Usa Thread

[Flashermac]

I'm glad I live outside the USA. I couldn't take having to listen to Hillary pontificating (and generally lying through her teeth) almost every day. I was in the States for six weeks last year, and to my surprise I found that I liked Obama. (From what I'd been hearing from rightwing friends, I expected the Beast of the Apocalypse.) I certainly don't agree with him on everything (e.g. using the military as a social experiment, putting women into combat arms despite the studies that show it weakens the military and endangers lives), but he struck me as a decent person who honestly meant well. I can't say that about Hillary. She just may be the Beast.

[Flashermac]

Someone who shares my views:

 

Why I Won’t be Voting for Hillary in November

 

 

 

I won’t be voting for Hillary Clinton if she wins the Democratic Party nomination for president, and I won’t heed Bernie Sanders if, as he has vowed to do, he calls on his supporters to “come together†after the convention, should he lose, to support Clinton and prevent Donald Trump or another Republican from becoming president.

 

Here’s why:

 

Hillary Clinton on her best of days is still a serious menace to both the earth’s continuance as a habitable planet, and to peace. A committed neoliberal who has pursued, both as a senator and as a secretary of state, a policy of economic and military destabilization of sovereign governments, with no regard for the aftermath of such criminality (think Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Venezuela, Libya, Ukraine and Honduras, but especially Libya, Ukraine and Honduras, which were very much her doing in her last public position as secretary of state), Clinton has made it clear even on the campaign trail that she considers Russia to be an enemy. If elected, she has also made it clear she’ll continue a dangerous policy of brinksmanship, pushing for NATO membership of more nations bordering Russia, and moving offensive weapons and troops there too. The stated neoliberal (and neoconservative) goal is to ultimately destabilize Russia so that a) President Putin is removed, and so that Russia further fragments into smaller nation-states. This is a mad recipe for World War III, and Clinton, as a new president out to prove her toughness, is a good bet to push things to a point where that war could become a reality.

 

She would, as president, also continue the long-time US policy of destabilization of elected governments in Latin America, and, in the Middle East, the abject and unqualified support of the virtually fascist government in Israel, as well as of the islamo-fascist Arab regimes like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — all of which she supported as a senator, and helped facilitate as Obama’s first secretary of state.

 

A supporter of fracking and of oil exploration, and even of the coal industry, all of which industries are funding her campaign, she will not take any consequential action to combat global warming that would threaten those industries. If she took the issue seriously, why would so many of the top “bundlers†of PAC contributions to her campaign be lobbyists from the energy industry?

 

If the rule is, judge a woman by who her friends are, let’s look at Clinton’s friends. So how about this rogue’s gallery: Henry Kissinger, one of the greatest US war criminals of the post-WWII era, arch-neocon Richard Kagan, a co-founder of the notorious Project for a New American Century (the playbook for the Bush/Cheney administration’s invasion of Iraq and demonization of Syria and Iran), and even G.W. Bush VP Dick Cheney, have all praised Clinton and she herself bragged about praise from Kissinger for her work as Secretary of State.

 

Here at home, Hillary is deep in the pocket of the banksters on Wall Street, as Sanders has repeatedly noted on the stump, having taken over $15 million in what amount to bribes from executives in that sector. What earthly good can come of that? (Except to her: much of the money came in the form of “speaking fees†for talks she gave before declaring her candidacy, and so were personal gifts.) Clinton’s also in the pocket of the oil and drug industries, and of the the arms industry.

 

With friends, or really bosses, like these, the best we could hope for from this wretched politician as president are a few liberal sops like perhaps marginally better enforcement of laws against racial and sex discrimination or unequal pay for women. We won’t even see reform of the police, because Clinton is big on law and order, despite her feigned sympathy for some of the mothers of victims of our militarized police on the campaign trail. The real Clinton sees black victims of police violence as what she has called “superpredators†who have to be “brought to heel,†and she can be expected to continue with policies, like the drug war and like three-strikes-you’re-out sentencing, instituted during husband Bill Clinton’s years in the White House. These are the policies that have destroyed countless families in African American and Latino communities, and that quickly gave the US the world’s biggest prison population — composed mostly of blacks and latinos, and almost entirely of the poor. The evidence of where Clinton’s heart really is: her acceptance of big contributions from the for-profit prison industry that began, and that has grown fat on those very incarceration policies she and Bill have initiated.

 

Having said this, I am well aware that Trump, that quintessential narcissist money-grubber and (like all successful politicians and business leaders) sociopath, would also not do anything about climate change. But at least he is likely to be more of an isolationist on foreign policy (he has said the US should be friends with Russia, not enemies). He has also not been deferential to Israel, saying he will be “neutral†on Palestine and Israel, and that he will seek “harmony†in the Middle East. Now there’s a refreshing position for anyone running for president to be taking.

 

Unlike Clinton, a free-trade fanatic, Trump might even dump the disastrous Obama-and-Clinton-negotiated Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) awaiting congressional approval at this date, and revisit older job-killing trade deals like NAFTA. He’s indicated as much, and his own gambling and entertainment businesses doesn’t depend on such deals.

 

Is Trump a racist? Who knows? As a New Yorker who spent 12 years watching Trump operate, I would suspect not. But here’s the thing: Trump is basically a TV personality acting in a campaign reality show where he plays a candidate. Would he really deport 11 million immigrants if he were elected president? No of course not. First of all he couldn’t do that as president, and he knows it. Would he wall off Mexico? No, because it would be too expensive, and even most Texans, Arizonans, New Mexicans and Californians wouldn’t actually want one, since too much of their states’ economies depend on cross-border business. Congress and the courts would also have to back such draconian projects. It’s all just talk — a way of getting the low-wattage, fearful and hate-filled white people who are propelling his candidacy to vote for him. In the general election, he’ll have to change his tune in order to win an electoral majority.

 

Actually, for all the racist and crazy shit Trump has said, he’s also said some good things. Besides proposing a saner foreign policy than Clinton, he has said during this campaign that he favors single-payer Canadian-style health care. In a prior campaign effort back in 1999, he even said he’d favor a 14.5% wealth tax on the assets of anyone worth over $10 million — a fabulous idea that would raise trillions of otherwise useless dollars and painlessly wipe out much of the national debt or fund expanded Social Security, or whatever. Maybe he’d revive that idea. What’s 14.5 % of Trump’s wealth to him, or to any millionaire or billionaire, after all?

 

My point is, with Hillary Clinton, we know what we’re getting — a corrupt war-mongering, duplicitous neoliberal Wall Street shill posing as a progressive. With Trump, we get a narcissistic businessman posing as a fascist. Neither one as president would actually be what they are pretending to be during the campaign.

 

I’m the first to admit they’re both unsavory human beings, and I won’t vote for either of them, but as far as those who would say that by not voting for Clinton, I’m helping to elect Trump, my reply is this: I know what Clinton will do as president, and that prospect is so frightening that I cannot in good conscience support her. If Trump were to win, we don’t know what he’d do, but it would probably not be to start another war, and certainly not one against Russia or China. I won’t vote for him, because what he is saying on the stump is reprehensible, but I’d feel better with him in the White House than with Hillary there.

 

By the way, I have to marvel at the suckers, many of them quite educated, who have been saying they like Sanders, but are voting for Clinton because they think she “knows Washington†and would “be able to work across the aisle and get things done.†Don’t they realize that Hillary Clinton is at least as loathed among Republicans, both among the public and in Congress, as Obama has been? There is no way a Republican Congress, or even a Democratic Senate with a large Republican minority (should we be so lucky as to see control of that chamber pass back to Democrats this fall), will allow Hillary Clinton to pass any legislation remotely important during her term of office.

 

So for now, I’m all in for Bernie Sanders (my state of Pennsylvania holds its primary on April 26). We’ve got the Democratic Convention here in Philadelphia too, so I plan to be inside as a reporter, and outside on the street, if there is any contest still at that point. But when it’s all over, if the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton, I’m voting Green for Jill Stein’s candidacy in the general election. Hopefully Bernie Sanders, after having pointed out Hillary’s corrupt financing and having been the victim of her campaign of lies, backed by a corrupt corporate media, will rethink his plan to endorse her. But if he does endorse her, I, and I suspect a large segment of his backers, will ignore him.

 

Clinton is not the lesser of two evils. She is demonstrably worse than Trump in some crucial ways.

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.counterpu...ry-in-november/

[unit731]

Well, Flash, some are abandoning the Republican ship !

 

“WASHINGTON — Republican Congressman Carlos Curbelo (Fla.) said Thursday he won’t ever support Donald Trump for president, and left the door open to voting for Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton instead.â€

 

LINK

[Flashermac]

A liberal case for Donald Trump: The lesser of two evils is not at all clear in 2016

 

 

There are perhaps no three words more jarring to liberals than “President Donald Trump.†The GOP front-runner and presumptive nominee has undoubtedly made enemies with his nativist rhetoric and bellicose persona. That said, now that the race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is effectively over, with the former secretary of state essentially guaranteed the nomination, many liberals and progressives are preparing, once again, to vote for the lesser of two evils. The choice may not be as clear as some Democrats believe — especially if Democrats can take back the Senate and assure themselves of a check on a GOP House.

 

Once you’ve let that sink in, try this: There is a liberal case to be made for Donald Trump. The prospect of Trump defeating Clinton this November is not necessarily the apocalypse that some would lead you to believe. Here are some of the reasons why.

 

1.) He’ll Change the Conversation

 

Perhaps the best thing I can say about Trump is that he speaks his mind. This sometimes leads to some pretty outlandish things, but not always. As Shane Ryan of Paste magazine, pointed out in a recent article, Trump has spent much of his time lately, railing against free trade and NAFTA, as well as the gross inequality in our system. Trump often talks about raising taxes on “hedge fund guys,†and he has acknowledged that the primary process is skewed in favor of the establishment.

 

Like Sanders, Trump is neither beholden to special interests, nor coordinating with a Super PAC. This alone sets him apart from the other candidates in the race — especially Hillary Clinton. If he wins the presidency, it will send shock waves through our political system, much like what would happen if Bernie were elected, but with a twist.

 

Trump’s brand of populism has been enabled by the roughly 40-year decline of our middle class that both parties have facilitated through the abandonment of Franklin D. Roosevelt in favor of Ronald Reagan. Trump may not offer policy specifics, but he does not need them because the political establishment on both sides of the aisle, have failed the American people so badly, and the people have caught on. The United States is an oligarchy — at least that’s what professors Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern concluded in their recent study.

 

Trump’s candidacy is further served by the fact that we do not have publicly financed elections, and by our corporate, ratings-obsessed mainstream media. He has a personality for prime time, and enough money to run himself in spite of the powers lined up against him.

 

If he were to be elected, it would force our leaders to have a real conversation about these problems that they simply won’t have if the people elect an establishment candidate like Hillary Clinton. If anything, the narrative that would emerge from a Clinton presidency would be that change isn’t possible. The parties pick the candidates, and regardless of what their policies are, the people fall in line with them eventually. Power never truly changes hands.

 

Excusing the fact that Trump, himself, is a corporate interest, he would shake the current system to its core — which needs to happen.

 

2.) That said, most of his policies are DOA

 

In all likelihood, Trump will not accomplish anything. He has made serious enemies in both parties and the media, whom he feels have slighted him, and I cannot see him working with those people. Trump holds grudges. He has filed more frivolous lawsuits than anyone in the public eye — or maybe we just hear about them more. Either way, politics do require compromise to one degree or another, and without it, nothing gets done. As such, when Trump finds himself up against institutional and bureaucratic resistance, it is unlikely he will deliver. For example, his wall — paid for by Mexico — is never going to happen. Ban all Muslims from entering the U.S.? Not a chance.

 

But what if he does work with Congress?

 

Well, first off, we do not know what his platform will be when he hits the general election. He likely tack to the middle. Second, even if he does work with Congress, he is still not going to get his social policies passed. The Senate with its filibuster and cloture rules is enough of a check on that, even if Democrats do not have a majority. Basically, we will not have immigration reform, but we will not have people rounded up in the streets and deported. Third and most important of all: I do not need to trust Donald Trump in the same way I would have to trust Hillary Clinton were she elected. The reason for this is very simple: Trump represents the GOP brand, and Clinton claims the mantle of progressive. If Trump fails to accomplish anything in office, or if he manages to do whatever damage he can do, he will represent the Republicans. Moreover, rightly or wrongly, he represents America’s crypto-fascist element. The best way to discredit both of these groups is to let them fail on their own. Trump will not succeed as a president.

 

On the flip side, if Hillary Clinton screws up by compromising too much (which is likely) or doing too little (also likely), progressivism will take a big hit in the public eye, which is something we cannot afford.

 

3.) The 2020 election looms

 

Now we arrive at the point where I start sounding old Jud Crandall from Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary.†Progressives and Democrats should be focusing on the election in 2020 because 1) it is a census year — meaning the makeup of the House of Representatives for the following decade will depend on down-ballot voting — and 2) there may be openings on the Supreme Court.

 

The last consecutive two-term presidents from the same political party were James Madison and James Monroe. In other words, Democrats face long historical odds if Hillary Clinton wins in 2016, of winning again in four years.

 

Historically, the party in control of the White House loses seats in the midterm. A Trump presidency would force Democrats to organize and turn out in the off-year. And it might provide a head-start on taking back the chamber in 2020

 

Clinton is also one of the weakest candidates ever to secure the nomination for president from either party. As Gallup pointed out, the word most associated with her name is “dishonest.†Her favorability ratings are abysmal, she’s prone to secrecy which opens her up to perceptions of scandal, and she has an FBI investigation hanging over her head. Unlike her rival, Bernie Sanders, but like Donald Trump, she underperforms among Independents — a necessary voting bloc for any president.

 

 

 

http://www.salon.com..._clear_in_2016/

 

 

Looks like a lot of people aren't happy with the choices.

[unit731]

“A California student was embarrassed and distressed after a picture of her wearing an Islamic head scarf, or hijab, appeared in her high school yearbook with the false name "Isis Phillips," a Muslim advocacy group said on Sunday.â€

 

Gotta love the subtle racism exhibited by the younger generation. Or possibly the printing company.

 

LINK

 

Not an accident in my opinion.

I recall my HS yearbook.

Two gals from the yearbook committee whoe didn't know me came around and asked me what sports and activities I had been in at HS.

I just made it all up.

Water Polo

Luge

Table Tennis

Basket Weaving

None of which the HS actually offered or had.

And yes, it is all printed under my yearbook picture!

[Flashermac]

[Flashermac]

The truth about our continuing combat role

 

 

When the president is in open disagreement with the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on one of the most critical issues our nation faces — whether to send our sons and daughters into combat — it should be cause for significant national concern.

 

President Barack Obama has repeatedly told the American people that U.S. troops are not in combat in the Middle East. In 2010, he announced that “our combat mission is ending†in Iraq. He used the same words in 2014 regarding Afghanistan. More recently, he said that our mission in Syria “will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.â€

 

Yet this month in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, I asked Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford if our troops in the Middle East, including in Syria, are engaged in combat. Both unequivocally said yes. To our members of the military serving overseas, Carter and Dunford were stating the obvious.

 

Indeed, recent reports in The Washington Post and the Military Times describe up to 200 Marines at Fire Base Bell in northern Iraq firing artillery daily in support of Iraqi troops and killing Islamic State terrorists. Our soldiers serving as part of the Joint Special Operations Command in the Middle East conduct regular counterterrorism missions to kill and capture terrorists. Since 2014, our brave pilots have dropped approximately 40,000 bombs in Iraq and Syria in close-air-support missions focused on killing Islamic State members and destroying their infrastructure and supply operations. An additional 1,200 bombs have been dropped supporting the coalition fight in Afghanistan combating the Taliban.

 

Some of our service members have been killed conducting these operations, while others have been wounded. All of this is the very definition of combat.

 

To Carter’s credit, he said at the hearing: “These people are in combat … and I think that we need to say that clearly.â€

 

Apparently, the White House didn’t get the memo. Last week, when asked about a Navy SEAL killed in a fierce firefight involving U.S. special operations forces, Kurdish commandos and Islamic State fighters, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that “the relatively small number of U.S. service members that are involved in these operations are not in combat but are in a dangerous place.â€

 

Why do Obama and his White House continue to peddle the fiction that U.S. forces are not engaged in combat? Perhaps the commander in chief is truly unaware that they are, which would be troubling indeed. More likely is that because he’s told the American people repeatedly that he will end wars and won’t send combat troops to the Middle East, the word contortions coming from the White House are part of a twisted attempt to salvage and protect the president’s legacy.

 

But by spinning the truth for political purposes, the president is coming perilously close to leaving a legacy of dishonesty when it comes to our military involvement in the Middle East. And much more worrisome, such dishonesty comes with costs.

 

First, it diminishes the service and sacrifice of our troops and their families. Americans serving in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan know they’re engaged in combat operations. The commander in chief needs to acknowledge this fact and the bravery it entails, not disguise the true nature of their duty.

 

Second, it further undermines the administration’s tenuous foreign policy credibility regarding its stated goal of degrading and destroying the Islamic State group. While this is the correct goal, a series of missteps in the Middle East, including the president’s failure to enforce his own red line when it was crossed by Bashar Assad in Syria, have brought us to the point where our adversaries and our allies question U.S. credibility and resolve. Islamic State terrorists know that they’re in combat against U.S. forces, but when the president says otherwise, it signals a lack of conviction, making it harder to defeat these terrorists.

 

Finally, the dishonesty about the role of our troops allows our presidential candidates to duck a tough issue. Hillary Clinton repeatedly has been allowed to say, unchallenged, that she would continue the president’s policies of not sending combat troops to Syria and Iraq.

 

Forty-five years ago, future Secretary of State John Kerry, then speaking as a veteran of the Vietnam War, urged the incumbent administration to be honest about the roles our men and women in uniform were playing in Vietnam. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he said, “We veterans can only look on with amazement on the fact that this country has been unable to see there is absolutely no difference between ground troops and a helicopter crew, and yet people have accepted a differentiation fed them by the administration.â€

 

The theater has changed, but Kerry’s words still resonate. For the betterment of our troops, and our country, he called for honesty then — just as we all should call for honesty now.

 

 

 

http://www.stripes.c...t-role-1.408561

[dean]

Illinois lawsuit against Senate candidate Duckworth in court http://www.kansascity.com/latest-news/article77134222.html

[Flashermac]

Kirk is a douche bag:

 

..........

 

Mark Kirk is a Republican Senator from Illinois. He’s also a serial military Stolen Valor candidate, whose no-heavy-bending career as a mostly-nonflying desk jockey intelligence officer has been the basis of repeated and persistent claims of combat service and awards that have turned out to be, there’s no other word, phony. We’ve beaten up phony Democrats before (Dick Blumenthal, come on down!), so doing the same for Republicans is fair play.

 

So Kirk makes phony service claims. Well, what can one reasonably expect from someone who’s both a lawyer and a politician?

 

Did we mention, from Chicago?

 

While serving the only God he has ever served — himself — as a staffer and lawyer-lobbyist in Washington, the Navy gave him a reserve officer’s commission in 1989, as they often do for politically connected DC maklers.

 

This not only gets the Navy an insider for their lobbyists to speed-dial, it gets the insider a second fat pension for little to no effort.

 

...

 

 

http://weaponsman.com/?p=12981

 

 

http://www.huffingto...h_n_598095.html

[Flashermac]