Dec 282019
 
 December 28, 2019  Posted by at 10:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Alfred Palmer Conversion. Beverage containers to aviation oxygen cylinders 1942

 

OPCW Official Ordered ‘All Traces’ Of Dissenting Report On Douma Deleted (RT)
Interminable Impeachment (J.T. Young)
Democrats Brace For ‘Bloody’ Primary Season (Hill)
Bernie Sanders Warns ‘My God … Trump Will Eat Biden’s Lunch” (CD)
Biden Says He Won’t Comply With Senate Subpoena In Impeachment Trial (DMR)
Elizabeth Warren’s Presidential Campaign Issues Urgent Fundraising Plea (R.)
Rachel Maddow’s Defense In OAN Lawsuit Is That Her Words Are Not Fact (CTT)
FBI Investigates Ghislaine Maxwell, Others For Epstein Links (R.)
Evidence of Absence (Kunstler)
Guardian Corrects Article About Assange Embassy ‘Escape Plot’ To Russia (RT)
Russia Deploys First Hypersonic Missiles (G.)

 

 

WikiLeaks’ new leak. We now have OPCW, White Helmets, Bellingcat exposed as lying through their teeth about this. Much of their funding follows s similar trail: US government, Atlantic Council etc. The basis of US foreign policy.

OPCW Official Ordered ‘All Traces’ Of Dissenting Report On Douma Deleted (RT)

The leadership of the chemical weapons watchdog took efforts to remove the paper trail of a dissenting report from Douma, Syria which pointed to a possible false flag operation there, leaked documents indicate. In an internal email published by the transparency website WikiLeaks on Friday, a senior official from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) ordered that the document be removed from the organization’s Documents Registry Archive and to “remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever.” The document in question is a technical assessment written by inspector Ian Henderson after a fact-finding mission to Douma, a suburb of Damascus, in the wake of an alleged chlorine gas attack.

Western politicians and media said at the time that the government forces had dropped two gas cylinders as part of an offensive against jihadist forces, killing scores of civilians. The OPCW inspector said evidence on the ground contradicted the airdropping scenario and that the cylinders could have been placed by hand. Considering that the area was under the control of anti-government forces, the memo lands credence to the theory that the jihadists had staged the scene to prompt Western nations to attack their opponents. The final report of the watchdog all but confirmed that Damascus was behind the incident, but in the past months an increasing amount of leaked documents and whistleblower testimonies have emerged, pointing to a possible fabrication.


The OPCW leadership stands accused of withholding opinions contravening the West-favored narrative and using misleading language to report what the inspectors found on the ground. The alleged email was written by Sebastien Braha, Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW. Its authenticity is yet to be confirmed, but the organization never said any of the previously leaked documents were not real. Another document published on Friday outlines a meeting with several toxicology experts and their opinions on whether symptoms shown and reported in alleged victims of the attack were consistent with a chlorine gas poisoning. “The experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure,” the document said, adding that the chief expert suggested that the event could have been “a propaganda exercise.”

Read more …

J.T. Young served under President George W. Bush as the director of communications in the Office of Management and Budget and as deputy assistant secretary in legislative affairs for tax and budget at the Treasury Department. He served as a congressional staffer from 1987 through 2000.

Interminable Impeachment (J.T. Young)

President Trump’s acquittal in the U.S. Senate is a foregone conclusion. But it will not be impeachment’s conclusion for Democrats. Democrats’ decision not to send House impeachment articles to the Senate clearly signals their strategy: Delegitimize any action short of removal. They will not let impeachment go, now or ever, because they must counter their sagging – and President Trump’s strengthening – political position. Democrats have been calling for President Trump’s removal forever, pursuing de facto impeachment since taking the House this year, and pursuing it in fact since September. This marathon became a sprint: One week in the House Judiciary Committee and one day on the House floor.

Now, it has abruptly halted at what should be its climax. House leaders say they are not sending the impeachment articles to the Senate in order to leverage a fair trial there. How this gives them leverage, or how a trial there could be less fair than the House’s proceedings, is unclear. What is clear is that Democrats intend to maintain impeachment as an issue beyond its constitutional course. To rephrase Yogi Berra: “It ain’t over, even after the fat lady sings.” To understand why, it is necessary to understand the myriad reasons behind Democrats’ singular obsession with impeachment. First, they have a weak case. This was evidenced by the bipartisan opposition to impeachment and the Democrats’ inability to convince even one Republican to support it.


Democrats therefore must blame someone else, and they are laying the foundation for claiming that someone else – additional witnesses – could have provided it. Second, the left is pushing Democrats hard on impeachment, and Democrats are dependent on their left. The left forced impeachment on Democrats. The further left, the harder the push. Simply recall who Democrats’ impeachment leaders were and who stayed most assiduously away — even if ultimately voting for it. Democrats are as dependent on the left as the left is insistent on impeachment. The left is credited with the party’s 2018 success. In the Democrats’ 2020 presidential field, liberals dominate collectively, even if they have not yet coalesced around one candidate. The so-called moderates are running left, and the liberals are staying put.

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Sis weeks to Iowa. Time for the candidates to turn on each other. Time for Trump to laugh.

Democrats Brace For ‘Bloody’ Primary Season (Hill)

Democrats are bracing for a long, drawn-out primary season. With just six weeks until the Iowa caucuses, some Democrats say they don’t expect a likely nominee to emerge anytime soon after early-voting states hold their contests. Instead, they’re preparing for a bruising four-way match-up that could drag on for months as candidates compete for the chance to challenge President Trump. Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have consistently topped nationwide polls, but Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg remain key contenders who show no signs of slowing down. “It’s going to be uglier than ugly,” one Democratic strategist said, pointing to surveys showing there is no clear winner across the first four states in the nominating process.

“It’s going to be a bloody slugfest. And the thing a lot of us fear is that Trump will benefit from all of it.” Democrats have focused their efforts on electability, making the case for rallying behind the kind of candidate who can topple Trump. Some Democrats say that while a progressive candidate can energize the party’s base and win in the primary, it would be much more difficult for that same White House hopeful to win the general election against Trump. Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, argued that because the top candidates each have strong pockets of support, the primary may even lead to a brokered convention in July. “Although people always say that, this time it could be true,” Zelizer said.

“Democrats are so desperate to defeat Trump they have very different visions of how to do this and won’t concede easily.” The party’s top four candidates — two progressive candidates and two moderate candidates — are indicative of where the Democratic Party is right now, said Democratic strategist Michael Trujillo. “It shouldn’t be a surprise you are seeing two progressives and two moderates vying for the top spot,” he said, adding that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also a wild card in the primary race. “What is the most interesting factor here is that voters are somewhat interchangeable between Biden and Sanders as they are between mayor Pete and Sen. Warren.”

[..] The Democratic strategist who predicted the primary would be a “bloody slugfest” said this election cycle is reminiscent of 2016, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sanders were locked in a bitter battle for the Democratic nomination. Clinton emerged the winner, but “she was damaged from the primary,” the strategist said. “And anyone who says Sanders didn’t hurt her has their head in the clouds,” the strategist said. This time around, a brokered convention “could only add further division at a time when we need it most. It’s a bit of a nightmare situation.”

Read more …

There you go. “Joe Biden is a personal friend of mine, but..”

Bernie Sanders Warns ‘My God … Trump Will Eat Biden’s Lunch” (CD)

Warning that President Donald Trump cannot be defeated by an establishment Democrat running a “same old, same old type of campaign,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times editorial board published Thursday that Trump would have a field day with former Vice President Joe Biden’s record of support for the Iraq War, job-killing trade deals, and other destructive policies. “Joe Biden is a personal friend of mine, so I’m not here to, you know, to attack him,” Sanders said. “But my God, if you are, if you’re a Donald Trump and you got Biden having voted for the war in Iraq, Biden having voted for these terrible, in my view, trade agreements, Biden having voted for the bankruptcy bill. Trump will eat his lunch.”

The Los Angeles Times interview was not the first time Sanders has distinguished his own record from Biden’s by highlighting the former vice president’s support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During a Democratic primary debate in September, Sanders noted that, unlike Biden, he “never believed what Cheney and Bush said about Iraq.” “I voted against the war in Iraq, and helped lead the opposition,” the Vermont senator said. Sanders told the Times that defeating Trump in 2020 will require a candidate who embraces “ideas that are going to excite and energize millions of people who right now are not particularly active in politics, and who may not vote at all”—and the Vermont senator argued he is the Democratic contender best positioned to deliver such a campaign.


“The reason I believe that I am the strongest candidate, and the reason I believe our approach is right is if you want a large voter turnout, if we understand that there are tens of millions of people in this country who don’t vote, who’ve kind of given up on the political process… I think I am by far the strongest candidate to reach out to those people,” Sanders said. “I think I’m the strongest candidate to bring together a multiracial coalition of African Americans, of Latinos, of Asians.”

Read more …

Joe Biden’s biggest problem appears to be that he can’t identify his biggest problem. Either that or he knows there’s no escaping it.

Biden Says He Won’t Comply With Senate Subpoena In Impeachment Trial (DMR)

Former Vice President Joe Biden confirmed Friday he would not comply with a subpoena to testify in a Senate trial of President Donald Trump. The Democratically controlled U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump earlier this month alleging Trump abused his presidential power by tying foreign aid approved by Congress to a politically motivated investigation into a company on which Biden’s son Hunter Biden served on the board. Leaders in the House and Republican leaders in the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate are trying to come to terms for an impeachment trial. Biden said in early December he wouldn’t comply with a subpoena by the Senate, and confirmed that statement Friday in an interview with the Des Moines Register’s editorial board.

He has not been subpoenaed, but Trump’s allies have floated the idea. Testifying before the Senate on the matter would take attention away from Trump and the allegations against him, Biden said. Not even “that thug” Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney and former New York City mayor, has accused Biden of doing anything but his job, the former vice president said. Biden also said any attempt to subpoena him would be on “specious” grounds, and he predicted it wouldn’t come to that. Biden said even if he volunteered to testify in an attempt to clear the air, it would create a media narrative that would let Trump off the hook.

“What are you going to cover?” Biden said to Register Executive Editor Carol Hunter in response to a question. “You guys are going to cover for three weeks anything that I said. And (Trump’s) going to get away. You guys buy into it all the time. Not a joke … Think what it’s about. It’s all about what he does all the time, his entire career. Take the focus off. This guy violated the Constitution. He said it in the driveway of the White House. He acknowledged he asked for help.” Shortly after the House voted to impeach Trump, Biden was campaigning in Iowa, where he called impeachment “a sad moment for our country.” It underscored the need for a president who can unify the country, he said.

“No one’s taken as much heat and as many lies thrown at them as I have, but again, this is not about me. It’s not about my family. It’s about the nation. And we have to reach out and unify this country,” Biden said in Ottumwa on Saturday. A centerpiece to Biden’s campaign is his ability to beat Trump in a general election. It was a sentiment most likely Democratic caucusgoers shared in a mid-November Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll. He was the only candidate whom a majority of respondents said they were either almost certain or fairly confident would defeat Trump, according to the poll.

Read more …

Warren and Bernie rely on the same donors. She may be gone in six weeks’ time.

Elizabeth Warren’s Presidential Campaign Issues Urgent Fundraising Plea (R.)

Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign told supporters on Friday its fundraising haul stands at just over $17 million and made a plea for more donations with just days left in the fourth quarter. The figure was a sharp drop from the previous quarter and accompanied the progressive Democrats’ slight slide in opinion polls in recent weeks in the Democratic contest to face Republican Donald Trump in the November 2020 election. “We’re only days away from the biggest fundraising deadline of the year, and we’re at risk of missing our $20 million goal,” Warren’s campaign said on its website. In an email to supporters, the campaign said its haul of a little over $17 million this quarter was “a good chunk behind where we were at this time last quarter.”


In the third quarter of 2019, Warren’s campaign reported raising $24.6 million, slightly behind the $25.3 million raised by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, the only other 2020 Democratic candidate to swear off big-money fundraisers. Warren, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, has for months been polling in the top three of the crowded Democratic field, along with Sanders and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. Support for her White House bid has slid since she announced in November how she would finance her $20.5 trillion Medicare for All plan with new taxes on the wealthy and corporations but without raising middle-class taxes. The plan drew criticism from rivals who say it is unrealistic and from some voters concerned that it was too extreme.

Read more …

3 years of daily RussiaRussia rants transferred to the field of entertainment. Get real. Here’s hoping OAN does Maddow, MSNBC and Comcast real damage.

Rachel Maddow’s Defense In OAN Lawsuit Is That Her Words Are Not Fact (CTT)

One America News (OAN) is in court against MSNBC‘s Rachel Maddow in a $10 million lawsuit after Maddow said her conservative competitor “really, literally is paid Russian propaganda.” Now, Maddow is arguing in court that her words should not be taken as fact. Her actual legal defense, put out in a motion by her lawyer Theodore Boutrous Jr., reads: “…the liberal host was clearly offering up her ‘own unique expression’ of her views to capture what she saw as the ‘ridiculous’ nature of the undisputed facts. Her comment, therefore, is a quintessential statement ‘of rhetorical hyperbole, incapable of being proved true or false.’”

During one of her MSNBC segments, Maddow claimed, “In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America is really literally is paid Russian propaganda,” and added, “Their on-air politics reporter (Kristian Rouz) is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.” Leaving aside that Maddow now says her words should not be believed as fact, a linguistics professor’s testimony is leading observers to believe Maddow is also now lying in court. UC Santa Barbara linguistics professor Stefan Thomas Gries said, “it is very unlikely that an average or reasonable/ordinary viewer would consider the sentence in question to be a statement of opinion.”


[..] OAN host Jack Posobiec tweeted at Maddow after she made her defamatory remarks, writing “Do you understand how defamation laws work? Please feel free to respond to our lawyers.” OAN’s lawsuit also named MSNBC, Comcast, and NBC Universal Media as defendants, and accuses Comcast, MSNBC’s parent company, of “anti-competitive censorship” because the network refuses to carry OAN as part of its cable package.

Read more …

Who cares after all this time? Let’s see some action.

FBI Investigates Ghislaine Maxwell, Others For Epstein Links (R.)

The FBI is investigating British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and several other people linked to U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation. They said a principal focus of the FBI’s investigation is Maxwell, a longtime associate of Epstein, and other “people who facilitated” Epstein’s allegedly illegal behavior. Maxwell has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing. Her lawyers did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI also is following up on many leads received from women who contacted a hotline the agency set up at its New York field office in the wake of Epstein’s arrest in July, the sources said.

One of the sources said the probe remains at an early stage. The sources declined to give further details or identify the people they are looking at apart from Maxwell. However, they said the FBI has no current plans to interview Britain’s Prince Andrew, a friend of Epstein’s who stepped down from his public duties in November because of what he called his “ill-judged” association with the well-connected money manager. A representative for the British royal family said that whether the agency interviewed Andrew was “a matter for the FBI.” Following Epstein’s arrest, the FBI urged anyone who had been victimized by Epstein or had additional information to call the agency’s hotline.


U.S. Attorney General William Barr vowed to carry on the case against anyone who was complicit with the financier. “Any co-conspirators should not rest easy,” he said in August. The two law enforcement sources said the FBI’s principal focus is on people who facilitated Epstein and that Andrew does not fit into that category. They did not rule out the possibility that the FBI would seek to interview Andrew at a later date.

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“..an anxious nausea creeps over the land that Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham are dawdling toward a goal of deflecting justice from the sick institutions behind the three-year coup..”

Evidence of Absence (Kunstler)

What is most perilous for our country now, would be to journey through a second epic crisis of authority in recent times without anybody facing the consequences of crimes they might have committed. The result will be a people turned utterly cynical, with no faith in their institutions or the rule of law, and no way to imagine a restoration of their lost faith within the bounds of law. It will be a deadly divorce between truth and reality. It will be an invitation to civil violence, a broken social contract, and the end of the framework for American life that was set up in 1788.

The first crisis of the era was the Great Financial Crash of 2008 based on widespread malfeasance in the banking world, an unprecedented suspension of rules, norms, and laws. GFC poster-boy Angelo Mozilo, CEO and chairman of Countrywide Financial, a sub-prime mortgage racketeering outfit, sucked at least half a billion dollars out of his operation before it blew up, and finally was nicked for $67 million in fines by the SEC — partly paid by Countrywide’s indemnity insurer — with criminal charges of securities fraud eventually dropped in the janky “settlement.” In other words, the cost of doing business. Scores of other fraudsters and swindlers in that orgy of banking malfeasance were never marched into a courtroom, never had to answer for their depredations, and remained at their desks in the C-suites collecting extravagant bonuses. The problems they caused were papered over with trillions of dollars that all of us are still on-the-hook for. And, contrary to appearances, the banking system never actually recovered. It is permanently demoralized.

How it was that Barack Obama came on-duty in January of 2009 and got away with doing absolutely nothing about all that for eight years remains one of the abiding mysteries of life on earth. Perhaps getting the first black president into the White House was such an intoxicating triumph of righteousness that nothing else seemed to matter anymore. Perhaps Mr. Obama was just a cat’s paw for banksterdom. (Sure kinda seems like it, when your first two hires are Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.) The failure to assign penalties for massive bad behavior has set up the nation for another financial fiasco, surely of greater magnitude than the blow-up of 2008, considering the current debt landscape. Not a few astute observers say they feel the hot breath of that monster on the back of their necks lately, with all the strange action in the RePo market — $500 billion “liquidity” injections in six weeks.

But now we are a year into Attorney General Bill Barr coming on the scene — the crime scene of RussiaGate and all its deceitful spin-offs. The Mueller investigation revealed itself as not just a thumping failure, but part of a broader exercise in bad faith and sedition to first prevent Mr. Trump from winning the 2016 election and then to harass, obstruct, disable, and eject him from office. And six months after Mr. Mueller’s face-plant, out comes the Horowitz Report tracing in spectacular detail further and deeper criminal irregularities in the US Justice agencies. What’s more, tremendous amounts of evidence for all this already sits on-the-record in public documents. The timelines are well understood. And so, an anxious nausea creeps over the land that Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham are dawdling toward a goal of deflecting justice from the sick institutions behind the three-year coup — that our polity is so saturated in corruption nothing will be allowed to clean it up.

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But not really.

Guardian Corrects Article About Assange Embassy ‘Escape Plot’ To Russia (RT)

The Guardian has corrected an article describing a “plot” to “smuggle” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange out of London, more than a year after publication. Russia called the article “disinformation and fake news” from the outset. Assange is currently languishing in London’s Belmarsh Prison, awaiting a hearing on his extradition to the US where he is facing espionage charges. However, in the runup to Christmas 2017 he was still safe inside the city’s Ecuadorian embassy. At the time, Assange had become a thorn in the side of Ecuador’s new president, Lenin Moreno, and Moreno was reportedly mulling a plan to offer him a diplomatic post in Russia, shifting him out of the UK and away from the threat of extradition.

When The Guardian reported on the story in 2018, it turned up the drama. Citing anonymous sources, the newspaper described a “plot” to “smuggle” Assange out of London on Christmas Eve, speeding the fugitive publisher away in a diplomatic vehicle and onwards to refuge in Russia. Ultimately, the report claims, the plan was deemed “too risky” and called off. Though the report painted a picture of a Kremlin-instigated cloak-and-dagger operation, Ecuador would have been well within its rights to grant Assange diplomatic status, had the UK Foreign Office signed off on it. However, plots and plans sell better than backroom diplomatic wrangling, and the paper went with the spy-movie version of events.

It even shoehorned in a paragraph on Assange’s “ties to the Kremlin,” and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ‘Russiagate’ investigation, for good measure. The Russian embassy in London called the article a clear example of “disinformation and fake news by British media.” On Sunday, the Guardian itself issued a correction. “Our report should have avoided the words ‘smuggle’ and ‘plot’ since they implied that diplomatic immunity in itself was illicit,” read a statement from the paper. The correction was made after a complaint from Fidel Narvaez, who served as Ecuador’s London consul at the time of the alleged “plot.” The paper described Narvaez as a middleman between Assange and the Kremlin. Narvaez outright denied any discussions with Moscow.

Though The Guardian corrected its choice of words, the bulk of its story remains as is. The identity of the anonymous sources cited remain a mystery, as does the level of awareness the Russian government had about the plan at any stage in its formation. As events transpired, Assange was bundled out of the embassy by Metropolitan Police in April, after Ecuador revoked his asylum.

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Nothing more fitting mere days before 2020. Russia’s hypersonics travel at 27x the speed of sound. China’s testing 5x. The US? Nothing so far.

Russia Deploys First Hypersonic Missiles (G.)

Russia has deployed its first hypersonic nuclear-capable missiles, with Vladimir Putin boasting that it puts his country in a class of its own. The president described the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, which can fly at 27 times the speed of sound, as a technological breakthrough comparable to the 1957 Soviet launch of the first satellite. Putin has said Russia’s new generation of nuclear weapons can hit almost any point in the world and evade a US-built missile shield, though some western experts have questioned how advanced some of the weapons programmes are. The Avangard is launched on top of an intercontinental ballistic missile, but, unlike a regular missile warhead, which follows a predictable path after separation, it can make sharp manoeuvres en route to its target, making it harder to intercept.

The defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, told Putin the first missile unit equipped with the Avangard had entered combat duty. “I congratulate you on this landmark event for the military and the entire nation,” Shoigu said later during a conference call with top military leaders. The strategic missile forces chief, Gen Sergei Karakaev, said during the call that the Avangard had been put on duty with a unit in the Orenburg region in the southern Ural mountains. Putin unveiled the Avangard and other prospective weapons systems in his state-of-the-nation address in March 2018, saying its ability to make sharp manoeuvres on its way to a target would render missile defense useless. “It heads to target like a meteorite, like a fireball,” he said at the time.


China has tested its own hypersonic glide vehicle, believed to be capable of travelling at least five times the speed of sound. It displayed the weapon called Dong Feng 17, or DF-17, at a military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese state. US officials have talked about putting a layer of sensors in space to more quickly detect enemy missiles, particularly the hypersonic weapons. The administration also plans to study the idea of basing interceptors in space, so the US can strike incoming missiles during the first minutes of flight when the booster engines are still burning.

Read more …

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle December 28 2019

Viewing 19 posts - 1 through 19 (of 19 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #52378

    Alfred Palmer Conversion. Beverage containers to aviation oxygen cylinders 1942   • OPCW Official Ordered ‘All Traces’ Of Dissenting Report On Do
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle December 28 2019]

    #52379
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “According to experts, climate change will result in “millions” of deaths, major European cities being sunken, nuclear war and global environmental riots…all within the next 5 days.
    That’s because they made the prediction back in 2004 and said all that would happen by 2020, which is just 5 days away.”

    Report Hyped by Climate Alarmists Warned of Million of Deaths, Nuclear War, Sunken Major Cities by 2020

    Gosh you’d think after 20 or 30 years, they’d say: “Hey! I think my models are broken! They’re more wrong than a flipped coin!” (95% wrong instead of 50%) Nope. Science!™ “Whenever your thesis is proved wrong, double down and tamper with data!” But I kid: many don’t have any data — they made it all up.

    Well they were right about one thing: that AGW would mean constant riots and food shortages…caused entirely by their own petrol taxes in France, and migration caused by their voluntary, profit-making wars. Good excuse tho. Greta approved, coming from a country that is now the hand grenade capital of the world due to those very policies.

    Oh look! “The leadership of the chemical weapons watchdog took efforts to remove the paper trail of a dissenting report.

    Sounds like everything else, every minute of the day. “I will heal you with the power of my lies!” And I’m guessing this is in some way similar to tampering with legal evidence. And I’m guessing no one will go to jail. And I’m guessing no one will care because we love lies and arrest the truth-tellers.

    Democrats have been calling for President Trump’sthe last 4 out of 5 Republican Presidents removal forever,

    It’s just a thing they do, stopping democracy and elections. But hey, “Socialists,” it’s a given.

    Again, if Trump were to indict any of the thousands of felons (see above) they would call it “obstruction” and impeach him with an actual premise. False, as arresting felons is his duty, but at least a premise. Whyfore? Well as Michael Moore – long-time defender and sympathizer for the working poor now says – “2/3 white people are violent racists, you should fear them” as a way of getting that civil war, their only chance. Oh P.S. he knows that entirely by of the color of their skin, the one they were born with. He can judge people exclusively by the color of their skin because that’s not racist at all. P.P.S. People worldwide of every other race cannot be racists: that’s only possible for ‘white’ people, whatever that totally anti-scientific word means. Not the Spanish, obviously. Not the Greeks. Not the Jews. Not the Slavs. Not any Caucasians from the Caucus, not the… “Science!™”

    Well anyway, getting that division and war is a poor plan, but it IS a plan. And more and more sub-quotes are popping up among minor democrats and minor reporters (but I repeat myself), where they say the reason is, they’re not winning the election, that’s why they impeach. Dunno how to say it’s fake and there’s no danger and no crimes any clearer than that, thanks for being honest!

    the thing a lot of us fear is that Trump will benefit from all of it.”

    Doesn’t have to be this way. It usually isn’t. You’re doing it wrong. Here’s an idea: get a platform most people like and a candidate that want it they can trust. Crazy I know, but it’s worked before. And you have one with both halves AND has not one but TWO victim-lottery checkboxes: Ms. Gabbard, the only candidate they are violently rejecting, because they are now the pro-war, pro-rich, pro-religion party.

    I’m the strongest candidate to bring together a multiracial coalition of African Americans, of Latinos, of Asians.”

    Strangely, no. The candidate that has doubled in those polls and has that momentum is Trump. Go fig. …Maybe some kind of karma for screwing all three groups relentlessly for 50 years.

    Biden Says He Won’t Comply With Senate Subpoena In Impeachment Trial (DMR)

    I’m sure the optics of that going into an election are fabulous. The video of Peolsi’s son just show what happens when you’re in a target-rich environment: everywhere you point you hit something. You can’t miss.

    “”All right. They’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us … They can’t get away this time.” — Marine General Chesty Puller (not a joke) having ‘a h–l of a good time’

    Elizabeth Warren’s Presidential Campaign Issues Urgent Fundraising Plea (R.)

    Trouble because she instantly got multi-millions ahead of time from all the banks and Wall Street, in anticipation of this run where like Obama, she could then violently double-cross the public in their service. But that money’s gone? Sounds like people aren’t buying. In one way, that’s okay: that’s what Bloomberg is there for, to throw unlimited money and slander at Cheeto, not caring which democrat wins, but he has to be a candidate for that to be legal.

    Rachel Maddow’s Defense In OAN Lawsuit Is That Her Words Are Not Fact (CTT)

    Yes, we knew Maddow’s words mean nothing, but now she has to prove publicly they mean nothing. Don’t worry: no one will care, they’ll believe it anyway, and I’ll be the crazy one.

    How it was that Barack Obama came on-duty in January of 2009 and got away with doing absolutely nothing about all that for eight years remains one of the abiding mysteries

    Hey! I just said that! But according to Moore only people with white skin are bad, so…bank and CIA sellout, droner-in-chief = good.

    Citing anonymous sources, the newspaper described a “plot”

    Stop there. It’s fake. Or rather, it’s John Brennan on the phone.

    Hypersonics: “The US? Nothing so far.

    Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure. You mean OFFICIAL reality, or just reality? Because they just admitted they have an anti-ICBM rocket that fits an F-16. The only way that can work is to be hypersonic AND miniaturized. …But then we don’t have a space program either. Except the one that just spent 400 days in space. But it can’t get there without Russian rockets. But it did. But we don’t, because we do, right? By the way, we just SAW an underwater ICBM be fired, and an F-16 shoot it down as Air Force One was in the air coming back from North Korea. But we didn’t. Except I can watch the launch on Youtube. What did I say about every word every adult says being a transparent, idiotic lie?

    Whidby
    Hey was that the same billionaire island that plane flew around for an hour before crashing?

    #52380
    zerosum
    Participant

    President Trump Wins 2020 in a Landslide
    Its the USA democracy operated by the enablers
    One dysfunctional legal system, Two parties, Many uninformed idiots,

    “Democrats have focused their efforts on electability, making the case for rallying behind the kind of candidate who can topple Trump”

    “Trump will eat his (Biden) lunch.”

    Sanders said. “I think I’m the strongest candidate to bring together a multiracial coalition of African Americans, of Latinos, of Asians.”

    There is no proof of wrong doing – Biden

    The non-politician cannot be beaten by dirty politicians

    #52381
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    From a few days ago, more evidence of the DNC’s machinations.

    The Democratic National Committee produced a new “unity” fundraising advertisement which featured 10 presidential candidates—but notably left out Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard… She has consistently polled higher than at least two of the candidates who were featured.

    Critics blast DNC for snubbing Tulsi Gabbard in “Unity” fundraising video featuring 10 candidates

    #52382
    John Day
    Participant

    It’s OK. I’m sending Tulsi $50 when she does special-good things, which she does some days.

    #52383
    John Day
    Participant

    http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/12/dont-believe-your-thought.html
    Another thing you have the power to do, which I highly recommend, is to get rid of beliefs which do not serve you and replace them with nothing at all. When you notice a belief you have about the world, or about yourself, or about someone else, or whatever, you can ask yourself how that belief is beneficial to you. If you conclude that the belief harms your ability to enjoy life or to succeed at your goals, or even if it’s just not particularly useful, you can simply consciously relinquish it by ceasing to energetically hold it in yourself as true and real. You don’t actually need to replace it with another belief if you don’t want to; you can just let it exist as one big question mark.
    ​ ​In fact it’s possible to live life with very few beliefs, because very few of them will be useful to you at any given time. You can comb through your entire belief system and consciously relinquish almost all of it one item at a time, leaving nothing in its place but question marks. You can choose to experience life as a mystery.

    Don’t Be Crushed By Your Own Belief System

    ​4 million Muslims killed since 1990, but the American Empire has been at it a LOT longer than that.
    (“White Man’s Burden”, signed copy for you, T.R.)
    ​ ​After the U.S. defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and annexed the Philippines under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the Moro population were not even consulted. The U.S. then sought to “pacify” them using brute force.
    ​ ​“I want no prisoners,” ordered General Jacob Smith on Samar Island during the war in 1902. “I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better you will please me.”
    ​ ​Fast forward over 100 years later and it is difficult to see how U.S. military doctrine has changed for the better. A video came to light in 2010 of then-General James Mattis saying that it was “a hell of a lot of fun to shoot” people in Afghanistan.

    “White Man’s Burden”: The US Has Been Fighting “Forever Wars” Against Muslims for 120 Years

    ​Rat Line Reversal will solve problems for Turkey by getting rid of heavily armed “refugees” from Syria, at bargain price, while exerting “regional influence” in oil-rich Libya. Libya’s the cheapest place to send that riffraff.
    ​ President Erdogan in a speech on Thursday presented plans to send Turkish national troops bolster Tripoli as well.
    Possibly thousands from among the so-called Turkish Free Syrian Army (formerly the FSA), with most of its fighters currently attacking Syrian Kurds in the ongoing ‘Operation Peace Spring’, will now be sent into Libya.
    There are reports suggesting Turkey is ready to pay $2,000 a month for each Syrian ‘rebel’ willing to go to Libya…
    And akin to the current proxy war which has seen both the US, Kurds, and Sunni Islamists backed by Turkey wrangle over Syria’s oil rich eastern region, Libya is heating up to be the latest ‘oil and gas prize’ — but with immensely more at stake.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/foreign-fighter-rat-line-reverse-turkey-sends-syrian-rebels-libya

    ​Is Social Media The New Tobacco? Charles Hugh Smith
    (Is killing bicyclists while texting the new second-hand-smoke?)
    https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec19/new-tobacco12-19.html

    #52384
    WES
    Participant

    O.K. about this global warming thingy.

    I live in cold Canada.

    I have been waiting for global warming to arrive for over 40 years now.

    Look, I am getting bloody tired of waiting for global warming to arrive.

    I want global warming now!

    #52385
    lms
    Participant

    I find it curious that you dedicate so much of your blog space to attacking the cast of characters trying to contain the American “president”, Adam Schiff, Robert Mueller, the main-stream media, the “Deep State”, etc. I agree with you completely that the investigations are a farce. The “president” may be sucking our nation and the planet down the toilet with him but there doesn’t seem to be evidence that legally justifies his removal from office. My intent is not to defend those who are desperate to prove the “president’s” criminality, but I don’t understand what motivates you and the journalists you feature to ridicule the efforts, however misguided, of the “resistance” .

    The Dems are pissed off and frustrated and the ongoing Witch Hunt is their way of beating their heads against the wall. Schiff must know his efforts will come to nothing but he can’t help himself. The New York Times and The Washington Post know they have lost any integrity and objectivity they might have had before 11/08/16, but they are driven by their disgust and hatred. The intelligence services must be working overtime trying to cover the tracks from their previous failed attempts while they plot new ways to engineer a coup. Like Rush gleefully says every day, “They just can’t get over it!”

    The authors of the constitution knew they had created an imperfect document and thought of it as a stop-gap that could be improved upon in a few years. But no one ever got around to doing that and here we are all these years later treating it as if it came directly from God. Contrary to prevailing self-deception, the constitution has many shortcomings, and one of its oversights is that it makes it very difficult to remove a preening despot occupying the executive office. That conundrum is compounded by the gradual usurpation of power finessed by the executive branch, especially in recent years.

    You and many others with their eyes open, know what is going on and feel compelled to bring the Left, the Liberals, the Resisters to their senses. But that doesn’t justify the lopsided proportion of negative opinion posted on TAE which is critical of the Great Witch Hunt compared to the proportion allotted for reporting the myriad transgressions perpetrated by the “president” almost daily. To readers like me you come across as a fan of the Clown in Chief and his policies because you utilize much more space trashing his trashers than you do focusing on his many flagrant offenses.

    The Dems may not be able to get over the results of the last presidential election but you seem to be unable to get over having to witness the futile and frenzied attempts of Democrats to turn back the clock. Sometimes you say things like the Dems and/or the Deep State are attempting a coup (and I recognize the truth in that) and then you say something like, “God help us if they succeed”, as if the office of the President is sacred. Well, if it ever was sacred, it has now been blasphemed and the impostor needs to be removed. Or maybe you are worried about anarchy. It seems to me that we are caught up in kind of a slowly developing anarchy already. Respect among Americans for institutions, for tradition, for honesty and integrity, for other people, has been slowly declining for a few decades and only picked up speed with this “president”. People are realizing they can do whatever they want and that they, too, can get away with it. Or maybe you prefer the slowly developing tyranny that is coming down the road.

    We are talking about a man who still thinks of himself as the star of his own reality TV show, where nothing and nobody stand in his way and his power is absolute. He’s popular because a lot of people like TV. They’ve grown up with TV and it informs their lifestyle, their conversation, their self-image, and their consumption habits. Television is about the star, the celebrity, and celebrities tend to become overly self-important, pompous and narcissistic due to the constant adulation heaped upon them. Combine that with a primal hunger for power and you have our “president”. He thinks he is the authority on literally everything. First he said his replacement on the TV show he starred in for 14 years was a failure. Right then, everyone should have realized where his head was at. He assumes it his privilege to second-guess professional athletes and their coaches. He doesn’t hesitate to tell the leaders of other countries that he has a better idea for handling their internal policies. He thinks he knows better than the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank how to steer the economy. He tries to humiliate anyone who doesn’t fall in line with his objectives.

    The “president” may be inarticulate, but he is glib and smarmy. He is expert at cutting off another speaker and he possesses enough of a threatening demeanor to consistently get away with it. His street smarts have successfully enabled pervasive self-promotion, dishonesty when necessary, and a skill for “working the system”. With the help of his lawyers and accountants he really is an expert on bankruptcies and tax avoidance. He also excels at blaming others when things go bad (Obama has been his most frequently abused scapegoat), taking credit for anything that goes right, and never apologizing or admitting to mistakes. His success has also been abetted by a natural mean-spiritedness and an instinctive ability to belittle an opponent or any innocent target within his discriminatory cross-hairs.

    Our “president” has always surrounded himself with low-lifes and grifters, people who know how to cut corners, tell a white lie with flair, dirty-tricksters. Not down-right thugs, but people who would know a thug if you needed one. Lots of creative accountants and resourceful lawyers. His long-time friend and mentor was Roy Cohn, who as a lawyer, had defended mob bosses and Joe McCarthy. Cohn’s career was studded with accusations and indictments against him for extortion, bribery, blackmail, and tax fraud. Another confidant has been Roger Stone who started out in politics “practicing the black arts”, as he, himself, has put it, on behalf of Richard Nixon. Stone and Paul Manafort, “the president’s” 2nd of three campaign managers have been partners in a lobbying firm since 1980. One of their first clients was Donald Trump. They have also represented African warlords and the tobacco industry. Stone has been a promoter of conspiracy theories such as: Lyndon Johnson was responsible for JFK’s assassination and Barrack Obama’s presidency was illegitimate because he was not a legal citizen.

    The “president’s” most senior appointments have included an anti-conservation Interior Secretary who opened up federal lands and waters to exploration for oil and gas (He was forced to resign from this position, not for working at a cross-purpose to the mandate of the department, but for fraud); an EPA administrator who, prior to that posting, had brought 13 lawsuits against the EPA; an Education Secretary who, in her home state of Michigan, had been a lobbyist and major funder of private for-profit schools, most of which under-performed neighboring public schools.

    The “president” is a habitual liar. Everyone lies and politicians are the most consistent liars. But the lies of politicians are far more influential and potentially damaging because they are public and they reach a wide audience via the megaphone of every available media conduit. The charismatic Clown in Chief is as comfortable with lying as with speaking the truth and half of an enthralled American audience has no interest in distinguishing between the two. The enthralled still believe the trope that he is a successful businessman even though it’s common knowledge that he declared bankruptcy 4 times. Bankruptcy is a legal maneuver used to avoid paying debtors. He borrowed money, built casinos or hotel, and then deployed his lawyers and accountants to free him from having to repay the borrowed money. He doesn’t share his tax returns because with the help of legions of accountants/lawyers he avoided paying tax. When his returns are finally released, his devotees will see that our “president” showed his patriotism to America by not paying taxes on his swindled earnings. That was his contribution to making America Great Again. But a lot of people love an artful scofflaw, so he probably doesn’t need to worry.

    The “president” is a sexual predator. The evidence for this is overwhelming and incontrovertible. Reminding your readers of this once in a while is more important than repetitive derision of the Schiff follies. If it’s not yet against the law for the putative leader of our country to grab women’s crotches, then something needs to change.

    Why would you be surprised that otherwise smart people can’t stop themselves from standing in the way of a rampaging rogue, who seems to only gather speed with each ineffective shot fired.

    I often say that The Post and The Times, Rachel Maddow, et al would better serve the public if, instead of expressing wasted outrage at every marginally significant detail that has come out the Mueller investigation and the Impeachment hearings, they kept a running list of the transgressions perpetrated by the Clown in Chief and his administration. With regular unbiased, well researched updates (no unnamed sources) on how those policies are affecting Americans and disenfranchised people around the globe. Put it on the front page, above the fold, and then devote the rest of the news to all the other significant events going on around the world outside of the Swamp Circus.

    Those transgressions occur with such frequency that each is soon replaced by another. All are quickly overwhelmed and obscured by the ongoing Witch Hunt. Some have been widely reported, others barely mentioned, but all quickly lost in a fog of media too obsessed with Russiagate and Ukrainegate. When everyone who has a shred of empathy for other humans should be screaming bloody murder Congress and the MSM can only behave like chickens with their heads cut off. Here is a brief summary of some of the actions taken by the “president”:

    This “president” and his craven minions have decreed that many environmental regulations be removed, regulations designed to keep toxic chemicals out of the air, water and earth that we and other creatures depend upon for sustenance;

    The “president” endangered the lives and welfare of (mostly poor) women by denying funding to family planning clinics which include referrals for abortions among their many services;

    The “president” has single-handedly taken several actions to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, thereby obstructing access to healthcare for millions of people;

    The “president” has prevented entry into the U.S. by citizens of certain countries, as well as, many people seeking refuge here. This was not done for the ostensible reason of protecting the U.S. from terrorists, but to discriminate against Muslims and the desperately poor. This serves his agenda and garners political support from racist Americans;

    The “president” and his rich cronies in the Congress made the rich richer by greatly reducing the tax on capital gains;

    The “president” and his appointees have made every attempt to remove climate change from the public conversation, by denying the science, by removing access to studies which support the science, by firing some scientists and muffling the voices of others. He has the authority to decide that the U.S. would be the only country in the world to deny the urgency of reducing carbon emissions;

    The “president” has robustly supported the occupation of Palestine and the inhumane treatment of its residents by Israel;

    The “president” has publicly appeared with and unreservedly voiced his praise and support for autocratic leaders of countries who share his disregard for human rights, El-Sisi of Egypt, King and Prince Salman of Saudi Arabia, Orban of Hungary, Erdogan of Turkey, Duterte of the Philippines, Bolsonaro of Brazil, Putin of Russia, and Kim Jong Un of North Korea;

    The “president” recently pardoned two war criminals and restored the rank of another, a Navy Seal. The Secretary of the Navy was forced to resign because he was opposed to honoring the Navy Seal, who was called ”freaking evil” by a member of his team in court testimony.

    Pardon me for saying so, but you need to get your priorities straight. If you think you are speaking up for Democracy, then please realize that we didn’t really have one anyway. The congress people in Washington rarely take any beneficial action on behalf of most citizens. They wouldn’t be solving the real problems that confront us anyway, whoever is occupying the oval office. Racism, healthcare, education, human rights, etc., etc. are issues that need to be addressed by a real leader, not a self-obsessed celebrity. The electoral college should be abolished and the election system overhauled. Trump lost the popular vote by the greatest margin ever for an elected president.

    It is a coup attempt. Call it that if you want. But everything is at stake. Please stop giving support to the “president” by denigrating the people who are opposing him.

    Larry Simpson

    #52386
    zerosum
    Participant

    @lms

    wow!
    DO YOU THINK THAT THERE IS ANYTHING THAT WE SAY HERE IS GOING TO AFFECT THE FUTURE?
    I think …
    The non-politician cannot be beaten by dirty politicians

    #52387
    WES
    Participant

    Ims:. I am surprised that you don’t think jobs are very important to people. Most people like to have jobs.

    You sound just like all those communists I met in Siberia back in 1983! That place was a hell hole!

    I would be only too happy to give you the address so you can move there!

    #52388
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    Humans are born with blinders to avoid the PTSD of seeing reality.

    The OPCW Blackout, Impeachment, Ukraine, and the lawless New Aristocracy, are all indecipherable unless one acknowledges that a plutocratic counter revolt established a new Western Empire ruled by supranational corporations and oligarchs that superseded the corrupt incompetent national governments. Founded on neoliberalism, with one goal only, increase corporate profits no matter the cost to humans or the environment. By the turn of the century, all of the western political parties were bought out and the forever wars were on. Then Donald Trump was elected throwing a monkey wrench into the whole process. He and Bernie Sanders are unsuitable Emperors. Venerable Joe Biden, who spearheaded the restart of the Cold War with Russia, is the only suitable placeholder in contention except perhaps for a gay Mayor. Clearly a new way to select the Global Ruler is needed.

    It is amazing that the world survived to 2020. How about 2030?

    #52389
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    It is a coup attempt. Call it that if you want. But everything is at stake. Please stop giving support to the “president” by denigrating the people who are opposing him.

    Larry Simpson

    You’ve done a spendid job of mis-characterizing this blog and its host.
    I would question your reading comprehension; it seems you have confused your own biases and projected that confused bias here.
    Objectivity is difficult; and rare in a culture of operating by confirmation biases.
    This is what makes TAE such a gem, IMO…

    #52390
    Dr. D
    Participant

    General Jacob Smith probably worked for the same people as General Smedly Butler who said, “War is a racket.” He was the enforcer. Pretty sure they didn’t give a s—t about the religion of the nation they wanted to take, except that bleeding hearts back home would make it hard for them if they were Christians.

    Certainly killed every Christian they could find recently and denied them entry while cooing about the Yazidis.

    I think the barrage of attention on the Left not only by TAE but other leftists like Pool and Dore is caused be a few things: Foremost, there’s a sense they’re playing the game badly. They actually WANT Cheeto out and the moderate Left to win, and this is not the way to do it. In fact, it’s wildly counterproductive as newly proven every day. So my guess is Raul falls into the European left-leaning and also has this inclination to help the Left win. In fact, although I’m only to the Left of Alexander Hamilton, I do the exact same thing. It’s no fun playing chess against an opponent who moves their pawns diagonally across the board, then forfeits, calls you a cheat, and throws the board over. Play smart, will ya?

    Second, the level of lies. Like Pool says, the Right is just being the Right, same as ever. They want smaller government, less regulation, more money, blah blah. The Left has gotten to a bad habit of just making things up. 10 times a day. Every day. The blackout on OPCW with CIA/MI6-backed Bellingcat gaslighting, and the totally-transparently fake Trump-vote flipper, right on the heels of claiming there’s no video of Biden firing the Ukraine prosecutor for $1B and that his son is NOT on the board for … reasons… are just straight-up infuriating. We understand spin, it’s playing the game well, but not whenever they blow up a few thousand people and get caught, just say, and report, “No we didn’t! They’re still alive!” I hope other humans feel the same about lies vs the level of lies.

    Third, and most sadly, and about Playing the Game Badly, is, there’s no sense in criticizing Trump, BECAUSE of the Left. They’ve already got that angle covered, 99% of every story, every day. What can we add? But because they do that, and also lie, THEY ARE RUNNING COVER FOR TRUMP, and helping him, as he can hide the real scandals behind their air-horn of lies and nonsense. They also run cover and help him by deliberately misunderstanding every thing they can, and presume he knows nothing and is up no nothing, which is why he keeps winning because he’s stupid, QED. I’ve regularly covered a variety of actually impeachable offenses but what’s the point? If you joined up and got the other side in they would lie, impeach for nonsense reasons, then be far worse on every single point they accuse him of, as is illustrated every day, e.g. Biden saying he won’t testify, which is what they’re impeaching for. Hey, isn’t that why Manning is in prison? Funny. Anyway, so a lot of what they disingenuously accuse him of is just a difference of approach and policy, as we saw in the Vindman testimony. Since that’s the option, I’d rather watch both these villains blow each other to bits.

    Fourth, they won’t bring up any elements of what we MUST stop and impeach for: OPCW wars, Assange 1A, 2A, 4A, Manning and 5A, ACA and 10A, etc. Why? Because the DNC and media love it, want centralized dictatorial power, but they want to be in control of it to kill us all, just as they do in Baltimore and Chicago. I have to oppose that, but that means I oppose them BOTH, and the DNC/Press are a lot, lot LOUDER on those issues of wild, Stalinist overreach. Trump just does it but pretends he won’t.

    The further criticism is fair, but only makes me wonder why we don’t have the same criticism back when Obama opened up oil and gas in ANWR, droned a few thousand civilians including citizens, arrested whistleblowers, deregulated banks and instead of criticizing the Fed, filled Wall Street’s wildest wishes. And, as you say, lied about it all, as Clinton, Bush, Obama were “as comfortable lying as speaking.” Yes. They are. I’ve been saying this all my adult life. That’s why you don’t’ trust or empower the governmentfor the love of Christmas. The later list of Trump’s crimes such as supporting dictators, paying Kim Jong, firing Generals, bombing nations, imprisoning by race, immigration, wrecking welfare, health care, and pardons are literally Bill Clinton’s Presidency, and maybe everybody back to Johnson or Eisenhower. FDR? Teddy? So why is it different now? Suddenly, for the first time in our lives, this Exact. Same. Thing is not okay. Why?

    And that’s what drives me, or us, crazy, and why we or at least I, can’t move on from it. I will never, ever get tired of telling the truth. I will never, ever accept lies and hypocrisies. But unfortunately, I start with the biggest loudest guy on the field, and that’s not Cheeto. What did Bill Maher say? To win they only need to be less bad, less crazy than Trump? And how is it that they’re not, so we can go after him instead? Please come back.

    #52391
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    The reason Trump distresses so many people is not that he’s so bad, or so good, but that he won’t speak in accepted status quo terms.

    On the left, people sigh wistfully for the days when our President could speak in complete coherent comprehensive sentences. Never mind that he typically defaced every remark he made by doing the opposite of what those sentences meant, or worse, doing just a tiny bit of what they meant while ignoring or defying the rest of their meaning.

    On the right, I often hear yearning for good ol’ Ronnie the Reagan (I don’t think anyone really misses Dubya), a public spokesperson who knew how to project solid wholesome snack food sound bites of a texture and flavor so many Americans know and love. Never mind that the same thing criticism I applied to Obama also applies to Reagan. How aware Ronnie was of his lies is somewhat obscured by the fact of his senility. Obama has no excuse that I can perceive. He knows on which side his bread is buttered and that seems to be good enough for him.

    Donald does Donald. He is a sincere phony who means what he says whether he means it or not. It works for him for the moment, and that’s what matters to someone as severely mentally ill as poor Donald. This distresses people all around because they like their liars to lie consistently. Truth is not what most people are used to hearing from politicians, but they have certain standards defining lying that is “respectable” and lying that isn’t, the types being preferred generally being mostly defined by what politically/ideologically labeled camp they identify or associate with.

    The fact that all previous presidents have steadily moved our nation closer to the Sunken Evil Empire sinkhole doesn’t seem to bother most people as much as a president who doesn’t pretend to be trying to improve things via a manner of lying to which they are accustomed to prefer and, apparently, at least sometimes, believe.

    Why we expend energy discussing such matters is, imo, because we’re primate hominids, and primates love to gather at territorial boundaries and hoot at the other territory’s members as those members in turn hoot at them. It takes our minds off our problems which we are unlikely to fix without miraculous intervention of some sort.

    Can We Talk?

    #52392
    zerosum
    Participant

    The right
    The left

    All of them say they don’t lie.
    All of them accuse the others of lying.
    Look behind the curtain. Yes, there are people influencing the puppets.
    ( In polite circle, “a women behind the throne”)
    Trump calls them “the swamp creatures”
    They are all controlled/motivated/advised/mentored/coached/influenced, by the enablers. (Didn’t you ever hear the expression, “Lawyered up”)

    Is democracy the same as freedom when your choice is determined by the enablers?

    #52393
    John Day
    Participant

    Thank You Ims!
    I was going to answer you, myself, but I’m overawed by all the answers you already got. I like Bosco’s best, because it’s the last one I read and it’s quick and whimsical, always good flourishes.
    That being said, I WILL comment that Trump is more of a giant chimpanzee in a China shop than a bull.
    Trump practices the “Drunken Monkey” style of political Kung-Fu, which only a master can practice, and which is dangerous for the practitioner, but oh-so-unpredictable to the opponent(s).
    Anyway, if you think Trump is stupid, you already lost.
    He’s “differently-abled”, as one might politely say.
    Tom Luongo thinks that BoJo has caught on to the style, or may somewhat emulate it.

    Did Macron and Johnson Negotiate a Hard Brexit in October?


    Luongo thinks Macron has an angle to unseat Germany at the top of the heap in Europe, which is admirably French of him, though I think he’s less bright than Tom does. The Rothschilds who pull his strings are bright enough though, and they reside on both sides of the Chunnel.
    I suspect the House of Rothschild has a clever ploy to come out on top of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.
    (I hope inwardly that even that sinister plan may herniate unexpectedly when lifting heavily, but I’ll stop, now.)

    #52394
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #52395
    John Day
    Participant

    Ouch! Ouch! Run! Run!
    I’ve got to send that footage to Nate Hagens, Bosco!

    #52407
    lasttwo
    Participant

    I greatly respect Raul and this is one of only two sites I rely on for news. both political parties are really really corrupt. the lobbyist and military run the country. Trump is a terrible president but he knows he wont live long enough to reap what he is sowing. His environmental policies alone are horrible.
    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/03/how-trump-is-changing-science-environment/
    the democratics are completely missing the message. No one is going to get fired up about Biden and the impeachment is stupid. the only person who made any sense in that debacle was Gabbard.

    Just a rambling thought.
    I have an 80 + year old neighbor sharp as a tack but I would not want him to be president.. There should be a max age as well as a minimum age. A president should have the live long enough to see the mess they made. If your smart and you live long enough to make it to 70 you have to be smart enough not to want that job. If you do want it at that age you probably should not have it. I know at 62 I was more capable at 50 and maybe even at 40 .

    I understand people are pissed off. The MBAs gutted middle America with factory farms in the 70s and 80s and moving manufacturling first to the southern states then to mexico then to asia. the computer and technology advancements take manufacturing jobs out in vast numbers and service jobs are next cashiers and drivers are close to being eliminated. The MBA across the world were taught the same lessons– cost reduction no matter what the cost. but you cannot put the Genie back in the bottle. technology caused the great depression, a tractor could do the work of 20 men,. and it will cause the next one (already did in 2008 we just fired up the printing press to wallpaper over it.)

    Trump is an old fool he is trying, very poorly, to make changes we talked about on the factory floor in the early 1980s. That Genie is not going to fit back in the bottle .but we could make the genie dance. the whole country could have solar panels if we decided to stop blowing up brown people for a few years. we could look to a future that the next generation to be born would be proud of. (its not coal) we could stop poising the planet with roundup and plastics. you get the idea we could chose to do the right things. You know start to leave it better than we found it.

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