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the ballade of a departing president...Do not rob the public with taxes and levies Do not got to war, do not steal someone else’s loot Even under the best of invented fakeries Thus return your millions from a Ukrainian hoot, And reduce your too dangerous armouries. Make sure the populace sees you in a good light, That the people love you without fear nor a single fight And hide that fake smile you have in broad daylight. That you are president, not a tyrant nor a loony. Be a true leader, lead without hypocrisy... Supply the people with freedom and justice And should you indulge in repression Especially decisively against the Q-anon Be aware that it will your own decision Not the nasty devil’s deceitful practice If you take the nation to near the precipice Have venerable people around your bin, And hear them talk willingly at your café As long as they’re not from the CIA Preparing someone to put in a coffin. Do not push a worthy man (me) out of favor, And choose the one (me) who deserves it… Do no yearn for money, estates nor splendor; Don't give away the profits that are losses on credit; Neither flatterers nor boastfuls let near you. Run away from these crazy clowns, who are only liars, And never endure those tongues acrid Who slander the Lords of foreign lands, Like Hillary and John Bolton. Decrees and sciences are necessary to defeat the Covid Without destroying the economyThe vaccines are nearly there, in your hands — So, you won’t need any lockdown. Yes, It’s not all to be President… Providence must honor your inner infant. A ruler without virtue carries ideals in vain, Ideals that thus become a burden in his brain. I may have been a fool, more than a bit, But never a hypocrite. Robert Smoothers Washington, DC. (aka Donald Trump)
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end the endless wars...
Donald Trump was much troubled during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns by so-called conservatives who rallied behind the #NeverTrump banner, presumably in opposition to his stated intention to end or at least diminish America’s role in wars in the Middle East and Asia. Those individuals are generally described as neoconservatives but the label is itself somewhat misleading and they might more properly be described as liberal warmongers as they are closer to the Democrats than the Republicans on most social issues and are now warming up even more as the new Joe Biden Administration prepares to take office.
To be sure, some neocons stuck with the Republicans, to include the highly controversial Elliott Abrams, who initially opposed Trump but is now the point man for dealing with both Venezuela and Iran. Abrams’ conversion reportedly took place when he realized that the new president genuinely embraced unrelenting hostility towards Iran as exemplified by the ending of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. John Bolton was also a neocon in the White House fold, though he is now a frenemy having been fired by the president and written a book.
Even though the NeverTrumper neocons did not succeed in blocking Donald Trump in 2016, they have been maintaining relevancy by slowly drifting back towards the Democratic Party, which is where they originated back in the 1970s in the office of the Senator from Boeing Henry “Scoop” Jackson. A number of them started their political careers there, to include leading neocon Richard Perle.
It would not be overstating the case to suggest that the neoconservative movement has now been born again, though the enemy is now the unreliable Trumpean-dominated Republican Party rather than Saddam Hussein or Ayatollah Khomeini. The transition has also been aided by a more aggressive shift among the Democrats themselves, with Russiagate and other “foreign interference” being blamed for the party’s failure in 2016. Given that mutual intense hostility to Trump, the doors to previously shunned liberal media outlets have now opened wide to the stream of foreign policy “experts” who want to “restore a sense of the heroic” to U.S. national security policy. Eliot A. Cohen and David Frum are favored contributors to the Atlantic while Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss were together at the New York Times prior to Weiss’s recent resignation. Jennifer Rubin, who wrote in 2016 that “It is time for some moral straight talk: Trump is evil incarnate,” is a frequent columnist for The Washington Post while both she and William Kristol appear regularly on MSNBC.
The unifying principle that ties many of the mostly Jewish neocons together is, of course, unconditional defense of Israel and everything it does, which leads them to support a policy of American global military dominance which they presume will inter alia serve as a security umbrella for the Jewish state. In the post-9/11 world, the neocon media’s leading publication The Weekly Standard virtually invented the concept of “Islamofascism” to justify endless war in the Middle East, a development that has killed millions of Muslims, destroyed at least three nations, and cost the U.S. taxpayer more than $5 trillion. The Israel connection has also resulted in neocon support for an aggressive policy against Russia due to its involvement in Syria and has led to repeated calls for the U.S. to attack Iran and destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon. In Eastern Europe, neocon ideologues have aggressively sought “democracy promotion,” which, not coincidentally, has also been a major Democratic Party foreign policy objective.
The neocons are involved in a number of foundations, the most prominent of which is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), that are funded by Jewish billionaires. FDD is headed by Canadian Mark Dubowitz and it is reported that the group takes direction coming from officials in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Other major neocon incubators are the American Enterprise Institute, which currently is the home of Paul Wolfowitz, and the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at John Hopkins University. The neocon opposition has been sniping against Trump over the past four years but has been biding its time and building new alliances, waiting for what it has perceived to be an inevitable regime change in Washington.
That change has now occurred and the surge of neocons to take up senior positions in the defense, intelligence and foreign policy agencies will soon take place. In my notes on the neocon revival, I have dubbed the brave new world that the neocons hope to create in Washington as the “Kaganate of Nulandia” after two of the more prominent neocon aspirants, Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland.
Robert was one of the first neocons to get on the NeverTrump band wagon back in 2016 when he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and spoke at a Washington fundraiser for her, complaining about the “isolationist” tendency in the Republican Party exemplified by Trump. His wife Victoria Nuland is perhaps better known. She was the driving force behind efforts to destabilize the Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych, an admittedly corrupt autocrat, nevertheless became Prime Minister after a free election. Nuland, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, provided open support to the Maidan Square demonstrators opposed to Yanukovych’s government, to include media friendly appearances passing out cookies on the square to encourage the protesters.
A Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton protégé, Nuland openly sought regime change for Ukraine by brazenly supporting government opponents in spite of the fact that Washington and Kiev had ostensibly friendly relations. Her efforts were backed by a $5 billion budget, but she is perhaps most famous for her foul language when referring to the potential European role in managing the unrest that she and the National Endowment for Democracy had helped create. The replacement of the government in Kiev was only the prelude to a sharp break and escalating conflict with Moscow over Russia’s attempts to protect its own interests in Ukraine, most particularly in Crimea.
And, to be sure, beyond regime change in places like Ukraine, President Barack Obama was no slouch when it came to starting actual shooting wars in places like Libya and Syria while also killing people, including American citizens, using drones. Biden appears poised to inherit many former Obama White House senior officials, who would consider the eager-to-please neoconservatives a comfortable fit as fellow foot soldiers in the new administration. Foreign policy hawks expected to have senior positions in the Biden Administration include Antony Blinken, Nicholas Burns, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett, Samantha Power and, most important of all the hawkish Michele Flournoy, who has been cited as a possible secretary of defense. And don’t count Hillary Clinton out. Biden is reportedly getting his briefings on the Middle East from Dan Shapiro, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, who now lives in the Jewish state and is reportedly working for an Israeli government supported think tank, the Institute for National Security Studies.
Nowhere in Biden’s possible foreign policy circle does one find anyone who is resistant to the idea of worldwide interventionism in support of claimed humanitarian objectives, even if it would lead to a new cold war with major competitor powers like Russia and China. In fact, Biden himself appears to embrace an extremely bellicose view on a proper relationship with both Moscow and Beijing “claiming that he is defending democracy against its enemies.” His language is unrelenting, so much so that it is Donald Trump who could plausibly be described as the peace candidate in the recently completed election, having said at the Republican National Convention in August “Joe Biden spent his entire career outsourcing their dreams and the dreams of American workers, offshoring their jobs, opening their borders and sending their sons and daughters to fight in endless foreign wars, wars that never ended.”
from Strategic Culture Foundation.
Read more:
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/november/13/neocons-poised-to-join-new-government/
beware of israel's intent again...
Ahead of the election, the Biden campaign hinted at the need to “renegotiate” the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran nuclear deal, an idea which Tehran rejected out of hand. Israel lobbied Washington intensely to pull out of the JCPOA, and has threatened military action against Tehran should the latter obtain nuclear weapons.
Israel may launch military strikes against Iran once President Donald Trump is out of office, former Trump National Security Adviser Herbert R McMaster has suggested.
“Israel follows the Begin Doctrine, which means that they will not accept a hostile state having the most destructive weapons on Earth,” McMaster said, speaking to Fox News.The former official was referring to the Israeli government’s policy of carrying out ‘preventative’ attacks against potential adversaries suspected by Tel Aviv of developing weapons of mass destruction. The doctrine was formulated in the 1960s, but was named after Israel's prime minister between 1977 and 1983, Menachem Begin, who attacked Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor outside Baghdad while it was still under construction in 1981. The doctrine is illegal under international law, which prohibits the concepts of pre-emptive strikes and preventative warfare.
“We’ve seen this in the past with Israeli Defence Force strikes in Syria. Remember 2007 when North Korea was helping to construct a nuclear weapons facility in the Syrian Desert, and the IDF struck that and [carried out] similar strikes in Iraq earlier than that? So I think it’s a possibility,” McMaster continued, referring to the IDF’s ‘Operation Outside the Box’ in September 2007.Syrian authorities repeatedly dismissed claims that the facility attacked in 2007 was a ‘nuclear site’, with President Bashar al-Assad saying it would have been “foolish” for Damascus to construct a nuclear site in the desert without any air defences. In 2009, Syrian officials told the International Atomic Energy Agency that the attacked site was a missile storage depot.
Read more:
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/202011131081153203-former-us-national-security-adviser-says-israel-may-launch-preemptive-strike-on-iran-post-trump/
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why trump should keep his head high...
By Max Parry...
It has been more than three weeks since election day and the incumbent US president still has yet to concede defeat. Despite the media’s distraction over the perspiration of his personal attorney during a bizarre press conference, the legal team led by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has actually done a decent job uncovering potential fraud in battleground states, where vote counting was delayed for several days before the former vice president was declared a “winner” by the news media and Silicon Valley.
Unfortunately, the 2020 election is not a sporting event or academic paper, therefore evidence that instances of fraud occurred will likely not be enough for the litigation to change the outcome, though it does appear his camp is finally facing up to leaving the White House come January. Then again, whether or not burden of proof was ever provided is immaterial, seeing as before he even took the oath of office a silent coup was underway to remove the democratically-elected government of Donald J. Trump that is now entering its final phase.
Trump found an unlikely voice of support contesting Biden’s premature declaration of victory in former six-term Democratic Congresswoman from Georgia and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, who this time was the running mate of former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura as a write-in entrant in some eligible states for the divided Greens who officially nominated labor activist Howie Hawkins.
During the 2016 election, the Democrats scapegoated Jill Stein for Hillary Clinton’s unexpected loss, even baselessly implicating the Green Party nominee in the Russiagate hoax simply for having appeared at a 2015 Moscow gala for the RT television network where General Michael Flynn and Russian President Vladimir Putin were in attendance.
Not only did the legislatures of swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin exclude Hawkins from the ballot at the behest of Democrats in a shameless act of voter suppression, but McKinney described the irregularities which plagued electronic voting machines in her home state of Georgia in 2020 as “déjà vu”, having been cheated out of Congress herself by such tactics in 2006.
McKinney also previously penned an essay entitled The Purple Revolution: US Hybrid Warfare Comes Home to Roost? on the establishment’s efforts to remove Trump which makes an apropos historical reference.
This November 22nd marked fifty-seven years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. When asked for his reaction to the killing of the 35th president in Dallas back in 1963 and less than two years before his own public murder, civil rights leader Malcolm X famously stated that “chickens were coming home to roost”, alluding to the US government’s interventions overseas such as the CIA-orchestrated assassination of the first Prime Minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, in 1960 following its independence from Belgian colonial rule.
His remarks in the wake of a national tragedy proved too controversial even for the Nation of Islam which publicly censured its most recognizable minister who would announce his departure from the black nationalist organization a few months later. The following year, he would be gunned down in Harlem in an assassination long-suspected to have been the work of the FBI’s counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) which had infiltrated his inner circle to frame the NOI for a mysterious death equally thought by the public to have been a state-sanctioned execution like that of JFK.
It is unclear whether the African-American Muslim leader believed the US government was behind Kennedy’s death, but chances are he was not naïve enough to think that the same machinations used abroad could not be implemented by those very forces domestically to remove someone elected by the American people they opposed. If the Kennedy assassination was indeed a result of the “unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex” which his predecessor Dwight D. Eisenhower even famously warned of during his farewell address, what took place was almost certainly a secret putsch.
President Kennedy had already been undercut by his own Joint Chiefs of Staff and Central Intelligence Agency in trying to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis and his back-channel negotiations with Nikita Khrushchev were sabotaged by hawkish officials within his own administration. The internal struggle that scuttled Kennedy’s attempts at détente parallels the vying factions which undermined Trump’s diplomacy with North Korea to a near tee.
Political scientist Michael Parenti explained in his essay The JFK Assassination: Defending the Gangster State how the 35th president was targeted by the security state which perceived Kennedy as “soft on communism” and placating the Soviet Union in his diplomatic efforts following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion:
The dirty truth is that Kennedy was heartily hated by right-wing forces in this country, including many powerful people in the intelligence organizations. He had betrayed the national interest as they defined it, by refusing to go all out against Cuba, making overtures of rapproachment with Castro, and refusing to escalate the ground war in Vietnam. They also saw him as an anti-business liberal who was taking the country down the wrong path. Whether Kennedy really was all that liberal is another matter. What the national security rightists saw him to be was what counted.
While the widely perceived truth about the JFK assassination remains sealed from public view, the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commissions of the 1970s exposed the numerous CIA-backed juntas which unseated popular leaders in Guatemala, Syria, Iran, the Dominican Republic, the Congo, Brazil, Indonesia, Chile, and countless other nations in the global south.
Ever since, the CIA’s preferred regime change stratagem has been to use what are paradoxically labelled “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) — which actually receive US government funding — as cutouts to destabilize noncompliant nations under the guise of supporting “pro-democracy” opposition movements. During the Cold War, the vast majority of states overthrown were left-leaning or socialist governments aligned with the Eastern Bloc, but in the post-Soviet world many of the toppled administrations have been far from left-wing and even conservative, with their only offense favoring economic ties with Russia or China and resisting Western hegemony.
Similarly, when domestic protest movements have taken shape at home in the US, the political establishment has used plutocratic foundations in Big Philanthropy and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex to defang them for its own agenda. Look no further than the way the nationwide mass demonstrations against racism and police brutality this year were rapidly transformed into a movement to elect Joe Biden, who drafted the senate version of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, with no substantial legislation passed to reform police.
The corporatized Black Lives Matter movement, a recipient of $100 million dollar grants from the CIA’s philanthropic frontage in the Ford Foundation, grew out of the legacy of the short-lived Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011 which itself were coopted by reformist and pro-Democratic Party outfits.
Not coincidentally, OWS was also infiltrated by Serbian political activist Srđa Popović of Otpor! (“Resistance!”) and the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) fame who previously led the Bulldozer Revolution which overthrew Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević in 2000.
A central component of the Gene Sharp-inspired ‘Color Revolution’ template is the engineering of contested election scenarios where leaders singled-out for regime change can be ousted after appearing to consolidate power, as seen in election-themed revolutions in Serbia (Bulldozer), Georgia (Rose), Ukraine (Orange), Kyrgyzstan (Tulip), Moldova (Grape), and other countries.
The same manner in which Biden declared himself the victor in spite of the lawsuits filed in federal court was recently observed abroad in the disputed election aftermath in Belarus where US-backed opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya announced herself the winner of its presidential contest in order to spark preplanned protests in Minsk against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. This was a replication of an unsuccessful blueprint from the 2009 Green Movement unrest in Iran during the incumbency of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as the presidential crisis in Venezuela last year, among others.
Trump‘s lawyer Rudy Giuliani appeared to be confused when he alleged that the e-voting irregularities involving the election software company Dominion Voting Systems had ties to deceased former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and international financier George Soros, who actually supports the US-backed opposition to the Chavista government in Caracas.
Giuliani may be mistaken but is pointing to something accurate, except in the contested US election his client is in the position of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro while Biden would be the equivalent of self-appointed “interim president” Juan Guaidó. Sans a few exceptions such as Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (who certainly knows a rigged contest when he sees one), most of the “international community” congratulated Biden on his assumed win just like Venezuela’s illegitimate coup leader.
Meanwhile, both the pseudo-left and conservative right seem to be equally misunderstood about Soros, who is neither the charitable billionaire or “globalist” bogeyman they imagine, but rather an anti-communist business tycoon who favors vulture capitalism and Western imperialism under the banner of liberal democracy.
As touched on by Cynthia McKinney, in the aftermath of Trump’s shocking triumph over Hillary Clinton in 2016, rumors began to swirl that a Soros-funded US ‘Color Revolution’ was in the works — a ‘Purple Revolution’, monikered after the noticeable shade Mrs. Clinton chose to don in her concession speech as a combination of blue and red intended to symbolize bipartisan opposition to Trump.
Whether or not that was true, it was in the wee hours following her loss that the Clinton campaign reportedly settled on placing the blame at the feet of unproven Russian interference for Trump’s unlikely victory.
Or was it even earlier?
Recently declassified CIA memorandums proved that months before the election in July 2016, Clinton had orchestrated a plan to whip up a smear campaign tying Trump to the alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee email server. The documents also showed beyond a doubt how the Russia probe was launched even though both the FBI and CIA were privy to Clinton’s intent on linking Trump with the Kremlin.
The three-year Russia investigation and subsequent impeachment over the Ukraine scandal were only the beginning chapters in the slow-motion soft coup against Trump. When all else failed, the US elite began to prepare for his ouster in the 2020 election. In fact, the possibility of a second Trump term was evidently too much of a nightmare for the establishment to even fathom, so they only prepared for his defeat and presupposed refusal to relinquish power instead.
Quite literally, an exclusive cabal of Washington insiders, establishment Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans were gathered by a former high-ranking Pentagon official, Nils Gilman, to participate in role-playing “election simulation” scenarios and tabletop “war game” exercises predicting various election outcomes which anticipated that Trump would resist acknowledging defeat and transferring power, precipitating a constitutional crisis. It was called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) and featured Clintonites John Podesta and Donna Brazile, who were joined by prominent neoconservative figures William Kristol, Max Boot, and the former George W. Bush speechwriter who coined the “Axis of Evil” phrase, war criminal David Frum.
Most telling is that among the scenarios considered, even in the postulated drill where the premise was a decisive victory for Trump, TIP determined that Biden should ignore the vote result and consider any measures necessary to attain the presidency, including provoking a constitutional crisis and possible civil war where Democratic-held states would be encouraged to secede from the Union, the electoral college abolished, and statehood awarded to Washington DC and Puerto Rico.
Upon reading the TIP report, it is clear that the real purpose of the bipartisan exercise was to mastermind the very disputed election outcome and concentration of power it predicts would be triggered by Trump. It is also possible that the project enlisted mass media in its scheme.
Just weeks before Election Day, a highly-publicized scandal broke at The New Yorker magazine after staff writer and CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin accidentally exposed himself during a Zoom video meeting with fellow employees. Many were too amused to notice the online conference call was revealed to be an “election simulation” featuring top columnists of the publication role-playing as participants.
It would not be out of the realm of possibility given the unprecedented extent to which corporate outlets and Big Tech companies have gone to influence the outcome of the election. Even those within legacy media such as The New York Post, one of the oldest newspapers in the United States, found itself censored by Twitter for publishing an explosive story which contained emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop of which not even the former vice president’s campaign denied the authenticity.
When Trump delivered a press conference outlining his campaign’s allegations of election fraud, major news outlets not only made the Orwellian decision to “fact check” Trump live on-air but cut away from the speech in the middle of his remarks in coordinated unison. Then when the president’s own social media posts were censored and flagged as disinformation, the jig was truly up.
It’s little wonder Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg openly bragged about how the platform was “partnering with the intelligence community” for censorship to be a soft power arm after the 2016 election.
Lo and behold, rather than being broken up for violating anti-trust laws, Silicon Valley has already been rewarded for staying true to its roots in the national security state by Biden’s transition team which consists of executives from Airbnb, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Dell, DropBox, Microsoft’s LinkedIn, Lyft, Stripe and Uber.
Can it really be that Trump is so hated because of his rejection of certain foreign policy orthodoxies like JFK alone? The truth is really so much more. It is because of his inclination to disgrace Washington’s sacred institutions for his own political gain which the entire establishment desperately needs to maintain the faith of the masses in its corrupt political system, rogue national security state, yellow press, and obsolete democratic process.
It is imperative to preserve these bureaucratic cornerstones as above criticism because they are a linchpin to holding power. As a political outsider, Trump blazed his own trail to the presidency and in doing so undermined the hallowed bastions of power in Washington, promising to “drain the swamp” while eroding faith in the leading US spy agencies as an unelected secret government or “deep state”, and most of all denouncing corporate media as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.” Even though these were accuracies cynically told by Trump for his own advantage, they were misunderstood by his detractors to be falsehoods simply because he was the source.
Trump’s populist agitation even worried his own group of backers within the ruling elite who convinced him to soften his rhetoric and reverse many of his positions once he took office. Since the 2020 election has not resulted in a desirable outcome, he has only continued to increase popular distrust of the political order and its mechanisms which guarantee the status quo overrides the will of the people, signaling he is more than willing to take the whole system down with him.
Indeed, polls indicate many Americans seem to agree with the president that the election was rigged in Biden’s favor. This is precisely why his rabble-rousing is viewed as dangerous by the elite which unleashed its media organs and intelligence agencies from day one to sabotage him — they knew that he is willing to lay bare the full corruption of the powers that be in order to help his own cause. For this reason, the media has resorted to the most deceitful and partisan methods to portray Trump as a unique danger that must be ousted at any cost.
It is no wonder how a coalition as incongruous as that behind Biden came into formation, from Lincoln Project “Never Trumper” Republicans to the Democratic Socialists of America, Big Tech monopolies to Black Lives Matter, Wall Street megadonors to the remnants of Occupy Wall Street, Bush-era national security officials to the inappropriately-named Revolutionary Communist Party (Refuse Fascism), and so on.
Or to really give an idea of just how absurd the ideological alliance was to ensure a Biden presidency, the Transition Integrity Project was even shamefully promoted by the likes of so-called “progressive” news outlets like Democracy Now! which made its journalistic name critically covering the very neoconservative figures from the Bush years behind TIP.
Somehow, those in power managed to persuade the “anti-establishment” to side with them against the bad orange man as the supposed greater evil, tricking them into defending institutions they should oppose as inviolable and the archaic US electoral system which deprives them of real democracy as unimpeachable. This is the real legacy of the Trump era — only time will tell if it is its lesson.
Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. Max may be reached at [email protected]Read more:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/11/26/us-election-a-color-revolution-comes-home-to-roost/
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The article above explains a truth that will incense the true "liberals" and "progressive" who "believe" in freedom, democracy and blah blah blah... Nothing is ever so clean. Trump was a bombastic clown with "undemocratic" ideas to get rid of the "Swamp", but the Swamp used all the tactics in the book to get rid of Trump. The Swamp is powerful. No-one on the liberal side can believe that "people voted for Trump". How can you be so dumb? Yes, people are so dumb, including the true "liberals" and "progressive" who "believe" in freedom, democracy and blah blah blah and voted for Biden... Most of the problems here stems that Trump himself has been operating with little regard for "democracy", which at this stage is run by the "Swamp" — which is a conglomerate of military, intelligence agencies, media (liberal and Murdoch) and bankers. What? This isn't possible would say the true "liberals" and "progressive" who "believe" in freedom, democracy and blah blah blah... because I truly "believe" in freedom, democracy and blah blah blah... The people on all sides cannot see through the fog of manipulation of their intent. The swamp has won again and the bombs are being primed. Trump should be proud that he had his mad four years in the sun, and one day, "some" historians could, and I say could, because history is written by the Swampy People, recognise he was doing his best for the best country in the best of the worlds, while fighting the Swamp... And this is why ASSANGE IS STILL IN PRISON and prevented to add one more single truth by deprivation of ANY communication. Read from top.
See also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35992
See also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/11276
See also: http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/37019
The truth is that Trump was equally hated by the true "liberals" and "progressive" who "believe" in freedom, democracy and blah blah blah... as much as the military machine. This paragraph about JFK can equally apply to Trump:
The dirty truth is that Kennedy [Trump] was heartily hated by right-wing forces in this country, including many powerful people in the intelligence organizations. He had betrayed the national interest as they defined it, by refusing to go all out against Cuba [Syria, et al], making overtures of rapproachment with Castro [Putin, Kim], and refusing to escalate the ground war in Vietnam [Afghanistan, Syria et al]. They also saw him as an anti-business liberal who was taking the country down the wrong path. Whether Kennedy [Trump] really was all that liberal [conservative] is another matter. What the national security rightists saw him to be was what counted.
Trump can count his lucky stars that he IS STILL ALIVE. The Swamp does not assassinate the right wing republicans. This would be uncouth, but they can orchestrate a "dismissal"... Trump would be well advised to leave the US on January 19th 2021 on his private jet and let Pence do the handover to Joe Biden... Go and create a new golf course in Venezuela for example... Kidding?
The Swamp is waiting for Trump not-to-be-president any more and take him to many courts in the country — as to erase him, obliterate him, ridicule him some more (Trump ridiculed himself anyhow) and debase "his legacy"... and I would not be surprise if Trump's jet is taken out of the skies by "rebels" or mechanical failure somewhere... Beware. Gus should not write history in advance...
One of the best act Trump could perform before leaving would be to PARDON ASSANGE and get him released from jail. This of course would be opposed by Pompeo, who, according to Gus's observing gaze, has been doing everything contrary to Trump's wishes while appearing to be on Trump's side. Pompeo is the master hypocrite — he profess to be a religious man — who would convince trump to act against his instincts... Sack Pompeo as well.
Please Donald, pardon ASSANGE and get him out of jail, SECURELY, THAT IS TO SAY THAT HIS LIFE IS SECURED — and that Assange is not assassinated while free, by a "mad man" (or woman) at the service of the CIA (or anyone else)... You know the caper.
is maureen shedding a real tear for trump?
Or is she sarcastic beyond belief?... Ah, I see... It's Kevin's opinion, her brother...
By Maureen Dowd
This Thanksgiving, I’m going to make myself a French 75 and toast the end of a very bad, horrible, no-good year. I’ll be the only one in our family following Dr. Fauci’s advice to “bite the bullet” and skip our large holiday gathering. No doubt, my Trump-loving family will pour one out for the president. In that spirit, my brother, Kevin, offers the following threnody for Donald Trump.
ROCKVILLE, Md. — The mercurial presidency of Donald Trump apparently is over. Historians, 20 or 30 years hence, will be the impartial arbiters of his accomplishments, but for the nearly 74 million people who voted for him, he already has fulfilled their hopes and justified their trust.
The Democrats call now for unity, but four years ago, they screamed for resistance and upheaval. They encouraged confrontation of Trump officials at their homes and restaurants. They opposed the administration every step of the way. Their hypocrisy is laughable.
Trump gave us a strong economy, achieved the lowest unemployment in 50 years, fortified the border and guaranteed the integrity of the judicial system by appointing over 200 judges, including three Supreme Court justices.
He was labeled a racist but funded historically black colleges and created opportunity zones with Senator Tim Scott. He was able to sign meaningful prison reform legislation.
He had foreign policy successes as well, renegotiating NAFTA and abandoning the disastrous Iranian nuclear deal (which took a $400 million cash bribe to close). He aggressively confronted China for its egregious behavior, brokered Middle East peace deals and was the greatest friend in the White House that Israel ever had.
Donald Trump was not without his flaws, but he stood like a brick wall against an unfair and openly hostile press and, alarmingly, a deep state aligned against him.
Trump made the Republican Party tougher, teaching it to counterpunch harder than its opponent. The Republicans did well on election night, gaining House seats when Nancy Pelosi predicted they would lose them.
They’re favored to retain control of the Senate, pending two runoffs in Georgia. This is very important as the Senate now will stand as the last line of defense against the radicals who steer the Democratic agenda.
Joe Biden was the best default option the Republicans could hope for. He is a creature of the Senate and hopefully will resist any attempts at major changes, like eliminating the filibuster and packing the Supreme Court. The problem, of course, is that he seems diminished and may not be up to the tidal wave coming from the left.
Mark down the levels of the Dow Jones and your 401(k)s. If Biden reimposes President Barack Obama’s regulations, the economy will shortly be back to where it was under Obama.
The Democrats remain mystified by the loyalty of Trump’s base. It is rock solid because half the country was tired of being patronized and lied to and worse, taken for granted. Trump was unique because he was only interested in results.
Democrats have been quick to dismiss any Trump supporter as a racist, homophobe or redneck, but they all shared a common trait with him, an unapologetic love of America.
The Republican success down-ballot and in state legislatures shows the folly of this condescension and sends a clear message that a majority of Americans are not ready for the socialist agenda favored by the radical left. Not only were there more Trump voters in 2020, there were more Hispanic and African-American voters backing Trump. The supreme irony here is that gradually the Republicans are becoming the party of the working class.
Trump reawakened the base with a populist message disdained by his critics as “Trumpism” but more closely resembling the rise of Huey Long. Trump was adored by his followers, who will remember him kindly.
Now it is time for Republicans to refocus and concentrate on winning the two races in Georgia. I am sure President Trump will do the right thing when the time comes.
A final word to the media: The open bar at the wedding is closed. Your ratings and circulation are about to tank. You may think you ran down the stag, but you will quickly realize that Joe Biden on a daily basis, speaking through his mask, will not generate the same ratings.
A word of caution to Fox News: Your not-so-subtle shift leftward is a mistake. You are one of a kind. Watching the quick abdication of Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum following the election (joining an already hostile Chris Wallace) was like finding out my wife was cheating. No one is tuning in to listen to the musings of Chris Hahn and Marie Harf.
Maybe now is the time for Trump to move on. There should not be a run in 2024. He can start a media empire to replace an increasingly disappointing Fox News. Rush will be leaving and we will need someone to hold the left accountable.
I would not want to see Donald Trump, four years older, looking like Joe Biden did this year. A star knows when to leave the stage.
And finally, a special congratulations to Senator Susan Collins, who cruised to re-election despite gloomy forecasts and a ton of dark money spent against her. The people of Maine place high value on integrity.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/opinion/thanksgiving-dowd-2020.html
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let them go free...
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn had pleaded guilty in 2017 to making "false and fraudulent statements" to the FBI regarding the nature of his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the Trump transition, but later retracted his plea and accused the FBI of framing him.
Outgoing Hawaii Congresswoman and former Democrat presidential candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, has urged President Trump to use the time he has left in office to pardon former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
“@real Donald Trump Since you’re giving pardons to people, please consider those who, at great personal sacrifice, exposed the deception and criminality of those in the deep state,” Gabbard wrote, addressing Trump directly via his Twitter handle..@realDonaldTrump Since you're giving pardons to people, please consider pardoning those who, at great personal sacrifice, exposed the deception and criminality of those in the deep state. https://t.co/aeXklUsNSd
— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) November 26, 2020Gabbard’s tweet linked to a video dated 6 October in which she highlighted her previous efforts to introduce legislation in the House to drop criminal charges against Snowden and Assange, and to reform the Espionage Act of 1917.
“I’ve introduced legislation to stand up for and to protect brave whistleblowers who come forward to expose illegal actions within our own government or egregious abuses of power and to reform the Espionage Act. To make sure that if a whistleblower is prosecuted under the Espionage Act, they will have their fair day in court, something currently not allowable under the law as it stands today,” the congresswoman said in the video.One of the pieces of legislation mentioned by Gabbard was co-sponsored by Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, who recently urged the President to pardon himself before leaving office to prevent his Democrat opponents of trying to prosecute him on some trumped-up charge out of “blood lust.” Trump later retweeted Gaetz’ pardon-related remarks.
President Trump should pardon Flynn, the Thanksgiving turkey, and everyone from himself, to his admin, to Joe Exotic if he has to.
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) November 25, 2020The Left has a bloodlust that will only be quenched if they come for those who fought with @realDonaldTrump to deliver for the American people. pic.twitter.com/wdTfu3Xwmp
Flynn Pardon
The lawmakers’ comments come in the wake of Trump’s decision to pardon former National Security Adviser, three-star Lieutenant-General Michael Flynn. Flynn was charged with lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during the Trump transition in late 2016. He first pleaded guilty but later retracted the plea after it became apparent through leaked documents that the FBI had deliberately tricked him into making false statements. In May, the Department of Justice moved to dismiss Flynn’s prosecution. However, Judge Emmet Sullivan, who oversaw the case, put the DoJ’s attempt to close the case on hold.
Read more:
https://sputniknews.com/us/202011271081295338-tulsi-gabbard-asks-trump-t...
In regard to ASSANGE, ALL THE CHARGES AGAINST HIM SHOULD BE DROPPED, ERASED, VANISHED as he can't be pardoned due to not being "a US citizen". ASSANGE SHOULD BE FREE.
In regard to SNOWDEN, ALL CHARGES AGAINST HIM SHOULD BE DROPPED, ERASED, VANISHED but he can be pardoned due to being a US citizen. SNOWDEN SHOULD BE FREE.
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"the will of the people"
In his cough-ridden victory speech Monday night, President-elect Joe Biden proclaimed again that “the will of the people prevailed” in the 2020 election. Biden invoked that phrase four times in one speech, and he’ll likely recite it often in the coming months to sanctify his new policies and proclamations. Biden also declared, “In America, politicians don’t take power — the people grant it to them.” But invoking the “will of the people” helps president seize all the power they claim to need, regardless of the Constitution or any provision of federal law.
Americans are encouraged to believe that their vote on Election Day somehow guarantees that the subsequent ten thousand actions by the president, Congress, and federal agencies will embody their wishes, spoken or otherwise, known or unknown. In reality, the more edicts a president issues, the less likely his decrees have any connection to popular preferences. And campaign promises are even less legally binding than a Tinder tryst’s promise to stay in touch.
Read more:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/bidens-will-of-the-people-malarkey/
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let's hope no-one gets bombed... etc...
gutted "intelligence"...
US President-elect Joe Biden says many of America’s security agencies have been “hollowed out” under President Donald Trump and the lack of information being provided to his transition team by the outgoing administration is an “irresponsibility.”
“We’ve encountered roadblocks from the political leadership at the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget,” Biden said on Monday after a meeting with his foreign policy team.
Right now we just aren’t getting all of the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas.“It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility.”
After Biden beat Trump in the November 3 election, the Democrat’s team only began meeting with administration officials in late November to coordinate the handover.
Trump is refusing to concede defeat in the November election. He has not met with Biden and it is unclear if he will before the inauguration in January.
Traditionally, the outgoing administration works with the incoming team to help ensure a smooth transition, in the name of the national interest.
Trump, a Republican, only authorised cooperation with Biden on November 23.
Earlier this month, Biden’s team said they had met resistance to their requests for information from some Pentagon officials.
The Pentagon pushed back against the Biden team’s earlier complaints.
A senior defence official last week said that the Pentagon had conducted 163 interviews and 181 requests for information and that it would continue to provide information and meetings.
But Biden reiterated those concerns on Monday.
“We encountered obstruction from the political leadership of that department (Pentagon). And the truth is many of the agencies that are critical to our security have incurred enormous damage,” Biden said after a meeting with his foreign policy team.
“The truth is that many of the agencies that are crucial to our security have incurred enormous damage. Many of them have been hollowed out – in personnel, capacity and in morale,” he said.
Biden takes office on January 20.
Read more:
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2020/12/29/irresponsibility-biden-accuses-trump-of-blocking-transition/
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With the professional liars of the "intelligence" community having been removed by Trump, may be may be may be Biden might find the truth that the rest of the world is not as nasty as he has been previously influenced to believe... There's hope here!
conceding for the first time...
President Donald Trump has conceded for the first time that Joe Biden will be the next US president, a day after his supporters stormed the US Capitol as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s victory.
Mr Trump, who as recently as Thursday morning (local time) had continued to claim falsely that the election had been stolen from him, said that “serving as your president has been the honour of my lifetime” in a video released on Thursday evening.
“America is, and must always be, a nation of law and order,” he said.
“The demonstrators who infiltrated the capital have defiled the seat of American democracy.
“To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.”
Mr Trump said he was turning his attention to a smooth and orderly transition after Congress certified the presidential election victory of Democrat Mr Biden following the storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters.
“Now, Congress has certified the results. A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation,” Mr Trump said in the video posted on Twitter.
Read more:
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/us-news/2021/01/08/donald-trump-acknowledges-joe-bidens-victory/
He wanted his twitter back... Acknowledging Biden's victory did that...
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