Santa Cop Is Coming To Town

You better watch out,
you better not shout
better not raise a ruckus in the street
I'm telling you why-
Santa Cop is Coming, to town.
He's making a list
and checking it twice
Gonna crack down on those he don't like-
Santa Cop is coming to town.
He sees you when you're walking
He knows if you're online
he knows if you've been "loyal" or not
it's a perfect surveillance state!
SOOO
You better not try
to change the state
cops know how to
put you in your place,
Santa Cop is Ruling, THIS TOWWWWN!

With Apologies from Jason Zenith for spoiling the Year's Most Important Shopping Season. (TM)

BBC Demonstrates How To Make Palestinians The Bad Guys

The BBC reported today that two Jewish colonialist conquerors were killed in the West Bank by a Palestinian "gunman." (Not an armed Palestinian patriot fighter, say.) But they cleverly left something out.

A few hours before that, Israeli Jewish troops conducted more of their ceaseless terror raids into the West Bank, murdering another three Palestinians on top of the tens of thousands they've murdered since 1948.

The picture looks a lot different when you include that fact. But the BBC is not in the business of providing objective news. It is in the business of political propaganda in the guise of news.

Political mythology claims the West Bank is under the control of collaborationist Palestinians called the "Palestinian Authority," headed by a corrupt leech named Mahmoud Abbas. He and his accomplices aided and abetted the murder of Yasir Arafat, by obstructing as long as possible the exhumation of Arafat's corpse to confirm the presence of radioactive polonium which the Israelis slipped into his food. Since then they've been as quiet as possible about the murder.

The PA's "security forces" are CIA-trained, which tells us all we need to know about the nature of those secret police thugs. Their job, like all CIA-trained "security forces" and "intelligence services" is the repression of the people they are assigned to contain.

Another way the BBC- and U.S. media too of course- cover up the fanaticism and imperialism of Israel is by never mentioning what the Israelis calls the West Bank- "Judea and Samaria." These fanatics are literally recreating something that existed over 2,000 years ago, combining ancient violent tribal supremacist ideology straight from the Old Testament with contemporary repressive military and police state technology.

Israel is indeed "part of the West" in the true sense of what that means- it is a nation of "white" imperialists conquering those designated as dark-skilled and subjugating them by force and violence and "settling" their lands, which hiding behind a facade of "democratic values."

[Thanks to Democracynow.org for reporting the facts the "venerable" BBC omitted from its version of reality.]

Mississippi Holds Fast To Racist Roots, Elects Confederate Gun Moll To U.S. Senate

White Supremacy Lives in Mississippi.

Parts of the U.S. corporate propaganda system (aka "the media") such as CBS radio network, are hailing the election of redneck racist Cindy Hyde-Smith to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi as "historic," NOT because she's a throwback to the 19th century Confederate States south, but because she's the "first woman elected to Congress from Mississippi," ever. In which case, they should be remarking on how extremely sexist Mississippi must be! This is the year 2018.

Naturally, the president who represents white supremacists, Donald Trump, campaigned for her.

Hyde-Smith is a reactionary racist in the mold of unreconstructed Confederate Jefferson Beauregard Session III. (Sessions recently made a teary exit as Attorney General of the U.S. on orders of the man who originally anointed him AG, president Donald J. "Jackass" Trump.)

Hyde-Smith went to high school at a so-called "private academy," one of the whites-only private schools set up by the incorrigible white racists of the South determined to maintain a system of quasi-apartheid. These schools were set up to avoid the racial integration being imposed at long last on Southern public school districts by the Federal courts. The descendants of slaves (who are also descended from slave owners who impregnated their slave "property") were for a century forced to endure a grossly inferior education system, deemed legitimate through the legal concept of "separate but equal" under prior Supreme Court doctrine. This mythology was finally abandoned by the Supreme Court under political pressure from the civil rights movement.

Hyde-Smith has posed proudly for photos in Confederate soldier regalia, including rifle. Her latest "gaffe" was informing an admirer that she'd happily attend a "public hanging" (i.e. a lynching of a black victim) "in the front row" with him. U.S. media, such as the awful CBS radio propaganda network, are passing this off as a "joke." Only she wasn't joking, so CBS was guilty of broadcasting disinformation in defense of a racist.

One wonders if CBS would pass off a remark such as "too bad Hitler didn't finish off the Jews" as a "joke." I doubt it. As always, "blacks" are at the bottom of the social pecking order in the U.S. And above all, the corporate propaganda system wants reactionary politicians to occupy the power slots, NOT anyone even slightly to the left, such as Hyde-Smith's Democratic opponent, Hyde-Smith is a Republican. In the South, the white racists- which is most whites in the South- migrated en massa from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party after the Texan Democrat and president Lyndon Johnson sheparded the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act through Congress, to ease somewhat the severe repression African-Americans live under in the Confederate states.

It is also a fact that the U.S. media virtually always covers for reactionaries and racists, bending over backwards to legitimize them.

Being a white racist, of course Hyde-Smith is also an awful reactionary on all political issues. [1]  Thus do the white racists of the "solid South" continue their tradition of packing the U.S. Congress with reactionaries who are enemies of human progress. (Just one example of thousands: for decades they prevented the passage of a Federal anti-lynching law, thus protecting their Southern "tradition" of torturing blacks and hanging them from trees or burning them alive, and passing around the body parts of the victims as souvenirs to the white mobs.)

Hyde-Smith in her native garb, as a warrior for slavery.

Hyde-Smith with Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant who appointed her to fill a U.S. Senate seat vacated by her reactionary racist predecessor Thad Cochran. Now she's been elected to a full term. Note the Mississippi state flag, which incorporates the stars and bars banner of the traitor slave nation, the Confederate States of America.

1]  For example, see "Rev. Barber: MS Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith Jokes About Hangings, But Her Policies Will Strangle the Poor," Democracy Now!, November 26, 2018.

The REAL Reason the White House Media Propagandists' Association Is Breaking With Its Own Tradition and Not Inviting a Comedian to Perform At Its Annual Celebration of Itself

It has been announced that a self-important propagandist group, the "White House Correspondents' Association," whose membership are the propagandists assigned by corporate propaganda outfits to "cover" the White House (i.e. the U.S. presidency), will not be inviting a comedian to entertain them in their tuxedos at their upcoming annual dinner, as they have done in past years. This is being blamed on the performance of comedienne Michelle Wolf at the last shindig of this group on April 28, 2018.

"The" media has taken this occasion to smear Wolf anew. They claim the "Association's" decision was because Wolf was "harsh," and that she made fun of Trump's White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders' appearance. Which she did NOT. In a 19 minute set, less than a minute and a half were about Sanders, and maybe two jokes referenced her appearance in some way, and they were MILD jokes. You can watch that segment on my youtube channel. [1] 

Wolf mocks Sanders' constant lying, and her vile politics. Apparently that is retrospectively unacceptable. Because when you watch the entire 19 minute performance, the audience laughs a lot, and heartily applauds at the ends. So Wolf actually went over well. 

But afterwards, there was a propaganda campaign attacking Wolf's set. Because she ended with a scathing critique of "the" media's symbiotic relationship with the horrid Donald Trump, landing square on the nose. She nails it. And then with a final throwaway line reminds everyone of the unwelcome fact that the people of Flint, Michigan were poisoned with lead in their water and that the situation there had still not been remedied. [2]

Too much truth for the behind-the-scenes bosses- the bastards.

1] See "All of Michelle Wolf's jokes about Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner." 

2] See "Michelle Wolf sticks it to the media for enabling Trump at the 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner."

Wolf's entire set is posted by C-Span on youtube.com: "Michelle Wolf COMPLETE REMARKS at 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner."

What They REALLY Mean When They Say "I Wish President Trump Would Tweet Less."

Republican politicians say this with some frequency. They trot out this stock phrase when they have to defend Trump, and/or justify their support for him and their refusal to criticize his latest outrage, whether something he said or something he did. Sometimes it's paired with advice that he focus more on "doing his job," i.e. doing more malicious actions that are part and parcel of the malign "Republican agenda." 

What they really mean is, I wish he'd stop being so explicit. It puts me on the spot, forcing me to defend insane and vicious statements, and threatens to arouse opposition to our horrible policies.

The "I wish he'd tweet less" trope is now being parroted by Republican voters in interviews with "the" media. When asked how Trump is "doing," or if he's "helping" them, they'll toss in the "wish he'd tweet less" line. 

What they really mean: I wish he'd stop saying what he thinks so I can continue to preserve my brain-dead illusions about who he is and what he wants to do.

The immoral GOP (Gang Of Plunderer) politicians are disciplined and fanatical and willing to be led by a narcissistic grifter mountebank who is irrational, erratic, and unpredictable, but who mostly delivers on their arch-reactionary, repressive, hyper-militaristic "agenda."  The Trump supporters among the populace- which apparently has increased in number to close to 50% of the population, amazingly enough- reject all the factual evidence, that is they reject reality- and insist on believing in the cons of Trump. Also his demagoguery appeals to their base instincts, their racial bigotry, their xenophobia, and their persecution complexes. Trump is a genius in one dimension of intelligence; emotional intelligence. Or to put it another way, he has great animal cunning, as all successful demagogues do, including the classic fascist dictators, Hitler and Mussolini. This confuses some people into seeing Trump as a fascist. He is an authoritarian and a bully. In terms of brutality, he actually hasn't outdone Obama The Drone Assassin or Bush The Torturer yet. But unlike them, he doesn't bother disguising his cruelties, but generally publicly revels in them. His base "base" is thrilled by a sense of vicarious vengeance against victims who have done them no harm. But by calling desperate, terrified refugees fleeing the Central American hellholes created by the U.S. "invaders," and holding publicity stunts to bellow about people murdered by illegal immigrants, Trump gives his bigoted, xenophobic followers an excuse to feel like victims of immigrants. Oh, and immigrants "stole" their jobs, employers didn't hire the immigrants to slash their own labor costs! 

There they go again, blaming those weaker than themselves instead of the actual culprits. What cowards they are.

"I talk so much and so loud and I fool soooo many people. It's terrific. It's terrific."

Trump Asserts Dictatorial Power To Change U.S. Constitution By Fiat, U.S. Media Response Lame

Right before elections for the House of Representatives and a third of the U.S. Senate, Trump is trying to whip up his "base" of white racists and xenophobes. He's doing it in at least two ways. With a week to go until the November 6 election, he is claiming the right to invalidate the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by issuing an executive order abolishing it. The 14th Amendment states that anyone born in the U.S. is automatically a U.S. citizen. (About 30 other countries also do this, contrary to Trump's lie, repeated regularly over the years and again now, that the U.S. is the only country that does this. Oh, and it's "ridiculous" and it "has to stop" He portrays all such people as leeches.) Reactionaries call this "birthright citizenship," as if it is somehow different from citizenship of babies born in the U.S. whose parents are U.S. citizens. They also push a lie called "anchor babies," which the corporate media NEVER call them on. The idea is that citizen babies somehow make it impossible to deport their parents. A lie, as the U.S. has long deported parents with U.S. citizen children. Obama indeed deported thousands of such people.

As far as a president changing the basic law of the U.S., the Constitution, to his liking by his own edict, that is completely illegal. The Constitution specifies two ways in which it can be altered: either by a Constitutional Convention, of which there has only ever been one, the one that created the Constitution, or by a vote of two-thirds of the members of both chambers of Congress AND by ratification by three-quarters of the state legislatures. That is how all subsequent amendments after the first ten (the so-called Bill of Rights) have been enacted.

The media headlines should have been the first part of my title above, Trump Asserts Dictatorial Power To Change U.S. Constitution By Fiat. Instead the predominant media reaction was Hmm, can he do that? There would probably be a legal challenge.

 Not, BLATANTLY ILLEGAL POWER GRAB UNPRECEDENTED IN U.S. HISTORY! And saying "there would be a legal challenge" implies he COULD do it, and THEN people would have to take him to court to try and overturn it! (Keep in mind that the Federal courts are now stuffed with extreme reactionary judges courtesy of the Federalist Society, the GOP, and the Democrats' spinelessness and political fecklessness.)

It seems that the establishment "resistance" to Trump consists of placing all hopes on former FBI secret police chief Robert S. Mueller III pulling a rabbit out of his hat and proving that Trump is Putin's Puppet, a criminal stooge of Moscow. Good luck with that. That means there's no hope at all.

As former CIA secret police chief Michael Morell has stated, if there was evidence to that effect, it would have either been leaked by now, or uncovered by the horde of reporters frantically digging for dirt on Trump. Plenty of dirt has been found- David Cay Johnston and Wayne Barrett have spent years digging up a mountain of misdeeds by Trump- but "Russian collusion," like the piss tape, is a fantasy.


The second way Trump is agitating his vile supporters is by screeching about an "invasion" by a few thousand refugees fleeing the violence and poverty created there by the Obama-Hillary Clinton coup in that nation. These refugees are currently over a thousand miles from the U.S., at the Guatemalan-Mexican border. Trump publicly called for them to be gunned down, U.S. Border Patrol style. ("When they throw rocks like they did at Mexican military police I say consider that a rifle.") The U.S. Border Patrol isn't murderous enough already. Trump has to stoke more murders. Just as he called on cops to bash the heads of people they arrest into their patrol cars' doorframes. Just as he praised a Republican lout for body-slamming a reporter, a thug subsequently elected by the goons of the state of Montana to Congress. [1]

Trump also made a big show of sending 5,200 army troops to the U.S.-Mexican border, following that by announcing his alleged intent to sent 15,000 troops. Hey, why not make it a million, asshole?

To borrow from Lillian Hellman, we're in Scoundrel Time (again), in America.

Der Fuhrer, U.S. version. And he's even of German ancestry! (And believes he's superior because of it. Remember 

he wanted more Norwegians to immigrate to the U.S., and stop the flow from "shithole" -i.e. "non-white"- countries.)

                  Gee, I TRIED to overthrow Trump for you. [Robert S. Mueller III, another guy of German extraction.]

1] "Trump praises GOP congressman who assaulted reporter: 'Any guy that can do a body slam — he's my guy.'" USA Today, October 18, 2018.

Republicans Have Already Stolen Georgia Governor's Election Before Election Day

The GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) have gotten so good at stealing elections after over two decades of practice that now they can do it before there's even an election.

In the state of Georgia, the race for Governor of that Confederate, racist state is set to be stolen by the current state Secretary of State, Brian Kemp.

By the way, Kemp is the guy who oversees the election! Kind of like an African dictator, only white.
Kemp has put a "hold" on 53,000 registrations, 70% of them of blacks. JUST COINCIDENTALLY, his Democratic opponent in the race for Governor is a black woman.

In Georgia, the Republicans have purged 1.5 million people from the rolls from 2012-2015. That's 10% of the total registered voters.

Kemp is demagoging a justification by claiming the Democrats want illegal aliens to vote. A nice racist smear that goes down well with Southern whites. (And lots of other whites in the U.S., which is a very racist country.)

The Republicans have pioneered many ways to steal elections. They also close most of the polling sites in heavily Democratic areas. Of course the Georgian Republicans haven't missed that trick either.

The sickest thing is that the U.S. insists on boasting that it's the World's Best Democracy.

Saudis GIft U.S. With 2 Big Bribes To Buy Their Way Out of Khashoggi Murder

Saudi Arabia just gave $100 million to the U.S. Now they've pledged to up their oil production to whatever it takes to fill the void left by the Trump regime strangling Iranian oil exports. This caused the price of oil to drop 4% today October 23rd.

Determined to evade responsibility for the butchering of Jamal Khashoggi, a former adviser to the Saudi "royals" whose patrons were neutralized by the current tyrant, the "Crown Prince" Mohammed bin Salman, favorite son of "King" Salman, they have gone from issuing threats to paying bribes to the U.S. to evade sanctions.

Trump would love to help them out. For several weeks he shielded them. But he is being pulled by the political undertow of the U.S. political establishment and even Republican Senators taking a harder line.

But in the end, the most that might happen is that some of "Prince" Salman's powers will be trimmed. Even more unlikely would be his replacement by another designated heir to the throne.

Meanwhile U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven "King of the Foreclosure Fraudsters" Mnuchin went back on his promise not to attend an "investment conference" being hosted by the murderous "Prince" Salman, and went. This conference was boycotted by numerous heads of large multinational corporations and European officials. However many venal capitalists did attend, and they gave Salman a standing ovation. It's said they're mainly oilmen.

Salman the Younger Explains to Mnuchin Why They Had to Chop Up Khashoggi's Body: "He was a fat man, so we had to
cut him up into pieces no bigger than this. It would have been terrible if someone got a hernia carrying him."

FBI Finishes Another of Its Specialties, A Sham "Investigation" That Is Actually A Cover-Up

Under pressure from the public, the media, and Democrats, in that order of concern, Trump ordered the FBI on September 28 to conduct a limited "supplemental" background check as an addition to their previous checks that failed to report on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's debauched, violent youth.

Kavanaugh has undergone previous such checks in order to work in the Bush White House on sensitive political programs (such as torture) requiring lying and stealth, and when Bush rewarded him by planting him on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the second most important court in the U.S. that in practice has the final word on many vital matters. (The Supreme Court refuses to even consider 90% plus of the cases litigants attempt to appeal to it. Contrary to popular delusion, one CANNOT "appeal all the way to the Supreme Court." Take four months of vacation time a year, the "Justices" only accept about 90 cases a year for review. And most of those are of minor import.)

The FBI was given just a week to carry out this latest whitewash. It finished two days early, on October 3rd. Senate boss Mitch McConnell then said there would be a vote by the full Senate on October 5th. The single copy of the FBI report would be reviewed in a "secure" room by a few Senators at a time, who would have to memorize its contents. (No cellphones or cameras allowed.) McConnell averred that this was "plenty of time" for the 100 Senators to review the report! ("The" media reported this absurdity matter-of-factly, as if there was nothing wrong with it.)

The FBI only interviewed 6 people: 4 friends of violent criminal Kavanaugh, a friend of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's ( whom he attempted to rape when she was 15), and Deborah Ramirez, who was molested by Kavanaugh at Yale University. (He shoved his bare genitals in her face.) The FBI ignored a list of 20 corroborating witnesses provided by Ramirez. They also failed to interview Kavanaugh or Dr. Ford. (Sparing Kavanaugh from committing a felony by lying to the FBI, which carries a five year prison sentence. Not that he would have been prosecuted. Unless the Democrats somehow take over the executive branch by winning the presidency. Kavanaugh's squirming evasions when asked repeatedly by a Democratic Senator on the Judiciary Committee if he would call for an FBI investigation clearly shows he is well aware of the peril of talking to the FBI.)

The FBI specializes in sham investigations when state crimes need hiding. Examples includes the CIA assassinations of John Kennedy (1963), Robert Kennedy (1968), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968), its own massacre of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, and numerous political assassinations and other crimes.

U.S. broadcast media has once again done a tremendous disservice by omitting the critical details and instead making it a "he said- she said" story. Not only Kavanaugh vs. Ford, but Republicans vs. Democrats. Republicans say enough time has been wasted (McConnell, and the awful Senator Lindsey Graham, a vicious, rabid cur), Democrats say the investigation was superficial and the vote is being rushed.

McConnell is the same guy who prevented the previous president, the Democrat Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama from filling a Supreme Court vacancy for almost a year. Which makes McConnell's talk of "wasting time" and his rush now all the more galling. That vacant seat was filled by Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch, the spawn of Reagan EPA head and zealous anti-environmentalist Anne Gorsuch Burford.

Of course Kavanaugh was just one of 25 interchangeable, extreme reactionaries on the list of Supreme Court candidates the loathsome Federalist Society handed to Trump to pick from. Interesting that Trump chose a fellow sexual predator. He must have sensed a kindred soul. It has also been reported that Kavanaugh has lately adopted a "legal theory" of presidential immunity from prosecution- interesting, since he had exactly the opposite attitude when he was a henchman of Kenneth Starr's in Starr's Get Clinton operation. But I guess we must await a greater legal mind to come up with some legerdemain to show why Democratic Presidents should be subject to prosecution but not Republican ones.

Republicans Implacably Determined to Implant a Second Sex Offender on the Supreme Court

We now have credible assertions that Brett Kavanaugh was involved in drugging and gang-raping young women. This is the fourth claim of sexual "misconduct" ("the" media's preferred euphemism for his crimes) against Kavanaugh.

When (or if) he joins Clarence Thomas on the high court, there will be two known sex offenders in effect making laws. Both Thomas and Kavanaugh are extreme misogynists who are champing at the bit to repeal what is left of the weak "right" that women have to terminate their pregnancies instead of being treated as chattel and forced to bear children against their will.

The GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) from their chief, Donald J. Trump, himself a known serial sex offender and adulterer, on down, have responded by attacking the accusers, calling their painful recollections "smears" (a word Trump used and was echoed by Senate boss, the loathsome Mitch McConnell of Kentucky) and avowing that they refuse to "ruin" Kavanaugh's "life" by NOT implanting him on the Supreme Court! (This from reactionary dog, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, on one of the Sunday morning bourgeois political propaganda TV shows September 23.)

So far, we've had Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who Kavanaugh and his crony Mark Judge tried to rape when she was only 15. This is documented by therapist's notes from 2012. We have a letter from an attorney to Judiciary Committee member Dianne Feinstein, the senior Democrat on the Committee, about complaints from Federal employees against Kavanaugh, which Feinstein suppressed, as she suppressed Dr. Ford's information, refusing even to brief other Democratic Senators when they asked for the information.

Then there was a woman who described Kavanaugh's drunken assaults at Yale University, which included him thrusting his exposed genitals in her face.

Now we have a sworn affidavit from Julie Swetnick, who has a security clearance which she would


lose if she committed perjury by making a false claim. She relates Kavanaugh's involvement in drugging and gang-raping women.

The Republicans' response with each new expose of Kavanaugh has been shriller and more vicious attacks on the accusers, smearing them as politically motivated liars. (Part of their smearing is accusing the victims of "smearing" Kavanaugh, inverting reality.)

Much of "the" media, and not just Murdoch's Minions at Fox "News," are slanting their "coverage" in a sexist, misogynist direction. I will have more on this later.

So the United States under Trump is forcefully erasing what social progress there has been in recent years. Meanwhile, Facebook, Twitter, youtube, and Spotify, in the name of cracking down on "divisiveness," are banning and censoring progressive voices (as well as Alex Jones, the only one banned that "the" media mention). But the divisions are not creations of critics. They are real and fundamental aspects of U.S. society. It is the aggressive attacks on human rights by the reactionary power structure that causes divisions in the U.S., NOT Russian trolls or botnets- contrary to Democratic Party, corporate media, and secret police absurd assertions. Recall that Obama's "Director of National Intelligence," James "Pinocchio" Clapper, commissioned a custom "intelligence report" attacking the likes of RT and Abby Martin for "creating division" in America! What demented, demonic scapegoating by a pathological system!

Your next Supreme Court Justice: Unconvicted Felon Brett Kavanaugh

"Why Didn't Someone Call the FBI 36 Years Ago?" Molester-In-Chief Asks in Smear of Kavanaugh Victim

Serial sex criminal and president of the United States Donald J. Trump asked that rhetorical question to rally his "base" of deplorables, louts, sexists and terrorist scum around Brett Kavanaugh, the Republican apparatchik Trump is trying to make a lifetime Justice of the Supreme Court.   He was speaking to his favorite propagandist and loyal shill, Sean Hannity, one of Murdoch's Minions at Fox "News" and a career radical reactionary and polemical TV bully. The "question" was directed at Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who at the age of 15, in 1982, should have gone to the FBI.

It shouldn't be necessary to point out the numerous things that are dumb about this. But in brief: rape is generally a state crime, not a Federal one, so the FBI wouldn't be involved unless local police asked for help. Second, then as now, the vast majority of rapes- like around 90%- are NOT reported by victims, much less teen ones, much less rape attempts.

And Trump knows this. He has had years of experience sexually assaulting numerous women with NONE of them filing criminal complaints against him! He's full of shit, and his bad faith is stunning.

This is a criminal who we have on video boasting of grabbing women's "pussies" and forcibly kissing them. "They let you get away with it," he said on that video. He has bragged about walking in on naked contestants in the Miss Universe pageant he controlled, to ogle them. He is also a known serial adulturer. He has an extensive history of sexual crimes and misbehavior.

But "the" media hasn't mentioned any of this in the Kavanaugh-Ford affair! I think it is QUITE relevant!

Trump had more idiotic, malign, and dangerous things to say on Twitter today:

"I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!"

"The radical left lawyers want the FBI to get involved NOW. Why didn’t someone call the FBI 36 years ago?"

Radical left lawyers. A classic "McCarthyite" smear, designed as a clarion call to the millions of reactionaries who are the core of Trump's "base."

This is about far more than just the case of Kavanaugh and Ford. The deep problem with what Trump is doing is he is pushing the U.S. backwards socially and culturally. He is promoting primitive, sexist, repressive male supremacist attitudes towards rape and women and the violent victimization of women. 

And he is determined to achieve his oft-stated goal of having the Supreme Court overturn Roe vs. Wade, thus abolishing the "right" to abortion. (More of a privilege that women have to struggle to get, especially poor women.) "It's going to happen," he has said repeatedly, cementing his tawdry alliance with the religious reactionaries of the U.S., the most hypocritical and sanctimonious mass of creeps in the country.

Wither the Democrats? As usual with reactionaries nominated for the Supreme Court, the dominant Democratic politicians surreptitiously grease the skids for the reactionary nominees, as I have explained in previous posts. (Just scroll down.) This time it was the awful Dianne "I love the secret police" Feinstein, who hid a letter from Ford she received in July. The excuse being peddled in "the" media for Feinstein is that Ford asked for anonymity. The trouble with that is that she also hid a letter from July from a lawyer notifying her of Federal employees with sexually derogatory information about Kavanaugh. There was NO request for anonymity in that letter. So "the" media simply ignores it.

Both political parties of the two-party cartel have been dedicated to making the U.S. more repressive throughout their history. The few "progressive" moves by them were done reluctantly and only because of intense public pressure. For example, what's so "progressive" about Nixon allowing Congress to create an Environmental Protection Agency? Polluters were destroying the environment and causing mass disease! That is objectively damaging even from the rulers' perspective!

In America, what is called "Liberalism" is merely pragmatism. What is called "Conservatism" is reactionaryism and even fascism.

"I really really LOVE women's HOLES. Believe me, I understand women.

                                              They say 'No' but they really mean 'Yes'!"

Right Wing Terrorist Network Swings Into Action Against Kavanaugh Sexual Assault Victim

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who was nearly raped by Trump Supreme Court nominee and Republican apparatchik Brett Kavanaugh, has been terrorized into leaving her home with her family by death threats and hate mail. Her email was hacked, and she was impersonated online by malign attackers.

As usual, much of "the" media, the U.S. power establishment propaganda organizations, have the backs of the terrorists by not reporting on their terrorist actions. This makes them accessories and accomplices. While the death threats have been reported in print media, the radio news I monitor, including NPR and CBS, have not reported them.

That same media are also accomplices to all the fascist terrorist regimes the U.S. has ever supported by the same means, refusing to report the news. Every "friendly" dictator and dictatorship gets puff-piece treatment from the U.S. media. A current outstanding example of this is Saudi Arabia and its ruling despots, "King" Salman and his vicious son, "Crown Prince" Mohammad bin Salman, architect of the destruction of Yemen, shakedown artist, and repressor of any and all would-be reformers of the medieval Saudi social order.

And what about the police? Why don't they ever hunt down and prosecute rightwing terrorists and harassers? Harassment and death threats are illegal activities. I thought they were "law enforcers." I guess it depends.

Ford is a Congressional witness. Why isn't the FBI tracking those threatening a Congressional witness and arresting them and presenting cases to the U.S. attorneys?

Well, the questions may seem naive, but actually they are rhetorical. To make obvious what should be obvious but is never thought in America. To think the obvious is to immediately and implicitly challenge this repressive system that uses right wing terrorists as auxiliaries to the power structure.

Don't hear any DEMOCRATS demanding the terrorists be hunted down and prosecuted, do you? See, it's the power structure itself enabling rightwing terrorism.

As the U.S. does all over the globe.

Meanwhile, the serial sexual criminal who picked Kavanaugh to be a Supreme Court Justice and reactionary hitman to put the final nail in the coffin of the right to terminate a pregnancy, Donald Trump, who boasts of grabbing women's private parts and forcibly kissing them, made a big public display of how awful the treatment KAVANAUGH is getting is! He feels SO BAD that such a GOOD MAN is enduring this ORDEAL!

Being disgusting is par for the course (if I may use golf terminology) for the Groper-In-Chief.

And while "the" media has repeatedly mentioned that 65 women who knew Kavanaugh signed a letter avowing that he's the perfect gentleman, (leaving about 4 billion females on planet earth who have yet to confirm he never tried to rape them), I only found out by accident that 599 women have signed a letter in support of Dr. Ford. It wasn't on broadcast media. But that's only about ten times as many women supporting Dr. Ford as piped up to aid Kavanaugh. Not newsworthy, I suppose. [1]

1]  "599 alumnae from Christine Blasey Ford’s high school sign letter saying they support her," Vox, September 18, 2018.

Brett Kavanaugh, GOP Mob Member, Prepares to Commit Third Round of Perjury

Bush regime apparatchik Brett Kavanaugh, whom Bush planted on a Federal Appeals Court as a judge, where he has tried his best to violate the rights of workers and citizens generally and illegally tried to block at least one woman from obtaining an abortion, perjured himself during his Senate confirmation hearings for that lifetime judicial appointment.

Last week, during his confirmation hearings for his appointment to the highest lifetime position in the U.S., Supreme Court Justice, he committed perjury again.

 Come Monday, September 24, he's going to commit perjury for at least the third time and deny deny deny that he attempted to rape Christine Blasey Ford when she was only 15.

He's already told an unsworn naked lie, claiming he wasn't at "the party" where he and his accomplice, neofascist hack Mark Judge, got extremely drunk and assaulted Ford. Problem with that is, no one has said exactly what party it was, where it was, and exactly when.

Actually that's his second lie on the matter of his rape attempt. He's already vociferously denied he did it. Which just isn't plausible. And given his record as a Bush regime apparatchik involved in deception and trickery, and his previous perjury, isn't credible.

His victim, now a 51-year-old psychology professor, has released her therapist's notes from 2012 to the Washington Post which documents her discussions with the therapist about the event. She has also taken and passed a polygraph test, for what's that worth. [1]

Also she has proven to be very reluctant to come forward, which does not sound like someone who is setting out to sabotage Kavanaugh's nomination,.

Kavanaugh's accomplice in the assault, Judge, at first claimed to have no memory of the event. Given how drunk he apparently was, that could well be. He has since changed his story to denying the assault. His "memoir," more a roman a clef about his drunken, degenerate youth, quite obviously includes his friend and crony Brett Kavanaugh, who appears in the book as a character named "Bart O’Kavanaugh."

Gee, I wonder who that could be!

The Republican Senators are planning to resolve the matter NOT by hearing from additional witnesses, NOT by conducting an investigation, NOT by asking the FBI to investigate, but by having Kavanaugh and Ford testify to the Judiciary Committee and that's it. Then they can pretend to believe Kavanaugh, or throw up their hands and say there's no way to determine the truth- and proceed to have the whole Senate vote on Kavanaugh's nomination,

Kavanaugh's previous perjuries included lying about knowing obviously stolen documents he received- documents the sender made clear were stolen- were stolen; lying about his views on abortion; misrepresenting his judicial record; lying about his activities in the Bush White House, including his involvement in the conspiracy to commit torture and to create war hysteria against Iraq based on a mountain of lies; and denying that his superior on the Appeals Court, Alex Kosinski, shares salacious material with him. (He pulled the "not that I recall" trick for that one.)

Kavanaugh is an oppressive reactionary whose elevation to the top court, if it happens, will once again have been done with Democratic Party complicity, in this case by Senator Dianne Feinstein, as I explained in a previous essay on this matter. The Supreme Court has functioned as a primary instrument of repression and corporate hegemony over U.S. society that permits the rest of the establishment to shrug and feign helplessness. There is a shabby pretense of neutrality, "legality," impartiality about the political decisions handed down by the court. There is nothing inevitable about those decisions. Rather, the reactionary Justices concoct rationales and esoteric legalisms to justify these political decisions.

You would have thought that after five GOP apparatchiks on the high court blatantly stole the 2000 election for Bush the Younger, the court would be completely discredited. But both the putative "opposition" party, the Democrats, and the corporate propaganda system, aka "the" media, pretend it was a legitimate decision. It is political theater designed to dupe the populace into seeing the power structure as legitimate and fair, not corrupt, venal, and having no right to their misrule over us.

1]  Polygraph's are claimed to detect lies, but they are still unproven after decades of use and considered so unreliable that U.S. courts mostly do not allow their introduction as evidence. And U.S. courts have really really low standards for what is acceptable "forensic science." For example, claims by pseudo-experts that they could match a bite wound on a person to another person's teeth have been allowed and used to convict people. Common sense along is enough to prove that is ridiculous.)

There They Go Again: Dominant Democratic Politician Connived To Put another Reactionary On U.S. Supreme Court, Failed Rapist Brett Kavanaugh, and Joe Biden, Blackmail Victim??

The Democratic Party is truly hopeless. When it comes to protecting human rights, or even just what paltry protections for average people exist on paper in U.S. law, or "standing up for" its proclaimed "values," or "fighting for" people it claims to represent, the Democratic Party has proven once again to be a political death trap for anyone relying on them for these things.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, did her utmost to keep secret a letter from a college professor that stated that Trump's second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, attempted to rape her while both were high school students. Feinstein is the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which just concluded high-speed "confirmation hearings" led by the Republican chairman, Charles Grassley, a fossilized reactionary from Iowa. [1]

The woman, Christine Blasey Ford, now 51 and a psychology professor, described how Kavanaugh and a chum, who were 17 at the time, attempted to rape her when she was just 15. Both men were very drunk, and Kavanaugh threw her down and lay on top of her, stifling her screams with his hand and tearing at her clothes while his accomplice turned up music in the room very loud as cover. When the accomplice jumped on top of the two, they tumbled over and she managed to flee. In 2012 she confided in a therapist, who notes corroborating the woman's account were obtained by The Washington Post newspaper. The victim also just passed a polygraph test of her veracity.

Kavanaugh, predictably, denies it. However Kavanaugh’s classmate, a neofascist hack named Mark Judge, said of the attempted rape, “I have no recollection of that.” That's not a denial! Furthermore, he wrote a memoir that provides some indirect evidence for the victim's claim, "Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk." The title gives an accurate sense of the contents. [2]
 
Feinstein refused to let her Democratic colleagues on the Judiciary Committee see the letter from Ford, and stonewalled questions from other Democratic Senators and staffers about the letter from Kavanaugh's victim.  Her staff brushed them off by saying it was too long ago to matter and that Feinstein had “taken care of it.” [Yeah, the way Joseph Biden "took care of" Anita Hill's revelations about Clarence Thomas in 1991.] The New Yorker magazine quotes "Congressional sources" saying  “We couldn’t understand what their [Feinstein and her staff] rationale is for not briefing members on this. This is all very weird;” and “She’s had the letter since late July. And we all just found out about it.” [3]

After being exposed in the media, Feinstein passed the letter (and the buck) to the FBI for "investigation." The FBI announced that it put the letter in Kavanaugh's file, and that's it. Feinstein announced her passing of the hot potato to the FBI with this internally contradictory statement: “That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities.” Which of course isn't honoring the victim's request for confidentiality, as telling the FBI exposes her identity and the FBI passed it along to the Trump White House for good measure.

By first deep-sixing and then being forced to reveal the victim's letter, Feinstein reaped the worst of both worlds. She is exposed as trying to cover it up, and attacked for the timing of a "last minute attack." White House spokesperson Kerri Kupec quickly took advantage, stating  “Not until the eve of his [Kavanaugh's] confirmation has Sen. Feinstein or anyone raised the specter of new ‘information’ about him,” slamming the revelation as an “11th hour attempt to delay his confirmation.”

Which, unfortunately, is how it looks. [4]

Republican Senators have followed suit, also blasting the Democrats.

But there is more. Feinstein ignored a letter she received in July, months BEFORE the just-concluded high-speed "confirmation hearings," from an attorney stating he had information from several Federal employees regarding Kavanaugh. Grassley also received that information. Here Feinstein can't pretend she was protecting someone's confidentiality. Taken together, the two cover-ups prove Feinstein's intent to help seat the extreme reactionary Kavanaugh on the high court, where he will vote to kill Roe vs. Wade, ending women's right to abortion in most of the country immediately, empower every abuse by the secret police, and immunize Donald Trump from any prosecutions. [5]

We're been here before, over and over, in fact. The Democratic Party has a HISTORY of smarmily helping the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) elevate anti-human reactionaries to the Supreme Court. Then every election they send out political junkmail saying only THEY stand between us and a far right wing Supreme Court that will overturn Roe vs. Wade, etc.

Recall that Antonin Scalia was confirmed by a Senate vote of 98-0. Those weren't 98 Republicans.
And in 1991 the man who proved indispensable to elevating known sexual harasser Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, another extreme reactionary, was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democratic Senator Joe Biden. (Yes, the same whom Barack "The Drone Assassin" made vice president, and who has pretensions of becoming president in his own right.)

Biden blocked the testimony of three corroborating witnesses for Thomas' victim Anita Hill at the confirmation hearings for Thomas. He also privately advises his Democratic Senate colleagues to discount Anita Hills' testimony. The damning story is recounted in a book by two establishment reporters. [6]

In December 2017 Biden, preparing his run for President in 2020, issued what The New Yorker mischaracterized as an apology to preempt criticism of his dirty deed in 1991, saying “I wish I had been able to do more.” Of course he certainly WAS able to "do more," or rather just NOT do what he DID, which was to privately smear Hill and block her supporting witnesses.

Unless he literally means he had no choice. Which could only mean the regime of Bush the Elder was blackmailing him.

If that is the case, Biden needs to come clean right now!

 Reactionary birds of a feather: Grassley and Feinstein, both born in 1933, both 85. 
Feinstein thinks life begins at 90, as she is currently running for another 6-year Senate term.

1]  "Dianne Feinstein Withholding Brett Kavanaugh Document From Fellow Judiciary Committee Democrats," The Intercept, September 12, 2018.


2]  "Brett Kavanaugh’s High School Friend Isn’t Helping the Nominee’s Case," Mother Jones, September 15, 2018.

3]  "A Sexual-Misconduct Allegation Against the Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Stirs Tension Among Democrats in Congress," The New Yorker, September 14, 2018.

4]  Similarly, New York officials let Donald Trump run his fraudulent "charitable foundation" in blatantly illegal fashion for years, and only after he became president initiated legal action against it. Which sure looks "political," don't it! Likewise, the FBI questions Paul Manafort years ago about his work in Ukraine, and took no action against him. And of course the NSA knows everything about everyone's money transfers, including Paul Manafort's. Since he'd been allowed for years to "launder" his money, underpay his taxes, and work for a Ukrainian ruler without registering as an "agent of a foreign power" without the government minding- and remember, the Democrat Obama was president for the previous eight years!- it is little wonder he was complacent. Yet suddently secret police apparatchik Robert Mueller III hurls all these charges at him. Rather like the scene in Casablanca, when the French police chief, under Gestapo pressure, suddenly "discovers" gambling in Rick's club.

5]  "Attorney Sent Letter to Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein Claiming Federal Court Employees Willing to Speak About Brett Kavanaugh," The Intercept, September 17, 2018.

6] See "How the Democrats Helped Create an Ultrareactionary Supreme Court- And Strip Women of Their Abortion Rights," July 10, 2018.

How the GOP and Trump Henchman Kris Kobach Stole the 2016 Presidential Election

The Gang Of Plunderers has been stealing elections for at least 20 years now. While the Democratic Party sleeps.

Well, not exactly. What the Democrats DO is turn a blind eye to the theft of elections and instead scream bloody murder at Ralph Nader (2000) and Vladimir Putin (2016)! Scapegoating irrelevant targets on which they unleash their wrath. They're afraid of the Republicans!

It's cowardly, and makes them accomplices to a rotten and corrupt and fraudulent system of pseudo-democracy. They would rather preserve the increasingly shabby and threadbare illusion of a fair electoral process then actually HAVE one! This makes them accomplices in their own victimization, as well as enemies of democracy.

But since the so-called Democrats are a front group for corporate oligarchy and global imperialism, why would they even care about democracy? Of course they wouldn't. And they don't. Democracy means power in the hands of the people, the precise opposite of corporate oligarchy and imperialism.

Aaron Maté of The Real News Network interviewed investigative journalist Greg Palast in August 2018 on some of the evil machinations of Kansas Republican Secretary of State and nominee for Governor Kris Kobach, and the theft of the 2016 presidential election. That makes three presidential elections stolen by GOP skulduggery- 2000, 2004, 2016. [1]

Seems they can't win anymore except by cheating.

Kobach has devoted his career to election theft. He has taken his underhanded methods of skulduggery national, as this video explains.

Palast describes systematic disenfranchising of tens of thousands of voters in "swing" states. The Democrats response? As in Florida in 2000, they don't defend the right of "minorities" to vote, Instead they gnash their teeth at the Green Party for daring to run in elections and "steal" the Democrats "votes," on the spurious assumption that every single voter for the Greens would be voting for Democrats instead. The other villain in the Democrats version of reality is that Internet memes spread by Russians induced people to vote for Trump who otherwise wouldn't have.

And according to Democratic Party astronomers, the moon is made out of green cheese.

The Republican apparatchiks who sit on the Supreme Court as the highest judges in the land have played their part in the election-stealing conspiracies of the Gang Of Plunderers (GOP), most infamously in 2000 when they banned Florida from conducting an accurate vote count, and by aiding and abetting Kobach's schemes. One method of covert disenfranchisement invented and spread by Kobach to the two-thirds of U.S. states the Republicans control, which these GOP operatives-in-judicial-robes have "legalized," is pretending that people with common black, Hispanic, and Asian-American last names living in different states are the same person, and if they fail to respond to a postcard mailed to them by election officials are automatically removed from the voter registration rolls without further notice to them. (As if people carefully read and comprehend every bit of seemingly insignificant mail, and mail never gets lost or misdelivered or stolen. And the phone hasn't been invented yet, so there's no way to call people.)

Here let me remind you that if it wasn't for Democratic Senators, these extremely partisan Justices would never have made it onto the Supreme Court. For the story of that betrayal, see footnote [2].

People who vote twice are subject to imprisonment for five years. Kris Kobach, who has conspired to deprive millions of the right to vote, should at least get life in prison. As a destroyer of democracy, he is subversive to the proclaimed values of America. Like a termite, he bores in secret, eating away at the foundational legitimacy of the U.S. electoral system.

The Man With the Crocodile Grin: Kris Kobach, anti-democratic reactionary 

white supremacist, GOP go-to guy for election-stealing.

1]  Watch "How the GOP and Trump Henchman Kris Kobach Stole the 2016 Presidential Election."

2]  For how the Democrats helped create a reactionary Supreme Court, see "How the Democrats Helped Create an Ultrareactionary Supreme Court- And Strip Women of Their Abortion Rights."

Corporate Oligarch Leslie Moonves Rewarded For Multiple Sexual Assaults With $100 Million

Nice work if you can get it.

CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves is negotiating a payout of $100 million as his price for leaving CBS after The New Yorker magazine has published a second expose of his sexual misconduct, assaults, and vengeful career-wrecking of women who spurn his crude advances. This time there are six more women describing forced fellatio, physical violence, and threats of retaliation for failure to satisfy The Great Man's sexual urges. [1]

This is the man who did so much to make Donald Trump president, boasting to an audience of rich creeps that "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." [2]

The CBS corporate board of directors has mooted the possibility of donating $20 million- one fifth of Moonves expected sack of loot- to the #MeToo anti-sexual harassment movement. They plan to hire an outside law firm to "investigate" the "allegations," and supposedly might pay Moonves nothing.
Corporate media has been reporting that even if Moonves gets no "severance" package, he has still extracted during his time at CBS one BILLION dollars! But the greed of such plutocrats is insatiable, so Moonves has been in a tug of war with the CBS board for weeks to try and extract every additional dollar he can.

Here's how dishonest CBS "News" is. In reporting the story as the first item on the 8 am (EST)  national broadcast on September 10, their radio network omitted the fact that CBS is hiring the outside law firm to investigate not just Moonves, but the environment of sexual harassment at CBS and at CBS "News."

The board issued the standard boilerplate bullshit about how they don't tolerate a hostile work environment and value their female employees and blah blah blah- a pack of lies. They're pretending not to know the reality inside CBS.

Moonves, for his part, is showing his stripes as a conscienceless, amoral goon, denying the allegations. But it is too many people making too many detailed claims for Moonves to have any credibility. He has also been trying to parry the truth with the smarmy line that he maybe made some women uncomfortable and for that he has regrets.

Oh shove it, you predator.

Moonves penchant for meting out punishment to women wasn't limited to those who failed to satisfy him sexually. After Janet Jackson's breast was accidentally exposed for nine-sixteenths of a second during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, Moonves was inexplicably enraged and proceeded to wreck her career. He used his control over the music video channels MTV and VH1 to ban her videos, wrecking sales of her current album. Her career never recovered. Justin Timberlake, who had torn her outfit, was held blameless by Moonves. Jackson's apology didn't mollify the suddenly hyper-prudish and ultra-Puritanical sex offender Moonves. This in a society drenched in sexual imagery, in which a mountain of hardcore pornography is readily available to anyone with an Internet connection or cable TV subscription. Truly the man is pathological. [3]

During the current scandal du jour, "the" media has been telling us how "brilliant" Moonves is. The evidence? CBS rose in the ratings from last to first. But as there are only four networks that matter, and the ratings differences between them are actually small, this is not so impressive. They generally run neck-in-neck, and often shift in position. It's a big deal to the corporations because they are hyper-competitive. (Even while being practically indistinguishable in their content.) Even the BBC fed its listeners the line about Moonves' "genius" as a "programmer."

This is standard for the BBC. The BBC is slavishly sycophantic in its parroting of the lines of the U.S. power establishment. The BBC must have no self-respect. (The BBC- British Broadcasting Corporation- is the official propaganda arm of the British government. It broadcasts around the world in various languages, especially to "Commonwealth" nations- that is, former British colonies.)

The End. (Is that okay, to end like that? I mean, it is the end!)

1]  "As Leslie Moonves Negotiates His Exit from CBS, Six Women Raise New Assault and Harassment Claims," New Yorker, September 9, 2018.

2]  "Leslie Moonves on Donald Trump: 'It May Not Be Good for America, but It's Damn Good for CBS,'" The Hollywood Reporter, February 29, 2016.  At the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco, Moonves enthused, "I've never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going." Moonves also giddily said, "Man, who would have expected the ride we're all having right now? ... The money's rolling in and this is fun."

And now we get to see the EPA wrecked, which will despoil the environment and give thousands more people cancer. And thousands of immigrant children kidnapped by ICE. Fun.

What a fucker.

3]  "Exclusive: Les Moonves Was Obsessed With Ruining Janet Jackson’s Career, Sources Say," Huffington Post, September 6, 2018.

                       Utterly selfish billionaire creep Leslie Moonves.

The Myth of Trump's "Uniqueness"

Or let's just say his uniqueness and alleged unprecedentedness for a U.S. president is exaggerated.

Lawless? What about Andrew Jackson, who ignored a Supreme Court decision and forced an entire Native American tribe on a death march.

Or George Bush, who violated U.S. law and the anti-torture treaty the U.S. was obligated to obey, and waged illegal aggressive war on Iraq?

Or Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama, who flouted his oath of office by failing to faithfully execute the laws of the land and uphold the U.S. Constitution by NOT prosecuting U.S. torturers, or financiers who committed fraud.

Or how about Ronald Reagan, who violated the Boland Amendment, a U.S. law forbidding aid to the contra terrorists committing atrocities in Nicaragua?

Or how about hundreds of other examples from U.S. history?

Here's how the "liberal" and very bourgeois New Yorker magazine describes Donald Trump:

"Amazingly, it is no longer big news when the occupant of the Oval Office is shown to be callous, ignorant, nasty, and untruthful." [1]

Just like Nixon. Or Ford. Or Reagan. Or both Bushes. It's "amazing" if you just arrived here from another planet.

But only some of those adjectives apply to other presidents. We can't call Obama, Clinton, or Carter, "ignorant," for example. They knew plenty.

Trump is the same, just more so.

The real establishment problem with Trump isn't any of those negative qualities- which except for ignorance are assets in the head manager of a global empire. The beef is his refusal to respect the established norms of U.S. imperialist strategy. Attacking trading partners, undermining the NATO military "alliance," publicly insulting allied heads of state, is harmful to U.S. power, at least potentially. Trump slashes aimlessly at reality, without a strategy. His existential modus operandi, which he has brought into the White House, is to bully and bluster, alternated with blatant flattery, pushing others off-balance psychologically in order to con them or just flat-out rip them off. He's currently conducting trade "policy" with an eye to shoving one-sided trade deals down the throats of Mexico, Canada, Europe, and China. This seems to have succeeded with Mexico, and probably will with Canada, which will probably end up extorted into sacrificing its dairy farmers, who are currently protected, and maybe its commercial mass  culture industry too. Europe and China will be tougher nuts to crack, but the U.S. has the upper hand with them too.

But while the New Yorker missed the mark, Trump is different in some ways.

Personality: Trump is a blatant narcissist. All presidents have narcissistic tendencies, or they wouldn't think they should be president. But Trump is clinically narcissistic. Trump also is extremely impulsive. And he habitually humiliates people- but so did Nixon, for example. Trump's difference here is one of degree, not kind.

Then there is lying. Of course all presidents lie, but Trump's lies are stupid, blatant, and insulting to our intelligence. Also much more frequent. Or maybe not much more. Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes, Obama all lied a hell of a lot. But there lies could be overlooked by the establishment media, even affirmed as truths, so it was okay as far as the power structure was concerned, They were lies backed by the system, unlike most of Trump's.

Besides personality, Trump is very different in that he is in open conflict with the Deep State, the real power, the secret police agencies including parts of the military, especially the National Security Agency, (NSA), the super-surveillance of everyone and everything arm of U.S. imperialism. That is more significant than Trump's outré personality.

A big reason most of the establishment media exaggerates the uniqueness is Trump is its need to obfuscate the reality of the existence of U.S. imperialism. As always, they cover the true nature of the U.S. system of corporate oligarchy and empire with a heavy blanket of gaslighting propaganda. To perceive reality under this system is to feel like one is losing one's mind, that either one must be crazy or "everyone else" is crazy. Perceiving reality while retaining one's sanity is a struggle in a system where horrendous crimes, such as the deliberate destruction of three skyscrapers under cover of allowing two jets to crash into two of them, is carried out openly and blatantly lied about by every media source, including "alternative" ones, for years thereafter. That happened on September 11, 2001. What happened next made the motives clear: invasion of Iraq, the first of the planned invasion of seven Middle East countries to "remake" the region more to the liking of imperialists drunk on power, and the permanent erasure of the already weak personal rights against state power in the U.S. The latter is a bipartisan project, which Barack "The Drone Assassin" enthusiastically and sneakily continued, for example with the insertion into the military budget of a law empowering the Federal government to declare any U.S. citizen a "terrorist" and imprison that person indefinitely in military gulag without charges or recourse to any legal process whatsoever.

Ah, "liberalism!" In some ways indistinguishable from "conservatism." Now that's "bipartisanship"!

1]  "Crazytown: A Bob Woodward Book, an Anonymous New York Times Op-Ed, and a Growing Crisis for the Trump Presidency- The Republican 'resistance' goes public (sort of), and everyone freaks out," New Yorker, September 6, 2018, third paragraph, last sentence.

With Genocidal Campaign Against Uighurs, China Surpasses U.S. For Title of World's Largest Prison Population

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination says China has imprisoned one million Uighurs in "reeducation" centers, employing the degradation and brainwashing techniques they perfected under the cult dictator Mao Zedong to wipe out the ethnic identities of the victims. Add that to the "official" number of prisoners China admits to having, two million, and you get a total of three million. This surpasses the nominal U.S. total of 2.2 million inmates, so China takes the lead in the Mass Incarceration Tournament.

That's just in the Uighur "autonomous region," an Orwellian designation for a region under the boot heel of a "Communist" party overlord that is being overrun by Han Chinese, and where the Uighurs are under tight police repression. As China is seeking to eliminate the Uighurs as a distinct population group with their own identity, China is in the process of committing genocide against the Uighurs.

The UN committee also said that perhaps another 2 million Uighurs in the Xinjiang "autonomous region" were being dragooned into Maoist-style "political camps for indoctrination." The Uighur prisoners are forced to renounce their Muslim religion and swear fealty to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.

So China has more than the "official" number of 2 million prisoners. It is actually 3 or 4 million.



China's UN ambassador in Geneva, where the committee met, Yu Jianhua, spouted cynical rhetoric claiming China was taking steps to achieve equality and solidarity between all ethnic groups. Yeah, right. And the Holocaust is a myth.

Human rights groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Chinese Human Rights Defenders, submitted reports to the UN body documenting the repression.

But don't count the U.S. out in the competition for the title of World's Most Punitive Nation. The U.S. also has many uncounted prisoners- uncounted in official tallies. There are thousands of immigrants in "detention," their asylum claims brusquely brushed aside. There are people accused of crimes and held in jail pending trial, either denied bail or unable to afford it. And it's not clear to me whether the many thousands of people serving sentences of less than a year in city and county jails are counted. Nevertheless, China, with an estimated one million Uighur political prisoners in brainwashing/torture centers added to the official two million prisoners, is now Number One in gross total prisoners.

And as a percentage of the adult population imprisoned, the U.S. is still stands tall and proud in First Place. And in proportion to national population, the U.S. has China beat by a country mile, with only a fourth of China's population (about 330 million vs. China's 1.3 billion people) but with over one-half to two-thirds China's tally of prisoners.

So the U.S. is still very, very competitive in this yardstick of repression, And in terms of an omniscient surveillance state, the U.S. has the lead, thanks mainly to the NSA, but also to the promiscuous use of "national security letters" by the FBI, about 50,000 issued per year in the name of "fighting terrorism," where demands are made for personal financial, medical, library, school, and all manner of other records, with the record-holders forced to provide the information and threatened to tell no one, on pain of severe criminal penalties. Who knew there were so many "terrorists" in the U.S.?

China, like numerous nations around the globe, has eagerly followed in the U.S.' footsteps and adopted the political and propaganda strategy the U.S. pioneered in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 arranged demolitions of three skyscrapers in Manhattan and the U.S. government-sent anthrax letters, claiming to be "fighting terrorism" by the mass imprisonment and brainwashing of Uighurs. Bashar al-Assad similarly adopted the "fighting terrorism" story in his war against the Syrian people, ongoing for seven years now and near its depressing and horrific climax.

Keep on eye on Syria in the imprisonment sweepstakes. With the monstrous Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian allies about the finally snuff out the popular uprising against the dictatorship, expect many tens of thousands to be imprisoned, and tortured. Many will end up being murdered, as per the standard practice of the Assad regime. (The number would be even higher except for the fact that after Assad and his allies finish barrel-bombing Idlib province, the last stand of the uprising, and conquer it, there wil be thousands of summary executions.)

Thank you, Obama, Trump, and "anti-imperialists" and "peace activists" for allowing Assad to remain in power by destroying "his" country in order to "save" it.

 Leaders in Repression: Xi Jinping and Bashar al-Assad

Democrats Put On An Empty Show of "Resistance" To Kavanaugh Supreme Court Nomination

You have to hand it to Democratic Party politicians: they are indefatigable con artists.

Their latest con, from just yesterday, was trying to stop the wheels of the Republican-controlled Senate from inevitably placing the extreme, anti-human reactionary ideologue Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.

Trump's presidential predecessor, Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama, nominated Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy left by the departure of Justice Anthony Kennedy in mid-March of 2016. That was TEN MONTHS before the end of Obama's term. The Republicans in the Senate, led by their fuhrer, I mean leader, Senator Mitch "Coalbrain" McConnell, refused to hold necessary hearings to consider the nomination.

What did the Democrats do? Did they scream bloody murder? Did Obama use the bully pulpit of the presidency to denounce this travesty, this usurpation of his presidential prerogative, daily or at least weekly? Did the Democrats launch an unrelenting media campaign to force the Gang Of Plunderers (GOP) to end the obstructionism of normal Constitutional process?

They did not. They just rolled over and played dead. Yet another despicable act by that reactoinary party of con artists and the execrable Obama.

Imagine if the situation was reversed. What do you think the Republicans would have done if a Democratic-controlled Senate snuffed a nominee of a Republican president like that? They'd threaten a civil war if they had to.

But then, the Democrats let the GOP steal at least three presidential elections from them -2000, 2004,
and 2016.

The truth is, the Democrats WANT a reactionary Supreme Court. They smarmily disguise the fact with political gamesmanship.

Antonin Scalia, one of the most extreme reactionaries ever elevated to the high court, was confirmed by the Senate 98-0! That means every Democratic Senator voted for that vile creature. And Clarence Thomas would never have made it if not for Senator Joe Biden, who chaired the Judiciary Committed in the then-Democratic-majority Senate. He told the other Democrats to discount the damning testimony of Anita Hill about Thomas' gross sexual misconduct. [1]

EVERY rightwing horrible who got to wear the robes of ultimate judicial power got there with the crucial votes of Democratic Senators. The Democrats merely POSE as "liberals." They are in fact pro-repression, pro-corporate tyranny in their actions.

So on Tuesday morning, during the opening of the sham "confirmation hearings" for rightwing GOP apparatchik Brett Kavanaugh by the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by a fossilized reactionary Senator from Iowa, Charles Grassley, we were treated to stunts by Democratic Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Richard Blumenthal, and others, trying to raise points of order with the authoritarian Grassley, who ignored them, talked over them like he was deaf, and repeatedly banged his gavel to try and silence them. To be sure, the Democrats objections were valid- such as the fact that the Trump regime dumped 40,000 documents on the Committee the day before, leaving no time to read and evaluate them, and refuses to release another 100,000 dealing with Kavanaugh's crimes when he was a henchman to President George W. Bush in the White House. These documents probably contain proof that Kavanaugh lied during his previous Senate confirmation hearings, when he was made a Federal Appeals Court judge by Bush. He swore then he'd had nothing to do with torture policy. There is evidence this was a lie. (By the way, Booker is a reactionary, as Glen Ford has documented, and Kamala Harris quashed an investigation into Steve Mnuchin, whose bank was found by her staff when she was California state attorney general to have committed at LEAST 1,000 cases of mortgage foreclosure fraud, stealing people's homes. So to see people like that posturing as Brave Liberal Warriors is particularly nauseating.) Mnuchin is now Trump's Treasury Secretary, thanks to Harris aiding and abetting his mountain of felonies. [2]

But what if the Democrats manage to stall the confirmation process past the upcoming midterm election in November? Say they manage to retake the Senate? That's a long shot, and if it happened they would have only a bare majority. They'll have to stall until the new Senate is seated next January. And then what? RIGHTWING DEMOCRATS FROM PRO-TRUMP STATES ARE GOING TO VOTE TO CONFIRM KAVANAUGH! So this whole "opposition" show is just to snooker people into thinking the Democrats are "fighting" the Kavanaugh nomination.

They should have done their fighting during the ten months McConnell and his wrecking crew bottled up the nomination of Merrick Garland. Not that Garland was any prize. He's a rightwinger, just not an extreme one like the despicable Kavanaugh. [3]

1]  Biden's despicable role is documented in the book Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, by two establishment journalists (one of which went on to become the first woman to become top editor at the New York Times, Jill Abramson).

2]  To discover the real Booker behind the mask, see: "Glen Ford Speaks about the Black 'Mis-Leadership' Class," October 18, 2013; "Cory Booker is No Progressive: The Countless Reasons Why He Will Not Be a Good Senator," The Majority Report with Sam Seder, August 12, 2013; and "Glen Ford: Corporate Assault on Public Education," May 9, 2012, all on youtube.com

3]  For what an anti-human interest scumbag Kavanaugh is, see "Report Finds Judge Kavanaugh Ruled Against Public Interest in Almost All of His District Court Cases," Democracy Now!, September 5, 2018.

The Catholic Church Is A Global Pedophilia Cult. It's Well Past Time To Label It As Such.

The latest "shocking revelation" about Catholic priests sexually preying on children under their control, with the institutional protection of their powerful organization, the Roman Catholic Church, comes from the state of Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

A state Grand Jury has issued an 884 page report detailing 70 years of criminal sexual acts perpetrated by Catholic priests in that state against children. 301 priests- 301!- were identified as perpetrators, and over 1000 children were their victims. They would take nude photos of boys and pass them around (a violation of draconian Federal child pornography laws). The report characterized the priests' activities as a "child porn ring."

The Pennsylvania state attorney general, Josh Shapiro, said "the Church protected the perpetrators at all costs." He described a "playbook" for how to hide the crimes of their priests that the Church bosses used. In other words, they committed criminal conspiracy, and aided and abetted the thousands of sex crimes.

Among the atrocities the Catholic Church committed against children in their clutches in Pennsylvania are these:

-A 9 year old boy forced to perform fellatio, then his mouth washed out with "Holy" water. (That must sanctify the sin, right?)

-Five girls in the same family were used for sex.

-A 7 year old girl was raped in the hospital after her tonsils were removed.

-An 18 month old baby was sexually assaulted. (Hey, I have a motto for this cult: "The Catholic Church: Plumbing the Depths of Depravity in God's Name.")

As in all the Catholic Church pedophilia and other sexual abuse scandals, the same pattern of the hierarchy- the church bosses- covering up and indeed protecting the sexual criminals in their employ. When things get hot, they merely transfer the perpetrator. They never so much as expel the offender, much less go to the police. This protection racket of course runs right up to the top, at the Vatican and the various "Popes" who run this racketeering enterprise with absolute authority, (Funny, the U.S. doesn't bring charges against the CC under the RICO statutes, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act. They only bring such charges against Mafioso and progressive activists. Reactionary power institutions have each others' backs.)

The Pennsylvania state attorney general, in announcing the Grand Jury's report, said he believes there were even more pedophile priests, and more victims, that they couldn't identify. The investigation relied on the Church's written records, and on victims coming forward. He assumed the Church didn't keep thorough written records, and that not all victims have come forward. Those are good assumptions.

This is just the latest news of rampant sexual crimes by priests preying on children. In states all over the U.S., it has been the same story.

And it's the same story in numerous countries around the world, from Latin America, to Europe, to Asia, to Australia. Always the same thing. Always going to the top of the hierarchy. Unending criminal behavior under cover of "holy" religion, always kept secret, the victims further victimized by this mind control cult with threats and guilt-tripping.

It is long past time to recognize the Catholic Church for what it is- a global pedophilia criminal conspiracy. It should be shut down under the racketeering laws.

Of course it won't be. Not just because it's so "powerful." But also because it is an ally of governments. It conditions people in its grip to be obedient authoritarians. It serves a vital function for the secular rulers.

Not by accident are so many police and secret police in many countries, including the U.S., Catholics. There's an irony for you!

Any parent who would put their child in the clutches of these known criminals is irresponsible.

Is Paul Manafort Banking on a Trump Pardon? He Better Be.

What he's doing makes no sense otherwise.

First, he went to trial in Federal court. U.S. Federal courts are like Chinese courts- both have a conviction rate around 98%. The laws, procedures, and court rules are constructed to virtually guarantee convictions. And the judges are mostly pro-prosecution; many actually ARE former prosecutors. I have yet to read of a judge with a background as a defense attorney, much less a Legal Aid lawyer, etc.

Second, Manafort is obviously "guilty" under U.S. law of the charges heaped on his head, "tax fraud" and "bank fraud."  U.S. law is very repressive. (Manafort faces possible life in prison on the current charges!) But applying U.S. law, Manafort is guilty. He apparently didn't report all his income to the tax authorities (the IRS, Internal Revenue Service), which is being labeled tax fraud, a crime. (The vast majority of incidents of unreported income are treated as civil matters in the U.S. and the IRS applies penalties and interest, so every criminal prosecution for tax evasion is in a sense selective prosecution.)

The bank fraud charge is another legal curve ball. A bank president hankered after an appointment in the Trump regime, so he approved a loan for Manafort over the objections of his underlings. In other words, he bribed Manafort with a dicey loan. Manafort's paperwork for the loan was inaccurate, but the application was really pro forma, since the bank president made the decision without regard to Manafort's creditworthiness. Yet the false paperwork is the basis for claiming that Manafort "defrauded" the bank- even though the head of the bank was well-aware of what was going on.

In the U.S., the rich are glorified by the media on a daily basis. Filthy rich billionaires like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and others are feted as figures of admiration. But in this trial, the government prosecutors used a common tactic, stoking class envy and resentment. Their opening gambit was harping on expensive clothes Manafort bought (the media in the U.S. had a great time ridiculing the items of clothing- since they are devoted to bringing down Trump, naturally they are hostile to Manafort). I find it hypocritical for a government that is the handmaiden of the super-rich to do an ideological somersault and play that populist, resent-the-rich card in court.

 In this case obviously Manafort was never going to be prosecuted if he hadn't been involved with Trump and thus provides a target for the special prosecutor, former FBI secret police chief Robert S. Mueller III, to use as a vector to get at Trump by forcing Manafort to "cooperate" in the Get Trump campaign of the secret police, most of the major media, and the Democratic Party. The FBI had long known about what Manafort was up to, having interrogated him and his former henchman Rick Gates, an admitted adulterer and crook who embezzled from Manafort (now turned states' evidence) in 2014. At that time the Department of "Justice" didn't see any reason to bring charges, even though they were questioning him about his work for the since-overthrown president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. Now however, Mueller is charging him for failing to register as an agent of a foreign power- that charge to be tried in an upcoming, separate trial. And of course the CIA and NSA knew all about his activities, as Manafort was advising the former president of Ukraine when he was in office, retroactively deemed a hostile act since the U.S. subsequently arranged the overthrow of that president. The FBI, DEA, CIA, and other agencies have free access to the NSA's massive databases. All Paul Manafort's telephone calls (the content, not just the metadata, as the mendacious U.S. media keeps lying), emails, websearches, bank transfers, and more are in the NSA's possession, and a search of "Paul Manafort" would instantly pull up all that data, (All your data is in the NSA's paws too.) [1]

So the government knew all about everything Manafort was doing that Mueller has suddenly decided is criminal and merits prosecution.

By the way, Manafort isn't the only person doing what he did. Other political hustlers "advise" foreign "leaders" and don't necessarily register. In Britain, Tony Blair has made millions as an image adviser to tyrants- but UK law isn't U.S. law. In the U.S., Israel has an entire cadre of agents of influence, in and out of the U.S. government, who don't register as their agents.

But the U.S. "justice" system has nothing to do with justice. It is political from start to finish.

Manafort's lawyers didn't call any defense witnesses. Their efforts in the trial were limited to cross-examining the government's witnesses, and making opening and closing arguments. In U.S. trials, prosecutors get to speak last to the jury before the jurors retire to deliberate on a verdict- yet another advantage for the government, as they're making the final impression and can rebut whatever the defense said without contradiction and make any and all manner of prejudicial assertions and slip in distorted or even false facts.

Manafort's defense team tried to blame everything on Rick Gates, the government's "star" witness. I rather doubt a conviction will be avoided. They'll be lucky to even get a hung jury (when the jurors can't agree on a unanimous verdict), in which case Manafort can and will be retried, unless he caves and offers Mueller something incriminating on Trump.

One defense "strategy" seems to be relying on a guilty verdict being overturned on appeal. Seems to me Manafort's lawyers are taking him for a ride, one very profitable for them. (Manafort had five very expensive lawyers in court for the trial.)

I can only guess that Manafort expects Trump to ultimately pardon him (after Manafort has been drained of hundreds of thousands of dollars by his lawyers). If that is what Manafort is counting on, he's a fool. He probably doesn't have any genuine information that could convict Trump of anything. Because it is obvious there was no conspiracy between Trump or anyone else and the Russians to hack computers or somehow fix the election. So Trump has no incentive to pardon Manafort.

 You handsome devil, you! (What, no $15,000 ostrich jacket?)

1]  "Manafort Asks Federal Judge in Virginia to Dismiss Fraud Case," Bloomberg, March 27, 2018. Manafort's lawyers filed a pre-trial motion, which Bloomberg News described thusly:

In his filing, Manafort [that is, Manafort's lawyers] refers to Justice Department interest in his activities that preceded his work as [Trump's] campaign chairman. In July 2014, he met with U.S. prosecutors and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents to discuss his offshore consulting activities, the filing said.

“The DOJ had thus already investigated Mr. Manafort’s tax filings for the time period covered by the indictment” and chose not to charge him, according to the filing. “The Special Counsel was obviously the driving force behind the decision to charge Mr. Manafort.”