It literally does not matter (much) who is acting as the President of America as he is not in charge. The power structure in America has nothing to do with the official flow charts, or that "piece of paper" formerly known as the "US Constitution". The President merely presides over one the several leading power centres. He is not the 'decider'.
It literally does not matter (much) who is acting as the President of America as he is not in charge. The power structure in America has nothing to do with the official flow charts, or that "piece of paper" formerly known as the "US Constitution". The President merely presides over one the several leading power centres. He is not the 'decider'.
Entirely correct. This is particularly true of US foreign policy. US foreign policy and its long term geopolitical goals is the province of the US State Department and the CIA, not the President, and they in turn decide policy with the Washington think-tanks funded by military and industrial conglomerates.
Obama found this out very quickly when he became President, and so did Trump. The difference is that Obama did as he was told, but Trump did not!
Trump’s ‘mistake’ was that he thought it was the President decided who to negotiate with and who to make a deal with and this was seen as very dangerous to all those people and the massive industry that makes money through never-ending wars and conflict. Trump’s carrot and stick approach might lead to peace breaking out and peace is anathema to the warmongers in Washington.
The people who are the most to blame for this situation are the media, whose job is to tell the truth and expose the totally corrupted US foreign policy military establishment, now being run by the unelected ‘permanent state’. Not only do they not do this, but they themselves have been co-opted and serve as a weapon against anyone who opposes the unelected state or threatens to expose it, even within their own industry, and Assange is the exemplar of this.
The awful shocking reality for me, is that it is the so called ‘liberal’ news outlets who people once trusted; The New York Times, NBC, The Guardian and the BBC etc, have done the most to destroy public trust in the media. They are constantly caught lying, yet carry on as though they are the beacons of democracy and somehow represent a ‘free and honest’ press. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Since the invasion of Granada and Panama and the first Gulf War etc, I have been telling anyone I can: “Do not trust any media at all, particularly regarding foreign policy! Presume they are lying and then try to work your way back to the truth by seeking out those marginalised journalists who have been pushed out for telling the truth and opposing the narrative. John Pilger, Chris Hayes, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal and even a comedian ‘working out of his garage whilst stoned’, Jimmy Dore, (who after all has got more right than TNYT for ****st’s sake!).
Im not sure we can ever return to a mainstream media that is honest, in my lifetime! I think we are seeing an end of a very historically short experiment in western style free-market capitalist democracy, which finally consumed and destroyed itself.
Excellent, on-point post. Pat Buchanan has been on this since the 90s. The DC foreign policy elites feared Donald Trump more than anything because he was threatening to bypass these corrupt bureaucrats and put an 'America First' doctrine in place (& expose their corruption). That's why they had a collective heart attack over Trump speaking directly with Zelenskyy, and the second impeachment. The American people deserve better.
Do we? Do the American people deserve better? The results of the midterms sadly make me think that we are, civically speaking, too lazy to really engage.
Do our legislators really legislate anymore? Or do "the leaders" and non-elected staff staple together 1,000 unread pages which get passed and the money flows ---- no auditing, of course.
And even though it is a Constitutional co-equal branch of government, no judicial decision is legit if it rules against your interest, right? Just ask our President who totally ignores Supreme Court rulings to impose his Party's will.
Watching the limited reporting of the Chinese protests, and the "non-singing" of the Iranian team at the World Cup --- we American people ARE a privileged bunch, and that includes our protesting class which is always whining about something, will never be satisfied, and will never be at risk like those brave Chinese and Iranians. I am disgusted. Freedom-wise, we have it so easy and we take it so for granted.
Finally, I agree that the elites will do whatever it takes to take out any threat to their system (which it is now obvious they almost completely control). Relentless against Trump. Obvious against Musk. We little people are just along for the ride.
Look no further than "biden", a demented senile shell of the man who he was once was, aka the "leader of the free world" as good evidence of what I just said.
Truly. I remember Joe Biden well, never liked him, but he's been there since forever. Joe Biden was smart, and very articulate. He was wrong about everything too, but nevermind.
That Joe Biden is clearly gone. That will happen to most of us if we live long enough. What's bizarre though is how a normal person can watch him struggling hard to form a sentence or to even find the exit in a familiar place, and STILL think, "My President. The leader of the free world!", is perfect proof that partisanship will destroy ones capacity to reason, to even see clearly.
Yep, and we can (strangely) add Nixon to the list!
He pulled out of Vietnam and opened the door to China, both against the wishes of the State Department and the CIA.
What happened to Nixon? He was impeached and resigned based on leaks from the deputy director of the FBI (Deep Throat) who was leaking to The Washington Post, who (in my opinion) knew who he was all along. Nixon’s sin of course was the cover-up and errr...swearing, not the break-in , and today it would be almost politics as usual. But, my point is that it is eerily similar to the Trump story! A President who worked outside of the ‘accepted’ wishes of the unelected state.
Compare Nixon’s and Trump’s ‘sins’ (that the media destroyed them for) against Johnson’s or Reagan’s or Bush’s! It’s almost laughable! Nobody EVER gets impeached for committing provable war crimes and lying the US into an illegal war that kills hundreds of thousands of innocent pple! But, they get impeached and totally destroyed for relatively minor misdemeanors that the media pretends is somehow more relevant!
"His secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia was a war crime of historic proportions, but no one even remembers that anymore."
Good to remind us Americans of this grim history, but I do want to amend it just a bit: the people of Laos and Cambodia remember those bombings. I know this from talking to some of the descendants of those who experienced it.
Thanks I stand corrected. I had read that the bombings were "largely forgotten" somewhere and was relying on that.
My comment was mostly about Americans and Westerners in general.
"MAG has reached a historic milestone — earlier this month, our teams in Laos removed and safely disposed of their 300,000th unexploded bomb.
Between 1964 and 1973, Laos became, per capita, the most heavily bombed country in the world, with over two million tonnes of bombs dropped during the Vietnam War — a tonne for each person living in Laos at the time.
The airstrikes were mostly aimed at disrupting movement along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a key logistical supply route used by the North Vietnamese.
Bombing raids unleashed an estimated 250 million cluster bombs, about 30 per cent of which failed to explode. But the ones that did not kill on impact have, instead, laid dormant ever since — ready to strike at any moment.
Every unexploded bomb littering the land represents a threat to life and a barrier to development, trapping whole communities in fear.
More than 50,000 people have been killed by unexploded bombs, 20,000 since the war ended. Almost half have been children."
OK Bill, you just blew my mind with that 300,000 unexploded bombs stat...just when you think you have some idea of the extent of the horror, someone comes along to clue you in just a bit more...thanks.
The numbers involved are to use an overused word, "staggering".
". . . from October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously believed: 2,756,941 tons’ worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having “unknown” targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all. The database also shows that the bombing began four years earlier than is widely believed—not under Nixon, but under Lyndon Johnson."
“It sure is a funny way to fight a war. I mean, I have yet to even see Vietnam or Laos. I get up in the morning, have breakfast and fly off. And man, I don’t see anything – just clouds, sky and sun. I get to the coordinates on the map, drop my load and I’m back in time for beer and lunch in the base restaurant complete with air conditioning. After a nap, I usually spend the afternoon swimming.” – American B-52 pilot, Utapao Air Force Base, Thailand
Well of course, Nixon was elected on the promise of ending the war, and had effectively reduced the US presence to minimum ground troops and had handed that role back to the South Vietnamese. Saigon fell after Nixon had resigned over the Watergate scandal so we will never know if he would have sent US troops back into Vietnam, but Ford was happy to pull out and end US involvement.
You are correct to point out Nixon’s war crimes, which makes my point. That is not what he was impeached for! He was impeached and resigned over an amateurish break-in by a bunch of clowns which he then tried to cover up.
US presidents are criminalised for trying to end military conflicts and reduce the military budget it seems...
It literally does not matter (much) who is acting as the President of America as he is not in charge. The power structure in America has nothing to do with the official flow charts, or that "piece of paper" formerly known as the "US Constitution". The President merely presides over one the several leading power centres. He is not the 'decider'.
Trump found that out. The hard way.
Entirely correct. This is particularly true of US foreign policy. US foreign policy and its long term geopolitical goals is the province of the US State Department and the CIA, not the President, and they in turn decide policy with the Washington think-tanks funded by military and industrial conglomerates.
Obama found this out very quickly when he became President, and so did Trump. The difference is that Obama did as he was told, but Trump did not!
Trump’s ‘mistake’ was that he thought it was the President decided who to negotiate with and who to make a deal with and this was seen as very dangerous to all those people and the massive industry that makes money through never-ending wars and conflict. Trump’s carrot and stick approach might lead to peace breaking out and peace is anathema to the warmongers in Washington.
The people who are the most to blame for this situation are the media, whose job is to tell the truth and expose the totally corrupted US foreign policy military establishment, now being run by the unelected ‘permanent state’. Not only do they not do this, but they themselves have been co-opted and serve as a weapon against anyone who opposes the unelected state or threatens to expose it, even within their own industry, and Assange is the exemplar of this.
The awful shocking reality for me, is that it is the so called ‘liberal’ news outlets who people once trusted; The New York Times, NBC, The Guardian and the BBC etc, have done the most to destroy public trust in the media. They are constantly caught lying, yet carry on as though they are the beacons of democracy and somehow represent a ‘free and honest’ press. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Since the invasion of Granada and Panama and the first Gulf War etc, I have been telling anyone I can: “Do not trust any media at all, particularly regarding foreign policy! Presume they are lying and then try to work your way back to the truth by seeking out those marginalised journalists who have been pushed out for telling the truth and opposing the narrative. John Pilger, Chris Hayes, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal and even a comedian ‘working out of his garage whilst stoned’, Jimmy Dore, (who after all has got more right than TNYT for ****st’s sake!).
Im not sure we can ever return to a mainstream media that is honest, in my lifetime! I think we are seeing an end of a very historically short experiment in western style free-market capitalist democracy, which finally consumed and destroyed itself.
"US Foreign Policy has never changed." - Scott Horton
Excellent, on-point post. Pat Buchanan has been on this since the 90s. The DC foreign policy elites feared Donald Trump more than anything because he was threatening to bypass these corrupt bureaucrats and put an 'America First' doctrine in place (& expose their corruption). That's why they had a collective heart attack over Trump speaking directly with Zelenskyy, and the second impeachment. The American people deserve better.
Do we? Do the American people deserve better? The results of the midterms sadly make me think that we are, civically speaking, too lazy to really engage.
Do our legislators really legislate anymore? Or do "the leaders" and non-elected staff staple together 1,000 unread pages which get passed and the money flows ---- no auditing, of course.
And even though it is a Constitutional co-equal branch of government, no judicial decision is legit if it rules against your interest, right? Just ask our President who totally ignores Supreme Court rulings to impose his Party's will.
Watching the limited reporting of the Chinese protests, and the "non-singing" of the Iranian team at the World Cup --- we American people ARE a privileged bunch, and that includes our protesting class which is always whining about something, will never be satisfied, and will never be at risk like those brave Chinese and Iranians. I am disgusted. Freedom-wise, we have it so easy and we take it so for granted.
Finally, I agree that the elites will do whatever it takes to take out any threat to their system (which it is now obvious they almost completely control). Relentless against Trump. Obvious against Musk. We little people are just along for the ride.
Most bills are not read by the Congress.
"biden" is not in charge
https://youtu.be/1eXOXEKEaQM
So who is?
Look no further than "biden", a demented senile shell of the man who he was once was, aka the "leader of the free world" as good evidence of what I just said.
....and he was always a very mediocre legislator with no good ideas and many bad ones.
His whole miserable career Biden did the bidding of the deep and enduring powers, and of course the rich.
His prison bill resulted a vast gulag unprecedented in history.
Indeed, when I see Biden, I see a corn husk.
Truly. I remember Joe Biden well, never liked him, but he's been there since forever. Joe Biden was smart, and very articulate. He was wrong about everything too, but nevermind.
That Joe Biden is clearly gone. That will happen to most of us if we live long enough. What's bizarre though is how a normal person can watch him struggling hard to form a sentence or to even find the exit in a familiar place, and STILL think, "My President. The leader of the free world!", is perfect proof that partisanship will destroy ones capacity to reason, to even see clearly.
This Biden: https://youtu.be/VIZmZe7fe3E
Versus this 'biden': https://youtu.be/H6uingtAWbk
You got it, Bill. Well said.
It was harder for JFK.
Yep, and we can (strangely) add Nixon to the list!
He pulled out of Vietnam and opened the door to China, both against the wishes of the State Department and the CIA.
What happened to Nixon? He was impeached and resigned based on leaks from the deputy director of the FBI (Deep Throat) who was leaking to The Washington Post, who (in my opinion) knew who he was all along. Nixon’s sin of course was the cover-up and errr...swearing, not the break-in , and today it would be almost politics as usual. But, my point is that it is eerily similar to the Trump story! A President who worked outside of the ‘accepted’ wishes of the unelected state.
Compare Nixon’s and Trump’s ‘sins’ (that the media destroyed them for) against Johnson’s or Reagan’s or Bush’s! It’s almost laughable! Nobody EVER gets impeached for committing provable war crimes and lying the US into an illegal war that kills hundreds of thousands of innocent pple! But, they get impeached and totally destroyed for relatively minor misdemeanors that the media pretends is somehow more relevant!
Nixon did not "pull out" of Vietnam.
He did bring in Vietnamization that reduced the numbers troops.
His secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia was a war crime of historic proportions, but no one even remembers that anymore.
"His secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia was a war crime of historic proportions, but no one even remembers that anymore."
Good to remind us Americans of this grim history, but I do want to amend it just a bit: the people of Laos and Cambodia remember those bombings. I know this from talking to some of the descendants of those who experienced it.
Thanks I stand corrected. I had read that the bombings were "largely forgotten" somewhere and was relying on that.
My comment was mostly about Americans and Westerners in general.
"MAG has reached a historic milestone — earlier this month, our teams in Laos removed and safely disposed of their 300,000th unexploded bomb.
Between 1964 and 1973, Laos became, per capita, the most heavily bombed country in the world, with over two million tonnes of bombs dropped during the Vietnam War — a tonne for each person living in Laos at the time.
The airstrikes were mostly aimed at disrupting movement along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a key logistical supply route used by the North Vietnamese.
Bombing raids unleashed an estimated 250 million cluster bombs, about 30 per cent of which failed to explode. But the ones that did not kill on impact have, instead, laid dormant ever since — ready to strike at any moment.
Every unexploded bomb littering the land represents a threat to life and a barrier to development, trapping whole communities in fear.
More than 50,000 people have been killed by unexploded bombs, 20,000 since the war ended. Almost half have been children."
https://reliefweb.int/report/lao-peoples-democratic-republic/mag-removes-300000th-unexploded-bomb-laos
OK Bill, you just blew my mind with that 300,000 unexploded bombs stat...just when you think you have some idea of the extent of the horror, someone comes along to clue you in just a bit more...thanks.
The numbers involved are to use an overused word, "staggering".
". . . from October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously believed: 2,756,941 tons’ worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having “unknown” targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all. The database also shows that the bombing began four years earlier than is widely believed—not under Nixon, but under Lyndon Johnson."
https://gsp.yale.edu/sites/default/files/walrus_cambodiabombing_oct06.pdf
“It sure is a funny way to fight a war. I mean, I have yet to even see Vietnam or Laos. I get up in the morning, have breakfast and fly off. And man, I don’t see anything – just clouds, sky and sun. I get to the coordinates on the map, drop my load and I’m back in time for beer and lunch in the base restaurant complete with air conditioning. After a nap, I usually spend the afternoon swimming.” – American B-52 pilot, Utapao Air Force Base, Thailand
https://apjjf.org/2012/10/47/Jeremy-Kuzmarov/3855/article.html
"The U.S. Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 “Victim Nations” Since World War II"
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051
I remember after 911, the big question on many American minds was, "Why do they hate us?"
They really don't know.
"Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do." Someone said.
And the beat goes on in Ukraine.
Well of course, Nixon was elected on the promise of ending the war, and had effectively reduced the US presence to minimum ground troops and had handed that role back to the South Vietnamese. Saigon fell after Nixon had resigned over the Watergate scandal so we will never know if he would have sent US troops back into Vietnam, but Ford was happy to pull out and end US involvement.
You are correct to point out Nixon’s war crimes, which makes my point. That is not what he was impeached for! He was impeached and resigned over an amateurish break-in by a bunch of clowns which he then tried to cover up.
US presidents are criminalised for trying to end military conflicts and reduce the military budget it seems...
Exactly. Thanks.
"That little Kennedy, he thought he was a god." - Allen Dulles