The Agency knew that their best asset for selling their wars was Barack Obama -- the same reason so many in the security state were eager to get rid of Donald Trump.
The one time we get a president who honestly is against endless wars, the Democrats came out in full force against him. The media as CIA mouthpieces came out in full force against him.
I daresay no one can ever take a democrat seriously ever again that says they are anti-war.
"I daresay no one can ever take a democrat seriously ever again that says they are anti-war."
A more honest appraisal is that the vast majority of both Republican and Democrat politicians are pro-endless-war.
And, given the new surge in actual Progressives winning office (some 22 of the 23 Progressives who ran in the November election won), there probably will be more federal level Democrats seated in the new Congress who are anti-war than Republicans.
In the USA, being pro-perpetual-war is a bipartisan affair, though we Progressives are working to change that.
yeah, but will hollah at a foo who votes for Trump - even though under Trump we undeniably had a fighter against the intelligence spooks, a President to end the wars, a President motivated to embrace reform for American minorities AND a President the mealy mouth media would actually confront.
True story, the day or week after she lost 2016, Hillary Clinton was shoveling money at the "progressive" not for profits. MSDNC brings em on - they lose their minds. every authentic movement is co-opted and destroyed by the Neo-Libtard Dems
If he was so against them, why didn’t he end them when he had the chance? Why did he escalate in Syria? He actions were no different than the shitty presidents before him
You can review the last 20 years of airpower statistics: You won't find any other POTUS that presided in that timeframe where they had a drop that large in number of bombs released.
I can't speak for further back than that because I can't locate any data pre-2k on airpower statistics for weapons releases. I do seem to recall that we launched A LOT of cruise missiles back in the day though...
Unlike you I provide sources for my assertions. Nowhere did I Contradict myself. Trump has finished the wars that were in progress and has worked to draw down our troops and get NATO to pull their own weight. Again, no other POTUS has done this.
I think he has tried and every time a General de Estados Unidos Corps de Marinos haha opposed him, the Neo-Libtards piled on to ensure our President was in a more weakened condition to withdraw troops.
He has been pushing for troop withdrawals and has been running peace negotiations with everyone he can. Bringing us down to 2500 troops in Afghanistan will be a massive accomplishment.
Don't forget this is the type of resistance to a withdrawal he is facing:
Yeah, we should not be supporting that quagmire. I fault Trump on that one. On the positive side, striking peace deals/negotiations between Arab states and Israel has been stunning.
Don, agreed that this was in the "pro" column for Trump and that the Dems generally are going to align with
But it's important to remember that those in the bubble are part of a media-left echo chamber that is literally suffering from an irrational mental state. So they need to be pitied a bit to get to solutions, because they are succumbing to normal human emotions fed by the current social media and traditional news media business models. The AI algos push bad news info at them to purposely trigger their emotions and that's what drives the TDS.
Not sure how to end it, but we need to start by recognizing the problem and thinking of them with empathy.
If one good thing is to come from the 2020 election it will be this: that Biden supporters may come to realize that they are, in fact, useful idiots. Although, to be fair, only the ones in swing states were actually useful.
1) by painting the next Republican/conservative leadership as equally evil to Trump in every way, the bubble folks push too far and cause crumbling of their coalition
2) they successfully convince their side that even Chuck Grassley is 100% evil in all ways and can't even be spoken to, and we creep closer to real problems
After talking with an old friend whose beliefs are contradicted by a couple of the links in this very article, I'm grappling with the appropriate way to point them here without a) their carte-blanche dismissal or these sources, and/or b) their dismissal of my viewpoints in general. TDS is real, and the last thing they want to hear is that they've helped install yet another pro-war leader into office.
I dealt with saving a friend from scientology and one core feature of cults is their tendency to push you to disregard input from people, cast them out of acceptable thinking, including your family. This cult is no different.
The best way to work is to occasionally slip in something from the "acceptable" media sources that contradicts everything they think, because those do pop up. For example, the recent WaPo articles on Kyle Rittenhouse actally paint things fairly and don't make him out to be a beast, point out he wasn't militia, etc. Or point out as things creep forward how their thinking changes to introduce doubt of their sources - "a couple of months ago they had you convinced that antifa didn't even exist". It's basically the same process as one coming to doubt taught religious faith - it happens over time with a series of smaller pieces that start not to add up.
One key thing is give them a scapegoat - it can't be their fault they believed in Russiagate - they have to have the ability to rationalize their behavior and be able to clearly state that the media/social media sources lied to them.
Very astute observations, I’ve come to the same conclusions on Quora. Believers of politics or religion are essentially brainwashed and cannot be reasoned with. You cannot be emotionally invested in any topic if you want to try to be objective.
But here’s what I’ve learned - believers for the most part, do not care so much about the beliefs (or politics) as they do the group identity they claim. They need the group affiliation, the beliefs are a symbol of the believer’s dedication to the group.
It’s fascinating, you can watch less experienced partisans or believers in real time, justifying a policy that you bring up that they aren’t familiar with. Based on the way you frame the topic, they will assume the policy to be part of their tribe. When you reveal that this policy is actually held by the opposing side, they will immediately begin justifying why it’s not a game changer policy - they’re essentially covering for their own identity, the policy never was something they were highly opinionated on. Just like the BLM movement or Covid-19. The net is flooded with believers who refuse to recognize the Marxist leaders, or who actually root for more cases, more deaths, to buttress their group identity.
And you’re right, the only way to get through to these believers is to drop seeds and hope one takes root someday.
you're right about that, and it's too frustrating to deal with on a regular basis. i stopped talking to several friends this year, and not because i'm offended by our differences, but because i got tired of trying to have a logical conversation that didn't quickly go off the rails with certain people. here's the bottom line: if you think half the country is being bamboozled by partisan propaganda, how can you be sure you're immune from your own side's propaganda?
besides that, there are subtleties that seem to be lost on most; such as the fact that BLM is a self-described Marxist organization. but are the majority of their supporters interested in Marxism? hard to say, but i'm skeptical. on the flipside, look how many right-wing Christians seem to like Trump, one of the worst examples of Christian values i can imagine. and the Republicans who still support Trump's efforts to overturn the election are doing so for their own agendas, not his.
and on the flopside, good luck showing Glenn's article about Obama and Bush being far more harmful than Trump to any proud Democrat; they won't even read past the headline.
Good point about the propaganda. I’m pretty loud about denigrating partisanry, consequently I have to remember to check my own bias to make sure I’m not being convinced of something that is buttressed by opinion.
The Marxist leaders vs the supporters is a grey area too. My conclusion was that the leaders knew the supporters weren’t Marxist and were never gonna be Marxist, so there must have been another reason for them to come out and say that.
I figured it must have been a polarizing strategy that has worked before in color revolutions, and that this may be what they’re provoking.
The alternative is to presume the BLM leaders thought their ideology of no private property and everyone gets the same food coupon (while dissolving the meritocracy and it’s money system) actually stood a chance of being implemented in America - which is patently absurd.
Right now, there does seem to be a major influence campaign going on. I thought initially it was to get rid of trump, but I don’t see an end to this PC cancel culture either. It could however be something natural - like a byproduct of the social media age, hard to say.
But after reading another one of Glenn’s articles about the media blackout Hunter’s laptop, I’m convinced that the msm and social media were aligned in their support of Biden (or non-support of trump), and thus officially cannot be trusted. I mean, I haven’t trusted the media for years, but this last debacle makes it transparent - they are interested in swaying public opinion, which is propaganda.
Trump is, indeed, transactional. If he is going to push anti-war and pro-life policy for his benefit, I support him. The “Trump is a racist White Supremacist” trope is patently ridiculous, though, and I am beyond sick of it...
It's enough to cite Trump's comment about " ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world." He added that they should "go back" to "the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came" and that "I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!" twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150381394234941448
So yes, he is a racist, in case you didn't know already. I am using the term "racism" here to mean a prejudiced state of mind characterized by a negative attitude toward people who are perceived as being in a particular race (or races). Such prejudice is the most plausible explanation for the negative attitude and inaccuracies in this series of tweets; if you don't know that, you have chosen not to know much about racial prejudice in America.
Everyone is biased to some degree. It's okay. Trump's racist comments about a bigoted Congresswoman who has the gall to condemn and malign America - a nation where she, an immigrant from an impoverished and violent country, was able to rise to the rank of a policy maker, an influencer, someone respected - does not bother me in the slightest. It may ruffle some feathers and bring up righteous indignation but where is the lie. She who hates America and wants to change America should show some humility. The beauty of America is that she doesn't have to, and she will continue to irresponsibly lecture us and wreak havoc in congress. Trumps comments mean nothing. You can call him a racist, but most Americans who value policy over clout agree with him. It was never about race, it was about her own hypocrisy. I am not white and I agree with him. My grandmother is an immigrant from a shithole country and I agree with him.
I see you're trying to shift the subject to Ilhan Omar. No thanks, that wasn't what I was talking about.
As my comments elsewhere show, I was talking primarily about the members of the Squad other than Omar. They were born in America. But even though these Congresswomen are American-born, Trump said that they "originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world" and told them to "go back" to "the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came". This, of course, isn't true. These American-born Congresswomen did not come from what Trump calls shithole countries. So the question is why Trump thought they did, and obviously the explanation for that has something to do with their not being white. Since these American-born Congresswomen weren't white, he concluded that they were from shithole countries. That's racist thinking.
I notice that your post wobbles back and forth about whether Trump is racist or not. But some of us can just say it straight: he is racist. If you like him despite his racism, that's up to you.
He's a racist in a sense that he'll state the obvious when the rest of America tip toes around reality in an incomprehensible way to avoid the title. The truth is, we are all racist. We all hold prejudices. That's human nature. Yes, I know your primary point wasn't on whether his comments hold merit but whether they were racist. Okay, they were racist. But that still doesn't make him a white supremacist, unless you're willing to call everyone a white supremacist (which many do) but that immediately renders the term irrelevant and useless.
By the way Randall, you can despise someone for their actions totally separate from their skin color. Well that is, unless you are obsessed with skin color and consider that as the most important thing about any person... the way CRT tells leftists that they must think.
I recognize that you're dodging the issue. You first tried to dismiss the idea that Trump was racist by saying it's "ridiculous". When I gave evidence for it, you ignored the evidence and started the old Straw Man trick of pretending to respond to me by bringing up views that weren't at all the same as what I was saying. These techniques are pathetic ways of arguing, and some of us are rational enough not to be fooled by them. The fact that you try to dodge the issue in this way shows how weak your case is; I wish Trump supporters weren't so dodgy, but it does make most of them easy to see through.
I don't think America is the source of all humanity's evil, duh. America is not a white supremacist country, if that phrase means to you something like what it meant to speak of "white supremacist South Africa" during the Cold War. Still, I recognize that racial prejudice and white supremacist views can be found in certain quarters in America, and that these views sometimes lead to negative effects on the lives of people who are not white. Your comments in your 2nd attempt at a reply are similarly misdirected; I have never seen critical race theorists say that "skin color is the most important thing about any person", much less insist on others thinking that way. More relevantly, it's not how I think. Trump's tweet was obviously not about how he "can despise someone for their actions", as your words suggest; instead, Trump was doing the very opposite of judging someone for their actions or for what King called "the content of their character". He was smearing people based on what his prejudice led him to falsely believe was "the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came".
Finally, when you bring up the fact that many have good reason to flee their countries to come to America, you fail to notice what anyone who is patriotic in the true sense should notice: that this kind of "voting with their feet" should NEVER be used by us Americans to make ourselves complacent about being a relatively good country, when we could be making the country greater that already is. I am patriotic in that sense; you, since you encourage complacency about racial prejudice, are clearly not.
I do see through your attempt to shift the subject to Straw Man views demonizing America, but it doesn't succeed in distracting from the other issue you were wrong on, namely that Trump is a racist.
Well we have arrived at a place where there is no compromise. You do not recognize the same facts as I do. He was attacking “the Squad” based on their widely quoted attacks on the moral character of America. Not on what you claim is his prejudice against their race due to their countries of origin. Not once did he comment on their race, yet somehow you, like all leftists, are able to read his mind (long distance style!) and draw conclusions on what motivated his rant. It is fruitless to argue about this because neither of us can read his mind. I will try another point of reasoning with you: even if he IS a racist(which I am not conceding), so what? “Thought crime” is not (yet!) illegal in America. Racist action, however, IS illegal under various civil rights laws. What law did he violate when he called them bad names?
By the way, have you ever been to Somalia or any of the Arabic countries? I have and they ARE shitholes.
I do not fall neatly into today’s ideological spectrum I am essentially libertarian. But what Glenn’s reporting and at least genuine attempt to cover truth tells me is that that truth actually brings people together even if they are ideological opposites.
Given the full truth, most Americans would oppose the forever wars and it would all collapse. As such, it’s obvious that the one thing the government and its nefarious little actors cannot tolerate is the truth.
I'd say half of America can't handle the truth. That's why they cling unquestionably to establishment media narratives that offer up false gods like BHO (who just released his third of three books....about himself).
Comfort food for the willfully ignorant. Because reality sucks.
i feel similarly. but why is knowing The Truth the end of the debate? even if we knew all the factors that contribute to political decisions, we would have a wide spectrum of opinion on policy proposals. information is only part of the problem. good decision making is far more difficult than it seems; and the more education you have, the harder it is to be certain.
My wish for the holidays is that President Trump goes to somewhere in Europe to have an unannounced meal with the US troops. Upon return to Andrews Air Force Base, the door to Air Force One opens and standing next to him is Edward Snowden and his wife. He has pardoned Mr. Snowden and brought them home to their parents waiting on the tarmac.
The fact that the Media and Dems immediately became forever war advocates is telling. But more telling is how quickly average American Dems did as well. If Trump was against it, they were for it. This is all possible because Americans have discarded anything that even resembles principles in favor of their “party”. Their views can be remolded in a matter of moments.
My liberal friends (and there are plenty of them, although the adjective doesn't really apply anymore) are so far oblivious to the fact that they've aligned themselves with neocons to become pawns of the wealthy, war-mongering elites. It's a sad, sad thing to watch.
Main Street Democrats haven't yet realized they are the party of Wall Street, the media empire, big tech, "lockdown" corporations, big pharma, and endless wars.
True. They only 'allowed' Bernie in the primary under specific conditions. There were several other dem presidential candidates who were deliberately omitted from the debates. He was allowed simply because as a socialist, they concluded he had no chance. Here's the only known interview of one of the other candidates in 2016 http://bit.ly/rocky2016-fraud
That requires a long answer. If I wanted 100% pure democracy that might be easy, but I don’t want pure democracy, just an increase in democracy which takes away power from unprincipled officials such as politicians. Designing a more democratic system that doesn't elect politicians is challenging. I hope and believe that some future generation will find a solution to it that works adequately. As of now, though, all I can offer is partial steps in that direction, but even just taking these steps would improve things. Here are my suggestions:
(1) All big economic packages, such as corporate welfare, should go to the voters for an up or down vote.
(2) Big decisions that involve picking an option from along a scale -- such as what percent of government spending should go to the military -- should be taken by public vote, perhaps by having voters pick options on a ballot every few years so that whichever option is chosen by the median voter gets put into effect.
(3) In general, have more participatory budgeting.
(4) Allow ballot initiatives at the federal level, and in the states and municipalities that don't currently have them. I don't consider ballot initiatives to be fully democratic, since they're too easily swayed by wealthy interests, just as elections of politicians are. But ballot initiatives do serve as a check and balance on politicians who disregard the people's voice, which is useful. In particular, initiatives that reject a set of new regulations or that undo an administration's rollback of regulations should always be allowed. Possibly, also allow recalls of politicians throughout the country at all levels.
(5) Community forums that don't have lawmaking power. In communities defined by shared interests and in geographical communities, there should be forums where people can hear from serious advocates on each side of a contemporary issue, and the people who attend the forum should get to discuss the issue. These forums should be better funded, more widely attended, and more widely heard than they are now, and they should be run by people who are not beholden to any political faction. It's essential for these forums not to have any kind of lawmaking role, or they would become corrupted by those who try to use them for power purposes. Those who attend these forums most frequently should have less of a voice in them than people who attend less commonly, to prevent the forums from being dominated by one faction. But the forums serve to help members of the public to work out what they think and to form civic networks with one another in a way that's not dominated by the power structure and serves as a check on those with political influence.
(6) Visibility of political discussion. Most major advertising channels (for instance, TV ads or YouTube ads) would be required to set aside a certain fraction of their space for two-sided discussion of political topics. Discussions would be recorded between skilled participants chosen by an algorithm, test audiences would decide which discussions are most interesting, and the most interesting discussions would be pushed into the advertising channels in a random way so that no particular segment of the audience is excessively targeted for any particular message. Again, this helps people become more informed.
(7) Opting out from politicians. In our current system, politicians in Congress and other legislatures are given the power to make laws as if they were the authentic voice of all the people in their district, when in fact the politicians are often working against the interest of most of the voters. Perhaps it would be better to give each voter the option of "opting out" from their local lawmaker politician and picking a legislative service to cast votes for them in the legislature instead. Depending on what percentage of voters in a given politician's district "opt out", that politician would lose a corresponding percentage of his vote in the legislature, which would be distributed among the chosen legislative services instead. So if 30% of the voters in a congressional district opt out, the elected Congressperson would no longer be allowed to cast the usual one vote in Congress, but only what counts as 0.7 votes, while the remaining 0.3 votes are split among the legislative services in proportion to what the people in his district chose. Each legislative service would be required to explain their votes, preferably in advance. Voters can change which legislative service they use at any time. It's important to allow one legislative service to "piggyback" on another: that is, if legislative service A is famous and gets a lot of opt-out votes from people around the country, other people can start up a rival legislative service which casts votes in largely the same way as legislative service A but differs on certain issues. These rival piggyback services are allowed to automatically copy the votes of the service they're piggybacking on except when they want to disagree. This discourages a famous legislative service from flouting the will of its supporters by trading its votes for backroom deals or hidden priorities, since if voters suspect that the famous service is doing that, they can easily move to a rival piggyback service with little disruption. Similarly, if voters don't trust their local elected politician, they can switch to a legislative service. No one legislative service should be allowed to control more than 10% of the votes in the legislature, and no more than 20% when piggybackers are included. Legislative services would not be allowed to have conflicts of interest, and advertisements could not promote legislative services except by quoting their explanations for their votes. Criticisms of a legislative service should be made automatically visible to those voters who support it.
(8) More widespread civic education. Some of it should teach people to get better at recognizing the kinds of abuses and wrong moves that political parties and movements have made in history. Some of it should teach the latest and the best techniques for helping campaigns for change, especially campaigns that don't have the power structure's backing, and should teach examples of when various kinds of campaigns for change have been succesful. Some civic education should be farmed out to groups from all parts of the political spectrum (as far as possible, groups that are not beholden to political leaders) which can teach their own keen sense of how to increase freedom and prevent abuses. And another part of civic education should bring out what groups from different parts of the political spectrum have in common. These different kinds of civic education shouldn't be taught only in school to young people, but should also be available as classes for people to re-learn later in life, like keeping up your CPR skills.
(9) Measures to raise the prestige and influence of forums and institutions that criticize and arouse opposition to potential abuses of power, even when this criticism goes against public opinion. This is necessary because, if politicians are no longer able to exercise a lot of power quietly, those who seek to abuse power will find that they need to make large sectors of public opinion into loyal and uncritical defenders of their abuses. Thus, as politicians' power is reduced, we need to compensate by creating more effective forums and institutions to awaken the conscience of individual citizens and of groups of citizens. The "civic education" that I discussed just above will help with that too.
(10) Measures to promote the voices of those who defend principles openly and aren't plotting some hidden means to advance a particular politician or faction. This should involve rewarding those who have shown an ability to command public attention and who have stuck to the same principles for a long time, even at times when it's not favorable to themselves or to any one faction.
Points (9) and (10) are because we need to guard against having a society where most people feel they need to support sneaky and unscrupulous means of advancing some faction's interest. Our current society, with its mealy-mouthed politicians and small-dollar campaign donations to pay for deceptive ads, induces those who watch politics to feel that they, as citizens, have to support sneaky and unscrupulous techniques to be effective. That makes our society even less democratic. We should work towards ensuring that, in a society with less power given to politicians, citizens should also be putting less energy into sneaky and unscrupulous techniques.
Sadly, I don't think they'll realize it any time soon. They'll be too distracted by the latest threats to democracy. On the menu for 2021: Covid and white supremacy, and how they're interrelated because those hateful MAGA-hat deplorables keep spreading the virus at their Klan rallies.
I spent a minute trying to figure out if you meant clueless or valueless, realized either worked and you may have just invented a neologism to represent both.
me too, i'm both good and smart, and i have all the right opinions. as far back as i can recall, i've always had the right opinions. i don't know what's wrong with other people.
If they're smart and good, then they are more likely to be in denial rather than simply clueless. I am confident many harbor secret suspicions that they confide to no one about -- not even their spouses. (I'm basically a "leftist", with the caveat that all left-describing labels are now FUBAR.)
It's really strange, you don't see the same from the right.
My personal belief is that it's because people leaning right, thanks to WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, learned to distrust all media - even when it tells us what we want to hear.
There are far many more right leaning individuals critical of Republicans than left leaning individuals critical of Democrats.
Oh, and I learned to distrust the media long before wikileaks. You only need to be interviewed once and see what gets printed as a result to have a high level of disdain for traditional media.
Left leaning individuals relying on CNN for news were literally told it was illegal to go to wikileaks by them. Given that, it is unsurprising that they haven't seen the evidence firsthand.
yeah, mine too. when i point out that democratic presidents are equally security-state advocates, warmongers, and hypocrites, they look at their shoes and change the subject. even better, they can never figure out why the unwashed masses "vote against their own interests" so often. but the truth is, we don't know what other people's interests are, let alone what a particular candidate represents to them. biden demonstrated this hubris by telling a black guy on TV, "if you don't know who to vote for, then you ain't black!" same old arrogant joe from the '80s, right? so who should a black guy vote for? trump, an archie bunker type olde-tyme bigot and his empty-suit VP, or the biden/harris crime-fighting duo, who successfully put thousands of black people in prison for dubious reasons [crack will get you 10x the sentence of coke; you're welcome]. not the most palatable choice...
Glenn, care to run your own Pew-style survey of the political leanings of your readership? Based on the comment sections of your articles, I'd wager it'd be in stark contrast to what we see with the large, corporate outlets.
Yeah, I'd love to do this - my guess is 35% left, 30% conservative, 25% independent/libertarian, and the other 10% just whatever. I love that. I'm going to let the audience build for awhile and then do some kind of survey.
I'm a pretty staunch conservative with a very powerful bullshit detector, so I can't tolerate mainstream retail media any more. Thanks for your effort here.
Conservative evangelical with a longtime admiration/respect for Mr. Greenwald. We need more people with his courage no matter our political or religious views.
I am for gay marriages, abortions, gun ownership, freedom of speech, freedom of religion or lack of it, freedom to use or not use drugs...so probably libertarian
It was my second Green presidential vote. After Obama's 2nd term of drone bombings, and the twice disenfranchisement of Senator Sanders' presidential campaigns, I was done with the corporate-owned party of war hawks.
I'm not a part of whatever tribe you're referring to so I don't care. You're probably thinking of center-left or center-right tribes which I also have no use for.
Just allowing a comment section on your articles is enough to know you are a real journalist. Letting the people express their views about the topic, or call the author out on mistakes or obvious bias, should be a staple of journalistic integrity in the modern age.
Like a youtube video with comments turned off, any article without a comment section should be immediately suspicious to any intelligent person.
One thing I love about your writing is it's given me ideas and thoughts that have allowed my politics to get a lot messier. While I consider myself on the left, your critiques have opened me up to calling out all the bullshit I see on the left. I find myself able to understand such a wider range of beliefs.
Not sure where I fit any more. But I can handle the truth - if I can find it. Election fraud and how we can fix some of it in the future is very important to me.
My political leanings are VERY human. When anyone attacks those humans who hunt whales or eat dolphins I firmly defend them, as we humans all need to stick together.
Undoubtedly the primary group we should all feel the strongest membership affiliation to. Sadly I think its place has been supplanted by a variety of others.
Without question the leanings are much more diverse here. One of my favorite things about it is that there is still so much agreement on the gold Glenn mines for us in spite of that diversity.
For me I disagree with some of what Mr. Greenwald says, but not anything he has said that he has tied directly to a source or document is among those things.
I know our politics are very different, though I imagine our disdain for the current state of the Press is the same in principle, though for him greater in degree for actually being in the arena and seeing it firsthand.
Early years I was a Republican. Middle years, a Democrat. Today I am neither because I am disgusted with both parties. The Republicans appear hell-bent on blurring the line that keeps separate church and state, while the Democrats are all about identity politics. By all appearances, we are faced with a toxic mess.
I have always been right where Gandhi is for almost 20 years. It tells me I’m a normal person I think. The political compass is at least an effort to break down the false dichotomy of left right identity.
It’s always worthwhile to have Obama exposed as just another war criminal president. My hope (and perhaps Glenn’s, too) is that someone close to Trump will suggest to him that.his best revenge against the Intel community would be a pardon for Assange and Snowden.
The only thing that ever made sense to me why Obama sold us down the river the way he did, was that he was groomed by CIA and delivered their BS propaganda. Biden will be no different. And it's obvious the CIA is behind the theft of this 2020 election as well, with their Hammer and Scorecard technology and electronic vote flipping. It's all so disgusting.
" And it's obvious the CIA is behind the theft of this 2020 election as well, with their Hammer and Scorecard technology and electronic vote flipping"
I've seen no evidence for this, and so far none of myriad state and federal courts have seen any, either. Conjecture, speculation and wishful thinking are not acceptable substitutes for evidence.
And just look at those involved in the ongoing coup attempt which started in 2016: Brennan Clapper Peter Strzok McCabe, the same cast of characters. You are being willfully blind. It's the same technology that has been used around the world to interfere in elections and overthrow regimes.
And JT, I don't watch Youtube videos when offered as evidence -- if it's important it will be found in writing and much easier to consult. As for "statistical anomalies," do you mean this clownishness:
>>Giuliani’s source for these percentages [showing statistical anomalies in Michigan] was an affidavit authored by Russell Ramsland, a security consultant and former Republican congressional candidate. The document alleges that anomalies in the vote count indicate that Michigan election results were "manipulated."
"There were at least 19 precincts where the Presidential Votes Cast compared to the Estimated Voters based on Reported Statistics exceeded 100%," the affidavit reads. The document then goes on to list the 19 precincts, shown in this screenshot:
A screenshot of the 19 precincts listed in Ramsland's affidavit
But there’s a problem, and it’s a big one: All 19 of the precincts cited in the affidavit are ****actually in Minnesota,**** not Michigan. <<
Ah, yes, L. Todd Wood and his "Creative Destruction Media." Fascinating folks. Here's one of theirs from yesterday:
= = = = =
Q WAS RIGHT
[Flaming Q-Anon graphic here]
After exhaustive meetings with sources in Ukraine, who provided reams of documentary evidence for hours, CDMedia has been exposed to a massive international criminal conspiracy which spans continents and decades.
Q was right. Our wold is run by a criminal syndicate unlike mankind has ever known.
Global financiers are involved. Former Presidents of the United States are involved, on both sides of the political aisle. The uni-party exists. Media titans are involved. Silicon Valley is involved. Our security agencies and most politicians are compromised.
I think for those who can watch a 30 min video and don’t require “written” explanation, one should watch and follow this Independant investigative journalist George Webb to understand the historical context of the military involvement. I have been following him for four years. He followed the Imran Awan (Pelosi’s top staffer) Pakistani spy scandal went to Michael Flynn‘s trial every day including the trial of his business partner, and knows all about Dimitri Alperovich configuring the blackberries for the DNC which was behind Russiagate. I promise you this will not be a waste of time: https://twitter.com/georgwebb/status/1330947136469434368?s=21
"Investigative journalist" George Webb, you say? I'm afraid this is one of those situations that justify disregarding claims simply because the source has established that he is utterly unreliable.
>>> "He followed the Imran Awan (Pelosi’s top staffer) Pakistani spy scandal . . ."
Awan was never a Pelosi staffer (he was a House computer technician) and there was no Pakistani spy scandal -- that's right-wing conspiracy nonsense. From the Wiki entry (which cites to reliable sources, as usual):
= = = = =
A government investigation led by U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu included forensic analysis of computer equipment and data, as well as interviews with about 40 witnesses. The investigation addressed various right-wing conspiracy theories about Awan, concluding that it had "found no evidence that [Awan] illegally removed House data from the House network or from House Members' offices, stole the House Democratic Caucus Server, stole or destroyed House information technology equipment, or improperly accessed or transferred government information, including classified or sensitive information."[2] The investigation found no evidence of ties between Awan and a foreign intelligence agency targeting Congress, or between Awan and an alleged criminal ring that stole equipment from Democratic lawmakers.[16] The investigators stated, "the government has uncovered no evidence that [Imran Awan] violated federal law with respect to the House computer system".[17]
And here, (from CNN, although that may upset some here) is and example of what happens when people take Webb's YouTube videos seriously:
= = = = =
How a conspiracy theory closed part of a major US seaport
by Donie O'Sullivan
@CNNMoney June 16, 2017: 5:46 PM ET
The past few years have shown how our propensity to speculate and to share online can quickly transform a fringe thought into conventional thinking. On Wednesday, we got new evidence of the potential real-world consequences as a trio of conspiracy theorists with a modest following inadvertently shut down part of one of the United States' largest ports.
I know Awan was the IT director. But he interfaced closely with Pelosi and Wasserman Schultz, which is why Nancy said, "get Imran in here, no staff." The House Inspector General Theresa Grafenstein herself, filed a "suspicious activity report," which said there were hundreds and hundreds of illegal logins. Awan spent 9 months out of the year in Pakistan while he was receiving a 160K per year salary. His father was ISI. They were in a company partnership with Raum Emanual having to do with farmland (that they stole) in Afghanistan in order to make opiates. Webb went to DC with a former CA police offer and interviewed scores of ppl until he found a former Marine who was renting a house from Awan who corroborated that he found "pried hard drives and blackberries" with House markings on them. Awan's wife had made police reports saying that he abused her and that he had said, " do you have ANY idea how important I am here and in Pakistan, I could have you killed." She tried to flea the country and was caught at the border with $12K and he was finally convicted on bank fraud," but that is certainly the least of his crimes. Ppl are being willing blind if they can not see the infiltration of ppl who were not vetted properly who mean us harm. And....George Webb has been on the ground for 5 years, analyzing the networks, looking at the meta data from the blackberry traffic, going to the trials and interview hundreds of ppl for corroboration, because he is a REAL journalist who follows the facts. He has a background in IT and network analysis. Not just in DC, but around the country-like in Akron OH covering the Roden "drug murders," and looking at the empty containers that were supposed to be filled with uranium. All of these videos-thousands of them were taken down from youtube. Your criticisms are empty and shallow and you haven't done ANY deep research.
I'm not aware that statistical anomalies were even alleged in the Michigan cases with which I'm familiar. The claims in both the state and federal cases there centered on alleged misbehavior by elections personnel and what the plaintiffs claimed were procedural defects.
" The claims in both the state and federal cases there centered on alleged misbehavior by elections personnel and what the plaintiffs claimed were procedural defects."
As far as I know, that is correct. The primary arguments had to do with purported "irregularities" committed by people on the ground in Wayne County. But I didn't read all the pleadings or decisions.
>>> "But I didn't read all the pleadings or decisions."
Nor did I. I enjoy reading good law, but there didn't seem to be much of that on offer in those cases. Judge Brann's opinion dismissing Trump for Pres. v. Boockvar was fun, though.
"Do you understand that sworn affidavits are, by definition, evidence?"
They are when they attest to facts that would pertain. The affidavits in question do not constitute evidence of fraud that would be legally sufficient for a court. (Hence, no courts have accepted that Team Trump has supported their fraud claims.)
Lack of named persons, times, and other specificity. And not understanding it was not her job to, e.g., check signatures as opposed to county clerks:
>>Jessy Jacob, a Detroit employee the city said has been on furlough. She claimed that while working at a city satellite voting center, she saw election workers "coaching and trying to coach voters to vote for Joe Biden and the Democrat party" as well as encouraging them to vote a straight Democratic ballot. Jacob asserted she saw several people already issued an absentee ballot cast a separate one but fail to surrender their old ballot or sign an affidavit disqualifying the first, as the law requires. While processing ballots on Nov. 4 at TCF Center, Jacob alleged that she was ordered to pre-date absentee ballots' receipt date into the qualified voter file system, ignore ballot deficiencies and not compare absentee ballot signatures with ones on file.
In an affidavit, Daniel Baxter, a special project election consultant for the Detroit Department of Elections, said Jacob's claim suggests that she did not understand many of the processes that she observed, and for which she was not responsible.
He said election workers "do not offer opinions on candidates or on proposals," and that to prevent double voting, "until the first ballot is canceled, a second ballot cannot be issued. In the event the first ballot is returned, it is verified in the Qualified Voter File and rejected as a duplicate."
Addressing Jacob's allegation regarding signature checks, Thomas' affidavit said "ballots delivered to the TCF Center had been verified by the City Clerk’s staff prior to delivery in a process prescribed by Michigan law." Also: "No ballot could have been 'backdated' ... The mailing date recorded for absentee ballot packages would have no impact on the rights of the voters and no effect on the processing and counting of absentee votes."<<
There are a LOT more where that one came from, as you presumably know. One wonders just what sort of sworn testimony would be required to raise the court's concern about election integrity.
These election challenged have been expedited, many are emergency claims and heard virtually immediately on appeal. Again, I see no evidence of any Court ruling for the Trump position of "fraud" or a "stolen" election; I *do see many Court rejections of these poorly pleaded and ill-supported claims.
For instance, today the Michigan Supreme Court refused to order an audit of Wayne County results and allowed the state certification of election results to occur today. That has put Joe Biden at the electoral threshold to unambiguously win.
Sorry, but I think JT’s “groomed” argument is considerably more persuasive. Think of the very thin gruel of Obama’s pre-POTUS “career” as a starting point. Your cleverly put “hopey changey” Obama window dressing was likely just another cheap invention and market positioning of intelligence community to better market the Obama empty (but highly malleable) suit.
as far as "grooming" him, I felt that from Chicago, and he sure paid em back with Eric Holder in Fergusen instead of investigating Chicago for corruption in Police and City govt
I don't know for sure, but I voted for him twice and recall a few times I felt that the spooks were intentionally intimidating him:
1) when they let the joker jump the fence and make it inside the White House door before apprehending
2) when they let the reality show guests crash a dinner party with POTUS
3) rumor had it the bombing of the Dr.'s without borders clinic was them proving to Obama he didn't want to cross them or else... :::shrugs:::: because they could do all manner of chicanery to screw up his Presidency
Yes, one could almost say that it was "vitally important (to the CIA and their paymasters) that Obama be elected" - eh?
The CIA don't give a damn for the military-money-congressional complexes wars. As a younger man I once spent time in the field with New Zealand, Australian and British SAS troops. Not that I saw them for a second during that long week, being a mere weekend warrior. But later, in the bar, the British contingent were selling t-shirts with their famous winged dagger logo on them, but instead of their official motto (Who dares, wins) the t-shirts were printed with their idea of a joke:
"Who cares who wins?"
The CIA cares about their own power and their own money. They don't want a war with the people paying their (official) expenses so they keep their real ambitions on the down-low but they don't give a damn about what congress wants, what the president wants, or what the people want. They lied about Osama bin Laden doing his international man of mystery thing from a James Bond cave complex in Afghanistan because the Taleban cut off the supply of opium by more than 90%. The UN were helping them to eradicate opium production. But once the USA and allies liberated Afghanistan from the rule of the Taleban that the USA had created to resist the Soviets, opium production mysteriously skyrocketed to even higher than it had been before the Taleban started their eradication programme.
As noted previously, the obvious and predictable and actual consequences of an action being the real reason for the action, it was this resumption of the opium trade out of Afghanistan that was the real reason for the childishly fake intelligence supplied by the CIA on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. The Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, is the CIA's Karachi branch office, the junior partner in this trade. The existence of a never-ending stream of military and CIA transports in and out of Afghanistan and Pakistan whose contents can never be examined because "national security" is the primary cargo method. The war profiteering, the extra-judicial powers afforded by the Patriot Act and the eternal War on Terror, is just a bonus.
The Afghan people, living in one of the poorest and least developed nations in the world, lacking modern infrastructure in terms of roads, airports, shipping, etc, and surveilled on the ground, in the air, and from space, 24 hours a day, have somehow managed to smuggle out of Afghanistan millions of kilograms of one of the most illicit substances in the world. Every year for 19 years.
Here's the first line of Wikipedia's entry on Afghan heroin production:
"Afghanistan has been the world's leading illicit opium producer since 2001."
It is interesting that no one has drawn a narrative line from the Afghan opium trade to our very own heroin epidemic here in the US, with drug makers making a fortune addicting people here. Where did all the opium come from to make that heroin (and oxycontin,) I wonder? Nobody asks. To my mind, just as the cocaine trade fueled our misadventures in South America, the opium trade has been feeding our misadventures in the middle east. Hard not to imagine the dots connected in exactly the same way. The drug trade fuels the war machine.
Yes, and it's been this way since the British built a mercantilist empire covering a third of the world using these methods. The Americans didn't only inherit the power of the British Empire - they also adopted the same methods. The lines go everywhere, like a web built by an acid-crazed spider in space. AIG, for example, who notoriously precipitated the previous "largest upward transfer of wealth in history" during the 2008 financial crisis, started in Taiwan iirc, insuring the CIA's aircraft running guns into Indochina and drugs out. (I'm sure it's just a coincidence that laundering trillions in drug money requires backdoor access to very large financial institutions who just happen to be too big to fail.) The Americans, however, have raised this game to a whole new level, having convinced three quarters of the globe to join in with their Freedom Exports R US boondoggle. The term gunboat diplomacy exists (to the degree anyone remembers it today) because the British Navy forced China and other nations to accept their drug trading so they could fund expanding the Empire. The intelligence services now constitute an empire within an empire and there is a long-noted tendency for them to cooperate across national boundaries without reference to or the knowledge of their putative political masters. The Dogs of War have slipped their own leash and the cry of Havoc is heard in the land.
I've been writing about this for years and no one listens; no one writes about it, and a couple of years ago I just gave up. There were minor strategic reasons to go into Afghanistan, but 95% of the reason was to restore the heroin trade that the Taliban had cut to ZERO!! We went in and in less than 12 months it was back in full swing. Then we made Afghanistan the world's 5th largest producer of marijuana which they'd never produced before.
The drug trade also fuels DC! But no serious investigator or journalist has dealt with it; no doubt fearing for their lives.
“Venezuela is fundamental threat to USA” -- declared Obama formally initiating regime change.
What he meant is “Socialism is a threat to capitalism”… hence imperial War-party endless wars -- again Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, China, Angola, Mozambique, etc., etc..
Defund military terrorism!
PS: Trump should pardon Julian Assange and Ed Snowden
It appears that with the announcement of President-elect Biden's new cabinet we are in for a period of extended forever wars and perhaps some new ones. The sight of warmongering thugs like Brennan and Clapper being lionized by left wing intellectuals, the MSM, and the Democratic party is sickening. Do I really see CNN and MSNBC looking to these men as honest spokesmen for an enlightened administration? Did they forget the torture promoters and "targeted killing" sponsors? Do they really represent a moral and enlightened world view?
Robert, you seem to be coming outta the fog, albeit a little late in the game. The MSM is the fog. They are only there to propagandize you and me. We all have to either go back to sleep or educate ourselves. No White Knight will do it for us.
What you're seeing and hearing from the MSM and the mainstream Democrats is perfectly usual and totally expected. I don't know any "left wing intellectuals" who are lionizing Brennan or Clapper.
She is associated with the "everything is racist" SJW crowd, which gropes around in history to surface old examples of oppression that have almost no relation to anything real going on in most "white" people's lives.
It is brought up to highlight the hypocrisy and contradictions of those that ideologically weaponize victim narratives.
The one time we get a president who honestly is against endless wars, the Democrats came out in full force against him. The media as CIA mouthpieces came out in full force against him.
I daresay no one can ever take a democrat seriously ever again that says they are anti-war.
"I daresay no one can ever take a democrat seriously ever again that says they are anti-war."
A more honest appraisal is that the vast majority of both Republican and Democrat politicians are pro-endless-war.
And, given the new surge in actual Progressives winning office (some 22 of the 23 Progressives who ran in the November election won), there probably will be more federal level Democrats seated in the new Congress who are anti-war than Republicans.
In the USA, being pro-perpetual-war is a bipartisan affair, though we Progressives are working to change that.
Sad truth is that the progressive wing of the Democrats might as well be a different party than the neoliberal moderates. They’re that far apart.
Yes, but with a brainwashed electorate who believes falsely that "we're a two-party system", then they wouldn't have a path to election!
yeah, but will hollah at a foo who votes for Trump - even though under Trump we undeniably had a fighter against the intelligence spooks, a President to end the wars, a President motivated to embrace reform for American minorities AND a President the mealy mouth media would actually confront.
but but but ... vote blueeee no mattah whoooooo
And don't forget the lowest unemployment rates among all demographics... ever.
I'll believe it when I see it
True story, the day or week after she lost 2016, Hillary Clinton was shoveling money at the "progressive" not for profits. MSDNC brings em on - they lose their minds. every authentic movement is co-opted and destroyed by the Neo-Libtard Dems
If he was so against them, why didn’t he end them when he had the chance? Why did he escalate in Syria? He actions were no different than the shitty presidents before him
He "escalated" to finish the war Obama started.
Which from the airpower statistics we can say he did.
https://www.afcent.af.mil/Portals/82/Documents/Airpower%20summary/(U)%20APPROVED%20Dec%202019%20APS%20Data.pdf
Bombs dropped per year on Iraq/Syria:
2015: 28696
2016: 30743
2017: 39577
2018: 8713
2019: 4729
You can review the last 20 years of airpower statistics: You won't find any other POTUS that presided in that timeframe where they had a drop that large in number of bombs released.
I can't speak for further back than that because I can't locate any data pre-2k on airpower statistics for weapons releases. I do seem to recall that we launched A LOT of cruise missiles back in the day though...
that is crazy
Utter nonsense. You’ve “corrected” my assertion only to contradict yourself. The only that he has ended is his presidency.
Unlike you I provide sources for my assertions. Nowhere did I Contradict myself. Trump has finished the wars that were in progress and has worked to draw down our troops and get NATO to pull their own weight. Again, no other POTUS has done this.
I think he has tried and every time a General de Estados Unidos Corps de Marinos haha opposed him, the Neo-Libtards piled on to ensure our President was in a more weakened condition to withdraw troops.
Trump did not start any new wars, but he has NOT finished any of the long running US wars. We are still in Afghanistan, Syria, etc.
He has been pushing for troop withdrawals and has been running peace negotiations with everyone he can. Bringing us down to 2500 troops in Afghanistan will be a massive accomplishment.
Don't forget this is the type of resistance to a withdrawal he is facing:
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2020/11/outgoing-syria-envoy-admits-hiding-us-troop-numbers-praises-trumps-mideast-record/170012/
what about Yemen?
Yeah, we should not be supporting that quagmire. I fault Trump on that one. On the positive side, striking peace deals/negotiations between Arab states and Israel has been stunning.
That war also started under Obama.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29319423
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian-led_intervention_in_Yemen
Incoming...be patient.
Don, agreed that this was in the "pro" column for Trump and that the Dems generally are going to align with
But it's important to remember that those in the bubble are part of a media-left echo chamber that is literally suffering from an irrational mental state. So they need to be pitied a bit to get to solutions, because they are succumbing to normal human emotions fed by the current social media and traditional news media business models. The AI algos push bad news info at them to purposely trigger their emotions and that's what drives the TDS.
Not sure how to end it, but we need to start by recognizing the problem and thinking of them with empathy.
If one good thing is to come from the 2020 election it will be this: that Biden supporters may come to realize that they are, in fact, useful idiots. Although, to be fair, only the ones in swing states were actually useful.
I'm 50:50 on which of two outcomes happen:
1) by painting the next Republican/conservative leadership as equally evil to Trump in every way, the bubble folks push too far and cause crumbling of their coalition
2) they successfully convince their side that even Chuck Grassley is 100% evil in all ways and can't even be spoken to, and we creep closer to real problems
After talking with an old friend whose beliefs are contradicted by a couple of the links in this very article, I'm grappling with the appropriate way to point them here without a) their carte-blanche dismissal or these sources, and/or b) their dismissal of my viewpoints in general. TDS is real, and the last thing they want to hear is that they've helped install yet another pro-war leader into office.
I dealt with saving a friend from scientology and one core feature of cults is their tendency to push you to disregard input from people, cast them out of acceptable thinking, including your family. This cult is no different.
The best way to work is to occasionally slip in something from the "acceptable" media sources that contradicts everything they think, because those do pop up. For example, the recent WaPo articles on Kyle Rittenhouse actally paint things fairly and don't make him out to be a beast, point out he wasn't militia, etc. Or point out as things creep forward how their thinking changes to introduce doubt of their sources - "a couple of months ago they had you convinced that antifa didn't even exist". It's basically the same process as one coming to doubt taught religious faith - it happens over time with a series of smaller pieces that start not to add up.
One key thing is give them a scapegoat - it can't be their fault they believed in Russiagate - they have to have the ability to rationalize their behavior and be able to clearly state that the media/social media sources lied to them.
We're getting there, slowly.
Very astute observations, I’ve come to the same conclusions on Quora. Believers of politics or religion are essentially brainwashed and cannot be reasoned with. You cannot be emotionally invested in any topic if you want to try to be objective.
But here’s what I’ve learned - believers for the most part, do not care so much about the beliefs (or politics) as they do the group identity they claim. They need the group affiliation, the beliefs are a symbol of the believer’s dedication to the group.
It’s fascinating, you can watch less experienced partisans or believers in real time, justifying a policy that you bring up that they aren’t familiar with. Based on the way you frame the topic, they will assume the policy to be part of their tribe. When you reveal that this policy is actually held by the opposing side, they will immediately begin justifying why it’s not a game changer policy - they’re essentially covering for their own identity, the policy never was something they were highly opinionated on. Just like the BLM movement or Covid-19. The net is flooded with believers who refuse to recognize the Marxist leaders, or who actually root for more cases, more deaths, to buttress their group identity.
And you’re right, the only way to get through to these believers is to drop seeds and hope one takes root someday.
you're right about that, and it's too frustrating to deal with on a regular basis. i stopped talking to several friends this year, and not because i'm offended by our differences, but because i got tired of trying to have a logical conversation that didn't quickly go off the rails with certain people. here's the bottom line: if you think half the country is being bamboozled by partisan propaganda, how can you be sure you're immune from your own side's propaganda?
besides that, there are subtleties that seem to be lost on most; such as the fact that BLM is a self-described Marxist organization. but are the majority of their supporters interested in Marxism? hard to say, but i'm skeptical. on the flipside, look how many right-wing Christians seem to like Trump, one of the worst examples of Christian values i can imagine. and the Republicans who still support Trump's efforts to overturn the election are doing so for their own agendas, not his.
and on the flopside, good luck showing Glenn's article about Obama and Bush being far more harmful than Trump to any proud Democrat; they won't even read past the headline.
Good point about the propaganda. I’m pretty loud about denigrating partisanry, consequently I have to remember to check my own bias to make sure I’m not being convinced of something that is buttressed by opinion.
The Marxist leaders vs the supporters is a grey area too. My conclusion was that the leaders knew the supporters weren’t Marxist and were never gonna be Marxist, so there must have been another reason for them to come out and say that.
I figured it must have been a polarizing strategy that has worked before in color revolutions, and that this may be what they’re provoking.
The alternative is to presume the BLM leaders thought their ideology of no private property and everyone gets the same food coupon (while dissolving the meritocracy and it’s money system) actually stood a chance of being implemented in America - which is patently absurd.
Right now, there does seem to be a major influence campaign going on. I thought initially it was to get rid of trump, but I don’t see an end to this PC cancel culture either. It could however be something natural - like a byproduct of the social media age, hard to say.
But after reading another one of Glenn’s articles about the media blackout Hunter’s laptop, I’m convinced that the msm and social media were aligned in their support of Biden (or non-support of trump), and thus officially cannot be trusted. I mean, I haven’t trusted the media for years, but this last debacle makes it transparent - they are interested in swaying public opinion, which is propaganda.
Well, this is pretty damn hard to argue with:
https://theintercept.com/2020/11/22/biden-drones-endless-wars/
*align with the neocons to drive wars.
Yup - it was a real awakening to see the CIA come out so brazenly against Trump. And the double whammy was the MSM who backed up all of the deceit.
But you repeat yourself.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/glenn-greenwald-levels-msm-journo-who-claims-hes-endangering-cia-mouthpiece-media
Agree.
My heart on your comment was assuming you were talking about JFK.
I should have said "In my lifetime." Sadly Substack doesn't seem to have a comment edit function.
Trump is, indeed, transactional. If he is going to push anti-war and pro-life policy for his benefit, I support him. The “Trump is a racist White Supremacist” trope is patently ridiculous, though, and I am beyond sick of it...
It's enough to cite Trump's comment about " ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world." He added that they should "go back" to "the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came" and that "I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!" twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150381394234941448
So yes, he is a racist, in case you didn't know already. I am using the term "racism" here to mean a prejudiced state of mind characterized by a negative attitude toward people who are perceived as being in a particular race (or races). Such prejudice is the most plausible explanation for the negative attitude and inaccuracies in this series of tweets; if you don't know that, you have chosen not to know much about racial prejudice in America.
Everyone is biased to some degree. It's okay. Trump's racist comments about a bigoted Congresswoman who has the gall to condemn and malign America - a nation where she, an immigrant from an impoverished and violent country, was able to rise to the rank of a policy maker, an influencer, someone respected - does not bother me in the slightest. It may ruffle some feathers and bring up righteous indignation but where is the lie. She who hates America and wants to change America should show some humility. The beauty of America is that she doesn't have to, and she will continue to irresponsibly lecture us and wreak havoc in congress. Trumps comments mean nothing. You can call him a racist, but most Americans who value policy over clout agree with him. It was never about race, it was about her own hypocrisy. I am not white and I agree with him. My grandmother is an immigrant from a shithole country and I agree with him.
I see you're trying to shift the subject to Ilhan Omar. No thanks, that wasn't what I was talking about.
As my comments elsewhere show, I was talking primarily about the members of the Squad other than Omar. They were born in America. But even though these Congresswomen are American-born, Trump said that they "originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world" and told them to "go back" to "the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came". This, of course, isn't true. These American-born Congresswomen did not come from what Trump calls shithole countries. So the question is why Trump thought they did, and obviously the explanation for that has something to do with their not being white. Since these American-born Congresswomen weren't white, he concluded that they were from shithole countries. That's racist thinking.
I notice that your post wobbles back and forth about whether Trump is racist or not. But some of us can just say it straight: he is racist. If you like him despite his racism, that's up to you.
As a POC, I find your comments racist. See how simple it is?
He's a racist in a sense that he'll state the obvious when the rest of America tip toes around reality in an incomprehensible way to avoid the title. The truth is, we are all racist. We all hold prejudices. That's human nature. Yes, I know your primary point wasn't on whether his comments hold merit but whether they were racist. Okay, they were racist. But that still doesn't make him a white supremacist, unless you're willing to call everyone a white supremacist (which many do) but that immediately renders the term irrelevant and useless.
Same here. Not white. From a shithole country. Immigrant. Hahaha. And not bothered.
By the way Randall, you can despise someone for their actions totally separate from their skin color. Well that is, unless you are obsessed with skin color and consider that as the most important thing about any person... the way CRT tells leftists that they must think.
So they flee their shithole countries, to come to white supremacist America, the source of all humanity’s evil? That’s be pretty dumb, huh?
I recognize that you're dodging the issue. You first tried to dismiss the idea that Trump was racist by saying it's "ridiculous". When I gave evidence for it, you ignored the evidence and started the old Straw Man trick of pretending to respond to me by bringing up views that weren't at all the same as what I was saying. These techniques are pathetic ways of arguing, and some of us are rational enough not to be fooled by them. The fact that you try to dodge the issue in this way shows how weak your case is; I wish Trump supporters weren't so dodgy, but it does make most of them easy to see through.
I don't think America is the source of all humanity's evil, duh. America is not a white supremacist country, if that phrase means to you something like what it meant to speak of "white supremacist South Africa" during the Cold War. Still, I recognize that racial prejudice and white supremacist views can be found in certain quarters in America, and that these views sometimes lead to negative effects on the lives of people who are not white. Your comments in your 2nd attempt at a reply are similarly misdirected; I have never seen critical race theorists say that "skin color is the most important thing about any person", much less insist on others thinking that way. More relevantly, it's not how I think. Trump's tweet was obviously not about how he "can despise someone for their actions", as your words suggest; instead, Trump was doing the very opposite of judging someone for their actions or for what King called "the content of their character". He was smearing people based on what his prejudice led him to falsely believe was "the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came".
Finally, when you bring up the fact that many have good reason to flee their countries to come to America, you fail to notice what anyone who is patriotic in the true sense should notice: that this kind of "voting with their feet" should NEVER be used by us Americans to make ourselves complacent about being a relatively good country, when we could be making the country greater that already is. I am patriotic in that sense; you, since you encourage complacency about racial prejudice, are clearly not.
I do see through your attempt to shift the subject to Straw Man views demonizing America, but it doesn't succeed in distracting from the other issue you were wrong on, namely that Trump is a racist.
Well we have arrived at a place where there is no compromise. You do not recognize the same facts as I do. He was attacking “the Squad” based on their widely quoted attacks on the moral character of America. Not on what you claim is his prejudice against their race due to their countries of origin. Not once did he comment on their race, yet somehow you, like all leftists, are able to read his mind (long distance style!) and draw conclusions on what motivated his rant. It is fruitless to argue about this because neither of us can read his mind. I will try another point of reasoning with you: even if he IS a racist(which I am not conceding), so what? “Thought crime” is not (yet!) illegal in America. Racist action, however, IS illegal under various civil rights laws. What law did he violate when he called them bad names?
By the way, have you ever been to Somalia or any of the Arabic countries? I have and they ARE shitholes.
(typo: should be "greater than it already is")
Well played.
I do not fall neatly into today’s ideological spectrum I am essentially libertarian. But what Glenn’s reporting and at least genuine attempt to cover truth tells me is that that truth actually brings people together even if they are ideological opposites.
Given the full truth, most Americans would oppose the forever wars and it would all collapse. As such, it’s obvious that the one thing the government and its nefarious little actors cannot tolerate is the truth.
I'd say half of America can't handle the truth. That's why they cling unquestionably to establishment media narratives that offer up false gods like BHO (who just released his third of three books....about himself).
Comfort food for the willfully ignorant. Because reality sucks.
Brad I would have a hard time arguing with that. They might not accept it as truth. Some would. Enough would. But many cannot handle it.
Why assume "of three"?
i feel similarly. but why is knowing The Truth the end of the debate? even if we knew all the factors that contribute to political decisions, we would have a wide spectrum of opinion on policy proposals. information is only part of the problem. good decision making is far more difficult than it seems; and the more education you have, the harder it is to be certain.
Great comment kudos from a fellow libertarian.
My wish for the holidays is that President Trump goes to somewhere in Europe to have an unannounced meal with the US troops. Upon return to Andrews Air Force Base, the door to Air Force One opens and standing next to him is Edward Snowden and his wife. He has pardoned Mr. Snowden and brought them home to their parents waiting on the tarmac.
Seconded! Probably room for Assange on that bird too.
There better be, or I will never forgive Trump.
Excellent Idea
?? The pharmaceutical EOs were issued before the election.
The fact that the Media and Dems immediately became forever war advocates is telling. But more telling is how quickly average American Dems did as well. If Trump was against it, they were for it. This is all possible because Americans have discarded anything that even resembles principles in favor of their “party”. Their views can be remolded in a matter of moments.
It's no longer a party, it's a religion, complete with unassailable priests and doctrine.
Democrats ran the Vietnam War for damn near a decade. Mind you, Republicans complain when Democrats don’t kill ENOUGH people.
My liberal friends (and there are plenty of them, although the adjective doesn't really apply anymore) are so far oblivious to the fact that they've aligned themselves with neocons to become pawns of the wealthy, war-mongering elites. It's a sad, sad thing to watch.
Main Street Democrats haven't yet realized they are the party of Wall Street, the media empire, big tech, "lockdown" corporations, big pharma, and endless wars.
But they are going to find out.
Since at least the 2016 cycle, they're starting to get it.
In my view, there's no way Bernie lost the primary in either 2016 or 2020. I just wish he'd have had the balls to go independent.
He couldn't. He was "leveraged"
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/47397#efmAAAAB2
Thanks, Don, I'd missed that one.
True. They only 'allowed' Bernie in the primary under specific conditions. There were several other dem presidential candidates who were deliberately omitted from the debates. He was allowed simply because as a socialist, they concluded he had no chance. Here's the only known interview of one of the other candidates in 2016 http://bit.ly/rocky2016-fraud
I hope you realize that, contrary to the propaganda saying otherwise, Bernie isn't a "socialist", and, he would easily have won.
We desperately need ranked choice voting.
Ranked choice voting is an improvement but doesn't fix all that much. See Arrow's theorem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem
I prefer solutions that are more democratic than voting for politicians.
oh boy, i read that but got confused about the implications; what do you suggest instead?
That requires a long answer. If I wanted 100% pure democracy that might be easy, but I don’t want pure democracy, just an increase in democracy which takes away power from unprincipled officials such as politicians. Designing a more democratic system that doesn't elect politicians is challenging. I hope and believe that some future generation will find a solution to it that works adequately. As of now, though, all I can offer is partial steps in that direction, but even just taking these steps would improve things. Here are my suggestions:
(1) All big economic packages, such as corporate welfare, should go to the voters for an up or down vote.
(2) Big decisions that involve picking an option from along a scale -- such as what percent of government spending should go to the military -- should be taken by public vote, perhaps by having voters pick options on a ballot every few years so that whichever option is chosen by the median voter gets put into effect.
(3) In general, have more participatory budgeting.
(4) Allow ballot initiatives at the federal level, and in the states and municipalities that don't currently have them. I don't consider ballot initiatives to be fully democratic, since they're too easily swayed by wealthy interests, just as elections of politicians are. But ballot initiatives do serve as a check and balance on politicians who disregard the people's voice, which is useful. In particular, initiatives that reject a set of new regulations or that undo an administration's rollback of regulations should always be allowed. Possibly, also allow recalls of politicians throughout the country at all levels.
(5) Community forums that don't have lawmaking power. In communities defined by shared interests and in geographical communities, there should be forums where people can hear from serious advocates on each side of a contemporary issue, and the people who attend the forum should get to discuss the issue. These forums should be better funded, more widely attended, and more widely heard than they are now, and they should be run by people who are not beholden to any political faction. It's essential for these forums not to have any kind of lawmaking role, or they would become corrupted by those who try to use them for power purposes. Those who attend these forums most frequently should have less of a voice in them than people who attend less commonly, to prevent the forums from being dominated by one faction. But the forums serve to help members of the public to work out what they think and to form civic networks with one another in a way that's not dominated by the power structure and serves as a check on those with political influence.
(6) Visibility of political discussion. Most major advertising channels (for instance, TV ads or YouTube ads) would be required to set aside a certain fraction of their space for two-sided discussion of political topics. Discussions would be recorded between skilled participants chosen by an algorithm, test audiences would decide which discussions are most interesting, and the most interesting discussions would be pushed into the advertising channels in a random way so that no particular segment of the audience is excessively targeted for any particular message. Again, this helps people become more informed.
(7) Opting out from politicians. In our current system, politicians in Congress and other legislatures are given the power to make laws as if they were the authentic voice of all the people in their district, when in fact the politicians are often working against the interest of most of the voters. Perhaps it would be better to give each voter the option of "opting out" from their local lawmaker politician and picking a legislative service to cast votes for them in the legislature instead. Depending on what percentage of voters in a given politician's district "opt out", that politician would lose a corresponding percentage of his vote in the legislature, which would be distributed among the chosen legislative services instead. So if 30% of the voters in a congressional district opt out, the elected Congressperson would no longer be allowed to cast the usual one vote in Congress, but only what counts as 0.7 votes, while the remaining 0.3 votes are split among the legislative services in proportion to what the people in his district chose. Each legislative service would be required to explain their votes, preferably in advance. Voters can change which legislative service they use at any time. It's important to allow one legislative service to "piggyback" on another: that is, if legislative service A is famous and gets a lot of opt-out votes from people around the country, other people can start up a rival legislative service which casts votes in largely the same way as legislative service A but differs on certain issues. These rival piggyback services are allowed to automatically copy the votes of the service they're piggybacking on except when they want to disagree. This discourages a famous legislative service from flouting the will of its supporters by trading its votes for backroom deals or hidden priorities, since if voters suspect that the famous service is doing that, they can easily move to a rival piggyback service with little disruption. Similarly, if voters don't trust their local elected politician, they can switch to a legislative service. No one legislative service should be allowed to control more than 10% of the votes in the legislature, and no more than 20% when piggybackers are included. Legislative services would not be allowed to have conflicts of interest, and advertisements could not promote legislative services except by quoting their explanations for their votes. Criticisms of a legislative service should be made automatically visible to those voters who support it.
(8) More widespread civic education. Some of it should teach people to get better at recognizing the kinds of abuses and wrong moves that political parties and movements have made in history. Some of it should teach the latest and the best techniques for helping campaigns for change, especially campaigns that don't have the power structure's backing, and should teach examples of when various kinds of campaigns for change have been succesful. Some civic education should be farmed out to groups from all parts of the political spectrum (as far as possible, groups that are not beholden to political leaders) which can teach their own keen sense of how to increase freedom and prevent abuses. And another part of civic education should bring out what groups from different parts of the political spectrum have in common. These different kinds of civic education shouldn't be taught only in school to young people, but should also be available as classes for people to re-learn later in life, like keeping up your CPR skills.
(9) Measures to raise the prestige and influence of forums and institutions that criticize and arouse opposition to potential abuses of power, even when this criticism goes against public opinion. This is necessary because, if politicians are no longer able to exercise a lot of power quietly, those who seek to abuse power will find that they need to make large sectors of public opinion into loyal and uncritical defenders of their abuses. Thus, as politicians' power is reduced, we need to compensate by creating more effective forums and institutions to awaken the conscience of individual citizens and of groups of citizens. The "civic education" that I discussed just above will help with that too.
(10) Measures to promote the voices of those who defend principles openly and aren't plotting some hidden means to advance a particular politician or faction. This should involve rewarding those who have shown an ability to command public attention and who have stuck to the same principles for a long time, even at times when it's not favorable to themselves or to any one faction.
Points (9) and (10) are because we need to guard against having a society where most people feel they need to support sneaky and unscrupulous means of advancing some faction's interest. Our current society, with its mealy-mouthed politicians and small-dollar campaign donations to pay for deceptive ads, induces those who watch politics to feel that they, as citizens, have to support sneaky and unscrupulous techniques to be effective. That makes our society even less democratic. We should work towards ensuring that, in a society with less power given to politicians, citizens should also be putting less energy into sneaky and unscrupulous techniques.
A few more suggestions in my next comment.
Yes, and done the right way, NOT like it's done here in CA!
Do you know the data pre “rigged” has CA red?
Believe it or don’t, Bernie was a victim of the now famous Dominion Software “glitch.”
Infamous. And, "it's not a bug, it's a feature!"
Kind of eerie the initials of that company.
The Clintons sicc'd the spooks on his wife.
Sadly, I don't think they'll realize it any time soon. They'll be too distracted by the latest threats to democracy. On the menu for 2021: Covid and white supremacy, and how they're interrelated because those hateful MAGA-hat deplorables keep spreading the virus at their Klan rallies.
I'm a liberal and I am baffled by how many smart, good people can remain intentionally vlueless.
I spent a minute trying to figure out if you meant clueless or valueless, realized either worked and you may have just invented a neologism to represent both.
I bet he meant clueless, but good point.
and viewless..no less
me too, i'm both good and smart, and i have all the right opinions. as far back as i can recall, i've always had the right opinions. i don't know what's wrong with other people.
If they're smart and good, then they are more likely to be in denial rather than simply clueless. I am confident many harbor secret suspicions that they confide to no one about -- not even their spouses. (I'm basically a "leftist", with the caveat that all left-describing labels are now FUBAR.)
It's really strange, you don't see the same from the right.
My personal belief is that it's because people leaning right, thanks to WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, learned to distrust all media - even when it tells us what we want to hear.
There are far many more right leaning individuals critical of Republicans than left leaning individuals critical of Democrats.
Oh, and I learned to distrust the media long before wikileaks. You only need to be interviewed once and see what gets printed as a result to have a high level of disdain for traditional media.
You sound like someone who knows.. I'd love for you to elaborate. 🖖
Left leaning individuals relying on CNN for news were literally told it was illegal to go to wikileaks by them. Given that, it is unsurprising that they haven't seen the evidence firsthand.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/law-prof-smacks-down-cnn-chris-cuomos-claim-that-its-illegal-to-possess-wikileaks-emails/
yeah, mine too. when i point out that democratic presidents are equally security-state advocates, warmongers, and hypocrites, they look at their shoes and change the subject. even better, they can never figure out why the unwashed masses "vote against their own interests" so often. but the truth is, we don't know what other people's interests are, let alone what a particular candidate represents to them. biden demonstrated this hubris by telling a black guy on TV, "if you don't know who to vote for, then you ain't black!" same old arrogant joe from the '80s, right? so who should a black guy vote for? trump, an archie bunker type olde-tyme bigot and his empty-suit VP, or the biden/harris crime-fighting duo, who successfully put thousands of black people in prison for dubious reasons [crack will get you 10x the sentence of coke; you're welcome]. not the most palatable choice...
Glenn, care to run your own Pew-style survey of the political leanings of your readership? Based on the comment sections of your articles, I'd wager it'd be in stark contrast to what we see with the large, corporate outlets.
Yeah, I'd love to do this - my guess is 35% left, 30% conservative, 25% independent/libertarian, and the other 10% just whatever. I love that. I'm going to let the audience build for awhile and then do some kind of survey.
Regardless of political leanings, I think what we all have in common is the desire for authentic, honest reporting... where ever that reporting leads.
That's what matters.
Amen
Amen to that.
I'm a pretty staunch conservative with a very powerful bullshit detector, so I can't tolerate mainstream retail media any more. Thanks for your effort here.
I’d say it’s the people to whom truth is more important than partisan horse shit.
Conservative evangelical with a longtime admiration/respect for Mr. Greenwald. We need more people with his courage no matter our political or religious views.
I am for gay marriages, abortions, gun ownership, freedom of speech, freedom of religion or lack of it, freedom to use or not use drugs...so probably libertarian
Add some socialist safety net programs to those issues you've mentioned, and you've got me.
Ex Dem. member of the nonexistent FDR/JFK party.
Me too. Demexit as of 2016.
Demexit due to watching Bill Clinton pick his cabinet for his first term.
Thanks for making me feel young! My Demexit was due to watching Citibank pick Barack Obama's first term cabinet. ;)
Me too. Demexit as of 2008
same. This was the first year I voted 3rd party
It was my second Green presidential vote. After Obama's 2nd term of drone bombings, and the twice disenfranchisement of Senator Sanders' presidential campaigns, I was done with the corporate-owned party of war hawks.
I am a civil liberties extremist, like my father before me.
What about if, like Nat Hentoff toward the end of his life, we just honest-to-goodness no longer know how to describe our political leanings?
I dunno if I'm the right guy to define righteousness but I know evil when I see it?
15 % trolling from the center. Keeps it spicy..lol
Militant centrist - fuck both sides I hate tribes
You honestly believe that centrists aren’t tribal?
I'm not a part of whatever tribe you're referring to so I don't care. You're probably thinking of center-left or center-right tribes which I also have no use for.
Just allowing a comment section on your articles is enough to know you are a real journalist. Letting the people express their views about the topic, or call the author out on mistakes or obvious bias, should be a staple of journalistic integrity in the modern age.
Like a youtube video with comments turned off, any article without a comment section should be immediately suspicious to any intelligent person.
One thing I love about your writing is it's given me ideas and thoughts that have allowed my politics to get a lot messier. While I consider myself on the left, your critiques have opened me up to calling out all the bullshit I see on the left. I find myself able to understand such a wider range of beliefs.
Not sure where I fit any more. But I can handle the truth - if I can find it. Election fraud and how we can fix some of it in the future is very important to me.
100% people willing to support great journalism!
Put me down as a Whatever.
Left Out
Human.
My political leanings are VERY human. When anyone attacks those humans who hunt whales or eat dolphins I firmly defend them, as we humans all need to stick together.
Undoubtedly the primary group we should all feel the strongest membership affiliation to. Sadly I think its place has been supplanted by a variety of others.
Have we met?
Without question the leanings are much more diverse here. One of my favorite things about it is that there is still so much agreement on the gold Glenn mines for us in spite of that diversity.
For me I disagree with some of what Mr. Greenwald says, but not anything he has said that he has tied directly to a source or document is among those things.
I know our politics are very different, though I imagine our disdain for the current state of the Press is the same in principle, though for him greater in degree for actually being in the arena and seeing it firsthand.
The Ministry of Truth can't fall fast enough.
I consider myself a leftist, but I believe in freedom of speech and I don't like the Democratic or the Republican parties.
Early years I was a Republican. Middle years, a Democrat. Today I am neither because I am disgusted with both parties. The Republicans appear hell-bent on blurring the line that keeps separate church and state, while the Democrats are all about identity politics. By all appearances, we are faced with a toxic mess.
The only people concerned with "identification" are those who want to paint the truth as bias.
Yes, I did that silly Political Compass Test and was just to the right of Bernie.
I had to have a bit of lie down after that...
I have always been right where Gandhi is for almost 20 years. It tells me I’m a normal person I think. The political compass is at least an effort to break down the false dichotomy of left right identity.
Did the test work? Or do you feel strongly further left or right compared to Bernie?
I feel that the test was accurate with it's intent, so I would end up a little left and a little libertarian.
However, IF the... RIGHT questions were asked.... ??? :D
Many of the questions aren’t answerable with the choices they give. It’s definitely not perfect...
Another phenomenal report. Cannot begin to tell you how much I appreciate real journalism.
It’s always worthwhile to have Obama exposed as just another war criminal president. My hope (and perhaps Glenn’s, too) is that someone close to Trump will suggest to him that.his best revenge against the Intel community would be a pardon for Assange and Snowden.
Priceless: Sen Mccain's face whilst talking to Admiral Rogers about how he got snookered by Chris Steele
see how respectful it is to use titles?
yeah Cletus, whatever
The only thing that ever made sense to me why Obama sold us down the river the way he did, was that he was groomed by CIA and delivered their BS propaganda. Biden will be no different. And it's obvious the CIA is behind the theft of this 2020 election as well, with their Hammer and Scorecard technology and electronic vote flipping. It's all so disgusting.
" And it's obvious the CIA is behind the theft of this 2020 election as well, with their Hammer and Scorecard technology and electronic vote flipping"
I've seen no evidence for this, and so far none of myriad state and federal courts have seen any, either. Conjecture, speculation and wishful thinking are not acceptable substitutes for evidence.
https://youtu.be/ficae6x1Q5A for a statistical breakdown of Michigan anomalies and information on aforementioned technologies https://theamericanreport.org/2019/09/27/the-real-whistleblower-story-dennis-montgomery-the-hammer-the-hard-drives-the-wiretapping-of-trump-and-the-prosecution-of-general-flynn/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=socialnetwork
And just look at those involved in the ongoing coup attempt which started in 2016: Brennan Clapper Peter Strzok McCabe, the same cast of characters. You are being willfully blind. It's the same technology that has been used around the world to interfere in elections and overthrow regimes.
And JT, I don't watch Youtube videos when offered as evidence -- if it's important it will be found in writing and much easier to consult. As for "statistical anomalies," do you mean this clownishness:
>>Giuliani’s source for these percentages [showing statistical anomalies in Michigan] was an affidavit authored by Russell Ramsland, a security consultant and former Republican congressional candidate. The document alleges that anomalies in the vote count indicate that Michigan election results were "manipulated."
"There were at least 19 precincts where the Presidential Votes Cast compared to the Estimated Voters based on Reported Statistics exceeded 100%," the affidavit reads. The document then goes on to list the 19 precincts, shown in this screenshot:
A screenshot of the 19 precincts listed in Ramsland's affidavit
But there’s a problem, and it’s a big one: All 19 of the precincts cited in the affidavit are ****actually in Minnesota,**** not Michigan. <<
Source: "Rudy Giuliani cites affidavit about Michigan that erroneously includes Minnesota locations" https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/11/21/fact-check-rudy-giuliani-affidavit-errors/6366011002/
Bizarrely (of course), the goofy affidavit (https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.283580/gov.uscourts.gand.283580.7.1_2.pdf) appears to have been filed in Wood v. Raffensperger, in whichever Georgia district is handling that one (I would think the Northern District, but it appears that the affidavit is stamped with an SDG case number).
Ah, yes, L. Todd Wood and his "Creative Destruction Media." Fascinating folks. Here's one of theirs from yesterday:
= = = = =
Q WAS RIGHT
[Flaming Q-Anon graphic here]
After exhaustive meetings with sources in Ukraine, who provided reams of documentary evidence for hours, CDMedia has been exposed to a massive international criminal conspiracy which spans continents and decades.
Q was right. Our wold is run by a criminal syndicate unlike mankind has ever known.
Global financiers are involved. Former Presidents of the United States are involved, on both sides of the political aisle. The uni-party exists. Media titans are involved. Silicon Valley is involved. Our security agencies and most politicians are compromised.
More:
https://creativedestructionmedia.com/opinion/2020/11/22/q-was-right/
I think for those who can watch a 30 min video and don’t require “written” explanation, one should watch and follow this Independant investigative journalist George Webb to understand the historical context of the military involvement. I have been following him for four years. He followed the Imran Awan (Pelosi’s top staffer) Pakistani spy scandal went to Michael Flynn‘s trial every day including the trial of his business partner, and knows all about Dimitri Alperovich configuring the blackberries for the DNC which was behind Russiagate. I promise you this will not be a waste of time: https://twitter.com/georgwebb/status/1330947136469434368?s=21
"Investigative journalist" George Webb, you say? I'm afraid this is one of those situations that justify disregarding claims simply because the source has established that he is utterly unreliable.
>>> "He followed the Imran Awan (Pelosi’s top staffer) Pakistani spy scandal . . ."
Awan was never a Pelosi staffer (he was a House computer technician) and there was no Pakistani spy scandal -- that's right-wing conspiracy nonsense. From the Wiki entry (which cites to reliable sources, as usual):
= = = = =
A government investigation led by U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu included forensic analysis of computer equipment and data, as well as interviews with about 40 witnesses. The investigation addressed various right-wing conspiracy theories about Awan, concluding that it had "found no evidence that [Awan] illegally removed House data from the House network or from House Members' offices, stole the House Democratic Caucus Server, stole or destroyed House information technology equipment, or improperly accessed or transferred government information, including classified or sensitive information."[2] The investigation found no evidence of ties between Awan and a foreign intelligence agency targeting Congress, or between Awan and an alleged criminal ring that stole equipment from Democratic lawmakers.[16] The investigators stated, "the government has uncovered no evidence that [Imran Awan] violated federal law with respect to the House computer system".[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imran_Awan
= = = = =
And here, (from CNN, although that may upset some here) is and example of what happens when people take Webb's YouTube videos seriously:
= = = = =
How a conspiracy theory closed part of a major US seaport
by Donie O'Sullivan
@CNNMoney June 16, 2017: 5:46 PM ET
The past few years have shown how our propensity to speculate and to share online can quickly transform a fringe thought into conventional thinking. On Wednesday, we got new evidence of the potential real-world consequences as a trio of conspiracy theorists with a modest following inadvertently shut down part of one of the United States' largest ports.
https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/16/media/port-of-charleston-dirty-bomb-conspiracy-theory-shutdown/index.html
= = = = =
I know Awan was the IT director. But he interfaced closely with Pelosi and Wasserman Schultz, which is why Nancy said, "get Imran in here, no staff." The House Inspector General Theresa Grafenstein herself, filed a "suspicious activity report," which said there were hundreds and hundreds of illegal logins. Awan spent 9 months out of the year in Pakistan while he was receiving a 160K per year salary. His father was ISI. They were in a company partnership with Raum Emanual having to do with farmland (that they stole) in Afghanistan in order to make opiates. Webb went to DC with a former CA police offer and interviewed scores of ppl until he found a former Marine who was renting a house from Awan who corroborated that he found "pried hard drives and blackberries" with House markings on them. Awan's wife had made police reports saying that he abused her and that he had said, " do you have ANY idea how important I am here and in Pakistan, I could have you killed." She tried to flea the country and was caught at the border with $12K and he was finally convicted on bank fraud," but that is certainly the least of his crimes. Ppl are being willing blind if they can not see the infiltration of ppl who were not vetted properly who mean us harm. And....George Webb has been on the ground for 5 years, analyzing the networks, looking at the meta data from the blackberry traffic, going to the trials and interview hundreds of ppl for corroboration, because he is a REAL journalist who follows the facts. He has a background in IT and network analysis. Not just in DC, but around the country-like in Akron OH covering the Roden "drug murders," and looking at the empty containers that were supposed to be filled with uranium. All of these videos-thousands of them were taken down from youtube. Your criticisms are empty and shallow and you haven't done ANY deep research.
Purported "statistical anomalies" are not evidence for your claim. No MI or federal court found this persuasive, if it was even offered into evidence.
I'm not aware that statistical anomalies were even alleged in the Michigan cases with which I'm familiar. The claims in both the state and federal cases there centered on alleged misbehavior by elections personnel and what the plaintiffs claimed were procedural defects.
" The claims in both the state and federal cases there centered on alleged misbehavior by elections personnel and what the plaintiffs claimed were procedural defects."
As far as I know, that is correct. The primary arguments had to do with purported "irregularities" committed by people on the ground in Wayne County. But I didn't read all the pleadings or decisions.
>>> "But I didn't read all the pleadings or decisions."
Nor did I. I enjoy reading good law, but there didn't seem to be much of that on offer in those cases. Judge Brann's opinion dismissing Trump for Pres. v. Boockvar was fun, though.
Do you understand that sworn affidavits are, by definition, evidence?
"Do you understand that sworn affidavits are, by definition, evidence?"
They are when they attest to facts that would pertain. The affidavits in question do not constitute evidence of fraud that would be legally sufficient for a court. (Hence, no courts have accepted that Team Trump has supported their fraud claims.)
Sounds like you're a pro. Can you help me understand why this one is deficient?
https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-11/JessyJacobAffidavit.pdf
" why this one is deficient?"
Lack of named persons, times, and other specificity. And not understanding it was not her job to, e.g., check signatures as opposed to county clerks:
>>Jessy Jacob, a Detroit employee the city said has been on furlough. She claimed that while working at a city satellite voting center, she saw election workers "coaching and trying to coach voters to vote for Joe Biden and the Democrat party" as well as encouraging them to vote a straight Democratic ballot. Jacob asserted she saw several people already issued an absentee ballot cast a separate one but fail to surrender their old ballot or sign an affidavit disqualifying the first, as the law requires. While processing ballots on Nov. 4 at TCF Center, Jacob alleged that she was ordered to pre-date absentee ballots' receipt date into the qualified voter file system, ignore ballot deficiencies and not compare absentee ballot signatures with ones on file.
In an affidavit, Daniel Baxter, a special project election consultant for the Detroit Department of Elections, said Jacob's claim suggests that she did not understand many of the processes that she observed, and for which she was not responsible.
He said election workers "do not offer opinions on candidates or on proposals," and that to prevent double voting, "until the first ballot is canceled, a second ballot cannot be issued. In the event the first ballot is returned, it is verified in the Qualified Voter File and rejected as a duplicate."
Addressing Jacob's allegation regarding signature checks, Thomas' affidavit said "ballots delivered to the TCF Center had been verified by the City Clerk’s staff prior to delivery in a process prescribed by Michigan law." Also: "No ballot could have been 'backdated' ... The mailing date recorded for absentee ballot packages would have no impact on the rights of the voters and no effect on the processing and counting of absentee votes."<<
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/11/20/affidavits-detroit-ballot-count-election-lawsuit-giuliani-trump/6348955002/
We'll see how the appeal goes.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/michigan-lawmakers-hold-hearing-election-irregularities-court-speeds
There are a LOT more where that one came from, as you presumably know. One wonders just what sort of sworn testimony would be required to raise the court's concern about election integrity.
"There are a LOT more where that one came from"
Fortunately, in our justice system, *volume of insufficient pleadings and affidavits do not substitute for proffering of legally sufficient evidence.
Can you provide sources for no-proof? Have you worked or know anyone who works in any of the 3 letter agencies?
"Can you provide sources for no-proof?"
Those making a claim have the burden to come forward with evidence; the burden is not on those who observe none.
If there is evidence of this fraud, where is the Court that cited it in a ruling for the Trump people?
Why don’t you wait and see before jumping the gun, then. Court process takes time. Let it play out. This isn’t a banana republic yet.
" Court process takes time.:
These election challenged have been expedited, many are emergency claims and heard virtually immediately on appeal. Again, I see no evidence of any Court ruling for the Trump position of "fraud" or a "stolen" election; I *do see many Court rejections of these poorly pleaded and ill-supported claims.
For instance, today the Michigan Supreme Court refused to order an audit of Wayne County results and allowed the state certification of election results to occur today. That has put Joe Biden at the electoral threshold to unambiguously win.
Here’s something to chew on: https://votepatternanalysis.substack.com/p/voting-anomalies-2020
I'd even consider evidence PRESENTED to a court that wasn't batshit-crazy like the wrong-state issue you cited earlier.
re: grooming
Obama's american grandfather was military/OSS.
Obama' mother worked for a CIA front in Indonesia.
Exactly. But this hasn’t ever been “uncovered” by MSM or Main Street America.
What was his name?
No, I think they intimidated him down, I'm sure leading up to it President Obama meant every hopey changey word of it.
Sorry, but I think JT’s “groomed” argument is considerably more persuasive. Think of the very thin gruel of Obama’s pre-POTUS “career” as a starting point. Your cleverly put “hopey changey” Obama window dressing was likely just another cheap invention and market positioning of intelligence community to better market the Obama empty (but highly malleable) suit.
as far as "grooming" him, I felt that from Chicago, and he sure paid em back with Eric Holder in Fergusen instead of investigating Chicago for corruption in Police and City govt
what a joke that fiasco was....
Penny Pritzker groomed Obama
I don't know for sure, but I voted for him twice and recall a few times I felt that the spooks were intentionally intimidating him:
1) when they let the joker jump the fence and make it inside the White House door before apprehending
2) when they let the reality show guests crash a dinner party with POTUS
3) rumor had it the bombing of the Dr.'s without borders clinic was them proving to Obama he didn't want to cross them or else... :::shrugs:::: because they could do all manner of chicanery to screw up his Presidency
I believe it to be an old Armenian saying but applicable: “When telling the truth, keep one foot in the stirrup”
Max Blumenthal is also a good journalist to read.
Yes, one could almost say that it was "vitally important (to the CIA and their paymasters) that Obama be elected" - eh?
The CIA don't give a damn for the military-money-congressional complexes wars. As a younger man I once spent time in the field with New Zealand, Australian and British SAS troops. Not that I saw them for a second during that long week, being a mere weekend warrior. But later, in the bar, the British contingent were selling t-shirts with their famous winged dagger logo on them, but instead of their official motto (Who dares, wins) the t-shirts were printed with their idea of a joke:
"Who cares who wins?"
The CIA cares about their own power and their own money. They don't want a war with the people paying their (official) expenses so they keep their real ambitions on the down-low but they don't give a damn about what congress wants, what the president wants, or what the people want. They lied about Osama bin Laden doing his international man of mystery thing from a James Bond cave complex in Afghanistan because the Taleban cut off the supply of opium by more than 90%. The UN were helping them to eradicate opium production. But once the USA and allies liberated Afghanistan from the rule of the Taleban that the USA had created to resist the Soviets, opium production mysteriously skyrocketed to even higher than it had been before the Taleban started their eradication programme.
As noted previously, the obvious and predictable and actual consequences of an action being the real reason for the action, it was this resumption of the opium trade out of Afghanistan that was the real reason for the childishly fake intelligence supplied by the CIA on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. The Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, is the CIA's Karachi branch office, the junior partner in this trade. The existence of a never-ending stream of military and CIA transports in and out of Afghanistan and Pakistan whose contents can never be examined because "national security" is the primary cargo method. The war profiteering, the extra-judicial powers afforded by the Patriot Act and the eternal War on Terror, is just a bonus.
The Afghan people, living in one of the poorest and least developed nations in the world, lacking modern infrastructure in terms of roads, airports, shipping, etc, and surveilled on the ground, in the air, and from space, 24 hours a day, have somehow managed to smuggle out of Afghanistan millions of kilograms of one of the most illicit substances in the world. Every year for 19 years.
Here's the first line of Wikipedia's entry on Afghan heroin production:
"Afghanistan has been the world's leading illicit opium producer since 2001."
I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
It is interesting that no one has drawn a narrative line from the Afghan opium trade to our very own heroin epidemic here in the US, with drug makers making a fortune addicting people here. Where did all the opium come from to make that heroin (and oxycontin,) I wonder? Nobody asks. To my mind, just as the cocaine trade fueled our misadventures in South America, the opium trade has been feeding our misadventures in the middle east. Hard not to imagine the dots connected in exactly the same way. The drug trade fuels the war machine.
Yes, and it's been this way since the British built a mercantilist empire covering a third of the world using these methods. The Americans didn't only inherit the power of the British Empire - they also adopted the same methods. The lines go everywhere, like a web built by an acid-crazed spider in space. AIG, for example, who notoriously precipitated the previous "largest upward transfer of wealth in history" during the 2008 financial crisis, started in Taiwan iirc, insuring the CIA's aircraft running guns into Indochina and drugs out. (I'm sure it's just a coincidence that laundering trillions in drug money requires backdoor access to very large financial institutions who just happen to be too big to fail.) The Americans, however, have raised this game to a whole new level, having convinced three quarters of the globe to join in with their Freedom Exports R US boondoggle. The term gunboat diplomacy exists (to the degree anyone remembers it today) because the British Navy forced China and other nations to accept their drug trading so they could fund expanding the Empire. The intelligence services now constitute an empire within an empire and there is a long-noted tendency for them to cooperate across national boundaries without reference to or the knowledge of their putative political masters. The Dogs of War have slipped their own leash and the cry of Havoc is heard in the land.
so fentanyl is china's revenge?
I've been writing about this for years and no one listens; no one writes about it, and a couple of years ago I just gave up. There were minor strategic reasons to go into Afghanistan, but 95% of the reason was to restore the heroin trade that the Taliban had cut to ZERO!! We went in and in less than 12 months it was back in full swing. Then we made Afghanistan the world's 5th largest producer of marijuana which they'd never produced before.
The drug trade also fuels DC! But no serious investigator or journalist has dealt with it; no doubt fearing for their lives.
Same. But I'm comforted by the fact that I'm still alive because nobody takes this discussion seriously. So, there's that.
Gary Webb wrote about it, got noticed, and "committed suicide."
yes, people do write about this, but not much anyone can do about it. and i believe afghan hash was popular worldwide in the '60s, if not earlier.
Wow, great article Glenn! The CIA’s dislike of Trump makes so much more sense now.
“Venezuela is fundamental threat to USA” -- declared Obama formally initiating regime change.
What he meant is “Socialism is a threat to capitalism”… hence imperial War-party endless wars -- again Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, China, Angola, Mozambique, etc., etc..
Defund military terrorism!
PS: Trump should pardon Julian Assange and Ed Snowden
Good stuff. Well worth the subscription. Hopefully your perspective will wake more people up.
It appears that with the announcement of President-elect Biden's new cabinet we are in for a period of extended forever wars and perhaps some new ones. The sight of warmongering thugs like Brennan and Clapper being lionized by left wing intellectuals, the MSM, and the Democratic party is sickening. Do I really see CNN and MSNBC looking to these men as honest spokesmen for an enlightened administration? Did they forget the torture promoters and "targeted killing" sponsors? Do they really represent a moral and enlightened world view?
Those people you think are "left wing intellectuals" are in fact neo-liberals.
Robert, you seem to be coming outta the fog, albeit a little late in the game. The MSM is the fog. They are only there to propagandize you and me. We all have to either go back to sleep or educate ourselves. No White Knight will do it for us.
What you're seeing and hearing from the MSM and the mainstream Democrats is perfectly usual and totally expected. I don't know any "left wing intellectuals" who are lionizing Brennan or Clapper.
Hopefully no intellectuals, regardless of descriptor.
Mr. Biden's success at selling wars to Europe remains to be seen, but I fear the CIA may have slipped up.
His VP will be doing the selling. Criticizing a black woman is racist, sexist, etc, so she is perfect for the job.
Kamala Chameleon is more than that.
Before she was Black she was African-American
Before she was African-American she was Indian-American
Before she was Indian-American she was Hindu-American
Before she was Hindu-American she was....Canadian.
If I were Sleepy Joe, I'd hire a food taster.
She'd be more effective doing that as President. Perhaps the CIA does have a plan.
It will be interesting to see how they handle Kamala’s ancestors slave owning past legacy, once the honeymoon’s over.
That doesn’t have anything to do with her personally. I’m not even sure why it was ever brought up
She is associated with the "everything is racist" SJW crowd, which gropes around in history to surface old examples of oppression that have almost no relation to anything real going on in most "white" people's lives.
It is brought up to highlight the hypocrisy and contradictions of those that ideologically weaponize victim narratives.
But it does. She uses race & victimhood when convenient.
That only applies if they are not in power