `capitalism'?" he wonders.
"The word itself has largely gone out of fashion. The approved references now are to the market
economy, free market, free enterprise, or private enterprise."
Cynthia McKinney writes that the book is "corruscating, eye-opening, and essential." Oliver Stone
calls it a "fireball of terse information."
Like Howard Zinn, Ralph Nader, Paul Craig Roberts, Cindy Sheehan and Bradley Manning, Blum is committed
to setting the historical record straight. His book is dangerous. Steadfast, immutable "truths" one
has taken for granted--often since childhood--are exposed as hollow baubles to entertain the un/mis/and
dis-informed. One such Blumism recollects Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez's account of a videotape with
a very undiplomatic Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and cowboy George Bush: "`We've got to smash
somebody's ass quickly,'" Powell said. "`We must have a brute demonstration of power.'
Then Bush spoke: `Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them
out and kill them! ... Stay strong! ... Kill them! ... We are going to wipe them out!'"
Blum's intellectual resources are as keen as anyone's writing today. He also adds an ample measure
of humanity to his trenchant critiques. He juxtaposes the noble rhetoric of our professed values
with the mordant facts of our deeds. The cognitive dissonance makes for a memorable, very unpretty
picture of how an immensely privileged people lost themselves, while gorging on junk food, junk politics,
junk economics, junk education, junk media. Like an Isaiah, a Jeremiah, he lambastes his own--us!--flaying
layers of hypocrisy and betrayals while seeking to reveal the core values of human dignity, empathy
and moral rectitude.
Gary Corseri has published and posted prose, poetry and dramas at hundreds of periodicals and
websites worldwide, including CommonDreams, Countercurrents, BraveNewWorld.in, OpEdNews, CounterPunch,
Outlook India, The New York Times, Dissident Voice. He has published novels, poetry collections and
a literary anthology (edited). His dramas have been presented on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere, and he
has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library. He has taught in US public schools and
prisons, and at American and Japanese universities. Contact: [email protected].
"... German Nazis and Italian Fascists defined their rule as 'democratic', and so does this Empire. The British and French empires that exterminated tens of millions of people all over the world, always promoted themselves as 'democracies'. ..."
"... And now, once again, we are witnessing a tremendous onslaught by the business-political-imperialist Western apparatus, destabilizing or directly destroying entire nations, overthrowing governments and bombing 'rebellious' states into the ground. All this is done in the name of democracy, in the name of freedom. ..."
"... This sacrificial altar is called, Democracy, in direct mockery to what the term symbolizes in its original, Greek, language. ..."
A specter is haunting Europe and Western world - it is this time, the specter of fascism. It came
quietly, without great fanfare and parades, without raised hands and loud shouts. But it came, or
it returned, as it has always been present in this culture, one that has, for centuries, been enslaving
our entire planet.
As was in Nazi Germany, resistance to the fascist empire is again given an unsavory name: terrorism.
Partisans and patriots, resistance fighters – all of them were and have always been defined by fascist
bigots as terrorists.
By the logic of Empire, to murder millions of men, women and children in all corners of the world
abroad is considered legitimate and patriotic, but to defend one's motherland was and is a sign of
extremism.
German Nazis and Italian Fascists defined their rule as 'democratic', and so does this Empire.
The British and French empires that exterminated tens of millions of people all over the world, always
promoted themselves as 'democracies'.
And now, once again, we are witnessing a tremendous onslaught by the business-political-imperialist
Western apparatus, destabilizing or directly destroying entire nations, overthrowing governments
and bombing 'rebellious' states into the ground. All this is done in the name of democracy, in the
name of freedom.
An unelected monster, as it has done for centuries, is playing with the world, torturing some,
and plundering others, or both.
The West, in a final act of arrogance, has somehow confused itself with its own concept of God.
It has decided that it has the full right to shape the planet, to punish and to reward, to destroy
and rebuild as it wishes.
This horrible wave of terror unleashed against our planet, is justified by an increasingly meaningless
but fanatically defended dogma, symbolized by a box (made of card or wood, usually), and masses of
people sticking pieces of paper into the opening on the top of that box.
This is the altar of Western ideological fundamentalism. This is a supreme idiocy that cannot
be questioned, as it guarantees the status quo for ruling elites and business interests, an absurdity
that justifies all crimes, all lies and all madness.
This sacrificial altar is called, Democracy, in direct mockery to what the term symbolizes
in its original, Greek, language.
***
In our latest book, "On Western Terrorism – from Hiroshima to Drone Warfare", Noam Chomsky commented
on the 'democratic' process in the Western world:
"The goal of elections now is to undermine democracy. They are run by the public relations industry
and they're certainly not trying to create informed voters who'll make rational choices. They are
trying to delude people into making irrational choices. The same techniques that are used to undermine
markets are used to undermine democracy. It's one of the major industries in the country and its
basic workings are invisible."
But what is it that really signifies this 'sacred' word, this almost religious term, and this
pinnacle of Western demagogy? We hear it everywhere. We are ready to sacrifice millions of lives
(not ours of course, at least not yet, but definitely lives of the others) in the name of it.
Democracy!
All those grand slogans and propaganda! Last year I visited Pyongyang, but I have to testify that
North Koreans are not as good at slogans as the Western propagandists are.
"In the name of freedom and democracy!" Hundreds of millions tons of bombs fell from the sky on
the Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese countryside bodies were burned by napalm, mutilated by spectacular
explosions.
"Defending democracy!" Children were raped in front of their parents in Central America, men and
women machine-gunned down by death squads that had been trained in military bases in the United States
of America.
"Civilizing the world and spreading democracy!" That has always been a European slogan, their
'stuff to do', and a way of showing their great civilization to others. Amputating hands of Congolese
people, murdering around ten million of them, and many more in Namibia, East Africa, West Africa
and Algiers; gassing people of the Middle East ( "I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas
against uncivilised tribes", to borrow from the colorful lexicon of (Sir) Winston Churchill).
So what is it really? Who is it, that strange lady with an axe in her hand and with a covered
face – the lady whose name is Democracy?
***
It is all very simple, actually. The term originates from the Greek δημοκρατία (dēmokratía) "rule
of the people". Then and now, it was supposed to be in direct contrast to ἀριστοκρατία (aristokratia),
that means "rule of an elite".
'Rule of the people' Let us just visit a few examples of the 'rule of the people'.
People spoke, they ruled, they voted 'democratically' in Chile, bringing in the mild and socialist
government of 'Popular Unity' of Salvador Allende.
Sure, the Chilean education system was so brilliant, its political and social system so wonderful,
that it inspired not only many countries in Latin America, but also those in far away Mediterranean
Europe.
That could not be tolerated, because, as we all know, it is only white Europe and North America
that can be allowed to supply the world with the blueprint for any society, anywhere on this planet.
It was decided that "Chile has to scream", that its economy had to be ruined and the "Popular Unity"
government kicked out of power.
Henry Kissinger, belonging, obviously, to a much higher race and country of a much higher grade,
made a straightforward and in a way very 'honest' statement, clearly defining the North American
stand towards global democracy: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist
due to the irresponsibility of its people."
And so Chile was ravaged. Thousands of people were murdered and 'our son-of-a-bitch' was brought
to power. General Pinochet was not elected: he bombed the Presidential palace in Santiago, he savagely
tortured the men and women who were elected by the Chilean people, and he "disappeared" thousands.
But that was fine, because democracy, as it is seen from Washington, London or Paris, is nothing
more and nothing less than what the white man needs in order to control this planet, unopposed and
preferably never criticized.
Of course Chile was not the only place where 'democracy' was 'redefined'. And it was not the most
brutal scenario either, although it was brutal enough. But it was a very symbolic 'case', because
here, there could be absolutely no dispute: an extremely well educated, middle class country, voted
in transparent elections, just to have its government murdered, tortured and exiled, simply because
it was too democratic and too involved in improving the lives of its people.
There were countless instances of open spite coming from the North, towards the 'rule of the people'
in Latin America. For centuries, there have been limitless examples. Every country 'south of the
border' in the Western Hemisphere, became a victim.
After all, the self-imposed Monroe Doctrine gave North Americans 'unquestionable rights' to intervene
and 'correct' any 'irresponsible' democratic moves made by the lower races inhabiting Central and
South America as well as the Caribbean Islands.
There were many different scenarios of real ingenuity, in how to torture countries that embarked
on building decent homes for their people, although soon there was evidence of repetitiveness and
predictability.
The US has been either sponsoring extremely brutal coups (like the one in Guatemala in 1954),
or simply occupying the countries in order to overthrow their democratically elected governments.
Justifications for such interventions have varied: it was done in order to 'restore order', to 'restore
freedom and democracy', or to prevent the emergence of 'another Cuba'.
From the Dominican Republic in 1965 to Grenada in 1983, countries were 'saved from themselves'
through the introduction (by orders from mainly the Protestant North American elites with clearly
pathological superiority complexes) of death squads that administered torture, rape and extrajudicial
executions. People were killed because their democratic decisions were seen as 'irresponsible' and
therefore unacceptable.
While there has been open racism in every aspect of how the Empire controlled its colonies, 'political
correctness' was skillfully introduced, effectively reducing to a bare minimum any serious critiques
of the societies that were forced into submission.
In Indonesia, between 1 and 3 million people were murdered in the years1965/66, in a US -sponsored
coup, because there too, was a 'great danger' that the people would rule and decide to vote 'irresponsibly',
bringing the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), at that time the third most numerous Communist Party
anywhere in the world, to power.
The democratically elected President of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered in 1961, by the joint
efforts of the United States and Europe, simply because he was determined to use the vast natural
resources of his country to feed his own people; and because he dared to criticize Western colonialism
and imperialism openly and passionately.
East Timor lost a third of its population simply because its people, after gaining independence
from Portugal, dared to vote the left-leaning FRETILIN into power. "We are not going to tolerate
another Cuba next to our shores", protested the Indonesian fascist dictator Suharto, and the US and
Australia strongly agreed. The torture, and extermination of East Timorese people by the Indonesian
military, was considered irrelevant and not even worth reporting in the mass media.
The people of Iran could of course not be trusted with 'democracy'. Iran is one of the oldest
and greatest cultures on earth, but its people wanted to use the revenues from its oil to improve
their lives, not to feed foreign multi-nationals. That has always been considered a crime by Western
powers – a crime punishable by death.
The people of Iran decided to rule; they voted, they said that they want to have all their oil
industry nationalized. Mohammad Mosaddeq, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran from
1951 to 1953, was ready to implement what his people demanded. But his government was overthrown
in a coup d'état, orchestrated by the British MI6 and North American CIA, and what followed was the
murderous dictatorship of the deranged Western puppet – Reza Pahlavi. As in Latin America and Indonesia,
instead of schools, hospitals and housing projects, people got death squads, torture chambers and
fear. Is that what they wanted? Is that what they voted for?
There were literally dozens of countries, all over the world, which had to be 'saved', by the
West, from their own 'irresponsible citizens and voters'. Brazil recently 'celebrated' the 50th anniversary
of the US-backed military coup d'état, which began a horrendous 20 year long military dictatorship.
The US supported two coups in Iraq, in 1963 and 1968 that brought Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party
to power. The list is endless. These are only some random examples.
On closer examination, the West has overthrown, or made attempts to overthrow, almost any democratically
elected governments, on all continents attempting to serve their own people, by providing them with
decent standards of living and social services. That is quite an achievement, and some stamina!
Could it be then that the West only respects 'Democracy' when 'people are forced to rule' against
their own interests? And when they are 'defending' what they are ordered to defend by local elites
that are subservient to North American and European interests? and also when they are defending
the interests of foreign multi-national companies and Western governments that are dependent on those
companies?
***
Can anything be done? If a country is too weak to defend itself by military means, against some
mighty Western aggressor, could it approach any international democratic institutions, hoping for
protection?
Unthinkable!
A good example is Nicaragua, which had been literally terrorized by the United States, for no
other reason than for being socialist. Its government went to court.
The case was called: The Republic of Nicaragua v. The United States of America.
It was a 1986 case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in which the ICJ ruled in favor
of Nicaragua and against the United States and awarded reparations to Nicaragua.
The judgment was long, consisting of 291 points. Among them that the United States had been involved
in the "unlawful use of force." The alleged violations included attacks on Nicaraguan facilities
and naval vessels, the mining of Nicaraguan ports, the invasion of Nicaraguan air space, and the
training, arming, equipping, financing and supplying of forces (the "Contras") and seeking to overthrow
Nicaragua's Sandinista government.
Judgment was passed, and so were UN votes and resolutions. The UN resolution from 1986 called
for the full and immediate compliance with the Judgment. Only Thailand, France and the UK abstained.
The US showed total spite towards the court, and it vetoed all UN resolutions.
It continued its terror campaign against Nicaragua. In the end, the ruined and exhausted country
voted in 1990. It was soon clear that it was not voting for or against Sandinista government, but
whether to endure more violence from the North, or to simply accept depressing defeat. The Sandinista
government lost. It lost because the voters had a North American gun pointing at their heads.
This is how 'democracy' works.
I covered the Nicaraguan elections of 1996 and I was told by voters, by a great majority of them,
that they were going to vote for the right-wing candidate (Aleman), only because the US was threatening
to unleash another wave of terror in case the Sandinista government came back to power, democratically.
The Sandinistas are now back. But only because most of Latin America has changed, and there is
unity and determination to fight, if necessary.
***
While the Europeans are clearly benefiting from neo-colonialism and the plunder that goes on all
over the world, it would be ridiculous to claim that they themselves are 'enjoying the fruits of
democracy'.
In a dazzling novel "Seeing", written by Jose Saramago, a laureate for the Nobel Prize for literature,
some 83% of voters in an unidentified country (most likely Saramago's native Portugal), decide to
cast blank ballots, expressing clear spite towards the Western representative election system.
This state, which prided itself as a 'democratic one', responded by unleashing an orgy of terror
against its own citizens. It soon became obvious that people are allowed to make democratic choices
only when the result serves the interests of the regime.
Ursula K Le Guin, reviewing the novel in the pages of The Guardian, on 15 April 2006, admitted:
Turning in a blank ballot is a signal unfamiliar to most Britons and Americans, who aren't yet
used to living under a government that has made voting meaningless. In a functioning democracy, one
can consider not voting a lazy protest liable to play into the hands of the party in power (as when
low Labour turn-out allowed Margaret Thatcher's re-elections, and Democratic apathy secured both
elections of George W Bush). It comes hard to me to admit that a vote is not in itself an act of
power, and I was at first blind to the point Saramago's non-voting voters are making.
She should not have been. Even in Europe itself, terror had been unleashed, on many occasions,
against the people who decided to vote 'incorrectly'.
Perhaps the most brutal instance was in the post WWII period, when the Communist Parties were
clearly heading for spectacular victories in France, Italy and West Germany. Such 'irresponsible
behavior' had to be, of course, stopped. Both US and UK intelligence forces made a tremendous effort
to 'save democracy' in Europe, employing Nazis to break, intimidate, even murder members of progressive
movements and parties.
These Nazi cadres were later allowed, even encouraged, to leave Europe for South America, some
carrying huge booty from the victims who vanished in concentration camps. This booty included gold
teeth.
Later on, in the 1990's, I spoke to some of them, and also to their children, in Asuncion, the
capital of Paraguay. They were proud of their deeds, unrepentant, and as Nazi as ever.
Many of those European Nazis later actively participated in Operation Condor, so enthusiastically
supported by the Paraguayan fascist and pro-Western dictator, Alfredo Strössner. Mr Strössner was
a dear friend and asylum-giver to many WWII war criminals, including people like Dr. Josef Mengele,
the Nazi doctor known as the "Angel of Death", who performed genetic experiments on children during
the WWII.
So, after destroying that 'irresponsible democratic process' in Europe (the post-war Western Empire),
many European Nazis that were now loyally serving their new master, were asked to continue with what
they knew how to do best. Therefore they helped to assassinate some 60,000 left-wing South American
men, women and their children, who were guilty of building egalitarian and just societies in their
home countries. Many of these Nazis took part, directly, in Operacion Condor, under the direct supervision
of the United States and Europe.
As Naomi Klein writes in her book, Shock Doctrine:
"Operación Cóndor, also known as Plan Cóndor, Portuguese: Operação Condor) was a campaign of political
repression and terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents, officially
implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America. The program
was intended to eradicate communist or Soviet influence and ideas, and to suppress active or potential
opposition movements against the participating governments."
In Chile, German Nazis rolled up their sleeves and went to work directly: by interrogating, liquidating
and savagely torturing members of the democratically elected government and its supporters. They
also performed countless medical experiments on people, at the so-called Colonia Dirnidad, during
the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, whose rule was manufactured and sustained by Dr. Kissinger
and his clique.
But back to Europe: in Greece, after WWII, both the UK and US got heavily involved in the civil
war between the Communists and the extreme right-wing forces.
In 1967, just one month before the elections in which the Greek left-wing was expected to win
democratically (the Indonesian scenario of 1965), the US and its 'Greek colonels' staged a coup,
which marked the beginning of a 7 year savage dictatorship.
What happened in Yugoslavia, some 30 years later is, of course clear. A successful Communist country
could not be allowed to survive, and definitely not in Europe. As bombs fell on Belgrade, many of
those inquisitive and critically thinking people that had any illusions left about the Western regime
and its 'democratic principles', lost them rapidly.
But by then, the majority of Europe already consisted of indoctrinated masses, some of the worst
informed and most monolithic (in their thinking) on earth.
Europe and its voters It is that constantly complaining multitude, which wants more and more
money, and delivers the same and extremely predictable electoral results every four, five or six
years. It lives and votes mechanically. It has totally lost its ability to imagine a different world,
to fight for humanist principles, and even to dream.
It is turning into an extremely scary place, a museum at best, and a cemetery of human vision
at the worst.
***
As Noam Chomsky pointed out:
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 population has been carefully excluded from political activity, and not by accident. An enormous
amount of work has gone into that disenfranchisement. During the 1960s the outburst of popular participation
in democracy terrified the forces of convention, which mounted a fierce counter-campaign. Manifestations
show up today on the left as well as the right in the effort to drive democracy back into the hole
where it belongs.
Arundhati Roy, commented in her "Is there life after democracy?"
The question here, really, is what have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What
happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What
happens when each of its institutions has metastasized into something dangerous? What happens now
that democracy and the Free Market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted
imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit? Is it possible to
reverse this process? Can something that has mutated go back to being what it used to be?
***
After all that brutality, and spite for people all over the world, the West is now teaching the
planet about democracy. It is lecturing Asians and Africans, people from Middle East and Sub-Continent,
on how to make their countries more 'democratic'. It is actually hard to believe, it should be one
of the most hilarious things on earth, but it is happening, and everyone is silent about it.
Those who are listening without bursting into laughter are actually well paid.
There are seminars; even foreign aid projects related to 'good governance', sponsored by the European
Union, and the United States. The EU is actually much more active in this field. Like the Italian
mafia, it sends covert but unmistakable messages to the world: "You do as we say, or we break your
legs But if you obey, come to us and we will teach you how to be a good aide to Cosa Nostra! And
we will give you some pasta and wine while you are learning."
Because there is plenty of money, so called 'funding' members of the elite, the academia, media
and non-government organizations, from countries that have been plundered by the West – countries
like Indonesia, Philippines, DR Congo, Honduras, or Colombia –send armies of people to get voluntarily
indoctrinated, (sorry, to be 'enlightened') to learn about democracy from the greatest assassins
of genuine 'people's power'; from the West.
Violating democracy is an enormous business. To hush it up is part of that business. To learn
how to be idle and not to intervene against the external forces destroying democracy in your own
country, while pretending to be 'engaged and active', is actually the best business, much better
than building bridges or educating children (from a mercantilist point of view).
Once, at the University of Indonesia where I was invited to speak, a student asked me 'what is
the way forward', to make his country more democratic? I replied, looking at several members of the
professorial staff:
"Demand that your teachers stop going to Europe on fully funded trips. Demand that they stop being
trained in how to brainwash you. Do not go there yourself, to study. Go there to see, to understand
and to learn, but not to study Europe had robbed you of everything. They are still looting your
country. What do you think you will learn there? Do you really think they will teach you how to save
your nation?"
Students began laughing. The professors were fuming. I was never invited back. I am sure that
the professors knew exactly what I was talking about. The students did not. They were thinking that
I made a very good joke. But I was not trying to be funny.
***
As I write these words, the Thai military junta has taken over the country. The West is silent:
the Thai military is an extremely close ally. Democracy at work
And as I write these words, the fascist government in Kiev is chasing, kidnapping and "disappearing"
people in the east and south of Ukraine. By some insane twist of logic, the Western corporate media
is managing to blame Russia. And only a few people are rolling around on the floor, laughing.
As I write these words, a big part of Africa is in flames, totally destroyed by the US, UK, France
and other colonial powers.
Client states like the Philippines are now literally being paid to get antagonistic with China.
Japanese neo-fascist adventurism fully supported by the Unites States can easily trigger WWIII.
So can Western greed and fascist practices in Ukraine.
Democracy! People's power!
If the West had sat on its ass, where it belongs, in Europe and in North America, after WWII,
the world would have hardly any problems now. People like Lumumba, Allende, Sukarno, Mosaddeq, would
have led their nations and continents. They would have communicated with their own people, interacted
with them. They would have built their own styles of 'democracy'.
But all that came from the Bandung Conference of 1955, from the ideals of the Non-Aligned movement,
was ruined and bathed in blood. The true hopes of the people of the world cut to pieces, urinated
on, and then thrown into gutter.
But no more time should be wasted by just analyzing, and by crying over spilt milk. Time to move
on!
The world has been tortured by Europe and the United States, for decades and centuries. It has
been tortured in the name of democracy but it has all been one great lie. The world has been tortured
simply because of greed, and because of racism. Just look back at history. Europe and the United
States have only stopped calling people "niggers", but they do not have any more respect for them
than before. And they are willing, same as before, to sacrifice millions of human lives.
Let us stop worshiping their box, and those meaningless pieces of paper that they want us to stick
in there. There is no power of people in this. Look at the United States itself – where is our democracy?
It is a one-party regime fully controlled by market fundamentalists. Look at our press, and propaganda
Rule of the people by the people, true democracy, can be achieved. We the people had been derailed,
intellectually, so we have not been thinking how, for so many decades.
Now we, many of us, know what is wrong, but we are still not sure what is right.
Let us think and let us search, let us experiment. And also, let us reject their fascism first.
Let them stick their papers wherever they want! Let them pretend that they are not slaves to some
vendors and swindlers. Let them do whatever they want – there, where they belong.
Democracy is more than a box. It is more than a multitude of political parties. It is when people
can truly choose, decide and build a society that they dream about. Democracy is the lack of fear
of having napalm and bombs murdering our dreams. Democracy is when people speak and from those words
grow their own nation. Democracy is when millions of hands join together and from that brilliant
union, new trains begin to run, new schools begin to teach, and new hospitals begin to heal. All
this by the people, for the people! All this created by proud and free humans as gift to all – to
their nation.
Yes, let the slave masters stick their pieces of paper into a box, or somewhere else. They can
call it democracy. Let us call democracy something else – rule of the people, a great exchange of
ideas, of hopes and dreams. Let our taking control over our lives and over our nations be called
'democracy'!
Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered
wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His discussion with Noam Chomsky
On Western Terrorism
is now going to print. His critically acclaimed political novel
Point
of No Return is now re-edited and available.
Oceania
is his book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto
Indonesia and the market-fundamentalist model is called "Indonesia
– The Archipelago of Fear". He has just completed the feature documentary, "Rwanda
Gambit" about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin
America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached
through his website or his
Twitter.
"... This activates what Randolph Bourne called their "herd mind," inducing them to rally around their governments in a militaristic stampede so as to create the national unity of purpose deemed necessary to defend the homeland against the foreign menace. When you lay siege to an entire country, don't be surprised when it starts to look and act like a barracks. ..."
"... Imperial governments like to pretend that affairs are quite the reverse, adopting the essentially terrorist rationale that waging war against the civilian populace of a rogue state will pressure them to blame and turn against their governments. In reality, it only tends to bolster public support for the regime. ..."
"... The imperial "bogeygoat" is an essential prop for the power of petty tyrants, just as rogue state bogeymen are essential props for the power of grand tyrants like our own. Thus, it should be no surprise that the staunchest opponents to the Iran nuclear deal include both American and Iranian hardliners. Just as there is a "symbiosis of savagery" between imperial hawks and anti-imperial terrorists (as I explain here), there is a similar symbiotic relationship between imperial and rogue state hardliners. ..."
Cold wars freeze despotism in place, and thaws in foreign relations melt it away
The recent Iran nuclear deal represents a thaw in the American cold war against that country.
It is a welcome sequel to the Obama administration's partial normalization with Cuba announced late
last year.
Hardliners denounce these policies as "going soft" on theocracy and communism. Yet, it is such
critics' own hardline, hawkish policies that have done the most to ossify and strengthen such regimes.
That is because war, including cold war, is the health of the state. Antagonistic imperial policies - economic
warfare, saber-rattling, clandestine interventions, and full-blown attacks - make the citizens of
targeted "rogue states" feel under siege.
This activates what Randolph Bourne called their "herd mind," inducing them to rally around
their governments in a militaristic stampede so as to create the national unity of purpose deemed
necessary to defend the homeland against the foreign menace. When you lay siege to an entire country,
don't be surprised when it starts to look and act like a barracks.
Rogue state governments eagerly amplify and exploit this siege effect through propaganda, taking
on the mantle of foremost defender of the nation against the "Yankee Imperialist" or "Great Satan."
Amid the atmosphere of crisis, public resistance against domestic oppression by the now indispensable
"guardian class" goes by the board. "Quit your complaining. Don't you know there's a cold war on?
Don't you know we're under siege?"
Moreover, cold wars make it easy for rogue state governments to shift the blame for domestic troubles
away from their own misrule, and onto the foreign bogeyman/scapegoat ("bogeygoat?") instead. This
is especially easy for being to some extent correct, especially with regard to economic blockades
and other crippling sanctions, like those Washington has imposed on Cuba, Iran, etc.
Imperial governments like to pretend that affairs are quite the reverse, adopting the essentially
terrorist rationale that waging war against the civilian populace of a rogue state will pressure
them to blame and turn against their governments. In reality, it only tends to bolster public support
for the regime.
The imperial "bogeygoat" is an essential prop for the power of petty tyrants, just as rogue
state bogeymen are essential props for the power of grand tyrants like our own. Thus, it should be
no surprise that the staunchest opponents to the Iran nuclear deal include both American and Iranian
hardliners. Just as there is a "symbiosis of savagery" between imperial hawks and anti-imperial terrorists
(as I explain here), there is a similar symbiotic relationship between imperial and rogue state hardliners.
The last thing hardliners want is the loss of their cherished bogeygoat. Once an emergency foreign
threat recedes, and the fog of war hysteria lifts, people are then more capable of clearly seeing
their "guardians" as the domestic threat that they are, and more likely to feel that they can afford
to address that threat without exposing themselves to foreign danger. This tends to impel governments
to become less oppressive, and may even lead to their loss of power.
Thus after Nixon normalized with communist China and belatedly ended the war on communist Vietnam,
both of those countries greatly liberalized and became more prosperous. Even Soviet reforms and the
ultimate dissolution of the Soviet Union only arose following American detente.
Simultaneously, as the American cold wars against communist Cuba and communist North Korea continued
without stint for decades, providing the Castros and Kims the ultimate bogeygoat to feature in their
propaganda, the impoverishing authoritarian grip of those regimes on their besieged people only strengthened.
Similarly, ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the puppet dictator that the CIA had
installed over Iran in a 1953 coup, the Ayatollahs have been able to exploit ongoing hostility from
the American "Great Satan" to retain and consolidate their repressive theocratic power.
All this is an object lesson for US relations with Putin's Russia, Chavista Venezuela, and beyond.
Disastrously, it is being unheeded.
Even while thawing relations with Iran, the Obama administration has triggered a new cold war
with Russia over Ukraine. This has only made Russian President Vladimir Putin more domestically popular
than ever.
And even while normalizing relations with Cuba, Obama recently declared Venezuela a national security
threat, imposing new sanctions. As journalist Alexandra Ulmer argued, these sanctions "may be godsend
for struggling Venezuelan leader," President Nicolas Maduro. As Ulmer wrote in Reuters:
"Suddenly, the unpopular leader has an excuse to crank up the revolutionary rhetoric and try to
fire up supporters, copying a tactic used skillfully for more than a decade by his mentor and predecessor,
the late socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez.
A new fight with the enemy to the north may also help unite disparate ruling Socialist Party factions
and distract Venezuelans from relentless and depressing talk about their day-to-day economic problems."
"... "The United States does not have a national health care system worthy of the name, because it is in the war business, not the health business or the social equality business." ..."
"... The United States is a predator nation, conceived and settled as a thief, exterminator and enslaver of other peoples. The slave-based republic's phenomenal geographic expansion and economic growth were predicated on the super-exploitation of stolen African labor and the ruthless expropriation of native lands through genocidal wars, an uninterrupted history of plunder glorified in earlier times as "Manifest Destiny" and now exalted as "American exceptionalism," an inherently racist justification for international and domestic lawlessness. ..."
"... "The U.S. state demands fealty to its imperial project as a substitute for any genuine social contract among its inhabitants." ..."
"... "The first Black U.S. president, Barack Obama, was among the most aggressive defenders of white supremacy in history." ..."
"... in opposition to their own interests ..."
"... "Race relations in the U.S. cannot be understood outside the historical context of war, including the constant state of race war that is a central function of the U.S. State." ..."
"... "We need a strong military, it is a dangerous world," Sanders told voters in Iowa." ..."
"... Sanders is a regime-changer, which means he thinks the U.S., in combination with self-selected allies, is above international law, i.e., "exceptional." ..."
"... According to Politico , "As late as 2002," Sanders' campaign website declared that "the defense budget should be cut by 50 percent over the next five years." But all the defense-cutting air went out of his chest after Bush invaded Iraq. Nowadays, Sanders limits himself to the usual noises about Pentagon "waste," but has no principled position against the imperial mission of the United States. "We need a strong military, it is a dangerous world," Sanders told voters in Iowa, during the campaign. ..."
"... Like Paul Street said, he's an "imperialist...Democratic Party company man." ..."
"... "A Sanders-led Party would still be an imperialist, pro-war party." ..."
"... BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected] . ..."
Leftish
Democrats insist they can reform the corporate-run, Russia-obsessed Democratic Party from the inside,
but most pay little attention to war. However, "War is not a side issue in the United States; it
is the central political issue, on which all the others turn." Some think Bernie Sanders should run
with the Peoples Party. But, "Sanders is a warmonger, not merely by association, but by
"The United States does not have a national health care system worthy of the name, because
it is in the war business, not the health business or the social equality business."
The United States is a predator nation, conceived and settled as a thief, exterminator and enslaver
of other peoples. The slave-based republic's phenomenal geographic expansion and economic growth
were predicated on the super-exploitation of stolen African labor and the ruthless expropriation
of native lands through genocidal wars, an uninterrupted history of plunder glorified in earlier
times as "Manifest Destiny" and now exalted as "American exceptionalism," an inherently racist justification
for international and domestic lawlessness.
Assembled, acre by bloody acre, as a metastasizing empire, the U.S. state demands fealty to its
imperial project as a substitute for any genuine social contract among its inhabitants – a political
culture custom-made for the rule of rich white people.
The American project has been one long war of aggression that has shaped its borders, its internal
social relations, and its global outlook and ambitions. It was founded as a consciously capitalist
state that competed with other European powers through direct absorption of captured lands, brutal
suppression of native peoples and the fantastic accumulation of capital through a diabolically efficient
system of Black chattel slavery – a 24/7 war against the slave. This system then morphed through
two stages of "Jim Crow" to become a Mass Black Incarceration State – a perpetual war of political
and physical containment against Black America.
"The U.S. state demands fealty to its imperial project as a substitute for any genuine social
contract among its inhabitants."
Since the end of World War Two, the U.S. has assumed the role of protector of the spoils of half
a millennium of European wars and occupations of the rest of the world: the organized rape of nations
that we call colonialism. The first Black U.S. president, Barack Obama, was among the most aggressive
defenders of white supremacy in history -- defending the accumulated advantages that colonialism
provided to western European nations, settler states (like the U.S.) and citizens -- having launched
an ongoing military offensive aimed at strangling the Chinese giant and preventing an effective Eurasian
partnership with Russia. The first phase of the offensive, the crushing of Libya in 2011, allowed
the United States to complete the effective military occupation of Africa, through AFRICOM.
The U.S. and its NATO allies already account for about 70 percent of global military spending,
but Obama and his successor, Donald Trump, demand that Europeans increase the proportion of their
economic output that goes to war. More than half of U.S. discretionary spending -- the tax money
that is not dedicated to mandated social and development programs -- goes to what Dr. Martin Luther
King 50 years ago called the "demonic, destructive suction tube" of the U.S. war machine.
"The first Black U.S. president, Barack Obama, was among the most aggressive defenders of
white supremacy in history."
The United States does not have a national health care system worthy of the name, because it is
in the war business, not the health business or the social equality business. The U.S. has the weakest
left, by far, of any industrialized country, because it has never escaped the racist, predatory dynamic
on which it was founded, which stunted and deformed any real social contract among its peoples. In
the U.S., progress is defined by global dominance of the U.S. State -- chiefly in military terms
-- rather than domestic social development. Americans only imagine that they are materially better
off than the people of other developed nations -- a fallacy they assume to be the case because of
U.S. global military dominance. More importantly, most white Americans feel racially entitled to
the spoils of U.S. dominance as part of their patrimony, even if they don't actually enjoy the fruits.
("WE made this country great.") This is by no means limited to Trump voters.
Race relations in the U.S. cannot be understood outside the historical context of war, including
the constant state of race war that is a central function of the U.S. State: protecting "American
values," fighting "crime" and "urban disorder," and all the other euphemisms for preserving white
supremacy.
War is not a side issue in the United States; it is the central political issue, on which all
the others turn. War mania is the enemy of all social progress -- especially so, when it unites disparate
social forces, in opposition to their own interests , in the service of an imperialist state
that is the tool of a rapacious white capitalist elite. Therefore, the orchestrated propaganda blitzkrieg
against Russia by the Democratic Party, in collaboration with the corporate media and other functionaries
and properties of the U.S. ruling class, marks the party as, collectively, the Warmonger-in-Chief
political institution in the United States at this historical juncture. The Democrats are anathema
to any politics that can be described as progressive.
"Race relations in the U.S. cannot be understood outside the historical context of war, including
the constant state of race war that is a central function of the U.S. State."
Bernie Sanders is a highly valued Democrat, the party's Outreach Director and therefore, as
Paul Street writes , "the imperialist and sheep-dogging fake-socialist Democratic Party company
man that some of us on the 'hard radical' Left said he was." Sanders is a warmonger, not merely by
association, but by virtue of his own positions. He favors more sanctions against Russia, in addition
to the sanctions levied against Moscow in 2014 and 2016 for its measured response to the U.S-backed
fascist coup against a democratically elected government in Ukraine. Rather than surrender to U.S.
bullying, Russia came to the military aid of the sovereign and internationally recognized government
of Syria in 2015, upsetting the U.S. game plan for an Islamic jihadist victory.
Back in April of this year, on NBC's Meet The Press, Sanders purposely
mimicked
The Godfather when asked what he would do to force the Russians "to the table" in Syria:
"I think you may want to make them an offer they can't refuse. And that means tightening the screws
on them, dealing with sanctions, telling them that we need their help, they have got to come to the
table and not maintain this horrific dictator."
Of course, it is the United States that has sabotaged every international agreement to rein in
its jihadist mercenaries in Syria.
"We need a strong military, it is a dangerous world," Sanders told voters in Iowa."
Sanders is a regime-changer, which means he thinks the U.S., in combination with self-selected
allies, is above international law, i.e., "exceptional."
"We've got to work with countries around the world for a political solution to get rid of this
guy [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad] and to finally bring peace and stability to this country,
which has been so decimated."
During the 2016 campaign, Sanders urged the U.S. to stop acting unilaterally in the region, but
instead to collaborate with Syria's Arab neighbors -- as if the funding and training of jihadist
fighters had not been a joint effort with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies, all along.
According to
Politico , "As late as 2002," Sanders' campaign website declared that "the defense budget should
be cut by 50 percent over the next five years." But all the defense-cutting air went out of his chest
after Bush invaded Iraq. Nowadays, Sanders limits himself to the usual noises about Pentagon "waste,"
but has no principled position against the imperial mission of the United States. "We need a strong
military, it is a dangerous world," Sanders told voters in Iowa, during the campaign.
Like Paul Street said, he's an "imperialist...Democratic Party company man."
"A Sanders-led Party would still be an imperialist, pro-war party."
At last weekend's
People's Summit , in Chicago, National Nurses United executive director RoseAnn DeMoro endorsed
Sanders for a mission he finds impossible to accept: a run for president in 2020 on the Peoples Party
ticket. Sanders already had his chance to run as a Green, and refused. He is now the second most
important Democrat in the country, behind the ultra-corrupt Bill-Hillary Clinton machine -- and by
far the most popular. On top of that, Sanders loves being the hero of the phony left, the guy who
gimmick-seeking left-liberals hope will create an instant national party for them, making it unnecessary
to build a real anti-war, pro-people party from scratch to go heads up with the two corporate machines.
Sanders doesn't even have to exert himself to string the Peoples Party folks along; they eagerly
delude themselves. However, a Sanders-led Party would still be an imperialist, pro-war party.
The U.S. does need a social democratic party, but it must be anti-war, otherwise it commits a
fraud on social democracy. The United States is the imperial superpower, the main military aggressor
on the planet. Its rulers must be deprived of the political ability to spend trillions on war, and
to kill millions, or they will always use the "necessity" of war to enforce austerity. The "left"
domestic project will fail.
For those of us from the Black Radical Tradition, anti-imperialism is central. Solidarity with
the victims of U.S. imperialism is non-negotiable, and we can make no common cause with U.S. political
actors that treat war as a political side show, an "elective" issue that is separate from domestic
social justice. This is not just a matter of principle, but also of practical politics. "Left" imperialism
isn't just evil, it is self-defeating and stupid.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at
[email protected].
@15 You mistate/misunderstood: "There was a simultaneous vote..." There was not.
S.Amdt. 232 (increase sanctions on Russia and limit Trump) was an amendment to
S. 722 (the Iranian sanctions bill).
Sanders voted for 232 because, frankly, he's all on board the Russia-Russia-Russia hysteria
and demonizing Syria. He voted against 722 for the potential damage to the multi-lateral nuclear
agreement with Iran. From his senate.gov website today:
" I am strongly supportive of the sanctions on Russia included in this bill. It is unacceptable
for Russia to interfere in our elections here in the United States, or anywhere around the
world. There must be consequences for such actions. I also have deep concerns about the policies
and activities of the Iranian government, especially their support for the brutal Assad regime
in Syria.
I have voted for sanctions on Iran in the past, and I believe sanctions were an important
tool for bringing Iran to the negotiating table. But I believe that these new sanctions could
endanger the very important nuclear agreement that was signed between the United States, its
partners and Iran in 2015. That is not a risk worth taking, particularly at a time of heightened
tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia and its allies. I think the United States must play a
more even-handed role in the Middle East, and find ways to address not only Iran's activities,
but also Saudi Arabia's decades-long support for radical extremism."
"The event was a political fraud from beginning to end. The basic thread running through all of
the workshops and demagogic speeches was the fiction that the Democratic Party-a party of Wall
Street and the CIA-can be transformed into a "people's party."
LOL!!! Totally spot the F on!!!!!
"Sanders lent his support to the neo-McCarthyite campaign of the Democrats and the military-intelligence
apparatus, which sees Russia as the chief obstacle to US imperialism's drive for regime change
in Syria and Iran. "I find it strange we have a president who is more comfortable with autocrats
and authoritarians than leaders of democratic nations," Sanders said. "Why is he enamored with
Putin, a man who has suppressed democracy and destabilized democracies around the world, including
our own?"
Sanders?? No fool like an old fool and tool of TPTB
Oh, I doubt he's a fool; the creed of the western political class is recognition of its own and
their interests over the interests of the majority. It is technically true that Putin is destabilizing
governments around the world – 'democracies', if you will – but it would presuppose that western
leaders are his accomplices. Because it is through them and their crackdowns and restrictions
and surveillance, which they say they must introduce for our own protection (because, you know,
freedom isn't free) that discontent and destabilization are born.
Reply
"... I feel utterly betrayed and conned by Barack Obama. He looked, talked and exuded kind, "humanness". But he was a fraud that STILL evades the grok of huge parts of the World population. People generally find it difficult to accept that this beautiful man (Obama) with the beautiful family, is a tyrannical bastard.(Remember NYT's, Uncle Joe Stalin?). ..."
"... Hillary Clinton, refreshingly (IMO), and bravely, is obviously a crazed maniac. Many noticed her authentic self during the campaign. Now that she is increasingly free to express her inner life, I expect people on both sides of the political divide (The Ups, AND the Downs) to wake up and smell the coffee. We are being lied to about almost everything, and it is not inadvertent. ..."
I believe that Hillary Clinton IS being, and broadcasting her authentic self. I support her
100% in this . I am not being snide. The curtains are being pulled aside on The Incompetent, Wizards
of Oz (The Corrupt Over-class). Hillary C will be remembered as the Foolish Wizard who could not
keep her curtain drawn! We got a glimpse into the innards of the Heath Robinson, Control Booth,
Political Contraption. (George Soros playing with himself!)
I feel utterly betrayed and conned by Barack Obama. He looked, talked and exuded kind,
"humanness". But he was a fraud that STILL evades the grok of huge parts of the World population.
People generally find it difficult to accept that this beautiful man (Obama) with the beautiful
family, is a tyrannical bastard.(Remember NYT's, Uncle Joe Stalin?).
Hillary Clinton, refreshingly (IMO), and bravely, is obviously a crazed maniac. Many noticed
her authentic self during the campaign. Now that she is increasingly free to express her inner
life, I expect people on both sides of the political divide (The Ups, AND the Downs) to wake up
and smell the coffee. We are being lied to about almost everything, and it is not inadvertent.
Clarky90 said, " We are being lied to about almost everything, and it is not inadvertent."
Exactly!
And the only solace I have from the Trump show is that the curtains will be pulled back completely
to expose the puppeteers of this charade they call a democracy.
Which should make it much easier to generate authentic opposition, doncha think? Trump was
The Great Reveal, next up is The Great Reveal for Dems: that they too love War and Billionaire
Corporo-Fascism
"Everybody Needs to Stop Telling Hillary Clinton to Shut Up"
Throughout the campaign, culminating in the mindbogglingly stupid "deplorables" remark, Clinton's
contempt for anyone who questioned her was clear. Her post election tour brings more of the same.
So yeah, people are sick of hearing it, and have every right to say so.
Three Takeaways From Bernie Sanders' Speech At The
People's Summit
"He may not be the leader of the free
world, but to the 4,000 activists gathered at The
People's Summit in Chicago, Sen. Bernie Sanders reigns
supreme.
The former presidential candidate and senator from Vermont headlined the progressive activist
conference Saturday night, drawing whoops, hollers, and standing ovations from the crowd that fought
alongside him on the road to the White House. Sanders' new calling: turning the 'resistance' movement
into action in the face of a president he's called a "fraud."
Sanders took aim at President Trump, the Democratic Party, and the outsized role of corporations
in American politics, hitting the major themes from his campaign stump speech and introducing some
new ones.
"Alas the pretend progressives here cannot be bothered."
PGL you're the only "pretend progressive" here. Real leftists do well in an election and so
PGL throws a little temper tantrum. You can't make him discuss it! He won't admit he was wrong!
He supported Corbyn even though he didn't talk about the election once during the entire campaign.
What a tedious phoney.
LONDON - Among the many satisfying outcomes of Britain's general election has been the roll
call of pundits reeling out apologies for getting it so wrong. The Labour Party has, against all
odds, surged to take a 40 percent share of the vote, more than it has won in years. And so the
nation's commentariat, who had confidently thought that the party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership
would be wiped off the political map, are now eating giant slices of humble pie.
Nobody is in politics to gloat. Labour's leadership team and supporters alike want the party
to win not for the sake of winning, but in order to bring Labour's economic and social agenda
to Britain, to measurably improve people's lives. Still, a little schadenfreude is definitely
in order.
Mr. Corbyn, from the left of the party, unexpectedly took its helm in 2015 after a rule change
allowed, for the first time, rank-and-file members to have an equal vote for their leader. And
he has been ridiculed, dismissed and bemoaned ever since. Cast as an incongruous combination of
incompetent beardy old man and peacenik terrorist sympathizer, Mr. Corbyn faced down a leadership
challenge from his own party about a year ago and constant sniping, criticism and calls for him
to quit throughout.
The political and pundit classes, in their wisdom, thought it entirely inconceivable that someone
like him - so unpolished, so left wing - could ever persuade voters. After Britain's referendum
decision, last June, to leave the European Union, more scathing criticism was piled upon the Labour
leader for his decision to, well, accept the democratic referendum decision, however bad it was.
By the time Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap election six weeks ago, her party ran
a 20-point poll lead ahead of Labour and her personal approval ratings were sky high while Mr.
Corbyn's were abysmally low. Liberal pundits were aghast at the thought of the Labour Party self-destructing
under Mr. Corbyn's supposedly toxic leadership. He was once again urged to step down.
Then the campaign started - and every prediction was turned on its head. The well-funded, hyper-efficient
Conservatives and their chorus of supporters in Britain's mostly right-wing press ran a terrible
campaign. Mrs. May came across as robotic and out of touch; she didn't seem to like engaging with
the press, much less the public. The more people saw of her, the more her ratings sank.
For Mr. Corbyn, the opposite was true. His detractors said his appeal was limited to a niche
of radical left activists, but in reality his quiet confidence, credibility and integrity - so
refreshing at a time when politicians are viewed as untrustworthy careerists - drew crowds of
enthusiastic supporters to ever-growing rallies. At one point, arriving to a televised debate
just over a week before the election, he was greeted with solid cheers en route to the event.
That was when his leadership team sensed something significant was taking place.
Part of this extraordinary success was a result of the party's campaign. Fun, energetic, innovative
and inspiring, it created its own momentum, with organic support mushrooming out of the most unlikely
places, flooding social media with viral memes and messages: Rappers and D.J.s, soccer players,
economists and television personalities alike climbed aboard the Corbyn project. Momentum, a grass-roots
organization of Corbyn supporters, activated the party's estimated 500,000 members - many of whom
had joined because Mr. Corbyn was elected as leader - into canvassing efforts across the country,
including, crucially, in up-for-grabs districts. Supporters were further encouraged by the sight
of Labour candidates demolishing long-hated Conservatives on television, appearances that were
swiftly turned into video clips and raced around the internet.
But the main mobilizer of support was the party's politics. For decades, Labour has been resolutely
centrist, essentially offering a slightly kinder version of neoliberal consensus politics. Those
on the left had long said that this was what had caused the party's slow decline, a hemorrhaging
of support from its traditional working-class voters. With Mr. Corbyn at its helm, the party tacked
firmly to the left, proposing to tax the few for the benefit of the many and offering major national
investment projects, funding for the welfare state, the scrapping of university tuition fees and
the re-nationalization of rail and energy companies.
It was a hopeful vision for a fairer society, offered at a time when the country is experiencing
wage stagnation and spiraling living costs, with many buckling under because of the economic crash
of 2008 and the Conservative Party's savage austerity cuts that followed. Given the chance for
the first time in decades to vote for something else, something better, a surprising number of
voters took it. Young people, in particular, seized this offer: With youth turnout unusually high
at 72 percent, it's clear that Labour brought them to the ballot box in droves.
Labour's shock comeback has tugged the party, along with Britain's political landscape, and
the range of acceptable discourse back to the left. In a hung Parliament, the Conservatives still
came out of the election as the main party, and now looks set to go into coalition government
with the homophobic, anti-abortion Democratic Unionist Party. But the Conservatives are now a
maimed party with a discredited leader - weaknesses to be seized upon and exploited by a now united
and empowered Labour party.
The grifters in the party didn't lose you dope. They all got paid. It's all so very much like
making a movie. So what if it didn't break even at the box office, everyone involved got theirs.
Seriously though you are correct. Sanders would have won against Trump. Everyone knows that,
except the die hard centerist Democrats that are trying hard not to look in mirror.
You wingnuts cant seem to comprehend that the Democratic primaries
was a series of state elections in which Hillary legitimately got more voters to vote for her.
They picked Hillary, for all your bleating about "elites."
Krugman posited once that Bernie might win the nomination by beating Hillary with disaffected
white voters in the red states despite being ultimately unelectable because of his radical views
in the general election. Of course that is not at all what happened.
"....This ties in with an important recent piece by Zack Beauchamp on the striking degree to
which left-wing economics fails, in practice, to counter right-wing populism; basically, Sandersism
has failed everywhere it has been tried. Why?
The answer, presumably, is that what we call populism is really in large degree white identity
politics, which can't be addressed by promising universal benefits. Among other things, these
"populist" voters now live in a media bubble, getting their news from sources that play to their
identity-politics desires, which means that even if you offer them a better deal, they won't hear
about it or believe it if told. For sure many if not most of those who gained health coverage
thanks to Obamacare have no idea that's what happened.
That said, taking the benefits away would probably get their attention, and maybe even open
their eyes to the extent to which they are suffering to provide tax cuts to the rich.
In Europe, right-wing parties probably don't face the same dilemma; they're preaching herrenvolk
social democracy, a welfare state but only for people who look like you. In America, however,
Trump_vs_deep_state is faux populism that appeals to white identity but actually serves plutocrats. That
fundamental contradiction is now out in the open."
I recall something more damning, but have not been able to find it after repeated attempts. My
belief is that it was obviously so far off the mark that it has been taken down off Krugman's
NYT blog and maybe any reference to it here at EV as well.
"... There are numerous clues that point to the 2016 US Presidential Election as having been a set-up. Few seem willing to take a close look at these facts. But it is necessary for an understanding of the world we live in today. ..."
"... Sanders as sheep-dog Black Agenda Report called Sanders a sheep-dog soon after he entered the race . ..."
There are numerous clues that point to the 2016 US Presidential Election as having been a set-up.
Few seem willing to take a close look at these facts. But it is necessary for an understanding of
the world we live in today.
Trump's first 100 days has come and gone and he has proven to be every bit the faux populist that
Obama was (as I explained in a previous post). In hind-sight we can see how a new faux populist was
installed.
Evidence
Sanders as sheep-dog
Black
Agenda Report called Sanders a sheep-dog soon after he entered the race . Sanders made it
clear from the start that he ruled out the possibility of running as an independent. That was
only the first of many punches that Sanders pulled as he led his 'sheep' into the Democratic fold.
Others were:
>> "Enough with the emails!"
>> Not pursuing Hillary's 'winning' of 6 coin tosses in Iowa;
>> Virtually conceding the black and female vote to Hillary;
>> Not calling Hillary out about her claim to have NEVER sold her vote;
>> Endorsing Hillary despite learning of Hillary-DNC collusion;
>> Continuing to help the Democratic Party reach out to Bernie supports even after the election.
"... The media says what??? Hillary Clinton complains about the media? Which media says that? Give us ONE single example Hillary! Just one where the media says you can't talk about that. Just pure hypocrisy ..."
"... Superficially, there is a semblance of variance from the political establishment. Macron formed his En Marche (Forward) movement only a year ago. He has never held elected political office. And until three years ago hardly anyone had ever heard of him. ..."
"... Paradoxically, Donald Tusk, the head of the European Council, congratulated the French people for "choosing liberty, equality and fraternity, and saying no to fake news." Paradoxical because everything about Emmanuel Macron's "meteoric rise" through elite banking and his equally stellar crossover to politics smacks of fabrication and fakery. ..."
"... Former banking colleagues recall that he wasn't particularly capable in his four years at Rothschild's while on a multi-million-euro income. But he "mastered the art of networking." In a Financial Times profile published before the election, a senior banker is quoted as saying: "What Mr Macron lacked in technical knowledge and jargon at first, he made up for with contacts in government." Other sources recall that "it was never quite clear who Macron worked for." ..."
"... Macron's En Marche does not have any members in parliament. His government will thus likely be comprised of patronage and technocrats selected from years of networking in the financial and Élysée Palace establishment. ..."
Everything about France's new president Emmanuel Macron suggests a theatrical production of hype
and illusion. He is being "sold" to the masses as an "outsider" and "centrist", a benign liberal.
In reality, enter the economic hitman who will blow French society apart in the service of the
oligarchy.
At age 39, Macron has been described as a "political wonderboy" and France's "youngest leader
since Napoleon Bonaparte." The former Rothschild banker who reportedly once had the nickname "the
Mozart of Finance" is now promising to renew France and bring the nation together, where people will
no longer "vote for extremes."
Fittingly for the Mozart of Finance, the new president used the "grandest of backdrops for entrance
on the world stage," when he made his victory speech on Sunday night in the courtyard of the Louvre,
noted the Financial Times. His dramatic walk to the stage through the world-famous museum courtyard
took a full four minutes. The night lights and shadows played with Macron's unsmiling, stoney face
as he strode purposely forward amid the strains of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. The choice of the European
Union's national anthem, rather than France's, is a harbinger of Macron's political project and the
globalist interests he serves.
The media says what??? Hillary Clinton complains about the media? Which media says that? Give
us ONE single example Hillary! Just one where the media says you can't talk about that. Just pure
hypocrisy
Geographically, the Louvre is situated midway between the traditional political venues of the
Place de la Concorde for the right, and La Bastille for the left. Here was Macron intimating once
again, as he did during his campaign, that he represents neither right or left. He has vowed to overturn
the bipartisan structure of French politics, creating a new "centrist" movement. Just like his other
moniker of being an "outsider," however, this image of Macron is a deftly manicured illusion.
Superficially, there is a semblance of variance from the political establishment. Macron formed
his En Marche (Forward) movement only a year ago. He has never held elected political office. And
until three years ago hardly anyone had ever heard of him. Now he is to become the eighth president
of the French Fifth Republic.
Paradoxically, Donald Tusk, the head of the European Council, congratulated the French
people for "choosing liberty, equality and fraternity, and saying no to fake news." Paradoxical
because everything about Emmanuel Macron's "meteoric rise" through elite banking and his equally
stellar crossover to politics smacks of fabrication and fakery. With his elite education at the Ecole National
Academie (ENA) where future French political leaders are groomed, to his precocious elevation in
investment banking, followed by his seamless entrance into top-flight government politics, Macron
is evidently a person with powerful guiding forces behind him.
Former banking colleagues recall that he wasn't particularly capable in his four years at Rothschild's
while on a multi-million-euro income. But he "mastered the art of networking." In a Financial Times
profile published before the election, a senior banker is quoted as saying: "What Mr Macron lacked
in technical knowledge and jargon at first, he made up for with contacts in government." Other sources
recall that "it was never quite clear who Macron worked for."
As the Financial Times noted: "At the bank, Mr Macron navigated around the numerous conflicts
of interest that arise in close-knit Parisian business circles, making good use of his connections
as an Inspecteur des Finances - an elite corps of the very highest-ranking graduates from ENA."
After quitting private finance, Macron joined the government of Socialist President Francois Hollande,
where he at first served as a "special advisor." In 2014, Hollande appointed him as economy minister
where he drew up a draconian program to undermine French employment rights in favor of corporate
profits. Macron resigned from his ministerial post only last year when he set up his own political
party in anticipation of contesting the presidential election.
Macron's En Marche does not have any members in parliament. His government will thus likely be
comprised of patronage and technocrats selected from years of networking in the financial and Élysée
Palace establishment. What little is known about Macron's policies is his stated commitment to more
stringent economic austerity, promises to slash €60 billion in public spending over the next five
years and axe up to 120,000 state sector jobs. He is also setting to drive through more "business
friendly" changes in labor laws that will allow bosses to more easily hire and fire employees. He
is giving companies license to negotiate increased working hours and lower salaries outside of statutory
law. So, the notion that Macron is some kind of benign "centrist" is an insult to common intelligence.
He is a "centrist" only in the sense of illusory corporate media branding; in objective terms, Macron
is a dedicated economic hitman for global capitalism.
Whatever one might think of his defeated rival Marine Le Pen of the Front National, she certainly
had Macron accurately summed up when she referred to him as the "candidate of finance." Independent
Socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who was narrowly knocked out in the first round of the election on
April 23, predicts that Macron will be a "disaster" for French society, blowing apart economic inequality
and social contracts to turn the country into the kind of poverty-wage slavery seen in the US and
Britain.
There is sound reason why the French and European political establishment exulted in Macron's
victory. He is no outsider, overturning the status quo for a more democratic outcome. He is in fact
a consummate insider who will pursue policies pandering to elite interests, at the expense of the
great majority.
Macron's "centrist [sic] victory brought joy to Europe's political establishment," reported the
New York Times, while the BBC informed of "palpable relief among European leaders." Outgoing President
Francois Hollande – the most unpopular French leader ever – warmly congratulated Macron, as did incumbent
prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve and other senior government figures. Macron had been endorsed by
Hollande's so-called Socialist Party and the center-right Republicans. So much for his vaunted "outsider"
image. Macron was also endorsed prior to the weekend vote by former US President Barack Obama and
European leaders, including Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President
Jean-Claude Juncker.
The irony of such brazen "electoral interference" is of course that this was what such Western
leaders have accused Russia of. Again, it also shows that Macron will be a "centrist" in more ways
than is meant. He will serve as a "dead-center" advocate of the transatlantic politics of Washington-led
neoliberal capitalism and NATO militarism. The French President-elect published a political autobiography
earlier this year entitled 'Revolution'. The only thing "revolutionary" about Macron's victory is
that the political establishment has invented an image for itself that upturns reality.
The intense media marketing of Macron as a "centrist outsider" is a coup against the meaning of
words and plain language. It is also worth noting that over 16 million French voters abstained or
spoiled their votes against the 20 million who opted for Macron. French society, as for other Western
nations, is riven by the ravages of global capitalism. And now here comes the "Mozart of Finance"
to allegedly bring harmony from the appalling discord he and others like him have sown.
Trump campaigned on non-interventionism platform. Almost paleo--conservative platform.
And on April 6 he lost "anti-war right". And even some part of anti-war left ( Sanders supporters who really hated Hillary
for her jingoism and corruption ) who supported him holding the nose. Probably forever.
That might have consequences for him because he lost support from politically active and important segment of his electorate.
Which to certain extent protected him from impeachment as the last thing DemoRats want are fierce protests up to armed clashes
with alt-right afterward.
If his calculation was that DemoRats (neoliberal Democrats) are now also a War party, so it does not matter, he probably
badly miscalculated.
He now needs to worry what Russians might have on him because Wikileaks or other similar sites might get some interesting
materials. Of course Pence would be even more horrible POTUS, and revenge is a dish that better serve cold, but still he probably
did not sleep well after this "Monica" show of strength.
He also probably can forget about any compromises of the style "something for nothing" (as previous presidents enjoyed in
a hope of improving relations between two countries) from Russians for a while.
Only things prepaid with yuans from now on ;-).
The whole move smell with "Monica" stiles and Iraq WDM: Shoot first ask questions later".
Now he really can be impeached by DemoRats with impunity and there will be little on no protests. But now, when he surrendered
to neocons, why DemoRats take trouble to impeach him?
In other words from April 6 "Agent Orange" is walking in his new clothing like naked king from Andersen tale.
Actually, if one knew that Trump betray them in such a blatant way, why would one vote for Trump.
You can get Hillary who definitely would be better for domestic economic policy then "Agent Orange", yet another puppet
of military industrial complex.
"... Obama: "[O]ne of the issues that Democrats have to be clear on is that given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere, we have to show up everywhere." Throwing Clinton under the bus ..."
"... I yelled at the radio after hearing this, because he means just showing up, telling people what they want to hear, then doing whatever the hell you want after getting elected. Not one word about actually meeting peoples needs. EFF OBAMA and the DEMOCRATIC PARTY!! ..."
"... If you didn't read this (linked yesterday), you should consider both reading and sharing far and wide. The entire system is designed to be anti-representative. Don't just get/stay mad, quit expecting a bunch of gangsters to function democratically. Get out of their box. ..."
Obama: "[O]ne of the issues that Democrats have to be clear
on is that given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere, we have
to show up everywhere." Throwing Clinton under the bus
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I yelled at the radio after hearing this, because he means just showing up, telling people what they
want to hear, then doing whatever the hell you want after getting elected. Not one word about actually
meeting peoples needs. EFF OBAMA and the DEMOCRATIC PARTY!!
If you didn't
read this
(linked yesterday), you should consider both reading and sharing
far and wide. The entire system is designed to be anti-representative. Don't
just get/stay mad, quit expecting a bunch of gangsters to function democratically.
Get out of their box.
In Part 2 of their interview, TYT Politics Reporter Jordan Chariton spoke with The Intercept
co-founder Glenn Greenwald about Senator Bernie Sanders pattern of working with corporate
establishment Democrats.
Everything Glenn said. I don't understand Bernie strategy, but I have to believe he's
playing the best game he can play and he knows patients, it's a chess game and it's
impossible for the observer to predict the players next move. But he does it with extreme
caution and thoughtfulness.
We have to stop thinking of Bernie as the "leader" of this revolution. Yes, not a
movement, but a revolution. Revolutions ARE NOT LEAD by one person. They have one or a few
figure heads that history remembers but they have many factions and many leaders to be
successful. I wish TYT would see it this way. We need to put more focus on all of the
different leaders and groups contributing to this revolution, not just Bernie.
I said it once and I will say it again...,never ever turn your back on Bernie Sanders.
This man has a plan. For sure i understand that people were quite pissed at the moment he
endorsed Hillary Clinton. But you know what? He had to do it. Supposed he wouldn't do it do
you actually believe he would still be a senator today? I don't think so. The Democratic
Party would have killed him. ( politically speaking). Look at his history. And listen to him
when he speaks. It is not only the USA that needs him. It's actually the whole world needs
him. Specially now with that clown of a president on the steering wheel. Love and peace to
you all.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend". It's a saying that has been around for generations,
for a reason. Truth will always be truth. It's been proven time after time in history, and is
a proven tactic that the US has successfully employed since the Revolutionary War (France vs
Britain) and is the only way weaker parties can triumph. You work together until you no
longer have common ground!
I am more on Glenn's side on this one. Bernie is a smart politician -- he knows you can't
be 100% belligerent and still expect to get anything done (even though some of us wish he
would be that way).
Strategically it is as if Bernie is behind enemy lines. The ideology of the corporate Dems
decimated legislative ranks. His small 'unsullied' unit in the legislature needs to grow to
match his outside support. To ensure that end he needs to continually draw & welcome
contrast btw himself & Est. Dems
Bernie Sanders just said on CBS that he is ready to work with Trump on
1) lowering drug prices by purchasing drugs from abroad and Medicare negotiate prices
2) infrastructure projects
3) better trade deals
Lets see if entrenched interests in the GOP and Democrat party let them work together. My guess
is NOT.
What that would accomplish is lay bare the corruption that is part of both parties.
Let's see if Trump actually wants to do any of those things Sanders wants. In other words will
he "reach across the aisle."
Let's see if Republicans in Congress cooperate.
I think it's unlikely although not impossible (as Krugman etc do)
Trump thinks of himself as a reality TV star. He likes the drama. But he seems to have no interest
in the details of policy. He found the border tax his advisers were floating as too complicated.
The Truth About the Sanders Movement
May 23, 2016 6:17 pm 1134
In short, it's complicated – not all bad, by any means,
but not the pure uprising of idealists the more enthusiastic
supporters imagine.
The political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry
Bartels have an illuminating discussion of Sanders support.
The key graf that will probably have Berniebros boiling is
this:
"Yet commentators who have been ready and willing to
attribute Donald Trump's success to anger, authoritarianism,
or racism rather than policy issues have taken little note of
the extent to which Mr. Sanders's support is concentrated not
among liberal ideologues but among disaffected white men."
The point is not to demonize, but, if you like, to de-angelize.
Like any political movement (including the Democratic Party,
which is, yes, a coalition of interest groups) Sandersism has
been an assemblage of people with a variety of motives, not
all of them pretty. Here's a short list based on my own
encounters:
1.Genuine idealists:
For sure, quite a few Sanders
supporters dream of a better society, and for whatever reason
– maybe just because they're very young – are ready to
dismiss practical arguments about why all their dreams can't
be accomplished in a day.
2.Romantics:
This kind of idealism shades over into
something that's less about changing society than about the
fun and ego gratification of being part of The Movement.
(Those of us who were students in the 60s and early 70s very
much recognize the type.) For a while there – especially for
those who didn't understand delegate math – it felt like a
wonderful joy ride, the scrappy young on the march about to
overthrow the villainous old. But there's a thin line between
love and hate: when reality began to set in, all too many
romantics reacted by descending into bitterness, with angry
claims that they were being cheated.
3.Purists:
A somewhat different strand in the
movement, also familiar to those of us of a certain age,
consists of those for whom political activism is less about
achieving things and more about striking a personal pose.
They are the pure, the unsullied, who reject the corruptions
of this world and all those even slightly tainted – which
means anyone who actually has gotten anything done. Quite a
few Sanders surrogates were Naderites in 2000; the results of
that venture don't bother them, because it was never really
about results, only about affirming personal identity.
4.CDS victims:
Quite a few Sanders supporters are
mainly Clinton-haters, deep in the grip of Clinton
Derangement Syndrome; they know that Hillary is corrupt and
evil, because that's what they hear all the time; they don't
realize that the reason it's what they hear all the time is
that right-wing billionaires have spent more than two decades
promoting that message. Sanders has gotten a number of votes
from conservative Democrats who are voting against her, not
for him, and for sure there are liberal supporters who have
absorbed the same message, even if they don't watch Fox News.
5.Salon des Refuses:
This is a small group in
number, but accounts for a lot of the pro-Sanders commentary,
and is of course something I see a lot. What I'm talking
about here are policy intellectuals who have for whatever
reason been excluded from the inner circles of the Democratic
establishment, and saw Sanders as their ticket to the big
time. They typically hold heterodox views, but those views
don't have much to do with the campaign – sorry, capital
theory disputes from half a century ago aren't relevant to
the debate over health reform. What matters is their outsider
status, which gives them an interest in backing an outsider
candidate – and makes them reluctant to accept it when that
candidate is no longer helping the progressive cause.
So how will this coalition of the not-always disinterested
break once it's over? The genuine idealists will probably
realize that whatever their dreams, Trump would be a
nightmare. Purists and CDSers won't back Clinton, but they
were never going to anyway. My guess is that disgruntled
policy intellectuals will, in the end, generally back
Clinton.
The question, as I see it, involves the romantics. How
many will give in to their bitterness? A lot may depend on
Sanders – and whether he himself is one of those embittered
romantics, unable to move on.
"... "Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media. People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids – all while the very rich become much richer. ..."
"... "To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him." ..."
This is inspiring, but I hope they realise that opposing Trump is just
one side of a two-front battle. Trump needs to be opposed when (as seems
very likely) he will start to drive a very right wing pro-billionaire set of
policies. But its increasingly obvious that there is an equally difficult
battle to be fought against the 'centrists' in the Dems and elsewhere. If
all the focus is on Trump, then there is the danger they just become the
useful idiots of the Dem mainstream.
I would go so far to say that their greatest opponent and biggest
danger is not Trump and the Republicans at all. It is the Democratic
Party and pretty much every significant office holding Democrat and their
staffs.
Revolution starts at home. Fighting with Republicans will not
accomplish much when the fifth columnists from the Democratic Party are
going to sabotage every effort they make which shows promise of having an
effect. They need to show their power by hamstringing targeted Democrats
and thus herding the rest into line through fear. You do what we say and
how we say it or we replace you. They have to own the left. No more
liberal's in name only. You are against us or you are with us.
I agree - they must be opposed in the primaries. That's tough to
do, and will take real dedication and money. The deplorable Debbie
Wasserman Schultz won against Tim Canova in the 2016 primary, and the
equally deplorable Chuck Schumer won reelection in 2016, so he won't
be facing a primary opponent until the 2022 election season. Pelosi,
of course is vulnerable every two years.
Please need to be willing to do more than just post comments on
blogs. And lets not have any more of those comments bewailing the
impossibility of overthrowing the status quo - it's difficult, but
it's not impossible. (This paragraph isn't directed specifically to
you, JohnnyGL or PlutoniumKun. I'm just concerned that some other
commenters seem to try to prevent people from taking an active role in
politics, and that is just plain wrong.)
uh why fight against a party with NO federal power? (state power in a
few states so maybe relevant there)
Even if you get unanimous Dem opposition how much does it matter? Ok
the Rs don't quite have a super-majority yet I guess but it is Rs who
will be passing legislation. Fighting Dems is about like fighting WWII
after it's all over. They have mouthpieces and foundations it is true,
but no power.
Better message is to be pro a set of policies:
1. Medicare for all
2. SS are a real retirement system
3. Job Guarantee
4. College for all – student debt
5. Taxes as social and business policy
6. No permanent standing military
Irritated by the identity politics of the main article. That and
would they have opened an office if Hillary had won? If not, I fear
they don't understand and are doomed to repeat the same mistakes of
their elders.
Sanders is always on point moving toward the goal with minimal time
spent talking about moving away from what Is opposed. Here's a sometime
humorous case in point–
A candid conversation: Bernie Sanders and Sara Silverman
Waaaaay too many bullet points already, and I see that others are
adding more. Not that I'm saying any of those are unimportant, but when
you have a dozen goals you actually have none at all. My ideal
progressive movement would hammer relentlessly on 3 major initiatives:
– Medicare for all
– $15 minimum wage
– Post office banking
All 3 provide tangible benefits to the majority of Americans, with the
added bonus of poking a sharp stick in the eye of the oligarchs.
I definitely agree about keeping the list of priorities short, but
I feel that these two areas are foundational and systemically
corrupting, and little else is likely to be accomplished without major
reforms of both
– MIC/"Defense" spending (mostly spent on offense, not defending
the borders of the USA from invasion)
– Campaign Finance – big money in politics
9. Lifelong job education and skills-building for all unemployed and
under-employed, paid for directly from corporate taxes.
10. Universal two-year commitment to the military or a full-time volunteer
public service program.
11. Rewilding and reforesting polluted and abandoned land.
12. Anti-trust! More trust-busting needed!
13. Agricultural reform to ban feedlots, fertilizers and pesticides and
reorganize farms to restore and rebuild soil. And yes, this will create
jobs.
"9. Lifelong job education and skills-building for all unemployed and
under-employed, paid for directly from corporate taxes."
people don't know what a nightmare such scenarios are, ok it sucks if
you are underemployed and have no way to retrain because finances, but it
also sucks big league if you have to spend your entire life working full
time AND pursuing more and more formal education, forever until you die.
Is any of our utopias going to care about human beings being able to BE
human beings? We are so so much more than just useful labor machines
forever aquiring labor market useful skills.
Ok course a basic income guarantee or a labor market tilted for labor
not capital (including government job creation sure – and sure there's
other things that can tilt it for labor – lower Social Security age,
unionization etc.) would nullify this objection as the competition for
jobs would lessen enough perhaps.
"10. Universal two-year commitment to the military or a full-time
volunteer public service program."
well this is even more self-evidently nightmarish but it hardly needs
unpacking. 2 years of becoming hired killers for the imperialist murder
machine. Yea I know you didn't specify military as mandatory, I'm just
saying what is being encouraged.
jrs: Agreed. Points 9 and 10 are non-starters. They will not lessen
class warfare. Only a jobs policy and a commitment to full employment
will. And this idea that U.S. citizens have to be drafted into some
regimented public-service program isn't helpful.
But let's talk about reopening the Civilian Conservation Corps, as
in point 11. Now that is a genuinely good idea. And people would
gladly join–without feeling regimented.
There was an interesting debate around the water cooler links on
Festivus. I would like to recap and extend it here because I want to know
more. First about how you, Lambert, see the take over of a single state
Democratic party office breaking open a path to reform the party from
within. I would like to hear what scenarios you feel are possible.
Walden pond wrote
"The elite control the D party (which is nothing but a criminal organization
at this point). They will allow outsiders to have dog-catcher, but get
uppity and run for a state position and that person will be out in an
instant. The Ds are factually/legally a private club and they can select
their membership and candidates in any way they choose or get a court to
back them on every petty legal change they make to block outsiders. They
change rules (legal contract) retroactively, they violate their own rules
repeatedly and someone thinks they are going to get any farther than a few
school board positions or city council is going to fail.
Taking over the D party is similar to proposing infiltrating gangs (fully
backed by the legal system) with 13 year olds to 'save the neighborhood'."
I whole heartedly agree. I think it's important that people understand
that the party is not just a "machine" waiting for someone new to guide it.
It is not a set of empty offices and poster printing machines with helpful
local people waiting for guidance. At the top, it is much more like an
exclusive country club whose membership passes down through wealthy families
who think they know what's best for the nation.
Anyhow, if you have a strategy on how to break it, I would like to
support that discussion. I would like to hear more.
I'm glad you carried this discussion over to today. People hear have
heard my sad tales of woe when I decided in 2004 to stop being
inattentive and to actually try "to change the party from within" that
talk show hosts like Thom Hartmann and "The Nation" gang call for every 4
years. Yes, I discovered what Walden Pond wrote; that there is an "elite"
control of the state parties. They are almost hereditary positions. Yes,
they will get excited by a newbie like me who was articulate, worked in
Hollywood, married to a rancher for conservative creeds. But then I
started to challenge their positions by advocating for single payer;
stronger labor stances that they all paId lip service to but didn't
really seem to care about. So no longer was I allowed to talk to the
press at the DNC Convention. As I recall in 2006 or 2007 they changed a
rule to make it harder to challenge Jon Tester in a primary.
Affairs like "Campaign for America's Future" conventions were always in
D.C. And during the 2nd one I went to, I confirmed by observations that
they were just big job fairs for people wanting jobs in the next
administration or becoming lobbyists. That was actually what the
convention in 2004 was too that I attended as a delegate. "Agriculture
Salutes Tom Harking"; brought to you not by The Grange but by Monsanto
and Carroll. Lavish party with handsome young men shucking tons of
oysters. Ick.
I went in naive as I suspect many well meaning millennials will do now to
this "house". But boy did I start to wake up and finally by 2009 after
the failed single payer health care movement, I quit this dead donkey.
There's a lot of contentious debate on whether to fight in the
Democrat Party or build a 3rd one. The answer is both, always and
constantly.
1) Start the fight within the Party, as seen in MI. What happened
there is important to expose and embarrass the local party officials. I
consider the incident an encouraging sign and hope there are more like it
around the country (not happy with the guy getting assaulted, of course,
but if it shows 'they are who we thought they were', then that's progress
of a sort).
2) If you can fight within the party and the party leadership at the
state level understands the need to change and gets on board (getting on
board as defined by fighting for specific policies, organizing and party
building, and going against the wishes of big donors), then work with
them.
3) if the big donors and dinosaur party leaders don't get on board,
then then need to be A) removed, if possible. Or, if not possible, B)
they should be isolated. If Schumer and Pelosi can't be primary-ed out of
existence (a-la Eric Cantor) then they should be stripped of leadership
positions and isolated. Primary all of their allies in congress. Pelosi
still got around 2/3 of the vote. Let's get it below 1/2. We're not
starting from scratch, there's a base of opposition to work with.
4) Part of the contention between points 2) and 3) is protests like
those seen recently protesting at Schumer's office by BLM and Occupy
folks. Again, make them come to us on policy. Life should get
increasingly uncomfortable for Party leaders and members that don't play
ball. It should be clear that their current attitudes and policies are
untenable and they need to get with the new program. Hassle them in their
offices, at their public events. Anti-fracking protestors who harassed
Cuomo over several years showed what to do. I think one of his kids joked
that when they got lost on the way to an event, they could always find
where they were going because the anti-fracking protestors were there
waiting for them.
People like Pelosi and Schumer will cave to public pressure, they've
done it in the past. Pelosi said no to medicare changes when Obama wanted
to put entitlement reform on the table. These people are different than
ideologues who will push their agenda regardless of public opinion.
They're snakes, but they'll play ball under pressure.
5) Now in the case where we can't with the fight within the party, go
outside. Socialist Alternative, Working Families and other 3rd parties
that are built up at the local level can threaten and do real damage.
Does anyone think Seattle gets a $15/hr min. wage without Sawant and
Socialist Alternative? Working Families Party demonstrated exactly what
NOT to do during NY Governor election. If Cuomo won't come to us and meet
our demands, bring him down. Suck it up, deal with a Republican for a few
years, if necessary. While the Republican is in charge, pressure them,
too. Don't think about the election right now .that's short termism.
Let's think 2, 3, 4 elections out. If you're not winning now, clear out
the deadwood to win later.
6) Now, to face up to the 'lesser evil' arguments regarding 5). It's
over, there's no more 'lesser evilism'. It's dead. Hillary Clinton and
the elite Dems killed it. They put it all on display for all to see. They
were willing to crush the left (again), squash voting rights through a
variety of means, and risk Trump or another whacky 'Pied Piper' candidate
in order to get their anointed candidate put in charge. THAT should tell
you EXACTLY who we're dealing with here. They were perfectly willing to
risk Trump to win, so that means if a 3rd party can get 3%-5% in a close
election and play a spoiler role, then that 3rd party should DO it. Every
time. Again, keep doing it until the Democrats adopt the platform of a
3rd party (which, presumably includes fight for $15, medicare for all, no
wars, etc). Again, until the Dems come to us on policy, they will be
opposed.
But, but Nader brought us Bush who brought us Iraq War! You cannot
take risks like that! Must vote lesser evil!!! Oh really? Dems voted for
Patriot Act, Dems voted for AUMF over and over again. Dems voted to keep
funding the war, too. When Dems don't win the Presidency they want to sit
back and wait for Repubs to do awful stuff so that Dems will be back in
charge as seen in 2006-8. Pelosi and Reid did NOTHING to deserve a win,
they just waited it out until people voted for change again. They want to
do this again. We can't let them. Make them do their job. Make them act
in opposition. Make them earn their next win, otherwise we'll get the
same group and the same policies that have just been discredited.
7) From the article, I like Ahmed's strategy/tactics, but the concept
of attacking Trump the person, seems flawed. Remember, policy is what
matters!
Nixon passed an amendment that created the EPA. That doesn't happen if
you oppose Nixon for who he is. Also, wikipedia reveals that the Clean
Water Act got passed in spite of Nixon's veto! If Trump wants to move in
the right direction, he should be praised for doing so. If he doesn't, go
around him!
Trump is a guy that just slapped the Repub establishment silly and
clearly is running at least partially out of vanity more than he wants to
collect fat checks when he leaves office (like the Clintons, and probably
Obama soon enough). There's value in this, by itself, and there's value
on policy grounds, too.
Okay, I'm done. I hope anyone who bothers to read found this
enjoyable. Happy for comments. Also, to be clear, I've got no experience
in organizing or any kind of playbook to carry this plan out. :) So, feel
free to mock my credentials, because they don't exist!
Sigh. We millennials might be smart about policy and pragmatic, but if
this is our moonshot, we don't know jack about how to organize a successful
social movement. Protesting "Trump" is stupid. Trump is not a policy. He is
a person. Is our goal to make him feel bad about himself? And he did win the
election. So his administration is, in fact, "legitimate" in any meaningful
sense of the word.
I'd have slightly different lists, but I entirely agree that a pro-policy
platform is an essential starting point. That said, protests basically
always fail, and more often then not IMO, strengthen the opposition. When
they succeed, or even make headway like NODAPL, they always share a common
set of features.
1) One very specific policy. Today, if I were in charge, I'd choose
Federally funded Medicare for all. Never mind details for protesting
purposes.
2) A simple, clear message that appeals to values that most people in a
body politic can agree on "Health Care is a Civil Right!"
3) A symbol that presents a clear, binary, moral choice. Sorry people, it
makes me feel icky too, but this is where we go hunting for a dying grandma
or kid with cancer who can't get medical care and make him/her our mascot
(ideally, in a purely strategic realm, such person would refuse any care
until it was guaranteed to all, then die at a decisive moment, thus becoming
a martyr).
4) The ability to bring different folks together to agree on ONE thing.
Organized bitch sessions about Obamacare in Trump country might work here,
but we'd have to throw shit at the wall and see what stuck. I know for a
fact that most Trump supporters, if pressed, will say that a family should
not have to choose between impoverishment and treating mom's cancer. But
protesting "Trump" is protesting them too, with the main goal of feeling
like you are a better person because you know that gender is socially
constructed or whatever (as if there is something magical in who you are
that is the reason you got to go to a private liberal arts college, and you
totally never would have been racist no matter what life circumstances you
were born into).
It's not that I'm a single issue person, it's just protesting lots of
things at once just makes a lot of noise, and a bunch of people trying to
work together with competing agendas (lack of shared vision, in corporate
speak), makes all human organizations dysfunctional. Basically, I support
many issues, but think mixing them all together is not a good recipe for
success.
Didn't read the article. Seems like a misdirected effort to me. You don't
win voters by being against something. You win them by being for something.
I am getting tired of the "Ain't It Awful" game. Give me a vision to be for.
There is something called target fixation. When you concentrate on what
you want to avoid, you end up going right toward it. Concentrate on where
you want to go rather than spend all your time thinking about where you
don't want to go.
This can be demonstrated by asking someone to follow your instructions
and then issuing a number of imperative sentences:
Don't think of blue
Don't think about your left earlobe
Don't think about what Crazyman will do with this
Don't think of Trump
Etc
One has to think of those things in order to make sense of the words.
Moving away from can be a powerful motivator but only toward will get you
there. Sorry, clarifying the obvious again.
This effort is not about winning voters but about blocking really bad
policy changes that will hurt millions of people. Organizing for an
election campaign and organizing for issue-based activism are not the
same. If Barb Mikulski forty-odd years ago had just gone around the city
talking about her vision of good communities and good transportation
policy, a lot of Baltimore neighborhoods would have been wiped out as the
city was cut apart by an ill-placed interstate. She stopped it by
organizing a fight against it. More recently, Destiny Watford, still in
high school at the time, was the prime mover in the successful fight
against an incinerator in her Curtis Bay neighborhood in south Baltimore.
There is a time and a place for everything. There are at least two
other organizations focusing on electoral politics. This one has a
different purpose.
Yes to be opposed to Trump is because they think a bunch of bad
policies will come from his administration and they are likely not
wrong. It doesn't need to be about Trump the person at all, though for
some deluded people it may be. Now they could broaden it to opposing
Paul Ryans congress etc. since they are hardly better but if any
legistlaton is actually going to be passed a Republican congress and
Trump will be working together.
A single issue focus, say it was Medicare for all, even if it was
sucessful, would have let all the other issues a Trump administration
will represent slide. Ok so if Trump passes tax cuts say that further
enrich the plutocrats, an ever more unequal society might even destroy
Medicare for all (the rich will just buy their way out). If Trump
passes even more obviously anti-environmental legistlation, the fact
Medicare for all was achieved would be a goal of it's own but would
not change this. Maybe there are people enough for all movements, I
don't know.
It'll never work & for good reason. It's a form of ideation contrary to
gnostic principles and therefore to the highest spiritual values on this
plane of existence.
Sad to see hopeful inspired people get lost in that maze of misery. Trust
your perceptions in the silence of your mind without looking to anybody else
for affirmation. People are people. That's what everybody who can figure
things out figures out when they grow up.
Grow up & Merry Christmas. LOL
I'm wishing Trump well & am somewhat hopeful that - through the odd
feedback loops in complex systems - the provocations of his originality will
shape things in a direction even progressives will find appealing. Maybe
I'll be wrong, I admit. But I'm usually not wrong. LOL. (Although I am
sometimes, no lie.)
Firecracker puppies professional trainer who isists she knows about how
people of color feel..hmmm a bunch of photos of ms nadine and her fellow
associates something about dc that tells me the demographics are not the
same as iowa does not look as she thinks there are any people of color who
can train on what "she" calls "non violence" and her "famous" black female
puppet to represent and protest against the military because the military is
so black and female seems a bit tone deaf
Same old same old chameleons bending to the new hot button funding to
keep the lights on
"As the international director of the committee to make noise and get
nothing done, we strive to "
And ms bangladeshi her nov 27 tweet that anyone right of the democrats is
a fascist does this child have an idea what that word means, or is it
something she picked up at one of the "people" conventions she attended or
spoke at
Not looking to be hyper cynical on this of all days but seems moumita has
spent her entire adult life posing with her megaphone and for someone who is
so "out there" mekantz find much about her except her self proclaimed
relevance and for a person who claims this large network somewhat smallish
set of followers on her chyrping account
The Washington police will now have to use a search warrant or a
battering ram unlike Zuccotti park where night sticks and pepper spray were
used. I don't see a problem getting those. Especially after agents have
infiltrated. Well at least it is a start which I hope snowballs!
enter the sans coullottes! I am thrilled and will try to get in contact
with them. depend upon it, the American people will turn to those who
demonstrate the best ability to push back against Trump. Which is why Bernie
has been doing that since the election.
No, I disagree. Bernie does not push back against Trump. No identity
politics, no focus on personalities. Bernie pushes back against
wrong-headed policies. Bernie wants policies that benefit the majority.
Let's pray our new president does some good that most of us do not
expect. I hope he is more unpredictable than that. I may be wrong but I
can hope.
Sounds like the Alternet crowd is up to its sheepdogging tactics again.
Let's corral young energy and co-opt it for the Democrats. Co-opting is what
I call "Skunking" because it sure stinks up the joint.
I'm with the majority here in finding this sad that these "organizers"
have decided to go all negative. They are "going to hold him [Trump]
accountable and delegitimize literally everything he is doing and not let
him succeed." Well, how has that worked out so far.
New thinking and new solutions ae called for, not the same old feel good
"protests" and voter drives that professional organizers love to do. If they
had done any real introspection they would have come up with ways of forming
new coalitions; and also realize the need to keep Schumer and Pelosi as
accountable as Trump. But these are still party operatives in younger
sheep's clothing. Many are poli sci majors who want to be in politics in
Washington as a vocation. See, they are the wise "behind the scenes" people
that will guide the "activists" . Ugh. Same old; Same old story.
And this smells of the same DLC Clinton gang since they are calling Trump's
victory and presidency illegitimate. Again, they don't want to delve into
why she lost. They wants jobs in D.C. And spend their energy "resisting"
rather than coming up with anything remotely interesting. This is not
Occupy. And I doubt they will embrace young Anarchists.
Wonderful shakeout by Cohn: Trump won by
trading places with
Obama
. O appealed to less educated whites as their protector
against the Wall Street candidate (47% time) Romney. (Crackpot) Trump
appealed to them with same promise versus Wall Street candidate (true
enough) Hill.
Upshot: Dems only have to get busy rebuilding labor union density at the
state by progressive state level (or not so progressive; but be seen trying
hard). Repubs will have no where to hide: once and for all political
checkmate.
We are only asking state legislatures to make possible joining a union if
you want to - without running an impassable gauntlet - no complicated policy
issues at all.
Totally unpromising that they start with the calamitous premise of the
whole Sanders campaign: "a campaign where Bernie specifically said, 'Do not
attack the other person." Sanders knew he could run a campaign that would
destroy the Clinton, a proven loser on the merits, and thereby make it
possible to defeat any of the GOP's dumpster of deplorables, especially the
Trumpe-l'oeil. But that would involve a political break with the whole
record of the Obama administration in both domestic and foreign policy. So
instead Sanders wound up saying the falsest single thing anyone said in the
whole campaign–"nobody cares about those damn e-mails."
Youth may wish to have their bragging rights for their old age, but Trump
has proven that power lies with the voters, who will be driven away to the
likes of Reagan by this posturing.
Ahmed has not learned all the lessons of the 1960s.
We-The-Ppl rejected Gold Sacks's "shitty deal" Hillary, foisted on us by
the Dems whose elites "assassinated" the best candidate since JFK; Repubs
rejected "fool me again" Jeb in the Primary. Nasty Trump was put there to
shoo-in Hill, but it backfired. Democracy? all gone. The Wild West is back.
We need both "away from" and "toward" bullet points. The "away
from" will naturally target Trump's onerous policies and will generate
lots of energy. The "toward" bullet points will also "target" the
"fake news" neoliberals because their support will prove to be tepid
faint praise and lots of how it can't be done. Energy wise it will be
more of a slog. They will also covertly seek to undermine progressive
change. They will be called out on their crap.
Why didn't they set up this "permanent base" when Sanders voted for the
700 billion dollar F35 or when Obama claimed the legal right to indefinitely
detain or kill anyone without judicial oversight?
"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image,
when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
I assume all of those who have so arrogantly dismissed the efforts of
these young people are all, therefore, engaged in alternative activities
that support their respective opinions of how to effect the change that is
our only salvation from neo-feudalism. Otherwise, I say put up or shut up.
Because I'm getting really sick of all the armchair quarterbacking, which
to me is no different from the way the DNC elites treat anyone who isn't a
member of their club. If people who object to the goals and/or methods of
the District 13 House group have useful suggestions to make, why haven't
they engaged in working to bring those suggestions to fruition. It's also
precisely the kind of ivory-tower critique that has brought us to this pass,
so do keep in mind that when pointing out the sins of others, one has three
other fingers pointing in the opposite direction.
Natural skeptic/cynic at this point I go back to to Bernie's first
statement after the election:
"Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that
is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the
establishment media. People are tired of working longer hours for lower
wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage
countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not
being able to afford a college education for their kids – all while the very
rich become much richer.
"To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that
improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other
progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues
racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously
oppose him."
Now taken in that light, do we need a generic "anti-Trump" resistance
house to "stick out like a sore thumb"?
Or do we need something that speaks to the deeper issues around which
non-squillionaire people can unite?
I concur with those who posted above on sticking to the issues. If you
stick to the issues, the face of the opposition (from within and without)
doesn't matter. It's about getting people to realize that agents of the
establishment on BOTH sides (Dem & Repub) of all various
identarian
flavors have betrayed us all.
Now granted, there's plenty of swamp left undrained to warrant being all
up the new administration's grill like freckles. But please, let's get the
focus where it should be – on what's being done and undone. Focusing on
"Trump" is a non-starter.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah and FestivusForTheRestOfUs to everyone!
Ellison is a dud, Bernie tweets support for Schumer "there's nobody I know better prepared
and more capable of leading our caucus than Chuck Schumer"!
Well there's a good chunder maker in that statement eh? Hope dashed!
There are no doubt many who are better informed, more progressive and principled, more remote
from Wall Street and oligarchic capture than Chuck Schumer and Ellison. So there you have it –
this is reform in the Democrats after a crushing defeat.
Vale democrats, and now the journey becomes arduous with these voices to smother hope. A new
party is urgently needed (I know how difficult that is) and these voices of the old machine need
to be ignored for the sake of sanity.
"... The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and disable
their dominance. ..."
"... It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the neoliberal
turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution of income
between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments. In Europe,
the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. ..."
"... When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features of
his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading money
center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New York Federal
Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury in the Obama Administration,
but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. The crisis served
to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political
power entirely into their hands as well. Simon Johnson called it a coup. ..."
"... Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980 drove
both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. ..."
"... It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences
were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified
this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for
economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that just happened,
in a meteorological economics. ..."
"... This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could aid
the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting constraints.
..."
"... No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and draw
attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization
of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes the political
problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational clarity or
coherence. ..."
"... If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power,
Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional
critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected,
Obama isn't really trying. ..."
"... Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because
it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. ..."
At the center of Great Depression politics was a political struggle over the distribution of
income, a struggle that was only decisively resolved during the War, by the Great Compression.
It was at center of farm policy where policymakers struggled to find ways to support farm incomes.
It was at the center of industrial relations politics, where rapidly expanding unions were seeking
higher industrial wages. It was at the center of banking policy, where predatory financial practices
were under attack. It was at the center of efforts to regulate electric utility rates and establish
public power projects. And, everywhere, the clear subtext was a struggle between rich and poor,
the economic royalists as FDR once called them and everyone else.
FDR, an unmistakeable patrician in manner and pedigree, was leading a not-quite-revolutionary
politics, which was nevertheless hostile to and suspicious of business elites, as a source of
economic pathology. The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek
to side-step and disable their dominance.
It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the
neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution
of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments.
In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle.
In retrospect, though the New Deal did use direct employment as a means of relief to good effect
economically and politically, it never undertook anything like a Keynesian stimulus on a Keynesian
scale - at least until the War.
Where the New Deal witnessed the institution of an elaborate system of financial repression,
accomplished in large part by imposing on the financial sector an explicitly mandated structure,
with types of firms and effective limits on firm size and scope, a series of regulatory reforms
and financial crises beginning with Carter and Reagan served to wipe this structure away.
When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features
of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading
money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New
York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury
in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan
Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five
banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well. Simon
Johnson called it a coup.
I don't know what considerations guided Obama in choosing the size of the stimulus or its composition
(as spending and tax cuts). Larry Summers was identified at the time as a voice of caution, not
"gambling", but not much is known about his detailed reasoning in severely trimming Christina
Romer's entirely conventional calculations. (One consideration might well have been worldwide
resource shortages, which had made themselves felt in 2007-8 as an inflationary spike in commodity
prices.) I do not see a case for connecting stimulus size policy to the health care reform. At
the time the stimulus was proposed, the Administration had also been considering whether various
big banks and other financial institutions should be nationalized, forced to insolvency or otherwise
restructured as part of a regulatory reform.
Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980
drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. Accelerating
the financialization of the economy from 1999 on made New York and Washington rich, but the same
economic policies and process were devastating the Rust Belt as de-industrialization. They were
two aspects of the same complex of economic trends and policies. The rise of China as a manufacturing
center was, in critical respects, a financial operation within the context of globalized trade
that made investment in new manufacturing plant in China, as part of globalized supply chains
and global brand management, (arguably artificially) low-risk and high-profit, while reinvestment
in manufacturing in the American mid-west became unattractive, except as a game of extracting
tax subsidies or ripping off workers.
It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences
were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified
this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility
for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that
just happened, in a meteorological economics.
It is conceding too many good intentions to the Obama Administration to tie an inadequate stimulus
to a Rube Goldberg health care reform as the origin story for the final debacle of Democratic
neoliberal politics. There was a delicate balancing act going on, but they were not balancing
the recovery of the economy in general so much as they were balancing the recovery from insolvency
of a highly inefficient and arguably predatory financial sector, which was also not incidentally
financing the institutional core of the Democratic Party and staffing many key positions in the
Administration and in the regulatory apparatus.
This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could
aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting
constraints.
No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and
draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization
of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes
the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational
clarity or coherence.
The short version of my thinking on the Obama stimulus is this: Keynesian stimulus spending is
a free lunch; it doesn't really matter what you spend money on up to a very generous point, so
it seems ready-made for legislative log-rolling. If Obama could not get a very big stimulus
indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen
spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again,
if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really
trying.
Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism,
because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.
Great comment. Simply great. Hat tip to the author !
Notable quotes:
"… The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and
disable their dominance. …"
"… It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the
neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution
of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist
commitments. In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. …"
"… When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features
of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading
money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the
New York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury
in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan
Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top
five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well.
Simon Johnson called it a coup. … "
"… Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980
drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. …"
"… It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences
were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified
this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility
for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces"
that just happened, in a meteorological economics. …"
"… This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could
aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting
constraints. …"
"… No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and
draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization
of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes
the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational
clarity or coherence. …"
"… If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of
power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular
and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic
Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying. …"
"… Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism,
because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.
…"
"... I can recall tales of insecure Eastern European Jewish immigrants pretending to be WASPS. ..."
"... To be blunt, Barack Obama was less "a president" than a talented actor playing at being presidential. ..."
"... Those of us who have encountered this deception are usually aware of its tell-tale signs, though, to be fair, it may have been diligently practiced for so long that it has become a "real" element of the perpetrator's core personality. For those unfamiliar with this deception, let me now offer a brief catalogue of these tactics. ..."
"... Central is the careful management of outward physical appearances. In theatrical terms, these are props and depending on circumstances, this might be a finely tailored suit, wingtip shoes, a crisp white shirt, a smart silk tie and all the rest that announce business-like competence. ..."
"... Mastering "white" language is equally critical and in the academy this includes everything from tossing around trendy terms, for example, "paradigmatic," to displaying what appears to be a mastering of disciplinary jargon. Recall how the Black Panthers seduced gullible whites with just a sprinkling of Marxist terminology. ..."
"... I recall one (white) colleague who gave a little speech praising a deeply flawed dissertation written by a black assistant professor up for tenure. He told the assembled committee that her dissertation reminded him of Newton's Principia Mathematica (can't make that stuff up). ..."
"... Obama as President repeatedly exhibits these characteristics. It is thus hardly accidental that he relies extensively on canned Teleprompter speeches. According to one compilation published in January 2013, Obama has used Teleprompters in 699 speeches during his first term in office. There is also his aversion to informal off-the-cuff discussions with the press and open mike who-knows-what-will-happen "Town Hall" meetings. Obama is also the first president I've ever seen who often favors a casual blue jacket monogrammed "President of the United States." ..."
"... I suspect that deep down Obama recognizes that almost everything is an act not unlike Eddy Murphy playing Professor Sherman Klump in The Nutty Professor . It is no wonder, then, that his academic records (particularly his SAT scores) are sealed and, perhaps even more important, many of his fellow college students and colleagues at the University of Chicago where he briefly taught constitutional law cannot recall him. It is hard to imagine Obama relishing the prospect of going head-to-head with his sharp-witted Chicago colleagues. ..."
"... As a mulatto raised by white grandparents in Hawaii, Obama is not a black American, with no cultural ties to black Americans and slavery, yet he later learned to throw out a black accent to fool the fools. As Stephen Colbert once observed, white Americans love Obama because he was raised the right way, by white people. That was intended as humor, but ..."
"... Obama has leased an ultra-expensive house in an exclusive neighborhood in DC just like the corrupt Bill Clinton prior to his multi-million dollar speaking and influence peddling efforts. Obama will not return to Chicago to help poor blacks, like Jimmy Carter did elsewhere after he left office. Obama doesn't need an Oscar, he got a Nobel Peace Prize for the same act. ..."
"... Congratulations on noticing what it takes to be a successful politician in ANY "Western" democracy. It doesn't matter if you are black, white, aquamarine or candy-striped, or whether you are a college professor, an "economist", or a "businessman". It's all bluff and acting. ..."
"... The single most critical element of a successful con is not the hucksters appearance, or mannerisms, or even the spiel, it is simply making the con something that the sucker wants to believe. ..."
"... I recognized Obama's type not from academia, but from corporate America. He was the token black higher up. He's smart enough not to obviously do something requiring termination (get drunk and harass a colleague at an office party, shred important document, etc.), and his mistakes can be blamed on team failures, so he gets "black guy's tenure"-a middle or upper management position after only a few years. ..."
"... This critique applies to almost every Presidential candidate, regardless of ethnicity. ..."
"... The most successful recent President was a former professional actor and thus well suited for the position. The latest President-elect is also a savvy media figure, and yet mocked for his obvious lack of intellectual heft. But in his case, he's not acting, it's reality TV. ..."
"... PS. Maybe some Jews around Trump are beginning to feel that China is the real danger to US power in the long run. So, what US should really do is patch things up with Russia for the time being, drive a wedge between China and Russia, and use Russia against China and then go after Russia. ..."
"... Really! Go after Russia? And how would you do that and why? What would "going after Russia" look like? What about the "horrific Rape of Russia" you spoke of? China and Russia have business to conduct, they're quite through with us, our dollar and our Fed. We'll be lucky if they allow us a piece of the action. Instead of Russia>China>Russia machinations, we might want to figure out strategies for doing some other business than patronizing our arms manufacturers. Hey, cap Jewish influence in the courts and business if you wish, but keeping the U.S. in an endless state of war, economic and otherwise is zero sum and worse for the little people. ..."
"... I've called him that for years. And Dubya was possibly our first "legacy" president: chosen entirely based on whom he's related to not on any individual qualities that would suit him for such a high office. Had Dubya been raised by regular people, he would have probably ended up as a hardware store manager. ..."
"... Amen to all. The whole deal is a fraud. All successful politicians are imposters, people who've mastered the art of deception. I'd go even further and say that the majority of "authority figures" are probably parasites and frauds to one degree or another. ..."
"... Overall, the current president has been a deception, a trivial self-absorbed person whose main concern has been himself turned outward onto issues of race and sexual orientation ..."
"... American politics at this level is fake. Everything is orchestrated, attire is handpicked, speeches are written by professionals and read off the teleprompter, questions from the public are actually from plants and rehearsed prior, armies of PR people are at work everywhere, journalists are just flunky propagandists, ..."
"... He will be the subject of future dissertations about the failure of the American political process and the influence of media and third parties like Soros. ..."
As the troubled Obama presidency winds down, the inevitable question is why so many people, including
a few smart ones were so easily fooled. How did a man with such a fine pedigree-Columbia, Harvard-who
sounded so brilliant pursue such political capital wasting and foolish policies as forcing schools
to discipline students by racial quotas? Or obsessing over allowing the transgendered to choose any
bathroom? And, of the utmost importance, how can we prevent another Obama?
I'll begin simply: Obama is an imposter, a man who has mastered the art of deception as a skilled
actor deceives an audience though in the case of Obama, most of the audience refused to accept that
this was all play-acting. Even after almost eight years of ineptitude, millions still want to believe
that he's the genuine article-an authentically super-bright guy able to fix a flawed America. Far
more is involved than awarding blacks the intellectual equivalent of diplomatic immunity.
When Obama first appeared on the political scene I immediately recognized him as an example of
the "successful" black academic who rapidly advances up the university ladder despite minimal accomplishment.
Tellingly, when I noted the paucity of accomplishment of these black academic over-achievers to trusted
professorial colleagues, they agreed with my analysis adding that they themselves had seen several
instances of this phenomenon, but admittedly failed to connect the dots.
Here's the academic version of an Obama. You encounter this black student who appears a liberal's
affirmative action dream come true -- exceptionally articulate with no trace of a ghetto accent, well-dressed,
personable (no angry "tude"), and at least superficially sufficient brain power to succeed even in
demanding subjects. Matters begin splendidly, but not for long. Almost invariably, his or her performance
on the first test or paper falls far below expectations. A research paper, for example was only "C"
work (though you generously awarded it a "B") and to make matters worse, it exhibited a convoluted
writing style, a disregard for logic, ineptly constructed references and similar defects. Nevertheless,
you accepted the usual litany of student excuses -- his claim of over-commitment, the material was unfamiliar,
and this was his first research paper and so on. A reprieve was granted.
But the unease grows stronger with the second exam or paper, often despite your helpful advice
on how to do better. Reality grows depressing -- what you see is not what you get and lacks any reasonable
feel-good explanation. The outwardly accomplished black student is not an Asian struggling with English
or a clear-cut affirmation action admittee in over his head. That this student may have actually
studied diligently and followed your advice only exacerbates the discomfort.
To repeat, the way to make sense out this troubling situation is to think of this disappointing
black student as a talented actor who has mastered the role of "smart college student." He has the
gift of mimicry, conceivably a talent rooted in evolutionary development among a people who often
had to survive by their wits (adaptive behavior captured by the phrase "acting white" or "passing").
This gift is hardly limited to blacks. I can recall tales of insecure Eastern European Jewish immigrants
pretending to be WASPS.
But what if the observer was unaware of it being only a theatrical performance and took the competence
at face value? Disaster. Russell Crowe as the Nobel Prize winning John Nash in A
Beautiful Mind
might give a stunning performance as a brilliant economist, but he would not last a minute
if he tried to pass himself off as the real thing at a Princeton economic department seminar.
To be blunt, Barack Obama was less "a president" than a talented actor playing at being presidential.
Those of us who have encountered this deception are usually aware of its tell-tale signs,
though, to be fair, it may have been diligently practiced for so long that it has become a "real"
element of the perpetrator's core personality. For those unfamiliar with this deception, let me now
offer a brief catalogue of these tactics.
Central is the careful management of outward physical appearances. In theatrical terms, these
are props and depending on circumstances, this might be a finely tailored suit, wingtip shoes, a
crisp white shirt, a smart silk tie and all the rest that announce business-like competence.
Future college or foundation president here we come (Obama has clearly mastered this sartorial ploy).
But for those seeking an appointment as a professor, this camouflage must be more casual but, whatever
the choice, there cannot be any hint of "ghetto" style, i.e., no flashy jewelry, gold chains, purple
"pimpish" suits, or anything else that even slightly hints of what blacks might consider authentic
black attire.
Mastering "white" language is equally critical and in the academy this includes everything
from tossing around trendy terms, for example, "paradigmatic," to displaying what appears to be a
mastering of disciplinary jargon. Recall how the Black Panthers seduced gullible whites with just
a sprinkling of Marxist terminology. Precisely citing a few obscure court cases or administrative
directives can also do the trick. Further add certain verbal styles common among professors or peppering
a presentation with correctly pronounced non-English words. I recall a talk by one black professor
from the University of Chicago who wowed my colleagues by just using-and correctly so-a few Yiddish
expressions.
Ironically, self-defined conservatives are especially vulnerable to these well-crafted performances.
No doubt, like all good thinking liberals, they desperately want to believe that blacks are just
as talented as whites so an Obama-like figure is merely the first installment of coming racial equality.
The arrival of this long-awaited black also provides a great opportunity to demonstrate that being
"conservative" does not certify one as a racist. Alas, this can be embarrassing and comical if over-done.
I recall one (white) colleague who gave a little speech praising a deeply flawed dissertation
written by a black assistant professor up for tenure. He told the assembled committee that her dissertation
reminded him of Newton's Principia Mathematica (can't make that stuff up).
Alas, the deception usually unravels when the imposter confronts a complicated unstructured situation
lacking a well-defined script, hardly surprising given the IQ test data indicate that blacks usually
perform better on items reflecting social norms, less well on abstract, highly "g" loaded items.
In academic job presentations, for example, a job candidate's intellectual limits often become apparent
during the Q and A when pressed to wrestle with technical or logical abstractions that go beyond
the initial well-rehearsed talk. Picture a job candidate who just finished reading a paper being
asked whether the argument is falsifiable or how causality might be established? These can be killer
questions that require ample quick footed intellectual dexterity and often bring an awkward silence
as the candidate struggles to think on his feet (these responses may rightly be judged far more important
than what is read from a paper). I recall one genuinely bewildered black job candidate who explained
a complicated measurement choice with "my Ph.D. advisor, a past president of the American Political
Science Association told me to do it this way."
Obama as President repeatedly exhibits these characteristics. It is thus hardly accidental
that he relies extensively on canned Teleprompter speeches. According to
one compilation published in January 2013, Obama has used Teleprompters in 699 speeches during
his first term in office. There is also his aversion to informal off-the-cuff discussions with the
press and open mike who-knows-what-will-happen "Town Hall" meetings. Obama is also the first president
I've ever seen who often favors a casual blue jacket monogrammed "President of the United States."
Perhaps the best illustration of these confused, often rambling moments occurs when he offers
impromptu commentary on highly charged, fast-breaking race-related incidents such as the Louis Henry
Gates
dustup
in Cambridge , Mass ("the police acted stupidly") and the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown shootings.
You could see his pained look as he struggles with being a "good race man" while simultaneously struggling
to sort out murky legal issues. This is not the usual instances of politicians speaking evasively
to avoid controversy; he was genuinely befuddled.
Similar signs of confused thinking can also be seen in other spontaneous remarks, the most famous
example might be his comment about those Americans clinging to their guns and Bibles. What was he
thinking? Did he forget that both gun and Bible ownership are constitutionally protected and the
word "cling" in this context suggests mental illness? Woes to some impertinent reporter who challenged
the President to clarify his oft-repeated "the wrong side of history" quip or explain the precise
meaning of, "That's not who were are"? "Mr. President, can you enlighten us on how you know you are
on the Right Side of History"?
I suspect that deep down Obama recognizes that almost everything is an act not unlike Eddy Murphy
playing Professor Sherman Klump in The Nutty
Professor . It is no wonder, then, that his academic records (particularly his SAT scores)
are sealed and, perhaps even more important, many of his fellow college students and colleagues at
the University of Chicago where he briefly taught constitutional law cannot recall him. It is hard
to imagine Obama relishing the prospect of going head-to-head with his sharp-witted Chicago colleagues.
Further add his lack of a publication in the Harvard Law Review, a perk as the President
of the Law Review (not Editor) and the credible
evidence that his two autobiographies where ghost written after their initial rejection as unsuitable
for publication. All and all, a picture emerges of an individual who knows he must fake it to convince
others of his intellectual talents, and like a skilled actor he has spent years studying the role
of "President." President Obama deserves an Academy award (which, of course would also be a step
toward diversity, to boot) for his efforts.
Carlton Meyer says: • Website
November 16, 2016 at 5:31 am GMT • 300 Words
This is why I often referred to Obama as a "Pentagon spokesman." Did you know his proposed
military budgets each year were on average higher than Bush or Reagan? People forget that is
first objective as President was to close our torture camp in Cuba. He could have issued an
Executive Order and have it closed in one day. DOJ aircraft could fly all the inmates away within
two hours before any court could challenge that, if they dared. It remains open.
Yet when Congress refused to act to open borders wider, he issued an Executive Order to grant
residency to five million illegals. And under Soros direction, he sent DoJ attack dogs after any
state or city that questioned the right of men who want to use a ladies room.
As a mulatto raised by white grandparents in Hawaii, Obama is not a black American, with no
cultural ties to black Americans and slavery, yet he later learned to throw out a black accent to
fool the fools. As Stephen Colbert once observed, white Americans love Obama because he was
raised the right way, by white people. That was intended as humor, but
Obama has leased an ultra-expensive house in an exclusive neighborhood in DC just like the
corrupt Bill Clinton prior to his multi-million dollar speaking and influence peddling efforts.
Obama will not return to Chicago to help poor blacks, like Jimmy Carter did elsewhere after he
left office. Obama doesn't need an Oscar, he got a Nobel Peace Prize for the same act.
3.anon says:
November 16, 2016 at 5:34 am GMT • 100 Words
What to make of the Michael Eric Dysons and the Cornell Wests of the world ?? How do they rise up the ranks of academia , become darlings of talk shows and news panels , all
the while dressed and speaking ghetto with zero talent or interest in appearing white . And zero
academic competency ??
6.CCZ, November 16, 2016 at 6:08 am GMT
Our first affirmative action President? I have yet to hear that exact description, even in a
nation with 60 million deplorable "racist" voters.
8.Tom Welsh, November 16, 2016 at 7:00 am GMT • 100 Words
Congratulations on noticing what it takes to be a successful politician in ANY "Western"
democracy. It doesn't matter if you are black, white, aquamarine or candy-striped, or whether you
are a college professor, an "economist", or a "businessman". It's all bluff and acting.
Why does anyone still find this surprising?
11.Alfa158, November 16, 2016 at 7:56 am GMT • 100 Words
The single most critical element of a successful con is not the hucksters appearance, or
mannerisms, or even the spiel, it is simply making the con something that the sucker wants to
believe. White people were desperate for a Magic Negro and they got one. Black people ended up
suffering from deteriorating economics and exploding intramural murder rates.
12.whorefinder, November 16, 2016 at 8:02 am GMT • 300 Words
Strikes a chord with me, and with Clint Eastwood (recall the 2012 RNC, where Eastwood mocked
Obama as an "empty chair").
I recognized Obama's type not from academia, but from corporate America. He was the token black
higher up. He's smart enough not to obviously do something requiring termination (get drunk and
harass a colleague at an office party, shred important document, etc.), and his mistakes can be
blamed on team failures, so he gets "black guy's tenure"-a middle or upper management position
after only a few years.
He then makes sure he shows up every weekday at 9am, but he's out the door at 5pm-and no weekends
for him. He's there for "diversity" drives and is prominently featured on the company brochures,
and might even be given an award or honorary title every few years to cover him, but he never
brings in clients or moves business positively in anyway. But he's quick to take the boss up on
the golfing trips. In short, he's realized he's there to be the black corporate shield, and
that's all he does. He's a lazy token and fine with being lazy.
It's why Obama had little problem letting Pelosi/Reid/Bill Clinton do all the heavy lifting on
Obamacare–not only was Obama out of his depth, he was just plain ol' fine with being out of his
depth, because someone else would do it for him. So he went golfing instead.
This is also why that White House press conference where Bill Clinton took over for him halfway
speaks volumes. Obama literally had no problem simply walking away from his presidential duties
to go party-because someone else would do it for him, as they always had.
It's also why he seems so annoyed when asked about the race rioting going on as a result of his
administration's actions. Hey, why do you think I gotta do anything? I just show up and people
tell me I did a great job!
13.Ramona, November 16, 2016 at 8:04 am GMT
It's been said for years that Obama amounts to no more than a dignified talk show host. The
observation has merit. Oscar-wise, though, only for ironic value.
15.Realist, November 16, 2016 at 9:50 am GMT • 100 Words
@Anon
"I think Obama is pretty smart if not genius. His mother was no dummy, and his father seems to
have been pretty bright too, and there are smart blacks."
Ann Dunham had a PhD in anthropology from a run of the mill university where she literally
studied women textile weaving in third world countries. Pure genius .right.
16.Fran Macadam, November 16, 2016 at 9:54 am GMT • 100 Words
This critique applies to almost every Presidential candidate, regardless of ethnicity. So few of
them have been other than those playing a role assigned by their donors. The most successful
recent President was a former professional actor and thus well suited for the position. The
latest President-elect is also a savvy media figure, and yet mocked for his obvious lack of
intellectual heft. But in his case, he's not acting, it's reality TV.
17.Jim Christian says:
November 16, 2016 at 9:59 am GMT • 200 Words @Anon
PS. Maybe some Jews around Trump are beginning to feel that China is the real danger to US power
in the long run. So, what US should really do is patch things up with Russia for the time being,
drive a wedge between China and Russia, and use Russia against China and then go after Russia.
Really! Go after Russia? And how would you do that and why? What would "going after Russia" look
like? What about the "horrific Rape of Russia" you spoke of? China and Russia have business to
conduct, they're quite through with us, our dollar and our Fed. We'll be lucky if they allow us a
piece of the action. Instead of Russia>China>Russia machinations, we might want to figure out
strategies for doing some other business than patronizing our arms manufacturers. Hey, cap Jewish
influence in the courts and business if you wish, but keeping the U.S. in an endless state of
war, economic and otherwise is zero sum and worse for the little people.
20.timalex, November 16, 2016 at 11:58 am GMT
Americans voted for and elected Obama because it made them feel virtuous in their mind and in the
eyes of the world. Obama has always been a psychopath. Psychopaths are good at lying and hiding things,even when
Presidents.
21.The Alarmist , November 16, 2016 at 12:03 pm GMT
So, you're saying he was an affirmative action hire.
22.Anon, November 16, 2016 at 12:28 pm GMT
Yeah and every white person in a position of power and privilege is "authentically intelligent".
America is a society run by and for phonies.
23.War for Blair Mountain, November 16, 2016 at 12:32 pm GMT • 100 Words
Barack Obama is a creation of the Cold War. His father was imported into the US through an
anti-commie Cold War foreign student program for young Africans. Barack Obama's nonwhite Democratic Party Voting Bloc would not exist if the 1965 Immigration
Reform Act had not been passed. The 1965 Immigration Reform Act was another creation of the
anti-commie Cold War Crusade.
The anti-commie Cold War Crusade has been a Death sentence for The Historic Native Born White
American Majority.
It is now time to rethink the Cold War .very long overdue..
24.AndrewR, November 16, 2016 at 12:55 pm GMT • 100 Words
@CCZ
I've called him that for years. And Dubya was possibly our first "legacy" president: chosen entirely based on whom he's related
to not on any individual qualities that would suit him for such a high office. Had Dubya been raised by regular people, he would have probably ended up as a hardware store
manager.
25.Rehmat, November 16, 2016 at 1:36 pm GMT • 100 Words
I think after wining Nobel Peace Award without achieving peace anywhere in the world – Obama
deserve Oscar more than Nobel Prize for equating Holocaust as a religion with Christianity and
Islam in his speech at the UNGA in September 2012.
Oscar has a long tradition to award top slot for every Holocaust movie produced so far.
"There's no business like Shoah business," says YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, established
by Max Weinreich in Lithuania in 1925.
More than 70 movies and documentary on Jewish Holocaust have been produced so far to keep
Whiteman's guild alive. Holocaust Industry's main purpose is to suck trillions of dollars and
moral support for the Zionist entity. Since 1959 movie, The Diary of Anne Frank, 22 Holocaust
movies have won at least one Oscar ..
27.jacques sheete says: November 16, 2016 at 2:20 pm GMT • 200 Words
@Tom Welsh
Amen to all. The whole deal is a fraud. All successful politicians are imposters, people who've mastered the
art of deception. I'd go even further and say that the majority of "authority figures" are probably parasites and
frauds to one degree or another.
I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it
exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is
balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful,
extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to
laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that
rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is
necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself – that civilization, at bottom, is
nothing but a colossal swindle.
- H. L. Mencken, Last Words (1926)
28.anonymous, November 16, 2016 at 2:34 pm GMT • 200 Words
The bar was set ridiculously low by his predecessor the village idiot Bush who could barely
put together a coherent sentence. After eight years of disaster people were hoping for
something different. Having a deranged person like McCain as his opposition certainly helped.
What choice did the American people have?
He received a Nobel Peace prize for absolutely nothing although I admit his reluctance to
barge into Syria was quite welcome. How many wars would we be in had the war-crazed McCain
gotten into office?
Overall, the current president has been a deception, a trivial self-absorbed person
whose main concern has been himself turned outward onto issues of race and sexual orientation.
American politics at this level is fake. Everything is orchestrated, attire is
handpicked, speeches are written by professionals and read off the teleprompter, questions
from the public are actually from plants and rehearsed prior, armies of PR people are at work
everywhere, journalists are just flunky propagandists, expressions of emotion are
calculated, the mass media is the property of the billionaire and corporate class and reflects
their interests, and so on down the line. The masses of Americans are just there to be managed
and milked. Look back at the history of the US: When haven't they been lying to us?
29.nsa, November 16, 2016 at 2:44 pm GMT • 100 Words
President is a very easy job. Almost anyone could fake it even actors, peanut farmers,
mulatto community organizers, illegitimate offspring of trailer park whores, haberdashers,
developers, soldiers, irish playboys, bicycle riding dry drunks, low rent CA shysters, daft
professors.
Play lots of golf. Hot willing young pussy available for the asking. Anyone call you a
name, have them audited. Invite pals onto the gravy train. Everyone kissing your ass and
begging for favors. Media nitwits hanging on every word. Afterwards, get filthy rich making
speeches and appearances. Tough job .
30.Anonymous, November 16, 2016 at 3:03 pm GMT • 100 Words
Manchurian Candidate, or Kenyan Candidate? Whatever he may be called, our current White
House resident is a colossal joke perpetrated on the world. Whoever covered all his tracks did
a masterful task. He will be the subject of future dissertations about the failure of the
American political process and the influence of media and third parties like Soros.
32.Lorax, November 16, 2016 at 3:17 pm GMT
Obama's grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham, was a "furniture salesman," for which role he
deserved an Oscar as well. It takes real acting ability to
pull off a lifetime career in Intelligence Service:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/08/07/obama's-cia-pedigree/
34.JoeFour, November 16, 2016 at 3:56 pm GMT
@AndrewR
"Had Dubya been raised by regular people, he would have probably ended up as a hardware
store manager."
AndrewR, I know you didn't mean it, but you have just insulted all of the thousands of
hardware store managers in this country.
"... Where the Democrats went wrong CNBC. Obama: "[O]ne of the issues that Democrats have to be clear on is that given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere, we have to show up everywhere." Throwing Clinton under the bus… ..."
"... he means just showing up, telling people what they want to hear, then doing whatever the hell you want after getting elected. Not one word about actually meeting peoples needs. EFF OBAMA and the DEMOCRATIC PARTY!! ..."
"... If you didn't read this (linked yesterday), you should consider both reading and sharing far and wide. The entire system is designed to be anti-representative. ..."
"... Don't just get/stay mad, quit expecting a bunch of gangsters to function democratically. ..."
Where the Democrats went wrong CNBC. Obama: "[O]ne of the issues that Democrats have to be
clear on is that given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere,
we have to show up everywhere." Throwing Clinton under the bus…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I yelled at the radio after hearing this, because he means just showing up, telling people what
they want to hear, then doing whatever the hell you want after getting elected. Not one word about
actually meeting peoples needs. EFF OBAMA and the DEMOCRATIC PARTY!!
If you didn't
read this (linked yesterday), you should consider both reading and sharing far and wide. The
entire system is designed to be anti-representative.
Don't just get/stay mad, quit expecting a
bunch of gangsters to function democratically. Get out of their box.
"... Knowing how angry the working class has become, the deep state could not install Hillary, for that would have been a tiresome rehash of another Clinton presidency. With NAFTA, Bill launched the job offshoring that has wrecked this country, and those most affected by it, working class whites, know damn well who's responsible. The Clinton brand has become anathema to middle America. ..."
"... On the foreign front, America's belligerence will not ease up under a Trump presidency, for without a hyper kinetic military to browbeat and bomb, the world will stop lending us money. The US doesn't just wage wars to fatten the military banking complex, but to prop up the US Dollar and prevent our economy from collapsing. The empire yields tangible benefits for even the lowliest Americans. ..."
Michele
Paccione / Shutterstock.com
Universally, Trump was depicted as an anti-establishment candidate. Washington and Wall Street
hated him, and the media were deployed to vilify him endlessly. If they could not discredit Trump
enough, surely they would steal the election from him. Some even suggested Trump would be assassinated.
Acting the part, Trump charged repeatedly that the election was rigged, and he was right, of course.
During the primaries, Hillary Clinton received debate questions in advance from CNN. More seriously,
30 states used voting machines that could easily be hacked.
A leaked tape of Trump making obscene comments about groping women became further proof that the
establishment was out to get him. In spite of all this, Trump managed to win by a landslide, so what
happened?
To steal an American election, one only needs to tamper with votes in two or three critical states,
and since Hillary didn't win, we must conclude that she was never the establishment's chosen puppet.
As Trump claimed, the fix was in, all right, except that it was rigged in his favor, as born out
by the fact.
While everybody else yelped that Trump would never be allowed to win, I begged to differ. After
the Orlando false flag shooting on June 12th, 2016, I wrote:
In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will hose away all of the rot and bloody
criminality of the Bush years. He turned out to be a deft move by our ruling class. Though fools
still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of our military banking complex. Now, Trump
is being trumpeted as another political outsider.
A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as
a magnet for liberal anger. This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war abroad
while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump won't fulfill any of his election promises,
and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politics.
On September 24th, I doubled down:
Mind-fucked, most Americans can't even see that an American president's only task is to disguise
the deep state's intentions. Chosen by the deep state to explain away its crimes, our president's
pronouncements are nearly always contradicted by the deep state's actions. While the president
talks of peace, democracy, racial harmony, prosperity for Main Street and going after banksters,
etc., the deep state wages endless war, stages meaningless elections, stokes racial hatred, bankrupts
nearly all Americans and enables massive Wall Street crimes, etc.
Only the infantile will imagine the president as any kind of savior or, even more hilariously,
anti-establishment. Since the deep state won't even tolerate a renegade reporter at, say, the
San Jose Mercury News, how can you expect a deep state's enemy to land in the White House?! It
cannot happen.
A presidential candidate will promise to fix all that's wrong with our government, and this
stance, this appearance, is actually very useful for the deep state, for it gives Americans hope.
Promising everything, Obama delivered nothing. So who do you think is being primed by the deep
state to be our next false savior?
Who benefits from false flag terrorist attacks blamed on Muslims? Who gains when blacks riot?
Why is the Democratic Party propping up a deeply-despised and terminally ill war criminal? More
personable Bernie Sanders was nixed by the deep state since it had another jester in mind.
The first presidential debate is Monday. Under stress, Hillary's eyes will dart in separate
directions. Coughing nonstop for 90 minutes, her highness will hack up a gazillion unsecured emails.
Her head will jerk spasmodically, plop onto the floor and, though decapitated, continue to gush
platitudes and lies. "A Very Impressive Performance," CNBC and CNN will announce. Come November,
though, Trump will be installed because his constituency needs to be temporarily pacified. The
deep state knows that white people are pissed.
The media were out to get Trump, pundits from across the political spectrum kept repeating, but
the truth is that the media made Trump. Long before the election, Trump became a household name,
thanks to the media.
Your average American can't name any other real estate developer, casino owner or even his own
senators, but he has known Trump since forever. For more than a decade, Trump was a reality TV star,
with two of his children also featured regularly on The Apprentice. Trump's "You're fired" and his
hair became iconic. Trump appeared on talk shows, had cameo roles in movies and owned the Miss Universe
pageant. In 2011, Obama joked that Trump as president would deck out the White House in garish fashion,
with his own name huge on the façade. The suave, slick prez roasted Trump again in 2016. Trump has
constantly been in the limelight.
It's true that during the presidential campaign, Trump received mostly negative press, but this
only ramped up support among his core constituency. Joe Sixpacks had long seen the media as not just
against everything they cherished, but against them as people, so the more the media attacked Trump,
the more popular he became among the white working class.
Like politicians, casinos specialize in empty promises. Trump, then, is a master hustler, just
like Obama, and with help from the media, this New York billionaire became a darling of the flyover
states. Before his sudden transformation, Trump was certainly an insider. He donated $100,000 to
the Clinton Foundation, and Bill and Hillary attended his third wedding. Golf buddies, The Donald
and Bill were also friends with one Jeffrey Epstein, owner of the infamous Lolita Express and a sex
orgy, sex slave island in the Caribbean.
In 2002, New York Magazine published "Jeffrey Epstein: International Money of Mystery." This asskissing
piece begins, "He comes with cash to burn, a fleet of airplanes, and a keen eye for the ladies-to
say nothing of a relentless brain that challenges Nobel Prize-winning scientists across the country-and
for financial markets around the world."
Trump is quoted, "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with.
It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger
side. No doubt about it-Jeffrey enjoys his social life."
Bill Clinton shouts out, "Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist
with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science. I
especially appreciated his insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on democratization,
empowering the poor, citizen service, and combating HIV/AIDS."
Epstein gushes back, "If you were a boxer at the downtown gymnasium at 14th Street and Mike Tyson
walked in, your face would have the same look as these foreign leaders had when Clinton entered the
room. He is the world's greatest politician."
Even during a very nasty election campaign, Trump stayed clear of Clinton's association with
Epstein because he himself had been chummy with the convicted pervert. Trump also never brought up
the Clintons' drug running in Mena or the many mysterious deaths of those whose existence inconvenienced
their hold on power.
With eight years in the White House, plus stints as a senator then secretary of state, Clinton
is considered the ultimate insider. Though a novice politician, Trump is also an insider, and it's
a grand joke of the establishment that they've managed to convince Joe Sixpacks everywhere that Trump
will save them.
Knowing how angry the working class has become, the deep state could not install Hillary,
for that would have been a tiresome rehash of another Clinton presidency. With NAFTA, Bill launched
the job offshoring that has wrecked this country, and those most affected by it, working class whites,
know damn well who's responsible. The Clinton brand has become anathema to middle America.
While Clinton says America is already great, Trump promises to make America great again, but the
decline of the US will only accelerate. Our manufacturing base is handicapped because American workers
will not put up with Chinese wages, insanely long hours or living in cramped factory dormitories.
In a global economy, those who can suck it up best get the jobs.
On the foreign front, America's belligerence will not ease up under a Trump presidency, for
without a hyper kinetic military to browbeat and bomb, the world will stop lending us money. The
US doesn't just wage wars to fatten the military banking complex, but to prop up the US Dollar and
prevent our economy from collapsing. The empire yields tangible benefits for even the lowliest Americans.
With his livelihood vaporized, the poor man does not care for LGBT rights, the glass ceiling or
climate change. Supplementing his wretched income with frequent treks to the church pantry, if not
blood bank, he needs immediate relief. It's a shame he's staking his hopes on an imposter.
The deep state ushered in Trump because he's clearly their most useful decoy. As the country hopes
in vain, the crooked men behind the curtain will go on with business as usual. Trump is simply an
Obama for a different demographic. Nothing will change for the better.
Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel,
Love Like Hate
. He's tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog,
Postcards from the End of America
.
In his first post-election
interview , Bernie Sanders
has declared to
should-be-disgraced Wolf Blitzer that Trump seeking to indict Hillary Clinton for her crimes
would be "an outrage beyond belief".
When asked if President Obama should pardon Hillary Clinton, Sanders seems almost confused as
to why a pardon would even be needed.
Blitzer notes that Ford pardoned Nixon before he could be charged, to which Bernie seemed again
incredulous as to the comparison was even being made.
He goes on to state:
That a winning candidate would try to imprison the losing candidate – that's what dictatorships
are about, that's what authoritarian countries are about. You do not imprison somebody you ran
against because you have differences of opinion. The vast majority of the American people would
find it unacceptable to even think about those things.
Either Senator Sanders is a drooling idiot, or he is being willfully obtuse.
No one wants to imprison Hillary Clinton because of her opinion. They want to imprison Hillary Clinton because she has committed criminal actions that any other
person lacking millions of dollars and hundreds of upper-echelon contacts would be imprisoned for.
Apparently, according to progressive hero Bernie Sanders, holding the elites to the same level
of justice as the peons is undemocratic, authoritarian, and perhaps even dictatorial!
Enough with the damn emails?
Enough with any hope that the Democrats have retained a minute shred of credibility.
The Democrats did a fine job of stomping out any enthusiasm by sabotaging
Bernie Sanders.
The DNC became a wholly owned subsidiary of Clinton Family Inc. starting
in about 2008. Control the rulemakers/money flow, and you can control who
the nominee is. At least that is the conventional thinking, and Clinton Inc.
is nothing if not conventional.
To buy the DNC, she chose to go to the Wall Street banksters, and others.
Essentially an "up front" bribe. No smoking gun needed to be created. They
knew what they were paying for, without it being said.
(I'm curious to see how many "donations" the Clinton Foundation receives,
now that she's been pushed out on an ice floe.)
They never anticipated a challenger who didn't need the DNC, or it's
cash.
They ignored the stats showing how many people wouldn't vote for Hillary
Clinton under any circumstance. Just call them racist/sexist/dumbazz hicks,
and call them "deplorables". Ask Mitt Romney how that worked out for him.
She lost an election to DONALD TRUMP. Even without the airwaves filled
with Republican attack ads. (Lack of RNC enthusiasm for Trump? Or a
recognition that Hillary's negatives couldn't be covered in a 30 second
commercial?).
If it wasn't for the Clinton's collective ego, and lust for power/money
(after all, we all now that in the current state of affairs, the moneyed
class drives policy), we'd all (well, all of us who don't live in the
rarefied air of the 1%ers/Banksters) be celebrating the upcoming
inauguration of President Sanders.
According to a new Wikileaks email, Bernie Sanders was just a Manchurian candidate and a
Clinton puppet all along. We finally have confirmation of what we have suspected since Bernie
said "people are sick of hearing about your damn emails" all the way back in 2015 during one
debate. That was a big give-away and a huge red flag which many have raised back then but now we
finally have irrefutable proof that Bernie Sanders was just a SCAM candidate and a con artist.
Sanders had non-aggression pact with Clinton who had "leverage" to enforce it Robby Mook
("re47") email reveals https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/47397#efmAAAAB2 …
Robert.
@robbiemakestees · Nov 4
@wikileaks the plot thickens. He basically handed her this nomination. What did he honestly
think was gonna happen?
"... WikiLeaks series on deals involving Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. Mr Podesta is a long-term associate of
the Clintons and was President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff from 1998 until 2001. Mr Podesta also owns the Podesta Group with his brother
Tony, a major lobbying firm and is the Chair of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington DC-based think tank. ..."
"... if President Obama signs this terrible legislation that blatantly validates Bernie's entire campaign message about Wall Street
running our government, this will give Bernie a huge boost and 10,000 -20,000 outraged citizens (who WILL turn up because they will
be so angry at the President for preemption vt) will be marching on the Mall with Bernie as their keynote speaker. " ..."
"... But Hirshberg does not stop here. In order to persuade Podesta about the seriousness of the matter, he claims that " It will
be terrible to hand Sanders this advantage at such a fragile time when we really need to save our $$$ for the Trump fight. " ..."
WikiLeaks series on deals involving Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. Mr Podesta is a long-term associate of the
Clintons and was President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff from 1998 until 2001. Mr Podesta also owns the Podesta Group with his brother
Tony, a major lobbying firm and is the Chair of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington DC-based think tank.
Hirshberg writes to a familiar person, as he was mentioned at the time as a possible 2008 Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate,
requesting Obama should not pass the Roberts bill because " if President Obama signs this terrible legislation that blatantly
validates Bernie's entire campaign message about Wall Street running our government, this will give Bernie a huge boost and 10,000
-20,000 outraged citizens (who WILL turn up because they will be so angry at the President for preemption vt) will be marching on
the Mall with Bernie as their keynote speaker. "
But Hirshberg does not stop here. In order to persuade Podesta about the seriousness of the matter, he claims that " It will
be terrible to hand Sanders this advantage at such a fragile time when we really need to save our $$$ for the Trump fight. "
SharkBit
Oct 14, 2016 9:20 AM
To all Sanders supporters. Your hero sold out to the devil. Your party is
corrupt to the core. If you care about America, voting Trump is the only way out
of this Shit Show. Otherwise, we all die as that corrupt bitch of your party is
crazy enough to take the USA into WWIII. You may not like Trump but he is nothing
compared to the Clinton Crime Family and all its globalist tenacles.
"... I have never before seen the press take sides like they did this year, openly and even gleefully bad-mouthing candidates who did not meet with their approval. ..."
"... This shocked me when I first noticed it. It felt like the news stories went out of their way to mock Sanders or to twist his words, while the op-ed pages, which of course don't pretend to be balanced, seemed to be of one voice in denouncing my candidate. ..."
"... I propose that we look into this matter methodically, and that we do so by examining Sanders-related opinion columns in a single publication: the Washington Post, ..."
"... its practitioners have never aimed to be nonpartisan. They do not, therefore, show media bias in the traditional sense. But maybe the traditional definition needs to be updated. We live in an era of reflexive opinionating and quasi opinionating, and we derive much of our information about the world from websites that have themselves blurred the distinction between reporting and commentary, or obliterated it completely. ..."
Neoliberal press serves its neoliberal paymasters. As simple of that. There is no even hint of
Us press being press. In certain aspects US jounalists are more "solgers of the Party" then their
colleagues in the Brezhnev time Pravda and Izvesia.
For once, a politician like Sanders seemed to have a chance with the public. He won a
stunning victory over Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary, and despite his
advanced age and avuncular finger-wagging, he was wildly popular among young voters.
Eventually he was flattened by the Clinton juggernaut, of course, but Sanders managed
to stay competitive almost all the way to the California primary in June.
His
chances with the prestige press were considerably more limited. Before we go into
details here, let me confess: I was a Sanders voter, and even interviewed him back in
2014, so perhaps I am naturally inclined to find fault in others' reporting on his
candidacy. Perhaps it was the very particular media diet I was on in early 2016,
which consisted of daily megadoses of the New York Times and the Washington Post and
almost nothing else. Even so,
I have never before seen the press take sides like
they did this year, openly and even gleefully bad-mouthing candidates who did not
meet with their approval.
This shocked me when I first noticed it. It felt like the news stories went
out of their way to mock Sanders or to twist his words, while the op-ed pages, which
of course don't pretend to be balanced, seemed to be of one voice in denouncing my
candidate.
A
New York Times
article greeted the Sanders campaign in
December by announcing that the public had moved away from his signature issue of the
crumbling middle class. "Americans are more anxious about terrorism than income
inequality," the paper declared-nice try, liberal, and thanks for playing. In March,
the
Times
was caught making a number of post-publication tweaks to a news
story about the senator, changing what had been a sunny tale of his legislative
victories into a darker account of his outrageous proposals. When Sanders was finally
defeated in June, the same paper waved him goodbye with a bedtime-for-Grandpa
headline,
hillary
clinton made history, but bernie sanders stubbornly ignored it.
I propose that we look into this matter methodically, and that we do so by
examining Sanders-related opinion columns in a single publication: the
Washington
Post,
the conscience of the nation's political class and one of America's few
remaining first-rate news organizations.
I admire the
Post
's
investigative and beat reporting. What I will focus on here, however, are pieces
published between January and May 2016 on the paper's editorial and op-ed pages, as
well as on its many blogs. Now, editorials and blog posts are obviously not the same
thing as news stories: punditry is my subject here, and
its practitioners have
never aimed to be nonpartisan. They do not, therefore, show media bias in the
traditional sense. But maybe the traditional definition needs to be updated. We live
in an era of reflexive opinionating and quasi opinionating, and we derive much of our
information about the world from websites that have themselves blurred the
distinction between reporting and commentary, or obliterated it completely.
For
many of us, this ungainly hybrid
is
the news. What matters, in any case, is
that all the pieces I review here, whether they appeared in pixels or in print, bear
the imprimatur of the
Washington Post,
the publication that defines the
limits of the permissible in the capital city.
... ... ...
On January 27, with the Iowa caucuses just days away, Dana Milbank nailed it with a
headline:
nominating sanders would be insane
. After promising that he adored the Vermont
senator, he cautioned his readers that "socialists don't win national elections in
the United States." The next day, the paper's editorial board chimed in with
a campaign full of
fiction
, in which they branded Sanders as a kind of flimflam artist: "Mr.
Sanders is not a brave truth-teller. He is a politician selling his own brand of
fiction to a slice of the country that eagerly wants to buy it."
Stung by the
Post
's trolling, Bernie Sanders fired back-which in turn allowed no fewer than
three of the paper's writers to report on the conflict between the candidate and
their employer as a bona fide news item. Sensing weakness, the editorial board came
back the next morning with yet another kidney punch, this one headlined
the real problem
with mr. sanders
. By now, you can guess what that problem was: his ideas
weren't practical, and besides, he still had "no plausible plan for plugging looming
deficits as the population ages."
... ... ...
After the previous week's lesson about Glass
–
Steagall, the editorial board
now instructed politicians to
stop reviling tarp
-i.e.,
the Wall Street bailouts with which the Bush and Obama Administrations tried to halt
the financial crisis. The bailouts had been controversial, the paper acknowledged,
but they were also bipartisan, and opposing or questioning them in the Sanders manner
was hereby declared anathema. After all, the editorial board intoned:
Contrary to much rhetoric, Wall Street banks and bankers still took losses and
suffered upheaval, despite the bailout-but TARP helped limit the collateral damage
that Main Street suffered from all of that. If not for the ingenuity of the
executive branch officials who designed and carried out the program, and the
responsibility of the legislators who approved it, the United States would be in
much worse shape economically.
As a brief history of the financial crisis and the bailout, this is absurd. It is
true that bailing out Wall Street was probably better than doing absolutely nothing,
but saying this ignores the many other options that were available to public
officials had they shown any real ingenuity in holding institutions accountable. All
the Wall Street banks that existed at the time of TARP are flourishing to this day,
since the government moved heaven and earth to spare them the consequences of the
toxic securities they had issued and the lousy mortgage bets they made. The big banks
were "made whole," as the saying goes. Main Street banks, meanwhile, died off by the
hundreds in 2009 and 2010. And average home owners, of course, got no comparable
bailout. Instead, Main Street America saw trillions in household wealth disappear; it
entered into a prolonged recession, with towering unemployment, increasing
inequality, and other effects that linger to this day. There has never been a TARP
for the rest of us.
... ... ...
Charles Krauthammer went into action on January 29, too, cautioning the Democrats that they
"would be risking a November electoral disaster of historic dimensions" should they nominate
Sanders-cynical advice that seems even more poisonous today, as scandal after scandal engulfs the
Democratic candidate that so many Post pundits favored.
... ... ...
The Iowa caucuses came the next day, and Stephen Stromberg was at the keyboard to identify the
"three delusions" that supposedly animated the campaigns of Sanders and the Republican Ted Cruz
alike. Namely: they had abandoned the "center," they believed that things were bad in the United
States, and they perceived an epidemic of corruption-in Sanders's case, corruption via
billionaires and campaign contributions. Delusions all.
... ... ...
On and on it went, for month after month, a steady drumbeat of denunciation. The paper hit
every possible anti-Sanders note, from the driest kind of math-based policy reproach to the
lowest sort of nerd-shaming-from his inexcusable failure to embrace taxes on soda pop to his
awkward gesticulating during a debate with Hillary Clinton ("an unrelenting hand jive," wrote
Post dance critic Sarah L. Kaufman, "that was missing only an upright bass and a plunky piano").
The paper's piling-up of the senator's faults grew increasingly long and complicated. Soon after
Sanders won the New Hampshire primary, the editorial board denounced him and Trump both as
"unacceptable leaders" who proposed "simple-sounding" solutions. Sanders used the plutocracy as a
"convenient scapegoat." He was hostile to nuclear power. He didn't have a specific recipe for
breaking up the big banks. He attacked trade deals with "bogus numbers that defy the overwhelming
consensus among economists." This last charge was a particular favorite of Post pundits: David
Ignatius and Charles Lane both scolded the candidate for putting prosperity at risk by
threatening our trade deals. Meanwhile, Charles Krauthammer grew so despondent over the meager
2016 options that he actually pined for the lost days of the Bill Clinton presidency, when
America was tough on crime, when welfare was being reformed, and when free trade was accorded its
proper respect.
... ... ...
The danger of Trump became an overwhelming fear as primary season drew to a close, and it
redoubled the resentment toward Sanders. By complaining about mistreatment from the Democratic
apparatus, the senator was supposedly weakening the party before its coming showdown with the
billionaire blowhard. This matter, like so many others, found columnists and bloggers and op-ed
panjandrums in solemn agreement. Even Eugene Robinson, who had stayed fairly neutral through most
of the primary season, piled on in a May 20 piece, blaming Sanders and his noisy horde for
"deliberately stoking anger and a sense of grievance-less against Clinton than the party itself,"
actions that "could put Trump in the White House." By then, the paper had buttressed its usual
cast of pundits with heavy hitters from outside its own peculiar ecosystem. In something of a
journalistic coup, the Post opened its blog pages in April to Jeffrey R. Immelt, the CEO of
General Electric, so that he, too, could join in the chorus of denunciation aimed at the senator
from Vermont. Comfort the comfortable, I suppose-and while you're at it, be sure to afflict the
afflicted.
... ... ...
It should be noted that there were some important exceptions to what I have
described. The paper's blogs, for instance, published regular pieces by Sanders
sympathizers like Katrina vanden Heuvel and the cartoonist Tom Toles. (The blogs also
featured the efforts of a few really persistent Clinton haters.) The Sunday Outlook
section once featured a pro-Sanders essay by none other than Ralph Nader, a kind of
demon figure and clay pigeon for many of the paper's commentators. But readers of the
editorial pages had to wait until May 26 to see a really full-throated essay
supporting Sanders's legislative proposals. Penned by Jeffrey Sachs, the eminent
economist and professor at Columbia University, it insisted that virtually all the
previous debate on the subject had been irrelevant, because standard economic models
did not take into account the sort of large-scale reforms that Sanders was
advocating:
It's been decades since the United States had a progressive economic strategy,
and mainstream economists have forgotten what one can deliver. In fact, Sanders's
recipes are supported by overwhelming evidence-notably from countries that already
follow the policies he advocates. On health care, growth and income inequality,
Sanders wins the policy debate hands down.
It was a striking departure from what nearly every opinionator had been saying for
the preceding six months. Too bad it came just eleven days before the
Post,
following the lead of the Associated Press, declared Hillary Clinton to be the
preemptive winner of the Democratic nomination.
What can we learn from reviewing one newspaper's lopsided editorial treatment of a left-wing
presidential candidate?
For one thing, we learn that the Washington Post, that gallant defender of a free press, that
bold bringer-down of presidents, has a real problem with some types of political advocacy.
Certain ideas, when voiced by certain people, are not merely debatable or incorrect or misguided,
in the paper's view: they are inadmissible. The ideas themselves might seem healthy, they might
have a long and distinguished history, they might be commonplace in other lands. Nevertheless,
when voiced by the people in question, they become damaging.
... ... ...
Clinging to this so-called pragmatism is also professionally self-serving. If "realism" is
recognized as the ultimate trump card in American politics, it automatically prioritizes the
thoughts and observations of the realism experts-also known as the Washington Post and its
brother institutions of insider knowledge and professional policy practicality. Realism is what
these organizations deal in; if you want it, you must come to them. Legitimacy is quite literally
their property. They dole it out as they see fit.
There is the admiration for consensus, the worship of pragmatism and bipartisanship, the
contempt for populist outcry, the repeated equating of dissent with partisan disloyalty. And
think of the specific policy pratfalls: the cheers for TARP, the jeers aimed at bank regulation,
the dismissal of single-payer health care as a preposterous dream.
This stuff is not mysterious. We can easily identify the political orientation behind it from one
of the very first pages of the Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide to the Ideologies. This is common
Seaboard Centrism, its markings of complacency and smugness as distinctive as ever, its habitat
the familiar Beltway precincts of comfort and exclusivity. Whether you encounter it during a
recession or a bull market, its call is the same: it reassures us that the experts who head up
our system of government have everything well under control.
It is, of course, an ideology of the professional class, of sound-minded East Coast strivers,
fresh out of Princeton or Harvard, eagerly quoting as "authorities" their peers in the other
professions, whether economists at MIT or analysts at Credit Suisse or political scientists at
Brookings. Above all, this is an insider's ideology; a way of thinking that comes from a place of
economic security and takes a view of the common people that is distinctly patrician.
WikiLeaks hack reveals DNC's favoritism as Clinton staff in damage control over Hillary's support
for DOMA
On October 10,
Wikileaks released part two of their emails from
Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.
Friday,
Wikileaks released their first batch of Podesta's emails, which included excerpts from
Clinton's Wall Street transcripts that reaffirmed why
Clinton refused to release them in full. During the second presidential debate,
Clinton confirmed their authenticity by attempting to defend one statement she made in the speech
about having a public and private stance on political issues. She
cited Abraham Lincoln, a defense comparable to her ridiculous
invocation of 9/11 when pressed on her ties to Wall Street during a
Democratic primary debate.
The latest release reveals current DNC chair Donna Brazile, when working as a
DNC vice chair, forwarded to the Clinton campaign a January 2016
email obtained from
the Bernie Sanders campaign, released by Sarah Ford, Sanders' deputy national press secretary, announcing
a Twitter storm from Sanders' African-American outreach team. "FYI" Brazile wrote to the Clinton
staff. "Thank you for the heads up on this Donna," replied Clinton campaign spokesperson Adrienne
Elrod.
One
email
, received by prolific
Clinton donor Haim Saban, was forwarded to
Clinton staff, praising the friendly moderators in the early March 2016 Democratic primary
debate co-hosted by Univision in Florida. "Haim, I just wanted to tell you that I thought the
moderators for last nights Debate were excellent. They were thoughtful, tough and incisive. I thought
it made
Hilary appear direct and strong in her resolve. I felt it advanced our candidate. Thanks for
Univision," wrote Rob Friedman, former co-chair of the Motion Picture Group.
Another email discusses planting a favorable Clinton story in The New York Times in March
2015. "NYT heroine. Should she call her today?" Podesta wrote to other Clinton campaign staffers
with the subject line 'Laura Donohoe.' "I do think it's a great idea! We can make it happen," replied
Huma Abedin. The story they referred to is likely "
In New Hampshire, Clinton Backers Buckle Up," published in The New York Times on March
12, 2015 about Laura Donohoe, a retired nurse and Clinton supporter in New Hampshire.
John Harwood, New York Times contributor and CNBC correspondent, regularly exchanged
emails with Podesta-communicating more as a
Clinton surrogate than a journalist.
In an October 2015
email thread, Clinton staff were in damage control over Hillary's support for the 1996 Defense
of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
Hillary Clinton would not disavow her support for it. "I'm not saying double down or ever say
it again. I'm just saying that she's not going to want to say she was wrong about that, given she
and her husband believe it and have repeated it many times. Better to reiterate evolution, opposition
to DOMA when court considered it, and forward looking stance."
Former
Clinton Foundation director, Darnell Strom of the Creative Artist Agency,
wrote
a condescending email
to Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard after she resigned from the
DNC
to endorse
Bernie Sanders , which he then forwarded to Clinton campaign staff. "For you to endorse a man
who has spent almost 40 years in public office with very few accomplishments, doesn't fall in line
with what we previously thought of you. Hillary Clinton will be our party's nominee and you standing
on ceremony to support the sinking Bernie Sanders ship is disrespectful to Hillary Clinton," wrote
Strom.
A memo sent from Clinton's general counsel, Marc Elias of the law firm Perkins Coie, outlined
legal tricks to circumvent campaign finance laws to raise money in tandem with Super Pacs.
In a March 2015 email
,
Clinton Campaign manager
Robby Mook expressed frustration DNC Chair
Debbie Wasserman Schultz hired a Convention CEO without consulting the Clinton campaign, which
suggests the
DNC and Clinton campaign regularly coordinated together from the early stages of the Democratic
primaries.
"... Zach Bee Of all the words you could chant, in the entire english language, they pick the ONE that rhymes with liar? What does Hillary! Fire! Even mean? I thought that was a joke at first. Wow. ..."
"... Moh Moony Spot on mate. No one ever accused Hillbots of being very bright. beidoll I kept thinking it should have been "Fire Hillary". I'd fire her before I'd hire her. ..."
For those who want a few laughs in these grim times, check out the excellent Jimmy Dore's video (6
minutes) comparing Bernie's rallies with Hillary's. There is a truly cringeworthy episode of HRC cheerleading
in the clip.
Heh. I liked this little exchange in the comments:
Zach Bee
Of all the words you could chant, in the entire english language, they pick the ONE that rhymes with
liar? What does Hillary! Fire! Even mean? I thought that was a joke at first. Wow.
Moh Moony
Spot on mate. No one ever accused Hillbots of being very bright.
beidoll
I kept thinking it should have been "Fire Hillary". I'd fire her before I'd hire her.
So even after Hillary says she's going to renounce every campaign promise
she made two hours after the polls close, Bernie can't wait to get out on the
campaign trail urge us to vote for our own extinction?
Donald may be "The Apprentice" but Bernie has got to be "The Biggest Loser"
Bernie is the Biggest Frigging Sellout, if you ask me. He spends 6 months
railing against HRC's policies and now is out promoting her. He is dead to
me now.
I can see the expediency of a reluctant endorsement at the convention,
but he's lost his credibility with this behaviour. They must've threatened
him with loss of his Senate committee positions or something.
…or offered to fund his foundation and invite hi to expensive
lectures. Carrot or stick, carrot or stick; so hard to tell. I imagine
the stick is avoided when possible; no point in bringing needless
ugliness into what could be a nice relationship.
With the media exclusively attuned to every new, or 11-year-old as the case may be, twist in the
Trump "sex tape" saga, it appeared that everyone forgot that a little over 24 hours ago, Wikileaks
exposed the real reason why Hillary was keeping her Wall Street speech transcripts - which we now
know had always been within easy reach for her campaign - secret.
In her own words : "if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the
deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and
a private position." In other words, you have to lie to the general public while promising those
who just paid you $250,000 for an hour of your speaking time something entirely different, which
is precisely what those accusing Hillary of hiding her WS transcripts had done; and as yesterday's
hacked documents revealed, they were right.
The Clinton campaign
refused to disavow the hacked excerpts, although it quickly tired to pin the blame again on Russia:
"We are not going to confirm the authenticity of stolen documents released by Julian Assange, who
has made no secret of his desire to damage Hillary Clinton," spokesman Glen Caplin said in a prepared
statement. Previous releases have "Guccifer 2.0 has already proven the warnings of top national security
officials that documents can be faked as part of a sophisticated Russian misinformation campaign."
Ironically, it was literally minutes before the Wikileaks release of the "Podesta Files" that
the US formally accused Russia of waging a hacking cyber attack on the US political establishment,
almost as if it knew Wikileaks was about to make the major disclosure, and sought to minimize its
impact by scapegoating Vladimir Putin.
And while the Trump campaign tried to slam the leak, with spokesman saying "now we finally get
confirmation of Clinton's catastrophic plans for completely open borders and diminishing America's
influence in the world. There is a reason Clinton gave these high-paid speeches in secret behind
closed doors - her real intentions will destroy American sovereignty as we know it, further illustrating
why Hillary Clinton is simply unfit to be president", Trump's campaign had its own raging inferno
to deal with.
So, courtesy of what Trump said about some woman 11 years ago, in all the din over the oddly coincident
Trump Tape leak, most of the noise created by the Hillary speeches was lost.
But not all.
According to
Reuters , supporters of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Saturday "
seethed ", and "expressed anger and vindication over leaked comments made by Hillary Clinton
to banks and big business that appeared to confirm their fears about her support for global trade
and tendency to cozy up to Wall Street. "
Clinton,
who last it emerged had slammed Bernie supporters as "basement dwellers" in a February fundraiser,
with virtually no media coverage, needs Sanders' coalition of young and left-leaning voters to propel
her to the presidency, pushes for open trade and open borders in one of the speeches, and
takes a conciliatory approach to Wall Street , both positions she later backed away from
in an effort to capture the popular appeal of Sanders' attacks on trade deals and powerful banks.
Needless to say, there was no actualy "backing away", and instead Hillary did what he truly excels
in better than most: she told the public what they wanted to hear, and will promptly reneg on once
she becomes president.
Only now, this is increasingly obvious to America's jilted youth: " this is a very clear
illustration of why there is a fundamental lack of trust from progressives for Hillary Clinton,"
said Tobita Chow, chair of the People's Lobby in Chicago, which endorsed Sanders in the
primary election.
" The progressive movement needs to make a call to Secretary Clinton to clarify where
she stands really on these issues and that's got to involve very clear renunciations of the positions
that are revealed in these transcripts," Chow said.
Good luck that, or even getting a response, even though Hillary was largely spared from providing
one: as Reuters correctly observes, the revelations were immediately overshadowed by the release
of an 11-year-old recording of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, making lewd comments
about women. In fact, the revelations were almost entirely ignored by the same prime time TV that
has been glued to the Trump slow-motion trainwreck over the past 24 hours.
Still, the hacked speeches could lead to further erosion in support from the so very critical
to her successful candidacy, young American voter.
Clinton has worked hard to build trust with so-called progressives, adopting several of Sanders'
positions after she bested him in the primary race. The U.S. senator from Vermont now supports
his former rival in the Nov. 8 general election against Trump. Still, Clinton has struggled to
win support from young "millennials" who were crucial to Sanders' success, and some Democrats
expressed concern that the leaks would discourage those supporters from showing up to vote.
"That is a big concern and this certainly doesn't help," said Larry Cohen, chair
of the board of Our Revolution, a progressive organization formed in the wake of Sanders' bid for
the presidency, which aims to keep pushing the former candidate's ideas at a grassroots level. "It
matters in terms of turnout, energy, volunteering, all those things."
Still, despite the Trump media onslaught, the message appeared to filter through to those who
would be most impacted by Hillary selling out her voters if she were to win the presidency.
"Bernie was right about Hillary," wrote Facebook user Grace Tilly cited by Rueters, "she's a tool
for Wall Street."
"Clinton is the politicians' politician - exactly the Wall Street insider Bernie described," wrote
Facebook user Brian Leach.
Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf said progressive voters would still choose the former first
lady, even with misgivings. "I'd like to meet the Bernie Sanders supporter who is going to say, 'Well
I'm a little worried about her on international trade, so I'm going to vote for Donald Trump'," he
said.
He just may meet a few, especially if Bernie's supporters ask themselves why Bernie's support
for Hillary remained so unwavering despite a leak confirming that Hillary was indeed all he had previously
railed against.
In a statement earlier, Sanders responded to the leak by saying that despite Hillary's paid speeches
to Wall Street in which she expressed an agenda diametrically opposite to that espoused by the Vermont
socialist, he reiterated his his support for the Democratic Party platform.
"Whatever Secretary Clinton may or may not have said behind closed doors on Wall Street, I am
determined to implement the agenda of the Democratic Party platform which was agreed upon by her
campaign," he said in a statement.
"Among other things, that agenda calls for breaking up the largest financial institutions
in this country, re-establishing Glass-Steagall and prosecuting those many Wall Street CEOs who engaged
in illegal behavior. "
In retrospect we find it fascinating that in the aftermath of October's two big surprises served
up on Friday, Sanders actually believes any of that having read through Hillary's
Wall Street speeches, certainly far more fascinating than the staged disgust with Trump who, the
media is suddenly stunned to find, was no more politically correct 11 year ago than he is today.
"... Then, Mook reveals that the campaign is working with Epstein on a piece bashing Sanders staff for underhanded tactics. ..."
"... "We are also working with Jen Epstein for a story about this (not necessarily the 11pm knocks, which we are working to confirm) regarding Sanders staff coming to office openings, tracking us, lying about endorsements, other shady field activity, etc.," Mook says in the email. ..."
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign collaborated with Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Epstein to
create an anti-Bernie Sanders story prior to the Nevada caucus.
In the vast trove of Clinton emails leaked Thursday by the organization DCLeaks, there is an email
exchange between Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and Emily Ruiz, head of the campaign's Nevada
operation. In the exchange, Ruiz and Mook discuss rumors that Sanders volunteers were posing as Clinton
operatives and engaging in irritating behavior like knocking on voters' doors at 11 pm.
Then, Mook reveals that the campaign is working with Epstein on a piece bashing Sanders staff
for underhanded tactics.
"We are also working with Jen Epstein for a story about this (not necessarily the 11pm knocks,
which we are working to confirm) regarding Sanders staff coming to office openings, tracking us,
lying about endorsements, other shady field activity, etc.," Mook says in the email.
"... "There's just a deep desire to believe that we can have free college, free healthcare, that what we've done hasn't gone far enough, and that we just need to, you know, go as far as, you know, Scandinavia, whatever that means, and half the people don't know what that means, but it's something that they deeply feel," ..."
"... "I am occupying from the center-left to the center-right. And I don't have much company there. Because it is difficult when you're running to be president, and you understand how hard the job is – I don't want to overpromise," said Clinton, who has customarily eschewed political spectrum labels. ..."
"... "understanding" ..."
"... "Some are new to politics completely. They're children of the Great Recession. And they are living in their parents' basement. They feel they got their education and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves. And they don't see much of a future," ..."
"... "If you're feeling like you're consigned to, you know, being a barista, or you know, some other job that doesn't pay a lot, and doesn't have some other ladder of opportunity attached to it, then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing." ..."
"... "listening to the concerns" of "the most diverse, open-minded generation in history." ..."
"... People who have the TV on all day and watch the news from the mainstream media are naturally going to get hoodwinked. They aren't the brightest, but they're also distracted and mislead. ..."
"... She is the definition of implicit bias. ..."
"... After all, they are the deplorables. HRC is truly the most despicable, scandal ridden, lying war monger to ever grace American politics. ..."
"... Shame on Sanders for supporting that Nazi witch. ..."
"... Millions of people were adversely harmed by her misguided policies and her "pay-to-play" operations involving favors in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative. ..."
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton made forthright remarks about Bernie Sanders'
supporters during a private meeting with fundraisers, an audio from which has been leaked following
an email hack.
"There's just a deep desire to believe that we can have free college, free healthcare, that
what we've done hasn't gone far enough, and that we just need to, you know, go as far as, you know,
Scandinavia, whatever that means, and half the people don't know what that means, but it's something
that they deeply feel," Clinton said during a Q&A with potential donors in McLean in Virginia,
in February, when she was still in a close primary race with Sanders.
The frontrunner to become the next US President said that herself and other election observers
had been "bewildered" by the rise of the "populist, nationalist, xenophobic, discriminatory"
Republican candidates, presumably Donald Trump, on the one side, and the radical left-wing idealists
on the other.
Clinton painted herself as a moderate and realistic contrast to the groundswell.
"I am occupying from the center-left to the center-right. And I don't have much company there.
Because it is difficult when you're running to be president, and you understand how hard the job
is – I don't want to overpromise," said Clinton, who has customarily eschewed political spectrum
labels.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, which posted the audio of Clinton's remarks, the recording
was attached to an email sent out by a campaign staffer, which has been hacked. It is unclear if
the leak is the work of the same hackers who got hold of a trove of Democratic National Committee
(DNC) emails in July.
... ... ...
In the session, Clinton called for an "understanding" of the motives of Sanders' younger
backers, while describing them in terms that fluctuate between patronizing and unflattering.
"Some are new to politics completely. They're children of the Great Recession. And they are
living in their parents' basement. They feel they got their education and the jobs that are available
to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves. And they don't see much of a future,"
said Clinton, who obtained the support of about 2,800 delegates, compared to approximately 1,900
for Sanders, when the results were tallied in July.
"If you're feeling like you're consigned to, you know, being a barista, or you know, some
other job that doesn't pay a lot, and doesn't have some other ladder of opportunity attached to it,
then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing."
Despite well-publicized tensions, particularly between the more vocal backers, Sanders endorsed
Clinton at the Democratic National Convention two months ago, and the two politicians have campaigned
together this week, sharing the stage.
Following the leak, the Clinton campaign has not apologized for the audio, insisting that it shows
that the nominee and is "listening to the concerns" of "the most diverse, open-minded generation
in history."
"As Hillary Clinton said in those remarks , she wants young people to be idealistic and set big
goals," said her spokesman Glen Caplin. "She is fighting for exactly millennial generation cares
more about – a fairer, more equal, just world."
In other parts of the 50-minute recording, Clinton spoke about US capacity to "retaliate"
against foreign hackers that would serve as a "deterrence" and said she would be "inclined"
to mothball the costly upgrade of the Long Range Standoff (LRSO) missile program.
The more she runs her mouth the more support she loses.
Gold Carrot -> Olive Sailboat 6m
Well if somebody is supported by Soros, Warren Buffet, Walmart family, Gates, Moskowitz, Pritzker,
Saban and Session what do you expect. Give me 8 names of other Americans who can top their money
worth. And even so called financial supporters of Republican party like Whitman and Koch brothers
are not supporting Trump. Whitman actually donate to Clinton. In fact most of the donation for
Trump campaign is coming from people who donate at average less than 200 dollars. Clinton represent
BIG MONEY that... See more
GA 2h
Clinton has a supremacist problem, she considers all americans under deserving people, she
thinks she is a pharaoh and we are little people. Reply Share 15
Red Ducky -> GA 23m
you think trump is different? ask yourself this question: Why do Rich people spend hundreds
of millions of dollars for a job that only pays $400K a year?
Rabid Rotty -> Red Ducky 9m
And Trump has stated several times that he will not take the Presidential Salary
pHiL SwEeT -> Rabid Rotty 8m
Uh, yah, Red Ducky just explained how it's not about the money, they're already rich. It's
about power, status, control and legacy.
Green Weights 2h
if Clinton sends her followers and their families to concentration camps, they'll still continue
supporting her. yes, that's how stupid they really are.
Olive Basketball -> Green Weights 55m
People who have the TV on all day and watch the news from the mainstream media are naturally
going to get hoodwinked. They aren't the brightest, but they're also distracted and mislead.
Cyan Beer 2h
She is the definition of implicit bias.
Norm de Plume
Sure enough. The real Americans. Not people, like her, who have dedicated their lives to
aggrandizing
themselves living effectively tax-free at the people's expense.
Seve141 7m
After all, they are the deplorables. HRC is truly the most despicable, scandal ridden, lying war
monger to ever grace American politics.
Tornado_Doom 12m
Shame on Sanders for supporting that Nazi witch.
Green Band Aid -> Tornado_Doom 12m
Sanders will be getting paid. All he does is for money.
Tornado_Doom -> Green Band Aid 11m
Does an old rich man like him need money?
Green Leaf 43m
Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State during Barack Obama's first term was an unmitigated
disaster for many nations around the world. The media has never adequately described how a
number of countries around the world suffered horribly from HC's foreign policy decisions.
Millions of people were adversely harmed by her misguided policies and her "pay-to-play" operations
involving favors in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative.
Countries adversely impacted by HC's foreign policy decisions include Abkhazia, Argentina,
Bolivia, Brazil, Central African Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti,
Honduras, Iraq, Kosovo, Libya, Malaysia, Palestine, Paraguay, South Sudan, Syria, Thailand,
Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, Western Sahara, Yemen - one would think they had
a visit from the anti-Christ instead of HC. Or is HC the anti-Christ in disguise?
Green Leaf 45m
The majority of American's will vote Trump for 3 primary reasons.
1. National Security: They
trust him when it comes to protecting national security and to stop illegal aliens from entering
US boarders along with stopping the mass importation of un-vetted refugees from the middle
east.
2. Economy: They know he knows how to get things done under budget and ahead of schedule..
and he knows how to make money. They want a successful businessman in office, not another political
who is out to enrich his or herself at their expense. In addition he knows how to create jobs
and he has a major plan to cut taxes to help the poor - no tax for anyone earning less then
$50,000 and
3. Hillary's severe covered-up health problems: With all of the problems that the
US is experience they don't want someone who passes out from a seizure in the middle of the
day running the country. This is a severely ill woman is, evidently, of the rare kind that
requires a permanent traveling physician and a "mystery man" who rushes to her side whenever
she has one of her frequent and uncontrollable seizure "episodes" (or otherwise freezes up
with a brain "short-circuit" during a speech). She has Parkinson's. The pneumonia was just
a symptom for something much more serious. She even had a mini seizure during the debate for
those with a medical background to see.
"... But Paul Krugman I have lost a lot of respect for. There was a candidate that people believed in and that stood up for working people and liberal values and that motivated people to come out and support him and his goals for the U.S.A. A candidate that would have neutralized Trump's appeal to the working class (which is mostly where I am). Krugman trashed him relentlessly using his very large soap box. ..."
I won't say bad things about Clinton. Because she is far better than the alternative at this point.
But Paul Krugman I have lost a lot of respect for. There was a candidate that people believed
in and that stood up for working people and liberal values and that motivated people to come out
and support him and his goals for the U.S.A. A candidate that would have neutralized Trump's appeal
to the working class (which is mostly where I am). Krugman trashed him relentlessly using his
very large soap box.
Now he is horrified that the polls are so close.
I can't say anything more without being negative. Except vote for Clinton- she's better than
Trump. Which is a pathetic endorsement.
"... Not because of policy, but because they *hate* Clinton's dishonest scumbags like Debbie Wasserman Shultz... They know them and hate them. ..."
"... Clinton brags about how much she's done for the children meanwhile she's a millionaire who gives speeches to Goldman Sachs and does nothing but attend fundraisers thrown by rich donors. ..."
"... a lot of Sanders supporters have a visceral dislike of Sanders people who lied to them and about us... The dishonesty is blatant, just how Hillary lied about Sanders during the primary. ..."
"... wait until the election is over. The hatred toward Clinton and surrogates ... will come pouring out. That is if she wins. ..."
Peter K. :
September 30, 2016 at 06:35 AM
Clinton should be beating Trump easily in the polls. Sanders
would be. Trump is the worst candidate in history.
Why
isn't she don't better? It's because Clinton surrogates like
PGL are hateful and obnoxious. The voters hate these people
and don't agree with Clinton's centrism. The voters hate the
BS we're expected to believe like how corporate trade is
nothing but beneficial or that the Obama years were great.
Not
because of policy, but because they *hate* Clinton's
dishonest scumbags like Debbie Wasserman Shultz... They
know them and hate them.
Clinton brags about how much she's done for the children
meanwhile she's a millionaire who gives speeches to Goldman
Sachs and does nothing but attend fundraisers thrown by rich
donors.
I'll vote for Hillary but
a lot of Sanders supporters
have a visceral dislike of Sanders people who lied to them
and about us... The dishonesty is blatant, just how
Hillary lied about Sanders during the primary.
But Sanders
knows policywise Trump is much, much worse than Hillary even
if she's not that good.
Peter K. -> Peter K....
, -1
That's why Sanders is campaigning for Hillary. But
wait
until the election is over. The hatred toward Clinton and
surrogates ... will come pouring out. That is if she
wins.
"... I said from the very beginning of Sanders campaign, that an old, lefty, New York Jew is going to have a really tough time connecting with older, black voters in the south. ..."
"... I don't think most Americans realize just how conservative southern blacks really are, particularly the ones old enough to remember the bad old days of segregation and before. ..."
"... the social climate in the south would reward and penalize behaviors by both whites and blacks in a manner very different from cultures found in the north and the west. ..."
"... Radical personalities and those who are quick to embrace new ideas don't fare very well in those parts of the country. Slow, steady, quite and modest is your best bet for survival. ..."
"... Almost like Clinton's "slow incremental change" campaign theme. ..."
I really liked Charles Blow's insightful comment about two Black Americas and the great migration.
I am white but I like to think that I know a little about Black America. I've travelled and lived
all over the US now, but I grew up in the eighties in a small, racially divided southern town.
I attended a public school that was 60% black and every black teacher of mine in elementary school
was formerly employed by the "separate but equal" black school system prior to desegregation.
I didn't realize how close I was to the bad ole' segregated south growing up, but it boggles my
mind and certain things make more sense to me now looking back. I was raised by my working mother
and two different black nannies. They were surrogate moms to me. I would play with their nieces,
nephews and grand-children at their house sometimes and other times at my parents. I even attended
church with them on a couple of different occasions. I left the south after graduating college
but I didn't forget the lessons of my youth. I said from the very beginning of Sanders campaign,
that an old, lefty, New York Jew is going to have a really tough time connecting with older, black
voters in the south.
I don't think most Americans realize just how conservative southern blacks really are,
particularly the ones old enough to remember the bad old days of segregation and before.
The cultural DNA of the diaspora blacks of the north and the blacks that stayed behind is very
different. Besides the attitudes and personality types that may have been more likely to migrate
north or west, it's important to remember that the social climate in the south would reward
and penalize behaviors by both whites and blacks in a manner very different from cultures found
in the north and the west.
There are still plenty of strong pockets of racism today outside of the south, particularly
in the northeast, appalachia, and the midwest but nowhere I've visited can compare to racism found
in the deep southern states of the Gulf and Mississippi delta region.
Radical personalities and those who are quick to embrace new ideas don't fare very well
in those parts of the country. Slow, steady, quite and modest is your best bet for survival.
Almost like Clinton's "slow incremental change" campaign theme. Clinton keeps running
up the delegate score with the support of southern black grannies like the ones who raised me,
but she is running out of deep south. Meanwhile Sanders is forging new coalitions and crushing
the under-forty vote, so even if he can't win the DNC's rigged primary this year the future looks
bright for leaders that want to pick up Sanders mantle in the near future.
Besides the attitudes and personality types that may have been more likely to migrate north
or west, it's important to remember that the social climate in the south would reward and penalize
behaviors by both whites and blacks in a manner very different from cultures found in the north
and the west.
Very true & excellent point. I grew up in small town Alabama & permanently moved away in January
1990. It is a very pro-establishment place, where, at least back then, people who were willing
to be noticeably different had to be very exceptional in some way or willing & able to fend for
themselves, otherwise they would be ostracized or bullied. Birmingham & Tuscaloosa were better,
at least in pockets, but outside of the university system you were still expected to behave in
a very conservative manner. Going home to visit over the years & seeing giant billboards–in cities!–saying
things like "Go to church or go to Hell" (that is an exact quote; I shall never forget it; horribly
wrongheaded and asinine even from a fundamentalist Christian perspective) or "praise be the glory
of the fetus, may those who harm it suffer eternal torment" (not an exact quote but pretty much
an exact sentiment on a large # of signs) did not make me change my thoughts a whole hella lot,
or–and this is kinda funny in light of my current politics–talking with a group of business owners
in an airport who suddenly turned their backs on me & excluded me from conversation when they
were trashing Hillary and I said "I like Hillary" & after a shocked silence one of them said "You
need to listen to Rush Limbaugh son, learn some things" followed by "I've heard Rush. Not really
a fan." That ended that conversation abruptly. Among other things.
And I have (or rather had, kinda lost touch) friends from Alabama involved in state & national
democratic politics, and whatever their private inclinations they were just as conservative as
the Republicans (among whom I had an equal # of friends) on most things in public, and kept very
quiet about issues where they were not with the growing conservative majority there (it should
be noted that this is a HORRIBLE long term strategy, if you have actual principles in opposition
to the spreading & solidifying right-wing belief system). I had nonetheless expected better from
the South, and am still disappointed/horrified at the voting there, but this reminder does explain
a lot. With a lot of help from the DNC & MSM, they were convinced Bernie would not win, and might
even lose by an amount they would find embarrassing, & knowingly fighting a lost cause is (or
was) generally derided back there, and no one wants to be an object of derision. Also, a lot of
Southerners just don't like people from the Northeast. End stop. I for some reason thought that
would have changed by now, and/or that Bernie was sufficiently atypical for this to be a non-factor
anyway. But maybe not. Plus it may be people still consider Hillary a Southerner from her time
in Arkansas, and she's getting the "one of us" vote.
but she is running out of deep south.
Indeed. Temperaments out west are very, very different. =)
Now in view of recent Hillary health problems actions of Wasserman Schultz need
to be revisited. She somehow avoided criminal prosecution for interfering with the
election process under Obama administration. That's clearly wrong. The court
should investigate and determine the level of her guilt.
Moor did his duty, moor can go. This is fully applicable to Wasserman Schultz.
BTW it was king of "bait and switch" Obama who installed her in this position. And
after that some try to say that Obama is not a neocon. Essentially leaks mean is
that Sander's run was defeated by the Democratic Party's establishment dirty tricks
and Hillary is not a legitimate candidate. It's Mission Accomplished, once again.
"Clinton is a life-long Republican. She grew up in an all-white Republican suburb,
she supported Goldwater, and she supported Wall Street banking, then became a DINO
dildo to ride her husband's coattails to WH, until the NYC Mob traded her a NY Senator
seat for her husband's perfidy. She never said one word about re-regulating the
banks."
How could this anti-Russian hysteria/bashing go on in a normal country -- the
level of paranoia and disinformation about Russia and Putin is plain crazy even
for proto-fascist regimes.
Notable quotes:
"... Wasserman Schultz reluctantly agreed to relinquish her speaking role at the convention here, a sign of her politically fragile standing. ..."
"... Democratic leaders are scrambling to keep the party united, but two officials familiar with the discussions said Wasserman Schultz was digging in and not eager to vacate her post after the November elections. ..."
"... Sanders on Sunday told CNN's Jake Tapper the release of DNC emails that show its staffers working against him underscore the position he's held for months: Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz needs to go. ..."
"... "I don't think she is qualified to be the chair of the DNC not only for these awful emails, which revealed the prejudice of the DNC, but also because we need a party that reaches out to working people and young people, and I don't think her leadership style is doing that," Sanders told Tapper ..."
"... But again, we discussed this many, many months ago, on this show, so what is revealed now is not a shock to me." ..."
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz will not
have a major speaking role or preside over daily convention proceedings this
week, a decision reached by party officials Saturday after emails surfaced raising
questions about the committee's impartiality during the Democratic primary.
The DNC Rules Committee on Saturday named Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, as permanent
chair of the convention, according to a DNC source. She will gavel each session
to order and will gavel each session closed.
"She's been quarantined," another top Democrat said of Wasserman Schultz,
following a meeting Saturday night. Wasserman Schultz faced intense pressure
Sunday to resign her post as head of the Democratic National Committee, several
party leaders told CNN, urging her to quell a growing controversy threatening
to disrupt Hillary Clinton's nominating convention.
Wasserman Schultz reluctantly agreed to relinquish her speaking role
at the convention here, a sign of her politically fragile standing. But
party leaders are now urging the Florida congresswoman to vacate her position
as head of the party entirely in the wake of leaked emails suggesting the DNC
favored Clinton during the primary and tried to take down Bernie Sanders by
questioning his religion. Democratic leaders are scrambling to keep the
party united, but two officials familiar with the discussions said Wasserman
Schultz was digging in and not eager to vacate her post after the November elections.
... ... ...
One email appears to show DNC staffers asking how they can reference Bernie
Sanders' faith to weaken him in the eyes of Southern voters. Another seems to
depict an attorney advising the committee on how to defend Hillary Clinton against
an accusation by the Sanders campaign of not living up to a joint fundraising
agreement.
Sanders on Sunday told CNN's Jake Tapper the release of DNC emails that
show its staffers working against him underscore the position he's held for
months: Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz needs to go.
"I don't think she is qualified to be the chair of the DNC not only for
these awful emails, which revealed the prejudice of the DNC, but also because
we need a party that reaches out to working people and young people, and I don't
think her leadership style is doing that," Sanders told Tapper on "State
of the Union," on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
"I am not an atheist," he said. "But aside from all of that, it is an outrage
and sad that you would have people in important positions in the DNC trying
to undermine my campaign. It goes without saying, the function of the DNC is
to represent all of the candidates -- to be fair and even-minded."
He added: "But again, we discussed this many, many months ago, on this
show, so what is revealed now is not a shock to me."
... ... ...
Several Democratic sources told CNN that the leaked emails are a big source
of contention and may incite tensions between the Clinton and Sanders camps
heading into the Democratic convention's Rules Committee meeting this weekend.
"It could threaten their agreement," one Democrat said, referring to the
deal reached between Clinton and Sanders about the convention, delegates and
the DNC. The party had agreed to include more progressive principles in its
official platform, and as part of the agreement, Sanders dropped his fight to
contest Wasserman Schultz as the head of the DNC.
"It's gas meets flame," the Democrat said.
Michael Briggs, a Sanders spokesman, had no comment Friday.
The issue surfaced on Saturday at Clinton's first campaign event with Tim
Kaine as her running mate, when a protester was escorted out of Florida International
University in Miami. The protester shouted "DNC leaks" soon after Clinton thanked
Wasserman Schultz for her leadership at the DNC.
"... Sanders is a touchy subject with me. The man was offered a spot on the Green party ticket, and obviously didn't take it. Considering the public disgust with the two slimeballs we're stuck with now, I believe he'd have had a real shot at the presidency. Despite my rating him as a C- at best, I'd have voted for the man. It's my opinion he'd have gotten a whole lot of Trump's base too. The poorer members of the GOP know they're getting the shaft, and I suspect a great many of them would have defected too. ..."
"... There was a theory early-on that Sanders never was really serious, but instead was running as a "sheepdog" to lead the dirty hippy lefties to Clinton. ..."
Sanders is a touchy subject with me. The man was offered a spot on
the Green party ticket, and obviously didn't take it. Considering the public
disgust with the two slimeballs we're stuck with now, I believe he'd have
had a real shot at the presidency. Despite my rating him as a C- at best,
I'd have voted for the man. It's my opinion he'd have gotten a whole lot
of Trump's base too. The poorer members of the GOP know they're getting
the shaft, and I suspect a great many of them would have defected too.
There was a theory early-on that Sanders never was really serious,
but instead was running as a "sheepdog" to lead the dirty hippy lefties
to Clinton. That theory looks more plausible now than it did earlier.
"... Sanders was clearly the sheep-dog, and I won't be surprised if an e-mail showing that reality appears. ..."
"... spitting in the face of the latest generation of suckers who thought that the elite plutocracy of the USA could be 'reformed' from within. ..."
"... sheepdog is accurate. I have been calling him a sheepdog since 2014 and predicting, correctly, that he would both lose the nomination and endorse Hillary. This was inevitable since he SAID he would endorse her from the start of his so-called campaign. ..."
Sanders was clearly the sheep-dog, and I won't be surprised if an
e-mail showing that reality appears. He is, in fact, with his total
and immediate roll-over, even as the corruption of the process was categorically
exposed by the e-mails, making no pretense otherwise, spitting in the
face of the latest generation of suckers who thought that the elite plutocracy
of the USA could be 'reformed' from within. He was the geriatric Obama,
dispensing more Hopium for the dopes. And when Clinton feigns adoption of
Sanders policy, like not signing the TPP, she is LYING.
Diana, July 28, 2016
Sanders' own campaign called him the "youth whisperer", but sheepdog
is accurate. I have been calling him a sheepdog since 2014 and predicting,
correctly, that he would both lose the nomination and endorse Hillary. This
was inevitable since he SAID he would endorse her from the start of his
so-called campaign. Perhaps he did so hoping that the DNC would play
fair, but that goes to show you he's no socialist. A real socialist would
have been able to size up the opposition, not made any gentleman's agreements
with them and waged a real campaign.
rtj1211, July 26, 2016
So far as I'm aware, there must be a mechanism for an Independent to
put their name on the ballot.
If the majority of people in the USA are really thinking that voting
for either Hillary or the Donald is worse than having unprotected sex with
an HIV+ hooker, then the Independent would barely need any publicity. They'd
just need to be on the ballot.
Course, the Establishment might get cute and put a far-right nutcase
up as 'another Independent' so as they would have someone who'd do as they
were told no matter what.
But until the US public say 'da nada! Pasta! Finito! To hell with the
Democrats and the GOP!', you'll still get the choice of 'let's invade Iran'
or 'let's nuke Russia'. You'll get the choice of giving Israel a blowjob
or agreeing to be tied up and have kinky sex with Israel. You'll get the
choice of bailing out Wall Street or bailing out Wall Street AND cutting
social security for the poorest Americans. You'll get the choice of running
the USA for the bankers or running the USA for the bankers and a few multinational
corporations.
Oh, they'll have to fight for it, just as Martin Luther King et al had
to fight for civil rights. They may have the odd candidate shot by the CIA,
the oil men or the weapons men. Because that's how US politics works.
But if they don't want a Republican or a Republican-lite, they need to
select an independent and vote for them.
The rest of us? We have to use whatever influence we have to try and
limit what they try to do overseas…….because we are affected by what America
does overseas…….
Sanders as a pupil of the king of "bait and switch" Obama
Notable quotes:
"... I think he will come to deeply regret what he has done. He has betrayed these people who believed in this political revolution. We heard this same kind of rhetoric, by the way, in 2008 around Obama. ..."
CHRIS HEDGES : Well, I didn't back Bernie Sanders because-and
Kshama Sawant and I had had a discussion with him before-because he said that
he would work within the Democratic structures and support the nominee.
And
I think we have now watched Bernie Sanders walk away from his political moment.
You know, he - I think he will come to deeply regret what he has done. He
has betrayed these people who believed in this political revolution. We heard
this same kind of rhetoric, by the way, in 2008 around Obama.
"... That means backing Wall Street, the neocons and the TPP. Shame on him! He told his followers to think of pie in the sky in the decades it will take to take over the Democratic Party from below, from school boards, etc. ..."
"... What on earth is revolution if it doesn't include either remove the rot in the Democratic Party, the Wall Street control, or start another party? It had to be one or the other. Here was his chance. I think he missed it. ..."
"... He did miss his chance. Some people were suggesting that he should walk and form his own party. Particularly how the party treated him. ..."
"... The Democrats and the Republicans together have made it almost impossible for a third party to get registered in every state. To run in every state. To get just all of the mechanics you need because of all the lawsuits against them. The Green Party is the only party that had already solved that. Apart from the Libertarian Party. ..."
"... The oligarchs have joined the Republicans and the Democrats are now seen to be the same party, called the Democratic Party. Here was his chance to make an alternative. ..."
"... I believe Hillary's the greater evil, not Trump, because Trump is incompetent and doesn't have the staff around him, or the political support that Hilary has. ..."
"... I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I remember her, as you do, as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight for universal health care. ..."
"... I served with her in the United States Senate and know her as a fierce advocate for the rights of children, for women and for the disabled. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her tonight! ..."
"... Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life. ..."
"... I agree with Hudson that HRC is the greater threat. I also agree with him that Bernie makes no sense. What the hell did Bernie have to lose? He could have accepted the prez nomination with the Greens. In fact, he should have run third party from the git-go. By sucking up to the dems that politically raped him, Bernie is exhibiting a variation of Stockholm syndrome. ..."
"... Bernie's problem in the end is that he couldn't see that in order to gain power in the Democratic Party (i.e., in order to dislodge the Clintons), the Left might (probably would) have to lose an election. ..."
"... The Democratic PoC (Party of Clinton) had to be shown as a party that could not win an election without its left half. He wrongly saw the powerless Trump as the greater threat, something that could only be done if he still at least marginally trusted Hillary to ever keep her word on anything. He will come to see that as his greatest mistake of all. ..."
"... Bernie reminds me of Gorbachev. Both clearly saw what the problem was with their respective societies, but still thought that things could be fixed by changing their respective parties. Bernie it seems, like Gorbachev before him, can not intellectually accept that effective reforms require radical action on the existing power structures. Gorbachev could not break with the Communist system and Bernie can not break with the Democratic party. ..."
"... I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I remember her, as you do, as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight for universal health care. ..."
"... I served with her in the United States Senate and know her as a fierce advocate for the rights of children, for women and for the disabled. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her tonight! ..."
"... Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life. ..."
PERIES: Let's turn to Sanders's strategy here. Now, Sanders is, of course,
asking people to support Hillary. And if you buy into the idea that she is the
lesser of two evils candidate, then we also have to look at Bernie's other strategy
– which is to vote as many people as we possibly can at various other levels
of the elections that are going on at congressional levels, Senate level, at
municipal levels. Is that the way to go, so that we can avoid some of these
choices we are offered?
HUDSON: Well, this is what I don't understand about Sanders's strategy. He
says we need a revolution. He's absolutely right. But then, everything he said
in terms of the election is about Trump. I can guarantee you that the revolution
isn't really about Trump. The way Sanders has described things, you have to
take over the Democratic Party and pry away the leadership, away from Wall Street,
away from the corporations.
Democrats pretend to be a party of the working class, a party of the people.
But it's teetering with Hillary as it's candidate. If ever there was a time
to split it, this was the year. But Bernie missed his chance. He knuckled under
and said okay, the election's going to be about Trump. Forget the revolution
that I've talked about. Forget reforming the Democratic Party, I'm sorry. Forget
that I said Hillary is not fit to be President. I'm sorry, she is fit to be
President. We've got to back her.
That means backing Wall Street, the neocons and the TPP. Shame on him!
He told his followers to think of pie in the sky in the decades it will take
to take over the Democratic Party from below, from school boards, etc.
Labor unions said this half a century ago. It didn't work. Bernie gave up
on everything to back the TPP candidate, the neocon candidate.
What on earth is revolution if it doesn't include either remove the rot
in the Democratic Party, the Wall Street control, or start another party? It
had to be one or the other. Here was his chance. I think he missed it.
PERIES: I think there's a lot of people out there that agree with
that analysis, Michael. He did miss his chance. Some people were suggesting
that he should walk and form his own party. Particularly how the party treated
him. But there is another choice out there. In fact, we at the Real News
is out there covering the Green Party election as we are speaking here, Michael.
Is that an option?
HUDSON: It would have been the only option for him. He had decided
that you can't really mount a third party, because it's so hard. The Democrats
and the Republicans together have made it almost impossible for a third party
to get registered in every state. To run in every state. To get just all of
the mechanics you need because of all the lawsuits against them. The Green Party
is the only party that had already solved that. Apart from the Libertarian Party.
So here you have the only possible third party he could have run on this
time, and he avoided it. I'm sure he must of thought about it. He was offered
the presidency on it. He could of used that and brought his revolution into
that party and then expanded it as a real alternative to both the Democrats
and the Republicans. Because the Republican Party is already split, by the fact
that the Tea Party's pretty much destroyed it. The oligarchs have joined
the Republicans and the Democrats are now seen to be the same party, called
the Democratic Party. Here was his chance to make an alternative.
I don't think there will be a chance like this again soon. I believe
Hillary's the greater evil, not Trump, because Trump is incompetent and doesn't
have the staff around him, or the political support that Hilary has. I
think Bernie missed his chance to take this party and develop it very quickly,
just like George Wallace could have done back in the 1960s when he had a chance.
I think Chris Hedges and other people have made this point with you. I have
no idea what Bernie's idea of a revolution is, if he's going to try to do it
within the Democratic Party that's just stamped on him again and again, you're
simply not going to have a revolution within the Democratic party.
I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I remember her, as
you do, as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role
that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight
for universal health care.
I served with her in the United States Senate and know her as a fierce
advocate for the rights of children, for women and for the disabled.
Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud
to stand with her tonight!
Sanders' campaign was premised on exactly the opposite. How can anyone
now take Bernie seriously?
Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful
human being I've ever known in my life.
Okay. I know this comment will bring forth much backlash, but I'm gonna
put it out there anyway since my 'give-a-shitter' was severely cracked over
4 yrs ago (when 2 sheriff's deputies evicted me from my home while I had
been current on my pymts when the bank foreclosed and the response from
EVERY govt agency I contacted told me to "hire a lawyer", which I couldn't
afford, with one costing much more than I owed on my home of 20 yrs). I
had bought my first house by the time I graduated h.s. and had owned one
ever since until now.
My 'give-a-shitter' completely shattered this year with the election,
so here goes:
So it seems we are offered 3 choices when we vote. Trump, Hillary or
Green.
To someone who is among the 8-10 MILLION (depending on whose figures
you believe) whose home was illegally taken from them by the banksters,
I would welcome a 4th choice since none of the 3 offered will improve my
life before I die.
The consensus seems to be that it'll take decades to create change through
voting.
I'm a divorced woman turning 65. I don't feel I have decades to wait,
while I am forced to live in a place that doesn't even have a flush toilet
because it's all I can afford. To someone my age with no degrees or special
skills, the job market is nonexistent, even if I lived in a big city (where
I couldn't afford the rent).
When I see reports of an increase in new homes being built, I'd love
to see a breakdown showing exactly how many of those homes will be primary
residences and how many are second (or third, or fourth) homes.
There are 4 new custom homes being built within a half mile of me.
None will be primary residences. All will be 'vacation' homes.
Yet if we're to believe the latest figures, "the housing market is improving!"
For whom?
Yes, I'm extremely disappointed that Bernie bailed on us. I doubt either
of us will live long enough to see the change required to change this govt
and save the planet with our current choices this election.
I fear the only thing that this election has given me was initially great
hope for my future, before being plunged into the darkness of the same ol',
same ol' as my only choices.
I was never radical or oppositional in my life but I would now welcome
a revolution. I don't see me living long enough to welcome that change by
voting. Especially with the blatant voter suppression and all else that
transpired this election.
While the govt and political oligarchs may fear Russia & ISIS, if they
met 8-10 million of us victims of the banksters, they would come to realize
real fear, from those within their homeland.
Most are horrified when I offer this view, saying I'd be thrown in prison.
Hmmm…considering that…I'd be fed, clothed, housed-and I'd have a flush toilet!
Gads, I'd love to see millions of us march on Washington & literally
throw those in power out of their seats onto the lawn, saying "enough is
enough"!
So I guess my question is, does anyone else feel as 'at the end of their
rope' as I do?
Can you even truly imagine being in my position and what you would do or
how you would feel?
Yes. I screamed, cried, and wrote Bernie's campaign before his endorsement
speech was even completed, expressing my disappointment, after foregoing
meals to send him my meager contributions.
My hopes were shattered and I'm growing impatient for change.
crittermom/Bullwinkle – here's one of the articles by Chris Hedges on
Bernie Sanders:
"Because the party is completely captive to corporate power," Hedges
said. "And Bernie has cut a Faustian deal with the Democrats. And that's
not even speculation. I did an event with him and Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein
and Kshama Sawant in New York the day before the Climate March. And Kshama
Sawant ,the Socialist City Councilwoman from Seattle and I asked Sanders
why he wanted to run as a Democrat. And he said - because I don't want to
end up like Nader."
"He didn't want to end up pushed out of the establishment," Hedges said.
"He wanted to keep his committee chairmanships, he wanted to keep his Senate
seat. And he knew the forms of retribution, punishment that would be visited
upon him if he applied his critique to the Democratic establishment. So
he won't."
Fair enough. I don't know enough about Nader to care. To me, it was just
the about-face that Bernie did, going from denouncing Hillary (albeit not
very strongly) to embracing her. I think if I had been one of his supporters
who cheered him on, sent him money, got my hopes raised that he would go
all the way, I would have been very disappointed. Almost like a tease.
I'd wanted Bernie to run as an Independent more than anything, but I
can understand him wanting to keep his Senate seat and chairs. Without them,
he has no power to bring change.
I had believed he had a good chance to win, whipping a big Bernie Bird to
both parties and changing things in my lifetime, running Independent.
I now realize just how completely corrupt our political system is. Far
worse than I ever could have imagined. Wow, have my eyes been opened!
I'm beginning to think this election may just come down to who has the
bigger thugs, Trump or HRC.
I agree with Hudson that HRC is the greater threat. I also agree
with him that Bernie makes no sense. What the hell did Bernie have to lose?
He could have accepted the prez nomination with the Greens. In fact, he
should have run third party from the git-go. By sucking up to the dems that
politically raped him, Bernie is exhibiting a variation of Stockholm syndrome.
Bernie's problem in the end is that he couldn't see that in order
to gain power in the Democratic Party (i.e., in order to dislodge the Clintons),
the Left might (probably would) have to lose an election.
The Democratic PoC (Party of Clinton) had to be shown as a party
that could not win an election without its left half. He wrongly saw the
powerless Trump as the greater threat, something that could only be done
if he still at least marginally trusted Hillary to ever keep her word on
anything. He will come to see that as his greatest mistake of all.
Bernie reminds me of Gorbachev. Both clearly saw what the problem
was with their respective societies, but still thought that things could
be fixed by changing their respective parties. Bernie it seems, like Gorbachev
before him, can not intellectually accept that effective reforms require
radical action on the existing power structures. Gorbachev could not break
with the Communist system and Bernie can not break with the Democratic party.
Bernie is too nice for his own good. He should have used the DNC machinations
as an excuse to go back on his promise to endorse. "I made that promise
on the assumption that we would all be acting in good faith. Sadly, that
has proved not to be the case."
But no, he's too much of a politician, or too nice, or has too much sense
of personal pride…or had his life and his family threatened if he didn't
toe the line (not that I'm foily). Whatever his motivations, we don't get
a "Get out of Responsibility Free" card just because one dude
made some mis-steps. If that's all it takes to derail us, we're
so, so screwed.
I also agree with Hudson and EndOfTheWorld that HRC is the greater threat
and that Sanders makes no sense.
Sure, the Dems probably threatened to kick him off of Congressional Committees
and to back a rival in Vermont.
So what! With his tenure and at his age, what's really to lose? If he
couldn't face off someone in his home state, it's probably time to retire
anyway. And it's not like he was ever in it for the money.
The best he gets now is mild tolerance from his masters. "Give me your
followers and lick my boots." What a coward, could have made history, now
he's a goat.
It's actually not so surprising given his long history of working within
the mainstream system, simply along its fringes. I think many may have been
falling into the '08 Obama trap of seeing what they wanted to see in him.
As a senator he's had plenty of opportunities to grandstand, gum up the
works, etc, and he really never does. Even his "filibuster" a few years
back wasn't all that disruptive.
EndOfTheWorld- totally agree with you. I just shake my head at Bernie.
Diametrically opposed to Clinton, he suddenly turns around and embraces
her! What? I will never understand that.
"America needs an ineffective president. That's much better than an effective
president that's going to go to war with Russia, that's going to push for
the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that's going to protect Wall Street, and
that's going to oppose neoliberal austerity."
He's right too. I am absolutely terrified of Hillary Clinton becoming
President. She strikes me as having psychopathic tendencies. I mean, just
look at the scandals she and Bill have been involved in, and then when she
gets caught, she lies, feigns ignorance, deflects, blames others, lies some
more. Power and money are her goals.
She has called Putin "Hitler", said she wants to expand NATO, and again
said she wants to take out Assad. Well, how is she going to do that when
Russia is in there? God, she is scary. I just hope that there's a big Clinton
Foundation email leak to finish her off.
Trump is out there, but at least he wants to try to negotiate peace (of
course, if war wasn't making so many people rich, it would be stopped tomorrow).
He's questioning why NATO is necessary, never mind its continual expansion,
and he wants to stop the TPP.
God, I'd be happy with even one of the above. Hillary will give us TPP,
more NATO, more war, and a cackle. Please, if anyone has some loose emails
hanging around, now is the time!
I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I remember her, as
you do, as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role
that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight
for universal health care.
I served with her in the United States Senate and know her as a fierce
advocate for the rights of children, for women and for the disabled.
Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud
to stand with her tonight!
Sanders' campaign was premised on exactly the opposite. How can anyone
now take Bernie seriously?
Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful
human being I've ever known in my life.
Butch – "…she helped lead the fight for universal health care." Did she
now? Here's a good quote on how she felt about universal health care:
"Hillary took the lead role in the White House's efforts to pass a corporate-friendly
version of "health reform." Along with the big insurance companies the Clintons
deceptively railed against, the "co-presidents" decided from the start to
exclude the popular health care alternative – single payer – from the national
health care "discussion." (Obama would do the same thing in 2009.)
"David, tell me something interesting." That was then First Lady Hillary
Clinton's weary and exasperated response – as head of the White House's
health reform initiative – to Harvard medical professor David Himmelstein
in 1993. Himmelstein was head of Physicians for a National Health Program.
He had just told her about the remarkable possibilities of a comprehensive,
single-payer "Canadian style" health plan, supported by more than two-thirds
of the U.S. public. Beyond backing by a citizen super-majority, Himmelstein
noted, single-payer would provide comprehensive coverage to the nation's
40 million uninsured while retaining free choice in doctor selection and
being certified by the Congressional Budget Office as "the most cost-effective
plan on offer."
"... Bernie had cashed in on the Revolution that he had betrayed, citing as evidence the purchase of a third ..."
"... I said there might be more to the story, like the fact that Bernie had signed a book deal (ala the Clintons) where he would tell the story of his Glorious Revolution (which ended up with him dumping his foot soldiers into the vaults of the very machine they were warring against.) And guess what? I was right. ..."
On Tuesday afternoon, my friend Michael Colby, the fearless environmental
activist in Vermont,
sent me news that Bernie Sanders had just purchased a new waterfront house
on in North Hero, Vermont. I linked to the story on my Facebook page, quipping
that Bernie had cashed in on the Revolution that he had betrayed, citing
as evidence the purchase of a third house for the Sanders family, a
lakefront summer dacha for $600,000.
This ignited a firestorm on Zuckerburg's internet playpen. People noted that
Bernie and Jane lived a penurious existence, surviving on coupons and the kindness
of strangers, and the house was just a cramped four-bedroom fishing shack on
a cold icy lake with hardly any heat–a place so forsaken even the Iroquois of
old wouldn't camp there–which they were only able to afford because Jane sold
her dead parents' house.
I said there might be more to the story, like the fact that Bernie had
signed a book deal (ala the Clintons) where he would tell the story of his Glorious
Revolution (which ended up with him dumping his foot soldiers into the vaults
of the very machine they were warring against.) And guess what? I was right.
Coming in November to a bookstore near you….Our
Revolution by Thomas Dunne Books.
The love for Bernie is truly blind. It's also touching. I've never seen Leftists
defend the purchase of $600,000 lakefront summer homes with such tenacity!
... ... ...
By the way, the median cost of homes sold in North Hero, Vermont so far this
year is $189,000.
... ... ...
Fulfilling his pledge to Hillary, Bernie Sanders took to the pages of the
Los Angeles Times to plead with his followers to get behind Clinton
as the one person who could "unite the country" against Trump.
In the wake
of this pathetic capitulation to the Queen of Chaos, our Australian Shepard,
Boomer, drafted an Open Letter on behalf of all sheepdogs renouncing any association
with Bernie Sanders. One of the signatories (a Blue Healer from Brentwood) swore,
however, that she saw Sander's head popping out of Paris Hilton's handbag…
A friend lamented the fact that all of the fun and spirit had gone out of
the election campaign since Sanders was "neutralized." Was Bernie neutralized?
I thought that Bernie neutralized himself. And it was hard to watch. Like an
x-rated episode of Nip/Tuck.
"... Bernie disgraced himself and drove a dagger through the heart of youth involvement in the democratic process. Millions of kids believd in him. He's is even more repellent that Clinton. Faced with evidence that the DNC had rigged the nomination process in favour of Clinton, what did he do? He backed her. Beyond shame. ..."
Bernie sold out. If not that, then he was simply in it as faux opposition
from the start. Having unified the militant and disgruntled outliers, he
then readily doffed his cap and sheperded his gullible followers towards
the only practical Democratic alternative available.
Wasted effort. The 'masters' in the shadows are about to throw the harridan
under the bus. Her brazen air of arrogance and entitlement is about to fade
as she comes to realise, that albeit Comey having been got at, he's still
succeeded in striking a severe blow against her, and also at the not-so-tin-hat
conspiracy of inappropriate, and increasingly overt, institutional support,
in the face of documented lies, in your face hypocrisy, and corruption oozing
from every orifice of a maverick administration.
The seeds have been planted for a defense of diminished responsibility.
Don't fall for it! Hillary, (and her illustrious spouse), deserve not a
smidgen of pity.
''We came, we saw, he died'', she enthusiastically and unempathically
cackled.
Just about sums it up
Michael109 fflambeau 2d ago
Bernie disgraced himself and drove a dagger through the heart of
youth involvement in the democratic process. Millions of kids believd in
him. He's is even more repellent that Clinton. Faced with evidence that
the DNC had rigged the nomination process in favour of Clinton, what did
he do? He backed her. Beyond shame.
His campaign ended with him performing the classic role of shipdog for Hillary,
who shares none of his ideas and economic policies. If this is not Obama style "bait
and switch' I do not know what is...
Bernie Sanders: I support Hillary Clinton. So should everyone
who voted for me http://fw.to/mVDxuLJ
The conventions are over and the general election has officially begun.
In the primaries, I received 1,846 pledged delegates, 46% of the total.
Hillary Clinton received 2,205 pledged delegates, 54%. She received 602
superdelegates. I received 48 superdelegates. Hillary Clinton is the Democratic
nominee and I will vigorously support her.
Donald Trump would be a disaster and an embarrassment for our country
if he were elected president. His campaign is not based on anything of substance
- improving the economy, our education system, healthcare or the environment.
It is based on bigotry. He is attempting to win this election by fomenting
hatred against Mexicans and Muslims. He has crudely insulted women. And
as a leader of the "birther movement," he tried to undermine the legitimacy
of our first African American president. That is not just my point of view.
That's the perspective of a number of conservative Republicans.
In these difficult times, we need a president who will bring our nation
together, not someone who will divide us by race or religion, not someone
who lacks an understanding of what our Constitution is about.
On virtually every major issue facing this country and the needs of working
families, Clinton's positions are far superior to Trump's. Our campaigns
worked together to produce the most progressive platform in the history
of American politics. Trump's campaign wrote one of the most reactionary
documents.
Clinton understands that Citizens United has undermined our democracy.
She will nominate justices who are prepared to overturn that Supreme Court
decision, which made it possible for billionaires to buy elections. Her
court appointees also would protect a woman's right to choose, workers'
rights, the rights of the LGBT community, the needs of minorities and immigrants
and the government's ability to protect the environment.
Trump, on the other hand, has made it clear that his Supreme Court appointees
would preserve the court's right-wing majority.
Clinton understands that in a competitive global economy we need the
best-educated workforce in the world. She and I worked together on a proposal
that will revolutionize higher education in America. It will guarantee that
the children of any family in this country with an annual income of $125,000
a year or less – 83% of our population – will be able to go to a public
college or university tuition free. This proposal also substantially reduces
student debt.
Trump, on the other hand, has barely said a word about higher education.
Clinton understands that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality,
it is absurd to provide huge tax breaks to the very rich.
Trump, on the other hand, wants billionaire families like his to enjoy
hundreds of billions of dollars in new tax breaks.
Clinton understands that climate change is real, is caused by human activity
and is one of the great environmental crises facing our planet. She knows
that we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and move
aggressively to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
Trump, on the other hand, like most Republicans, rejects science and
the conclusions of almost all major researchers in the field. He believes
that climate change is a "hoax," and that there's no need to address it.
Clinton understands that this country must move toward universal healthcare.
She wants to see that all Americans have the right to choose a public option
in their healthcare exchange, that anyone 55 or older should be able to
opt in to Medicare, and that we must greatly improve primary healthcare
through a major expansion of community health centers. She also wants to
lower the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs.
And what is Donald Trump's position on healthcare? He wants to abolish
the Affordable Care Act, throw 20 million people off the health insurance
they currently have and cut Medicaid for lower-income Americans.
During the primaries, my supporters and I began a political revolution
to transform America. That revolution continues as Hillary Clinton seeks
the White House. It will continue after the election. It will continue until
we create a government which represents all of us and not just the 1 percent
– a government based on the principle of economic, social, racial and environmental
justice.
I understand that many of my supporters are disappointed by the final
results of the nominating process, but being despondent and inactive is
not going to improve anything. Going forward and continuing the struggle
is what matters. And, in that struggle, the most immediate task we face
is to defeat Donald
Most of us knew this already, but now here's proof.
Is Bernie going down fighting for his political beliefs like a real presidential
candidate would? Is he even being remotely honest with his supporters at this
point? Nope. He's keeping his mouth shut and staying on script for Hillary -
who everyone knows will be the worst kind of tyrannical dictator - saying, "I'm
proud to stand with her".
For those of us who didn't know this, Bernie was like a magical fairy unicorn.
People want so badly to believe it's real... but it just isn't... and it never
was. Feel the burn...
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Lemmy Fuque
1 day ago
For decades the Clintons have run a criminal organization of fraud, deception,
hypocrisy, conspiracy, bribes, blackmail, espionage, treason, murder, assassination,
money laundering, sex-slaves, pedophilia, etc. that would leave Capone and
Giancana in awe. Leaked DNC emails is your proof that Bernie was just another
Clinton pawn. (Add Seth Rich to the Clinton body count after leaking DNC
emails). Though Bernie attracted a lot of followers, do NOT under estimate
the stupidity of the brainwashed Libtard electorate to vote the skank criminal
cunt for POTUS. Clintons run the $100B criminal Clinton Foundation & Global
initiative and get what they want-or they will take you out. Libtards will
be the easiest and first lead to FEMA camps for NWO depopulation.
You can't blame Bernie for he is a Professional politician after all. To
survive in that game, one has to play ball with party management. Half the
trouble in this country comes from the two parties who make the decisions....Not
the people.
like jessse venture said ..politics is exactly like wrestling - In front
of the cameras they hate each other , but when it's off they eating lunch
together
Bernies reaction that night when Clinton dared to thank him said it all
,sad fact is he refuses to say they fucked him and lied and cheated because
she has offered him something or he is scared.
"... Older people–and older AAs are no exception–I think just are less receptive to the Sanders message. They've been propagandized for too long and too successfully. Actually I don't just think this, the polling data fairly screams it. It might be a waste of time chasing those AA church lady grandmothers, they are right wing conservatives in almost any objective sense who minus the identity politics woo woo would be Republicans but just need a safe space to be that way without rubbing shoulders with overt white racists, and the corporate neocon-neolib DP mainstream is a perfect fit for them. ..."
"... Obama, who pretty much could be George W Bush in blackface, is the perfect identity politics totem for that role. ..."
We will have to wait for the campaign tell-alls to understand what the Sanders
campaign believed its strategy was, and whether the campaign believes
it was successful, or not. While it is true that reform efforts in the Democrat
Party have a very poor track record, it's also true that third parties have
a terrible track record. (It's worth noting that in the eight years just past,
with the capitol occupations, Occupy proper, Black Lives Matter, fracking campaigns
all on the boil, the Green Party was flatlined, seeminly unable to make an institutional
connection with any of these popular movements. It may be that 2016 is different.
It may also be that the iron law of institutions applies to the GP just as much
as it does to any other party.) Therefore, "working within the Democrat Party"
- which Sanders consistently said he would do; the label on the package
was always there - is not, a priori , a poor strategic choice, especially
if "working within" amounts to a hostile takeover followed by a management purge.
And it's hard for me to recall another "working within" approach that garnered
45% of the vote, severed the youth of the party - of all identities - from the
base of the ruling faction, and invented an entirely new and highly successful
funding model. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, which the dominant faction
in today's Democrat Party destroyed, would be the closest parallel, and the
material conditions of working people are worse today than they were in Jackson's
time, and institutions generally far less likely to be perceived as legitimate.
And if we consider the idea that one of Sander's strategic goals was not the
office but the successful propagation of the socialist idea - as a Johnny Appleseed,
rather than
a happy warrior - then the campaign was a success by any measure. (That
said, readers know my priors on this: I define victory in 2016 as the creation
of independent entities with a left voice; an "Overton Prism," as it were, three-sided,
rather than an Overton Window, two-sided. I've got some hope that this victory
is on the way, because it's bigger than any election.)
With those views as background, most of the attacks on Sanders accuse him
of bad faith. This was the case with the Green Party's successfully propagated
"sheepdog" meme; it's also the case with the various forms of post-defeat armchair
cynicism, all of which urge, that in some way Sanders succeeded by betraying
his supporters in some way. (This is, I suppose, easier to accept than the idea
that Sanders got a beating by an powerful political campaign with a ton of money
and the virtually unanimous support of the political class.)
If Sanders had defined success as betraying his supporters, I would expect
him to act and behave like a successful man. That's not the case. Here is Sanders
putting Clinton's name into nomination:
It's a sad, even awful, moment, I agree, but politics ain't beanbag. While
it would be irresponsible to speculate that Sanders looks so strained and unhappy
because he found a horse's head in his bed (
"Mrs. Clinton never asks a second favor once she's refused the first, understood?"
), his body language certainly doesn't look like he's a happy man, a man
who is happy with the deal he's made, or a man who has achieved success through
the betrayal of others; you'd have to look at the smiling faces on the Democrat
main stage for that.
I don't know the psychology of Sanders, but, how much did he really expect
to win in the early days of his campaign? Could "getting the Socialism ball
rolling" have been his definition of success in the beginning? Like Trump,
the other disruptional candidate, could his very success in the primary
season have surprised him? If so, then his pivot back to the Senate and
Socialist coalition movement building makes perfect sense.
In this sense, the anger focused on Sanders would be a displacement
of the groundswell of anger by the general public at the sheer brazenness
of the DNC's anti public policies. The DNC has shown contempt and disdain
for the very people they purport to work for. Whoever shifted the popular
anger from the DNC onto Sanders has done a masterful job of propaganda.
Saint Bernays would be proud.
I don't think he was expecting to win when he started, but at the same
time he was probably thinking it was worth a running a primary challenge
to change the conversation. His political strategy of trying to increase
turnout of working class voters was not a bad one, considering that Democrat
primary voters have lately been the demographics who support either neoliberalism
or would be racially biased against a non-Christian candidate. He was mainly
hurt by three things, two of which were largely out of his control: (1)
he lacked the polish/media saavy to not get dragged into minor issues that
distracted from his core message (like the flap about calling Clinton unqualified,
or his visit to the Vatican), (2) he literally had the entire media and
political establishment working against him, and arguably inciting voter
suppression and fraud , and (3) his non-Christianity limited his ability
to coalesce support from older African-Americans, which hurt him in the
South and hurt him from a perception standpoint.
What remains to be seen is where his supporters go now. Dissatisfaction
with the status quo will only continue to increase. Something interesting
though, is that Tulsi Gabbard seems to be setting herself to be the continuation
of the Sanders movement. I am unfamiliar with her policies, but her positioning
is in stark contrast to the rest of the Democrat Party.
Older people–and older AAs are no exception–I think just are less
receptive to the Sanders message. They've been propagandized for too long
and too successfully. Actually I don't just think this, the polling data
fairly screams it. It might be a waste of time chasing those AA church lady
grandmothers, they are right wing conservatives in almost any objective
sense who minus the identity politics woo woo would be Republicans but just
need a safe space to be that way without rubbing shoulders with overt white
racists, and the corporate neocon-neolib DP mainstream is a perfect fit
for them.
Obama, who pretty much could be George W Bush in blackface, is the
perfect identity politics totem for that role. The good news is obviously
that this demographic is dying off and young AAs don't share their elders'
pretty extreme right wing Christian viewpoint. I don't think the left needs
to fix that "problem" or even can. Time will fix it and nothing much else
can.
"... So, there you have it. The guy who suspected his campaign was being intentionally marginalized by the party apparatus learns in fact he, his campaign and most importantly, his voters were indeed intentionally marginalized by the leadership of the Democratic Party. The chairman of the Party is Barack Obama. He appoints the Director who we all know is Wasserman Schultz. Thus, the entirety of the DNC leadership knowingly and with intent marginalized Sanders and his voters. Yet, Sanders remains loyal and naively believes his voters will stay with him if he sticks with the party and their chosen candidate that screwed him and them. ..."
"... His response reminds me of battered wife syndrome. He has absolutely bonded with his abusers. He is a sick man as in mentally impaired, maybe fatigued, and should seriously consider some rest. ..."
"... Think about all that man has put himself, his family, his workers, his voters through this last year. His efforts were ginormous. Yet, within less than 48 hours the man dismisses the gravity of how his life's work was deliberately, with intent, sabotaged by the DNC and goes onto say it's not important, the issues are. ..."
"... Sure the issues are important to his voters but their learning the DNC put their resources behind their chosen candidate vs remaining neutral as their Bylaws require, would seriously piss me off. Hell it does piss me off and I'm not even a Sanders supporter. ..."
"... And why on earth would any of Sanders voters ever believe that the same party that marginalized him and his efforts would ever give weight to the issues he's fighting for! ..."
For those who have a Twitter account, checkout #dncleak or #dncleaks on the
latest over the Wikileaks release of the DNC emails.
Here's one -"Hillary Clinton is now blaming the Russians for leaking the
emails. Like that makes it any better that you rigged the primary."
Sanders to Chuck Todd on the leaks -
Todd: "So just to sum up here, these leaks, these emails, it hasn't given
you any pause about your support for Hillary Clinton?"
Sanders: "No, no, no. We are going to do everything that we can to protect
working families in this country. And again, Chuc, I know media is not necessarily
focused on these things. But what a campaign is about is not Hillary Clinton,
it's not Donald Trump. It is the people of this country, blah blah blah..."
"[...] And I'm going to go around the country discussing them [issues] and
making sure Hillary Clinton is elected president."
So, there you have it. The guy who suspected his campaign was being intentionally
marginalized by the party apparatus learns in fact he, his campaign and most
importantly, his voters were indeed intentionally marginalized by the leadership
of the Democratic Party. The chairman of the Party is Barack Obama. He appoints
the Director who we all know is Wasserman Schultz. Thus, the entirety of the
DNC leadership knowingly and with intent marginalized Sanders and his voters.
Yet, Sanders remains loyal and naively believes his voters will stay with him
if he sticks with the party and their chosen candidate that screwed him and
them.
UNFRIGGINBELIEVABLE!
His response reminds me of battered wife syndrome. He has absolutely
bonded with his abusers. He is a sick man as in mentally impaired, maybe fatigued,
and should seriously consider some rest.
I cannot imagine learning after years of planning, hard work and personal
sacrifices being made to fulfill my lifelong ambition to get within a whisker
of achieving my goals, only to learn within weeks after capitulating, that my
entire life's effort was undermined from the beginning by the very apparatus
I aligned with, albeit as an Indy, for decades. An apparatus that must remain
neutral.
Think about his response to Todd. Think about all that man has put himself,
his family, his workers, his voters through this last year. His efforts were
ginormous. Yet, within less than 48 hours the man dismisses the gravity of how
his life's work was deliberately, with intent, sabotaged by the DNC and goes
onto say it's not important, the issues are.
If I were a Bernie supporter I'd be starting a campaign to convince that
man to take some serious time off. Go fishing. Go for hikes whatever. Just get
away from the bubble and clear your head and soul.
Sure the issues are important to his voters but their learning the DNC
put their resources behind their chosen candidate vs remaining neutral as their
Bylaws require, would seriously piss me off. Hell it does piss me off and I'm
not even a Sanders supporter.
And why on earth would any of Sanders voters ever believe that the same
party that marginalized him and his efforts would ever give weight to the issues
he's fighting for!
"... "We have been offering Bernie Sanders, basically to sit down and talk and to explore how we might be collaborate, because I can't give away the nomination," ..."
"... "could certainly work with him for all sorts of possibilities, including leading the ticket." ..."
"... "truly saw the light," ..."
"... "the green light, that we do need independent politics." ..."
"... "the revolution is now being stuffed back into a counter-revolutionary party," ..."
"... "leading the charge for Wall Street, for wars and for the Walmart economy." ..."
"... "Bernie said let's forget the past, but I don't think people can forget this movement that they've worked so hard to build," ..."
"... "there were a lot of people who were watching this endorsement in complete and utter disbelief." ..."
"... "I think there are a lot of broken hearts out there among the Bernie campaign. A lot of people who are feeling burned by the Democratic Party, who are not going to simply resign themselves to an election that offers them either a billionaire, one hand, or a cheerleader for the billionaires," she added. ..."
Following Sanders officially dropping out of the race, Stein reminded RT viewers
of her proposal to step aside in order to offer him the nomination in her Green
Party.
"We have been offering Bernie Sanders, basically to sit down and
talk and to explore how we might be collaborate, because I can't give away the
nomination," Stein told RT, stressing that even though she cannot take
the delegates' role of assigning nominations, she "could certainly work
with him for all sorts of possibilities, including leading the ticket."
This could be possible, she said, if Sanders "truly saw the light,"
meaning "the green light, that we do need independent politics."
In Stein's view, "the revolution is now being stuffed back into a counter-revolutionary
party," whose standard bearer, Clinton, she scorns for "leading the
charge for Wall Street, for wars and for the Walmart economy."
"Bernie said let's forget the past, but I don't think people can forget
this movement that they've worked so hard to build," Stein said, adding
that on Tuesday "there were a lot of people who were watching this endorsement
in complete and utter disbelief."
.... ... ...
Sanders supporters have taken to social media in a stern backlash against
the former Democratic presidential candidate.
"They also can't forget Hillary Clinton's record, which is very much the
opposite of what they have been working for the past year," Stein says.
"I think there are a lot of broken hearts out there among the Bernie
campaign. A lot of people who are feeling burned by the Democratic Party,
who are not going to simply resign themselves to an election that offers
them either a billionaire, one hand, or a cheerleader for the billionaires,"
she added.
She says that after primaries in California where "it became clear that the
Democratic Party was really shutting [Sanders] out," her Green Party began to
see people's interest surge.
"We are seeing that now, in the last 24 to 36 hours as well, as people realize
that the game is over," Stein said.
@MajorCallowayLeader
Well, now it's Stein or Trump - time will tell.
Sanders is the worst kind of turncoat.
How can he possibly support the Laughing Butcher of Libya? He must have
been a lost soul to begin with, or sold it long ago.
"... In late April I was among the 25 Vermonters who occupied Congressman Bernie Sanders' Burlington office to protest his support of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and the ongoing war against Iraq. Calling ourselves the "Instant Antiwar Action Group," we decided to bring our outrage at Bernie's escalating hypocrisy directly to his office, an action that resulted in 15 of us being arrested for trespass. ..."
"... Dissident Voices ..."
"... Despite his own claims, Sanders has not been an antiwar leader. . . . His hawkish [stance] drove one of his key advisers, Jeremy Brecher, to resign from his staff. Brecher wrote in his resignation letter, "Is there a moral limit to the military violence you are willing to participate in or support?" ..."
"... Dissident Voices ..."
"... Under the Bush regime, Sanders' militarism has only grown worse. While he called for alternative approaches to the war on Afghanistan, he failed to join the sole Democrat, Barbara Lee, to vote against Congress' resolution that gave George Bush a blank check to launch war on any country he deemed connected to the September 11 attacks. ..."
"... After thousands of people are killed in the World Trade Center and Pentagon, President George Bush and Congress declared war on Afghanistan. Sanders joined the bandwagon and voted to adopt the joint resolution that authorized the President to use the United States Armed Forces against anyone involved with the attacks of September 11th, 2001 and any nation that harbors these individuals. ..."
"... While Sanders voted against the original authorization to use military force against Iraq, he followed that vote with several subsequent votes authorizing funding of that war and the debacle in Afghanistan. ..."
What also stands out in the above criticism is that Sanders, seeking the
Democratic nomination as a Tea Party of the Left outlier, has a long-standing
history of supporting presidential military forays: anathema to aggressive
progressives.
In 1999, Congressman Sanders signed onto President Bill Clinton's military
interventions into Kosovo. Peace activists crashed his Burlington, VT Congressional
Office. One of the protesters commented on
the Liberty Union Party website :
In late April I was among the 25 Vermonters who occupied Congressman
Bernie Sanders' Burlington office to protest his support of the NATO bombing
of Yugoslavia and the ongoing war against Iraq. Calling ourselves the "Instant
Antiwar Action Group," we decided to bring our outrage at Bernie's escalating
hypocrisy directly to his office, an action that resulted in 15 of us being
arrested for trespass.
Dissident Voices blasted Sanders not just for cozying up with
the Democratic Party, but war authorizations throughout his tenure in the
House of Representatives.
Despite his own claims, Sanders has not been an antiwar leader. .
. . His hawkish [stance] drove one of his key advisers, Jeremy Brecher,
to resign from his staff. Brecher wrote in his resignation letter, "Is there
a moral limit to the military violence you are willing to participate in
or support?"
Under the Bush regime, Sanders' militarism has only grown worse.
While he called for alternative approaches to the war on Afghanistan, he
failed to join the sole Democrat, Barbara Lee, to vote against Congress'
resolution that gave George Bush a blank check to launch war on any country
he deemed connected to the September 11 attacks.
Indeed,
Barbara
Lee (D-CA) was the lone vote against granting this extended power to
President Bush. Sanders joined with both parties on this issue. Of course.
While Presidential candidate Sanders
has
relaunched his speech on the House floor opposing the War on Iraq in
2002,
Counterpunch has already exposed Sanders' connections with
Bush 43's military ventures:
After thousands of people are killed in the World Trade Center and
Pentagon, President George Bush and Congress declared war on Afghanistan.
Sanders joined the bandwagon and voted to adopt the joint resolution that
authorized the President to use the United States Armed Forces against anyone
involved with the attacks of September 11th, 2001 and any nation that harbors
these individuals.
And then:
While Sanders voted against the original authorization to use military
force against Iraq, he followed that vote with several subsequent votes
authorizing funding of that war and the debacle in Afghanistan.
Sanders has followed a pattern of voting against initial efforts to expand
government resources into the War on Terror, then voted for funding them
afterwards.
The Democratic Party's 2016 Presidential bench is a clown-car of political
dysphoria. From Hillary Clinton's early yearning for Republican Barry Goldwater,
to Lincoln Chafee's former GOP US Senator status, and Jim Webb's service
in the Reagan Administration, now left-wing partisans can argue that "Weekend
at Bernie" Sanders
is right-wing warmonger .
Sanders has spent a lot of time and energy convincing voters that Clinton had
no place in the Oval Office.
The following are just a few examples.
1 – "Are you qualified to be President of the United States when
you're raising millions of dollars from Wall Street whose greed, recklessness
and illegal behavior helped to destroy our economy?" – Philadelphia rally,
April 2016.
However, Sanders may be singing a different tune when he is back in Philadelphia
for the Democratic National Convention. His change of heart Tuesday included
telling the audience: "I have come here to make it as clear as possible as to
why I am endorsing Hillary Clinton and why she must become our next president."
2 – "I proudly stood with the workers. Secretary Clinton stood
with the big money interests" – Youngstown, Ohio March 14
Sanders has frequently attacked Clinton's use of Super PACs and potential
interest from elite banks. While the former secretary of state has been endorsed
by many unions, such as the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees,
Sanders' speech swapped that rhetoric for something a little more flattering.
In his endorsement speech, he said: "Hillary Clinton understands that we
must fix an economy in America that is rigged and that sends almost all new
wealth and income to the top one percent."
3 – "Do I have a problem, when a sitting Secretary of State and
a Foundation ran by her husband collects many millions of dollars from foreign
governments, governments which are dictatorship… um yeah, do I have a problem
with that? Yeah I do."
Sanders passionately attacked the Clinton Foundation in June, calling its
reception of money from foreign governments such as Saudi Arabia a "conflict
of interest." However, on Tuesday he told the audience that Clinton "knows that
it is absurd that middle-class Americans are paying an effective tax rate higher
than hedge fund millionaires, and that there are corporations in this country
making billions in profit while they pay no federal income taxes in a given
year because of loopholes their lobbyists created."
4 – "She was very reluctant to come out in opposition. She is running
for president. She concluded it was a good idea to oppose the TPP, and she did."
Clinton's slow opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) raised the
ire of both Sanders and his supporters. Perhaps through intense negotiations
to make Clinton's campaign more progressive, he is now willing to focus more
on Clinton's interior economy, saying, "She wants to create millions of new
jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure – our roads, bridges, water
systems and wastewater plants."
5 – "Well, I don't think Hillary Clinton can lead a political revolution"
Commenting on Clinton's potential to carry the torch for the political revolution
he claimed he was spearheading, Sanders lacked faith in her ability to make
the changes he deemed necessary back in June, when he was on CBS's "Face the
Nation."
However, perhaps through negotiating the terms of his endorsement, Clinton's
platform sounds more and more like Sanders' when he talks about it. Describing
new platforms such as lowering student debt and making free education attainable
without accruing massive amounts of debt, along with expanding the use of generic
medicine and expanding community health centers all sound like shades of Sanders.
6 – "When you support and continue to support fracking, despite
the crisis that we have in terms of clean water… the American people do not
believe that that is the kind of president that we need to make the changes
in America to protect the working families of this country."
Back in an April debate, many voters were frustrated when Clinton gave a
lengthy, difficult explanation about her stance on fracking. Sanders, a longtime
opponent of hydraulic fracturing.
However, since the CNN Democratic Debate, Sanders and Clinton may have both
shifted their positions on the matter that was once clear cut for the senator
from Vermont.
According to Sanders, "Hillary Clinton is listening to the scientists who
tell us that if we do not act boldly in the very near future there will be more
drought, more floods, more acidification of the oceans, more rising sea levels."
7 – "When this campaign began, I said that we got to end the starvation
minimum wage of $7.25, raise it to $15. Secretary Clinton said let's raise it
to $12 ... To suddenly announce now that you're for $15, I don't think is quite
accurate."
At the same CNN debate in Brooklyn, Sanders hammered on Clinton's inconsistent
stance on raising the minimum wage. While her opinion has shifted from debate
to debate, it seems that Sanders' has as well.
"She believes that we should raise the minimum wage to a living wage," Sanders
said, without specifying what the minimum wage would be increased to under her
more progressive campaign.
8– "Almost all of the polls that… have come out suggest that I
am a much stronger candidate against the Republicans than is Hillary Clinton."
Sanders might be eating crow for this one. His entire endorsement speech
often focused on the party's need to defeat presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.
Throughout the speech, Sanders contrasted the new and improved Clinton strategy
that includes more of Sanders' talking points with those from Trump.
Sanders went as far as to place the importance of the election on keeping
Trump away from the Supreme Court, saying, "If you don't believe this election
is important, take a moment to think about the Supreme Court justices that Donald
Trump will nominate, and what that means to civil liberties, equal rights and
the future of our country."
9 – "[Super predators] was a racist term and everybody knew it
was a racist term."
Clinton's involvement with the criminal justice reform of the 1990s that
contributed to the mass incarceration has frequently been a contentious point
in this election. In 1996, she went on to warn the public about the existence
of "super predators," or children with "no conscience, no empathy, we can talk
about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel."
However, both Clinton and Sanders have a track record of working with the
civil rights movements, and now Sanders may not be so quick to put Clinton and
racist in the same sentence.
"Hillary Clinton understands that our diversity is one of our greatest strengths,"
he said Tuesday.
Of course Bernie Sanders appears to have sold out emerging from a White
House meeting with President Barack Obama vowing to work together with Hillary
Clinton to defeat Donald Trump in November. Bernie would rather endorse
a traitor who has sold her influence as Secretary of State just to save
the Democratic Party. Obama assured Bernie, no doubt, that he would not
allow Hillary to be indicted. And to further rig the game, the State Department
refuses to release her emails until
AFTER the election. But the actual date they gave was
November 31st, 2016, which does not exist since November has only 30 days.
Once she is president, no doubt they will vanish altogether.
It appears that Bernie is betraying all those who supported him. Hillary
will raise $1 billion to buy the White House. That kind of money does not
come from bankers without strings. Wall Street supports Hillary – not Trump.
That says it all. How Bernie can just give up is amazing. What happened
to his "revolution" will never be discussed.
"Text of Bernie Sanders' speech endorsing Hillary Clinton" [MarketWatch].
Lambert here: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. The moment had to come,
and now it has come. Will Sanders, in practice, have proven to be a sheepdog?
Will Sanders' endorsement decapitate his movement? To me, the open question
is what actions Sanders voters will take, going forward, beyond the ballot
box, and as organizers. I'm not really sanguine about that, because the
Chicago conference didn't give me confidence the left could unsilo itself,
and distinguish itself, as a single institutional force ready to take power,
from the (neoliberal) liberals (mostly Democrats) and the (neoliberal) conservatives
(some Democrats, mostly Republicans). That said, the Sanders campaign did
more than the left could have expected in its wildest dreams. To the text:
[SANDERS:] I have come here today not to talk about the past but
to focus on the future. That future will be shaped more by what happens
on November 8 in voting booths across our nation than by any other event
in the world. I have come here to make it as clear as possible as to
why I am endorsing Hillary Clinton and why she must become our next
president.
During the last year I had the extraordinary opportunity to speak
to more than 1.4 million Americans at rallies in almost every state
in this country. I was also able to meet with many thousands of other
people at smaller gatherings. And the profound lesson that I have learned
from all of that is that this campaign is not really about Hillary Clinton,
or Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, or any other candidate who sought
the presidency. This campaign is about the needs of the American people
and addressing the very serious crises that we face. And there is no
doubt in my mind that, as we head into November, Hillary Clinton is
far and away the best candidate to do that.
I'd prefer the position that Clinton hasn't won the nomination until
there's a vote on the convention floor, which I had understood to be the
position of the Sanders campaign.
[SANDERS:] Hillary Clinton understands that we must fix an economy
in America that is rigged and that sends almost all new wealth and income
to the top one percent.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
[SANDERS:] This election is about the grotesque level of income and
wealth inequality that currently exists, the worst it has been since
1928. Hillary Clinton knows that something is very wrong when the very
rich become richer while many others are working longer hours for lower
wages.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
[SANDERS:] I am happy to tell you that at the Democratic Platform
Committee which ended Sunday night in Orlando, there was a significant
coming together between the two campaigns and we produced, by far, the
most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party. Our
job now is to see that platform implemented by a Democratic Senate,
a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton president - and I am going
to do everything I can to make that happen.
Platform as a highly inadequate baseline and a method to hold Clinton's
feet to the fire? Yes. Not negligible, but not much. And
Clinton immediately showed - before the rally! - that she didn't
take it seriously.
[SANDERS:] Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and
I am proud to stand with her here today.
I don't see how the institutionalized corruption of both legacy parties
generally and the Clinton Dynasty in particular make any of this possible.
One door closes, another opens…
"'I can't help but say how much more enjoyable this election is going
to be when we are on the same side,' [Clinton] said. "You know what? We
are stronger together!'" [CNN].
Whichever Clinton operative decided to deploy the "stronger together" slogan
shouldn't be expected to have known that it's also a slogan developed by
the military junta in Thailand. But whatever.
"Tuesday's rally drew supporters of Clinton and Sanders, some of whom
chanted 'Bernie' while others chanted 'unity.' Some Sanders supporters left
their seats when Sanders endorsed Clinton. Earlier, when New Hampshire Sen.
Jeanne Shaheen said 'we need to elect Hillary,' she was interrupted by shouts
of 'No!' and chants of "Bernie, Bernie' [USA
Today]. "But there were deafening cheers as Sanders said Clinton would
'make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her here today.'"
"The most ringing portion of the endorsement came at the end, with Sanders
bringing up some of the personal reasons why he had chosen to support Clinton.
But even this portion felt a bit lifeless, with Sanders citing Clinton's
intellect and passion on children's issues, and failing to address her integrity,
which he directly challenged during the campaign and which will continue
to be an issue the Republicans attack in the wake of the conclusion of the
FBI's investigation into her email scandal" [Slate].
And what happened here?
Do we have any readers who were on that conference call?
"[I]n a nod to Sanders's successful fundraising efforts that brought
in millions of dollars from small donors, with at one time an average donation
of $27, Clinton's campaign has made $27 an option on its online donor page"
[CNN].
"About 85 percent of Democrats who backed Mr. Sanders in the primary
contests said they planned to vote for her in the general election, according
to a Pew poll released last week. Yet she has struggled to appeal to the
independents and liberals who rallied behind the senator's call for a 'political
revolution' to topple establishment politicians, Mrs. Clinton included"
[New
York Times]. 85% of declared Democrats. Not such a good number from
a third of the electorate.
"I am not voting for Hillary Clinton, regardless of her endorsement by
Bernie Sanders. My decision isn't because of the scandal around her emails
or because of some concern over her character. My reasons are pretty straightforward.
I don't agree with her ideologically" [Eddie S. Glaude,
Time].
The Trail
"The final amendment to the Democratic Party platform was meant to sprinkle
Hillary Clinton's name throughout the document, putting a contentious and
drawn-out primary process to rest in favor of a unified party. It never
came up for a vote" [Bloomberg].
"Despite having the support of both the Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaign
staffs, the amendment hadn't been run by committee members or Sanders supporters
in the audience, some of whom angrily shouted down the language because,
they argued, Clinton isn't the official nominee yet. The moment highlighted
the state of the party after a long weekend of intense debates in Orlando,
Florida, that left some tempers frayed, and extensive back-room policy negotiations
between the two campaigns…."
"On Tuesday, the [Trump and Indiana Governor Mike Pence] will put their
compatibility to the test when they appear together at a rally near Indianapolis,
the latest in a string of public auditions for the running mate role" [RealClearPolitics].
""Hillary Clinton's campaign is vetting James G. Stavridis, a retired
four-star Navy admiral who served as the 16th supreme allied commander at
NATO, as a possible running mate" [New
York Times].
From the Wikipedia entry, which seems to have been written by a Clinton
operative: "Stavridis has long advocated the use of "Smart Power," which
he defines as the balance of hard and soft power taken together. In numerous
articles[17] and speeches, he has advocated creating security in the 21st
century by building bridges, not walls." I mean, come on.
jo6pac
Those that sent money to Bernie please let Lambert and us know if dddc
or dnc ask for $$$$$$. Then may be it will just be a letter from the foundation
asking for $$$$$$$$$$$$.
Roger Smith
I will update should I receive anything. I am curious about the list
as well.
Arizona Slim
I just unsubscribed from Bernie's e-mailing list.
Rick
As did I. I will keep the poster I bought from his campaign as a reminder
of a now passed moment of hope.
cwaltz
The moment hasn't passed unless you were expecting Bernie Sanders to
do all the heavy lifting.
The reality is that each and every person disappointed today should make
a concerted effort to let the DNC know in no uncertain terms did their lying,
cheating and outright rigging of this primary mean that they'll be getting
a vote this November. It also means that each and every person find their
spine and support someone other than the Democratic nominee. Expect to hunker
down for 4 years no matter what because if Clinton or Trump are the nominees
then you can pretty much expect there won't be many benefits for average
Americans.
"... "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." ..."
"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.
Bernie is anti war, anti Wall St., anti TPP. If that is not a betrayal of his
supporters and his principles what is it then. Endorsing Clinton is like taking
a job at Goldman-Sachs.
So why exactly he endorses her? We still don't know.
The Democrats has good political operatives. There is Barack, the "change-no-change"
"black not for blacks" candidate, and Bernie, The Revolutionary who stands
staunchly behind Goldman Sachs and everything it presents.
Of course the real governing task is delegated to Hillary Clinton and
the "experts" from the banks.
Hey guys. Good job. Just remember: ultimately there is that cliff you're
marching towards.
Why is he not doing as he promised and taking his message and challenge
all the way to the convention? The super delegates are still an play and
I doubt they've even finished counting California...This is very disheartening...
Prepare for eternal war.
I'd like to formally thank Bernie Sanders for endorsing my wife Hillary
today. I know how tough it was for Bernie to stump for her today. Especially
considering Hillary is even more crooked than my 4-inch yogurt slinger.
As many of my young interns know, that's really crooked!
I'd also like to formally apologize to Bernie for all the death threats
and that severed horse's head my guys left in his bed. lol whoops! Ok, gotta
go make another phone call to my good friend Trump now.....
You could just crawl back into your socialist hole and not say anything
Bernie, but no, you're just another fool brought by Clinton because she
needs your votes like she needs air. Congratulations on becoming another
member of the Clinton foundations bankroll
The problem isnt her most recent rhetoric, it is her person, and trusting
to do the things she says (as she has held every side of every position).
The endorsement doesn't fix the problem that we still don't want her...
I think many of us will be looking for at the third party alternatives.
If we give into this lesser of two evils every election cycle, we'll soon
find candidates worse than Trump.
1. Party platforms are consolation bullshit. They mean nothing, especially
when the big money funding the campaign is against the platform. This is
just a political fact.
2. Therefore, Bernie's campaign has not started a revolution, but rather
has dead-ended with a big bowl of nothing.
3. Parties are the vehicles through which policies get pushed and accomplished.
Since it was re-engineered by the Clinton's in the 1990's, the Democratic
Party is like a vehicle with its steering welded to turn right.
4. Therefore the only way to achieve a successful and peaceful political
revolution is to re-engineer the vehicle; and this requires breaking it
down and putting it back together.
In other words, for the sake of progress, the D.N.C. as presently constituted
and managed had to be destroyed.
5. The only way to destroy the D.N.C. would have been to hand Hillary
a defeat on a platter. This would have driven home, in the only way politicians
understand, that progressive Americans will not be played and fooled.
6. The willingness to do this requires strategic fortitude -- a willingness
to think in long term objectives and to endure immediate and temporary inconveniences.
Four years of Trump will not be the "sky-is-falling" disaster the Hillary
Hens are clucking over. Eight years of Hillary will only solidify the grip
corporations, banks and neo-con militarists, have on the country.
7. Bernie should have run as an independent, precisely in order to defeat
Hillary. Only then could a four year hiatus be used to clean out the D.N.C.,
and revitalize it with real progressive blood. Then and only then will progressives
get the "platform" they want. Is four years of Clown Trump worth it? You
bet.
I disagree. Chris Hedges believes that Sanders intended to mislead voters
and intentionally funnel them back to Hillary Clinton under the belief that
they would uncritically support her. That seems to be completely false,
and even if it were true, it's seems he made a terrible sheepdog as many
of us will not support Hillary. The problem was that although he saw no
chance for an independent to win, the Democratic Party is a dead end for
real change as well. I guess we all know that now.
When it comes to intention I guess that I believed that he was genuine
in his attempt to win and bring about change (except on the nation that
cannot be criticised and on foreign policy) but the endorsement of HRC is
another blow for the massive desire to remove these two corporatist parties.
With the DNC having decided to support fracking, settlements etc the
American people (and the world) are in for more of the same, war, privatisation,
alienation of the poor, secret trade deals that give more power to corporations
and environmental destruction etc. etc. etc
"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."
You bottled it in the end. Sad. I never liked him much, but in running
as an independent or siding with the Greens he could have showed that he
stands for something. Endorsing Clinton is like taking a job at Goldman-Sachs.
Oh, so he admitted it'd be better to support a lesser evil? How should you
support an evil anyway? How about quietly withdrawing from the race and
not saying anything that violates his own principles? I don't see what that's
difficult to understand myself!
There was never a doubt that Democrats would eventually unite behind whoever
ended up being the nominee. The problem is that all those NON-Democrats
who so passionately supported Bernie will not. He was the real deal, and
our best hope of actually engaging them, expanding our party, and having
the wave election we need to actually get progress done.
I have been actively trying to recruit folks like this into our ranks
for many years now, so trust me when I tell you that we are in very serious
trouble this year. No matter what Bernie says or does, these non-Dems will
not feel the bern for her. We are heading to a low voter turnout election
with two major candidates that have record low net favorability ratings,
and Republicans usually do best in situations like that since they have
the most reliable voting base.
In my book, when you've run against somebody, you must think that guy would
be a bad choice. When you think a person is a bad choice, how come you endorse
that person? Bernie lost my respect (even though he doesn't care)!
F*** this lesser-of-two-evils rubbish. We paid for his campaign, to resist
this criminal and what she represents with every fibre of his body and he's
sold us out. Jill Stein offered him something that could have brought real
change and he sold us out. He is there because of the money and faith we
put in him.
What a turncoat bastard. I am disgusted.
For a vast library of information detailing the many crimes of the ghastly
Clinton crime syndicate, please see the following link.
http://www.arkancide.com
Super delegates have yet to vote, Hillary has not made it past the threshold,
so if Sanders torpedos her, he gets booted out as a Dem nominee by party
rules. So in order to stay to the convention he is doing what he has to.
Has he conceded? No! If Bernie showed and asked me to vote for Hillary
I would tell him no.
At this point, Bernie's endorsement of Hillary does not matter at all. The
genie of his movement is already out of the bottle, and it cannot be put
back in.
The movement never belonged to him, he belongs to the movement, and Bernie
knows it. He knows it even as he pronounces the endorsement. He has played
his enormously important part in that movement through his candidacy and
now he will go back to fighting for the progressive cause from inside the
Democratic party, because that is what he has been doing for twenty years
and before he launched that candidacy. But the forces that he has unleashed
will keep growing and gathering strength on their own.
Same old shit then. The Plutocrats won again and can freely go on
selling 'war for profit' as 'fighting for freedoms.'
With the useful benefit that La Clinton can now swan about on stage draped
in a coat made from the hide of an old leftie.
"We came, we saw we skinned it." And oh how the laughter rang out the entire
length of Wall Street.
So the warmongers and wall street win again. For the moment at least. The
struggle continues. A new front opens under the banner of the Greens. In
the UK the Grassoots on the left now have the whole power of the elite arrayed
against them, with dirty tricks and media lies. The right wing blairites
are using every trick in the book to split our Labouur Movement and remove
our democratically elected Leader Corbyn. We are hanging in. Wish us luck,
American friends! Looks like we are going to need it. No surrender!
There was never any doubt, in any election ever fought in the USA, that
the military-industrial-financial complex would be the winner. They always
are.
The left in the UK are tearing themselves apart Life of Brian
style (how prescient that film was!). It will be generations before they
every wield power in this country, if ever. I'll probably see out my days
under a vicious Tory administration.
It's a shame it has come to this but kind of expected.
Bernie wants to stop Trump now, and he believes that his is the way to
do it. I don't personally this will have the desired effect enough people
despise Clinton, but we will see.
If I was a US citizen and had a vote, I would have thrown my full support
behind Bernie, but this endorsement certainly would not make me vote for
Hillary either (I certainly wouldn't support Trump, I'm not totally insane),
I'd prefer to abstain completely.
Strategic voting is an expression of support for the rigid, corrupt and
self-serving political system that led to self-serving cretins like Trump
and Clinton being among the elite ruling class in the first place.
All it does is prolong the death rattles of the lower orders of society.
Fellow Americans: Our country was demolished by Clinton, and Obama has been
running a kill list for extra judicial killins, and he is the sitting president
under wich a police force appears to be on a rampage to coloured people.
The first black president leading a nation of multiple racist killings.
Do
Not
Ever
Vote
Democrats
Again
The word lie doesnt cover it. The word lying says it doesnt want anything
to do with Democrats. Trump, or any other republican, is a far better bet.
bring back George Bush jr for all I care. Anyone but a Demorcratic president.
Dont do it.
To endorse Hillary Clinton is to be in alliance with a cynical and utterly
corrupt liar who is willing to say anything to get elected. By endorsing
Hillary you, Bernie, have become a part of everything you have been complaining
about. Never mind. It never was about you and your endorsement isn't worth
shit.
After the progressive cause was successively sold out to Goldman Sachs by
Paul Krugman, Gloria Steinem, John Lewis and the Congressional black caucus,
Lena Dunham, Beyonce, George Clooney and Elizabeth Warren (Did I forget
any of the earlier hate figures here?) it was inevitable that Bernie would
ultimately also be revealed as a neoliberal sellout.
Has to be viewed in the context of the global threat of Donald Trump
though
yeah imagine anyone daring to public oppose further neo-conservative
onslaught.
Obviously the man's unhinged and has to be stopped pronto.
fortunately bill kristol, victoria nuland, robert kagan et al are hot on
the case and 100% on board with hillary (& bill) on this
Sanders and Warren are now subsumed into the maw of the Empire of the Exceptionals
and are pledging their loyalty to it. Just like Obama all hopie changie
during campaigns but when the chips are down they show their true colors
as Neoliberal sycophants and support every policy the claimed to oppose.
I for one will never support a now proven corrupt and dishonest career politician.
Sorry Bernie, but the political revolution can never take place within a
party as establishment focused as the Democratic Party. A sad and depressing
time for all real progressives.
Trump is a man whose uncompromising attitude means he'll get even less
done than Obama. He'd be remembered as an ineffective washout of a president,
unable to get anything done and sorely disappointing a lot of voters.
Hillary is a smooth political operator who's in it for her own gain and
will get an awful lot done - just not the things you want her to do. She'll
be hawkish against Russia, interventionist against the Middle East, she'll
throw her full weight behind the establishment in both America and Europe,
and she'll make sure her paymasters at Goldman Sachs aren't disappointed
in her.
I suppose voting for Hillary to stop Trump might be an unavoidable course
of action. But few people realize the danger Hillary represents to the United
States... not because of what she will do, but because of what she won't
do.
Across the Western world, the centre is rapidly crumbling. Without a
significant course correction, it will soon fall and what replaces it is
hard to predict – but I doubt it will be pretty. Austria almost elected
a far right president, the UK voted for Brexit, the GOP nominated Trump.
You're a fool if you think this is the anti-establishment backlash... it's
only the beginning, and these events are just canaries in the mine. The
real backlash is yet to come.
With 4-8 years of a Clinton-led status quo government, resentment will
grow, inequality and hopelessness will increase... and eventually a right
wing demagogue who is much smarter than Trump will see an opportunity and
pounce. I suspect it'll happen right after the next market crash, which
Clinton will do nothing to prevent.
Historically illiterate people are constantly looking out for the "next
Hitler" and so point their finger at the likes of Trump. But that's the
wrong question. Anyone who understands the events that led to Nazism realizes
the true question is who is the next Von Hindenburg . Clinton looks
like a pretty good candidate in that respect.
"... Yeah. Painting the Syria/Libya crisis as Hillary vs the Repubs however is dishonest. not lacking insight or clarity. dishonest. On the Repubs: all the candidates except Trump said at the debate a few days ago that peace was not in the interests of Israel and therefore a US President would betray Israel by SEEKING peace. ..."
"... Hillary said at the townhall before Miss/MI that 'if we'd taken out Assad earlier like we did Gaddafi then Syria would only be as bad as Libya'. Your Hillary vs the Repubs routine is dishonest. This is the neocon oligrachy fighting for its life election. do not fake it in the name of Hillary. ..."
"... The Obama administration has redefined the word "militant " to be a "male of military age within the strike zone" and here's the killer ..."unless POSTHUMOUSLY proven to be innocent" ..."
"... Ramos ought to have asked Hilary exactly why Gadaffi was deposed, and came back at her fiercely with statistics and independent reports if she dared to even muse the suggestion that it was another "humanitarian intervention". ..."
"... If Hillary's two decade history of war mongering was exposed for what it really represents by "journalists" in the corporate media, she would no longer be insulated from the scrutiny her deeply flawed decision making warrants. ..."
"... Unfortunately, the American public have only independent news sites like the Intercept, Truthdig, the Jacobin, Harpers Magazine, Mondoweiss, and a few others from which to evaluate the real damage Hillary has caused. ..."
"... What gives Amerika the right to intervene in the affairs of other nations in the first place? Are they unaware that the rest of the world fears American terrorism more that anything else, or more likely, do they care? No wonder Hillary and the Republican hawks are worrying the planet. ..."
You are absolutely right as far as these five questions are concerned. Yet you forgot an important
one: TTIP as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. These so-called free trade agreements are
a fatal threat to democracy as they invest more power in corporations than in parliaments and
additionally they are detrimental to labour and the environment in the concerned countries.
It's a good article and reflects some of the questions I've been having.
My curiosity was aroused when the first CIA-directed drone killed its first victims, a terrorist
leader and some comrades in Yemen years ago. I'd thought that the CIA's assassination of anyone
in a foreign country was illegal. Evidently the rules have changed but I don't recall hearing
about it.
The media are always an easy target but lately I think their responsibility for our collective
ignorance has increased. The moderators in the TV debates seem deliberately provocative. I can
remember the first televised debate -- Kennedy vs. Nixon -- when both men soberly addressed the
camera when answering questions of substance.
The first interaction BETWEEN debators was a brief remark in 1980 by Reagan aimed at Jimmy
Carter. "There you go again." Before then, the debates were sober and dignified, as in a courtroom.
After that, the debates slowly slid into the cage fights they've become.
I'm afraid I see the media as not setting the proper ground rules. Fox News is the absolute
worst. The result is a continuous positive feedback loop in which we are gradually and unwittingly
turned into those people who buy gossip tabloids at the supermarket checkout counter.
BREAKING NEWS! HILLARY WETS BED UNTIL TWELVE YEARS OLD!
If we wind up with one of these egomaniacal clowns in the White House, we'll deserve what we
get.
here it is again Cruz: right now in Fox: Iran wants to kill us; 'Donald' wants to negotiate deals
with Iran and Cuba. We don't negotiate with terrorists. By failing to note what Trump actually
says and by pretending that Hillary is not a neocon - a subtle one to be sure - you are revising
the facts. actually as the facts appear. think about it and be clear. the moderate Islam routine
BY Cruz Rubio Kasich is not about islam. its about the supposed sunni supposed allies. like please.
add some insight. at least a bit.
Yeah. Painting the Syria/Libya crisis as Hillary vs the Repubs however is dishonest. not lacking
insight or clarity. dishonest. On the Repubs: all the candidates except Trump said at the debate
a few days ago that peace was not in the interests of Israel and therefore a US President would
betray Israel by SEEKING peace.
Trump said he'd be even-handed for the purpose of negotitating
a peace deal. the other candidates say - reading from a script, certainly not thinking - that
the trick was to get Saudi Arabia and Turkey to fight ISIS. sure, except they wont. Their agenda
is anti-Assad in the name of conservative sunni-ism. the moderate arab sheikdom theocracy routines
IS part of the problem. frankly the other Repub candidates would flirt with nuking Iran. Iran
must be part of the solution like it or not. Hillary said at the townhall before Miss/MI that
'if we'd taken out Assad earlier like we did Gaddafi then Syria would only be as bad as Libya'.
Your Hillary vs the Repubs routine is dishonest. This is the neocon oligrachy fighting for its
life election. do not fake it in the name of Hillary.
Isn't the reason for most foreign policy decisions that they will make money for the Military
Industrial Complex?
"Modernizing" nuclear weapons? Helping Saudi Arabia slaughter citizens of Yemen? Destabilizing
multiple countries so that MORE weapons become "necessary" to deal with the instability?
All the question should be framed on that basis: "Is there any reason to 'modernize' our nuclear
weapons other than to enhance the bottom line of the companies involved, especially when we are
supposed to be working against nuclear proliferation?"
Fantastic article, absolutely spot on. Its been a long wait , thank you.
The Obama administration has redefined the word "militant " to be a "male of military age within
the strike zone" and here's the killer ..."unless POSTHUMOUSLY proven to be innocent"
Democrats or Republicans alike, foreign policy is predicated on the American drive to maintain
global dominance, whatever illegal murderous callous action it takes.
Ramos ought to have asked Hilary exactly why Gadaffi was deposed, and came back at her fiercely
with statistics and independent reports if she dared to even muse the suggestion that it was another
"humanitarian intervention".
Sanders should be pressed on Israel, and whether he can formally condemn the state for repeatedly
breaking promises re: settlement on the West Bank and for committing war crimes during the Gaza
strip conflict.
If Hillary's two decade history of war mongering was exposed for what it really represents by
"journalists" in the corporate media, she would no longer be insulated from the scrutiny her deeply
flawed decision making warrants. If democracy and transparency actually functioned in the media,
Hillary would be exposed as a neocon, whose terrible policy decisions have led to one global disaster
after another, fomenting terrorism. (Even the New York Times-which endorsed Hillary-detailed her
disastrous decisions in Libya).
Unfortunately, the American public have only independent news sites like the Intercept, Truthdig,
the Jacobin, Harpers Magazine, Mondoweiss, and a few others from which to evaluate the real damage
Hillary has caused.
But, like her domestic policies-historically: from Clintonomics to mass incarceration; welfare
reform; the war on drugs; education (especially in Arkansas); disastrous "free" trade agreements;
rampant fascism in the form of corporatism; plus, the millions donated to her campaign from dark
money super pacs; and her sham "foundation; Hillary continues to represent the worst that politics
offers, both globally and domestically.
And the list above also includes the devolution of the Democratic Party from FDR-like socialism
to Clinton dominated corporate hacks, since Bill's election in 1992.
Until Clinton, Inc is stopped from commanding allegiance from "democratic" politicians on everything
from the macro to micro levels of Democratic Party matters, voters will continue to be denied
a true forum for change.
What gives Amerika the right to intervene in the affairs of other nations in the first place?
Are they unaware that the rest of the world fears American terrorism more that anything else,
or more likely, do they care? No wonder Hillary and the Republican hawks are worrying the planet.
"Currently Saudi Arabia is engaged in an indiscriminate bombing campaign in one of the world's
poorest.."
Saudi Arabia is bombing with logistical help from US and UK, we're not only silent on the crimes
of KSA, we help them
"Currently Saudi Arabia is engaged in an indiscriminate bombing campaign in one of the world's
poorest.."
Saudi Arabia is bombing with logistical help from US and UK, we're not only silent on the crimes
of KSA, we help them
Hillary was the push behind the U.S. Participation in Ukraine, Syria and Libya. Just a pathological
warlord. She appointed VIc Nuland as undersecretary of state for Gods sake. A neo-con. The people
that brought us the Iraq war. If she's elected you will get more of the same in a big way as she
will increase the force structure and the involvement.
It is futile to expect reason from people whose foreign policy education comes primarily from
Hollywood. It used to be that 96 % of people in congress had never left the country, even less
lived abroad with other people and learned a foreign language. The ignorance is truly amazing
and it would be funny if these people were not those that decide what happens in the world.
If the US keeps meddling in world affairs then the whole world should vote in their elections.
Don't exactly celebrate the US 'wag my tail' relationship with Wahhabi Arabia but on Syria, the
only good option is to ally with President Assad and bomb out the Wahhabi infestation.
Libya is the dog that doesn't bark in the night in UK politics too.
During the debate on bombing Syria, speaker after speaker alluded to the disastrous intervention
in Iraq, for which the guilty parties are no longer in the house.
But not one brought up the disastrous intervention in Libya, for which the guilty party was
currently urging us into another intervention.
Having an amateurish, inward-looking Labour party doesn't help, of course.
The only people who have called Cameron out on Libya in the past year are Nigel Farage and
Barack Obama. Ye gods.
"According to the 24 February 2010 policy analysis "The Year of the Drone", released by the New
America Foundation, the civilian fatality rate since 2004 is approximately 32%. The study reports
that 114 reported UAV-based missile strikes in northwest Pakistan from 2004 to present killed
between 830 and 1,210 individuals, around 550 to 850 of whom were militants."
You can quibble about the exact number of civilians killed, but the moment you approve of your
local police bagging bad guys even if your family gets killed then you can maybe make a comment.
Many human rights organizations have called them illegal, and retired military leaders have
said they backfire, creating more terrorists than they kill.
After reading " The Dron Papers
" Edward Snowden came to the conclusion that drones do not really chase the terrorists, but
they chase their mobile phones. Hence so many innocent victims, because who can guarantee that
the mobile phone which was earlier in the possessions of some terrorist, is not now in the hands
of entirely innocent people.
So, in addition to many ethical questions about the use of drones, this raised another question
on how much "high-tech killing" is indeed reliable.
Excellent article.
Informative and quite rightly challenging.
America is really running away with itself on who, where, how and why they attack.
Britains 'special' relations with the US, should be curtailed, forthwith, because they have the
audacity to now start pressuring us about the EU refferendum, too.
Obama had the nerve to say that we were free loading on the back of "US might" and their attempts
at "global order", his words. While neatly avoiding the questions you ask here, about their role
in Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, drones etc., etc, etc.
Britain should fight back with these facts and distance ourselves from this aggression.
While an enormous amount of time during this campaign has focused around the Iran nuclear
deal, almost no attention has been given to any country that actually has nuclear weapons and
what they plan to do with them over the coming years and decades.
This is also a proof of the "schizophrenic" Obama-Clinton foreign policy. US administration is
doing everything to solve the problem of the Iranian nuclear program, and at the same time doing
everything to spoil relations with the other nuclear power in the world, Russia.
The curiosity of its kind is that Russia, which is also affected by the US sanctions, helps US
to resolve its dispute with Iran and suspend sanctions against this country. And not only that,
but Russia agrees to relocate enriched uranium from Iran to its territory and thus provide a practical
implementation of the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program.
yet the presidential candidates are almost never asked about why congress has not authorized
the military action like the constitution requires.
Yes, Trevor Timm also criticized this in some of his previous articles, as well as Ron Paul, who
also often criticized Obama for this fact. It's completely unclear why Obama continues to rely
on the two authorizations that George W. Bush has got from Congress "to punish the perpetrators
of the 9/11 attacks", and for "the destruction of Saddam Hussein's [non-existent] WMD". This is
particularly unclear given that Obama himself came to power mainly due to his criticism of Bush's
war adventures.
It is possible that Obama does not have enough confidence that he can get authorization from the
GOP dominant Congress to combat Isis in Syria and Iraq. However, by using authorizations for the
old wars for something that has nothing to do with the new wars, Obama is not only acting illegally,
but also provides an opportunity for the conclusion that he now supports Bush for the same thing
for which he criticized him earlier, that is, for the Afghan and Iraq war.
'course I wouldn't approve. And I doubt most countries approve of being invaded (except for the
folks who DO approve anyways).
"The US must stop acting as the world police.' Great phrase. You hear it a lot. Totally insupportable.
Here's the fundamental problem: the globe is a small place these days. Countries really are no
longer isolated entities than can act with little to no impact on anybody else. What one does,
others feel. And leadership is a thing - somebody will always lead. Right now, there are very
few candidates for that. With the fall of imperial England, the US became the only real superpower
left (other than Russia, which has since collapsed, and is busy trying to come back). Thus, whether
it likes it or not, the US has a leadership role to play. If it abdicates that position, and does
as you and so many other less-than-brilliant folks demand? Power abhors a vacuum. Most likely
is that either Russia or China will take over the role currently played by the US. And if you
think either of THOSE countries will do a better job than the US, well... enjoy your personal
delusion.
As for 'scratching heads and bleating' about intervention... we did not have to intervene.
Said that before, saying it again, get it through your skull - we did not have to intervene. We
could, in fact, totally disarm and just sit back and do nothing, anywhere. But. THIS WOULD HAVE
CONSEQUENCES TOO. Seriously. Understand that. Doing nothing is doing something. Sitting out is
still an action one can take. And it is INCREDIBLY likely that things would be WORSE in Libya
right now had we not intervened. Not guaranteed, but likely.
The situation sucks. It would have been great if it had all turned out better. It didn't. But
it probably would have been worse had we made a substantially different choice. Yeah, sure, you
could then pat yourself on the back, and pretend that at least the US wasn't responsible, but,
well, as a certain red-and-blue clad superhero says, with great power comes great responsibility.
The US has great power - if we didn't intervene, and horrible things happened, it'd be just as
much our fault as it is now that we DID intervene, and bad things happened. Because it would have
been in our power to stop it, and we didn't.
Business
International Corporation (BI)
is a known CIA front company; it
is very likely that our precious
Barack Obama is better
understood as an asset of one or
more intelligence agencies, and
is certainly controlled by some
very serious interests *above*
the Wall Street level (i.e.
Brzezinski, Rockefeller,
Kissinger, Soros, etc.)
Look
at the work his mother Ann
Durham did for the Ford
Foundation in Indonesia: who was
her boss there? None other than
Timothy Geithner's father.
Please tell me the odds of that
coincidence.
I don't believe in
coincidence. I also don't
abide with broad conspiracy
theories. I DO believe that
people act on what they
perceive to be their best
interests. I think that had
President Obama determined
that it was in his best
interest to support BI,
purportedly the left-wing
advocate for the ruling
class, I can't see how he
figured that leaving the
company, and serving for
several years as a community
organizer in Chicago would
get him what he might have
been looking for at BI - as
an 'undercover' agent. Or
'tool' for that matter.
Pancho
He needed some left wing
credentials going forward.
I'm sure he had periodic
contact with his BI
recruiters as they continued
to groom him for bigger and
better things. Everything,
from his membership in Rev
Wright's church community to
the demographics of the
state congressional district
of his Chicago home address
was figured in.
Truly, the only individuals worth following today in Amerika
are the super-economist, Michael Hudson, brilliant philospher thinker,
Michael Parenti, Glen Ford (blackagendareport.com), Glenn Greenwald
(brilliant talk he gave recently in Santa Fe (see site below, please),
and Chris Hedges. There's really not much left anymore in Amerika,
sadly!
at 9:40 pm Check out Scott Noble and his new video on Obama Lifting
the Veil.
It's pretty damned good stuff, and he covers most of the bases.
DownSouth
at 10:24 pm You might also want to check out this interview:
In an interview with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, Dr. Cornel
West discusses his…epic dispute with White House economic adviser
- then Harvard President - Larry Summers.
"Larry Summers, I think, he had a long history of arrogance and
relative ignorance about poor people's culture and working people's
culture and so forth," West told Goodman. Their dispute began shortly
after Summers was appointed President of Harvard, and ultimately
led West to leave Harvard and join the faculty of Princeton. According
to West, Summers accused him of canceling classes and called his
interest in hip-hop an "embarrassment," among other slights.
West added that he was surprised when Obama selected Summers
for his council of economic advisers:
I said, here's somebody who has no history whatsoever of sensitivity
to poor people or working people, who had been supporting deregulation
for a long time as a Clintonite, in the Clinton administration.
What is going on here? Or has Obama already become so comfortable
with the establishment that you had to have an economist who was
legitimate to the establishment in order for him to get his regime
off the ground? OK. I mean, if that's the kind of argument you have,
then put it forward. But don't tell me you're a progressive, then,
and generate that kind of support or major advisers speaking to
you–speaking to you every day.
Jerry 101
at 2:56 pm Andrew Jackson, yes.
But JFK? no.
I think that what we really need
at this time is for a new Huey Long to emerge. Someone who can really
scare the bejeezus out of the oligarchs. Someone who really wants
to gut the system.
Then, maybe, just maybe, we can get a Roosevelt (either one,
or a combination of both – The New Dealer and The Trust Buster)
to start cleaning up this mess.
Tertium Squid
at 2:59 pm I think the modern analogue for Huey Long is Hugo Chavez.
Woo hoo Hueygo.
James
at 8:47 pm Alas, Cornel West always strikes me as "academically
naive." Perhaps that's even a complement.
F. Beard
at 1:47 pm "Chains you can believe in"
Poor Obama. It would take an Andrew Jackson or a JFK to deal
with the bankers today but I guess Mr. Obama will settle for being
the last black President for the next 100 years.
Find your backbone, Mr Prez; your time is running out.
James
at 7:06 pm "Mr Prez"
Clearly that's an honorary title. Too bad for all of us normal
people Obama's been anything *but* honorable since taking office.
And as we're all now belatedly waking up to realize, he never
was. Imagine that! A lying politician (and from Chicago of all places)!
Who would have guessed?
Jojo
at 2:02 pm Throwing a little more tinder on the fire: ---– March
31, 2011 Many Jobs Seen as Failing to Meet the Basics By MOTOKO
RICH
Hard as it can be to land a job these days, getting one may not
be nearly enough for basic economic security.
The Labor Department will release its monthly snapshot of the
job market on Friday, and economists expect it to show that the
nation's employers added about 190,000 jobs in March. With an unemployment
rate that has been stubbornly stuck near 9 percent, those workers
could be considered lucky.
But many of the jobs being added in retail, hospitality and home
health care, to name a few categories, are unlikely to pay enough
for workers to cover the cost of fundamentals like housing, utilities,
food, health care, transportation and, in the case of working parents,
child care.
A separate report being released Friday tries to go beyond traditional
measurements like the poverty line and minimum wage to show what
people need to earn to achieve a basic standard of living.
The study, commissioned by Wider Opportunities for Women, a nonprofit
group, builds on an analysis the group and some state and local
partners have been conducting since 1995 on how much income it takes
to meet basic needs without relying on public subsidies. The new
study aims to set thresholds for economic stability rather than
mere survival, and takes into account saving for retirement and
emergencies.
"We wanted to recognize that there was a cumulative impact that
would affect one's lifelong economic security," said Joan A. Kuriansky,
executive director of Wider Opportunities, whose report is called
"The Basic Economic Security Tables for the United States." "And
we've all seen how often we have emergencies that we are unprepared
for," she said, especially during the recession. Layoffs or other
health crises "can definitely begin to draw us into poverty."
According to the report, a single worker needs an income of $30,012
a year - or just above $14 an hour - to cover basic expenses and
save for retirement and emergencies. That is close to three times
the 2010 national poverty level of $10,830 for a single person,
and nearly twice the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
A single worker with two young children needs an annual income
of $57,756, or just over $27 an hour, to attain economic stability,
and a family with two working parents and two young children needs
to earn $67,920 a year, or about $16 an hour per worker.
at 3:11 pm Isn't the median wage (different from the household median
income of course, as households have an average of more than 1 worker)
about $26K or so?
MyLessThanPrimeBeef
at 3:14 pm The economic strategists all agree it's unwise to fight
economic war on two fronts.
Military wars – it seems possible these days.
So, it is hard to envision how to emerge victorious combatting
'outsourcing of jobs' and 'insourcing of cheap labor (legal and
illegal)?'
It's possible that if we let them all in, we can make it just
a one-front struggle – no more worrying about outsourcing.
Cedric Regula
at 5:31 pm There is a fast track to legal US citizenship…join the
military. So there is a method to their madness….
Not to mention the defense industry has been hiring Indian and
Chinese engineers on work visas as soon as they graduate college.
Back in 70s at my Alma Mater, Purdue, located in the eastasia
province of Indiana, routinely had a MS graduate class consisting
of about 80% rich kid Indians and Chinese on foreign government
scholarships. Could have been Korean or Taiwanese, I guess. Hard
to tell from the graduating class pictures. But it does make me
wonder what was going on at CA universities.
Bill
at 7:56 pm Those numbers seem a little high for my area. On 60,000
per year here, a young couple with two children can own a home,
provide for all expenses and still sock away 20 to 25k per year
for retirement. The one thing that could really hurt is a catostrophic
illness that our health care only pays 90% of. That could bankrupt
us quite easily.
Wendy
at 2:07 pm I am going to suggest this at the originating site but
would also like to suggest here, that being pro-management or pro-owners
is NOT being "pro-business", any more than being pro-labor is "pro-business"
(and probably less so).
the term has been co-opted to throw workers in a bad light –
any opposition to worker demands is called "pro-business" and workers
themselves (or those who want jobs) are somehow "anti-businesss"
but this is incorrect, as well as very misleading, as well as awarding
honor (to management/onwers) when the opposite is what is deserved.
Hal Horvath
at 2:18 pm Obama is in a form of 'regulator capture.' One of the
prime responsibilities of a President is to be a kind of super-
or meta-regulator.
I figure the cognitive capture is largely via the very convincing
Timothy Geithner, who is himself in cognitive capture.
What's the antidote? Only 2 I can think of: direct experience
in small business (more than a few months), and/or having some kind
of unusual experience and then an epiphany.
Could Obama have an epiphany? Well, it's not impossible.
-
btw, on a previous topic, for those interested in a convenient
way to learn about radiation risks, NPR's program "Science Friday"
today is exactly about that, via interview with neutral expert.
I find this kind of thing useful to allow me to take care of mundane
tasks while learning something valuable and immediately relevant.
bob
at 3:03 pm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Wsy8jHPk4
Tertium Squid
at 3:07 pm "Find your backbone, Mr Prez"
"Could Obama have an epiphany? Well, it's not impossible."
The dream dies hard. I know it wasn't till Katrina ("Hecuva job,
Brownie!") that the scales fell from MY eyes about the Bush administration
specifically and the conservative movement generally.
…and that their actions, haphazard and chaotic as they may have
been, were a very accurate reflection of what they wanted to do.
Don't worry, you'll get there. If Libya isn't enough I'm sure
something even more outrageous is coming at us.
F. Beard
at 7:09 pm The dream dies hard. Tertium Squid
I never had the dream; I wrote in Ron Paul in 2008. Still I had
hope for Obama; at least he wasn't McCain.
James
at 9:45 pm Still I had hope for Obama; at least he wasn't McCain.
Faint praise that. Still feel so good about your decision? Me
neither.
Jojo
at 11:16 pm I think many more people are disappointed in Obama because
our expectations were so high after 8 years of Bush.
OTOH, McCain would have been plain awful. But then we would have
expected that.
Craig A. Jenkins
at 3:14 pm Mr. Obama became president at a crucial moment in our
history. The "Great Recession" of 2007-2009 was the second great
failure of essentially laizze faire capitalism of the last 70 years.
Clearly, the business of America needed to be done differently.
Rather than leave consumers to be preyed upon by business entities,
a new partnership was needed. The false dichotomoy of management
v. labor no longer works, especially not for the working people
of America. Instead, management must recognize "labor" is not just
the hands who make the products or provide the services, but are
also the consumers who comprise the domestic market which businesses
need to survive and to thrive.
Mr. Obama, by linking his future to the very interests who caused
the recession, has not only squandered this moment of history, but
set-up the nation for even bigger failures in the future by not
reining in the banks and other institutions which nearly burned
the world's economy to the ground. The corosive effect of money
in national politics, which will only get worse as corporations
pursue their new found freedom to support candidates after the Citizens
United decision, means money talks and the concerns of the generally
poorer public are secondary concerns at best.
This would be class warfare if the middle and working classes
resisted the tide of the monied classes. Sadly, we are not. Yet.
nonclassical
2:07 am Folks,
The historical documentation=truth. U.S. "democratic" capitalism
only "re-sets" when everyone has lost everything.
Allowing those "in charge" to remain so, belies transparency,
oversight, accountability. Read Geisst's, "Wall $treet-A History".
We have ignorantly allowed corporatocracy to move us from FDR's
"New Deal" to robber baron's "Old Deal".
Propping up what remains is no answer.
Dave of Maryland
at 3:38 pm Obama is a boot-licker.
Say it.
Say it OUT LOUD.
Obama is a boot-licker.
*********************
Obama also collects titles. He's now got the two most impressive
titles on the planet: President, and Nobel Prize Winner.
Elsewhere Yves has wondered about females & cups of coffee. No,
Obama is not a skirt-chaser.
Like Sarah P., Obama never stays with anything. Will he run next
year? Obama's never run for re-election in his life. He's got the
title. That's all he wanted.
Betcha he pretends to run, and then bows out at the very last
minute. He doesn't want the office. Just the title. Too bad we can't
persuade him to resign now.
Yves Smith
at 7:47 pm I was not accusing him of being a skirt chaser, merely
using an unflattering metaphor and making sure it was memorable.
I suppose I could have used a sports metaphor instead, like saying
he claimed to have won a blue ribbon for every race he entered.
James
at 10:28 pm All due, calling NoBama a "boot-licker" is merely calling
– forgive me here – a spade a spade, is it not? No use belaboring
the obvious is there?
NoBama! Once upon a time I(we) was(were) young, stupid, and naive.
Yes indeed! Those were the days!
No sir, we won't get fooled like that again, NO SIR!
Not until, oh, I dunno, at least 2012 I guess at least. HELL
NO!
We'll show 'em them for sure we will! Bastards!
Dave
at 3:38 pm You find more coverage of poor people overseas from the
MSM, than even a mention of the poor people in this country. Even
Obama doesn't mention the poor, only the middle class. Joe Bageant,
who sadly recently died, chronicled the plight of the poor white
class in this country. What, there's a poor class in America, the
greatest country ever? What a joke. America's going to burn again,
and it's just a matter of time
Michael H
at 4:25 pm Thanks Dave, for mentioning Joe Bageant.
I'd never heard of him until he died recently, since then I've
heard the name mentioned once or twice, and after reading your post
I decided to look him up and found this:
"…He tells of that huge class of unnoticed people in America,
the white underclass of a thousand small towns and countryscapes…He
had no patience for smug commentators in Washington who talked at
half a million bucks a year….
"His politics may have confused the chattering classes. Joe was
the least racist guy who ever lived, but he wrote about the white
poor, whose very existence runs against hallowed doctrine. He was
also explicitly in favor of the Second Amendment, noting that ninety
pounds of dressed venison matters a whole lot to many families.
These are families that reviewers of books have never heard of."
I'm adding Joe Bageant to my list of recent American writers
who write about poverty. And it's a very short list.
nonclassical
2:09 am Thomas Frank has heard of them…
optimader
11:25 am Joe Bageant was heroic and is missed
notexactlyhuman
at 5:32 pm Just yesterday received Bageant's Rainbow Pie: A Redneck
Memoir. From a preliminary perusal, it appears the new book may
well be even better than Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from
America's Class War. Joe was one of the greats.
Anyway, on another note, from Taibbi:
"Exactly how tough do you think all these ex-Wilmer lawyers will
be on current Wilmer clients like Goldman, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley,
General Electric, Credit Suisse, and practically every other major
financial services company? The shamelessness factor is growing
by the minute. "
4:49 am Yes but even with those percentages, the overall numbers
of poor are not kind to whites. And in a democracy, where overall
numbers count, it seems foolish to split the poor by obsessing on
race. Obvously there is ambiguity with Latinos since it is not a
race and many would be considered white. But ignoring that we get
the following total numbers:
Blacks at 13% of population at 35% poverty rate equals 4.5% of
310 million equals around 14 million poor blacks.
Latinos at 16% of population at 34% poverty rate equals 5.4%
of 310 million equals around 17 million poor Latinos.
Whites at 65% of population at 13% poverty rate equals 8.45%
of 310 million equals around 26 million poor whites.
Personally I would be doing everything I could to combine the
14 million poor blacks with the 17 million poor Latinos and together
with the 26 million poor whites. Working together gives us around
57 million poor people fighting the rich. Obsessing on race means
we have about 31 million fighting against 26 million and basically
just cancelling each other out.
James
at 7:43 pm Poor people pointing fingers at each other is *exactly*
the goal of TPTB. Poor is poor. Where do our *real* allegiances
lie in the modern world, at least once the shit-on poor are smart
enough to realize it?
Nation states? Are you kidding?
Local states/villages? Maybe, depending on your specific situation.
Talk to me about social/economic opportunity and your speaking
my language. Every truly poor and oppressed minority knows this
already in their bones. *Rest assured*, every rich and privileged
majority in this world will *very soon* come to know the truth of
those words.
kevin de bruxelles
3:58 am I too was disappointed with his rather foolish decision
to split the poor in half by referencing race. That is not to say
that he is factually wrong, I'm sure black and brown are disproportionately
poor. But the overall numbers, depending on how you define poor,
will come out with at least as many poor whites as poor black and
browns. So he handed the wealthy a nice little strategic victory
by refusing to focus on class alone but instead falling into the
trap of splitting the poor in half by obsessing about their race.
I mean how did a poor white person feel listening too him – is his
poverty somehow more acceptable due to his lack of melanin?
What you don't see is the rich dividing themselves up by race.
So I suppose tenure at an elite university comes at a price.
In any case Obama is happy to have blacks attack him; just like
he strongly encourages the retarded left to beef with him. All that
talk in 2007 about Obama not being an authentic African-American
certainly did him no harm. It just helps validates him to "centrist"
voters. Because at the end of the day, since the poor refuse to
organise and vote for a Social Democratic party, where in the hell
else are they going to go on election day? They have zero leverage
on Obama and the Democrats. At best they can stay home but if the
Republicans continue their attacks on unions, then Obama can count
on plenty of scared people voting for him, hoping against hope that
he will serve as a defensive bulwark against the change coming from
the Right.
EMichael
11:23 am I would rewatch the clip of Mr. West if I were you. And
also try to find other comments from him that include "it is not
just about poor blacks".
abelenkpe
at 6:53 pm That is a great clip. We certainly do need a jobs program
in this country. Thanks for posting!
James
at 7:31 pm It's hard to take this post seriously, in that the only
people who could not know the truth of it from their own day to
day experience are NoBama's remaining loyal constituents – the Wall
Street and MIC plutocracy – or his most heated enemies – the very
people this post points its finger at, but for many reasons too
deep to explore here (but have been explored nonetheless by many
a political/sociological tome) are simply too damn stupid to notice
that they've been targeted by BOTH political parties.
All that said, what's to be done about it? How do you educate
a populace that's simply too damn stupid to realize that they're
merely lambs being led to the slaughter (a *totally* convenient
religious metaphor that – imagine that! – has been called into service
of the cause), especially when you consider that big money driven
marketing campaigns delivered through TV and internet are the modern
equivalent of "big brother?"?
Answer: In the short term at least, you can't, and the battle
– to be brutally honest – cannot and will not be won. That simple
bit of bracing reality is the best message that can be transmitted
for the foreseeable future. Absent a *transformational* political
and sociological awakening in the US (particularly) immediately,
we are *all* about to go down some alternative paths that almost
all of us are not going to find *at all* agreeable.
Patrick
at 7:32 pm The campaign slogan was "Yes, we can". The result was
either "No he couldn't, or No he wouldn't". I can't make my mind
up which it is, but with every passing day I'm leaning towards the
latter.
The joke is that come 2012 the bankers he's helped to protect
will put a large part of their "taxpayer" money behind his opponent.
Masonboro
at 7:39 pm Not to pick nits but using Michael Jordan as an example
of rising from poverty is not a good choice. I worked with James
Jordan (Father) for a number of years at the local GE plant and
he was a manager with a decidedly middle class lifestyle when Michael
was at Carolina. Great guy and hard worker BTW.
Jim
gil mendozza zuntzes
at 7:58 pm hum… hum… Subprime Bonds are coming Back!… Federal Reserve
Bank Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke speaks in Washin-gton yesterday
to Snister,Swindler & Lier Barack Obama, Bernanke says; Recession
very unlikely to be over… Bad for U.S. economic recovery. Suprime
can trigger another financial crisis. New home sales fell 15%; the
lowest level since 2008, and Oil prices had risen sharply, Crude
Oil Barrel could top $200 by the last quarter of 2011. He could
not guarantee any expectations for a dull recovery–Bernanke said
will be hard to get credit for consumers and businesses and He believes
the economy won't turn around untill the year 2015; and that the
United States is coming apart.
Denise
at 8:29 pm @ Patrick: The bazillionaires and corporatists won't
have to put their money behind Obama's opponent for a second term.
He is their candidate. He's done everything they wanted. It's no
coincidence there isn't yet a declared Republican candidate. Obama
will coast to a second term, no problem. Of course there'll be a
big show put on for We The Sheeple but it's a foregone conclusion.
This is the first time I've heard of Cornell and I do like what
he's got to say.
Yves, I only recently became a huge fan of Joe Bageant's and
am sorry at his passing. Absolutely one of the most brilliant writers
I've read. Glenn Greenwald is brilliant also, as is Michael Hudson
(to agree with a previous poster).
Paul Tioxon
at 10:39 pm Well it's official, the He's not Black enough for me
from the more Mau Mau than thou- argument. Most people in America
after going through the political uprisings of the 60's have seen
the office of transgressive behavior go the rich white boy in the
room who was first to say "As I look around this room, I don't see
any people color". This first commandment handed down to the immediately
impressed allowed the Great Announcer the power over the group by
showing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, their failure in not recognizing
that they were all white, and did not even have enough revolutionary
fervor by which to tap their radical Black Compatriots.
Well, with all due respect to Mr Harrison, who appears to be
Black by the picture he provides us, Cornell appears to be the first
official radical Black ass you have provided for your Wall St and
other viewership. A new step forward for NC. And no doubt, the political
cover necessary for all of the white people who post here who just
can't stand Obama because his policy choices just suck ass. And
I feel your pain. It is the Obama administration, and the 2 year
Democratic legislative majority that has failed to do much, if any,
of the heavy lifting to transform the nation.
And let me put my cards on the table. Obama, if we was going
to transform society, he would do exactly what Hugo Chavez did,
and nationalize the oil, coal and gas industries. After all, most
of it is owned by foreigners. This gusher of cash sold to China,
India and Korea would balance a lot current accounts in favor of
team USA. Furthermore, if he was going to transform society, he
would place health care as a right by amending the constitution,
as it is in the United Mexican States and setting up single payer
government managed health insurance.
And of course, all of the gun toting rioting tea baggers would
be locked up and beaten by the police and finally discredited. But
that did not happen. And the betrayal of the rule of law in face
of the galactic scale of economic theft and destruction seems to
be the biggest problem for most NC viewers. It is a problem. But
the reformist nature of the demands here and the underlining debunking
of neo liberalism and the Washington Consensus serves up only a
surgically repaired and physically rehabbed doomed system. Doomed,
not by historical determinism, but by the analysis here and in other
rigorous social science studies. Obama is none other than a capitalist
politician, but clearly, not one that will change the system into
something else, more egalitarian, more liberating or economically
stable. He is in the tradition of the old Liberal consensus, where
you could smell freedom, blowing in the wind from just over the
horizon, just a further bit down the road, but not quite there yet.
But, in the mean time, a measure of dignity, a small but more than
adequate slice of the pie in the sky, but here on earth in back
yard bar b ques from sea to shining sea, next to 2 car garages.
He is practitioner of the disjointed incrementalist approach
to talking about progress, actually allowing some of it and repairing
the cracks in the system while holding back the reactionary capitalists
that will more than gladly turn the politics over to brutal, violent,
terrorizing oppression, in order to ensure the system goes on for
another day. Yes, you are all not insane, he is protected the unjustifiable
looting of the nation and world by banks. It is also, for now the
only system we have. The small steps he has taken, in allowing for
99 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits, expanding the Pell
Grants to take young Americans off the street and job market as
well as nationalizing the student loan system are small potatoes.
I can not over estimate the serious disaster of the alternative.
We have only seen the sneak preview trailer for republican world.
I urge many of the people here to not give up and allow even more
republican control, and if anything, get into the democratic party
and take as much control of it as you can at the level you can.
If the militant right wing of the republican party can do it, you
can as well.
required
at 10:44 pm I've been calling obama a FR$UD for almost two years
now – mainly for not prosecuting the fraud.
Salviati
at 11:50 pm What many self proclaimed 'black academics' like Cornell
West failed to acknowledge in the run up to the 2008 selection was
that Barack Obama represented the ultimate realization of Malcolm
X's worst nightmare. Here was a man that ran on a platform rhetoric
of "change", and has very cynically manipulated the politics of
race to shore up and maintain support from the communities that
he turns around and screws. As a result progressive politics is
in shambles while the poor, working class and primarily people of
color are being devastated.
Perhaps this is a price worth paying to have the first black
president. I don't know, I wish it were different.
Martin Finnucane
12:12 am I've always found Cornel to be a bit jejune. But maybe
I've been wrong - I find that I agree with every bit of this. President
Obama has given us a peculiar, perhaps post-modern, version of racial
uplift: lots of warm-hearted photo-ops and imaginary race conciliation,
but with a most-definite "screw y'all" to poor youth, who are disproportionately
black, brown, and red, as Professor West says.
Professor West is also an enemy of Larry Summers, which makes
him okey-dokey in my book.
Random Blowhard
12:34 am Almost correct, Obama is for WALL STREET only. EVERYONE
else gets the trickle down.
abcx
1:09 am It amazes me sometimes how prescient the Who were back in
the day. Bunch of kids but their words stand the test of time I
think.
We'll be fighting in the streets With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone And the men who spurred
us on Sit in judgment of all wrong They decide and the shotgun sings
the song
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution Take a bow for the new
revolution Smile and grin at the change all around me Pick up my
guitar and play Just like yesterday And I'll get on my knees and
pray We don't get fooled again Don't get fooled again
Change it had to come We knew it all along We were liberated
from the fall that's all But the world looks just the same And history
ain't changed 'Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution Take a bow for the new
revolution Smile and grin at the change all around me Pick up my
guitar and play Just like yesterday And I'll get on my knees and
pray We don't get fooled again Don't get fooled again No, no!
I'll move myself and my family aside If we happen to be left
half alive I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky For I know
that the hypnotized never lie
Do ya?
There's nothing in the street Looks any different to me And the
slogans are replaced, by-the-bye And the parting on the left Is
now the parting on the right And the beards have all grown longer
overnight
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution Take a bow for the new
revolution Smile and grin at the change all around me Pick up my
guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and
pray We don't get fooled again Don't get fooled again No, no!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Meet the new boss Same as the old boss
Patrick
7:10 am Cornel still trying to be the corner hipster of the 60's.
In the end he will vote for Obama regardless of his short comings.
He knows it and so does Obama.
Dan Duncan
9:53 am A Baby-Boomer-Blogger links to a Baby-Boomer-Race-Baiter,
to the bellow of fellow Baby-Booming-Beatnik-Bloviators.
The Me-My-Mine-Generation that will go down forever as The Peter
Pans That Could…and then couldn't. The Peter Pans who made it out
of adolescence–barely–only to languish as Perpetually Entitled 20
Somethings. The Generation of Brats that wantonly destroyed everything
in its path.
It'd be easier to get some scuba gear, an underwater writing
pad, and teach a school of fish about the concept of water than
to get Boomers to understand the concept Selfish Indulgence.
"... "It's official: When it comes to foreign policy, Barack Obama's first term is really George W.
Bush's third. Bill Kristol, son of the late neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol and editor of
the Weekly Standard, declared that Obama is "a born-again neocon" during a March 30 appearance on
the Fox News Channel's Red Eye w/Greg Gutfeld. Kristol's remark came in the context of a discussion
of Obama's consultation with Kristol and other influential columnists prior to his March 28 address
to the nation about his military intervention in Libya. Gutfeld quizzed Kristol about the President's
asking him for "help" with his speech. Kristol denied that Obama had sought his help. Instead, Kristol
said, ..."
"... Barack Obama, the candidate of "change we can believe in," turned out to be the President of "more
of the same." Lest there remain any doubt about this, one need only turn to establishment news organ
Time magazine. There Mark Halperin, explaining "why Obama's Libya address was strong," states quite
bluntly: "George W. Bush could have delivered every sentence."
..."It's official: When it comes to foreign policy, Barack Obama's first term is really George W.
Bush's third. Bill Kristol, son of the late neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol and editor of
the Weekly Standard, declared that Obama is "a born-again neocon" during a March 30 appearance on
the Fox News Channel's Red Eye w/Greg Gutfeld. Kristol's remark came in the context of a discussion
of Obama's consultation with Kristol and other influential columnists prior to his March 28 address
to the nation about his military intervention in Libya. Gutfeld quizzed Kristol about the President's
asking him for "help" with his speech. Kristol denied that Obama had sought his help. Instead, Kristol
said,
In case anyone missed the significance of Kristol's comment, Gutfeld made it clear: "We've got
the drones. We've got military tribunals. We've got Gitmo. We're bombing Libya. People who voted
for Obama got four more years of Bush."
Kristol agreed, adding: "What's the joke - they told me if I voted for McCain, we'd be going to
war in a third Muslim country…. I voted for McCain and we're doing it."
Of course, to Kristol, calling someone a neocon is a compliment. Indeed, Kristol praised Obama's
speech on the Weekly Standard blog, saying the President "had rejoined - or joined - the historical
American foreign policy mainstream." The speech was "reassuring," Kristol explained, saying, "The
president was unapologetic, freedom-agenda-embracing, and didn't shrink from defending the use of
force or from appealing to American values and interests." In other words, it was a neocon speech,
cloaking the use of violence in the language of liberty and treating the U.S. military as the President's
personal mercenaries to reshape the globe rather than as defenders of the territorial United States.
This is not the first time Kristol and other neocons have lauded Obama's foreign policy. After
Obama made a speech in 2009 announcing he was sending more troops to Afghanistan - that is, he was
replicating Bush's Iraq "surge" in another location - Michael Goldfarb, a Weekly Standard writer,
asked Kristol for his reaction to the speech. "He said he would have framed a few things differently,"
Goldfarb related, "but his basic response was: 'All hail Obama!'"
Similarly, when the President last August claimed that "the American combat mission in Iraq has
ended" while asserting that "our commitment to Iraq's future is not" ending, New York Post resident
neocon John Podhoretz applauded Obama for his "rather neoconservative speech, in the sense that neoconservatism
has argued for aggressive American involvement in the world both for the world's sake and for the
sake of extending American freedoms in order to enhance and preserve American security." [Emphasis
in original.]
Sheldon Richman, writing in Freedom Daily, reminded readers of just exactly what neocon policies
have wrought:
Just to be clear, the neocons were among the key architects of the war against Iraq in 1991, followed
by the embargo that killed half a million children. That war and embargo set the stage for the 9/11
attacks, which were then used to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq (an ambition long predating
9/11) and the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, American's [sic] longest military engagement
- all of which have killed more than a million people, wreaked political havoc, and made life in
those countries (and elsewhere) miserable. Let's not forget the drone assassination and special ops
programs being run in a dozen Muslim countries. The neocon achievement also has helped drive the
American people deep into debt.
Nice crowd Obama is hanging with these days. And that's no exaggeration. Frederick Kagan, one
of the top neocon brains and a signatory of the Project of the New American Century imperial manifesto,
now works for Gen. David Petraeus.
Barack Obama, the candidate of "change we can believe in," turned out to be the President of "more
of the same." Lest there remain any doubt about this, one need only turn to establishment news organ
Time magazine. There Mark Halperin, explaining "why Obama's Libya address was strong," states quite
bluntly: "George W. Bush could have delivered every sentence."
Note that the candidate swears to be "faithful" to the "interests, welfare and success of
the Democratic Party," but not to its principles. That's because there aren't any.
Clinton's new
book removes all doubt. She still has no idea why she lost
Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan from my deep purple state of NH both, voted to allow the bill to proceed. And of course my esteemed congress critter, Annie Kuster, did her bit in congress. Only 968 days until I can exact my retribution on Shaheen at the polls, first and foremost for her vote in favor of fast track, but damned if she doesn't give me another good reason on almost a daily basis.