Posts Tagged ‘THE NEW REPUBLIC’
ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUFFINGTON POST, JOSEPH STALIN, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NAZI-SOVIET "NON-AGGRESSION PACT", NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, NUCLEAR WEAPONS, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE SS, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THIRD REICH, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UKRAINE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, WEHRMACHT, WORLD WAR 11, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 20, 2024 at 12:05 am
On June 22, 1941, with 134 Divisions at full fighting strength and 73 more divisions for deployment behind the front, the German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union.
Joseph Stalin, the longtime Soviet dictator, was stunned. The invasion had come less than two years after Germany had signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union.
On August 23, 1939, Stalin had signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact with German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler.
The reason: Each dictator got what he wanted—for the moment. Hitler was planning to invade Poland in a matter of days—and he wanted to avoid a war with the Soviet Union.
And Stalin got what he wanted: The eastern half of Poland.
Joseph Stalin
The agreement stunned the world. Since 1919, Nazis and Communists had fought bitter battles against each other in the streets of Germany during the Weimar Republic.
When this was replaced in 1933 by the Third Reich, German Communists were rounded up and imprisoned, if not murdered, by Hitler’s ruthless secret police, the Schutzstaffel (“Protective Squads”).
For the moment, however, all of that was conveniently forgotten.
And, surprising as it might seem, each dictator harbored a secret respect for the other.
After Hitler launched a blood-purge of his own private Stormtroopers army on June 30, 1934, Stalin exclaimed: “Hitler, what a great man! That is the way to deal with your political opponents!”
And Hitler was equally admiring of Stalin’s notorious ruthlessness: “After the victory over Russia,” he told his intimates, “it would be a good idea to get Stalin to run the country, with German oversight, of course. He knows better than anyone how to handle the Russians.”
Adolf Hitler
But Hitler hadn’t forgotten his life’s ambition to conquer the Soviet Union and utterly destroy “the scourge of Jewish-Marxism.”
Stalin received numerous warnings from the United States and Great Britain about the coming invasion. But he dismissed them as efforts by the West to trick him into violating the pact and turning Nazi Germany into his mortal enemy.
When informed of the attack, Stalin at first believed it was being made by rogue German forces. He refused to order an immediate counterattack.
Upon being convinced that the Wehrmacht intended to wage all-out war, he went into a funk in his dacha and shut himself off from everyone. To his closest associates he wailed: “Lenin left us a great inheritance and we, his heirs, have fucked it all up!”
Meanwhile, the Red Air Force was destroyed on the ground by the awesome Luftwaffe. And the Wehrmacht was advancing at a rate of 25 miles a day.
German soldiers marching through Russia
On July 3, after 10 days of brooding (and probably drinking heavily) in his dacha, Stalin finally took to the airways across the Soviet Union.
Never a spellbinding orator, Stalin spoke in slow and faltering tones. Nevertheless, his opening words were startling: “Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and sisters! Men of our army and navy! I am addressing you, my friends!”
Stalin had never addressed an audience this way, and he never would again.
He said the “peace loving” Soviet Union had been attacked by “fiends and cannibals” who wanted to restore the rule of the landlords and Czars. He claimed the non-aggression pact with Germany had given the army much-needed time to rearm and reorganize its forces.
This was accompanied by orders unprecedented in any other army: Those taken prisoner by the Germans were to be considered traitors—and shot or imprisoned. Those suspected of wounding themselves to avoid combat were also subject to summary execution. So were soldiers who had been legitimately wounded in battle but were suspected of inflicting those injuries.
The first two years of the war—1941 to 1943—proved disastrous for the Soviet Union.
During the first six months—June to December, 1941—German armies lured huge Soviet forces into gigantic “cauldron battles,” surrounding and exterminating them. An estimated 5.7 million prisoners of war (POWs) fell into German hands. Of these, at least 3.5 million died in custody.
But then the infamous Russian cold and snows of winter halted the Wehrmacht before Moscow.
In the summer of 1942 German forces once again mounted a ferocious offensive, driving all the way to the Volga—and Stalingrad.
But they became bogged down in bitter house-to-house fighting. With the arrival of winter, Soviet forces surrounded the Wehrmacht’s powerful Sixth Army. The besiegers became the besieged. On February 2, 1943, Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus surrendered what remained of his army. The battle cost Germany 500,000 men, including 91,000 taken prisoner.
As the Red Army finally began to go over on the offensive, Stalin relaxed the iron controls that had long stifled creativity on the part of his commanders.
The infamous political commissars were removed from control over Russian generals. Gold braid and fancy uniforms were manufactured and rushed to the front as morale boosters.
The war would last another two years—costing the Soviet Union at least 26 million citizens—before it ended with the Red flag flying over Berlin.
Almost the entire western half of the Soviet Union was devastated—first as the Germans overran territory from the Polish border to the gates of Moscow, and then again as the Soviets slowly pushed them back to Berlin—the capital of the Third Reich itself.
9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, AFGHANISTAN, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CIA, CNN, COURT MARTIAL, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DONALD TRUMP, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FOX NEWS, GEORGE W. BUSH, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUFFINGTON POST, JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Kamala Harris, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PAKISTAN, PBS NEWSHOUR, PETE HEGSETHM, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALIBAN, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 19, 2024 at 12:14 am
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
So warned Abraham Lincoln in a speech in January 1838.
On November 5, 2024, Americans chose to die by suicide.
They re-elected Donald Trump President by 76,429,164 votes over 73,736,923 votes for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Abraham Lincoln
The two issues securing his victory were hatred of illegal immigrants and inflationary prices.
Harris had repeatedly cited Trump as a threat to democracy. In her “closing argument” to voters on October 29. She warned that Trump was “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”
Trump “would walk into [the Oval] Office with an enemies list when elected.”
It hasn’t taken long to prove Harris’ warning correct. On November 16, the NBC News website carried the following story:
“The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan.
“Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out, and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason.”
The Pentagon
The article stated that Trump had condemned the withdrawal as a “humiliation” and “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country.”
Ignored in all of this:
- The military officers were following the lawful orders of President Joe Biden to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
- Trump first reached an agreement with the Taliban in 2020 to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, roughly 13,000 troops, and release 5,000 Taliban fighters from prison.
- The Biden administration then completed the withdrawal and badly overestimated the ability of Afghan government forces to fight the Taliban on their own.
Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, has criticized the withdrawal, saying the U.S. lost the war and wasted billions of dollars.
In his 2024 book The War on Warriors, Hegseth wrote, “The next president of the United States needs to radically overhaul Pentagon senior leadership to make us ready to defend our nation and defeat our enemies. Lots of people need to be fired. The debacle in Afghanistan, of course, is the most glaring example.”
This despite the blunt reality that the United States had been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001.
The war began as a “find and destroy” mission against Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11. He was then living in Afghanistan under the protection of its ruling thugocracy, the Taliban.
Osama bin Laden
The administration of President George W. Bush demanded his immediate surrender to American justice.
The Taliban refused.
So, on October 7, 2001—less than one month from the 9/11 attacks—American bombers began pounding Taliban positions.
The whole point of the campaign was to pressure the Taliban to surrender Bin Laden.
But the Taliban refused. Bin Laden holed up in the mountains of Tora Bora, and then ultimately escaped into Pakistan.
After December, 2001, American Intelligence completely lost track of Bin Laden. CIA officials repeatedly said he was likely living in the “no-man’s-land” between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Still, the United States continued to commit forces to Afghanistan—to turn a primitive, warlord-ruled country into a modern-day democracy.
There was, admittedly, a great deal to detest about the Taliban:
- When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, they turned soccer stadiums into execution plazas for mass beheadings or shootings.
- Taliban “fighters” proved their “courage” by throwing acid into the faces of women who dared to attend school.
Taliban religious police beating a woman
- On August 8, 1989, the Taliban attacked Mazar-i-Sharif. Talibanists began shooting people in the street, then moved on to mass rapes of women. Thousands of people were locked in containers and left to suffocate.
- The Taliban forbade women to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative and wearing the burqa—a traditional dress covering the entire body. Those who disobeyed were publicly beaten.
Yet, as horrific as such atrocities were, these did not obligate the United States to spend eternity trying to bring civilization to this barbaric country.
On July 8, 2021, President Joseph Biden said that America would withdraw its armed forces from Afghanistan by August 31, thus ending the nearly 20-year war.
“How many more, how many more thousands of American daughters and sons are you willing to risk?” Biden said to those calling for the United States to extend the military operation.
Biden thus became the first President since 2001 to recognize the futility of sacrificing American lives to turn a hopelessly barbaric pseudo-country into a modern nation.
He gave lawful orders for such a withdrawal.
Now those officers who followed those lawful orders risk being court-martialed and imprisoned—or even executed.
ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALBERT SPEER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BETRAYAL, BIBLES, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHINA, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DONALD TRUMP, ERICH VON MANSTEIN, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FRANCE, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUFFINGTON POST, JAMES COMEY, JOSEPH R. MCCARTHY, MAGINOT LINE, MEDIA MATTERS, MICHAEL COHEN, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUGS, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, PEW RESEARCH CENTER, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, ROY COHN, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SNEAKERS, SOVIET UNION, T-SHIRTS, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE PARIS AGREEMENT, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE WEEK, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, WORLD WAR 11, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 18, 2024 at 12:10 am
On January 27, 1944, Adolf Hitler convened a meeting of 100 of his military chiefs, including all the army group commanders of the Eastern front.
The war against the Soviet Union was going badly while the Americans and British were preparing to invade France. And Hitler believed he had the recipe for assuring victory: The Wehrmacht needed to be inoculated with the spirit of National Socialism.
At the end of his long-winded speech, he addressed this challenge to his generals:
“If the worse ever comes to the worst, and I am ever abandoned as Supreme Commander by my own people, I must still expect my entire officer corps to muster around me with daggers drawn—just as every field marshal or the commander of an army corps, division or regiment expects his subordinates to stand by him in the hour of crisis.”
Adolf Hitler
Sitting in the front row was Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, perhaps the most brilliant member of the German General Staff. It was Manstein who had designed the “Sickle Cut” attack on France in May, 1940.
Bypassing the much-vaunted Maginot Line, the Wehrmacht struck through Belgium, taking the French completely by surprise. As a result, it defeated France in six weeks—something Germany had been unable to do during the four years of World War 1.
Now, in a loud voice, Manstein proclaimed: “And so it will be, Mein Fuhrer!”
Hitler froze; it had been more than a decade since anyone had dared interrupt him. Then, trying to make the best of a bad moment, he continued: “Very well. If this is the case, it will be impossible for us to lose this war.”
Hitler hoped that Manstein had intended to reassure him of his loyalty. But Martin Bormann, his all-powerful secretary, told him that the generals had interpreted the outburst differently: That the worse would indeed come to the worst.
Erich von Manstein
And, which, in fact, happened.
As the Russian army closed in on his underground bunker in April, 1945, Hitler revealed his utter contempt for the Germans who had so blindly served him for 12 years.
“If the war is lost,” Hitler told his former architect and now Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer, “the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable.
“There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis which the people will need to continue even a most primitive existence.
“On the contrary, it will be better to destroy these things ourselves, because this nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation.”
Just as Hitler demanded loyalty from his accomplices to infamy, so does Donald Trump.
Former FBI Director James Comey has had firsthand experience in attacking organized crime—and in spotting its leaders.
In his bestselling memoir, A Higher Loyalty, he writes:
“As I found myself thrust into the Trump orbit, I once again was having flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the mob. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and the truth.”
James Comey
When Comey refused to overlook Trump’s treasonous contacts with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, Trump fired him.
On October 9, 2019, The Week published an article: “Note to Republicans: Trump will betray you just like he betrayed the Kurds. The one constant in the president’s life is betrayal.” Specifically:
“Trump’s forte is con artistry. He sells books he doesn’t write to people who don’t read. He failed as a businessman but succeeded as a fake businessman on TV. The supreme irony of his life is that he poses as a dealmaker when he is the opposite. Trump doesn’t make deals. He breaks them….
“If there’s a constant in Trump’s life, it’s betrayal. He has betrayed his business partners, his customers, his employees, his friends, his wives, and his voters. A man who is willing to betray those closest to him will not hesitate to turn his back on foreigners thousands of miles away.”
To enrich himself at the expense of his followers, Trump has peddled a variety of expensive products. Among these:
- “Never Surrender” sneakers;
- Mugshot T-shirts, mugs and posters;
- Bibles made in China (as he rails against a trade deficit between China and the United States.
On the international level, Trump has withdrawn the United States from a host of international agreements. Among these:
- The Trans-Pacific Partnership;
- The Paris Agreement to combat global warming;
- The Iran nuclear deal.
As a result, the world no longer trusts the United States to honor its commitments.
A 2018 Pew Research Center survey found that 82 percent of Europeans didn’t trust Trump’s handling of international issues. Seventy-five percent of Canadians and 91 percent of Mexicans didn’t trust him to do the right thing regarding world affairs.
For Trump, as for Hitler, loyalty goes only one way—from others to him. No one who served either man—no matter how loyally or how long—could be certain when he would be deemed disposable.
1968 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, ABC NEWS, ABORTION, ADOLF HITLER, AILEEN CANNON, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, ARI FLEISCHER, ” 9/11, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BILL CLINTON, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, COMMUNISTS, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DAVID BROOKS, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, ECONOMY, FBI, FEAR, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, GEORGE H.W. BUSH, GEORGE W. BUSH, GREED, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HATRED, HERITAGE FOUNDATION, HUFFINGTON POST, HUMAN NATURE, ILLEGAL ALIENS, JACK SIMITH, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JOHN GOTTI, JONATHAN CAPEHART, JOSEPH BIDEN, JOSEPH MCCARTHY, LEE ATWATER, MEDIA MATTERS, MERRICK GARLAND, MICHELLE OBAMA, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PAUL VON HINDENBURG, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, PROJECT 2025, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RICHARD NIXON, SALON, SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOUTHERN STRATEGY, SOVIET UNION, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TREASON, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, UPI, USA TODAY, WEIMAR REPUBLIC, WILLIAM BRANGHAM, WONKETTE, WORLD WAR 11, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on November 13, 2024 at 12:17 am
There are many reasons why Democrats lose elections. Seven have already been offered. Here are two more.
Reason #7: Republicans learned long ago that most voters aren’t moved by appeals to their rationality. Instead, what counts with them is emotions—such as fear.
From the end of World War II in 1945 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Enemy of Choice for Republicans was the Communists.
Millions of Americans were so pathologically frightened by “The Red Menace” that any Democratic politician libeled as a “Communist,” “Comsymp,” “fellow traveler” was considered as at least a potential traitor, if not an actual one.
Among the Republican politicians who rode to victory on a wave of Red hysteria: Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy
Even as late as 1992, President George H.W. Bush and the Republican establishment charged that Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton might be a KGB plant. Their evidence: During his tenure at Oxford University in 1969-70, Clinton had briefly visited Moscow—and thus might have been turned into a “Manchurian Candidate.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Right-wingers had to settle for attacking their opponents as “liberals” and “soft on crime.” But these charges didn’t carry the same weight as “Communists” and “traitors.”
Then, on September 11, 2001, Republicans—and their Right-wing supporters—at last found a suitable replacement for the Red Menace: The Maniacal Muslim.
The World Trade Center on September 11, 2001
Led by President George W. Bush, Republicans used fear of Muslims to con and bully the nation into a needless, bloody, budget-busting war on Iraq.
Democratic are generally unwilling to fight fire with fire. Thus, Michelle Obama in 2016: “When they go low, we go high.”
Reason #8: Republicans consistently bring brass knuckles to a prizefight.
Example 1: Republicans organized a nationwide effort to suppress voter turnout among blacks and liberals.
Yet Democrats didn’t make a similar effort to suppress Right-wing turnout. Nor did the Biden Justice Department indict those Republicans responsible for their anti-democratic efforts.
Example 2: On January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump—supported by at least 147 Republicans in the House and Senate—incited a treasonous coup to remain in office. This despite the overwhelming evidence that he had lost the 2020 election to Joseph Biden.
With the end of the Biden administration little more than two months away, not one Republican House or Senate member supporting such treason had been indicted for that infamy. Let alone tried, convicted and imprisoned.
Had this occurred, the Biden administration’s agenda would have been far more advanced than it is. Republicans who were raising funds for re-election campaigns would have been forced to raise them to pay huge legal bills.
They would have had far less time to plot to overthrow democracy. Instead, their attention would have been increasingly focused on their upcoming trials for treason.
Reason #9: Since 2021, the Biden administration tolerated Donald Trump’s campaign of lies.
Trump continues to spread The Big Lie that he was robbed by a vast conspiracy—although not one of the more than 60 cases his lawyers brought before Federal judges proved this true.
Moreover, he has openly and repeatedly threatened to seek “vengeance” on Democrats who have opposed him—starting with President Biden and his family.
A major goal of “Project 2025,” designed by the Right-wing Heritage Foundation, is to make the director of the FBI personally accountable to a Right-wing President—just as the head of the KGB is personally accountable to Vladimir Putin.
There can be no doubt that after Trump’s win in 2024, American democracy as it has existed for 248 years will vanish.
Trump should have been indicted for treason by no later than mid-2021. Even then, the evidence was overwhelming that he had instigated the coup attempt.
Yet it wasn’t until November 18, 2022, that Jack Smith was appointed Special Counsel to oversee the criminal investigations into Trump’s role in the January 6 Capitol attack and his illegal storage of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
And Smith allowed Trump-appointed Florida Judge Aileen Cannon to indefinitely postpone the stolen documents trial.
Meanwhile, Trump won repeated delays in his trial for inciting a violent attack on the Capitol. His victory on November 5 guarantees he will not be prosecuted for any of his crimes.
To bring down Mafia “boss of all bosses” John Gotti, the FBI waged a seven-year, $75 million campaign—which included the use of electronic bugs and recruitment of informants.
To date, there is no evidence that the Bureau applied such an effort against Trump—although he, unlike Gotti, threatens the very foundations of American democracy.
For this, blame must fall squarely on Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has been notably derelict in pursuing Right-wing treason.
America now stands at the point where the German Weimar Republic stood in 1932: With an aged President (Paul von Hindenburg) unable—or unwilling—to cope with a surging Fascistic movement (led by Adolf Hitler).
The results of that collective failure destroyed Germany and left 60 million dead around the world.
The United States—and especially Democrats—has allowed itself to make that same fatal mistake.
1968 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, ABC NEWS, ABORTION, ADOLF HITLER, AILEEN CANNON, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, ARI FLEISCHER, ” 9/11, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BILL CLINTON, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, COMMUNISTS, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DAVID BROOKS, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, ECONOMY, FBI, FEAR, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, GEORGE H.W. BUSH, GEORGE W. BUSH, GREED, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HATRED, HERITAGE FOUNDATION, HUFFINGTON POST, HUMAN NATURE, ILLEGAL ALIENS, JACK SMITH, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JONATHAN CAPEHART, JOSEPH BIDEN, JOSEPH MCCARTHY, JUOHN GOTTI, LEE ATWATER, MEDIA MATTERS, MERRICK GARLAND, MICHELLE OBAMA, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PAUL VON HINDENBURG, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, PROJECT 2025, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RICHARD NIXON, SALON, SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOUTHERN STRATEGY, SOVIET UNION, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TREASON, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, UPI, USA TODAY, WEIMAR REPUBLIC, WILLIAM BRANGHAM, WONKETTE, WORLD WAR 11, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on November 12, 2024 at 12:05 am
There are many reasons why Democrats consistently lose elections.
Democrats expect people to rise above their worst selves and embrace a higher, altruistic cause—civil rights, abortion rights, healthcare for all.
Reason #3: Republicans look for those who are comfortable in their racism, their greed, their hatred for women. They don’t try to reform them—they encourage them in their racism, greed and misogyny.
This began long before Donald Trump became a Presidential candidate in 2016.
When Richard Nixon announced his candidacy for President in 1968, he pursued what was euphemistically termed “a Southern strategy.”
In reality, this was aimed to exploit whites’ fear and hatred of blacks.
In a now-infamous 1981 interview, Right-wing political consultant Lee Atwater explained how this worked.
Lee Atwater
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you, backfires.
“So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract.
“Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites….
“‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Nigger, nigger.’
“So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.”
But blacks have by no means been the only targets—and victims—of Republican hate campaigns. A partial list of these would include:
- Liberals
- Women
- Socialists
- Secularists
- Disabled
- Environmentalists
- Hispanics
- Gays
- Lesbians
And now transgenders.
Reason #4: Republicans are experts at inciting hatred—and reaping huge gains in power as a result.
There can be no better example of a politician who has played successfully on the hatred of American voters than Donald Trump. If Barack Obama was the 2008 candidate of “Hope and Change,” then Trump was the 2016 candidate of “Hate and Fear.”
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him.
Donald Trump
The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.
Among his targets:
- Hillary Clinton
- The New York Times
- President Barack Obama
- CNN
- Actress Meryl Streep
- The Washington Post
- Singer Neil Young
- Democrats
- Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Republicans
- Comedian John Oliver
- The State of New Jersey
- Beauty pageant contestants
Others he clearly delighted in insulting during the campaign included:
- Women
- Blacks
- Hispanics
- Asians
- Muslims
- The disabled
- Prisoners-of-war
Democrats want to believe a day will come when all races, colors and creeds will live together in harmony. Their policies aim at creating that sort of society.
Reason #5: Republicans know that most people instinctively feel comfortable with those who most resemble themselves. And they don’t seek out those who differ from themselves.
That’s why—in schools and prisons—whites sit mostly with whites, blacks sit mostly with blacks, and Hispanics sit mostly with Hispanics.
Reason #6: Republicans know that if most Americans feel uncomfortable with fellow Americans who don’t resemble themselves, they feel even less comfortable with foreigners who don’t.
This is especially true when inflation is high, jobs and housing are scarce, and local schools and hospitals are crammed with illegal aliens—who, by law, shouldn’t even be in the country.
For these Americans, the Democrats’ “Kumbaya” message of love and tolerance is wasted. By contrast, Republicans’ cries of “Get rid of the illegal aliens!” ring loud and clear.
Illegal aliens crossing into the United States
Moreover, the “illegal alien” tagline often allows Republicans to sidestep criticism on even the most outrageous of their actions.
Example: The case of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped—and had to travel to Indiana to obtain an abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade.
Ohio has a “heartbeat” law making abortion a crime after a fetal heartbeat is determined—usually within the first six weeks.
For Ohio’s Republican legislators and governor, the “rights” of a fetus far outweigh those of an actual human being—even if she is a child.
Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for President George W. Bush, said on Fox News that the girl’s illegal alien rapist from Guatemala was the villain, not the fetal heartbeat law.
“The agenda is to allow people to come into America without having to come here legally. If you start pointing things out like this, it makes it a moral question. And that’s why the press doesn’t want to face up to the fact it’s a moral issue that people should not be allowed in America unless they come here legally.”
Democrats believe that voters are creatures of rationality.
Reason #7: Republicans learned long ago that what counts with most voters is emotions—such as fear.
From the end of World War II in 1945 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Enemy of Choice for Republicans was the Communists.
Millions of Americans were so pathologically frightened by “The Red Menace” that any Democratic politician libeled as a “Communist,” “Comsymp,” “fellow traveler” was considered at least a potential traitor, if not an actual one.
1968 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, ABC NEWS, ABORTION, ADOLF HITLER, AILEEN CANNON, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, ARI FLEISCHER, ” 9/11, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BILL CLINTON, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, COMMUNISTS, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DAVID BROOKS, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, ECONOMY, FBI, FEAR, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, GEORGE H.W. BUSH, GEORGE W. BUSH, GREED, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HATRED, HERITAGE FOUNDATION, HUFFINGTON POST, HUMAN NATURE, ILLEGAL ALIENS, JACK SMITH, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JONATHAN CAPEHART, JOSEPH BIDEN, JOSEPH MCCARTHY, JUOHN GOTTI, LEE ATWATER, MEDIA MATTERS, MERRICK GARLAND, MICHELLE OBAMA, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PAUL VON HINDENBURG, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, PROJECT 2025, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RICHARD NIXON, SALON, SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOUTHERN STRATEGY, SOVIET UNION, SUSAN PAGE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TREASON, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, UPI, USA TODAY, WEIMAR REPUBLIC, WILLIAM BRANGHAM, WONKETTE, WORLD WAR 11, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on November 11, 2024 at 12:16 am
If you’re wondering why Donald J. Trump once again won the election of 2024—you can stop wondering.
The Democrats lost the Senate while Republicans closed in on the House on November 5. The Democrats also lost the White House.
Why?
Reason #1: Because Republicans understand the darker sides of human nature far better than Democrats—and don’t hesitate to take full advantage of them.
Democrats believe that people want to become altruistically better than they are. They don’t.
Reason #2: Republicans realize that most people like themselves as they are—and don’t want to change. At least, not in the altruistic ways Democrats envision.
If they want to change anything about themselves, it’s strictly at the materialistic level: More money, lower prices, more big-ticket toys.
They may claim concern for others, but if given a choice between their pocketbook and a higher goal, most will vote for their pocketbook.
A first-rate example of this appeared on The PBS Newshour on July 15, 2022, during an exchange between conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for the Washington Post.
David Brooks (left) and Jonathan Capehart (right) on the PBS Newshour
Host William Brangham led off the exchange:
“I want to switch, Jonathan, to this issue of the continued fallout of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. And Democrats seem to believe that this could be one of the things that might give them at least some trace of a fighting chance in the midterms.
“And we saw we this week this sort of horrendous case of a young 10-year-old girl who had been raped. She got pregnant. She then had to leave her state [Ohio] and go to another state [Indiana] where abortion would still be allowed.
“And GOP officials tried to make hay of it. They doubted that that story really existed. The local [Attorney General] said, we’re going to go after the doctor that performed this.
“Do you think that—that issue and the extremity of the way that this is being handled will actually benefit Democrats?”
Capehart: “It should. The idea that we’re talking about violence against a child, and then being forced by the state to give birth to this child, going to another state so she can terminate that pregnancy, and then being persecuted and prosecuted by the state for doing that….
“We are in “Handmaid’s Tale” territory here. We are turning into Gilead. And if there are people out there who are upset by the Supreme Court decision, by what Republican legislators around the country in states and localities are doing to further restrictions and bans on abortion.
“I don’t know what else could push people to the polls more than not just being stripped of a constitutional right, but having your right to — right to freedom, right to privacy, right to liberty not just taken away, but local officials doing everything they can to ensure that you don’t have autonomy over your own body.
“If that doesn’t get people out to the polls, I don’t know what will.”
It didn’t.
Brangham then turned to Brooks:
“I mean, David, this was an incredibly extreme case, in some ways crystallized the sharpness and the horribleness of this division in this country.
“Do you think it will redound to the Democrats’ benefit?”
Brooks: “A little, but, frankly, not much.
“Now, abortion rights defenders, they should pursue their cause with the passion that they’re bringing to it….
“But there’s just a giant gap between what a lot of Democrats want to talk about and what the whole rest of the country wants to talk about. And if you ask people, what’s the most important issues, progressives want to talk about abortion and guns.
“The entire rest of the country, independents, conservatives, unaffiliated people, they want to talk about the economy. And, for them, the economy is way up here. Jobs are number one. Inflation is number two.
“And so why is Joe Biden at 33 percent approval in the latest Times poll? It’s the economy. Why in the same poll do half of Hispanics support the Republicans now? The economy. These are earthquake numbers for Democrats…..
“But if Democrats, if they’re not talking about economic policy every day, then they’re just not talking about the policy that is clearly ranking number one with a vast majority of voters.”
No Republican has appealed more directly to greed as a motivator than Donald Trump.
On August 23, 2018, Trump, as President, offered additional evidence that he’s “not like other people.” He did so by giving an unprecedented reason why he shouldn’t be impeached: “I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders doubtless spoke for millions of Trump supporters when she said, on June 4, 2018:
“Since taking office, the President has strengthened American leadership, security, prosperity, and accountability. And as we saw from Friday’s jobs report, our economy is stronger, Americans are optimistic, and business is booming.”
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHRIS STIREWALT, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DAVID BROOKS, DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS, DONALD TRUMP, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FOX NEWS NETWORK, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUFFINGTON POST, JACQUI HEINRICH, JOE BIDEN, JONATHAN CAPEHART, LAURA INGRAHAM, LIBEL, MEDIA MATTERS, MIKE LINDELL, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEW YORK TIMES V. SULLIVAN, NEWSDAY, NEWSMAX, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RUDOLPH GIULIANI, RUPERT MURDOCH, SALON, SEAN HANNITY, SEATTLE TIMES, SIDNEY POWELL, SLANDER, SLATE, STEVE BANNON, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TUCKER CARLSON, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on November 8, 2024 at 12:11 am
Fox News has spent two years peddling “The Big Lie”—that President Donald J. Trump was cheated of electoral victory in 2020.
But now the truth is coming to light.
On the March 3 edition of The PBS Newshour, political commentators David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart explored the explosive revelations emerging from a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News.
Host Amna Nawaz opened:
And, at CPAC today, [Steve Bannon, former chief strategist for President Trump] went after Fox, saying they’re not pro-Trump enough.
But, just this week, we did see a huge admission in that—the latest filings and the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems, that admission from Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch. He conceded under oath Fox hosts lied about the 2020 election, and he chose not to stop them. What are the implications of that?
David Brooks
New York Times Columnist David Brooks: Rupert Murdoch started a paper called The Australian a long time ago. He was a journalist, an actual journalist. And now he’s gotten to the point where you can lie on camera if—as long as your ratings are OK.
Those people who lied didn’t lie over little things. They lied about the election results of a presidential election, kind of a major deal. And we now know—as we all suspected—they all knew what was happening.
And Murdoch is sitting there atop this organization sort of blithely pretending it’s not really his problem. And so he can say it, and he has power over the corporation today. He owns it. He could fire Tucker [Carlson]. He could fire all the people—all the people who were in on this and whose journalistic integrity has been exposed as zero.
And yet he’s still trying to blithely rise above it. And so it’s amazing that we have a major news organization that is inaccurate about a presidential election.
Jonathan Capehart
Washington Post Associated Editor Jonathan Capehart: Oh, it’s huge. And it was confirmation of something that folks on the left and just folks paying attention kind of suspected: That Fox News, the “news” is in quotes, that they’re out there blatantly telling lies.
But then to see in black and white as part of this case that not only…they would say lies on television, but then, behind the scenes, they knew the truth.
And what that says to me is, Rupert Murdoch and his anchors, those people who are peddling in lies, they are insulated from the effect of the lies that they tell. When you see someone saying, “Oh, our ratings are going down, and that’s going to affect the stock price.” So there’s no concern….
Rupert Murdoch
Hudson Institute, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
So that means you’re more concerned about your bottom line than the corrosive impact on our democracy and political discourse in this country. That, to me, was what’s really disturbing.
And what’s even more disturbing is that Fox News isn’t even really covering this lawsuit, which means that their audience, who should know about what’s being said about them and about the programming for them, they will never—they might not ever know….that what they’re being told is just a big bunch of lies.
Amna Nawaz: I go back to the impact again, though, because their audience, which is in the millions, right……if you’re a loyal Fox watcher prone to distrust any other information source anyway, does any of this make an impact?
Jonathan Capehart: Well, that’s the point I was trying to make. We don’t even know if they will even know about this case, as a result. And even if they do find out, either they might not trust it, or maybe they just don’t care. I don’t know.
David Brooks: Well, they’re losing some viewers to the further right, the Bannons of the world. So they are — they are definitely losing viewers.
But my colleague David French made the core point about Fox. If you’re in red America or in rural America, Fox is not just a news organization. It’s your community center. It’s an organization that—that news organization that pays intense attention, that lots of good news stories about cops and soldiers.
A lot of things that happen in red America that don’t get much coverage in the coastal media get a lot of attention in Fox. And so the loyalty there is not only about politics, and it’s not only about news coverage. It’s just about where people see themselves reflected.
* * * * *
A Twitter user recently asked: “Are critical thinkers being vastly outnumbered in the USA because secondary education is just so damn expensive? It’s no wonder Republican states are among the most poorly educated.”
The answer is: No.
You don’t have to accept propaganda.
You can question the official version of any story.
You can seek out multiple sources.
You don’t have to seek out only those sources that confirm your long-held prejudices.
And you don’t need a college education to do so.
If Right-wingers—who make up the audience for Fox News—are ignorant, it’s because they want to be ignorant.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHRIS STIREWALT, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DAVID BROOKS, DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS, DONALD TRUMP, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FOX NEWS NETWORK, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUFFINGTON POST, JACQUI HEINRICH, JOE BIDEN, JONATHAN CAPEHART, LAURA INGRAHAM, LIBEL, MEDIA MATTERS, MIKE LINDELL, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEW YORK TIMES V. SULLIVAN, NEWSDAY, NEWSMAX, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RUDOLPH GIULIANI, RUPERT MURDOCH, SALON, SEAN HANNITY, SEATTLE TIMES, SIDNEY POWELL, SLANDER, SLATE, STEVE BANNON, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TUCKER CARLSON, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on November 7, 2024 at 12:12 am
Reputable news organizations believe they’re hurt when a reporter gets his facts wrong—or, worse, invents a story for sensationalistic attention.
For Fox News Network, getting hurt means that some of its own reporters have told the truth. And, as a result, many of its viewers are turning to other Right-wing propaganda outlets.
In a series of email exchanges, Fox Network executives revealed they were not simply loyal to President Donald Trump but mortally afraid of him.
Star Host Tucker Carlson said that Trump was good at “destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
Nor was Carlson the only one. The fear started at the very top—with Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch: “Nobody wants Trump as an enemy. We all know that Trump has a big following. If he says, ‘Don’t watch Fox News, maybe some don’t.”
Up to January 26, 2021, Murdoch allowed Fox advertiser Mike “My Pillow” Lindell to appear on the Tucker Carlson Tonight Show to lie that Trump had been cheated of victory by massive voter fraud.
Questioned as to why he allowed it, Murdoch agreed with the statement, “It is not red or blue, it is green.”
Rupert Murdoch
Eva Rinaldi, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
In short: Lust for money, not ideology, motivated Fox’s slant on politics.
And, as with all Fox News commentary, truth played no role in the decision to air it.
With unapologetic hypocrisy, Fox stars Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham brutally mocked the lies being peddled by Trump—and their own network.
In a text to Ingraham, Carlson said that Sidney Powell, an attorney who was representing the Trump campaign, was “lying” and that he had “caught her” doing so.
Ingraham: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy [Giuliani].”
Hannity said Giuliani was “acting like an insane person” and Ingraham described him as “an idiot.”
And Hannity said: “That whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second.”
Sean Hannity
How do we know all this? Certainly not because some outraged Fox whistleblower made these exchanges public.
It’s because Fox’s chief victim, Dominion Voting Systems, decided to strike back.
The Denver-based company produces and sells electronic voting hardware and software, including voting machines and tabulators, in Canada and the United States.
Dominion, claimed Fox, had criminally enabled Democrats to steal the election for Joe Biden by programming its machines to throw out votes meant for Trump.
Its reputation unfairly tarnished, its employees threatened with violence by Trump’s Fascistic supporters, Dominion filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News in March, 2021.
Dominion charged Fox News with pushing false conspiracy theories about the company to win back dissatisfied viewers upset with its coverage of Trump’s defeat.
Libel lawsuits are typically centered around one falsehood. But Dominion cites a lengthy list of Fox hosts making false claims even though they were known to be untrue.
According to an almost 200–page document Dominion filed in the lawsuit:
“From the top down, Fox knew ‘the Dominion stuff’ was ‘total BS.’ Yet despite knowing the truth—or at minimum, recklessly disregarding that truth—Fox spread and endorsed these ‘outlandish voter fraud claims’ about Dominion even as it internally recognized the lies as ‘crazy,’ ‘absurd,’ and ‘shockingly reckless.’
“As a result of the false accusations broadcast by Fox into millions of American homes, Dominion has suffered unprecedented harm and its employees’ lives have been put in danger,” Dominion’s attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.
Backing up its assertions: A treasury of emails, texts, testimony, and other private communications from Fox News personnel contradicting the network’s claims that Dominion’s voting machines had rigged the presidential election in Joe Biden’s favor.
These had all been obtained through the discovery process.
While Fox was echoing Trump’s claims of “massive voter fraud,” its executives and commentators knew that he—and they themselves—were lying.
In mid-November 2020, Carlson texted one of his producers that “there wasn’t enough fraud to change the outcome” of the election.
Later, Carlson said that Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s attorneys and a prominent accuser of election fraud, “is lying.”
Dana Perino, an anchor, called allegations of voter fraud against Dominion “total bs,” “insane,” and “nonsense.”
Murdoch told an executive on November 6, 2020 that “if Trump becomes a sore loser we should watch Sean [Hannity] especially and others don’t sound the same.”
And on January 5, 2021, Murdoch wrote to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott:
“It’s been suggested our prime time three [Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham] should independently or together say something like, ‘the election is over and Joe Biden won.’ It would “go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election [was] stolen.”
But Fox never aired such a statement.
Fox has repeatedly tried to get the case dismissed, but Superior Court Judge Eric Davis has refused to do so. A trial is slated to begin on April 17.
There is a difference between journalism and Fascistic propaganda. And Fox News Network routinely provides examples of the latter.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHRIS STIREWALT, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DAVID BROOKS, DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS, DONALD TRUMP, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FOX NEWS NETWORK, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUFFINGTON POST, JACQUI HEINRICH, JOE BIDEN, JONATHAN CAPEHART, LAURA INGRAHAM, LIBEL, MEDIA MATTERS, MIKE LINDELL, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEW YORK TIMES V. SULLIVAN, NEWSDAY, NEWSMAX, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RUDOLPH GIULIANI, RUPERT MURDOCH, SALON, SEAN HANNITY, SEATTLE TIMES, SIDNEY POWELL, SLANDER, SLATE, STEVE BANNON, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TUCKER CARLSON, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY
In Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on November 6, 2024 at 12:04 am
In the beginning was the audience. And the audience was filled with Fascistic hate and prejudice, and sought always to have its beliefs confirmed.
And then came Fox News Network, which sought to capture that audience—and, with it, huge ratings and profits.
At the center of both Fox and its audience stood Donald Trump—first as a Presidential candidate, then as President.
In him, Right-wingers found their ideal representative: He promised to destroy all those groups they hated.
Among these: Blacks, Asians, “uppity” women, Muslims, liberals, Hispanics, Democrats.
Donald Trump
So when Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election—by 81,284,666 votes for former Vice President Joe Biden versus 74,224,319 for Trump-–the Right was devastated. And furious.
Unlike its defeats in past Presidential elections, this time the Right refused to accept the will of the electorate.
Trump had often “joked” about how wonderful it would be for the United States to have a “President-for-Life”—as was the case in China.
This time the Right intended to make that a reality.
Central to making that happen was the Fox News Network.
In 2022, for its seventh consecutive year, Fox News stood as the top-rated cable news network in the United States. Fox averaged 1.4 million total day viewers.
By contrast, 733,000 watched MSNBC and 568,000 watched CNN.
In prime time, Fox came in first with an average of 2.3 million viewers in 2022.
MSNBC came in second with 1.2 million and CNN ranked third with an average of 730,000.
As for profits: Fox’s net income for the twelve months ending December 31, 2022 was $1.507B, a 4.94% increase year-over-year.
In 2015, Trump launched his campaign for President. His chances for success seemed impossible at the time—even to many mainstream Republicans.
But as he won victory after victory in Republican primaries, Fox News stuck with him. And stayed with him through the four years of his Presidency.
Fox was Trump’s favorite network. It gave him unstinting praise and sought to put a favorable spin on everything he did. As a result, Trump rarely gave interviews to CBS, NBC or ABC News.
In turn, Fox profited hugely as its audience—and advertisers—eagerly tuned in.
So when Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election, he and Fox decided they must get him back into the Oval Office.
Trump did his best—or worst—by filing about 60 lawsuits to overturn the results of the election. But none of his attorneys could prove their claims that widespread fraud had robbed him of victory. The suits were dismissed by judges or withdrawn by Trump’s own attorneys.
Fox News couldn’t file fraudulent cases on Trump’s behalf. But it could poison the public mind by claiming—endlessly and falsely—that Trump had been cheated by massive voter fraud.
Fox didn’t even wait for the final results of the 2020 election to be called before it intervened on the side of what would soon be dubbed “The Big Lie.”
On Election Night, Chris Stirewalt, the political editor of Fox News Channel. was the first to project Biden’s victory in Arizona. This turned out to be right—and brought a furious attack upon Stirewalt.
Tucker Carlson
“We worked really hard to build what we have,” Fox host Tucker Carlson texted his producer, Alex Pfeiffer. “Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.”
For Carlson, credibility didn’t mean ensuring integrity in news reporting. It meant telling Fox’s Right-wing audience what it wanted to hear—whether the “news” was true or not.
Carlson added that he had spoken with fellow primetime commentators Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity minutes earlier and that they were “highly upset.”
In a January 26 Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Times, Stirewalt wrote: “Having been cosseted by self-validating coverage for so long, many Americans now consider any news that might suggest that they are in error or that their side has been defeated as an attack on them personally. The lie that Trump won the 2020 election wasn’t nearly as much aimed at the opposing party as it was at the news outlets that stated the obvious, incontrovertible fact.”
Stirewalt was fired from Fox News in January, 2021.
Trump was furious about the Arizona call. After the election, he attacked Fox News and encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax.
Which many of them did, costing Fox a big chunk of its audience.
For Fox, this was the ultimate catastrophe. The company began cracking down on its employees who had dared tell the truth on Election Night.
One case involved White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich. Her sin was fact-checking a Trump tweet accusing Dominion Voting Systems of election fraud.
Heinrich wrote that top election officials had determined “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
“Please get her fired,” Star host Tucker Carlson texted his fellow told host Sean Hannity: “Seriously….what the fuck? I’m actually shocked….It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
Hannity replied that he had already spoken to Suzanne Scott, the network’s chief executive. The next morning, Heinrich’s tweet had been deleted.
ABC NEWS, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BARACK OBAMA, BARRON TRUMP, BBC, BIBLE, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CIVIL WAR, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEMOCRATS, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FORT SUMTER, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HILLARY CLINTON, HUFFINGTON POST, JEZEBEL, JOSEPH R. BIDEN, MARLA MAPLES, MATTHEW TAYLOR, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEW APOSTOLIC REFORMATION, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SLAVERY, STORMTRUMPERS, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE VIOLENT TAKE IT BY FORCE (BOOK), THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, WHITE EVANGELICAL RACISM, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on November 5, 2024 at 12:09 am
Christian nationalist leaders are telling their followers that Vice President Kamala Harris is under the influence of a “Jezebel spirit.”
The term immediately conjures up the Biblical story of the evil Queen Jezebel, who persecuted prophets and worshiped false gods. As a result, she was punished by being thrown out a window, trampled by a horse, then eaten by dogs.
Harris is a former San Francisco District Attorney, California Attorney General and United States Senator from California.
Meanwhile, those who fanatically support Donald Trump have embraced a woman of an entirely different sort: A former illegal alien and porn model named Melania Trump.
The Associated Press has found documentation showing that Melania Trump broke immigration law when she first entered the country from Slovenia in August, 1996, on a tourist visa.
Tourist visas allow someone to stay in the United States for six months, but they can’t seek employment in the United States during that time. Nevertheless, Melania quickly gained work s a professional model.
Then on October 18, 1996, she got an H-1B visa for “skilled workers” allowing her to work legally in America as a model. Melania was “paid for 10 modeling assignments between September 10 and October 15”—while she was still on the tourist visa.
In March, 2001, she was granted a green card for permanent residency through the EB-1 program, nicknamed the “Einstein visa” due to its allocation to top academics, business leaders and Oscar-winning actors.
Yet the only “genius” she demonstrated lay in posing for nude and seminude photos. One of them showed her being hugged by another naked woman.
Another photo—published during the 2016 Presidential campaign by the New York Post—showed her totally nude, with stars covering her breasts. Its title: “The Ogle Office.”
Melania’s foray into nude modeling might now be forgotten except:
- Many of those photos were splashed across the Internet. And, has been often remarked: Everything is forever on the Internet; and
- Melania herself has resurrected this sordid phase of her life to promote her new book: Melania.
Seeking to redeem the value of her “nude work,” she has placed it in the context of the esthetic value of “Art.”
In a post on X, she writes: “Are we no longer able to appreciate the beauty of the human body? Throughout history, master artists have revered the human shape, evoking profound emotions and admiration.
“We should honor our bodies and embrace the timeless tradition of using art as a powerful means of self-expression.”
Some social media posters—enraged by her violation of the immigration laws when she did these shoots—haven’t bought into this:
“I really don’t care that you were a nude model. What I do care about is the fact that you worked as a nude model while in this country on a visitor visa, that’s illegal. You had the audacity to attack President Obama, who was born a U.S. citizen, about his birth certificate and push racist lies.”
Others have been infuriated by Republican hypocrisy and the double moral standard they apply:
“I don’t take issue with her posing nude for any reason. My concern lies with the MAGA crowd who overlook her nude photos while criticizing and shaming other women for doing the same. The level of hypocrisy is remarkable.
“Right, her husband posted a meme suggesting Harris gave blowjobs to get where she is.”
Whereas Melania became an American citizen by having an extramarital affair with Donald Trump while he was married to Marla Maples.
After they married in 2005, she further anchored herself to America by giving birth to Barron, who was born in 2006.
During an interview with radio talk show host Larry King, Trump—who had cheated on his previous two wives–said: “There’s nothing like a good marriage.”
Kamala Harris has repeatedly said that she wants to be “the President of all Americans.” Assuming this is true, the blunt reality is: She will never be, even if she wins the Oval Office.
At least half of this country is solidly Fascistic, and will always remain so. Its members not only lust to live under a Right-wing dictatorship but, even more so, force non-Fascists to do so.
A similar situation existed in the United States in the decades leading up to the Civil War: Half of the country—that is, 13 Southern states—were determined to preserve slavery at all costs. The other half—19 Northern states—were determined to prevent its spread, if not end it altogether.
Civil War America
Júlio Reis, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Newly-elected President Abraham Lincoln said in his Inaugural Address that he did not intend to abolish slavery. In fact, he emphatically declared that he did not have the legal power to do so.
Nevertheless, Southerners couldn’t live under an administration that condemned them as morally damned. Their tattered pride led to the April 12, 1861 attack on Union Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.
The resulting civil war lasted four years, killed 750,000 Americans—and rid the United States of legalized slavery after 246 years.
It may yet take another such wholesale bloodletting before the United States becomes wholly free—or wholly Fascist.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUFFINGTON POST, JOSEPH STALIN, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NAZI-SOVIET "NON-AGGRESSION PACT", NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, NUCLEAR WEAPONS, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE SS, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THIRD REICH, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UKRAINE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, WEHRMACHT, WORLD WAR 11, X
TWO DICTATORS, TWO CRISES: PART ONE (OF TWO)
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 20, 2024 at 12:05 amOn June 22, 1941, with 134 Divisions at full fighting strength and 73 more divisions for deployment behind the front, the German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union.
Joseph Stalin, the longtime Soviet dictator, was stunned. The invasion had come less than two years after Germany had signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union.
On August 23, 1939, Stalin had signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact with German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler.
The reason: Each dictator got what he wanted—for the moment. Hitler was planning to invade Poland in a matter of days—and he wanted to avoid a war with the Soviet Union.
And Stalin got what he wanted: The eastern half of Poland.
Joseph Stalin
The agreement stunned the world. Since 1919, Nazis and Communists had fought bitter battles against each other in the streets of Germany during the Weimar Republic.
When this was replaced in 1933 by the Third Reich, German Communists were rounded up and imprisoned, if not murdered, by Hitler’s ruthless secret police, the Schutzstaffel (“Protective Squads”).
For the moment, however, all of that was conveniently forgotten.
And, surprising as it might seem, each dictator harbored a secret respect for the other.
After Hitler launched a blood-purge of his own private Stormtroopers army on June 30, 1934, Stalin exclaimed: “Hitler, what a great man! That is the way to deal with your political opponents!”
And Hitler was equally admiring of Stalin’s notorious ruthlessness: “After the victory over Russia,” he told his intimates, “it would be a good idea to get Stalin to run the country, with German oversight, of course. He knows better than anyone how to handle the Russians.”
Adolf Hitler
But Hitler hadn’t forgotten his life’s ambition to conquer the Soviet Union and utterly destroy “the scourge of Jewish-Marxism.”
Stalin received numerous warnings from the United States and Great Britain about the coming invasion. But he dismissed them as efforts by the West to trick him into violating the pact and turning Nazi Germany into his mortal enemy.
When informed of the attack, Stalin at first believed it was being made by rogue German forces. He refused to order an immediate counterattack.
Upon being convinced that the Wehrmacht intended to wage all-out war, he went into a funk in his dacha and shut himself off from everyone. To his closest associates he wailed: “Lenin left us a great inheritance and we, his heirs, have fucked it all up!”
Meanwhile, the Red Air Force was destroyed on the ground by the awesome Luftwaffe. And the Wehrmacht was advancing at a rate of 25 miles a day.
German soldiers marching through Russia
On July 3, after 10 days of brooding (and probably drinking heavily) in his dacha, Stalin finally took to the airways across the Soviet Union.
Never a spellbinding orator, Stalin spoke in slow and faltering tones. Nevertheless, his opening words were startling: “Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and sisters! Men of our army and navy! I am addressing you, my friends!”
Stalin had never addressed an audience this way, and he never would again.
He said the “peace loving” Soviet Union had been attacked by “fiends and cannibals” who wanted to restore the rule of the landlords and Czars. He claimed the non-aggression pact with Germany had given the army much-needed time to rearm and reorganize its forces.
This was accompanied by orders unprecedented in any other army: Those taken prisoner by the Germans were to be considered traitors—and shot or imprisoned. Those suspected of wounding themselves to avoid combat were also subject to summary execution. So were soldiers who had been legitimately wounded in battle but were suspected of inflicting those injuries.
The first two years of the war—1941 to 1943—proved disastrous for the Soviet Union.
During the first six months—June to December, 1941—German armies lured huge Soviet forces into gigantic “cauldron battles,” surrounding and exterminating them. An estimated 5.7 million prisoners of war (POWs) fell into German hands. Of these, at least 3.5 million died in custody.
But then the infamous Russian cold and snows of winter halted the Wehrmacht before Moscow.
In the summer of 1942 German forces once again mounted a ferocious offensive, driving all the way to the Volga—and Stalingrad.
But they became bogged down in bitter house-to-house fighting. With the arrival of winter, Soviet forces surrounded the Wehrmacht’s powerful Sixth Army. The besiegers became the besieged. On February 2, 1943, Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus surrendered what remained of his army. The battle cost Germany 500,000 men, including 91,000 taken prisoner.
As the Red Army finally began to go over on the offensive, Stalin relaxed the iron controls that had long stifled creativity on the part of his commanders.
The infamous political commissars were removed from control over Russian generals. Gold braid and fancy uniforms were manufactured and rushed to the front as morale boosters.
The war would last another two years—costing the Soviet Union at least 26 million citizens—before it ended with the Red flag flying over Berlin.
Almost the entire western half of the Soviet Union was devastated—first as the Germans overran territory from the Polish border to the gates of Moscow, and then again as the Soviets slowly pushed them back to Berlin—the capital of the Third Reich itself.
Share this: