Sunday, December 29, 2019

A PATRICK HENRY ESSAY (No. 5-98) THE POLITICAL LEGACY OF PATRICK HENRY


red hill

This is not my work.  It was censored from the Red Hill Website (it was originally at www.redhill.org/history_essay.html). I just found an archived copy of this essay here https://web.archive.org/web/20021212044753/www.redhill.org/history_essay.html.  I am reposting it since it is important to the debate.

A PATRICK HENRY ESSAY
(No. 5-98)
THE POLITICAL LEGACY OF PATRICK HENRY
By Henry Mayer

A talk prepared for the 160th Anniversary of the Founding of Emory & Henry College, Charter Day, March 21, 1996
Two hundred and twenty-one years ago come Saturday [March 23, 1775] Patrick Henry delivered a powerful sermon on the illusions of hope and the inevitability of war that ended with a phrase that still reverberates in our political consciousness. We may not know very much about the man or the context of his speech, but on the basis of that one ringing sentence Patrick Henry occupies a place in the annals of American oratory and the pantheon of American patriots. I hope I won't shock you too badly by suggesting that this approach short-changes both our hero and ourselves. It's not the quotation, but the career that commands attention--at least fifteen terms in the legislature, leadership in the historic revolutionary conventions, the continental congress, and the 1788 ratifying convention, three successive annual terms as Virginia's first governor and three additional years later, and--from first to last--a deep and affectionate popularity that amounted to folk hero status and for a long time made Henry more highly cherished than George Washington in the hearts of his Virginia countrymen. Because Henry's career was so much tied to Virginia's, and because the significance of the states as political and cultural entities has atrophied over two centuries of national growth, the significance of Henry's role has dwindled, too, into that of a provincial politician. It is true that he was no philosopher and, unlike four of his Virginia compatriots, he never became president. Yet what Henry set in motion in Virginia eventually shook America and reshaped its politics.

Patrick Henry was on of the first and greatest political mavericks in American history, and his career stands as an inspired example of popular democratic leadership combined with public service. Although his antagonists dismissed him as a demagogue who whipped up the masses to serve ignoble ends of personal ambition, I would argue, rather, that he had the great public gift of articulating, in an age of deference, what the silenced majority thought and felt. All great popular leaders have this ability to express to the powerful what the powerless feel and to develop new forms of protest and participation by which they can make their concerns register on the political agenda. Time and again in a long career that spanned the quarter-century between the Stamp Act protests and the conflict over ratification of the U.S. Constitution, patrick Henry took the unorthodox, advanced, uncomfortably radical and provocative position and made himself, as one admirer said, "the very devil in politicks."

Did this make him a patriot or a subversive? That depends upon whom you ask, and when. To George III or Lord North in 1775, Henry was the bane of sedition; but he was equally seen as seditious and rebellious by the Speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses and a good many other aristocrats in 1765 when he loudly advocated massive public defiance of the Stamp Act while his elders--and social betters--wanted a more traditional and sedate approach. (To protect their position, incidentally, they did not scruple to rescind the vote as soon as Henry's back was turned and expunge his most radical recommendation from the record.) To James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in 1787-88, Henry was "the great adversary" who sounded "the trumpet of discord" with his implacable opposition to their plans for a powerful new central government. To a considerable extent history has shared their perspective: Henry is remembered for his revolt against the King, but his opposition to the Constitution is regarded as cranky, wrong-headed, and if not precisely seditious, certainly an affront to national progress and historical good order.

To Henry, however, his career from first to last represented fidelity to the fundamental maxims of a free society. Since our system rests--somewhat uneasily at times--upon the twin principles of majority rule and minority rights, it is notable that his political legacy is the dual one in that he both opened the door to democracy and protected--indeed, exemplified--the right to dissent.

His first important contribution--and the key, really, to everything that followed--lay in the area of religious liberty. Henry had grown up partly in the snug and cozy world of the Virginia gentry--his father was a magistrate and his uncle an Anglican minister--and partly in the world of the evangelical dissenters--his mother, grandfather, and many kinfolk had joined the Presbyterian revival of the 1740s. Patrick Henry sympathized with the spiritual force of the revival, though he never experienced the new birth himself, and he sensed the cultural and political challenge to the gentry's aristocratic control that lay behind it. Though he knew the g entry's ways and remained comfortable with tavern and courthouse politics, his father's declining status and his mother's religious alienation made him somewhat of an outsider.

In the 1760s, as a young lawyer, he made his reputation defending a second wave of revivalists--the itinerant Baptist preachers who were subjected to fines, beatings, and persecution by the local authorities. When the preachers were indicted for disturbing the peace, Patrick Henry often came along to disturb the indicters, and it is very important to emphasize that in 1772 he sponsored a bill in the House that would have gone beyond the traditional principle of English toleration (the state's indulgence) to the recognition of a natural right of conscience to "have and enjoy the full & free exercise" of religion without molestation or penalty by the state. It was Henry's concept of "free exercise" that he, working with young James Madison, incorporated into the Virginia Declaration of Rights during the momentous convention of 1776, and that helped reorient the controversy over religious freedom from the issue of what dissenters could do to the question of what the state could not do--and thus provided the scaffold upon which the First Amendment was later built.

To return, however, to the revival. In an important, if somewhat paradoxical sense, Henry's protection of the right to dissent animated his ability to create a more democratic politics, Patrick Henry understood intuitively that there was both a religious and a political awakening going on in Virginia, and he became the evangelistic leader of the revolution because he translated the subversive elements of religious discord into politics and made the dissenters and the ordinary folk excluded from the traditional political process and skeptical of aristocratic rule his power base. He fused the evangelical and gentry style into a new and powerful political identity--the angry outsider who turned old political forms toward new ends.

In this sense, Patrick Henry was a mediating figure--and by that I don't mean someone with a gift for compromise, but rather a figure capable of embodying and guiding the historic transition from the hierarchical society of the colonial 18th century to the democratic society of the 19th century American republic. Henry knew how the gentry operated, but was not wholly committed to it: he sympathized with the yeoman's condition, yet aspired to more for himself; in the mixture he became a man who could reach out to ordinary people, speak to them with fire and conviction, meld them into one community of belief, and turned that massed opinion into a profoundly new political force. It was that taking of politics "out of doors" that angered the aristocracy: it was that appeal to public opinion which antagonized Thomas Jefferson until he applied the lessons ten and twenty years later; it was that popular militancy that made the revolutionary work of the colonial assemblies and conventions possible, and it was that commitment to the centrality of popular constituencies and local majority governance that seemed most directly threatened by the new centralized administrative apparatus mandated b y the Philadelphia convention of 1787.

Henry became known as " a son of thunder," the new Boanerges, a political apostle of popular government, and the epithet does evoke the natural fervor of the man. Just as the religious revivalists engaged in a soulful, personal preaching that mocked the polite discourse of the Anglicans, so did Henry employ a natural, homely style that mocked the elaborate rules of rhetoric and the flowery Latin quotations and the classical allusions so admired by the gentry. He broke the mold of traditional political address and rhetorical argument and fashioned a new one--partly theatrical, partly sermonic--that combined an actor's flair with a preacher's fervor and transported audiences even more than it persuaded them.

The "liberty or death" speech (delivered, by the way, not in the capitol at Williamsburg, but in a church, in Richmond) resonates with Biblical references and cadences, but let's take another look at that famous concluding phrase--"I know not what course others may take but, as for me, give me liberty or give me death." What posterity hears is the devotion to liberty, but what his audience heard, and what we need to hear as well--is the emphasis, as in evangelical religion, on personal choice and individual commitment, here directed toward unorthodox and daringly original political ends. "You never heard anything more infamously insolent than P. Henry's speech," a Tory merchant wrote. "This creature is so infatuated that he goes about praying and preaching amongst the common people."

In the longest and most reliable texts we have for Patrick Henry, the hundreds of hours of heroic speech he offered in the 1788 ratifying convention in defense of the agrarian majority against the centralizing tendencies of the commercial elite, we see again the personal style at work. He portrays himself as an aged "sentinel" of liberty; he tries to imagine the effects of the proposed new government upon the ordinary folk whom he fears will "sip sorrow" in a consolidated government of implied powers, unrestricted by the traditional bill of rights: "I speak as one poor individual," he says, in that insistent, self-dramatizing way he had, "but I speak the language of thousands."

To Madison's reassurances that civil liberties were protected by implication, Henry replied, "If they can use implication for us, they can also use implication against us." Notice the identification with the majority, even as he sought protection for the minority. "We are giving power, they are getting power; judge, then, on which side of implication will be used!" Henry said he would be for modest increases in the powers of the central government. "If we grant too little power today, we can grant more tomorrow. But if we grant too much today, tomorrow will never come." This, in a nutshell, was Henry's traditional Whig skepticism, fidelity to the idea that the polis itself (the electorate, as it was coming to be understood) had a civic obligation to supervise the governors, and it is this sense of duty that is most difficult to exercise in the era of mass communications and the modern nation-state.

Henry's sustained attack was silenced only once, ironically, by a thunderstorm that rattled the windows of the building so noisily that the session had to be adjourned. The convention was closely divided, but despite his willingness to accept consolidation if only a bill of rights were added before ratification, Henry could not prevail. Virginia ratified the Constitution by ten votes and Henry had to accept Madison's promise that the new Congress would consider Virginia's list of suggested amendments along with those from other states. This was a process that the redoubtable Henry would not leave to chance, and he applied some formidable political pressure to ensure their consideration, forcing Madison to run for Congress in a largely anti-federal district and to make a campaign promise (significantly accomplished ina latter to a Baptist minister) that he would work for amendments. It was the mobilization of public opinion that underlay Henry's first great triumph in the Stamp Act protests, and it was this novel, popular constituency-based politics that formed his last, for I will leave to you the beguiling question of apportioning the credit for the Bill of Rights between the man who drafted the first ten amendments and the man who made him do it.

In this connection, however, I need to say something about a recent popular misconception concerning Patrick Henry's legacy and the genesis of the Second Amendment, which states, "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Despite efforts of a number of misguided scholars to construe this language as justifying individual, unregulated gun ownership, I am firmly convinced that the Second Amendment is concerned with the state's power to control its own militia as a civilian alternative to a professional standing army. In raising the issue in the Virginia Convention Patrick Henry several times pointed to Art. I, Section 8, Clause 16, as an example of the potentially threatening effect of dual state and congressional jurisdiction over the militia and the possibly dangerous union of the purse and sword vested in Congress. Yet wielding the scholar's power of the ellipse several partisans of gun ownership have edited Henry's remarks about how best to regulate the militia into an inflammatory half-truth "The great object is that every man be armed....Every one who is able may have a gun." The NRA has blown this up into a poster-sized blurb embossed with Patrick Henry's image.

This is not, I repeat NOT, part of Patrick Henry's legacy. Clearly speaking of the problem of militia organization, what he actually said is, "The great object is that every man [of the militia] be armed.--But can the people to afford to pay for double sets of arms &c.? Every one who is able may have a gun. But have we not learned by experience, that necessary as it is to have arms, and though our assembly has, by a succession of laws for many years, endeavored to have the militia completely armed, it is still far from being the case. When this power is given up to Congress without limitation or bounds, how will your militia be armed? You trust to chance...."

Not to belabor the argument, but cinch it, I would also remind you that the liberty or death speech itself was in support of a resolution to put the colony in a mode of defense, and the plan proposed by Henry's committee as a result of its passage included a militia law that described in great detail not only the number of men, but the amount of ammunition to be raised by a collective levy, and a very clear procedure for maintaining county and provincial control over the militia system. If Henry's remarks were intended to cast doubt upon the adequacy of a hypothetical Congressional militia law, they only affirmed his commitment to the traditional method of state control over a militia that, far from being a privatized collection of gun-toting individuals, was a community temporarily called to arms and always subservient to public authority and law.

Having said perhaps too much about the effort to distort Patrick Henry's legacy by putting words in his mouth, I now need to say something about a silence in Henry's legacy. Like the other Virginia framers Henry both owned slaves and owned up to the impossibility of squaring the existence of chattel slavery with the ideals of the Revolution. Sensitive as he was to the influence of religious radicals, he at least had the decency to respond to an exhortation by a Quaker leader, Robert Pleasants, who asked all the prominent patriots to follow his own example of legally emancipating his slaves and rehiring them as paid laborers. Yet Henry's letter is both forthright and evasive. He concedes the evil, laments his entrapment in the system, suggests it will be abolished in the fullness of time, and declares that he will transmit to posterity, together with his slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery. Henry was skilled at the politics of gesture and brave in defiance of convention, but on this issue--the gravest and most fateful in our history--the common path of least resistance and left successor generations to sip the sorrow of his era's default.

Henry, we may say in extenuation, was a man of his times, and this brings me to a final point about legacies. No matter what we take from the past, what we make of it is our own. Henry's time is done. Independence was secured, the Constitution was ratified; we have an income tax and a standing army, interstate highways and social security, federally insured bank deposits, pure food and drug laws, and a minimum wage. We have abolished slavery; we have eliminated property qualifications for voting and outlawed disenfranchisement on the basis of race or sex. We have become so great, so centralized, so industrialized a nation that it is hard to credit Henry's anti-federal vision, rooted in an agrarian localism that no longer exists, as a once-plausible alternative. Yet the larger significance is not the outcome of this free-wheeling debate, but an appreciation that it took place at all. Dissenters like Henry deserve to be recognized as framers, too, because they took politics seriously enough to contend for their beliefs and animate one pamphleteer's maxim that "in principles of politics, as well as in religious faith, every man ought to think for himself."

This is a responsibility that we must accept. We cannot make an icon of Patrick Henry and fling his remarks, however resonant they may be, at our contemporary problems. Of course one hears echoes of Henry's populism and skepticism in modern controversies, and the intersection of religion and politics remains as dangerous and unsettling in our day as it was in his. But hear my point. They are echoes, not mandates. It is not enough to choose a position on the basis of what patrick Henry might have thought or said or done. What we can best take from him, in the final analysis, is inspiration for active engagement in the public affairs of our own day.

The patriots at odds in the 1760s, 70s, and 80s struggled with the endemic American conflict between liberty and authority, between the realm of personal freedom and the power of the state. And it is part of our paradoxical politics today. We are a people, after all, who rail against government even as we insist upon law enforcement, who praise self-rule but suspect politics, who glory in an egalitarian credo yet tolerate profound inequities of class, race, and gender, and who celebrate diversity while railing against outsiders and harshly judging the world's people who choose not to follow our example. We yearn for past certainties and spurn past restraints, fearing change even as we desire it. Patrick Henry was born into a world that seemed both staid and settled, and yet pulsated with forces that, within his lifetime, reshaped his world and pointed in the direction of ours. We live in a world that seems to throb with forces beyond our control, and we are faced with conflicts in values perhaps more profound than any faced by Patrick Henry and a new century whose dan seems clouded with uncertainty rather than bright with promise. What new era will we help to deliver? We need to accept the challenge, not shrink from it, understand politics as a civic calling, not a spectator sport or a giant yawn, and not leave it to another George or Patrick or Bill or Bob or Newt or Ross to do it for us.

Modern historians once stigmatized the Anti-federalists as "men of little faith." had Patrick Henry heard the charge, he would have clearly rejected it. Citizens, he believed, are not supposed to have faith in their governors; they are supposed to have faith in themselves. We can best honor Patrick Henry's political legacy of democratic participation and individual dissent by recognizing the legitimacy, indeed, the necessity of political conflict in a free society. As a sentinel for liberty Patrick Henry manifested the citizens' essential skepticism against entrenched power, yet he did so mindful of the need to nourish the commonweal and lead lives of civic virtue. he was a political man in an age that honored politics and believed in its possibilities. In speaking the language of thousands, he teaches us, most of all, to speak for ourselves and our deepest aspirations for the common good.

Henry Mayer is the author of Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic. His new book, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery, will be published in fall 1998 by St. Martin's Press. The Patrick Memorial Foundation is grateful to Mr. Mayer for permission to publish "The Political Legacy of Patrick Henry."

Saturday, December 28, 2019

Who Rigged the 2016 Elections? Hint: It wasn't the Russians

The reason I know that Russiagate was a crock was that I saw what went on.

And here is the documentation that the DNC rigged the 2016 primary:
https://medium.com/@brandondegraff/the-dnc-rigged-the-2016-primary-for-hillary-clinton-c0752fbf3140

BC Degraff does a fantastic job of documenting what happened to the Sanders campaign in 2016.

What gets me is that this was so blatant, yet MSNBC and Wretched Madcow never addressed this. Instead the media spent a lot of time on the Russian Interference distraction tactic.

Any "Russian interference" was negligible compared to the internal corruption of the system.

Now, why isn't Adam Schiff spending his time on this?

Oh, yeah, the Democratic party was the perpetrator.

Friday, December 20, 2019

Kayfabe Impeachment

Remember the time Trump tweeted "Covfefe"? and it created a stir because no one knew what "Covfefe" was? Trump tweeted again at 6:09 am: "Who can figure out the true meaning of "covfefe" ??? Enjoy!" and the original tweet was removed.

 People were confused. Lots of way out guesses.

But some people know about World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE) and that Trump is a WWE Hall of Famer.. Let's add in that not only is Trump an actor, he's a reality show star.

Kayfabe is a term in WWE:
In professional wrestling, kayfabe (also called work or worked) is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as "real" or "true", specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not of a staged or predetermined nature of any kind. The term kayfabe has evolved to also become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the direct or indirect presence of the general public.
"Covfefe" doesn't make sense, but the tweet makes a whole lot more sense if we change the word to what it should have been "kayfabe":
"Despite the constant negative press covfefe"
"Despite the constant negative press faked hatred"
We know that the Dems wanted a pied piper candidate (Wikileaked Podesta e-mail). Why not have Trump be the "jobber" or faked opposition in WWE Terms? The Candidate would be a great reality TV show as CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said about Trump, "It May Not Be Good for America, but It's Damn Good for CBS."

Trump received nearly 6 Billion in free coverage because he was good for ratings. Better yet, not only was he the "jobber", but he could be the "heel" (villain, baddie) to Hillary Clinton's "face" (the good one). Trump acts like a jerk and distracts from Clinton. Did Trump just say "pussy"?

Got it?

Except things didn't work to plan. Hillary Clinton was so bad, which was something mentioned in 2007. But you were a "misogynist" if you said in in the 2016. Clinton was so bad that the result of the 2008 Michigan had Clinton "win" with 51% of the vote, but the runner ups were "Uncommitted" 31% and "undecided" 9% (total 40% for nobody).

The way that translated in 2016 was that she couldn't get enough votes in what she thought were the close states: Michigan being one of those close states.

That meant that Trump would move reality shows from "The Candidate" to "the Presidency of the United States". He would keep the role of the heel and the public could boo him to their hearts content.

They would have "the impeachment" as a spin off where the Democrats could pretend to look into what went wrong in 2016 while really doing fuck all about the problem. But like "The candidate" the Dems didn't plan on public reaction. The Dems had to create a show for the public.

But the problem was that the Dems knew it was a bad idea and would be doomed to failure.

Worse, if the public twigged to what was actually going on in Ukraine they would be even more pissed at the Dems.

Pelosi's failure to pass on the articles of impeachment is an admission the impeachment was kayfabe. A show trial to try and make the public happy. Democrats can watch their people attack Trump. Republicans can watch their people defend Trump. Both Democrats and Republicans could feel good.

Sort of.

Some people got it and didn't feel so good. They couldn't understand why.

It's like covfefe. People were guessing. People were confused until they understand it was Trump breaking kayfabe.

You won't know what to feel until you understand the impeachment was just duopoly kayfabe.

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Yes, Impeachment is a Show Trial

Let's start this with a couple of definitions:

a judicial trial held in public with the intention of influencing or satisfying public opinion, rather than of ensuring justice.
Now, The impeachment seems to be playing to the base of partisan Democrats since, as the Republicans correctly pointed out, the Democrats made it clear from BEFORE Trump even took office that they would impeach him.

Next characteristic of a show trial:
A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant.
The fact that the vote pretty much went down party lines is indicative that the outcome was predetermined. My Rep., Madeline Dean, has members of Ukrainian Nationalist Stepan Bandera's family in it. I know at least one contacted her repeatedly to tell her that the impeachment was a bad idea. Not sure whether Rep. Dean's vote was due to willfull ignorance or just towing party line.

Ukraine is a cesspit of scandal and corruption and to have brought charges against Trump based on events happening there was a serious error of judgement.

It was already ordained that the House would impeach and this would die a death in the Senate. Mitch McConnell said as much. Now, Pelosi is holding off on sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate.

A public trial with the intent of satisfying public opinion with a predetermined outcome is the perfect description for what just happened. I dare anyone to argue that wasn't what happened.

But please don't blame the left. I know this lefty would have preferred that the Democrats have been productive with their time and work on election reform. But I know that it was easier to find blame in others and do the neo-McCartyite totalitarian thing.

Because any serious investigation into what went wrong in 2016 would find plenty of dirt on the Dems.

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Impeachment WTF?

I don’t want impeachment “to be a way of life in our country.” 
The Democrats impeachment thing is totally pathetic. The impeachment is a prime example of Trump Derangement Syndrome. The Dems SHOULD have spent the past few years looking into what really went wrong in 2016. Instead, they have spent the time on total bullshit.

Worse, they announced they would impeach Trump early on. So, points for the Republicans who are pointing out that the impeachment is a joke.

The really pathetic thing about the Impeachment hearings is listening to the Democrats trying to justify giving military aid to Ukraine as being in the US national interest.

Um, Ukraine is rife with neo-Nazis and this money is going to them. I want to know how giving money that ends up in the hands of Right Sector and the Azov Brigade is in the US interests?
One writer said that:
the Democrats’ impeachment bid as a dead man’s hand, Aces & Eights. But the actual cards on the table are even worse—more like two-seven, unsuited.
But make the analogy even more accurate by saying the Republican are sitting there with a royal flush while the Dems are bluffing. I'm not sure how the Democrats could be so blinded by TDS to miss that they are running straight into the Grand Canyon without a parachute.

These people are so blinded by partisanism that they aren't listening to themselves let alone other people.

Seriously, watching the impeachment debates is like watching a really bad movie where you know how it's going to end. You watch it anyway to see how much worse it can get.

My Questions from watching this are:
Democrats: How does giving money that ends up in the hands of neo-Nazi Groups like Right Sector and the Azov brigade in the US national interests? Very important since those people train US right wing crazies.
Republicans: how can you say that Trump was "democratically elected" when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of 2.1%? It was the anti-Democratic electoral college that put Trump in Place. 
 Seriously, this mess could have been avoided if there had been a serious examination of what went wrong in 2016. But that would look bad for both parties. Although I think the Dems would come out of it looking much worse than the Republicans.

I have to wonder what more could go wrong here. The ending is obvious, this is a partisan exercise where Trump will be acquitted in the Senate.

You have to wonder why the Democrats are bothering with all this. Since the real time to remove Trump is coming in less than a year. Is it because the Democrats have nothing to offer?

Monday, December 16, 2019

The Impeachment of Hillary Clinton.

I love alternative reality scenarios and this one is easy to do.

Here is the alternative reality where Hillary Clinton becomes president because she won the popular vote with a margin of 2.1% (or nearly 3 million votes). Forget the Electoral College result because Katherine the Great didn't persuade the founding fathers to put that in the Constitution.

The Republicans control the house 241-192 and Senate by 52-48.

https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results
 
Are you telling me that Hillary Clinton WOULDN'T be under investigation for anything and everything? The Clinton Foundation is still under scrutiny in our current reality (and "no" it hasn't gotten a clean bill of health, but Trump is really great for distracting people).


I'm sure there would have been loads of things the Republicans could go after Hillary for, but since I mentioned the Clinton Foundation, let's go with that. Especially since you can see a clip of the December 2018 hearings here.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4767670/user-clip-clinton-foundation-charity-fraud



“Some interviewees reported conflicts of those raising funds or donors, some of whom may have an expectation of quid pro quo benefits in return for gifts,” the lawyers warned.

I wouldn't be so smug about impeachment if I were a Democrat since the shoe very easily could have been on the other foot.

And I would put money that Clinton would have been impeached and removed since the Republicans had control of both houses after the 2016 election.

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Why Sanders is the only hope for the Democrats.

“Just as he did in Burlington, Sanders is putting his faith not in some mythical negotiating power as Trump did, or in some fantasy of coming to the table in good faith negotiations with Mitch McConnell as Biden and Obama and Buttigieg do, or even in his ability to jiujitsu the levers of government through superior bureaucratic knowledge as Warren does. He believes, just as he did in Burlington, that the only way to break the back of Congressional gridlock and inertia and neoliberal entrenchment is by putting your faith in the people. In serving as organizer in chief.”
Krystal Ball describes how he can fix things here.

But you don't need a Crystal, or Krystal, ball to see that the Democrats need new blood and real issues to run on in order to win.

Trump being bad won't win elections. Especially not if the alternative is just as bad.
Seriously, both parties are 60-80% the same. I would say 100% the same given how inept they are and how much they wasted time on inane bullshit the past few years.

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Vote Blue No Matter WTF?

Seriously? The Democrats haven't learned squat since 2016. That's due to the fact that they have been blaming everybody but themselves for that election. Toss in that they have been trying to distract people from their mistakes.

Except that is backfiring BIGTIME.

I wouldn't have known or cared about Hunter Biden if the Dumbocrats had that lie, but No they have to involve Donald Trump. The whole shebang looks like a Mexican finger pointing standoff of who is more corrupt in regard to Ukraine.

But we need to get a little history of the situation.

The US want to control Ukraine in order to establish US managed pipeline routes relating to the geopolitical competition over oil and natural gas. The US also wants to advance the US controlled NATO alliance to surround all of Russia's European borders. The Obama administration and the State Department (which Hillary Clinton had built up from 2009 to 2013) assisted in the undemocratic coup in Ukraine which was led by neo-Nazi white supremacists in 2014. This Nationalist group violently took over Ukraine. The Nationalists attempted to make it illegal in Ukraine to speak Russian, a minority who are still a major force in running the Ukraine government.

In Crimea, where the vast majority of residents are Russian, the Crimeans, fearing the Nationalist regime that had just taken over Kiev, quickly voted to rejoin Russia and by agreement with no military action at all, Crimea legally rejoined Russia. There was no supposed ‘invasion’ of Crimea. It did not happen.

Likewise, the people in the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine were also concerned with the Nationalist ethnic cleansing. An election was held, but because a similar annexation of Donbas into Russia would spoil western plans to dominate pipeline routes and control Russia’s border, the fascist government in Kiev immediately moved with its military, to by force squash the vote and stop Donbas from leaving. This resulted in a 2014-2015 civil war in Donbas, in which Russia lent military support to Donbas (but no formal troops) and the US lent mirroring military support to Kiev.

Putin, if anything, is there preventing a possible genocide. Additionally, the Aid being given to the Ukrainian forces is questionable given that it could result in a genocide.

But TRUMP.

This is an excellent example of Trump Derangement Syndrome since very few people are discussing why we are giving aid which could result in a genocide in the first place.

Let's toss in that Hunter Biden's employment with Burisma was also being called into question under the Obama Administration. On the other hand, no one is questioning the propriety of his employment during these hearings.

The problem here is that both Biden and Trump are slimy. Biden has already said not to vote for him if you dislike fracking.

I'm not the only person to point out that Biden is the male version of Hillary Clinton.

The problem is that the Democratic Party's credibility will be shot from the failed attempt to impeach Trump. They can't pull of a repeat of what they did to Sanders in 2016 without totally alienating his supporters.

Maybe there will be a few who are total masochists or idiots, but one of my takeaways from 2016 was that my vote didn't count. The other was that the problems were internal which means the US needs election reform more than they need the circle jerks to remove Trump.

The bottom line is that all the problems which led to Trump's becoming president are still firmly in place. I see the Democrats ready to make the same errors because they are too arrogant to fix their problems.

No, you have to earn my vote, which is why I left the Democratic Party before the DNC in Philadelphia. Don't count on me voting Blue. Or Red.

I don't vote for evil: lesser or otherwise.

That's how we got into this mess in the first place.

This is worth watching for why impeachment will backfire and the Dems will lose if Sanders isn't their candidate:
https://therealnews.com/stories/trump-impeachment-misguided-move

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

The Dems double down on their bad bets.

Ever watch a compulsive gambler?

The Dems are like compulsive gamblers who make bad bets. They double down on the next "sure thing" until they self-destruct.
"Hillary will win in a landslide"
"Comey will vindicate Hillary"
"Russiagate will end trump"
"Ukraine is a done deal: Trump will be impeached"

See a pattern here?


The first problem is that "Russiagate" and "Ukrainegate" both had underlying Democratic misconduct. Clinton's e-mails and Wikileaks for Russiagate where DNC internal emails showed that Clinton WANTED Trump to be her opponent. The media pushed Trump and gave him nearly 6 billion dollars in free publicity.

Ukrainegate's underlying Democratic scandal concerns Joe Biden's son, Hunter, receiving a job from Buresma. Something which could have flown under the radar if the Dems kept their moufs shut.

Naw, they have to draw attention to Trump asking the Ukrainian President to look into it. There is also the money/military aid/arms sale  which was alleged to be held up by Trump and whether this is tied to the Biden thing. There is another aspect to this: a Ukrainian company called Burisma Holdings.

Like REFCO, Hillary Clinton's Commodities Broker, Burisma has a dodgy rep:


Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) have conducted in total 15 investigations on Burisma's owner Zlochevsky. In 2016, former Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko accused Burisma subsidiaries of conspiracy and tax evasion of about one billion hryvnias (US$70 million) in 2014–2015, but later during investigation subsidiaries of Burisma were not mentioned. Tax audit of Esko-Pivnich by the State Fiscal Service found some violations in 2016. As a result, 50 million hryvnias (US$1.9 million) of additional taxes was paid to eliminate criminal charges. In total, Burisma paid additional 180 million hryvnias (US$7.44 million) of taxes to avoid further criminal proceedings. A criminal investigation was conducted if natural resources extraction licenses were issued to Burisma subsidiaries legally during the period Zlochevsky held government office. Although violations of the procedure were established by NABU, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office missed procedural deadlines for a lawsuit and the case for nullifying licesenses was dismissed by the court. In October 2019, Prosecutor General Ruslan Riaboshapka announced that all 15 investigation cases will be reviewed.
Let's add in the video of Joe Biden talking about how he was instrumental in getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired for good measure.

At least the Ukrainians get what is going on if the American Public hasn't. A couple of Ukrainian MPs have asked for both Ukraine and US investigate this matter.

How much do you want to be no Ukrainians will be invited to the Partisan mudslinging match?

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Hunter Biden is one very impressive person

Чи розуміє Гантер Байден українську?

Мало того, що українська мова - це інша мова. Він має інший алфавіт. Гaнтер зміг зрозуміти достатньо, щоб зробити гарну роботу?
Which is "Does Hunter Biden understand Ukrainian? Not only is Ukrainian a different language. It has a different alphabet. Was Hunter able to understand enough to do a good job?"

Serious question since Biden was getting 50k a month to be a compliance officer for a Ukrainian corporation. Wouldn't being able to work in Ukrainian be part of the job description? Even Lt. Col. Vindeman said that Hunter Biden didn't seem to be qualified for the job.  Toss in Even Hunter Biden admits these jobs don't appear to be on the up and up.

We can get into Buresma's corruption as well. And the Ukrainians seem to be on the same page as Trump about this matter as well. I'm not holding my breath to see any Ukrainians give testimony before the house Judiciary Committee.

But it would be interesting.

Let's add in for good measure that Hunter Biden has a similar job with a Chinese corporation.

So, while Trump asks for information on this, which even the Atlantic admits is "accepatble corruption", he's hauled before the Media and public with impeachment proceedings.

Listening to politicians talk about corruption is like Captain Renault being told there is gambling at Rick's place.

I can't wait for all this to blow up.

The better part is that the Ukrainian forces have serious neo-Nazis in their midst: the Azov Brigade. The right could have a field day with all of this!

Friday, December 6, 2019

Dissenting voice on impeachment which got missed by the US media

This law prof makes it clear that he dislikes Trump, but he knows what the public seem to be missing and the Democratic establishment. I don't like Trump, but I also do not like the Democrats.



Unfortunately, he has the pulse of the nation down to a tee.

People are pissed, but they are pissed at the wrong thing. Trump's win was due to a sick system.

The lack of proper introspection into what really went wrong in the 2016 election is what would be much more proper than the bullshit that Trump has been subject to.

This guy is right: both sides of this controversy have demonised the other to justify their defences.

Why isn't he being listened to?