USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!!

[Cliff Varnell]

My comments in red.

That article, above, from Newsweek is what one would/should expect from one of many propaganda mouthpieces of the Establishment Machine [which comprises both the Republicans and the Democrats]. It denigrates Sanders and Stein and posits that the Democrats can be the real answer to anything in the USA.


Tell the millions people who have benefited from the expansion of health care that Obama didn't do anything for them.

Obamacare wasn't good for everyone, but for those on the bottom of the economic scale it was a life-saver.

They saved something like 70,000 lives just by tightening regulations on hospitals, and millions of poor folks benefited from the expansion of Medicaid.

Now the GOP is planning to eliminate Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid.

Any idea how many people are going to be sentenced to an earlier death because the GOP has taken over?

I don't buy it. The Democrats are only the lesser of evils to the Republicans

What you are over-looking -- and as an ex-pat you may not be aware of -- is the influence the Democratic grass roots has on policy. Not all policies, mind you, but many.

Net neutrality, the Consumer Protection Board, same-sex marriage, raising the minimum wage -- these are all issues the Democratic grass roots have influenced.

If we organize more, we can influence more.

But when the GOP has the White House and Congress it's the Republican grass roots who have influence.

You think there's no difference to someone whether they have health insurance or not?

Think again.


- but BOTH are evil and part of a pact with the 'Devil' of the Military, Intelligence, Corporate, Financial Oligarchy - which we need to get rid of before they get rid of the Planet and what LITTLE is left of our freedoms and democracy. NDAA was passed under Obama.

But Obama objected to the "indefinite detention clause" and the Democrats in the House voted against that clause.

It's only there because the Republicans in the House voted in lock-step for it.

Obama put out a signing statement saying it doesn't apply to US citizens.

Think Trump will make such a declaration?

No, and then we'll formally be in a military dictatorship.


Obama used drones to kill thousands of innocents - foreign and US Citizens. Bill Clinton and Obama both destabilized nations and waged needless wars for the Military-Industrial-Intelligence. Clinton repealed Glass-Steigall, and Obama bailed out the big banks but not the citizens they have robbed..and one can go on and on.


Indeed. It's been a constant battle. But false equivalencies must be rejected as readily as false dichotomies.

The National Security State doesn't work for the President.

The President serves the bidding of the National Security State.

We were lucky to have a guy in Obama who sometimes got around the War Party imperatives -- that's how we got the deal to remove chemical weapons from Syria and nuke material from Iran. Obama out-finessed them.

Otherwise, he did what he was forced to do. Drone wars, Ukraine, Libya, the crackdown on whistle-blowers.

But he opened relations with Cuba, and deserves credit for it.


The view that the Democrats are some life raft to the rough seas of the Republicans is at best naive, at worst the kind of dangerous thinking that has landed the USA exactly where it is now.

The analogy is hysterical.

With the Dems there is a chance -- maybe a small chance but a chance nevertheless -- that social progress can be made.

I live in San Francisco. I get health care through a Democratically installed health program (not Obamacare). I enjoy rent control -- pay 20% of current market value.

Republicans would take all of that away from me if they could.

Think we're not going to fight for the progress we've made along many issues?

As for Trump being elected there is no one to blame but the DNC itself for ignoring the will of their supporters to have Sanders,

Sanders lost by 4 million votes.

That wasn't the DNC's doing.


and not to have another big champion of things as usual and a war monger/owned-by-wallstreet - Clinton. Sanders, while far from perfect was the only mainstream person who could have defeated Trump and at the same time made some difference - he really should have run on the Green Party ticket - the Democratic machine on paper proved they didn't want his brand of Democratic Socialism. The Green party has the kind of change we need to avert disaster in the USA and the World - nothing less than that will do.


The electoral college insures a two party system.

Without a Green Senate and a Green House none of these wonderful Green things could be implemented.


It is exactly this idea that we can make change without changing from the usual choices between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum [Republican / Democrats] that American never changes [except in the smallest ways that don't 'bother' the secret ruling Mandarins],


Maybe having affordable health care and affordable housing are "the smallest things" to you, but not to me.

You don't live here, Peter, you have no idea what it's like on the ground.


and the World is on the brink of collapse on all fronts - moral, environmental, endless wars, trickle-up economics, diminution of freedoms and liberties, et al. No more business as usual; no more lesser of evils; no more doing the same old things and expecting a new outcome (the definition of defective thinking)!

[Cliff Varnell]

Not a full week out and the FBI's President is finding out he made the biggest mistake of his life winning the gig.

Popcorn, any one?


McCain Warns Trump on Putin as Transition Shows Signs of Disarray

By JASON HOROWITZ, HELENE COOPER, JENNIFER STEINHAUER and ADAM GOLDMANUPDATED 1:43 PM


The jockeying for power in the incoming administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump and on Capitol Hill is exposing frayed nerves and lingering anger but also the seeds of new leadership in both parties.

Photo

Steven Mnuchin, President-elect Donald J. Trump's national campaign finance chairman, at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Tuesday. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
McCain to Trump: Don't get cozy with Putin.

Senator John McCain issued a blunt warning on Tuesday to President-elect Trump and his emerging foreign policy team: Don't try another "reset" with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
During the campaign, Mr. Trump described Mr. Putin as a strong leader and suggested that the United States and Russia might join forces in fighting the Islamic State. Mr. Putin congratulated Mr. Trump on his election in a phone call on Monday and discussed working together to combat terrorism and resolve the crisis in Syria, according to the Kremlin's account.
That was too much for Mr. McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who cautioned the incoming administration not to be taken in by "a former K.G.B. agent."
"The Obama administration's last attempt at resetting relations with Russia culminated in Putin's invasion of Ukraine and military intervention in the Middle East," Mr. McCain, the newly re-elected Arizona Republican, said in a statement.
Continue reading the main story



"At the very least, the price of another reset' would be complicity in Putin and Assad's butchery of the Syrian people," he added. "This is an unacceptable price for a great nation. When America has been at its greatest, it is when we have stood on the side of those fighting tyranny. That is where we must stand again."
Jobs by the thousands, but few takers.

Rebekah Mercer, the scion of a powerful family of conservative donors and a member of Mr. Trump's executive transition committee, has had little success in her mission to solicit names and résumés for potential administration posts, according to a person familiar with her outreach efforts.
Ms. Mercer, 42, the daughter of the New York investor Robert Mercer, has told Republican operatives and members of previous administrations that she was having trouble finding takers for posts at the under secretary level and below. She also made it clear that the transition team was more than a month behind schedule and on a tight timeline, the person said.
The Mercer family has invested tens of millions of dollars in conservative causes and is considered especially close to Stephen K. Bannon, the chairman of Mr. Trump's campaign who was named as his senior presidential adviser. Mr. Mercer reportedly invested $10 million in Breitbart, the right-wing news site previously run by Mr. Bannon. Mr. Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, also previously oversaw a "super PAC" financed by the Mercer family.
Harry Reid: Democrats must defend the defenseless.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the outgoing minority leader, took to the Senate floor Thursday with a slew of stories about bullied children, racist attacks, and anti-Semitic acts, unholstered to bash Mr. Trump, his new hobby. "His election sparked a wave of hate crime across America. This is a simple statement of fact," Mr. Reid said before imploring Democrats to stand as a force against Mr. Trump.
Reins at House Republican campaign committee change hands

Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio was named the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the party's campaign arm for House candidates, succeeding Representative Greg Walden of Oregon. In a statement, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan called Mr. Stivers "a talented leader."
Trump team's long memories are impeding the transition.

Eliot A. Cohen, who wrote one of the "Never Trump" pieces this year that called Mr. Trump's view of American power and influence in the world "wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle," said in an interview on Tuesday that a Trump transition aide had asked him for recommendations for the national security team.
But when Mr. Cohen, a former national security official in George W. Bush's administration, suggested the caveat that many foreign policy hands would enlist only if there were credible people leading national security agencies and departments, he said he received a vituperative email in response.
The tone of the email surprised him, he said, expressing a level of vengefulness at odds with an administration that is trying to fill important national security positions with qualified people.
"They think of these jobs as lollipops," Mr. Cohen said. "I think we're on the verge of a crisis here."
A filibuster threat against John Bolton, as Rudolph Giuliani rises.

With John Bolton, the former United Nations ambassador, emerging as a finalist for a senior national security post, even secretary of state, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said on Tuesday that he would do "whatever I can" to block him.
Such opposition is improving the stock of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, to lead the State Department, but Mr. Paul is not so sure about him either, citing Mr. Giuliani's "worrisome ties to foreign governments" on CNN.
The floating of Mr. Bolton as one of Mr. Trump's contenders for secretary of state has baffled members of both parties, because his hawkish foreign policy worldview is so at odds with Mr. Trump's campaign pitch for less military engagement in the world.
That is one area in which Mr. Paul, one of Mr. Trump's rivals in the race for the Republican nomination, said he agreed with the president-elect.
"I can't imagine supporting anyone who hasn't learned the lesson of the last 20 years," Mr. Paul said of Mr. Bolton, who was ambassador to the United Nations for George W. Bush during the escalation of the war in Iraq. Mr. Paul called Mr. Bolton "unrepentant."
Global security consultant leaves the transition.

Matthew Freedman, the chief executive at Global Impact, a consulting firm, was removed from his post overseeing the National Security Council transition after questions emerged about his lobbying ties.
According to a former federal government official, Mr. Freedman had been using his Global Impact email to conduct official transition business. The official said that transition members were advised to use only their ptt.gov email, and that use of a business email was counter to transition policy.
Mr. Freedman has worked as a security consultant for decades, after a brief career with the federal government working for the National Security Council and the Agency for International Development. He started as a foreign government lobbyist in the 1980s, when he joined a company then led by Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's former campaign chairman, taking up prominent international clients, such as government officials from Nigeria and Argentina, and the dictator Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines.
Reached by phone, Mr. Freedman declined to comment Tuesday.
A broader lobbyist purge underway?

Photo

Vice President-elect Mike Pence arrived at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Tuesday. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times Vice President-elect Mike Pence and Rick Dearborn, a Trump campaign staff member who is close to Mr. Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are going over the transition staffing list to make a "very concerted effort to clear house of any lobbyists," said one transition official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. This means others beyond Mr. Freedman will likely be purged as well.
Two rich investors, two big cabinet posts

Carl Icahn, a business magnate who is close to the president-elect, tipped his hand on Twitter: Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs financier and hedge fund founder, seems to have an inside track to be Treasury secretary; and Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor and turnaround artist, could be Commerce secretary.
And one of them hints at the huge' tax cut to come?

Mr. Mnuchin, Mr. Trump's national campaign finance chairman, does seem to have big plans.
Spotted entering Trump Tower on Tuesday, he told reporters, "We're working on the economic plan with the transition, making sure we get the biggest tax bill passed, the biggest tax changes since Reagan, so a lot of exciting things in the first 100 days of the Trump presidency."
Mr. Trump has called for deep tax cuts for people at all income levels, consolidation of tax brackets, higher standard tax deductions, the elimination of the death tax and lower corporate tax rates. He has also called for ending "special interest loopholes" and he has said he wants to end the "carried interest" provision that benefits private equity groups.
The estimated cost to the treasury of those plans is more than $5 trillion over 10 years. To put that in perspective, George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 the largest in history were a wee $1.35 trillion over a decade.
Ben Carson declines health posts.

Ben Carson spent months trying to persuade voters to elect him president, but, according to his spokesman, he does not think he is qualified to run a federal agency in the Trump administration.
According to the spokesman, Armstrong Williams, who is also Mr. Carson's business manager, Mr. Trump offered the retired neurosurgeon a "buffet" of job options as a reward for being a loyal ally after dropping out of the race for the Republican nomination.
"The president-elect said, Ben, tell me whatever you want to run, it will be yours,'" Mr. Williams recounted.
But Mr. Carson has no experience running large enterprises, Mr. Williams said, and did not think it would be a wise move to start in the new administration. Mr. Carson had been discussed as a candidate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Education, or to be surgeon general.
"He'd be like a fish out of water," Mr. Williams said.
Is Kellyanne Conway, the victorious campaign manager, out?

Photo

Kellyanne Conway spoke at the Wall Street Journal's C.E.O. Council in Washington on Monday. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump's campaign manager who was often credited with steadying his roiling political machinery, may not go to the White House, according to two people briefed on the discussions.
Ms. Conway, Mr. Trump's final campaign manager, sanded down the candidate's rougher edges in her television appearances, but she has four young children and is weighing what a move to the West Wing would do to them.
Instead, she may remain on the outside, as a voice for the new administration on television or with a new "super PAC" set up to support the president-elect's activities.
Democrats are not immune from the disarray.

Amid rising calls for change in Democratic leadership, House Democrats decided in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday to postpone their leadership elections until Nov. 30.
After last week's bruising loss, there have been rumblings among some Democrats that perhaps a new leader should replace Representative Nancy Pelosi of California in the role she has held since 2003. Some members have urged Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio to run, and he is considering it, his office said Monday.
Mr. Ryan, a former football player from the Youngstown area, is in stark contrast with Ms. Pelosi, an affluent scion of a Baltimore political family long ensconced in San Francisco, one of the country's most liberal bastions.
But House Republicans are all smiles.

Photo

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, center, at a House Republican leadership meeting, spoke to the news media in Washington on Tuesday. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who was renominated to his position by his colleagues on Tuesday, gushed at the Capitol, "Welcome to the dawn of a new united Republican government," noting that his team is working carefully with Mr. Pence on a common agenda.

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/us/politics/hillary-clinton-wins-new-hampshire.html?ribbon-ad-idx=20&src=trending"]
[/URL]

[Peter Lemkin]

My comments in red.

That article, above, from Newsweek is what one would/should expect from one of many propaganda mouthpieces of the Establishment Machine [which comprises both the Republicans and the Democrats]. It denigrates Sanders and Stein and posits that the Democrats can be the real answer to anything in the USA.


Tell the millions people who have benefited from the expansion of health care that Obama didn't do anything for them.

Obamacare wasn't good for everyone, but for those on the bottom of the economic scale it was a life-saver.

They saved something like 70,000 lives just by tightening regulations on hospitals, and millions of poor folks benefited from the expansion of Medicaid.

Now the GOP is planning to eliminate Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid.

Any idea how many people are going to be sentenced to an earlier death because the GOP has taken over?

I don't buy it. The Democrats are only the lesser of evils to the Republicans

What you are over-looking -- and as an ex-pat you may not be aware of -- is the influence the Democratic grass roots has on policy. Not all policies, mind you, but many.

Net neutrality, the Consumer Protection Board, same-sex marriage, raising the minimum wage -- these are all issues the Democratic grass roots have influenced.

If we organize more, we can influence more.

But when the GOP has the White House and Congress it's the Republican grass roots who have influence.

You think there's no difference to someone whether they have health insurance or not?

Think again.


- but BOTH are evil and part of a pact with the 'Devil' of the Military, Intelligence, Corporate, Financial Oligarchy - which we need to get rid of before they get rid of the Planet and what LITTLE is left of our freedoms and democracy. NDAA was passed under Obama.

But Obama objected to the "indefinite detention clause" and the Democrats in the House voted against that clause.

It's only there because the Republicans in the House voted in lock-step for it.

Obama put out a signing statement saying it doesn't apply to US citizens.

Think Trump will make such a declaration?

No, and then we'll formally be in a military dictatorship.


Obama used drones to kill thousands of innocents - foreign and US Citizens. Bill Clinton and Obama both destabilized nations and waged needless wars for the Military-Industrial-Intelligence. Clinton repealed Glass-Steigall, and Obama bailed out the big banks but not the citizens they have robbed..and one can go on and on.


Indeed. It's been a constant battle. But false equivalencies must be rejected as readily as false dichotomies.

The National Security State doesn't work for the President.

The President serves the bidding of the National Security State.

We were lucky to have a guy in Obama who sometimes got around the War Party imperatives -- that's how we got the deal to remove chemical weapons from Syria and nuke material from Iran. Obama out-finessed them.

Otherwise, he did what he was forced to do. Drone wars, Ukraine, Libya, the crackdown on whistle-blowers.

But he opened relations with Cuba, and deserves credit for it.


The view that the Democrats are some life raft to the rough seas of the Republicans is at best naive, at worst the kind of dangerous thinking that has landed the USA exactly where it is now.

The analogy is hysterical.

With the Dems there is a chance -- maybe a small chance but a chance nevertheless -- that social progress can be made.

I live in San Francisco. I get health care through a Democratically installed health program (not Obamacare). I enjoy rent control -- pay 20% of current market value.

Republicans would take all of that away from me if they could.

Think we're not going to fight for the progress we've made along many issues?

As for Trump being elected there is no one to blame but the DNC itself for ignoring the will of their supporters to have Sanders,

Sanders lost by 4 million votes.

That wasn't the DNC's doing.


and not to have another big champion of things as usual and a war monger/owned-by-wallstreet - Clinton. Sanders, while far from perfect was the only mainstream person who could have defeated Trump and at the same time made some difference - he really should have run on the Green Party ticket - the Democratic machine on paper proved they didn't want his brand of Democratic Socialism. The Green party has the kind of change we need to avert disaster in the USA and the World - nothing less than that will do.


The electoral college insures a two party system.

Without a Green Senate and a Green House none of these wonderful Green things could be implemented.


It is exactly this idea that we can make change without changing from the usual choices between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum [Republican / Democrats] that American never changes [except in the smallest ways that don't 'bother' the secret ruling Mandarins],


Maybe having affordable health care and affordable housing are "the smallest things" to you, but not to me.

You don't live here, Peter, you have no idea what it's like on the ground.


and the World is on the brink of collapse on all fronts - moral, environmental, endless wars, trickle-up economics, diminution of freedoms and liberties, et al. No more business as usual; no more lesser of evils; no more doing the same old things and expecting a new outcome (the definition of defective thinking)!

The fact that I live outside the USA [not by choice by the way - I had death threats from those who run the 'joint'] doesn't make me any less aware or concerned than anyone who does. I do return to visit and even flurted with a return in my last years - NOW out of the question - but likely was not to be anyway. I get the 'treatment' when back - so YOU don't understand as I do what 'vulnerable' sections of society fear and face.

Your endless at nauseum repetition that it was not the DNC's own documented dirty tricks [an conspiracy with the media they have affiliations with] to deny the more popular candidate - Sanders - and run a much hated and hawkish insider who would do their bidding ['their being who owns and funds the DNC'] will not change my mind that you are totally wrong on that. Sanders, for many reasons would have trounced Trump and the DNC has to face up to this. Also the notion that Assange is a Russian agent is lunatic stuff. That was the excuse to cover their asses the Democrat machine put out out of embarrassment of their on perfidy against Sanders, and other crimes and misdemeanors. I'm glad you benefit from Obamacare and rent control. Yes, there are minor differences, mainly internal, between the two parties - but the BIG issues are unchanged and unchanging. I'm not willing to accept the minor changes to NOT try to change the entire system! Humanity, the ecosystem, nor Americans will survive without totally destroying the system and rebuilding another. How many millions died in Obama's eight years? How many new and old wars? How many wistleblowers jailed or hunted for the Espionage Act? How many Trillions from the poor to the rich? You seem not to be able to see the big picture nor to make the big changes needed to save the country and the World - sad. You are just thinking of your own situation - as were most of those misguided folks who voted for Trump. In the end neither you nor they will get what you want nor deserve - nor the rest of the citizenship and World populace. We need HUGE structural changes, not tiny little ones. We are not incrementally making progress IMHO, they are trowing bones to distract from the ongoing horrors.

As Howard Zinn said 'When you always vote the lesser of evils, you always will get evil, and less'.....that is the take-away you refuse to see. He is right.

[Peter Lemkin]

The Democratic Party destroyed its best chance at defeating Donald Trump.


The Republican billionaire, who ran an overtly racist, extreme right-wing campaign, defeated Hillary Clinton in a massive political surprise this week, apparently losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College tally.
This upset could likely have been avoided, however. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton's insurgent left-wing opponent during the primaries, repeatedly warned voters and the Democratic establishment that he had a greater chance of defeating Trump.
"Bernie Sanders continues to be the strongest candidate in the race to keep Donald Trump out of the White House," his campaign stressed in a May press release. Polling done that month by a variety of news outlets and firms consistently found that Sanders had a double-digit percentage point lead over Trump, with Sanders' average margin over the Republican being three times larger than Clinton's average lead of 3.3 percent.
Experts said Sanders' sizable lead over Trump was largely due to his popularity among independents and young voters, two groups with whom Clinton did not do nearly as well.
Sanders pollster Ben Tulchin noted at the time that the Vermont senator's overwhelmingly "positive profile stands in stark contrast to both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, who are both deeply unpopular."
Of the three major-party presidential candidates who remained in the race at that time, Sanders was the only one with a net positive favorability rating. Clinton had a net favorability rating of negative 21 percent and Trump's was negative 29 percent.
In fact, Trump and Clinton were the least popular presidential candidates in the history of the United States. An August ABC News/Washington Post poll found that Trump had a 63 percent unfavorability rating among U.S. adults, with Clinton following closely behind at 56 percent amounting to record-breaking levels of dislike and distrust.
Sanders, by contrast, is the most popular major political figure in the U.S., according to an October report. The popularity of the longtime independent Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist skyrocketed throughout his campaign, which mobilized millions of people and launched a massive grassroots movement.
A humorous July poll showed that Trump and Clinton were more disliked by millennials than Lord Voldemort, the villain from the "Harry Potter" fictional universe. Trump had a net favorability rating of a staggering negative 53 percent, with Clinton's at negative 32 percent, whereas Sanders had a positive net favorability of 34 percent. (The question about Voldemort was inspired by a previous poll, conducted by The Washington Post in June 2015, which also found that Sanders was the only major political figure with a positive net favorability rating.)
For months, poll after poll indicated that Sanders led Trump, in a hypothetical general election matchup, by wider margins than Clinton did. Whether Sanders would actually have beaten Trump is of course impossible to say for sure, but his chances were much higher than those of Clinton, who did not lose by much.
Even Trump recognized that Sanders was a bigger threat. In May, he tweeted, "I would rather run against Crooked Hillary Clinton than Bernie Sanders and that will happen because the books are cooked against Bernie!"
In a March primary debate against Clinton, Sanders said, "I would love to run against Donald Trump, and I'll tell you why. For a start . . . almost every poll has shown that Sanders versus Trump does a lot better than Clinton versus Trump."
Polls did show that Clinton could beat Trump, "but not by so much," Sanders emphasized. "And, that's true nationally, and in many other states," he said.
"The other reason I think we can beat Trump is that our campaign is generating an enormous amount of excitement," Sanders continued. "I think we are exciting working-class people, young people who are prepared to stand up and demand that we have a government that represents all of us."
Clinton's campaign was never able to generate anywhere near that level of excitement. Unlike Obama, who ran on promises of "hope and change," Clinton's entire campaign was based on opposing Trump. The vast majority of people who voted for her said they did so to oppose the bigoted billionaire.
Crucially, Clinton lost in key battleground states like Wisconsin and Michigan, where Sanders won the Democratic primaries. These are areas that have been heavily hurt by neoliberal economic policies and trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement which have led to outsourcing, deindustrialization and rising unemployment and poverty and that were strongly promoted by Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill, the former president. Winning those two states plus one other typically Democratic state that Trump carried such as Ohio or Pennsylvania, would have provided a majority in the Electoral College vote.
Yet Democratic turnout dropped in the 2016 general election: Roughly 7 million fewer Democrats voted than in 2012's. Despite all the media attention devoted to the Clinton campaign's "ground game," the Democratic Party simply failed to mobilize its base of voters and lost to the least popular presidential candidate ever.



Overall voter turnout in the election was also quite low, likely reflecting widespread dislike of the candidates. Nearly half of eligible voters, 47 percent, did not vote in the election. Clinton and Trump each attracted about 25 percent of the eligible electorate in a closely divided election.
Perhaps it comes as no surprise then that the Democratic Party that chose to nominate the second-least popular presidential candidate ever a Wall Street-backed neoliberal millionaire whose foreign-policy views were even more hawkish than those of her Republican rivals had previously systematically undermined its best chance to defeat Trump.
Internal emails from the Democratic National Committee, released by the whistleblowing journalism organization WikiLeaks, show that the Democratic Party sabotaged Sanders' campaign on behalf of Clinton.
The DNC is supposed to be bound to impartiality, but clearly favored Clinton from the beginning. In an ensuing scandal after the leaks, four top DNC officials were pressured to resign, including chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a former co-chair for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Mere minutes after Schultz resigned from the DNC, the 2016 Clinton campaign hired her.
An internal campaign email released by WikiLeaks also demonstrates how the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC intentionally fueled the rise of Trump, helping to create the far-right Frankenstein monster that defeated her.
Even after the Democratic Party betrayed him and undermined his campaign, Sanders, fearing a potential Trump presidency, endorsed Clinton and campaigned for her, alienating many of his supporters.
Yet Sanders also spoke out and warned that the Democratic Party was on the path to disaster. When the U.K. surprisingly voted in June to leave the European Union, in the so-called Brexit vote, Sanders penned an op-ed in The New York Times titled "Democrats Need to Wake Up."
"Surprise, surprise," Sanders began the article. "Workers in Britain, many of whom have seen a decline in their standard of living while the very rich in their country have become much richer, have turned their backs on the European Union and a globalized economy that is failing them and their children."
He warned that the growing levels of massive inequality in a world where the richest 62 individuals own as much wealth as the poorest half of the entire planet's population and where the top 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 99 percent are fueling far-right, fascistic politics.


"The notion that Donald Trump could benefit from the same forces that gave the Leave proponents a majority in Britain should sound an alarm for the Democratic Party in the United States," Sanders wrote. "Millions of American voters, like the Leave supporters, are understandably angry and frustrated by the economic forces that are destroying the middle class.
"The global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world," he warned. "We must create national and global economies that work for all, not just a handful of billionaires."
Sanders' words fell on deaf ears. Leaked emails from WikiLeaks showed that, in her private speeches to the financial sector, for which she was paid millions of dollars, Hillary Clinton said she "represented" and "had great relations" with Wall Street.
Trump exploited dissatisfaction and anger at the establishment, distracting from the root causes of problems and misdirecting that rage toward refugees, migrants, Muslims and people of color through demagogic scapegoating.
Exit polls showed that a whopping 74 percent of voters who said they were angry at the government chose Trump, with just 17 percent voting for Clinton.
USA Today found that 76 percent of voters who said their financial situation is worse off today than it was four years ago backed Trump, with just 19 percent behind Clinton. The inverse was also true; 72 percent of voters who said their financial situation is better off today supported Clinton, while 22 percent voted for Trump.
Decades of neoliberal economic policies and trade deals, started under President Ronald Reagan and continued under presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have led to job loss and immiseration, fueling the racism behind both Trump's campaign and the Brexit vote. Sanders was able to tap into this anger and responded to it with left-wing policy solutions. Trump, on the other hand, took advantage of that same outrage and diverted it toward bigotry, xenophobia and jingoism.
The media certainly helped, too. Major news outlets paid little attention to Sanders' campaign, even when he was winning primary after primary, while they gave billionsof dollars of free media coverage to Trump. CBS CEO Les Moonves declared that Trump's candidacy "may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS."
But above all, it was the Democratic Party that destroyed its chances of defeating Trump.
https://www.salon.com/2016/11/10/bernie-...im-anyway/

[/FONT]
[/FONT]

[Cliff Varnell]

The fact that I live outside the USA [not by choice by the way - I had death threats from those who run the 'joint'] doesn't make me any less aware or concerned than anyone who does. I do return to visit and even flurted with a return in my last years - NOW out of the question - but likely was not to be anyway. I get the 'treatment' when back - so YOU don't understand as I do what 'vulnerable' sections of society fear and face.

Peace, brother.

I'm just saying you don't face the loss of your health care, or the loss of your home, due to Republican policies.

I do. If a Trump Supreme Court rules rent control unconstitutional -- I'm homeless.

Our circumstances are not the same.

I go with what Bernie says now when told he could have won -- "So what?"

[Lauren Johnson]

I'm just saying you don't face the loss of your health care, or the loss of your home, due to Republican policies.

Jesus H. Christ, Cliff, you have not fucking idea how hard Peter's life was and still is. None. And it comes from the deep state -- the force that treats Republicans and Democrats like sock puppets. And I hope you survive this administration. Life is going to get a lot harder for a lot of people.

[Cliff Varnell]

I'm just saying you don't face the loss of your health care, or the loss of your home, due to Republican policies.

Jesus H. Christ, Cliff, you have not fucking idea how hard Peter's life was and still is. None. And it comes from the deep state -- the force that treats Republicans and Democrats like sock puppets. And I hope you survive this administration. Life is going to get a lot harder for a lot of people.

If I offended you Peter, I apologize.

I just don't understand all the Dem-bashing when we're dealing with an overt fascist takeover by Republicans.

[Lauren Johnson]

I need to apologize to you Cliff.

BTW. Have you read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine? She builds an amazing case for how the Dems became Republicans -- just a little to the left. That's why I bash them.

[Peter Lemkin]

People angry, anarchic levels of violence possible after vote Chris Hedges

[FONT=&amp]7 Nov, 2016 07:34
The end to the dirtiest presidential race in American history is just around the corner. Candidates marred by scandals and allegations of corruption are running neck and neck. The nation is divided and tensions are running high, as both Trump and Hillary head into the vote with historically low approval ratings. With both candidates loathed by the public, who is going to be the real loser in this race? And with the price tag for the campaign set to exceed a record $6.6 billion dollars, why does the cost of the American elections amount to the budget of a small country? We ask American journalist, Pulitzer prize-winning author Chris Hedges.


Sophie Shevardnadze:Chris Hedges, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, author, welcome to the show once again, great to have you back. Hillary was seemingly cruising to victory just after the debates - some polls gave her a 10 point lead - and now there's virtually nothing separating the candidates. Today, if you had a million bucks who'd you bet it on - Clinton or Trump?
[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]






[/FONT][FONT=&amp][FONT=&amp]st after the debates - some polls gave her a 10 point lead - and now there's virtually nothing separating the candidates. Today, if you had a million bucks who'd you bet it on - Clinton or Trump?
[/FONT]

[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Chris Hedges: It's impossible to tell you, because it really will depend on the mood, on the emotions of the voters on election day. That's all these campaigns are about, because they both essentially are neo-liberal candidates who will do nothing to impede imperial expansion and corporate power. The whole campaign has descended to, you know, not surprisingly, to the level of a reality TV show, with presidential debates featuring women who have accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual assault being brought in by Donald Trump; videos - I'll go back to the primaries - of the size of people's genitals. I mean, it's just appalling, but all of that is emblematic of a political system in deep decay and one that no longer revolves around fundamental issues. We know from the Wikileaks emails, the John Podesta emails that were leaked from Hillary Clinton, that there was a calculated effort on a part of a Clinton campaign to promote these fringe candidates - like Trump, and they particularly wanted Trump, because the difference between Hillary Clinton and a more mainstream Republican candidate, like Jeb Bush, is so marginal. So if you had to ask me, I don't think Trump will win, but I don't rule out the possibility that he will win - we have to look at the Brexit polls in Britain...
SS: Right.
CH: ...And same kind of anger is underway here.
SS: The FBI is extending its investigation into the Clinton email case - after obtaining a warrant to search the laptop of Clinton's closest aide Huma Abedin. The Clinton campaign says the move is political - is the FBI guilty of swaying the vote, like Hillary suggests?
CH: To be fair to FBI, they were put in a very difficult position - there are tens of thousands, they say 660,000 emails, we don't really know how many of those, but if the FBI made this discovery and did not make it public, they would be accused, of course, of aiding Clinton campaign. I don't know the motives, but I think we do have to recognise that the FBI, I think, felt correctly, that given the volatility of the campaign and the fact that they had, after the investigation of the Clinton email - she had used a private server - while they certainly felt that it was inappropriate to exonerate her of criminal activity that they felt kind of a responsibility to be transparent.
SS: Another FBI investigation showed that the bureau didn't find any evidence that Trump is tied to the Kremlin, like the Clinton campaign implied - has Hillary's attempt to play the Russian card failed?
CH: I don't know that it's failed, because the media has been quite obsequious in terms of parroting back this narrative, and one of the frustrations of the Wikileaks email dumps, the John Podesta emails, he is her campaign manager, runs her campaign - is that the contents were often overlooked to essentially ask the question: "Is Russia trying to influence the elections?", and as a former investigative reporter for the New York times, this is just not a legitimate question. I spent many-many years, 15 years with the Times, I was elated all sorts of information by all sorts of governments, from the French Intelligence agency to the Israeli Secret Service, the Mossad, to the U.S. government - and these people were not leaking it because they cared about democracy or an open society, they were leaking this information because it was in their interest to do so, and my job, as a reporter, was to determine whether this leaked information was true or untrue - and that's really the only thing the reporter should do with the leaked information on the Podesta emails. But one of the things that as a reporter, as a former investigative reporter, that has disturbed me is that they have - I'm talking about the press, especially about the electronic, commercial corporate press - they have effectively ignored much of what is in the emails to carry up this speculation. Meanwhile, of course, nobody has offered us any evidence that the Trump campaign is linked in any way to Russia or that Russia is responsible for the email dump.
SS: We're used to the fact that ordinary Americans don't really care about foreign policy, but this campaign has focused a lot on foreign issues and Russia in particular. Are candidates trying to unite the nation by creating the image of a foreign threat?
CH: Yeah. It's very disturbing on many levels, the kind of neo-conservative foreign policy cabal led by Robert Kagan and others that is around Clinton. The very people who gave the disastrous Iraq war, are now proposing policies to bait Russia. You know, it makes absolutely no sense to those of us who spend as many, as I did, two decades abroad as a foreign correspondent, except that it plays well politically into this very stunted, peculiar, neocon vision of the world, and that is that everybody out there only understands one language, and that's force. That's how you see these 15 years now of war, the longest war in U.S. history. It's been an utter disaster, utter failure, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of course, Syria, and Libya - and yet, what's the response? More bombs, more bombs, more bombs, which created the problems in the first place.
SS:Yeah, and do Americans like being scared by a foreign adversary?
CH: No, I don't think they "like" it, but it's a very effective form of control. Fear works, and Americans are hardly the only people to use it. Terrorism, the specter of Russia...whatever it is! Fear is a form of social control, and when you have essentially two political parties that are doing corporate bidding that serves the interests of corporate global elites, at the expense of the citizens - they need fear, they need to manufacture fear, and I think that's what we're seeing.
SS: Trump has said things along the lines of this election is rigged' and he's hinted that he may contend the results, which is kind of like admitting he'll be defeated. Is this talk backfiring and scaring away voters? Why would people head to the ballots if they think their voice doesn't count anyway?
CH: The Trump's base, primarily white lower-working class, which has been dispossessed through de-industrialisation, is going to head to the polls. They are attempting to work within the system. If the race is close and Trump loses, I think, everything we have seen, given the volatility of Trump, suggests that he will charge that the elections were rigged. We certainly have seen evidence now, from in particular the leaked emails, of the rigging of the primaries on the part of the Democratic National Committee, on behalf of the Clintons. It's pretty clear that Nevada Caucus was stolen, they blocked independents from voting in many of the primaries, in many of the states, and independents were Bernie Sanders' primary base. We just saw a few days ago, a day or two ago, that Clinton was actually leaked questions that would be given to her at a staged... I mean, they call them "Townhalls", they're totally Potemkin-like reality shows, totally scripted - so, it's enough to look into the inner workings to suggest that these people, the Clinton machine, the Democratic party do not play fair. So, yeah, I think that that is the danger and the danger becomes then, when enraged Trump supporters believe that the system is rigged, the system is broken, it doesn't function fairly - and that becomes dangerous, because these people will resort to kind of anarchic levels of violence.
SS: Filmmaker Michael Moore, who you can't call a Republican-friendly figure exactly, called Trump "a human Molotov cocktail" which desperate poor voters can throw at the system that stole their lives from them. How come a Republican candidate is the candidate of the dispossessed, shouldn't Hillary be the one taking care of them?
CH: Yeah. That is the whole idea, that a billionaire developer is somehow the voice of the dispossessed, but he has tapped into this right-wing populism. This is coupled with a kind of xenophobia, kind of exalted nationalism, and a statement - which is true, of course - that the elites have betrayed the ordinary citizenry. So, when Donald Trump goes to Michigan and stands before the executives from car manufacturers, who are moving their plants over the border, courtesy of NAFTA, to Mexico, and says that if you try to make cars in Mexico, I'll put a 35% tariff on it - this is something that no candidate, in either party, has been saying, and there are many-many really struggling... I mean, half of this country now lives in poverty, people who have been waiting a long time for somebody to stand up and defy these corporate executives and CEOs who have destroyed their lives, the lives of their communities, destroyed the lives of their families. So, in that sense, Trump is not a traditional Republican which is why the Republican establishment itself has united with the Democratic establishment to try and destroy the Trump presidency - much as in 1972, the left-wing insurgent candidate George McGovern saw the establishment of the Democratic party unite with the establishment of the Republican party to elect Richard Nixon.
SS: The election is estimated to have cost 6.6 billion dollars so far -that's including the House and Senate campaign spending, and is likely to end up being even more pricey than that. That's the whole budget of Bahrain. Elections in India have four times as many voters and cost one billion less. Is this price tag cutting off any truly independent candidate, like Bernie Sanders?
CH: You can't compete, unless you can raise that kind of money, unless you can get into debates. Bernie Sanders actually raised significant sums, he didn't do it through corporations, his average campaign contribution was $27 - but yeah, you can't play in this game of political theater, unless you're bankrolled to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. That is the part of the way they lock out third-party candidates, like the Green party candidate Jill Stein.
SS:The Democratic party managed to fend off an anti-system challenger - Sanders - how come the Republicans couldn't find anyone who could defeat Trump?
CH: Because the establishment itself is so deeply hated, so when the Republican establishment finally did - they didn't take him seriously in the beginning, and when they did turn on him, they trotted out the former presidential candidate Mitt Romney to attack him, and people just laughed. It's the Romneys, the Bushes, the Clintons, the Obamas, it's that establishment that people are turning against - which is why Hillary Clinton is having such a difficult time competing against such an imbecilic, undisciplined and impulsive and, frankly, ignorant candidate.
SS: I'm just wondering - why is the media, even the right-leaning media, which created Trump's phenomenon - turning on him in this campaign?
CH: Two reasons. One - he is attacking the trade agreements, which is how the elites make their money, and secondly, he's a public relations disaster for the U.S. I think those are the two reasons. Maybe, the third reason is that they don't know what they're getting with Trump - nobody knows what they're getting with Trump. Trump doesn't know what he's getting with Trump, and they know that Clinton will maintain both the imperial overreach and the design of the corporate state. So, Clinton's a sure bet and Trump is just too volatile a candidate, and that's why the establishment has turned on him.
SS: PresidentObama has hit the campaign trail to endorse Hillary Clinton - he's warning that all the progress will go out the window if we don't make the right choice'. Do you think everything Obama achieved will really go out the window if Trump gets elected?
CH: I don't think Obama has achieved very much. His healthcare program which is essentially forcing citizens to buy defective corporate products and we're watching now massive increases, on an average of 22%, and people that have the bronze plan, different levels of plans cannot even afford the kinds of premiums and copayments... - I mean, the whole system is a disaster. His assault on civil liberties has been worse than under Bush, he has expanded imperial wars, in places like Libya, create more failed states. I don't think Obama has much of a legacy. He'll walk out and get rich and will start his own Foundation like the Clintons - there's almost a complete continuity between Bush and Obama.
SS: A recent CNN ORC poll says Obama's approval rating is higher than at any time during his presidency - why is he doing so great now that he's leaving? Is that his Hillary campaigning paying off?
CH: You know, these people run very skilled public relations operations which revolve not around policy but around creating manufactured personalities, and that has been very difficult for Clinton - and that's why Clinton has the second-highest disapproval rating of any Presidential candidate as far as we know in American history, with the exception, of course, of the person she's competing against - Donald Trump. We have to look at what American politics is - it's really about creating feelings, emotions, getting voters to confuse how they are made to feel with knowledge. It is not about actual policies, and both Michelle Obama who has a very high kind of favourability rating and Barack Obama have been skilled in doing that. It's much more difficult, that's part of the problem, for the Clinton campaign.
SS: Looking back at the beginning of Obama's presidency, the Nobel committee handed Obama the peace prize in 2009 - not for his accomplishments, but for his intentions. But the promised peace didn't come to Afghanistan, didn't come to Iraq, we're seeing the unravelling of other Middle Eastern states - did Obama's peace vision not only fail but make things worse?
CH: Oh yeah, of course, look at Libya, look at Syria, look at Somalia, look at Iraq, look at Afghanistan, look at Pakistan. No, it's a complete catastrophe. I've spent seven years in the Middle East, I was the Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times, and what we've done is, I would argue, the greatest strategic blunder in American history, and it's one that Obama aided and abetted. The whole idea of him as a peace candidate is... I mean, I kind of gave up on the Nobel Prize Committee, I have no idea why this was done. As you correctly pointed out, he hadn't even done anything.
SS: Was it a genuine inability to make things better, were his hands tied?
CH: No. He was an establishment candidate, he was selected, anointed and promoted by the Democratic Chicago political machine, which is one of the dirtiest in the country, he got more money in 2008 from Wall St. than the Republican candidate who was against him - McCain. No, he's very cynical...bright, talented, unlike George Bush, but deeply cynical candidate. He brought in the old establishment, including the old Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who had been the Secretary of Defence under Bush, he brought in old these figures like Larry Summers and Geithner who are Wall St. marionettes. No, Obama knew very well what he was doing from the very beginning and effectively... Look, he won Advertising Age's top annual award which was "Marketer of the Year". His campaign did, because the professionals knew just what he done - he functioned as a brand for the corporate state, a very powerful and a very effective one.
SS: On the other hand America has restored relations with Cuba and reached a nuclear deal with Iran - both seemed unachievable just a couple of years ago. Do you count those as a Obama's foreign policy successes?
CH: Yeah, they are foreign policy successes, but we have to understand that the Pentagon had long fought the neocons call for war with Iran, even under the Bush administration they put a stop to it. So, there was no appetite within the American military establishment for war with Iran anyway. So that wasn't really an option, despite Israeli pressure. In terms of Cuba, it just got to the point of absurdity - the boycott of Cuba, and we must also remember that the second generation of Cuban Americans did not have that kind of hatred towards Fidel Castro and towards the Cuban regime, and so it was politically safer for the Democratic party because the new generation, just like the new second and third generation of Jewish Americans don't have that loyalty to Israel - it wasn't as politically volatile a decision.
SS:Obama made global zero' a strategic objective - however he failed to get America to ban nuclear tests by ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, while the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to three minutes to midnight' - that is to a nuclear war. Why did Obama's promise to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in American foreign policy' backfire?
CH: Because the military-industrial establishment is so powerful in the United States that politicians serve its interests. They don't dictate what the interests of that industry is - officialy, it swallows about 53% of our discretionary budget, but that, of course, masks huge other expenditures, including for our nuclear weapon systems, which isn't counted for Veteran's affairs, which is huge for, if you want to count, the security and surveillance state, which is officially hidden, but probably at least a hundred billion dollars... We're starving the rest of society to do that, and you can't fight these wars. Indeed, if you were watching the Bernie Sander's campaign, Sanders did not take on imperial adventurism or the military establishment - because you can't, within the American political system - and Obama, I think, is an example of that.
SS: Police shootings of unarmed black men have sparked massive protests and the Black lives matter movement - does Obama being the first black president actually mean little for race troubles in the U.S.?
CH: It means nothing, because you have de-industrialised urban centres, i.e. places that once had factories and jobs, which are now in ruins - you walk through them and it's boarded up factories and pothole streets and crumbling infrastructure, dysfunctional schools, and there are no jobs. So you have created mini police states in these marginal communities, where police can serve, as we see, as Judge, Jury and Executioner - three in one. Americans, almost all poor people of colour, are shot by police in this country every day, and it's a form of social control, along, of course, with mass incarceration. We have 25% of the world's prison population and 4% of the world's population - most of those imprisoned are poor people of colour. So, when you've taken away the possibility for jobs and with it the possibilities for hope, for advancement, for inclusion within both the economic and political system - then you need these very harsh forms of controls in order to keep people, essentially, fenced in. That's why these killings don't stop, it doesn't matter how many protests are carried out.

[/FONT]

[Cliff Varnell]

[QUOTE][FONT=&amp]
SS: The FBI is extending its investigation into the Clinton email case - after obtaining a warrant to search the laptop of Clinton's closest aide Huma Abedin. The Clinton campaign says the move is political - is the FBI guilty of swaying the vote, like Hillary suggests?
CH: To be fair to FBI, they were put in a very difficult position - there are tens of thousands, they say 660,000 emails, we don't really know how many of those, but if the FBI made this discovery and did not make it public, they would be accused, of course, of aiding Clinton campaign. I don't know the motives, but I think we do have to recognise that the FBI, I think, felt correctly, that given the volatility of the campaign and the fact that they had, after the investigation of the Clinton email - she had used a private server - while they certainly felt that it was inappropriate to exonerate her of criminal activity that they felt kind of a responsibility to be transparent.
[/FONT][/QUOTE]

This is 100% fiction.

First of all, there were no rules against having a private server -- it was widespread practice in the State Dept. -- and Comey admitted under oath that any reasonable person would have made the same mistakes Clinton did.

Second of all, Comey could have checked out those e-mails in the time it took him to write his Treason Letter to Congress.

https://www.inverse.com/article/23367-ed...estigation

If the head of the FBI re-programs all the cable news coverage over the last 11 days of an election heavily in favor of one candidate, he has violated the Hatch Act and can reasonably be accused of treason.