Category Archives: McCain

Hello darkness my friend

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By Joseph Ballin 4/11/2018 7:31 PM EST

Image result for world war III

A war is on between two groups of capitalist nations. On the one side of American and her satellite nations and on the other side of the axis of resistance, Syria, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. Any person who does not side with the defenders aganist aggression are imperialists, there is no middle ground here. You are either for the political sovereignty of Syria, Russia, and Iran or not.

The chickens are falling coming home to roast for Russiagaters and the Democratic establishment. Russiagate blew up in their face on Sunday when Trump attacked Putin and the Russian Federation by name. The fake Russiagate scandal generated by the mainstream media in relation to Trump has made him flip from wanting detente with Russia to now pushing for the possibility of a World War with Russia. I hate to be defending Trump here, but the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt for the most part on him and he has been the toughest president ever when it comes to Russia, from sanctions, to censoring Russian media in the US, to expelling Russian diplomats. Relations now with Russia are even worse than when they were during the Cold War. Only time I can remember them being worse than this was during the Russian Civil War when Wilson sent US troops to occupy Russia, engaging in open hostility with Russia.

Trump, who has finished assembling his war cabinet with neoconservatives like Mike Pompeo, Gina Haspel, and John Bolton, along with a war criminal like James Mattis, is prepared for a war, a massive war. A war that could lead to the death of all live on earth. A world war. To even contemplate that a few years ago would be insane, but here we are. The New York Times has a very good map on the current situation of troop levels in Syria. Check it out here – https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/11/world/middleeast/syria-military-us-russia-iran.html

Russia and Iran has stated that any attack on Syria will lead to retaliation. Iran states it will retaliate aganist Israel for the April, 8 strike. We are beginning to see military mobilization and flight cancelations in and around the area of Syria. The Free Syrian Army says it will lead a counter offensive when any such attack accrues.

Yet a conflict in Syria could open up conflicts elsewhere, such as Ukraine, Iraq, NATO/EU Russian/Belarus border, etc. Such a conflict would lead to tens of thousands, if not millions in a matter of a few days. The possibility of nuclear weapon usage would of course lead to the death of almost all human life on the planet. With Putin’s new nuclear weapons that can bypass American’s EU Thaad missile defense system, the odds of American not being take out in a first strike by Russia are almost a 100%. I leave you with this quote:

“Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship… Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” – Hermann Goering, 1946

It started with William Howard Taft

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By Joseph Ballin 1/3/2018 8:16 am EST

People always wonder how we got to Trump. How did the GOP lose it’s mind? Where did everything go so wrong? This all didn’t start with Trump, go back to Mitt Romney, well actually go back to McCain, well actually go back to George W. Bush Jr., well actually go back to Bob Dole, well actually go back to George H. W. Bush, well actually go back to Ronald Reagan, well actually go back to Gerald Ford, well actually go back to Richard Nixon, well actually go back to Barry Goldwater, well actually go back to Dwight D. Eisenhower, well actually go back to Thomas E. Dewey, well actually go back to Wendell Willkie, well actually go back to Alf Landon, well actually go back to Herbert Hoover, well actually go back to Calvin Coolidge, well actually go back to Warren G. Harding, well actually go back to Charles Evans Hughes, and finally we get to William Howard Taft.

I did that to show you that this cancer that that has infected the Republican Party and later the Democratic party has been around for a long time, and has historically go by different names over the years. Regan ran on “trickle down economics”, also called “voodoo economics” by his very own vice president George W. H. Bush. Coolidge ran on “Less government in business and more business in government.” One of the earliest critics of trickle down economics was Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, a political hero of mine, who would say the following about that issue, “There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.” Bryan not only was the Democratic presidential candidate several times, he also changed the party platform of the Democratic party to move away from the Bourbon Democrats like Cleveland who governed as fiscal conservatives. Imagine if Sanders won the Democratic nominee and somehow managed to change the entire platform and party structure of the Democratic Party.

The Republican Party also saw an insurgency of it’s own on the progressive and nationalist side. Theodore Roosevelt was the vice president of William McKinley, until McKinley’s assassination by an anarchist. Roosevelt was trusteed into the presidency. During the time just before the United States entered World War 1, America was at it’s height in terms of the power of unions and radical movements in the US. We had anarchists, Wobblies, Socialist Party candidates receiving a million voters in a presidential election, etc. It was an era of American history called the “Pogressive Era”. Roosevelt came into the presidency dealing with a Republican Party that since at least the 1880s had sold out to big business and the intrests of the robber barons.

Roosevelt went to war with big industry, enacting break up of big corporations, who would later go on to merge together due to neglect, protecting our national parks, his “Square Deal” social welfare program, brought about the birth of our national parks, and brought an end to the Russo-Japanese war without involving US troops. It would be later he would be held up by Congress who refused to enact his progressive agenda. Roosevelt did not run again in 1908 and William Howard Taft. However, Taft was a conservative and refused to continue Roosevelt’s progressive. Roosevelt felt betrayed by Taft and the Republican establishment. After losing the nomination to Taft and created his own third party, the Pogressive Party. The Pogressive Party platform called for the following:

* Strict limits and disclosure requirements on political campaign contributions
* Registration of lobbyists
* Recording and publication of Congressional committee proceedings
* A National Health Service to include all existing government medical agencies.
* Social insurance, to provide for the elderly, the unemployed, and the disabled
* Limited the ability of judges to order injunctions to limit labor strikes.
* A minimum wage law for women
* An eight-hour workday
* A federal securities commission
* Farm relief
* Workers’ compensation for work-related injuries
* An inheritance tax
* Women’s suffrage
* Direct election of Senators
* Primary elections for state and federal nominations
* The recall election (citizens may remove an elected official before the end of his term)
* The referendum (citizens may decide on a law by popular vote)
* The initiative (citizens may propose a law by petition and enact it by popular vote)
* Judicial recall (when a court declares a law unconstitutional, the citizens may override that ruling by popular vote).

Kept in mind this was in 1912 his platform was purposed, not 2016. What America would look like today if Roosevelt didn’t lose control of the Republican Party to the right wing of the party, which caused the Republican Party to turn far right and the Democratic Party to move to the right wing, is up for debate. However, Taft refusing to continue Rooesevlt’s progressive policies would inevitably lead to the rise of Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, who would massively slash US taxes (The top marginal rate was reduced annually in four stages from 73% in 1921 to 25% in 1925.), lead to a massive economic bubble in the US, with massive inequality and most of the US being ruled as a police state by the KKK, and finally the collapse of 1929. Trump’s 2017 tax cut will go down in history in the same way the Harding tax cuts went, a complete economic collapse of the global economy. My only hope is this time we learn our lesson.

Donald Trump, George W. Bush’s third term

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By Joseph Ballin 8/9/2017 12:46 AM EST

One thing that really drives me up a wall is when people say “Trump makes me wish we had Bush as president again.” When Gore Vidal said we are the United States of Amnesia, he wasn’t fucking joke. Bush was the second worst president (second only to the current asshole) in US history and nearly destroyed the country and the world. Growing up under Bush for me was like someone growing up under Hitler or Franco, it’s a dark time in your history to remember. I simply refer to it as “The Dark Times”. In fact Trump has brought back a lot of memories that I tried to suppress from the Bush administration.

Not to mention the fact it was Bush’s stupidity that helped create Trump in the first place. If Bush was never president, we never get McCain picking Sarah Palin, and if we never got her, we never got Trump. For all the MAGA chuds out there who said Trump would be different from from Bush, where are they now? In fact Trump has become Bush’s third term. Here’s some stuff Bush and Trump both did as president:

1. Bush killed the nuclear deal Bill Clinton established with North Korea, Trump just killed the nuclear deal with Iran that was established by Obama.
2. Both bombed an Arab Baathist country in the middle east for no reason at all.
3. Both came in trying to be friendly with Putin, only to have relations deteriorate dramatically over their presidency.
4. Both expanded NATO.
5. Both ran on an anti-interventionist foreign policy during their respective elections, only to turn into full blown neocon war mongers the second they get into the white house.

Other than that, every thing else is standard stuff presidents do in terms of foreign policy, which is basically war mongering and war crimes, along with breaking international and US law. One key difference between Bush and Trump foreign policy, Bush talked alot about freedom and democracy, Trump has the foreign policy of the Golden Horde, rape and pillage.

1. Both reenacted the Mexico City policy that was previously resided by president Clinton and Obama.
2. The civil rights department of the US government has been largely rendered defunct under both GWB and Trump.
3. The Bush administration abandons ratification Kyoto Protocol, while the Trump administration leaves Paris Deal.

On LGBT issues, I would say Trump is actually WORSE for LGBT Americans than Bush. Trump may not have ran an openly anti-LGBT campaign, but if you had looked at the 2016 GOP platform, it looked like something out of Nazi Germany on LGBT rights. The following things Trump has done on LGBT rights over the last 200 days: removed any referenced to LGBT people or civil rights on white house website, rescind Obama’s guidelines on transgender students bathroom access, rescinded Obama’s federal contractors executive order covering sexual orientation and gender identity, appointed a bunch of batshit insane Christian fucktards to various government departments and courts, gender identity not covered in US census, argued sexual orientation isn’t covered under civil rights laws, banned transgender service members from the US military, and a bunch of other awful shit.

Trump hasn’t been able (thank the gods) to get a lot of bills signed into place, outside of the recent sanctions bill he signed on Iran, North Korea, and Russia. No deathcare bill passed, not tax cuts passed, no federal right to work bullshit, etc. Outside of alot of deregulation and taking healthcare away from women, he’s been a failure for the most part in terms of the oligarchic Christian fascist movement in the US. Let’s hope the next 100 days have Trump signing stupid shit like the Fred Thompson courthouse and not stuff like privatizing social security.

The Sam Seder Tim Black debate, or the Sam talks over Tim while Michael Brooks makes snarky commentary.

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By Joseph Ballin 6/29/2017 5:37 PM EST

Reader’s note: I am a fan of both Sam Seder’s The Majority Report and The Tim Black Show. I do not hold any hostilities towards either person debating in this piece and am writing this to illustrate how we on the left can find better solutions to our problems. That being said I’m biased toward Tim in this debate.

What’s the difference between a liberal and a progressive? Personally I don’t care or like these labels. Hillary described herself as a “progressive who can get stuff done.” So I couldn’t care less about those labels, but Tim goes into what I think he meant is between neoliberal corporate shills and people who want change in this country. Yes Sam is correct that the Majority Report does talk about all of the issues that Tim Black listed. So Sam goes to Tim’s youtube page and criticizes him for not covering healthcare enough. However, Sam has not watched Tim’s show and doesn’t know that he’s covered healthcare numerous times on his show. And now Sam goes into the Seth Rich / Kimdotcom territory.

The one thing me and Jimmy Dore have both been very clear on, we want evidence. We want evidence of Russiagate, evidence Assad gassed his own people, evidence for or against the Seth Rich cover up, etc. That’s reality based thinking. That’s why I’m an agnostic atheist, because I can’t prove there isn’t a god/gods, but there is no evidence that they do exist so there is no reason for me to believe in them. In fact, nothing in the universe can be proven. A fact is a statement that is taken to be true based off of evidence. It is something we collectively as a society agree what is real and fake. A theory is a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena.

Ok now that we got that out of the way let’s deconstruct all this shit. There is no verifiable evidence Russia hacked, interfered, or colluded with Donald Trump or his campaign. In fact, as president, US relations with Russia under Trump are at a record low. Trump has repeatedly attacked the government of Bashar Al-Assad and Iranian militias several times, Russia’s allies. Trump signed a treaty expanding NATO to Montenegro, something Russia opposes. He signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017, which authorized $100 million dollars for the “Countering Russian Influence Fund”, to counter “Russian influence and aggression” and to “support civil society organizations in Europe and Eurasia.” It also included a measure imposing new restrictions and oversight on Russian diplomats in the United State. The Act also includes provisions that no appropriated funds may be used to support the Russian annexation of Crimea and assist Crimea, if such assistance includes the participation of Russian Government officials, or other Russian owned or controlled financial entities. It also states that no funds may be used to support “the Russian occupation of the Georgian territories of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali Region/South Ossetia” or to assist the central governments of other countries that have recognized the two territories’ independence. On top of all that, US has imposes more sanctions on Russia during Trump’ presidency. If Trump’s a Russian puppet, he’s doing a really shitty at it.

Again this is not to say there isn’t business ties Trump has to Russia, like with Deutsche bank and Trump hotels because he’s a billionaire, but he also has business ties to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, Philippines, Azerbaijan, mafia, etc., but the mainstream media never mentions this. Why does mainstream media never bring up the fact General Flynn was a paid agent of the Turkish government? Why does the mainstream media not bring up the fact Trump appointed all these Goldman Sachs people because of his ties to Israel? Or China provisionally granting Trump 38 trademarks after getting elected? Or the Clinton’s business dealings in Russia? So there is enormous hypocrisy on this issue. Focus on Russia and nothing else. Why you may ask? Because starting a new cold war with Russia ensures defense contractors can make giant profit because now we have a great power enemy again. Also we can’t start a cold war with China because our economies are to tied together. It has less to do with Trump himself and more to do with more spending on the military and strengthening the police state. That’s why you don’t hear anything about getting rid of voting machines or having open, fair, and free elections.

As for the Syria gassing of 2017, the entire thing was brought up so briefly and forgotten about so quick by mainstream media and the Trump administration it really makes you wonder what really did happen in Syria. Why has there been no independent UN investigation into the gassing? There is no evidence Assad ordered the gassing of any civilians. As for the Seth Rich story, I stated on day one when I first heard about the Seth Rich murder that I found it very fishy. I have no idea is Seth Rich was the Wikileaks leaker or who killed him, but I do know a couple things. I do know Assange has hinted, but not confirmed, to Seth Rich being the leaker. Wikileaks, outside of the Garani Massacre Video which they said they would publish, but never did, has been 100% on point. So now that we got all that out of the way, back to the debate.

So Sam now brings up whether or not it’s a good thing to promote the Russia fear mongering story to split off three Republican votes in the Senate for healthcare. First of all I won’t advocate a new cold war with Russia over healthcare. Second of all why does Sam think Russia influences how Republican senators vote on healthcare. We’ve already seen the Senate healthcare bill be delayed because of how awful it is. People aren’t thinking about Russia when they think of healthcare, they are thinking of NOT DYING! Plus I would wager all that corporate cash the Republicans senators take is more of an influence than the so called Russia scandal over Trump’s head. The only thing that will force Republicans to change their votes on healthcare is though mass movements.

Now Black brings up the rigged 2016 Democratic primary and the DNC fraud lawsuit. Tim brings up exit polling being used by the US to determine whether an election is legit or bs in foreign countries. I would like to point out that irregularities in exit polling in Ukraine were cited by the US and EU for the fascist coup in Ukraine. And I would also like to point out Sam Seder has had on Greg Palast on Ring of Fire, someone who says the 2016 Democratic primary was rigged. But ok Sam I guess the primary wasn’t “rigged.”

Continuing on Tim brings why Democrats blaming progressives for the lose of Hillary Clinton. So Tim brings up Susan Sarandon and her revolution comment about Trump, stating we are seeing a revolution already taking place under Trump. Ok so I agree and disagree with Tim here. A revolution against Donald Trump hasn’t sustained itself, yet. It needs to be sustained though mass rallies every week and civil disobedience in the streets. And I believe a revolution under Trump can happen if he topples Assad and invades Iran

Michael continues to break into this heated debate to make a funny comment. Now we get back to Seth Rich. So Sam again thinks that it’s crazy to think that politicians won’t murder people to cover up corruption. I agree Tim Black that we need to ask questions. Again I’m an agnostic on Seth Rich, I don’t know who killed Seth Rich.

One of the most damming quotes from the Sam Seder vs Tim Black debate comes right around here. “She (Nancy Pelosi) is a great leader. I would not support a challenge to her” – Sam Seder. Ok so let’s give Sam the benefit of the doubt and say Pelosi wasn’t guilty for the thousands of losses of Democrats in elections over the past decade or so. So why is it Sam doesn’t bring up the fact Pelosi didn’t do shit to bring about real progressive change during her time as speaker from 2007 to 2011? She opposes single payer, she didn’t prosecute GWB, and she didn’t bring up the Employee Free Choice Act.

And finally Sam says Steny Hoyer would be worse than Pelosi. So Sam why not get rid of Hoyer? And if he’s replaced with another corporate Dem get rid of them until we get someone who will at least listen to progressives. That’s what the Republicans did with Eric Cantor and their party is stronger than ever. Tim brings up the fact Sam voted for Hillary Clinton in New York, a blue non-swing state, but he doesn’t blame Hillary for not appointing Bernie Sanders as her VP pick, which everyone agrees would have won her the election. You know why she didn’t do it? Because of spite and corporate greed. She would rather lose to a Republican than give an inch to progressives, and that’s why we have Trump.

Bring Back Isolationism

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By Joseph Ballin

5/18/2017 8:56 AM EST

The Rape of Belgium was the first modern propaganda campaign by the British in order to change the opinion of Americans to join the side of the allies during World War I. Films of the dreaded Hun raping Belgium women and bayoneting babies appeared on Americans films. That is not to say there wasn’t atrocities committed by both sides during World War I, but that was not the reason we got into World War I. The real reason was because wallstreet had funded France and United Kingdom during the war and wallstreet wanted those debts paid back.

Germany and Austro-Hungary posed no threat to the United States. What should have happened was both sides should have ceased hostilities with each other and marched back to their nation’s borders, in a similar manner that brought an end to the bloody massacre that was the Korean War. Now, 100 years later, the U.S. State Department, one of the most evil organizations in human history, is “claiming” that the Assad government has killed and burned thousands of bodies in prisons. When I heard this, flashes of the rape of Belgium and Nayirah al-?aba? testifying before Congress that in Kuwait, Iraqi soldiers were “throwing babies out of incubators”.

The similarities between the Syrian Civil War and World War I are so numerous and obvious they could be put into a giant list. Let’s do that:

*Wilson runs for president under the campaign slogan “He kept us out of war”, winning in November 1916, only to betray his voters by declaring war on Germany in April 1917. A 100 years later, Trump runs for president under the campaign slogan of keeping us out of Syria, winning in November 2016, only to betray his voters by declaring war on Syria in April 2017.
*Both Trump and Wilson are authoritarian racists who advocated arresting journalists and establishing surveillance states.
*Instead of the the evil Kaiser, we now have Assad, the so called “butcher” of Damascus.
*There are various interconnecting alliances with contradictory goals among so called “allies”.
*Anti-war movements are marginalized and crushed by the state.

The more things change, the more things stay the same. Since Congress and US presidency no longer abide by US Constitution when it comes to declaration of war, Trump could at any time, use the thousands of US troops currently in Syria since March 2017 to overthrow Assad. We don’t have to be Nostradamus to see what happens next. We already have Iraq and Libya as models of American “liberation” looks like.

Until I see a shed of proof of Assad’s forces burning bodies or using sarin chemicals I do not believe either of them. Even if they were true, I would not advocate intervening in Syria. The only thing we can do to help is take in ALL Syrian refugees since we helped cause this, provide non-lethal aid to Syria, stop funding the so called “rebels”, and advocate some kind of cease fire.

Any new war will lead to decades long occupation by US military forces. We still have troops in Germany, Italy, Japan, and South Korea. Iraq and Afghanistan are almost 20 year old occupations. Imagine if we took all those US troops back home and instead of nation building over there, we start nation building here.

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_non-interventionism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolationism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_House

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_Belgium

The Crimes of Donald Trump

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By Joseph Ballin

5/13/2017 7:10 PM EST

The one thing I hate most about being American is the hypocrisy of our views towards life and rule of law. This brings me to Donald Jay Trump, a guy you may have heard of. So Trump paints himself as his good moral god fearing Christian man who cares about muh fetuses, while on the side grabbing pussy. However, Trump has no problem dropping drones on innocent people while the orange cunt eats chocolate cake in Mar-a-Lago. I do not know the exact numbers of innocents murdered under the fascist Trump regime. The Obama regime considered any male 16 years or older killed as “terrorists”. It is hard to tell when the US is propping up proxy regimes like Egyptian General Sisi and funding secret covert terrorists in Syria since 2005. If I had to estimate he’s killed at least a couple thousand if not ten thousand innocent people since January 20.

For all the Trump voters out there who thought he was the peacenik to Hillary’s war mongering, where are you now? He’s given the CIA and generals the power to kill anyone at any time and deploy US ground troops to any country at any time. We’ve seen an massive escalation in drone strikes under the Trump regime, along with a $100 billion arms deal for Saudi Arabia. There is a build up of US ground troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with deployment of US ground troops in Syria and Somalia. He allowed his generals to drop MOAB on Afghanistan and we still do not know how many people were killed from that strike because nobody has been allowed anywhere near the blast. And he is pushing us towards war with North Korea and Iran, all while striking the Syrian government over a chemical attack committed by the al-Qaeda white helmets. Relations with Russia are at the worst they have ever been and we are already probably in a new cold war with them. Trump’s foreign policy is basically a return back to the times of the Golden Horde.

Again all of this doesn’t mean Hillary was the peace candidate, far from it, but we didn’t have people like Trump supporters out right lying saying she was. If I had it my way I would have Trump, Hillary, Obama, Bush, Bill Clinton, GWB, GHWB, Jimmy Carter, and pretty much almost the entire US government on trial for war crimes against humanity and a sentence of life imprisonment without parole, since I don’t believe in the death penalty. I think Dr. Cornel West summed it up best when he said “That means that a child in Yemen, Somalia, and a child in Pakistan has the same value as a child in Newtown, Connecticut, Southside Chicago, Chinatown, barrio and an Indian reservation. A child is a precious child, no matter what. Somebody’s got to be accountable for that.”

Everyone being treated the same aka equality right? You would think in the good old US of A that would be the case, but equality under the law in US is bullshit. If I kill someone I go to jail, if someone in the US government kills someone they get medals. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, the near dead fossil and AG for the US, is rebooting the War on Drugs (that never ended since it’s declaration by Richard Nixon), telling prosecutors to seek the “most serious” charges and stricter sentences on the issue of drugs. So smoking a plant winds your ass in jail for life because private prisons demand cheap slave wage labor. Meanwhile wallstreet can steal from us and get tax payer bail out in order to keep the gravy train of capitalism going for another 10 years till the next crash.

“If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it” said Mark Twain, a man who was centuries ahead of his time. Until we call out the hypocrisy of both Republicans and Democrats we will never been free of this unless cycle of the War on so called “Terror” and War on so called “Drugs.” These wars are actually wars on the poor and non-white people. A lot of so called liberals hated Bush, but where ok with Obama putting a nice face on Bush’s policies. Now with Trump, the nice face has been replaced with an ugly orange turd, which is good for the left in the sense it wakes people up to just how fucked our government is. We need to move past this D vs R bullshit, end all these bullshit wars for profit, and move together as horizontally organized global workers party.

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Links:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-saudi-idUSKBN18832N

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/12/528086525/sessions-tells-prosecutors-to-seek-most-serious-charges-stricter-sentences

Banana Republicans

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Take it easy, Champ. Why don’t you sit this next one out, stop talking for a while…

Just for fun, here is Wikipedia’s definition of a Banana Republic:

In modern usage the term has come to be used to describe a generally unstable or “backward” dictatorial regime, especially one where elections are often fraudulent and corruption is rife. By extension, the word is occasionally applied to governments where a strong leader hands out appointments and advantages to friends and supporters, without much consideration for the law. A banana republic can also be used to describe a country where a large part of its economy and politics are controlled by foreign powers or even corporations.

I’m too lazy to make all the requisite links to the Bush Administration, so I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. Still, it’s sad to see McCain continue to whore himself out like this. You don’t owe those pigs anything, Johnny, cut ’em loose!

* * * * *

Update:  Sure enough, the “banana republic” line is a GOP talking point.  Politics is such a pathetic game, it would be laughable if these people weren’t responsible for so much human misery.  Jamison Foser has more.

Bring out your dead!

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Now for some more gratuitous holiday embedding. I can’t believe we’ve gone this long without a dead tune….

And with the Monty Python reference and in the spirit of the holidays and binge eating….

“It’s only wafffffer thin…”

And here is Cleese on The Countdown…..his laugh alone is worth watching.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The perils of early voting

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For some reason McCain is obsessed with Iowa, a state he has no chance of winning. Nevertheless he continues to hold campaign events there, though apparently unconcerned with the youth vote:

She said McCain staffers wouldn’t tell her why she was being asked to leave and when she got outside, she saw “a group of about 20 people” who had all been asked to leave [the rally].

Elborno said after seeing the people who were asked to leave, she was concerned that McCain’s staffers were profiling people on appearance to determine who might be a potential protester.

“When I started talking to them, it kind of became clear that they were kind of just telling people to leave that they thought maybe would be disruptive, but based on what? Based on how they looked,” Elborno said. “It was pretty much all young people, the college demographic.”

Elborno said even McCain supporters were among those being asked to leave.

“I saw a couple that had been escorted out and they were confused as well, and the girl was crying, so I said ‘Why are you crying? and she said ‘I already voted for McCain, I’m a Republican, and they said we had to leave because we didn’t look right,’” Elborno said. “They were handpicking these people and they had nothing to go off of, besides the way the people looked.”

911 is a Joke

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Ok, this is beneath the dignity of our very serious site, but the Joe McCain phone call saga is too freaking funny. I want the embedded stream of all phone calls asap. Joe McCain is John’s brother, a fellow geezer, who calls 911 from his car to ask what’s going on up ahead that’s causing him to sit in DC traffic. (Dude, it’s DC traffic). He does this not once, but twice, the second time to complain that he has been harassed by the 911 operator who informed him that frivolous 911 calls are illegal.

In 11 days we will hold a national election in which millions of people will vote to put crazy old men in charge of the country.

* * * Update * * *

First 911 call

Voice mail chastisement

Second 911 Call

* * * Pink Update * * *