Biden's immediate abandonment of his 2020 vow to turn the Saudis into "pariahs," and his increasing support for the regime, shows the core deceit of U.S. propaganda.
The KSA beheaded over 50 people in 2021 for witchcraft. Russia doesn’t even have the death penalty. The same people who are insisting we tear down statues are supporting a country who makes 16th Century Europe look like a daycare.
They have regular conferences, complete with water pitchers, monogrammed notebooks and ballpoint pens, for the discussion of witchcraft, as if it’s a real, pressing concern.
There’s actually a Federal Task Force that runs around pursuing witches very similar to our organized crime task forces. The powers that be at Google have made it hard to find a lot of this, but you can actually read their police reports online via a vie witches. It’s like 13th Century England just suddenly got sky scrapers and cars. Crazy stuff.
Thats way way less than the number of drug dealers and gang members (typically young male minorities, with minimal educations, and typically in Democrat cities with onerous gun laws) that die every day in America from gun and drug violence. Just like they did in the 1920s over gun and alcohol violence.
The DNC screams at school shootings, but says nothing about the children gunned down in 'defund the police' DNC run cities. I guess in their sick minds, all children are valuable but some are more valuable than others.
I view tearing down statues as speech suppression. Speech can take many forms, and one of those is 3D graphic representations. I don't want Abraham Lincoln or Robert E. Lee statues torn down. Rather, I want them used as a means of focusing reasoned discourse on important issues. The popular narrative misses that Lincoln was a racist, on record saying that the Negro will never be equal to the white man, and Lee manumitted he slaves.
Your number is too low. The litany of crimes that call for execution is extensive, and the Saudis have literally millions of expats from Pakistan and India from whom to chose. Even Sharia punishment for non-capital crimes can result in death.
Saudis hire others to do their work for them, as I've seen in many trips to the region. The joke is whether sex is work or pleasure. The Saudi thinks, and replies "Pleasure. If it were work, I'd have a Pakistani do it for me."
No one is even talking about the crazed liberal who used the Kavanaugh doxxing to try and kill him.
Can you imagine if a white Trumper had done that to RBG? You know how many liberals try to tell me she was the first female SCJ? These people know what the media told them and thats about it, sadly.
I see that Mr. Greenwald finally outed Obama as a political player, good. I caught a clip on TV after a meeting Trump had with a few fellow colleagues during his presidency. I haven't a clue as to what they were talking about. When most left, and the camera panned in on him he expressed despair over our many stupid wars that killed many, cost millions and for nothing. I never heard any mention of his comment, and I think they were always afraid that he wasn't going to play the game right. I saw a video clip of Nancy Pelosi who was on the Intel committee during the build up to war with Iraq. She said quite openly that she knew there were no weapons of mass destruction so she didn't vote for the war, and thought nothing of the fact she was going to keep her mouth shut on the very reason we claimed we had to take out Saddam. I think after a while and sometimes a very short while, politicians sell their souls for money, for power. Most of them have become hollowed out rich people.
Thank you. I find it strange that Democrats claim Trump has control of the Republican Party; he has far more influence over the Democrats. What else are they going to talk about? The record is shameful.
It literally took hours for reinforcements to arrive. I live in Ottawa close to Parliament Hill and I have seen or attended dozens of demos. The Ottawa Police work with the RCMP and the military on these matters. I cannot imagine it taking HOURS for help in the event of a mob here storming Parliament. Minutes is more like it. It literally could not happen.
It has to be the same in the security obsessed US Capitol.
I heard Trump's speech on January 6th and while listening I never thought he was inciting his audience to violence, however he did say the election was stolen, and considering that for 4 years the democrats in complicity with a very supportive, non-objective mainstream press as well as the so called "independent left" who maintained no sense of objectivity were trying to unseat an elected president made it seem a possibility to me. If I recall correctly there were senators and congressmen willing to look at the six key sates that were in question. Violence would never benefit Trump's objectives, and if anything would undermine any legitimate claims he had. His base was repeatedly maligned from the beginning of his presidency, initially defined by Clinton as a half basket of deplorables. A meme circulating on Facebook described them as an uneducated, immoral lot. From the beginning they even set the stage for people to believe his base was capable of wrongdoing and were morally corrupt, and mindless, and capable, even with no weapons, to make an attempt to overthrow our government. So, from the beginning they had their cast of characters in place, and mindless enough to orchestrate an insurrection with no weapons.
I saw that reported from some "news source" a month or so ago. I seem to recall that the report made it seem like the Saudi's had enacted delayed executions simultaneously, rather than 81 being some typical per period number, but it's still outrageous.
It is a topic that is kept under wraps, but I became quite friendly with the Bedouins while I was in the Gulf. Sometimes I would go with a man and his wife to the "family" section of a restaurant, where she would unveil.
I have no confirmation,, only overheard conversations. Arabic is my sixth or seventh language, and they might well have been discussing recipes for hummus ma'a laham. The discussions, as I understood them, were about executions of females, which are astoundingly frequent, and almost always occur in private.
I didn't receive this information on stone tablets from a burning bush, and have zero confirmation.
By getting a great deal of sand in my shoes from a great number of independent countries since 1992. And maintaining correspondence with friends in multiple countries. My sources are fading, just as I am.
Me, but that was a couple of months ago. I often read Aljazeera on line. However, I forgot all about it until you mentioned it here. I still don't understand why Russia can be so easily used as the boogeyman. I swear, I gave up that BS when I was 8.
I heard this morning that around 46 Palestinian journalists have been murdered by IDF since 2000. The latest being a Palestinian-American. Love to see the admin handle that.
Oh you heard it, it must be true. Is this like when the media heard Jussie Smollet was a hate crime victim. Stop posting tenuous BS and post something with substance.
Why discourage someone from posting? I'm not fond of the Facebook-like junior-high cafeteria atmosphere recently imposed, but any forum dedicated to absolute free speech must pay that price.
I was just asking Nancy like I ask every poster here, to cite their evidence.
One thing Glenn does better than any journalist is provide evidence of all the stuff he is talking about and I get incredibly frustrated when this last bastion of actual evidence starts to tilt towards the normal websites full of unsubstantiated BS.
I did react a bit too harshly, but not to discourage them from posting, but rather to cite the evidence for their post.
Icon can be unnecessarily nasty, but in this case, he was very in line. I generally post links but forgot in this case. I am not yet at the point where people are going to take my word for it. But thank you for your input!
FWIW thats the main reason I did get frustrated because you are always one of the 'good ones' who always cites their stuff, and I did respond a bit harsher than normal, my bad.
Also good link, was an interesting read that has me down another rabbit hole of learning :)
If liberal Democrats still believed in the existence of women, one would expect them to be horrified by Saudi Arabia's marginalization of said women.
But, it's a two-tiered conundrum.
Of course, as we all now know, there's no such thing as women and we must never , NEVER suggest that Islam is detrimental to them, whatever we call them.
The DNC is an alliance, not a singular party. The cobble together anything that doesn't identify itself as anti-Democrat, and they try to put it together and serve it to the American public with a smile.
Who cares that Louis Farrakhan is an anti-semite and is an SPLC hate criminal, if the jewish Democrat voters never find out he was with Barack Obama until AFTER the 2nd term elections.
These people have been manipulating elections since the Adams family dynasty and its just in human fucking nature to be pieces of shit apparently.
The media hides it. They call President Trump, arguably the greatest ally in the WH to jews, was an anti-semite, and hide the pictures of Obama with Farrakhan.
Its media manipulation and nothing else, when you look for it you see it EVERYWHERE.
Having lived in Luxor, Egypt and traveled extensively in the Middle East, I do not know a single Muslim country where I would want to have grown up as a woman, or gay, or a Muslim who decided to leave the religion. I was shocked to find out how bad it really is. But no one in the west wants to hear about it. Pretty ironic that I was able to get my story of helping a Swedish woman escape Luxor during the pandemic published in the most progressive Egyptian news outlet, but no progressive western publication would touch it. They are fools who need a good dose of reality. I get so angry about it. I'd love to see these leftists crying about Putin dropped into a village in any of these Muslim countries and left there for a year. Within a week, they would be begging to move to Russia.
I don't think that most of us think Russia isn't bad, its that 90% of us on this forum know every other regime/government is too, and is just better at spinning it.
I refer to M. Feral's singular line of reasoning in all his postings. Even when Russia is not part of the issue at hand, he "points out" how it is better than the U.S.
The evidence is overwhelming, but I would never suggest anyone to go back and read him, so I won't play that game here.
And you think that western sanctions have nothing to do with anything?
Russia is a larger grain exporter than Ukraine. For that matter, Ukraine *could* export grain overland, and Russia has agreed in principle to allow grain shipments through the port of Odessa. Ukraine has refused, because they want the West to deblock Odessa so as to allow arms shipments.
For the same reason we owe more $ than the rest of the world has, because we have the guns to tell anyone to fuck off.
And yet your liberal leaders will tell you how they need more gun laws, while their own states and cities are awash in blood and violence despite having worse gun laws than other states.
I do not read, watch, or listen to the State-captured "MSM." I am a Capitalist (another word for Classical Liberal, like the founders and like Glenn Greenwald).
Putin and his oligarchs are Fascists who threaten the entire world, especially Western Civilization. The Russian people have burdened the world, especially the West, with their Authoritarian Socialist (another term for Fascist) leadership for 100+ years.
Good for you and your Russo-phile friends. Bad for the free West.
Well, they may be be sons o' bitches, but they assuredly don't threaten the entire world--that's completely absurd. As far as Western Civilization is concerned, it's doing a fine job of destroying itself. Our homegrown sociopathic oligarchs (your heroes, evidently) are almost there--just need a little more time
Don't put words in my mouth. No People are "sons of bitches."
The Russians threaten the entire world with their acquiescence of archaic and barbaric international Fascism, not to mention more nukes than the rest of the world combined. We are not threatening their use; they are.
The West has already started the long process of ridding its own Authoritarian Socialism, the neo-cons of the Republican Party, and the neo-libs of the Democrat.
The Peoples of Western Civilization are waking up to their birthright of individual freedom. The Russian People are regressing.
I'm getting tired of equivocators like you, M. Gordon. Wake up.
After your first sentence, each subsequent sentence is a non-sequitur. The second sentence, I suppose, is meant by you to support the first. It does not; it relates a single individual's experience, which cannot be used rationally to apply to the remainder of all cases. The third sentence has no discernible connection to the second. The third sentence has no discernible connection to the second. The final sentence is an unsubstantiated assertion.
I see Biden w/ Kimmel and I say, "WTF do leaders of other countries think of this country!" We heard that question incessantly w/ Trump but it's much more applicable now.
On this note, maybe people ought to ask why Biden gets interviewed by Kimmel instead of by, oh I don’t know, let’s just pick a random name: Glenn Greenwald.
I saw that before. If i were a Democrat, i would be hanging my head in humiliation at the cringe. Which is probably why i haven't been one for over 2 decades.
He must live in constant terror knowing the media can weaponize that karl malone impression or host of other things from his past at any moment. Shill for the shots. Shill for wars. Shill for Biden. Demonize Trump. Anything to keep the sword of Damocles from falling. One of his most humiliating moments was that award show. I can't hear you Jimmy! I can't hear you Jimmy! Say it again! Say it again!
Well the networks are such bastions of class, respect for women, diverse ownership, and not in any way part of a vertically integrated cabal of media, politics and business, clearly they and anything they produce should be given all benefits of the doubt.
Kimmel is playing the divide and conquer game. Our democracy has gone to hell, but the real source of the problem is far above the left vs right divide. It is with the .01% who own the media, weapons industry, big pharma and all other major infrastructure.
As long as we are fighting with each other, we won't see the real problem.
But why are you watching Kimmel, he's just a rebranded misogynist who is best buddies with Sarah "You Bernie Bros are being ridiculous!" Silverman. These people are bought and paid for by their media empires.
aI don’t “watch” Kimmel. That interview was covered by everybody, so I watched the first few minutes to see how it was actually going.
That was it.
Fox News has been shit since its inception, but still gets a lot of viewership. I guess that the rest of the media figured, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em…to everyone's detriment.
It reminds me of the days when some people actually gave a rat's ass about whatever came out of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' mouth.
She was on Trevor Noah's show (got a nice hug from Trevor), Stephen Colbert (starry eyed Steve), a "hard-hitting" interview by Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes (kidding) and a love-fest on Chris Hayes show on MSNBC that was thinly disguised as a 'Green new Deal Town Hall ."
Oddly enough, the toughest question I ever saw tossed her way was from Jake Tapper on CNN.
They think that we're little better than those evil despotic states we say we so despise, with a media that goes to ridiculous lengths to deny the obvious.
Why do so many of the current crises all trace back to some form of Trump Derangement Syndrome? Can all the billions of dollars and years of effort used to prove absolutely nothing all follow from a seething irrational hatred of a former game-show host who was something of a "loose cannon" during his tenure? Was his outsider status the cause for all the pants-wetting and the continued growth of the police state expansion of DHS? The fallout from the years of utter anti-Trump bullshit continues to rain down on everyone and there does not seem to be an end in sight, especially now with the Jan 6 show trial gearing up just in time for the midterm elections.
True elites -- the ones exercising power, not merely the "upper" classes -- don't give a damn about Trump's (often just supposed) narcissism, racism, sexism, xenophobia, corruption, or all the rest of the Democrats' red meat on him. They just want to SHUT HIM UP ... because he threatens their financial/power interests, combined with the fact that they have less than zero respect for Americans and for democracy.
Exhibit A showing this is the truly ridiculous narrow focus of his first impeachment, just to kill two birds with one stone (with Biden's corruption the other bird) -- after years of screaming a catalogue of Trump crimes and other offenses from A to Z.
The new-and-improved version is, of course, the January 6 Inquisition, which orchestrators hope will sweep not only Trump but his entire team and core of support into the trashbin. What they don't realize is that, to half the country, they already look worse than the clowns who ran the Soviet Union's (actual) coup d'etat in August 1991. In that case, the perps' fast collapse happened because they attempted it without a smidgen of competent PR.
Biden's behavior, a Glenn copiously describes, is just back to normal. It will NOT end. At least, not until something bad enough to wake the vast majority of Americans from their sleep and/or outright denial.
"Supposed" is right. Trump was and is just a narcissist with a lot of BS bravado and bluster--characteristics appealing to many of us working class types and not unknown in varying degrees in most politicians. His frankness is appealing to voters as were his consistent efforts to follow through on his campaign pledges, something I've never seen in all my 61 years, with the exceptions maybe of Kennedy and Johnson with the Apollo project and the Great Society BS.
But WHO are these "elites" and WHY do they want to shut Trump up? What threat is he to them? I understand why the corporate press was after him--he made them look like idiots by getting elected. But who else besides the Democratic Party benefits from trashing Trump's reputation and sabotaging his presidency?
"But WHO are these "elites" and WHY do they want to shut Trump up?"
In my opinion, Trump threatens primarily the Military-Industrial [-Congressional*] - Complex (MIC) with his war-limitation talk. This is of course quite a large number of people, including many powerful ones, globally. (* = in Ike's original draft(s)
There's dozens of other constituencies whose comfortable positions he threatens, if you look over some of his most-criticized speech (that are not the "red-meat" things I mentioned), and then spend some time following the connected money and/or power trails.
Yep, and the "bill the people at the Fed level for state costs" Democrats are the left wing side of that Military-industrial complex on the (mostly) right.
They just want a bunch of free $ to build their empires and power bases up and a bill to Joe and Joanna Taxpayer
Yes, and he is too big to get rid of in the traditional means. He has too much money and fame. Boycotts? Useless, same with bribes. He also has the stones to call people like Milley "a fucking idiot."
Neocons like Liz Cheney, globalists on either side, as well as established party members who have had to retire because now people are paying attention to politics all of a sudden (look at AOC).
"True elites -- the ones exercising power, not merely the "upper" classes -- don't give a damn about Trump's (often just supposed) narcissism, racism, sexism, xenophobia, corruption, or all the rest of the Democrats' red meat on him. They just want to SHUT HIM UP ... because he threatens their financial/power interests, combined with the fact that they have less than zero respect for Americans and for democracy."
Spot on, Anti-Hip...amazing how few people understand this simple truth. You can grab all the P you want, so long as you play the game.
This might be the most fascinating question and phenomenon of our times...
since Trump liberals have talked themselves into a psychosis-level derangement and (as we all know) first and foremost this has caused them to abandon every possible prior principle: free speech, free thought, freedom of expression and dissent etc etc...
I can only guess about the psychological roots but I think the educated urban elite of America really deeply believe that it is their divine right to rule over the Deplorables class—liberals went to all the best schools, have the most cutting-edge dogma, the most valuable Rolodexes—they were about to elect the first female President and usher in a long reign of enlightened diverse technocracy (basically their eternal dream of top-down bureaucratic control sung to the tune of John Lennon's "Imagine") and then that evil orange man came and stole it all away...
So there response has been the raging tantrum of an infant who had all his toys stolen, or really the need people have to be in CONTROL and what happens when they think they're in CONTROL but it slips away (as it always does)...
And when will it end? Not until that man is either dead or otherwise incapacitated.
"I think the educated urban elite of America really deeply believe that it is their divine right to rule over the Deplorables class"
But this part is not really new. What is new, as Christopher Lasch put it all the way back in 1994, is "The Revolt of the Elites", including as you put it, their mania for complete, micromanaging, condescending, control, as if the people are not people, but mere expendable cattle ... or cockroaches.
Where did this come from? How did the concept of noblesse oblige completely disappear?
I love Lasch, he was a prophet in many ways...to take a guess at your 2nd question, I would think that "noblesse oblige" (which more or less died with the WWII generation) can only be practiced by a ruling class that is secure in their status, secure in their $$, secure in their morals, secure in their worldview...in the post-60s zeitgeist (which seems to be the demon spawn of Ayn Rand and Herbert Marcuse) there is so much social churn that no real elite class can solidify because whatever they own/think/believe could be antiquated with the next software update...in liquid modernity not even a billionaire can feel a solid foundation beneath them, and in a world that is constantly shifting, the illusion of CONTROL becomes a felt need and addiction...
"I can only guess about the psychological roots but I think the educated urban elite of America really deeply believe that it is their divine right to rule over the Deplorables class—liberals went to all the best schools, have the most cutting-edge dogma, the most valuable Rolodexes—they were about to elect the first female President and usher in a long reign of enlightened diverse technocracy"
So true, Clever P...I have personally witnessed this in my own circle...their often juvenile mocking of Trump masks what they perceive to be his threat to their power and control.
My belief is that this is because Trump was a true outsider and Obama was also to some degree an oustider.
The two party elites are fighting for the Empires they have created over the last two decades, and all their media allies created by the TCA are doing everything to protect and hold onto that power they paid and worked hard to acquire.
No politician in history ever went from a no one in government to President. Ever. The fact that he was unapologetic and called them out for their bullshit made them all pile on. He ended the Bush and Clinton dynasties and left them both without control when it was possible we would have had HRC > Jeb instead of Obama > Trump.
I can't stand Trump on 95% of the things he does, but I love that he flipped the bird to the elites, and even picked up blue collar democrats who felt abandoned as he did it.
What you saw in 2020 was a full court press from the old-school elites and it worked. Joe Biden, a guy who cant even form a complete sentence, with a crackhead son, won because of roughly 50000 votes.
Right. The 2 parties and their media lapdogs/informal employees.
Any opinion on the so-called "deep state" and its possible involvement in the attempt to unseat Trump? If they had a hand in it, what were THEIR motives? I imagine they might be the same as those motives you ascribe to the 2 parties and their media.
But if security state bureaucrats of the NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS conspired to discredit Trump and attempted to remove him from office by a campaign of lies and half-truths strategically linked (I don't like the current cant "disinformation"), what does that say about who or what actually determines who holds the White House?
Is the end scene of "Being There" a dramatization of our political reality? Or does that reality work itself out in Federal offices throughout DC, sort of like "Get Smart"?
Yeah, no. The people in power behind the politicians are exactly who did in Trump in 2020 and are leading the charge now (through political proxies) because it is in their best interests to do so. Glenn has it exactly right. You speak truth to power and power kicks you in the nuts...hard. It doesn't matter if they use the left boot or the right one. They both cause you to double over and puke up your lunch.
Ask yourself this:
If the situation were reversed, if Trump ran and won on a Democrat ticket ousting the annointed MIC successor Hilary Rodham Clinton who was a Republican and then Trump did what he did, do you think anything would have been different?
Do you really think that the oligarchs who depend so much on having the 'little people' fight amongst themselves so they do not get hip to the truth that the oligarchs are the real menace, do you think they for one second would put up with a Democrat pulling back the curtain any more than a Republican?
This has absolutely zero to do with party politics. Zero.
If you want change, get the money out of politics. Because for the oligarchs money provides the means to pull strings and the more money you have, the more strings you can pull. Which is why you have a horribly crooked tax regime where billionaires pay no taxes and the working class is up to their neck in unsustainable debt. They always make sure to leave enough strings unpulled to deal with the budget because they need to keep their cycle of privileged life moving along.
You could see that in 2016 with CNN rigging the primary against Sanders, though like an obedient solider he fell in line. Hillary pulled her stunt on Gabbard in 2020, however, unlike Sanders, she didn't sit down and shut up.
Then how does this have "absolutely zero to do with party politics"? I suppose Stephen here (not Stephen Sanford) means the parties are proxies for "oligarchs," in that these oligarchs determine who in each party does or says whatever.
Who exactly are these oligarchs? Why is it in their interests to have citizens fighting among themselves over cultural issues? I daresay such issues can't erase the obvious facts of inflation and Dementia Joe's growing senility and the absolute bleeding of the Treasury with this idiotic blank check to Ukraine (Zelensky and his cronies more precisely).
There are those of us who actually pay attention to what is going on the in the world (basically everyone who is on this board and others like it). We have differing opinions on things sure, but we follow the issues closely and don't just eat what is on the plate in front of us in terms of the news.
We are the minority, a very small one. The vast majority do not venture beyond mainstream media to get their daily news fix, they do not question the narrative put in front of them at all, and worse, the repeat said narrative verbatim and say 'Hah! I know what's what, I do, the news told me so!' It's almost Suessian in it's simplicity.
The oligarchs (and I'm fairly certain that if it were a choice between a loved one dying and you naming them, the list would just pour out of your mouth, you don't need me to identify them for you),. know this and they know the less people talk about them, the less accountable they will have to be. So they give the general populace who does not want to spend the energy required to move a mouse across a screen a story that they can easily digest like pablum whose main takeaway is the opportunity for said populace to say 'At least I'm not like that asshole.'.
By getting them to focus their (pick an ugly emotion) on said 'asshole' who has been served up to them on a platter by the corporate media via various statements/briefings etc supplied by politicians or those acting on their behalf but purporting to be independent experts in their fields, they pull the focus away from their own crimiality and plant it squarely on the pig in the corner.
That sir, is why they do what they do. That is why it is in their best interests to have the 'little people' at each other's throats. It's three card monte but on a massive scale.
Is everything a complete lie? No, all good deceptions have some figment of the truth in there somewhere. And often times the facade is built around a fact. But just like the Wizard of Oz unless you look behind the curtain, you are not getting the whole story or even most of it.
This is why people like Noam Chomsky are so hated by the political establishment. Not only does he not buy the pig in the corner routine, he goes through great pains to continually point out to anyone who will listen that said pig is actually a dog with a slinky glued to it's ass.
You could also see it with the Hanging Chads (Gore vs Bush). Naturally I don't *know* this, but I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that someone appealed to Gore not to drag this out and in return they would help him with his post political career. He chose the environment and became the poster boy for climate change. Book deal, doc film, talk shows etc. They threw just enough money behind him to make him famous but not enough to actually make a difference because it was not in their best interests to do so. So basically he got out of the way of the oligarchs for what amounted to a bag of beans.
A year after the election USA Today did an exhaustive count of every ballot cast in Florida during the 2000 election and determined that Bush in fact won the state. What was fascinating about the decision is that although it appeared to be split on ideological lines, the reasoning wasn't nearly as close. Seven of nine Justices concurred that treating different counties differently and only recounting in those that Gore stipulated violated equal treatment before the law.
The Democratic Party still matters as the core of a collapsing authoritarian empire. The Republican Party is irrelevant.
Gore lost. The ONLY reason it was close is that the media called the election for Gore BEFORE the polls had closed on the most Republican part of Florida, which is around Pensacola and in the Central Time Zone. The lines were long and people decided to go home without voting when they heard on their car radios that their vote wouldn't matter. Bush would have won Florida by at least 5000 votes if the media hadn't been so ignorant.
The irony is that even if Russia really were as bad as we claim (it isn't, but whatever) - this would be but a pimple on the ass of the Saudi tyranny.
The Saudis recently executed an astonishing eighty one people in just one day. Now find someone else other than I who knows that.
Now imagine if !PTUIN! had done that. We would know all their names, we would have seen their pictures, their families would be on tv every night.
As it is?
"It's okay! We love you! Kisses"
And there there is Bandar Buhs!
The KSA beheaded over 50 people in 2021 for witchcraft. Russia doesn’t even have the death penalty. The same people who are insisting we tear down statues are supporting a country who makes 16th Century Europe look like a daycare.
TRVTH
And well said!
They have regular conferences, complete with water pitchers, monogrammed notebooks and ballpoint pens, for the discussion of witchcraft, as if it’s a real, pressing concern.
This I did not know.
Wow!
But what else to expect in a medieval theocracy run by human monsters?
There’s actually a Federal Task Force that runs around pursuing witches very similar to our organized crime task forces. The powers that be at Google have made it hard to find a lot of this, but you can actually read their police reports online via a vie witches. It’s like 13th Century England just suddenly got sky scrapers and cars. Crazy stuff.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
Exodus 22:18
King James Version
Which "they?"
Thats way way less than the number of drug dealers and gang members (typically young male minorities, with minimal educations, and typically in Democrat cities with onerous gun laws) that die every day in America from gun and drug violence. Just like they did in the 1920s over gun and alcohol violence.
The DNC screams at school shootings, but says nothing about the children gunned down in 'defund the police' DNC run cities. I guess in their sick minds, all children are valuable but some are more valuable than others.
I support tearing down statues & I've opposed US support of the Saudis for over 20 years.
Which statues though?
My dream is to come to America someday to view the oh so famous Statue of Limitations!
I view tearing down statues as speech suppression. Speech can take many forms, and one of those is 3D graphic representations. I don't want Abraham Lincoln or Robert E. Lee statues torn down. Rather, I want them used as a means of focusing reasoned discourse on important issues. The popular narrative misses that Lincoln was a racist, on record saying that the Negro will never be equal to the white man, and Lee manumitted he slaves.
It's worse than that, it's the destruction of memory, of history and heritage.
Something on which we firmly agree. There are other areas of agreement.
WELL SAID!
Your number is too low. The litany of crimes that call for execution is extensive, and the Saudis have literally millions of expats from Pakistan and India from whom to chose. Even Sharia punishment for non-capital crimes can result in death.
Saudis hire others to do their work for them, as I've seen in many trips to the region. The joke is whether sex is work or pleasure. The Saudi thinks, and replies "Pleasure. If it were work, I'd have a Pakistani do it for me."
"in one day"
My reading skills are slipping, but I got the "one day" bit. Your number is too low.
No one is even talking about the crazed liberal who used the Kavanaugh doxxing to try and kill him.
Can you imagine if a white Trumper had done that to RBG? You know how many liberals try to tell me she was the first female SCJ? These people know what the media told them and thats about it, sadly.
I see that Mr. Greenwald finally outed Obama as a political player, good. I caught a clip on TV after a meeting Trump had with a few fellow colleagues during his presidency. I haven't a clue as to what they were talking about. When most left, and the camera panned in on him he expressed despair over our many stupid wars that killed many, cost millions and for nothing. I never heard any mention of his comment, and I think they were always afraid that he wasn't going to play the game right. I saw a video clip of Nancy Pelosi who was on the Intel committee during the build up to war with Iraq. She said quite openly that she knew there were no weapons of mass destruction so she didn't vote for the war, and thought nothing of the fact she was going to keep her mouth shut on the very reason we claimed we had to take out Saddam. I think after a while and sometimes a very short while, politicians sell their souls for money, for power. Most of them have become hollowed out rich people.
Thank you. I find it strange that Democrats claim Trump has control of the Republican Party; he has far more influence over the Democrats. What else are they going to talk about? The record is shameful.
It literally took hours for reinforcements to arrive. I live in Ottawa close to Parliament Hill and I have seen or attended dozens of demos. The Ottawa Police work with the RCMP and the military on these matters. I cannot imagine it taking HOURS for help in the event of a mob here storming Parliament. Minutes is more like it. It literally could not happen.
It has to be the same in the security obsessed US Capitol.
Jan 06 was an operation, a psyop.
I heard Trump's speech on January 6th and while listening I never thought he was inciting his audience to violence, however he did say the election was stolen, and considering that for 4 years the democrats in complicity with a very supportive, non-objective mainstream press as well as the so called "independent left" who maintained no sense of objectivity were trying to unseat an elected president made it seem a possibility to me. If I recall correctly there were senators and congressmen willing to look at the six key sates that were in question. Violence would never benefit Trump's objectives, and if anything would undermine any legitimate claims he had. His base was repeatedly maligned from the beginning of his presidency, initially defined by Clinton as a half basket of deplorables. A meme circulating on Facebook described them as an uneducated, immoral lot. From the beginning they even set the stage for people to believe his base was capable of wrongdoing and were morally corrupt, and mindless, and capable, even with no weapons, to make an attempt to overthrow our government. So, from the beginning they had their cast of characters in place, and mindless enough to orchestrate an insurrection with no weapons.
I saw that reported from some "news source" a month or so ago. I seem to recall that the report made it seem like the Saudi's had enacted delayed executions simultaneously, rather than 81 being some typical per period number, but it's still outrageous.
It is a topic that is kept under wraps, but I became quite friendly with the Bedouins while I was in the Gulf. Sometimes I would go with a man and his wife to the "family" section of a restaurant, where she would unveil.
I have no confirmation,, only overheard conversations. Arabic is my sixth or seventh language, and they might well have been discussing recipes for hummus ma'a laham. The discussions, as I understood them, were about executions of females, which are astoundingly frequent, and almost always occur in private.
I didn't receive this information on stone tablets from a burning bush, and have zero confirmation.
It's not a typical day no. They seem to save them up for some reason. It's probably just convenient.
Interesting. How did you know that?
By getting a great deal of sand in my shoes from a great number of independent countries since 1992. And maintaining correspondence with friends in multiple countries. My sources are fading, just as I am.
In the swamp rat world, all despots are equal but some are more equal than others.
Me, but that was a couple of months ago. I often read Aljazeera on line. However, I forgot all about it until you mentioned it here. I still don't understand why Russia can be so easily used as the boogeyman. I swear, I gave up that BS when I was 8.
I heard this morning that around 46 Palestinian journalists have been murdered by IDF since 2000. The latest being a Palestinian-American. Love to see the admin handle that.
1) How do you know they aren't "journalists"?
2) The D does stand for defense. Is it possible *murder* is inaccurate?
3) That's barely 2 (two) per year, in basically a warzone. I'd call that admirable restraint.
Oh you heard it, it must be true. Is this like when the media heard Jussie Smollet was a hate crime victim. Stop posting tenuous BS and post something with substance.
Of course, you are correct Icon.
My apologies.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/12/infographic-the-journalists-killed-by-israeli-forces-since-2000
Much better thank you Nancy.
Why discourage someone from posting? I'm not fond of the Facebook-like junior-high cafeteria atmosphere recently imposed, but any forum dedicated to absolute free speech must pay that price.
I was just asking Nancy like I ask every poster here, to cite their evidence.
One thing Glenn does better than any journalist is provide evidence of all the stuff he is talking about and I get incredibly frustrated when this last bastion of actual evidence starts to tilt towards the normal websites full of unsubstantiated BS.
I did react a bit too harshly, but not to discourage them from posting, but rather to cite the evidence for their post.
Hey, Bill,
Icon can be unnecessarily nasty, but in this case, he was very in line. I generally post links but forgot in this case. I am not yet at the point where people are going to take my word for it. But thank you for your input!
FWIW thats the main reason I did get frustrated because you are always one of the 'good ones' who always cites their stuff, and I did respond a bit harsher than normal, my bad.
Also good link, was an interesting read that has me down another rabbit hole of learning :)
I hope the high schoolers are paying attention.
If liberal Democrats still believed in the existence of women, one would expect them to be horrified by Saudi Arabia's marginalization of said women.
But, it's a two-tiered conundrum.
Of course, as we all now know, there's no such thing as women and we must never , NEVER suggest that Islam is detrimental to them, whatever we call them.
The DNC is an alliance, not a singular party. The cobble together anything that doesn't identify itself as anti-Democrat, and they try to put it together and serve it to the American public with a smile.
Who cares that Louis Farrakhan is an anti-semite and is an SPLC hate criminal, if the jewish Democrat voters never find out he was with Barack Obama until AFTER the 2nd term elections.
These people have been manipulating elections since the Adams family dynasty and its just in human fucking nature to be pieces of shit apparently.
Yes, the pass the media gives to the anti-Semite hater Farrakhan is shocking...I'm not sure that most liberal American Jews even care. I don't get it.
The media hides it. They call President Trump, arguably the greatest ally in the WH to jews, was an anti-semite, and hide the pictures of Obama with Farrakhan.
Its media manipulation and nothing else, when you look for it you see it EVERYWHERE.
and its a dingleberry to USG corruption
The Saudis can’t start World War III.
Oh, well that makes their tyranny okay, then!
Far from it.
Deleted - responding to a different comment, sorry.
Bad cat!
That is NOT what M. John said.
Hey, Timothy Andrew Staples, HOW ARE YOU???
Fair to middling. You? I mean, YOU???
I am hanging in there. Thank you. I mean, YOU!!!
Having lived in Luxor, Egypt and traveled extensively in the Middle East, I do not know a single Muslim country where I would want to have grown up as a woman, or gay, or a Muslim who decided to leave the religion. I was shocked to find out how bad it really is. But no one in the west wants to hear about it. Pretty ironic that I was able to get my story of helping a Swedish woman escape Luxor during the pandemic published in the most progressive Egyptian news outlet, but no progressive western publication would touch it. They are fools who need a good dose of reality. I get so angry about it. I'd love to see these leftists crying about Putin dropped into a village in any of these Muslim countries and left there for a year. Within a week, they would be begging to move to Russia.
I don't think that most of us think Russia isn't bad, its that 90% of us on this forum know every other regime/government is too, and is just better at spinning it.
That is not M. FC's (non-)point, and does not address his constant anti-West sentimentality.
Russia is much, much worse than *you* claim, M. Feral, but, as you say, whatever.
Evidence please.
I refer to M. Feral's singular line of reasoning in all his postings. Even when Russia is not part of the issue at hand, he "points out" how it is better than the U.S.
The evidence is overwhelming, but I would never suggest anyone to go back and read him, so I won't play that game here.
For the record, I do not believe Thomas and I are related, nor have we ever met.
And you think that western sanctions have nothing to do with anything?
Russia is a larger grain exporter than Ukraine. For that matter, Ukraine *could* export grain overland, and Russia has agreed in principle to allow grain shipments through the port of Odessa. Ukraine has refused, because they want the West to deblock Odessa so as to allow arms shipments.
Ukraine is number two grain exporter after US. See empr.media Nov 6, 2021. Russia produces more grain but most is used to feed its people.
Russia is the world's largest grain exporter.
Not even close to accurate. Grain to Asia and Africa goes by sea, not overload to the mountains.
It doesn't have to go through Odessa.
Russia is NOT much much worse You seen to be a victim of US MSM.
I have a friend living in Russia, a former Canadian and journalist (Independent), who never wants to live in the authoritarian west AGAIN
Russians know exactly what US MSM says about them and their President
The US is mocked and laughed at. Hard .
No one mocks us to our face though do they?
For the same reason we owe more $ than the rest of the world has, because we have the guns to tell anyone to fuck off.
And yet your liberal leaders will tell you how they need more gun laws, while their own states and cities are awash in blood and violence despite having worse gun laws than other states.
I do not read, watch, or listen to the State-captured "MSM." I am a Capitalist (another word for Classical Liberal, like the founders and like Glenn Greenwald).
Putin and his oligarchs are Fascists who threaten the entire world, especially Western Civilization. The Russian people have burdened the world, especially the West, with their Authoritarian Socialist (another term for Fascist) leadership for 100+ years.
Good for you and your Russo-phile friends. Bad for the free West.
Well, they may be be sons o' bitches, but they assuredly don't threaten the entire world--that's completely absurd. As far as Western Civilization is concerned, it's doing a fine job of destroying itself. Our homegrown sociopathic oligarchs (your heroes, evidently) are almost there--just need a little more time
Don't put words in my mouth. No People are "sons of bitches."
The Russians threaten the entire world with their acquiescence of archaic and barbaric international Fascism, not to mention more nukes than the rest of the world combined. We are not threatening their use; they are.
The West has already started the long process of ridding its own Authoritarian Socialism, the neo-cons of the Republican Party, and the neo-libs of the Democrat.
The Peoples of Western Civilization are waking up to their birthright of individual freedom. The Russian People are regressing.
I'm getting tired of equivocators like you, M. Gordon. Wake up.
You sound like a bot
After your first sentence, each subsequent sentence is a non-sequitur. The second sentence, I suppose, is meant by you to support the first. It does not; it relates a single individual's experience, which cannot be used rationally to apply to the remainder of all cases. The third sentence has no discernible connection to the second. The third sentence has no discernible connection to the second. The final sentence is an unsubstantiated assertion.
The real question is if we are the biggest, strongest, richest country, why do we have to get in bed with any dictators or tyrants we dont like?
Biden wants to be paid off. He figures he is too well born to be prosecuted and convicted.
Biden wants to be paid off by foreigners. The Clinton Foundation approach but straight into his Swiss bank account.
I see Biden w/ Kimmel and I say, "WTF do leaders of other countries think of this country!" We heard that question incessantly w/ Trump but it's much more applicable now.
On this note, maybe people ought to ask why Biden gets interviewed by Kimmel instead of by, oh I don’t know, let’s just pick a random name: Glenn Greenwald.
Glenn would reduce the man formerly known as "Joe Biden" to a sputtering puddle of slime on the studio floor.
So no.
Jimmy Kimmel did by not saying much.
Kudos and Well Said.
Joe doesn’t know truth, therefore can’t handle it.
Jimmy Kimmel’s done the impossible…make Markos “Roses” Moulitsas look like a serious journalist. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/01/09/nancy-pelosi-gets-delivery-roses-thanks-an-online-fundraiser/
I saw that before. If i were a Democrat, i would be hanging my head in humiliation at the cringe. Which is probably why i haven't been one for over 2 decades.
The parties died imo right around 1968 in Chicago.
Even the hippies saw that all the momentum in the world didn't mean shit vs. an entrenched 'the man'
The hippies became 'the man'.
The king is dead. Long live the king!
Kimmel was never anything more than a second-rate (erring on the high side here) comedian.
If he weren't such an obedient lapdog, he would have been canceled for "The Man Show."
He must live in constant terror knowing the media can weaponize that karl malone impression or host of other things from his past at any moment. Shill for the shots. Shill for wars. Shill for Biden. Demonize Trump. Anything to keep the sword of Damocles from falling. One of his most humiliating moments was that award show. I can't hear you Jimmy! I can't hear you Jimmy! Say it again! Say it again!
People try all the time, it gets suppressed, if you post it on reddit they will delete it and ban your account.
u right fer sure tho his karl malone was pretty hilarious and those chicks on trampolines never gets old...
Well the networks are such bastions of class, respect for women, diverse ownership, and not in any way part of a vertically integrated cabal of media, politics and business, clearly they and anything they produce should be given all benefits of the doubt.
INDEED. I find him insufferable, personally
Kimmel is playing the divide and conquer game. Our democracy has gone to hell, but the real source of the problem is far above the left vs right divide. It is with the .01% who own the media, weapons industry, big pharma and all other major infrastructure.
As long as we are fighting with each other, we won't see the real problem.
And the real problem is the politicians work for the elite backers instead of their full cadre of consitutents.
I like it when you start to see the truth Pete.
But why are you watching Kimmel, he's just a rebranded misogynist who is best buddies with Sarah "You Bernie Bros are being ridiculous!" Silverman. These people are bought and paid for by their media empires.
Anything they tell you is an ad. Anything!
aI don’t “watch” Kimmel. That interview was covered by everybody, so I watched the first few minutes to see how it was actually going.
That was it.
Fox News has been shit since its inception, but still gets a lot of viewership. I guess that the rest of the media figured, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em…to everyone's detriment.
jimmy should have stuck with his juggies gig.
It reminds me of the days when some people actually gave a rat's ass about whatever came out of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' mouth.
She was on Trevor Noah's show (got a nice hug from Trevor), Stephen Colbert (starry eyed Steve), a "hard-hitting" interview by Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes (kidding) and a love-fest on Chris Hayes show on MSNBC that was thinly disguised as a 'Green new Deal Town Hall ."
Oddly enough, the toughest question I ever saw tossed her way was from Jake Tapper on CNN.
I guess he lost his mind for a moment.
Great comment. Tapper puts on his big boy pants occasionally. There still a few synapses of intellectual honesty in that brain..a FEW.
Agreed.
They were all just trying to get into her pants, and were willing to listen to anything for the opportunity...
They think that we're little better than those evil despotic states we say we so despise, with a media that goes to ridiculous lengths to deny the obvious.
He goes on a late night comedian show yet doesn’t sit down with real journalists does he!!! Because he is I for to be president. He is the joke.
Why do so many of the current crises all trace back to some form of Trump Derangement Syndrome? Can all the billions of dollars and years of effort used to prove absolutely nothing all follow from a seething irrational hatred of a former game-show host who was something of a "loose cannon" during his tenure? Was his outsider status the cause for all the pants-wetting and the continued growth of the police state expansion of DHS? The fallout from the years of utter anti-Trump bullshit continues to rain down on everyone and there does not seem to be an end in sight, especially now with the Jan 6 show trial gearing up just in time for the midterm elections.
When will it end?
True elites -- the ones exercising power, not merely the "upper" classes -- don't give a damn about Trump's (often just supposed) narcissism, racism, sexism, xenophobia, corruption, or all the rest of the Democrats' red meat on him. They just want to SHUT HIM UP ... because he threatens their financial/power interests, combined with the fact that they have less than zero respect for Americans and for democracy.
Exhibit A showing this is the truly ridiculous narrow focus of his first impeachment, just to kill two birds with one stone (with Biden's corruption the other bird) -- after years of screaming a catalogue of Trump crimes and other offenses from A to Z.
The new-and-improved version is, of course, the January 6 Inquisition, which orchestrators hope will sweep not only Trump but his entire team and core of support into the trashbin. What they don't realize is that, to half the country, they already look worse than the clowns who ran the Soviet Union's (actual) coup d'etat in August 1991. In that case, the perps' fast collapse happened because they attempted it without a smidgen of competent PR.
Biden's behavior, a Glenn copiously describes, is just back to normal. It will NOT end. At least, not until something bad enough to wake the vast majority of Americans from their sleep and/or outright denial.
"Supposed" is right. Trump was and is just a narcissist with a lot of BS bravado and bluster--characteristics appealing to many of us working class types and not unknown in varying degrees in most politicians. His frankness is appealing to voters as were his consistent efforts to follow through on his campaign pledges, something I've never seen in all my 61 years, with the exceptions maybe of Kennedy and Johnson with the Apollo project and the Great Society BS.
But WHO are these "elites" and WHY do they want to shut Trump up? What threat is he to them? I understand why the corporate press was after him--he made them look like idiots by getting elected. But who else besides the Democratic Party benefits from trashing Trump's reputation and sabotaging his presidency?
"But WHO are these "elites" and WHY do they want to shut Trump up?"
In my opinion, Trump threatens primarily the Military-Industrial [-Congressional*] - Complex (MIC) with his war-limitation talk. This is of course quite a large number of people, including many powerful ones, globally. (* = in Ike's original draft(s)
There's dozens of other constituencies whose comfortable positions he threatens, if you look over some of his most-criticized speech (that are not the "red-meat" things I mentioned), and then spend some time following the connected money and/or power trails.
Yep, and the "bill the people at the Fed level for state costs" Democrats are the left wing side of that Military-industrial complex on the (mostly) right.
They just want a bunch of free $ to build their empires and power bases up and a bill to Joe and Joanna Taxpayer
He keeps saying the quiet part out loud - it's one of the themes of Glenn's article.
THIS
Yes, and he is too big to get rid of in the traditional means. He has too much money and fame. Boycotts? Useless, same with bribes. He also has the stones to call people like Milley "a fucking idiot."
I think the threat he posed to the elites was his "saying the quiet part out loud"...
I recall the hyperventilating when Trump said we were in Syria to take the oil LOL!
We should compile a list of things that Trump said! That list would show quite clearly why the elites detested him..
I also noticed that the very things Dems accused Trump of doing THEY WERE DOING themselves Right down to the reasons for his impeachment
The following commentary sums up the Trump Presidency and the unprecedented efforts to unseat him pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMrEzqwffEs&t=15s
Neocons like Liz Cheney, globalists on either side, as well as established party members who have had to retire because now people are paying attention to politics all of a sudden (look at AOC).
"True elites -- the ones exercising power, not merely the "upper" classes -- don't give a damn about Trump's (often just supposed) narcissism, racism, sexism, xenophobia, corruption, or all the rest of the Democrats' red meat on him. They just want to SHUT HIM UP ... because he threatens their financial/power interests, combined with the fact that they have less than zero respect for Americans and for democracy."
Spot on, Anti-Hip...amazing how few people understand this simple truth. You can grab all the P you want, so long as you play the game.
Yep. A metastasizing cancer on all that the Declaration and Constitution attempt to establish.
This might be the most fascinating question and phenomenon of our times...
since Trump liberals have talked themselves into a psychosis-level derangement and (as we all know) first and foremost this has caused them to abandon every possible prior principle: free speech, free thought, freedom of expression and dissent etc etc...
I can only guess about the psychological roots but I think the educated urban elite of America really deeply believe that it is their divine right to rule over the Deplorables class—liberals went to all the best schools, have the most cutting-edge dogma, the most valuable Rolodexes—they were about to elect the first female President and usher in a long reign of enlightened diverse technocracy (basically their eternal dream of top-down bureaucratic control sung to the tune of John Lennon's "Imagine") and then that evil orange man came and stole it all away...
So there response has been the raging tantrum of an infant who had all his toys stolen, or really the need people have to be in CONTROL and what happens when they think they're in CONTROL but it slips away (as it always does)...
And when will it end? Not until that man is either dead or otherwise incapacitated.
"I think the educated urban elite of America really deeply believe that it is their divine right to rule over the Deplorables class"
But this part is not really new. What is new, as Christopher Lasch put it all the way back in 1994, is "The Revolt of the Elites", including as you put it, their mania for complete, micromanaging, condescending, control, as if the people are not people, but mere expendable cattle ... or cockroaches.
Where did this come from? How did the concept of noblesse oblige completely disappear?
I love Lasch, he was a prophet in many ways...to take a guess at your 2nd question, I would think that "noblesse oblige" (which more or less died with the WWII generation) can only be practiced by a ruling class that is secure in their status, secure in their $$, secure in their morals, secure in their worldview...in the post-60s zeitgeist (which seems to be the demon spawn of Ayn Rand and Herbert Marcuse) there is so much social churn that no real elite class can solidify because whatever they own/think/believe could be antiquated with the next software update...in liquid modernity not even a billionaire can feel a solid foundation beneath them, and in a world that is constantly shifting, the illusion of CONTROL becomes a felt need and addiction...
"in a world that is constantly shifting, the illusion of CONTROL becomes a felt need and addiction..."
Well said.
"I can only guess about the psychological roots but I think the educated urban elite of America really deeply believe that it is their divine right to rule over the Deplorables class—liberals went to all the best schools, have the most cutting-edge dogma, the most valuable Rolodexes—they were about to elect the first female President and usher in a long reign of enlightened diverse technocracy"
So true, Clever P...I have personally witnessed this in my own circle...their often juvenile mocking of Trump masks what they perceive to be his threat to their power and control.
The upper middle class objected to the vulgarity so they gave us Biden. Many of them still feel like it was the right trade.
Biden is vulgar
And far worse than Trump
No argument here.
People say Trump lies all the time....however how many lies has Biden told? Who has fact checked Corn Pop and Big Momma?
Who has fact checked everything Biden said about inflation?
Biden, like Obama, has more tact than Trump, though they are both far worse than he is.
I think Elon Musk called it correctly when he noted that we elected Biden to instill a sense of normalcy, not institute a sweeping progressive agenda.
My belief is that this is because Trump was a true outsider and Obama was also to some degree an oustider.
The two party elites are fighting for the Empires they have created over the last two decades, and all their media allies created by the TCA are doing everything to protect and hold onto that power they paid and worked hard to acquire.
https://www.fcc.gov/general/telecommunications-act-1996
No politician in history ever went from a no one in government to President. Ever. The fact that he was unapologetic and called them out for their bullshit made them all pile on. He ended the Bush and Clinton dynasties and left them both without control when it was possible we would have had HRC > Jeb instead of Obama > Trump.
I can't stand Trump on 95% of the things he does, but I love that he flipped the bird to the elites, and even picked up blue collar democrats who felt abandoned as he did it.
What you saw in 2020 was a full court press from the old-school elites and it worked. Joe Biden, a guy who cant even form a complete sentence, with a crackhead son, won because of roughly 50000 votes.
Right. The 2 parties and their media lapdogs/informal employees.
Any opinion on the so-called "deep state" and its possible involvement in the attempt to unseat Trump? If they had a hand in it, what were THEIR motives? I imagine they might be the same as those motives you ascribe to the 2 parties and their media.
But if security state bureaucrats of the NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS conspired to discredit Trump and attempted to remove him from office by a campaign of lies and half-truths strategically linked (I don't like the current cant "disinformation"), what does that say about who or what actually determines who holds the White House?
Is the end scene of "Being There" a dramatization of our political reality? Or does that reality work itself out in Federal offices throughout DC, sort of like "Get Smart"?
Ha, ha, ha! Get Smart!! Prefect analogy to Democrat hegemony.
Yeah, no. The people in power behind the politicians are exactly who did in Trump in 2020 and are leading the charge now (through political proxies) because it is in their best interests to do so. Glenn has it exactly right. You speak truth to power and power kicks you in the nuts...hard. It doesn't matter if they use the left boot or the right one. They both cause you to double over and puke up your lunch.
Ask yourself this:
If the situation were reversed, if Trump ran and won on a Democrat ticket ousting the annointed MIC successor Hilary Rodham Clinton who was a Republican and then Trump did what he did, do you think anything would have been different?
Do you really think that the oligarchs who depend so much on having the 'little people' fight amongst themselves so they do not get hip to the truth that the oligarchs are the real menace, do you think they for one second would put up with a Democrat pulling back the curtain any more than a Republican?
This has absolutely zero to do with party politics. Zero.
If you want change, get the money out of politics. Because for the oligarchs money provides the means to pull strings and the more money you have, the more strings you can pull. Which is why you have a horribly crooked tax regime where billionaires pay no taxes and the working class is up to their neck in unsustainable debt. They always make sure to leave enough strings unpulled to deal with the budget because they need to keep their cycle of privileged life moving along.
You could see that in 2016 with CNN rigging the primary against Sanders, though like an obedient solider he fell in line. Hillary pulled her stunt on Gabbard in 2020, however, unlike Sanders, she didn't sit down and shut up.
Then how does this have "absolutely zero to do with party politics"? I suppose Stephen here (not Stephen Sanford) means the parties are proxies for "oligarchs," in that these oligarchs determine who in each party does or says whatever.
Who exactly are these oligarchs? Why is it in their interests to have citizens fighting among themselves over cultural issues? I daresay such issues can't erase the obvious facts of inflation and Dementia Joe's growing senility and the absolute bleeding of the Treasury with this idiotic blank check to Ukraine (Zelensky and his cronies more precisely).
There are those of us who actually pay attention to what is going on the in the world (basically everyone who is on this board and others like it). We have differing opinions on things sure, but we follow the issues closely and don't just eat what is on the plate in front of us in terms of the news.
We are the minority, a very small one. The vast majority do not venture beyond mainstream media to get their daily news fix, they do not question the narrative put in front of them at all, and worse, the repeat said narrative verbatim and say 'Hah! I know what's what, I do, the news told me so!' It's almost Suessian in it's simplicity.
The oligarchs (and I'm fairly certain that if it were a choice between a loved one dying and you naming them, the list would just pour out of your mouth, you don't need me to identify them for you),. know this and they know the less people talk about them, the less accountable they will have to be. So they give the general populace who does not want to spend the energy required to move a mouse across a screen a story that they can easily digest like pablum whose main takeaway is the opportunity for said populace to say 'At least I'm not like that asshole.'.
By getting them to focus their (pick an ugly emotion) on said 'asshole' who has been served up to them on a platter by the corporate media via various statements/briefings etc supplied by politicians or those acting on their behalf but purporting to be independent experts in their fields, they pull the focus away from their own crimiality and plant it squarely on the pig in the corner.
That sir, is why they do what they do. That is why it is in their best interests to have the 'little people' at each other's throats. It's three card monte but on a massive scale.
Is everything a complete lie? No, all good deceptions have some figment of the truth in there somewhere. And often times the facade is built around a fact. But just like the Wizard of Oz unless you look behind the curtain, you are not getting the whole story or even most of it.
This is why people like Noam Chomsky are so hated by the political establishment. Not only does he not buy the pig in the corner routine, he goes through great pains to continually point out to anyone who will listen that said pig is actually a dog with a slinky glued to it's ass.
You could also see it with the Hanging Chads (Gore vs Bush). Naturally I don't *know* this, but I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that someone appealed to Gore not to drag this out and in return they would help him with his post political career. He chose the environment and became the poster boy for climate change. Book deal, doc film, talk shows etc. They threw just enough money behind him to make him famous but not enough to actually make a difference because it was not in their best interests to do so. So basically he got out of the way of the oligarchs for what amounted to a bag of beans.
A year after the election USA Today did an exhaustive count of every ballot cast in Florida during the 2000 election and determined that Bush in fact won the state. What was fascinating about the decision is that although it appeared to be split on ideological lines, the reasoning wasn't nearly as close. Seven of nine Justices concurred that treating different counties differently and only recounting in those that Gore stipulated violated equal treatment before the law.
The Democratic Party still matters as the core of a collapsing authoritarian empire. The Republican Party is irrelevant.
Gore lost. The ONLY reason it was close is that the media called the election for Gore BEFORE the polls had closed on the most Republican part of Florida, which is around Pensacola and in the Central Time Zone. The lines were long and people decided to go home without voting when they heard on their car radios that their vote wouldn't matter. Bush would have won Florida by at least 5000 votes if the media hadn't been so ignorant.
50,000 muled votes.