Month: November 2019

Patriot Act Reauthorization

While the country was sitting around watching the TV or scratching their asses while Uncle Bob tells them what is what in the impeachment…..the Dems proved to me that they are just as big a warmonger bunch of d/bags as the GOP…..

Why?

Without much ado the Dems in the House voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act and all the authoritarian crap that goes with it……House Democrats are ignoring civil liberties and including a three month straight reauthorization of the Patriot Act (with zero reform) in the continuing resolution.

Buried in a stopgap government funding resolution unveiled by House Democrats Monday is a provision that would reauthorize the notoriously abusive Patriot Act for three months, a move privacy advocates warned would ensure President Donald Trump’s administration holds on to “terrifying authoritarian surveillance powers.”

Evan Greer, deputy director of digital rights group Fight for the Future, highlighted the provision on Twitter shortly after House Democrats released the continuing resolution (pdf), which would temporarily avert a looming government shutdown by providing funding for federal agencies through December 20. A House vote on the measure is expected as early as Tuesday.

“The continuing resolution would reauthorize a mass surveillance authority that has never been proven useful and that has consistently broken the laws and rules governing surveillance,” tweeted Demand Progress. “Democrats must not hand this president these dangerous Patriot Act authorities.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/19/handing-trump-terrifying-authoritarian-surveillance-powers-house-democrats-include

The Dems are proving that they are bigger Neocon toadies than their GOP counterparts…..https://www.truthdig.com/articles/democrats-are-becoming-the-party-of-permanent-war/

I do this stuff so that you do not have and maybe miss an episode of “Naked And Afraid”…you are welcome.

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The Middle East And The Future

I have been remiss in my postings on the Middle East…the theater in DC has been just too much to ignore…at least for me…..I need to get back to my first interest and start keeping my readers abreast of the situations that could involve them at any turn.

The Middle East since the US invaded Iraq has been in the process of a re-alignment…..the war of words between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been getting warmer and warmer….to the point of a scared KSA to form an alliance with Israel…..

After years of bitter rivalry, the Saudis and the Iranians are considering how they can dial down their mutual animosity. The formerly powerful Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of Persian Gulf monarchs is atomizing because Saudi Arabia is losing its grip. And Washington’s former domination of the region appears to be in decline.

Some of these developments are long-standing, pre-dating the cruise missile and drone assault that knocked out 50 percent of Saudi Arabia’s oil production. But the double shock—Turkey’s lunge into Syria and the September missile attack—is accelerating these changes.

Middle East: a Complex Re-alignment

And this realignment will come with a cost thanks to the foreign policy of Trump and his family of thugs……our ability will be greatly diminished…..

This is an analysis from a defense think tank so it will be a bit skewed…..

The twin crises in Syria and Iraq are altering the region’s battlefields and geopolitical dynamics. Russia, Turkey, Iran, the Assad regime, and ISIS are sweeping in as U.S. troops withdraw from northeastern Syria. In neighboring Iraq, widespread popular protests are creating military and political opportunities for Iran and its proxies. Here are some of the grim implications for U.S. national security:

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/10/10-ways-americas-situation-middle-east-will-get-worse/160752/

As an educated Middle East wonk I have asked just what the Hell Trump is doing in Syria….he removed troops….then sent them back to take Syrian oil….and a wordy back and forth……but the simple question is what the Hell is Trump doing?

Conflicting statements from the Trump insiders makes it more difficult to understand…..

To Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley and the rest of the military brass, the U.S. objective is the same as it ever was: “the enduring defeat of ISIS.” Speaking on ABC’s This Week, Milley placed the number of U.S. troops in Syria somewhere between 500 to 600, but most certainly less than 1,000. President Trump’s decision to park hundreds of troops next to Syria’s eastern oil fields is presumably just an extension of the original mission. Nothing to see here folks: we are pressing on.

Ask Defense Secretary Mark Esper the same question, however, and you will get a different answer. In Esper’s telling, preventing the Islamic State from retaking the oil fields is only one goal on a longer list, to include ensuring the Syrian Kurds receive all of the profits and blocking the Assad regime and the Russians from accessing the area. About 250 miles to the south, a couple of hundred U.S. soldiers stationed at al-Tanf along the Iraq-Syria border are executing what is an altogether different mission entirely: disrupting Iran’s attempt to establish an uninterrupted supply route from Iraq through Syria to Lebanon.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/skeptics/take-oil-pull-troops-what-donald-trump-doing-syria-95561

To quote my grandmother….”that makes everything as clear as mud”……

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Closing Thought–26Nov19

Where have we heard of the “Thought Police” before?

You may have had to read a book to get that answer.

It looks like the Chinese are detaining people before they commit the crime…..

The watch towers, double-locked doors, and video surveillance in the Chinese camps are there “to prevent escapes.” Uighurs and other minorities held inside are scored on how well they speak the dominant Mandarin language and follow strict rules on everything down to bathing and using the toilet, scores that determine if they can leave, the AP reports. “Manner education” is mandatory, but “vocational skills improvement” is offered only after a year in the camps. Voluntary job training is the reason the Chinese government has given for detaining more than a million ethnic minorities, most of them Muslims. But a classified blueprint leaked to the media shows the camps are instead precisely what former detainees have described: Forced ideological and behavioral re-education centers run in secret.

The classified documents lay out the Chinese government’s deliberate strategy to lock up ethnic minorities even before they commit a crime, to rewire their thoughts and the language they speak. The papers also show how Beijing is pioneering a new form of social control using data and artificial intelligence. Drawing on data collected by mass surveillance technology, computers issued the names of tens of thousands of people for interrogation or detention in just one week. Experts say the documents spell out a vast system that targets, surveils, and grades entire ethnicities to forcibly assimilate and subdue them—especially Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim Turkic minority of more than 10 million people with their own language and culture. Click for the full article.

Back in the Dark Ages of our foreign policy (pre-2017) the president would issue a condemnation of such blatant violations of a person’s rights…..but those days are GONE…..I mean Trump will not come out in support in of the democracy protests in Hong Kong and has threatened to veto a bill passed in a bi-partisan move that condemns the Chinese government for the iron fist crack down.

So he will allow the mistreatment of a Muslim minority but will come out for a Christian minority in Iraq…..what a bone head hypocrite.

Nothing more heinous than playing games with people’s lives….and we Americans know how that works.

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That Mayor Pete News

After the last debate the MSM has a new favorite Dem candidate after Biden….Mayor Pete Buttigieg……is the fair hair child (for now)…..

For me he is way to much a Corporatist candidate…….I want us to stop using the term “Centrist”……they are not so they are however owned by the corporations and money…….and as his favoritism grows more and more history comes rolling out of the woodwork…..

For instance in 2010 Mayor Pete is caught on camera praising the Tea Party……

South Bend, Indiana Mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is facing backlash over a resurfaced video from 2010 in which he offered words of praise for the right-wing Tea Party movement and expressed a desire to find common ground.

During an October 2010 forum in Indiana hosted by the Tea Party-affiliated group Citizens for Common Sense, Buttigieg—then a candidate for Indiana state treasurer—told the audience that “there’s some, especially in my party, who think the Tea Party’s a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party.”

“But there are many others who believe that the Tea Party’s motivated by real concerns about the direction of our government, and the responses of our government to citizens,” Buttigieg said. “And above all a frustration with business as usual. That is what motivated me to run. And so while we may come from often very different perspectives, I believe we might find that we have a lot in common.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/19/disqualifying-buttigieg-faces-backlash-praising-right-wing-tea-party-movement

In the beginning I could see the need for the Tea Party but then it became co-opted by bigots, Xenophobes, etc……it gave us the biggest cowards and liars…Gohmert, Meadows, Scalise, so on and on…..and look where these slugs have brought the country to……it is disgusting.

Sorry I digress…..back to Mayor Pete……

One of the biggest problems for Mayor Pete is that his appeal to black and brown voters is just not there….I mean he cannot even get an endorsement from a fellow city employee…..

The senior black member of the city’s Common Council has endorsed Joe Biden for president instead of South Bend’s own Pete Buttigieg. Oliver Davis prefers Biden’s experience to his mayor’s, Politico reports. “When you’re flying in the middle of a storm, you want to make sure you have steady, experienced leadership,” Davis said, adding that some backers at home thought Buttigieg should remain in office in Indiana longer to gain experience before running for president. Davis also appeared miffed that Buttigieg didn’t consult him and other black council members before launching his campaign, especially given his weak support among black voters nationally: “Don’t you think that you would take some time to talk to us in town before you lift off?” Davis ran to succeed Buttigieg this year but was defeated by the mayor’s choice.

Davis’ decision doesn’t reshape the race, but it highlights the difficulty Buttigieg is having in drawing support from people who aren’t white. A Quinnipiac University poll shows less than 1 percent of likely black voters in South Carolina support him, per the Washington Post. A major reason could be that Buttigieg is gay; black Americans are much less likely than whites to endorse same-sex marriage, Pew has found. But experts and analysts say there are so many factors in this election that it’s more complicated than that, per NBC. “The true Pete Buttigieg test, the one he’s unquestionably failing, has to do with the résumé and the issues,” one political scientist said.

I have been saying all along the Mayor Pete was nothing more than a corporatist candidate…his issues lean toward protecting the wealthy corporations rather than the country……as a support to my belief…..

Why has Buttigieg flipped from being a putative progressive to being perhaps the most conservative, pro-corporate Democrat remaining in the field? A good place to start would be to follow the money.

Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, the fourth-largest town in Indiana, is the shiny new object in the race to become the Democrats’ candidate for president in 2020. Coming from almost nowhere, he’s finished first in several recent Iowa polls.

Superficially, there’s a lot that’s appealing about Mayor Pete: He’s articulate, quick on his feet, can speak in full paragraphs—sometimes in Norwegian—and projects a sense of optimism. But when you scratch below the service, it’s hard to find Buttigieg’s core convictions, and and he now appears to have put himself up for sale to corporate interests

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/11/22/pete-buttigieg-just-shill-corporations-and-donor-class

He may be a corporate favorite but until he can pull the wool over the eyes of black voters like the Clinton machine has done then he will be just another “also ran”.

I read this stuff so you do not have to….you are welcome!

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The Real Constitutional Crisis

#2 In A Series

To help my reader keep up begin with Part One……https://lobotero.com/2019/11/25/thoughts-on-impeachment-and-the-trial/

As the House portion of this drama draws to a close we hear daily that we are in a Constitutional crisis….on that point I agree for we have a leader that thumbs his nose at the Constitution……

Yes I said “Thumbs” and in a wealth of ways……just a few of the ways he is in violation of the document……

Violation of Constitution on Domestic Emoluments; Violation of Constitution on Foreign Emoluments; Incitement of Violence; Interference With Voting Rights; Discrimination Based On Religion; Illegal War; Illegal Threat of Nuclear War; Abuse of Pardon Power; Obstruction of Justice; Politicizing Prosecutions; Failure to Reasonably Prepare for or Respond to Hurricanes Harvey and Maria; Separating Children and Infants from Families; Illegally Attempting to Influence an Election Tax Fraud and Public Misrepresentation; Assaulting Freedom of the Press; Supporting a Coup in Venezuela; Unconstitutional Declaration of Emergency; Instructing Border Patrol to Violate the Law; Refusal to Comply With Subpoenas; Declaration of Emergency Without Basis In Order to Violate the Will of Congress; Illegal Proliferation of Nuclear Technology; Illegally Removing the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

I know a few in that list is a bit of a stretch but it all comes down to interpretation

The Constitution itself is the crisis that we keep hearing about in the MSM and from those pundits with an agenda……

To no small degree, “our” (their) archaic Constitution is the constitutional crisis. It helped hatched the Trumpenstein and it is helping keep it in office perhaps for five or, God help us, more years. The way to get rid of this terrible tyrant is through a mass and prolonged popular rebellion that includes among its demands the call for a new national charter, one that includes among its provisions (just for starters) the abolition of anti-democratic absurdities like the Electoral College, the disenfranchisements of Puerto Rico and Washington DC, the provision of two Senators to each state regardless of its population size, the lifetime appointment of Supreme Court Justices, and the eviction of private money from public elections. The whole damn system that spat up/shat out Malignant Orange is guilty as Hell. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote not long before his death, “the real issue to be faced” beyond superficial matters is “the radical reconstruction of society itself.”

The Real Constitutional Crisis: The Constitution

Then we have those that say “not to worry this to shall pass”…..I say WRONG!

Even a former GOP Representative Justin Amash has made his thoughts known….

Independent Rep. Justin Amash said on Wednesday that U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland’s testimony to House Intelligence Committee hearing on impeachment was the latest evidence against President Donald Trump that—if Trump was a regular person facing a grand jury—would result in certain indictment.

Amash, who left the Republican party in July 2019 over Trump’s behavior and the refusal of GOP leaders to hold him accountable, pointed out on Twitter that “impeachment in the House is an indictment.”

“If this were an ordinary prosecution, there’s no grand jury in America that would not return an indictment on the facts and evidence presented in these hearings,” said Amash.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/20/ex-republican-justin-amash-says-theres-not-jury-country-wouldnt-indict-trump-based

One conservative (politician) with a spine does not a party make…..PERIOD!

The Trump presidency has changed everything and we will have a long journey back to normalcy…..if ever.

Apparently an oath given before God (if you believe that sort of thing) does not matter……..

Before you toadies go on the attack maybe it would help to refresh your memory (if you have one) of what the Constitution is all about…..

https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution

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Why Is Latin America Exploding?

It is interesting that since 2017 Latin America has become a hot bed of right wing politics and protests….are the two related?

Riots in Venezuela, Chile (again), Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, even Brazil is feeling the pressures. People taking to the streets and the government uses police and military to calm the population.

The Newest outbreak of protests is in the country of Colombia……

Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in the Colombian capital on Saturday as anti-government protests continued for a third day amid rising fear and violence.

The protests began on Thursday when more than 200,000 people took part in what they called a national strike over a number of grievances, including possible economic reforms by the government of right-wing President Ivan Duque.

While the majority of the protesters continue to demonstrate peacefully, banging kitchenware in the streets in a traditional Latin American protest called a “cacerolazo” [casseroles], some small factions have clashed with security forces in Bogota and country-wide.

Three protesters have died in the unrest so far, while a car bomb in the western region of Cauca killed at least three police and left 10 others wounded on Friday.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/fear-grips-colombia-protesters-anti-gov-rallies-turn-violent-191124051954754.html

Latin America has not seen this much violence since the 70s and 80s…..when most of the right wing strongmen lost their hold on the governments….time to throw the slugs out again.

The US has been a friend to the neofascist in Lain America for decades…..some recent history…..

However much they war on the domestic political front, Washington’s Democrats and Republicans are on the same page when it comes to the imperial war on democracy and social justice in Latin America.

In 2009 and 2010 Republicans were in a partisan tizzy over everything Barack Obama and Democratic Party, from health insurance reform to economic stimulus, bank bailouts, auto bailouts, and climate policy. The “Tea Party” rebellion arose, replete with a heavy dose of white herrenvolk racism.

But the Teapublicans offered no complaint when Obama’s Secretary of State Hilary Clinton aided and abetted a right-wing business and military coup that overthrew Honduras’ democratically elected left-populist president Manuel Zelaya in the spring of 2009.  Washington’s two major parties were united in opposition to Zelaya’s alignment of Honduras with Venezuela, Brazil and Bolivia in attacking poverty and inequality and redirecting Latin American regional development away from U.S. control [1]. Democrats and Republicans agreed that the independent and egalitarian Latin American trend needed to be checked.

Washington’s Consensus on Neofascist Coups in Latin America

The US cannot keep its grubby hands off Latin America and in almost every occasion they have claimed some violation of the Monroe Doctrine to justify the interference.

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Closing Thought–25Nov19

I try to not post too much on religion…..one it is a personal choice and being so is of no importance to the dialog IST wants to have…..and two just not something I want to do…..

I read something about the VP….it does not surprise me for Pence is a theocrat and would force me to believe his brand of religious fervor if he had his chance….so when I read he was only using aid to benefit certain religions…..

Last November, a top Trump appointee at the U.S. Agency for International Development wrote a candid email to colleagues about pressure from the White House to reroute Middle East aid to religious minorities, particularly Christian groups.

“Sometimes this decision will be made for us by the White House (see… Iraq! And, increasingly, Syria),” said Hallam Ferguson, a senior official in USAID’s Middle East bureau, in an email seen by ProPublica. “We need to stay ahead of this curve everywhere lest our interventions be dictated to us.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-mike-pences-office-meddled-in-foreign-aid-to-reroute-money-to-favored-christian-groups

Then Trump considering a possible benchmark for receiving foreign aid……..

Aides to President Donald Trump are drafting plans to condition U.S. aid to other countries on how well they treat their religious minorities, two White House officials said.

The proposal is expected to cover U.S. humanitarian assistance, and could also be broadened to include American military aid to other countries. If the proposal becomes reality, it could have a major effect on U.S. assistance in a range of places, from Iraq to Vietnam. Its mere consideration shows how much the White House prioritizes religious freedom, an emphasis critics say is really about galvanizing Trump’s evangelical Christian base.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/11/trump-weighs-foreign-aid-religious-freedom-069595

This is just a way to promote one religion over another….we can call it whatever we want but it is not the business of the US to pick a country’s religion for them…..this will strain relations with Middle East and India for sure.

Keep in mind that most Americans do NOT want religion as part of the government…..

While Americans largely have a positive view of the role of religion in public life, they overwhelmingly want religious institutions to stay out of politics, a new survey from the Pew Research Center has found.

Sixty-three percent of U.S. adults believe churches and other houses of worship should “keep out” of political matters. When asked if religious institutions should endorse political candidates, 76 percent say no. And a plurality of adults—at 37 percent—believe that religious groups already have “too much” political influence.

https://www.newsweek.com/religion-democrats-republicans-politics-pew-poll-1472207

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Thoughts On Impeachment And The Trial

Part One in an IST Series……

As the hearings have wound down and built the case for impeachment before it is sent to the Senate for the trial…..most major pundits analyze the Repubs responses and say that in private the Repubs are disgusted and will do what is best for the country in the end.

This is a huge laugh. Optimism is a wonderful thing but it is in denial if anyone thinks the GOP will turn on Trump…regardless his crimes…..that would take principles nay, a spine.

There will be NO bi-partisanship and the MSM needs to stop using that term for good. What few incidents where there has been some cooperation is negligible and comes with renaming Post Office buildings and such.

It is humorous to listen to the on-air pundits try and spin this as something that will feed the headlines…not of it is reality.

I wish that the MSM would just step up and admit that the chances of the Repubs finding their spines in this process is laughable….

If this were a rom-com, instead of a constitutional crisis, I like to think the ending would go something like this: Senate Republicans, crashing through an airport departures gate (it always involves crashing through an airport departures gate) would catch up with Senate Democrats somewhere around the metal detectors and tearfully acknowledge that, yes, Donald Trump is not merely destroying America but also the soul of the Republican Party, and that although the party has been blind and shortsighted, it has also realized the error of its ways, and yes, it was you all along. And then there would be tears, and clapping and reconciliation, as underpaid TSA workers high-five one another and an optional dance number would break out. The whole thing would be a real Christmas blockbuster.

Despite the fact that this is indeed a constitutional crisis, this rom-com-worthy sentiment has still persisted far too long: Democrats are problematically in love with the notion that underneath all of their politics and posturing, Republicans in the U.S. Senate are still dashing heroes with hearts of molten gold, and, despite years spent playing the bad boys, they’re really just waiting to do the right thing. Once the right moment comes, they will wake up and realize how easy it is to change course, and then, in a blaze of bipartisan glory, they will dump Donald Trump, reinstate shattered norms, and knit the country together into a more perfect union once more. Country before party, Me Before You, Tears and Recriminations. But also Happily Ever After.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/11/stop-assuming-senate-republicans-will-do-the-right-thing.html

Spines are in short supply in the GOP side of Congress…..this whole thing will go down as a waste for it will be nothing but an exercise in partisan bullshit!

Trump will be impeached without a single GOP vote in the House and then it will go to the Senate for the trial where Trump thinks he will be cleared…..

“I want a trial.” President Trump went on Fox & Friends Friday morning and said he looked forward to a Senate trial on impeachment to clear his name, reports Mediaite. After Trump made the statement, host Brian Kilmeade asked, “You want a trial?” And Trump doubled down: “Oh, I would! Look, number one, they should never, ever impeach.” He said Democrats on the House intelligence panel failed to make their case—”there’s nothing here”—and cited analyses he’s heard, including on Fox, to back him up. (Indeed, the testimony does not appear to have changed any Republican minds.) Related:

  • Repeats theory: In the Fox interview, Trump also repeated his belief that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election and did so to benefit Hillary Clinton, taking the focus off of Russia. “Are you sure they did that?” asked Steve Doocy, per the Hill. “That’s what the word is,” responded Trump. This comes a day after former White House adviser Fiona Hill ridiculed the theory in her impeachment testimony and called it Russian propaganda.
  • An accusation: Trump dismissed the testimony of Ukraine embassy staffer David Holmes, who said he overheard a phone call in which Trump asked diplomat Gordon Sondland about Ukraine investigations. “I guarantee you that never took place,” said Trump.
  • What’s next: The House intelligence panel will write up a report and give it to the House Judiciary Committee in the next few weeks, per Axios. The judiciary panel will then draft and vote on articles of impeachment and send them to the full House. The timeline remains very much up in the air, but a vote to impeach could come by the end of December. The matter would then move to the Senate for a trial.
  • Wild card: As of now, the House Intelligence Committee has no more scheduled hearings. But that could change if the courts compel big names such as former national security adviser John Bolton, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to testify, notes the Washington Post. However, it’s not clear when any such ruling might come, and Democrats have suggested they won’t wait for it.
  • GOP strategy: Republicans are expected to draft a counter-report in the House. And GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham has sent a letter to Pompeo asking for information on Joe and Hunter Biden, as well as other Obama administration officials, suggesting a “conservative counter-investigation” is in the works, per the Post.
  • Another option: In the Wall Street Journal, conservative columnist Peggy Noonan think it’s crystal clear now that “Trump muscled Ukraine for political gain.” She doesn’t think senators will convict, but she thinks “they should take seriously the idea of censuring him for abuse of power.” This hasn’t happened to a president since Andrew Jackson. Of course, Trump has been compared to Jackson before, and “in the end he will probably be proud of a tightening of the connection.”

And the sycophants will dance!  And the peasants will bow down and kiss the shit covered boots of the leader!

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