Trunp's Geopilitical Adviser is Disgraced Former Head of DIA

[Peter Lemkin]

In any case the clowns have long been in the White House.

Exactly, I'm glad you got the 'message' I intended from that piece re: Trump.

But hey! Clowns in the White House.....where do I begin.....ummmmmm maybe with R. Raygun who had been a fink in the Actor's Guild to turn in all 'red' actors to the unAmerican Activities Committee while he was making 'enlightening' grade-D films such as 'Bedtime for Bonzo'. Many of his biggest malevolent political/military decisions as President were actually made by Nancy's astrologer. Clowns would have done a better job than Raygun - who for reasons I can't fathom is widely held in high esteem. He was a rotten person, actor, governor, and an even more rotten President....but then after JFK they all were. All hail the Clowns In Chief!

[Peter Lemkin]

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An Indictment of Bigotry Within the Republican Party.

By John Pagoda

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"This party does not prey on people's prejudices. We appeal to their highest ideals. This is the Party of Lincoln." Paul Ryan





On Super Tuesday Donald Trump won a lion's share of Republican voters. Two days later it was "everybody hates Trump" led by non other than Mitt Romney in response to Trump's inability to forcefully disavow the former KKK leader, David Duke.



That lingering stench permeated the air that carries the words coming from those breeding in the Republican establishment sewer when they launched their "anybody but Trump" campaign, giving rise to the possibility of a brokered convention in which the messengers may benefit politically begging the question: just how far divorced from reality is the Republican Party from top to those who prefer the comfortable lie?


Some uncomfortable historical truths are that Republicans stopped being "the Party of Lincoln" when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Up to 1965 the Democratic Party controlled the south precisely because Lincoln was a Republican who destroyed their slave- based economy and it was the Democratic Party that used the infamous "Jim Crow" laws" to control the recently freed black population with well-attended lynchings and other forms of discrimination.



After LBJ the Democratic Party in the south was replaced by the Republican Party - that same prejudice, bigotry and racial animus moved from one host to another. The disease of racism was now perpetuated by the Republican Party using less overt forms of discrimination. The new form of slavery became "The New Jim Crow" with a war on drugs, which conveniently incarcerated more black and brown men and women, and Republican-controlled states no longer limited to south of the Mason-Dixon line passing voter-ID laws primarily disenfranchising people of color. That is today's Republican Party, which sullies the name "Lincoln" while claiming to be its embodiment.



In 1968 the Republican Party presidential candidate, Richard Nixon, used his "southern strategy", which saw the official shift of the Republican Party from the "Party of Lincoln" to the party that embraced white racism towards African Americans to solidify the white vote in the South.



In 1980 Ronald Reagan launched his official race-baiting campaign in the Mississippi county where the KKK murdered civil- rights volunteers Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner in 1964. During Reagan's run he repeatedly used the "Chicago welfare queen" story, perpetuating the stereotype of lazy black women ripping off the entitlement system that was paid for by white tax-paying workers who played by the rules and who were being "victimized" by some "strapping young buck." Once in office Reagan proceeded to push the new Jim Crow laws through his "war on drugs", which resulted in the "land of the free" becoming the world's number-one country in prison population.



In 1988 George H. W. Bush used a racially charged ad about a black felon Willie Horton to establish his racist bona fides and his son, George W., reduced the number of prosecuting civil-rights violations, continued to attack affirmative action and his response to Katrina in New Orleans highlighted the structural racism supported by the Republican Party.



This by no means is intended to absolve the Democratic Party of their embrace of racism from Bill Clinton's welfare reform to Hillary Clinton's "hard-working white people" stump speech in 2008 while 8 years later she panders for and receives the support of that same black community. Nor does it absolve the corporate-controlled media, which repeated the fictional reports provided by police that black residents in New Orleans were "raping, looting and shooting at rescue workers" and their decades-long abject failure to exercise the freedom of the press to expose the racism at the core of Republican ideology.



In 2011 Donald Trump questioned the citizenship and the legitimacy of the first black American president, demanding Obama prove his citizenship. This was a popular theme among a sufficient number of Republicans to reflect an absolute lack of respect for the President of the United States because of the color of his skin.



So impressed with someone who had the courage to speak their racial hatred, the Tea Party base of the Republican Party supported Trump's challenge. Indeed a founder of "Tea Party Nation" said, "The great thing about what Donald did is he said it and he did not flinch when he said it. A lot of the alleged conservative leaders have run like cockroaches when the the lights are turned on from the eligibility issue."



Based on that unappealing description, who would be the cockroaches today? Perhaps those "cockroaches" were Romney, Boehner, Ryan, McConnell and the rest of the Republican establishment, which said nothing from 1968 to 2011 when Trump's action certainly gave the appearance of racism. Romney certainly didn't object to Trump's campaign money even after Trump's racially charged challenge. Where was the outrage of the Republican establishment then? Instead they were too occupied with insuring nothing proposed by a black president would be supported.



In addition it was just last year when it took the murder of nine black people in a South Carolina church by a white supremacist to prompt their governor to remove the confederate flag and the racism it symbolized for 155 years after the civil war.




Finally, Ted Cruz recently appeared before the National Religious Liberties Conference in Iowa where he courted the support of Colorado pastor Kevin Swanson, who called for the death penalty for homosexuality before introducing Ted Cruz. Cruz's response was not to call out the prejudices of these so-called Christians instead he said "any president who doesn't begin every day on his knees isn't fit to be commander-in-chief of this nation."



Even Marco Rubio's dog-whistle call for "state's rights", which have long been used to "deny rights" of people of color and now intend to deny the rights of women, Latino's Muslims and the LGBT community, were met with silence by Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell when the rest of their party's leading presidential candidates preyed on people's prejudices.



In conclusion the leading voices of the Republican establishment can claim that theirs is the party of Lincoln and as such they don't "prey of people's prejudices", rather they "appeal to their highest ideals", but the historical record shows that since 1965 the Republican Party stopped being "the party of Lincoln" and since 1968 the actions and policies of the Republican Party has in fact preyed on people's prejudices.



If the Republican Party really believes the words recently parroted by their leaders that they "appeal to the highest ideals" of the people, it should be reflected in their actions; e.g., supporting the Voting Rights Act, equal pay for equal work, an acceptance of a woman's right to choose, and the equal rights of all citizens without regard to race, gender, religion, sexual identity, of all U.S. citizens.



As of this writing the actions of the Republican Party reflect the racism, sexism, homophobia, and Islamophobia that infect today's Republican Party and continues to perpetuate the divineness that prevents this nation from ever realizing its capacity to be great. And as of this writing the mainstream media fails to expose that chasm between the rhetoric and reality of today's Republican Party. Silence is complicity.

[Peter Lemkin]

By William Blum Published March 11th, 2016

American exceptionalism presents an election made in hell

If the American presidential election winds up with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and my passport is confiscated, and I'm somehow FORCED to choose one or the other, or I'm PAID to do so, paid well … I would vote for Trump.
My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity, and the environment. And when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is an unholy disaster. From Iraq and Syria to Libya and Honduras the world is a much worse place because of her; so much so that I'd call her a war criminal who should be prosecuted. And not much better can be expected on domestic issues from this woman who was paid $675,000 by Goldman Sachs one of the most reactionary, anti-social corporations in this sad world for four speeches and even more than that in political donations in recent years. Add to that Hillary's willingness to serve for six years on the board of Walmart while her husband was governor of Arkansas. Can we expect to change corporate behavior by taking their money?
The Los Angeles Times ran an editorial the day after the multiple primary elections of March 1 which began: "Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States," and then declared: "The reality is that Trump has no experience whatsoever in government."
When I need to have my car fixed I look for a mechanic with experience with my type of auto. When I have a medical problem I prefer a doctor who specializes in the part of my body that's ill. But when it comes to politicians, experience means nothing. The only thing that counts is the person's ideology. Who would you sooner vote for, a person with 30 years in Congress who doesn't share your political and social views at all, is even hostile to them, or someone who has never held public office before but is an ideological comrade on every important issue? Clinton's 12 years in high government positions carries no weight with me.
The Times continued about Trump: "He has shamefully little knowledge of the issues facing the country and the world."
Again, knowledge is trumped (no pun intended) by ideology. As Secretary of State (January 2009-February 2013), with great access to knowledge, Clinton played a key role in the 2011 destruction of Libya's modern and secular welfare state, sending it crashing in utter chaos into a failed state, leading to the widespread dispersal throughout North African and Middle East hotspots of the gigantic arsenal of weaponry that Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi had accumulated. Libya is now a haven for terrorists, from al Qaeda to ISIS, whereas Gaddafi had been a leading foe of terrorists.
What good did Secretary of State Clinton's knowledge do? It was enough for her to know that Gaddafi's Libya, for several reasons, would never be a properly obedient client state of Washington. Thus it was that the United States, along with NATO, bombed the people of Libya almost daily for more than six months, giving as an excuse that Gaddafi was about to invade Benghazi, the Libyan center of his opponents, and so the United States was thus saving the people of that city from a massacre. The American people and the American media of course swallowed this story, though no convincing evidence of the alleged impending massacre has ever been presented. (The nearest thing to an official US government account of the matter a Congressional Research Service report on events in Libya for the period makes no mention at all of the threatened massacre.)
The Western intervention in Libya was one that the New York Times said Clinton had "championed", convincing Obama in "what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of state." All the knowledge she was privy to did not keep her from this disastrous mistake in Libya. And the same can be said about her support of placing regime change in Syria ahead of supporting the Syrian government in its struggle against ISIS and other terrorist groups. Even more disastrous was the 2003 US invasion of Iraq which she as a senator supported. Both policies were of course clear violations of international law and the UN Charter.
Another foreign-policy "success" of Mrs. Clinton, which her swooning followers will ignore, the few that even know about it, is the coup ousting the moderately progressive Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in June, 2009. A tale told many times in Latin America. The downtrodden masses finally put into power a leader committed to reversing the status quo, determined to try to put an end to up to two centuries of oppression … and before long the military overthrows the democratically-elected government, while the United States if not the mastermind behind the coup does nothing to prevent it punish the coup regime, as only the United States can punish; meanwhile Washington officials pretend to be very upset over this "affront to democracy". (See Mark Weisbrot's "Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side The United States Government is On With Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras".)
In her 2014 memoir, "Hard Choices", Clinton reveals just how unconcerned she was about restoring Zelaya to his rightful office: "In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere … We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot."
The question of Zelaya was anything but moot. Latin American leaders, the United Nations General Assembly, and other international bodies vehemently demanded his immediate return to office. Washington, however, quickly resumed normal diplomatic relations with the new right-wing police state, and Honduras has since become a major impetus for the child migrants currently pouring into the United States.
The headline from Time magazine's report on Honduras at the close of that year (December 3, 2009) summed it up as follows: "Obama's Latin America Policy Looks Like Bush's".
And Hillary Clinton looks like a conservative. And has for many years; going back to at least the 1980s, while the wife of the Arkansas governor, when she strongly supported the death-squad torturers known as the Contras, who were the empire's proxy army in Nicaragua.
Then, during the 2007 presidential primary, America's venerable conservative magazine, William Buckley's National Review, ran an editorial by Bruce Bartlett. Bartlett was a policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan, a treasury official under President George H.W. Bush, and a fellow at two of the leading conservative think-tanks, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute You get the picture? Bartlett tells his readers that it's almost certain that the Democrats will win the White House in 2008. So what to do? Support the most conservative Democrat. He writes: "To right-wingers willing to look beneath what probably sounds to them like the same identical views of the Democratic candidates, it is pretty clear that Hillary Clinton is the most conservative."
During the same primary we also heard from America's leading magazine for the corporate wealthy, Fortune, with a cover featuring a picture of Mrs. Clinton and the headline: "Business Loves Hillary".
And what do we have in 2016? Fully 116 members of the Republican Party's national security community, many of them veterans of Bush administrations, have signed an open letter threatening that, if Trump is nominated, they will all desert, and some will defect to Hillary Clinton! "Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin," says Eliot Cohen of the Bush II State Department. Cohen helped line up neocons to sign the "Dump-Trump" manifesto. Another signer, foreign-policy ultra-conservative author Robert Kagan, declared: "The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton."
The only choice? What's wrong with Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate? … Oh, I see, not conservative enough.
And Mr. Trump? Much more a critic of US foreign policy than Hillary or Bernie. He speaks of Russia and Vladimir Putin as positive forces and allies, and would be much less likely to go to war against Moscow than Clinton would. He declares that he would be "evenhanded" when it comes to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (as opposed to Clinton's boundless support of Israel). He's opposed to calling Senator John McCain a "hero", because he was captured. (What other politician would dare say a thing like that?)
He calls Iraq "a complete disaster", condemning not only George W. Bush but the neocons who surrounded him. "They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction." He even questions the idea that "Bush kept us safe", and adds that "Whether you like Saddam or not, he used to kill terrorists."
Yes, he's personally obnoxious. I'd have a very hard time being his friend. Who cares?

[David Guyatt]

Let's hope Hilary fails. She be disastrous.

[Peter Lemkin]

Let's hope Hilary fails. She be disastrous.

Agreed...but Trump would also be, IMHO, for other reasons......Bernie Sanders is the only chance of American not going into fatal collapse...and I fear the powers that be would never let him run beyond the primaries. Its goodnight America......choose your poison. The election will be thrown via electronic voting machines if the 'men behind the curtain' don't like the actual vote. So much for democracy...but we lost that long ago...long, long ago......