Secret Policeman Mueller Reinforces Hoax of Russian Threat To U.S. "Democracy," Tells Democrats Don't Bother Getting Him to Testify

Those were the two points he hammered home in a political theater performance, a show to which he summoned the media to attend as his audience, and just as audiences do not participate in the performance, Mueller barred them from questioning him. Just be stenographers, you propagandists. Or political theater reviewers.

Just as he did when helping justify aggression against Iraq by the Bush regime, by falsely testifying to Congress, pretending to know that Iraq had prohibited weapons plus ties to Al-Qaeda, once again Mueller spewed lies designed to further a covert yet obvious political agenda. Back then it was furthering the campaign to create the warlike atmosphere to enable the invasion of Iraq. This time it's perpetuating the Big Lie that Russia mounted a major assault on U.S. democracy. (Leave aside the fact that the existence of U.S. "democracy" is itself a myth. The U.S. is a corporate oligarchy, a bourgeois class dictatorship, with a secret police state that is more powerful than the legislature, a legislature that exists to do the bidding of big corporations and rich plutocrats, and that is monopolized by a two-party political cartel.) [1]

Mueller had it both ways about Trump's guilt. Playing it coy, he claimed the reason he didn't accuse Trump of any crimes was because Department of "Justice" policy (set by fiat by itself) is that a sitting president of the U.S. cannot be indicted. (Which flies directly in the face of the oft-repeated political slogan that "no one is above the law, including the president," but that contradiction is NEVER mentions by ANY corporate media propagandist, establishment politician, or state apparatchik, so you're not supposed to THINK the most obvious thing, once again.) Talking out of the other side of his mouth, he pointedly said that wasn't an exoneration either. So guilty as NOT charged, I guess. He was miffed that Trump's hand-picked Attorney General, William "Maximum Authoritarianism" Barr, spun the Mueller report as exoneration of Trump. But the U.S. Constitution does not bar indictment of a president. It provides the mechanism of impeachment on the obvious presumption that a president would be able to block his own prosecution by the executive branch he controls. And Kenneth Starr, another special prosecutor and a GOP hitman, had no problem accusing President Bill Clinton of crimes in his report, which he turned over to Congress where the GOP-controlled House of Representatives duly impeached Clinton. (The Senate fell short of the 2/3rds majority needed to convict and remove Clinton from office.)

Mueller disingenuously said it would be "unfair" to Trump to accuse him of crimes without Trump having the option to legally clear himself. As if the report was an indictment, which it is NOT. He would have been perfectly free to accuse Trump of crimes in a report that isn't an indictment without violating DO"J" absurd Can't Indict A President policy. As for Trump somehow being unable to "clear" himself, perhaps it has escaped Mueller's notice, but Trump has the biggest bully pulpit in the nation (indeed in the world) and uses Twitter several times a day as a mega-bullhorn, the noise of which is amplified daily by U.S. media quoting it. So Trump is hardly prevented from replying to anything in the Mueller report.

Speaking of people who will never have a chance to clear themselves, and how unfair that is, what about the Russian spam farm people Mueller indicted? Seeing how adept U.S. courts are in political frame-ups, and seeing the legal crucifixions of Viktor Bout and Maria Buttina, it is obvious that the U.S. can convict anyone it targets (Julian Assange is next!) so that the Russian defendants have no choice but to stay in Russia instead of subjecting themselves to a U.S.kangaroo  political court with a foregone conclusion. By the way, Mueller dropped that indictment like a bomb on the eve of Trump meeting with Putin, with obvious political intent to affect the meeting. But "Bob" Mueller is a "straight arrow!" Just ask anyone in the power elite!

Mueller could have written that Trump broke the law, or there was evidence of crimes, but he was barred by DO"J" policy from indicting the president. Instead he's playing to both sides, the Republicans and the Democrats. Both are taking what they want from the Mueller report and from Mueller's stunt performance. And both have a real basis for doing so, thanks to Mueller's deliberately mealy-mouthed evasions and obliqueness. He didn't accuse Trump of any crimes, even though the point of the two-year-long exercise was to determine that one way or the other. On the other hand, he says he didn't exonerate Trump. Instead he persecuted a couple of dozen marginal figures who had brief ties to Trump, destroyed Paul Manafort, and most consequentially bolstered the Big Lie of "massive Russian election meddling."

EVERYONE in the U.S. political establishment agrees that there was MASSIVE Russian "interference" in the 2016 election, a whopping Big Lie that rivals any Big Lie in world history. This lie will continue to mold U.S. policy towards Russia for years, perhaps decades to come. And only ill will come of the U.S. pretending to be victimized by Russia. The reality is the reverse, of course, with the U.S. constantly punishing Russia with more and more sanctions, and waging economic warfare, for example by trying to sabotage Germany's agreement with Russia for a gas pipeline to carry Russian natural gas to Europe.

What Mueller did was rather craven but perfectly reflects the political crosscurrents. He positioned his "report" and himself to protect himself from attack by either faction of the two-party political cartel, and artfully gave each faction, Republican and Democratic, something they could seize on. Mueller, who rose to the top of the Deep State apparatus as FBI secret police chief, is a consummate political animal. [2]

Numerous U.S. presidents have broken U.S. laws countless times. And forget about international law. The U.S. has contempt for that. except when it can cynically use it to beat an adversary nation over the head with it. So U.S. presidents are not merely "above" the law, they are virtually immune, with only rare exceptions.

Just a few examples of outrageous presidential criminality: Trump's "favorite president," Andrew Jackson, ignored a Supreme Court ruling upholding the treaty rights of Native Americans in the Southeast and sent 16,000 men, women, and children on a death march, killing 4,000 of them on the so-called Trail of Tears, as they were forced to walk from Florida and Georgia to Oklahoma, a trek of about 1,500 miles. And the second president, John Adams, had laws, the Alien and Sedition acts, which turned the Bill of Rights into useless verbiage, imprisoning publishers of newspapers who criticized him. 

Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon (and John Kennedy too) waged undeclared war on Vietnam (and Laos and Cambodia, which were "secretly" bombed- i.e. U.S., but not foreign media, refused to report it- thus "secret" from the duped American public who get their "news" from corporate propaganda organs.

Ronald Reagan and his henchmen broke various laws in the Iran-Contra scheme, by which they funded international terrorism against Nicaragua.

There are too many more examples to cite.

Mueller's other big theme was making it clear he would add nothing to what was already in the report and that therefore the Democrats shouldn't bother getting him to testify to House Committees. Everything he has to say was already in the report, he insisted. Which is ridiculous. Of COURSE there are questions to ask! Like how he arrived at his various decisions. And the evidentiary basis for the reports "findings." Trump's handpicked Attorney General William Barr refuses to provide Congress with an uncensored version of the report and the supporting documentation. (They hate saying "censored," so they say "redacted," just an evasive way of saying "censored," like "enhanced interrogation technique" obfuscates "torture.")

The Democrats, instead of focusing on the awful policies of Trump, instead are still angling to unseat him in the 2020 election with this ginned up "Russian collusion" campaign. One irony is that Clinton paid for the "Steele Dossier," a fantastical piece of disinformation by a former MI6 British secret policeman which cites as sources Kremlin officials! So WHO got help from Russia! And this dossier was fraudulently used by the FBI to obtain a FISA warrant to start a so-called foreign counterintelligence investigation targeting Trump campaign people like Carter Page. The secret police dripped factoids to undermine Trump in the media. And despite their proven hostility and adversarial posture towards Trump, media propagandists and Democratic political hacks regularly attack him for "siding with Putin" (or others) "against his own intelligence agencies." 

They are hardly "his own" agencies. They're his enemies! Not to defend Trump: a pox on ALL their venal houses!

The reason the Democrats DON'T criticize Trump for his actual evil policies (excepting the persecution of Hispanic migrant issue, which the Democrats are using ONLY to curry favor with Hispanic voters- Trump's policies are merely an intensification of Obama's, and the Democrats haven't made much of the murders of migrant children by medical neglect and indifference), is that they FAVOR those policies. They don't really mind gargantuan tax cuts for corporations and the rich, who are their real constituents. They are enthusiastically beating the drums for the U.S. coup effort in Venezuela. They are indifferent to the destructiveness of Trump's anti-environment policies. However on foreign policy they want him to be even more hostile to Russia- apparently words matter more than actions to the Democrats. The fact is that Trump's actions have been highly hostile to Russia. I already cited the matter of the gas pipeline project with Germany, which Trump's ambassador has been aggressively trying to kill. There was the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats. The ratcheting up of sanctions. Sending lethal military aid to the Kiev cabal in Ukraine, something Obama refrained from doing. Supporting opposite sites in the Syrian civil war. And now on opposite sides in Venezuela. Trump has actually done nothing FOR Russia, except be verbally polite to Putin and accept Putin's denial of election "meddling." (The "meddling" was so inconsequential as to not be worth mentioning. But the U.S. politico-media system has inflated a nothingburger into a gigantic propaganda balloon. The universe hasn't seen such a huge expansion from nothingness since the Big Bang that created the universe!)

Like this guy below, who insists that the fabricated Russian "hack" of the DNC server was JUST LIKE THE JAPANESE ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR! He's Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a "liberal" from New York City (a fanatical enemy of the Palestinian people, by the way). You'll read more about him in the footnotes below.

Nadler interpreted Mueller's little speech thusly: "Mueller told us that Russia attacked our political system."  And that "Trump welcomed it." "The president is lying about Mueller's conclusions" of no collusion or obstruction. [No he's not. Mueller didn't SAY Trump obstructed "justice," and he definitively concluded the Trump campaign did NOT conspire with Russia or Russians.] Nadler went on to take a swipe at lifelong GOP apparatchik William Barr: "The Attorney General is lying about that too."

Well Jerry, I got news for you. You, your party, the "intelligence community," and the GOP are all FULL OF IT. The Great Russiagate Hoax is just that. Once in a blue moon Trump is right about something. 

This is one of those rare times. 

Self-Styled Grand Inquisitor Jerrold Nadler

Donald J. Trump. He's so innocent, says he! (And his stooges, flunkies, and flacks all agree!)

1] I don't want to go off on too long of a tangent, so for now I'll just briefly illustrate how exiguous the Russian "effort" to "elect Trump" was. It consisted of the false claim that they gave damning Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, exposing Hillary Clinton's mendacity by revealing just what she said in her secret speech to Goldman Sachs that she had refused to release, and how the Democratic National Committee (DNC) under the control of Clinton agent Debbie Wasserman Schultz, used underhanded methods to tilt the primaries for Clinton and against Senator Bernard Sanders. Those emails made the American electorate better informed! So far from being an "attack on our democracy," it made for BETTER democracy, such as it even exists in the U.S. Unless you understand "our democracy" in the way "La Cosa Nostra" is understood, "Our Thing." "Our democracy" means the criminal system of power in which a two-party political cartel maintains monopoly political power for the benefit of themselves, their corporate masters, the military-industrial complex, and the Deep State secret police agencies. But career NSA technical experts (now retired) William Binney and Kurt Wiebe have proven that the DNC emails were NOT downloaded over the Internet, but were copied to a flash drive. Nor has any evidence at all ever been presented by the "intelligence community," establishment politicians, or the pseudo-journalists who act as conduits for secret police disinformation and Democratic Party propaganda to substantiate their CLAIM that this occurred. Instead it is assumed a priori as a fact, and anyone who so much as asks for evidence is smeared as a Russian agent, pawn, or stooge.

As for the effect of those emails on the outcome, they apparently had none. They were released in July 2016. In October 2016 Clinton was ahead in the polls by a comfortable 14%. Then in late October, then-FBI secret police chief James Comey announced that the investigation into the Clinton private server scandal was alive again because the FBI found more State Department emails, this time on a device belonging to officially disgraced and ridiculed former Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York City. (Weiner had an irresistible compulsion to send women photos of his genitalia via the Internet.) The emails turned out to be mere copies of previously examined ones, but the effect on Clinton's poll numbers was startling- dropping her to a lead of only 3.5% (same as the typical polling margin of error) to dead even with Trump. On Election Day ten days later in November, she won by 2.9 million votes, but lost because of the absurd and archaic U.S. electoral college. (There is good evidence the GOP stole the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.) 

Instead of blaming Comey, the Electoral College, GOP voter suppression and cheating, the Democrats decided to falsely blame the Russians. The GOP has obvious reasons to go along with this. And the corporate propaganda, which also wants to preserve the reactionary Electoral College system and hide GOP election malfeasance, is happy to scapegoat Russia. 

The other evidence that can be adduced to claim extensive Russian "meddling" in sacred U.S. "democracy" was $50,000 spent on Facebook ads before the election, and $4,700 spent on all Google platform, including youtube. This according to the testimony of Google's CEO to Nadler's Judiciary Committee, when Nadler himself asked. So that's something. When weighed against the combined $1 BILLION ($1,000,000,000) spent by the Clinton and Trump campaigns, plus additional gargantuan sums spent by other U.S. persons and entities, plus the estimates $2 BILLION worth of free air time that "the" media bestowed on Trump, so fascinating did and do they find him, it is extremely risible to be squealing about "massive" Russian "interference." 

In light of all this, you can see how cynical, farcical, and just plain demented is the insistence that Russia is "undermining our democracy." It would be a bad joke if they weren't so serious and persistent in perpetuating this Big Lie.

2] Trump and his lackeys reiterated the "no collusion no conspiracy" theme. Trump himself said no charge equals innocence. (If he'd been acquitted at trial- or if the Democrats impeach him and the Senate doesn't convict, and it is impossible to imagine the necessary two/thirds of Senators voting to convict, especially with a Republican majority in the Senate- that would be a verdict of "not guilty." Whether "not guilty" equals "innocent" is a semi-Talmudic question.

The Democrats continued to interpret this latest manifestation of Muellerism their way, both in regards to Trump and the frame-up of Russia as guilty of "attacking" so-called "American democracy." For example, one of the worst Russiagaters, who has said the mythical Russian "hack" of the DNC computer server was the same thing as the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor (!), the screwball political hack Democrat Jerrold Nadler of New York City, who now sits as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, hysterically opined after The Mueller Show that "Mueller told us that Russia attacked our political system." 

I'll tell you a country attacking another nation's political system: the U.S. attacking the Venezuelan government, trying to overturn the result of the last election there by force, violence, and economic warfare. Oh, and the U.S. does that sort of thing all the time. With Nadler's full-throated support.

Political Barnacle Theresa May Finally Being Pried Off Prime Minister's Office

The awful shrewish reactionary Theresa May has finally lost her tenacious grip on power. Having failed four, or five, or six,  or however many times it was, to get the British Parliament to approve the agreement she negotiated with the European Union on the exit of Britain from that Union (so-called Brexit, short for British exit), she has finally reached a political dead end. Her party, the vicious "Conservative" Party, known as the Tories, will pick a new leader, and since they have control of Parliament (in alliance with a small ultra-reactionary party from Northern Ireland) that leader will be the next Prime Minister.

May announced that she will officially resign on June 7. However she won't be gone until late July, when the new PM is settled on.

May, in her brief farewell address, played the faux feminist card, noting that she was the second female PM, and avowing she won't be the last. As if she and her female predecessor, the fascist-loving Margaret Thatcher, have a right to lay claim to progressive credentials, which is what feminism is about.

Thatcher raised a ruckus when the murderous fascist military dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, was briefly detained in Britain on a Spanish arrest warrant for the Spanish citizens he murdered. The UK ultimately refused to honor the arrest warrant from fellow EU member Spain. Thatcher posed for photos with the blood-soaked dictator, beaming warmly at him.

As for May, in her previous power job as so-called Home Secretary, she worked assiduously to make Britain an even more repressive secret police state than it already is, including by pushing oppressive "anti-terrorist" (read: anti-dissident) legislation. Her slashing of firemen contributed to the Grenfell Tower fire massacre, along with the Tories' anti-poor policies which led to flammable aluminum siding used on the Tower, creating a potential torch. 79 people died. But they were poor and "non-white," so no big deal. Then Prime Minister May never bothered meeting with the survivors.

In her brief resignation speech, May almost broke into tears at the end, that's how sorry she felt for herself just because she can't be Prime Minister for life. She ran inside to do her blubbering out of public view.

Next she'll have a permanent seat in the House of "Lords," that decrepit relic of British aristocracy, a persistent feature of a quasi-Medieval class system in that benighted land of privilege that absurdly advertises itself as the epitome of democracy. (They don't even have a constitution!)

Now that May's power-greedy fingers have finally been pried loose from the PM's office- she was nothing if not tenacious about clinging to power- the next PM will be in the same impossible position vis a vis Brexit. The politicians in Parliament of both major parties (Conservative and Labour) are internally divided about leaving the EU, despite the public referendum that voted to leave several years ago. And those who want to honor the vote of the public are split between those who want a "hard" Brexit, that is, just leave without any agreements on border controls, trade, and more, and those who want a "soft" one, that is, some arrangements with the EU to soften the economic blow that the "hard" Brexiteers are oblivious to. May spent two years negotiating the best deal the EU would agree to, and the EU's current position is that there will not a renegotiation- another illusion of unrealistic politicians and opinionators who refuse to accept reality. In particular, they are allergic to the part of the exit agreement May reached that provides for modified border controls between Ireland, an EU member, and the chunk of the island that is Ireland that is the British territory of Northern Ireland. Instituting full-blown customs checks on that border has major negative economic and social ramifications for both Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Anyway, here's a foul farewell to Theresa May, Wicked Witch of Downing Street.

Oh suck it up, Crybaby!

Trump Is To Democrats As Lucy Is To Charlie Brown.

In the comic strip "Peanuts," the child character Lucy lures Charlie Brown into practicing a football kickoff by holding it upright on the ground and then pulling it away just as he takes a running kick, landing flat on his back.

A running theme over the years of the strip (which was also a TV show and numerous products over the years) is Lucy repeating the same cruel trick on Charlie over and over. Even though he resists and should know better, he still lets himself be talked into trying to kick the ball, and invariably Lucy yanks it away at the last moment and Charlie Brown lands flat on his back.

Like So.

Trump does the same thing with the Democratic Congressional leadership, periodically luring them into "negotiating" with him, and then pulling the rug out from under them. He even does it to the politicians of his own party in Congress. For example, Republicans in Congress have more than once been misled to believe he agreed to something, only to have them land flat on their backs when he double-crossed them. (This is one of his techniques for establishing interpersonal dominance. He insults, abuses, disrespects people and makes them eat it. Then he'll switch to feeding them superlative compliments, which only puts them in a state of anxious fear of displeasing him. He treats people like abused dogs, and it works.)

Trump just did it again to the Democratic Congressional poohbahs, suckering them into a meeting allegedly to strike a deal to fund "infrastructure," tempting bait to Democratic politicians. (Perhaps irresistible bait.) This even though Trump has previously floated bogus "infrastructure" deals. The last time he used that con man teaser in his carnival barker mode he kept yelling $1.7 TRILLION!" Only it was really only $200 billion in imaginary Federal spending and the rest magically coughed up by the states and private businesses. Absurd. And I'm sure HE knew it was absurd.

So the Democrats were doubly foolish to take the bait. But they did, duly trooping over to the White House at King Trump's invitation to be his duped stooges once again.

And what happened? Trump stomped out of the meeting after only 5 (or 3, accounts vary) minutes. Trump demanded an end to "these phony investigations" or else no deals with the Democrats, ever. He spoke those words in a display of pique in front of the media that he staged immediately after he stormed out of the meeting in a snit. The media was summoned to the Rose Garden of the White House while Trump was in the "meeting." A podium had already been prepared in the Garden, with a sign announcing "No Collusion," a slogan Trump has repeated hundreds of times in denial of secretly working with Russia to win election. 

Extortionate tactics and psychologically disorienting maneuvers are standard operating procedures for Trump.

And just what "investigations" did he mean? All of them, of course. But that includes not just the investigations by the various House of Representative committees (now controlled by Democrats), but also New York State investigations (again, by Democratic politicians) and various investigations by U.S. attorneys as mentioned in the Mueller Report. Those aren't under Democratic Party control.

Trump has been defying House oversight by refusing to allow any executive branch officials to testify or turn over documents. There are currently tug-of-war battles going on between the House and the Trump regime to get Robert Mueller to testify, to get Trump's former lawyer Don McGahn to testify, to get the IRS to turn over Trump's tax returns, and more.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has barred the IRS (Internal Revenue Service, the tax-collecting arm of the U.S. government) from turning over Trump's tax returns. This despite the face that even the IRS's own legal staff says it is illegal for the IRS to refuse to hand over Trump's tax returns to Congress as has been demanded by the House Ways and Means Committee. Mnuchin uses as his excuse to defy the plain language of the law giving Congress this authority that the Congress has no "legitimate legislative interest." (The IRS is part of Treasury.)

The law is quite clear. Congress can obtain any tax returns it requests. It's not up to the Treasury Secretary to decide on the "legitimacy" of the requests.

Oh, and you should know: Mnuchin is an unconvicted felon who is only where he is thanks to Democratic Senator Kamala Harris, who currently wants to be president. Mnuchin controlled a California bank, OneWest, when Harris was California state Attorney General. Her office's staff uncovered 1,000 cases of mortgage foreclosure FRAUD by Mnuchin's bank, and estimated another 1,000 cases existed. She ignored their findings and brought no charges whatsoever. (Entirely coincidentally, Mnuchin donated money to her political campaign committee.) 

So in terms of corruption, ethics, and moral standards, once again we see that there isn't a dime's worth of difference between these two competing factions of the ruling political elite. Think of them as rival criminal gangs, which is fundamentally what they are.

King Trump. There is indeed Method to His Madness.

Trump Proves People Are Cretins By How Easily He Manipulates Them

Donald Trump is transparently venal, corrupt, narcissistic, and one of the world's most obvious liars. Nobody lies more blatantly than he.

And yet, tens of millions of people loyally hang on his every absurd statement, ignoring the contradictions from one breath to the next, as if they're playing Simon Says with him and the object is to just follow along with every silly movement.

Even when Trump directly attacks their own self-interests, these people are benumbed to that fact by the narcotic effect Trump's outré personality has on them.

All he has to do is tweet some balderdash or bloviate some bullshit, and they remain loyal to him, even adoring.

Two examples of this phenomenon were evident on May 14th, 2019.
This morning on the U.S.-Government-created ratio network NPR, the morning "news" show, "Morning Edition, had on the Republican governor of Nebraska, who defended Trump's instigation of a trade war with China, even though it has badly damaged the economic interests of farmers in his state. He said "we" had to hang tough and see it through and he had total faith in Trump.

Now, he wouldn't be taking this position if the voters in his state had turned against Trump. This guy wants to keep getting elected to his cushy job with great medical insurance and pension benefits, which he can use as a springboard to run for the U.S. senate, or hop to a well-paid job as a lobbyist making sure state laws are written for the benefit of specific business interests.

Agriculture is the bread and butter of Nebraska. Apparently the majority of voters there are willing to suffer at Trump's hands, rather like sitting passively in the dentist's chair and enduring the pain.

These are the same people who hate Democrats for trying to give them social programs that would benefit them.


However it must be mentioned that Trump handed farmers affected by the trade war with China a government handout on top of the handouts they already get. (For some reason this isn't "welfare.") Soybean farmers were targeted for handouts.

Nebraska Governor Peter Ricketts, A Proud Trump Supporter

The second example today was the behavior of the speculators and traders to cause the daily gyrations of the stock market (they're mislabeled "investors" in the capitalist media, even though investing is not what they do).

Last week U.S. stock markets gyrated and couldn't seem to decide whether to take seriously the Trump threat to impose 25% tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to the U.S., on top of the previous 10% duty on other goods. On some days stocks would plunge and then recoup the losses on the same day. When the tariffs were imposed as stated they would be, overnight Thursday-Friday, stocks fell on Friday but not too much. Apparently the speculators were waiting to see if Trump would pull a rabbit out of his hat or if a trade deal would magically materialize over the weekend despite the impasse over fundamental issues dividing China and the U.S. that clearly won't be resolved quickly. (Especially since the reason for the new tariffs was the U.S. claim that China had backtracked on already agreed to measures.)

The new week started with China imposing retaliatory tariffs, throwing the speculators into a tizzy.
So the stock traders went into a panic on Monday May 13, and market averages fell by 2.4% to 3.4%, their worst decline in four months.

Tuesday morning (May 14), Trump blasted out a flurry of tweets designed to turn around the psychology of the speculators. And he made this pronouncement: The trade war with China was a mere bagatelle, just "we're having a little squabble with China because we've been treated very unfairly" and "we're winning it." (Of course. Trump always wins, remember? The four time bankrupt who's lost billions and had to settle suits over his fraudulent "university" for $25 million is always a winner.)

Well that did the trick. U.S. stocks zoomed up on the open and closed with significant gains of about 1%, although they didn't hold the highs of the day which were up about 1.5%.

So all Trump had to do was call a trade war between the world's two largest economies "a little squabble" and that was enough to reignite giddy optimism.

You see what I mean by "cretins"?

Wednesday May 15 stock markets in Europe and the U.S. weren't sure which way to go so they went both ways, down AND up during trading hours.

Given the manic-depressive nature of those who create the daily swings in stocks, there's no predicting what their collective mood will be tomorrow.

                                     The Irresistible Pied-Piper!

 He who knows how to manipulate cretins, knows how to rule.

Saudi Arabia Cooks Up Gulf Of Tonkin-Style Incident To Incite War With Iran

Here we go. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia claim their oil tankers were attacked in some unspecified way in the Strait of Hormuz. This is reminiscent of the imaginary attack on U.S. Navy ships off the coast of Vietnam that U.S. president Lyndon Baines Johnson used to get Congress to pass a resolution authorizing the U.S. military to "defend" itself, which Johnson used to send an army to Vietnam ultimately totally 550,000 men and wage a massive aerial bombardment campaign against Vietnam carried out by the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy carriers, and U.S. Army helicopters.

Whatever happened- if anything- to those tankers this time, it's doubtful that Iran did it. The last thing Iran wants is war with the U.S.

The timing is quite interesting. A year ago Trump trashed the nuclear agreement that had been painstakingly hammered out over years by the Obama regime, Russia, China, France, Germany, and Britain on one side, with Iran on the other, which put Iran's nuclear enrichment program in mothballs for 15 years and required it to dispose of its 20% enriched uranium and heavy water. The Trump regime has been systematically wrecking the Iranian economy with strangling sanctions. Pompeo has repeatedly declared the goal of reducing Iran's oil exports to zero.

Recently the sanctions have been tightened more, with the U.S. declaring that no other nation would be allowed to import Iranian oil, under penalty of U.S. punishment. This applied even to China.
Europe has made empty promises to allow Iran to trade and import normally, but in practice has knuckled under to U.S. sanctions. Because the U.S. controls the world financial system, there is currently no way to conduct international trade that the U.S. bans.

Iran agreed to the deal in return for the lifting of sanctions. Instead the sanctions have gotten worse, while Iran has been fully compliant with the agreement, as verified by 14 inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran finally ran out of patience this month, after a year of this crap, and told the Europeans that they had 60 days to fulfill their promises to find a way for Iran to import good and export oil. The Europeans arrogantly rejected what they called Iran's "ultimatum." Stooges of the U.S. as always. Iran said it would begin by ceasing sale of its enriched uranium and heavy water, and retain them in country.

Saudi Arabia, it's Arabian peninsula lackey oil sheikdoms, and Israel have been trying for years to finagle the U.S. into going to war against Iran and overthrowing the regime. But Iran is not Iraq. It has three times the population, is much larger in land area, and unlike Iraq it has an intact military. It also has allies in the region, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon, which can make problems for Israel.

Just days ago, Israel slipped the U.S. an "intelligence assessment" beating the drum about the Iranian "threat." John Bolton, the fanatical, rabid imperialist whom Trump anointed "National Security Adviser," (who heads the "National Security Council," which brings together the aggressive arms of the U.S. Imperialist state to plot attacks around the world- the Pentagon, CIA, State and Treasury Departments), immediately announced that a carrier battle group and B-52 bombers (giant 8-engine jets that were used to ravage Vietnam) were being sent to counter Iranian "threats." Trump's Secretary of State, the thuggish, vulgar liar Michael Pompeo, also blustered that Iran would pay if it attacked "American interests" (undefined as always) or "our allies." (Guess who? Saudi Arabia and Israel.)

And now we have this "attack" on tankers. Iran immediately issued a statement expressing worry about the alleged incident.

It's such an obvious set-up.

Joe Biden In Pictures: The Race for 2020!

And what a racy race it is, if you catch my drift!

Everybody wants Joe to be the Democrats' nominee for president. ("Everybody" meaning anybody who's anybody living in the reinforced titanium bubble for the elite and protected by the world's most powerful military and secret police machinery.) Joe's a pillar of the political establishment who can be counted on to protect corporate oligarchy and U.S. imperialism.

And Joe Biden is a really gregarious, personable, downright likable guy, as this photo essay will show you!

Joe is renowned as quite the Ladies' Man Around Town. The Town being the Most Important Town In The World, Capital City of The Greatest Empire In Human History. Innumerable women from both high and not-so-high stations in society can attest to his winning ways with women.

DAMN you smell good Girl! -Biden follows diplomatic protocol with Brazilian president Dilma Rousseuf, the lucky recipient of Joe's attentions on the occasion of a state visit. Sure beats being tortured in a fascist dungeon under a military dictatorship set up by the U.S.! Let's call it our way of making it up to you, Dilma!

You're never too young to be the lucky recipient of Joe's "affection." He's just a loviin' guy with a "hands on" approach to life! (Oh, all those draconian "crime" laws he played the lead role in passing that doubled the prison population in a decade? Hey, everybody makes mistakes! And sure, he wrote the PATRIOT ACT, but everybody else voted for it! C'mon, gimme a break! Don't judge me by my political actions! Judge me by how I make people feel!)

Gimme a kiss, Loverboy! -Joe don't discriminate by gender! Easy to see why he came out for gay rights before that stuffed shirt Obama! (He's so "progressive"!)

Don't Believe The Children! -Senator Chris Coons swears his daughter was enjoying this! See? Just look at her face! She's lovin' it!! (Leaning away is avoidance behavior, you say? Naw, she was just playing hard to get!)

Bikers not cool with Biden messin' with their woman, but what can you do? Can't kick his ass 'cause, 

you know, Secret Service and all...

Up against the wall, bitch! -Petty Anita Hill still holds a grudge just because Biden didn't believe her testimony about Clarence Thomas in 1991 (and told the other Senators not to believe her, and blocked other witnesses from testifying, and let his Republican colleague "friends" publicly ream her out as a tramp and a hysteric and a fabricator), but Biden is so understanding that he's almost apologized to her, just 'cause he's running for president now. And hey, we got a great Supreme Court Justice thanks to Joe!

He may look Black, but don't be fooled! Underneath the skin is a white segregationist. (He hates affirmative action, for one thing!)

Submit to My Touch, All Ye Comely Lasses Who Come Before Me! Joseph R. Biden, Jr., magnanimously announces that he is Available to Be Our President in 2020. Rejoice!

I've got my eye on YOU! You're NEXT! -Looks like SOMEBODY'S gonna get poked! Might even be YOU! (Or ALL of us!)

When you're powerful, they let you do it! You can get away with anything! 

Biden 2020!

   The corporate oligarchic power establishment that rules the U.S. is trying to set up a contest for presidential power between a pussy-grabber and a man who grabs just about anything else. Trump, who in his own words, "grabs women by the pussy" because, as he explained to a cackling Billy Bush (yes, one of those Bushes, the dynastic ruling class criminal clan) "when you're a star they let you do it . You can do anything. Grab then by the pussy. You can do anything." And Biden, who had NO IDEA it wasn't perfectly within social norms to stroke, caress, sniff, and kiss strange women and children. I mean, all of a sudden that became unacceptable! Who knew you weren't supposed to do that? Why EVERYONE USED to do it! 

   Biden NOW claims he "gets it," even though it's obvious by all the verbiage he's crafted and said or had issued for him, definitely does NOT get it. Including making a joke out of it with his appearance before a friendly audience by using children as stage props and announcing that the child "gave permission" for him to hug him. As if a young child wouldn't be cowed and intimidated by a powerful adult "asking" if he could hug him. Not too many children acculturated in this authoritarian culture would say "No." The message was clearly, Oh you people are making a big deal out of nothing.

  Well, it certainly is less of a big deal than the career he's made out of passing repressive laws, exploding the prison population, voting for the invasion and destruction of Iraq, his racist alliances with the likes of Strom Thurmond, his vociferous opposition to school integration, and a lot of other vileness that has made the U.S. more oppressive and even more of an imperialist scourge around the world.