Author: JC

By JC

Listening to Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin revealing their tax cut package during a briefing at the White House today ( I know, torture time…), I heard the following response by Secretary Mnuchin to a question about whether or not Trump would sign the legislation if wasn’t deficit neutral:

“…when we look at the deficits, and the deficit has gone from 10 to 20 trilion dollars in the last administration…”

At this point I realized just how fucked we are, when the Treasury Secretary of the U.S. doesn’t know the difference between the national debt and a deficit (or maybe he is too intellectually sloppy to articulate the difference, or is such a poor communicator he can’t think on his feet). Basic Economics 101 stuff. A deficit or surplus is the measurement (usually annually) of how out of balance the budget is — income and expenses. The national debt is an aggregate of annual deficits or surpluses over time.

While there are many different ways to look at debt and deficits (and Steve K. has had some interesting posts on that at Piece of Mind lately), and we can argue about them till the cows come home, when the person in charge of the nation’s finances (outside of the Fed — and that’s a whole ‘nother story) is not coherent enough to use the proper wordage in what will become another huge battle in Congress — tax “reform” — how can we trust any of the other words he/they use?

Obviously we can’t, which is why everything we see and hear in public is nothing more than a charade for the public and the media to focus on while the real looting goes on behind a smokescreen. Those people are idiots and tools, and they take us for less than idiots.

By JC

Missoula Downtown Association Director Linda McCarthy:

“…$850 million is being invested in downtown right now.”

Mayor John Engen:

“…homelessness is an almost unsolvable issue…”

By JC

In Barack Obama’s outgoing press conference on Wednesday, he admitted that the emails that were purportedly hacked and released via the Russians were in fact leaked:

First of all, I haven’t commented on WikiLeaks, generally. The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether Wikileaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC emails that were leaked.

So, after months of wailing by the liberal press and those who couldn’t believe that Hillary Clinton could lose on her own (of course with help from the DNC), the largest non-news event of the day basically admits that it was all just smoke and mirrors.

With the coronation of Donald Trump now captivating the news cycle, it will be left imprinted in people’s brains that the Russians hacked the election, and gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks and thus took down Clinton. Thus propaganda has done its work.

Will the admission of soon-to-be-ex president Obama that the emails were leaked — and the evidence of hacking was inconclusive — ever see the light of day in the same press rooms that were so adamant it was the Russians? I doubt it. And we will be left with a public image of an election tarnished by foreign influence, when in fact that election of Trump was only assisted by actions of an insider leaking the emails and thus the facts behind the scene of Hillary’s campaign.

h/t to b at Moon over Alabama for having the temerity to wade through Obama’s remarks to sift out this beauty.

By JC

Thus spoke President Obama in his outgoing way. Actually and literally going out, as in leaving office in less than a month. So let’s all remember that the politics of fear is being ingrained into the populace by our dearly departing Democrat administration and all of its neocon/liberal interventionists as a way to poison future relations with Russia and other countries.

It is tantamount to throwing a temper tantrum in the West Wing — burning the furniture, scattering files, and scrambling contact info in an attempt to muddy the waters the incoming foreign policy and national security teams will have to wallow in. And that is dangerous for all of us who have to live through the next 4 years with a foreign policy that has yet to take any form, other than a few twittered one-liners.

George W. Bush applied these fear-based tactics right after he entered office, and used them to lie his way into starting a needless war, and to coast through 8 years of horrendous foreign policy: you’re either with us or you’re with the enemy.

Hillary Clinton would have continued to use similar tactics (can you say “no fly zone in Syria”) to ice another 8 years of Clintonism. This would have brought the total to potentially 32 years of interventionist foreign policy, as Bush’s foreign policy (Doctrine of Preemption) was but a continuation of the path that Bill Clinton set forth (building on Reagan and G.H.W. Bush’s return to publicly acceptable warfare after the Vietnam debacle), and that Barack Obama was afraid to derail as he tiptoed into office.

Of course people will say, but there is evidence! Well, to quote the DHS, there is a hefty “as is” disclaimer on the accompanying report:

This report is provided “as is” for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within. DHS does not endorse any commercial product or service referenced in this advisory or otherwise.

In other words, buyer beware. Evidence not included. Propaganda alert! Here is a link to the full DHS report. Have at it. Couple of caveats, this report will undoubtedly be used by Russia as reason to illuminate our cyber espionage on other countries and elections in retaliation.

It used to be that when you heard words like “for informational purposes only” it was associated with a game not intended to be taken seriously (i.e. “for entertainment purposes only”). So we are led to believe that our sanctions and actions are publicly legitimized by a nebulous “for informational purposes only” document, yet behind the scenes are real actions of state, or declarations of cyber war that are based on what evidential fact?

The chasm between evidence and material provided “for informational purposes only” is vast. I am reminded of Colin Powell selling Bush’s lies to the U.N. in preparation for going to war on Iraq. And the hypocrisy here is breathtaking — surely the exceptional country is the only one allowed to engage in cyber electoral warfare or regime change!

But undoubtedly Obama’s actions are intended to hamstring Trump, and give the official “conspiracy theory” about how and why Hillary Clinton lost the election the White House’s seal of approval. The “facts” have been created or mangled, stories have been planted in the mainstream media, and the Ministry of Truth’s paid op-ed writers are getting to work churning out the pablum dictated by the new “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” that snuck through Obama’s office on Christmas Eve (now there’s a lump of coal for you!).

And as to there still being almost 4 weeks till Trump’s inauguration, many more land mines will be laid in the fields of opportunity that we call “foreign policy.” The trip wires are being installed, invisible red lines drawn, threats uttered behind closed doors, and covert actions taken. Unfortunately, many of these will only be discovered when they are leaked by whistleblowers, extracted by hackers, or have been actualized and set irreversible and public actions in motion.

Obama has turned his sham interventionist foreign policy into a nuclear hot potato for an incompetent Commander in Chief CEO and board of execs and generals to handle. The tools of fascism handed to Obama by Bush, Cheney & Co, and Bill Clinton have been carefully nurtured and expanded. Now we get to see what the real crazies get to do with them.

By JC

Ok, now that Lizard is back among the walking dead (er, gainfully employed) I guess I’ll have to end my self-imposed sabbatical from posting. So first off, what has been sticking in my craw is the drumbeat of propaganda and fake news that is sweeping the nation, Europe and the ‘nets — and all the hoopla and fallout accompanying it.

Today’s revelation is that Facebook is rolling out a new system of flagging and disputing shared articles. I’ve seen some people I know well who are sharing articles that are horribly slanted, and are just downright propaganda. Yes, I’m talking about articles from WaPo, the NY Times, Fox and MSNBC and The Atlantic (among many others), but that’s nothing new.

What the story is here, is that Facebook is going to rely on a system being developed and maintained by the International Fact Checker Network (IFCN). The IFCN is hosted by Poynter Institute for Media Studies. At last we can rest assured that our news is being curated by an independent, professional source, right…??? Think again.

Poynter is the home of the IFCN, the principles by which many “fact” checking outfits like Snopes and PolitiFact adhere. It appears that the official word on facts is coalescing around Facebook’s use of Poynter’s system. So it makes sense to take a cursory look at Poynter.

So let’s see who is funding Poynter’s IFCN. Here is a list of funders provided on their website:

Poynter’s IFCN has received funding from:

• the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation
• the Duke Reporters’ Lab
• the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Google
• the National Endowment for Democracy
• the Omidyar Network
• the Open Society Foundations and
• the Park Foundation

And let’s break that list down with some names:

Arthur Blank Family Foundation: Billionaire Arthur Blank (Forbes #214 richest worldwide) is the co-founder of Home Depot, owns a couple of Atlanta pro sports teams, and sits on the Board of Cox Enterprise (home of many major media/radio sources and Cox Communications). Anybody who has paid attention to Blank’s politics and policies with Home Depot or Cox know him for the right-wing opportunist he is.

The Duke Reporter’s Lab is a Stanford initiative to track and develop fact-checking sites world wide. Of course, the DRL is as subject to journalistic interpretation as any other source so… why would we let them bring us a list of fact checkers to trust? This is a stalking horse.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Need I say more about the Gates’ and their Foundation? Oligarchy at its best here in the form of the world’s richest person.

Google: the world’s largest search index and purveyor of new technologies always geared to padding the bottom line. Google has the ability to swing the news however it wants, to achieve whatever political or business prospects it needs with a simple shift in algorithms, or blacklist. Hardly an independent purveyor of facts, it has indexes full of crap buried in mountains of garbage, coated in sprinkles of questionable matter. Not to mention that its founder and current executive chair of Alphabet, Inc. Eric Schmidt is listed by Forbes as the 100th richest person in the world.

National Endowment for Democracy: the public propaganda arm of the CIA. Need I say more? If you think this is a good thing, then you are part of the problem, not the solution.

The Omidyar Network: owned by eBay founder Peter Omidyar. In 2009 Omidyar donated $2 million to WikiMedia, which resulted in a pro-quid-pro for his deputy Matt Halpin to get a seat on their board. Yes, pay-to-play is alive and well at Omidyar, one can assume it is here too. eBay also owned PayPal from 2002-2014 until Omidyar spun it off to be a publicly traded business. Omidyar also owns a slew of other businesses, including First Look Media (the home of Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept). Omidyar’s billions in wealth have him listed #43 on the Forbes list of the wealthy. Oh, did I mention that The Intercept has escaped any mention on the current list of prop sites? Greenwald must be so proud!

Open Society Foundations: This is the home of Chairman George Soros (Forbes #19). Again, need I say more about his left-wing profile? Soros as much as anybody will translate any advantage he has — politically, economically, journalistically — into personal gain. He’d even trade a country’s sovereignty (i.e. Ukraine) to profit personally.

The Park Foundation: the late Roy Park was the founder of Park Communications (media conglomerate) and the creator of the Duncan-Hines brand, and early major shareholder in Proctor & Gamble when it acquired Duncan Hines. The Foundation continues to support scholarships and media communications. Park is probably the only quasi-independent funding source of the IFCN, probably listed to give it a bit of credibility.

Well, there you have it. The list of oligarchs, philanthropists, transnational corporations, media conglomerates, government propaganda ministers, and individual power sharks that Facebook has entrusted to fund and provide for the filtering of your news.

Think about that the next time you go to share or read an article on Facebook and wonder why and how this source is available, or why it is in dispute, or why an article you try to post won’t show.

I’m encouraging people to read critically. If you don’t have critical reading skills, acquire and use them. Lack of critical reading skills is probably the largest problem in the world today. Don’t let any one source tell you what, or what not to read. Read widely and compare views. Learn about the people who are writing, and whom they write for. Read history, and read it from different angles. Be skeptical and learn how to debate. Critique what you read, and talk/correspond with a variety of people, particularly with those who have different perceptions and views than you. Don’t fall victim to confirmation bias, and don’t get lost in your own fishbowl or thought bubbles.

And don’t get caught up in, or perpetuate and escalate the propaganda surrounding politics that inevitably lead to war — speak out about what you see and read! We are seeing a repeat of the drumbeat from 2002, including a barrage of propaganda intended to inflame people about Russia, much as we did about Iraq. And this drumbeat is louder and fiercer than before, and is being led by the same mainstream media sources that falsely lead us into the Iraq war. Democrats are as susceptible to this barrage as are republicans, and are actively using propaganda to prepare us to wage war on Russia in a cover-up, and as a consequence of, Hillary Clinton’s self-imposed loss to Donald Trump.