Americans have to choose between two equally right-wing pro-war candidates, says Jerome White, presidential candidate for the Socialist Equality Party. He says Trump promotes xenophobic, anti-immigrant lines while Clinton’s a complete tool of Wall Street.

US Elections 2016

A new report by the Wall Street Journal shows that US Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton received millions of dollars for her campaign from Wall Street. 

RT: Why does Clinton seem to be the preferred candidate for Wall Street? 

Jerome White: She has a long record, as did her husband Bill Clinton with very, very close connections to the most powerful financial institutions in the US on Wall Street. Under her husband’s administration they deregulated Wall Street; they lifted the Glass–Steagall Act, and allowed the immense building-up of the financial bubble that produced the financial collapse of 2008. As the Obama administration carried out the bailout of Wall Street, the Clintons maintained very, very close ties. As we all know, she received hundreds of thousands of dollars - in fact millions of dollars and speaking fees - in the aftermath of the crash. 

RT: Clinton is also likely to get more contributions now that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have dropped out of the race. Will this have an impact on her stances on issues and, perhaps, presidency?  

JW: After an entire primary process in which for the first the anger of millions of workers over the social inequality, over the domination of the entire political system by the financial elites was expressed. In the end essentially, what the American people have is a choice between two equally right-wing candidates, two pro-war candidates.   

Clinton is the Wall Street candidate based on donation figures - report

On the one hand, a billionaire, who is Donald Trump, who seeks to tap into the social anxiety and channel it along xenophobic and anti-immigrant lines; on the other, complete tool of Wall Street and of the Pentagon. In the end, the [Bernie] Sanders’ campaign, which tapped into this enormous anger – he is now committed to support Hillary Clinton, who he openly criticizes as a tool of Wall Street. But he as a Democrat now is supporting that very same tool of Wall Street.  

 

read more: https://www.rt.com/op-edge/342630-trump-clinton-wall-street-war/

 

 

"We need to ask, what do people mean by a 'Christian nation'? If you could have done a public survey in 1776, the vast majority of white Americans would have professed to be Christians," said Kidd.

"Christian (or at least theistic) assumptions about creation, equality, and human nature undergirded the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But the idea that God made a special covenant relationship with America, like He did with Israel in the Hebrew Bible, has no scriptural or historical basis."

Kidd also told CP that he understood that many evangelical Christians are justifiably "frustrated by judicial attempts to remove religion from the public sphere."

"But Moore correctly reminds us that the Founders, supported by legions of evangelicals, intentionally separated church and state in the Constitution, to protect believers and churches from persecution," continued Kidd.

"The First Amendment also made clear that in America, unlike in England, the government would not try to do the business of the church."

 

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/russell-moore-america-christian-nation-baylor-evangelical-historian-163788/#u0xBs4qlAHX0x3HK.99

 

God bless YameriKa... Yep, unfortunately, only the Jews have had an iron-clad contract with god... Is this why, the YameriKans are trying hard to suck up to them? Omg, The crap we believe in ! It's frightening... And the most frightening is that most of the people are stomping on the same tired religious ground, making no stride forward, with their illusions still caught in an antique simplistic disproven legend...

 

"assumptions about creation, equality, and human nature"? As long as you were white and not a slave... Assumptions? Sure...

 

...

Lyndon Johnson’s decision to bomb North Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin incident [in 1965, President Johnson commented privately: "For all I know, our navy was shooting at whales out there."] made him a war leader, and Americans rally to presidents in a time of war.

In 2016, however, Trump holds a fistful of face cards. After eight years of President Obama, he is the candidate of change in 2016, and Clinton is the candidate of same.

Trump may bring more excitement than some folks can handle. But Clinton has become a crashing bore, until she gets agitated, and then the voice rises to where she sounds like the siren on the hook-and-ladder in “Chicago Fire.”

Other than that she would be the first woman president, what is there about her or her agenda that has popular appeal? That lack of appeal explains why her crowds are a fraction of Bernie Sanders’.

The Clinton of 2016 is not the Clinton of 2008.

As for the issues dividing Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump appears to have won the argument, if the debate is decided by voter preferences rather than Beltway preferences.

Trump’s denunciation of NAFTA and other “free-trade” deals Ryan supports is echoed by Sanders, who opposed those deals when they were up for a vote. Hillary Clinton no longer rhapsodizes over husband Bill’s NAFTA, and signals she will not support Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership in a lame-duck session.

read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/the-gop-must-change-again/

 

...

There are, of course, a growing number of Republican voices who want us to believe that Trump’s indiscretions are not evidence of a passion for verbal crime but rather just isolated verbal crimes of passion. Perhaps this is why five days after Governor Mike Huckabee declared his support for Trump and claimed that the #NeverTrump movement was “hapless” and “more about providing high dollar work for the political consultants than stopping …. Clinton,” he let pass without comment Trump’s vile tweet aimed at Huckabee’s fellow Baptist minister, Russell Moore: “…. Moore is truly a terrible representative of Evangelicals and all of the good they stand for. A nasty guy with no heart!”

Governor Huckabee’s silence on Trump’s Moore-tweet initially seems like a bit of a mystery, since over the years he has been without peer in his fleet-footed defense of anyone who he thought was bullying or misrepresenting the views of his fellow Christians. He came to the defense of Duck Dynasty when Cracker Barrel announced it no longer would be selling the television show’s products. He has offered his support to the Duggar Family, Kim Davis, and even the Pope, and in the latter case issuing a series of Twitter missives in the direction of President Obama’s White House. Yet when Trump went after the Pope earlier this year, calling the Holy Father a pawn of the Mexican government, Governor Huckabee joined in with the attack.

To add more to the mystery, you may recall that not too long ago he was quite critical of President Obama and the First Lady for allowing their daughters to listen to the music of the African-American artist, Beyoncé: “My point was, even in speaking about the Obamas—and I said about them in the book [God, Guns, Grit, and Gravy], they’re great parents. But it was President Obama, in an interview with Glamour, who said that some of the lyrics he won’t listen to with his daughters, because it embarrasses him.” He went on to say, “If it embarrasses you, then why would you possibly think it’s wholesome for your children to put it into their heads?”

read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/huckabee-changes-his-tune/

 

In God, Guns, Grits and Gravy, Mike Huckabee asks, "Have I been taken to a different planet than the one on which I grew up?" The New York Times bestselling author explores today's fractious American culture, where divisions of class, race, politics, religion, gender, age, and other fault lines make polite conversation dicey, if not downright dangerous. As Huckabee notes, the differences of opinion between the "Bubble-villes" of the big power centers and the "Bubba-villes" where most people live are profound, provocative, and sometimes pretty funny. Where else but in Washington, D.C. could two presidential golf outings cost the American taxpayers $2.9 million in travel expenses?

Government bailouts, politician pig-outs, and popular culture provocations from Jay-Z and Beyoncé to Honey Boo-Boo to the Duck Dynasty's Robertson family. Gun rights, gay marriage, the decline of patriotism, and the mainstream media's contempt for those who cherish a faith-based life. The trouble with Democrats, the even bigger trouble with Republicans, our national security complex, and how our Constitution is eroding under our noses. Stories of everyday Americans surviving tough times, reflections on our way of life as it once was, as it is, and as it might become...these subjects and many more are covered with Mike Huckabee's signature wit, insight, and honesty.

At times lighthearted, at others bracingly realistic, Huckabee's brand of optimistic patriotism highlights American ideals, offering a bright outlook for future generations.

With a wry eye for the ridiculous and a clear-eyed look at the most controversial issues of our time, God, Guns, Grits and Gravy is Mike Huckabee at his very best.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Grits-Gravy-Mike-Huckabee/dp/1250060990

 

 

Do I see a Shakespearean tragedy or a comedy in all this? Or do I see the "there is no room for both of us on this planet syndrome?". I will stay confused and be caught in the chaos, hoping that the pain will stop soon. Is it the pain of laughter or the pain of feeling the pain of people killed by all these morons who want to rule the world according to their god, guns and phuken' greed?

Are we nuts? Am I nuts?

if you are over 18, you can visit: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/28619

 

Presumptive Republican nominee for the US presidential election Donald Trump has attacked former Prime Minister Tony Blair for the Iraq War “disaster,” saying he did a “terrible job” by invading.

In an interview with ITV, Trump warned that the Chilcot Inquiry into the 2003 invasion, which will finally be published on July 6, will not look good for the former Labour PM.

“I don’t see it as war crimes. I just think he goes down as somebody who did a terrible job. 

“[President George W.] Bush got us into it, that’s a terrible, terrible thing that happened,” he said.

“Tony Blair made a mistake. You can’t just go in haphazardly. You folks got involved in that mess just as we did and now look at it.”

Trump said UK leaders should put the needs of their own country before that of America, and would get more respect if they stood up to US presidents.

“I’m surprised somebody would see the Bush relationship as being that important.”

Trump also criticized Lord Alan Sugar, who hosts the UK version of the Apprentice, but is critical of the Republican’s campaign.

“He’s small time. Don’t forget that Sugar works for me. Every time he makes money from that show he pays me.”

Trump also denied claims he saw Princess Diana as the “ultimate trophy wife” or had any interest in wooing her despite once claiming he could have “nailed” her.

https://www.rt.com/uk/343295-trump-blair-iraq-khan/

 

see also:

 

'Crime of aggression': Alex Salmond’s quest to put Tony Blair on trial over Iraq hits legal snag
----------------
The more one does the sums (Rupert Murdoch was a strong supporter (even an instigator through his journals, newspapers and involvement with Kristol) of the war on Iraq and being ruthlessly anti-Russian, the more I can see Uncle Rupe starting to barrack for La Clinton...
It was not a mistake... Bush, Blair and Howard had to know they were fudging the war against Saddam. It was a deliberate set up which ended arse up, mostly for the people of Iraq, but not so much for the oil companies...

 

 

Clinton: Trump 'not qualified to be president.' Sad!

Published time: 19 May, 2016 22:59
Apparently “not qualified” is the insult of choice in the 2016 presidential campaign. The latest to lob the lack-of-experience grenade was Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, who took aim at presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.
When Clinton was asked by CNN’s Chris Cuomo if she thought the billionaire businessman was qualified, she was blunt in her response.

“No, I do not,” she said.

“The threat that Donald Trump poses is so dramatic ‒ to our country, to our democracy, and to our economy,” Clinton said later.

She outlined her reasons why, using examples just from this past week: He’s “attacking Great Britain, praising the leader of North Korea ‒ a despotic dictator who has nuclear weapons,” she said.

“Whether it is saying [to] pull out of NATO [or to] let other countries have nuclear weapons, the kinds of positions he is stating and the consequences of those positions and even the consequences of his statements are not just offensive to people, they are potentially dangerous,” she added.

Clinton also described Trump’s positions as “irresponsible, reckless, dangerous comments.”

To vote for Donald Trump one needs to believe it is easier to run an entire country than keep a steak company from going out of business.
Clinton ‒ a former secretary of state, US senator and first lady ‒ touted her bona fides in the exclusive interview, while also reiterating Trump’s lack of experience.

“I know how hard this job is, and I know that we need steadiness as well as strength and smarts in it, and I have concluded he is not qualified to be president of the United States,” she said.

“Not qualified” has been bandied about in the Democratic primary race as well. Both Clinton and rival Bernie Sanders have used the phrase to attack each other.

In early April, the senator from Vermont suggested Clinton’s Wall Street backers made her unqualified to take presidential office.

“She has been saying lately that she thinks I am ‘not qualified’ to be president,” Sanders told a Philadelphia rally ahead of the Pennsylvania primary. “I don’t believe that she is qualified if 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. I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq,” Sanders added.

In response, Clinton supporters created the #HillarySoQualified hashtag.

Social media being the way it is, the ploy quickly backfired, trending for all the wrong reasons as Sanders supporters hijacked the term to attack Clinton’s past stances on foreign policy, the email scandal and her foundation. Others joked that she was only qualified to work with Republicans on policies like war and destroying the environment.

While he was still in the presidential race, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had to battle against arguments that he was “not qualified” to hold the highest office in the land. The attack on him was a little different, however. He didn’t need to prove his qualifications to the court of public opinion, but rather to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

A Pittsburgh resident named Carmon Elliott filed a lawsuit in late February seeking to remove Cruz’s name from the ballot, claiming that the senator did not qualify to run, because he was born in Canada. Cruz was not a “natural born citizen” as required under the US Constitution, Elliott argued. In March, however, Pennsylvania’s highest court sided with Cruz.

In case you were wondering what the Constitution’s eligibility requirements entail, it’s quite simple, really:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

-Article II, Section I, Clause 5

 

Link to above article has been lost.... Meanwhile, unless the last two presidential candidates develop an IQ of 176 EACH in the next week or so, the world is in trouble. Hard to know which one could be worse — the warmonger qualified Clinton who protects the invasion of the Saudis in Syria and Yemen — or the frontier Mexican wall builder and rejector of American Muslims who don't adopt American values... The worst part here is that American morons will decide...

 

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been given a boost by a new poll showing the presumptive Republican nominee winning November’s general election against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

An ABC News/ Washington Post poll published on Sunday shows Trump with a two percent advantage over Clinton with registered voters in a hypothetical general election matchup.

According to Langer Research, Trump’s “enhanced competitiveness reflects consolidation in his support since his primary opponents dropped out.”

read more: https://www.rt.com/usa/344040-poll-trump-ahead-clinton/

 

Voters in all three states are looking for "radical change" and are unhappy with the way trade deals have impacted the US economy. While Clinton is viewed as being more prepared to be president, Trump is seen as the more honest candidate and better suited to fight terrorism.

Despite the progress, Trump continues to struggle in some areas. For instance, in Florida, which has a large Hispanic population, Trump is winning only 21 percent of non-white voters.

But he is also making progress with other important voting blocs. Trump has struggled with female voters in many national polls, but in Pennsylvania he has narrowed the gender gap. He currently trails Clinton by 4 four points, down from 16 points in June.

Both candidates are expected to campaign aggressively in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida ahead of the November election. No candidate has won the presidency without winning two of those three states since 1960, Quinnipiac notes.

"Donald Trump enters the Republican convention on a small roll in the three most important swing states in the country," Brown said.

Separate polls released Wednesday by NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist also showed Trump and Clinton statistically tied in Ohio and Iowa. According to that poll, no black voters in Ohio planned to vote for Trump.  In Pennsylvania, Clinton holds a solid advantage, topping Trump by a margin of 45 per cent to 36 per cent.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-election/donald-trump-polls-improve-in-key-states-20160713-gq5cu0.html#ixzz4EM4mYHew
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook
See toon at top...

 

Countdown to disaster?

As the world media continues to eulogize Cuban leader Fidel Castro, the neocon-liberal establishment is quietly positioning their chess pieces for a power grab of epic proportions. As far as I can tell, there are three stages of this silent coup presently being carried out on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

The first step in the process was to perpetuate the news that although Donald Trump won the Electoral College (306-232), he failed to win the popular vote - reportedly by 2.5 million votes, at last count.

Clinton’s alleged victory in the popular vote count, which continued for three weeks after Nov.9 (keep in mind that most of the vote monitors had already went home as these votes were being quietly tallied), could present serious complications for Trump and his chances of entering the White House, as will become clear a bit later.

Meanwhile, the blatantly anti-Trump media is conducting “thought experiments” to show how Clinton would have, could have, should have won the Electoral College if only the Electoral map had been spliced and diced here and there across the nation. The implicit media message behind all of this tomfoolery, of course, is that Wall Street-approved Clinton deserves her coronation, because, well, that is what the elite want, democratic procedure be damned.

This ongoing campaign on behalf of Clinton is much more than just sour grapes; in fact, it is a war of attrition designed to exert undue pressure on the Electoral College, the rickety institution that got Trump elected in the first place. And although it has never robbed an election from a candidate who has gained the majority of Electoral College votes, there is a possibility – and a very high one in this particular battle - of so-called “faithless electors” tipping this contest in Clinton’s favor.

This represents the second stage of Clinton’s attempt at reversing the results of the presidential election in her favor.

Will the Electoral College go rogue?

The Electoral College is scheduled to meet on December 19 to perform what, under normal circumstances, would be a mere formality of voting for either Clinton or Trump, according to the will of their constituents.

Needless to say, we are not dealing with “normal circumstances.” 

The 2016 presidential campaign represents an epic power struggle that will determine the trajectory of US domestic and foreign policy like no other contest in recent history. No surprise, then, that neo-liberal lobbying groups have been exerting immense pressure on these electors to ignore the will of the people and “vote their conscience.”

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/369019-donald-trumped-hillary-clinton-us-pres...

 

 

See toon at top... PLEASE NOTE THE DATE OF PUBLICATION.

I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved Me Wrong.

A historian of conservatism looks back at how he and his peers failed to anticipate the rise of the president.

BY RICK PERLSTEIN

APRIL 11, 2017

Until Nov. 8, 2016, historians of American politics shared a rough consensus about the rise of modern American conservatism. It told a respectable tale. By the end of World War II, the story goes, conservatives had become a scattered and obscure remnant, vanquished by the New Deal and the apparent reality that, as the critic Lionel Trilling wrote in 1950, liberalism was “not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.”

Year Zero was 1955, when William F. Buckley Jr. started National Review, the small-circulation magazine whose aim, Buckley explained, was to “articulate a position on world affairs which a conservative candidate can adhere to without fear of intellectual embarrassment or political surrealism.” Buckley excommunicated the John Birch Society, anti-Semites and supporters of the hyperindividualist Ayn Rand, and his cohort fused the diverse schools of conservative thinking — traditionalist philosophers, militant anti-Communists, libertarian economists — into a coherent ideology, one that eventually came to dominate American politics.

I was one of the historians who helped forge this narrative. My first book, “Before the Storm,” was about the rise of Senator Barry Goldwater, the uncompromising National Review favorite whose refusal to exploit the violent backlash against civil rights, and whose bracingly idealistic devotion to the Constitution as he understood it — he called for Social Security to be made “voluntary” — led to his crushing defeat in the 1964 presidential election. Goldwater’s loss, far from dooming the American right, inspired a new generation of conservative activists to redouble their efforts, paving the way for the Reagan revolution. Educated whites in the prosperous metropolises of the New South sublimated the frenetic, violent anxieties that once marked race relations in their region into more palatable policy concerns about “stable housing values” and “quality local education,” backfooting liberals and transforming conservatives into mainstream champions of a set of positions with enormous appeal to the white American middle class.

These were the factors, many historians concluded, that made America a “center right” nation. For better or for worse, politicians seeking to lead either party faced a new reality. Democrats had to honor the public’s distrust of activist government (as Bill Clinton did with his call for the “end of welfare as we know it”). Republicans, for their part, had to play the Buckley role of denouncing the political surrealism of the paranoid fringe (Mitt Romney’s furious backpedaling after joking, “No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate”).

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Continue reading the main story

Then the nation’s pre-eminent birther ran for president. Trump’s campaign was surreal and an intellectual embarrassment, and political experts of all stripes told us he could never become president. That wasn’t how the story was supposed to end. National Review devoted an issue to writing Trump out of the conservative movement; an editor there, Jonah Goldberg, even became a leader of the “Never Trump” crusade. But Trump won — and conservative intellectuals quickly embraced a man who exploited the same brutish energies that Buckley had supposedly banished, with Goldberg explaining simply that Never Trump “was about the G.O.P. primary and the general election, not the presidency.”

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/magazine/i-thought-i-understood-the-american-right-trump-proved-me-wrong.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

 

See toon at top... PLEASE NOTE THE DATE OF PUBLICATION.

 

 

The calls to the White House come at least once a week. "Murdoch here," the blunt, accented voice on the other end of the line says.

For decades, Rupert Murdoch has used his media properties to establish a direct line to Australian and British leaders. But in the 44 years since he bought his first newspaper in the US, he has largely failed to cultivate close ties to an American president. Until now.

 

Murdoch and President Donald Trump - both forged in New York's tabloid culture, one as the owner of The New York Post, the other as its perfect subject - have travelled in the same circles since the 1970s, but they did not become close until recently, when their interests began to align more than ever before.

Since Inauguration Day, Murdoch has talked regularly with Trump, often bypassing the White House chief of staff, General John F. Kelly, who screens incoming calls. Murdoch has felt comfortable enough to offer counsel that others may shy away from, such as urging the president to stop tweeting and advising him to improve his relationship with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Murdoch also has weekly conversations with Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

 

 

 

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/rupert-murdoch-and-donald-trump-a-friendship...

 

See toon at top...

In a long exposé of Donald Trump smooching to the Russians on Mother Jones, this US Democratic website (MJ) does not manage to bring ONE single proof that the Russian Government helped DumbDumb's victory in the 2016 US Presidential elections. Read from top. 

 

This is Mother Jones speaking:

October 7: US intelligence agencies issue a joint release saying they are “confident” the Russian government interfered in the US election, in part by directing the leaking of hacked emails belonging to political institutions like the DNC. This is the first official government confirmation that Russia orchestrated the hacking and leaks during the election.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/exhaustive-history-donald-t...

 

Yes... As well, the USA were "confident" that Saddam had weapons of Mass Destruction — when in order to attack him they HAD TO KNOW HE DID NOT HAVE ANY. Same dif.

And what did the emails of the DNC showed? That the DNC had been playing silly buggers with Bernie Sanders... And what did the emails of Hillary showed? That she had been very cavalier with the truth... meaning she had lied like all get out as well as being responsible for destroying two reasonably good countries. Pox.

 

...

A few of the panellists did identity that troubling phenomenon that came out of the Trump election of 2016: media representatives have become unwitting handmaidens and retainers. 

“There’s never been a person in any aspect of American politics,” reflected gloomy New York Times critic Wesley Morris, “this fluid or this fluent in the television televisual linguistic arts.”  

As Gessen remarked with undeniable accuracy, Trump did sail “to the white House on all the free air time he got”.

Such maelstroms must be escaped and to do so would not, argued Morris, entail making Oprah Winfrey or other celebrities presidential nominees. With an admirable sense of faith, he returned to the enlightenment promise of reason: good candidates with a grounding in sound debate and rational thinking might still be found and, even more urgently, had to be found.

Dr Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. 

 

To say the least, this analysis avoided the real issue here, I will say one word: Murdoch. Read from top.

 

Had Murdoch chosen to endorse someone else, other than the one that celebrated sexism, ridiculed the disabled, scandalised former prisoners, or mocked the war dead, Trump would have remained a pissing dummy, but now he is THE President.  So?

 

Has the media helped Trump? Yes, but! Not the media that you, the "liberal thinkers", think about. Not the media that is reasoned and long winded explanatory editorials with hypocritical love for Hillary. No... Yes Trump got "free kicks" on Fox and who owns THE Fox? Murdoch. Trump got a lot of OTHER free kicks by getting in bed with the "evangelicals". The Evangelicals run middle America and they were helped in their "news" apparatus with ... one guess only: YES! Murdoch... If you don't see a pattern here, then you don't know anything about the psychology of the "ordinary" people — the "deplorables"... Like trained crows, they eat in the hands of Uncle Rupe's media.

 

"Trump had to be covered as a fascinating grotesque, even though, in the view of panellist and Putin biographer Masha Gessen, the media “dropped the ball” in “treating him as a normal candidate”... WRONG. My recollection here that all the "liberal" media were treating Trump as a REPULSIVE grotesque character...

 

So, what is this "media"? We all know that there are several media outlets in the USA as well as in Australia. It's a question of sphere of influence — especially where the votes are critical in the swinging voters areas. Let's face you can't change a rat-bag into a silk-purse, but some middle average shopping bags can be decorated with the colour ribbons of your choice. In Australia, 70 per cent of the news flavour is based on Mr Murdoch views...  And he is very clever at the manipulation of "opinions"... In the end public "opinions" create the space for "personality" politics — good or bad.  

 

"...good candidates with a grounding in sound debate and rational thinking might still be found and, even more urgently, had to be found." Good luck to you if the media does not like you — or even if your own party shoots across your bow like the DNC did to Sanders. Here, too many journalists think that the "liberal' (US mild left right-wing) media is the beacon of truth. WRONG. Not a single "liberal" journalist presently understand the power play being staged by The Donald in the Middle East. Not one.

 

Read from top and see all the covers of The New York Post, prior to Trump's election, some of them posted on this site. Then if you're not dumb, you will understand the "relative" influence of the "media" but not the self-righteous-first-female-president-ever supporter one... When Uncle Rupe chooses a winner, it's very rare that he "looses"... Read from top again!!!!

 

Oh and I forgot...: NOT A SINGLE RUSSIANS IN SIGHT! And what does the "liberal" media do? Look for a ruskie under ever stone ever to be turned... and still nothing, but there is hope in the fool's gold mine... It has been "salted" (or "peppered") by Soros...

From ERIC ZUESSE

America’s system of ‘democracy’ is very different than France’s: Throughout the primaries-season — America’s first round — the most-preferred of all candidates in the race was Bernie Sanders, who, in the numerous one-on-one polled hypothetical choices versus any of the opposite Party’s contending candidates, crushed each one of them except John Kasich, who, throughout the primaries, was the second-most preferred of all of the candidates (and who performed far better than did Trump did in the hypothetical match-ups against Clinton). In the hypothetical match-ups, Sanders beat Kasich by 3.3%, whereas Kasich beat Clinton by 7.4% — that spread between +3.3% and -7.4% is 10.8%, and gives a pretty reliable indication of what the Democratic National Committee threw away when rigging the primaries and vote-counts for Hillary Clinton to win the Party’s nomination. Sanders beat Trump by 10.4%, whereas Clinton beat Trump by 3.2%. That spread was only 7.2% in favor of Sanders over Clinton; but, in any case, the DNC cared lots more about satisfying its mega-donors than about winning, when they picked Clinton to be the Party’s nominee. (Ms. Clinton’s actual victory over Mr. Trump in the final election between those two nominees turned out to be by only 2.1% — close enough a spread so as to enable Trump to win in the Electoral College (which is all that counts), which counts not individual voters but a formula that represents both the states and the voters. Sanders would have beaten Trump in a landslide — far too big a margin for the Electoral College to have been able to go the opposite way, such as did happen with Clinton. This fact was also shown here and here. That’s what the DNC threw away.) 

Hillary Clinton received by far the biggest support from billionaires, of all of the candidates; Sanders received by far the least; and this is why the Democratic Party, which Clinton and Barack Obama (two thoroughly billionaire-controlled politicians) effectively controlled, handed its nomination to Clinton. On 7 June 2016, the great investigative journalist Greg Palast headlined and documented "How California is being stolen from Sanders right now”, and four days later a retired statistician’s review of other statisticians’ statistical analysis of data from all of the primaries and caucuses, reaffirmed their findings, that the Democratic nomination had been stolen by the Democratic National Committee, and he concluded that “the whole process has been rigged against Bernie at every level and that is devastating even though I don't agree [politically] with him.” A more detailed study was published on 1 August 2016, titled "Democracy Lost: A Report on the Fatally Flawed 2016 Democratic Primaries”. Basically, what had happened is that the most-preferred of all the candidates got deep-sixed by Democratic Party billionaires, who ultimately control the DNC, just as Republican billionaires control the RNC. The US Government is squabbles between billionaires, and that’s all. That’s what’s left of American ‘democracy’, now.

On 12 August 2016, Julian Assange noted: "MSNBC on its most influential morning program, Morning Joe, was defending Bernie Sanders. Then Debbie Wasserman Schultz [head of the DNC] called up the president of MSNBC. Amazingly, this is not reported in the US media. It is reported in the US media that they called up Chuck Todd who’s the host of Meet The Press. Something much more serious is not reported — that Debbie Wasserman Schultz herself personally called up the president of MSNBC to apply pressure in relation to positive coverage about Bernie Sanders on Morning Joe.” That was typical of what went on.

Hillary Clinton’s favorable rating, by Election Day, was 40.3%, her unfavorable was 55.3%. Donald Trump’s favorable was 39.8%, unfavorable was 53.4%. Bernie Sanders, as of the end of the primaries on 29 June 2016, was 50.8% favorable, 39.6% unfavorable, and it has been getting steadily better afterward. But the suckered Democratic Party voters (the ones who were counted, at any rate) voted slightly more for Hillary than for Bernie. Even despite Sanders’s having had support from few if any billionaires, he almost won the Democratic nomination, and that’s remarkable. He might actually have received more votes during the primaries than Hillary did, but we’ll never know.

So: America is a dictatorship by the billionaires. And this means that it operates by fooling the public. France is similar, though it achieves this via a different way. And, in both countries, deceit is essential, in order to achieve its dictatorship. Fooling the public is now what it’s all about, in either case. Democracy can never be won by fooling the public; because fooling the public means removing the public’s ability to control the government. So, calling such a nation a ‘democracy’, is, itself, deceiving the public — it’s part of the dictatorship, or else support of the dictatorship.

 

Read more:

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/05/19/how-democracy-ended.html

 

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To New York mayor Bill de Blasio, Rupert Murdoch is directly responsible for Donald Trump.

In fact, De Blasio argues, “if you could remove News Corp from the last 25 years of American history, we would be in an entirely different place”.

In his view, without the malign influence of Murdoch’s media empire and its conservative Trump-supporting Fox News “we would be a more unified country. We would not be suffering a lot of the negativity and divisiveness we’re going through right now. I can’t ignore that.”

De Blasio spoke to the Guardian in New Orleans, hours before he took the stage at the annual Netroots Nation conference of progressive activists.

The New York mayor, who has never been on the best of terms with the famously aggressive press in his hometown, has his own criticisms of America’s media but has not restrained his attacks on Trump for branding reporters “the enemy of the people”.

“There is no comparison between a progressive critique of the media – and overwhelmingly corporate media, by the way – and a president who does not believe in free speech and is trying to undermine the norms of democracy,” he said.

He did make clear that “if you see a steady decline in democracy, we’re going to have to vividly defend a lot of media we don’t agree with. But I don’t want to give them a free pass on what they have done to all of us.” 

The venue presented an opportunity for De Blasio, who describes himself ideologically as “one part social democracy, one part New Deal, one part liberation theology”, to lay out his vision for progressive politics.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/07/bill-de-blasio-interview...

 

if you could remove News Corp from the last 25 years of American history, we would be in an entirely different place"???

You can say this about Australia as well... If you have read Gus' comments on Trump and Murdoch, you would know that we've been on the case that Murdoch "elected" Trump, NOT THE RUSSIANS...

 

Mind you in some European countries, the influencer is that other dubious manipulator — Soros...

 

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Axelrod teased a little more information out of the CNN president – he had turned down a position with Al Gore’s campaign in the past, and had always harbored a desire to run for office, apparently – before joking that he might “know somebody” who could help Zucker out. Axelrod, of course, is best known as the strategist behind Barack Obama's presidential campaigns, almost singlehandedly propelling an unknown junior Senator from Chicago into a beloved president with a massive cult following, based on little more than a four-letter slogan in 2008.

Zucker has dropped few hints before that he might have ambitions beyond CNN, but he was quick to blame the president after a bomb-like device appeared at the network’s New York offices last month, blaming his former employee’s rhetoric for putting reporters’ “safety” at risk, and seems to harbor residual guilt at his role in pushing Trump into the spotlight.

Using the interview as a chance to test out campaign-ready soundbytes, Zucker told Axelrod, “I think that our job at CNN is to tell the truth, and to stand on the side of pro-truth.” Leaving the listener to wonder if any news broadcaster has ever come out as “pro-lie,” Zucker took a dig at his favorite target: “I do understand that sometimes when you’re pro-truth it comes off as anti-Trump.”

CNN has been blamed for giving oxygen to the Trump wildfire in the early days of the 2016 campaign, and Zucker alternated between defending his coverage and claiming he was only doing what his competitors were doing. “I recognized his popular appeal – I understood there was something about Trump and his character that was popular and I thought would work, and I do think that’s one of the reasons that I had CNN pay attention right away to Donald Trump, because I think if you look back, most national news media organizations didn’t take it very seriously.”

Axelrod didn’t let that statement go unchallenged, countering that “some would argue it’s a chicken and egg thing.”

Zucker got defensive, trying on an air of Trumpian defiance. “I’m not going to apologize…we’ve never been above what the audience is interested in. I think this idea that you should only feed the audience spinach, and you should tell them what’s important – I reject that.”

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/445496-jeff-zucker-hints-politics/

 

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The Case for Trump, Victor Davis Hanson, Basic Books, 392 pages

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno. The author of more than two dozen well-received books on topics ranging from the ancient world to the modern, Hanson lives in Selma, California, on a working farm that has been in his family for five generations. It’s an experience that’s given him strong views on subjects like illegal immigration, which has touched his life directly. 

He opens his latest volume, The Case for Trump, in the year 2015, when Democratic and Republican strategists believed the country was becoming less industrialized and more digital, that new demographics—encouraged by open-border immigration proponents—would produce waves of new voters, and that the number of red-state voters was shrinking significantly. That meant gearing successful political pitches to the new political realities—globalism, open borders, identity politics, and other “woke” concerns. Then Donald Trump came down the escalator in his eponymous building, gave “the strangest presidential candidate’s announcement speech in memory,” and made “ready for the beginning of a nonending war with the press and civil strife within his party. He postured like Caesar easily crossing the forbidden Rubicon and forcing an end to the old politics as usual.”

Trump would play, Hanson writes, “an ancient role of the crude, would-be savior who scares even those who would invite him in to solve intractable problems that their own elite leadership could not. Trump was not that much different from the off-putting tragic hero—from Homer’s Achilles and Sophocles’s Ajax to modern cinema’s Wild Bunch and Dirty Harry.” In this crisply written and forceful analysis, Hanson argues that Trump has met those intractable problems head-on, shaking an establishment running on empty to its core, and, during his first two years, establishing an unparalleled record of solid presidential accomplishment.

Hanson takes us through the campaign again, commenting on how effectively Trump beat his primary opponents—11 well-qualified Republicans—and then Hillary Clinton with her billion-dollar war chest and most of the pollsters, establishment, academy, and major media behind her. Trump threw her badly off stride—just as he did his fellow Republicans—with an unorthodox campaign and a “Homeric use of adjectival epithets.” In the process, he blew up the approved scripts for campaigning, speaking, and debating, earning enemies among opponents and the media that covered him. 

Paradoxically, one of the reasons for Trump’s continued popularity is the nearly monolithic hostility of the media, even segments of the conservative media. Hanson, a frequent contributor to conservative publications, aligns himself with no clique or faction, although he seems mildly contemptuous of Never Trumpers. “In the conservative old days,” he writes, “a Republican president could call upon New York and Washington pundits and insiders—in the present generation names like David Brooks, David Frum, Jonah Goldberg, Bill Kristol, Bret Stephens, or George Will—for kitchen cabinet advice. But now they were among Trump’s fiercest critics.”

And in some cases, they have been among the most tasteless. When Melania Trump, recovering from kidney surgery, dropped briefly from sight, “Never-Trumper David Frum wondered whether Trump had struck his wife and sought to cover up the ensuing crime.” Frum wrote: “Suppose President Trump punched the First Lady in the White House (federal property = federal jurisdiction), then ordered the Secret Service to conceal the assault?”

Other Never Trumpers were less nasty, although the objective—discrediting Trump and hoping for his removal—remained steady. From the day Trump was elected, Hanson writes, “David Brooks reassured his depressed readers that Trump would likely either resign or be removed from office before his first year was over.” Nor has that hope faded. Recently we learned that top officials in the FBI had seriously discussed removing him from office—some might call it a coup.

 

Read more:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/comment/reply/31994/43435

 

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Gus:

Trump had one allied in the media: Rupert Murdoch.

From then on, all the media that "ordinary" people — the "deplorables" — saw (I did not say read, because even in print, Murdoch media is mostly seen — in pictures — rather than read) and watched Fox News (owned by Murdoch) strut its low denominator powerful stuff that was far easier to absorb than a million words of "analysis" by the "liberal" media for the elite, Trump was "going to win"...  WITHOUT MURDOCH, TRUMP WAS A GONER...

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This was our despair. Tony Abbott was an "unelectable" dude, a person who lied overtly and at times admitted to it — a ning-nong whose shifty views are (were) more than ignorant on many fronts, from education to scientific knowledge, got over the line easily by being "managed by Rupert Murdoch".

Here in Australia, we have two coming major elections: one for the federal government and one for the government of New South Wales. Both CONservative governments stink of corruption, of arrogance, of stubbornness and of ignorance. The polls give Labor a lead of ten points against these "Liberal" (a misnomer, one should understand: CONservative) governments. BUT, the Murdoch media is supporting both these rotten governments. Thus the battle is 50/50 with a chance of a Labor (akin to the Democrats in the USA) defeat. We shall see. Should Labor win, this could be the first time that a Murdoch's government choice is defeated. 

 

It's a lot of hard work and one prays (" to the gods of democracy" — Demos and Kratos) for a miracle or two...

 

From the Real News Network...

 

We ask FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley to compare the Russiagate investigation with the treatment of Hillary Clinton's emails, and ask whether the current polarized political landscape makes it more likely for the agency to make partisan choices.

GREG WILPERT: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Greg Wilpert in Arlington, Virginia.

A just-released book by New York Times Reporter James B. Stewart titled Deep State: Trump, the FBI, and the Rule of Law, compares the FBI’s investigations into both Hillary Clinton and into Donald Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential campaign. We rarely take a look at these two investigations side by side, because even though they took place more or less at the same time, the information about them was made public at different times. That is, the investigation into Clinton’s use of her email while she was Secretary of State become public knowledge when then-FBI Director James Comey made announcements about the investigation, first saying it was closed in mid-2016, and then a mere 11 days before the November election, announced that it was re-opened.

The other investigation into Russia’s suspected interference in the 2016 election was kept mostly secret during the campaign but became public knowledge afterwards when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. The difference between the way the FBI handled these two investigations raises the question of just how impartial the FBI is and whether there is such a thing as a deep state, as the title of Stewart’s book suggests.

Joining me now to explore this question is Coleen Rowley. She’s a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel. In 2002, she was named one of Time Magazine’s Persons of the Year for having exposed some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures. Thanks for joining us again, Coleen.

COLEEN ROWLEY: Yes, thanks.

GREG WILPERT: So let’s start with a comparison of how the FBI handled the two investigations. As I mentioned, the main difference, at least on the surface, was that the investigation into the Clinton emails became public knowledge when there were leaks about it and Comey made announcements about the on-again, off-again nature of the investigation. And the one in the Trump campaign and its connection to Russia didn’t become public knowledge until much later. So how would you compare these two investigations? Did the FBI treat them impartially? What do you think?

COLEEN ROWLEY: I’m not a big fan of James Comey. And I’ve even written opinion pieces critical of both him and Mueller for a lot of reasons. The FBI has a long history of flawed investigations. You should read Mike German’s new book, Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide, it’s the whole history of Waco and Ruby Ridge and etc. There’s just a whole bunch of things, anthrax case. However, in this case, I actually can sympathize with James Comey to some extent, because investigating both presidential candidates essentially at the same time–although the Hillary Clinton investigation of her use of a private server started before any information came in about collusion with Russia, that all started a bit before. And I think though, because… We talk now about, is the president above the law? And you think about both presidential candidates now being investigated by an FBI director, the big cases always tend to be micromanaged. So they’re not normal. They’re going to be managed from the top, at the very least by assistant directors and that type of thing, and usually even the director himself.

So there are similarities and there are differences in these two investigations. The main similarity, I would say, is the political polarization. And you see that there was talk by some agents of trying to go after Hillary Clinton, their chance to finally find some information about her that she had done something wrong. So that was a little polarized. But then you see that the later investigation of Trump’s collusion, which Robert Mueller did not find sufficient evidence of, you find that the agents were even talking more so between each other about trying to go after Trump. So the similarity here is that there was political polarization. And if you think about how the FBI is supposed to be the least political agency, they were, under the Hatch Act, you weren’t even supposed to wear a political button or anything. So this is very unprecedented, at least from the time I was in the FBI.

The differences, I think a main difference between the Hillary Clinton and the investigation of Trump and Russia is the aggressiveness. In the Hillary Clinton investigation, it did start early, but it was long criticized that the FBI did not use the grand jury. They did not even use the grand jury process in order to subpoena records. And they seemed to go lightly on Hillary Clinton in interviewing her. James Comey now admits that they made the decision very early on that they would not be able to prove malicious intent that … He said, “Well, she was very careless and reckless in using the private server, but we couldn’t actually prove a bad, malicious intent on her part.” And he admits now that decision was made very early on. Well, what that did then was that the aggressiveness in the investigation did not seem to be normal.

Now, in the investigation of Russia, if you think about a foreign country allegedly taking emails from the DNC server, and the FBI does not even do the forensic work itself in examining that server, but allows the Democrats’ own private company to do all the forensic work, that of course is less than aggressive as well. And there were calls also that came from the DNC that seemed to have been treated lightly or ignored early on. Now, when the investigation of Russia gets started, they actually then go to using the FISA courts. And you know what, FISA is quite a… Anytime you’re going to use electronic surveillance, that would mean that that’s very aggressive. You have to have probable cause that it’s a foreign power. And in this case, they went after one of the Trump associates very early on, but then, thinking that it would lead to other people being trapped up, and they signed onto it for four times. So I think that that … And they even used interviews where, the interview of Flynn where they didn’t tell him that they were investigating him, they didn’t give him Miranda rights, etc.

So I think that you see a difference in the aggressiveness in both investigations, ultimately. This week or next week, very soon probably, there will be an IG, Inspector General, report. Inspector General Horowitz is going to release his report of how he thinks the FBI and the DOJ did in investigating the Russia collusion. And we already have his report of the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails. He found no real problem. I mean, he criticized a little bit. He had more or less exonerated the FBI in investigating Hillary Clinton. And it remains to be seen if he will exonerate everyone now in the investigation of Donald Trump and the allegations of Russia.

GREG WILPERT: Now, when we compare these two investigations, as you just did, would you say that they give us reason to believe that there is something such as a deep state that is trying to manipulate presidents and presidential elections, as Stewart’s book seems to suggest? And if there is some kind of manipulation going on, what interests do they seem to be pursuing?

COLEEN ROWLEY: There’s always been… “Deep state” has kind of a bad connotation, so we can choose the term “permanent state.” And certainly, presidents come and go, but people like CIA career officials, State Department career officials, FBI career officials stay. And so I think, obviously, you can’t argue there’s a permanent state. The question is this power dynamic. And in other times, I think that the president clearly would have been able to order intelligence agencies to pretty much do what they want, even illegal orders, as in Iran-Contra and all these different times when presidents actually gave illegal orders to their agencies. Look at Bush ordering torture, and Rumsfeld ordering torture. And most of the agencies went along with that. And so I think, in most cases, you don’t have agency officials second-guessing the president. And I would say they should at some times, especially when the orders are illegal.

However, I think what has changed, and again, this is some evidence for how powerful the permanent state has now become, is that the polarization is so different now than ever before, extremely unprecedented. And we have these different camps fighting for power, almost in a life and death, War of the Roses struggle right now. On the one side, you have the Dem leadership, you have the war hawk think tanks, you have corporate media, you also have, I’m trying to think on the one side, but that’s a very powerful … the intelligence, you have some of the permanent state, not all of them, but you definitely have some of those former intelligence directors on that side. And on the other side, you have Trump, some of his remaining loyalists, I would say probably his base, his Christian fundamentalists, and very little of the media.

So you’ve got them locked in this struggle. And if you were really trying to do your job as an FBI agent right now, it would be very, very difficult. And I would say again, this is really unprecedented because of the polarization and this power struggle. It actually, I think goes way beyond even Watergate. I think that we’re almost in a constitutional crisis right now. A lot of people are saying, “No one knows how it’s going to turn out,” but it’s very, very different. And the permanent … If you go back to Schumer, who told Rachel Maddow, he said, “Trump’s being very stupid because by criticizing his intelligence community, they have six ways to Sunday to get back at you,” and there’s precedent for that. There is precedent for intelligence agencies going after the executive branch. Some of those, to this day, remain unknown. And people call them conspiracies and everything, but there is precedent because they do have a certain amount of power. And especially when you have these two different camps right now.

GREG WILPERT: Now, of course this is going to be of major concern were somebody such as Bernie Sanders elected as president, if that were to happen. And so I guess then, my next question is, well, what is there that could be done to reform these institutions so that they don’t undermine an elected president? Now, I’m not saying that this actually happened necessarily, but we could imagine that that could happen if, let’s say somebody such as Sanders were elected.

COLEEN ROWLEY: Yeah, exactly. The precedent now has been set. And anytime you’re setting a precedent for… Just the leaking is a good example. Directors are not supposed to leak. They have in the past; they’ve tried to control narratives and they’ve leaked. But we’ve also now set a terrible precedent of leaking information which, in some cases, could actually be dangerous, and certainly is wrong, this notion of controlling the media.  So I think that the way it could be fixed, you know, the old notion of draining the swamp might be pie in the sky. It’s just really, at a certain point right now, it’s maybe gone past that idea that you can fix it. We have systemic issues right now. And one is that it’s not a question of merely undermining the president, I would say. Like I said, if the president is doing something illegal, those directors have to say, “No, we aren’t going to torture. That’s illegal. We can’t do that, Dick Cheney. We can’t do that.”

So there are points where directors have to be very powerful. But there’s also times when–in conducting foreign policy, et cetera–a president cannot be second-guessed on every single telephone conversation that they engage in either. I think perhaps the one answer is to start going after this endemic corruption. I’m going to suggest one good way that would probably go a long ways to fixing things and you wouldn’t have this polarization, which is public officials–Congress–should pass a law; this should not be legal for public officials to have these second careers as lobbyists for foreign countries, as lobbyists for special interests, generals going and generals and directors now becoming talking heads on media. We need to have some restraints on this, what they call “normalized corruption.” And it causes conflicts of interests.

There are easy ways to remedy that. We’re not supposed to have emoluments. You’re not supposed to make a lot of money off of public service. And I think if we could fix that problem, trying to reduce the amount of profiteering off of public service, and I think it could be fixed, we just have to get much stricter ethics laws and enforce the current Office of Government Ethics laws that we already have, that would probably go a long ways. It wouldn’t be the complete solution, but it would help.

GREG WILPERT: Well, we’re going to leave it there for now. I was speaking to Coleen Rowley, FBI whistleblower and former Special Agent. Thanks again, Coleen, for having joined us today.

COLEEN ROWLEY: Yes, thanks Greg.

GREG WILPERT: And thank you for joining The Real News Network.

 

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Read also:

http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/32744

 

selling shit sandwiches...

 

the CIA at work with dirty tricks...