"It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error"..Thomas Paine
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Author: lobotero
I have been a radical, labor organizer, writer, lecturer, teacher, analyst, political activist , convention delegate and I still have my sanity--who knew?
Today is notable because in 1807 the VP of the US was arrested on the charges of treason……Aaron Burr was his name…..an event in American history that few Americans know anything about…..but I can change that.
Aaron Burr, a former U.S. vice president, is arrested in Alabama on charges of plotting to annex Spanish territory in Louisiana and Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic.
In November 1800, in an election conducted before presidential and vice-presidential candidates shared a single ticket, Thomas Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, defeated Federalist incumbent John Adams with 73 electoral votes each. The tie vote then went to the House to be decided, and Federalist Alexander Hamilton was instrumental in breaking the deadlock in Jefferson’s favor. Burr, because he finished second, became vice president
This is why I think more American history should be taught to our children….there is more to this country than the quick overview most get in school….plus CIVICS need to be taught in more depth…..
Again you are pretty much caught up with the mash-up…..
Now the new “axis of evil”………Pompeo, Bolton and Abrams….the warmongering neocons that are handling the Venezuela situation…..
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on countries to “pick a side” on Venezuela, urging them to back opposition leader Juan Guaido in a Saturday speech at the UN Security Council in New York.
“Now, it is time for every other nation to pick a side. No more delays, no more games. Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you’re in league with Maduro and his mayhem,” Pompeo told the Security Council.
Russia accused Washington of plotting a coup attempt and had tried to stop the meeting requested by the United States. “Venezuela does not represent a threat to peace and security. If anything does represent a threat to peace, it is the shameless and aggressive action of the United States and their allies aimed at the ouster of the legitimately elected president of Venezuela,” Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told the UN Council.
Recently Pompeo tried to include all the neocon “hit list” into the conversation on Venezuela……..
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made several statements that raised eyebrows, such as claiming that Cuba had invaded Venezuela and “taken control” of the Venezuela’s “security apparatus” and that U.S. sanctions illegally imposed on Venezuela “aren’t aimed at the Venezuelan people.”
However, the most surprising claim Pompeo made in the interview was that Hezbollah and Iran were “active” in Venezuela, presenting a national security “risk for America.”
After accusing China, Cuba and Russia of interfering with U.S. efforts to install U.S.-funded opposition figure Juan Guaidó and oust current Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Pompeo made the following assertion:
If there is any proof that Trump picks people that compliment his stupidity it will be his adviser Bolton…..he has done what most neocons do…..thumps his chest like a sex crazed primate……this time it is Iran.
President Donald Trump’s national security adviser has issued a direct threat to Iran’s supreme leader on the 40th anniversary of his country’s Islamic Revolution.
John Bolton was featured Monday in an ominous video posted to the White House’s official Twitter account. The video was posted as a “message to the Ayatollah of Iran,” Ali Khamenei, who the United States has targeted with a new social media campaign entitled “#40YearsofFailure” in reference to the decades of hostility between Washington and Tehran since the 1979 uprising that ousted a West-backed monarchy and installed a Shiite Muslim clerical leadership.
“What a 40 years its been, tyrannizing its own people and terrorizing the world, Iran continues to seek nuclear weapons to intimidate peaceful people all around the globe and ballistic missiles to use as delivery systems,” Bolton said in the roughly one-minute clip. “Iran under the ayatollahs remains the central banker of international terrorism and its conventional military forces are all over the Middle East, in Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
To be honest this link is a neocon propaganda site take that for what it is worth.
Remember the non-existent WMDs in Iraq? Or 1954 an excuse for the regime change in Guatemala was the presence of Soviet guns……well that is tried and true the technique…..
While insisting that US military intervention against Venezuela remains on the table, Senate Armed Services Committee chief Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has also claimed on Tuesday that the US would be obliged to intervene if Russia were to move weapons to Venezuela.
“We’d have to, not go to war, but use force,” Inhofe told reporters. This claim appears not to be an actual obligation, but part of the idea of the Monroe Doctrine that the US generally does intervene against other countries getting involved in the entire Western Hemisphere.
And while Inhofe doesn’t appear to want to rule out attacking Venezuela just unilaterally, as the administration is hoping to impose regime change there, it is clear he views the war even more favorably if it can somehow be turned into a proxy war against Russia.
(antiwar.com)
Now let’s look at why.
After decades of rhetoric why does the US want to overthrow an elected government?
Since 1998, the United States of America has tried to overthrow the government of Venezuela. What threatened the government of the United States since then was the Bolivarian dynamic set in motion by the election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela that year. Chávez won the elections with a mandate from Venezuela’s workers and poor to overhaul the country to tend to their long-neglected needs.
Venezuela, with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, had enriched the U.S.-based oil companies and its own oligarchy. Venezuela’s key oil minister in the early 1960s (and architect of OPEC—the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso rightly called oil the “devil’s excrement.” It promised so much and delivered so little. Chávez arrived as the embodiment of popular hope. He threatened the oil companies and the oligarchy, which is why the United States tried to overthrow him.
The first attempt at a coup came in 2002, when the United States egged on the military and the oligarchy to overthrow Chávez. They failed. He was supremely popular, the Chavista base eager for change that would improve their lives. They had no faith in the United States or the oligarchy, both of whom had suffocated them for the past century.
The American people need to ask why is this so damn important to the Neocons…….just why is it that the US cannot tolerate a leader that does not agree with them? And who elected the US to speak for the people of Venezuela?
WE have heard, usually on slow news days, about the war on Yemen by Saudi Arabia, UAE, US, et al…….small amount of info in the MSM about the humanitarian crisis (keep this silent we cannot have too many knowing the crisis we, the US, are helping to create)…….sadly civilians are still dying from war and then from hunger and disease but you know some mythic border crisis is far more important than people dying at our hands whether directly or indirectly.
A few in Congress have been trying to end our involvement with the Saudis and others over their crimes against the Yemeni people.
Last week the work began……
The newly minted House Foreign Affairs Committee’s first priority was to follow up on the Senate’s unprecedented passage of the war powers resolution on Yemen last December that positively influenced ceasefire negotiations in Sweden. It did so by marking up Congressmen Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Mark Pocan’s (D-WI) (along with 68 bipartisan colleagues) war powers resolution on Yemen. The committee reported the resolution favorably out of committee this week, and there may be a floor vote by the end of February.
Senators Sanders (I-VT), Lee (R-UT), and Murphy (D-CT) have also reintroduced their war powers resolution, setting up another Senate vote to send the legislation to the president’s desk. Should the resolution pass both chambers as it is likely to do, it will set up a confrontation with Trump. He will have to decide whether to listen to the will of Congress in asserting its constitutional authority over matters of war or side with the Saudi and Emirati governments, whose support his administration views as essential to pursuing its primary goal of military confrontation with Iran.
Good for it is time to end this damn involvement in the Saudis push to be the head cheese in the Middle East………
Congress is seeking to trim presidential war powers in Yemen. Unfortunately, the Republican Party leadership continues to defend unrestrained executive authority. Outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan used procedural legerdemain to block a vote on Washington’s support for Saudi Arabia’s murderous assault on Yemen.
Contrary to Trump administration claims, memorialized in an atrocious op-ed under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s name, not everything in the world is about Iran. The conflict in Yemen continues decades of internal strife. Saudi Arabia’s invasion internationalized a decade-long domestic fight. Riyadh’s hubris gave Tehran an opportunity to bleed the Saudis militarily.
Looks like we have a deal to drop our support for the Saudis rape and destruction of Yemen.
Now the question is….if a bill hits Trumps desk because of his awe and envy of the Saudis wealth will he veto the bill making it his first veto, which should be easy for Trump for “veto” only has 4 letters in it……
the House of Representatives issued a stinging rebuke of the White House’s holding pattern in support of the Saudi coalition in Yemen. The vote was the culmination of multiple years of efforts by realists on Capitol Hill and their allies. House Joint Resolution 37 demands the removal U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities in or affecting Yemen within a month unless: Congress authorizes a later date, or issues a declaration of war, or specifically authorizes military force. The vote was not close: 248-177.
“The vote today is a step toward more sensible U.S. policy in Yemen and the Middle East, a welcome admonishment of Saudi Arabia, and an overdue assertion of nearly-dormant war powers. In each of those senses, though, more is needed,” says Benjamin H. Friedman of Defense Priorities.
Few weeks ago there was a big story about something one of the newly elected reps had said……it was said to be antisemitic (it was not but that lie is always a good weapon)…..she was urged to resign by Trump his toady VP and others……but what about those others that have made actual racist remarks and are still serving in Congress….six of them should resign NOW!
Time for both parties to decide if they represent all the people of just a slim margin of donors and supporters.
Let’s clean up government throw out a/holes that hate and divide….we need a united country to face this world that is emerging from the decay of the 20th century…..
These 6 are the rotting core of the GOP……cut them out now for the benefit of the party going forward.
A few closing thoughts…….
“Racism is man’s gravest threat to man – the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.” ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.” ~ Lord Byron
“Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
“Bigotry is the disease of ignorance.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
This one is my favorite…..
“Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions.” ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton
As a history buff I am always looking for stuff that the normal person may not be aware of or did not learn while in school…..the major event in American history that gets a lot of attention is the “emancipation” but is it all that we think we know about it?
John Brown was executed by the state of Virginia with the approval of the national government. It was the national government which, while weakly enforcing the law ending the slave trade, sternly enforced the laws providing for the return of fugitives to slavery. It was the national government that, in Andrew Jackson’s administration, collaborated with the South to keep abolitionist literature out of the mails in the southern states. It was the Supreme Court of the United States that declared in 1857 that the slave Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom because he was not a person, but property.
Such a national government would never accept an end to slavery by rebellion. It would end slavery only under conditions controlled by whites, and only when required by the political and economic needs of the business elite of the North. It was Abraham Lincoln who combined perfectly the needs of business, the political ambition of the new Republican party, and the rhetoric of humanitarianism. He would keep the abolition of slavery not at the top of his list of priorities, but close enough to the top so it could be pushed there temporarily by abolitionist pressures and by practical political advantage.
Lincoln could skillfully blend the interests of the very rich and the interests of the black at a moment in history when these interests met. And he could link these two with a growing section of Americans, the white, up-and-coming, economically ambitious, politically active middle class. As Richard Hofstadter puts it:
Those guys at Bad Lip Reading are a pack of geniuses…..I love there videos…..and they have got a good one for Trump’s State of the Union speech in 2019….
Enjoy!
Once again these guys hit a homer.
I look forward to their next post and I shall make sure that my readers get to enjoy their humor as well.
I guess I need to address that damn 300 lb gorilla in the corner…..
Friday our Dudley-Do Right in the White House signed the CR to fund the government (photo not available) and issued his declaration that he promised to do…..the problem is in his usual bluster Trump may have turned and bit his own ass……
As expected, President Trump declared a national emergency on Friday over the US-Mexico border. A big legal fight looms, but first comes the initial reaction. First up: George Conway, husband of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, thinks the president made a big mistake by saying, “I didn’t need to do this” during his Rose Garden speech. “This quote should be the first sentence of the first paragraph of every complaint filed this afternoon,” he tweeted. Trump’s full quote: “I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn’t need to do this. But I’d rather do it much faster.” (Watch the clip here.) More reaction, to that quote and the declaration in general:
Agreed: At Hot Air, Allahpundit agrees with Conway. “We don’t need to get into why this is a damaging thing for him to admit, right? We all graduated from fourth grade.” Trump just handed the courts a factual basis to rule against him on the grounds that an emergency doesn’t actually exist, writes Allahpundit.
Not so fast: Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner writes that he’s skeptical the “I didn’t need to do this quote” is the bombshell people are suggesting it is. “In fact, it could even do the opposite— bc obvious counter is he wanted to do faster bc he thought it was a pressing emergency,” he tweets.
Democrats’ miscalculation? An analysis by Noah Feldman at Bloomberg suggests Democrats may have strengthened Trump’s case by agreeing to provide $1.4 billion for the border. That was far less that Trump wanted, prompting him to declare the emergency, but Feldman argues that by providing even the $1.4 billion, Trump can argue in court that Democrats agree with him the border needs strengthening and that “his re-allocation of funds is necessary to achieve Congress’s expressed will.”
The polls: Stats expert Nate Silvers thinks Trump is courting trouble in the polls. “Indeed, the act of declaring a national emergency to build a wall is even more unpopular than the wall itself—and the wall isn’t popular,” he writes at FiveThirtyEight. “Polls as tracked by PollingReport.com show an average of 32 percent of Americans in favor of the declaration and 65 percent opposed. Even in an era where many of Trump’s top priorities poll only in the low-to-mid-40s, that’s an especially large split, with roughly twice as many voters opposed as in favor.”
New York Times: An editorial says Trump has just taken “executive overreach to dizzying new heights.” Migrants at the border are not an emergency, say the editors. “This administration is forever coming up with creative new ways to disturb and dismay the nation. Mr. Trump’s eagerness to undermine the Constitution to serve his short-term political gain remains among the most outrageous.”
Wall Street Journal: The conservative editorial page is not on board with the move. “The emergency declaration will please his most ardent supporters, but Mr. Trump is setting an unfortunate precedent—and judges could tie up his wall in court for years.”
Washington Post: Its editorial on the subject is more angry at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for going along with Trump as the president treats the Constitution with “cavalier contempt.” With his move, “Trump will inaugurate a new, imperial phase of his presidency,” the editors write. “Mr. McConnell, who had previously warned him against such an action, will show he has perfected a trick: roll over and play dead.”
Ann Coulter: Often seen as the voice of Trump’s conservative base, Coulter is not happy with the day’s news. Coulter backs tougher immigration moves, but she thinks Trump caved by signing the separate spending bill even though it didn’t have the money the president wanted. The “goal of a national emergency is for Trump to scam the stupidest people in his base for 2 more years,” she tweeted. Coulter said that the only “national emergency is that our president is an idiot” Is the far right support waning?
I shall give Trump some advice my mother would give me…”Make damn sure your brain is loaded before you fire off your mouth”……
His babbling is that of some mental midget that cannot get past some event that occurred….
While Trump was ranting and acting like a spoiled 4 year old a REAL national emergency was unfolding…..yet more gun violence…..we are getting close to the number of one a day with multiple victims……
Six people are dead and five officers are wounded after a shooting at a business in suburban Chicago, per the AP. The gunman, identified as 45-year-old Gary Martin, was among the dead at the Henry Pratt Co. building in Aurora. The Chicago Sun-Times talks to Martin’s mother, who says he was “way too stressed out” after being laid off recently. The officers who were wounded were fired upon as soon as they entered the building, police said. All are in stable condition.
John Probst, an employee at Henry Pratt, tells ABC7 that he ran out of the back door as the shooting unfolded Friday afternoon. Probst says he recognized the gunman. “What I saw was the guy running down the aisle with a pistol with a laser on it,” Probst says. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker commended the “amazing” work of law enforcement officers who responded to the scene, crediting them with saving “countless lives.” The company makes valves for industrial purposes; its location in Aurora is about 40 miles west of Chicago. (Read more mass shootings stories.)
The fence thingy is nothing more than a way to appease his low mental activity base……but there may be a problem there as well…..his main media advisers are Hannity, Coulter and Rush…..one has now decided his is an “idiot”…..
“Thank god he’s relieved me any responsibility for what he’s been doing,” Coulter told the radio hosts. “That was the biggest favor anyone could do for me today.” Declaring that “the country is over” now, she said she didn’t need a Tarot card reader to know that Trump would “totally f-over his base.”
The president’s “mandate,” Coulter said, was to build the wall. And even though that’s what he plans to do by declaring a national emergency, she’s not happy about it. “The only national emergency is that our president is an idiot,” she said.
Will the loss of Coulter’s support harm the president…..probably not for the “Bobble-heads” hang on every word Trump has to say so Coulter’s words will fall on def ears.
The “Border Crisis” is only in the mind (of the imagination) of a spoiled 6 year old with a constipation problem.
I am thinking this “wall” is an ego trip like everything he does….something he can hang his name on….
