Lester Holt, the moderator of the so-called presidential “debate”, earns a base salary of 4 to 10 million dollars from NBC News. His net worth is at least 12 million dollars. NBC is in turn owned by Comcast (51%) and General Electric (49%).
GE received giant subsidies ($60 billion) from Obama, which were repaid, thanks to Quantitative Easing (QE) and other US government financial and fiscal maneuvers. In turn, GE was able to buy its competitor, the French Alstom, thus extending the US empire. A wealthy professional propagandist sycophant like Lester Holt can only be grateful to the system which made him into one of the world’s richest persons.
Bush: ‘I think I killed even more Iraqi than Bill. And now I am getting richer everyday with the oil price shooting up.’ Clinton: ‘Stop bragging, we got things rolling with our blockade of Iraq. Bill and me killed hundreds of thousands from our blockade of drugs going into Iraq.’
Obama, a follower of Ronald Reagan, and thus Ayn Rand, has quietly supported giant US corporations as weapons of world domination for the USA. Now Europe has seven (7) large companies out of the fifty (50) largest ones by market capitalization, and the USA, thirty-one (31). As Europe is nearly twice as big as the USA in population, and roughly of the same socio-economic and educational level, it should be the case that there are, and there used to be that there were, more large European companies than US ones. Obama, using fiscal policy, and other tricks (QE, fiscal evasion) while claiming the opposite, has insured the domination of large US corporations.
For example, Apple Inc., the world’s largest company, pays only 1% tax (whereas US law says it should be 35%, and European law says it should be a minimum of 12.5% in Ireland, and up to 33% in France). The Obama administration just went hysterical when the European Commission asked Apple to pay a minimum rate of 12.5% (the minimum tax in Ireland, where Apple claims to be based). Mr. Holt is a full card-carrying member, a towering profiteer of this vast conspiracy, of domination of the world by giant US corporations. Mr. Holt is a specialist in charge of hypnotizing We The People with the conspiracy’s poisonous ideology, and he naturally fears that president Trump would collapse both the conspiracy and its ideology (as Trump claimed he would do so, with various tricks and threats against Obama’s corporate champions, from taxation, to tariffs, to applying anti-trust, to imposing a fiscal amnesty, etc.).
Lester Holt A Plutocrat? Here Is The Proof:
The USA committed a serious war crime by attacking, invading, abusing, devastating and torturing Iraq. That war crime under the Geneva Convention was left not just unpunished, but even unexamined.
As we will see below, Lester Holt is not a bystander in this war crime, but a participant in its cover-up. (I confessed that I have lost the habit of watching US “news” for decades: there is nothing new about that propaganda. The Trump=Clinton “debate” was the first time I listened to Mr. Holt.)
Plutocrats are people who exert power (kratos) through evil (Pluto= Hades = Satan = Shaitan). As we see below, Mr. Holt made a carefully disingenuous preemptive attack against Trump on Iraq, thereupon sheltering Hillary Clinton from the assault she deserved on the same subject, that of instigating a massive war crime. In 2002, a year before the attack by Bush on Iraq, Trump was interviewed on the radio, and, that being the first time he was asked, Trump said: “I’m no warmonger. But the fact is, if we decide a strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion.”
***
The moderator was obviously biased against Trump. Lester Holt, the so-called moderator asserted, then insisted and re-asserted that Trump has been for the Iraq war, grounding his pontificating, calm hysteria on a vague statement Trump made on the Stern talk show in 2002, which I just quoted. Now here is what transpired in the presidential so-called debate, this week:
Trump: “I was against the war in Iraq.”
Lester Holt, moderator from hell then lied. Or, as pro-Clinton sycophants say, fact-checked Trump (with invented facts):
Lester Holt halting Trump: “The record does not show that.”
“The record shows that I’m right,” Trump responded. “When I did an interview with Howard Stern, very lightly, first time anyone’s asked me that, I said, very lightly, ‘I don’t know, maybe, who knows?’ essentially. I then did an interview with Neil Cavuto. We talked about, the economy is more important [than the war].”
That 2003 interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News shows that Trump was not “in favor” of going to war in Iraq. As released by Fox News:
“Well, I’m starting to think that people are much more focused now on the economy,” Trump said. “They’re getting a little bit tired of hearing ‘We’re going in, we’re not going in.’ Whatever happened to the days of Douglas MacArthur? Either do it or don’t do it. Perhaps he shouldn’t be doing it yet. And perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations.”
Trump more vocally opposed the invasion in a 2004 Esquire interview, as Fox News points out, and proved prescient on the aftermath:
Trump: “Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we’re in,” he said in an August 2004 issue of Esquire. “I would never have handled it that way…Two minutes after we leave, there’s going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. And he’ll have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam [Hussein] didn’t have.”
Nonetheless, the self-glorifying “fact checkers” are going to continue to equate Trump’s hedged reluctance to invade Iraq, and his subsequent more vocal, precise and prescient opposition, with Hillary Clinton’s actual vote to authorize the invasion in Iraq. Clinton did vote as a Senator from a most important state and while privy to top secret information. She is a close friend of Bush, as she was (and is) of Trump, and her determined opposition to the Iraq invasion and demolition would have stopped it.
Lester Holt’s crafty lie on Iraq attacked Trump in such a way that Trump could not attack Hillary Clinton on Iraq (as Trump did devastatingly with Jeb Bush). If Hillary Clinton had opposed the Iraq attack forcefully in 2003 (as the French did), the war, and its tremendous mayhem, would not have happened. Clinton is responsible. Those covering her up now are behaving like holocaust deniers. Which, well, they are. They are responsible too.
Patrice Ayme
Tags: Lester Holt
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
September 30, 2016 at 4:42 am |
Patrice, never a dull moment reading your essays! And I must add, being rather predictable, that it makes the integrity of dogs all the more precious!
LikeLike
September 30, 2016 at 6:12 am |
Thanks Paul! Glad to not be boring! I do think that crooks imagine themselves to be full of integrity.
LikeLike
September 30, 2016 at 4:47 am |
Bush and Cheney led the invasion of Iraq so to blame it on HRC is an overstatement. To suggest that HRC on her own could have been persuaded Bush-Cheney from the invasion is a real stretch. Her vote was wrong no doubt but to cast her as the architect of the Iraq war is a reach too far. It cost her in 2008 and still hangs around her neck – but Drumpf? By the way, NBC was the home of Trump’s “reality” tv series. Not hardly an anti Drumpf group- they promoted him for years. Matt Lauer gave him a pass on everything.
Drumpf was asked by Howard Stern on air if he was in favor of the invasion and his response was “yes, I guess so”. Not exactly a protest. Drumpf would blow a ship out of the water over taunts. He is all for rebuilding a “depleted” military. He promotes the big lie and denounces anyone who calls him out on it ,or anything, a liar. He lies about every five minutes. Who can believe anything he says? His “temperament” is a real problem. And where does he ever promote enforcement of anti-trust and taxation of plutocracy? He won’t even reveal his tax returns. He is hiding damaging info- if the returns helped him we would have seen them already. And what is it with all his Putin praise? Hard to find anything positive.
LikeLike
September 30, 2016 at 6:09 am |
Bush and its accomplices did indeed lead the invasion of Iraq. Bush is most culprit, being the C in C. However, one of these accomplices was Hillary Clinton. And she was not a simple collaborator. She was in an exceptional position as NY Senator. She, by herself, could have stopped the invasion.
The invasion was a close thing. The French government had insured that a UN vote would fail, either at the UNSC, or the General Assembly. The French also formally informed Bush and his accomplices of this. At this point, Clinton just had to say there was no UN authorization. She did not just have enormous clout, she was, and is, a personal friend. The french effort had nearly stopped Bush, a little supplementary push would have worked.
NBC ownership changed. Now it’s fully (?) owned by Comcast (contrarily to what I wrote). The “I guess so” was in that 2002 interview which i quoted. 2002. Trump opposition to the war surfaced fully in 2003/2004. The point was not that Trump is abominable. The point is that this important element of the debate was rigged so that US war criminals keep on having a free ride. Trump TALKED AGAINST in 2003, HILLARY VOTED FOR.
More generally my point is that Hillary supporters don’t care whether she contributed to the current plutocratic system. They even deny that it exists. That makes them more on the right than some of the most rabid Trump supporters.
We have seen this sort of things in the past (some Commies could be worse than some Nazis). I am not in charge of Trump propaganda, but he definitively explained in details, even during the debate, some of what he would do about the tax amnesty. And this touches the problem exactly: anti-Trump haters are too busy hating to even listen some of the good proposals of Trump, and try to force them on the the democratic leadership.
to
I am praising neither Putin, nor Trump. However, the USA is led presently, and thus so is the world, by a fraternity of world class crooks, conspiring all together… And Putin is one of their consequences. Trump has had not consequences so far… Except maybe in encouraging the EC to become a bit more courageous, and go after the corporate patrons of Obama (to the Obama’s administration’s fury).
LikeLike
September 30, 2016 at 11:53 am |
Drumpf has raised some issues about the banks although these issues are not mentioned often- his more blatantly nativist and racist attract more attention and spout from his mouth more frequently. Does HRC lean plutocratic? No doubt. FDR was a capitalist as well amongst other unsavory traits. Drumpf rides an emotional wave of discontent that is not all economic- much of it is the racial backlash of a black president that has racists in a frenzy for 8 years.
There is so little anti-plutocratic in his message and so buried in his rhetoric that it is difficult to take it seriously. Clearly, some plutos are jumping the GOP ship to endorse HRC and perhaps their most real concerns are not clearly stated. Drumpf has a sordid history of stiffing investors, contractors, etc and is likely to stiff the electorate too. It is a sad election but HRC for all her faults is not Drumpf.
LikeLike
September 30, 2016 at 2:20 pm |
FDR wrote and passed the BANKING ACT of 1933. Clinton, Bill, demolished it. So the Clintons are birthers of financial plutocracy.
True, Trump says whatever. Quite often. Frankly, out of crass ignorance. Obviously. So what? The US CODE of MILITARY CONDUCT (like the German one in WWII) outlaws unlawful orders. Even the Nazis did not prosecute ONE soldier who refused unlawful orders in WWII.
That the pro-Trump wave is actually racist anti-Obama seems denied by the polls: Obama has extraordinarily high approval ratings (for a 2 term president). And that’s HRC’s greatest asset. It is actually the HRC camp which screams racism, this way, they don’t have to have a plan. Say on “Obama”care. (VP Joe Biden himself just admitted there was a problem with Obamacare, just along the exact lines I had described in the last 8 years…)
All plutos and all noeocons have loudly jumped HRC side, with very few exceptions. Repeating ad nauseam that Trump did illegal stuff is not genuine: if he had, he would have been put in jail. Calling Senator Elizabeth from Harvard, Pocahontas, is funny, not that racist. When a tall blonde like her (and I am all for her!) applies as an Indian, Trump gets loud, it has been so since 1970…
LikeLike
September 30, 2016 at 4:43 pm |
I think lots of folks are in total denial that Hillary could be even worse than Trump for the poor and down trodden.Democrats are as bloody about Iraq and the rise of inequality, and Hillary led the show. She tried a health conspiracy, 25 years ago, which has now grown into Obamacare, that’s quite far from single payer
LikeLike
October 1, 2016 at 4:56 am |
I used to believe Hillary was very different from Bill, that she was bidding her time to exact vengeance.. Now I view her as possibly worse.
LikeLike
October 1, 2016 at 1:36 am |
HRC is a flawed candidate as is Drumpf. Her role is her husband’s administration appears overblown yet she sullied herself undeniably with her Iraq vote.
That many of the GOP establishment support her is troubling and telling. But is it more telling about Drumpf’s incoherence, blatant racism (dog whistle variety is preferred), and authoritarian or vulgar deportment than him having any real anti-plutocratic agenda?
HRC is connected to plutos and Drumpf appears outraged over having been shut out from the clique. But he has a terrible record of stiffing his creditors and walking away with a personal payoff. Not illegal but not commendable. His only success may be that he is not broke after having 14 million dropped in his lap.
As bad a HRC may be, Drumpf is a disaster in at least as many ways if not more such as when one looks over his USSC picks and civil rights positions- he wants to loosen up the libel laws against the press. His demeanor is outlandish and that is more troubling than HRC and her health plans, etc. Anyone but HRC seems to be your position be it even someone as despicable as Drumpf with all his fascist tendencies.
LikeLike
October 1, 2016 at 4:52 am |
We agree on Clinton.
As I said many times, I used to view Trump as the poster boy of banking corruption. That’s what I said until 1994. However, then the Clintons repelled the BANKING ACT Of 1933. That was hard to believe. I still cannot believe that one does not talk about it. After the abrogation of the Banking Act, Trump looked like an amateur. Over the next two decades, Trump became more and more alienated with the rest of the elite, revisiting his youth. It turned into a very deep rage. That rage focused on Obama’s slick, empty ways, a mirroring of the elite of the democratic elite (all of them very wealthy politicos like Pelosi, Feinstein, etc.) I really believe that Trump hates the financial plutocracy… whereas Clinton is obviously its candidate.
My own opinion is that voting for Clinton is not morally tenable. And not just because of her, but her supporters, who have written off many crimes the Clintons and their descendants committed as if they did not exist. So Clinton has become the figurehead of a giant collective brainwashing and whitewashing, where a sober analysis of the past, and what went wrong, has been replaced by hurling insults at somebody who was never in a position of political power (Trump).
I have changed my mind on her during this campaign. So the Clintons, like the Bush crowd are, in view of the Geneva Convention, apparent war criminals. Trump, whatever the accusations of having “stiffed” people he had contracts with, is in no way in the same category. However, amazingly, all moral values are inverted, and also all real values: mass criminal acts are described as not relevant to society, whereas insults (against Trump) are viewed as real criminal attack Trump committed. The latest, the Alicia Machado affair, is telling: she was made into a multimillionaire by Trump, extracted as she was from Venezuela where she was tied to very serious criminal activities (and got off, god knows how… Also, how did she get US residency? She was a movie star overseas).
I am a personal friend of Obama. However, I think he only let the Dark Side grow, the Darkest Pluto-corporative side. Otherwise he did nothing. I am ready to bet that, be it Trump or Clinton, he will be forgotten quickly. I do see advantages to Clinton, and some of these advantages are similar to those of Trump: s/he is a mean daughter/son of a bitch. Clearly, it would be good to have a female president.
Just for a change.
I have no reason to believe that Trump is more “fascist” than Clinton. I have no problem with anyone voting for Clinton or Trump. I do have a problem with people who sincerely believe her lies (nobody seems to believe Trump, hahaha)
LikeLike
October 1, 2016 at 2:56 pm |
I have just read out aloud to Jean your post, and your reply just above to SDM.
Jean and I agree with you although I would add that it is a pity that the voting form won’t have the option of: None of the Above!
Not yet being a US citizen I won’t have a vote. If I did I would have a terrible time making a decision. Jean is leaning towards voting for Trump on my birthday (November 8th.)
LikeLike
October 1, 2016 at 4:54 pm |
Thanks Paul (and Jean!) for the comment, and appreciating what I write enough to read it aloud! All I can say is this: Trump’s candidacy is refreshing. Clinton, clearly, will be more of the same. Although I don’t believe that it will be as much of the same as under Obama, the reason being that things are breaking down. At this point, Clinton is running down the clock, avoiding any policy commitment or exposition, and threw fresh meat, Trump way with that incredible Alicia Machado’s story. Machado was accused of murder (among other things), in her native Venezuela, before Trump made her a star… And is now a US citizen… Although she made her movie star career, after Trump, thanks to Trump, and overseas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Something fishy is going on. Maybe Machado is one of Bill’s girlfriend? (I am trying to out-do Trump in the way of innuendos, hahahaha) If the Clintons cannot find any more beautiful stories of immigration.
On the serious side, from Britain to the US Midwest, to France, to all over the West, globalization has turned into plutocratization. That needs to be stopped, and Trump has proposed several mechanisms, to hinder plutocratization, all of which I have proposed on this side, already more than ten years ago. So I cannot be stridently anti-Trump when he loudly adopts part of my program!
LikeLike
October 1, 2016 at 5:06 pm
Very, very interesting. Just keeping my fingers crossed that whosoever makes it to The White House doesn’t get the notion of removing all Brit bloggers who don’t have a US passport! (Must get my finger out and fill in the Naturalisation Application Form!) (Whoops – just failed! Should have called it the Naturalization Application Form. 😦 )
LikeLike
October 1, 2016 at 8:45 pm
(Answered separately to avoid nestling.) I don’t think you have to worry, your blog is all too integrous (;-)!). Cats, dogs and flowers, nature, poetical and housekeeping blogs are not just safe, but recommended.
The Orwellian state is on the side of Clinton (Trump risks making a mess of it, be it only by talking too much!) But they are subtle. There is a famous extensive quote of Tocqueville about that, turning epople into sheep…
LikeLike
October 1, 2016 at 8:18 pm |
Dear Paul:
Well, global plutocracy is a fact. I could not be sure why the Guardian censored me from day one (as did all other British publications I tried… Except for The Economist, who did not censor me once).
However, it turns out that Bill Gates controls The Guardian (!). That had been kept secret. (The Guardian is supposed to be for the people, not owned by Pluto!)
I know for a directly checked fact that the Bing search engine selectively censors my publications (something Google does not do as blatantly). And so on. The Internet is one place where the propaganda war is on, and the Islamist State was able to milk that. So, even more so, the powers that be control the Internet extremely efficiently….
LikeLike
October 3, 2016 at 8:22 pm |
FWIW, re the graunad, it seems to be some kind of favoured news source to funnel information warfare against French interests – the two examples I have in mind are the 2004 ‘children killers’ slurs (complete with that out-of-context picture of that French soldier guarding a young children corpse, after the probable provocation/shot into the crowd in front of the hotel serving as French HQ) in Ivory Coast, and the recent (2014 I think) accusation of organized sexual abuse perpetrated by French troops in RCA. In both case, the Guardian appeared to be at the forefront of those “concerns for human rights”.
And, IIUC, and I do not have specific infos on that, the same smearing tactic, from the same actors, graunad at the forefront, was used against French peacekeepers in ex-Yugoslavia (an another area where French and/or continental interests clashed against UK/US interests), so one cannot even blame the online ectoplasm that today’s Guardian is.
In any case, broadly speaking, I’d trust the British press integrity about as far as I could throw it, and I can’t throw it, case in point, Brexit and the general coverage of all thing EU since forever… and NOT just the tabloids or “right wing” press, quite the contrary. La voix de son maître, rien de plus.
As for the internet, it is the perfect place if one wish to lose himself in ideological echo chambers, niche beliefs, ideas rabbit holes, and all that “epistemological closure”, before anything else, control, censorship, all-seeing virtual panopticon,…
LikeLike
October 4, 2016 at 4:56 pm |
The “graunad”????? What is that? Anti-French propaganda works very well: US friends pulls away from me about it. Even today, and become “friends”. They reproach to me to say anything favorable to France, and how come all paths lead back to Paris, etc. I even have an example of this as I write. A “friend” came and confronted (rare for an American) about something I wrote on the Internet, as it contradicted what she learned at school (namely that the versailles Treaty, thus the hated French, caused Nazism…). Then she made a point to me nasty to me ever since, barely saying “hi” and socially ignoring me otherwise…
LikeLike
October 9, 2016 at 5:53 pm |
Oh, yeah, it does work, doesn’t it?
To follow my usual pet peeves, Cf. the online everlasting roundabout of “factoids” that actually are leftovers of previous propaganda efforts against France – Napoleon’s size, obvious self-serving stories (about Nelson being “better in bed than Napoleon”, some virtuous UK Gentleman scolding French officers,…), “Crecy-Agincourt-Waterloo!”, “it was not the French, it was the Normans!”,…
I fully expect, AOTBE, the BS made-up “quotes” about French racial cowardice that were all the rage back in the 2003-2005-2007 hysteria to be taken as face value 200 years from now, ingrained as they will be in the general Anglo cultural background.
What pisses me off, apart from the non-reciprocity, the Brit French obsession having no counterpart IMHO, is the French ideologically-driven involvement in this memoricide.
The notion of France “losing WWI”, or even of France “losing the 100 years war” (as I have discovered only a few years ago, to an increasing frequency) is already annoying enough from the English-language world and its entertainment pseudopods (the French absent from all WWI-themed media, for example), that this effacement becomes self-effacement by official France is maddening. The anglos being anglos doesn’t bother me much, they can’t help; Official France going along is alarming.
As an aside, I wonder what will happen when this millefeuilles of storytelling, this “virtualist” worldview that is the anglo world, which control representations and “narratives” (being to WWII psychological warfare & clandestine action what power projection and MIC are to WWII war effort, IE a continuation and application into peacetimes and into its own sphere of influence), when this construct at the heart of their (self-)image will crash against something it can’t refute or narrate away?
When, say, apart from all its actual military might, the narrative of the US Military Juggernaut, will crash and burn pitifully in some future peers-war?
What will happen to all that edifice built and maintained since WWII? (Imagine France representing itself winning WWI again and again and again…, up until well into the 1990’s)
LikeLike
October 9, 2016 at 7:47 pm
The fact is, “France” whatever “France” is. lost some battles, but won civilization. This is a French civilization.
LikeLike
October 10, 2016 at 9:44 pm
Avec les Anglos (notamment ceux qui ont atteint la masse critique outre-Atlantique, mais pas seulement) aux commandes depuis 200 ans, droit dans le mur et en klaxonnant, les poches pleines de billets, s’il vous plait, tandis que la France ne produit plus de civilisation depuis belle lurette – et n’en produira plus, en tous cas tant qu’elle sera à la remorque.
LikeLike
October 11, 2016 at 3:40 am
Glucksman, le fils de Glucksman said that there are no more French intellectuals with world, civilizational weight. I agree. No more French OFFICIAL civilization class intellectuals.
That’s one of the reason I write 99.99% in English (although my French is 100% operational). Once a French philosopher, an official one, long ago met with me (it had been arranged by someone not me). He peremptorily concluded: OK, when are you going to write all of this in French? As if I were thus to access a higher level.
I am mostly French civilization, as Great Britain and the USA are. An historical fact. And English is a variant of French, a different dialect (it’s not Turkish or Chinese!)
La France est a la remorque parceque ses intellectuels sont a la remorque, et ils le sont depuis for longtemps. French Existentialism was not up to Nietzschean standards of creativity (because they stole lots from Friedrich). And more recent stuff has been rather shallow too (French Theory, etc.) Nothing that a well-placed nuke can’t change…
LikeLike
October 4, 2016 at 5:01 pm |
I guess, “graunad” means “Guardian”. Yes, I found myself censored on it on day one. That was highly surprising to me then (I was still young and naive then). Turns out Gates controls it. The 200 billion dollars control man (some his own fortune, some those of others). It is indeed subtly vicious against the French REPUBLIC. As I pushed them hard later to know why I was censored, they told me I “blogged the Qur’an”. That’s weird in two ways: I am an unconscious Jihadist, and “blogging Qur’an” should not be a crime anyway…
LikeLike
October 9, 2016 at 4:48 pm |
Yes, the graunad is a (misremembered?) in-joke, an amusing misspelling that I often found in rightwing US sources; not sure if I spelled it right (grauniad, maybe?), but anything that deflates that sorry sack of holier-than-you hot air is good enough for me. As for the “virtuous”, “progressive” press shamelessly serving the raw interests of British plutocrats, I’d advise you to ask Dominique Deux, about the Sao Tome e Principe story he’s been told there once, and that he shared on the economist a while ago. Or how to use principled press campaigns to further naked self-interests, with probably nothing having changed at all since that particular example (cue-in the “Belgian Congo horrors” narrative pushed around the same time the Boer war was witnessing some quite despicable behaviours by the Brits; deflection at its best, lasting to this day).
LikeLike
October 1, 2016 at 9:03 pm |
You have more inside info than I, having friendship with Obama, etc. WJC was terribly wrong with undoing Glass Steagall and it appears that HRC has no real intention of reinstating it. WJC also signed welfare reform, another mistake. Then there was the bankruptcy reform act- another pluto win. Drumpf does rage against the establishment but he seems more angry about his exclusion from it than wanting to do anything positive for general public. Drumpf hates it but he is so incoherent that he appears to have no plan whatsoever to make the working/middle class great again. He opposes increased minimum wage, never talks about reinstating Glass Steagall or breaking up bug banks or other anti-trust action. His Putin fixation is another troubling issue. How much does he owe to foreign investors? Then there are his alt-right white nationalism undertones.
HRC is tough – she has stood up to Drumpf better than JEB etc. He bullied and thrashed his way through the GOP and she maneuvered behind the scenes in the party- Sanders was an outsider to DNC so he had to go above and beyond to get the nomination, too hard a climb with the HRC machine.
Now it is all out battle between the two. The press has had it in for HRC and meanwhile they fawn over Drumpf with billions in free advertising. So where is the smart money on the election? Can Drumpf bellow his way through a tough calculating HRC? And if so, how is it that he disrupts plutocracy when he seems more miffed for not being invited to the party?
LikeLike
October 1, 2016 at 11:45 pm |
I just do not have friendship with Obama. My Hawaiian spouse grew up with him. We also refused to cash in (I tend to view that as a bad decision at this point!). But we saw others doing it, and getting crazed with power (like in totally insane). I recommended HRC for State, when I still hoped she could grow and change. Instead she persisted and signed in ever more degenerate ways. Now I am sure what is needed is a shock to the system. I was 100% behind Sanders, BTW, and finds Senator Warren alarmingly becoming main stream… Still, I am divided. All the BS about Trump is beyond the pale (the lying accusations which seems the main “democratic” programme), however, having a woman president, per se, would be a great, very important progress.
LikeLike
October 2, 2016 at 12:42 am |
Make no mistake: the fact that both Trump and Hillary are tough is an asset. And the obverse was Obama’s undoing. My old theory on Hillary was that she would exact vengeance (including on Bill). So I am not rabidly anti-Hillary. I may well be pleasantly surprised. To help that, we need to be mean with her. She veered significantly to the LEFT in the last two weeks as Trump breathe too heavily by her ass. That veering to the LEFT helped progressivism, and helped her (in the polls, I am following them carefully).
Trump was the first to attack “carry interest”, he did it loudly even before Sanders, complete with gory details…
[There was a typo in the first version of this present comment, where I get right and left confused, TWICE…]
LikeLike
October 2, 2016 at 11:41 am |
Carried interest has been Drumpf’s only real nod to anti-plutocracy. Of course, Plutocracy is not a major issue for the white majority (barely) electorate- they are more concerned with the flag, Jesus, national anthem, pledge of allegiance, school prayer, food stamp “abuse”, illegals, immigrants, Muslims, welfare mothers, voter fraud, “liberals”, NFL, NASCAR, Kardashians, and so it goes. Drumpf encourages and validates their bigotry (fear) towards the “other”.
Inverted totalitarianism is at work- the masses do not see the well hidden power play. Yet they feel dispossessed and are looking for a scapegoat. The alt-right to the rescue?
HRC is a bit of a wild card- she has been pushed left and seems to appreciate that veering left could be her ticket to to the White House.
She moves hesitantly, but she has a clear path- just espouse decriminalization of marijuana, free public college for all,$15 minimum wage, and Glass Steagall, and she would likely be home free to the White House.
Does she really want to be C in C? The path is there but she may need to disavow her pluto backers- the race is tight and what have they done for her lately?
LikeLike
October 2, 2016 at 3:00 pm |
Trump has been clear about making Obama’s corporate titans paying taxes and getting anti-trusted. It’s personal, as usual, he seems to really dislike Bezos and Amazon… But the fact that Obama wants Apple to pay ONLY 1% tax, and puts the entire weight of US diplomacy to do so, is beyond disgusting. I agree with your analysis of Hillary: if she just veers left a little bit, she gets the White House. Everything indicates it, the polls are clear. Her extreme reluctance to do so is telling and scary. Obama faked being more left more readily 8 years ago.
Instead of walloping in the “deplorable” approach of Hillary, I did a search, and found:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-08-31/we-arent-as-divided-on-inequality-as-data-on-donald-trump-voters-suggest
Americans Want to Be More Equal
Economic inequality is a problem that unites voters across partisan lines.
By Josh Hoxie | Contributor
Aug. 31, 2016, at 9:30 a.m.
Of all the pressing problems facing our country, which one garners the concern of the biggest share of Americans? The growing gap between rich and poor.
More than half the country, new Pew Research Center polling confirms, considers growing economic inequality a serious national problem. No other issue elicits as much public concern.
Unfortunately, and somewhat predictably, deep partisan lines appear to divide this public unease over inequality. Seven in 10 Hillary Clinton supporters deem inequality a pressing issue. Just three in 10 Trump backers feel the same way.
So what are we to make of numbers like these? For starters, we need to remind ourselves that rising inequality remains indisputable fact. Study after study continues to detail how the rich get richer and the rest of us do not.
The three issues Trump supporters rank as most pressing, according to the Pew Research study: immigration, terrorism and crime.
RELATED CONTENT
My – Poorer – Generation
Young people are set to inherit the unequal economic heritage of their parents.
The attraction that these hot-button issues hold for many Trump voters would not surprise French economist Thomas Piketty, the world’s most celebrated inequality analyst. Piketty sees such fearful concerns as a likely response to worsening economic conditions.
“If a rising fraction of the population, at the bottom and in the middle of the pyramid, feels that the system is not working for them,” Piketty cautions in the recently published “Hidden Wealth of Nations,” “some might become tempted by nationalist solutions, ethnic divisions, and the politics of hatred.”
Average Trump backers are actually better off than average Americans, contrary to much of the early reporting on Trump support. But Trump supporters do tend to live in areas with lower levels of social mobility. Their children are not doing as well as their parents. Or in Piketty’s words, “the system is not working well for them.”
What about non-Trump supporters? Do they have the fortitude to take on inequality?
Bernie Sanders is betting they do. His new organization, Our Revolution, will continue to push the anti-inequality agenda that Bernie spotlighted to relentlessly in his campaign. Hillary Clinton and President Obama, for their part, have signaled support for tackling inequality through substantive policy changes.
LikeLike
October 2, 2016 at 3:11 pm |
Silly Facebook exchange:
Patrice Ayme: Trump wants to attack globalization, which, as it is, i call: PLUTOCRATIZATION. Why? Because he is an inner pluto, not a global pluto (as Hillary is)
Americans who profited from the invasion of Iraq (fracking, cheap oil) and Obama’s mercantilism (worldwide rule of Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) are all for that to go on
Mike Griffith So what. Trump is a disgusting racist XENOPHOBIC asshole. Your support for him offends me.
Patrice Ayme: I do not support Trump. I deny that he exhibits xenophobia from the acts of his life. Alicia Machado who Trump made a star, the Venezuelan beauty queen and alleged attempted murderess, has white skin, red hair, proving the point about the fact that some immigrants are indeed suspected of major crimes (hahaha).
Let’s be serious: Is being against NAFTA being xenophobic? Krugman and Clinton (Bill) think so. If I am against various foreign dictators who funded him, I am xenophobic, according to Bill Clinton.
Mike Griffith Trump is xenophobic. Geez. It’s so obvious. Why are you taking this weird stance on this this?
Patrice Ayme Brandishing just one word does not an analysis make. You scream: “xenophobic!” just like Jihadists scream: God is Great!”. Screaming is not reasoning. In the acts of his life, Trump is clearly more xenoPHILE than the average US citizen.
Two mothers of Trump’s children: xeno born and xeno educated. His own children: xeno educated (in France!). His own mother whom he loved dearly: xeno born and xeno educated. And yes, i am also anti-NAFTA. Something I have against child labor, among other things.
Mike Griffith Man, you sure twist things around. It’s so simple. Trump is xenophobic. Come on Patrice, this is politics 101, human behavior 101. It’s pretty obvious to the other 99% of intellectuals on this planet. Geez! I think you just like the stimuli of forming unthought of arguments -on common issues- to enlighten some darken corner that you think nobody sees. Don’t forget the forest for the trees!!
Patrice, we need to unite against Trump. He could be real dangerous for this country, more dangerous than giving the 1% more money, more dangerous than not supporting the Syrians directly, more dangerous than killing Iraqis for oil, etc. He sets a precedence of hatred, racism, xenophobia, and bigotry that we haven’t seen in politics in over 75 years. This needs to be stopped. Precarious times in the Western Hemisphere right now.
LikeLike
October 2, 2016 at 4:14 pm |
New York Times feigning surprise that Trump was using an unfair tax code to build wealth (as all Plutocrats do!)
LikeLike
October 2, 2016 at 4:32 pm |
John Michael Gartland: For that matter, the NYT is of the plutocrats, by the plutocrats, for the Plutocrats…while pretending to be for the people…just like HRC, and people believe this stuff.
LikeLike
October 2, 2016 at 4:35 pm |
Indeed, John Michael. NYT is also OWNED by a particular family of plutocrats, forever. I did not send a comment; although a long term subscriber to the NYT, they censor ALL my comments. Every single one of them. On whatever. Even poetry. The NYT is symptomatic of the pseudo-left, and pseudo-center.
LikeLike
October 2, 2016 at 4:45 pm |
Clinton’s remarks came during a fundraiser at the home of former U.S. Ambassador Beatrice Welters, and the audio was first released by the conservative publication The Washington Free Beacon on Friday night.
Clinton, talking about Sanders’ supporters: “They’re children of the great recession. And they are living in their parents’ basement, they feel that they got their education and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves, and they don’t see much of a future,” Clinton said in the audio.
“If you’re feeling that you’re consigned to being a barista or some other job that doesn’t pay a lot and doesn’t have much of a ladder of opportunity attached to it, then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing,” she continued. “So I think we all should be really understanding of that, and we should try to do the best we can not to be a wet blanket on idealism.”
Donald Trump’s campaign jumped on the story of the audio, with the Republican nominee using it to make a direct appeal to Sanders’ supporters.
“Crooked H is nasty to Sanders supporters behind closed doors. Owned by Wall St and Politicians, HRC is not with you,” Trump tweeted Saturday. (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/782264189574377472?ref_src=twsrc^tfw)
LikeLike
October 2, 2016 at 11:21 pm |
So what’s da deal … Everyone now concerned if Trump gave to charity. One should look at ones self in this matter and not at others. And … He has a bevy of accountants guiding him. Why wouldn’t he take advantage of the laws of the nation.
LikeLike
October 2, 2016 at 11:21 pm |
Trump didn’t make the laws …people like Clinton (both) and Obama did…..Do you want us to believe if there was wrong doing the current Democrat administration would give him as “pass” ?? ha!
LikeLike
October 2, 2016 at 11:23 pm |
Arthur, Douglas: this is basically what Trump said in the debate to Hillary:”Change the law”. One thing about Trump, undeniable: all the atrocious laws & acts of the USA in the last 50 years he is innocent of. The hilarious ones forget this
LikeLike
October 3, 2016 at 3:34 am |
Your take on HRC’s reluctance to track more left is accurate. It betrays her pluto ties to Wall Street. She needs the Sanders supporters to seal the deal and she is frustratingly hesitant to do so. It could be her undoing.
That Drumpf supporters do not rank economic inequality high on their priorities is not surprising. His support is more grounded in a backlash to 8 years of a black president and the embarrassment of the failure of the middle east wars and persistent terrorism. That Drumpf is a darling or the white nationalists (racist) groups is very telling. The “alt-right” crowd find him irresistible.
Can Sanders continue to help push HRC to the left? If so,he could get her elected. The bigger issue is can his movement help change Congress because otherwise any change is unlikely to occur. Obama had a majority and squandered it so then again,….
LikeLike
October 3, 2016 at 4:14 am |
Sanders just declared, along the lines you are enunciating, that he was trying hard to nudge Hillary to the left (specifically about banks!). Considering that all the polls indicate that if she barks at finance, she will be elected, this is really a situation which means that, probably, at this point, her presidency will try strictly nothing against the financial plutocracy. And that displeases me.
Reciprocally, the descendant of the Drumpfs has seen that he can get her that way. So Trump is running hard against Wall Street. I think he always hated the Manhattan aristocracy, so he is genuine that way. Now some “”friends”” of mine (not just facebook friends, I have known some for 20 years or more!) tell me they don’t care about the 1%, just about Trump’ xenophobia. There I really have a problem, because in 2003, when i was very opposed to the attack on Iraq, many of them gave me a hard time for my lack of patriotic enthusiasm… In other words, although some of Trump supporters are no doubt Nazi, some, even many of Hillary supporters are completely drunk on cool aid with Bush and the rest of the Iraq invading criminals.
In a way I have no idea whether Trump or Clinton would be worse. What is certainly worse, is denying all the Dark Side which comes with Hillary, while claiming to be “progressive” and the fact that this Dark Side was in power at least ever since Reagan came to power. Barry O infuriates me when he sings the praises of the Financial Times and Reagan…Especially Reagan (the FT is sometimes right). Whether Trump or Hillary is president the “Sanders” left will have to push hard. And that starts with thinking hard, and feeling hard.
Obama squandered his super majority, from Blue Dog democrat, and Pluto demoncrat (Pelosi, Feinstein, ex-Senator Daschle, etc.) opposition. In a lie which foiled the rabble, he pretended that it was all the fault of the Republicans. A real strong in the head president would have been ashamed to pretend that way.
LikeLike