Obama’s Hollow Legacy
The emptiness of defeat
By Margaret Kimberley | Black Agenda Report | November 16, 2016
Obama’s legacy is in tatters, and that is good news. Donald Trump’s victory was not just a win over Hillary Clinton, but against Democratic Party policies that silenced the rank and file. For years Democrats became convinced that the only means of keeping Republicans at bay was to go along with their party leadership without complaint. If they wanted to expand trade deals that stole workers’ jobs, so be it. The people who marched against the invasion of Iraq folded their tents when Democrats became the party of endless war. When Obama promoted austerity and “grand bargains” with Republicans not a word was uttered. Even Black Lives Matter refused to point out that the Obama Justice Department left killer cops unpunished.
Barack Obama is nothing if not consistent. While Democrats take to the streets in protest against president elect Trump, Obama declares that the man he once called unfit is not an ideologue, but a “pragmatist.” No one should be surprised about the conciliatory tone. Obama never had a problem with Republicans. They may have obstructed him, but he was always happy to assist them because he wasn’t really opposed to their policies.
The most obvious example of Obama’s lack of substance was his relationship with black Americans. His disdain and contempt for the people who loved him the most was clear to anyone who paid attention. Jokes about “cousin Pookie” and parents serving fried chicken for breakfast should have been seen as the racist screeds they clearly were. But the desire to see a black face in a prominent place endures to our detriment.
Obama won by making himself palatable to white people while also taking advantage of undeserved black pride. Hillary Clinton would be the president elect if the new voters who emerged in 2008 had remained committed to the Democratic Party. But their loyalty was to the imagery of Barack Obama as president. Their joy was confined to seeing him meet the queen of England alongside his first lady or disembarking from Air Force One with his signature swagger. The sight of Barack and Michelle hosting a state dinner was enough to make black hearts swoon. Policy initiatives need not intrude upon the love fest.
The end result of this unrequited and superficial love was six million fewer votes cast for Hillary Clinton in 2016 than for Obama in 2012. The apocryphal cousin Pookie stayed home and no one should be surprised. There is no secret to keeping voters engaged. They are engaged if their needs are met. Deliver for voters and they deliver in the voting booth.
Even the unpopular and shady Hillary Clinton could have won Michigan if the people of Flint had received the federal help they needed so badly. Not only did the Obama environmental protection agency allow the beleaguered city to be given contaminated water, but he showed up for a photo opportunity and did nothing else as residents suffered. He drank a glass of water, posed for the cameras and returned to Washington. The people of Flint are still living under conditions Americans think of as being “Third World.”
The response to Trump’s victory should mean more than protesting policies the Democrats now have little ability to fight. This moment presents an opportunity for much needed introspection and mea culpas. Millions of people did more than just accept Democratic Party policy. They supported actions they would have rejected if carried out by a Republican or a white Democrat. They supported Muammar Gaddafi when Republicans were president but averted their eyes to his murder when committed by a Democrat. They even voted for the person who bragged about the killing. Democratic voters must ask themselves why they said nothing when their party promoted trade deals that were against their interests. Ultimately that acquiescence led to defeat at Trump’s hands.
The Obama team’s propaganda skills were legendary but the day of reckoning revealed the emptiness of what they produced. The corporate media acted like scribes under White House direction and declared that Russia was an enemy state and its president a 21st century Hitler. Now it is Donald Trump, the self-promoting reality television star, who declares his willingness to talk to his Russian counterpart. It is the sort of behavior that Democrats once valued.
Democratic presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton began the tradition of getting Democrats to support what they didn’t like. Obama perfected the art, which ultimately led to the debacle. He will certainly not be the last to tempt the party faithful but in 2016 Democrats sold their souls and ended up with nothing. Defeat creates the most hollow feelings of all.
Margaret Kimberley can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
Clinton Promotes War While US Public Opinion Speaks to Anti-Militarist Populism
By James Petras :: 11.14.2016
Introduction
Castigating the US electorate as accomplices and facilitators of wars, or, at best, dismissing the voters as ignorant sheep-people (‘sheeple’) herded by political elites, describes a partial reality. Public opinion polls, even the polls overwhelmingly slanted toward the center-right, consistently describe a citizenry opposed to militarism and wars, past and present.
Both the Right and Left have failed to grasp the contradiction that defines US political life: Namely, the profound gap between the American public and the Washington elite on questions of war and peace within an electoral process that consistently leads to more militarism.
This is an analysis of the most recent US public opinion polls with regard to outcome of the recent elections. The essay concludes with a discussion of the deep-seated contradictions and proposes several ways in which these contradictions can be resolved.
Method
A major survey of public opinion, sponsored by the Charles Koch Institute and the Center for the National Interest, conducted by the Survey Sampling International, interviewed a sample of one thousand respondents.
The Results: War or Peace
More than half of the American public oppose any increase in the US military role overseas while only 25% back military expansion.
The public has expressed its disillusionment over Obama’s foreign policy, especially his new military commitments in the Middle East, which have been heavily promoted by the state of Israel and its US domestic Zionist lobby.
The US public shows a deep historical memory with regard to the past military debacles launched by Presidents Bush and Obama. Over half of the public (51%) believe that the US has become less safe over the past 15 years (2001-2015), while one eighth (13%) feel they are more secure.
In the present period, over half of the public opposes the deployment of ground troops to Syria and Yemen and only 10% favor continued US support for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
With regard to specific US wars, over half believe that Bush’s invasion of Iraq made the US homeland less secure, while only 25% believe it didn’t increase or decrease domestic security. Similar responses were expressed with regard to Afghanistan: 42% believe the Afghan War increased insecurity and about a third (34%) felt it did not affect US security.
In terms of future perspectives, three quarters (75%) of the American public want the next President to focus less on the US military operations abroad or are uncertain about its role. Only 37% are in favor of increased spending for the military.
The mass media and the powerful financial backers of the Democratic Presidential candidate have focused on demonizing Russia and China as ‘the greatest threats in our time’. In contrast, almost two thirds (63.4%) of Americans believe the greatest threat comes from terrorism both foreign and domestic. Only 18% view Russia and China as major threats to their security.
In regard to the Pentagon, 56% want to reduce or freeze current military spending while only 37% want to increase it.
Wars and Peace: The Political Elites
Contrary to the views of a majority of the public, the last four US Presidents, since the 1990’s, have increased the military budget, sending hundreds of thousands of US troops to launch wars in three Middle Eastern countries, while promoting bloody civil wars in three North African and two European countries. Despite public opinion majorities, who believe that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have increased threats to the US security, Obama kept ground troops, air and sea forces and drone operations in those countries. Despite only 10% public approval for his military policies, the Obama regime has sent arms, advisors and Special Forces to support the Saudi dictatorship’s invasion of tiny Yemen.
Obama and the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pushed a policy of encircling Russia and demonizing its President Putin as the greatest threat to the US in contrast to US opinion, which considers the threat of Islamist terrorism as five times more serious.
While the political elite and the leading Presidential candidates promise to expand the number of US troops abroad and increase military spending, over three quarters of the American public oppose or are uncertain about expanding US militarism.
While candidate Clinton campaigned for the deployment of the US Air Force jets and missiles to police a ‘no fly zone’ in Syria, even shooting down Syrian and Russian government planes, the majority of US public opposed it by 51%.
In terms of constitutional law, fully four-fifths (80%) of the US public believes the President must secure Congressional approval for additional military action abroad. Nevertheless, Presidents from both parties, Bush and Obama launched wars without Congressional approval, creating a precedent which the next president is likely to exploit.
Analysis and Perspectives
On all major foreign policy issues related to waging war abroad, the political elite is far more bellicose than the US public; they are far more likely to ignite wars that ultimately threaten domestic security; they are more likely to violate the Constitutional provisions on the declaration of war; and they are committed to increasing military spending even at the risk of defunding vital domestic social programs.
The political elites are more likely to intervene in wars in the Middle East, without domestic support and even in spite of majoritarian popular opposition to war. No doubt the executives of the oligarchical military-industrial complex, the pro-Israel power configuration and the mass media moguls are far more influential than the pro-democracy public.
The future portends a continuation of militarism by the political elites, and increase in domestic security threats and even less public representation.
Some Hypothesis on the Contradiction between Popular Opinion and Electoral Outcomes
There is clearly a substantial gap between the majority of Americans and the political elite regarding the role of the military in overseas wars, the undermining of constitutional prerogatives, the demonization of Russia, the deployment of US troops to Syria and deeper US entanglement in Middle East wars for the benefit of Israel.
Yet it is also a fact that the US electorate continue to vote for the two major political parties which have consistently supported wars, formed military alliances with warring Middle East states, especially Saudi Arabia and Israel and aggressively sanctioned Russia as the main threat to US security.
Several hypotheses regarding this contradiction should be considered:
1. Close to 50% of the eligible voters abstain from voting in Presidential and Congressional elections. This most likely includes many among the majority of Americans who oppose the expansion of the US military role overseas. In fact, the war party ‘winner’ typically claims victory with less than 25% of the electorate – and threats this as a mandate to launch more wars.
2. The fact that the mass media vehemently supports one or the other of the two war parties probably influences a minority of the electorate who decide to actually participate in the elections. However, critics have exaggerated the mass media’s influence and fail to explain why the majority of the American public disagree with the mass media and oppose the militarist propaganda.
3. Many Americans, while opposed to militarism, vote for the ‘lesser evil’ between the two war parties. They may believe that there are greater and lesser ‘degrees’ of war mongering and choose the less strident.
4. Americans, who consistently oppose militarism, may decide to vote for militarist politicians for reasons besides those of overseas wars. For example, majoritarian Americans may support a militarist politician who has secured funding for local infrastructure programs, or protected farm and dairy subsidies, or who promises jobs programs, lowers public debt or opposes corrupt incumbents.
5. Americans, opposed to militarism, may be deceived by the pronouncements of a demagogic presidential candidate from one of the war parties, whose promise of peace will give way to escalating wars.
6. Likewise, the emphasis on ‘identity politics’ can deceive anti-war voters into supporting a proven militarist because of issues related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preferences or loyalties to overseas states.
7. The war parties work together to block mass media access for anti-militarist parties, especially preventing their participation in national electoral debates viewed by tens of millions of voters. War parties collude to set impossible restrictions against anti-militarist party participation in national level elections, banning citizens with non-violent police records or former convicts who have served their sentences from voting. They reject poor citizens who lack photo identification, limit access to transport to voting sites, limit the number of polling places in poor or minority neighborhoods and deny time-off for workers to vote. Unlike other countries, US elections are held on a work day and many workers are unable to vote.
In other words the electoral process is ‘rigged’ and imposes ‘forced voting’ and abstention: Collusion between the two war parties limits voter choice to abstention or casting a ballot for the ‘lesser evil’ among the militarists.
Only if elections were open and democratic, where anti-militarist parties were allowed equal rights to register, participate and debate in the mass media, and where campaign financing were made equal would the contradictions between the wishes of the anti-militarist majorities and votes cast for pro-war elites be resolved.
‘US Anti-Trump Protests Similar to Soros Color Revolutions Abroad’
21st Century Wire | November 12, 2016
Organized efforts are underway by Democratic Party affiliated NGO’s to try and somehow delegitimize the results of this week’s US Presidential Election.
On the eve of the US Election before voters went to the polls, 21WIRE political affairs analyst Patrick Henningsen accurately predicted this week’s unrest when he said:
“If Trump wins, expect the likes of Soros and MoveOn.org to unleash wave after wave of flash mobs, who will protest, riot, smash and burn their way on to CNN’s 24 hour news rotation. Expect Occupy 2.0, and #BlackLivesMatter to rage.”
On Friday, Henningsen talked to RT International about the post-elections protests that were coordinated in part by Democratic Party ‘community organizing’ online platform MoveOn.org.
Not surprisingly, MoveOn.org have also launched a national ‘activist’ campaign to “Abolish the Electoral College” after Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton came up short with 232 (including New Hampshire) to Donald Trump’s 306 (including Arizona and Michigan). Final totals are not yet in, but thus far 2016 would be the fifth time in U.S. history that a presidential candidate has won the White House while losing the total popular vote.
21WIRE Associate Editor Shawn Helton recently revealed more details about how the near exact same methods used in CIA and Soros-funded ‘color revolutions’ overseas – are now being deployed on US domestic shores by similar NGO front organizations: has been the driving force behind nationwide protests against the election of Donald Trump.
“Overseas, Washington tends to use the same cast of NGO fronts to build-up pro-US political opposition groups, as well as plan and generate civil unrest. They include the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute (NDI), Freedom House and later the International Center for Non-Violent Conflict (ICNC), and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the financial and contractor arm of the Department of State. Inside the US, deep state actors in Washington generally work through Democratic Party affiliated organizations like MoveOn.org, as well as through labor union organizations like AFL-CIO, and UNITE HERE. These, along with many other similar organizations have been involved in organizing this week’s protests,” says Helton.
Helton also raised the question as to why President Obama has stayed silent in the face of street protests, opting instead to “lead from behind.” He explains:
“Certainly, judging by President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s total silence over their own party’s role in fomenting this week’s unrest – one can only conclude that both party leaders approve of the protests and riots. The political motivation is undeniable – to help delegitimize a new Trump presidency.”
Poor Liberals: You have Nobody to Blame but Yourselves
By David Penner | Dissident Voice | November 10, 2016
Poor liberals – for years you have toiled in vain for the betterment of humanity. Martyring yourselves for the greater good, you have attained a new level of sophistication and moral superiority, the likes of which we may never see again. It makes me weep such tears of bitterest woe, seeing your saintly queen of benevolence, fail to be anointed Queen Mass Murderer of The Earth.
Every four years you come out of hibernation, and run about the country like so many chickens with their heads cut off, ranting and raving about how we all have to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, or else the world will come to an end. We will be enslaved to a redneck, who dropped out of high school and works in a gas station, or a KKK guy – or worse!
In actuality, the real problem is that when you look in the mirror, you see an educated person, a literate person, an articulate person. You see someone who is wise, cultured, unequivocally left wing, logical, and above all rational. This person you are looking at does not exist. This person does not exist, any more than if I were to look in the mirror, and believe I was looking at a hippopotamus or a water buffalo.
In certain circles, this is often referred to as insanity. You might want to talk to your therapist about that.
And this person might have existed in 1963. But that person, who had ideals, who may have genuinely stood against imperialism and militarism, and who may have once cared about education and unions, is no more. For you have degenerated into such a mindless piece of degenerate insouciant flotsam, that I cannot help but look upon thy face with horror.
Let’s take a brief look at some of the wondrous things American liberals, led by Hillary and Obama, these two magnificent whoring knaves of oligarchy, have accomplished over the past eight years.
You bombed Libya off the face of the earth, thereby destroying not only a country which boasted the highest standard of living in Africa, but which also led to the destabilization of the entire region, when your beloved freedom fighter barbarians raided the government military stockpiles.
You overthrew the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych, putting a gang of Banderite ultranationalists and Neo-Nazis in power, who immediately moved to strip the Russian language of its official status, and who let loose a horrific orgy of violence against the people of the Donbass. Victoria Nuland, a neocon gal pal of Saint Hillary, and one of the principal architects of this monstrous illegal coup, is known to all Russians, yet you probably never heard of her. (Perhaps this is because the only thing that matters to you is getting a Democrat into the Oval Office. What they actually do, once they get there, is apparently of no interest to you whatsoever.)
You sent thousands of troops to Afghanistan, and are no closer to defeating the Taliban, than you were at the beginning of Obama’s first term in office.
And just a few months ago, Saints Obama and Hillary signed off on an arms deal worth more than 115 billion dollars with Saudi Arabia, one of the most authoritarian and reactionary regimes on earth. Undoubtedly, they will use these weapons to arm jihadist barbarians in other countries, as well as genocide the people of Yemen – yet another liberal slaughterhouse you have insouciantly and mindlessly slept through. Undoubtedly, women’s rights have improved dramatically there, as you can’t marry an underage girl after her village was relentlessly bombed with American weapons, and she is presently dead.
And then there are the countless drone massacres in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Perhaps blowing up soccer games and wedding parties has helped these people to embrace the wonders of multiculturalism and diversity? And let’s not forget the fascist coup in Honduras, and a far right coup in Brazil: these acts of barbarism also bear the mark of the liberal, the Imaginary Leftist, the most incorrigible knave in human history.
And this brings us to perhaps your most glorious humanitarian intervention of all: arming and funding bloodthirsty jihadi criminal gangs, assigned with the task of overthrowing the Assad regime. And with the blessing of the American liberal, they have embarked on a crusade to also exterminate Syrian civilization in the process. Please, liberals, do not make me vomit onto my computer, by talking about all the suffering children in Aleppo. The real barbarians who have made these children suffer, have been running the White House for the past eight years, and it was you who put them there in the first place.
Poor liberals – you have done nothing in thirty years, except burn all your own books, outsource and offshore jobs, while supporting all the most reactionary possible foreign policies. I’m sure you must be in tears, now that Hillary won’t be imposing a no-fly zone over Syria any time soon; but there are actually billions of people in the world that would greatly appreciate it, if the ICBMs stay just right where they are.
(And speaking of Russia: what are we to make of the shocking Neo-McCarthyism and Russophobia, which formed the bedrock of Saint Hillary’s campaign? Is this yet another example of her irrefutable leftist credentials? Of her tolerance and ideals?)
And is it not indubitable and ironic, that while you support these barbaric and insane wars of aggression – which cost trillions and trillions of dollars – your own kids increasingly graduate from college and cannot find jobs?
You are so divorced from reality, so drugged with the narcotic of identity politics, and indifferent to the sufferings of your fellow Americans, as well as the sufferings of those whose countries are destroyed by your wars of aggression, that you are simply no longer living in the reality based world; and sadly, haven’t been for a very long time.
Perhaps there is a place where American liberals fight racism, sexism, and carry out humanitarian interventions, which bring an end to genocide, persecution of minorities, and authoritarian regimes: in your mind.
Where are your patronizing airs now? Your smugness?
You will blame this ignominious defeat on the evil white guys, the racists, the Russians, the perverts, the sexists, and those wishing to restore patriarchy, but alas, dear liberals: you have nobody to blame but yourselves.
David Penner has taught English and ESL within the City University of New York and at Fordham. He can be reached at: penadam@hotmail.com.
What Happened In This Election?
By John Chuckman | Aletho News | November 10, 2016
Brushing away the extreme claims and rhetoric of much election analysis, there are some observations which deserve attention. These unfortunately mostly provide hard lessons and not a lot of encouragement for people who hold to principles of democracy, enlightenment, and progressivity.
The election demonstrated perhaps better than ever, and better than has generally been recognized, that American is, indeed, a plutocracy. It took a genuine American Oligarch, a multi-billionaire, a man with a lifetime’s economic empire-building, to defeat a family which could provide the very definition of being politically well-connected, a family which had laboriously constructed and carefully maintained a kind of deep well ever-flowing with money for their ambitions.
It was the ever-flowing well of money, drilled by Bill Clinton with help from some extremely shady friends, such as Jeffrey Epstein, that made the Clintons keystone establishment figures in the Democratic Party. It was not personal charm or exceptional political generalship – although Bill, in his heyday, displayed some of both of those – that earned the Clintons their place, it was the money, the “mother’s milk of politics.” In what is euphemistically called “fund raising,” many hundreds of millions of dollars were provided for the party over the last couple of decades by Bill Clinton’s efforts.
Hillary fully appreciated the fact that money buys power and influence. She lacked Bill’s superficial charm, but she certainly more than shared his ambition. On the charm front, when she was ready to move into running for office, she adopted, perhaps under Bill’s tutelage, a kind of forced clown face with arched eyebrows, bugged-out eyes, and a smile as big as her lips would allow, and these expressions were accompanied by little gestures such as briefly pointing to various on-lookers or waving helter-skelter whenever she campaigned.
Her gestures reminded me of something you might see atop a float in a Christmas Parade or of the late Harpo Marx at his most exuberant. These were not natural for her. They were never in evidence years ago when she spent years as a kind of bizarre executive housewife, both in a governor’s mansion and later in the White House, bizarre because she indulged her husband’s non-stop predatory sexual behavior in exchange for the immense power it conferred on her behind the scenes over her far more out-going and successful politician-husband.
Anyway, Hillary knew that gestures and simulated charm do not get you far in American politics. She determined to build a political war chest long ago, and there are many indications over the years of her working towards this end of making this or that change in expressed view, as when running for the Senate, when sources of big money suggested another view would be more acceptable. She was anything but constant in the views she embraced because when she ran for the Senate she spent record amounts of money, embarrassingly large amounts.
In her years of speaking engagements, she aimed at special interests who could supply potentially far more money than just exorbitant speaking fees. Later, in the influential, appointed post of Secretary of State – coming, as it does, into personal contact with every head of government or moneyed, big-time international schemer – she unquestionably played an aggressive “pay for play” with them all. Covering up that embarrassing and illegal fact is what the private servers and unauthorized smart phones were all about.
A second big fact of the election is that both major American political parties are rather sick and fading. The Republican Party has been broken for a very long time. It hobbled along for some decades with the help of various gimmicks, hoping to expand its constituency with rubbish like “family values,” public prayer and catering to the Christian Right, and anti-flag burning Constitutional amendments, and now it is truly out of gas. That is precisely why a political outsider like Oligarch Trump could manage to hi-jack the party.
He was opposed by tired, boring men like Jeb Bush, seeking to secure an almost inherited presidency, and a dark, intensely unlikable, phony Christian fundamentalist like Ted Cruz, and it proved to be no contest. It was a remarkable political achievement, but I think it was only possible given the sorry state of the party.
The Republican Party had been given a breather, some new life, by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. He had an extremely mixed record as President, but he was popular, held in some affection, and did have a clear vision, but his effect on the party was not lasting. Trump could be seen as another Reagan, but I think the comparison is superficial. Trump literally hi-jacked the party, and he was not deliriously crowned by its establishment.
The Republican Party itself was formed not long before Abraham Lincoln’s candidacy out of the remains of worn out and collapsed predecessors, including the Whigs and Free-Soil Democrats. Parties do not last forever, and here was Trump creating something of a minor political revolution inside a tired and fairly directionless old party, a phenomenon which I do not think was sufficiently noticed.
The press was too busy attacking him from the start to take notice or do any intelligent analysis, and he was attacked precisely for the potential damage to the establishment he represented. His most promising quality is his potential for creating a new coalition of interests and one excluding the continuation of the Neocon Wars Hillary vigorously embraced and would expand.
But the Democratic Party is in serious trouble, too. It has a great deal of internal rot, as the Wiki-Leaks material from the DNC clearly shows us. Arrogance, lack of direction, ignorance of the people it has always claimed to serve, bad decision-making, and the absolute prostrate worship of money are the major symptoms.
It would have been impossible for the party to have so made up its mind and committed its resources to Hillary Clinton without serious rot. She has always had strong negatives in polling, always been (rightly) suspected concerning her honesty.
The Wiki-Leaks material tells us about many internal conflicts, including harsh high-level judgments of Hillary’s decision-making, resentment over the back-stabbing character of daughter Chelsea who is said to resemble Hillary in her behavior and attitudes, and the belief of some that Hillary just should not have run. And, frankly, she had become for many a rather tiresome, used-up figure from whom absolutely nothing spectacular in politics or policy could possibly be expected. But they not only blindly supported her, they broke all their own party rules by internally and secretly working to defeat a legitimate and viable contender, Bernie Sanders.
Sanders might well have been able to win the election for the Democrats, but their establishment was blind to the possibility and rejected his candidacy out-of-hand. After all, there were Bill and Hillary beckoning to their running well of money. In hindsight, it might be just as well that Sanders was cheated out of the nomination. He proved a weak individual in the end, giving in to just the forces he had claimed to oppose and leaving his enthusiastic followers completely let down. There he was, out on the hustings, supporting everything he ever opposed personified in Hillary Clinton. Men of that nature do not stand up well to Generals and Admirals and the heads of massive corporations, a quality which I do think we have some right to expect Trump to display.
Another important fact about the election is that it was less the triumph of Trump than the avoidance of Hillary that caused the defeat. The numbers are unmistakable. Yes, Trump did well for a political newcomer and a very controversial figure, but Hillary simply did badly, not approaching the support Obama achieved in key states, again something reflecting the documented fact that she is not a well-liked figure and the Party blundered badly in running her. But again, money talks, and the Clintons, particularly Bill, are the biggest fundraisers they have had in our lifetime. No one was ready to say no to the source of all that money.
Now, to many Americans, the election result must seem a bit like having experienced something of a revolution, although a revolution conducted through ballots, any other kind being literally impossible by design in this massive military-security state. In a way, it does represent something of a revolutionary event, owing to the fact that Trump the Oligarch is in his political views a bit of a revolutionary or at least a dissenter from the prevailing establishment views. And, as in any revolution, even a small one, there are going to be some unpleasant outcomes.
The historical truth of politics is that you never know from just what surprising source change may come. Lyndon Johnson, life-long crooked politician and the main author of the horrifying and pointless Vietnam War, did more for the rights of black Americans than any other modern president. Franklin Roosevelt, son of wealthy establishment figures, provided remarkable leadership in the Great Depression, restoring hopes and dreams for millions. Change, important change, never comes from establishments or institutions like political parties. It always comes from unusual people who seem to step out of their accustomed roles in life with some good or inspired ideas and have the drive and toughness to make them a reality.
I have some limited but important hopes for Trump. I am not blind or delirious expecting miracles from this unusual person, and after the experience of Obama, who fairly quickly proved a crushing, bloody disappointment, I can never build up substantial hopes for any politician. And what was the choice anyway? Hillary Clinton was a bought-and-paid one-way ticket to hell.
Trump offers two areas of some hope, and these both represent real change. The first is in reducing America’s close to out-of-control military aggressiveness abroad. This aggressiveness, reflecting momentum from what can only be called the Cheney-Rumsfeld Presidency, continued and grew under the weak and ineffectual leadership of Obama and was boosted and encouraged by Hillary as Secretary of State. Hillary, the feminists who weep for her should be reminded, did a lot of killing during her tenure. She along with Obama are literally responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of women and their families, many of them literally torn apart by bombs.
The other area of some hope is for the welfare of ordinary American people themselves who have been completely ignored by national leaders for decades. By welfare, I do not mean the kind of state assistance that Bill Clinton himself worked to end.
George Bush’s lame reaction to Hurricane Katrina (before he was internationally shamed into some action) has become the normal pattern for America’s national government when it comes to ordinary Americans. The truth is that the legacy of FDR has withered to nothing and no longer plays any role in the Democratic Party, and of course never did in the Republican Party.
Nothing can impress someone not familiar with America’s dark corners more than a visit to places like Detroit or Gary or Chicago’s South Side, parts of New Orleans, or Newark or dozens of other places where Americans live in conditions in every way comparable to Third World hellholes. No, I mean the people’s general well-being. Trump’s approach will be through jobs and creating incentives for jobs. I don’t know whether he can succeed, but, just as he asked people in some of his speeches, “What do you have to lose?” Just having someone in power who pays any attention to the “deplorables” is a small gain.
People should never think of the Clintons as liberal or progressive, and that was just as much true for Bill as it is for Hillary. His record as President – apart from his embarrassing behavior in the Oval Office with a young female intern and his recruitment of Secret Service guards as procurers for women he found attractive on his morning runs – was actually pretty appalling. He, in his own words, “ended welfare as we know it.” He signed legislation which would send large numbers of young black men to prison. He also signed legislation which contributed to the country’s later financial collapse under George Bush. He often would appoint someone decent and then quickly back off, leaving them dangling, when it looked like approval for the appointment would not be coming. His FBI conducted the assault on Waco, killing about eighty people needlessly. A pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was destroyed by cruise missiles for no good reason. There were a number of scandals, including the suicide of Vince Foster and the so-called Travelgate affair, which were never fully explained to the public. It was his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who answered, unblinkingly, a television interviewer’s question about tens of thousands of Iraqi children who died owing to America’s embargo, “We think it’s worth it.” He committed the war crime of bombing Belgrade. When news of the horrors of the Rwanda genocide were first detected by his government, the order secretly went out to shut up about it. No effort was made to intervene.
No, any real change in America could never come from people like the Clintons, either one of them.
Trump’s Election: ‘We May Have Just Dodged the Bullet on WWIII’
Sputnik | November 10, 2016
On Tuesday, voters in the US went to the polls to choose their next president, electing Republican Donald Trump. Speaking to Sputnik, Professor Tony Monteiro, peace activist and scholar at the department of African American Studies at Temple University, suggested that Trump’s election may have just saved the world from World War Three.
Calling Tuesday’s vote a “political insurrection,” Monteiro said that he was frankly surprised by “the depth and magnitude” of the popular revolt.
“I felt it was possible, [but] didn’t believe it was probable, given that the Clinton campaign had all of the resources…”
“It’s a situation where the pundits and the political experts had predicted based upon an old paradigm of viewing elections. And what we had is a new paradigm – a paradigm grounded in rage, anger and class resentment against an elite which never repaired the profound damage done to the American working people and the middle classes as a consequence of the Great Recession of 2007 and 2009.”
The academic explained that he frankly “just had no idea at how deep this was. And we saw it – it was a sweep. In fact, Donald Trump did to Hillary Clinton what the experts were saying she would do to him. It’s quite unbelievable – it’s a historic outcome. I think finally, that temporarily, the world has dodged the bullet of World War.”
“If Clinton had won, we would be on a fast track to war with Russia, either in the Baltics, Ukraine or in Syria. She made that perfectly clear.”
Trump, meanwhile, “had over the course of this election cycle said the very opposite. Many people thought that by coming out against war with Russia, he had disqualified himself. In fact he went so far as to attack the generals and those who are running foreign policy.”
Ultimately, the expert stressed that more than anything, this election was “a serious rebuke to the corporate media, who were all against Trump and for Hillary Clinton. Now in saying all of this… I don’t think Trump is a pure vessel… However, what is significant, and what we have to pay close attention to, is not Trump the individual, but that movement that made it possible for him to win the election.”
Monteiro suggested that consciously or not, this movement was animated by their class interest – based on popular anger over stagnant wages, and at the same time, trillions of dollars in offshore banks held by oligarchs, the transnational corporations and hedge funds.
“You’ve got all of these young people who are graduating from university, with tremendous debt, with no jobs that pay them enough to pay off their debt. And then of course Trump made a kind of heavy-handed and awkward appeal to the Black community – but there was some truth to it! When he said that the political forces that the Black community has aligned with has done very, very little for them. And he said to Black people ‘you have nothing to lose’. I think that in the Rust Belt, the former industrial mid-west, more Black people voted for Trump than we are aware of at this time.”
Taking office, Trump faces political, class and racial divisions of an almost unprecedented scale. “The nation is divided; it has not been this divided since the civil war in the 1860s.”
The difference this time, according to the analyst, “is that the divisions are not so much sectional, but are more economic and social class-[based].”
“Can he unite the country around a program of rebuilding the nation economically, and a policy of peace abroad? I’m not yet certain,” Monteiro stressed. But he was encouraged by Trump’s acceptance speech, where “he said that he was for cooperation with nations and finding common ground. I felt that the paramount issue in this election was the question of war and peace, even though it was not the major issue discussed in the corporate media. It was the paramount issue, because I am of the opinion that had Hillary Clinton won, she was going to fast-track belligerency and even war with Russia, and that could have spun out of control into a thermonuclear war.”
Hillary versus Donald: Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead! Victory for the Wizard of Oz!
By Diana Johnstone | Global Research | November 9, 2016
“There’s no place like home.”
That’s the lesson. Even when home is Kansas.
The real meaning of this election is not, as bitterly disappointed Hillary supporters still maintain with tears in their eyes and fear in their throats, a victory for racism and sexism.
The real meaning of this upset is that Wall Street’s globalization project has been rejected by the citizens of its homeland.
This has major implications for the European nations that have been dragged along into this ruinous project.
Hillary Clinton was the candidate of the military industrial complex and international finance capital. She designed herself to be the figurehead of those forces, as queen of regime change. She aspired to be the one to remake the world in the image Wall Street dictates. It was a project enthusiastically and expensively supported by the one percent who profit from arms contracts and the trade deals they write themselves for their own interests.
To distract from the genuine significance of her candidacy, the Clinton campaign appealed to the desire for respectability of educated city dwellers, portraying Trump supporters as racist yokels motivated by a hateful desire to scapegoat minorities as revenge for their own inadequacies. They were “deplorables”, and you wouldn’t want to be one of them, would you?
Trump was sexist, because he referred to certain women as “bimbos”. Elizabeth Warren called him out for this, on a platform where Hillary sat listening, mouth wide open in delight – she who had referred to Bill’s girlfriends as “bimbo eruptions”. Sleaze and hypocrisy drowned out policy discussions. The worst the Clinton campaign could come up with was an eleven-year-old locker room exchange – just words, hardly comparable to Bill’s chronic actions.
Still, millions who were taken in by the Clinton campaign line are devastated, terrified, convinced that the only reason Trump won was the “racism” and “sexism” of that lower caste in globalized society: white heterosexual working class males.
But no, Virginia, there were other reasons to vote for Trump. Racism and sexism are surely low on the list.
Trump voters were scandalized by Hillary’s lies and corruption. Many of them would have voted for Bernie Sanders if they had the choice. That choice was taken away from them by Democratic Party manipulators who were sold on their own advertising campaign to elect “the first woman President.” A brand new product on the Presidential election market! Be the first to vote for a woman President! New, improved!
Bernie’s success already showed that millions of people didn’t want that woman. But the Democratic Party manipulators and their oligarch sponsors went right ahead with their plans to force Hillary Clinton on an unwilling nation. They brought this defeat on themselves.
Contrary to what you could believe by reading the New York Times, there were even intellectuals who voted for Trump, or at least refused to vote for Hillary, for the simple reason that Trump appears less likely to lead the world into its third and final Great War. He said things giving that impression, but such statements were ignored by mainstream media as they worked overtime to inflate the ogre image. No war with Russia? You must be a Putin puppet!
Trump voters had several reasons to vote for Trump other than “racism”. Most of all, they want their jobs back, jobs that have vanished thanks to the neoliberal policy of transferring manufacturing jobs to places with low wages.
But racism is the only motive recognized by the globalized elite for rejecting globalization. British citizens who voted to leave the European Union in order to recover their traditional democracy were also stigmatized as “racist” and “xenophobe”. Opposition to racism and xenophobia is the natural moral defense of a project of global governance that deprives ordinary citizens of any important power of decision.
This extraordinarily vicious campaign has brought out and aggravated sharp divisions within the United States. The division between city and countryside is most evident on the electoral maps. But these real divisions are exacerbated by a campaign that portrayed Donald Trump as a racist madman, a new Hitler about to bring fascism to America. The antiracism of this campaign, denouncing “hate”, has actually spawned hate.
No, Virginia, Trump is not Hitler. He is the Wizard of Oz. He is a showman who pulled off an amazing trick thanks to the drastic moral and intellectual decline of the American political system.
He is neither as dangerous as his opponents fear, nor as able to “make American great again” as his supporters hope. He is the Lesser Evil. What will become of him in Washington is anybody’s guess.
Copyright © Diana Johnstone, Global Research, 2016
Trump’s Victory Should Not Obfuscate Election Fraud
By Doug Steil | Aletho News | November 9, 2016
As luck would have it Hillary Clinton’s landslide loss was so big that massive election fraud by Democratic Party operatives in various cities could not overcome her deficit.
The “shock” by insiders of having lost obviously reflects their earlier certainty of prevailing, which hints at the extent of their vote rigging schemes. The unverifiable system of voting in America is so flawed that foreign observers are now being blocked from monitoring US elections. The topic of fraud can no longer be swept under the rug.
Surely Clinton and the media will try to make a big deal of having “received more votes” than Trump in the popular vote total, which according to the current tabulation has already occurred, with an even higher differential to come once West Coast state results are all counted.
Those inside the DC Beltway and within elite campuses will claim that this is “unfair” and that Hillary really “should have won”.
However, this assertion should be vociferously challenged. Surely this surplus is artificial. Is it really possible that so many Americans would have ignored the prospect of going to war with Russia?
The question needs to be raised publicly: How many hundreds of thousand votes were switched from Trump to Clinton altogether and how many invalid (illegal) votes were registered for her?
Aside from that — assuming all the votes were legitimate — the electoral college system is intended to prevent, say, a concentration of votes in urban centers to the detriment of rural voters across the country. As is the case in Maine and Nebraska, voters in individual states can decide how to allocate their electoral votes, so it doesn’t have to be a winner-take-all system.
It is a tribute to the designers of the US Constitution that the Electoral College mechanism still exists. It’s almost as if though they might also have already suspected long ago that there could be illicit efforts in the future to change an election outcome simply by stuffing the ballots in a few locations. The indirect US electoral system has saved the country from a big crisis brought on by election fraud. Instead of changing the Constitution future election reforms should focus on making vote fraud impossible or extremely difficult to carry out.
The Neocon-Liberal alliance: Clinton coalition that could trigger WWIII
By Neil Clark | RT | November 8, 2016
The 2016 US Presidential election has seen a coming together of hard-core Bush-era neocons and the anti-Bush liberal-left in support of the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The unofficial coalition, which looks likely to help propel the Democratic nominee to the White House (if the polls are to believed), will have surprised many, but it’s not the first time self-identified progressives have – wittingly or unwittingly – aided the cause of the most reactionary people in western politics.
The neocons: a group of ultra-hawkish hard-right imperialists, who are quite happy for the US to illegally invade other sovereign states and drop bombs all over the world. The liberal-left: who profess their support for human rights, internationalism and progressive causes.
At first sight, these two groups don’t appear to have much in common. But the truth is the liberal-left have for a long time been the accomplices of the endless war lobby.
Think back to 1999 and the US-led bombing of Yugoslavia. Never mind that the Balkan state was a multi-party democracy that operated an economy with very high levels of public/social ownership: the liberal-left cheered as bombs rained down on Belgrade, Nis and Kragujevac. Many ‘progressives’ swallowed hook, line and sinker the lurid claims of a ‘genocide’ being committed in the province of Kosovo, which were later dismissed by a UN court.
Although it was promoted as a ‘humanitarian’ venture, the bombing of Yugoslavia was in fact a hard-right project pushed by fiercely anti-socialist/anti-communist Cold War warriors.
It’s worth noting the names on the Executive Committee of the ‘Balkan Action Committee’ which lobbied hard for war against Yugoslavia in 1999. They included Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld – three men we would all hear a lot more from in the build-up to war with Iraq.
The liberal-left were also broadly on board for the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, an assault we were told would greatly help women’s rights.
However, in 2003, there was a break between most of the liberal-left and the neocons over the invasion of Iraq. This military aggression, unlike the one against Yugoslavia, was led by a Republican president. George W. Bush, the man at the helm, was too much of a Texan ‘redneck’ for educated liberal-leftists to support.
Progressives who had no problem with backing an illegal war against Yugoslavia, found they did have a problem backing an illegal war against Iraq.
In the end, the only ‘liberals’ who supported the Iraq invasion were neo-cons masquerading as liberals, and we all saw through their disguise.
In 2011, though it was ‘business as usual’ for the neocon/liberal-left alliance as a ‘nice’ Democrat administration helped destroy Libya – the country which had the highest living standards in Africa – and whose ‘tyrannical’ government provided free health care, education, and electricity to all of its citizens.
Again, this was a military assault which was pushed by neocons, the same crowd who’d lobbied for war against Yugoslavia and Iraq. Once again the liberal-left didn’t seem to notice, or indeed to care, who was behind it.
The toppling of Muammar Gaddafi (the latest neocon-designated ‘New Hitler’ who was hell-bent on ‘genocide’), would lead to a more democratic Libya with major advances in human rights, liberal-leftists assured us. In fact, the NATO attack on Libya turned the country into a failed state and a haven for jihadists.
Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State in 2011, played a prominent role in the destruction of Libya – so much so that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, in a recent interview with John Pilger, has labelled it ‘Hillary’s war.’
But Libya has been quietly forgotten during the Presidential election campaign, as indeed has the Iraq war.
Liberal-leftists who couldn’t bear the sight of George W. Bush are lining up with pro-Iraq war hawks to try and get HRC elected.
Film-maker Michael Moore, who made the fiercely anti-Bush documentary, Fahrenheit 9-11, finds himself on the same side as Bush’s speechwriter David Frum and Robert Kagan, co-founder of the Project for the New American Century. That would have seemed unthinkable a few years back, but it’s happening today, folks.
Why are America’s liberal-left doing this? It’s not as if Trump or Clinton are the only options: Dr Jill Stein’s policies on social justice, war and peace, and climate change are far more progressive than Clinton’s. Why, instead of backing Stein, are they enabling Washington’s war lobby again, just as they did in 1999 and in 2011 during the bombing of Libya? Don’t they ever learn their lesson? How naive are liberals to be fooled by the sudden neo-con concern for ‘women’s rights’ and the rights of immigrants and gay people?
Make no mistake, the PNAC crowd are backing Clinton, not because they are appalled at sexist/racist or politically incorrect statements made by Donald Trump, but because they believe HRC will be the candidate who is more likely to continue the policy of endless war. More specifically, in regards to Syria, they want a US President who will prioritize on toppling the secular government of President Assad – not defeating ISIS. Trump’s great ‘crime’ in their eyes is that he does want to prioritize on ISIS – and horror of horrors – to work with Russia to defeat terrorism.
As America goes to the polls today, the stakes could not be higher. Clinton’s support for the imposition of a No-Fly Zone against Russian and Syrian aircraft risks starting World War Three, and the deaths of potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.
Is that what the ‘progressives’ who are lining up with the destroyers of Iraq really want?
Follow Neil Clark on Twitter @NeilClark66
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From the Archives
Stealth Bombers and Bunker Busters
Analysis of the so-called 12-Day War, and the triumphantly celebrated Operation Midnight Thunder
By William Schryver | imetatronink | November 28, 2025
The GBU-57 is a big fat gravity bomb with fins. To achieve effective precision, a B-2 bomber must drop it on its intended target from no further than about five nautical miles — essentially right on top of the target.
Its penetration depth is claimed to be 200 feet. But that capability has NEVER been tested against a seriously hardened deep-underground target encased in layers of high-performance concrete, and topped with a few dozen meters of solid rock. In that sort of real-world scenario, the GBU-57 would be lucky to drill down 50 feet, if that.
It was always ridiculous silly talk to suggest the GBU-57 was the wonder weapon it was made out to be. There is a good reason the US only produced a couple dozen of them and then stopped: they understood its acute limitations in a non-permissive combat environment.
And, notwithstanding the hyperbolic Israeli propaganda, there was never any credible evidence that Iranian medium- and long-range air defenses against fixed-wing aircraft were attrited to any significant degree. And Iranian short-range air defenses were increasingly effective against long-range Israeli drones with each passing day.
As for the B-2: it is a big fat subsonic aircraft. It flies at airliner speeds. A strike on Fordow would entail flying at least 500 miles in and out of Iran. … continue
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