Over Memorial day weekend Libertarians came together from across the country and around the world to nominate their president and vice presidential candidates at their annual national party convention. And for many the top of the ticket for the fall and the general election season is troubling, deeply troubling.
But lets look at it from this perspective for just a minute, shall we? My prediction is that the Johnson-Weld ticket will be Libertarian-lite in that they’ll run under the Libertarian party banner but will, instead, draw from the well of the Never Trump Never Hillary movements in a kind of “A Coalition of the Willing.” Or as Bill Clinton and Dick Morris did so infamously in the 1990’s, “Triangulation.”
In either case I like Bill Weld and have enormous respect for Gary Johnson, ever since 2011 when he first ran for the presidency. Then as now Johnson stands for some of the same things that I do, but with Charles and David Koch, through Bill Weld, pulling on Johnson like he’s a puppet and they’re the masters even I can’t stomach that!
I hate Charles and David Koch with every fiber of my being for what they have done to this great country of ours and this beautiful world in which we all live. They are evil incarnate, in my opinion, and hell itself would be a far worse place with them in it.
I call LINO – Libertarian in Name Only! And for those disgruntled and disaffected Libertarians I offer this as your Battle Cry:
Hold fast, and as Jesse Ventura says, “Stay Vigilant…”
–Rhett.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, SHARE! PLEASE? THANK YOU. COME AGAIN.
They say that politics makes for strange bedfellows, and its taken me most of my life to understand what that even means and it wasn’t until this national election cycle, in fact, that I’ve come to fully understand its true meaning.
And as luck would have it this is not the first time Mr. Lewandowski has had trouble with the law. In 1999 he was arrested after attempting to bring a loaded weapon into the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.
Before that he was charged with assault and battery after having bit a fellow campaign staffer’s ear according to this report from the PalmBeachPost.com in the early 1990’s while working on a Congressional campaign in his home state of New Hampshire, the first mainstream campaign he ever worked on.
By all rights and accounts Mr. Lewandowski shouldn’t just be in jail, BUT under it. Affluenza anyone? Anyone?
We are told though that all of this is just nuance. Side show. Carnival barker stuff. And to ignore the obvious for obvious sake. Act as if nothing ever happened. That this is all just make-believe. Pretend. For ratings in a presidential election year. Culminating into this sort of Max Von Sydow‘Needful Things’ – esque “Hey these things happen,” moment:
No. These sort of things don’t just happen politically or otherwise. They are be design and purpose. Not to say that Ms. Fields, the reporter to which Mr. Lewandowski is alleged to have assaulted in Jupiter, FL. earlier this month, set all this up to happen, BUT that she was used and has been used as a message board for both the left and the right politically. Excused away, almost, by both; in lieu of her ’15 minutes of fame’ in the mosh pit known as social media.
For his part Mr. Lewandowski maintains his ‘innocence’ and his boss, Mr. Donald J. Trump, is ‘Standing by his man’. Watch.
Doubling down, as early as yesterday evening during a town hall event on CNN, on Lewandowski staying put in the presidential campaign:
And in the midst of this political circus are the voices of calm and reason. Myself. Mr. Bill Moyers and so many others.
Guys who are saying, “Whoa! Wait a minute. Hold on just one minute here. This guy – Lewandowski – needs to be put in jail! And damn it all to hell Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Rahm Emanuel need to exit stage left…”
And speaking further on the exit of Wasserman-Schultz and Rahm Emanuel Mr. Moyers & Mr. Winship wrote:
“Their disappearance might also help Hillary Clinton convince skeptical Democrats that her nomination, if it happens, is about the future, and not about resurrecting and ratifying the worst aspects of the first Clinton reign when she and her husband rarely met a donor to whom they wouldn’t try to auction a sleepover in the Lincoln Bedroom.”
That Mrs. Clinton in all her political resplendent should ‘man up’ and:
“… come right [on] out and ask for the resignations of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Democratic National Committee Chair — and Florida congresswoman — Debbie Wasserman Schultz.”
“Rahm Emanuel first came to prominence as head of the finance committee for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, browbeating ever-increasing amounts of money out of fat cat donors, and following [the] Clinton[‘s] into the White House as a senior adviser attuned to the wishes and profits of organized wealth.”
“After alienating most of Washington with his arrogance and bluster Emanuel left in 1998 and went into investment banking in Chicago, making more than $16 million in less than three years.
He came back to Washington as a three-term Illinois congressman, chaired the fundraising Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (calling on his Wall Street sources to get in on the gravy by electing so-called New Democrats over New Deal Democrats), and soon was back in the White House as Barack Obama’s chief of staff.”
The Buffet Rule Map breakdown, courtesy of Wikipedia 2016…
Remember that shocking dash cam video of a black 17-year-old named Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times by a Chicago policeman while he was walking away? Of course you do; who can forget it? Remember, too, that for 400 days the police kept the existence of the video secret and did nothing about the shooting. Meanwhile, the City of Chicago paid five million dollars to McDonald’s family, who at that point had not filed a lawsuit. But despite the large sum of money coughed up by his own administration, Emanuel claims he never saw the video. If that’s true, he was guilty of dreadful mismanagement; if he did know, he’s guilty of far worse.
Only after his re-election was the cover-up of the murder revealed. In Perlstein’s words, “Given that he surely would not have been reelected had any of this come out before the balloting, a recent poll showed that only 17 percent of Chicagoan’s believe him. And a majority of Chicagoan’s now think he should resign.””
By this time you may well be asking, “what could be worse?” Great question! And here’s my answer:
The Honorable Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, (D-FL) Congressperson and 1st Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (photo courtesy of The Florida-Sun Sentinel, 2012)
And rather than admit to those problems, and deal with them accordingly, the three-man tag team of Ford, Jr. Wasserman-Schultz and Meek, like so many of their colleagues, swept those controversies under the rug – passed the buck and left the American people to pay for the check.
Why am I not surprised?
“As for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she embodies the tactics that have eroded the ability of Democrats to once again be the party of the working class. As Democratic National Committee chair she has opened the floodgates for Big Money, brought lobbyists into the inner circle and oiled all the moving parts of the revolving door that twirls between government service and cushy jobs in the world of corporate influence.
She has played games with the party’s voter database, been accused of restricting the number of Democratic candidate debates and scheduling them at odd days and times to favor Hillary Clinton, and recently told CNN’s Jake Tapper that super delegates — strongly establishment and pro-Clinton — are necessary at the party’s convention so deserving incumbent officials and party leaders don’t have to run for delegate slots “against grassroots activists.” Let that sink in, but hold your nose against the aroma of entitlement.
[Wasserman-Schultz] has aligned herself with corporate interests out to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s effort to create national standards for the payday-lending industry, a business that in particular targets the poor. Payday loans, as Yuka Hayashi writes at The Wall Street Journal, “are quick credits of a few hundred dollars, with effective annual interest rates ranging between 300% and 500%. Loans are due in a lump sum on the borrower’s next payday, a structure that often sends people into cycles of debt by forcing them to take out new loans to repay the old ones.”
According to the nonpartisan Americans for Financial Reform, this tail-chasing cycle of “turned” loans to pay off previous loans makes up about 76 percent of the payday loan business. The Pew Charitable Trust found that in Wasserman Schultz’s home state, the average payday loan customer takes out nine such loans a year, which usually has them mired in debt for about half a year. … The very people, it must be acknowledged, who now have an ally in the chair of the Democratic National Committee, who has so engineered the rules of the current Democratic primary process so as to virtually assure her unlimited access to a Clinton White House where she can walk in freely to press the case for her … donors and pals.[..]”
Professor Tim Canova, former California University School of Economics Teacher (photo courtesy of New Time of Broward and Palm Beach, 2016)…
As a long-time lawyer, educator and economics and policy adviser to Mr. Bernie Sanders and others Professor Canova has seen, first-hand, the devastating effects Wasserman-Schultz brand of governance on South Florida since he moved to Hollywood, FL. in 2012 from the greater Los Angeles, CA. area.
“I’m very unhappy with Wasserman Schultz’s representation of the district. Time and time again, she has voted to protect the pools of dark money in politics. My dissatisfaction with her has gone back many months, to when she voted to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership.”
As an outspoken critic of Wall Street and Madison Avenue Professor Canova seems like the natural protagonist to Wasserman-Schultz soft-core political porn:
“Given his own experience as an outspoken Wall Street critic, Canova came to one conclusion: He ought to run to take Wasserman Schultz out. So, on January 8, he officially announced his candidacy in Florida’s 23rd District, which encompasses Hollywood and Miami Beach. … He grew up on Long Island, attended Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., and, after graduating, worked as a legislative aide to former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas. From there, he practiced commercial law at the then-prominent New York City law firm [of] Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander, and Ferguson. Among [the] other prominent alumni [who practiced law there along side the likes of] Richard Nixon and former Sen. Pat Buchanan [,who] worked for the firm before going into politics.”
As the New Times of Broward and Palm Beach put it:
“[While]he has not received any sort of endorsement from the Sanders campaign. … Canova is an outspoken liberal who believes the Federal Reserve should be reformed. While at Chapman [University], Canova was driving to a meeting with then-Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in 2011 when he noticed an encampment had emerged around Los Angeles City Hall. It turned out to be one of the nation’s largest #OccupyWallStreet protests. [And] I found it fascinating,” he says. “The encampment itself was a revelation. There were a lot of young kids, for most part, who had voted for Obama just a year or two earlier, but the new administration had not done much of anything for this generation. Many were homeless or out of work, but they were intelligent people.””
As a ‘Wall Street reformer’ Mr. Canova was called upon by Senator Sanders and eighteen other economists to study a 2011 report released by the Fed’s own Government Accountability Office which detailed that ’employees and big bank owners’ for corporations like Goldman Sachs:
“sat on the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks while their own firms received Fed [bailout] money.”
– What, I wonder, could ever be wrong with this picture? Well lets see.
Goldman Sachs Offices in downtown New York, NY. USA (photo courtesy of Village Voice Magazine, 2013)…
“After Wasserman Schultz voted to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership midway through 2015, Canova says he tried to contact the congresswoman’s office to explain his issues with the bill. He says he never heard back. So, he says, he had no choice but to try to remove her from office himself.”
And its news like this that should be a sole comfort to folks like Mr. Moyers and Winship. To know that there are people like Professor Canova, Tammy Baldwin, Alan Grayson, Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren fighting the good fight, the progressive fight , in this and future Congresses.
A choice instead of the ‘status quo’, OR as Moyers and Winship concluded in their pleading:
“This is why [politicians like] Emanuel and Wasserman Schultz must go. To millions, they are enablers of the one percent, perpetrators of the Washington mentality that the rest of the country has grown to hate. What a message such servants of plutocracy send: Democrats — a bridge to the past.”
–Rhett.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, SHARE! PLEASE? THANK YOU. COME AGAIN.
Japan’s Finance Minister Accidentally Reveals How It All Ends: “War” by Tyler Durden, http://www.zerohedge.com While this all started with a currency “war,” it seems –according to a stunningly candid transcript of Japan’s finance minister’s conversation with none other than Paul Krugman – that the real endgame here is actual war. Aso remarked that “a […]
NEW YORK, New York – In the first hour of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” today co-host Mika Brzezinski lamented, “[Ben Carson] seems to me to be disconnected from reality” while talking all things Ben Carson and the 2016 Republican primary process.
Dr. Ben Carson (L) and Donald J. Trump (R)…
A primary process that sees both the retired pediatric neurosurgeon and the businessman and media magnate Donald J. Trump on top in all the latest polls, despite the controversies in as many days. Mika lamented, and the cavalcade of midway media mavens and politicos wasted no time in demonstrating WHY they fear Ben Carson and Donald Trump. Watch!
So where, I wonder, can or could we meet in the middle?
I think I have the answer to such a dilemma, and we will call it, “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Main Stream Media: The Do’s & The Don’ts for the 2016 presidential race…”
Hitchhiker’s thumb…
Hitchhiker’s Guide #1: Unless there was an accident resulting in death or dismemberment where an arrest record might be discovered, don’t bring it up because it makes both the reported and the reporter, media and politician alike, look stupid. And leaves the viewer/listener wanton for something that never was.
Hitchhiker’s Guide #2: Unless there’s a positive or negative effect on the Sovereign Republic of the United States of America, don’t bring up politicians peccadilloes. The less said. The better. Because knowing for sure whether Ben Carson had a Lizzie Borden moment with his mother years ago or not won’t put gas in the American people’s tanks, food on the American people’s tables or money in the American people’s pockets.
Hitchhiker’s Guide #4: Not everyone was born a politician, a pollster, a pundit or a talking head. And whether you were or were not or whether the person or persons on whom the topic of discussion is about is or isn’t it doesn’t matter, sooooo don’t bring it up.
Hitchhiker’s Guide #5: Never ever hitch a ride with strangers, and IF someone has…Bring it up! We all remember the rule of thumb taught to us by our parents right? “Stranger danger,” remember?
These are do’s and don’ts that I think will help out both the politicians, the media, and the voter most of all to discern who they want and who they don’t want governing themselves and their families for the next four years.
–Rhett E. Column
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“If you talk about human rights in my country, I will talk about human rights in the United States. You have racial riots taking place in the wake of the killing of so many black people by the police. You have prisons full of inmates and new techniques of torture being used. .. If you talk about human rights in the [D.P.R.K.], we will talk about human rights in the U.S.” – Mr. Park Yong Chol, Deputy Director of the D.P.R.K.’s Institute for Research into National Reunification
PYONGYANG, North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea) – In quite possibly the BEST ‘drop the mic’ moment I have ever read in my lifetime a Mr. Park Yong Chol delivered a line on human rights that is loathed to be heard, really, from the Western World when it comes to human rights and the ‘nuclear option’. Bottom line.
The rest of the interview mattered not, to me at least. What mattered was that one honest to God moment between Mr. Young Chol and Will Ripley of CNN.
Clearly N. Korea or the (Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea – D.P.R.K.) has its good and fair share of civil as well as human rights violations (it’s been that way since the Communist took charge in 54′ – they frown, oddly enough, on public and I might add private decent), but Mr. Yong Chol had a moment of absolute and tea total clarity. It mattered not to him who his audience was, because at the opening of the interview he told his interviewer, “I hate talking to foreign press.” And rightfully so when you consider all the lambasting that North Korea faces on an almost daily basis from ‘foreign press’.
Seems like when they make two steps forward, they get knocked, two steps back. The entire Korean Continent is a standards and practices in that since the Korean Conflict, aka the Korean War, aka “a first world-wide police action” – with the second one being the War in Vietnam.
Many historians have questioned, openly, President Truman’s decision to remove MacArthur from Command because of MacArthur’s popularity number one, and because of his contributions towards a lasting peace and freedom in the South Pacific (Truman put MacArthur in official charge of the dropping of the Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan – thus ending, entirely and “unconditionally” WW2) during WW2 and later in life after his, “official” military career. His leadership at West Point. And then his lasting efforts towards world peace and stability through the United Nations.
Some say Truman looked foolish there after and that his presidency was greatly diminished.
But imagine for a minute had MacArthur, old ‘Dugout Doug’ himself, had been right about a unified Korea? – I happen to think he was. What a vastly different place this world would be had Chairman Mao Zedong and the Communist not been so successful in the deunification of Korea. CNN wouldn’t even be talking to folks like Yong Chol. No mention of ‘Dear Leader’ or D.P.R.K. to be had here. No threat of ‘the bomb’ being dropped on the West by N. Korea every other month.
So. In a larger sense we have former President Harry S. Truman to thank for all this. To thank for the allowances of the Communist. Because thereafter Chairman Mao, a General of the Red Army of China during the Korean conflict, took full advantage of General MacArthur’s removal from Command by Truman. And would, years, later, privately, thank Harry Truman for his decisional contribution. Or so I have been told.
We all remember, no doubt, the late actor Gregory Peck’s epic, “MacArthur”. It was a through and through classic of the life and times of General Douglas S. MacArthur. Gregory Peck had a line, from a speech that MacArthur had given to West Point graduates it was a line that included the words, “First. Best. Duty.” These were the words MacArthur himself used in his Thayer Award speech at that West Point graduation in 1962 titled, “Duty, Honor, Country”. Listen.
Say what you want or will about General MacArthur, but no one was left to know what he thought as an American. A Soldier. A Patriot. And as a human being of the World towards his other fellow human beings.
MacArthur knew what had to be done, planned for it, lobbied for it, encouraged the public to back it, but the powers that be here in America – then as now – would have none of it. They knew – then as now – what was best. Well. Let me just leave you, as I opened with you, with this drop the mic moment from a Communist.
“If you talk about human rights in my country, I will talk about human rights in the United States. You have racial riots taking place in the wake of the killing of so many black people by the police. You have prisons full of inmates and new techniques of torture being used. .. If you talk about human rights in the [D.P.R.K.], we will talk about human rights in the U.S.” – Mr. Park Yong Chol, Deputy Director of the D.P.R.K.’s Institute for Research into National Reunification
–Rhett.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — I just finished reading an article from MSN News Services, via Reuters and the AP on the so-called Bush-era torture programs/enhanced interrogation techniques during the early days of the War on Terror and I must say I am experiencing and have been experiencing a myriad of emotions, a veritable roller coaster ride of feelings on this pending report for the last two weeks.
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what, respectfully, Mr. Obama & Co. are hiding? Why the need to delay, and deny the American people, their right to know? Additionally why the need to provide cover for the Intelligence Community? Finally why, in this article I read, was a pending report from out of the White House, “accidentally emailed” to an Associated Press reporter?
These are but some of the many questions some of the many points of emotion I have been wrestling with, and again, for the last two weeks.
And so it goes…
I learned something this week and I also want to correct, publicly now, a record of standing I have long-held against a former President of these United States, Dwight Eisenhower. I contended that it was former President Eisenhower who started the C.I.A., it was not. It was in fact Harry Truman who started the C.I.A., BUT and his later years he, like so many of us do, had a change of heart on all things Central Intelligence Agency. Here, is where the change of heart began.
And so it goes…
I said all that to say this. The White House, more importantly this President, Barack H. Obama, II., and the honorable, had better come clean. He has but two whole handfuls of months left in his presidency to serve. He has a real opportunity. A real chance to level the playing field to correct the record as it were for the good of all mankind. To become something far more than what I have titled him under this #blogpost as, an ‘ACCIDENTAL’ Statesman.
President Barack H. Obama, II, 2012 Democratic National Convention…
Because, and I will close with this. Comments such as these from online news articles, though good and very informative, WILL NOT suffice,
“The report does not draw the legal conclusion that the CIA’s actions constituted torture, though it makes clear that in some cases they amounted to torture by a common definition, two people who have read the report said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the still-classified document publicly by name.
The Senate report, the State Department proposes to say, “leaves no doubt that the methods used to extract information from some terrorist suspects caused profound pain, suffering and humiliation. It also leaves no doubt that the harm caused by the use of these techniques outweighed any potential benefit.”
Those methods included slapping, humiliation, exposure to cold, sleep deprivation and the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.
The White House document is significant because it also reveals some of the State Department’s concerns about how the CIA’s tactics will be portrayed around the world.”
COMMENTS like these, for me at least, add up to duck and cover, run and hide, that age-old game of cat and mouse, that has been played throughout history both time and memorial by our fathers, grandfathers and forebears. The Cold War is over folks!
Yet Barack Obama, it appears wants to do nothing more than allow the Intelligence Community to play with the lives, fortunes and sacred honors of We The American People. It would appear to me, in the very least, that ,his attitude and actions of late, the Constitutional Law Professor has an obligatory disdain for the Rule of Law. It says, by his actions, that the Intelligence Community could give a fat rat’s rectum less about the Rule of Law OR that they only care about the Rule of Law when it is more than conveniently necessary for them to do so.
Such an attitude, such an approach toward governance and toward the everyday people who elected him to high office amounts to what Hollywood calls, “creative license”. And creative license will not cut it Mr. President! Respectfully.
Peace.
–Rhett.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, SHARE! PLEASE? THANK YOU. COME AGAIN.
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