Trump?

[James DiEugenio]

On November 12, 2016 at 2:00 PM, Cliff Varnell said:

Jim, at the beginning of the year you were the only I can remember on this board who came out for Clinton. What happened? Was it a book you read?

Was it anything like the epiphany Gary Mack must have felt when he could no longer convince himself about "Badgeman"?      

Just thought I'd add in a reference to the Kennedy assassination.

Kirk, the last thing I want you to think is that somehow I voted for Trump.  No I did not.  I have never voted Republican in my life because I believe in the things JFK worked on: civil rights for all, a gentle American foreign policy in the Third World, an expanding economy, and peace at all costs.

But I should add, I have never voted for a Clinton,  Since I live in California, I can vote my conscience.  So in general elections I vote for the Green party.  In the primaries i voted for Jerry Brown in 1992, John Edwards in 2008, and Sanders in 2016.

The reason I never voted for a Clinton is simple: from the beginning I had them pegged as Democratic Poseurs. And sure enough, by 1994, Clinton had become Republican Lite.  I mean what kind of Democrat brings in DIckie Morris as his chief strategist?

Cliff writes a very one sided history of Clinton in 1992 above.  Consdier what he tried to do from 1993 to 1994 and you will understand why the GOP took back congress in 1994.

1. He gives his wife the unofficial health care desk, and she utterly fails to get single player off the ground, let alone accepted. We get great plans: for the insurance industry.

2. Gays in the military, don't ask don't tell.  Why would anyone with a big nine point victory (largely due to Perot), do something like this in his first two years?  He got blasted by the Pentagon.

3. Passes NAFTA and makes Gore the point man on it.  Thereby setting himself us as David Rockefeller's agent. Mack McClarty was Rockefeller's contact point on this issue in the White House.  Kennedy would not even let Rockefeller in the White House to talk about it.  After its passage,  McClarty went to work for Rockefeller agent Kissinger. He then set up his own version of Kissinger Associates.  Only a Democrat could get through this globalist agenda.  

No wonder he got blasted in 1994.  He then turns even more Republican with business deregulation, telecom deregulation, the crime bill, NATO intervention in the Balkans etc.  But what do you expect from a DLC member who attends the Bilderberger meeting  before he gets elected.

Clintonism was a plague on the Democratic Party.  The only good thing about the HRC defeat is now Clintonism is gone forever.   We can now get back to being Kennedy Democrats: with people like Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders, and Ellison.

Edited November 14, 2016 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

13 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Kirk, the last thing I want you to think is that somehow I voted for Trump.  No I did not.  I have never voted Republican in my life because I believe in the things JFK worked on: civil rights for all, a gentle American foreign policy in the Third World, an expanding economy, and peace at all costs.

But I should add, I have never voted for a Clinton,  Since I live in California, I can vote my conscience.  So in general elections I vote for the Green party.  In the primaries i voted for Jerry Brown in 1992, John Edwards in 2008, and Sanders in 2016.

The reason I never voted for a Clinton is simple: from the beginning I had them pegged as Democratic Poseurs. And sure enough, by 1994, Clinton had become Republican Lite.  I mean what kind of Democrat brings in DIckie Morris as his chief strategist.

Cliff writes very one sided history of Clinton in 1992 above.  

I did what?

WTF are you refering to?

Consdier what he tried to do from 1993 to 1994 and you will understand why the GOP took back congress in 1994.

1. He gives his wife the unofficial health care desk, and she utterly fails to get single player off the ground, let alone accepted.

Like every President since Teddy Roosevelt.

Nine decades of governmental failure on health care.

Carter would have passed it but Teddy Kennedy scuttled it.

We get great plans: for the insurance industry.

They didn't think Hillarycare was so great -- it was the insurance industry who scuttled it with a blanket of folksy ads!

2. Gays in the military, don't ask don't tell.  Why would anyone with a big nine point victory (largely due to Perot),

Another myth.  Exit polls from the 1992 election showed an even split from Perot voters.

do something like this in his first two years?  He got blasted by the Pentagon.

Took place in the early weeks of 1993 -- the issue blew over.

That's the extent of my defense of the Clintons.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 14, 2016 by Cliff Varnell

[Douglas Caddy]

Scenes from anti-Trump protests

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/12/us/elections/photographs-from-anti-trump-protests.html

 

[Thomas Graves]

On 11/13/2016 at 10:39 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Kirk, the last thing I want you to think is that somehow I voted for Trump.  No I did not.  I have never voted Republican in my life because I believe in the things JFK worked on: civil rights for all, a gentle American foreign policy in the Third World, an expanding economy, and peace at all costs.

But I should add, I have never voted for a Clinton,  Since I live in California, I can vote my conscience.  So in general elections I vote for the Green party.  In the primaries i voted for Jerry Brown in 1992, John Edwards in 2008, and Sanders in 2016.

The reason I never voted for a Clinton is simple: from the beginning I had them pegged as Democratic Poseurs. And sure enough, by 1994, Clinton had become Republican Lite.  I mean what kind of Democrat brings in DIckie Morris as his chief strategist?

Cliff writes a very one sided history of Clinton in 1992 above.  Consdier what he tried to do from 1993 to 1994 and you will understand why the GOP took back congress in 1994.

1. He gives his wife the unofficial health care desk, and she utterly fails to get single player off the ground, let alone accepted. We get great plans: for the insurance industry.

2. Gays in the military, don't ask don't tell.  Why would anyone with a big nine point victory (largely due to Perot), do something like this in his first two years?  He got blasted by the Pentagon.

3. Passes NAFTA and makes Gore the point man on it.  Thereby setting himself us as David Rockefeller's agent. Mack McClarty was Rockefeller's contact point on this issue in the White House.  Kennedy would not even let Rockefeller in the White House to talk about it.  After its passage,  McClarty went to work for Rockefeller agent Kissinger. He then set up his own version of Kissinger Associates.  Only a Democrat could get through this globalist agenda.  

No wonder he got blasted in 1994.  He then turns even more Republican with business deregulation, telecom deregulation, the crime bill, NATO intervention in the Balkans etc.  But what do you expect from a DLC member who attends the Bilderberger meeting  before he gets elected.

Clintonism was a plague on the Democratic Party.  The only good thing about the HRC defeat is now Clintonism is gone forever.   We can now get back to being Kennedy Democrats: with people like Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders, and Ellison.

Dear Mr. DiEugenio,

"Peace at all costs," huh?

Reminds me of Daladier and Chamberlain in 1938.  Can you spell M-U-N-I-C-H?

(How did that work out, by the way?}

--  Tommy

PS  I, too, idolize JFK.  But don't you think he risked going to war when he blockaded Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis? 

(BTW, he did the right thing there.)

 

 

Edited November 15, 2016 by Thomas Graves

[Douglas Caddy]

http://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/11/15/trump-transition-shake-up-part-of-stalinesque-purge-of-christi/21606533/

[Sandy Larsen]

On 11/13/2016 at 11:39 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Clintonism was a plague on the Democratic Party.

Under Bill Clinton:

• Violent crime rate fell by 33%.
• The U.S. experienced the longest economic expansion in history.
• 23 million jobs were added to the economy.
• Median household income increased by 14%, the greatest increase for any two-term president.
  For African American families the increase was 30%.
• Poverty dropped to near record lows.
• The federal budget went from enormous deficits to enormous surpluses.
• The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was created, providing free or near-free insurance for kids in low--income families.
• It became legal for gays to serve in the military.
• The Internet was created.

No wonder Clinton left office with a 65% approval rating.

(But some people are never satisfied.)

[James DiEugenio]

TG: 

Dear Mr. DiEugenio,

"Peace at all costs," huh?

Reminds me of Daladier and Chamberlain in 1938.  Can you spell M-U-N-I-C-H?

(How did that work out, by the way?}

--  Tommy 

PS  I, too, idolize JFK.  But don't you think he risked going to war when he blockaded Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis? 

(BTW, he did the right thing there.)

 

It means you don't go to war over some made up data from State Department analysts, as with HRC and Iraq.

Or insert combat troops into a nationalistic war in Indochina, which American troops cannot win.

Or use American air power to save an unwarranted invasion of  an island that never attacked the USA.

As per the Missile Crisis, only one person died.  And he was an American.  There was a contingency plan to bomb Cuba when he was shot down, which Nitze wanted JFK to do in return.  Kennedy did not.

You only commit American troops and blood into war when 1.) Your vital interests are threatened and  2.) All other negotiations for avoidance have failed.

In the Missile Crisis, Kennedy and Nikita negotiated a way out.

IF you listen to LBJ on those tapes you will see, that if his advice had been followed, we probably would not be here today.

 

[Thomas Graves]

Dear Mr. DiEugenio,

If you will take the time to read about this true Russian / Soviet hero and you'll realize how close we really "came".https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov

 

Please do realize that I'm grateful that JFK had the gonads to ignore LeMay, Johnson, etc, and to blockade Cuba instead of invading it or nuking it.  

 

While I'm at it:

What about the 1948 - 1949 Berlin Airlift?  Did we do the right thing, there, Mr. DiEugenio?

It's interesting that you didn't mention Crimea, Putin's "Little Green Men," The Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, GRU-boy-Igor Girkin's / Igor 'Strelkov's' shootdown (by mistake - he / they thought it was a Ukrainian military plane) of MH17 with one of Putin's BUK's (which scampered back across the border into Mother Russia the next day), etc.

--  Tommy

Edited November 15, 2016 by Thomas Graves

[Douglas Caddy]

Trump and his IRS tax return. Trump gets inaugurated on Jan 20. He must file his 2016 tax return by April 15, 2017, or ask for an extension. Eventually, sooner or later, he must file his return. Presidents always make their tax returns public. Will Trump do the same or will he refuse to make the return public or will he say he can't make it public because he (as President) is being audited by the IRS? The latter option does not sound like a wise PR move. This should get interesting.

[Cliff Varnell]

Break out the popcorn!

Trump has purged his transition team of moderates.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-expert-mike-rogers-leaves-trump-transition-team-amid-shake-up-1479221847

He's got 70 days to put a government together and he's dealing with a small coterie of hacks.

There is no interaction between Trump and Obama's people!

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-team-no-state-defense-outreach?utm_content=bufferd9c17&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[James DiEugenio]

Tommy:

 

That episode was in the book One Minute to Midnight.  When the author of that book was interviewed he called Kennedy's conduct of the Missile Crisis, indicative of his greatness as a president.  And anyone who reads those transcripts will realize that, except maybe Noam Chomsky.  JFK got so sick of the rightwing zealots who wanted him to attack Cuba that he carved out a back channel to Nikita through his brother.

 

As per the Berlin airlift, that is not committing combat troops.  That was a strategic supply move which did not cost the life of one American as far as I know.  

I don't know what you are talking about with Crimea.  How are American vital interests endangered there? 

[Thomas Graves]

8 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Tommy:

 

That episode was in the book One Minute to Midnight.  When the author of that book was interviewed he called Kennedy's conduct of the Missile Crisis, indicative of his greatness as a president.  And anyone who reads those transcripts will realize that, except maybe Noam Chomsky.  JFK got so sick of the rightwing zealots who wanted him to attack Cuba that he carved out a back channel to Nikita through his brother.

 

As per the Berlin airlift, that is not committing combat troops.  That was a strategic supply move which did not cost the life of one American as far as I know.  

I don't know what you are talking about with Crimea.  How are American vital interests endangered there? 

Dear Mr. DiEugenio,

So, JFK stood up to the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis, right?

And inso doing, he risked going to war, right?

Good on him, right?

--  Tommy

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Tommy:

 

In that instance, America's vital interests were at stake.  If you read the transcripts, JFK thought that the Russians were join to use this new leverage to do a horse trade with him:  America gets out of Berlin, Russia gets out of Cuba.  To Kennedy that would have been equivalent to breaking America's pledge with Europe for a protective alliance.  

Secondly, it altered the balance of power by giving the Soviets a credible first strike threat.  The Russians moved in all three legs of the atomic triad:  medium range missiles, nuclear bombers, and atomic submarines.  These were enough to knock out well over a hundred American cities, and there would have been no defense since the flight time was so quick.  

I don't know what gets more vital than that.  To JFK that was worth fighting over.  But he still found a way to negotiate both formally and informally. 

[James DiEugenio]

Sandy:

That list of yours is, for me, kind of paltry for a Democrat in office for eight years.   I mean I could do the same for Truman or even LBJ.  And i could really go to town with FDR and JFK, even though he was in office for just three years.

But you leave out the things that make the Clintons so off-putting to most Demcorats.

1.  1996 Telecomm deregulation.  Probably the most far reaching telecomm act since the creation of the FCC.  This eventually allowed  six major corporations to control about 90 per cent of all major media outlets.  It also allowed cross ownership on a scale no one had ever imagined possible.  This means TV companies could now buy newspapers, and movie studios e.g. NBC Universal.  At the same time, the public was paying more and more in cable bills for less and less choices.

2.  1999 Bank deregulation.  In many ways the White House role in this was disguised after the fact because this set the stage for the upcoming 2007-08 financial debacle that almost sent us back to 1929.  Clinton signed off on a reversal of Glass Stegall, the 60 year old law that set up a wall between personal banking and investment banking. This was done by FDR so if the stock market went south it would not drag down banks with it.  Pretty wise eh?  Bill didn't think so.  Until it happened.

3. 1999 Stock market deregulation. This one freed up the use of derivatives in the stock market with almost no regulation.  This one was so stupid and so short sighted, Bill had Democrats in the senate screaming in agony when he signed it.  They said it was a Pandora's Box of calamities waiting to happen.  Guess what? They were right.  Just read The Big Short, or for a longer version:  All the Devils are Here.  IMO, Clinton's failure to veto this law was the single most crucial factor which caused the 2007-08 blowout that brought us to the precipice of disaster.   In documents declassified in 2005, it was revealed that Podesta was a big backer of this one:  you know HRC's campaign manager. If it had been me I would have vetoed them both, and then gone on national TV. They would have been gone.

4. 1996 Welfare bill.  Only a Democrat could have passed such a thing.  Sent welfare via block grants to the states.  Guess what, black Americans bore the brunt of this since those southern states made the rules  more stringent.  Wasn't Bill from Arkansas?  He did not know this would occur?

5. 1994 Crime Bill.  This made Clinton responsible for the biggest incarceration in pure numbers of any American president in history.  It allowed for a hundred to one disparity in prison terms for crack vs powder cocaine.  Who do yo think that hurt the most?  Remember Gary Webb's expose about crack in black areas?  Michelle Hamilton's article about this in The Nation was devastating.  And the cover up by Bill in using crime stats to bolster it was vitiated by Fact Check.  Maybe  this is why twenty percent of black males voted for Trump?

6. On the eve of the Rwanda genocide, Bill recommended that the UN decrease its peacekeeping force by a factor of ten. Do I have to say anymore about what happened after?

7.  I should close with a real humdinger.  By 1998, Bill had gone so far into the Republican ranks that he was consulting with Newt Gingrich. Yep, the devil himself.  What about? Privatization of Social Security.  Let me say that agin:  Bill was in talks to privatize Social Security, the signal achievement of the New Deal.  The program that made FDR an icon to America.  The program that eventually got  tens of millions of elderly people out of poverty. A program that was so abundant, that the government raided it to assuage deficits.

You may say:  Well, nothing came of it though.  But that  was because of a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky.  Its the one good thing  that came out of that whole impeachment struggle.

Bill Clinton was the best Republican president since Dwight Eisenhower.  Unfortunately I am a Democrat. Thank God he and his wife are gone.

 

Edited November 16, 2016 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

44 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Bill Clinton was the best Republican president since Dwight Eisenhower.  Unfortunately I am a Democrat. Thanks God he and his wife are gone.

So Hillary Clinton deserved to have an election rigged against her by James Comey and the corporate news media?

She deserved to have millions of her voters disenfranchised and subject to all forms of voter suppression?

It's okay if one party relentlessly investigates the opposition leaders because we don't like those leaders?

It's okay for the head of the FBI to throw his weight against a Presidential candidate 11 days out?

This is what I mean by "fascism-apologist."

The Clinton Derangement Syndrome is so intense Republican fascism is tolerated.

Edited November 16, 2016 by Cliff Varnell