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.
This an article about an interview with Steve Bannon, Trump's campaign manager and chief Strategist,
and the chairman of Breitbart media. Breitbart is a known promoter of various right wing mis-truths
and contrived docu-mercials depicting political falsehoods, like those against Acorn, Planned
Parenthood, and the hyperbolic non-sense of falsely registered voters or voter fraud.
(Note: yes it is true that some registration organizations gather signatures of person's who
write Mickey Mouse and
Superman on registration ballots, but these are 100% filtered out by the employees at the local
state Registration office, and never make it to the actual real world voter registration list.
However, attacking these groups by infiltrating their signature gathering attempts with people who
deliberately contrive to put these fake names on the registration cards -- and then "exposing" this
occurrence in a docu-mercial -- is what Breitbart calls "journalism."
He never called himself a “populist” or an “American nationalist,” as so many think of him today.
“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.
Shocked, I asked him what he meant.
“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring
everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment ...”
“[The] National Review and The Weekly Standard,” he said, “are both left-wing magazines, and I want
to destroy them also.” He added that “no one reads them or cares what they say.” His goal was to
bring down the entire establishment including the leaders of the Republican Party in Congress....
Trump’s behavior thus far has been compatible with Bannon’s belief in Leninist tactics. As the
Bolshevik leader once said, “The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to
find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way
as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.”
[SOURCE:Ronald Radosh | The Daily
Beast | 21 August 2016]
Some other things about Steven Bannon and Breitbart "in their own words" comes from the New York Times.
Referring to Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin in a 2011 radio interview on Political
Vindication Radio, he said: “These women cut to the heart of the progressive narrative. That’s why
there are some unintended consequences of the women’s liberation movement. That, in fact, the women
that would lead this country would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love their
children. They wouldn’t be a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools up in New
England. That drives the left insane, and that’s why they hate these women.”
[SOURCE:Danile Victor and Liam Stack | New York
Times | 14 November 2016 ]
The pot calls the kettle black and then makes some tea.
Donald Trump spent the past two years attacking rival Hillary Clinton as crooked, corrupt, and weak.
But some of those attacks seem to have already slipped into the history books.
From installing Wall Street executives in his Cabinet to avoiding news conferences, the
president-elect is adopting some of the same behavior for which he criticized Clinton during their
fiery presidential campaign...
GOLDMAN SACHS
Then: "I know the guys at Goldman Sachs," Trump said at a South Carolina rally in February, when
he was locked in a fierce primary battle with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. "They have total, total control
over him. Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton."
Now: A number of former employees of the Wall Street bank will pay a key role in crafting Trump's
economic policy. He's tapped Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn to lead the White House National
Economic Council. Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary nominee, spent 17 years working at Goldman
Sachs and Steve Bannon, Trump's chief strategist and senior counselor, started his career as an
investment banker at the firm.
Trump is following in a long political tradition, though one he derided on the campaign trail: If
Cohn accepts the nomination, he'll be the third Goldman executive to run the NEC.
BIG DONORS
Then: "Crooked Hillary. Look, can you imagine another four years of the Clintons? Seriously. It's
time to move on. And she's totally controlled by Wall Street and all these people that gave her
millions," Trump said at a May rally in Lynden, Washington.
Now: Trump has stocked his Cabinet with six top donors — far more than any recent White House. "I
want people that made a fortune. Because now they're negotiating with you, OK?" Trump said, in a
December 9 speech in Des Moines.
The biggest giver? Linda McMahon, incoming small business administrator, gave $7.5 million to a
super PAC backing Trump, more than a third of the money collected by the political action committee.
NEWS CONFERENCES
Then: "She doesn't do news conferences, because she can't," Trump said at an August rally in
Ashburn, Virginia. "She's so dishonest she doesn't want people peppering her with questions."
Now: Trump opened his last news conference on July 27, saying: "You know, I put myself through your
news conferences often, not that it's fun."
He hasn't held one since.
Trump skipped the news conference a president-elect typically gives after winning the White House.
Instead, he released a YouTube video of under three minutes. He also recently abruptly canceled
plans to hold his first post-election news conference, opting instead to describe his plans for
managing his businesses in tweets. "I will hold a press conference in the near future to discuss the
business, Cabinet picks and all other topics of interest. Busy times!" he tweeted in mid-December.
FAMILY TIES:
Then: "It is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the State Department
begins. It is now abundantly clear that the Clintons set up a business to profit from public office.
They sold access and specific actions by and really for I guess the making of large amounts of
money," Trump said at an August rally in Austin.
Now: While Trump has promised to separate himself from his businesses, there is plenty of overlap
between his enterprises and his immediate family. His companies will be run by his sons, Donald Jr
and Eric. And his daughter, Ivanka, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have joined Trump at a number of
meetings with world leaders of countries where the family has financial interests.
In a financial disclosure he was required to file during the campaign, Trump listed stakes in about
500 companies in at least 25 countries.
Ivanka, in particular, has been caught making early efforts to leverage her father's new position
into profits. After an interview with the family appeared on "60 Minutes," her jewelry company,
Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, blasted out an email promoting the $10,800 gold bangle bracelet that she
had worn during the appearance. The company later said they were "proactively discussing new
policies and procedures."
Ivanka is also auctioning off a private coffee meeting with her to benefit her brother's foundation.
The meeting is valued at $50,000, with the current top bid coming in at $25,000.
"United States Secret Service will be Present for the Duration of the Experience," warns the auction
site.
After 6 bankruptcies, Trump was somehow still able to get new capital investments. James Henry, who
recently published an article in the magazine, The American Interest, titled "The Curious World of Donald Trump's Private Russian
Connections."
This information comes not from some fringe lunatic.
James S. Henry is a leading economist, attorney and investigative journalist who has written
extensively about global issues. James served as Chief Economist at the international consultancy
firm McKinsey & Co. As an investigative journalist his work has appeared in numerous publications
like Forbes, The Nation and The New York Times. He was the lead researcher of the recently released
report titled 'The Price of Offshore Revisited.'
Trump Vineyard Estates LLC filed a request Dec. 2 with the Labor Department for six H2 visas, which
permit U.S. employers to hire foreigners for seasonal jobs such as pruning grapevines, which is what
the request said. The request was posted online by the Labor Department on Wednesday and first
reported by BuzzFeed News.
The workers are needed to prune the vines on the estate, the Labor application said, and they would
be paid $10.72 per hour for a 40-hour, six-day week. The jobs are anticipated to last from January
to June....
The Trump vineyard applied for 19 temporary visas for foreign workers in 2014, 2015 and this year,
before the most recent request, according to federal records. In addition, he has sought to hire 513
foreign workers since 2013 for some of his other businesses, including for his Palm Beach home,
Mar-a-Lago Club.
Do you see the irony here? The same candidate who protested about immigrants taking jobs, is asking
for permission to hire (and has previously hired) immigrant labor instead of hiring American
workers. Obviously, it was all
bullshit. The chutzpah of these people is simply amazing.
Tuesday, 20 December 2016 at 18h 38m 37s
Planned Obsolescence
Planned Obsolescence is
inefficient and destructive. What appears good to the individual firm in the short term, might
actually be destructive in the aggregate. Interesting video.
The favorite game of this industry is to build [it] and then blow [it] up and rebuild it again....
Increased necessity produces increased inefficiency.... It's a value system disorder.
Tuesday, 20 December 2016 at 3h 48m 39s
I love Rachel Maddow
Supporting dictators who enable cheap extraction of resources is unfortunately the history of the
Western world, and perhaps humanity in general.
Click here for a Rachel
Maddow expose on how Rex Tillerson changed the Chad oil market to help a dictator and destabilize
the region, against the interests of the United States. Or watch the video below. Your choice.
Joseph Stiglitz knows a few things about economics. He was the chief economist of the World Bank
from 1997 to 2000. He was the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors to President Bill Clinton
from 1995 to 1997. He is currently an Economics professor at Columbia University.
He also writes for an outlet called Project Syndicate, an online warehouse of various columnists and opinion writers
that can get picked up an published by newspapers. The website is practically an independent
periodical, except the individuals who write are mostly reputable and knowledgable. Any potential
spin is at least intelligent, and not based on blatant abuse of facts or outright lies, which has
somehow become tolerable in the mainstream press.
During the campaign, Trump promised to get tough on executives who outsource American jobs. He is
now holding up the news that the home heating and air-conditioning manufacturer Carrier will keep
around 800 jobs in my home state of Indiana as proof that his approach works. Yet the deal will cost
taxpayers $7m, and still allow Carrier to outsource 1,300 jobs to Mexico. This is not a sound
industrial or economic policy, and it will do nothing to help raise wages or create good jobs across
the country. It is an open invitation for a shakedown of the government by corporate executives
seeking handouts.
Similarly, the increase in infrastructure spending is likely to be accomplished through tax credits,
which will help hedge funds, but not America’s balance sheet: such programmes’ long track record
shows that they deliver little value for money. The cost to the public will be especially high in an
era when the government can borrow at near-zero interest rates. If these private-public partnerships
are like those elsewhere, the government will assume the risks, and the hedge funds will assume the
profits.
The debate just eight years ago about “shovel-ready” infrastructure seems to be a distant memory. If
Trump chooses shovel-ready projects, the long-term impact on productivity will be minimal; if he
chooses real infrastructure, the short-term impact on economic growth will be minimal. And
back-loaded stimulus has its own problems, unless it is managed extremely carefully.
If Trump’s pick for US treasury secretary, the Goldman Sachs and hedge fund veteran Steven Mnuchin,
is like others from his industry, the expertise he will bring to the job will be in tax avoidance,
not constructing a well-designed tax system .... [T]ax reform was inevitable, and was likely to be
undertaken by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and his staff – giving the rich the less progressive,
more capital-friendly tax system that Republicans have long sought. With the abolition of the estate
tax, the Republicans would finally realise their long-held ambition of creating a dynastic
plutocracy – a far cry from the “equality of opportunity” maxim the party once trumpeted.
Monday, 19 December 2016 at 22h 23m 11s
The Bahamas connection
Rex Tillerson sat on the board of a Russian oil company based out of the Bahamas. Click here for the story in the Guardian, a UK newspaper.
Tillerson – the chief executive of ExxonMobil – became a director of the oil company’s Russian
subsidiary, Exxon Neftegas, in 1998. His name – RW Tillerson – appears next to other officers who
are based at Houston, Texas; Moscow; and Sakhalin, in Russia’s far east.
Monday, 19 December 2016 at 18h 37m 19s
Global capitalism New York conference
This is a great
video lecture from Richard D. Wolff, a very intelligent, infamous professor of economics at
University of Massachusetts from 1973 to 2008. He is called a "socialist" economist, but I think he
is more of a historian than anything else. He just happens to be anti-militarist, and so I think
that's why he gets this label -- because he thinks the economy should not be run dominated by
military spending. Regardless of your perspective, his intelligence transcends ideological bounds
because he truly understands economics and history.
Saturday, 17 December 2016 at 22h 44m 38s
Sabotage and Jim Crow
Click here for the Greg Palast report on how Rethuglicans sabotage democracy
with a straight face.
How come Obama said nothing about this during his big Friday speech? Not one word from our black
president. Not one single word.