The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Kirk Gallaway]

I agree W. It would be good to get an indictment out there, and test Linsey Graham's hypothesis. I say bring it on! My guess is that they're cowards and their bark is worse than their bite.

Remember how they were threatening all hell to break to lose on Biden's inauguration day? I knew that would be a non event, though I did wonder if they'd pull something at the state capitols, but that turned out to be a non event too.

There could be some terrorist activity for a period of time though, and the putting out of fires. Whose to say that it hadn't already begun  and how many of these mass killings really have had some political origins  up to now, like the guy in Highland Park?

[Matt Allison]

I'm going to mix so many metaphors it will make your head spin.

Rather than a snowball rolling down a hill, adding on to itself, and becoming a powerful avalanche, Trump is trying to push a boulder up a steep hill, losing help as he goes, and will eventually see it roll back on top of him, flattening anyone still along for the fool's errand.

 

 

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

2 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

I'm going to mix so many metaphors it will make your head spin.

Rather than a snowball rolling down a hill, adding on to itself, and becoming a powerful avalanche, Trump is trying to push a boulder up a steep hill, losing help as he goes, and will eventually see it roll back on top of him, flattening anyone still along for the fool's errand.

 

 

 

 

Matt:

 

You need to work the Myth of Sisyphus in there somehow. 

[Benjamin Cole]

4 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

       So, notice how Trump now has his MAGA cult focusing on their rage at the U.S. government, and resistance to the rule of law, in response to what, exactly?  To the belated, drawn out investigations of his serious crimes-- his coup attempt on January 6th, and his blatantly illegal handling of classified documents.

      Quite a mob psychology trick, with a major assist from Trump Republicans and the right wing media.

      And, IMO, the longer these belated Trump investigations fester, the worse the MAGA cult violence problem will become.  Trump would burn the country down to save his own skin.

      Trump's lap dog, Lindsey Graham, is threatening violence if Trump is indicted, but I think the risk of violence is worsened by allowing Trump to control the narrative and incite violence.

 

Your President has warned you: Be afraid, very very afraid.

Important: This was not a political speech.

The President said this was an apolitical speech, and thus a representation of how the federal government, and the security state, size things up. 

That brace of Marines is there for a reason. 

 

[W. Niederhut]

7 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

I'm going to mix so many metaphors it will make your head spin.

Rather than a snowball rolling down a hill, adding on to itself, and becoming a powerful avalanche, Trump is trying to push a boulder up a steep hill, losing help as he goes, and will eventually see it roll back on top of him, flattening anyone still along for the fool's errand.

 

 

 

 

A Nordic version of the Myth of Sisyphus?

Instead of a rock, he rolls a snowball down the hill?

In Trump's case, the story is bound to have a very ugly ending.

(Someone pointed out that all Trump stories end in Chapter 11.)

[Steve Thomas]

In furtherance of their investigation into Donald Trump's violation of the Emoluments Clause to the Constitution, Congress has expressed an interest in the number of "Gift Items" found at Mar-a-Lago.

Steve Thomas

[Douglas Caddy]

13 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

Are we on the side of the heroes or the villains regarding Ukraine and Zelensky? Some sobering reading... 

 

https://maajidnawaz.substack.com/p/lower-energy-bills-or-funding-zelensky?s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=direct

America is on the side of heroes who are fighting Putin's attempt to revive the Soviet Empire of captive nations.

Some Americans push Putin's propaganda, such as the above link that spew forth falsehoods about the U.S. manufacturing bioweapons in the Ukraine. Putin's falsehoods are having an effect. Here is an excerpt from today' front page New York Times:

 

 

Of the many falsehoods that the Kremlin has spread since the war in Ukraine began more than six months ago, some of the most outlandish and yet enduring have been those accusing the United States of operating clandestine biological research programs to wreak havoc around the globe.

The United States and others have dismissed the accusations as preposterous, and Russia has offered no proof. Yet the claims continue to circulate. Backed at times by China’s diplomats and state media, they have ebbed and flowed in international news reports, fueling conspiracy theories that linger online.

 

In Geneva this week, Russia has commanded an international forum to air its unsupported assertions again. The Biological Weapons Convention, the international treaty that since 1975 has barred the development and use of weapons made of biological toxins or pathogens, gives member nations the authority to request a formal hearing of violations, and Russia has invoked the first one in a quarter-century.

 

 

[Guest]

32 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:

America is on the side of heroes who are fighting Putin's attempt to revive the Soviet Empire of captive nations.

Some Americans push Putin's propaganda, such as the above link that spew forth falsehoods about the U.S. manufacturing bioweapons in the Ukraine. Putin's falsehoods are having an effect. Here is an excerpt from today' front page New York Times:

Doug,

Western media outlets were propagating that Nazism existed in Ukraine which dated back to WW2. The article links the Daily Beast which some of us here accept has been used as a CIA front. 
 

Was Zelensky implicated in the Pandora papers? 
 

Does the USA have bio-warfare labs or has it funded labs inside Ukraine? 
 

We are long enough in the tooth to understand that all sides in any conflict use propaganda, as a lot of the battle is fought inside peoples minds. Public is needed to goto war or to support conflicts monetarily. Everyone one of us here understands that Russia are not saints but, this forum leaves most of us understanding that our own countries are guilty of all kinds of acts that we would ordinarily associate with tyrants or evil. The victims are the people fighting it and the people being displaced, and having their lives ruined. The USA and European nations have blood on their hands here. This was a conflict a long time coming and the USA/NATO had no right to Keep expanding east. Russia had no right to invade Ukraine. The problem is that neither the western powers nor Russia is playing by rules where they ask permission, they just do as they please. Ukraine is also not innocent in terms of the ethnic cleansing that has gone on since 2014 in Donetsk and Luhansk. We were all ok while that was happening, media silent. There are no innocent super powers, only villains. 
 

I’ll say it again, we need a detente, a rapprochement, a deescalation and a diplomatic solution.  That won’t happen if you are cheerleading one super power. 
 

In case you missed this talk from years ago, preeminent geopolitics expert, John Mearsheimer outlines the nuanced situation in Ukraine. 
 

 

[Douglas Caddy]

 

Supreme Court strikes out its own team ahead of 2022 elections (msn.com)

[W. Niederhut]

On 3/13/2022 at 9:51 AM, W. Niederhut said:

      Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin pointedly disagrees with the late George F. Kennan and David Mearsheimer's opinions that NATO expansion is responsible for Russian Federation aggression (including Putin's invasion of Ukraine.)

 https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin

March 11, 2022   

Excerpt

Remnick: We’ve been hearing voices both past and present saying that the reason for what has happened is, as George Kennan put it, the strategic blunder of the eastward expansion of NATO. The great-power realist-school historian John Mearsheimer insists that a great deal of the blame for what we’re witnessing must go to the United States. I thought we’d begin with your analysis of that argument.

Kotkin: I have only the greatest respect for George Kennan. John Mearsheimer is a giant of a scholar. But I respectfully disagree. The problem with their argument is that it assumes that, had NATO not expanded, Russia wouldn’t be the same or very likely close to what it is today. What we have today in Russia is not some kind of surprise. It’s not some kind of deviation from a historical pattern. Way before NATO existed—in the nineteenth century—Russia looked like this: it had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West. This is a Russia that we know, and it’s not a Russia that arrived yesterday or in the nineteen-nineties. It’s not a response to the actions of the West. There are internal processes in Russia that account for where we are today.

I would even go further. I would say that NATO expansion has put us in a better place to deal with this historical pattern in Russia that we’re seeing again today. Where would we be now if Poland or the Baltic states were not in NATO? They would be in the same limbo, in the same world that Ukraine is in. In fact, Poland’s membership in NATO stiffened NATO’s spine. Unlike some of the other NATO countries, Poland has contested Russia many times over. In fact, you can argue that Russia broke its teeth twice on Poland: first in the nineteenth century, leading up to the twentieth century, and again at the end of the Soviet Union, with Solidarity. So George Kennan was an unbelievably important scholar and practitioner—the greatest Russia expert who ever lived—but I just don’t think blaming the West is the right analysis for where we are.

Chris,

     Since you have mentioned Mearsheimer again, I'm re-posting Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin's explicit disagreement with Mearsheimer's opinions about Russia, NATO, and the current Ukraine crisis.

     (We discussed this six months ago, and I'm rolling the rock back up the hill.)

     As an aside, I just finished reading Mikhail Bulgakov's 1925 novel, The White Guard, about the Ukrainian civil war in 1918.  Ukrainian nationalists were fighting Russians a century ago.

     Sadly, there's a lot of bad blood there, which Putin has taken to a whole new level.

[Douglas Caddy]

 

Judge 'stormed ahead like a bull in a china shop' and shredded precedent to protect Trump: Former prosecutor - Raw Story - Celebrating 18 Years of Independent Journalism

[Greg Doudna]

BERNIE, The Guardian, 9/2/22.

 

---

The US has a ruling class – and Americans must stand up to it
In the year 2022, three multibillionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 160 million Americans. This is unsustainable.

Bernie Sanders
Fri 2 Sep 2022

Let’s be clear. The most important economic and political issues facing this country are the extraordinary levels of income and wealth inequality, the rapidly growing concentration of ownership, the long-term decline of the American middle class and the evolution of this country into oligarchy.

We know how important these issues are because our ruling class works overtime to prevent them from being seriously discussed. They are barely mentioned in the halls of Congress, where most members are dependent on the campaign contributions of the wealthy and their Super Pacs. They are not much discussed in the corporate media, in which a handful of conglomerates determine what we see, hear and discuss. 

So what’s going on? 

We now have more income and wealth inequality than at any time in the last hundred years. In the year 2022, three multibillionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 160 million Americans. Today, 45% of all new income goes to the top 1%, and CEOs of large corporations make a record-breaking 350 times what their workers earn. 

Meanwhile, as the very rich become much richer, working families continue to struggle. Unbelievably, despite huge increases in worker productivity, wages (accounting for real inflation) are lower today than they were almost 50 years ago. When I was a kid growing up, most families were able to be supported by one breadwinner. Now an overwhelming majority of households need two paychecks to survive. 

Today, half of our people live paycheck to paycheck and millions struggle on starvation wages. Despite a lifetime of work, half of older Americans have no savings and no idea how they will ever be able to retire with dignity, while 55% of seniors are trying to survive on an income of less than $25,000 a year. 

Since 1975, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth in America that has gone in exactly the wrong direction. Over the past 47 years, according to the Rand Corporation, $50 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90% of American society to the top 1%, primarily because a growing percentage of corporate profits has been flowing into the stock portfolios of the wealthy and the powerful. 

During this terrible pandemic, when thousands of essential workers died doing their jobs, some 700 billionaires in America became nearly $2 trillion richer. Today, while the working class falls further behind, multibillionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are off taking joyrides on rocket ships to outer space, buying $500 million super-yachts and living in mansions with 25 bathrooms. 

Disgracefully, we now have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any developed nation on Earth and millions of kids, disproportionately Black and brown, face food insecurity. While psychologists tell us that the first four years are the most important for human development, our childcare system is largely dysfunctional – with an inadequate number of slots, outrageously high costs and pathetically low wages for staff. We remain the only major country without paid family and medical leave. 

In terms of higher education, we should remember that 50 years ago tuition was free or virtually free in major public universities throughout the country. Today, higher education is unaffordable for millions of young people. There are now some 45 million Americans struggling with student debt. 

Today over 70 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured and millions more are finding it hard to pay for the rising cost of healthcare and prescription drugs, which are more expensive here than anywhere else in the world. The cost of housing is also soaring. Not only are some 600,000 Americans homeless, but nearly 18 million households are spending 50% or more of their limited incomes on housing. 

It’s not just income and wealth inequality that is plaguing our nation. It is the maldistribution of economic and political power. 

Today we have more concentration of ownership than at any time in the modern history of this country. In sector after sector a handful of giant corporations control what is produced and how much we pay for it. Unbelievably, just three Wall Street firms (Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street) control assets of over $20 trillion and are the major stockholders in 96% of S&P 500 companies. In terms of media, some eight multinational media conglomerates control what we see, hear and read. 

In terms of political power, the situation is the same. A small number of billionaires and CEOs, through their Super Pacs, dark money and campaign contributions, play a huge role in determining who gets elected and who gets defeated. There are now an increasing number of campaigns in which Super Pacs actually spend more money on campaigns than the candidates, who become the puppets to their big money puppeteers. In the 2022 Democratic primaries, billionaires spent tens of millions trying to defeat progressive candidates who were standing up for working families. 

Dr Martin Luther King Jr was right when he said: “We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power” in America. That statement is even more true today. 

Let us have the courage to stand together and fight back against corporate greed. Let us fight back against massive income and wealth inequality. Let us fight back against a corrupt political system. 

Let us stand together and finally create an economy and a government that works for all, not just the 1%. 

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Douglas Caddy said:

 

Judge 'stormed ahead like a bull in a china shop' and shredded precedent to protect Trump: Former prosecutor - Raw Story - Celebrating 18 Years of Independent Journalism

     I suppose that nothing should shock me when it comes to Donald Trump's lifelong evasion and obstruction of justice, but this one shocks me.

    I'm not a lawyer but, surely, this ruling doesn't pass the sniff test, does it?

    Even Bill Barr said that there was no reasonable case for the appointment of a Special Master.

Edited September 5, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

BERNIE, The Guardian, 9/2/22.

 

---

The US has a ruling class – and Americans must stand up to it
In the year 2022, three multibillionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 160 million Americans. This is unsustainable.

Bernie Sanders
Fri 2 Sep 2022

Let’s be clear. The most important economic and political issues facing this country are the extraordinary levels of income and wealth inequality, the rapidly growing concentration of ownership, the long-term decline of the American middle class and the evolution of this country into oligarchy.

We know how important these issues are because our ruling class works overtime to prevent them from being seriously discussed. They are barely mentioned in the halls of Congress, where most members are dependent on the campaign contributions of the wealthy and their Super Pacs. They are not much discussed in the corporate media, in which a handful of conglomerates determine what we see, hear and discuss. 

So what’s going on? 

We now have more income and wealth inequality than at any time in the last hundred years. In the year 2022, three multibillionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 160 million Americans. Today, 45% of all new income goes to the top 1%, and CEOs of large corporations make a record-breaking 350 times what their workers earn. 

Meanwhile, as the very rich become much richer, working families continue to struggle. Unbelievably, despite huge increases in worker productivity, wages (accounting for real inflation) are lower today than they were almost 50 years ago. When I was a kid growing up, most families were able to be supported by one breadwinner. Now an overwhelming majority of households need two paychecks to survive. 

Today, half of our people live paycheck to paycheck and millions struggle on starvation wages. Despite a lifetime of work, half of older Americans have no savings and no idea how they will ever be able to retire with dignity, while 55% of seniors are trying to survive on an income of less than $25,000 a year. 

Since 1975, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth in America that has gone in exactly the wrong direction. Over the past 47 years, according to the Rand Corporation, $50 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90% of American society to the top 1%, primarily because a growing percentage of corporate profits has been flowing into the stock portfolios of the wealthy and the powerful. 

During this terrible pandemic, when thousands of essential workers died doing their jobs, some 700 billionaires in America became nearly $2 trillion richer. Today, while the working class falls further behind, multibillionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are off taking joyrides on rocket ships to outer space, buying $500 million super-yachts and living in mansions with 25 bathrooms. 

Disgracefully, we now have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any developed nation on Earth and millions of kids, disproportionately Black and brown, face food insecurity. While psychologists tell us that the first four years are the most important for human development, our childcare system is largely dysfunctional – with an inadequate number of slots, outrageously high costs and pathetically low wages for staff. We remain the only major country without paid family and medical leave. 

In terms of higher education, we should remember that 50 years ago tuition was free or virtually free in major public universities throughout the country. Today, higher education is unaffordable for millions of young people. There are now some 45 million Americans struggling with student debt. 

Today over 70 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured and millions more are finding it hard to pay for the rising cost of healthcare and prescription drugs, which are more expensive here than anywhere else in the world. The cost of housing is also soaring. Not only are some 600,000 Americans homeless, but nearly 18 million households are spending 50% or more of their limited incomes on housing. 

It’s not just income and wealth inequality that is plaguing our nation. It is the maldistribution of economic and political power. 

Today we have more concentration of ownership than at any time in the modern history of this country. In sector after sector a handful of giant corporations control what is produced and how much we pay for it. Unbelievably, just three Wall Street firms (Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street) control assets of over $20 trillion and are the major stockholders in 96% of S&P 500 companies. In terms of media, some eight multinational media conglomerates control what we see, hear and read. 

In terms of political power, the situation is the same. A small number of billionaires and CEOs, through their Super Pacs, dark money and campaign contributions, play a huge role in determining who gets elected and who gets defeated. There are now an increasing number of campaigns in which Super Pacs actually spend more money on campaigns than the candidates, who become the puppets to their big money puppeteers. In the 2022 Democratic primaries, billionaires spent tens of millions trying to defeat progressive candidates who were standing up for working families. 

Dr Martin Luther King Jr was right when he said: “We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power” in America. That statement is even more true today. 

Let us have the courage to stand together and fight back against corporate greed. Let us fight back against massive income and wealth inequality. Let us fight back against a corrupt political system. 

Let us stand together and finally create an economy and a government that works for all, not just the 1%. 

Yep - That’s about it. @Greg Doudna is it possible that this elite are manufacturing crisis? In business problems are created just so a profitable solution can be offered. 
 

Was it Mussolini who defined fascism as the merging or corporations and state? 
 

I have said this many times that I am not a fan of Marx but, he did say that the end days of capitalism would be oligarchs cannibalising state institutions. In that I think he was right. 
 

Have you read Orwell and Huxley, Greg? Or anything about technocracy? 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Chris,

     Since you have mentioned Mearsheimer again, I'm re-posting Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin's explicit disagreement with Mearsheimer's opinions about Russia, NATO, and the current Ukraine crisis.

     (We discussed this six months ago, and I'm rolling the rock back up the hill.)

     As an aside, I just finished reading Mikhail Bulgakov's 1925 novel, The White Guard, about the Ukrainian civil war in 1918.  Ukrainian nationalists were fighting Russians a century ago.

     Sadly, there's a lot of bad blood there, which Putin has taken to a whole new level.

Well, thank you for sharing that again, its useful for anyone else reading and they can make up their own mind. What I would say is; you know the nature of the US/NATO’s foreign policy, why is this an exception? IMO there is nothing virtuous about it, only super-powers moving against eachother, testing their enemies. 
 

Agree, the bad blood goes way back.