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Posts posted by Joe Bauer
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9 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:
Trump Makes Us Ill
Trumps team just held a nationally televised damage control press conference to first: milk the Afghanistan withdrawal for political gain and secondly to present an image of great achievement in the area of coronavirus control and prevention and downplaying it's seriousness in the area of death count.
Still, Trump couldn't help his inflaming political attacking self in defending and repeating his Hoax charge against the Democrats.
That their blaming of him and others in his administration of mishandling this crisis, and the dem. leaning media reporting this ... is the hoax.
He politicizes this crisis at the same time he says that only the Democrats are doing this.
And he stated that the Fed will do whatever it takes to salvage the current Stock Market landlside. Meaning, they will do this to keep his number one political gain bragging point alive and relevant versus a negative in his run for re-election.
You know Trump...whatever it takes ... for him to WIN!
9 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:Going viral is not a good thing this time.
By Maureen Dowd
Opinion Columnist - The New York Times
- Feb. 29, 2020, 2:30 p.m. ET
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Donald Trump was right.
Germs are scary.
For three decades, I talked to Trump about his fear of germs. When I interviewed him at the Trump Tower restaurant during the 2016 race, the famous germophobe had a big hospital-strength bottle of hand sanitizer on the table, next to my salad, ready to squirt.
He told me about the nightmarish feeling he had when a man emerged from the bathroom in a restaurant with wet hands and shook his hand. He couldn’t eat afterward.
Today, in a stunning twist of fate, germs are infecting his presidency and threatening a bad prognosis for his re-election prospects.
Trump is the first president to use the stock market as a near-daily measure of his success — and his virility — and now the market is slumping. If you want to own it on the way up, you have to own it on the way down.
Investors, who worried when Trump began to rise in politics, soon realized that he had their backs. He was just a corporate vessel pretending to be a populist; the stock market was his sugar high.
Now Trump is learning the hard way what my fatalistic Irish mother taught me: The thing you love most is the first to go. As Mike Bloomberg points out, investors have factored in Trump’s incompetence, and that is contributing to the market cratering.
The president urged the Fed to do something soon to mitigate the stock market losses. Socialism for the rich!
The scaremonger in chief has been downplaying the possibility of a coronavirus pandemic and joining Fox News hosts in accusing the “anti-Trump” media and “Do Nothing Democrats” of scaremongering about the virus.
At the CPAC convention, Mick Mulvaney told a cheering crowd that impeachment was the “hoax of the day” and now the press thinks the coronavirus “is going to be what brings down the president.” The media, he said, should spend more time on positive stories, like the president’s “caring” relationship with his teenage son, Barron, even though White Houses usually frown on stories about young presidential offspring.
Mike Huckabee went on the attack, asserting that Trump “could personally suck the virus out of every one of the 60,000 people in the world, suck it out of their lungs, swim to the bottom of the ocean and spit it out, and he would be accused of pollution for messing up the ocean.”
On Fox, Don Jr. said the Democrats “seemingly hope” the virus kills millions to stop Trump’s winning streak. Rush Limbaugh chimed in that the media “would love for the coronavirus to be this deadly strain that wipes everybody out so they could blame Trump for it.”
There are 2,800 dead worldwide and disturbing stories showing how federal criteria delayed the diagnosis of a California woman and how federal health employees interacted with Americans who had possibly been exposed to the virus in China without proper training or gear.
Yet Trump seems more consumed with how the Democrats might blame him for a coronavirus recession than with the virus itself.
Trump had tweet-shrieked at President Barack Obama about how he should handle Ebola. (“Obama should apologize to the American people & resign!”)
Yet he was so relaxed about the coronavirus threat that he spent 45 minutes Thursday chatting in the Oval with the authors of a little play called “FBI Lovebirds: Undercovers,” inspired by the texts of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. The play’s leads, Dean Cain of “Superman” fame and the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” actress Kristy Swanson, were also in the meeting. Trump joked that he’d be willing to be Cain’s understudy, the actor said. The president got together the same day with a group that included his social media boosters Diamond and Silk.
At the White House press conference, Trump preened: “Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low.” He later said that one day, like a miracle, the virus “will disappear.”
His top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, pushed the crisis as an opportunity: “Stocks look pretty cheap to me.”
Trump won’t be able to deflect and project and create a daft alternative narrative. The virus won’t respond to conspiracy theories from Rush Limbaugh or nasty diatribes from Sean Hannity or nicknames from Donald Trump.
This will be a deus ex machina test of Trump’s authoritarian behavior. Epidemics are not well suited to authoritarian regimes and propaganda, as we saw this week when Beijing’s use of propaganda tactics to suppress information about the outbreak failed spectacularly and when Iran tamped down news about the virus for political reasons even as it ravaged top officials.
The reality of the coronavirus spreading will reflect poorly on Trump — his cavalier dismantling of vital government teams for health response and his disdain for experts and science.
Trump tried to make federal agencies complicit on his fabulist hogwash about the size of his inaugural crowd and the path of Hurricane Dorian. It is unlikely that he will be able to keep his insatiable and insecure ego in check long enough to give the nation the facts, reassurance and guidance it needs about the infection.
Trump is already doing his orange clown pufferfish routine, acting as though he knows more about viruses than anyone, just as he has bragged that he knows more about the military, taxes, trade, infrastructure, ISIS, renewables, visas, banking, debt and “the horror of nuclear.”
He appointed Mike Pence to be point man, even though, as the famously homophobic governor of Indiana, Pence helped make the H.I.V. epidemic there worse by substituting moral pronouncements for scientific knowledge. Coronavirus Czar Pence spent Friday at a $25,000-a-plate dinner in sunny Sarasota raising money to try to win back the House, The Tampa Bay Times reported.
Trump’s history in business — he makes people feel good for a while and then it ends badly — could presage a stock market crash before he exits.
And it’s conceivable that a crash — along with hospitals being overwhelmed by the uninsured — could lead to the election of a real populist promising Medicare for All.
And that would be a very Trumpian arc indeed.
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I have mentioned my surprise that this non-JFK thread has been allowed to stay on the forum as long it is has, but at the same time very appreciative because it gives us inherently political minded members at least one thread outlet to express our current political concerns along with our main JFK truth focus one.
A nice "one thread" break balance if you will?
With that in mind, I am certainly not advocating starting any more non-JFK threads.
However, staying in this one thread, I want to at least bring up the incredibly world effecting and American news dominating coronavirus situation.
I live in California. The effect this reported threat is having in our daily lives here ( even at this earliest stage ) is incredible and I think way beyond what most Americans know or imagine.
I listen to radio news almost constantly when I am not home at the computer.
My radio listening is confined to the largest audience 24 hour news station in Northern Calif. KCBS out of San Francisco.
Expert commentary regards the most pressing news stories is a 24 hour part of the KCBS format.
These commentators on the coronavirus situation are already suggesting the public consider major life style changes such as stocking up on basic need items, avoiding plane travel, avoiding attending public events and even social functions of more than a few people, and even keeping an open mind to pulling your children from school and home schooling them if the situation gets too bad !
There are so many other areas of concern I don't want to mention them to keep from scare mongering.
There are so many cancellations of conventions and other large crowd venues in the Bay Area it is unprecedented. Calif. and San Francisco in particular are so dependent on tourism and large group convention business that their income revenue if this continues has to be hit hard on levels that we have never seen before.
Tourism from China to Calif. over the last 20 years has grown to huge numbers. This has stopped completely.
Every aspect of the hospitality industry in Calif. is already economically effected by this loss alone.
The potential of devastating economic damage is real and judging from what we are already seeing in real life terms at just this early scared stage is ominous.
How this is going to play out in the national political arena is the big question.
One that none of us participating in this thread content can ignore or pretend isn't the big elephant in the room anymore.
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23 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:
The Volcker Rule:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/02/a-republican-plutocrat-tries-to-buy-the-democratic-nomination
BTW William, I agree with you that the stock market drip is more of a correction than a reaction to coronavirus.
If Bloomberg is allowed to buy the nomination I swear I will not vote this coming November for the office of president.
Not as a democrat as I have been all my life.
I will not be a part of such a perverse, corrupt and unAmerican scheme.
The link you provided Jim says it all about Bloomberg.
The idea of a mega-rich billionaire ascending to our highest elective office by kidnapping the Democratic Party nomination ( when he isn't even a democrat!) through the most massive expenditure media and bought off support manipulation campaign ever created is a deeply disturbing scenario to me. To a gut wrenching degree.
Meg Whitman tried to do the same thing of buying the Governorship of California a few years ago. The amount of her own money she pumped into her Republican campaign broke all records. It got her the candidacy.
She lost of course, but this was in California where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a wide margin and always have.
The rest of the country is much more susceptible to the big money manipulation imo.
How could the national Democratic Party come to this breakdown state? Where we may only have a choice between two 1% ruling priority billionaire ego-maniacs to choose from this next November?
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I wish I could know whether E.Howard Hunt made this story up to help his son St.John reap some financial security through perhaps a licensing and publishing deal?
Or, he was telling the truth about his fellow covert operators organizing the "Big Event" and at the behest of power people such as LBJ.
In accepting Hunt's "Big Event" tale as true, you must then accept the reality that JFK was taken out via a coup involving our own leaders.
It's a tough choice.
Doug, was your friend E.Howard Hunt telling the truth with his "Big Event" confession?
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It's Trump's shockingly irresponsible, confused and/or downplaying response to this global economic and human life threatening crisis that is most troubling to me.
Trump:
It's not that serious. It's a democratic party scheme to undermine his re-election.
Trumps mouth pieces...it's a hoax?
Recent Trump Medal Of Freedom recipient Rush Limbaugh infers the coronavirus may be a covert planned release event?
This is the worst, most irresponsible presidential handling of a major national and world effecting crisis I've ever seen. We are witnessing a true "crisis in confidence" with Trump's outrageously incompetent response to this crisis which the stock market landslide is reflecting.
My wife and I are truly concerned about this virus spreading here at home.
We are the most susceptible to it's deadly effects according to reports that older people with other medical conditions are the hardest hit.
And hey, what if oldsters like Sanders, Biden and even Trump himself should be hit by this virus?
No, this crisis and massive stock market loss isn't something I and other Trump dis-likers look at with glee. We even have some funds in the stock market ourselves and have already lost some value in just this last week!
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WOW!
The stock market just "opened"...with a 1,000 point drop!
Just 2 more thousand and we hit recession territory.
Looks like Trump's number #1 political achieving bragging point is close to being ( if not already ) history.
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You recall Jesus's actions when he came upon the church square and saw all the money changers doing business there?
Donald Trump:
King ... of the "Money Changers."
His first mental thought process in every matter of governmental affairs clearly seems to be one of personal political and money making gain as a priority before considering the common good of "all" the American people beyond just the 1% wealthiest class.
It's an "obsessive" Mar-a-Lago spoiled/Me First mind set.
When a stock market drop hits 10% it's called a "Correction."
When that drop hits 20% it's called a "Bear Market" or ... a "Recession."
Before this morning's Dow Jones opening bell ( and in just 5 days time ) we are already more than half-way to the "Recession" stock market drop mark.
Who would have predicted an almost surreal event of biological nature such as a new world wide threatening pandemic level human virus and it's non-antidote spread might possibly be Trump's undoing?
Like everything else with DJT ... it's crazy!
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Diane Sawyer interviewed New York City Gotti crime family Capo and hit man Sammy "The Bull" Gravano back in April of 1997.
Gravano had already ratted out his former boss by this time and spilled a few more beans ( very small servings ) to Sawyer as well.
Gravano was discussing his control over a few of the trade unions in NYC during he and Gotti's heyday and especially the cement pourers union. He said he and Gotti were pulling in millions of dollars a year in extorted kick backs from this trade union alone.
In the middle of Gravano's bragging recollection of not just how good of a hit man he was and also how good he was as the controller of this particular NYC building industry graft corruption scheme he blurts out an unprompted ... " Donald Trump couldn't get a buildin' built wit-out goin' throughs me. "
Now, as we all know Trump did a lot of New York City construction right during the time Gotti and Gravano ran these unions.
So, Gravano is telling the world...that Trump had major construction dealings with them during that time period? Imo it sure sounds that way.
New Jersey was the same thing.
New Jersey and New York were so controlled by the mob in that era. One can fairly assume or reasonably guess that Trump has been dealing with elements of organized crime throughout much of his business career.
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I honestly worry about both Bernie Sander's and Joe Biden's health and stamina from now until this November.
The primaries have already been exhausting it seems to me and especially for two men close to 80 years old and with Bernie actually having at least one or more heart issues.
Warren looks like she is in excellent health. The other candidates as well.
If Sanders is the front runner and even the final nominee and he suffers a significant health setback before the election, it could change everything and in a potentially negative way for the Democrats.
I hate to lose Warren as a senator, but if she and Sanders could work through their mutual animosity, I also would love to see a Sanders/Warren ticket.
They would win the national women vote easily.
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Joining the New York Times, the Boston Globe just endorsed Elizabeth Warren for President.
The Boston Globe performed an astonishing U-turn on Wednesday when it officially endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) run for president.
The newspaper’s editorial board declared Warren to be “the best choice for Democrats,” hailing her track record and “tenacity to defend the principles of democracy, bring fairness to an economy that is excluding too many Americans, and advance a progressive agenda.”
List of Elizabeth Warren 2020 presidential campaign ...
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So much has been said about Ruby's shooting of Oswald being an unplanned, impulsive, overly distraught emotion driven act of murderous insanity made possible only because of incredibly brief time frame window of opportunity luck.
How if Ruby had arrived just 3 to 4 minutes later to the transfer scene, he would have missed out on his Oswald whacking chance.
Let us imagine Ruby getting into that basement press crowd earlier than he did. Even 5 to 10 minutes earlier.
I propose that Ruby would have been recognized by at least one or more police security in that crowd if he had done so. Ruby's policeman friend William "Blackie" Harrison was within just a couple to a few feet ( arms length ) from Ruby when Ruby bolted out to shoot Oswald.
Harrison told the Warren Commission he was looking around during his time standing on the front line of the press crowd that morning both before and up to the time Oswald was brought in.
And yet, Harrison said he never saw Ruby standing close to him or entering the basement at any time up until Ruby charged past him to get a point blank shot into Oswald's gut.
If Ruby had been hanging around and moving into the close front edge of the basement press crowd for 5 or 10 minutes before the shooting, chances are very likely Ruby would have been noticed ( so many policemen in that crowd knew Ruby personally ) and probably confronted as to his presence there not being allowed ...imo.
Heck, even career newspaper writer Seth Kantor might have noticed Ruby in the crowd again as he did at Parkland Hospital the early afternoon of 11,22,1963.
Kantor was in the Dallas PD basement during this whole time. And Kantor later stated under oath, that even with his press badges visible it was harder for him to get into the DPD basement than it was for Ruby.
My point being that Ruby would NOT HAVE WANTED to arrive in the super crowded and guarded Dallas PD basement "too early" for these reasons.
A last minute entrance just before the chaotic Oswald arrival with a distracting press crush shouting and popping flash bulbs would obviously make Ruby's presence there much more unnoticed.
Just a thought.
Quote -
ks' in closed-door 2016
New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg said at a private event in 2016 that his presidential campaign platform would have been to "defend the banks" and also labeled the progressive movement and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, now a rival for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, as "scary."
When asked his views on the rise of the far right in Europe, Bloomberg warned about the rise of progressive politicians in the US, citing Warren."The left is arising. The progressive movement is just as scary," he says. "Elizabeth Warren on one side. And whoever you want to pick on the Republicans on the right side?"Bloomberg, who was elected mayor as a Republican and as an independent, also criticized President Barack Obama, saying that his 2012 endorsement of Obama was "backhanded" and that he thought Republican Mitt Romney could have done a better job if he'd been elected.Bloomberg is now running a largely self-funded multi-million-dollar campaign for the Democratic nomination, positioning himself as a moderate as his rivals -- a crowded field that includes not just Warren but Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who is now the front-runner -- are trying to paint him as an out-of-touch billionaire who is trying to buy an election. Bloomberg has argued that he is using his wealth to advance progressive causes and defeat President Donald Trump in November.Audio of his comments, allegedly from a closed Goldman Sachs event for at Yankee Stadium on June 15, 2016, were anonymously sent to CNN by an email address called "CancelGoldman," with the author claiming he worked at Goldman Sachs for 14 years. The email called on Bloomberg to drop out of the race. The audio of the event, sent to CNN and a host of reporters was uploaded to audio hosting platform SoundCloud five days ago. Bloomberg's campaign confirmed the authenticity of the comments. CNN confirmed through Facebook photographs that Bloomberg took part in an event that day at Yankee Stadium. Goldman Sachs declined to comment, but did not dispute it was their event.Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Bloomberg, said Bloomberg's comments about banks were a joke."The opening line was a joke," Loeser told CNN in an email. He added: "in the more serious parts of the speech, Mike tells very wealthy Americans that they need to break their addiction to cheap money that's exacerbating income inequality in America."In the remarks, Bloomberg also spoke of the need for America to solve the problem of income equality before society "blows up.""Well, to start, my first campaign platform would be to defend the banks, and you know how well that's gonna sell in this country," Bloomberg said in his remarks."But seriously," he went on, "somebody's gotta stand up and do what we need. A healthy banking system that's going to take risks because that's what creates the jobs for everybody. And nobody's willing to say that. The trouble is, these campaigns in this day and age, really are about slogans and not about issues anymore. And in this election you're going to see people are voting and they either love or hate, mostly hate both, but who you hate the least. That's what they're going to vote for. And they're not going to vote on issues."Bloomberg added of the banking crowd, "these are my peeps."He also said at the event that he had been prepared to run as an independent against both Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 and had lawyers in all 50 states to get him on the ballot, but as he's also said publicly, told the crowd that the best he could hope to get was a third of the electoral votes and said an independent had "no chance."The head of privately held Bloomberg LP, a financial data and media company, said he didn't regret not running -- but joked that winning the presidency would have given him the benefit of using Predator drones on those who had "annoyed me or screwed me.""It would have been a great job," says Bloomberg. "No, I mean, you think about it, you have Predators, and the Predators have missiles, and I have a list of everybody that's annoyed me or screwed me for the last 74 years, and bang-bang-bang-bang."Bloomberg's spokesman acknowledged to CNN the joke on drones seemed inappropriate."Way back in 2016, when someone cracked wise about a President using military hardware to settle grudges, an audience would laugh," Loeser also wrote. "After three years of Donald Trump's daily drama, that might not seem so funny. What you hear in these remarks are a combination of jokes and detailed explanations of ways to make our government better that are far beyond what the current occupant of the Oval Office could read, let alone think."Speaking about Obama, Bloomberg -- then still an independent -- described his 2012 endorsement as "back-handed" and said he did not think Obama did not do a good job in his first term, and that Romney would have done a better job if he could have governed as he did as governor of Massachusetts."The second Obama election I wrote a very backhanded endorsement of Obama," Bloomberg said. "Saying I thought he hadn't done the right thing, hadn't done, hadn't been good at things that I think are important and Romney would be a better person at doing that. But Romney did not stick with the values that he had when he was governor of Massachusetts."Loeser, Bloomberg's spokesman, defended his comments on Obama."Regarding President Obama, he was making an important point," he told CNN in an email. "Everyone who read Mike's endorsement of President Obama saw that it was aimed at convincing Americans who saw merit in both candidates to vote for Obama. President Obama didn't need Mike Bloomberg to get out the vote from the strongest Obama voters. What Mike could and did do for President Obama is much like what he could and did do for Hillary Clinton when he spoke at the Democratic Convention in 2016 -- convince Americans who weren't already convinced of voting for the Democrat."Former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign slammed Bloomberg's comments about Obama on Monday."Now we know that behind closed doors, Bloomberg described his last-minute endorsement of President Obama in 2012 as 'very backhanded' and said that he thought 'Romney would be a better person at doing' the 'things that I think are important.' Bloomberg may have changed his voter registration but he's still a Republican at heart," Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesperson, said in a statement.In his remarks, Bloomberg made historical reference to previous anti-elite revolutions."The ways you get Congress to work for you is the ways you deal with your family," Bloomberg said. "You bribe them. You say to your kid, you say to your kid to 'clean your room or you don't get your allowance.' That's a bribe, I'm sorry."Another speaker interrupted Bloomberg to suggest curfews, and Bloomberg agreed. "Curfews or you threaten them, 'If you don't do this no television,'" he said. "Or you try to reason with them you know, maybe you'll find $2 under your clothes that are piled on the floor. But that's the way you deal with people and you deal with organizations. That's the way every big organization runs."Bloomberg lamented the loss of earmarking as a means for congressional cooperation."We've taken away some of that with these member items that used to be that Congress had a certain amount of money and they would bribe each legislator to vote for the important things. We got rid of that and now it's so fractured. It's hard to get anything through Congress."He also said he'd raise interest rates if he were president and called for passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, from which Trump ultimately withdrew the US.In other comments, Bloomberg explained he backed Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey's reelection that year, even though he disagreed with him on most issues, because he supported his signature issue of guns. Democrats have criticized Bloomberg for his support of a small number of Republican candidates as late as the 2018 midterm elections.I edited some of the above article for space considerations. Parts of which mentioned Bloomberg's comments on the coal industry, contributions to climate change groups and even some job creation proposals.What I posted is the main thrust of the article imo and much more important in the context of understanding Bloomberg's true mind set , personal values system and agenda in his massive spending campaign to buy the presidency.I have mentioned before that Elizabeth Warren has always been the 1% power people's biggest fear as a candidate.Here Bloomberg tells his Wall Street brethren he will protect them from her. And he clearly states...Warren and the progressives are the number one enemy, not Donald Trump.Bloomberg's 1/2 BILLION dollar campaign advertising effort is about splitting the Democratic primary votes and to deflate Warren's chances specifically. Bloomberg's comments at the Goldman Sach's Yankee Stadium get together reflecting this main concern about Warren and the "arising of the progressives" couldn't be clearer.Warren would win it all if she had won the first primaries going into Super Tuesday and Bloomberg knows this.Bloomberg is in AN ALL OUT WAR effort to take control of the Democratic party by this November with unprecedented war time urgency spending.The fact that enough potential voters are now saying they are voting for Bloomberg just from seeing his generalized ads all over every media and not knowing anymore about him through any self-informing research reflects the intellectual weakness and laziness that I have always said is one of American society's greatest flaws.Reminds me of the huge landslide of voters choosing the incredibly corrupt Nixon ( his whole team went to prison-25!) over the truly honest, patriotic and law abiding George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election because they fell for the massive Republican propaganda "LAW AND ORDER" campaign scaring them into believing McGovern was a dangerous commie/hippie/free love and drug promoting BOOGIE MAN who's election would turn their children into law disrespecting drug addicts and free love sex slaves.Then just two years later when the truth was exposed that the REAL law and order breaking boogie men were Nixon and his entire staff (complete with his own private burglary team!) you would think that tens of millions of 1972 presidential election voters would have realized how duped and dumb they were to believe the false reality of McGovern being the bad guy versus Richard Millhouse Nixon.And yet, I don't believe those Nixon law and order voters ever really took personal responsibility or blame for their placing the real crooks in office in 1972.That same intellectual weakness and susceptibility to being influenced by massive false reality propaganda that inspired so many to vote the most corrupt group of politicians in American history into the White House in 1972 is still with us if Bloomberg is able to steal the Democratic nomination just by massive spending media advertising alone. -
Douglas, do you think you personally have ever been wiretapped or surveilled even more?
If so, who would you think would do this and why?
If you don't want to comment on this subject I understand.
And by the way, thank you for your supportive post of me personally a few days ago.
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5 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:
BTW, Chris hit the big leagues on the back of Oliver Stone. First by attacking Nixon, and then by going after JFK indirectly.
He tried to say that somehow Haldeman did not mean what he wrote with that referral to the Bay of Pigs in his book The Ends of Power. He did this by not consulting with the co author Joe DiMona. Gary Aguilar did, and showed just how bad Chris's research was. The book went through five drafts and Haldeman never asked to take it out.
In 1996, he wrote a book called Kennedy and Nixon, which was a back handed attack on Stone since it clearly implied that somehow JFK and RMN had a lot in common and were actually chums:. Therefore Kennedy was not the liberal icon Stone made him out to be. This one was so bad the LA TImes had Oliver review it. Chris wrote a letter in reply. It began with, "Oliver stone doesn't like me." Question: Who does? ( I always found it odd that Tony Summers liked this book and referenced it in his biography of Nixon.)
On his show, he takes numerous opportunities to attack those who deny the WR. And he sucks up to GOP thugs. He stood by Tom DeLay until the end, and even beyond.
If he went, i have little hope that he would be replaced by someone better. Chris Hayes and O'Donnell are Ok, but they got rid of the person i thought was their best years ago. Melissa Harris Perry resigned in 2016 when they cut back her time during the primaries that year.
So I don't have a lot of hope if this effort succeeds. But man, comparing a Jewish candidate's primary victory with the fall of France to the Third Reich? Shows how far they think they can go for propaganda purposes; clearly a scare tactic. But it also shows who they really are.
Right on Jim Di!
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3 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:
Why Democrats Are Bound for Disaster
Win, lose or draw, there’s no legitimacy in America anymore.
By Frank Bruni in The New York Times
Opinion Columnist
- Feb. 21, 2020
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- I’ll let you in on a little secret about media coverage of prime-time political debates: What happens in the first half, even the first quarter, gets much more attention than what happens as the night drags on.
We all have deadlines bearing down on us and must produce our stories immediately after the debate’s end, so we start formulating thoughts and fashioning sentences before then. If there are fireworks early in the event, we say a cheer of gratitude and let them light up our commentary. So it was with Mike Bloomberg’s miserable performance in Las Vegas. He established his awfulness right off the bat. We ran with it. I know I did.
But in the case of this debate, what happened at the bitter end was probably most meaningful. All six candidates onstage were asked to envision a situation — utterly plausible this year — in which none of them went into the Democratic convention in Milwaukee in July with a majority of pledged delegates and, therefore, an unequivocal claim to the nomination. Should the politician with a plurality of delegates be the nominee?
Only Bernie Sanders, who currently has the best shot at being that person, said yes. The others said no. That would mean a brokered convention, in which the votes of uncommitted “superdelegates” or alliances formed among certain candidates are necessary to put someone over the top. And it would be a nightmare scenario for the Democratic Party, which is deep into a bad dream already, because it would invite further cynicism, second-guessing, cries of illegitimacy and irresolution in a country that’s paralyzed by all of that.
Something unsettling is going on in American politics — in America, period — and the chaotic Democratic race exemplifies it. The rules are all blurry. The processes are all suspect. Or at least they’re seen that way, so more and more judgments are up for debate and more and more defeats are prone to dispute. President Trump is a prime player in this, but it didn’t start with him and isn’t confined to him. He’s exploiting and accelerating a crisis of faith in traditions and institutions, not causing it. He’s improvising, and he’s hardly alone.
Everywhere I look: incipient or latent pandemonium. The Iowa caucuses were a mess that motivated some candidates to press self-aggrandizing grievances. Bloomberg’s rivals argue (understandably) that he’s using his billions to game the system and pervert the whole shebang. And in a reprise of four years ago, Sanders’s supporters fume that the media, the Democratic National Committee and other supposed pillars of the establishment are conspiring against him in some underhanded, corrupt way. I’m no soothsayer, but I foresee intensifying quarrels over whether whoever is leading the field deserves to be in that position and whether his or her competitors got a raw deal.
It’s 2016 all over again, except maybe worse. Back then both Sanders and Trump, who was braced to lose, insisted that the process was rigged. Sanders’s supporters questioned the legitimacy of Hillary Clinton’s victory in the Democratic primary before Clinton’s supporters questioned the legitimacy of Trump’s victory in the general election. There were good reasons all around, but it was striking nonetheless how fervently the disappointed rejected the denouement.
It was also corrosive. I’m not recommending a pliant surrender to injustice, but I see more value in plotting carefully for the next fight than in raging boundlessly over the last one. At some point, doesn’t everyone have to move on?
Not anymore. In Washington, there’s the prospect of impeachment beyond impeachment, of new hearings to supplement the old ones, of additional evidence that will spiritually nullify the president’s ludicrous acquittal by the Senate. John Bolton continues his national-security version of a strip tease; he’s both a man of — and a metaphor for — an era in which nothing finishes, everything festers and all can be revisited and revised. Bill Barr junks sentence recommendations. Trump commutes sentences. There are investigations into investigators. Cries of cheating and fraudulence fly in every direction.
I blame the internet, because I like to and because it’s true. I mean that I blame the way it encourages people to choose their own information and curate their own reality, so that no official pronouncement competes with a pet theory. I blame a national epidemic of selfishness, too. It seems to me that fewer and fewer people are easily moved off their particular worries, their special wants. Any outcome that displeases them is ipso facto a bastardized one.
“The refusal to grant victors legitimacy bundles together so much about America today: the coarseness of our discourse; the blind tribalism coloring our debates; the elevation of individualism far above common purpose; the ethos that everybody should and can feel like a winner on every day,” I wrote during the last presidential election, and I wondered then if this were a passing phase.
Nope. It’s the context — aggravated if anything — for the current race for the Democratic nomination, which features a scrum of sharp-elbowed aspirants, room galore for recriminations and the very, very real possibility of a brokered convention.
Imagine that Sanders — with a plurality but not a majority of delegates — loses the nomination that way. He and many of his supporters would probably say that Democratic voters had been betrayed, and they wouldn’t be wrong. They could be furious enough to abandon the party’s pick, to the advantage of Trump.
Now imagine the opposite: Although Sanders lacks a majority, Democrats who aren’t on his train feel too intimidated not to ride it, and so rules and dynamics set up expressly to make sure that the nominee represents as close to a party consensus as possible aren’t properly applied. His nomination would be deemed unjust in some quarters, straining party unity.
What would salvage either set of circumstances is the acceptance and acknowledgment by Democrats who don’t get what they want that perpetually sore feelings serve little purpose. But that perspective — that maturity — is in retreat.
We certainly can’t expect it from Trump if (please oh please) he’s defeated in November. He’ll manufacture any and every argument to say that he was robbed. And in a country in which the messy guts of our institutions are increasingly conspicuous and the merchants of cynicism grow ever bolder, he’ll find takers aplenty.
After all, getting worked up is so much less tedious than getting along.
Coherent summary by Mr. Bruni.
However, imo, he seems to lambast the Democrats and Democrat voters as much as Trump and his power enablers almost equally for our bad current state of affairs.
My take is that our wealthiest 1% representing Republicans are way more responsible for this fractured political situation of the Democrats and our country as a whole.
Our ever more powerful wealthiest corporate powers to be have been attacking and dividing the left and middle class since Reagan times with a war mentality and massive unlimited funding for such projects as incessant right wing liberal bashing radio propaganda reaching and successfully inflaming 10's of millions of already angry Americans 24/7 for years.
The creation of Fox News. Never ending dirty tricks political activities. The blocking of left wing or even moderate Supreme Court justices. And topped off now with the most outrageously aggressive and effective political divider and inflamer in American history ( BY FAR ) ...Donald Trump.
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2 hours ago, Dennis Berube said:
Wow, I was shocked by the title alone, and I'm used to the MSM. This feels like another furtherance of the MSM's overt support of Wall Street to me, its more obvious now than ever before in my life.
Russia gate distracted the country from the very real conspiracy of the Clinton faction and the DNC preventing Sanders from the 2016 nomination, but now in 2020... Everywhere you look on the MSM, they are freaking out again over Sanders. Here is a CNN editorial title on the front page
"Opinion: Bloomberg needs to take down Sanders -- immediately "
Part of me hopes Bernie gets the nomination and on November 1st, he switches to Independent or creates another party if he wins, the democrats (Tulsi and a couple others excluded in my opinion) are no longer the party of JFK/FDR.
DB I spotted that editorial link on CNN this morning also.
The writer is obviously elevating and promoting Bloomberg as the only other viable democratic party candidate. Doing his part to create this specific false reality perception in the eyes of his readers.
With the unprecedented massive amounts of money Bloomberg is throwing into just the nomination ( approaching half a BILLION? ! ) you have to believe that some of this tempting gold mine could very well be going to certain political writers who have report publishing access MSM connections.
This specific planted false perception article raises the possibility question.
Bloomberg's frantic push for the nomination with a crazy out-of-this world high financial commitment begs rational suspicion. One senses there is a larger picture fear going on here. My guess is that it is our top 1% ruling class fearing losing control to a progressive agenda Dem candidate and most importantly losing control of the Supreme Court and other court realms.
Bloomberg and his fellow billionaires have done much better under Trump than any other president in U.S. history. Why try to replace him? A false flag operation?
I have stated that the Dem candidate the super wealthy ruling class feared most of all was Elizabeth Warren. And they have already won in getting her out of the picture.
Warren would beat Trump in the women vote guaranteed. That's over half the battle.
Imagine 50 to 75 million American women watching nationally televised debates between Warren and Trump?
Just from the visual physical contrast alone (Trump the overweight sexist bully versus the thin and moral school teacher looking Warren ) Warren would win the majority of their votes instantly.
Especially if at least one major TV network would scroll at the bottom of the screen Trump's most women disparaging misogynist statements from thousands over the years such as "grab em by the pu$$y, my bad sex behavior accusers aren't my type, they're all XXXXX, and on and on.
Sanders has always had a loyal base and their numbers stay the same. With so many other Dem candidates splitting the primary votes, Sanders base just happens to be the majority vote garnering one.
If Biden ( and maybe Buttigeig ? ) finally drops out...I would hope Warren stays in to pick up some of their base.
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9 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:
This is why MSNBC is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/chris-matthews-bernie-sanders_n_5e51ad62c5b629695f5b64d7
This article says it all.
IMO Chris Mathews has always been a ... well ... read the article Jim Di links us to.
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By the way...Gene Wilder would have been a mega-star in the silent film era.
Turn off the sound while watching many of his films.
I laugh just as hard just watching his body language, facial expressions and especially his eyes. What a great pantomimist! Chaplinesque imo.
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I'm curious.
Do any of our thread contributing members feel Seth Rich was murdered by someone other than one or two desperate hold up persons?
That his murder was motivated by his political activity?
Yes, again, I am not well researched in the matter but I know enough to know that the idea of Rich's murder "not" being tied to his political activity is still strongly questioned by many.
Was it ever explained why Seth Rich was still on the street "walking around" for more than 2 1/2 hours in a known crime ridden area at 4:15 in the morning after leaving his favorite pub at 1:45 AM?
Was this a typical thing with Rich?
Even in my most drunken state as a weekend night club frequenting 20 something old in our California town ( way back in the 1970's ) did I ever just leave these closing establishments and walk the streets at those hours. And our town was a fairly crime safe one.
Rich apparently struggled with his assailants who supposedly then shot him in the back twice before running off just one minute before the police arrived?
Between $125,000 and $280,00 was eventually offered as a reward for information in Rich's murder.
Usually, someone in low income areas who knows anything about the perps will try to get such massive reward monies. Instant riches very often trumps loyalty to robber friends in such environs.
But no one has ever come forward?
Reminds one of the Mary Pinchot Meyer's canal walk path murder. At least that one was in broad daylight. Meyer's presence there made sense, unlike Rich's street walking in a dangerous area at 4:15 in the morning.
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12 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:
Thanks for this link Joe. I'd not seen it.
https://www.rohrabacher.com/news/my-meeting-with-julian-assange#comments
That link was provided by Jim Di Ron. Not me.
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18 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:
Bob, that was really bad, I mean really. This is a JFK forum for people who do research, which as far as I can tell, you and Joe B really do not do a lot of. If you have, please show me there the essays are housed or if you wrote a book that I missed.
Jim Di you are right.
I am not of this high level research group, not even close.
When it comes to serious lifetime researchers on this forum we all know of "your" efforts and achievements which encompass a huge body of work including many important historical areas besides and beyond the JFK assassination.
I read many more of your essays than you know. When you provide links, I check them out and usually finish them which often takes a decent amount of time.
I won't even try to debate this point you make regards Bob and I not doing a lot of research and therefore not having forum worthy credibility and insight.
Years ago ( I have stated this before ) I checked into the forum almost daily as a viewing visitor for a long time without joining and posting myself. Precisely because of the high research level of the contents. It was fascinating stuff. Often intimidating.
Yet, I eventually jumped in regardless.
Have I diminished the forum high research integrity by doing so? Perhaps.
However, I really do pull back now and then because I am aware my postings aren't always research worthy.
I honestly "try" to give thought to only posting on threads that I am really passionate about and also when I feel even my limited research comments and questions won't dilute the discussion, debate and info sharing too much and taint the reputation of this esteemed forum. Hope you don't think this is B.S.
However, this particular thread has driven me beyond that rational mind set.
I'll admit it. I am totally biased regards anything to do with Donald Trump.
I post things on this thread that are often pure emotion. I can't contain this part of me regards Trump.
I am truly, seriously concerned ( more than anytime in my 12 presidents lifetime ) about what is happening to our country under Trump's presidency.
And I have come to the conclusion that I don't believe anything anyone connected to Trump says.
I have stated my surprise that this Trump thread has been kept on the main forum.
When this specific thread ends, I am quite sure I will go back to my less emotional approach to more JFK focused postings, poorly researched as my input may be.
Jeff has done research in the past and has a lot of work to show for it. I have written or co-edited three books and literally scores of essays. The point is, we know the difference between a primary source and a secondary source. We also can detect bias and spin. Now, I am really surprised that no one here has tried to go to the primary source, which Is the congressman. I am the only one who has given any background on him. Or described his many years in trying to better relations between Moscow and Washington. Which I think is relevant. Why do you and Joe leave that out?
Second, the congressman has posted on twitter about this. Why do you leave that out? It does not get any more primary sourced than that. Here it is:
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This "Pardon Offer" to Assange has now been officially acknowledged by Rohrbacher himself.
Here we have another "Rudy Guliani" type "official but not official?" mission of a single point man sent to "work a deal" with Assange to apparently protect the interests of Russia/Putin and Trump's defense of them.
And done with the same "mafia type" MO. Never a direct link to Trump.
Keep the Godfather insulated.
Yet Rohrbacher has a "direct line" to speak with Trump's chief of staff ( chief Capo ) John Kelly about this mission?
Kelly took the call and listened to Rohrbacher's message but didn't respond directly regards any further action or "non-action?"
Look, when someone in Rohrbacher's postion can call and get directly connected to Trump's chief of staff about "anything" that says a lot about Rohrbacher's high standing within the highest levels of Trump's staff.
And Kelly never mentioned Rohrbacher and this call or the Assange/Russia problem to Trump? Please.
If this 3 hour long meet-up mission to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London by Rohrbacher was just to see what Assange knew about the Russian's as a source, John Kelly would probably have been more open to discussing it with Rohrbacher versus this typical ( I can't talk about it on these secure lines ) silence and non-response.
And here we go again with desperate damage control word and semantic games by Rohrbacher.
Assange has made a clear and specific charge. He was offered a pardon to "deny Russian hacking" in the 2016 election. Not that he was asked to help dispel the conspiracy theories surrounding them.
Just from the Guliani Ukraine scheme alone, we all know the Trump way.
His credibility is shot. Most know this now and you just can't trust anything he and his enablers say anymore.
And here just today, we have another Trump crony ( Roger Stone ) being sent to prison for his lying about Assange and these Russia involvement matters.
Wake up people!
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Most major internet news sites just can't say straight out that Warren won this debate.
And that Bloomberg was beyond a disaster.
Watching Bloomberg was literally cringing.
Probably the worst nationally televised Presidential candidate debate performance I can recall.
If Bloomberg was as poor as half those candidates he wouldn't even be in this race or up on that debate stage. He bought his way onto that stage.
Klobuchar really seemed out of control with her anger toward Mayor Pete and looked and sounded desperate. She couldn't take the heat. Mayor Pete kept his cool.
Mark Zaid, JFK and Trump
in JFK Deep Politics
Posted