W. Niederhut

Trump's ten counts of obstruction of justice in the Russia-gate scandal are critically important-- far worse than Nixon's obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandal. It amazes me that there has been so much denial about these crimes by Trump, even on this forum (e.g., our "Mark Zaid" thread.) To quote Weissman in the above article-- As for his conduct during the Mueller investigation, Weissmann explained that not prosecuting Trump for the ten examples of obstruction of justice would essentially make all special counsel investigations in the future pointless. “You have to remember in the Mueller report, there is substantial evidence that the president obstructed justice, in other words, obstructed the special counsel investigation,” he continued. “And to me, that’s even more important to vindicate. If you are not going to hold a president accountable for a special counsel investigation obstruction, then there’s no reason to actually have a special counsel in the future. In other words, the precedent that you’re setting in the future is don’t bother appointing a special counsel because there isn’t going to be any accountability for a president who obstructs that investigation.”

It looks like people, generally, are still not taking Prouty seriously as an honest, primary source witness of the history of "the CIA, Vietnam, and the plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy"-- including his involvement in writing portions of the Pentagon Papers and the McNamara/Taylor Report. My question. Why? Why, for example, would people consider historians like John Newman, or others, more credible sources about events Prouty was involved in than Prouty himself? The implication is that Prouty was either dishonest, or lacking in discernment. Both notions seem inaccurate to me.

I recall reading that Leon Panetta told Obama early in his presidency, "You can't just say, 'No,' to these guys" -- i.e., the CIA and the Pentagon brass. Does that ring a bell?

Cliff, Small world! Your cousin Al ("AJ") was a big part of the Kamikazi Klones shows around here back in the early 80s. I remember AJ well, on stage, but never met him. (Evergreen is on a different planet.) He was not the Klone I once treated, but I shouldn't say more about that subject, in the interest of confidentiality. As for Stravinsky, Paul is the second professional musician I know of who is especially fond of The Rite of Spring. What a piece of work!

How many more knock out punches to the cabeza can Wheeler take before the refs finally stop this fight? First it was weeks of posts about Joe Biden's alleged dementia, then about Hunter Biden's laptop. Now it's alleged election fraud.

Robert, GHWB was always a CIA man. Joseph McBride (a member of this forum) played a key role in bringing that hidden history to light. As for Joseph Biden, here we go again, apparently. 'This Is How a Torturer Ended Up Running the CIA': Biden Reportedly Hopes to Avoid Probes Into Trump Crimes Mirroring Obama's choice to "look forward" not back, one critic said this a "preview of an epic failure" by the President-elect https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/17/how-torturer-ended-running-cia-biden-reportedly-hopes-avoid-probes-trump-crimes November 17, 2020

Dennis, Given the fire hose of Trump/RNC falsehoods about alleged election fraud, can you post a credible source for Wheeler's claim about a serial 100K to 0 vote tally in Pennsylvania? It sounds like obvious bunk to me. Meanwhile, it is a matter of public record (per my post here a few days ago) that the RNC has actively solicited false claims of election fraud from their base.

Quite the scatological metaphor, there, Crna Gora... 🤥 But, I'm still curious about how these POTUSes (POTII?) end up kowtowing to the Deep State after they are elected. Trump never mentioned anything about 9/11 Truth after he was elected. And, much to my chagrin, Obama never looked into the Bush-Cheney chicanery surrounding the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Great stuff, fellas. I have been a big fan of the English Beat since the early 80s, when I saw Rick Wakeling, Ranking Roger & Co. in concert. (I've even recorded my own home-studio covers of a few Beat songs, which are surprisingly simple to play.) David Andrews' Flying Lizards' cover of James Brown's Sex Machine had me rolling on the floor. (I had never heard of the Lizards.) But let's not forget about the original robotic "New Wave" video of that era, which I first saw on a giant screen at a club in Greenwich Village in (?) '80 or '81, before MTV existed -- Das Model, by Kraftwerk. I think the club was called Rock City. (There was a similar club at Kenmore Square in Boston at the time, called the Metro.)

Stop the Steal's massive disinformation campaign connected to Roger Stone www.cnn.com/2020/11/13/business/stop-the-steal-disinformation-campaign-invs/index.html November 15, 2020 (CNN)It is an internet battle cry: Stop the Steal has swept across inboxes, Facebook pages and Twitter like an out-of-control virus, spreading misinformation and violent rhetoric -- and spilling into real life, like the protest planned for DC this weekend. But while Stop the Steal may sound like a new 2020 political slogan to many, it did not emerge organically over widespread concerns about voting fraud in President Donald Trump's race against Joe Biden. It has been in the works for years. Its origin traces to Roger Stone, a veteran Republican operative and self-described "dirty trickster" whose 40-month prison sentence for seven felonies was cut short by Trump's commutation in July. Despite efforts by Facebook to shut down the misleading content, it was too late. The cluster of groups and pages -- which altogether had amassed 2.5 million followers, according to an analysis by activist group Avaaz -- had seeded a jungle of misinformation that is being shared -- and believed -- by millions of Americans. "....it was too late." As Mark Twain correctly pointed out, a lie can travel around the world before the truth has time to put its' pants on.

537 votes. 173,000 Florida voters were purged from the rolls from 1999-2000 by the Jeb Bush/Katherine Harris administration. Thousands of over votes -- and anomalous Pat Buchanan votes-- on the Palm Beach "butterfly" ballots. And Al Gore never did get a recount in Miami-Dade, and other counties-- despite the fact that recounts were mandatory under Florida law.

Jim, Is anything known about Joe Biden's private beliefs and sentiments about JFK's assassination? As a liberal, Irish Catholic of his generation, Joe Biden seems like a guy who might be sympathetic with the JFKA Truth movement.

Giuliani’s fantasy parade of false voter-fraud claims www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/16/giulianis-fantasy-parade-false-voter-fraud-claims/ by Glenn Kessler November 16, 2020

Huh??? 🤥

Trump is largely responsible for the rioting in D.C. this evening. None of this nonsense would be happening if Trump had simply refrained from gas-lighting his supporters about the election. He continues to incite violence.

Since we're all interested in history here, I'm going to post an obscure Rocky Mountain footnote in the history of American punk rock. So, when I moved back to Denver in 1983, after living in New England for eight years, I was very disappointed with the local live punk rock and jazz music scene. (Boston was teeming with punk bands and great jazz musicians from places like the Berklee School of Music.) But there was one punk rock band in Denver that was surprisingly good, in my estimation -- the Kamikaze Klones, from Evergreen, Colorado, (of John Hinckley, Jr. fame.) I went to several of the Klones' performances at a local club called The Mercury Cafe in about 1983-84, (including a show where two of the band members were arrested in the parking lot for possession of cocaine between sets.) The Klones wrote songs like, Give Texas Back to the Mexicans-- a punk parody of Paul McCartney's song, Give Ireland Back to the Irish. One of the Klones later became a patient of mine, and told me the inside story of their rise and fall in the 80s. Even at the height of their considerable local popularity-- which included one or two out-of-state tours-- the band never earned enough money to live on, especially since most of the money went up their noses. This low budget video, filmed at Denver's old Larimer Street wino district, (of Jack Kerouac/Neal Cassidy fame) doesn't really do justice to the quality of the Klones' live performances back in the day.

I was living in Providence back in the 70s when David Byrne and the Talking Heads started out at the Rhode Island School of Design. (Their first big hit was "Psycho Killer," on the '77 album.) And I used to go out and listen to punk bands perform at the Rat in Boston's Kenmore Square when I was in med school there from 1979-83. In those days, there were a lot of punked out teenagers hanging around Boston's subways with mohawk haircuts, black clothes, safety pin piercings, etc. But, honestly, I was never all that wild about most of the cacophonous punk rock stuff, especially if it was out-of-tune. I gravitated more toward the euphonious sounds of Bob Marley, the Police, U2, and Sting's solo work in the 80s. De gustibus non est disputandum. Here's the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain performing the Talking Heads punk rock classic, Psycho Killer.

So, Tommy Tuberville's dad fought in the Wehrmacht, then? Meanwhile, my dad was fighting 76 years ago to free Europe from fascism...

130 of Trump's Secret Service Agents and multiple members of Trump's inner circle, including Mark Meadows and Corey Lewandowski, are now COVID positive. And the epidemic is surging in the U.S.

I just found a helpful 2020 Election Flow Chart for Rob Wheeler over at the Democratic Underground. 🤥

Incidentally, the Hayes-Tilden election of 1876 was, ultimately, a disaster for the freed men of the former Confederacy. As part of the Congressional deal, Hayes agreed to withdraw Federal troops from the South, ushering in the collapse of Reconstruction and 88 years of lynchings and Jim Crow laws. One hundred and forty-four years later, the U.S. is still struggling with voter suppression in the former slave states and widespread systemic racism in our municipal police departments --a direct legacy of Ante-Bellum slave patrols.

Mark, IMO, Trump never does anything "for the sake of others." It's not in his nature. He's a sociopath whose modus operandi is to manipulate others for his own benefit-- for financial gain, power, adulation , sex, etc. One of the most disturbing things about Trumpism, for me, has been the inability of so many Americans to recognize and understand the nature and characteristics of Trump's sociopathy-- even in 2020! Tom Nichols said it well in his recent Atlantic essay entitled, "A Large Portion of the Electorate Voted for the Sociopath." To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "Trump is a fraud, inside of a swindle, wrapped in a scam."

Bunk. We've had mail-in voting here in Colorado for several years. It works very well, and there has been no evidence of voter fraud. Trump and his RNC goons are simply trying to create a false pretext for contesting the election results-- after sabotaging the USPS deliveries of ballots, and (in Pennsylvania) passing a ridiculous law that prevented the counting of mail-in ballots until 7 A.M. on November 3rd. As always with Trump, it's a sales scam based on smoke, mirrors, and mass disinformation.

Or if voting irregularities are alleged... Just saw this explanation of the apparent Trump/GOP scam at Axios. The Electoral College play www.axios.com/trump-electoral-college-biden-68d94e27-ace7-4da8-9e22-af7a62fe5149.html

After Biden Win, Right-Wing Sites Continue to Push False Vote-Fraud Claims Many publications have refused to acknowledge the president-elect. Casting doubt on the integrity of the vote “has been a fundamental part of Trump’s election strategy,” said Whitney Phillips of Syracuse University. www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/business/media/right-wing-sites-false-vote-fraud-claims.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage