It was, for example, long after 2016. But some people still couldn't accept what was, by now, a very old election. The populace, as a whole, might benefit from a book entitled ELECTIONS FOR DUMMIES. Until that's published, maybe they can make do with Politics For Dummies.
That might be too much for some to thumb through. If they needed something with more brevity, we could refer them to the beginning of Carole King and Toni Stern's "Sweet Seasons." It opens with "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose/ And most times you choose between the two."*
It's really that simple.
Or should be.
It is that simple to most of us with our feet planted on the ground. We're fully aware that we -- and those who came before us -- have survived a great deal. It's only the juvenile-minded that can't accept reality. I'm not referring to millennials, nor will this be a slam piece on them, it was the aged -- and the mentally infirmed like Gloria Steinem -- that wanted to launch 'the resistance.'
Well they had all the time on their hands, didn't they? It's not like they had jobs at their advanced age. And it's not like they could organize with US SOCIALIST WORKER which imploded over one tawdry scandal after another. So it was time for Gloria to again pose as a Democrat and try to lead. She's always been a lousy leader which is why so many suspected that she never left the CIA. But that's another story. If it's a story that you're late to, enjoy this footnote to Michael Steven Smith and Heidi Boghosian's "Inside the Organized Crime Syndicate Known as the CIA: Interview with Douglas Valentine" (LAW & DISORDER transcript posted at DISSIDENT VOICE):
Gloria Steinem was an iconic leader of the American feminist movement and co-founded Ms. Magazine. In March 1967, Ramparts magazine broke one of the first major exposes in the CIA’s history. From the early 1950s until 1967, the international program of the National Student Association and some of its domestic activities were secretly underwritten by clandestine funding from the Central Intelligence Agency.
During the years 1958-67, Steinem accepted a paid position with the CIA when she went undercover with the “Independent Research Service” as she infiltrated the student-based NSA, not the other super-secret NSA—the National Security Agency. In her covert capacity, she attended the World Youth Festival of Students and Youth, first in 1959 in Vienna, Austria, attended by 18,000 delegates coming from 112 nations, and secondly in Helsinki, Finland, attended by 18,000 delegates from 137 countries. While claiming that her CIA collaboration ended in 1962, new data suggest that her secret work lasted until 1967.
To view a revealing interview of Steinem by journalist Cory Morningstar about her CIA adventures, see link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HRUEqyZ7p8. [↩]
If there's any reason for a Gloria Steinem -- hagged out as she is today -- physically and mentally hagged out -- to still try to be at the center of the media's attention, it's to provide perspective.
Providing perspective is not that difficult.
Watch.
Your Grandmama Survived
Taft
Your Mama Survived
Hoover
You've Already Survived
Nixon
and
One Hundred and Forty Days
of
Reagan
Why?
Because
YOU CAN'T KEEP A GOOD WOMAN DOWN
Celebrate
the
Tradition!
In 1981, an invitation to a book party for Alice Walker's short story collection YOU CAN'T KEEP A GOOD WOMAN DOWN could note those realities.
In the time since the 2016 election, realities -- even simple realities -- could not be noted.
Truth could not be noted, often times.
Instead, we had fantasies and conspiracies passed off as fact by sore losers.
Donald Trump won the 2016 election.
Did it thrill my soul?
No. Few presidential elections thrill my soul.
But I can grasp reality.
And I can LITTLE RED HEN my life and do the things needed regardless of who is in the White House.
What a great time for elders to have imparted that reality to the young.
But that didn't happen.
Instead, we got, "Hillary won the popular vote."
I'm sorry, did you just move to this country? Are you very young and never took a civics class?
No president in the US is elected by popular vote.
We don't do that here.
Should we?
At this site, we've long advocated for the popular vote and for abolishing the electoral college.
Notice that, even now, Hillary Clinton -- a supposed 'leader' -- can't and won't advocate for that.
I happen to believe the American people have every right to be in a democracy -- a direct democracy -- and to elect their own presidents.
I'm also aware that we don't have that right currently.
Hillary getting more popular votes doesn't matter at all. And if you're surprised that she lost even while winning the popular vote, I refer you to the works of Gore Vidal -- essays and novels and speeches -- which, yes, dissect Bush v Gore but which, also, dealt with an earlier incident. Read his novel 1876. In that election, the winner wasn't the candidate who won the popular vote. Grover Cleveland and Andrew Jackson are two more who won the popular vote but didn't become president.
Again, ELECTIONS FOR DUMMIES, might clear up some things. Might also, if we're lucky, really start a push to end the electoral college.
But it is the system that was in place -- both before and after the 2016 election -- when Donald Trump won the presidency.
He was elected president.
Instead of accepting that reality, we have had years of nonsense and garbage.
First up? MSNBC was so damn sure -- Rachel Maddow most of all -- that the electors going to the electoral college could be swayed. The electors were going to ignore, the Rachels just knew, what the voters they were supposed to represent had expressed at the polls. Seven electors did do as the Rachels largely wanted -- switch their votes. Two switched from Donald, five switched from Hillary. Donald won 304 electoral votes, Hillary won 227.
Unless you were a member of the corporate media, the election had been decided.
If you were a member of the corporate media, there was no theory too nutty for you to advance. You'd do anything to avoid embracing reality.
It recalled the nutty, insane theories of John Nichols. Five-cents writes for THE NATION and THE PROGRESSIVE and really should be locked away in an asylum for the criminally insane.
His big theory about the 2004 election, remember, that he expressed with crazy kook Amy Goodman, was that Hillary Clinton would get the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Now she wasn't running for it, remember? Not that year. But John explained 'reality' to crazy Amy, at the convention, Hillary would show up and the various delegates would ignore who they were pledged to and make her, someone who never declared her candidacy, the presidential nominee.
There's a lot of crazy running in that stupid head of John Nichols. In 2008, he'd again take to DEMOCRACY NOW! -- a show where any lie can be pimped -- and this time, as Barack Obama was in trouble for conversations with the Canadian government about how his NAFTA talk was just talk and he was fine with these trade agreement, John 'explained' to America that it wasn't Barack, it was Hillary having these conversations! He was working on, he explained, a big story.
That story never emerged. The events never took place, they only existed in the insane mind of John Nichols.
Why does he continue to be employed?
And grasp that he's no friend of We The People. In 2006, he was advocating for impeachment. In fact, he was promoting his book THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT in September of that year, ahead of the book's release, and in early October -- the book was published October 6, 2006. Then he stopped mentioning it. What changed?
October 22, 2006, 60 MINUTES (CBS) broadcast the interview where Nancy Pelosi announced that impeachment was off the table.
John heard his marching orders and followed them.
That's a whore. That's not what a journalist is supposed to do. There's a reason real journalist John Stauber so frequently slams John Nichols in Tweets.
The crazy that once only came out of John Nichols and his limited ilk was all over the country in the last years.
The FBI, after the electoral college failed to live up to nutty conspiracy theories, the FBI was going to take care of Donald Trump, the Rachels insisted. They had the goods on him.
No they did not. What they had was illegal spying on a presidential candidate carried out with the permission of the Obama White House -- spying which apparently Barack himself authorized and of which he was in on the loop. Grasp that for one damn minute. Everything that Donald's being accused of with regards to Joe Biden was already done to Donald by Barack on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Grasp that. The evidence is so much stronger there.
Well, they didn't have the goods and that failed.
So then Robert Mueller became the one who was going to harpoon the great orange whale. But, at the end of his journey, that Captain-Ahab-come-lately failed as well.
Then it was push for impeachment.
All of this is garbage, pure garbage. It ate real time and meant real needs and real issued went unaddressed.
'We have a duty!' so many members of the House of Representatives insisted regarding impeachment. If you had a duty to impeach, you wouldn't be holding on to the Articles of Impeachment, would you? If that vote was your duty then it was also your duty to immediately turns those Articles of Impeachment over to the Senate.
Jonathan Turley is a legal scholar and a very sharp mind. I frequently agree with him -- and always learn from him.
He's currently disputing a claim that an impeachment doesn't take place if the Articles of Impeachment are not forwarded to the Senate.
I don't know that's that right. I understand his opinion. I understand the opposing opinion as well.
But, here's the thing, both of those are just opinions. They're not opinions that are backed up by any judgments because this is not an area of the law that the courts have ever spoken to. This is unaddressed. Jonathan's opinion might be correct, the other opinion might be. This is undetermined at present.
But whether that ever becomes settled law or not, one thing that is obvious is that if you voted citing your duty and your oath and blah blah, if any of that is supposed to mean anything, you then immediately send the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. Failure to do so would mean failing your duty -- to the Constitution, to We The People, to yourself.
All of this is a waste of time.
Donald Trump is the president of the United States. No one making a living off betting would ever tell you that he's going to be removed from office.
There are real issues and, once upon a time, we could fight for them regardless of who was in the White House. While Reagan was president, we could, and did, fight for reproductive rights, fight against the US efforts to exterminate people in Latin America, fight against Apartheid in South Africa, etc.
Now, in the middle of Reagan's presidency, you had the city of Philadelphia bombing a street to kill its own citizens -- the May 13, 1985 attack on MOVE.
So I am not arguing that, had we all paid attention and advocate for real issues over the last years, that we would have arrived at Nirvana.
I am, however, stating, as a fact, that we might have ended a war or two or delivered Medicare For All or other important needs.
Nancy Pelosi is not your friend. Her way, please note, is not Medicare For All. She is opposed to it. She talks of the need to do her duty but her duty is not about delivering the needs of the people.
She pushed for impeachment. She's not opposed to war. She's not opposed to war on the poor. She is opposed to Donald not dancing the national security dance that so many presidents have done before him.
For that, she pushed impeachment. Our lives, as Americans, were in jeopardy, she insists because funding to the Nazi-haven that is Ukraine today was temporarily slowed and/or stopped.
I long ago shared the reality on Donald and Joe. If Donald Trump suspected something illegal took place in Ukraine, it's his duty, as the head of the executive branch, to pursue that. Whether it's questions or what have you, it is his duty.
The Democrats in the House have never explained how they can justify that Donald acted inappropriately. What they accuse him of -- again, please note -- is actually what the evidence more clearly points to Barack Obama doing.
At least a third of the country doesn't care for Donald Trump. At least.
Guess what?
Long before they decided to form an opinion on Donald Trump, I already had one. I don't like him. Maybe Rosie O'Donnell goes further back in her dislike? Maybe she doesn't. If it's just the public dislike, I go further back than Rosie. And I don't fault Rosie for what she says about Donald -- it's been a long running feud between them.
I haven't had a feud with Donald. That's not because I'm better than Rosie. That is because I have always had a ton of things to do and I don't accomplish any of them with ongoing feuds. Donald knows how I feel about him. I've made that perfectly clear to his face long before he ever had a public battle with Rosie. Donald doesn't like me either and I'm okay with that. He's entitled to like or dislike whomever he wants, same as me.
I don't like Donald.
So it's really been something to watch the nonsense and stupidity of 'the resistance' and how it has wasted our time and really torn at the presidency.
You've been a bunch of idiots. Some of you were misled by elders, some of you are elders who knew what you were doing and just preferred to whore -- often because that's where the money was.
Donald is not the worst president we've ever had.
As someone on the left, I'll even state that he's not even the worst one in my lifetime.
As someone on the left, I'll argue he's also been an unintended gift in many ways.
Are you appalled by what's he doing to immigrants?
I am too.
But, look it, here's the thing, I was appalled when Barack Obama was doing the exact same thing.
Where were your 'resistance leaders' on that?
I said some time ago -- and I stand by it -- that if the Democrats win the White House, you'll see a push for helping immigrants fall away. That's because they were okay with what Trump is doing when Obama did it. That's because they spent the '00s proposing building a wall -- even Hillary herself.
They are using immigration the same way they used Iraq. They pretend to care and be outraged because it's a political football they can use against an opponent. But it's a political football that they will drop -- or spike? -- as soon as Democrats control the White House -- as they did with Iraq.
Joe Biden was part of the Obama administration.
Every thing that the 'resistance' pretends to care about, Joe's guilty of. He's currently attempting some sort of tiny walk away from Barack on immigration. He's done a step or two away from Barack on Afghanistan.
Yet some idiots still want to vote for him.
Supposedly, Russia interfered with the 2016 election. Some fools will even argue that Russia helped Trump win.
Hillary was a weak candidate in 2016. If she'd run her 2008 campaign, she might have won. But delicate flower didn't want to meet the people -- so she skipped out on some needed states -- which turned out to be swing states -- and she hid behind celebrities.
But if you're really telling me that you believe Russia determined the 2016 US election and that this outrages you, my question becomes: What about Joe Biden?
In 2010, the Iraqi people were suffering under the paranoid thug Nouri al-Maliki that the Bully Boy Bush administration had installed as prime minister in 2006 -- mainly because the CIA assessment argued that, of all the possible prime ministers, Nouri would be the easiest to control because of his deep paranoia. Nouri had terrorized the Iraqi people. He and his son had become rich by stealing from the Iraqi people. Sunnis families were being destroyed because Nouri would send forces to their homes for 'Omar' and, if 'Omar' wasn't there, Nouri's forces would take away a father or son or wife or mother or daughter of 'Omar' and that person would then disappear into Nouri's secret prisons and jails. He was running torture centers.
The Iraqi people knew this. As a people, they rejected him and went with a new political coalition -- Iraqiya. Iraqiya was about a national identity, where they would be Iraqis. It was a party that included all sects, all religions, it even included women.
It was a strong statement, their support of this party in the March 2010 elections.
Instead of supporting the Iraqi people, the Barack Obama administration -- Joe was the lead on Iraq -- overturned the votes of the people with The Erbil Agreement which instead gave Nouri a second term. How big was this? So big that Patrick Cockburn has lied about it over and over and over. He has never told readers of his columns -- columns passed off as reporting -- about this reality. He has told them that Iran's government interfered.
We covered reality in real time. The Erbil Agreement is what gave Nouri a second term. Years before Emma Sky published her book THE UNRAVELING: HIGH HOPES AND MISSED OPPORTUNITIES IN IRAQ (2015), we were covering that reality. Even before Michael Gordon and US Gen Bernard E. Trainor's THE ENDGAME: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ, FROM GEORGE W. BUSH TO BARACK OBAMA (2012), we were covering that reality.
So don't posture with me about pretending to give a s**t that Russia 'stole' the election if you have never taken the time to call out what Barack and Joe did in November of 2010. And before some idiot -- probably a Patty Cock-burn worshiper -- e-mails, yes, the election was in March of 2010. The election wasn't settled until November of 2010. Iraq was in a political stalemate -- and, by the way, this site was the first to call it that. Carnegie and all the others followed in our wake.
That was originally a parenthetical but since we're noting The Year For Dummies, let's leave the parenthetical. Time and again, the analysis here has stood up. And that's not a humble brag. If I wanted to brag, I'd cover a lot more topics.
Like the documentary about the sex trade in Iraq -- you can see it on AMAZON PRIME -- prime members can see it for free. As someone who noted the sex trade and reported on it in the early years of the war -- thanks to reporters covering Iraq who were not allowed by their publications or networks to report on it and thanks to friends at the US State Dept -- as someone who called out the go-go boys of the Green Zone -- US reporters who were using prostitutes at the time while, in interviews, insisting no prostitution was taking place. If I just wanted to brag, I'd spotlight that documentary and so much more.
We told the truth here about Iraq to the best of our abilities.
We didn't whore for this candidate or that -- either US candidates or Iraqi ones.
Didn't whore then, don't now.
We've repeatedly noted that Iraq is just not a part of the debates. Anderson Cooper can waste everyone's time with a question about Ellen DeGeneres but he can't ask about Iraq.
Protests have been taking place in Iraq for months now. Those new to the topic should refer to Dirk Adriaensens' "Iraq: The October Revolution of 2019 and the Iran-US Conflict" (GLOBAL RESEARCH), Over 500 people are dead, many more injured and many are also missing. But that wasn't an issue for the Anderson Coopers. They could ignore it and they could ignore Iraq.
They pretty much all did until December 31st when the US embassy in Baghdad was stormed and the US ambassador evacuated.
Grasp how much b.s. they've offered all year and how little of value. Grasp what happened December 31st and how they'd done nothing to prepare US viewers, listeners or readers for what was gong to happen. They wasted everyone's time -- and maybe they're okay with wasting their own time, but I don't have time to waste.
Here, we told the truth.
The whores?
I'm just appalled. I'm appalled that Robert Fisk -- a fake ass, I learned the hard way there even with news producers warning me about him -- tried to use his minor image to re-install Hayder al-Abadi -- one of Iraq's most inept and corrupt politicians -- back into office.
These people don't care about Iraq. They don't care about the people. They're not trying to push for the people to have self-determination.
They're liars who lie to advance the goals of others. There's a reason, as a CNN exec stressed to me in 2005, that Fisk and Thomas Friedman are friends.
So very true.
Today’s attack against the U.S. Embassy should not be confused with the legitimate efforts of the Iraqi protestors who have been in the streets since October working for the people of Iraq to end the corruption exported there by the Iranian regime.
The Secretary of State is probably correct in that assessment. Arabic social media would back that up.
But it's hard to tell that story, in the press, if you haven't already been telling the story about the protests. It's all the same faceless person if you're the US press.
Let's talk other issues.
A Democratic Party primary is taking place. We don't note Andrew Yang. It took awhile but some non-community members finally noticed. We've never featured his Tweets -- and we've featured Tweets from Kamala and Amy -- neither of whom was a lefty.
Andrew has a cult, doesn't he? He can say anything and they're okay with it. I explained that the first week of June in the gina & krista round-robin and it's still true today.
Andrew stood on the stage in the final debate of 2019 pimping what?
Nuclear energy.
Yeah, he is dangerous. He's a thick headed imbecile who tosses around money and buys his way onto the stage -- something we abhor when it's Tom Steyer or Mike Bloomberg. He notes a few populist ideas, a few, but everything he represents is appalling.
And his nonsense about nuclear energy?
It is not safe. We cannot dispose of the waste in our lifetimes because it's deadly for so many years. And in a post-9/11 world, you certainly should grasp that a nuclear power plant becomes an ideal terrorist target and that if suicide bombers are ready and willing to fly into buildings, why wouldn't they be willing to fly into a nuclear power plant?
And I find it very telling that Tulsi Gabbard is tarred and feathered over who supports her when Andrew Young is a darling of the White Nationalist movement.
Tulsi.
Tulsi voted "present" on impeachment. I don't have a problem with that. Seems like a smart move. But . . .
"Present" really does seem to be all she's capable of.
Joe Biden's still in the race. Tulsi not only refused -- twice -- to challenge him in the July debate and not only spent her press time after that debate minimizing Joe's actions and, in fact, lying for him, but she's refused to call him out since.
Joe's still in the race. Some swear he's a front-runner. And 'anti-war' Tulsi can't call him out. Her campaign's about to be over.
She will have killed it herself.
After Iowa and New Hampshire, it doesn't matter what she wants. Her campaign's over. She can continue it but the media will have every right to ignore her and, if she doubts that, she can talk to loser Dennis Kucinnich.
He endorsed her.
He would, wouldn't he?
He's useless and, apparently, he wants to celebrate her for being useless as well.
Joe is an idiot who has gotten nothing right and Tulsi's never criticized him. She's made herself useless and the new Dennis Kucinich. I guess we'll see her on FOX NEWS in the future the way it has become a home for Dennis. And that's not a slam on FOX NEWS -- when CNN is as awful as it currently is, I'm not going to slam FOX NEWS. But that is me noting that fake Dennis was always a fake and remains one. He's not leading any movements -- or even trying. He'll cash his paycheck from FOX and never give Americans any real truth. Hey, Dennis, you ever going to explain to America what happened on the plane trip with Barack? You got on that plane swearing you could not vote for ObamaCare because it wasn't what America needed. You got off the plane agreeing to vote for it.
Don't you think the American people have a right to know what happened on the plane ride? If it's difficult for you, Valerie Jarrett told me Barack explained to you all the monies that could be used against you in your re-election campaign. Does that help you start telling the story? It should because not only were you blackmailed but, after you agreed to do what Barack told you to, they still ran someone against you and knocked you out of Congress.
Ever plan to share that story with America?
No. Of course not. Stay useless, Dennis, all your life.
And that apparently is the path that Tulsi wants to take as well.
Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. In the Democratic Party's primary, that's all that's really left. If America wants to progress and not just go back to years ago when nothing was being done -- immigration wasn't being addressed in any helpful manner, climate change was being handled by a series of do-nothing treaties, the wars increased under Barack -- it's Bernie or Elizabeth.
And if one of them gets the nomination, I can vote for them.
One of the things I'm happy about is that we have had lasting influence.
When this site started, we talked repeatedly, over and over, about how you own your vote. You use it as you see fit. We echoed that in speeches and talks across the country. And it's a part of our lives now. People bring it up. They take pride in their vote. This was a huge pushback against the nonsense that if we are left we must vote Democratic.
And we don't have to hold our noses when we vote.
The politics of fear is all some tiny minds offer.
We own our votes and, if you want them, you better campaign for them.
Stop being part of corrupt media system that tries to sheep-herd voters over to a candidate instead of demanding that the candidate appeal to voters.
I called the 2016 election for Donald in September of 2016 and did that because of something more precise than phone polling with a tiny segment of possible voters -- face-to-face with thousands of Americans will always give you a better view of the mood of the country.
The media and the DNC don't seem to realize that they're not going to be able to steal the nomination from the popular candidates this time and get away with then guilting voters into supporting losers like Joe Biden.
The DNC created very real anger and resentment in 2016. If the nomination goes to anyone other than Bernie or Elizabeth, the DNC will suffer greatly at the voting booth in November of 2020.
But it really does appear to be, as Gore Vidal so often would point out, an issue of control. The DNC would rather lose the election than give up control to the people.
I guess we'll see who the biggest dummy is but, going into 2020, the DNC appears to have a lock on that title. That said, never underestimate the media, they could easily win the title themselves.
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2018: The Year of Media Self-Exposure
2017: The Year of Chicken Little
2016: The Year of WTF
2015: The Year of the Ass
2014: The Year of Self-Exposure
2013: The Year of Exposure
2012: The Year of Avoidance
2011: The Year of the Slow Reveal
The Common Ills Year in Review 2005
The Common Ills Year in Review
