bruce, that’s what schlomo wilder said about Hitler in 1928. continue laughing until it’s not funny any more. for some, already, it’s not funny any more.
History does not repeat, but sometimes it rhymes, said the wag.
First as tragedy, then as farce, said the philosopher.
Sterling used to have a theme he sounded about eras being defined be “pre” or “post” or “new xxx” or some other reference to another time past or to come.
The U.S. — especially but not exclusively the centre-left — has been stuck for a very long time in rehearsing the styles and conflicts and other tropes of past eras. WWII. The 1960’s. The Reagan Revolution. The Civil Rights Movement.
A country where no one knows any actual history and and everyone seemingly has grave difficulty remembering events of a mere two, ten, twenty years ago and drawing any implication, has been dressing up its politics in vintage finery, moth-eaten and faded.
Our dominant ideology is neoliberalism. Not actual liberalism. The strawmen of the left are “fascists” and “white supremacists”. The right seem surprised that “socialist” fails as an epithet. Our foreign policy experts are bent on containing communist Russia, fearing its propaganda as much as its desire to . . . sell natural gas!??
This has been going on for a while — this wearing out of obsolete rhetoric by overuse and increasing misapplication. George W Bush tried to sound Churchillian — remember that? Movies “inspired by a true story” and rewriting history are as standard now as prequels and remakes of both good originals and really bad ones. They remade Snakes on a Plane and did a movie casting Lincoln as a vampire-killer!
Vampires and zombies — as common as cowboys and doctors once were — have had a long run in popular culture. (We just elected a zombie as president, with a vampire as vp!). The most popular social media app is TikTok, where people make their own television commercials — contemplate the implication: a culture drowned in commercialization has embraced it as the only thing, even as the planet hurtles toward ecological collapse.
This little mini-rant was triggered by seeing Bernie Sanders in mittens turned into a meme, complete with “Explainers” explaining what a viral meme was for the uninitiated in “trends” (new meaning, if you have to ask you are not going to understand the answer)
I am going to risk venturing that if you are feeling intense anger and fear about “those” people in politics, the “fascists” or rioters at the capitol or whatever, your anger and fear is inexplicable to most people. The narratives driving your emotions are form without substance, made up by professional cynics to trigger you and intrigue you and draw you into a vaguely familiar dreamspace where you can feel involved while not being involved.
While you were worrying about the overthrow of democracy by a new totalitarianism, actual democracy was subverted by a neoliberalism building an inverted totalitarianism where all the “hot” controversies are completely made-up nonsense irrelevant to anything.
Some quick thought about conservatives and Trumplicans crying and whining about the cancel culture:
McCarthyism is the first and original cancel culture. Conservatives and Republicans invented the cancel culture with McCarthyism in the 1950s, by targeting people whom they deemed as having the incorrect ideologies and thoughts. People literally lost their jobs, families and lives and went to prison when conservatives targeted them and deemed them as “communists” or “socialists”. Conservatives and Republicans made it not permissible to think in certain ways or believe in certain things: it was basically thought control aka the cancel culture.
Conservatives and Republicans are still perpetuating that same cancel culture for 70+ years. Even today they are throwing around the “communist” and “socialist” label (and even “liberal” as a slur,) still trying to cancel people with the old tired tactics. They are crying and whining now only because the cancel table has finally turned on them. However, let’s pretend McCarthyism has never happened and it has not persisted until today.
Hypocrites. There would be no forgiveness and mercy for hypocrites who did wrong in first place and still refuse to do some overdue self-reflection and soul searching.
Trump pardoned Lil Wayne while abandoning hundreds of his loyal insurrectionist MAGAs to rot. Yet only an estimated 1/10th of the 74 million Trump enablers are realizing how they were played.
If you ask the 90% who the enemy is, they’ll still say it’s “socialism” which is defined by them as a government which favors the alien/satanic “other”, over their own honest, loyal, hardworking, patriotic and godfearing whitish selves.
That’s a lot of people who claim “personal responsibility”, while desperately needing somebody powerful to believe in.
MOA reports that Biden has moved an armored Battalion into Syria from Iraq Thursday.
Unless Biden follows with more armor and support vehicles it looks like it’s meant as bait, to goad Assad with the hope of starting another US war which…the Israelis could use as cover to have another go at Lebanon…and the world’s largest untapped natural gas fields offshore both nations. The MI-6 organized gas attacks were meant to get Trump to start the war, looks like Biden is going to try a different tack, surely an attack on US troops will “unite the nation” under the banner of war?
How very Presidential, not at all like that incompetent hippie dude…what was that peacenik’s name again?
Now, “if I would just stand back and watch and learn”. Yes indeed.
Honest D voters conned into the narrative ” Trump=Hitler => Trump-voters=Nazis => VoteBiden ⊻ you’re a Nazi” are about to learn, but…will they be smarter than they were? We’ll find out when 2036 rolls around.
‘Dark Money’ Helped Pave Joe Biden’s Path to the White House
President Joe Biden benefited from a record-breaking amount of donations from anonymous donors to outside groups backing him, meaning the public will never have a full accounting of who helped him win the White House.
“Dark money”
Biden – $145 million ($1.5 billion total)
$318.6 million came from donors who gave less than $200
$1182 million came from fat cats (no offence to cats)
$46.9 million from Facebook Inc. co-founder Dustin Moskovitz
$3 million from Twilio Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Lawson
$2.6 million from Eric Schmidt of Alphabet Inc
Well let’s see, as I recall, Trump wanted a guy named Gen [ret.] Flynn but…
Flynn had outed Obama/Hillary/Biden’s plan to ship the US supplied [through channels] arms used to “regime change” Libya over to Syria. This “regime change” took Libya from the most prosperous/egalitarian state in Africa, back to the poorest nation on the continent. Anyway, the arms going to Syria were to oust Assad and get at Syria’s offshore natural gas fields [world’s largest] that had been discovered in 2009 and confirmed in 2011.
Apparently, Gen Flynn as DIA chief had qualms about Obama/Hillary/Biden’s plan to supply some of the world’s worst terrorists with money, arms and training in contravention to US law in scheme to steal Syria’s natural resources for the profit of political donors. [Oddly, Tulsi Gabbard expressed similar concerns as early as 2014.]
Well, we can’t have officials who obey reason, the edict of Nuremberg and US law, no siree, not in Obama’s wheelhouse. So General Flynn was ousted for dutifully and LEGALLY writing a DIA paper warning of the dangers of arming a group of vile international terrorists…and the quagmire ahead. This published paper btw caught the attention of the Trump campaign and the rest was history…but let me remind the folks who want to put that sordid story “behind us” and “move forward”.
There was no way Obama wanted all his war-crime skeletons unearthed by a guy who knew where the bodies were buried. So, Obama authorized the of use secret state apparatus to bug Flynn’s phones, read his mail and so on. Then FBI director Comey…was/is what Ian referred to yesterday as a “boot-licking authoritarian” and was all to happy to try his hand at entrapping Obama’s mortal enemy in a process crime by using illegally obtained communications. The charge was bullshit, Flynn’s lawyers had a severe conflict of interest that was secretly used by the “justice department” and the Judge in the case must of had a skeleton or two in the closet because he was the most ham fisted adjudicator in my memory…well, in the US. Julian Assange’s Judge openly showed similar bias.
At this point, boot-licking authoritarians in the press and the boot-licking authoritarians who call themselves “liberals”, “pregressives” and “lefties” joined the chorus because, like, well, you know, Trump=Hitler => therefore any illegal action is justified…and so, that is how we got to Pompeo.
Boot-licking authoritarians who call themselves “liberals”, “progressives” and “lefties” joined hands with the National Security State…and yet, today they pretend not to have been used to empower the worst SOS since….well…Hillary.
Let me say now, before you all misunderstand my earlier comment about the ill-wisdom of, say, fearing a repeat of Germany 1930-33, what I was NOT saying. I am NOT saying “do not worry” — rather I am saying, “let go” of manipulative narrative memes and at least try to get real. We are human and a lot of politics is a contest of competing narratives that argue for applying alternative meanings, in the social construction of a ramshackle consensus reality. That is never going to change. But you do not have to cling to “exciting” narratives that have more correspondence to the past or to fantasy than to verifiable facts of the present case. Politics will always be a team sport, but you do not have to cheer and boo style alone, and let the bastards hide governance behind a façade of brand management.
As good as it gets in a mass democracy is agreement to disagree on a lot of things and an acceptance of the legitimacy of varying perspectives even on what we cooperate in doing. We do not have anything like that in operation, at least inside the echo chambers of explicitly political discourse. Many journalists and pundits and commenters — whether at CNN or the New York Times or on some podcast or blog or YouTube channel show — are unconcerned about factual accuracy — it is hard work and doesn’t attract an audience, why bother? The army of PR hacks who feed the smaller corps of professional journalists first drafts not of history but of propaganda are increasingly cavalier about being discredited; their journalist-clients will protect their sources after all. Even official government agencies and academic institutions respect little ethical imperative to either check that facts correspond to their favored narrative or that their audiences understand what they say correctly, and are little concerned when challenged with facts or methodological critique, let alone concerns about prudence or humane intent. Being factually disproven is no bar to continuing as if uninterrupted; even less are cruelty, predictive failure or deliberate deception taken on as a blemish to reputation. Instead, the accurate critiques are silo’d so thoroughly that their enactment by members of the “opposing tribe” can be dismissed as mime — unheard, seen as a bad joke.
This is not healthy for the polity. It creates a fog of disinformation that most people ignore and a few people distill into nonsense (e.g. QAnon) and a lot of people take on as an excuse for expressing anger and frustration and despair on the one hand and an excuse for dismissing the expression of anger, frustration and despair by other people — in other words it produces a lot of rude interpersonal behavior. If it has any effect whatsoever on governance by authorities, it seems likely to be negative: official action to ensure that the ratio of information to disinformation declines and government becomes even less responsive to any but billionaires.
Who is that guy who keeps goose-stepping through here? And isn’t Mike Flynn the Trump nazi who wanted to declare martial law and rerun the election under the guns of the military?
And speaking of no sense of irony, the right has been attacking campaign limits and finance reform for 45 years.
Buckley v. Valeo (1976) limited disclosure, took off limits on campaign spending
First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978) recognized the “free” speech, i.e. political spending, rights of corporations
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) prohibited restrictions on “independent” political spending by corporations and other organizations
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014) rescinded individual limits on contributions to parties and committees
Now they are upset that Biden outraised them in their own racket. They would be more believable if they were as concerned about the Koch network and what dark money is buying.
“the Republican base is composed of the wealthiest voters residing in lower-income districts”
“The fact that Republican objectors command some of the least popular support among their own constituents of any congressional elected officials in the country is both a testament to their effectiveness in entrenching their own power and the foundation on which we must ground our hopes for political change to end minority rule.”
plague species – I wish I could live farther out from the city. I imagine it is lovely where you and your family live. It’s really a pretty town if you can live with the mosquitoes. I miss having a yard and being able to have a dog. Intown is good for an old hippie like me though, because plenty of good healthcare is on my doorstep here, and at my stage of life it is prudent to take note of such things.
Related to the topic here, and also interesting if you live in the city, it this treasure I lucked onto –
It’s a history of white flight in Atlanta. The reason it relates to the article from Boston Review is that both books focus on the tsunami of demographic change in the burbs ringing the cities.
At first glance, I see things about the trends to like. It’s easy to drive around the countryside with churches everywhere and imagine that neighborhoods beyond the city are swarming with Christian evangelicals, but it may be more of an assertively visible Potemkin show than it seems. If the numbers the demographers are reporting are true, then there are large Hispanic and Asian origin communities that are growing and prospering along with the proliferation of churches. The more they prosper, the more voice/clout they will have in local politics.
I guess that’s why Democrats position themselves as the party of multi-cultural professionals. So intuitively that makes me think, okay, all the party has to do to dominate for decades is hit the pavement and start organizing all those missing voters in Trumpland. But the Biden camp continues to this day to completely ignore grassroots work as they have from the start of the primaries. They were surprised when they won in Georgia. Their lavishly-rewarded professionals told them Georgia could not be won and they put it out of mind. Actual voter outreach does not interest them.
So I guess the future is an oligarchy of big money and the PMC with a modern PMC-administered surveillance state to manage the rest of us? Looks that way so far. The masters of misinformation are exploiting the same vulnerability in Americans that Hezbollah exploits in Israelis. It is a population that feels entitled to respond with old-testament (or modern dystopic) hysteria and punitive (and profitable) excess at the mere suggestion that a fraction of the harm they inflict so expansively on others might be visited upon their angelic selves. At least I guess that is why they are so eager to plug all of us into their matrix.
As a character, Mike Flynn did not strike me as a reliable teller-0f-truth, so color me skeptical of the idea that he is the hero of his own or any story. I, personally, do not know of the factual basis motivating Obama’s distrust of Flynn and cannot comment on that. I do agree that the Obama administration’s policy of arming Al Qaeda in Syria to overthrow Assad (“=Hitler”, never gets old it seems) when their army of 500 moderates and liberals evaporated was singularly stupid (nothing singular about the stupid in American middle east policy); I did notice that Obama seemed to pull back a bit, once Kerry replaced Clinton as SoS and acted the part well enough to do a classic deal with Lavrov on Syrian chemical weapons. But, I think the investigation and prosecution of Flynn were cynically pursued and unjust, on their face. That so few “on the other side” have questioned the various tentacles of Russiagate, even after its ugly underbelly has been exposed is a sad commentary on how far gone are so many true believers in lesser evil.
By kicking the Senate impeachment trial back to Feb. 8, the Democrats are giving Republicans time to cool off and go back into partisan mode. That is they are already conceding the outcome.
Meanwhile the FBI and DOJ are talking about not charging all those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.
And with conservative Democrats like Manchin, Schumer may not have the votes to go the no-filibuster route, in which case McConnell, the King of Obstruction, wins.
A hallmark of Nazi rule is stocking the government with lackeys loyal only to Dear Leader and his corrupt corporate cronies.
The first Nazi Biden fired was Michael Pack, head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Pack tried to transform the Voice of America, into a propaganda outlet for Trump. He purged the VOA and its sister networks staffs and replaced with Trump loyalists to do pro-Trump coverage and unconstitutionally punished any journalists who did actual reporting on the administration. Pack also fired the board of the Open Technology Fund, which promotes international internet freedom and replaced them with Republican corporate cronies.
Another Nazi who Biden fired was Kathleen Kraninger, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She had zero experience in consumer protection but immediately undermined the agency’s role as a watchdog for the financial sector. She eliminated restrictions on predatory payday lending and federal support for military families who were defrauded by lenders. She increased the ability of debt collectors to harass Americans who’d been impacted by Dear Leader’s gross mismanagement of the pandemic.
Another Nazi who Biden fired was Peter Robb the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel. Robb was profoundly anti-union during his tenure. He limited employees’ free speech, gave managers more leeway to engage in wage theft, limited unions ability to collect dues and help workers organize. He also demoted every regional director in an attempt to gain unprecedented authority so he could bust existing unions and prevent new ones from forming.
And speaking of no sense of irony, the right has been attacking campaign limits and finance reform for 45 years.
. . .
Now they are upset that Biden outraised them in their own racket.
I am sorry, but I do not get it, Hugh. Does Biden offer any alternative here? Any policy opposition? Better practice? Better example, beyond a show of “ethics” policy as Obama did, with no enforcement to follow. It does not look like it. He’s not even the lesser evil — he evades limits on campaign financing with wild abandon. Raises money by telling billionaires that he does not blame them for anything and nothing will fundamentally change.
Back in 2016, the big scandal exposed by revealing the DNC emails was that Hillary had hatched an elaborate scheme to circumvent campaign finance law and not incidentally wreck the Democratic Party as an institution. The scandal about her own email server as SoS was that she was evading the same official records laws that the Bush Administration had shamelessly abused, and not incidentally strictures on security and secrecy.
This is who the Democrats are and have been for a long time. Their 2020 Primary season was rife with anti-democratic behavior and gambits. They are not the good guys or even the lesser evil of your favored narratives.
I do not think Republicans are sincere critics of Biden’s corruption and authoritarianism. Irony? gah. Are the Democrats sincere critics of Republican irresponsibility and corruption? Pelosi seems perfectly happy to enact much of their agenda.
Every time I bring up the inner contradiction of your cheerleading Democrats against Republicans with no acknowledgement that the Democrats are not advocating and promoting better policy, you accuse me of false equivalence. You are the one putting things on the scale’s balance and never noticing that it does not tip appreciably.
thank you for the link to AEI on Syria. it does not say much about Flynn’s views though.
I cannot say the perspective of the author is one I share. I quote:
in 2012, Obama met with CIA director David Petraeus, Joint Chiefs Chairman Marty Dempsey, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and they recommended a robust equip and train program for the moderate, pro-Western opposition. Obama rejected their advice. The result, as both Panetta and Clinton pointed out in their respective memoirs, was the creation of a “vacuum” in Syria that turned that country into a safe haven from which ISIS rose.
The “robust equip and train program for the moderate, pro-Western opposition” was one of those delusional, trite policy ideas founded on determined ignorance that the Blob loves and keep the U.S. mired in self-defeating perpetual war all over the Middle East.
I agree with b at MOA about 85% of the time, here I disagree, but not in the obvious manner; I think this was a cynical ploy to simultaneously:
1] To take credit for the social progress that the 7-2 Supreme Court ruling this past summer engendered.
2] To create a backlash against transgender persons [of whom the neoD’s have always despised – see Barney Frank strips LBGT bill of transgender protections]. This backlash will be used politically by neoD’s. And transgender people, the most oppressed* group in the USA, will pay the price. *[see homicide rates 8 times higher for transgender male-to-females than for young black males…unemployment…same deal]
While I am all for transgender civil rights, Title IX is a set aside for women and it’s done a marvelous job of giving women sports opportunities that simply couldn’t exist without it…and Biden is fucking it up. And while I am all for transgenders, getting/keeping a job/apartment/house, a place at the lunch-counter/inn and all that other stuff, I am not cool with a 6’6″ biological male taking a team spot away from a 5″8″woman. The increasing number of biological males taking top spots in women’s sports is something that should not be allowed. It’s definitely hurting the political support of transgenders amongst women.
Again, this is a cynical ploy by Biden and the people who will be most hurt are exactly those people who Biden claims to be helping. After the Supreme Court ruling this past summer, I had hoped that the last group denied legal civil rights in the USA would finally have legal protection and through transgenders individual singular efforts, social acceptance…which in the fullness of time, would lead to a unified social structure in which all people of this nation could partake in it’s bounty.
Thank you for the perspective, KT Chong. Of all the comments so far in this thread, yours has taught me the most.
I have a friend who works in Canadian immigration, and they told me that once you’re 35 or older, Canada won’t let you immigrate to their country. That’s an extremely tight window. I’ve been told I can apply for permanent residence, which will give me a 5 year window in which I could move. So if I do the work, I can have the option to move to Canada until I’m 39. I wish I had a 10 year window, to really see how things in the US will play out.
Ian, you briefly mentioned how difficult it is to get into Canada interview for Wicked Systems. Could you do me a favor and write about it in more detail one of these days? Try to help Americans who are considering leaving the USA before it goes bad?
Bruce W: ‘Mike Pompeo as the “the competent, autocratic fascist”?!?! LOL.’
Quite. Pompeo is just a fat, nasty non-entity created and pushed into place by Charles Koch.
Now, Pompeo’s done his job. Almost certainly, he won’t even be re-installed as the ‘Senator from Koch’ in Kansas’s 4th district, but given a sinecure position in the Koch network and put out to pasture.
What’s complicated? The right has been behind most of the moves against campaign finance reform, especially via stacking SCOTUS. But it only becomes an issue for them when a Biden or Obama do it better than them. I find it funny that less than a week into Biden’s term, dark money suddenly gets discovered, when, as I said, the modern gutting of campaign began 45 years ago. Dark money has been around for a while. When I googled, I got a bunch of articles about how the groups who planned the attack on the Capitol were funded by dark money.
Nor is your discovery that there is nothing particularly democratic about the Democratic party especially new, but thanks for the effort.
Amazon Requests In-Person Union Vote in Covid-Hit Alabama
Under the current plan, workers will have most of the next two months to vote by mail.
Amazon said…. that mail-only balloting was the safest approach was “based on speculation and conjecture, and without ever balancing the purported risk of virus spread against the public policy that ‘strongly favors’ allowing employees to vote in person,” and
that a mail election raised the risk of fraud and the coercion of workers. It also said the process would depress turnout…
“the inclusion of China onshore government bonds, issued by the Chinese government, and policy financial bonds, issued by the Chinese policy banks, into [the western financial institution indexes]”
opened the possibility for the Western investors to buy Chinese government bonds that yield ~3%.
“Stephen Chiu, Asia FX and Rates Strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, said that overseas investors’ holdings of China bonds rose by more than 48 percent in 2020, the fastest annual growth in two years.”
This caused “a narrowing China-US yield gap”, which was effectively a rise in yield on treasuries. El Erian attributed the rise in yield in treasuries to a coming inflation and displeasure of the US debt owners with their own land. Guess he was wrong or partly right.
I watched The Trial of the Chicago 7 on Netflix the other day.
I wouldn’t say it’s an accurate depiction of the events at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention or the trial of the insurrectionists that took place the following year, but it’s an interesting movie in its own right, and it might be a good enough history lesson for those who believe — as many of us sometimes do — that we are living in the worst of times under the most oppressive conditions imaginable.
Not so, not even close. Which is not to say that things are all that good, either. They’re not.
Bad as government oppression and police brutality are now, they were worse for more people than they are now. Economic opportunity was very limited for large swaths of the population. Corruption was possibly a little different then, but it was very widespread and infected nearly all aspects of life. A horrible war was under way in Indochina that killed and injured so many millions it’s almost inconceivable now. Practically every major city was “on fire”, large sections left in ruins, hundreds dead, official murder was routine, every populist/progressive leader was assassinated. Media was not freer.
Aaron Sorkin’s movie version of the trial and the characters involved is more Sorkin than history — Julius Hoffman was senile, corrupt and racist as hell, the Jerry Rubin I knew was nothing like the stoned out nearly catatonic gnome portrayed in the film, Tom Hayden was quite a bit different than he is portrayed in the movie, and he did not read the names of the five thousand soldiers killed in Vietnam during the course of the trial at the conclusion, etc. etc. And so forth.
But what I remember of the times and the trial is not how others might remember it, and those who don’t recall it at all because they’re too young can learn something about the way things were from Sorkin’s version.
We have many challenges now, some of which are new. But so did those who preceded us.
why is the hostility to electoral integrity and democratic process among establishment Democrats of so little concern to you?
I say, “This is who the Democrats are and have been for a long time.” And, you reply, “Nor is your discovery that there is nothing particularly democratic about the Democratic party especially new, . . . ” Huh?
Are you simple minded? Some of us have been for campaign finance reform, even public campaign financing for decades. Do I have a lot of time for people who in a sea of slime find it just now and only in those they don’t like? No. Please be disingenuous elsewhere.
You have been in favor of campaign finance reform for decades and this leads to your celebrating the record amounts of dark money financing much of the latest President’s $1.5 billion campaign.
Of course, Biden supported the U.S. getting involved in Yemen in the first place, but it’s good that he now realizes that was a mistake and is going to end American support for the ongoing atrocities there.
I agree with NR here, Biden’s whiplash, 180 turn on his own policy of war and bloodshed [in Yemen]…apparently, we need to focus more on restarting the bloodshed in Syria is nice, late but, nice.
Obama/Biden’s green-light of the slaughter led to the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Yemen. And Obama/Biden’s $1,000,000,000.00 gift of precision-guided bombs as he was leaving office was/is exactly twice as bad as Trump’s $500,000,000.00 while he was leaving office. While there is a difference in magnitude, both of them evil, both of them intended as ex de facto payola to an “industry” that has profited horribly under the wars of aggression foisted on the US by the Clinton/Bush/Obama administration. [singular intended]. Congress has until Thursday to grab the tar baby Trump left behind…just as Obama/Biden left a 2x’s bigger tar baby four years ago.
Here’s an article that debunks the recent justification by Obama officials trying to cleanse their hands of the murderous war initiated by Obama & Biden and I stress, idiotically allowed to continue under Trump…tip to congress [circa 2019], don’t write a bill that insults the President who has to sign it.
_________________________
“On November 11, 30 senior Obama administration officials issued a statement calling on the Trump administration to end all support for Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen…it was, ultimately, a failed reckoning for the Obama administration’s role in risking American complicity in Saudi-led coalition abuses in the first place. [T]hey justify the Obama administration’s initial decision to support the war as based on “a legitimate threat posed by missiles on the Saudi border and the Houthi overthrow of the Yemeni government, with support from Iran.”
A more honest reckoning for how the US got to where it is in this war in Yemen would start with a greater admission of the truth of the Obama administration’s motivations and mistakes in participating in this war. In their letter, the Obama officials try to distinguish their administration’s support for the war as “conditional,” vs. Trump’s “unconditional” support. Of course, this matters little to the Yemeni people because the outcome has been the same: death and destruction, very often by US bombs.
The Obama administration’s stated justifications for joining the war effort obscure the truth of what led them to the war. Other Obama administration officials had already stated that their support for the war, coupled with a $1 billion arms deal, was first and foremost payback for Saudi’s grudging tolerance of the Iran nuclear deal, and to reassure them that the US remained a reliable ally, despite the deal. The amount of Iranian support to the Houthis has been debated, of course, but with little evidence, all pretty murky; better known is the fact that the Houthis are a fiercely independent group with a long history of waging war in Yemen.
As the war has evolved, Iran’s involvement with the Houthis has certainly grown, filling in the vacuum for the Houthis’ desperate search for allies, effectively creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. What is clear is that the former Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh – long supported by the US – and various Yemeni defense forces controlled by his son and nephew supported the Houthis to such a degree that international observers formally dubbed them the “Houthi-Saleh forces.” The Houthis had been at war with Saleh’s government for decades over long-simmering grievances as a minority group in the country. They had supported the uprising against Saleh and were active participants in the country’s “National Dialogue” to reshape the country’s governance. When Houthi armed groups marched on the capital, it was to rebel against the newly drafted constitution and a proposed federal structure they believed would weaken them. They negotiated an agreement with President Hadi to resolve their differences, but soon found themselves in control of the capital when Saleh-backed defense forces stepped down from defending key government buildings, including the parliament and the presidential palace.
The Obama administration, not learning enough from past foreign military experiences in Yemen, accepted baseless assurances from the Saudis — including the then-deputy Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman and the inexperienced Saudi military — that they would overthrow the Houthis in months. The US decidedly looked the other way from Saleh’s strong support for the Houthis, including vast stores of weaponry from the Defense Ministry, an institution that remained loyal to Saleh. The war dragged on, with limited military gains by the Saudi-led coalition, but a rising toll of unnecessary and unlawful death and destruction.
Well before President Trump’s appearance, we at Human Rights Watch and others had documented well over 100 apparently indiscriminate or disproportionate aerial attacks by the Saudi-led coalition on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Yemen, causing devastation to Yemenis in their homes, markets, schools, hospitals, and even during their weddings and their funerals. In case after case, we showed that US weapons were being used in many of these attacks, including widely banned cluster munitions in populated areas. False denials and cover-ups by Saudi military authorities were clear signs that they were not trustworthy partners. We repeatedly provided this evidence to Obama administration officials, but they would insist, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary, that the support they were providing was reining in the Saudis and helping improve their ability to comply with the laws of war. This is not a case of hindsight knows best. The Obama administration should have known back then.
Also well before Trump adviser — and son-in-law — Jared Kushner’s conspicuous friendship with Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi-led coalition’s arbitrary and excessive delays on imports to Yemen were exacerbating health and nutrition crises, as diseases like cholera spread like wildfire. The Saudi-led coalition’s closure of a critical airport meant that many Yemenis couldn’t travel to get the healthcare they needed. UN humanitarian agencies and global relief organizations pleaded in vain about the harm caused by the coalition restrictions, to little avail.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration was providing Saudi Arabia not only with ongoing military support (which the formal officials mention) but also diplomatic cover (which the former officials omit), especially at the UN. When the UN finally named Saudi Arabia on its “Global List of Shame,” of the worst offenders against children, for its attacks on children in Yemen, the US stood silent as Saudi Arabia strong-armed the UN. Then-Secretary General Ban Ki Moon resisted for a while, but finally caved in and removed Saudi Arabian from the list, admitting that Riyadh had threatened to cut its funding to various UN agencies. Twice during the Obama administration, the US had the opportunity to push for a UN inquiry into abuses by all sides in the Yemen conflict, and twice it did not—the Saudi-led coalition didn’t want one. Despite repeated queries about whether the US supported the first proposed UN inquiry, Obama officials responded with silence or words of deflection, which spelled the political demise of such an initiative.
The cost of the Obama administration’s support for Saudi Arabia’s war went beyond Yemen. The juxtaposition of the Obama administration decrying Syrian/Russian attacks on civilians and Assad’s ongoing blockade of humanitarian goods, while the United States was defending Saudi-led coalition attacks on civilians and the impact of the blockade in Yemen, undermined the credibility of the Obama team’s efforts to restrain the Syrian government. The Russians openly mocked then-UN Ambassador Samantha Power for this hypocrisy. The US should have condemned and acted to curb both coalitions, equally and fairly.
Whatever conditionality the Obama administration thought it had created — in holding up the transfer of precision munitions near the tail end of Obama’s term and suspending cluster munition transfers earlier — ultimately did not have meaningful impact in reining in the continued Saudi-led coalition attacks on civilians. Nor were the steps robust enough to protect the US and US officials from risking complicity in war crimes.
Despite the claimed “unconditional” support from the Trump Administration, its officials, too, have reacted strongly to some excesses: condemning the total blockade, pushing Saudi Arabia to permit cranes to get into Yemen, ending refueling of coalition planes. But, like the steps of the previous administration, it is not anywhere close to enough. As Yemenis remember the pain and suffering the US has helped inflict on their country, as they surely must, they will not look more kindly on the Obama administration’s merely “conditional” support. And that is not to mention several dozens of Yemeni civilians killed in drone strikes in the pursuit of Al Qaeda fighters.
The point is an honest, full appreciation of the reasons for these policies and their consequences. The statement by former senior officials fails in that task.”
Just had a thought. Not my greatest, probably not my worst.
If lunatic Democrats persevere in trying to impeach non-President Trump, hopefully they will surpass even themselves, and go on to try and have whatever hospital Trump was born in to revoke his birth certificate.
Besides the comedic value, it may illumine some dim bulbs in this country as to how deep the lunacy goes.
metamars, maybe you could take a look at Article I, Section 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution:
“The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.”
It is the House of Representatives, not you, not your fascist cohorts, which decides if a federal official can be impeached. Nothing in the Constitution says such an official has to be currently in office.
The Senate has similar power in how an impeachment trial is to be conducted. There is the 1876 precedent of William Belknap, the Secretary of War, when he heard that he was about to be impeached, he resigned, hence not in office, and was impeached anyway. A majority of Senators voted for his conviction but not the 2/3 required. The “already out of office” defense was raised in the Senate and rejected by it.
The House of Representatives, having God-like powers of impeachment, could use them against any hospital officials who refuse to revoke President Trump’s birth certificate.
Indeed, why doesn’t the House of Representatives un-elect President Trump, and make him a non-President pretender, who was falsely given the keys to the White House for 4 years? While doing so before impeaching raises the question of motivation, they could first impeach him, and then render him not just an impeached non-President, but later an impeached never-President.
That doesn’t make any sense to me, but who am I to question those who have the “sole Power of Impeachment”, which, in this Orwellian age, must mean ALSO the “sole Power to DEFINE Impeachment” – whether or not that passes the laugh test.
The 1876 impeachment is interesting, and I wasn’t aware of it. But rather than assume that they weren’t abusing the law, I’ll go with the dictionary.com definition of impeachment:
1 the impeaching of a public official before an appropriate tribunal.
2 (in Congress or a state legislature) the presentation of formal charges against a public official by the lower house, trial to be before the upper house.
If Donald Trumps is still a “public official”, pray tell us what official position he holds. I won’t hold my breath waiting for your answer.
Speaking of the 19th Century, I think it’s high time that the 7 Supreme Court members who voted against Dred Scott in 1857 be impeached. And we shouldn’t let limitations of imagination impinge on our current legislators’ right to impeach, as they see fit. In those days, people got around with horses, and we may as well impeach the horses of the 7 guilty justices.
This will at least send a message to current horse owners who are thinking of doing anything a Democratic controlled House of Representatives finds odious. As for the horses and horse owners of long ago – not so much.
Glad I mostly stayed away this weekend. I guess with the right wing fizzle (entirely predictable for a country where 95% of the population is a job firing from permanent destitution and falling out of their class), nobody is worried about surviving the actual encroachment of neofeudalism, as imposed by the Ds, Rs, and their various corporate masters.
For the Hughs and Willys and KT Chongs, don’t be surprised that as you did not speak up for (and indeed completely trashed the right to due process and dignity of) people who happens to disagree with you on a few points, nobody will be there to speak for you when it’s your turn.
I believe that is an “and” not an “or”. Per your interpretation NR, impeachment could be held a priori to obtainment of office.
With no time limit, anytime a political party, having reached majority wished to punish it’s political opponents, for any number vacuous reasons, it could, under your interpretation NR, eliminate any/all opponents past/present/future officeholders from holding office using “impeachment”. I try not to speak for the dead but, I feel confident were you to argue your point to the writers of the US Constitution…they would spit in your face and call you what you are, a political hack*.
*Only a fool, fascist or political hack would argue such a concept. Please note; I have been most kind in my conjecture.
And per *your* interpretation, S Brennan, anyone could avoid being barred from office under Article 1, Section 3 simply by resigning prior to being convicted in the Senate. Since, as they would no longer be in office, they could not be removed from office, which you believe is a prerequisite for being barred from office.
I feel confident that if you were to argue your point to the writers of the U.S. Constitution, they would feel insulted by the fact that you think they would be stupid enough to design a punishment with such a trivially easy way to avoid it, and would call you what you are, a dishonest right-wing cultist. Although since I do not share your out-of-control anger issues, I don’t imagine them spitting in your face or anything similar; words would be more than enough to dismiss you with.
This is Article I, Section 3, Clause 7 on punishments stemming from impeachment:
“Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”
For those unfamiliar with the concept, this is a list. It contains 3 items:
1. Removal from office.
2. Disqualification from any other office
3. Liability to prosecution under federal law.
Impeachment as described in the US Constitution applies to federal positions, something all of us except metamars seem aware of. And as the language of the text indicates, because the Framers weren’t writing for idiots, these were higher level federal positions, positions of honor, trust, and profit.
This is Article I, Section 3, Clause 7 on punishments stemming from impeachment:
“Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”
For those unfamiliar with the concept, this is a list. It contains 3 items:
1. Removal from office.
2. Disqualification from any other office
3. Liability to prosecution under federal law.
Impeachment as described in the US Constitution applies to federal positions, something all of us except metamars seem aware of. And as the language of the text indicates, because the Framers weren’t writing for idiots, these were higher level federal positions, positions of honor, trust, and profit.
Did Trump resign? No he did not he finished his time in office. So in short, you attempt to sell a diversionary lie. Democrats waited until the results of the election in Georgia gave them the votes needed for impeachment. What I said above Stands:
“Per your interpretation NR, impeachment could be held a priori to obtainment of office.
With no time limit, anytime a political party, having reached majority wished to punish it’s political opponents, for any number vacuous reasons, it could, under your interpretation NR, eliminate any/all opponents past/present/future officeholders from holding office using “impeachment”. I try not to speak for the dead but, I feel confident were you to argue your point to the writers of the US Constitution…they would spit in your face and call you what you are, a political hack*.
*Only a fool, fascist or political hack would argue such a concept. Please note; I have been most kind in my conjecture.”
Whether someone leaves office by resignation or by finishing their term makes no difference at all as to whether they are still in office or not. Either way, they are no longer in office. So in short, you attempt to lie, deflect, and distract, as is usual for you, S Brennan. What I said above stands:
“And per *your* interpretation, S Brennan, anyone could avoid being barred from office under Article 1, Section 3 simply by resigning prior to being convicted in the Senate. Since, as they would no longer be in office, they could not be removed from office, which you believe is a prerequisite for being barred from office.
I feel confident that if you were to argue your point to the writers of the U.S. Constitution, they would feel insulted by the fact that you think they would be stupid enough to design a punishment with such a trivially easy way to avoid it, and would call you what you are, a dishonest right-wing cultist. Although since I do not share your out-of-control anger issues, I don’t imagine them spitting in your face or anything similar; words would be more than enough to dismiss you with.”
The Framers were men of their age. They had plenty of prejudices and were a pretty anti-democratic lot. But they weren’t idiots, and they didn’t write the Constitution for idiots. Impeachment for them was a way to put limitations on certain kinds of power. They were not interested in laying out every possible contingency that our current whack right wing comes up with. If they wrote something, they weren’t wasting words. It’s there because they thought it was important to be said. And if it isn’t, they thought the general principle and common sense were enough.
But with today’s right wing, it clearly is not. They say whatever they want to say. If someone brings up the Constitution, they say the Constitution says whatever they want it to say –even if it says the opposite. I mean look at the 2nd Amendment. How many gun owners belong to a well regulated militia? Answer: none. Not since the Civil War, a 150 years ago. They wrote the 2nd and 3rd Amendments because they saw a standing army as a danger to them and the republic. But the right wing simply erased the history and turned gun ownership into some kind of 11th Commandment that Moses brought down from Sinai. You think they can’t and aren’t doing the same thing with impeachment? Or that they wouldn’t turn around and make the exact opposite arguments if they wanted to target a Democrat with impeachment? The Framers gave us the tools to guard against dictatorship. The brains and stones to use them is on us.
Did Trump resign? No he did not he finished his time in office. So in short, you attempt to sell a diversionary lie. Democrats waited until the results of the election in Georgia gave them the votes needed for impeachment. What I said above Stands:
“Per your interpretation NR, impeachment could be held a priori to obtainment of office.
With no time limit, anytime a political party, having reached majority wished to punish it’s political opponents, for any number vacuous reasons, it could, under your interpretation NR, eliminate any/all opponents past/present/future officeholders from holding office using “impeachment”. I try not to speak for the dead but, I feel confident were you to argue your point to the writers of the US Constitution…they would spit in your face and call you what you are, a political hack*.
*Only a fool, fascist or political hack would argue such a concept. Please note; I have been most kind in my conjecture.”
I have thought of a possible other name for “neo-liberalism”. How about calling it “market stalinism”? That sounds more catchy and also more threatening and more trigger more thought.
” Neo-liberalism” just sounds like ” lets update liberalism to keep up with the times”. “Neo” meaning ” new” and all.
Obama killed off Howard Dean’s ” 50 state strategy” of deep and broad organizing and outreaching. I think he did that in line with the DLC Hamilton Project Democrats’s upper-class emphasis.
And , as you say, Biden continues the emphasis on limiting DemParty participation wherever possible to the Goldman-Sachs feminists and the New Yuppie Scumocrats.
So the Black-Oriented organizers showed what is possible in the shadow of DemParty indifference. I don’t think the DemParty will be so indifferent next time. I think the DemParty ( the Party of Pelosi, Obama, and Dianne Feinstein’s husband) will try undermining the Georgia Volunteers as much as the DemParty can get away with.
So, given that the Black-Oriented Georgia Organizers see what is possible, have they considered starting their own party in certain cases? A party which could be called the New Deal Revival Party? Or the Real Democrat Party? Or some such thing?
Because people like them either need to conquer and declintaminate the Democratic Party or they need to exterminate the Democratic Party and create their own Real Democrat Party (being careful to rigidly exclude infiltration by Goldman-Sachs feminists or New Yuppie Scumocrats who would immediately begin plotting to clintaminate any new such party.)
Market marxism could also be tried. People could try either, or both, and see if either or both of them catch on.
( I liked market stalinism because of the nastiness of stalinism. And just imagine that nastiness disguised in false market flags. In 1950 there were 6 million farms in America. Now there are 1 million. The rest were abolished during the ” Corporate collectivization of the kulaks”.)
Since you’re just spamming the exact same comment over and over again and not even attempting to refute my argument, I’m going to take that as an admission that you have no counterargument. Thank you for admitting you were wrong and that impeachment can continue even after someone is out of office.
Plague Species
https://furry.substack.com/p/state-of-the-union
bruce wilder
Re: state of the union link above
Mike Pompeo as the “the competent, autocratic fascist”?!?!
LOL
Plague Species
bruce, that’s what schlomo wilder said about Hitler in 1928. continue laughing until it’s not funny any more. for some, already, it’s not funny any more.
bruce wilder
History does not repeat, but sometimes it rhymes, said the wag.
First as tragedy, then as farce, said the philosopher.
Sterling used to have a theme he sounded about eras being defined be “pre” or “post” or “new xxx” or some other reference to another time past or to come.
The U.S. — especially but not exclusively the centre-left — has been stuck for a very long time in rehearsing the styles and conflicts and other tropes of past eras. WWII. The 1960’s. The Reagan Revolution. The Civil Rights Movement.
A country where no one knows any actual history and and everyone seemingly has grave difficulty remembering events of a mere two, ten, twenty years ago and drawing any implication, has been dressing up its politics in vintage finery, moth-eaten and faded.
Our dominant ideology is neoliberalism. Not actual liberalism. The strawmen of the left are “fascists” and “white supremacists”. The right seem surprised that “socialist” fails as an epithet. Our foreign policy experts are bent on containing communist Russia, fearing its propaganda as much as its desire to . . . sell natural gas!??
This has been going on for a while — this wearing out of obsolete rhetoric by overuse and increasing misapplication. George W Bush tried to sound Churchillian — remember that? Movies “inspired by a true story” and rewriting history are as standard now as prequels and remakes of both good originals and really bad ones. They remade Snakes on a Plane and did a movie casting Lincoln as a vampire-killer!
Vampires and zombies — as common as cowboys and doctors once were — have had a long run in popular culture. (We just elected a zombie as president, with a vampire as vp!). The most popular social media app is TikTok, where people make their own television commercials — contemplate the implication: a culture drowned in commercialization has embraced it as the only thing, even as the planet hurtles toward ecological collapse.
This little mini-rant was triggered by seeing Bernie Sanders in mittens turned into a meme, complete with “Explainers” explaining what a viral meme was for the uninitiated in “trends” (new meaning, if you have to ask you are not going to understand the answer)
I am going to risk venturing that if you are feeling intense anger and fear about “those” people in politics, the “fascists” or rioters at the capitol or whatever, your anger and fear is inexplicable to most people. The narratives driving your emotions are form without substance, made up by professional cynics to trigger you and intrigue you and draw you into a vaguely familiar dreamspace where you can feel involved while not being involved.
While you were worrying about the overthrow of democracy by a new totalitarianism, actual democracy was subverted by a neoliberalism building an inverted totalitarianism where all the “hot” controversies are completely made-up nonsense irrelevant to anything.
Take a deep breath and let it go.
KT Chong
Some quick thought about conservatives and Trumplicans crying and whining about the cancel culture:
McCarthyism is the first and original cancel culture. Conservatives and Republicans invented the cancel culture with McCarthyism in the 1950s, by targeting people whom they deemed as having the incorrect ideologies and thoughts. People literally lost their jobs, families and lives and went to prison when conservatives targeted them and deemed them as “communists” or “socialists”. Conservatives and Republicans made it not permissible to think in certain ways or believe in certain things: it was basically thought control aka the cancel culture.
Conservatives and Republicans are still perpetuating that same cancel culture for 70+ years. Even today they are throwing around the “communist” and “socialist” label (and even “liberal” as a slur,) still trying to cancel people with the old tired tactics. They are crying and whining now only because the cancel table has finally turned on them. However, let’s pretend McCarthyism has never happened and it has not persisted until today.
Hypocrites. There would be no forgiveness and mercy for hypocrites who did wrong in first place and still refuse to do some overdue self-reflection and soul searching.
Willy
Trump pardoned Lil Wayne while abandoning hundreds of his loyal insurrectionist MAGAs to rot. Yet only an estimated 1/10th of the 74 million Trump enablers are realizing how they were played.
If you ask the 90% who the enemy is, they’ll still say it’s “socialism” which is defined by them as a government which favors the alien/satanic “other”, over their own honest, loyal, hardworking, patriotic and godfearing whitish selves.
That’s a lot of people who claim “personal responsibility”, while desperately needing somebody powerful to believe in.
S Brennan
MOA reports that Biden has moved an armored Battalion into Syria from Iraq Thursday.
Unless Biden follows with more armor and support vehicles it looks like it’s meant as bait, to goad Assad with the hope of starting another US war which…the Israelis could use as cover to have another go at Lebanon…and the world’s largest untapped natural gas fields offshore both nations. The MI-6 organized gas attacks were meant to get Trump to start the war, looks like Biden is going to try a different tack, surely an attack on US troops will “unite the nation” under the banner of war?
How very Presidential, not at all like that incompetent hippie dude…what was that peacenik’s name again?
Now, “if I would just stand back and watch and learn”. Yes indeed.
Honest D voters conned into the narrative ” Trump=Hitler => Trump-voters=Nazis => VoteBiden ⊻ you’re a Nazi” are about to learn, but…will they be smarter than they were? We’ll find out when 2036 rolls around.
Sad story for my country, for my planet.
It's Getting Boring By Now
Sad story for my country, for my planet.
You don’t seem too concerned about it, despite all you write. Maybe stop and smell a rose or something.
NL
Suddenly,
‘Dark Money’ Helped Pave Joe Biden’s Path to the White House
President Joe Biden benefited from a record-breaking amount of donations from anonymous donors to outside groups backing him, meaning the public will never have a full accounting of who helped him win the White House.
bloomberg
NL
“Dark money”
Biden – $145 million ($1.5 billion total)
$318.6 million came from donors who gave less than $200
$1182 million came from fat cats (no offence to cats)
$46.9 million from Facebook Inc. co-founder Dustin Moskovitz
$3 million from Twilio Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Lawson
$2.6 million from Eric Schmidt of Alphabet Inc
Trump – dark money $28.4
Romney 2012 dark money – $113
Stirling S Newberry
As long as politicians are economically undervalued dark money will go up.
S Brennan
@ Bruce Wilder,
How did we wind up with Mike Pompeo?
Well let’s see, as I recall, Trump wanted a guy named Gen [ret.] Flynn but…
Flynn had outed Obama/Hillary/Biden’s plan to ship the US supplied [through channels] arms used to “regime change” Libya over to Syria. This “regime change” took Libya from the most prosperous/egalitarian state in Africa, back to the poorest nation on the continent. Anyway, the arms going to Syria were to oust Assad and get at Syria’s offshore natural gas fields [world’s largest] that had been discovered in 2009 and confirmed in 2011.
Apparently, Gen Flynn as DIA chief had qualms about Obama/Hillary/Biden’s plan to supply some of the world’s worst terrorists with money, arms and training in contravention to US law in scheme to steal Syria’s natural resources for the profit of political donors. [Oddly, Tulsi Gabbard expressed similar concerns as early as 2014.]
Well, we can’t have officials who obey reason, the edict of Nuremberg and US law, no siree, not in Obama’s wheelhouse. So General Flynn was ousted for dutifully and LEGALLY writing a DIA paper warning of the dangers of arming a group of vile international terrorists…and the quagmire ahead. This published paper btw caught the attention of the Trump campaign and the rest was history…but let me remind the folks who want to put that sordid story “behind us” and “move forward”.
There was no way Obama wanted all his war-crime skeletons unearthed by a guy who knew where the bodies were buried. So, Obama authorized the of use secret state apparatus to bug Flynn’s phones, read his mail and so on. Then FBI director Comey…was/is what Ian referred to yesterday as a “boot-licking authoritarian” and was all to happy to try his hand at entrapping Obama’s mortal enemy in a process crime by using illegally obtained communications. The charge was bullshit, Flynn’s lawyers had a severe conflict of interest that was secretly used by the “justice department” and the Judge in the case must of had a skeleton or two in the closet because he was the most ham fisted adjudicator in my memory…well, in the US. Julian Assange’s Judge openly showed similar bias.
At this point, boot-licking authoritarians in the press and the boot-licking authoritarians who call themselves “liberals”, “pregressives” and “lefties” joined the chorus because, like, well, you know, Trump=Hitler => therefore any illegal action is justified…and so, that is how we got to Pompeo.
Boot-licking authoritarians who call themselves “liberals”, “progressives” and “lefties” joined hands with the National Security State…and yet, today they pretend not to have been used to empower the worst SOS since….well…Hillary.
Llaria Queen
Larry King is finally dead, thank god. What a waste of life that doucehbag was.
bruce wilder
Let me say now, before you all misunderstand my earlier comment about the ill-wisdom of, say, fearing a repeat of Germany 1930-33, what I was NOT saying. I am NOT saying “do not worry” — rather I am saying, “let go” of manipulative narrative memes and at least try to get real. We are human and a lot of politics is a contest of competing narratives that argue for applying alternative meanings, in the social construction of a ramshackle consensus reality. That is never going to change. But you do not have to cling to “exciting” narratives that have more correspondence to the past or to fantasy than to verifiable facts of the present case. Politics will always be a team sport, but you do not have to cheer and boo style alone, and let the bastards hide governance behind a façade of brand management.
As good as it gets in a mass democracy is agreement to disagree on a lot of things and an acceptance of the legitimacy of varying perspectives even on what we cooperate in doing. We do not have anything like that in operation, at least inside the echo chambers of explicitly political discourse. Many journalists and pundits and commenters — whether at CNN or the New York Times or on some podcast or blog or YouTube channel show — are unconcerned about factual accuracy — it is hard work and doesn’t attract an audience, why bother? The army of PR hacks who feed the smaller corps of professional journalists first drafts not of history but of propaganda are increasingly cavalier about being discredited; their journalist-clients will protect their sources after all. Even official government agencies and academic institutions respect little ethical imperative to either check that facts correspond to their favored narrative or that their audiences understand what they say correctly, and are little concerned when challenged with facts or methodological critique, let alone concerns about prudence or humane intent. Being factually disproven is no bar to continuing as if uninterrupted; even less are cruelty, predictive failure or deliberate deception taken on as a blemish to reputation. Instead, the accurate critiques are silo’d so thoroughly that their enactment by members of the “opposing tribe” can be dismissed as mime — unheard, seen as a bad joke.
This is not healthy for the polity. It creates a fog of disinformation that most people ignore and a few people distill into nonsense (e.g. QAnon) and a lot of people take on as an excuse for expressing anger and frustration and despair on the one hand and an excuse for dismissing the expression of anger, frustration and despair by other people — in other words it produces a lot of rude interpersonal behavior. If it has any effect whatsoever on governance by authorities, it seems likely to be negative: official action to ensure that the ratio of information to disinformation declines and government becomes even less responsive to any but billionaires.
Hugh
Who is that guy who keeps goose-stepping through here? And isn’t Mike Flynn the Trump nazi who wanted to declare martial law and rerun the election under the guns of the military?
And speaking of no sense of irony, the right has been attacking campaign limits and finance reform for 45 years.
Buckley v. Valeo (1976) limited disclosure, took off limits on campaign spending
First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978) recognized the “free” speech, i.e. political spending, rights of corporations
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) prohibited restrictions on “independent” political spending by corporations and other organizations
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014) rescinded individual limits on contributions to parties and committees
Now they are upset that Biden outraised them in their own racket. They would be more believable if they were as concerned about the Koch network and what dark money is buying.
someofparts
This is the best analysis I’ve seen yet that breaks down just who supports Trump.
https://bostonreview.net/politics/jacob-whiton-where-trumpism-lives
“the Republican base is composed of the wealthiest voters residing in lower-income districts”
“The fact that Republican objectors command some of the least popular support among their own constituents of any congressional elected officials in the country is both a testament to their effectiveness in entrenching their own power and the foundation on which we must ground our hopes for political change to end minority rule.”
plague species – I wish I could live farther out from the city. I imagine it is lovely where you and your family live. It’s really a pretty town if you can live with the mosquitoes. I miss having a yard and being able to have a dog. Intown is good for an old hippie like me though, because plenty of good healthcare is on my doorstep here, and at my stage of life it is prudent to take note of such things.
Related to the topic here, and also interesting if you live in the city, it this treasure I lucked onto –
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=white+flight+atlanta+and+the+making+of+modern+conservatism&i=stripbooks&crid=3HFYBXFAECYA9&sprefix=white+flight%2Cstripbooks%2C1332&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-a-p_1_12
It’s a history of white flight in Atlanta. The reason it relates to the article from Boston Review is that both books focus on the tsunami of demographic change in the burbs ringing the cities.
At first glance, I see things about the trends to like. It’s easy to drive around the countryside with churches everywhere and imagine that neighborhoods beyond the city are swarming with Christian evangelicals, but it may be more of an assertively visible Potemkin show than it seems. If the numbers the demographers are reporting are true, then there are large Hispanic and Asian origin communities that are growing and prospering along with the proliferation of churches. The more they prosper, the more voice/clout they will have in local politics.
I guess that’s why Democrats position themselves as the party of multi-cultural professionals. So intuitively that makes me think, okay, all the party has to do to dominate for decades is hit the pavement and start organizing all those missing voters in Trumpland. But the Biden camp continues to this day to completely ignore grassroots work as they have from the start of the primaries. They were surprised when they won in Georgia. Their lavishly-rewarded professionals told them Georgia could not be won and they put it out of mind. Actual voter outreach does not interest them.
So I guess the future is an oligarchy of big money and the PMC with a modern PMC-administered surveillance state to manage the rest of us? Looks that way so far. The masters of misinformation are exploiting the same vulnerability in Americans that Hezbollah exploits in Israelis. It is a population that feels entitled to respond with old-testament (or modern dystopic) hysteria and punitive (and profitable) excess at the mere suggestion that a fraction of the harm they inflict so expansively on others might be visited upon their angelic selves. At least I guess that is why they are so eager to plug all of us into their matrix.
bruce wilder
@ S Brennan
As a character, Mike Flynn did not strike me as a reliable teller-0f-truth, so color me skeptical of the idea that he is the hero of his own or any story. I, personally, do not know of the factual basis motivating Obama’s distrust of Flynn and cannot comment on that. I do agree that the Obama administration’s policy of arming Al Qaeda in Syria to overthrow Assad (“=Hitler”, never gets old it seems) when their army of 500 moderates and liberals evaporated was
singularlystupid (nothing singular about the stupid in American middle east policy); I did notice that Obama seemed to pull back a bit, once Kerry replaced Clinton as SoS and acted the part well enough to do a classic deal with Lavrov on Syrian chemical weapons. But, I think the investigation and prosecution of Flynn were cynically pursued and unjust, on their face. That so few “on the other side” have questioned the various tentacles of Russiagate, even after its ugly underbelly has been exposed is a sad commentary on how far gone are so many true believers in lesser evil.Hugh
By kicking the Senate impeachment trial back to Feb. 8, the Democrats are giving Republicans time to cool off and go back into partisan mode. That is they are already conceding the outcome.
Meanwhile the FBI and DOJ are talking about not charging all those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.
And with conservative Democrats like Manchin, Schumer may not have the votes to go the no-filibuster route, in which case McConnell, the King of Obstruction, wins.
S Brennan
@ BW,
I thought you knew the outline, here’s a quick link to get you started on the Obama vs Flynn in Syria.
https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/intelligence/defense-intelligence-agency-warned-obama-about-isis-in-2012/
Many more but that ought to get you started google “Flynn’s 2012 DIA report on Syrian rebels”
Willy
A hallmark of Nazi rule is stocking the government with lackeys loyal only to Dear Leader and his corrupt corporate cronies.
The first Nazi Biden fired was Michael Pack, head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Pack tried to transform the Voice of America, into a propaganda outlet for Trump. He purged the VOA and its sister networks staffs and replaced with Trump loyalists to do pro-Trump coverage and unconstitutionally punished any journalists who did actual reporting on the administration. Pack also fired the board of the Open Technology Fund, which promotes international internet freedom and replaced them with Republican corporate cronies.
Another Nazi who Biden fired was Kathleen Kraninger, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She had zero experience in consumer protection but immediately undermined the agency’s role as a watchdog for the financial sector. She eliminated restrictions on predatory payday lending and federal support for military families who were defrauded by lenders. She increased the ability of debt collectors to harass Americans who’d been impacted by Dear Leader’s gross mismanagement of the pandemic.
Another Nazi who Biden fired was Peter Robb the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel. Robb was profoundly anti-union during his tenure. He limited employees’ free speech, gave managers more leeway to engage in wage theft, limited unions ability to collect dues and help workers organize. He also demoted every regional director in an attempt to gain unprecedented authority so he could bust existing unions and prevent new ones from forming.
Many other Trumpian Nazis have been fired.
Stirling S Newberry
Russia has problems. The elite had not thought through the situation. It will cost them but how much is the question.
bruce wilder
I am sorry, but I do not get it, Hugh. Does Biden offer any alternative here? Any policy opposition? Better practice? Better example, beyond a show of “ethics” policy as Obama did, with no enforcement to follow. It does not look like it. He’s not even the lesser evil — he evades limits on campaign financing with wild abandon. Raises money by telling billionaires that he does not blame them for anything and nothing will fundamentally change.
Back in 2016, the big scandal exposed by revealing the DNC emails was that Hillary had hatched an elaborate scheme to circumvent campaign finance law and not incidentally wreck the Democratic Party as an institution. The scandal about her own email server as SoS was that she was evading the same official records laws that the Bush Administration had shamelessly abused, and not incidentally strictures on security and secrecy.
This is who the Democrats are and have been for a long time. Their 2020 Primary season was rife with anti-democratic behavior and gambits. They are not the good guys or even the lesser evil of your favored narratives.
I do not think Republicans are sincere critics of Biden’s corruption and authoritarianism. Irony? gah. Are the Democrats sincere critics of Republican irresponsibility and corruption? Pelosi seems perfectly happy to enact much of their agenda.
Every time I bring up the inner contradiction of your cheerleading Democrats against Republicans with no acknowledgement that the Democrats are not advocating and promoting better policy, you accuse me of false equivalence. You are the one putting things on the scale’s balance and never noticing that it does not tip appreciably.
bruce wilder
thank you for the link to AEI on Syria. it does not say much about Flynn’s views though.
I cannot say the perspective of the author is one I share. I quote:
The “robust equip and train program for the moderate, pro-Western opposition” was one of those delusional, trite policy ideas founded on determined ignorance that the Blob loves and keep the U.S. mired in self-defeating perpetual war all over the Middle East.
S Brennan
From MOA:
“On his first day in office President Joe Biden destroyed women’s sports…one of several executive orders Biden issued the
Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation…This is liberalism gone crazy.”
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/01/on-day-1-president-joe-biden-destroyed-womens-sports/comments/page/2/#comments
I agree with b at MOA about 85% of the time, here I disagree, but not in the obvious manner; I think this was a cynical ploy to simultaneously:
1] To take credit for the social progress that the 7-2 Supreme Court ruling this past summer engendered.
2] To create a backlash against transgender persons [of whom the neoD’s have always despised – see Barney Frank strips LBGT bill of transgender protections]. This backlash will be used politically by neoD’s. And transgender people, the most oppressed* group in the USA, will pay the price. *[see homicide rates 8 times higher for transgender male-to-females than for young black males…unemployment…same deal]
While I am all for transgender civil rights, Title IX is a set aside for women and it’s done a marvelous job of giving women sports opportunities that simply couldn’t exist without it…and Biden is fucking it up. And while I am all for transgenders, getting/keeping a job/apartment/house, a place at the lunch-counter/inn and all that other stuff, I am not cool with a 6’6″ biological male taking a team spot away from a 5″8″woman. The increasing number of biological males taking top spots in women’s sports is something that should not be allowed. It’s definitely hurting the political support of transgenders amongst women.
Again, this is a cynical ploy by Biden and the people who will be most hurt are exactly those people who Biden claims to be helping. After the Supreme Court ruling this past summer, I had hoped that the last group denied legal civil rights in the USA would finally have legal protection and through transgenders individual singular efforts, social acceptance…which in the fullness of time, would lead to a unified social structure in which all people of this nation could partake in it’s bounty.
Net Neutrality
Thank you for the perspective, KT Chong. Of all the comments so far in this thread, yours has taught me the most.
I have a friend who works in Canadian immigration, and they told me that once you’re 35 or older, Canada won’t let you immigrate to their country. That’s an extremely tight window. I’ve been told I can apply for permanent residence, which will give me a 5 year window in which I could move. So if I do the work, I can have the option to move to Canada until I’m 39. I wish I had a 10 year window, to really see how things in the US will play out.
Ian, you briefly mentioned how difficult it is to get into Canada interview for Wicked Systems. Could you do me a favor and write about it in more detail one of these days? Try to help Americans who are considering leaving the USA before it goes bad?
Mark Pontin
Bruce W: ‘Mike Pompeo as the “the competent, autocratic fascist”?!?! LOL.’
Quite. Pompeo is just a fat, nasty non-entity created and pushed into place by Charles Koch.
Now, Pompeo’s done his job. Almost certainly, he won’t even be re-installed as the ‘Senator from Koch’ in Kansas’s 4th district, but given a sinecure position in the Koch network and put out to pasture.
Hugh
What’s complicated? The right has been behind most of the moves against campaign finance reform, especially via stacking SCOTUS. But it only becomes an issue for them when a Biden or Obama do it better than them. I find it funny that less than a week into Biden’s term, dark money suddenly gets discovered, when, as I said, the modern gutting of campaign began 45 years ago. Dark money has been around for a while. When I googled, I got a bunch of articles about how the groups who planned the attack on the Capitol were funded by dark money.
Nor is your discovery that there is nothing particularly democratic about the Democratic party especially new, but thanks for the effort.
NL
Suddenly,
Amazon Requests In-Person Union Vote in Covid-Hit Alabama
Under the current plan, workers will have most of the next two months to vote by mail.
Amazon said…. that mail-only balloting was the safest approach was “based on speculation and conjecture, and without ever balancing the purported risk of virus spread against the public policy that ‘strongly favors’ allowing employees to vote in person,” and
that a mail election raised the risk of fraud and the coercion of workers. It also said the process would depress turnout…
Bloomberg.
NL
“the inclusion of China onshore government bonds, issued by the Chinese government, and policy financial bonds, issued by the Chinese policy banks, into [the western financial institution indexes]”
opened the possibility for the Western investors to buy Chinese government bonds that yield ~3%.
“Stephen Chiu, Asia FX and Rates Strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, said that overseas investors’ holdings of China bonds rose by more than 48 percent in 2020, the fastest annual growth in two years.”
This caused “a narrowing China-US yield gap”, which was effectively a rise in yield on treasuries. El Erian attributed the rise in yield in treasuries to a coming inflation and displeasure of the US debt owners with their own land. Guess he was wrong or partly right.
Ché Pasa
I watched The Trial of the Chicago 7 on Netflix the other day.
I wouldn’t say it’s an accurate depiction of the events at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention or the trial of the insurrectionists that took place the following year, but it’s an interesting movie in its own right, and it might be a good enough history lesson for those who believe — as many of us sometimes do — that we are living in the worst of times under the most oppressive conditions imaginable.
Not so, not even close. Which is not to say that things are all that good, either. They’re not.
Bad as government oppression and police brutality are now, they were worse for more people than they are now. Economic opportunity was very limited for large swaths of the population. Corruption was possibly a little different then, but it was very widespread and infected nearly all aspects of life. A horrible war was under way in Indochina that killed and injured so many millions it’s almost inconceivable now. Practically every major city was “on fire”, large sections left in ruins, hundreds dead, official murder was routine, every populist/progressive leader was assassinated. Media was not freer.
Aaron Sorkin’s movie version of the trial and the characters involved is more Sorkin than history — Julius Hoffman was senile, corrupt and racist as hell, the Jerry Rubin I knew was nothing like the stoned out nearly catatonic gnome portrayed in the film, Tom Hayden was quite a bit different than he is portrayed in the movie, and he did not read the names of the five thousand soldiers killed in Vietnam during the course of the trial at the conclusion, etc. etc. And so forth.
But what I remember of the times and the trial is not how others might remember it, and those who don’t recall it at all because they’re too young can learn something about the way things were from Sorkin’s version.
We have many challenges now, some of which are new. But so did those who preceded us.
bruce wilder
again Hugh you confuse me
why isn’t dark money a problem for you?
why is the hostility to electoral integrity and democratic process among establishment Democrats of so little concern to you?
I say, “This is who the Democrats are and have been for a long time.” And, you reply, “Nor is your discovery that there is nothing particularly democratic about the Democratic party especially new, . . . ” Huh?
someofparts
another cold cup of coffee –
https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2021/01/19/american-democracy-is-in-no-imminent-danger/#more-5304
“while economic inequality does cause legitimation problems, those problems are fundamentally different in kind from the problems of the 1930s”
Capital mobility is our problem and so far nobody knows how to fight it.
Hugh
Are you simple minded? Some of us have been for campaign finance reform, even public campaign financing for decades. Do I have a lot of time for people who in a sea of slime find it just now and only in those they don’t like? No. Please be disingenuous elsewhere.
bruce wilder
You have been in favor of campaign finance reform for decades and this leads to your celebrating the record amounts of dark money financing much of the latest President’s $1.5 billion campaign.
And, you think me disingenuous!
Chuck Mire
Where were they radicalized?
https://religiondispatches.org/where-were-they-radicalized-no-answer-is-complete-without-addressing-evangelical-churches-and-schooling/
https://www.amazon.com/Founding-Myth-Christian-Nationalism-American/dp/1454933275
NR
Thanks for that article, Chuck. Some great insight into how evangelicals have driven the fascist push in America.
NR
A good move from Biden:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/biden-stop-support-saudi-war-crimes-yemen.html
Of course, Biden supported the U.S. getting involved in Yemen in the first place, but it’s good that he now realizes that was a mistake and is going to end American support for the ongoing atrocities there.
Plague Species
NR, that is good news. We must acknowledge the good, otherwise calling out the bad is meaningless.
S Brennan
I agree with NR here, Biden’s whiplash, 180 turn on his own policy of war and bloodshed [in Yemen]…apparently, we need to focus more on restarting the bloodshed in Syria is nice, late but, nice.
Obama/Biden’s green-light of the slaughter led to the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Yemen. And Obama/Biden’s $1,000,000,000.00 gift of precision-guided bombs as he was leaving office was/is exactly twice as bad as Trump’s $500,000,000.00 while he was leaving office. While there is a difference in magnitude, both of them evil, both of them intended as ex de facto payola to an “industry” that has profited horribly under the wars of aggression foisted on the US by the Clinton/Bush/Obama administration. [singular intended]. Congress has until Thursday to grab the tar baby Trump left behind…just as Obama/Biden left a 2x’s bigger tar baby four years ago.
Here’s an article that debunks the recent justification by Obama officials trying to cleanse their hands of the murderous war initiated by Obama & Biden and I stress, idiotically allowed to continue under Trump…tip to congress [circa 2019], don’t write a bill that insults the President who has to sign it.
_________________________
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/11/19/obama-officials-incomplete-reckoning-failure-yemen
“On November 11, 30 senior Obama administration officials issued a statement calling on the Trump administration to end all support for Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen…it was, ultimately, a failed reckoning for the Obama administration’s role in risking American complicity in Saudi-led coalition abuses in the first place. [T]hey justify the Obama administration’s initial decision to support the war as based on “a legitimate threat posed by missiles on the Saudi border and the Houthi overthrow of the Yemeni government, with support from Iran.”
A more honest reckoning for how the US got to where it is in this war in Yemen would start with a greater admission of the truth of the Obama administration’s motivations and mistakes in participating in this war. In their letter, the Obama officials try to distinguish their administration’s support for the war as “conditional,” vs. Trump’s “unconditional” support. Of course, this matters little to the Yemeni people because the outcome has been the same: death and destruction, very often by US bombs.
The Obama administration’s stated justifications for joining the war effort obscure the truth of what led them to the war. Other Obama administration officials had already stated that their support for the war, coupled with a $1 billion arms deal, was first and foremost payback for Saudi’s grudging tolerance of the Iran nuclear deal, and to reassure them that the US remained a reliable ally, despite the deal. The amount of Iranian support to the Houthis has been debated, of course, but with little evidence, all pretty murky; better known is the fact that the Houthis are a fiercely independent group with a long history of waging war in Yemen.
As the war has evolved, Iran’s involvement with the Houthis has certainly grown, filling in the vacuum for the Houthis’ desperate search for allies, effectively creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. What is clear is that the former Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh – long supported by the US – and various Yemeni defense forces controlled by his son and nephew supported the Houthis to such a degree that international observers formally dubbed them the “Houthi-Saleh forces.” The Houthis had been at war with Saleh’s government for decades over long-simmering grievances as a minority group in the country. They had supported the uprising against Saleh and were active participants in the country’s “National Dialogue” to reshape the country’s governance. When Houthi armed groups marched on the capital, it was to rebel against the newly drafted constitution and a proposed federal structure they believed would weaken them. They negotiated an agreement with President Hadi to resolve their differences, but soon found themselves in control of the capital when Saleh-backed defense forces stepped down from defending key government buildings, including the parliament and the presidential palace.
The Obama administration, not learning enough from past foreign military experiences in Yemen, accepted baseless assurances from the Saudis — including the then-deputy Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman and the inexperienced Saudi military — that they would overthrow the Houthis in months. The US decidedly looked the other way from Saleh’s strong support for the Houthis, including vast stores of weaponry from the Defense Ministry, an institution that remained loyal to Saleh. The war dragged on, with limited military gains by the Saudi-led coalition, but a rising toll of unnecessary and unlawful death and destruction.
Well before President Trump’s appearance, we at Human Rights Watch and others had documented well over 100 apparently indiscriminate or disproportionate aerial attacks by the Saudi-led coalition on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Yemen, causing devastation to Yemenis in their homes, markets, schools, hospitals, and even during their weddings and their funerals. In case after case, we showed that US weapons were being used in many of these attacks, including widely banned cluster munitions in populated areas. False denials and cover-ups by Saudi military authorities were clear signs that they were not trustworthy partners. We repeatedly provided this evidence to Obama administration officials, but they would insist, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary, that the support they were providing was reining in the Saudis and helping improve their ability to comply with the laws of war. This is not a case of hindsight knows best. The Obama administration should have known back then.
Also well before Trump adviser — and son-in-law — Jared Kushner’s conspicuous friendship with Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi-led coalition’s arbitrary and excessive delays on imports to Yemen were exacerbating health and nutrition crises, as diseases like cholera spread like wildfire. The Saudi-led coalition’s closure of a critical airport meant that many Yemenis couldn’t travel to get the healthcare they needed. UN humanitarian agencies and global relief organizations pleaded in vain about the harm caused by the coalition restrictions, to little avail.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration was providing Saudi Arabia not only with ongoing military support (which the formal officials mention) but also diplomatic cover (which the former officials omit), especially at the UN. When the UN finally named Saudi Arabia on its “Global List of Shame,” of the worst offenders against children, for its attacks on children in Yemen, the US stood silent as Saudi Arabia strong-armed the UN. Then-Secretary General Ban Ki Moon resisted for a while, but finally caved in and removed Saudi Arabian from the list, admitting that Riyadh had threatened to cut its funding to various UN agencies. Twice during the Obama administration, the US had the opportunity to push for a UN inquiry into abuses by all sides in the Yemen conflict, and twice it did not—the Saudi-led coalition didn’t want one. Despite repeated queries about whether the US supported the first proposed UN inquiry, Obama officials responded with silence or words of deflection, which spelled the political demise of such an initiative.
The cost of the Obama administration’s support for Saudi Arabia’s war went beyond Yemen. The juxtaposition of the Obama administration decrying Syrian/Russian attacks on civilians and Assad’s ongoing blockade of humanitarian goods, while the United States was defending Saudi-led coalition attacks on civilians and the impact of the blockade in Yemen, undermined the credibility of the Obama team’s efforts to restrain the Syrian government. The Russians openly mocked then-UN Ambassador Samantha Power for this hypocrisy. The US should have condemned and acted to curb both coalitions, equally and fairly.
Whatever conditionality the Obama administration thought it had created — in holding up the transfer of precision munitions near the tail end of Obama’s term and suspending cluster munition transfers earlier — ultimately did not have meaningful impact in reining in the continued Saudi-led coalition attacks on civilians. Nor were the steps robust enough to protect the US and US officials from risking complicity in war crimes.
Despite the claimed “unconditional” support from the Trump Administration, its officials, too, have reacted strongly to some excesses: condemning the total blockade, pushing Saudi Arabia to permit cranes to get into Yemen, ending refueling of coalition planes. But, like the steps of the previous administration, it is not anywhere close to enough. As Yemenis remember the pain and suffering the US has helped inflict on their country, as they surely must, they will not look more kindly on the Obama administration’s merely “conditional” support. And that is not to mention several dozens of Yemeni civilians killed in drone strikes in the pursuit of Al Qaeda fighters.
The point is an honest, full appreciation of the reasons for these policies and their consequences. The statement by former senior officials fails in that task.”
metamars
Just had a thought. Not my greatest, probably not my worst.
If lunatic Democrats persevere in trying to impeach non-President Trump, hopefully they will surpass even themselves, and go on to try and have whatever hospital Trump was born in to revoke his birth certificate.
Besides the comedic value, it may illumine some dim bulbs in this country as to how deep the lunacy goes.
Hugh
metamars, maybe you could take a look at Article I, Section 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution:
“The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.”
It is the House of Representatives, not you, not your fascist cohorts, which decides if a federal official can be impeached. Nothing in the Constitution says such an official has to be currently in office.
The Senate has similar power in how an impeachment trial is to be conducted. There is the 1876 precedent of William Belknap, the Secretary of War, when he heard that he was about to be impeached, he resigned, hence not in office, and was impeached anyway. A majority of Senators voted for his conviction but not the 2/3 required. The “already out of office” defense was raised in the Senate and rejected by it.
metamars
The House of Representatives, having God-like powers of impeachment, could use them against any hospital officials who refuse to revoke President Trump’s birth certificate.
Indeed, why doesn’t the House of Representatives un-elect President Trump, and make him a non-President pretender, who was falsely given the keys to the White House for 4 years? While doing so before impeaching raises the question of motivation, they could first impeach him, and then render him not just an impeached non-President, but later an impeached never-President.
That doesn’t make any sense to me, but who am I to question those who have the “sole Power of Impeachment”, which, in this Orwellian age, must mean ALSO the “sole Power to DEFINE Impeachment” – whether or not that passes the laugh test.
The 1876 impeachment is interesting, and I wasn’t aware of it. But rather than assume that they weren’t abusing the law, I’ll go with the dictionary.com definition of impeachment:
If Donald Trumps is still a “public official”, pray tell us what official position he holds. I won’t hold my breath waiting for your answer.
metamars
Speaking of the 19th Century, I think it’s high time that the 7 Supreme Court members who voted against Dred Scott in 1857 be impeached. And we shouldn’t let limitations of imagination impinge on our current legislators’ right to impeach, as they see fit. In those days, people got around with horses, and we may as well impeach the horses of the 7 guilty justices.
This will at least send a message to current horse owners who are thinking of doing anything a Democratic controlled House of Representatives finds odious. As for the horses and horse owners of long ago – not so much.
Why, I’ll bet Maxine Waters would go for this.
bruce wilder
I can read the Constitution, too, and the text asserts that the only effect is removal from office.
Astrid
Glad I mostly stayed away this weekend. I guess with the right wing fizzle (entirely predictable for a country where 95% of the population is a job firing from permanent destitution and falling out of their class), nobody is worried about surviving the actual encroachment of neofeudalism, as imposed by the Ds, Rs, and their various corporate masters.
For the Hughs and Willys and KT Chongs, don’t be surprised that as you did not speak up for (and indeed completely trashed the right to due process and dignity of) people who happens to disagree with you on a few points, nobody will be there to speak for you when it’s your turn.
NR
bruce wilder:
You need to reread Article I, Section 3:
S Brennan
NR,
I believe that is an “and” not an “or”. Per your interpretation NR, impeachment could be held a priori to obtainment of office.
With no time limit, anytime a political party, having reached majority wished to punish it’s political opponents, for any number vacuous reasons, it could, under your interpretation NR, eliminate any/all opponents past/present/future officeholders from holding office using “impeachment”. I try not to speak for the dead but, I feel confident were you to argue your point to the writers of the US Constitution…they would spit in your face and call you what you are, a political hack*.
*Only a fool, fascist or political hack would argue such a concept. Please note; I have been most kind in my conjecture.
NR
And per *your* interpretation, S Brennan, anyone could avoid being barred from office under Article 1, Section 3 simply by resigning prior to being convicted in the Senate. Since, as they would no longer be in office, they could not be removed from office, which you believe is a prerequisite for being barred from office.
I feel confident that if you were to argue your point to the writers of the U.S. Constitution, they would feel insulted by the fact that you think they would be stupid enough to design a punishment with such a trivially easy way to avoid it, and would call you what you are, a dishonest right-wing cultist. Although since I do not share your out-of-control anger issues, I don’t imagine them spitting in your face or anything similar; words would be more than enough to dismiss you with.
Hugh
This is Article I, Section 3, Clause 7 on punishments stemming from impeachment:
“Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”
For those unfamiliar with the concept, this is a list. It contains 3 items:
1. Removal from office.
2. Disqualification from any other office
3. Liability to prosecution under federal law.
Impeachment as described in the US Constitution applies to federal positions, something all of us except metamars seem aware of. And as the language of the text indicates, because the Framers weren’t writing for idiots, these were higher level federal positions, positions of honor, trust, and profit.
Hugh
This is Article I, Section 3, Clause 7 on punishments stemming from impeachment:
“Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”
For those unfamiliar with the concept, this is a list. It contains 3 items:
1. Removal from office.
2. Disqualification from any other office
3. Liability to prosecution under federal law.
Impeachment as described in the US Constitution applies to federal positions, something all of us except metamars seem aware of. And as the language of the text indicates, because the Framers weren’t writing for idiots, these were higher level federal positions, positions of honor, trust, and profit.
S Brennan
Did Trump resign? No he did not he finished his time in office. So in short, you attempt to sell a diversionary lie. Democrats waited until the results of the election in Georgia gave them the votes needed for impeachment. What I said above Stands:
“Per your interpretation NR, impeachment could be held a priori to obtainment of office.
With no time limit, anytime a political party, having reached majority wished to punish it’s political opponents, for any number vacuous reasons, it could, under your interpretation NR, eliminate any/all opponents past/present/future officeholders from holding office using “impeachment”. I try not to speak for the dead but, I feel confident were you to argue your point to the writers of the US Constitution…they would spit in your face and call you what you are, a political hack*.
*Only a fool, fascist or political hack would argue such a concept. Please note; I have been most kind in my conjecture.”
NR
Whether someone leaves office by resignation or by finishing their term makes no difference at all as to whether they are still in office or not. Either way, they are no longer in office. So in short, you attempt to lie, deflect, and distract, as is usual for you, S Brennan. What I said above stands:
“And per *your* interpretation, S Brennan, anyone could avoid being barred from office under Article 1, Section 3 simply by resigning prior to being convicted in the Senate. Since, as they would no longer be in office, they could not be removed from office, which you believe is a prerequisite for being barred from office.
I feel confident that if you were to argue your point to the writers of the U.S. Constitution, they would feel insulted by the fact that you think they would be stupid enough to design a punishment with such a trivially easy way to avoid it, and would call you what you are, a dishonest right-wing cultist. Although since I do not share your out-of-control anger issues, I don’t imagine them spitting in your face or anything similar; words would be more than enough to dismiss you with.”
Hugh
The Framers were men of their age. They had plenty of prejudices and were a pretty anti-democratic lot. But they weren’t idiots, and they didn’t write the Constitution for idiots. Impeachment for them was a way to put limitations on certain kinds of power. They were not interested in laying out every possible contingency that our current whack right wing comes up with. If they wrote something, they weren’t wasting words. It’s there because they thought it was important to be said. And if it isn’t, they thought the general principle and common sense were enough.
But with today’s right wing, it clearly is not. They say whatever they want to say. If someone brings up the Constitution, they say the Constitution says whatever they want it to say –even if it says the opposite. I mean look at the 2nd Amendment. How many gun owners belong to a well regulated militia? Answer: none. Not since the Civil War, a 150 years ago. They wrote the 2nd and 3rd Amendments because they saw a standing army as a danger to them and the republic. But the right wing simply erased the history and turned gun ownership into some kind of 11th Commandment that Moses brought down from Sinai. You think they can’t and aren’t doing the same thing with impeachment? Or that they wouldn’t turn around and make the exact opposite arguments if they wanted to target a Democrat with impeachment? The Framers gave us the tools to guard against dictatorship. The brains and stones to use them is on us.
S Brennan
Again NR,
Did Trump resign? No he did not he finished his time in office. So in short, you attempt to sell a diversionary lie. Democrats waited until the results of the election in Georgia gave them the votes needed for impeachment. What I said above Stands:
“Per your interpretation NR, impeachment could be held a priori to obtainment of office.
With no time limit, anytime a political party, having reached majority wished to punish it’s political opponents, for any number vacuous reasons, it could, under your interpretation NR, eliminate any/all opponents past/present/future officeholders from holding office using “impeachment”. I try not to speak for the dead but, I feel confident were you to argue your point to the writers of the US Constitution…they would spit in your face and call you what you are, a political hack*.
*Only a fool, fascist or political hack would argue such a concept. Please note; I have been most kind in my conjecture.”
different clue
@Bruce Wilder,
I have thought of a possible other name for “neo-liberalism”. How about calling it “market stalinism”? That sounds more catchy and also more threatening and more trigger more thought.
” Neo-liberalism” just sounds like ” lets update liberalism to keep up with the times”. “Neo” meaning ” new” and all.
S Brennan
Nice one DC…
Following your lead…perhaps “Market Marxism” might be catchier; the double constant and all?
different clue
@someofparts,
Obama killed off Howard Dean’s ” 50 state strategy” of deep and broad organizing and outreaching. I think he did that in line with the DLC Hamilton Project Democrats’s upper-class emphasis.
And , as you say, Biden continues the emphasis on limiting DemParty participation wherever possible to the Goldman-Sachs feminists and the New Yuppie Scumocrats.
So the Black-Oriented organizers showed what is possible in the shadow of DemParty indifference. I don’t think the DemParty will be so indifferent next time. I think the DemParty ( the Party of Pelosi, Obama, and Dianne Feinstein’s husband) will try undermining the Georgia Volunteers as much as the DemParty can get away with.
So, given that the Black-Oriented Georgia Organizers see what is possible, have they considered starting their own party in certain cases? A party which could be called the New Deal Revival Party? Or the Real Democrat Party? Or some such thing?
Because people like them either need to conquer and declintaminate the Democratic Party or they need to exterminate the Democratic Party and create their own Real Democrat Party (being careful to rigidly exclude infiltration by Goldman-Sachs feminists or New Yuppie Scumocrats who would immediately begin plotting to clintaminate any new such party.)
different clue
@S Brennan,
Market marxism could also be tried. People could try either, or both, and see if either or both of them catch on.
( I liked market stalinism because of the nastiness of stalinism. And just imagine that nastiness disguised in false market flags. In 1950 there were 6 million farms in America. Now there are 1 million. The rest were abolished during the ” Corporate collectivization of the kulaks”.)
NR
S Brennan,
Since you’re just spamming the exact same comment over and over again and not even attempting to refute my argument, I’m going to take that as an admission that you have no counterargument. Thank you for admitting you were wrong and that impeachment can continue even after someone is out of office.
mago
Insufferable this comment thread section/whatever. Astrid hit the nail good though, imho.
Jaja.
different clue
” Insufferable this comment thread section/whatever.”
And yet you are still here, still suffering. I’ll bet you even read this comment, didn’t you?
Jaja.