W. Niederhut

Robert, Two things. 1) The mods were asked to review whether the thread should be deleted ONLY because of obscenity. 2) Your slur about Vice President Harris (above) is based on the rather scurrilous assumption that Harris was not dating the future mayor of San Francisco out of genuine romantic interest. How did you acquire such omniscience? At the time, Mr. Brown had, reportedly been estranged from his wife for ten years. Perhaps she found him charming and intelligent. Perhaps he reminded her of her professorial father-- i.e., paternal transference. Compare that story with Donald Trump's history of serial sexual assaults, groping strangers, and carousing with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Ignore My Brother Bobby August 25, 2024 at 8:50 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Max Kennedy: “I’m heartbroken over my brother Bobby’s endorsement of Donald Trump.” “I think often about my father and how he might have viewed the politics of our time. I’m not sure what he would have thought about TikTok or AI, but this much I know for sure: He would have despised Donald Trump.”

It's worth raising, IMO.

Has Trump pressured his MAGA factotums in Congress to release the JFK Records this year? He successfully pressured Mike Johnson and the MAGA House to kill the bipartisan Senate Border Security bill, so he has that kind of leverage. And, as I recall, Larry Schnapf was in contact with some members of the MAGA House to legislate the release of the records.

Well, Kirk, in fairness to our friend, John Cotter, Phil Spector's dominance did sort of ruin, The Long and Winding Road, with all of those syrupy violins. 🤥

Should this crude post be deleted? Since this is the Education Forum, IMO, it may be worth approaching this post as what Barack Obama calls a "teachable moment." One of the oldest racist stereotypes in American history is that of black women being labeled as whores. Historically, enslaved black women were often subjected to sexual assault and used as sex slaves. And post-slavery, many have lived in poverty. Another old racist stereotype has been the mythology that black people lack intelligence-- apparently, even if their mother was a biomedical research scientist, and their father is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at Stanford University, as in Vice President Harris's case. No doubt, Trump and his MAGA fans are going to roll out a lot of these racist and misogynist memes and slurs about Kamala Harris between now and November. But here's a reality-based meme that's worth contemplating when we compare the private lives of Kamala Harris and Trump. It doesn't get at Trump's history of sexual assaults, barging in on teen dressing rooms, and visiting Jeffrey Epstein's teen sex-trafficking island, but it is apt.

Speaking of short-lived euphoria, there's breaking bad news for our pro-plutocracy Hibernian hermit... Nate Silver has just reported that RFK, Jr.'s endorsement hasn't moved the needle for the Felonious Skunk. Bobby's dwindling 2% were, evidently, already in Mango Mussolini's court-- i.e., the anti-vax MAGAs who survived the COVID pandemic.

Comrade Kamala? How moronic is that Mango Mussolini nickname? I think Kinaski is referring to the lady whose father is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at Stanford. Geez... 🙄

Holiday, Karl? Does this mean that you won't be keeping us posted on the latest X-Twitter clips from Alex Jones, Vigilant Fox, and Laura Loomer? Shucks... 🙄

Folks, Has anyone else noticed that our anti-Democratic Hibernian hermit is an alleged environmentalist opposed to plutocracy? Has he figured out yet that Donald Trump recently promised Big Oil moguls to sabotage Biden's clean energy initiatives, and promised billionaires to cut their taxes again, in exchange for campaign cash? These are subtle clues, somewhat reminiscent of those experiments where chimpanzees have to stack boxes to reach bananas suspended from the ceiling.

"When I'm President, the American people are going to find out who really destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11." -- Donald Trump (2016) "I have a terrific healthcare plan that will cover everyone and cost less." -- Donald Trump (2016) "I want to release all of (JFK assassination) records." -- President Donald Trump (2017)

Another guy who nailed Donald Trump and RFK, Jr. is Rabbi Hillel the Elder. "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But, if I am only for myself, what am I? -- Hillel

Adam, With all due respect, your ignorance about the reality of recent American political and economic history is profound and, frankly, embarrassing. Are you, perchance, getting your fake "news" from the right-wing Aussie propagandist, Rupert Murdoch? U.S. Presidential historians and scholars have accurately ranked Donald Trump as the single worst President in American history. Almost all of Trump's former staff, and his own Vice President, are refusing to endorse his re-election. What does that tell you? Trump mushroomed the U.S. national debt by $8 trillion with massive tax cuts for corporations and billionaires, yet he had the worst private sector jobs creation record in modern Presidential history. His tax cuts were used mainly for salary-boosting stock buybacks by corporate CEOs. He inherited seven years of sustained private sector job and GDP growth from Barack Obama, (and a near tripling of the stock markets) but never increased GDP growth, before presiding over an economic collapse in 2020. He appointed an oil industry lobbyist to run the Environmental Protection Agency, and rolled back over 100 pollution control regulations. He withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords. He directly incited racial violence and murder in the United States, including the El Paso Walmart Massacre. He completely bungled the COVID pandemic response and caused hundreds of thousands of preventable COVID deaths, even hosting super-spreader campaign rallies in 2020, at the height of the deadly Delta wave. His supporters died at higher rates than Democrats throughout the pandemic. Then, he lied about the 2020 election results, and incited a violent mob attack on the U.S. Congress to block the certification of Joe Biden's election. He also pressured state officials to alter vote tallies, and organized slates of False Electors in several swing states that he lost. As for Vice President Harris, her education and intellect completely dwarf Donald Trump's. Listen to her Democratic nomination acceptance speech and educate yourself. Her eloquence and intellect were on full display in Chicago.

"I’ve known Bobby Kennedy for quite a while. Something has happened to him. Maybe it’s the worm that got into his brain, but saying Trump will protect your freedoms and keep America from becoming a totalitarian state, he’s out of his f--ing mind." -- Rob Reiner

As RFK Jr. Backs Trump, Here's the Secretive Billionaire Plutocrat Funding Them Both | Common Dreams August 24, 2024

Amen, Larry. And, since some people on the forum keep fluffing America's worst President on the JFK board, let's put RFK, Jr.'s bizarre endorsement of Donald Trump in historical context. RFK, Jr.'s environmentalist colleagues have already expressed shock about RFK, Jr. endorsing the man who has promised to sabotage clean energy and climate change mitigation for Big Oil. Here's a historical perspective on Irishman, RFK, Jr., endorsing our 21st century white nationalist Know Nothing candidate, Donald Trump. By endorsing Trump, RFK Jr. betrays the Kennedy legacy Anti-Irish discrimination taught the Kennedys to be welcoming and inclusive. By Karen Tumulty August 23, 2024 at 3:25 p.m. EDT Were it not for the fact that he was blessed at birth with a revered name, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might never have amounted to anything but a crackpot on the fringe. Again and again, to the dismay of his extended family, RFK Jr. has sullied the Kennedy name and the dimming aura of Camelot by spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories, most dangerously ones that undermine public confidence in vaccines. His bizarre campaign for president this year — with its revelations that he had a dead worm in his brain and once left the carcass of a bear cub in Central Park — was an embarrassment. But his announcement on Friday that he would “throw my support” to Donald Trump in battleground states represents a betrayal of a higher order. Given how low Kennedy has been polling, his endorsement probably won’t make much of a difference in the presidential race. Yet in casting his lot with a former president who preaches intolerance and division, he has cast aside the principles for which generations of Kennedys have stood. Among the earliest of those causes was immigration. While still a senator in 1958, John F. Kennedy wrote an essay highlighting the contribution that new arrivals made to America, and arguing for more generous policies toward them. His own Irish forebears had faced “the hostility of an already established group of ‘Americans,’” the future president noted. “It is not unusual for people to fear and distrust that which they are not familiar with. Every new group coming to America found this fear and suspicion facing them.” He did not live long enough to see the immigration reform he envisioned become law in 1965. However, JFK’s essay “A Nation of Immigrants” was published as a book after his assassination and inspired his youngest brother, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, to carry forward a cause that both of them viewed as integral to the full realization of civil rights in this country. “Our streets may not be paved with gold,” Ted Kennedy said during the Senate debate on that law, “but they are paved with the promise that men and women who live here — even strangers and new newcomers — can rise as fast, as far as their skills will allow, no matter what their color is, no matter what the place of their birth.” Compare that with what Trump expressed the day in 2015 that he stepped off an escalator in his Fifth Avenue tower and announced he was running for president. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Beyond stoking the xenophobia so abhorred by the Kennedy brothers, Trump has animated his candidacy with grievance and calls for retribution against all his enemies. This he portrays as a sign of his strength. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, D- N.Y., who had campaigned in Indiana Thursday, April 5, 1968 was shaken as he informed an audience in a Black section of Indianapolis, "Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight," Kennedy learned of Dr. King's death when his plane landed in Indianapolis. (John R. Fulton Jr./AP) How different that is from the character displayed in April 1968 by Robert F. Kennedy. As he was preparing to deliver a presidential campaign speech in a poor Black neighborhood of Indianapolis, the New York senator learned that civil rights champion the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. Knowing the potential for violence in a city that was yet unaware of the news, Kennedy climbed onto the back of a flatbed truck and delivered, extemporaneously, what is regarded as one of the greatest orations of the 20th century. He implored the shocked crowd to put aside hatred and instead “make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.” After quoting from memory the words of his favorite poet, Aeschylus, about the discernment that comes from pain, he said: “What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be White or whether they be Black.” That speech would be cited as a reason that Indianapolis was peaceful in its grief even as riots erupted in other cities across the country. But just two months later, on the night he won the California primary, Robert F. Kennedy himself was shot to death. “I think my father would be disappointed by what was happening in the political landscapes in our country today,” the great healer’s namesake son told CBS in 2018. Back then, before his vanity campaign and his sad grovel for a place in Trump’s orbit, RFK Jr. still understood his father’s legacy: “He saw America as an exemplary nation. … That we should know the difference between leadership and bullying, that we should try to promote democracy.” Indeed. He surely should.

Yeah, Denny, and RFK, Jr. is now the Pollution & Global Warming candidate.... Did he forget that Trump promised Big Oil moguls this year that he would, "Drill, Baby, Drill," and sabotage clean energy initiatives? RFK, Jr. is a complete fraud. Kennedy’s Trump endorsement stuns his former environmental allies - The Washington Post

Have you guys heard the latest from Greg Palast on RFK, Jr.'s brain problems? I was on the phone with RFK Jr. When he lost his mind - Greg Palast

Exactly, Kirk. I'm still trying to wrap my head around RFK, Jr.'s bizarre decision to endorse Trump. It's almost beyond belief! Does RFK, Jr. care about anything, other than himself? No wonder his former environmentalist colleagues told him to get out of the race. In effect, RFK, Jr. is now endorsing the guy who; 1) Rolled back over 100 environmental regulations 2) Withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords 3) Approved the Keystone XL pipeline 4) Signed a massive tax cut for billionaires and corporations 5) Tried to sabotage the Affordable Care Act 6) Signed off on mandatory cuts to Medicare and Medicaid 7) Abrogated Roe v. Wade-- by stacking the SCOTUS with Federalist Society judges 8 ) Tried to extort political favors (and a Big Lie) from President Zelensky, by withholding military support 9) Organized slates of False Electors in multiple swing states that he lost in 2020 10) Incited a violent mob attack on the U.S. Congress to overturn an election

One month ago, RFK Jr said that JD Vance was owned by the CIA and Military Industrial Complex. - Democratic Underground Forums

One month ago, RFK Jr said that JD Vance was owned by the CIA and Military Industrial Complex. - Democratic Underground Forums (video link at DU)

Dr. Fauci was correct when he said that RFK, Jr. is a very disturbed person. Consider RFK, Jr.'s obsession with pushing disinformation about pharmaceuticals, including vaccines, in light of his long history of heroin addiction, drug dealing, and even using anabolic steroids for body building. It's weird. Nor does he have a science or medical education.

With his pharmaceutical experience, perhaps RFK, Jr. will be appointed FDA Director in Donald Trump's Project 2025 administration. Afterall, Trump appointed the oil industry lobbyist, Scott Pruitt, EPA Director in 2017. RFK Jr. Was My Drug Dealer Kennedy’s endorsement of Donald Trump raises an awkward question. By Kurt Andersen Mark Peterson / Redux August 23, 2024, 4:04 PM ET The leading third-party candidate for president—an environmental lawyer and activist, a son and nephew of legendary liberal Democratic politicians—just quit the race and announced that he is joining the campaign of the most anti-environment president and presidential nominee in recent history, the leader of a Republican Party he has turned into a right-wing, anti-democratic, protofascist personality cult. I could go on and on and on, cataloging the contradictions and abandonment of principle, all gobsmacking. Enjoy a year of unlimited access to The Atlantic—including every story on our site and app, subscriber newsletters, and more. Become a Subscriber But Donald Trump and Bobby Kennedy—as I’ve referred to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. since we met freshman year at Harvard—have always had many features in common as well. Both are entitled playboy sons of northeastern wealth; both (in Michelle Obama’s words) were “afforded the grace of failing forward” as misbehaving, underachieving adolescents admitted to Ivy League colleges thanks to “the affirmative action of generational wealth”; both were reckless lifelong adolescents, both attention-craving philanderers and liars, both jerks. And Kennedy’s hour-long speech today was nearly as meandering and filled with lies as any average hour of Trump. On the subject of reckless-adolescent entitlement, I’ve got one Bobby Kennedy anecdote to tell. But it’s actually relevant to his endorsement of Donald Trump for president and his apparent expectation of joining a second Trump administration. In Kennedy’s speech today, he spoke at length about federal pharmaceutical regulation and programs addressing chronic disease. “I’m going to change that,” he said, promising to “staff” the health agencies very differently. “Within four years, America will be a healthy country … if President Trump is elected and honors his word.” Trump, he added, “has told me that he wants this to be his legacy.” My Bobby Kennedy story involves pharmaceuticals—not the legal, lifesaving kind, such as the vaccines he’s made a career of lying about, but the recreational kind. As a candidate, Kennedy got a very sympathetic pass on his years of drug use because he’s an addict, having used heroin from ages 15 to 29. He quit when he was arrested after overdosing on a flight from Minneapolis to the Black Hills and found by police in South Dakota to be carrying heroin; he pleaded guilty and received only probation. Kennedy, as Joe Hagan wrote in a recent Vanity Fair profile, “has made his history of addiction part of his campaign narrative.” As a teenager in Nebraska, I’d smoked cannabis and dropped acid before I got to Harvard in 1972. Sometime during my freshman year, I tried cocaine, enjoyed it, and later decided to procure a gram for myself. A friend told me about a kid in our class who was selling coke. The dealer was Bobby Kennedy. I’d never met him. I got in touch; he said sure, come over to his room in Hurlbut, his dorm, where I’d never been, a five-minute walk. His roommate, whom I knew, was the future journalist Peter Kaplan—with whom I, like Kennedy, remained friends for the rest of his life. He left as I arrived. I wondered whether he always did that when Bobby had customers. Make your inbox more interesting with newsletters from your favorite Atlantic writers. Browse Newsletters “Hi. Bobby,” Kennedy introduced himself. Another kid, tall, lanky, and handsome, was in the room. “This is my brother Joe.” That is, Joseph P. Kennedy II, two years older, the future six-term Massachusetts congressman. Bobby Kennedy wasn’t famous, but he was the most famous person I’d ever met. He poured out a line for me to sample, and handed me an inch-and-a-half length of plastic drinking straw. I snorted. We chatted for a minute. I paid him, I believe, $40 in cash. It was a lot of money, the equivalent of $300 today. But cocaine bought from a Kennedy accompanied by a Kennedy brother—the moment of glamour seemed worth it. Back in my dorm room 10 minutes later, I got a phone call. “Hello?” “It’s Bobby.” “Hi.” “You took my straw!” I realized that I had indeed, and had thought nothing of it. Because … it was a crummy piece of plastic straw. But Bobby was pissed. “There are crystals inside it, man, growing. You took it.” Growing? The residue of powdered cocaine mixed with mucus formed crystals over time? What did I know. It reminded me of some science-fair project. “So … you want the straw back?” “Yeah, man.” I walked it back to his room. He didn’t smile or say thanks. It was the last time I ever bought coke from anyone. A famous rich boy selling a hard drug that could’ve gotten him—or, more precisely, someone who wasn’t him—a years-long prison sentence. His almost fetishistic obsession with a bit of plastic trash. His greedy little burst of anger cloaked in righteousness. His faith that he was cultivating precious cocaine crystals. In retrospect, it has seemed to me a tiny illustration of the child as the father of the man he became: fantastical pseudoscientific crusader, middle-aged preppy dick who takes selfies with barbecued dogs and plays pranks with roadkill bear cubs he didn’t have time to eat. But the reason I decided finally to share this anecdote is because of a criminal-justice policy advocated by the presidential candidate he’s just endorsed. It’s another of those many spectacular contradictions I mentioned earlier. That is, Donald Trump, if he becomes president as Kennedy is now working to make happen, wants to start executing drug dealers. He said so in a speech as president in 2018: “These are terrible people, and we have to get tough on those people, because … if we don’t get tough on the drug dealers, we’re wasting our time … And that toughness includes the death penalty … We’re gonna solve this problem … We’re gonna solve it with toughness … That’s what they most fear." He said it again in 2022 when he announced his current candidacy: “We’re going to be asking [Congress to pass a law that] everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, [is] to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.” Elizabeth Bruenig: Trump dreams of a swifter death penalty And at a campaign rally this past April, he elaborated at length on his plan to kill drug dealers: “The only thing they understand is strength. They understand strength—and it’ll all stop.” Our policy, he explained, should be like that in the country he otherwise demonizes the most. “When I met with President Xi of China, I said, ‘Do you have a drug problem?’ ‘No no no,’ [he said,] ‘we have no drug problem.’ [I said,] ‘Why is that?’ ‘Quick trial!’ I said, ‘Tell me about a quick trial.’ When they catch the seller of drugs, the purveyor of drugs, the drug dealers, they immediately give them a trial. It takes one day. One day. At the end of that day, if they’re guilty, which they always are … within one day, that person is executed. They execute the drug dealers. They have zero drug problem. Zero.” And so, one question for reporters to ask the new Trump campaigner and potential Trump-administration official Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is something like this: The candidate you’re campaigning for, in whose administration you apparently intend to serve, wants our laws rewritten so that drug dealers, particularly those who sell narcotics, face capital punishment. Given that you sold cocaine in your youth, how do you feel about his advocacy of a regime that might have resulted in your own execution at age 19? Editor’s Note: The Kennedy campaign did not reply to requests for comment on this story.

I have long suspected that RFK, Jr. is missing a number of screws. Today, words cannot express my contempt for the wretch. His father and uncles must be rolling over in their graves.

Trump is an intellectual and ethical midget compared to Kamala Harris. He has the vocabulary, fund of knowledge, and ethical sensibility of a 5th grade schoolyard bully, And, sadly, his intellectual and ethical deficits appeal to some people in the U.S. and even, apparently, in Europe. 🙄