Kamala Harris and the RFK assassination

[David Andrews]

9 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/donald-trumps-big-problem-with-senior-voters
 

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/07/13/polls-trump-continues-to-lose-support-from-seniors/
 

https://www.axios.com/biden-polling-seniors-trump-2ff44e93-290f-4bb2-995c-c944e54a2464.html

Do seniors who read The New Yorker vote Trump?

[Sandy Larsen]

5 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Sandy:

Obama had the opportunity of a lifetime to really do something  big about the American economy.  If you recall, as I do, some people-- like Michael Moore--were talking about a second New Deal.  There was never a time like that that I can recall in my lifetime.  The GOP was discredited, homes were being lost, investment banks were going under, commercial banks were going BK.  Some of the largest BK's in history took place at that time.  There was never a better time to do a restructure. Even better than today.  Did Obama call in Stieglitz?  Nope.

What does Obama do instead?  He has a meeting with a bunch of conservative writers, e.g. Kristol, to try and gain their backing on his action.  

He didn't have to.  Once he called in Geithner and Summers, everyone knew what was going to happen.  They were acolytes of Bob Rubin (Mr. Goldman Sachs) who started the Hamilton Project. Of which Obama attended a few meetings.  Do I really have to say anything more?

One of the biggest bail outs in history took place for the  pet Wall Street investment banks.  Who went to jail?  (Sound of crickets chirping.).

Obama settled on the weakest remedy:  a stimulus package and a bail out package.  Kristol could not have hoped for anything more.  What the GOP really feared was a second New Deal.  They realized that if such a thing happened, it would redefine the political party system much like FDR did. I mean, to say Obama was better than W, I mean what does that mean?  W was the  worst president in history.  Until that time. Give me a break.

Let us never forget: it was Clinton who signed off on derivatives, and Clinton who signed off on the repeal of Glass Steagall,  Obama once introduced Clinton as a "great president"🤮

The Harris/Biden ticket is simply the Bill and HIllary/DNC dream team.  If you liked the Clintons and Obama--with HRC as secretary of state--this is your ticket. Go ahead and celebrate.  

If you preferred Sanders and Warren, well, vote Green in California.  Which I will.

The thing to celebrate today is Ilhan winning.  The squad will be intact.  That is the real hope of the Democratic party.

 

Jim,

Proof is in the pudding. Obama saved the U.S. from Great Depression #2. He gave affordable healthcare to low income folks like me. (In 2018 I got an $84,000 hospital bill. My share was $2000.) We still have General Motors and all the businesses supporting it because of Obama. He brought 10% unemployment down to less than 5%. Stock market shot up from 6000 to 17,000 (DJIA). Housing market stabilized.

And you complain because he didn't do it THE WAY you would have had him do it? The way which probably didn't have the votes, just like single payer healthcare didn't have the votes? I'll stick with the proven, thank you.

I prefer Sanders over Biden. But I'm glad Biden won the primary because I don't think a self described socialist can win the presidency in America. Not yet.

BTW I'm not the only one to give high marks to Obama. He was ranked #8 among American presidents in the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) 2018 presidential greatness poll.

All Scholars Voting:

1. Lincoln
2. Washington
3. FDR
4. T. Roosevelt
5. Jefferson
6. Truman
7. Eisenhower
8. Obama
9. Reagan
10. LBJ

 

Of course, Reagan doesn't belong in the top 10... but Republican scholars -- like Republicans in general -- think highly of the man. If we look at the votes of only Democratic scholars, Reagan drops off the list and Obama gets a boost because conservative scholars dislike Obama moreso than the other democratic presidents.

Democratic Scholars Voting:

1. Lincoln
2. FDR
3. Washington
4. T. Roosevelt
5. Jefferson
6. Obama
7. Truman
8. LBJ
9. Eisenhower
10. Wilson

(Source)

Edited August 12, 2020 by Sandy Larsen

[Cliff Varnell]

29 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

Do seniors who read The New Yorker vote Trump?

Seniors who vote Trump read Breitbart.

 

 

Edited August 12, 2020 by Cliff Varnell

[Sandy Larsen]

4 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Was Stieglitz a Senator? Nope, and Obama needed 60 votes in the Senate to pass anything.

The Democrats only had 57 Senators, plus Independent Joe Lieberman in their caucus.  They needed Lieberman and 2 Republicans to go along with anything.

Would Lieberman have gone along with this radical restructuring?  Susan Collins? Arlen Specter?

Gimme a break!

 

Good points.  (My bolding)

 

[W. Niederhut]

14 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

That is an interesting article Ty linked to.  

But I wanted to ask about Will Rua.  How did Obama and Biden kill 6 million people?

Am I, and most people, missing something?

 

There are many critical issues raised on this thread that deserve commentary, but I want to mention the subject of Obama allegedly murdering "6 million people."   It's ludicrous.

One statistic that I recall reading about in late 2017 is that the U.S. military killed more civilians-- so-called "collateral damage"-- during the first EIGHT MONTHS of Trump's presidency than they had killed during EIGHT YEARS under Obama.  Big difference.

Recall that Trump, himself, had openly chided General Mattis about measures to minimize "collateral damage" to civilians in Syria and Anbar province.

Here's one reference on the subject, written only two months after Trump's 2017 inauguration.

U.S. War Footprint Grows in Middle East, With No Endgame in Sight

www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/world/middleeast/us-war-footprint-grows-in-middle-east.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0


March 29, 2017

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The United States launched more airstrikes in Yemen this month than during all of last year. In Syria, it has airlifted local forces to front-line positions and has been accused of killing civilians in airstrikes. In Iraq, American troops and aircraft are central in supporting an urban offensive in Mosul, where airstrikes killed scores of people on March 17.

Two months after the inauguration of President Trump, indications are mounting that the United States military is deepening its involvement in a string of complex wars in the Middle East that lack clear endgames.

Rather than representing any formal new Trump doctrine on military action, however, American officials say that what is happening is a shift in military decision-making that began under President Barack Obama. On display are some of the first indications of how complicated military operations are continuing under a president who has vowed to make the military “fight to win.”

In an interview on Wednesday, Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the commander of United States Central Command, said the new procedures made it easier for commanders in the field to call in airstrikes without waiting for permission from more senior officers.


“We recognized the nature of the fight was going to change and that we had to ensure that authorities were down to the right level and that we empowered the on-scene commander,” General Votel said. He was speaking specifically about discussions that he said began in November about how the fights in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State were reaching critical phases in Mosul and Raqqa.

Concerns about the recent accusations of civilian casualties are bringing some of these details to light. But some of the shifts have also involved small increases in the deployment and use of American forces or, in Yemen, resuming aid to allies that had previously been suspended.

And they coincide with the settling in of a president who has vowed to intensify the fight against extremists abroad, and whose budgetary and rhetorical priorities have indicated a military-first approach even as he has proposed cuts in diplomatic spending.

To some critics, that suggests that much more change is to come, in difficult situations in a roiled Middle East that have never had clear solutions.

Robert Malley, a former senior official in the Obama administration and now vice president for policy at the International Crisis Group, said the uptick in military involvement since Mr. Trump took office did not appear to have been accompanied by increased planning for the day after potential military victories.

“The military will be the first to tell you that a military operation is only as good as the diplomatic and political plan that comes with it,” Mr. Malley said.

The lack of diplomacy and planning for the future in places like Yemen and Syria could render victories there by the United States and its allies unsustainable.

“From harsh experience, we know that either U.S. forces will have to be involved for the long term or victory will dissipate soon after they leave,” he said.

Others fear that greater military involvement could drag the United States into murky wars and that increased civilian deaths could feed anti-Americanism and jihadist propaganda.

Some insist that this has already happened.

“Daesh is happy about the American attacks against civilians to prove its slogans that the Americans want to kill Muslims everywhere and not only the Islamic State’s gunmen,” a resident of the Syrian city of Raqqa wrote via WhatsApp, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. He gave only his first name, Abdul-Rahman, for fear of the jihadists.

The shift toward greater military involvement extends into one of Mr. Obama’s central legacies: the prolonged American presence in Afghanistan, where more than 8,400 American soldiers and 5,924 troops from NATO and other allies remain, and where the Taliban have been resurgent.

Plans have been announced to send 300 United States Marines to Helmand Province, their first deployment there since 2014. And the American commander, Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., told Congress in February that he would like another “few thousand” American and coalition troops.

But the changes have also been notable in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, all home to overlapping conflicts in failed states where jihadist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State have taken advantage of the chaos to step up operations.

Even while being drawn more deeply into those conflicts, the Obama administration sought to limit American engagement while pushing — mostly in vain — for diplomatic solutions. It also launched frequent airstrikes to kill individual jihadists or to destroy their facilities and sent thousands of American troops back to Iraq to train and advise Iraqi forces, and also provide firepower, so they could “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State.

But under Mr. Obama, the White House often spent weeks or even months deliberating certain raids and airstrikes out of concern for American service members and civilians — and often to the frustration of commanders and American allies.

Mr. Trump’s tough statements before coming into office, and the rise in civilian deaths in recent American strikes, have raised questions about whether the new president has removed constraints from the Pentagon on how it wages war.

[Douglas Caddy]

[Prof. Juan Cole, as usual is head and shoulders above everyone else in his analysis and commentary.]

Kamala Harris is the America that Trump tried to Stop: the Best of Jamaica and India and born in Oakland

Juan Cole08/12/2020

 

https://www.juancole.com/2020/08/america-jamaica-oakland.html

 

[Joe Bauer]

JFK isn't on those top 10 presidents lists?

And yet LBJ is?

If one did a list of the most corrupt presidents LBJ would be number 1.

LBJ is on those top 10 lists for one reason, his "Great Society" commitment which truly did benefit most of the working class, poorer and racially oppressed parts of our society on a new deal scale.  

So much so it blinded out the dark side of LBJ imo.

A false reality image cover-up that continues to this day. 

Imagine a highest power Godfather using his massive wealth to improve the lives of working and poor folk in his controlled domain to levels they had never seen before.

Even if these great life improved folk found out that their benefactor was also corrupt, it would be hard for them to turn their loyalty against him.

They probably wouldn't even want to deal with finding out this darker truth. And until today, that's still the case with LBJ imo.

Johnson went "all out" with his "Great Society" giveaway.

He knew that he needed something this populist ( actually totally socialist ) and massive to overcome what he knew was a serious suspicious, mistrusting and Southern good ole boy perception of him by most Americans and create a more JFK popular, benevolent good king type image. 

This giveaway was so huge ( and aggressively and successfully implemented as well ) it worked ... in spades!

LBJ is on these top presidents lists because of that one policy, but he was still a murderous criminal imo.

JFK had the same "Great Society" goals in mind with his "New Frontier" intentions.

And if he was elected to a second term and had the ridiculously high House and Senate majority numbers LBJ had, JFK surely would have gotten through many of them himself.

JFK's courage to stand up to the corrupt forces that were really controlling too much of everything in this country up to and during much of his term ( and that were of massive numbers and power and influence beyond anything average Americans could imagine ) as well as millions of rabid JFK hating segregationists, super wealthy extreme right wing/oil baron groups, Mafia, vengeful expatriated Cubans and our own covert community ( fired Dulles, Bissell and Cabell ) and a threatened Hoover as well, defined him as perhaps our greatest president after Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt in his life giving sacrifice in standing up to these corrupt forces imo.

On the other hand, LBJ was right in there with all those corrupt groups!

Some here will surely dismiss me as a follower of former forum member Robert Morrow in his crusade to lift the false reality veil from our official historic record of LBJ as something other than a totally corrupt historic figure.

They would be correct in that assessment. 

LBJ's "Great Society" giveaway was real and beneficial, but it doesn't change the reality of his greater over-all and more important legacy of corruption imo.

Until we face this truth and quit living in a false historic record reality, we just perpetuate the damage living a lie does to us all as a nation and society. Same with JFK's murder and our official record of this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 12, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Douglas Caddy]

[Senator Schumer should announce that anyone rigging the election through politicization of the postal service will be indicted and prosecuted if Biden is elected.]

A conspiracy’: Alarms sound after postal worker reports removal of sorting machines

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/a-conspiracy-alarms-sound-after-postal-worker-reports-removal-of-sorting-machines/

 

Edited August 12, 2020 by Douglas Caddy

[Ron Ecker]

18 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

      But let's get real, folks.  Anyone who wants to make Kennedy Assassination Trutherism an issue in the 2020 election needs to remember that, as Oliver Stone put it, "Trump got rolled by the Deep State" when he blocked the full release of the JFKA records.  

I don't understand why Trump did that. I mean, he has nothing but contempt for the intelligence people holding those records. He ignores or doesn't believe what intelligence tells him, and he and his supporters love conspiracy theories (at least if they're crazy enough). So when Trump "got rolled," in exactly what way?

 

[W. Niederhut]

31 minutes ago, Ron Ecker said:

I don't understand why Trump did that. I mean, he has nothing but contempt for the intelligence people holding those records. He ignores or doesn't believe what intelligence tells him, and he and his supporters love conspiracy theories (at least if they're crazy enough). So when Trump "got rolled," in exactly what way?

 

Perhaps we should re-phrase the question.

Why DID Trump use the GHWB executive rider to block the release of the JFKA records?

Also, on the subject of Trutherism, whatever happened to Trump's 2016 claim, "When I'm President the American people are going to find out who REALLY destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11?"

[Ron Ecker]

52 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Why DID Trump use the GHWB executive rider to block the release of the JFKA records?

 

The only thing I can think of is a physical threat. Remember the "assassination plot" (involving Lee Harvey and Osvaldo) against Jimmy Carter in L.A., which prompted the peace-loving Carter to support the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan? "Russia's Vietnam," as national security advisor Zobig Brzzzzzinski (sp) put it.

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Nice one Joe:

That list Sandy produced is one of the most bizarre I have ever seen:  

LBJ, Truman, Eisenhower, Wilson, Obama?  Who sponsored that list?  Rupert Murdoch's rent  a scholar program?

Johnson reversed almost all of Kennedy's major foreign policy programs: Congo, Indonesia, Dominican Republic,  Vietnam.  In the last he created a disaster of dual epic proportions. In the sense that it wrecked two countries, Vietnam and the USA.  As I wrote in my essay on the subject, he also completely mishandled Kennedy's civil rights program and his planned war on poverty.  Which ended up being stillborn.  Which is one reason we have what we do today: the Minny murder and BLM.

Harry Truman did to FDR what LBJ did to Kennedy. FDR was the balancing beam between Churchill and Stalin. Once he died disastrous things happened:  the atomic bombings of Japan--killing over 200,000 civilians in three days--and the igniting of the Cold War.  And we are living with those two horrendous events today.  Even though, and this is the capper, even though there is no USSR today and Russia is not a communist country.  This is why Republicans like George Will and Condi RIce like Truman.  He is the indirect father to the neocon movement, which controls foreign policy today. The alternative was FDR and Henry Wallace.

Eisenhower, as the authors of that fine book Subversion as Foreign Policy have noted, was the father of American assassination plots and regime change in the Third World.  It was Ike who directly ordered the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.  It was Ike who ordered the plans to overthrow Castro. He gave free rein to the Dulles brothers and their ideas about American dominance in the Third World: Guatemala and Iran.  In both situations the results were pretty awful for the citizens living there: death squads and hit lists in the former, the Shah and Savak in the latter.

Woodrow Wilson provided the captions for Griffith's almost obscenely racist smash hit film Birth of A Nation.  He had that hideously racist film screened at the White House. That picture was the beginning of the whole Lost Cause view of the South. Which is one of the most pernicious and warped lies ever produced in American history text books. The idea that Wilson was a progressive president is also belied by his creation of the privately held Federal Reserve Board, the stock in that monstrosity was owned by the Rockefellers, Morgans, and Warburgs.  Like they needed the money.  This is progress?

Obama  (and Oprah) promised us Hope and Change. Yet his plan on salvaging the economy differed little  from what Paulson originally announced in 2008 (TARP) and started doing in late 2008 and January of 2009.  Geithner essentially revised it a bit and expanded it. People like Krugman  criticized the program on the grounds that they were really non-recourse loans from which asset managers would benefit greatly--in other words, not only would no one be indicted, they would be rewarded for the disaster they created.  In foreign policy, did Obama, on his own, stop any of the NSA surveillance programs W started ? If any were stopped it was largely because of Risen and Snowden. Did he get us out of Afghanistan?  Its pretty bad when Trump does the things that Obama should have done.  I mean how can anyone defend Libya and Honduras?  

Defending Obama by saying that he did not have a veto proof senate reminds me of the shameless defense of Clinton that says well, derivatives and the destruction of Glass Steagall had the votes anyway!  Well, Clinton could have vetoed both.  He did not.  When JFK began his partial test ban treaty everything was stacked against him.  He worked on it day and night: it passed overwhelmingly.  When he began his civil rights bill in 1963 he was not even close to getting it passed--back then you needed 67 votes to dodge a filibuster.  So, in June of 1963, he began the biggest lobbying program in modern history .  That program paid off when, after his death, RFK, HHH and Tom Kuchel broke the filibuster in the summer of 1964.  Russell later admitted that it was JFK's courting of, and bringing into Washington, the midwest Protestant ministers that eventually broke the filibuster. 

To me, that's leadership. 

Edited August 12, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

49 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Obama  (and Oprah) promised us Hope and Change. Yet his plan on salvaging the economy differed little  from what Paulson originally announced in 2008 (TARP) and started doing in late 2008 and January of 2009.  Geithner essentially revised it a bit and expanded it. People like Krugman  criticized the program on the grounds that they were really non-recourse loans from which asset managers would benefit greatly--in other words, not only would no one be indicted, they would be rewarded for the disaster they created. 

Paul Krugman: "US economy: Thank you, Obama!"

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2524089-Paul-Krugman-quot-US-economy-Thank-you-Obama!-quot

Quote

In foreign policy, did Obama, on his own, stop any of the NSA surveillance programs W started ? If any were stopped it was largely because of Risen and Snowden.

“If”?

NSA Ends Bulk Collection of Telephony Metadata under Section 215

https://www.lawfareblog.com/nsa-ends-bulk-collection-telephony-metadata-under-section-215

<quote on>
In 2014, in a speech at the Department of Justice to address domestic and international concerns regarding U.S. intelligence activities, President Obama announced that the Intelligence Community would end the NSA bulk telephony metadata program conducted under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act. The President directed the Intelligence Community and the Attorney General to develop options for a new approach to match the capabilities and fill the gaps that the Section 215 program was designed to address without the government acquiring this metadata in bulk.</q>

DiEugenio refuses to give America’s first black President credit for anything.

Neither does Donald Trump. It’s a standard Team Fascism narrative.

Quote

Did he get us out of Afghanistan?  Its pretty bad when Trump does the things that Obama should have done.

Trump got us out of Afghanistan?

Since when?

How is it DiEugenio won’t give Obama credit for his accomplishments but he gives Trump credit for something that hasn’t happened?

Quote

I mean how can anyone defend Libya and Honduras?  

Can’t defend Obama’s policies in Libya or Honduras.  Those are black marks on his foreign policy record.

But how can anyone honestly ignore the Iran nuke deal, the negotiated removal of Syrian chemical weapons, the opening to Cuba, or the Paris Climate Accords?

Trump/DiEugenio will never give Obama credit for anything, ever.

Quote

Defending Obama by saying that he did not have a veto proof senate reminds me of the shameless defense of Clinton that says well, derivatives and the destruction of Glass Steagall had the votes anyway! 

What a shameless straw man!

Does DiEugenio have a clue how the US government operates?  

Obama needed 60 votes to pass legislation.  He only had 57 Democratic Senators.  He needed Independent Joe Lieberman and two Republicans.  He ended up with three — Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and our bete noire Arlen Specter.

Time was of the essence. The economy was in free-fall in the winter of 2009.  Obama took office on January 20 and signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 on February 16.

Quote

Well, Clinton could have vetoed both.  He did not.  When JFK began his partial test ban treaty everything was stacked against him.  He worked on it day and night: it passed overwhelmingly.  When he began his civil rights bill in 1963 he was not even close to getting it passed--back then you needed 67 votes to dodge a filibuster.  So, in June of 1963, he began the biggest lobbying program in modern history .  That program paid off when, after his death, RFK, HHH and Tom Kuchel broke the filibuster in the summer of 1964.  Russell later admitted that it was JFK's courting of, and bringing into Washington, the midwest Protestant ministers that eventually broke the filibuster. 

To me, that's leadership. 

Let’s game this out.  DiEugenio thinks that Obama should have spent a year lobbying for some undefined “restructuring” while the economy collapsed from inaction?

[James DiEugenio]

I should add this about Obama.

As everyone knows, it was Obama who maneuvered Perez into the DNC when it looked like Ellison had the position wrapped up.  To say that Perez has been a problem is an understatement.

Now, from an article at Huffpost about how Harris was selected:

"But in private, Obama suggested to others that he believed Harris was the favorite."

Edited August 12, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

17 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

I should add this about Obama.

We can expect James DiEugenio to attack Democrats primarily between now and election  day.