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My Candidate doesn't have a PNAC bone in his body or PNAC skeleton in his closet.
Take PNAC, please.
Flashback: What Neocons Told Us about Iraq
Dick Cheney
"I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." June 20, 2005 (Source)
"I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months." March 16, 2003 (Source)
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” (Source)
"If we had to do it over again we would do exactly the same thing.” September 13, 2006 (Source)
“What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action.” October 5, 2004 (Source)
Bill Kristol
“Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president.” July 15, 2007 (Source)
"This is going to be a two month war, not an eight year war." March 28, 2003 (Source)
"There has been a certain amount of pop sociology... that the Shi'a can't get along with the Sunni... there's almost no evidence of that at all.” April 4, 2003 (Fox News w/ Bill O’Reilly)
"“The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably.” April 28, 2003 (Source)
“… there are hopeful signs that Iraqis of differing religious, ethnic, and political persuasions can work together. This is a far cry from the predictions made before the war by many, both here and in Europe, that a liberated Iraq would fracture into feuding clans and unleash a bloodbath.” March 22, 2004 (Source)
“… the continuing debates over the terms of a final constitution, have in fact demonstrated something remarkable in Iraq: a willingness on the part of the diverse ethnic and religious groups to disagree--peacefully--and then to compromise.” March 22, 2004 (Source)
Paul Wolfowitz
“There's a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” March 27, 2003 (Source)
On weapons of mass destruction: “There's no question in my mind that there was something there. There are just too many pieces of evidence and we'll get to the bottom of it.” August 1, 2003 (Source)
“Some of the higher-end predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam (Hussein) Iraq, are wildly off the mark.” February 27, 2003 (Source)
"It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army. Hard to imagine." Feb. 27, 2003 (Source)
"Peacekeeping requirements in Iraq might be much lower than historical experience in the Balkans suggests. There's been none of the record in Iraq of ethnic militias fighting one another that produced so much bloodshed and permanent scars in Bosnia along with the requirement for large policing forces to separate those militias.” Feb. 27, 2003 (Source)
“These are Arabs, 23 million of the most educated people in the Arab world, who are going to welcome us as liberators.” Feb. 27, 2003 (Source)
"The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator.” March 11, 2003 (Source)
"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason." May 28, 2003
SOURCE: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/flashback-republicans-iraq-cheney-wolfowitz-kristol
Others, also, have noticed: Bernie Sanders has INTEGRITY.
But Sanders genuinely, sincerely, does not care about optics. He is the rarest of Washington animals, a completely honest person. If he's motivated by anything other than a desire to use his influence to protect people who can't protect themselves, I've never seen it. Bernie Sanders is the kind of person who goes to bed at night thinking about how to increase the heating-oil aid program for the poor. -- Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, April 29, 2015
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/give-em-hell-bernie-20150429?page=2
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/give-em-hell-bernie-20150429?page=2
Please compare with the bi-partisan PNAC crypto-fascist corporate interests bent on fracking Ukraine and making money off war four ways to Super Tuesday:
What about apologizing to Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland?
Fri, Feb 7, 2014
By ORIENTAL REVIEW
What about apologizing to Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland?
Yesterday’s leak of the flagrant telephone talk between the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt has already hit the international media headlines. In short, it turned out that the US officials were coordinating their actions on how to install a puppet government in Ukraine. They agreed to nominate Bat’kyvshchina Party leader Arseniy Yatseniuk as Deputy Prime Minister, to bench Udar Party leader Vitaly Klitschko from the game for a while and to discredit neo-Nazi Svoboda party chief Oleh Tiahnybok as “Yanukovych’s project”. Then Mrs. Nuland informed the US Ambassador that the UN Secretary General, Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman had already instructed Ban Ki-moon to send his special envoy to Kyiv this week “to glue things together”. Referring to the European role in managing Ukraine’s political crisis, she was matchlessly elegant: “Fuck the EU”.
In a short while, after nervious attempts to blame Russians in fabricating (!) the tape (State Department: “this is a new low in Russian tradecraft”), Mrs. Nuland made her apologies to the EU officials. Does it mean that the Washington’s repeatedly leaked genuine attitude towards the “strategic Transatlantic partnership” is more worthy of an apology than the direct and clear interference into the internal affairs of a sovereign state and violation of the US-Russia-UK agreement (1994 Budapest memorandum) on security assurances for Ukraine? Meanwhile this document inter alia reads as follows:
The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.
The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
Back to the latest Mrs. Nuland’s diplomatic collapse which was made public, it was unlikely an unfortunate misspelling. Andrey Akulov from Strategic Culture Foundation has published a brilliant report (Bride at every wedding, Part I and Part II) a couple of days ago describing Mrs.Nuland’s blatant lack of professionalism and personal integrity. He described in details her involvement in misinforming the US President and nation on the circumstances of the assasination of the US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens in Benghazi in September 2012 and her support of the unlawful US funding of a number of the Russian “independent” NGOs seeking to bring a color revolution to Russia.
CONTINUED w/LINKS...
http://orientalreview.org/2014/02/07/what-about-apologizing-to-ukraine-mrs-nuland/
If you've time, there's great video at the link, too.
Neocons and Liberals Together, Again
The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government's national security...
Tom Barry, last updated: February 02, 2005
The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government's national security strategy with a new public letter stating that the "U.S. military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume." Rather than reining in the imperial scope of U.S. national security strategy as set forth by the first Bush administration, PNAC and the letter's signatories call for increasing the size of America's global fighting machine.
SNIP...
Liberal Hawks Fly with the Neocons
The recent PNAC letter to Congress was not the first time that PNAC or its associated front groups, such as the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq, have included hawkish Democrats.
Two PNAC letters in March 2003 played to those Democrats who believed that the invasion was justified at least as much by humanitarian concerns as it was by the purported presence of weapons of mass destruction. PNAC and the neocon camp had managed to translate their military agenda of preemptive and preventive strikes into national security policy. With the invasion underway, they sought to preempt those hardliners and military officials who opted for a quick exit strategy in Iraq. In their March 19th letter, PNAC stated that Washington should plan to stay in Iraq for the long haul: "Everyone-those who have joined the coalition, those who have stood aside, those who opposed military action, and, most of all, the Iraqi people and their neighbors-must understand that we are committed to the rebuilding of Iraq and will provide the necessary resources and will remain for as long as it takes."
Along with such neocon stalwarts as Robert Kagan, Bruce Jackson, Joshua Muravchik, James Woolsey, and Eliot Cohen, a half-dozen Democrats were among the 23 individuals who signed PNAC's first letter on post-war Iraq. Among the Democrats were Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and a member of Clinton's National Security Council staff; Martin Indyk, Clinton's ambassador to Israel; Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute and Democratic Leadership Council; Dennis Ross, Clinton's top adviser on the Israel-Palestinian negotiations; and James Steinberg, Clinton's deputy national security adviser and head of foreign policy studies at Brookings. A second post-Iraq war letter by PNAC on March 28 called for broader international support for reconstruction, including the involvement of NATO, and brought together the same Democrats with the prominent addition of another Brookings' foreign policy scholar, Michael O'Hanlon.
CONTINUED...
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/articles/display/Neocons_and_Liberals_Together_Again
That's from Rightweb, longtime monitors of all things Rightwing, including PNAC and its enablers. Names to pay attention to in particular are Victoria Nuland, our woman in Ukraine, who is married to PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan. Robert Kagan's brother is Frederick Kagan. Frederick Kagan's spouse is Kimberly Kagan.
Brilliant people, big ideas, etc. The thing is, that's a lot of PNAC and the PNAC approach to international relations means more wars without end for profits without cease, among other things detrimental to democracy, peace and justice.
Bernie has none of that in his DNA or attic, either.
40 replies
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See? Bernie brings out their creativity. 
He and other great Democrats were targeted by the Right for supporting democracy, justice and equal rights for Cubans and Nicaraguans and El Salvadorans and others brutalized by the 1-percent.
GOP Michigan legislature redistricted one great Party Whip out of his seat. Other liberal, progressive and humanitarian Democrats, likewise got the ziggy in the press and at the ballot box for opposing genocide in the name of capitalism.
CIA Out of Control
Russ Baker
Village Voice, Sept. 10, 1991
EXCERPT...
Dellums press secretary Max Miller says the representative from
Berkeley, together with majority whip David Bonior--another
outspoken liberal--made an agreement with Speaker Thomas Foley to
maintain a low profile in return for gaining seats on the committee.
After one full round of legislation and briefings, Miller says,
Dellums will be heard from. "They wanted to find out as much as
they could before speaking out." Meanwhile, the energetic Oliver
North, in his role as president of something called the Freedom
Alliance, has launched a campaign to collect a million Dump Dellums
signatures. He calls Dellums "a pro-Marxist, antidefense radical,"
who would be a threat on the "supersensitive" committee. Putting
Dellums on the panel, North says, was an "extremely reckless and
very dangerous appointment."
And those who make trouble get trouble. Reports and rumors that
the apparatus pokes into the personal lives of members of Congress
underlines the danger of investigating national security agencies.
"There's a little bit of fear that if you do go after the
intelligence community, your career is threatened," says McGehee,
author of "Deadly Deceits: My 25 years in the CIA." Even the
complacent Senate intelligence committee chair David Boren has
reason to worry. According to the "Voice"'s Doug Ireland (see Press
Clips, May 28), Boren faced a vicious primary battle in his first
senatorial campaign, during which his opponents accused him of being
a homosexual. At a press conference, Boren swore on a white Bible
that he was not. "It would therefore be utterly churlish," Ireland
wrote, "to speculate on whether or not the Company has a file on the
state of its tamed watchdog's libido." Since then, Boren has called
Robert Gates "one of the most candid people we've ever dealt with."
Leading congressional critics of the CIA have been defeated,
despite their long, distinguished careers in Washington and
Congress's nearly foolproof 98 per cent reelection rate. Both Otis
Pike and Frank Church were defeated soon after chairing their
precedent-setting '70s hearings. Pike's report had been so
incendiary that Congress voted not to release it before the White
House had a chance to censor the document. (It was ultimately
leaked to and published by the "Voice."
Pike's committee staff
director had been warned by the CIA special counsel, "Pike will pay
for this, you wait and see--we'll destroy him for this," according
to "The New York Times." Also defeated were outspoken senators Dick
Clark, Birch Bayh, and Harold Hughes. Foreign money--possibly South
African--is believed to have financed the defeat of Clark, a vocal
critic of the CIA and U.S. ties with South Africa.
Challenging the CIA also means trying to rein in dictatorial
tendencies that naturally accrue to the occupant of the Oval Office.
"Every president of the United States, no matter what he says before
he becomes president, about how he's going to clean things up," says
Marchetti, "once he gets in there and finds out that's *his* agency,
that's *his* intelligence community, hey, all bets are off."
One man who told the truth blew his chance to become CIA
director, thanks to "reformer" Jimmy Carter. Hank Knoche, acting
director following Bush's retirement, had been called down to a
Senate committee. "The chairman was complaining that `we just don't
know what's really going on,'" says Marchetti, who was privy to the
details of the incident. "They asked [Knoche] about covert action
operations: `Do we know all the stuff that's going on? Could you
tell us more about them?'" Asked to reveal the 10 largest ongoing
operations, Knoche offered to name a few of the lesser ones, despite
urgings from his aide that he keep his mouth shut. President Carter
reportedly heard about it, and was none too happy. Instead of
Knoche, the odds-on favorite for the slot, he named intelligence
novice and old Naval Academy chum Admiral Stansfield Turner. "Hank
learned his lesson that day," says Marchetti.
CONTINUED...
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/alt.conspiracy/G8CP9pwqjvU
That's good DNA.
Even if an almost unknown phrase amongst the General Public, it has become entrenched in the national psyche through our inability to think of any ways of living other than war. Check out what the intellectual heavyweight professor and the New York Times have to say:
Economist Tyler Cowen of George Mason University has seen the future and it looks bleak for most of us. Thankfully, the United States of America may be in for good times, especially for those perched atop the socio-economic pyramid scheme, should war break out.
The Pitfalls of Peace
The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth
Tyler Cowen
The New York Times, JUNE 13, 2014
The continuing slowness of economic growth in high-income economies has prompted soul-searching among economists. They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits.
An additional explanation of slow growth is now receiving attention, however. It is the persistence and expectation of peace.
The world just hasn’t had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but today’s casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.
Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.
It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military contracting, not today’s entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic growth.
War brings an urgency that governments otherwise fail to summon. For instance, the Manhattan Project took six years to produce a working atomic bomb, starting from virtually nothing, and at its peak consumed 0.4 percent of American economic output. It is hard to imagine a comparably speedy and decisive achievement these days.
SNIP...
Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.
Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?_r=0
[font color="purple"]Dr. Cowen, from what I've read, is a fine person and not one to promulgate war. He's just sayin'.
He has commented on other Big Ticket economic themes impacting us today: "Inequality," for another instance. [/font color]
Tired Of Inequality? One Economist Says It'll Only Get Worse
by NPR STAFF
September 12, 2013 3:05 AM
Economist Tyler Cowen has some advice for what to do about America's income inequality: Get used to it. In his latest book, Average Is Over, Cowen lays out his prediction for where the U.S. economy is heading, like it or not:
"I think we'll see a thinning out of the middle class," he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "We'll see a lot of individuals rising up to much greater wealth. And we'll also see more individuals clustering in a kind of lower-middle class existence."
It's a radical change from the America of 40 or 50 years ago. Cowen believes the wealthy will become more numerous, and even more powerful. The elderly will hold on to their benefits ... the young, not so much. Millions of people who might have expected a middle class existence may have to aspire to something else.
SNIP...
Some people, he predicts, may just have to find a new definition of happiness that costs less money. Cowen says this widening is the result of a shifting economy. Computers will play a larger role and people who can work with computers can make a lot. He also predicts that everyone will be ruthlessly graded — every slice of their lives, monitored, tracked and recorded.
CONTINUED with link to the audio...
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221425582/tired-of-inequality-one-economist-says-itll-only-get-worse
For some reason, the interview with Steve Inskeep didn't bring up the subject of the GOVERNMENT DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT LIKE IN THE NEW DEAL so I thought I'd bring it up. Older DUers may recall the Democratic Party once actually did do stuff for the average American, from school and work to housing and justice. But, we can't afford that now, obviously, thanks to austerity or the sequester or the divided government.
What's important is that the 1-percent may swell to a 15-percent "upper middle class." Unfortunately, that may see the rest of the middle class go the other way. Why does that ring a bell? Oh yeah.
"Commercial interests are very powerful interests," said George W Bush on Feb. 14, 2007 White House press conference in which he added, "Let me put it this way, ah, sometimes, ah, money trumps peace." And then he giggled and not a single member of the callow, cowed and corrupt press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up.
Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan tried to bring it to our nation's attention back in 2007. I don't recall even one reporter from the national corporate owned news seeing it fit to comment. Certainly not many have commented on how three generations of Bush men -- Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush, President George Herbert Walker Bush and pretzeldent George Walker Bush all had their eyes on Iraq's oil.
I wish the Press had done its job. Those in authority would have to do their job. Millions might still be alive, the People might use the money spent on wars in better ways, and the Republic might see a return to Justice. We don't need more war. Thank you for grokking and caring, senz!
New Democrat Coalition (Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrat_Coalition
They get funding and support from entities like Koch Industries, The Bradley Foundation, Raytheon, Merck, Phillip Morris-many of the same funders/supporters of the worst of the worst in American politics. They are confederates of my primary class enemies in reality, yours too Sir.
Exactly.
Or his spouse? I know he doesn't take PAC money, where a lot of hanky panky and shenanigans of those with Big Bucks go on.
Hillary, the Banksters Committed 'Fraud,' Not 'Shenanigans'
William K. Black
Huffington Post, 02/04/2016
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her debate with Senator Sanders minutes ago, said that she went to Wall Street and told them to stop their "shenanigans." The context was that she was being asked to respond to the complaint that she was too close to on Wall Street billionaires. She had every incentive, therefore, to demonstrate how tough she would be on Wall Street.
In that context, the best she could muster was the pusillanimous "shenanigans." Here is a typical definition of that word with examples.
Hillary cannot bring herself to use the "f" word in the context of Wall Street CEOs leading the largest and most destructive fraud epidemics in history - frauds that made them spectacularly wealthy. A few minutes later, Bernie said that "fraud" was Wall Street's business model.
SNIP...
Here is the reaction of another prominent official to the plight of the homeowners:
"Along with innovation came complexity, and complexity is the enemy of transparency. I had high school friends and grade school friends that got put into mortgages by unscrupulous brokers. Some lost their houses, and I spent time with them and looked at what they had been conned into accepting--they didn't understand what they were signing on for. It was despicable."
"Despicable." The person I am quoting is Hank Paulson, former head of Goldman Sachs, and Secretary of the Treasury under President Bush. Paulson is not by nature someone with great sympathy for the poor. Hillary urges us to believe that because she started as a lawyer for an NGO she has established that she is a person of exceptional empathy. But her 2007 speech to Wall Street was a direct test of character that she failed. Hank Paulson, the leader of the "Vampire Squid," won the test of reality and human sympathy and Hillary lost -- and it wasn't close.
Hillary could easily have gotten the issue correct by talking with Miller and Madigan to get the facts. Both AGs are leading endorsers of Hillary's campaign. Hillary did not investigate, she did not even take the step that Hank Paulson did and check with friends with real experience with foreclosures.
Hillary simply believed the banksters' myths about the crisis. She pronounced sentence on the people losing their homes who were the victims of the banksters' frauds. She implicitly cast the banksters as the victims of the homeowners. The best she could muster was to note that the banksters should have vetted the loans more carefully. What courage.
SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/hillary-the-banksters-com_b_9164930.html
William K. Black
Huffington Post, 02/04/2016
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her debate with Senator Sanders minutes ago, said that she went to Wall Street and told them to stop their "shenanigans." The context was that she was being asked to respond to the complaint that she was too close to on Wall Street billionaires. She had every incentive, therefore, to demonstrate how tough she would be on Wall Street.
In that context, the best she could muster was the pusillanimous "shenanigans." Here is a typical definition of that word with examples.
1. : a devious trick used especially for an underhand purpose
2. 2a : tricky or questionable practices or conduct --usually used in pluralb : high-spirited or mischievous activity --usually used in plural
Examples of SHENANIGAN
1. students engaging in youthful shenanigans on the last day of school
2. an act of vandalism that went way beyond the usual shenanigans at summer camp
Hillary cannot bring herself to use the "f" word in the context of Wall Street CEOs leading the largest and most destructive fraud epidemics in history - frauds that made them spectacularly wealthy. A few minutes later, Bernie said that "fraud" was Wall Street's business model.
SNIP...
Here is the reaction of another prominent official to the plight of the homeowners:
"Along with innovation came complexity, and complexity is the enemy of transparency. I had high school friends and grade school friends that got put into mortgages by unscrupulous brokers. Some lost their houses, and I spent time with them and looked at what they had been conned into accepting--they didn't understand what they were signing on for. It was despicable."
"Despicable." The person I am quoting is Hank Paulson, former head of Goldman Sachs, and Secretary of the Treasury under President Bush. Paulson is not by nature someone with great sympathy for the poor. Hillary urges us to believe that because she started as a lawyer for an NGO she has established that she is a person of exceptional empathy. But her 2007 speech to Wall Street was a direct test of character that she failed. Hank Paulson, the leader of the "Vampire Squid," won the test of reality and human sympathy and Hillary lost -- and it wasn't close.
Hillary could easily have gotten the issue correct by talking with Miller and Madigan to get the facts. Both AGs are leading endorsers of Hillary's campaign. Hillary did not investigate, she did not even take the step that Hank Paulson did and check with friends with real experience with foreclosures.
Hillary simply believed the banksters' myths about the crisis. She pronounced sentence on the people losing their homes who were the victims of the banksters' frauds. She implicitly cast the banksters as the victims of the homeowners. The best she could muster was to note that the banksters should have vetted the loans more carefully. What courage.
SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/hillary-the-banksters-com_b_9164930.html
Personally, I hate Bernie's stance on guns and gun ownership. And his responses to the debate have proven disastrous. Wish I were helping him refine his positions.
That said, Bernie is against violence of one human being against another. Does the name Berta Cáceres ring a bell?
This news you should know BEFORE the election.
As Greg Grandin at The Nation explains:
Cáceres was a vocal and brave indigenous leader, an opponent of the 2009 Honduran coup that Hillary Clinton, as secretary of State, made possible. In The Nation, Dana Frank and I covered that coup as it unfolded. Later, as Clinton’s emails were released, others, such as Robert Naiman, Mark Weisbrot and Alex Main, revealed the central role she played in undercutting Manuel Zelaya, the deposed president, and undercutting the opposition movement demanding his restoration. In so doing, Clinton allied with the worst sectors of Honduran society. -- This photo of Honduran environmental activist Berta Caceres accompanied The Nation‘s expose of the US role in her death. (image: Goldman Environmental Prize)
US Contribution to Death of Honduran Activist Goes Unmentioned in US Coverage
By Adam Johnson
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting/FAIR.org, March 4, 2016
EXCERPT...
The Honduran military abducted President Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint and flew him out of the country on June 28, 2009. While the coup unfolded before the international community, the United Nations, the EU and the Organization of American States rushed to condemn it. Fifteen House Democrats joined in, sending a letter to the Obama White House insisting that the State Department “fully acknowledge that a military coup has taken place and…follow through with the total suspension of non-humanitarian aid, as required by law.”
But Clinton’s State Department staunchly refused to do so, bucking the international community and implicitly recognizing the military takeover. Emails revealed last year by the State Department show that Clinton knew very well there was a military coup, but rejected cries by the international community to condemn it. As The Intercept’s Lee Fang reported, Clinton attempted to use her lobbyist friend Lanny Davis to open up back channels with Roberto Micheletti, the illegitimate interim ruler installed after the coup, effectively endorsing the new right-wing government that would go on to crack down on Cáceres and others activists.
In her memoirs, Clinton herself discloses she had no intention on restoring the elected President Zelaya to power. “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras,” Clinton wrote, “and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”
On September 28, State Department officials blocked the OAS from adopting a resolution that would have refused to recognize Honduran elections carried out under the dictatorship—giving the US’s final seal of approval to the military coup that began three months prior.
One wouldn’t know any of this reading US reports of Cáceres’ death. The coup, and its subsequent purging of environmental, LGBT and indigenous activists, is treated as an entirely local matter, reduced to the “cycle of violence” cliche often employed with destructive governments the United States helped usher into power.
CONTINUED UNDEMOCRATIC AS ALL HELL...
http://fair.org/home/us-contribution-to-death-of-honduran-activist-goes-unmentioned-in-us-coverage/
So, yeah. Ha ha. It is to laugh at fascism.
William K. Black explains...
"I did not know the bank was being robbed because I was engaged in my sworn duty as a police officer."
170 Economists Endorse Bernie Sanders’ Plan To Reform Wall St. And Rein In Greed
By Jason Easley on Thu, Jan 14th, 2016 at 2:23 pm
170 of the nation’s top economists have released a letter endorsing Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’s plan to reform Wall Street.
A letter signed by 170 economists including former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, University of Texas Professor James K. Galbraith, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC., Brad Miller, former U.S. Congressman from North Carolina, and William K. Black, University of Missouri-Kansas City endorsed the Sanders plan to reform Wall Street.
The economists wrote:
Both campaigns are rolling out endorsements on a daily basis, but the anger over Wall Street crashing the US economy and walking away with a slap on the wrist is one of the main drivers behind the popularity of Sen. Sanders.
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http://www.politicususa.com/2016/01/14/170-economists-bernie-sanders-plan-reform-wall-st-rein-greed.html
By Jason Easley on Thu, Jan 14th, 2016 at 2:23 pm
170 of the nation’s top economists have released a letter endorsing Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’s plan to reform Wall Street.
A letter signed by 170 economists including former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, University of Texas Professor James K. Galbraith, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC., Brad Miller, former U.S. Congressman from North Carolina, and William K. Black, University of Missouri-Kansas City endorsed the Sanders plan to reform Wall Street.
The economists wrote:
In our view, Sanders’ plan for comprehensive financial reform is critical for avoiding another ‘too-big-to-fail’ financial crisis. The Senator is correct that the biggest banks must be broken up and that a new 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, separating investment from commercial banking, must be enacted.
Wall Street’s largest banks are now far bigger than they were before the crisis, and they still have every incentive to take excessive risks. No major Wall Street executive has been indicted for the fraudulent behavior that led up to the 2008 crash, and fines imposed on the banks have been only a fraction of the banks’ potential gains. In addition, the banks and their lobbyists have succeeded in watering down the Dodd-Frank reform legislation, and the financial institutions that pose the greatest risk to our economy have still not devised sufficient “living wills” for winding down their operations in the event of another crisis.
Secretary Hillary Clinton’s more modest proposals do not go far enough. They call for a bit more oversight and a few new charges on shadow banking activity, but they leave intact the titanic financial conglomerates that practice most shadow banking. As a result, her plan does not adequately reduce the serious risks our financial system poses to the American economy and to individual Americans. Given the size and political power of Wall Street, her proposals would only invite more dilution and finagle.
The only way to contain Wall Street’s excesses is with reforms sufficiently bold and public they can’t be watered down. That’s why we support Senator Sanders’s plans for busting up the biggest banks and resurrecting a modernized version of Glass-Steagall.
Both campaigns are rolling out endorsements on a daily basis, but the anger over Wall Street crashing the US economy and walking away with a slap on the wrist is one of the main drivers behind the popularity of Sen. Sanders.
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http://www.politicususa.com/2016/01/14/170-economists-bernie-sanders-plan-reform-wall-st-rein-greed.html
For those new to the subject of forensic economics: Those 170 economists are a Who's Who of Integrity.
Yes, there is a commonality of purpose, there, as well.
Words of wisdom:
Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine
by Jeffrey D. Sachs
Common Dreams, Feb. 5, 2016
There's no doubt that Hillary is the candidate of Wall Street. Even more dangerous, though, is that she is the candidate of the military-industrial complex. The idea that she is bad on the corporate issues but good on national security has it wrong. Her so-called foreign policy "experience" has been to support every war demanded by the US deep security state run by the military and the CIA.
Hillary and Bill Clinton's close relations with Wall Street helped to stoke two financial bubbles (1999-2000 and 2005-8) and the Great Recession that followed Lehman's collapse. In the 1990s they pushed financial deregulation for their campaign backers that in turn let loose the worst demons of financial manipulation, toxic assets, financial fraud, and eventually collapse. In the process they won elections and got mighty rich.
Yet Hillary's connections with the military-industrial complex are also alarming. It is often believed that the Republicans are the neocons and the Democrats act as restraints on the warmongering. This is not correct. Both parties are divided between neocon hawks and cautious realists who don't want the US in unending war. Hillary is a staunch neocon whose record of favoring American war adventures explains much of our current security danger.
SNIP...
Hillary's record as Secretary of State is among the most militaristic, and disastrous, of modern US history. Some experience. Hilary was a staunch defender of the military-industrial-intelligence complex at every turn, helping to spread the Iraq mayhem over a swath of violence that now stretches from Mali to Afghanistan. Two disasters loom largest: Libya and Syria.
Hillary has been much attacked for the deaths of US diplomats in Benghazi, but her tireless promotion of the overthrow Muammar Qaddafi by NATO bombing is the far graver disaster. Hillary strongly promoted NATO-led regime change in Libya, not only in violation of international law but counter to the most basic good judgment. After the NATO bombing, Libya descended into civil war while the paramilitaries and unsecured arms stashes in Libya quickly spread west across the African Sahel and east to Syria. The Libyan disaster has spawned war in Mali, fed weapons to Boko Haram in Nigeria, and fueled ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In the meantime, Hillary found it hilarious to declare of Qaddafi: "We came, we saw, he died."
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http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/05/hillary-candidate-war-machine
Wars without end. Amen.
Originally, President Obama backed ousted Honduran president (supporters shown in civilian clothes below).
Dancing with Monsters: The U.S. Response to the 2009 Honduran Coup
"A coup anywhere in Latin America is a very big deal.”
By Alvaro Valle
Harvard Political Review, April 13, 2015
SNIP...
The U.S. Response
Latin American governments immediately denounced Zelaya’s ouster as a military coup. The United States was not quite as decisive in its diction, with the initial statement from the Obama administration merely calling on “all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms.” Obama did go on to denounce the coup in the following days, but Frank noted that Obama’s characterization of the government change was very important. “He very clearly failed to call it a military coup. If he had called it a military coup, the United States would have had to immediately suspend all police and military aid,” Frank explained. “Eventually some money sent was suspended, but the vast majority was not.”
Following the coup, President Obama called many times for the reinstatement of Zelaya. In contrast, Secretary of State Clinton made remarks that were far more equivocal. When asked if the United States had any plans to alter aid to the coup government, , “Much of our assistance is conditioned on the integrity of the democratic system. But if we were able to get to a status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome.” Clinton seemed to prioritize having a stable regime over preserving democratic ideals.
As further evidence, Clinton wrote in her book, Hard Choices, “In the subsequent days [after the coup] … we strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot,” revealing that even as the administration publicly advocated for Zelaya’s return, Clinton was not working to ensure that it would happen.
Pastor added that Clinton had personal connections with supporters of the coup government that may have led her to soften her stance. For instance, Lanny Davis, Bill Clinton’s former personal lawyer and a longtime Hillary Clinton supporter, lobbied in Washington for the Honduran coup government, Honduran elites, the Business Council of Latin America, and the American companies that took issue with Zelaya’s reforms. Bennett Ratcliff, another top Democratic campaigner with close ties to the Clintons, also worked for the Honduran coup government as a lobbyist in Washington. These personal connections to advocates for the coup government raise troubling concerns that political ties influenced Clinton’s stance.
In Clinton’s defense, these personal connections were not the only political forces supporting the coup. Levitsky noted that initial opposition to the coup in the United States may have given way because “Republicans held a couple of major U.S.-Latin America appointments: the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and the Ambassador to Brazil. They held these positions hostage to a softening of U.S. policy toward the coup government.”
CONTINUED w/ links sources etc....
http://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/us-honduran-coup/
Of course, it's plausible that all this just happened to favor Empire at the expense of Democracy. Then, it would be mere coincidence that today many if not most of the progressive -- socialist -- regimes in South America and Central America have been replaced by rightist regimes. Kind of reminds me of another time in history when the State Department/CIA made an end-around directives from the Oval Office.
So, who is in control when the people vote for peace and yet get more war? Not that you'd know, uponit7771, it's more of a rhetorical question.
Robert Kagan is a neoconservative writer and historian based at the Brookings Institution. A longtime proponent of an aggressive, interventionist U.S. foreign policy, Kagan has played an influential role in shaping the neoconservative agenda for more than two decades.
Kagan was a cofounder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a now defunct pressure group that helped build Beltway support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. In the early years of the Obama administration, he reprised this role as a cofounder of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a PNAC successor group.
He has also served as an adviser to the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a board member of the U.S. Committee on NATO, an “international patron” of the UK-based Henry Jackson Society, a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard, and a foreign policy adviser to the Republican presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and John McCain.
Despite his GOP bona fides, Kagan during the 2016 presidential primaries he described himself as a “former Republican” because of his disappointment over the party’s 2016 presidential candidates. In a February 2016 op-ed for the Washington Post, Kagan expressed particular concern about the rise of Donald Trump, whom he called “the most successful demagogue-charlatan in the history of U.S. politics.” Blaming the Republican Party for the creation of Trump and the emergence of other disastrous candidates like Sen. Ted Cruz, Kagan wrote in Washington Post, “For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be.”[1]
In 2014, Kagan foreshadowed his endorsement of Hillary Clinton during an interview with the New York Times. “I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” he said. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue, it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”[2]
Kagan has also maintained a number of bipartisan affiliations. He has visited the Obama White House, for example, and helped establish a bipartisan civilian advisory board for Democratic Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.[3] According to a July 2014 New York Times report, “Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute” and has “insisted on maintaining the link between modern neoconservatism and its roots in muscular Cold War liberalism.” In fact, Kagan has even shied away from the “neoconservative” label, saying he prefers to be described as a “liberal interventionist.”
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he is now a foreign policy adviser to one Hillary Clinton.
with friends like these who needs anemones.
