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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Why I Don’t Trust Trump on Iran

Posted by M. C. on January 7, 2020

At some point, when we’ve been lied to constantly and consistently for decades about a “threat” that we must “take out” with a military attack, there comes a time where we must assume they are lying until they provide rock solid, irrefutable proof. Thus far they have provided nothing. So I don’t believe them.

http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/january/06/why-i-don-t-trust-trump-on-iran/

Written by Ron Paul

President Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told us the US had to assassinate Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani last week because he was planning “Imminent attacks” on US citizens. I don’t believe them.

Why not? Because Trump and the neocons – like Pompeo – have been lying about Iran for the past three years in an effort to whip up enough support for a US attack. From the phony justification to get out of the Iran nuclear deal, to blaming Yemen on Iran, to blaming Iran for an attack on Saudi oil facilities, the US Administration has fed us a steady stream of lies for three years because they are obsessed with Iran.

And before Trump’s obsession with attacking Iran, the past four US Administrations lied ceaselessly to bring about wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Serbia, Somalia, and the list goes on.

At some point, when we’ve been lied to constantly and consistently for decades about a “threat” that we must “take out” with a military attack, there comes a time where we must assume they are lying until they provide rock solid, irrefutable proof. Thus far they have provided nothing. So I don’t believe them.

President Trump has warned that his administration has already targeted 52 sites important to Iran and Iranian culture and the US will attack them if Iran retaliates for the assassination of Gen. Soleimani. Because Iran has no capacity to attack the United States, Iran’s retaliation if it comes will likely come against US troops or US government officials stationed or visiting the Middle East. I have a very easy solution for President Trump that will save the lives of American servicemembers and other US officials: just come home. There is absolutely no reason for US troops to be stationed throughout the Middle East to face increased risk of death for nothing.

In our Ron Paul Liberty Report program last week we observed that the US attack on a senior Iranian military officer on Iraqi soil – over the objection of the Iraq government – would serve to finally unite the Iraqi factions against the United States. And so it has: on Sunday the Iraqi parliament voted to expel US troops from Iraqi soil. It may have been a non-binding resolution, but there is no mistaking the sentiment. US troops are not wanted and they are increasingly in danger. So why not listen to the Iraqi parliament?

Bring our troops home, close the US Embassy in Baghdad – a symbol of our aggression – and let the people of the Middle East solve their own problems. Maintain a strong defense to protect the United States, but end this neocon pipe-dream of ruling the world from the barrel of a gun. It does not work. It makes us poorer and more vulnerable to attack. It makes the elites of Washington rich while leaving working and middle class America with the bill. It engenders hatred and a desire for revenge among those who have fallen victim to US interventionist foreign policy. And it results in millions of innocents being killed overseas.

There is no benefit to the United States to trying to run the world. Such a foreign policy brings only bankruptcy – moral and financial. Tell Congress and the Administration that for America’s sake we demand the return of US troops from the Middle East!

Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
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My Corner by Boyd Cathey Military Coup against Trump

Posted by M. C. on October 26, 2019

https://boydcatheyreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/

Boyd Cathey

The Deep State Out in the Open

Calls for a Military Coup against Trump

Friends,

This past Christmas at a social gathering of some former high school classmates I had a brief conversation with an old friend, a liberal—I still have one liberal friend, but he’s about the only one left.  Aware of my positions on issues, and, yes, having actually read a few of the columns and essays I’ve written over the years, my friend—let’s call him Dave—enjoys needling me as a “conspiracy theorist.” And at that event he was at it again.

I don’t mind his banter, and, in a jocular fashion, I hand it right back at him.

This past Christmas Dave was all exercised about some of my pieces on “the Deep State,” and insisted that such discussion was nothing more than “right-wing talking points,” “conspiratorial exaggerations about legitimate government,” and, basically, much ado about nothing. The Deep State he explained, did not really exist—rather, I was “making it all up,” and that my criticism was actually misdirected at noble professionals who had dedicated their lives and careers to what he termed “the betterment of all Americans.”

How dare I attack those hard-working men and women who actually “made this country work!” [I am quoting his words, as I distinctly remember them.]

I don’t think my conversation that isolated in today’s America. But I also believe that the more zealous and frenzied the opposition to President Trump becomes, the more the reality of the Deep State has also become. As I have written previously, the election of the “great disruptor” has forced the administrative and managerial elites, fearful of losing their power and influence, increasingly out of the closet into the open. Indeed, Donald Trump, with all his bluster and unorthodox (according to Washington DC) manner of doing and saying things, has torn the mask off, at least partially, of the permanent, largely faceless bureaucratic class that has for so long dominated this country…and our lives.

But until recently, a full admission of this from the agents of the Deep State was unthinkable. The narrative was exactly that of my friend Dave: those upright and dedicated bureaucrats and experts, in government and in think tanks, were simply doing their job as professionals…but now that uncouth and ignorant “bull-in-a-china-shop” Donald Trump had attacked them, and he was thus “endangering our democracy” because of it.

Speaking, as it were, for most of the major media, Glenn Carle, a former CIA “clandestine services officer and an expert on national security,” called the very idea of a Deep State a “dark conspiracy.” Joined by other members of our intelligence agencies, he declared in May 2017:

The president has cast doubt on proven truths, undermined the laws, undermined the judiciary, the free press, the intelligence community…He’s undermined the very values upon which this society was built. So, what do you do if you’re an intelligence official? …This dilemma…has been widely discussed among those in the intelligence community, who have been forced to assess which is the greater threat: Trump’s “authoritarian tendencies” which threaten “the fabric of the nation,” or the clear national-security risks posed by a sustained stream of classified information being made public….”When leaks come from the intelligence community, it’s not to undermine the president or to protect the deep state. It’s to protect democracy — it stems from a sense of profound patriotism,” Carle said. “The deep state does not exist in fact but it exists in the minds of Trump supporters…”

Talk about “projection”!  Protecting democracy—by undermining it?…when for decades this country (as most of the nations in Europe) has been virtually ruled and governed by an unelected, untouchable caste of managers whose vision increasingly centers on a universalist globalism in which the citizens of the American republic will have become mere cogs: do your work, pay taxes, but shut up and don’t ask questions about “things that don’t concern you,” like running this country.

But now that symbol and beacon of the American Establishment, The New York Times, has come full circle: yes, the Deep State DOES indeed exist, it asserts, but that is actually a “good thing,” good for you and good for the country. Perhaps the insistent talk by the president and increasingly by some conservatives forced the Times out from the shadows?

Here was the headline of the Times editorial on October 20, 2019: “They Are Not the Resistance. They Are Not a Cabal. They Are Public Servants.”

Ironically, this admission/defense by “the Grey Lady” comes just a few days after a major Leftist columnist and contributing editor to Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi, blew the whistle on his fellow bedfellows. In a major essay—curiously not heralded on Fox and ignored by such media as CNN and MSNBC—Taibbi, no friend at all to President Trump or his policies, suggested that his friends on the frenetic Left “might soon wish they just waited to vote their way out of the Trump era,” and that, indeed, we ARE living through an attempted “coup” against the president and his agenda, that we are watching an hysterical effort to negate and undo the results of the 2016 election by any means.

Taibbi wishes to see the president gone, but he also sees that what is happening before us in Congress, in the press, and in academia,  is worse, far more damaging and dangerous to the survival of the American republic than the perceived infractions or lese-majeste’ of Donald Trump. The consequences of what the Left, the Democrats, and Never Trumpers are attempting and inciting are, in fact, driving a poisonous and violent stake into what is left of the republic.

I pass on a slightly-edited copy of Taibbi essay. Notice near the beginning as he writes about our divided country, he intimates that “we are speeding toward a situation when someone in one of these camps refuses to obey a major decree, arrest order, or court decision, at which point Americans will get to experience the joys of their political futures being decided by phone calls to generals and police chiefs.”

That incredibly chilling prediction is undergirded by an OpEd, again in The New York Times, by retired Admiral and Clinton loyalist, William McRaven [“Our Republic is Under Attack from the President,” October 18], in which he argues forcefully “that senior military leaders have lost confidence in the president and feel he is a threat to the nation,” and that “action” must be taken, “the sooner the better.” In other words…a military coup.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/were-in-a-permanent-coup?fbclid=IwAR2ZclK5zzGIxMU7fMFgmQ5fMGcinw_E6rVOKTeHlAFiCSXosXxkVLBo2yQ

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The Conspiracy Against Trump Is Now Out In The Open – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on October 4, 2019

Government in the United States is falling apart in front of our eyes. 

The conspiracy against Kennedy was not so obvious.

Trump's Breaking the CIA Into a 1000 Pieces - Last ...

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/10/03/the-conspiracy-against-trump-is-now-out-in-the-open/

Paul Craig Roberts

I am beginning to wonder if fluoridation hasn’t dropped the US IQ by much more than 5 points.

The reports, such as this one— https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/whistleblower-schiff-impeachment/2019/10/02/id/935386/ — which provide clear evidence that the alleged whistleblower spent a month arranging his complaint with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, media, and other Democrats, thus revealing that it is nothing but another orchestrated hoax to use against President Trump, miss the main point.

The main point is that the “whistleblower” complaint is false.  The falsity of the complaint is proven by the released unredacted transcript and by the statements of Ukrainian President Zelensky. 

What the “whistleblower” complaint actually reveals is that there is a conspiracy within the government to produce false evidence and false charges against President Trump.

Schiff lied before the TV cameras at the Maguire hearing when he read his false version of the telephone transcript.  How can a man who lies so brazenly in front of people who know he is lying be trusted with the chairmanship of an intelligence committee or any committee?   

Atkinson violated the law that requires first-hand knowledge by the complainant by altering the form to permit second-hand hearsay. Atkinson made this change in order to accommodate the false charge against Trump.  Why is such a crooked official allowed to remain in office?

Government in the United States is falling apart in front of our eyes.

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new illuminati: Lyndon B. Johnson behind John F. Kennedy's ...

 

 

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Democrats Wrote to Ukraine in May 2018, Demanding It Investigate Trump | Breitbart

Posted by M. C. on September 26, 2019

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/24/democrats-wrote-to-ukraine-in-may-demanding-it-investigate-trump/

by Joel B. Pollak

Democrats wrote to the Ukrainian government in May 2018 urging it to continue investigations into President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign — collusion later found not to exist.

The demand, which came from U.S. Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), resurfaced Wednesday in an opinion piece written by conservative Marc Thiessen in the Washington Post.

Ironically, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) declared Tuesday that the mere possibility that President Trump had asked Ukraine to continue an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden — even without a quid pro quo — was enough to trigger an impeachment inquiry. (Biden boasted in 2018 that he had forced Ukraine to remove its prosecutor by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid; he did not tell his audience at the Council on Foreign Relations that the prosecutor was looking into a firm on whose board his son, Hunter Biden, was serving.)

Thiessen observed (original links):

It got almost no attention, but in May [2018], CNN reported that Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) wrote a letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressing concern at the closing of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe. In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine was at stake. Describing themselves as “strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine,” the Democratic senators declared, “We have supported [the] capacity-building process and are disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast aside these [democratic] principles to avoid the ire of President Trump,” before demanding Lutsenko “reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation.”

The Democrats’ letter is available online here. In it, Menendez, Durbin, and Leahy demanded that the Ukrainian government answer their questions about the Mueller probe, and issued an implied threat: “This reported refusal to cooperate with the Mueller probe also sends a worrying signal — to the Ukrainian people as well as the international community — about your government’s commitment more broadly to support justice and the rule of law.”

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Kevin Barrett: Ukraine another CIA coup victim -- Puppet Masters -- Sott.net

 

 

 

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Edward Snowden On Trump, Privacy, and Threats to Democracy: One Hour Interview on MSNBC – Antiwar.com Blog

Posted by M. C. on September 25, 2019

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2019/09/23/edward-snowden-on-trump-privacy-and-threats-to-democracy-one-hour-interview-on-msnbc/

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The Real Reasons Why The Media Is Suddenly Admitting To The Recession Threat

Posted by M. C. on August 24, 2019

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/the-real-reasons-why-the-media-is-suddenly-admitting-to-the-recession-threat_08232019

This article was originally published by Brandon Smith at Alt-Market. 

…The first inclination of a portion of the liberty movement will be to assume that mainstream reports of the imminent economic crisis are merely an attempt to tarnish the image of the Trump Administration and that the talk of recession is “overblown”.  This is partially true; Trump is meant to act as a scapegoat, but this is not the big picture.  The fact is, the pattern the media is following today matches almost exactly with the pattern they followed leading up to the credit crash of 2008.  Make no mistake, a financial crash is indeed happening RIGHT NOW, just as it did after media warnings in 2007/2008, and the reasons why the MSM is admitting to it today are calculated.

Before we get to that, we should examine how the media reacted during the lead up to the crash of 2008.

Multiple mainstream outlets ignored all the crash signals in 2005 and 2006 despite ample warnings from alternative economists. In fact, they mostly laughed at the prospect of the biggest bull market in the history of stocks and housing (at that time) actually collapsing. Then abruptly the media and the globalist institutions that dictate how the news is disseminated shifted position and started talking about “recession” and “crash potential”. From the New York Times to The Telegraph to Reuters and others, as well as the IMF, BIS and Federal Reserve officials – Everyone suddenly started agreeing with alternative economists without actually deferring to them or giving them any credit for making the correct financial calls.

In 2007/2008, the discussion revolved around derivatives, a subject just complicated enough to confuse the majority of people and cause them to be disinterested in the root trigger for the economic crisis, which was central bankers creating and deflating bubbles through policy engineering. Instead, the public just wanted to know how the crash was going to be fixed. Yes, some blame went to the banking system, but almost no one at the top was punished (only one banker in the US actually faced fraud charges). Ultimately, the crisis was pinned on a “perfect storm” of coincidences, and the central banks were applauded for their “swift action” in using stimulus and QE to save us all from a depression level event. The bankers were being referred to as “heroes”.

Of course, central bank culpability was later explored, and Alan Greenspan even admitted partial responsibility, saying the Fed knew there was a bubble but was “not aware” of how dangerous it really was. This was a lie. According to Fed minutes from 2004, Greenspan sought to silence any dissent on the housing bubble issue, saying that it would stir up debate on a process that “only the Fed understood”. Meaning, there was indeed discussion on housing and credit warning signs, but Greenspan snuffed it out to prevent the public from hearing about it.

Today we have a very similar dynamic. Use of the “R-word” in the mainstream media and among central banks has been strictly contained for the past several years.  In the October 2012 Fed minutes, Jerome Powell specifically warned of what would happen if the Federal Reserve tightened liquidity and raised interest rates into economic weakness.  He warned that this would have negative effects on the stimulus addicted investment environment that the central bank had fostered.  This discussion was held back from the public until only a year-and-a-half ago.  As soon as Powell became chairman, he implemented those exact actions.

Only in the past year as talk of recession begun to break out, and only in the past couple of weeks have outlets become aggressive in pushing the notion that a financial crash is just around the corner. The reality is that if one removes the illusory support of central bank stimulus, our economy never left the “Great Recession” of 2008.  Signals of renewed sharp declines in economic fundamentals have been visible since before the 2016 elections.  Alarms have been blaring on housing, auto markets, manufacturing, freight and shipping, historic debt levels, the yield curve, etc. since at least winter of last year, just as the Fed raised rates to their neutral rate of inflation and increased asset cuts from the balance sheet to between $30 billion to $50 billion or more per month.

The media should have been reporting on economic crisis dangers for the past 2-3 years.  But, they didn’t give these problems much credence until recently.  So, what changed?

I can only theorize on why the media and the banking elites choose the timing they do to admit to the public what is about to happen. First, it is clear from their efforts to stifle free discussion that they do not want to let the populace know too far ahead of time that a crash is coming. According to the evidence, which I have outlined in-depth in previous articles, central banks and international banks sometimes engineer crash events in order to consolidate wealth and centralize their political power even further. Is it a conspiracy? Yes, it is, and it’s a provable one.

When they do finally release the facts, or allow their puppet media outlets to report on the facts, it seems that they allow for around 6-8 months of warning time before economic shock events occur. In the case of the current crash in fundamentals (and eventually stocks), the time may be shorter. Why? Because this time the banks and the media have a scapegoat in the form of Donald Trump, and by extension, they have a scapegoat in the form of conservatives, populists, and sovereignty activists.

The vast majority of articles flowing through mainstream news feeds on economic recession refer directly to Trump, his supporters and the trade war as the primary villains behind the downturn. The warnings from the Fed, the BIS and the IMF insinuate the same accusation….

Another factor on our timeline beyond Trump’s helpful geopolitical distractions is the possibility of a ‘No-Deal’ Brexit in October. I continue to believe this outcome (or something very similar) has been pushed into inevitability by former Prime Minister Theresa May and EU globalists, and that it will be used as yet another scapegoat for the now accelerating crash in the EU. With Germany on the verge of admitting recession, Deutsche Bank on the edge of insolvency, Italy nearing a political and financial crisis, etc., it is only a matter of months before Europe sees its own “Lehman moment”. The Brexit is, in my view, a marker for a timeline on when the crash will hit its stride…

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The Low Inflation Rate Lie | Greg Hunter's USAWatchdog

 

 

 

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Was Trump Right About Baltimore? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on August 7, 2019

The lesson for black people is that politicians and government handouts are not solutions. If they were, at a public expenditure that tops $22 trillion over the past half-century, black people would not be confronted with today’s problems.

Like I said in another forum – I am having troubling coming with an instance where a government program actually helped poor people.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/walter-e-williams/was-trump-right-about-baltimore/

By

Here’s what President Donald Trump tweeted about Baltimore’s congressman and his city: “Rep. Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is far worse and more dangerous. His district is considered the worst in the USA.”

“As proven last week during a congressional tour, the border is clean, efficient and well run, just very crowded,” Trump added. Cumming’s “district is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”

President Donald Trump’s claims suggesting that Rep. Elijah Cummings’ Baltimore-area district is “considered the worst run and most dangerous” has been called racist. But whether Trump’s claims have any merit is an empirical matter settled by appealing to facts. Let’s look at a few.

In 2018, Baltimore was rated one of the “Rattiest Cities” in the nation by pest control company Orkin. According to Patch Media, although there has been progress in the last few years, Baltimore ranks ninth in rat infestation, down from its sixth position two years ago on Orkin’s list.

What about safety? In 2017, St. Louis had the nation’s highest murder rate, at 66.1 homicides per 100,000 residents. Baltimore came in second, with 55.8 murders per 100,000 people. The unpleasant fact is that predominantly black and Democratic-run cities have the worst records of public safety. The Trace, an independent nonprofit news organization, using 2017 data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program, listed the 20 major U.S. cities with the highest homicide rates. After St. Louis and Baltimore, Detroit was third, with 39.8 murders per 100,000 people. Other cities with high murder rates included New Orleans; Kansas City, Missouri; Cleveland; Memphis, Tennessee; and Newark, New Jersey. With 24.1 murders per 100,000 residents, Chicago ranked ninth in the nation, followed by Cincinnati and Philadelphia. Washington, D.C., was 17th.

What about education in Baltimore? In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state’s mathematics exam. In six other high schools, only 1% tested proficient in math. In raw numbers, 3,804 Baltimore students took the state’s math test and 14 tested proficient. Citywide, only 15% of Baltimore students passed the state’s English test. Money is not the problem. Of the nation’s 100 largest school systems, Baltimore schools rank third in spending per pupil.

Baltimore’s black students receive diplomas that attest that they can function at a 12th-grade level when in fact they may not be able to do so at a sixth-, seventh- or eighth-grade level. These students and their families have little reason to suspect that their diplomas are fraudulent. Thus, if they cannot pass a civil service exam, they will accuse the exam of being racist. When they get poor grades in college and flunk out, they will attribute their plight to racism. The information that these black students have is that they, just as white students, have a high school diploma and the only explanation they see for unequal outcomes is racism. The same story of poor education outcomes can be told about most cities with large black populations.

The problems that black people confront are immune to who is the president of the U.S. Those problems were not ameliorated when Barack Obama was president. Those problems are not going to be ameliorated by Trump’s presidency, though the black unemployment rate is considerably lower. The lesson for black people is that politicians and government handouts are not solutions. If they were, at a public expenditure that tops $22 trillion over the past half-century, black people would not be confronted with today’s problems.

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Trump Will Be Impeached. The Stupid Party Says, ‘Bring It On!’ — Strategic Culture

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2019

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/06/01/trump-will-be-impeached-stupid-party-says-bring-on/

James George Jatras

 

In the wake of Robert Mueller’s calculated handoff of the “Get Trump” portfolio to the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, two things are evident.

First, President Donald J. Trump is virtually certain to be impeached. That’s manifest despite doddering House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s playing cute for now, seeking to ensure first that “we do want to make such a compelling case, such an ironclad case that even the Republican Senate, which at the time seems to be not an objective jury, will be convinced.” Translation: We don’t have the goods yet, but we expect to.

Second, like generals proverbially fighting the last war – namely, Republicans’ failed 1998 effort to oust Bill Clinton – many in the GOP have convinced themselves that a Trump impeachment will be unsuccessful and will only hurt the Democrats. Put another way, the Stupid Party once again rises to the occasion. Cue Karl Rove:

‘Knowing what they know today, if House Democrats move forward on the impeachment of President Trump, five things will happen.

‘First, swing voters will conclude the Democrats are conducting a highly partisan exercise.

‘Second, impeachment talk will largely or completely obscure anything else House Democrats will do legislatively. Voters could decide the Democrats are a do-nothing bunch.

‘Third, impeachment will play a much larger role in the Democratic presidential primary. The issue of impeachment will obscure the other messages of the Democratic presidential hopefuls and raise the prospect of a backlash against candidates like former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who have yet to embrace impeachment.

‘Fourth, the Republican Senate will quickly dismiss any impeachment resolution passed by the House, killing the issue.

‘And finally, any of the dozens of vulnerable House Democrats in Republican-leaning districts who back impeachment will have given their GOP opponents a big issue.’ [Emphasis added]

Make no mistake, while the Democrats hope to wound Trump even if the attempt to remove him fails, they are deadly serious that they have a realistic shot at finishing him off. Moreover, they know that removing him by impeachment is a better prospect than beating him at the polls.

The Democrats are not at all sure about winning in 2020, not least because of the pathetic gaggle of so-called candidates they’ve got to offer. Thus their main goal in pursuing impeachment will not be to weaken Trump for 2020, it is – still – to get him out of the White House.

That’s because, as was the case in 2016, Trump’s the only GOP candidate who has a shot at winning. The Democrats want a sure thing. Having underestimated him in 2016 they don’t want to roll the dice again. Even though Trump has not turned out to be the transformative president that many of his supporters might have hoped for, he certainly will be the lesser of evils compared to whoever ends up the Democratic nominee. (Spoiler alert: it won’t be Tulsi Gabbard.) Worse from their point of view, he remains a toxic avatar of the old America they thought well and truly laid to rest once and for all. They can’t breathe easy while he remains in office lest he, however unlikely in view of his failures of performance, serve as a catalyst for revival of the historic American nation facing extinction at the hands of certified victim classes…

Finally, let’s note what was the most important substantive message from Mueller’s swan song: Russia! Russia! Russia! Mueller both began and ended his ramble with a denunciation of Russia’s supposed attack on the United States in 2016. Citing Mueller, Ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence [sic] Committee Mark Warner has called for redoubled efforts to pass “legislation that enhances election security, increases social media transparency”: a dog-whistle for the real threat to honest elections: using “Russian bots” and “hate speech” as justification for tech companies’ clampdown on dissent. Whatever happens to Trump, our dangerous enmity with Russia is permanent – and possibly passing the point of no return – while erosion of Americans’ freedoms will continue apace.

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Citizen: “What are you protesting against” Johnny: “What have you got?” The Wild One

 

 

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EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Krugman: Trump’s Tweets on Trade and Tariffs are So Idiotic That I Am Going to Reference Them in My Textbooks

Posted by M. C. on May 8, 2019

“to a first approximation, foreigners paid none of the bill, U.S. companies and consumers paid all of it.”

https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2019/05/krugman-trumps-tweets-on-trade-and.html

Paul Krugman nails it again. Trump is so bad on trade that he makes Krugman look like a sound economist.

PK writes in his new New York Times newsletter:

Trump’s tweets over the past few days may well be featured in future economics textbooks as perfect illustrations of how people misunderstand the basics of international trade and trade policy. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee it, since I’m the co-author of two textbooks.

First, Trump is still saying that because we run a $500 billion trade deficit with China — it’s actually $379 billion, but who’s counting? — that means we lose $500 billion. As some economists quickly pointed out, by this logic we all lose when we go shopping at our local supermarkets. After all, do the supermarkets buy anything from us in return? No!

Second, Trump keeps asserting that China is paying the tariffs he has already imposed. This could be true, if tariffs were driving Chinese prices down; in fact, the threat of more Chinese tariffs on U.S. agricultural exports is one reason grain prices have just plunged to a record low.

But enough time has passed for economists to look at the actual results of Trump’s trade policy so far, and the Chinese are not, in fact, paying the tariffs. As I wrote a couple of months ago, “to a first approximation, foreigners paid none of the bill, U.S. companies and consumers paid all of it.”

So if you’re trying to make sense of what’s happening on trade, you should start with the basic point that Trump has no idea what he’s doing, that there isn’t any coherent U.S. policy goal.

–RW

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Blithering Idiots Express Fear That Putin Will Rig 2020 Election For Trump – Caitlin Johnstone

Posted by M. C. on May 6, 2019

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/05/04/blithering-idiots-express-fear-that-putin-will-rig-2020-election-for-trump/

author: Caitlin Johnstone

“Putin” is the number one USA trend on Twitter as of this writing, which is always a reliable sign that something very stupid is happening in American media.

“Putin” is once again the hysterical shrieking buzzword of the day because Donald Trump openly boasted at a press conference of having had an hour-long phone call with the Russian president, in which he claims the two leaders discussed nuclear de-escalation, Venezuela, North Korea, and the discredited “collusion” narrative. When asked whether he’d told Putin not to meddle in the 2020 US elections, Trump replied, “We didn’t discuss that.”

“Had a long and very good conversation with President Putin of Russia,” the president tweeted. “As I have always said, long before the Witch Hunt started, getting along with Russia, China, and everyone is a good thing, not a bad thing. We discussed Trade, Venezuela, Ukraine, North Korea, Nuclear Arms Control and even the ‘Russian Hoax.’ Very productive talk!”

So of course everyone is now in garment-rending apocalyptic DEFCON 1 catastrophe mode.

“It bears repeating: We have been given no indication that Trump or his re-election campaign will hesitate to take advantage of Russian help again in 2020, in whatever form it might take,” warned the Wall Street Journal’s Dustin Volz.

“President Trump today continues to belittle Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential election, as well as continued election interference,” CNN’s Jake Tapper solemnly warned today. “The president went on to tell reporters later that he did not tell Putin to stop engaging in election interference which remains, according to Trump’s own top national security officials, a continuing threat to the United States. Based on the president’s public statements, and apparently his private one with Vladimir Putin, the man who led and continues to lead cyber-attacks on the United States, the president’s more concerned with underlining that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was unable to find sufficient evidence that any member of his team was involved in criminal conspiracy with Russia.”

“The simple fact is this: Trump remains — despite all available evidence — a skeptic about both Russia’s past attempts at interference in the 2016 election and, therefore, the country’s attempts to target future elections,” warns CNN’s Cris Cillizza. “That skepticism could have far reaching consequences when it comes to just how much (or little) the administration prioritizes dealing with these threats from foreign powers heading into the 2020 election. And that is a truly scary reality.”

“The 2020 campaign is already in full swing and Trump just told Putin, the man behind the most serious cyber attack on our democracy ever, that he believes it was all a hoax,” tweeted Congressman and virulent Russiagater Adam Schiff. “Once again, he betrays our national security and for what? Nothing more than his own vanity and delusion.”

“Exactly what Putin wanted and expected,” tweeted MSNBC’s Clint Watts. “This is why Russia backed Trump, elevate politicians to achieve what Russia wants – to subvert and weaken democracy, surrender the world to authoritarians, like the Kremlin.”

So the narrative in mainstream liberal circles today is that Putin is going to interfere in the 2020 elections, and, because that interference will surely advantage Trump, there will be no resistance to that interference.

Only blithering idiots believe this narrative.

To begin with, the public has still seen not one single shred of evidence that Russians interfered in the 2016 election in any meaningful way, and, in a post-Iraq invasion world, only idiots believe on faith the unsubstantiated claims made by government agencies about rival governments. We’ve seen the Mueller report cited as “evidence” of this interference, but the Mueller report contains nothing but assertions, and assertions are not evidence. People have tried to argue with me that Mueller would never make assertions about Russian interference without having seen copious amounts of hard, verifiable evidence, but that is exactly what Mueller did with WMDs as FBI Director in February 2003. Daniel Lazare for Consortium News documents that there are in fact some major plot holes in Mueller’s timeline, making it entirely possible that a bogus narrative is being advanced.

So there’s no reason to accept on faith that Russian election interference happened in 2016, let alone that there’s any risk of it happening in 2020. But even if you do accept the establishment Russia narrative regarding 2016, you can be certain that Moscow won’t be interfering in 2020 for Trump’s benefit.

You can be absolutely certain that Russia won’t be interfering to re-elect Trump because Trump has proven to be the most hawkish president against Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, by a very wide margin. For all his rhetoric about “getting along with Russia”, Trump has greatly escalated tensions with the nuclear superpower by staging a coup in Venezuela, implementing a Nuclear Posture Review with a much more aggressive stance against Russia, withdrawing from the INF treaty, bombing and illegally occupying Syria, arming Ukraine, and many, many other hawkish actions taken against the interests of the Russian Federation which his predecessor Obama never dared to take.

Even if Putin were the brilliant omnipotent mastermind with tentacles in every international affair as he is consistently depicted in western mainstream media, it would make no sense whatsoever for him to help re-elect an administration that has been undermining and threatening Russia at every opportunity. That will not happen.

But of course, this obvious fact will not stop the Russia conspiracy theories, because Russia conspiracy theories have nothing to do with facts. We can expect to see fact-free allegations that Russia is planning to help Trump win in 2020 getting louder and louder as the election grows nearer. We can expect to see these fact-free allegations bolstered and amplified by western government agencies who need to manufacture support for further escalations against Russia, by the mass media who need ratings, and by the Democratic Party who need to keep their base fixated on insubstantial nonsense while they force an establishment loyalist through their fake primary.

It’s so interesting how each mainstream side of this is doing exactly the opposite of what they claim to be doing: Trump claims to want to work with Russia, but in term of action his administration is attacking Russia’s interests in many hugely significant ways to an extent that is unprecedented in a post-USSR world. Democrats claim to be opposing Trump’s pernicious inclinations, but in practice they fully support all his most pernicious agendas, including the potentially world-ending escalations between two nuclear powers, and including the Venezuela regime change operation which is getting more aggressive by the day. Even the supposedly progressive wing of the Democratic Party has been mostly flowing along with this, with Alexandria Occasio-Cortez reportedly saying “I defer to caucus leadership on how we navigate this” when questioned on Trump’s Venezuela coup attempt.

The gap between reality and the dominant narratives about reality is getting wider and wider. Something’s going to have to give.

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