What's In Store For Julian Assange

Julian Assange will be forced to "confess" falsely that Russia gave WikiLeaks the DNC emails in return for "leniency." Read on:

The U.S. and its foreign government stooges have victimized Julian Assange for the past decade. But their hunger to punish Assange is nowhere near sated yet.

With the seizure of Assange by the British police, the U.S.' clutches are inexorably closing around him. The smarmy and dishonest president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, who duped his predecessor Rafael Correa into helping him become president (Moreno has repaid the favor by bringing bogus criminal charges against Correa, forcing him into exile) made a corrupt bargain with the U.S. to obtain loans from the International Monetary Fund (which his poor population will have to pay back, with interest) and other secret favors to turn on Assange (who Correa granted asylum and Ecuadorean citizenship to), denouncing Assange publicly and calling in the British police to haul him into British captivity. (A yearlong campaign by the Moreno regime to make Assange's life as miserable as possible inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where Assange has been trapped by the British on orders of their U.S. masters for the last 7 years, failed to induce Assange to turn himself over to the tender mercies of the U.S.)

Thus the years-long nefarious scheme by the U.S. to dig its claws into Assange is reaching its goal. Who says the U.S. can't be patient?

Now, what does the U.S. want from Julian Assange? Besides silencing him and stopping the revelation of U.S. crimes by WikiLeaks? What does Assange have to "trade" to the U.S. in return for "leniency?"

"Cooperation." But what form would such "cooperation" take?

It is now established dogma in U.S. mythology that Russia "hacked" the computer of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and engaged in "massive" "interference" with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a sacrilege against Holy American Democracy. This is contemptibly laughable on numerous grounds, as well as factually false. The U.S. is a corporate oligarchy and bourgeois class dictatorship. The Congress is bought and paid for by these dominant economic players, and the Congress enacts laws to serve the interests of the very rich and large corporations. The elections themselves involve a lot of vote stealing and voter suppression and all manner of dirty tricks. The U.S. media and election officials connive to ensure that candidates from parties outside the two-party political cartel are marginalized to the maximum degree.  Billions were spent on manipulating the minds of the American people by the two oligarchical political parties and various shadowy organizations set up by rich plutocrats. Trump got billions in free air time from "the" media.

Other ways in which this canard is repulsive in its cynicism is the fact that the U.S. has intervened in other nations' elections AT LEAST 81 times since 1945- and in ways that were effective, unlike what Russia is said to have done. (Not to mention U.S. invasions, coups, and other forms of subversion to change governments it didn't like.) 

The DNC emails were released by WikiLeaks in July, 2016. In OCTOBER 2016, Clinton was ahead of Trump in the polls by 14%. In late October, FBI chief James Comey announced that emails related to the investigation of the private server Clinton used as Secretary of State under President Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama were found on a device belonging to disgraced penis-texter Anthony Weiner. (It turned out they were merely copies of already-discovered emails, a big nothing.) That caused a big change in the polls, to between dead even and a 3.5% lead for Clinton (within the polling margin of error). Ultimately Clinton won by 2.9 million votes, so Trump became president because of the Electoral College. That's how it works in the self-proclaimed World's Greatest Democracy.

Thus did Russian steal the election for Trump.

But I did leave a few things out.  Russia spent $4,700 on all Google's platform's, including Youtube, according to the Congressional testimony of Google's CEO. And there was some drop-in-the-ocean Facebook activity by Russia, like pictures of Satan arm-wresting Jesus, and an anti-masturbation meme. This span and clickbait from a Russian troll farm was elevated into a devastatingly effective Russian election meddling operation by the unholy alliance of the Democratic Party, the corporate media, and the anti-Trump elements of the Deep State.

As to the factual basis for what has become a "fact" taken for granted- that Russia "hacked the DNC computer," there is none. There is only the assertion by the FBI and CIA that it did. There has never been any evidence provided. And in fact there is evidence conclusively proving that the assertion is false.

The DNC refused to allow any government agency to examine their computer. The FBI just took the DNC's word for it that "Russia hacked" it. Considering the accusation that a "hostile foreign power" committed a computer crime and "meddled" in a U.S. election, this is amazing. What kind of "investigation" is this? 

Tellingly, the NSA doesn't assert that Russia hacked it. The NSA is the only agency that, absent examining the computer server, could determine if Russia had intruded and downloaded data, because the NSA captures and stores all Internet traffic in the U.S. and most of that outside it.

Two retired career NSA veterans with years of technical expertise, William Binney and Kurt Wiebe, then analyzed the speed at which the DNC emails were downloaded, and found it would have been impossible to transfer them over the Internet at anywhere near the speed they were downloaded at. Rather it was the speed copying the emails to a flash drive plugged into the computer system.

Case closed. But there's even more. There's a likely person who did it.

Seth Rich was a young man who worked for the DNC. He was murdered in Washington, D.C. in what the police say was a "botched robbery." "Botched" because nothing was stolen from him. Not his cellphone, not his wallet, not his watch.

Two men shot him in the back a few steps from his home. No arrests have been made.

WikiLeaks put out a $25,000 reward on the case. Out of all the murders in the U.S., in the whole world, they offered a reward in just this one murder case. And in a Dutch television interview, Assange walked right up to the line of saying that Rich was the source of the DNC emails.

But you want me to believe, indeed demand I believe, that "Russia hacked the DNC's computer." And if I refuse to swallow your propaganda and go along with your hoax, that makes me a Russian agent and/or a kook.

Sorry, no sale. Go ahead and slander me.

Now, what about What's In Store For Julian Assange?

Julian Assange has repeatedly denied that WikiLeaks got the DNC emails from Russia. The "Mueller Report" repeats without evidence the FBI-CIA ASSERTION that Russia "hacked" the DNC server, and states that Assange LIED in denying this. Those are now Official Facts. Totally false, but unchallengeable "facts."

Here's something that surprised me, something that in days of blather now that the (censored) report has been released hasn't even been mentioned in "the" media:

The title of the "Mueller Report" is "Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election."

Nothing about Trump or his campaign in that. So what has ended up as the target here?

Russia. As the table of contents, and the mass of Russian individuals named in the report, makes clear.

So it's obvious that both rival wings of the two-party political cartel, the Deep State, and most of the major media all agree on a Big Lie, "Russian election meddling." Something for which there is virtually no evidence.

Thus "evidence" would certainly be useful to them.

Given this political context, and the demented viciousness and relentless fanaticism of the U.S. power system, here's what I predict they're going to do to Julian Assange. They're going to offer him a choice. "Cooperate," and get a "light" sentence of "only" twenty years for the numerous charges they're gonna heap on his shoulders under draconian, repressive U.S. "law," or die in a U.S. "Supermax" prison, a psychological torture center designed to isolate political prisoners from the world.

"Cooperation" means not just betraying WikiLeaks internal structure and methods in detail, but most important politically, it means "confessing" to a lie, the Big Lie, that WikiLeaks got "hacked" emails "from Russia." And furthermore, we're gonna drag you into Grand Jury star chamber proceedings and Congressional hearings and maybe criminal trials and you're gonna degrade and humiliate yourself and lose the respect of your admirers and colleagues (you won't have any self-respect left) and make you lie and lie and lie about Russia and WikiLeaks, discredit the very organization you worked so hard to nurture, disgrace yourself and turn your back on your life's mission of speaking truth to power, in return we'll only make you live in a tiny cell by yourself, cut off from the world, for twenty years instead of for the rest of your life. (If you even survive longer than twenty years.)

What a choice.

Abandoned by the new, venal Ecuadorean government, by his homeland Australia, a lickspittle of a nation that can't get its tongue far enough up the asshole of the U.S. (or arsehole, if you prefer), an object of opprobrium in "Western" propaganda media, and target of relentless hatred by the U.S. imperialist power establishment, Assange's only allies are scattered dissidents, a handful of lawyers, and compromised "civil liberties" organizations that so far only weakly mewl tepid objections to this vicious repression.  (This means you, ACLU.) Absent an unexpected change in the correlation of forces (a useful term despite its "Marxist" "taint"), Assange's fate looks grim.

Assange helped reveal numerous crimes against humanity and corruption by numerous governments. It is a revealing commentary on the state of so-called "civilization" that the result isn't accolades, awards, and support for him and for WikiLeaks but an all-out attempt to crush him completely, silence him for life, and to destroy WikiLeaks.

I'm imagining the agony Julian's loving mother is going through right now. She made the "mistake" of raising an ethical son. That's something very dangerous to do in the "Free World."

Possibly the last photo we'll be allowed to see of Julian Assange for quite a while.

Wikipedia actually has a pretty good synopsis on Julian Assange, at least as of this writing before secret police agents sabotage it again. Just click on this bold text.

Evidence Anthony Weiner May Have Been Targeted To Sabotage Clinton's Election Campaign

Smack in the middle of a Wall Street Journal article about Anthony Weiner's sentencing hearing for his conviction on the Federal charge of "transferring obscene material to a minor" (a 15-year-old teenager) were these startling paragraphs:

Mr. Weiner's attorneys, Arlo Devlin-Brown and Erin Monju, have said the teenager targeted Mr. Weiner for personal profit and "to influence the U.S. presidential election." On Wednesday, Mr. Devlin-Brown declined to comment on the prosecutors' filing. [The prosecutors' filing that called for a prison sentence of 21 to 27 months for Weiner.]

The public exposure in September 2016 of Mr. Weiner's conduct with the teenager triggered a re-examination, days before the U.S. presidential election, of the federal probe concerning the private email server used by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. [Translation: Provided the FBI with a pretext for reigniting the Clinton secret email server scandal.] FBI agents seized a laptop from Mr. Weiner that had been used by both him and his wife, Mrs. Clinton's longtime aide Huma Abedin.

But prosecutors wrote in their filing that the teenager's motivation should be irrelevant to his sentence. [That's convenient. Sweep it under the rug.] ("Prison proposed for Weiner," Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2017, page A12A.)

So those who comb through media with a fine-tooth comb may have come across this tantalizing hint of a plot to sabotage the Clinton campaign.

It was just ten days before the November 7, 2016 presidential election when then-FBI secret police chief James Comey hurled a grenade into the Clinton campaign, announcing a "reinvestigation" of "new" (actually just copies of previously-obtained and scrutinized ) emails from Clinton's computer server. Clinton had been ahead of Trump by a comfortable 14% in polls, in the wake of the revelation of a video of Trump boasting of sexually assaulting women by grabbing their genitals and forcibly kissing them. Strangely, the churning up of the previously-closed investigation into Clinton's circumvention of Federal record-keeping rules by using a private computer server in her home to conduct her State Department business, caused her lead over Trump to evaporate, illustrating the fickleness and irrationality of a segment of the public.

When Comey had previously announced the conclusion of the lengthy investigation, he pronounced that no crime had been committed, but also publicly excoriated Clinton for her action, which allegedly jeopardized "classified" information. Clinton of course has been thoroughly dishonest throughout the scandal.

The New York City field office of the FBI was furious with Comey's decision not to recommend criminal charges to the Department of "Justice," which brings Federal prosecutions of crimes. Their anger at the decision to let Clinton off the hook has been reported by various bourgeois media sources. This office is staffed and run by rightwing extremists, reactionary political fanatics.

The FBI New York City field office is the largest in the U.S. it has long indulged in nefarious conspiracies against both politicians and against any and all people and groups considered "leftwing." They are a lawless gang that wiretaps, bugs, burglarizes and steals routinely without any warrants, targeting people they don't like. Mail is monitored and sometimes stolen, including certified mail. (I have suffered all of this personally, to my detriment.) This FBI office has long been tasked with carrying out political skulduggery, including espionage and counterespionage. It is tasked with spying on the UN, and the UN missions of various nations, including Cuba, an object of malign assault by the U.S. since 1959, including all manner of terrorism, sabotage, murder, economic warfare and espionage.

Rudolph Giuliani, formerly NYC mayor, and previous to that the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (i.e. chief Federal prosecutor for much of New York State, including Manhattan, the key borough of New York City where high finance and media are centered) has maintained close connections, dating to his days as U.S. attorney, with the reactionary elements of the FBI field office. He has frequently been an conduit for unattributed "information" from those FBI agents, manipulating public opinion and trying to cause certain political outcomes.

Giuliani was and is a Trump ally, before and after Trump's "election" by the Electoral College. (Trump lost the "popular" vote to Clinton by 2.9 million votes, which Trump claimed were all illegal aliens voting unlawfully.) After Trump assumed the presidency, Giuliani went on television to boast about how he crafted Trump's order banning Muslims from 7 countries entry to the U.S. to better withstand legal challenge. Giuliani's name has repeatedly been publicly bruited about as a possible Trump choice for high government office in the Trump regime.

So IF Weiner was set up, the primary suspects have to be Giuliani and his political hit squad inside the FBI's New York City field office. (Weiner lives in NYC.) Weiner's sexual compulsion, and his vulnerability, was well known. It would have been simple to recruit a malleable teenager to be their pawn in a plot aimed at Clinton, using Weiner as a patsy and collateral victim of their scheme. Others have commented that Comey's hand was forced by the NYC FBI office to go public with the "new" emails taken off the shared laptop of Weiner and Abedin. FBI agents in New York could have "leaked" (planted) the news of finding Clinton State department emails on the Weiner/Abedin laptop, along with derogatory comments about Comey, had Comey not acted. Or they could have fed the information to Giuliani, who could have gone on television (as he often does) and reveal it.
Now, where is the story on what information Weiner's attorneys have to substantiate their claim? (Hel-lo, corporate propaganda system!)

 

















  

Trashy NYC Tabloids Had Great Fun Mocking Weiner

With Juvenile Headlines

Background: Anthony Weiner was a U.S. Congressman representing part of Brooklyn (one of five boroughs of New York City in New York State) when he was publicly exposed as having a habit of sending images of his penis to strange women via the Internet. Driven from office, he attempted a political comeback by running for Mayor of New York City in 2013.

But the establishment media and the shadowy power structure weren't through with Weiner yet.
He actually wasn't doing badly in the polls when he was outed as continuing the behavior that cost him his previous office. This ended his chances of being elected Mayor.

Then came Abedin divorcing him, and the criminal case around the 15-year-old.

The UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter was another victim of a sex trap. A cop pretended online to be a teenage girl, and exchanged sexual messages with Ritter. That was enough to arrest and convict him. In his case also his sexual proclivities were already known. Ritter's crime was contradicting the Bush II and media propaganda campaign that falsely asserted that Iraq still had "weapons of mass destruction." Ritter begged to differ, and could speak with authority.

Expecting men not to be sexually attracted to teenage girls is fighting biology. Before "civilization," life expectancy might be 25 years. People mated at puberty. Even today, in many societies girls are married off in their teens. I think that is not good, and people should evolve out of such practices- and best not to trade sex talk with teenagers, even imaginary ones. In the U.S., the thought itself is a crime, since "attempted" crime is criminal. And the Supreme Court, in an infamous case, affirmed that possession of a video of pre-pubescent girls in swimsuits dancing "suggestively" is a felony- namely possession of "child pornography." The Clinton regime took that one all the way to the high court to enforce that Saudi-style conviction, and set a precedent for extreme repression that comes in handy as yet another weapon against people who run afoul of the government.

The Wall Street Journal is, as its title makes clear, a newspaper for financiers and businessmen. Its editorials and opinion pieces are consistently hard-core reactionary, but the reporting sections are more or less normal for a U.S. establishment newspaper. Rupert Murdoch bought its parent company, Dow Jones, from the Bancroft family and promptly put its website behind a paywall.

Oh You KRAAAZY Ex-Congressman, You!

(Anthony Weiner, he of the uncontrollable sexual compulsion. "SAD!" as a certain President of the U.S. would say.)

Trump, Imitating U.S. "Intelligence" Agency Method, Claims Secret Knowledge Refuting Russian "Election Hacking" Charges

Oh, the irony!

One of the long-standing modus operandi of U.S. secret police agencies (euphemistically referred to as "intelligence" or "law enforcement" outfits) is the claim to secret information, which means if you knew what they know, you'd see that their propaganda and ideological assertions were true! Of course, they can't tell you what the alleged information is, because it's "classified," that is, "secret," and revealing it would risk exposing their "sources and methods," and even RISK PEOPLE'S LIVES!, but you should just trust these righteously upstanding, loyal and True-Blue Patriots. (The same "patriots" who daily urinate on the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, systematically violating the alleged "rights" of Americans they don't like, as they have done since their inception. Of course their have to break U.S. law by persecuting people whose beliefs or activities they don't like, to "protect our freedoms." How's that for an Orwellian mind-bender!)

This tawdry, dishonest trick of bluffing was analyzed decades ago in a book co-authored by a former CIA officer and a former State Department official, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. [1]

Well, it turns out that others can play the same mystique of intelligence game.

Namely Donald Trump.

Starting months ago with anonymous secret policemen whispering in the ears of their media enablers, there has been a propaganda campaign (and the propaganda could be partially or wholly true, keep in mind- propaganda sometimes is) tarring Russia for allegedly sneaking into email accounts of Democratic Party apparatchiks, including that of John Podesta, a sort of eminense grise behind the Clintons. These communications then surfaced on WikiLeaks, the hated information-exposing operation headed by Julian Assange. (The U.S. government has had WikiLeaks and Assange under siege for over five years now, trying mightily to destroy the organization. The first WikiLeaks "crime" that sparked U.S. outrage was the online publication of "classified" U.S. State Department cables and military reports and, most notoriously, the infamous collateral murder video showing the murderers' eyes view from a U.S. Army helicopter in Iraq murdering journalists and civilians on the ground in Baghdad, and attempting to murder children in a van. U.S. Army Specialist Chelsea- formerly Bradley- Manning was persecuted for sending this data to WikiLeaks.) [2]

The emails from Podesta and Democratic National Committee apparatchiks revealed a concerted campaign to destroy the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton rival Senator Bernie Sanders, including various nasty subterfuges. Pulling up this rock also gave a general view of the smarmy interior of the Democratic Party, usually kept carefully hidden from public view. (If they'd wanted to, the establishment media could have revealed the truth about the Democratic Party decades ago, but the two-party political cartel of the Democrats and the Republican Party, aka the GOP- Gang Of Plunderers, is a key pillar of corporate oligarchy, and "the" media is fundamentally the mouthpiece of that oligarchic power structure. The two-party political cartel and the corporate media are pillars of the power structure and are fundamentally allied, no matter their conflicts and disagreements which lie on a more superficial level.)

We also got to see the text of the Secret Speech that Hillary Clinton was paid a cool quarter million dollars to read to a Goldman Sachs audience, those wizards of financial chicanery, which confirmed what should have already been obvious- that the Clintons are handmaidens of the top echelons of U.S. capital, and Clinton's campaign rhetoric to the contrary was just the standard Democratic Party mendacity. (Her rhetoric was pulled to the "left" by the competition from Sanders for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.)

By and by, government officials were forced to reveal their faces to sell the "Russia Hacking Sacred U.S. Democracy" story. So first we got James "Pinocchio" Clapper, he of the false Senate Intelligence Commitee testimony, Obama's "Director of National Intelligence," pointing the finger at Russia. Then came the CIA, an agency of professional liars and deceivers, avowing that Russia Was Guilty. The FBI hedged a bit, apparently to allow it to wiggle out later if the whole thing was exposed as false.

Finally Obama demanded conclusionary reports from the CIA and FBI by the time he finally exits the White House on January 20. Congresspeople of both parties waxed wroth at the Russian "interference" in "our election" and "subversion of our democracy." Obama then imposed sanctions on Russia as punishment, expelling 35 Russian diplomats and closing two Russian facilities in the U.S., announcing more attacks on Russian assets, and threatening unspecified covert acts of retaliation. (Putin cleverly parried Obama's hostile attack by refusing to retaliate in kind, even inviting the children of U.S. diplomats in Russia to attend Kremlin Christmas and New Year's celebrations! Stuffed, Obama!)

Trump has adamantly refused to conform to this campaign, despite daily brickbats hurled at him by numerous branches of the media (including the "comedy" show "Saturday Night Live" on NBC, which portrayed Trump as a "Manchurian Candidate" of Putin [3]).

Then Trump played the "I know things you don't know" card, the card the secret police habitually play. Trump said he knew “things that other people don’t know” that would be revealed “on Tuesday or Wednesday.” (Don't hold your breath.)

A few salient points about the bad faith and fraudulence of this entire "Russia Tried To Damage Our Democracy" propaganda campaign, which U.S. media mostly refuse to breathe a word about:

-Clinton got 2.9 million more votes than Trump. She "lost" because of the idiotic, archaic Electoral College, a political straitjacket that the Democrats refuse to blame, much less reform or abolish, even though the same thing happened to them in 2000. They prefer to be slaves to the dead hand of the past, apparently. Thus do U.S. "Founding Fathers," in their graves for two centuries, impose their will on the present. Sick. [4]

-Clinton led Trump in polls by 14% until FBI secret police chief James Comey reignited the issue of her private server State Department emails just before the election, causing her lead to vanish.

-We have the right to the information provided by WikiLeaks, allegedly via Russia. (Assange denies it came from Russia.)

-The feckless, cowardly Democrats habitually scapegoat others for their losses, instead of making an honest accounting and taking positive, constructive action. In 2000 Ralph Nader was their designated scapegoat. Today it's Russia.  They are cowardly punks who never challenge GOP election stealing, in 2000, 2004 (Ohio stolen), and this year, with massive voter disenfranchisement and invalidation of valid ballots. (See Greg Palast's work.)

-Finally, and most importantly, just how hypocritical can the U.S. get with all this screeching about "foreign interference"? No nation on earth has done more interfering in other countries than the U.S.! From massive CIA intervention in European politics after World War II (funding politicians, parties, newspapers, paying gangsters to beat up leftists, etc.) to COMPLETELY DESTROYING DEMOCRACIES in places like Iran (1953) Guatemala (1954) Brazil (1965) Chile (1973), and various other military coups. The U.S. INVADED the Dominican Republic in 1965 when it didn't like who won an election there.

So now U.S. elites are screeching about Russia letting the American public in on some Democratic Party poohbahs' dirty secrets? BOO-HOO! Get over it.

"I got special secret information stored right in here! I'll gladly tell you about it tomorrow if you'll give me a headline today."

1] The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, 1974. But nothing changed, the populace remains ignorant and willfully naive, and the same old tricks of mass manipulation work. With the cooperation of a venal media, of course, without which the secret police couldn't get over with their shit.

Marchetti was a CIA officer and assistant to the CIA deputy director,  Marks a former Foreign Service Officer.

2] "Collateral Murder" videos on youtube.com. You must watch this if you never have yet.

3]  Posted on youtube.com by "Saturday Night Live" [NBC]. "Donald Trump Christmas Cold Open - SNL," published December 18, 2016. The SNL opening skit was crude and obvious, apparently to make sure that even the politically unsophisticated would get the message. I found it funny anyway, and grossly distorted. But then, satire is based on exaggeration. "Rex Tillerson" (Trump's designated Secretary of State who just resigned as head of ExxonMobil) also appeared in the skit.

A "Manchurian Candidate," which comes from a novel by that name, refers to a programmed assassin whose mind is under external control. That's beyond being a stooge, beyond being a puppet. It's being a hypnotized zombie.

4] The Democrats won't even back the movement among states to agree to give their Electoral College votes to whoever wins the "popular" vote. The plan is that when states with a total number of Electoral Votes equalling a majority of Electoral College votes (270 or more ) agree to join, the plan becomes effective. So far state legislatures controlling around 160 Electoral College votes have passed the necessary legislation.

For details on the Electoral College, and how the U.S. has historically been anti-democratic, see "In the Self-Proclaimed 'World's Greatest Democracy,' the Candidate With the Most Votes Just Lost," November 14, 2016.

In the Self-Proclaimed "World's Greatest Democracy," the Candidate With the Most Votes Just Lost

Democrat Hillary Clinton won more votes than Republican Donald Trump, but Trump won because of one of the U.S.' peculiar institutions, the "Electoral College." Presidents are actually elected by "electors," as per the U.S. Constitution. There are 538 of these electors, apparatchiks of the two ruling political parties. Clinton may end up with 2 million more votes than Trump after California is fully counted. (Clinton currently is ahead by 1 million.) But the so-called "popular vote" isn't what elects a U.S. president. The Electoral College vote does, and Trump won there, because he won enough of the 50 states to win a majority of the "Electors." [Later in this essay I explain the system in detail.]

This is the FIFTH U.S. presidential election in which the winner lost. It happened previously in 2000, 1888, 1876, and 1824. In fact, in 1824, the "winner," John Quincy Adams, didn't win the popular vote OR the Electoral College vote.

You would think the need to change this anti-democratic system would be obvious. Apparently it's not obvious to the elites who wield power.  The Democratic Party, having lost in 2000 and 2016, you'd think would be calling for change. But it isn't. Instead its two current leader, Obama and Clinton, immediately called for all citizens to fall in line behind Trump, to respect the "democratic process" and genuflect before the nobility of "our democracy." Obama immediately rushed to invite Trump to the White House and pledged to do his upmost to achieve a smooth transition of power and help Trump have a "successful" presidency.

Needless to say, their rivals, the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) doesn't return the favor. Trump repeatedly announced his intention to claim he was cheated if he lost the election. ("The system is rigged, Folks!" was one of his repeated lines in the weeks before November 8.) And when Obama was elected in 2008, the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, announced at the outset that his number one priority was to make sure Obama had a failed presidency. (The U.S. corporate media doesn't want anyone to remember these things, so they don't mention them.) Newt Gingrich, a smarmy opportunist who has attached himself like a barnacle to the Trump ship, practiced the same sort of "politics of destruction," trying to delegitimize the Democratic Party. But it goes back even further, to the post World War II GOP strategy of redbaiting Democrats, which is how Richard Nixon got elected to Congress and to the U.S. Senate, before Eisenhower elevated him to the vice presidency. Even earlier, in the 1930s, reactionary Republicans acted as ideological police against Democrats.

Those who genuinely oppose not just the racist, reactionary, deformed narcissist Trump and the horrible anti-human policies of the GOP, but those of the Democrats and this entire oppressive system cannot look to the Democratic Party to lead an opposition. The top Democrats have already announced their intention not to oppose Trump and the GOP agenda! (Harry Reid doesn't count as he is retiring.) They won't even block the arch-reactionaries Trump has vowed to elevate to the Supreme Court, even though the Republican Senators blocked Obama from filling the Antonin Scalia vacancy for almost a year. The Democrats in general knuckle under to every GOP power play. Plus, the Democrats are a corporate imperialist party that fundamentally opposes real changes in the U.S. system.

Why some people have a hard time seeing this is baffling. The history of the Democratic Party since the extreme racist Woodrow Wilson, who inaugurated the modern U.S. police state with the Espionage Act and the Palmer raids, makes it crystal clear that Democrats are no allies of true progressives. [In fact the Democratic Party was the party of white racism from the 19th century until the 1960s.]

I'm sure almost no non-Americans, and probably most Americans, don't understand the Electoral College. Therefore, here is an explanation.

The U.S. Constitution as originally written set up this crazy system, part of the conscious design to maintain elite class control over political power. In other words, the U.S. was created as a oligarchy, not a democracy. Originally only white male property owners could vote in the U.S.- not even all white men! Women could not vote until 1920, which means as of today they could vote during less than half of U.S. history, and Southern blacks not until the 1960s, with the exception of a few years immediately after the Civil War ended in 1865.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution set up the Electoral College. The Xii Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1804, tweaked the College a bit. The Constitution calls for state legislatures to choose the Electors who in turn would vote for U.S. President and Vice President. But problems, such as deadlocked legislatures that couldn't decide on Electors, caused all the states except South Carolina to allow white men generally to vote for the Electors by 1832. South Carolina finally threw in the towel on state legislators having sole voting power for president in 1860, the same year that state became the first state to secede from the U.S., in December.

By the way, for 125 years state legislators picked their states' U.S. Senators, until 1913, when the XVII Amendment switched to "popular" election of U.S. Senators.

Today there are a total of 538 Electors. The Democratic Party and Republican Party choose the Electors. The American people are actually voting for these rival slates of Electors, unbeknownst to them.

These 538 party loyalists actually elect the president. Each state is apportioned a minimum of 3 electors. The number of electors per state corresponds to the number of a state's U.S. Congress people. As each state has two Senators and at least one Representative in the House, each has at least 3 electors. California, the most populous state and thus the state with the most House Representatives in the U.S. Congress, has 55 Electors. With 435 Representatives and 100 Senators (2 per state), that equals 535 Electors. The 3 remaining Electors were granted to the District of Columbia in 1964, 188 years after the United States was declared, when the residents of the capital city of the "World's Greatest Democracy" were finally allowed to vote.

The reason the "popular" vote and the Electoral College votes can differ is quite simple. All but two states gives 100% of their electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote in the state. They don't have to do this, they could apportion the electoral votes according to the popular vote percentages, as this is entirely up to the individual states. But that is what they do. So say one candidate gets 55% in enough states to win a majority of electoral votes, but only 35%, say, in states he/she loses. They would have fewer "popular" votes nationwide, but a majority in the Electoral College.

The actual election by the Electoral College will occur this December, when the Electors meet in their respective state capitals and in the District of Columbia to vote. Not all of themn are legally bound to vote according to their state's popular vote, but since they are disciplined party hacks, they will. Trump is expected to receive 290 votes (270 required to win) and Clinton 228. The over 7 million votes that went to other candidates (including write-ins not on the ballots) get zero Electoral Votes, as if they don't exist. (The establishment media never mentions these votes, contributing to their invisibility.)

The U.S. territories Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands, get no votes from the Electoral College because they aren’t states and they don’t have a special Constitutional amendment to recognize them. 4.4 million U.S. citizens live in the territories, a population almost equal to the total of 6 states.  (There are 4.5 million combined in North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, and Delaware.)

Other people who can't vote are millions of people convicted of felonies in states that strip such people (mostly blacks) of the right to vote permanently.

If no candidate wins a majority in the Electoral College, the House of Representatives votes for the next president, and the U.S. Senate for the vice-president. Which in practice would mean the controlling party in each chamber would pick its own party's candidate, barring some weird political deal. This happened just once, in 1824.

In the very first U.S. presidential election in 1789, there was only one candidate- George Washington. See how "democratic" the U.S. was even at the very beginning? I found an interesting article that describes how U.S. presidential politics has really been a battle between competing elites from the very start- and indeed is still today. [1] Rival gangs of rich people and corporate interests cluster around the two oligarchic parties and compete with each other for state power. They use demagoguery and dishonest propaganda slogans and
"ideas" to psychologically manipulate various sectors of the populace to vote for them.

Here is the breakdown of the "popular" vote and the prospective Electoral College tally. Notice that over 7 million voters who voted for someone other than the two candidates of the two-party dictatorship don't count at all, as they get zero Electoral College votes.

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php

Here is a useful historical timeline from Wikipedia.org ["Voting rights in the United States." Footnotes at Wikipedia.]

                                            Milestones of national franchise extension

Abolition of property qualifications for white men, from 1792 (Kentucky) to 1856 (North Carolina) — see: Jacksonian democracy.[5]

Citizenship in both the United States and U.S. States by birth or naturalization, 1868 — see: Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Non-white men, 1870 — see: Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Direct election of Senators, 1913 — see: Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave voters rather than state legislatures the right to elect senators.[11]

Women, 1920 — see: Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Native Americans (for all who did not already have the vote, which nearly two-thirds did[12]), 1924 — see: Indian Citizenship Act.[13]

Residents of Washington, D.C. for U.S. Presidential Elections, 1961 — see: Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Poll tax, 1964 — see: Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting imposition of poll tax in federal elections.

Protection of voter registration and voting for racial minorities, later applied to language minorities, 1965 — see Voting Rights Act of 1965; this has also been applied to correcting discriminatory election systems and districting.

Poll Tax, 1966 — see: Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), prohibiting imposition of poll tax or property requirements in all U.S. elections.

Adults between 18 and 21, 1971 — see: Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution,[14] were granted the vote in response to Vietnam War protests which argued that soldiers who were old enough to fight for their country should be granted the right to vote.[11]

Requirement that a person reside in a jurisdiction for an extended period — 14th Amendment; Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330  (1972).[15][16][16]

Washington, D.C., for restoring local elections such as Mayor and Councilmen, after a 100-year gap in Georgetown, and 190-year gap in the wider city, ending Congress's policy of local election disfranchisement started in 1801 in this former portion of Maryland, 1973, — see: D.C. Home rule.

United States Military and Uniformed Services, Merchant Marine, other citizens overseas, living on bases in the United States, abroad, or aboard ship, 1986 — see: Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.[17]
Finally, here's an interesting paragraph from the Federal Government's National Archives and Records Administration webpage on the Electoral College:

Reference sources indicate that over the past 200 years, over 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College. There have been more proposals for Constitutional amendments on changing the Electoral College than on any other subject. The American Bar Association has criticized the Electoral College as “archaic” and “ambiguous” and its polling showed 69 percent of lawyers favored abolishing it in 1987. But surveys of political scientists have supported continuation of the Electoral College. Public opinion polls have shown Americans favored abolishing it by majorities of 58 percent in 1967; 81 percent in 1968; and 75 percent in 1981.

Well, so much for democracy and the "will of the people."

For more details on the Electoral College, see the following:

"U.S. Electoral College: Frequently Asked Questions," National Archives and Records Administration.

"Electoral College, (United States)," Wikipedia.org.

"Breaking down the US elections: Your biggest questions answered," RT, November 8, 2016


1] "Presidential Elections," History.com, website of the History Channel cable TV channel. Oddly for a corporate entity, I've found the articles there mostly pretty objective.

Trump Is Destabilizing the U.S.- Should Progressives Worry?

Donald Trump is aggravating the fissures in U.S. society. A narcissist running a demagogic campaign for president of the U.S., his aim is his own self-aggrandizement.

He is rabble-rousing elements of the broad, discontented, white working class and anxious "middle" classes which the establishment power system seeks to keep passive as the system of corporate oligarchy slowly and relentlessly grinds them down economically. In classic fascist/reactionary fashion, he diverts attention from understanding the actual structure and nature of society and instead scapegoats "outsiders," in his case "illegal" immigrants and would-be refugees seeking asylum from war zones. He has also identified the various trade treaties as a cause of the economic squeeze on workers, which is valid as a factor.

Trump has made a frontal assault on these so-called "free trade" deals, violating an establishment ideological taboo observed by Democrats and other Republicans alike. Trump has done more to incite opposition to these treaties than labor unions, which supposedly represent the interests of workers, and certainly more than the Democratic Party, whose dominant figures largely support these corporate-power-enhancing treaties.

And while pressing the same hot button "culture war" issues that "respectable" "conservatives" do, being a political vulgarian he doesn't do it in a muted fashion as standard-issue reactionary Republicans do but does it very sharply, as was on display in the third and last "presidential debate" last night between him and Hillary Clinton, the Democrat. (This sort of crudeness is referred to by Republican operatives themselves as tossing "red meat" to "the base." Apparently GOP voters are like pet ocelots. Trump threatens to take them off their leashes.) These issues are guns, abortion, and immigrants. (The immigrant issue of course is tied to the economic insecurity felt by millions, with racism and xenophobia in the mix.)

Trump laid down his marker on immigrants early on when he branded virtually all Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers- a trope others have picked up, some implying that all murders in the U.S. are the work of illegal immigrants, an absurdity that goes unchallenged. Instead we get from Democrats and "liberals" heartstring-plucking stories of hardworking immigrant families (it always has to be families) and children caught in a legal bind not of their own making. Which is fine, but insufficient, as it leaves the murderer-immigrant theme unrefuted.

Trump lately has also been destabilizing the legitimacy of U.S. elections by claiming they are "rigged," to cheat him of his victory. He continued this tact last night. This is very cynical on his part, as he is doing it because he is apparently going to lose. [1]

But the irony is, U.S. elections ARE corrupt, only not in the ways Trump means. [2] For example, the last two times a Republican "won" the presidency, it was by stealing it. Bush  the Younger stole Florida in  2000, aided and abetted by his brother Jeb, the then-governor of Florida, Jeb's GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) minions there who disenfranchised thousands of eligible voters, and most importantly by five Republican Supreme Court justices, who illegally blocked a recount in Florida. In 2004 Ohio was stolen, with the connivance of GOP officials there, led by Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell.  Since 2000, the Republican-owned corporations that make the crooked voting machines have connived to steal numerous elections by programming them to switch votes from Democrats to Republicans. (The Democrats refuse to make an issue out of any of this. As for 2000, they blame it all on Ralph Nader. Talk about scapegoating!)

But the Republicans (or elements of the secret police state acting on their behalf) are more ruthless than that.
Both Paul Wellstone and Mel Carnahan were murdered by plane sabotage to help the GOP control the U.S. Senate. And a devout Christian computer programmer, who helped the Republicans steal elections, had an attack of conscience and spoke out. While flying to testify in a civil case against Karl Rove, the top Republican electoral operative, his plane too was downed, and the evidence he was carrying to the trial was removed from the crash site, never to be seen again.

We can add mass disenfranchisement by various chicanery of Democratic voters, which the Democratic Party barely objected to until very recently.

Nor does it help that the Republicans who constituted a majority on the Supreme Court before the death of arch-reactionary Antonin Scalia last year gutted the Voting Rights Act, opening the door to even more ruthless disenfranchisement of "black" citizens in the erstwhile Confederacy.

Trump has even damaged the Republican Party, which he has hijacked for his ego trip. Contrary to universal handwringing by the establishment blatherariat, this is a good thing. It is to be fervently desired to see that evil, noxious weed break up into two or more parties. (That would also have the salutary effect of weakening the extortionist power of the Democratic Party to force people to vote for them as "the lesser of two evils" to avoid a Republican victory.)

You would think that progressives would welcome things that weakens the stability of the current oppressive, imperialist, and incorrigible U.S. structure. That assumes that they understand the problems they complain about are structural in nature and deeply rooted in the nature of U.S. society. Many apparently don't understand that, but they should.

But instead, as happens every time there is the one-day-every-two-years when some actual democracy has to be allowed- democracy to the very limited extent that some people (not millions of disenfranchised people, mostly blacks) are allowed to vote from a menu of two choices presented to them- Democratic Party politicians or Republican Party politicians- what progressives and special interest "leftists"* virtually all do is line up like obedient ducklings behind the Democrats. [3] Because "the Republicans are worse." They are exhorted by Democratic Party political auxiliaries like Robert Reich (a Bill Clinton cabinet member) that "now is not the time" to seek an alternative, not even a Senator Bernard Sanders, who ran as a Democrat for president against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party primaries and then supported her when he was blocked from victory. But there will never be a "right time" as long as the Republican Party exists.

Preserving the faux "unity" of the American populace under the current political and economic power structure is precisely what those in power want! Why would anyone who struggles against this system want to help do that?

The media created Donald Trump, making news stories out of even his random idiotic tweets. Now they are trying desperately to destroy his drive to the White House with sex scandalizing. To be sure, he is loathsome, and a probable rapist, as I will explain in a separate essay. (Bill Clinton is a confirmed rapist- cf. Juanita Broaddrick- and that IS relevant because he will have immense power if/when his wife achieve her goal of the presidency, her compensation for setting aside her own ambitions in Arkansas and when her husband got to be president. It's a family affair, you see.  Now it's her turn. The other relevance is that Hillary was a driving force in the character assassinations of her husband's various paramours. And it went into actual terrorism. When Kathleen Willey reported a rebuffed sexual advance on her by Bill C. in the White House, her cat was killed, after which a man jogged up to her outside when she was along and mentioned the dead cat. A scary threat indeed, the implication being that he could kill her right then and there.)

Here's a good reason to look forward to the end of the election: the media obsession with Donald Trump will abate. (If we're very lucky, it will even end.) But the barbaric soul of the Republican Party has had its genteel veil torn off by Donald Trump.


1] Trump also has broken new ground, at least in the past century, by openly attacking the legitimacy of his two-party opponent. Trump at the previous debate said he would jail Hillary Clinton if elected. Last night he said she shouldn't even be allowed to run because of her "many crimes." If he had meant crimes against humanity, he would have been onto something. He just meant her private email server, destroying 30,000 emails, an allegedly lying to the FBI.

This attack on the legitimacy of the official opposition can be seen as rooted in the GOP attacks on Obama's legitimacy, including the claims that he was born in Kenya and thus Constitutionally ineligible to be president. The GOP didn't overtly push that line, but its auxiliaries in "talk" radio promoted it. Trump took that "issue" and ran with it in the years when he was preparing the ground for his attempt to grab the presidency.
Nor are fraudulent claims of election-stealing by the Democrats new. The myth has long been nurtured that JFK stole the 1960 election from Nixon by stealing Illinois. That myth is easily refuted by simple arithmetic. Just subtract the Illinois electoral votes from Kennedy's total and add them to Nixon's. Kennedy still wins. But as Reagan said, "facts are stupid things."

In fact, the Republican Party, by pushing relentlessly to the right (with the help of almost the entire U.S. media) over the last almost 50 years, a campaign of reaction and rollback that was a response to the upsurges of the 1960s, has really opened the door to a demagogue like Trump. The years of rightwing extremism have validated the derangement and inculcated the rightwing segment of the populace in irrational beliefs an animosities.

2] Trump claims illegal immigrants are voting, "dead people" are voting, illegal immigrants are not just voting once, but "fifteen times," etc. etc. This is of a piece with his general cynical demagoguery designed to rabble-rouse the racists and xenophobes, who number in the millions.

3] I use "leftists" for want of a better single word, and also because that is how the power structure thinks of them, especially the secret police agencies, "talk" radio, hard-rightwing media, and rightists generally, even though that is a stupid way to think of them. I am referring to single-issue people such as those categorized as environmentalists, gay rights activists, "civil" i.e. black rights people, and so on, dozens of such splinter groups with no unity, each applying a modicum of pressure on the system to achieve its own ends within the current system without changing its basic imperialist, corporate oligarchic nature one whit.

The truth is, the vast majority of progressives are frightened of pulling down the temple of power. That's why their distress at Trump's refusal to validate the fairness of the election has them in a tizzy as much as it has the establishment media the the Democrats. Even as I'm writing this, one Kristen Clarke is talking to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! (the first segment of the day's show) and prattling on about U.S. "democracy" being the "model for the world" and how "distressing" it is that Trump would question the legitimacy of a U,S. election. Then she segued into a total non sequitur about voter suppression against blacks! Which would seem to undercut her boilerplate propaganda about legitimacy and a Model for the World. She keeps referring to "conspiracy theories," and brushes aside a question about Gore v. Bush in 2000 ("We're not going to relitigate [that]" i.e. not going to discuss, remember, or learn from) and denies U.S. elections can possibly be rigged. "Rigged elections, pure mythology, pure fiction..."! [What, 2000 wasn't? 2004 wasn't?]

Clarke is also bent out of shape that Obama's nominee for the "broken" Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, a conservative former prosecutor, hasn't been given a Senate confirmation hearing. "A Constitutional Crisis" she calls it. "I am deeply concerned about this era of political obstruction we are in," she says, parroting Democratic Party rhetoric.

Clarke is President and Executive Director of the "Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law," founded in 1963 at the request of president John F. Kennedy. That political pedigree maybe tells you all you need to know about where Clarke is coming from.

Trump Adopts Obama Defense In Wake of Revelation of Crude Sexual Behavior and Attitude

"Anyone who knows me knows these words don't reflect who I am." -Donald "SuperEgo" Trump explaining why we should disregard his boasting about grabbing women by the "pussy," kissing women he doesn't even know, describing them as meat and himself acting like a beast of prey. [1]

"That's not who we are!" -Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama, every time he has to explain away U.S. criminality or venality.

So, it doesn't matter if Americans torture people, assassinate people, bomb hospitals and journalists, imprison millions- since that's "Not who we are," it doesn't count as part of character and identity. Some doppelganger America did it. Perhaps an imposter America. Since America is really a Good Country, and Obama a Good Man, and Trump whatever he says he is, the actions to the contrary are not their responsibility. Thus the culprits dissociate themselves from their own crimes.

Hillary Clinton also trotted out the "That's not who we are" trope recently. Apparently this is now going to be an enduring part of U.S. propaganda and denial. [2]

Add that to Obama's Legacy.

1]  Trump and his supporters (including the loathsome Rudolph Giuliani making the rounds of the Sunday morning TV political propaganda show October 10, a man who openly carried on an affair while mayor and still married to another woman) have tried to play down the vulgar conversation between Trump and celebrity brownnoser Billy Bush, a member of the Bush clan and cousin of the most recent president Bush. Their spin is that it was a long time ago, and Trump apologized (grudgingly, reluctantly, and in a pro forma manner, while simultaneously attacking by saying Bill Clinton has said worse, and threatening to bring up at the next debate with Hillary Clinton the rape of Juanita Broaddrick and all the "bimbo eruptions"- to use the Clintons' campaign from 1992 when Bill's sexual affairs threatened his candidacy for President) and anyway he's not like that now.

But it wasn't just the words Trump used: Trump was describing his own habitual conduct. (The disgusting Billy Bush cackled gleefully at Trump's self-description, something there has been no comment on by "the" media. I guess those bastards cover each others' asses.)

Trump has a history of misogyny and stalking of women going back to his high school days. He has always felt entitled, being the son of a rich landlord. On the Bush tape, he says when you're a celebrity "you can do anything." Indeed, there are privileges reserved to some in this society. And in Trump's case, he didn't even have to be discreet! But now he discovers that when you run for a competitive political office, your life is put under scrutiny and your bad behavior no longer covered up for you.

CNN just dredged up radio clips spanning 23 years of Trump's banter with the vulgar Howard Stern. Remember, this stuff was broadcast over public airwaves, with nary a ding to Trump's reputation until now. Here are a few gems:

Trump said he would “have no problem” having sex with 24-year-olds, and he “couldn’t care less” if he satisfies the women he sleeps with. But they have to be young, since “it’s checkout time” once women reach age 35. He also boasted that he'd engaged in three-way sex. “Haven’t we all?” Trump told Stern on his SiriusXM satellite radio show in 2008, obviously aware that "we all" haven't. Notice the ploy to assert his own superiority and make others feel inferior.

Someone might want to think twice about working for Trump enterprise. When he owned the Miss Universe pageant, he would barge in on nude contestants in their dressing room, calling it an "inspection."

With his connoisseur's eye, Trump pronounced of his daughter Ivanka, “She’s actually always been very voluptuous,”

Here's Trump's definition of "the perfect date:"

“You meet at 7 for drinks. You promise to take her to dinner, but you never get there.”

That's my definition of a lout.

2]  Far more substantive than Trump's sexism and misogyny is the expose of what Clinton said to all those finance capitalists in the speeches they so richly paid her for. It was the opposite of what she claims to stand for in her public pronouncements during this campaign. (No surprise, really.) Thanks to Russia and WikiLeaks for that. But "the" media is making a much bigger deal out of the Trump scandal du jour, since the establishment consensus is that Trump Must Not Be President. Why, he won't even demonize Official Enemy Vladimir Putin!

For the Trump recordings, see below.

Trump and Billy Bush discuss how to relate to women: "Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005," Washington Post, October 8, 2016.

For Trump and Howard Stern: "Donald Trump to Howard Stern: It's okay to call my daughter a 'piece of ass'," CNN Politics, October 9, 2016.

I just gave the GREATEST APOLOGY you ever, heard. It was truly amazing. No one has ever been as contrite as I was. Trust Me on this.

Pretty women are like magnets. I just have to kiss them, okay?

Taboo Ironies In Clinton's VP Choice

Hillary Clinton bestowed the Democratic Party's vice presidential nomination on Tim Kaine, a Democratic U.S. Senator from Virginia. This political product launch had three themes, which campaign operatives put on their communications transmission belt to "the" media in the form of talking points. These were duly pointed out to the public by said media. The themes were Kaine's alleged devotion to what in the U.S. are called "civil rights," meaning equal "rights" for citizens designated as "black;" his "missionary" work in Honduras in 1980 (less than a year), and the fact that he speaks fluent Spanish. (All Hispanics must now vote for him, I suppose.)

I say "black" because I don't like classifying people by color. People aren't jellybeans or M & M's.

I say "the" media, because it is not the one-and-only media, nor is it this objective thing, like the earth or sun, that just exists and has immutable properties. It is a particular media. In the U.S. that media called "the" media are the megaphones and mouthpieces of a corporate oligarchy that indoctrinates the populace with the values and ideology of corporate capitalism (misleadingly called "free enterprise"). It is completely a bourgeois class interest (although it masquerades in some instances as working class or "middle" class, the better to gain the trust of and to dupe "target audiences," a very telling term in itself).

Now, as to Kaine being presented as some great civil rights activist years ago. Of course he never was. But that is a good distraction from Hillary's anti-civil rights activities at the same time. She was a Goldwater Girl in college, head of the campus GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) students' group at Wesleyan University. Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential candidate in 1964, was an ardent foe of civil rights, opposed legislation to allow blacks to vote in the South, and so on.

Then there's that "missionary work" by Kaine in Honduras. Honduras. The country where a U.S.-backed coup destroyed democracy and has instituted a regime of chaotic death-squads, murdering hundreds of activists. Clinton boasted in her most recent book, a sort of autohagiography, about how she protected and legitimized the coup, running interference against objections by other nations.

The third Honduran grassroots environmental activist opposing a hydroelectric project murdered in the last few months, Lesbia Janeth Urquia, was savagely hacked to death with a machete at the beginning of August. She was a 49-year old mother of three.

Another mother, Berta Cáceres, the first of those victims, avowed that Clinton and the U.S. bore responsibility for the existence of the current Honduran state terrorist regime, The regime has cynically tried to pin the murders on family members and fellow activists.

The three activists, extremely brave, poor people, were all members of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, indicating a systematic, murderous targeting of the group.

This is the regime, and policy of gangster-style repression, that Obama-Clinton-Democratic Party imposes on Honduras.

"Lesser evil" my ass.

Kaine, apparently a very clever politician, uses the scant nine months he spent in Honduras 36 years
ago as a three-way political bank shot. In the words of The Nation magazine, "Kaine, who has been talking about his time in Honduras at least since the early 2000s, when he was mayor of Richmond, uses his nine-month stay as a kind of platitudinous catch-all, to prove he is a true Christian to Virginia conservatives, to court the Latino vote, and, now, to convince rank-and-file Democrats he’s a progressive." [1]

Religious "missionaries" have for centuries been the pilot fish and advance guard of European and U.S. Imperialists. Starting with the Spanish empire, and right through to the current use of religious front men and women by the CIA, the missionary is the recon scout of imperialism.

As it turns out, the Selfless Missionary Timothy Michael Kaine, a Good Catholic, isn't as pure as the driven snow. When he was Governor of the state of Virginia, he took a number of bribes (called "gifts" in U.S. political parlance) from corporations in return for his official acts on their behalf. But in yet another example of the extremely arbitrary and capricious nature of U.S. "justice," he hasn't been prosecuted, while other politicians have been prosecuted and even convicted in much more attenuated cases of alleged bribery (U.S. Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who is being prosecuted for vacationing with a longtime friend he helped out, and whose case is currently in process; and former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell and his wife, whose convictions were just overturned by the Supreme Court on the grounds that the actions McDonnell took in return for gifts were not official acts and thus did not come under bribery laws- why his wife got convicted in the first place is a mystery- as an accessory?) or outright frame-ups, like the case of former Democratic Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, outrageously railroaded by the local GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) power establishment and sentenced to a draconian seven years in prison, for appointing a contributor to a ballot initiative to an unpaid post on some planning board. (So why isn't every U.S. president guilty of bribery for appointing their campaign contributors to plum ambassadorships, which are paid, prestigious jobs and should go to experience State Department veterans? [2]

And Kaine speaks Spanish. He speaks Spanish. He proved it in his convention speech. Kaine speaks Spanish.

He speaks Spanish.

The Kaines were happy in Honduras. Too bad Hondurans can't be.

Berta Cáceres

Lesbia Janeth Urquia

Just two more victims (of millions) of U.S. "policies."

The perfect VP pick: Doglike Kaine trots closely behind his political master.

1]  "Eat, Pray, Starve: What Tim Kaine Didn’t Learn During His Time in Honduras," The Nation, July 27, 2016. A must-read article summarizing the situation Kaine was immersed in in Honduras, with an overview of the Reagan-Bush atrocities in the region. Although keep in mind that their predecessor Carter initiated the "policy" of multi-state terrorism, and their successor Clinton transferred it to Colombia.

The Nation is the left boundary of Establishment media. It's the border between being part of the system and resistance/opposition to the power structure. The Nation is reformist, but not too reformist. Its idea of reform is jawboning the Democratic Party to do things that Party has proven it will never do. And every four years, the magazine puts on its cowboy hats and rounds up progressives to herd them into the Democratic Party corral. Their assaults on Ralph Nader for daring to run for president (and "stealing" Democratic votes) was relentless, nasty, and revealing of the bankruptcy of their politics. Anyone who really wants pro-human change has to realize that the two-party corporate capitalist imperialist dictatorship is the enemy, Instead The Nation and its ilk aids and abets the Democratic Party's politics of extortion, forcing people to vote for the allegedly "lesser evil." 

Which has brought us to our current state of greater repression and greater grotesque concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority (euphemised as "inequality,") with institutionalized global assassinations and a Perfect Surveillance State brought to you by Barack Obama, Democrat.

Expect more of the same poison under a second Clinton reign.

2]  "As Pick for No. 2, Tim Kaine Sees Gifts Come Under Scrutiny," New York Times, July 24, 2016.

On Don Siegelman, a concise summary of the outrageous facts of the case is at "Why Obama Should Pardon Don Siegelman," New Yorker, January 14, 2015, by former Federal prosecutor and Edward Snowden hater Jeffrey Toobin. (Even reactionary establishment barnacle George Will thinks Siegelman got a raw deal.)

In another example of what a coward Barack Obama is, that even after over 100 former state attorneys general [!] sent a letter to Obama seeking a pardon for Siegelman, Obama ignored them. 

["Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman seeks pardon from President Obama," Alabama Media Group website of Alabama newspapers, April 13, 2016.]

In fact, after the Washington Post quoted Siegelman in an article on the Supreme Court exoneration of Bob McDonnell, Obama's Bureau of Prisons transferred Siegelman to solitary confinement in a Louisiana Federal prison, obviously to silence him and as punishment. It's the second time Siegelman has been thrown into the hole after giving a media interview. ["Former Alabama governor Don Siegelman sent to solitary confinement," Washington Post, April 29, 2016.]

To be "fair" and "balanced," I'll mention that the Bureau of Prisons denied that they threw Siegelman into solitary as a punishment. (I hear solitary is actually great fun.) The 70-year-old Siegelman, a Kung Fu Master and trained ninja, has escaped from some of the world's most escape-proof prisons, and thus is a high-security-risk prisoner.... Um, well, that's partly true. He is 70.

This is a Democratic president doing this to a framed-up Democrat. What kind of amoral creeps are Democrats that they accept this kind of party "leadership"? 

The big puzzle is why even the Democrats in the power structure are insistent on heaping injustice upon Siegelman. The Federal appeals court has upheld his conviction, and the Supreme Court refused to even allow him a hearing, completely blowing off a brief signed by 116 former attorneys general in support of Siegelman's exoneration.. ["More than 100 former attorneys general ask US Supreme Court to review Siegelman sentence," Alabama Media Group website of Alabama newspapers, October 22, 2015.

(One of Obama's Supreme Court appointees, Elena Kagan, was Obama's solicitor general, in which role she participated in the persecution of Siegelman. ["Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman seeks pardon from President Obama," Alabama Media Group, op cit.])

The Obama regime has been playing a shell game with Siegelman, moving him from prison to prison in states far away from his family and friends,such as Oklahoma, to try and isolate him, break his spirit, and punish his supporters by stealing their time and money when they attempt to visit him in prison. Obama has repeatedly demonstrated his streak of cruelty, as in the murder of 16 year old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, his teenage cousin, and five other civilians while they were dining, blown up by an Obama drone; arranging the breaking of Medea Benjamin's arm by Egyptian secret police goons to punish her for heckling him during one of his unctuous, oleaginous, sanctimonious, speeches; and the persecution of whistleblowers, activists and dissidents under his rule. A coward and a bully- not an attractive combination. One thing you can say about the likes of Putin and Erdogan: they're bullies but no cowards. Somehow that makes them less contemptible than Obama.

The treatment of Siegelman reminds one that the U.S. power establishment is a dangerous nest of vipers, a collection of scorpions that are even dangerous to one another, not just to all the rest of us on this planet. There is no guarantee of personal security as a member of a criminal gang.

Of course, Siegelman got off easy compared to two of the Kennedys.

Hitler reacts to Hillary Clinton winning the Democratic nomination

On a lighter not: Hilarious parody video on youtube. See at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVjeN3rOBzM

Personally I enjoyed it. Good medicine for me, as the secret police scum of the U.S. (FBI, CIA, and their local police stooges) has victimized me for over 40 years now and in some respects ruined my life.

Democratic Party Apparatchiks Insist on Going With Weaker Presidential Candidate

The AP (Associated Press) and NBC on June 6 declared Hillary Clinton the winner of the Democratic Party nomination for president. Totaling up the delegates she won in state primaries and caucuses and adding the over 500 unelected "superdelegates" (party poohbahs and assorted elected officials) backing her, they figured she has hit the magic number of a majority of delegates. Thus seeming to obviate the June 7 California, New Jersey, and other primaries. California being by far the most populous U.S. state, with the most delegates, and once again consigned to political irrelevancy.  [1]
Clinton's "victory" is actually not great news for the Democrats.

Senator Bernard Sanders has consistently polled stronger against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton has. Yet the Party apparatus, controlled by the Clintons and their minions, is going with the weaker candidate, Hillary Clinton. (Perhaps we should refer to the Democratic Party as the "Clinton Machine." Even since 1992, that seems to be about what it is.)

In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in mid-May among 1,109 registered voters, Clinton beat Trump 47% to 41%, a lead of 6%. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3%, which means the two candidates could actually be dead even. In any event, poll results are volatile, and public opinion is very fickle.  [2]

Sanders, on the other hand, leads Trump 51% to 38%, a pretty wide margin. (The New York Times calls that "a more hypothetical matchup," striving to be neutral, I suppose. Can't really fault that circumlocution.)

Sanders has consistently done better in polls against Trump than has Clinton for months now. So logically, the Democratic Party should at least be giving serious consideration to Sanders.
But the Democrats would probably rather LOSE the election than anoint Sanders as their standard-bearer.

It seems that their role as protectors of corporate hegemony trumps even their own partisan self-interest.

Sanders is hardly a radical. He calls himself a "democratic socialist," by which he apparently means New Deal Democrat or social democrat. That is, he's for a decent "safety net" for the population, rather than dog-eat-dog capitalism with most of the wealth going to a small class of plutocrats, as in late 19th century-early 20th century America (which the Republicans relentlessly push returning to, being an atavistic, revanchist party), or the system of crumbs doled out as pacifiers as favored by the current Democratic Party. The Republicans would eliminate the crumbs: the Democrats, under their last two presidents, Obama and Bill Clinton, have proved willing to "compromise" with the Republicans and reduce the amount of the crumbs. As in any compromise with fanatics, such compromises are only temporary, as the fanatics always come back and demand more until reaching their ultimate goal. Thus the "reasonable" sellouts eventually "compromise" their way to utter defeat. (THAT'S the "lesson of Munich"!)

Both of the hegemonic political parties are fronts for big capital interests. (The Libertarian Party are laissez-faire capitalists like the Republicans minus the crony capitalism of the Republicans, and lacking the taste for militarism and imperialism of the two ruling parties. The Republican Party in actual elections almost entirely sweeps up libertarian-minded voters.)

Both Clinton and Trump were viewed negatively by over 50% of the respondents to the poll. This too is consistent over time. If one were to included people not registered to vote in the tally, those negatives would probably be even higher. People who don't register are either thoroughly disgusted with the system, alienated from it, or indifferent. (Or just unmotivated.) So a high percentage of them have no use for "politicians" generally.

Now, it's true that Clinton got more votes in the Democratic primaries than Sanders. But in the general election in November, independents and Republicans will be voting too. The point is, Sanders does better than Clinton in that situation. Certainly among independents, and while only a relatively small percentage of Republicans would ordinarily vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, I suspect that more would go for Sanders than for Clinton. Because even though he calls himself a "democratic socialist," he acts like he wants to shake things up, something many Republicans want. Plus, he's a bit of a crotchety, ornery old coot, as are many Republicans. And they really hate Clinton. Then there's the fact that a significant number of Republicans can't abide Donald Trump. So I think it is clear that Sanders would actually be the better opponent against Trump.

Sanders is officially an "independent," while functioning as a "left wing" Democrat in the mold of a Dennis Kucinich. The Democrats usually have someone playing the role of "progressive" in order to continue to dupe progressives into voting for their corporate hegemonist and mass-murdering imperialist party. Sanders, like Kucinich, like indeed all of the handful of "progressive" Democrats in the Congress, is a lone wolf who refuses to even form a caucus of progressives in the Congress. That fact alone is enough to prove that these people aren't serious.  [3]

Sanders is functionally a Democrat in the Senate, as he votes their way almost always. In return, they reward Sanders with plum seats on various Senate committees. They also don't try to unseat him in Vermont elections.

But the Clintons are practitioners of cronyism on a vast scale, especially with their multi-billion dollar "foundation." They are a source of jobs and money. And they wired the Democratic Party power structure long ago. Hillary landed in New York State as a political carpetbagger and bumped aside other Democratic Party politicians who were "in line" to run for a Senate seat there. That's how she became a U.S. Senator. Then it was expected she would be the Party's presidential candidate in 2008, as if by some divine right of succession. The upstart hustler from Illinois, Barack Hussein Obama, yanked the rug out from under her with his slick moves, willingness to shamelessly lie about his future policies, and the technical brilliance of his campaign machinery. And oodles of money from Wall Street and other precincts of Big Capital (who obviously knew his "progressive" rhetoric was a sham to dupe the rubes- I mean, the citizens).

Ironically, Obama is very much like Hillary's husband, Bill Clinton. Both are very adept con artists, lacking any conscience, very good at lying (unlike Nixon) which they do convincingly. And both implemented very repressive policies domestically, and liberally killed people abroad.

Yeah, life is ironic sometimes.

1]  Here's one measure of how profoundly undemocratic the U.S. is- and this is never spoken of. The U.S. Senate, the upper chamber of the U.S. Congress, is immensely powerful. Because of its archaic and anti-democratic rules and procedures, a single Senator can block legislation.

Each of the 50 states elects 2 Senators to the Senate, for a total of 100. The state of California, as of July 2014, had a population as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau of just shy of 39 million people. The 22 least populous states had a total population of about 39 and a half million. So Californians had two whole Senators to represent them in the U.S. Senate, while virtually the same number of people from elsewhere (mostly reactionary backwaters) had 44, close to half the entire Senate!

The least populous state, Wyoming, Dick Cheneyland, with a population barely over half a million, has the same number of Senators as California, which has 66 times Wyoming's population. A 66 to 1 ratio. 66 Californians equal 1 Wyoman in political weight.

Nice and democratic!

2]  "Republicans Want Their Party to Unify Behind Donald Trump, Poll Shows," New York Times, May 19, 2016.

3]  Ralph Nader has thoroughly exposed this sham. See for example this excerpt from Nader's appearance on Democracy Now!, May 18, 2015, when he was interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. Sanders snubbed him for 15 years, and 9 Congressional "progressives" completely ignored his pleas to them to form a united front to advance an agenda.

Here's the transcript of the relevant portion of the interview:

RALPH NADER: Bernie Sanders does not answer my calls. Fifteen years, he’s never answered a telephone call, never replied to a letter, never replied to a meeting that I wanted to go down and see him. I even had to write an article on this, called "Bernie, We Thought We Knew Ye!" One of the problems he’s going to face, other than his good graces in Vermont, is that he doesn’t have good political antennae. He doesn’t have political social graces. And he’s going to have to change that. A lot of his friends have told me that that’s a problem. But most progressive senators don’t really respond to any progressive group that tries to push him to do more than they want to do. I wrote nine letters to nine progressive senators, like Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and saying, "Look, you’re all lone rangers doing good things, but you’re going nowhere. So why don’t you get together into a caucus of nine, 10, 12 senators in the Senate and push a unified agenda on poverty, on labor, on the environment, on trade, on military policy? You might really get somewhere. At the least, you’ll raise these issues more prominently." Not a single response. Called up, said, "Would they respond?" Not a single response. I did finally have to go down and meet with the general counsel for Senator Warren. But by and large, that’s the problem with the left. That’s the problem of progressives. They don’t link with one another. You never see Heritage Foundation or Cato or all these right-wing groups tolerate members of Congress treating them that way who are supposed to be on their side.- "Ralph Nader on Bernie Sanders' Presidential Bid & His Unanswered Letters to the White House," Democracy Now!, May 18, 2015.]

The Unbearable Phoniness of Congressional "Progressives."

              Sheesh! Looks like my time in the limelight is just about up.