Month: June 2016

by William Skink

First, let me state explicitly I absolutely DO NOT condone violence or intimidation as political tactics, so I hope the following post isn’t misconstrued by anyone who feels passionately about saving refugees and expanding gun control.

Missoula’s City Council has made the choice to bring back the debate over background checks within city limits and no one should be surprised that this “debate” got nasty quick:

“Here is the lead tyrant in Missoula that wants your guns and wishes to throw unknown refugees onto the streets of Montana,” Ravndal wrote on his Facebook page with a photo of one of Missoula’s female council members. “(She) accuses those that seek transparency and accountability of hate and fear mongers. She needs your help God!”

It’s not the first time sponsors of the Missoula ordinance have been threatened with violence, though they’ve been reluctant to discuss it publicly. The comments resulting from Ravndal’s post, however, were troubling.

“Let the rapes begin at her address,” Ken Printz responded with a Facebook post.

“Maybe she just needs some redneck love to get her to drop the liberal bull shit,” wrote Trevor Ogden-Sanchez.

When people are scared or feel threatened, rational, reasonable arguments and common sense measures don’t mean a damn thing. People are absolutely scared right now. They don’t trust politicians (many disdain and despise them) and they hate the power that has been centralized within the Federal government. Many have a vague sense of how economically dispossessed they have become, and are therefore very susceptible to scapegoating whatever demographic their choice of media is telling them to blame.

For example, here’s what the piece of shit director of the CIA is telling them on Breitbart.fear:

In his 60 Minutes interview last Sunday, CIA Director John Brennan warned that Islamic State attacks (ISIS/ISIL) on U.S. soil are “inevitable.” He came close to blaming political correctness for interfering with efforts to detect and thwart terror plots.

And today Brennan will kick it up a notch:

CIA Director John Brennan spoke before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday where he is expected to warn US lawmakers that Islamic State militants are training and preparing to deploy operatives for further attacks on the West and will rely more on guerrilla-style tactics to compensate for their territorial losses.

Per his prepared remarks before the Committee, Brennan said that ISIS has been working to build an apparatus to direct and inspire attacks against its foreign enemies, as in the recent attacks in Paris and Brussels. “ISIL has a large cadre of Western fighters who could potentially serve as operatives for attacks in the West.”

Most importantly, he said the Islamic State is working to smuggle them into countries, perhaps among refugee flows or through legitimate means of travel.

Our government is trying to make us more and more afraid because then we are so much easier to manipulate and control (not like it was hard without the endless fear propaganda). Local officials need to really think through whether closing background check loopholes and bringing refugees into this environment rife with fear and paranoia is worth feeding into the narratives being pimped by despicable apparatchiks like Brennan.

In the UK, a politician was brutally attacked, possibly by a deranged Natavist British man:

Witness Clarke Rothwell told BBC News said there was an altercation between a man carrying a gun and Cox. He purposefully targeted her, said Rothwell, who runs the cafe next to the library where the incident took place.

“He shot this lady and then shot her again,” he said. “He lent down. Someone was wrestling with him and he was wielding a knife and lunging at her. Three times she was shot. People were trying to help her. Then he ran off down a one-way street. Me and my mate drove round to try and find him.”
…
Was Brexit a motive? Sky says that according to a witness report, the assailant shouted “Britain First”.

Again, I don’t condone the use of violence and intimidation, but I think realistically violence and intimidation is going to get worse. I’m sure well-intentioned resolve by local officials not to give in to the tactics of fear will keep them pushing for what they believe is right.

And I’m sure they read the news, so they probably have a decent sense that shit is getting out of hand.

What’s more difficult to absorb is how much this benefits the non-partisan, authoritarian fascists who are in control of our government and moving this country towards war with Russia.

by William Skink

Tick tock goes the Doomsday Clock, now two minutes to midnight:

We are living through a situation unparalleled in our history as a nation where the issues of war and peace are not being debated in public, at least not in any serious way.

Moreover, the risk of accidental war has moved quickly beyond where it was just 18 months ago. Now we are entering upon implementation of very provocative U.S.-directed military expansion of NATO activities at the borders of Russia. The ongoing war games — code-named Anaconda-16 in Poland numbering 31,000 troops, 17,000 of them Americans — are rehearsing a NATO seizure and occupation of Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave, just a few miles away.

President Vladimir Putin’s remark at the start of the exercises was that any move into Russian territory would elicit a nuclear response that would not be limited to the European theater but would be directed at the mainland United States. These were clear words, but I greatly doubt that many Americans heard them (or if they did, it was in the mainstream media’s context of the demonized Putin’s “reckless” rhetoric).

And now that things are falling into place for WWIII, NATO is claiming they have a reason to start a war with Russia: Hillary’s compromised private email server. I’m not kidding. From the link:

On Tuesday, June 14th, NATO announced that if a NATO member country becomes the victim of a cyber attack by persons in a non-NATO country such as Russia or China, then NATO’s Article V “collective defense” provision requires each NATO member country to join that NATO member country if it decides to strike back against the attacking country. The preliminary decision for this was made two years ago after Crimea abandoned Ukraine and rejoined Russia, of which it had been a part until involuntarily transferred to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev in 1954. That NATO decision was made in anticipation of Ukraine’s ultimately becoming a NATO member country, which still hasn’t happened. However, only now is NATO declaring cyber war itself to be included as real “war” under the NATO Treaty’s “collective defense” provision.

NATO is now alleging that because Russian hackers had copied the emails on Hillary Clinton’s home computer, this action of someone in Russia taking advantage of her having privatized her U.S. State Department communications to her unsecured home computer and of such a Russian’s then snooping into the U.S. State Department business that was stored on it, might constitute a Russian attack against the United States of America, and would, if the U.S. President declares it to be a Russian invasion of the U.S., trigger NATO’s mutual-defense clause and so require all NATO nations to join with the U.S. government in going to war against Russia, if the U.S. government so decides.

NATO should have been scrapped when the Soviet Union collapsed, but instead of moth-balling this Cold War relic, Bill Clinton took advantage of the Soviet collapse to push NATO east, which it has been steadily doing ever since.

Trump has criticized the role of NATO, which for this idiot partisan is a point of contention he thinks local media should be questioning Ryan Zinke about:

While there are literally hundreds of problematic positions that have been taken by Mr. Trump, the Montana press should ask Congressman Zinke about at least a few. Here are some suggestions.

1. Given his endorsement of Trump’s foreign policy, does Congressman Zinke agree that South Korea and Japan should build nuclear arsenals? With Trump’s plan to withdraw American troops from those nations? His economically-crippling suggestion that the US would block oil imports from Saudi Arabia? His calls for a trade war with China? His disavowal of NATO? His contention that nuclear weapons could be used in Europe?

My suggestion is the Montana press should ask Denise Juneau if Hillary’s reckless use of a private server should be an issue worth triggering nuclear armageddon over.

by William Skink

Today Janet Yellen was asked if the Fed had lost credibility. Her response is an amazing garble of words that needs to be broken up into lines of poetry to truly be appreciated. Enjoy!

ECONOBABBLE

Well, let me start — let me
start with the question of
the Fed’s credibility.

And you used the word “promises”
in connection with that.

And as I tried to emphasize
in my opening statement, the paths
that the participants project
for the federal funds rate
and how it will evolve are not
a pre-set plan or commitment or
promise of the committee.

Indeed, they are not even — the median
should not be interpreted as
a committee-endorsed forecast.
And there’s a lot of uncertainty
around each participant’s projection.

And they will evolve.

Those assessments of appropriate policy
are completely contingent
on each participant’s forecasts of the economy
and how economic events will unfold.

And they are, of course, uncertain.

And you should fully expect
that forecasts for the appropriate path of policy
on the part of all participants
will evolve over time
as shocks, positive or negative,
hit the economy that alter those forecasts.

So, you have seen a shift
this time in most participants’ assessments
of the appropriate path for policy.
And as I tried to indicate, I think
that largely reflects a somewhat
slower projected path for global growth — for growth
in the global economy
outside the United States, and for some
tightening in credit conditions
in the form of an increase in spreads.

And those changes in financial conditions
and in the path of the global economy
have induced changes in the assessment
of individual participants
in what path is appropriate
to achieve our objectives.

So that’s what you see — that’s what
you see now.

-Janet Yellen

by William Skink

The politics of tragedy are moving quick as partisans seek to take advantage of the carnage to attack their political opponents. At Intelligent Discontent, Pete Talbot intertwines comments from the great boogeyman, Donald Trump, with a statement from Ryan Zinke in a post titled Zinke and Trump and AR-15’s. Here is the quote from Trump that Talbot uses:

When it comes to Radical Islamic terrorism, ignorance is not bliss – it’s deadly. We need to tell the truth, also, about how Radical Islam is coming to our shores. We are importing Radical Islamic Terrorism into the West through a failed immigration system — and through an intelligence community held back by our president … I don’t want them in our country.

The problem with calling out Trump when he erroneously conflates a failed immigration system (with which Obama has deported more illegals than even Bush) with Radical Islamic Terrorism is that, with Hillary as their nominee, Democrats have zero credibility. And that will make attacks like this one from Trump quite effective:

Donald Trump on Monday demanded that Hillary Clinton return $25 million the Clinton Foundation reportedly received from Saudi Arabia.

“Crooked Hillary says we must call on Saudi Arabia and other countries to stop funding hate,” Trump posted to Facebook. “I am calling on her to immediately return the $25 million plus she got from them for the Clinton Foundation!”
…
“Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays,” Trump wrote in a separate post. “Hillary must return all money from such countries!”

Democrats can mock and ridicule and shame Trump supporters till they turn blue in the face, trying desperately to smear local Republicans with his words, but because Democrats don’t have the courage to oppose “Crooked Hillary”, too many of Trumps attacks will be both accurate, and effective.

Lost in all this is the actual truth behind America’s special relationship with Saudi Arabia. To get that truth a great place to start is Bitter Lake, a fascinating documentary by Adam Curtis.

America has been entangled with the Saudis for over half a century, especially the Bush family. And that relationship will continue to thrive under the coming Clinton regime.

Pete Talbot concluded his post by linking to a little pep-talk from a former CIA officer suggesting it’s critical to listen to one’s enemies. I know, I puked in my mouth a little bit to. From the link:

“If I learned one lesson from my time with the CIA, it is this: Everybody believes they are the good guy,” Fox said in a video shared by AJ+ on Facebook Monday.

When it comes to the Islamic State militant group, Fox says the public conversation is “more oversimplified than ever” and encompasses stories “manufactured” by a small minority of powerful people who remain in power by “convincing the rest of us to keep killing each other.”

She believes understanding comes with listening.

“The only real way to disarm your enemy is to listen to them,” she said. “If you hear them out, if you’re brave enough to really listen to their story, you can see that more often than not you might’ve made some of the same choices if you’d lived their life instead of yours.”

I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but honestly, fuck the CIA. If one were to read just Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets and David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard one would understand that much of the global carnage that has killed millions and put us on the precipice of another world war stems from what the CIA has done under monsters like Allen Dulles and George Bush, Sr.

Because too many Americans–Democrats and Republicans alike–are blinded by American Exceptionalism and ignorant of this dark history, that small minority of powerful people will continue manufacturing oversimplified stories (read: propaganda) to keep the rest of us killing each other.

And to show how little difference there truly is between The Donald and Killery, they’re both getting a big hard on for bombing ISIS:

HILLARY CLINTON AND Donald Trump reacted to the Orlando shooting with evidence that they can agree on at least one thing: bombing people. Both candidates called for an escalation of the U.S.-led bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

“We have generals that feel we can win this thing so fast and so strong, but we have to be furious for a short period of time, and we’re not doing it!” Trump complained on Fox & Friends Monday morning.

“Are you saying hit Raqqa right now?” asked host Brian Kilmeade. “We’re going to have to start thinking about something,” Trump replied.

Along the same lines, Clinton suggested during her post-Orlando speech Monday afternoon that “We should keep the pressure on ramping up the air campaign.”

by William Skink

The politics of tragedy are moving quick as partisans seek to take advantage of the carnage to attack their political opponents. At Intelligent Discontent, Pete Talbot intertwines comments from the great boogeyman, Donald Trump, with a statement from Ryan Zinke in a post titled Zinke and Trump and AR-15’s. Here is the quote from Trump that Talbot uses:

When it comes to Radical Islamic terrorism, ignorance is not bliss – it’s deadly. We need to tell the truth, also, about how Radical Islam is coming to our shores. We are importing Radical Islamic Terrorism into the West through a failed immigration system — and through an intelligence community held back by our president … I don’t want them in our country.

The problem with calling out Trump when he erroneously conflates a failed immigration system (with which Obama has deported more illegals than even Bush) with Radical Islamic Terrorism is that, with Hillary as their nominee, Democrats have zero credibility. And that will make attacks like this one from Trump quite effective:

Donald Trump on Monday demanded that Hillary Clinton return $25 million the Clinton Foundation reportedly received from Saudi Arabia.

“Crooked Hillary says we must call on Saudi Arabia and other countries to stop funding hate,” Trump posted to Facebook. “I am calling on her to immediately return the $25 million plus she got from them for the Clinton Foundation!”
…
“Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays,” Trump wrote in a separate post. “Hillary must return all money from such countries!”

Democrats can mock and ridicule and shame Trump supporters till they turn blue in the face, trying desperately to smear local Republicans with his words, but because Democrats don’t have the courage to oppose “Crooked Hillary”, too many of Trumps attacks will be both accurate, and effective.

Lost in all this is the actual truth behind America’s special relationship with Saudi Arabia. To get that truth a great place to start is Bitter Lake, a fascinating documentary by Adam Curtis.

America has been entangled with the Saudis for over half a century, especially the the Bush family. And that relationship will continue to thrive under the coming Clinton regime.

Pete Talbot concluded his post by linking to a little pep-talk from a former CIA officer suggesting it’s critical to listen to one’s enemies. I know, I puked in my mouth a little bit to. From the link:

“If I learned one lesson from my time with the CIA, it is this: Everybody believes they are the good guy,” Fox said in a video shared by AJ+ on Facebook Monday.

When it comes to the Islamic State militant group, Fox says the public conversation is “more oversimplified than ever” and encompasses stories “manufactured” by a small minority of powerful people who remain in power by “convincing the rest of us to keep killing each other.”

She believes understanding comes with listening.

“The only real way to disarm your enemy is to listen to them,” she said. “If you hear them out, if you’re brave enough to really listen to their story, you can see that more often than not you might’ve made some of the same choices if you’d lived their life instead of yours.”

I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but honestly, fuck the CIA. If one were to read just Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets and David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard one would understand that much of the global carnage that has killed millions and put us on the precipice of another world war stems from what the CIA has done under monsters like Allen Dulles and George Bush, Sr.

Because too many Americans–Democrats and Republicans alike–are blinded by American Exceptionalism and ignorant of this dark history, that small minority of powerful people will continue manufacturing oversimplified stories (read: propaganda) to keep the rest of us killing each other.

And to show how little difference there truly is between The Donald and Killery, they’re both getting a big hard on for bombing ISIS:

HILLARY CLINTON AND Donald Trump reacted to the Orlando shooting with evidence that they can agree on at least one thing: bombing people. Both candidates called for an escalation of the U.S.-led bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

“We have generals that feel we can win this thing so fast and so strong, but we have to be furious for a short period of time, and we’re not doing it!” Trump complained on Fox & Friends Monday morning.

“Are you saying hit Raqqa right now?” asked host Brian Kilmeade. “We’re going to have to start thinking about something,” Trump replied.

Along the same lines, Clinton suggested during her post-Orlando speech Monday afternoon that “We should keep the pressure on ramping up the air campaign.”