It's not
about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.
It's because the Republicans have been systematically put into place and blackmailed -- which is why Jeffrey Epstein was .... I'll leave that up to you to fill in the details.
It's disgusting. So when you see the merchants of lies show up on your TV or you-tube or twitter feed spewing lies, you have to wonder, what do they have on you?
Lindsay Graham from South Carolina. John Kennedy from Louisiana. Devin Nunes from California. Jim Jordan from Ohio. What do they have on you? Why sell your integrity for pennies on the dollar?
Wednesday, 4 December 2019 at 4h 42m 23s
Logical Fallacies
I love Beau. He has a genuine, thoughtful, and respectful take on issues. He also does an intelligent discussion of human logical fallacies. The Republican party currently lives on the basis of misinformation campaigns and heavy use of logical fallacies, as Beau explains here.
Recently I pointed out to someone who lives in my neighborhood that Herr Trump had "Rudy Giuliani running a shadow state department, and Eric Prince attempting to set up back channel communications with Russia and Saudi Arabia via a meeting in the Seychelles Islands." The person said, "Oh, well you just don't like Trump's style" and discredited my facts.
Uhm, like 2 years ago
[SOURCE:Washington Post | 3 April 2017 | ] ...
And, how do you accidentally wind up here meeting operatives from BOTH Russia and Saudi Arabia?
Puh-lease.
This is fucking serious y'all. We have a President and a political party that has been colluding (at the worst) or willing to collude with heinous foreign governments both during the Trump campaign and after Trump got elected. The Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, and Eric Prince incidents prove this. Our government has been invaded by partisan hacks who are blind, hell bent on destroying the government from the inside out and whittling away at the democracy we have been building and improving since 1776 or earlier.
They look the other way when the NRA was found to be laundering money from Russian sources, and involved with a Russian spy that got arrested -- sleeping with various high level officials like a true spy, a modern day Mata Hari.
The links are a complex web as evidenced by two of those at the 2016 convention dinner. Ex-Moscow banker Alexander Torshin, who was sanctioned last year, and his gun rights protege Maria Butina, who in late 2018 pleaded guilty to being a Russian influence agent and is now cooperating with US law enforcement, spent years cozying up to the NRA and some of its leaders.
[SOURCE #1:Guardian Newspaper | 1 March 2019]
[SOURCE:NPR (National Public Radio) | 27 September 2019]
Was that hammered into your skull by the corporate media sources? Of course not. The owner's are only interested in managing their own personal benefits from the global capitalist system and could care less about a functional democracy that enables a government of, by, and for the people. So the owner's hire spokesperson's who frame the contemporary issues in manageable paradigms, or simply ignore -- which is what is happening here. Most of the elite think they can manage this maniac in the white house, hiding behind the corporate artifices of civic communication. They think of themselves as providing outdoorsy stump speaking events, with folksie-aw-shucks people standing on wooden boxes and speaking before crowds sitting on the grass.
Newsflash. The TV and the internet are not public speaking events. The people you see speaking on corporate media are well paid. We are being pigeonholed into manipulated categories and fed propaganda, some blatant and some subtle. Some media outlets (MSNBC, Washington Post) largely consist of facts; others (Fox, SF Chronicle) often contort facts to the extreme, even outright lying. That's the difference between the Democratic and Republican party nowadays, competing versions of how to manage the underclasses for the Billionaire classes that own them. This is the inevitable result of allowing money to influence (pay for) our democracy, the fact that an entire political party is basically okay with colluding with foreign governments to influence or manipulate politics or democratic elections.
Which blows my mind. Reagan Republicans would spit on this modern after-birth of what had been something resembling integrity before the two World Wars. Hiram Johnston, Theodore Roosevelt, Florencio LaGuardia, and Robert M. La Follette to name a few. After FDR captured the government in 1932 the morbid uber-wealthy put their resources into the Republican party, and gradually strangled the integrity out of it, preferring the hiring of charlatans, political jackals, and word merchants to prop up their overall desire to get whatever they want without any civic obligations necessary -- because ... capitalism? Free Markets? The Divine Right of Kings? .. or whatever mojo they can string together to confuse the plebs.
Sunday, 24 November 2019 at 2h 32m 22s
Dr. Pamela Popper
It's all about the Benjamins y'all.
Tuesday, 19 November 2019 at 5h 13m 9s
13 Articles of Impeachment
The inimitable Ralph Nader and the esteemed Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein (an honorable Republican) lay out the articles of impeachment.
Of course, since Trump didn't get a blow job (aka Bill Clinton) in the oval office, the Rethuglican traitors in Congress will cry foul.
Sad. Massive sad.
Interestingly enough, did you know, that the reason why the Impeachment process was put into the Constitution was because Ben Franklin made the argument, what if a foreign power got involved in influencing the election process? That argument convinced those who were on the fence over whether to include the impeachment process instead of relying on elections.
Our forefathers were amazingly prescient.
Here is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the Chris Hayes show. I love AOC. Awesome woman.
Sunday, 17 November 2019 at 6h 26m 3s
Malcolm lays out the geo-political reality
Wednesday, 23 October 2019 at 1h 38m 30s
True That
I agree with one of my fav bloggers, you cannot appeal to the better angels of the ubermensch (good word, look it up)
You don't need facebook for propaganda and you don't need Russian twitter bots, either. The focus on Russian influence has let everybody else off the hook. Any time there's some bullshit on the internet people scream "RUSSIA!" Yah, well, maybe it is, but while that's an issue it isn't the sole source of bullshit on the internet. You don't need rubles for that. We have a very well funded domestic conservative bullshit operation.
It is scary that your MAGA-brains share every piece of bullshit from any website on facebook. Email forwards from the old days from your racist uncle were scary, too. As is Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, bulk mail propaganda, etc. I'm not saying all of these are precisely the same thing, but hoping for some referees, or even the Marshal of the Supreme Court, to somehow correct for them, is not going to be productive. There are no referees.
To the extent that something like Facebook is a uniquely bad feature in the year of our Gritty, 2019, you have to fix them with power. Your personal power, political power, etc. Appealing to Zuck to do the right thing is silly. And, really, while it's reasonable to ask all of these entities to enforce the rules they claim they enforce, otherwise they're going to do what they're going to do as long as it makes them money. I don't really understand what motivates these rich weirdos, but apparently "doing good" is not it.
Click here and read what William B. Taylor said today. Mr. Taylor is the senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine.
If you rely on news media, your ignorance will be preyed upon, because the corporate media is bought by the uber-wealthy in order to suppress the will of the people and create internecine controversy, distracting us from the more important issues.
Sunday, 13 October 2019 at 5h 32m 0s
Malcolm Nance in 2018
Malcolm has been a true patriot.
Trump was purposefully recruited by Putin's thugs. The Republican party has been infiltrated with intrusions of money from foreign sources and entire floors of Trump hotel rooms are being paid for at thousands of dollars per room by foreign agents. Much like the condominiums on his various properties got bought for millions of dollars over the market value by dubious characters with foreign connections.
Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell's wife Elaine Chao has had links to Chinese elites through her father.
In China, the Chaos are no ordinary family. They run an American shipping company with deep ties to the economic and political elite in China, where most of the company’s business is centered.
[SOURCE:Michael Forsythe, Eric Lipton, Keith Bradsher and Sui-Lee Wee | New York Times | 2 June 2019]
The smart Republicans jumped ship once they sniffed the treason. Only a few have actually spoken out. The vast majority of Republicans are cowering in fear because they have never governed based on conviction but upon what pablum they could speak to those who voted for them that their wealthy corporate donors would support. Mike Pence is a perfect example of this ilk.
Wednesday, 25 September 2019 at 3h 34m 12s
Richard D Wolff explains the Market
We are all bullshitted by propaganda provided for us by the wealthy who buy the communication systems (newspapers, media outlets, magazines, social apps) for the sole purpose of brainwashing the rest of us on their paradigm.
If you are getting manipulated, the manipulators need to make you feel that your manipulation is somehow a natural state of the "real" world. They hire charlatans and snakes who willingly use nuanced language or stir up primordial prejudices in order to bullshit the vast majority of persons who are getting fucked over by the morbid stupid paradigms used by those who are in positions of wealth to justify this dysfunctional system.
Markets destroy communities when they are not properly regulated. There is nothing inherently "free" about markets. Market systems exist independent of the overall political system. Dictatorships and Democracies alike rely upon markets for the distribution of goods and services.
Tuesday, 24 September 2019 at 1h 24m 11s
My Wholesome Advice to a Friend
This is what I advised a lady friend of mine recently who was concerned about some other people that she referred to as "enemies"
If indeed you feel these folks are purposely trying to “get under your skin” … why would you give them that satisfaction?
My mom always told me that 90% of what you react to is based on your own personal history, the other 10% is what is actually in the moment. So perceiving other people as “enemies” is kind of silly. People do what they do. If they are so weak and pathetic that they need to play mind games then that is on them. Which is very sad. Once you encounter such persons, put them in the regressive child category, because this is how children behave. And then treat them accordingly. The phrase “Love thy enemies” means to develop a big picture understanding. If people are playing mind games and are petty, they are telling you that they cannot overcome their unresolved issues. If you take that personally, it is because of your own unresolved issues.
I say this because this is true of me as well. But if you see others as enemies, you will be carrying a burden of disdain and negativity that is not good for your soul. Instead perceive these overgrown children as fools, silly people who need help, and you should just be you and don’t even give them a microcosm of space in your brain. However ... always leave room in your heart. Because that is how you end the cycle of pain and suffering.