Popular Media – The Leading Rabble in the Sad Story “Trump-Clinton” Remains

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What can anyone really think or say regarding this latest attempt at knocking Donald Trump off his political horse?

SOME OLDER TO NEWER PHOTOS OF TRUMP AND CLINTON

By Jeff Koopersmith, Editor Emeritus

The “obscene” talk that magically moved a couple of dozen fellow and phony Republicans to “un-support” Republican Donald Trump’s bid to beat Hillary Clinton to the Oval Office is more than usually heard in frat houses, gym and club showers, and on long drives where two guys “compare notes” on their sexual conquests.

Some men brag often, others occasionally – but most do so at one time or another – despite CNN’s Jake Tapper’s wail that he was in a fraternity and the gym and never said anything like that – ever!

Well Okay Jake.

However, the true reason that the Republican Party Chiefs and even Trump’s Vice Presidential choice went a little mad as if they had never, ever, heard or said such things.  This remains the height of hypocrisy though it is true that some teens and adult men really have never said anything like the instant video starring Donald Trump – maybe.

Personally, I don’t know of one.

I did my own “mini-poll” with several acquaintances – Only one of seven said he never used vulgarity in his reenactments.  All seven were quite well known conquistadores when we were young, and all chuckled with me at our fellow men pretending they were above such language – even about women no one knew or truly never existed.

What is even more sidesplitting are the news readers and sorta journalists acting as if each was holier than the other.

The female member of the ‘Fourth Estate’ is yet acting as though they have been personally gang-raped by Trump and chums.  Senators and House members, for a short time this weekend, tried to beat each other out in their mad dashes to encrypt Trump in The Political Graveyard and disavow him.

At this very moment NPR is fully playing along – airing Trump and Howard Stern, years ago, talking murky and about Stern never turning down “a date” with Ivanka Trump, Donald’s beloved daughter.

Here are the non-facts as portrayed by most media outlets.

Late last week, a video appeared along with an ailing idea of where it came from.  From what I know – the video was located by an anonymous source at NBC television and then laundered by sending it to the Washington Post so that it appeared that somehow, someone, uncovered a privately and perhaps illegally taped and filmed look at Donald Trump speaking with Billy Bush (now gone from his own television show as punishment?) about women.

Their chat was the kind of conversation one might here in the locker room of a males-only prep school.   It was peppered with undeserved bravado, braggadocio, and unusually filthy specifications about how to approach a great looking woman who was married, including how easy they were to kiss and touch – especially by wealthy and famous male perps.

The audio portion was the only important part of the video since the guffaws, grunts and giggles that spewed from both men’s mouths was what is so violently off putting to many women who have donned the latest and strongest feminism hat thus far including real or posed outrage at uninvited attention from the opposite sex.

Along with this has come a deluge of college and military rape claims from women who heretofore did not often report these rapes in prior decades.

It is a changed world. Women find reporting these rapes has become duly a badge of courage inasmuch as the police, courts and university officials still seem to be living in an age where “boys will be boys” – without asking first for small are larger favors from the ladies.

Many lawyers, including Hillary Clinton believe that perhaps a majority of rape claims exist because. at this time, women are far more offended and defensive, while taking additional chances, being alone with seemingly normal men, getting drunk with them or each other, and using drugs that can cloud or completely block their mental capacity to choose sex partners who they may later charge with rape based on inability to make “informed selections”.

Added to this, aflame, is the fact that young men and women of any gender are at this time of life experiencing not only peer pressure to “loosen up” but the added pressure delivered by an Everest of biological desire to reproduce – often miss-classified as “love”.

All of us remember these feelings, and many men have felt a slap in the face or more for trying beyond the “limits of the day.”

Continue reading THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA – The Biggest Losers in the October Trump-Clinton Event

BY JEFF KOOPERSMITH, EDITOR EMERITUS

Big Media, Democrats, Republicans, and Generals – Using dead warriors for political or any gain.

WASHINGTON 2 AUGUST 2016 -Khizr and Ghazala Khan are demonstrably loving parents, and even after twelve years, they weep over their 27-year-old son, Army Captain and hero Humayun Khan’s death in Iraq a dozen years ago.

Anyone who reads American Politics Journal opinion regularly knows that I do not acknowledge – in any way – bringing in former ‘generals’ and other retired military to appear on television as talking-heads for one candidate or another.

They should remain retired, and tell their friends and neighbors what they think.
The military answers to the President of the United States and therefore could find themselves being called up (which happens) and taking orders from someone they insulted could they not?

This is why the new appearance of once-powerful men and woman all over the campaign charts is not only selfish, but also an insult to the military itself.
In the case of Mr. and Mrs. Khan things become a bit muddled:

1. Mr. Kahn, by coincidence makes his living as a lawyer representing buy-you-way-in clients who legally take advantage of more quiet opportunity to leave their own countries and gain a quick slide to green cards and future citizenship merely by investing five hundred thousand dollars in America.

2. Captain Khan, depending on his thoughts prior to death, might be in great distress over his parents appearing increasingly on television news, in newspapers and publicly, realizing they are at least a news-worthy commodity, as well as being outstanding American Citizens as they seem.

3. Assuming that the Khans are what they appear to be (and I do), they yet continue to bait and insult Donald Trump who may very well become the Commander and Chief of the United States military.

Trump has been a frequent and avid supporter of our military and our veterans – something that Mrs. Clinton has not yet equaled because at least some percentage of Democrats are not blindly approving of our military fighting, it sometimes seems, everywhere around the globe. I do approve of this, because terrorism has become a worldwide problem that seems quite impossible to stop.

Yet I continue to lament 58,000 or my American peers who were drafted into the service and murdered at war in Vietnam – for what no good reason has ever been explained, nor I have ever accepted.

Added to this are the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Laotians, and others in that region who we killed – including children, moms with no weapons, and others who were not part of that misguided war.

That aside, it’s number the first reason for which I criticize Mr. Khan. He earns as least part of living by billing wealthy middle eastern clients that want to live in the United States and that spoils the Khan- feast for me.

Today, Mr. Khan is only now a world-recognized expert on unusual visas and residency structures that are legal but not well known except by the bar specializing in First Class- defined immigration.

Prior to his first appearance with his wife looking pitiable, as she well is, Mr. Khan was not the most famous American immigration lawyer on the face of the earth. This begs a question of whether he spoke or speaks only from the heart, or also for the purse.

This also puts his objectives at question. Was he really so terrified of Donald Trump, or was he out to make himself wealthier by gaining not only a global reputation as a lawyer, but now as the most recognized supporter of ‘good’ Muslims in America who don’t mind ratting on other Muslims that
dabble with or otherwise support Muslim terrorists.

In addition, the Kahn’s are recognized as A-List guests for all kinds of feasts, dinners, preferences and the like.

As a consequence, Mr. Khan will be asked to speak, for fees, or not – all over the USA and beyond should he be able and willing – which it appears, at leapt this week, he is – in spades.

On the other side of this messy coin is the potential for the Khan family here to be in grave danger from any terrorists in hiding that are told, or simply do, harm or murder them. I hope that Mr. Khan thought out his outburst, delivered by a practiced orator as almost all lawyers remain. I mention this only to be
balanced – The Khans may have also shown great bravery in putting themselves in harm’s way.

The Khan question is fraught with complexity. Certainly Mr. Khan enjoys free speech as we all do – he is an American. However, the first amendment does not guarantee free speech knowingly aimed at tens of millions from all over the world nor to take a negative stance against Donald Trump or any candidate for President including a positive one for Secretary Clinton.

I am an independent – and I have not made up my mind who to vote for. My background is heavily anti-Republican since we went to war in Iraq, but I am well known for presenting in writing thousands of articles in favor of Democrats and Republicans as well.

I made my start in policy and politics through Ronald and Nancy Reagan, both of whom I venerated. I was trained at the highest level by the Republican National Committee while running the US Senate Campaign of Republican Senator Ed Howard (PA) a great man and progressive Republican. I made an agreement with the RNC to provide them with my office’s services as well.
I try to be fair to all sides, but not in some stealthy manner. I do decide what is real and what is not – and I have no conclusions on this situation except to say that such a deduction is impossible today – something our news editors should think about with some enthusiasm.

I do not believe that Muslim-based terrorists are maiming and killing because of Quran teachings – but form unholy ignorance and poverty. Far too many middle eastern youngsters can look forward to a life other than so- filled with poverty and without chances that it makes all Americans look like millionaires
in comparison.

I think that educated Muslims that have their private agendas are luring the younger into their armies and terror cells for the reason that most of these boys and girls perceive, at a very early age; that they have little or nothing to look forward too but the ignoble lives.

I have little problem with any group, anywhere, rising up against those who are responsible for their situations, lack of democracy, and insisting on rules designed to make certain they cannot know about even legal peaceful revolt. Muslim men and women are put to death because they dare to speak out in
protest.

It may be that we chose are allies inartfully, or that we used their alliances to perpetrate our own gains. This is why, perhaps, the young neo-terrorists are attacking the West today. After all, western powers are the original colonists of many nations including those dominated by Muslim beliefs.

Could today’s young and uneducated Muslims believe or be taught we Americans are at least partially at fault for their current problems?
In conclusion, I believe that intentionally or not, the Khans have bared their grief to exercise their freedom, but the grim shadows that will follow them, were not the sole or most important intention of the First Amendment – Free speech is here like nowhere else because it was meant to guarantee the ability to speak against, as well, to  lesser extent, to support our governments.
Was Mr. Kahn speaking against our government – No. Will Mr. Kahn benefit from his original and following presentations? – Yes.  Kahn had every right to speak against Donald Trump who is stubbornly against any Muslims entering the
country until the terror can be confronted successfully and terror groups are erased.

Donald Trump is also entitled to speak out against what Mr. Kahn said. He has abandoned his plans to ban all Muslims from travel to the US. He has supported, more than any Republican candidate our troops and our veterans. He has read the Constitution, probably more than once during his excellent opportunities for education.

I think the Kahn’s should be respected for the feelings, but I also think that the DNC should not have allowed him to speak at last week’s DNC Convention for fear that it would appear that the Democratic Party could be using the death of a fine American – to feather Secretary Clinton’s nest and help the down-ballot Democrats running for the House and Senate.
I continue to believe it is wrong to use the excuse of the heroic death of a soldier, who is after all trained to kill, as the excuse to attack others – especially because we have no draft and everyone in the services is a volunteer and paid – though regrettably too little – to serve their country when and if the Pentagon
order is such.
It is unfortunate for the Khan’s to have used the terrible loss of their son, and just as disgraceful for the Generals that appear on Fox News et al, and write op-eds against Democrats or Republicans, and for both political parties to spin the
military dead to their own gains.

_ _

By Jeff Koopersmith

Harambe is a Swahili name meaning; working together, pulling together, helping each other, caring, and sharing. Today, like Can Van Coppenolle of Texas who named Harambe, I am listening to Rita Marley sing the song “Harambe” on as I write. https://youtu.be/GlQgC5IyPHw

To begin, let me tell you that I write children’s books about endangered animals that, along with us, solve their problems.  I adore animals but I do not expect others to do so in the way I do. Mine is an unusual identification with animals and especially those who are alone from brutality.

Yet, I believe, with all my heart, that Zoos should be stripped from society.

At one time, zoo may have been needed, but because today technology has allowed us to see any animal, large or small, in such detail as to make zoos almost non-credible. Try instead to observe living animals on television or better, your computer for unmatched depth and wider coverage via the Internet.

To my mind Zoos should all be closed because the living things in them suffer poor quality lives, no matter how the zoo tells you otherwise.

They do not live in their habitats, nor do they eat what they should, or what they would if they were home in the wild. They do not have enough space, or they have too much space. They are often close to animals they do not take a fancy to, or too far from animals and plants they naturally like.

They are often treated badly, although we all think workers are kind at zoos – that is not always true.  Just ask Shamu the whale.

Whichever case you might make – animals do not belong in cages for our amusement nor our education.  Some of the greatest tragedies in history have used that same excuse, but it is a falsity much as your being a cage would be.

This is not the 17^th Century where we could not possibly go everywhere on earth to see special creatures; it is the 21^st Century where the best biologists and filmmakers can bring you directly to those animals.

That, when weighed against animal anguish, marks my case.

If you are wealthy enough you can mount a safari, but even then you will see only those creatures who allow you to see them. And you won’t see them in a natural pose or place most times.

Our instant lost friend, the Great Ape Harambe, is a superlative example of why we should not retain animals in zoos or enclosures of any kind. A fence perhaps, to protect us from the more violent ones and them from us – but nothing more than that.

I entreat you.

There is, in June of 2016, worldwide an ongoing quarrel re Harambe the silver back gorilla who was shot to death in America this week in order to insure a little boy’s life.

Harambe was only 17 years old.  He might have lived to over fifty.  The boy, on the other hand was human and could live until 90 or even 100. Both could have lived, and I believe both would have lived except for panic.

The boy, still in pre-school, had somehow fallen into the Harambe’s zoo setting in a Gorilla enclosure where a kind of river exists. That river was only a foot deep it appears.

The child by some means made his way under a ridiculously defectively designed and dangerous fence for safety purposes over the gorilla space that any adult could jump, or crawl under as well as the three-year-old boy, the son of Deonne Dickerson and Michelle Gregg who have been heavily criticized for not watching their son more carefully.

The boy was not markedly hurt as he landed near Harambe in water within the ape outdoor enclosure, and all the photos show the gorilla, as might be expected, for a great ape like this held in human captivity for 17 years, to be relatively and calm except at one point where he tugged the boy, pulling him from harm, by his thinking – his reaction to screaming crowds, who were worried that Harambe might eat the boy, but to Harambe they were simply shouting people who disturbed him and the boy.

Harambe was not King Kong, and yet in a way he died very much like him. He was killed by people he loved and others that sought to save those same people.

Harambe spent most of his life living in too small a space surrounded by lookie-loos shouting at him, throwing things at him, and talking about him, laughing at him, or talking to him in a language he did not truly understand. There was nothing he could do but “sometimes throw mud” at visitors with little accuracy. (there was a little sign here warning zoo patrons of this mud toss)

Look at these photo of Harambe as a baby – an orphan.  Look at him sitting and looking at the cell phone photos of himself and other animals with a young man on the other side of the thick glass – who shared them with Harambe.

He had soul.

Think about Harambe looking forward to a good dinner of fruit and whatever silver back gorillas enjoy to eat.  Think about him meeting a female ape that he loves in some gorilla way, and his own children being born at another time henceforth.  Think about how sweet Harambe can look – even at 5oo pounds of muscle, slumbering in his enclosure.

Look into his eyes in these photos and tell me that every one of us is more important than he because we are not apes. We are, in so many ways, just smarter and slyer, but not more important.

Smarter and slyer.  That’s all.

I certainly understand what happened the day Harambe was murdered, but I cannot blame this not quite humanoid animal for his own death – and some people should pay for his death, no matter how “arguably” levelheaded it might have seemed to be.

It is not practical to kill an innocent but wild living thing for pleasure or for most any reason. Had Harambe growled and screamed at the boy and ran for him open mouthed – perhaps – but this was not his manner then.

Not ever.

No human is more imperative than any of God’s creatures, and no creature is more important than human beings either.  They are equal as told us from historical treatise and lore. Therefore, no animal deserves an implacable and pitiless death only to protect a human life not yet threatened.  We already kill animals by the billions each year – to eat, to amuse, and to profit from.

We kill animals to ease our hunger: to amuse our still- predator hunters.

Where was this child’s mother?  She was taking photos of her other kids and had turned away from her little son for a few seconds.  Her actions are not the reason that Harambe was murdered by the zoo or other security – it was the zoo’s own abysmal ignorance that killed the already endangered Harambe – one of only a scarce number of living silver-backs gorillas left in the world today.

It is the Zoo and zookeepers who are responsible.  They have taken these animals and shanghaied them for what they believe is a fine purpose.  It is not a fine purpose. It is an ego trip.

Yet we do not safeguard them properly. Every day one can read a report of a loose tiger or lion, or some other zoo animal shot to “protect the public”. Keeping the innocent from being shot is also part of protecting them.

How could these zoo experts – after “the 37 years” that this Gorilla exhibit has been up and running – not take care to notice that even a grown man could simply hurdle the “fence” above the replica river – a railing which was in fact only a metal bannister two and a half feet-plus high along with a horizontal length of wire below it that would stop almost nothing small from ending up tumbling down into Harambe’s river.

Ludicrous Fence

So much media coverage of this heartbreak now dominates are airways, yet here is not a single photo of Harambe on television, the 450-pound ape that showed us nothing but distress and protection FOR the child – not AT the child, who we are told was not injured by the gorilla at any time.

Harambe did pull the child through the water to get the boy and himself away from the screams of humanity coming from above and only adding to the ape’s confusion.  People should learn to shut up in these instances.

Harambe, who had been staring up and looking at children, adults, men and women for all his 17 years of life knew very well that this young boy, now somehow in his ape arms, was a living being and wittingly did nothing to harm the child.

But the dumbfounded head or decision-maker of the Cincinnati Zoo who decided the best thing to do then was to direct the murder of this innocent animal.  Was this done to protect the young boy or also, perhaps, to protect his job and reputation which I am putting into question today.

That shot or shots are not recorded on film, or are being hidden.  I would like to view that footage if it exists.  I would like to see some proof of the danger other than Harambe’s size.  Apes are gentle as well as rough.  I have seen them pick up a tiny thing carefully and inquisitively.  So have most of us.

What an awful thing it must have been for the child to see the big monkey, who at least seemed to amuse him more than frighten him, now shot to death within his view.

I assume the child witnessed this harsh end, but I do not know for certain. If he was not close enough to see the ape and didn’t see it – then why wasn’t the boy pulled away at that point rather than killing Harambe?

There is talk everywhere and on all sides, and gentle people on the internet are being made fun of because they seem to be profoundly upset and ready to have the boy’s mother arrested for child endangerment.

From my own upbringing and my training in law school I would say that is an open question because the child moved from the overlook and down to the exhibits river within seconds. I believe his mother is not liable for the incident. The zoo is responsible.

Evidently no one else saw boy moving toward danger and stopped him.

Where was Harambe’s keeper during this time?  That is an important question. Where was the person that this poor young ape trusted most?

There was someone he trusted, but he or she was not there – or not allowed to try to dissuade Harambe from keeping the child.

It is clear to me as an involved animal lover that no trouble seemed taken to try to entice Harambe away from the child – even though Harambe was also and evidently not aware that the child was in danger from him – But perhaps he felt he was in danger – from the people around them shouting and screaming like maniacs as if they were in the water with Harambe.

This was an awful mockery of humane justice.  Kill the ape to save the child that may not have needed saving.

It was clearly at least partly a public relations decision that could have been rightfully or mistakenly made by anyone under pressure of potentially losing a little boy’s life to an ape.  I do not blame anyone that day and those several minutes for making hasty and erroneous decisions.

Yet, when was the last time an ape ate a person in a zoo or anyone else?  I don’t know – but I, as many others, seem to see that the ape Harambe would not have injured that child purposely for almost any reason.

He had that chance for over ten minutes – Harambe’s last ten minutes of life – to do so – instead he held onto the boy – he held hands with him and the child was not screaming and crying. He too seemed to have known that Harambe did not mean him any harm, or is this my heart talking?

So where did the shooter come from?  In back of Harambe at the door just behindhand in the final photographs- or from above – a sharpshooter thinking ‘now I have the chance to kill a silver back gorilla’ – or pausing, ‘how can I kill this poor ape who is not hurting this boy?’

Whichever he thought – he went ahead with his orders.

Less than a few hundred dollars of additional fencing would have saved Harambe and the child’s predicament would never have happened.

For this the Zoo, not the mother, should be punished as the law and humaneness allows, and those responsible for zoo safety and the safety of the animals themselves should be penalized immediately – not for killing Harambe – but for allowing the tragedy to take place surely from employee negligence.

Had that boy been killed by Harambe – his parents may have sought and deserved millions in compensation from the zoo and the city or company that controls it.

Yet, in the end – as of today – no one paid anyone a farthing, and only Harambe, God bless him, paid the biggest price that anyone can pay.

Will he be buried or simply tossed into an incinerator?

A travesty and a tragedy.

People, pay attention to those you love and those you protect from harm.

All zoos should be closed and padlocked nevertheless.  We now have the ability to see every animal including an amoeba, in absolute detail and in living color.

There is no need for zoos where animals are tortured everyday living in cages, in glass boxes and worse just to amuse us and our children. There are people who provide sanctuary for orphaned or maimed animals.  That is enough and usually well thought out.

Instead let’s provide even more such places where the animals – even if not able to go back to their natural habitat from human spoiling – at least be allowed to be free with their own kind in as close to the same sheltering importance as they might have enjoyed had they not been injured or orphaned by poachers.

Yes, a better quality of life is possible for them – and that’s where we should pay our dues – not at zoos who often profit from the misery of animals.

Human beings are, just by a whisker-innocent, and we also can think about very complex matters – even if uneducated. We should understand that Zoos are inexcusable just as torture of our kind is.

It is the animals who are born and remain innocent for their entire lives.  They carry out nature’s plan. If only we all could claim this as well.

NOTE: (As I am remembering, only a few years ago when my adored giant schnauzer DeNiro attacked me when I did something imprudent which he couldn’t understand and put him in shock.

I had made a mistake then, and made it look like I was dying to DeNiro who was asleep on the kitchen floor as I had fallen on that floor in a dramatic faint to make another person with us laugh.

And as I looked into his face his eyes on mine, I realized that if he didn’t stop ripping at my arms and scalp I would die.  I was frightened to die, but I did not blame my dog.

To DeNiro, an innocent animal, I was gone or dying and he was trying to wake me or devour me out of adoration, not hate. He was overcome and became more wolf than dog.

That dog – who weighed 150 pounds had slept next to me for years. We spent almost every waking moment together.

He had walked through town with me, swam in Lake Lugano with me, and followed me through the crowds in Milano to have his “beauty treatment” at a chic animal stylist’s.  He went grocery shopping, just leashed to a pole at the entrance – and everyone liked him.

He had licked my face with a kiss every morning and night. He had trusted me and I him.

He had shared gelato ice cream cones with me in Ponte Tresa and Porta Ceresio, and we had gone on trips to France and Germany by car – he next to me usually snoozing but always ready to yap at a car passing or coming too close to us. 

And then, on the floor of my kitchen that day in Southern Italy, overlooking the stunning lake Lugano, I became ready to die rather than have someone hurt him for my folly. 

I thought about police coming, the ambulance – everything that could hurt him.

As this progressed it came to be, that just fastening his leash on his collar stopped this terror, and he walked away as if nothing happened – only he was terribly worried as I could see by his drooping head. 

His leash, of all things, set him free.

I ended up close to bleeding to death, and with my houseman I rode in an ambulance from my home nearly twenty miles to a hospital that evening – where I had 140 or so stiches in my arms and head.

Yet, all I could think of was my dog DeNiro who had sired my two female schnauzers Michelle and Mischka who brought me even more love and laughter, as well as his little “son” who I named Barack from my great joy and pride at our new American President, Barack Obama.

That night I slept with DeNiro as if mothing had happened. It was late and we were bedraggled but together.

In the end DeNiro breathed his last breath alone in a singular dog run at a hospice. I had moved back to America and he could not travel as he had to go for cancer treatment of his gums which no matter what we paid or prayed did not cure him nor bring him home to Washington with the girls and Barack. 

DeNiro always had everything I could give him – yet I have never gotten over his death. I should have been with him, as he had always stayed near me. He was alone without me – just as I have never lost the horror of my father’s death alone in a freezing car on Christmas Day –  hit by a drunk being chased by a cop. 

I was too young then to know my Dad loved me as much or more than DeNiro. Yet I felt and perceived DeNiro’s affection every minute of every day, when he in my lap, licking his vanilla gelato cone, or running after a squirrel he never caught in the hills above our home.

There is not an animal lover that would disagree with what I have told you here about Harambe or DeNiro.  They both died alone not among friends and family.  Most of us who yet have a heart and soul do mourn animals as much as we mourn men.

It’s evenhanded and a natural thing.

I know that some reading this essay will snicker at me – my feebleness – my equating every living thing, and especially the most innocent with humans.

Gee, I even talk to plants when they seem “down”.

I do not deny you that laugh.  Just please attempt to recognize how so many of us really do feel about most living things. They are as precious as we, and we should treat them that way – especially domesticated pets.

Many people on social media et al – are deploring Harambe the Silver Back’s murder right in his small, but only, home.  Me as well.

It is, after all, a crying matter, and something that, so easily, could have been avoided.

So easily….

By Jeff Koopersmith ­ 04/21/16 06:44 PM EDT

A longtime friend, trusted colleague, and oft-consulted expert in the circumstance of this world, Mark Penn, wrote an interesting opinion piece published by The Hill which I assume was to aim his points at those elected officials and staff members who call Washington D.C.’s Capitol Hill home — at least a few days a week.
Generally, I agree with Mr. Penn on his fact making yet I was disappointed that he didn’t present additional solutions to the questions planted in his reader’s minds this week.
Mark Penn, and I are uneasy that only one third of the 320 or more million people in the United States are voting – even for our President in November, while the nation well appears to be severely divided.
I write “appears” because most Americans rely on mass media for our information. It is they who tell us how things are, and what things to watch for and watch-out for.
Penn’s most interesting and disturbing thought for this April, 2016 is that perhaps only 10 to 12 million voters (4%) will determine the choice Americans have for our President which is at least touted, if not realistically being, the most powerful office in the world.
Penn cites modern communications, better voter education, and the internet in collision with antique methods of voting in the first instance as lacking. For this and other reasons, he writes that we find ourselves with a democracy “veering off course”. “Veering” was a fine choice to describe almost any democracy on this planet – for they all suffer from the same illnesses and lack of control by the very citizens they are designed to represent but do not.
Too much money in politics, too many insiders, too few men and women who understand or can become cognizant of the concrete complexity of this 21st Century are part of our choosing at all levels of government.
I agree with Penn, but add, that along with better communications and voter education married with the internet and cable television today offer an astonishing, even alarming, depth and sweep of dissemination available not only in towns, but across borders and even into deep space itself. Nothing can be said or done that is not reported within moments somewhere and then spread like wildfire.
It is the mugging of these up-to-the-second powers that are, in my opinion, furthermost to blame for the instant situation we find ourselves in – not only here in America – but worldwide. This is the paying of vast sums to run advertisements which at best are half-truths and at worst – vile lies that provides this punishment of no choice but my choice.
Yet this is the “same old story” is it not? “The masses are asses” – so why burden ourselves about what these masses consider, deliberate, or know of? Another way to state this: “The wisdom of the crowd” which means essentially the same but in reverse.
One need must only look to quote James Surowiecki: “Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise” to make the divide and conquer argument.
Yet, it turns out that crowds can make better decisions than just the few, however to think about the ways to do this requires much study and a set of circumstances which are not available to most audiences – especially crowds.
So let us examine the worst enemies of good decisions by many people – Surowiecki, of course, also studies antithetics like rational failures or bubbles during which a crowd produces very poor judgment, and argues that in these types of situations their cognition or cooperation miscarries because the members of the crowd are also conscious of the opinions of others and commence to emulate each other and conform rather than think contrarily.
Though he gives vetted and scientific proof of crowd-made choices most-of-them are swayed by an influential source. Thus he says that the core reason groups of people irrationally imitate each other is that the system for making judgments has a methodical defect. That defect today is in part the old boys network that yet pretends to exist to measure the wishes of the crowd.
Neither the Democratic National Committee nor the Republican National Committee truly exist to measure the choices of the 200 million of us that could vote.
Surowiecki believes, and I concur, that what happens when the decision making atmosphere is not arranged to accept a crowd, the assistances of individual judgments and private information are lost and the crowd can only do as well as its smartest member.
In essence Mark Penn reprimands us for just this situation, telling us an uncomfortable truth, that we cling to old-fashioned ways that are not now constructed to deal with hundreds or a hundred-million opinions at once.
The current bou-hah-hah over Republican rules as they impact delegates, who, in place of voters, act as the smartest member or the crowd they represent is nonsense since these delegates are not part of this crowd, but privileged in their access to knowledge or experience – or worse – brow-beating and bribery which Mr. Trump believes skews the crowds (voters) wishes.

Mark Penn reminds us:
Of the 226 million eligible voters, about 153 million voters were registered as of the last presidential election — left out of the system are mostly downscale, less educated whites, and disproportionately more Asian and Hispanic voters. Black voters are 73 percent registered, compared with 73 percent of all women and 69 percent for men overall

Notice though that those left out are mostly not as well educated and are from foreign countries. They do not gain their wisdom from study or higher education for the most part – but instead watch television, listen to talk radio, or watch cable television for the “news” which in these months are all heavily loaded with political opinion mixed with a dash of statistics such as “who won” or “who lost” or “who is in trouble” and nothing more.
Mr. Penn points out that that the sources of information, for whatever reason – and there are many — help to create greater division because they focus on smaller selected groups to gain an advantage for a pivot point – made not by an informed crowd – but by people who already are liable to agree with each other’s choices.

One example of this is the comparison, for the sake of argument, between MSNBC and Fox News cable television. Fox News “cherry-picked” its audience by appealing to a certain group of cable television viewers who see themselves as conservative, right-wing, nationalistic, family-oriented, and religious — while clinging to arguments like the Constitution should be construed only in 17th and 18th Century terms – Verbatim – and that the only thing standing between them and whatever horror currently unfolds – is the military – a 15th Century ideal I might offer.
Did Fox News do this to further Republican thought or merely to carve out a piece of the viewing audience that was not being well-served? In a sense it makes no difference, any more than MSNBC catering to Democrats.
Make no mistake – Fox News and MSNBC mirrors and certainly created a mass of asses – who now nip and gnaw at each other’s side when in fact as a whole might be far more moderate and up to finding consensus rather than nonsense.
MSNBC, on the other hand carries the banner of the left, the progressive, the “marchers for peace, equality, and diplomacy” which reflect attitudes often seen en-masse from more highly educated citizens – those with classic university educations found in the 1960’s through the early 1990’s were not designed simply to provide one with a job which it seems they are today except at the highest levels, but supposedly and generally effectively to provide one with the capacity to think. Lessons in thinking include deeper understanding of logic and semantics which seem to be largely ignored today. Almost nothing we read or hear is well thought out and well stated.

And, as Penn argues, presidential candidates have one billion dollars and more to sell themselves. That seems like adequate funding to contact everyone in depth, but in reality it’s only a little more than six or seven dollars per voter when you count internal overheads and salaries, etc.

“Rather than bring the country together, they demonize their opponents to hype turnout among select groups, targeted by race, religion or ethnicity. Fear and division replace hope as the motivating elements behind campaigns, and 90 percent of the advertisements are now negative ads”, writes Penn.
Yes, most political campaigns and, more importantly, all the information about candidates and their ideas are not aimed at swing voters but now put more worryingly, toward exhilarating their base. It seems to make no difference what any candidate or campaign states or airs, and lies have become the weapons of the modern political duel – with cannon not swords.
Mark Penn offers that the system should be reformed from top to bottom to create a true democracy that represents its citizenry and suggests:
1. That newborns receive a voter ID card along with a social security number.
2. That we change the day of voting to weekends, and allow voting from secure facilities: (e.g. ATM machines) while getting rid of early voting because this ignores that last weeks of campaigns can be pivotal.
3. That we should abolish caucuses because they are only open to voters who have the time, and further reminds us that only a quarter of the normal primary turnout occurs with a caucus. I have, for more than a decade, been rewriting a column titled “Who cares what Iowans think” in that same regard but with tongue in cheek.
4. I disagree with Mark Penn here. – He suggests rotating the geographic order of primaries – I suggest that they all occur on the same day perhaps one month before scheduled conventions or, better yet – that primaries are abolished to remove unmovable Party power from the menu. Let all who run be on the ballot though I realize this could end in total chaos should too many file for the same seat – or the oval office.
I also believe that the process has become dominated not only by activists who tend to get involved, but mastered by paid advocates hired to push one candidate or issue that, in fact, forms its own troop of activists that would never have been shaped because of no natural audience.
How much damage to the process has been done by fraudulent claims and cooked-up “issues” which are based on faulty logic or lies, or both and often unfathomably linked to a two century old document – The Constitution – which is, despite right wing claims –a living and breathing document that must reflect the times – not a verbatim and often twisted non-interpretation of exact verses.
On that very issue I recall while in law school the question of money in politics was chic as it is today. Around that time the Supreme Court did not entertain limiting the amount of money in total that could be spent on a federal campaign, but one justice remarked that if the Court recognized, in the future, that funding in excess perverted our doctrinal and heartfelt adoration of “free speech” that such funding could be Constitutionally limited.
Today, because of two or three unreasonably wrong-minded Supreme Court justices we have come to a point where money can never be limited if that constraint also limits “free speech” even though the founders never intended that free speech would include what Adolf Hitler twisted it to become. This was the “Big Lie Theory” of mass thought control that was to be adopted as the norm.
These Justices, no matter who, cannot believe that one could spend 100 billion dollars to convert a Lie to the Truth or a Dictatorship to a Democracy – but such has been done, and is being done every day in America and around the globe under the fraudulent understanding of “free speech”.
The Federal Election Commission wastes all of its time looking at money and the occasional misrepresentation of fact every few years, but the Commission is as much of a scheme as are the people who control the government with outside money – the great adjustment mechanism so often used these days as to twirl into part of American history – not what the oversight should tackle – American hypocrisy via perjury.

It is not enough to have some newspaper owned by one of the wealthiest retailers in history – The Washington Post – to make us smile with its truth-o-meters and such awarding tiers as fibs to Pants-On-Fire statements of candidates or their operatives.

In closing I agree wholeheartedly with Mark Penn that the system is broken to the point of destroying faith in individual rights to vote, be counted and to be heeded as well.
Yet the problem goes far beyond Democracy. Our lives are unjustly overflowing with big lies – one after another, so that now lies are seemingly protected under the Constitutional shelter of free speech.
This is madness, and a huge part and parcel of the depression we suffered in 2000’s when not only Wall Street, but Main Street did business in the trillions based upon falsities so absurd that they were akin to political speeches that have also been the tightly aimed focus of uncontrollable family-room amusement.
Do we recall that in earlier times that businesses could be punished for lying about their products and that news sources were held more closely to the truth by authorities that guarded we simple mortals from outrageous claims?
Do we look toward other nations who do not allow people to simply attack others just because they live on their reputations? We all live on our standings – why is it that film and music stars cannot guard theirs very well? Why is it that I can, when couched in “opinion” call any politician a Nazi, or a Murderer and not be called to the bar to defend that position or pay the price?
No, money does not provide an open visa to lie, cheat, steal, and mind-bend everyone who is too busy, too bored, or too uneducated to follow the politics of their city, state, or nation.

While we attempt to fix the problems Mr. Penn so well puts in front us, we had better also examine just how much any of us can lie or bend the truth merely for profit either in money or position? We might also look at allowing public figures to litigate against those who defame them even though they are well-known.

What kind of solution to malicious lies does our democracy offer us? I say almost none, or none at all. Instead it offers people of wealth who can buy the vehicles of Big Lies as if they were ice cream cones or a cigar the ability to destroy. It is nothing for a billionaire or a 100-billion-dollar corporation to spend a few million or billion to distort the truth while pitching us one against the other.

In the end, everything we do in life is an election.

While our moral and religious leaders with bibles and prophecies warn us of the consequences, those concerns are difficult to measure or even to notice today, yet the masses have absorbed such garbage around the world – that they now sense the game and eagerly play while the rest sit back and shake their heads at the sure outcome.

Yes, Ted Cruz and Bernard Sanders might be the only choice now – but in reality it could be anybody who has enough cash to turn our heads with lies coupled with a false need to choose sides when this is not necessary.

All this will only fester and become shoddier if we continue to ignore truth and spot-on justice.

It might be time to change our moral fiber before we have absolutely no decency at all.

Any American interested in the primaries, delegate bribing, and who- punched-who at which stump speech can’t helped becoming bored senseless watching CNN, Fox News, or any politically captivated news source including mine.

By Jeff Koopersmith

Somehow I feel I must follow the 24 cycle in re “Politics” when I know instead I should be following recordings of CEOs in their offices while plotting how they can launder stockholder-owned cash to bribe the Congress and State Houses to get their way. What no one seems to realize is this:

We are making the world despise us because of our arrogance, foolishness, flag waving and threatening.

I laugh at myself here – but in my heart and mind I know that we won’t have to wait too long before some nation – perhaps an ally – thinks we are dangerous enough.

It further makes me chuckle when supposed intellects like Senator Ted Cruz whine that Donald Trump gave money to Democrats – yet he “is supposed to be a Conservative Republican.”

Here is a secret, that if you searched this site through the past 30 years, you might find I have repeated dozens of times. The secret is clear to most of the world now – and thanks in part to Mr.Trump – who has taught us that he gave money to every political campaign he could – including those who had two qualities – First – that they could halt, or make more costly, one of his projects, and second that they “owed him a courtesy” – Democrat, Republican, Communist, or Atheist – businesspeople and lobbyists could care less which party a member or “winning” candidate belong to – because national parties have almost no impact on real politics at all.

The exception? The old rules that keep men like Reince Priebus in power even though he only works hard two of three times a cycle. The Chairs of the parties have very little money because the only big contributors they have, if any, are wasting funds that could buy votes instead. However, all lobbyists make sure to provide at least a little grease to the party coffers because one thing the Party can do is introduce key players to anyone on the Hill or in State Capitols in need of a little “talkin’ to”. Although it is not legal – although I cannot keep up with FEC rule changes – much money donated to PARTies are quickly expressed to candidates – they are earmarked so that individuals can take care of The Party and the Target member or candidate simultaneously – or donate more money than allowed because he or she is “maxed out” under FEC Law – if there is anything left of it.
In essence the Party ‘launders’ this money for the donor and the receiver. I wonder if the FBI knows this and tries to do something about it.

This month we have found that the National Parties can also change rules whenever it feels like it – especially in primary seasons. Naturally Mr. Priebus denies he has presided over such foolishness – but somehow the RULES seem really not to exist because no matter how difficult it may seem to an outside – it take very little effort to change them. This can be done with several phone calls without even meeting.

Poor Reince. First he has a first name that no one appears to be able to pronounce. Second he is stuck with Ted Cruz and Donald Trump – two candidates he is rumored to despise. Ergo, he must choose the best of the worst and he appears to have knighted Ted Cruz who, to my mind, is a bigger monster than good all Donald. The reason that Washington picked up “Lyin’ Ted” so quickly was not because Trump once long ago called Cruz a liar; It was because Ted Cruz is the most proven liar in the Senate and would be the biggest in congress if Darrell Issa somehow left the House.

As an aside, of course, the Congress and the White House believe that it’s okay to lie as long as you’re not caught so, to be honest, who knows which lies the most – and who cares. The Human race has settled on lying as the best policy thousands of years ago – and that won’t change.

I can tell you as frankly as possible that Hillary Clinton will be the Democrat nominee – either because she is the most truthful or the biggest liar. While I love the truths I often hear from Bernard Sanders – he is unelectable because he made the unwise choice to call himself a socialist for three decades. He also lies a little – but not as destructively as others. If he did get the nod – it would be because he believes in a dream world – this brings him close to the heart of good people and the young who have not yet become soured on reality.

On the Republican side I have no answers. I can’t believe that it will not be Cruz or Trump although either is bound to lose unless the chosen Democrat loses their mind or dies just at the wrong date.

If Ted Cruz somehow squeaks out a win for the White House I, and several people I know, will simply move to Europe as I did when the Bush Cheney team invaded Iraq. We all know they would kill millions – but we never anticipated that this would continue for 25 years and make much of the earth our enemies – allowing ISIS and others to set up training academies where JIhadists are schooled in terrorizing everyone who isn’t Muslim.

Trump, on the other hand, talks, like Cruz, of using Nukes to deal with Isis et al.
That’s a lot of bull – similar to the remarks that fart out of North Korea now and then – but talk somehow seems to morph into action at times. Until will stop our own weapon production at an alarming rate we are simply laughed at when we and our “chosen” relatively few allies do have nuclear weapons, because we let them have them, sell them to them, or because everyone is getting smart enough to build these weapons, or buy them from Pakistan, and worse.

There is no way to stop any nation with the money from gaining a nuclear presence. As anyone should know – nothing can be hidden any longer and not for a long time. For this reason we remember Ronald Reagan and his plan to spend more on defense than offense. We have done that so perhaps the three or four generations now alive in “THE WEST” can breathe easily for a lifetime.

And that’s all. I regret this more than any mistake we, as the Human Race have made in known history.

By Jeff Koopersmith, Editor Emeritus

“Beware the Ides of March”

15 March 2016 WASHINGTON DC  – It is clear to me that Donald Trump is not a Racist. There are few true racist New Yorkers born during the era 1950 and on up through 1980s.

Yes. Beware the Ides of March Mr. Trump.

Trump and I share some things. We are an alike age, and I feel I can guarantee this that I write today, and I know he would agree.  This is not a defense of Donald Trump – it is only an exploratory explanation.

Yes, Trump disapproves of President Obama and did mention the Birther issue – that Obama was born in Kenya — once too many times, but The Donald is at heart not a racist or closed minded in fact, you might guess on your own, that Trump is merely designedly politically incorrect as are a great number of New Yorkers, city and state who did not design that quality but are Boomers who were raised in politically incorrect homes, boarding schools, and elsewhere where urban White kids were taught ethics by their parents, and that hanging around Black Americans – except in “our” house  – was “dangerous”.

Our parents and relatives, teachers and preachers  were and  some still are acting when they need be acting like angels and hiding their own racism or tilted preferences in many matters.

Boomers lived through our own era of riots and burning – and know better than to say things socially well-banned – but some things are static and we hang on to old expressions not now P.C. – I call this “Haunted by Parental Memories”. What we learned then was that minorities will only digest a small portion of mean or evil treatment before they explode.  That is similar to any human being.

Donald Trump is simply; often crude and quite direct.

However, other charges made against him by fellow Republicans include; going bankrupt – a normal need for entrepreneurs who often must bring their business investments bankrupt because it did not show profits.

This week Trump has been attacked in full force by almost all media, left, right, and center and many politicians because he has allegedly caused the attendees to his arena appearances to become “destructive and violent.”

This is only half the story of course inasmuch as there were only a few instances of violence and one or two small injuries resulting from Trump speech attendees and others who attended without revealing they were anti-Trump and that some were Bernie Shapiro and Hillary Clinton supporters – et al.  No one knows as yet whether these hi-jinks were started by the alleged “victims” or by Trump supporters.

These events bring large crowds and contain a majority of young testosterone-fueled men along with women. Both men and women from the StopTrump groups seem to take the lead in interrupting Trump one by one so that he cannot speak at all.

Let me add that both the Secret Service and Trump’s private security felt it needed to be at large gatherings like these and in greater quantity – and they sometimes were involved in what some label as violence

I have personally seen all the videos of these fisticuffs and removals from the venues and do not agree that Trump had much or anything to do with what also occurs far more often at every sports venue, every bar, and every schoolyard over and over again.

It’s a “cheap shot” as they say in NY City – thus far to blame Trump for all this nonsense, and you should consider just who is inflaming the crowds?  I put my money, on the money.  My belief is that both the one-percent and the existing political big and small wigs realize Trump won’t be a pushover for THEIR wishes needs and wants so they must stop him – and we now behold StopTrump in its many forms.

Along with these charges are other more-whispered charges – that Trump is a misogynist (many misogynists have no idea they dislike women); that Trump is stupid, that Trump would cause WWIII once in office et al. Other recorded insults include being a  feckless blowhard; a Jackass (by Sen Lindsey Graham an also-ran with little supports in these primaries of 2016); Jimmy Kimmel said “The closest he ever got to battle was a fight with Rosie O’Donnell” as if all Presidents went to war; Former Texas Gov and another early loser in the primaries of 2016 called Trump “a cancer.”; Sen. John McCains’s son Jack called Trump “”Reprehensible”; Sen Marco Rubio – soon to be a loser in the primaries called Trump “shameful” for remarking that border crossings from Mexico murderers and rapists:  Trump was also called vile and worse for criticizing Sen. John McCain for saying “I like people who weren’t captured – and that McCain was not a war hero as others have said for the past 40 years. (To be fair, the NY Times actually tracked all “202” insults that Trump supposedly wrote or said about others – SEE http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html?_r=0)

I invite you as well to research the background of Senator McCain – who, by the way is a fun guy to have a beer with, but who also left many American prisoners of war in Vietnam at the invitation of his father – an Admiral in the U.S Navy. Perhaps McCain did not want to do this, but one thing is for sure – he was questionable pilot and that was and is proven in military records.

Donald Trump is neither stupid nor a racist. He is, in my opinion a ‘limousine liberal’ – and most of the wealthiest men and women in this country are the same – save for the GOP penchant for antagonism with taxation and a mix of warmongers.

There is little or no proof that Donald Trump lied any more than the rest of the candidates this year – including Bernard Sanders.  Almost all the 27 original candidates have insulted Trump and the rest of their opponents including “the angel of the day” – Ted Cruz, who acts more like a gangster, and even the quiet Jeb Bush,(so quiet I don’t recall what he said about Donald Trump).

Trump fans of course are incensed by the current RNC, et al, “set-up” it seems because what Trump has said is mostly true about the others in my opinion because all elections and especially those for president have had similar insults hurled and worse.  I suggest you research the insults and crimes made in presidential elections since the birth of the nation – you might shocked or you might laugh.

I prefer to laugh.

Those who have formed PACS and other groups to destroyTrump’s chances to acquire enough primary votes to be nearly guaranteed  the nomination are now running ads that show women repeating some very politically and socially incorrect statements he is said to have made.  These insults, I assume,  come from living in New York for nigh on  60 years.

This is, regrettably, how men can talk in small and even larger but private groups. I do not excuse my gender for this, but instead face the truth that we men are terrors when it comes to “dirty” talk  about women and tend also to insult them, and others, behind their backs.

I am not sure I’ve ever been a poker game with men where wisecracks (no pun intended) are the menu of the day and frequently focus on women as various animals, stupid, naive, having great boobs and the like.

Most men would never repeat those phrases within earshot of women, but a few do – One of them seems to be Mr. Trump who tends to say whatever comes to mind. He does not read from a teleprompter shooting him misogynous verbiage, he just speaks like Trump speaks.  A problem yes, a disqualifier – I doubt it.

The other side of this war erupting between men and women that has continued through thousands of years is that women do the same. I have heard women friends, family members, even my mother and her pals say some fairly crude things about men, both negative and “dirty positive”.  Is this in the genes thing in both men and women or just the result of media?  Have you ever seen HBO’s “Game of Thrones” – a quite sophisticated 100 hours of wonder but woven heavily and generously with filthy words about the opposite sex from both male and female characters.  In short – laced with the truth.

Let me add that every one of the men still competing for the presidential nomination – on both sides – have engaged in private and public expressions that make us gape – but the gape is phony and the chuckles are always there.

Let’s make sure our new babies are taught from birth that saying anything untoward is punishable by death. (Happy Birthday Mom).  I think she might agree, but still scold! (My mother would have been 98 years old today)

Trump, like Fox News, has had to choose his audience of voters. He knew that he could not become a Democrat overnight, for many reasons – including supporting many Democrats for office proof that he was in fact a liberal guy – as are most New Yorkers, most of the time even if they register as Republicans.

To live in a city as dense and diverse as New York City one must be fairly liberal or hide in their homes and clubs, which some amazingly do.

When Trump and I were in boarding schools on diverse coasts I doubt that many of our fellows were Black. At my school in tony Brentwood, Los Angeles there was a single Black student. We did have several Latino boys at school boarding and day students.  They were the sons of President’s and Dictators or wealthy industrialists. We also had lots of movie and television stars’ children at my school as well as David Hearst – the grandson and once in a while pool swimmer at Hearst Castle built famously by William Randolph Hearst.

The problem of course was that there were, at our young ages, few “mixed” neighborhoods in the United States – including in New York City – both my and Trumps home town. Here is  a photo of Donald Trump and his father surveying a”war zone” of development:

In the 1950’s Black Americans were still extricating themselves out of gluey slavery and phony institutional mixes which was normally  lip-service kinds of programs here and there.

Thus, Donald Trump and I both grew up and were “trained’ as bigoted without knowing it.  Much as many of you were.

But we were also growing during the 1960s and witnessed the riots in black neighborhoods that, alone, resulted in several forward-looking federal programs which mandated the states to rethink their patriarchal near-slavery posture in the South – and more privately in the North with Blacks calm but edgy anywhere (sort of).

Yet blacks remained most welcome in the homes of the middle and upper middle class, to help with children, cooking, gardening, and especially cleaning to give White women more time at the “clubs” or card parties, or mahjong madness.

In my home we had two Black women who lived with us.  One, as a boy, was my precious, Victoria. Looking back, I loved her more than my own mother who I hardly saw, save at dinner times.  The other girl was named Florida who was quite young and not educated – the nicest person in the house, except for my father, and of course Victoria.  Florida bought that “nudists” were the name for pretzels!

I don’t know what Donald Trump’s parents felt about Blacks or the poor in the 1950s-60s, and early 1970s.  What I do know is that my own grandfather Julius and Trump’s father were in the same business and that both of them, in Brooklyn together, called Blacks ’Schwartzehs’ –in German or Yiddish.  Jews, after WWII were not racist – they already knew what that could mean and all too well.

Trump and I also attended the same type of military schools, although Trump’s school had a far stricter reputation as you may see here:

Here is a little video about Brentwood Academy where I went to school and lived.

However, the Jews who came to America after the war did enjoy finding that non-white Americans were treated as a sub-species generally – so they too – finally had someone to “pick on” in a negative way –  I.E. “Let the Schwartzeh do it, or my maid is a Schwartzeh.”

My family took pains to provide Black men and women decent jobs in business and some of my uncles catered to ‘negro tastes” in their retail stores.  I can’t say that I know this was because they “felt” for them, or because they would work for less than whites – but hire them they did – and that was unusual in late 19th and early 20th century America.

Where I lucked out, and turned out differently then most, was that my own Mother was an early and sturdy activist against America’s apartheid which surely existed with great pain to the negro – from her own childhood beginning in 1918.

I am politically correct, most of the time, but a racist thought or word can come out of my mouth on occasion and at home where only my dogs can hear it!

Perhaps that is easier to happen to Mr. Trump.  He was groomed for business – I was turned-out for the law.  Yet I call one of my favorite Chinese friends Little Miss Ching, and a great Black woman associate and friend called me “Pink Dick” and in front of everyone in our office.  Am I a racist – no, but then again I wasn’t raised by one.

The reason my mother was such an early adopter of complete fairness, and who saw no color at all, was because she ran away from home as a teen and became an entertainer at the Chicago World’s Fair where she was surrounded by Black musicians, dancer, singers and other talented souls who made up a majority of the “left” in her world at that early time and throughout her life.

Then she began to suffer from Alzheimer’s, and that caused her to revert to racism except with the closest Black friends she maintained even in old age. This was an unbelievable transformation to me – then an adult. I could not stand for her new diseased personality and certainly thought she had lost her mind – but no, she was just ill I was too injudicious to realize it.

My mother was also a great supporter and front-line activist in convincing Congress and later President Truman to integrate women directly in the armed forces  She was in the Women’s Army Corp immediately and later was instrumental, along with my Uncle Raymond Schroeder to convince President Harry S. Truman to sign a law creating regular and reserve status for women in the armed forces.

I never considered race, creed of religion.  My father owned a factory in the Bronx, NY – which was also a blighted part of New York City – a horror –  at which most blacks who needed to live near Manhattan resided.  I played baseball, stick-ball, and the usual boy’s games with these pals and they made me even more angered at the dregs of slavery that yet existed in American in the 1950s and which I became more and more expert on.

Many of my “aunts and uncles” were Black. Of course they were either musicians, lawyers, and even one high court judge in New York.  The mother of one of those early friends of my mom was like my own grandma and I would venture to visit her as often as I could – even as a grown man. She was called Mama Carolee and was the sweetest woman I have ever had to pleasure to meet.

Mama Carolee

I lived at college from 1966-1970. My roommate and I were supportive of Black causes and the complete end to institutional racism at that time even though there not many Blacks in our dorms or at the university.

Both he and I joined, figuratively, the Black Panthers, but only helped with their social dealings. We even took well-known Black first names – I was Leroy and my roomie was Satch, after the great musician Satchmo Louis Armstrong.

Satch and I did do one “violent” thing – we threw all the furniture around the large swimming pool at our dormitory into that pool as an event we planned to prove our fealty to our Panther friends.

At that time student Panthers were also less active than non- school-attending Panthers who did, along with social work in the Black community, commit crimes to make their points and feather the Panther treasury, and even committed murder.

Our generation served food at the first meals served to Black children by the Panthers. In Retrospect I might have been wrong to become a special Panther, but looking back I adopted the good, and rejected the bad party of that battle. And I got to wear a beret for a while.

The Republicans had no appreciable presence at most state universities during the period from 1964 through the early 1970s. When they did go to college they went to smaller private ones, or religious hideouts.  Republicans at public universities could not chance having an open table to sign-up at almost every university in the United States.

In 1965 I traveled through the American South and saw that things were far worse there – although it was hard to imagine anything shoddier than the “projects” in New York and Chicago and most big cities in America that were built very quickly after earlier riots – when minorities had had it.

The musical West Side Story took the part of poor Puerto Ricans at that time – I wonder now why it wasn’t Black Americans who were the focus of Leonard Bernstein then. Was he too a racist?

One day I took a drink of water, purposely, in Bogalusa, Mississippi just after emerging from a Black’s Only rest room.  I took my drink from a “Blacks Only” water fountain and woke up from a good beating and a slashed hand as my gift. Things were more than touchy throughout the U.S. that year and some thugs who hated Blacks pummeled and cut me up as they did many freedom riders.

Let me be clear – I was never a freedom rider.  I was afraid of dying. Yet as I moved through the South from Miami to New Orleans and on back to California I became angrier and angrier at what I witnessed.

The lowliest young racist today has never witnessed what went on in this country from the end of WWII through the 1990s.

Sadly, after 1998, racism somehow began to come into its appalling own again – especially in the South and among ill-educated youth and blue collar families elsewhere.

I can recall driving through Chicago with a well-to-do uncle and him lowering the locks on his Lincoln Continental because we were entering a “coffee and cream” area of the city.  He was not a racist as we define them today – he was a pussycat in comparison – but some things stuck and coffee with cream was one of them.  Yes, cream, were the Whites living in the same neighborhoods as the coffee.

After 1998 things changed for the worse.

It was Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch who most severely brought this change – and very quickly via Fox News, newspaper rags from London, and later the purchase of the Wall Street Journal. They poisoned the minds of millions of Americans to adopt severe right wing doctrine.

Early on Aisles who is responsible for Fox Television and more of Rupert Murdoch’s menu began his quest.  I will not explain this as “Mr. Ailes salivating at the chance” to bring back old nightmares.  I think he settled on becoming another cable news channel to compete with CNN – but aiming for older viewers that kept their right and ultra-right attitudes – or grew them starting in the Reagan Era – where Aisles played a small but important role.

Aisles who has gone after me personally and with private investigators had no idea, when he launched Fox News on cable, that it would become so popular. He couldn’t have known that not just older white Americans would flock to his new channel but would soon be joined by all “unsuccessful” men and women who not only were negative to minorities from annoyance to hatred – and also because these white families were facing retirement with almost nothing in Fox’s near future. They too were have-nots – although they feel, even today – a step above the Black man.

Aisles knew how to profit on fear – he was an artiste at it.

Ailes also knows how to deliver on war – and the Bush-Cheney Administration gave him the quantifiable action to speedily go forward – using a ‘hate the Arabs’ and ‘Love your America theme – And lets not forget who has made you poorer –Democrats and “Leftists” who gave those “people” welfare and other “handouts” – That’s who.

Well Aisles be damned – it turned out that he had hit the only “oil” left in the viewership world at that pre-Internet time – and boy did he become richer than Croesus as a result. Within a few years his viewers outpaced CNN.

Fox News is said to have enemies lists from Ailes and his “Brain Room” and it became a Nixonite list of those people who preferred peace to war, minorities who didn’t adopt “American Values”, people who didn’t “work hard enough”, people on welfare, people on Medicare, people who “expected” handouts, any criminal (except Republican criminals) it seems, drug users, drug pushers (but not Pfizer), the lying eco “nuts” who were lying about the ruined earth even though Fox knew they were lying,

All middle of the road (then) newspapers and the more liberal newspapers – the worst being the “commies” at the New York Times were Ailes’  hated targets as well.

One could hear on Fox News – especially in early mornings when blue collar workers were getting ready to toil in hard jobs with low pay – they now became Aisles unwitting friends.  Wall Street, Brokers, banks and additionally, and to create a buttress, were the Jews and Israel because these factions were too smart, yet too under siege to accept or deny Ailes pap as truth.

This is a very complex part of the Aisles formula for greatness because he had to stave off Jewish leaders who were largely on the left of center, yet bring Israel and Zionists to his breast to be fed more half-truth and false interpretations from Fox and often denied by Israelis but accepted, as needed, as a gift. Israel knew it had to toe the line for Fox – it was and is her biggest positive free media source in the United States, and should not be blamed for tens of million of free media aimed at Congress and the White House.  In short, he copied the same ruse as the Republicans in the “new” Congress.

One might call Rodger Ailes a genius, as they once called Hitler, had Hitler, like Ailes, befriended the Jews only to use them instead of murder them Ailes would then be a clone.

Ergo – “Ailes can’t be a fascist because he loves the “Jewish People and Israel”. Perhaps he does, but he uses them like no one since Himmler. Rodger Ailes is, in my opinion an old geezer playing the modern fascist – he fools the have-nots and he fools them well enough to consider voting for neocons and worse.  Ailes claims his half-truth news program is “entertainment” from which I assume that Fox News is a misnomer. It is not news at all – it’s dogma.

Those Republican thugs we see now, even in Congress, have no idea how terrible it was for minorities in those older days – and they seem not to care.

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle in their middle sixties and older certainly do see it – but they are now called RINOS – Republicans in Name Only and the “communists” by their juniors – and according to freaks like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio – themselves come from immigrant Latino minorities yet too young to be treated like street garbage during their own youth – and now – they are deniers.

Deniers are the worst.

Fox News and Rodger Aisles did not do this alone.  They supported and cheered on even more right-wing publications – especially on the Internet or still alive in hardly-read magazines that spouted right wing ethics which were in reality, a lack thereof.

What became “The American Way” was not a giving, caring nation and morphed into a nation that stood for “Work hard to get rich, and even if you don’t make – Worship the Rich. (Unless they were left wing rich or entertainers). These website rags  include The Daily Caller, Red State, Breitbart, The Blaze and dozens of others.

This list of wrongdoers is from what I call on my own formula – A true generalization. There is nothing wrong with generalizing when the truth is wide-ranging and provable.

I have many Republican and even Ultra Right-Wing associates and friends.  Two of my closest friends who are Trump supporters know that a detente has seemingly been reached between Trump and Fox  News in most cases even though sex-pot, shrieking, know-it-all Megyn Kelly will take a shot at him at almost any opportunity privately and even on the air at times.

Saying Republicans are today only out for money and killing the poor and Islam as racism using budget cuts is, or course is not true for all Republicans – but the trend is toward expanding Neo-Nazism within certain growing wings of the Grand Old Party, and anyone who disagrees with this new and evil-appearing club scares even even the GOP codgers — who will have to move way to the right to get re-elected.

This movement to the right is a major problem for the United States, as it has become so in Europe and in other so-called Democracies around our world.

The problem is that even the most unsophisticated person working a field in the desserts of Africa or the rivers of Vietnam now know – in detail – very well, what appears to be a huge group of White-dominated hypocrites who are sneaking into power and posing a tremendous threat to the underclasses.

In conclusion: American voters should realize that almost no politician tells the truth during a campaign. Politics today is far too sophisticated to ignore pollsters who in fact direct political candidates on what to say, when to say it, and to whom.

Donald Trump may not be spending a lot with pollsters but he is watching what they think closely.  The tragedy for The Donald may be that he saved money in the wrong place and should have hired the best pollsters around to guide him a bit better while still keeping to his ‘say what I want, no matter the cost’ theme. (For a smile see: http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Politically-Correct

In fact, I am quite amazed by Trump’s lack of cleverness here.  It almost certainly will, at this late juncture, cost him a straight-winning nomination based on state primary wins – and once the GOP goes to convention to choose, it will be quite difficult to prevail, I would go so far as to say impossible, for Trump to get the nod.

As it looks today that reward would most likely go either to Ted Cruz or even Mitt Romney or some dark horse.  But Cruz is the more likely – and I can tell you that you will not even recognize the United States when Cruz starts his battle of vengeance on the poor, the sick, the minority, and our allies as he missuses his power and allows his regrettable ego to take charge and ruin what’s left of the magic of the United States.

Trump, if he loses the nomination,  must then run as an Independent, in my opinion – to deny the GOP a win for the White House.

Mr. Trump could do this easily and emerge as a leader in American politics for his lifetime, yet he must plan for it now as it will be a complex objective to achieve. All he need do is to focus on key heavily populated states. to run independently and deny any candidate the Republicans come up with for President.

He must also make it clear that this is what he is doing I hope.

This could be Donald Trump’s greatest gift to America. The America he recognizes well, and loves perhaps without knowing it.  He could deny the far more dangerous and destructive Ted Cruz a shot at the Oval Office, and he can save himself the heartache one must endure, upon entering 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for four to eight years of misery.

Any past president who is honest will be glad to tell Mr. Trump what misery to expect, and how grueling it would be for him and his family.

Thus this essay is  about me, and this is Donald Trump as well – We are dissimilar and alike – and that’s what I hope you have gleaned about our times.  The above is an outline of how we grew up, what we learned and miss-learned, what we did correctly, and what we did in error. What I have not included is my personal knowledge of Trumps social interests – which are many.

By the by- I am not voting for Donald Trump nor anyone else – I believe that the circus we have witnessed during the past months is proof of what I’ve suspected since elementary school – “Most things we hear or read from public or corporate sources are straight- out lies and half-truths”.

Today the media controls the political process for better or worse.

It is their advertisers that call the shots because business provides the money to make a profit or not in the  television, radio, and print business.

Worse, the men and women who own or control large media sources are friends with those who make it clear through not-very-true news – They insist on what is acceptable to them and of course what is “not Presidential material”.

There is nothing new about this – it’s been going on for a millennium. I know it, you, at least, suspect it.

Politics today, and Democratic Voting  anywhere on Earth is a kind of a fabulously gross Ice Cream Sundae combined with slaves fighting to the death in Roman coliseums.  Finding who are the slaves, and who are the masters is the key.

Fighting was real in Rome – it is not in America and elsewhere – because the voters do not make policy except by completely frightening the top one percent and what we call opinion-leaders, who are usually also chosen by the big money (with many surprising exceptions, but when measured – not enough.)   So shaking them up, is better than casting a vote they might never count.

You should go and vote though – but not for this crowd.  I am writing in Senator Elizabeth Warren because she’s a genius, she is kind, and she stands for the true American Values that grew up and matured during my lifetime – going from greed to caring and now, sadly back again. American Values do not include making billions of dollars on the backs of “lesser citizens”.

Remember?

JMK

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President Barack Obama surprised me this week, weighing in on Donald Trump’s candidacy and other GOP candidates without mentioning their names.

I think this creates more division, and more verbal warfare.

I understand Obama’s need to say something.

However, I also see that GOPers are now quoting Cabinet members as using words such as “hate Donald Trump” or “Marco Rubio – are you kidding”

The bag of tricks available in this arena is huge – there is no need for the President of the United States to lower him or herself to realpolitik levels.

I hope the President – who I admire without reserve – will argue that point with whomever is advising him on this issue.

A shocking prescription to protect our world from conflict and disorder

By Jeff Koopersmith, Editor Emeritus – American Politics Journal – for my son

7 January 2016

“The fourth and broadest shift in the international order flows from the transition from a U.S.- dominated system toward a non polar world, one in which the leading political and economic institutions no longer reflect the true balance of global power” – Ian Bremmer, The Eurasia Group

WASHINGTON DC   7 JANUARY 2016

Ian Bremmer seems to me to be one of the canniest minds in the United States, but now and then he allows his prior work to get in the way of today’s reality.

For instance, the quote above and more seems to advocate that without a U.S. controlled system of world order (and I assume he believes the other “pole” was made of the former Soviet Union, or perhaps China) we are now entering either a nonpolar world – which I dispute – or a multipolar world – a notion that I find more convincing.

I mean no disrespect to Mr. Bremmer. I never miss his appearances on Charlie Rose or at other forums if possible – even when I have to put up the second and/or third part of Rose’s program and Charlie’s noticeable but disturbing adoration for actors and directors – all of whom seem to be high up in the intellectual atmosphere, yet, alas, perhaps.

As a kind of academic hobbyist after attending twenty-seven years of educational modules from the ABC’s to analysis of semantic differentials, I find it helpful to bounce my own designs against those of minds  like Bremmer’s, and I must say that his worry about non-polarization has me tickled as it appears it must be true or reflective of Bremmer’s own concern about state-owned capitalism that for me has more sidelines than a Rubric Cube as well as being uncontrollable which appears obvious in Beijing.

Prof. Bremmer has appreciable disquiet over the lack of transparency by such players as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  While these giants, filled with donated currency from other colossi, do impact our world, many of the programs each sponsors are thorough disasters for the nations in receipt of this largesse.  Instead, just like in the United States the money somehow makes it way to leadership pocketbooks and makes them, not the nation, wealthier and more-essential – and of course, in today’s world Splendid.

Bremmer’s underpinning – his view of our planet and guests thereon – seems almost totally grounded in a necessity for “order”. Yet we all know in our core of souls that there is nothing more disorderly than the human being – even when compared with most animals. Even the lion himself does not control the Masai Mara any more than Eisenhower controlled our post WWII earth much to his disappointment.

While the 2016 opening acts in scattered financial circuses worldwide bodes ill, it seems to me that the very lack of American domination, if it be true, is and was caused by our unfettered craving to control the order of “all stuff” – which is caused by what I named our “Colonialization Gene” – passed to us over more than a dozen centuries – Sixty generations of visceral need to have whatever we can get.

Nations, and corporations are not individuals nor are their governments.

When Barack Obama speaks at the United Nations publically – he does not say “I, the United States” … (I must admit though I love his freshness and his background – Barack Obama uses the word “my” almost constantly which ticks me off. Rarely do you hear him speak of “we” when referring to his tens of thousands staff or much of anything else including we peons)

“We” is generally used to define a national population even though, of course, that is deceptive, much as “Democracy” can be and is seen as overprized.

“The people” do run nor manage large governments. Perhaps at the village level this is true, but in the end it’s the best, the brightest, and the wealthiest who are this “We” – the rulers if you will.  This is fodder for further discussion than called for here – except to point out that in the entire world there are probably fewer than twenty thousand men and women who control, absolutely, the planet – and not symphonically.

I have told my son and grandsons more than once. that, if possible, the best form of government is the “Benevolent Dictatorship” – The problem is finding one, and then replacing him or her with another when they depart.

The United States believes, especially at the lower but still canny echelons of intelligence, that essentially strength crafts truth (aka might is right).  For this reason – and our history of being dominated for 400 years by other earlier “mighty” nations. we continually struggle to dominate, but always beneath the justification of biblical rationale.

There is one component of Barack Obama that turns its back on this genetic truth even when his own back is to the wall as his popularity wanes.

Yet Barack Obama did not cause what could be an awful period ahead.

A group of would-be and were leaders from the first days of recorded and oral history did this.

These, mostly men. were smart, but not smart enough to realize that Mr. Bremmer’s international order could only be controlled, if ever, by a single government that by some miracle could reflect the generally-accepted resolve of ten billion people without killing so many of us, or forcing us to adopt whichever form of governance the strongest require.

How absurd was it to believe that dictators AND their people would accept American (or Western) Democratic ideals?

The proof of this, of course, is our own miscarriage to think we could transplant more or less a French ideal, which is not idyllic at all, to Iraq, or Syria; Russia, or China; Yemen or Saudi Arabia. Gibberish. We have failed in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan – and yes Russia. Are the captains of those nations morons, or are we simply too full of ourselves to understand what should be simple – Different folks need different strokes.

In fact, most “democracies” I have studied, regurgitated and re-studied seem to be harbors of gluttony, acquisitiveness, and a dash of generosity to conceal the worst of it.

Do voters in reality have confidence they can change the impeller of unfettered capitalism?  Of course not. They believe, however that someone or some elite group can – so we watch advertisements and pick the best liar to lead us (as long as they are photogenic)

What Mr. Bremmer fears is that this someone is or becomes “the State”. Yet that dread, if present, is unfounded and worse implies that the United States form of government is the best without question.  I certainly believe that – but I do not believe governing practice is transferable.

Is Bremmer afraid of the muscle of the state or simply the state’s unpreparedness?

A look at those nations who now stay away from conflict as demonstrated by France, Iceland and many others demonstrates that this is wrong. All these countries and more have had their entire governments resign simply from disgrace and sometimes for minor reasons.

For one reason or another the United States President and Congress nor any state I can recall after the civil war has resigned because the let down their population.

However, my definition of a state – can only be a universal in one capacity and that is stopping war and even civil war on this earth.

This would be demonstrated to all other nations in regions where elected, appointed, or kleptomaniacal leaders cannot control alone or with help from others without due fairness to all and without retribution.

My own theses are founded on the idea of the now mired-in-technicality United Nations – much as our country is founded on united states. Frankly the United Nations cannot perform in all the arenas they have adopted. The world is too large and far too complex to do so in the 21^st Century.

Nevertheless, another form of all nations united must begin, not as an excuse to have lunch everyday at La Grenouilles in Manhattan, but instead to machete any hint of warfare – either physical or financial – swiftly and without mercy.

What Mr. Dick Cheney, once an allied buddy of Saddam Hussein against Iran, accomplished proves my point.  A people who live between borders that are merely a blunder of geographic happenstance or foolhardiness cannot be allowed to attack or be attacked.

Period.

Yet the powerful – anywhere – believe that it is reasonable to kill men women and children who threaten “our” way of life – not in any specific way – but in ANY way.  What an empty and false notion.

It is only reasonable to use force or arms or financial ruin if a nation threatens “a way of life” by killing or causing death via other means.

This interference with others for merely monetary gain has to end, and ergo Mr. Bremmer’s idea to maintain some puerile balance between the one, two, three out of 200 poles is unmanageable and absurd today.

When it comes to killing or causing poverty we, all the nation states, must agree that the threat from the target illicit state is unlawful and those that put out that fire must come from a unified nationhood, unified under at least this one rule.

Why is it impossible to once again mirror the British Empire, the Spanish Kingdom, The French Empire, The Roman Domains?

In the main, this is because of one wonderful and cancerous element – Communication.

Almost all people – even those living 100 miles up the Amazon River, are aware of what is possible to have, not to have, or be destroyed by. This is a very new and very dangerously superb gift from the minds of Nerds.

I am reminded of a nine-year old boy who daily piloted his tiny sailboat on the Nile in Egypt navigating me back and forth between appointments and amusements in that superlative country.

That boy had no idea what the world was like.  If he had known, he would not have clung to one imbecilic dream – to kill all Jews. He told me that one afternoon on the river. “That will make everything good” he said.

This boy was nine years old, yet after a week or so and upon visiting his family hovel on the “bad” side of the river occupied by no less than 11 adults and children. He called it home and I realized then that we “rich people” from the West were only so dazzling because we then were able to hide our gildededness from most of the rest of the world.

This family fed and watered me, laughed with me, and along the way I began sending bits of money to them to assure the boy’s education.

He was educated, and today he has a workstation that continues to teach him – even without his realizing it; He knows how the world indeed works.

As he matures he will realize that most everything of tangible and pecuniary value is owned by the strongest, not the weakest; that children in at least 30 nations have their own bathrooms and skateboards, bikes, and books – That some automobiles cost as much as the annual salary of 500 of his neighbors and their 1.8 million hours of toil for those 500 – 1.8 million!

My little friend has not maintained his hatred of Jews.  He did maintain his loathing, his fear and loathing, of “the west”.

The nonsense you see on the television and hear on the radio as to these so-called religious wars is just that – nonsense. It is not really Islam against the world, or Sunni vs. Shia – it is the have nots erupting in disgust and led by those who may be “haves” but are humiliated by that.

My own wonderful country – America – now has nearly 50 million people living under the poverty line mostly because we spent several trillion dollars on destroying an entire region – perhaps an entire continent – for nothing but visceral need.

The reason that more than half the earth is at war with each other is KNOWLEDGE. It is a shock to realize what happens when you educate the poorest among us – The British and all the Empires believed this untrue for centuries until the people they educated rose up and pitched them out.

There is no war between Sunni and Shia – there are wars between fictional “nations” whose borders were conceived in this century by the Western privileged – the Victors.

The Saudis are afraid of Iran – not because they are Shia, but because they recently made a covenant with the U.S. and its allies netting Iran a couple hundred billion dollars (their own confiscated money) which the Kingdom worries harkens the end of the America-Gulf love affair.

It does not.

So. Let’s begin by making it a universal international crime, punishable by international shunning and even death to take up arms within or between people’s or nations.

How we do that is up for grabs and quite possible. Quite simple really.

Once we stop living in fear foisted on us by the CEO’s of NBC, BBC, CBC, Pravda, et al – there will be a chance to make additional wise and fair decisions that impact all of us “earthlings” not just the ones we target.

So in the end Bremmer is correct.

We need, at least, to form a world-board of directors whose members pass muster – not beauty contests; who must be judicious, not wise-guys – and who cannot buy each other or threaten to gain some device.

And yes, if may take military power to stop those who choose to kill each other including innocent, but “collateral” bodies and damage. Horrible but necessary because today diplomacy works only among the most privileged and educated.

When is has come to today’s wars – it is too late to progressive.

Our new Nations united against war must be amalgamated at least in that one direction, and very soon – and no nation will have a veto power – that which corrupts the U.N. today. When a war begins the rest of us end it.

This is a call, therefore, for a colossal step toward orderliness.

Pandora’s Box is wide open thanks to brilliant on-the-spot communication at all levels. That peculiar promise holds a veritable snakes-nest of pending horror should we continue to run about the earth – all of us – willy-nilly trying to gain the upper hand with power or punishment.

We must stop and now.

I believe that there would never have been another war after Korea had all the people of the earth been party to the giant conversation we see as everyday life.

I watched almost 60,000 or my peers die in Vietnam – for nothing but insatiability. Zilch.

It is near one hundred years after the first roiling of World War I.

Enough is enough.

Getting the upper hand is the broadest of alliances in peace willing to stop all war not just war that impacts a particular nation or group of the powerful.

Even if Rupert Murdoch’s repugnant Fox News or The Economist tells you that seeking wealth and power is the best prescription.

This does not mean that none will be wealthier than others – it simply means that none will live in dirt eating flies unless they choose to so after a decent education and a good look around.

Yes, only a first step – but one we must see to.

[Thanks to Ian Bremmer for prompting me to write.] – JMK

. . .they didn’t complain when we used terrorism as a major weapon against those Brits! They helped!

By Jeff Koopersmith, Editor Emeritus

It strikes me as odd that the Media is going wild for France when all those hacks really enjoy are the Hot Spots like Cannes and only certain arrondissement in Paris – the costly ones.

One would think a nuclear weapon was set off in that City where every person or citizen of FORMERLY FRENCH ARAB COLONIES came in on easy-to-get visas since the French are liberal and good people.  Yet so many remained trapped in French minority-related poverty as so many of our own people of color also stay poor in reality and spirit.

Take a look at French history with Syria – and more, what they might lose is they don’t terrify the jihadists.

Also, you may know, French Jews began leaving Paris especially – but from all over France because they knew how Arabic peoples in the Med and Africa felt about the French who were also well known anti.  French+Jew+Inbred French antisemitism+Arab antisemitism meant – “Hey we better get outta here bubby!.” And so they did – check it out –  and not just last year – but from the late 1990s on.

However, to be “shocked” at the latest blood bath in France is to be ignorant and the French people should be protesting their government – not a war they cannot afford and not a war against Islam – because Islam is not the reason that these terrorists are doing the dirty. France should have (1) protected their people better, and (2) before that – made certain the people they used so tragically around the world during the 18th and 19th centuries be given a leg-up – more than an EasyVisa to spend money in France or take a lousy job.  They should have invested in those they conquered and not allowed the most evil of leftovers to brutalize their own people.

While most Arabs come from an Islāmic background – they also come from the some of the toughest poverty on earth where women are treated as feces, and girls are killed should they be born to male-less parents.

I have traveled somewhat widely in Muslim nations. In fact just before that moron Dick Cheney (now well-known) fooled George W with purportedly phony information about the poison gas and nukes in Iraq I leased a home on Lake Lugano in Italy and planned, for the next to years, to travel all over the Arab world because I was getting on in age and worried I could not do it in the next decade. There was much to be seen that I had not.

I made it Tunisia.  I was there two weeks before the Arab nightmare began.  I like to think that the wonderful Tunisian people I met on the ferry from Italy and all around town joined the Democratic train because I came.  Even then I knew something was up because I was at the most popular beach town in Tunisia and was about one of five people there vacationing. I had a wonderful time. The cabana staff gave me the wooden number plaque from my little changing room on the sand because I asked them about family, friends schools and more.

The pooh-poohed the idea that radical Arabs were fighting for Allah.  almost everyone I talked – educated or not – talked first about the Dictators that kept most of them in poverty, and the Imams that helped them.  That isn’t to say they don’t believe in their God – but it does mean that they might truly be fighting for freedom against their own Tyrants now that the time has come.

And in Tunisia, the time came quickly and without too much fuss.

So – Main Stream Media and comedy channels like Fox – don’t be fooled by this BS about Islam vs. Christian and Jew et al. That is like repeating over and over that the American Revolution was about Religious Freedom – It was not. It was about freedom for some, and greed from most others.

Look back throughout our own history and you will find that every time we have domestic unrest it’s about freedom and equality – not religion.  The Arabs feel the same. Of course they do. They are not the idiots you might think they are. They are far more educated than in past centuries – and even then they were fighting for dictators who denied them freedom and equality and instead – just like we do – threatened them with DEATH as the last resort, or the first, for “abandoning” their desert posts.

Arabs and Africans no matter their religion are tired of Kings and Dictators, Emirs, and Imams.  They want to put the men and women in official status who might take some time to worry about them – their problems, their lack of freedom. They are sick, literally, of being ignored.

This does not mean I am against fighting terrorists who threaten people all over the earth. What it does mean is that our own leaders should come clean and tell us we are fighting for our own freedom and equality barely given because if we don’t we will end up like the very people we now loathe – and perhaps not because we are so innocent.  I love my America, but I too am tiring of little and bigger wars that seem never to stop – but rarely threaten us.

Remember – we loathed the English. Now we love them – hugging them from our “special relationship” – which is exactly what?

We saved them from Hitler. And today we are praying for, as we should, the French people who are paying a price for being our allies and for their forbearers’ cruelty to the “colonies”.

When these criminals crowds pour into America to punish us for our Cheney-Bush shenanigans, will the French be there for us? I hope so – but with humility and mais sans hypocrisie.

It’s still Clinton and Bush as Favorites

By Jeff Koopersmith, Editor Emeritus (1988-2012)

TUESDAY, 28 OCTOBER 2015 -WASHINGTON, DC-This evening Americans have the opportunity to listen to and watch whomever is left in the Twin Bakers Dozen of unprepared for the White House Republican Candidates for the GOP presidential nomination – and that person who will most-likely face Secretary Hillary Clinton 13 months from now remains a mystery.

Tonight’s debate, will include Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, John Kasich and Rand Paul, and begins at 7 p.m. Central Time. It will last two hours.

One reflects on the paucity of credentials these men and one woman display.

Mr. Trump is a successful master of braggadocio and a moderately successful member of the fabled American one percent – That means he is rich. He’s the almost perfect New Yorker who believes the sun revolves around him and his family – a wonderful family really – giving and mostly honest – but pushing the limits almost all the while.  Mr. Trump although he has amassed the money of others primarily, and later made his own, simply does “deals”.

Trump builds new buildings and he builds them cheap in more ways than the just cost. He rehabs old office towers like his hotel marring Central Park and other buildings bearing at least his name on Central Park South, in Florida, Panama, SoHo, Waikiki, and elsewhere. He likes golf courses and thinks they attract the clientele he aims for – people with money, but not classic- these are the artsy types who are willing to overpay for grade C, 4-star hotels and condominiums.

Mr. Trump had a long running television program – more a comedy than a how-to, which featured hiring and firing people who wanted to work for him.  I know people who work for Trump and know of people that Trump has fired. They seem to me to be far too gentle for his gang, yet perhaps they were not talented enough to turn little or nothing into millions which I admit is Trump’s definite magic.

Can Donald Trump turn a sulking America into a happy place filled with almost total employment, universal health care, and even joy?

I don’t know.  I do know that political writers are praying he gets the nod – because no one has so interested the American public than Donald Trump nor entertained the intellectual elite in spades.

Aside from Ben Carson, MD – Trump is yet leading in many polls that mean little or nothing for either Carson or Trump.  There is far too much ahead to predict anything but what might happen the day such a poll is taken.

Speaking of Ben Carson – he is, to most of us, a conundrum.  Carson poses an interesting problem: Where did he come from aside from an operating room, and what does he truly want, and how does a man considered by some to be a genius, decide to become a Republican, who believes in: “Life, his God; the abolition of Obamacare; the end of Hispanics crossing our borders; and more which are normally a set of unprincipled principles usually ascribed to Americans who are largely not very wealthy (though some are) but want to be – so very, very badly; and often to someone’s disadvantage.

This brings up a question I will grant somewhat short shrift. “Primaries and Caucuses” – two ridiculous activities that serve to enrich people living in states that hold these silly elections, and test only the ability of a candidate’s talent pool to pay hundreds well enough to bribe, even threaten, primary voters to get the polls, for that is the main problem facing each Republican candidate – now ten of them, and earlier nearly twenty if you count the maybes.  

These primary elections are ludicrous because they measure mostly the whims and condition of the American average voter that is far different than the norm.

Are people living in California and New York akin to those in Iowa and New Hampshire or South Carolina?  Do most people living in Iowa or New Hampshire live in large cities?  Do South Carolinians concern themselves with social problems, racism, poverty, and more unfairnss as do the more urbane, and by the way, majority of Americans?  The answer is “No”.

Thus my short conclusion is that primaries be held in all states on the same date to choose each party’s candidate for President. Period.

Then we have a good idea of who the majority thinks might be the best for all Americans – not just the ones who are wined and dined in Podunkity locales because they have their election earliest?

If you want to be president – then you simply must visit all fifty states at two different stages – the primary and the general.

Every four years I normally write a column titled “Who Care What Iowans Think” and it is widely read. Perhaps I will do the same early next year, or perhaps I won’t because I know it will do no good to change this one assured insult to a true Democracy reflecting every American – not only the ones in the states with early primaries.

I believe now, in October of 2015, that neither Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, nor Rand Paul will win the presidential nod even if one of them “takes the gold” in Iowa and New Hampshire. I think that Jeb Bush yet has the potential, along with Marco Rubio, and even John Kasich to do so, and will maintain this better chance as long as their campaign funding and illegal (to me) PAC millions hold out.

Carly Fiorina, who used complaining as her way to save herself from drowning will not last much longer unless she finds a political sugar-daddy to keep her in the mix.

Chris Christie who has little chance to be re-elected to any office, will also fade quickly for lack of money and necessary intelligence.

Rand Paul is just too much like his father – and crazier than a loon in my opinion. He might last a bit longer – butwill not prevail in either of the three earlier primary/caucus circuses even though his people tell him he could win at South Carolina.

Ted Cruz who is supposed to be brighter than most, has proved an awful campaigner and strategist and has some superbly weird ideas that do not fit his posed biography.

Mike Huckabee – a most dastardly choice in that he is treacherous and cowardly-continuing  and sneakily to conceal himself behind God, therefore once again attempting to fool those who truly believe. Huckabee like others in modern history only runs for the presidency to feather his, his friend’s, and family’s treasure.  I don’t think, for a moment, that he ever believed he might win unless the entire United States became, overnight,  exactly like Arkansas when he was miraculously elected its Governor.

So, for me, its down to Bush, Rubio, and Kasich.

My wager is still on Bush.

His ability to connect with the average American voter is suspect, but he commands a virtual army of Bush-lovers and donors that can roll over the others like a tidal wave – and beside he’s a nice guy with a Hispanic wife and does not display snobbishness.

Bush is also not identified with the crazy-wing of the Republican party made up of Tea Party nuts and warmongers. If he stays away from the far right – and even teases them a bit, he will re-emerge more powerfully.

Marco Rubio comes in second on my short list. He is very smart and agile. His problem is that he is minority in an eight-year long demonstration that we are still a racist nation. He is also perceived as somewhat too young and uncontrolled for the Oval Office.  However, keep your eye on him – he will try again – and then he might be successful if he tones down the RIGHT side of his brain and matures.

For me, it’s another Bush or Senator Rubio who’ll get the Republican nod if there is any sanity left among conservative America.

Either way – at this juncture – just about a year before the Presidential election in November of 2016, either Bush or Rubio will fall to Hillary Clinton barring any occurrence of  heavily disruptive action(s) in this nation or around the world – Even For News’.

(thanks to Getty Images for an original but not copy of above photo)

So call me stupid.

By: Jeff Koopersmith

8 August 2015 – I actually watched the loser “can’t-di-dates” on Fox around 5 PM last evening. Then throughout the night I watched something worse – the ten “Might-be-winners” “debate” – i mean orate – I mean stammer through the first chance at revealing themselves to the public through the eyes of the usual morons at Fox including Megyn Kelly who got a mouthful from Donald Trump. I’ve heard Trump call her a bimbo privately, although I was sitting at a table near him – it could have been one of the others but I don’t think so.

Look, to save your time and mine:

The Fox production of Goobers on Parade One and Two were the biggest waste of time this year. The questioners were rude, the participants were rude or croaking about something that had nothing to do with becoming the President of the United States.

For instance “Dr.” Ben Carson reported that he was qualified to run a government with hundreds of thousands of employees and a mighty military because he had “cut a brain in half” and operated on a baby in the womb. Now I am sure these were breakthrough surgeries – but any doctor worth his salt – including that total idiot and quickly disappearing Dr. Rand Paul would immediately admit that doctors knowledge is quite narrow – mainly in the fields of animal husbandry, butchering, cooking and sailing Hinckley 50 foot yachts.

All one has to do is look at the past Surgeon Generals to realize that doctors can’t be in charge of much but an operating room. And that’s fine – but please stop voting for doctors – they are simply fancy mechanics – and usually very good people but certainly not master deal-makers.

Trump was Trump but the only frivolity he offered was admitting he called a fat television star – a fat slob. I will not name that person – but it was funny and the camera was off Megyn Kelly who quoted him – (wrongly) with that line which to her was much longer than it was in reality.

Thus far no one has asked Donald Trump the real questions that should be asked. Someday soon, someone will – and then all hell will break loose!

That’s all folks!

The Vahge Sisters – are they plotting to steal the White House?

Could a Billionaire Threesome Buy the White House?

BY JEFF KOOPERSMITH, Editor Emeritus

31 JULY 2015 – NEW YORK  Aside from wondering why Fox News is hosting a “debate” next week between seventeen candidates for its Presidential nomination of the man or woman who might end up in the Oval Office in 2017, I can’t help thinking that either Reince Priebus (GOP Chairman) and his team of nitwits are either taking a very long summer break – or are simply broken.

Never in the history of the United States have nearly 20 people made serious and semi-serious (as in Rand Paul) bids for that seat at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at the same time.

What goes with this foolishness are tens of millions of Republican voters who have no idea what’s going on, and are frustrated, even angry about this hijinx which comes, not from GOP chieftains, but from the very fact that that the GOP as a national organization has no power whatsoever over Republican candidates – and haven’t had for at least twenty years or more.

Money controls politics, and now more openly than ever.

The smoke filled rooms which once determined who would run for the presidency are ash. The primary system is in essence gone for GOP HQ control. Truly the GOP up on 1st and D Street SE in Washington is nothing more than a puppet for billionaires, corporate lobbyists, and even old ladies who’ve inherited enough money to get anything done for and by Republicans as long as her donation is huge and her ideas won’t get anyone imprisoned.

In fact just next to the big money there stands a group of neerdowells called ‘campaign strategists’ and ‘wonks’ who in fact control the candidates on a day to day basis. It is there job to win at all costs and wealthy individuals and groups are having a ball controlling them as well – either with rewards or threats.

Both work.

So, no matter what happens in the staged “debates” and the ludicrous caucuses and primaries in small states that represent nothing close to the American people in general, it will be at the GOP Convention where the winner will be crowned – no matter what people think in Iowa or New Hampshire.

In all, about 2,500 delegates will be howling, carrying professionally made signs that look unprofessional, drunk and excited will be stacked in hot and humid Cleveland – Cleveland?  between July 18 and the 21st of 2016.

Will this be a “brokered” convention?

You bet.

But the term “broker” refers more to Wall Street than to highly placed political thinkers and strategists. The brokers today are the fellows and ladies in the Sky Boxes playing cribbage and leaving the sure to be Convention boredom as they wish.

Imagine a couple of multi-billionaire sisters who are seeking, not only to command the White House through their chosen puppet, but to control the nation including the military, the congress, and most state houses in America via that control?

Let’s call them the Vahge sisters.

They, aged 78-94 and their closest friends have already wrested the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate from Democrat control merely because voters dared to elect a ‘socialist’ person of color as president – not only once, but twice!

Thus, to their alzy minds, the White House must now fall to the Republican party – no matter the cost – and the Vahge sisters can afford to load that greenback cannon. All they need to buy the convention, is to pay every delegate $100,000 each. That total is only somewhere around $250 million. Chicken feed to Vahges who have $23 Billion in the bank -Net.

Of course, you say, this could never happen, yet it damn well could.  Take a look at the candidates running now – with more to come perhaps. Few if any GOP candidate has the money to fund their own campaigns for the next year. Only Donald Trump claims he will do this – but I find that difficult to bet on.

Yet, it isn’t $250 million is it?  The number is $250 mill – less the delegates already in the box and maybe – to be safe – 55% (a bit more than 50% plus 1 vote) of the rest. Heck, the Vahge sisters could pull it off – Broker the convention themselves, prepay the delegates on their AMEX cards through PayPal credits made to mysterious open and closed “companies” with strange sounding names like “Delegate New LLC.”

I’ve made my point I trust.

I don’t believe the Vahge sisters exist, but I do know that billions are flowing into this presidential cycle – so it’s not difficult to assume most of it will end up one way or another in candidates’ pocketbooks as well as petty party operatives offshore a banks.

I propose, to fix this insanity, is that elections SHOULD be held via the NYSE.  Why not – that’s the way it is already. Political money can no longer be traced by the FBI or the FEC.  Payoffs are hardly ever found as eyes blur over when talking about hunting them down. Every wealthy American has ties to Wall Street.

So, if we let the New York Stock Exchange offer two IPOs – one Democrat, one Republican – heck even Tea Party and American Nazi Party IPOs – why not?  Let “the people” decide who wins by which IPO is capitalized to the highest degree when the market closes that day in November, 2016.

This is the fair way to elect people to office – even presidents.  Every American – man, woman, octogenarian and child could now buy shares of GOP or DEM.  That’s about 325 million people.

Even the Vahges could not afford to pay off that many people – could they?

It’s difficult to know where to begin.

How about the maniac who went into a church in South Carolina – prayed with a group there and then shot dead nine of them because he was some sort of freak Rebel who hated dark skinned people?

My comment is about the Governor. I think she was bordering on idiocy when she signed a bill WITH NINE PENS that would remove the rebel flag at the state capitol – Get this: in order to give each family a pen commemorating the fact that nine perfectly innocent and wonderful people had to die in order for a long drawn out argument in the 21st century whether we shoudl allow remnants of past hatred and slavery to be flying from flagpoles and almost anywhere you can think of in the South.

A travesty. Had I received one of those pens I would would have burned it on the steps of the SC Capitol building, only because I don’t have enough courage to burn it in the the Governor’s office. Nikki Haley is her name – and she probably thinks she will be a presidential contender someday.

In the meantime more than a dozen dead dark-skinned men lay dead from police shootings. “Good shooting ore bad” there was no need to shoot to kill these men. Enough said.

Unemployment among dark-skinned American youth is close to 50%. Boy – they have a lot to look forward and so much to lose.

President Obama did well these past weeks. First, the Supreme Court agreed with him that it was okay to give Southern people and other right-wing state residents the ability to participate in health insurance we now call ObamaCare – as it should be. The court, in doing so, mocked those who tried to deny the poor health care in far too many states with Republican governors who didn’t deserve to govern,

When will politicians learn they are not elected to take action based on polls?  As John Locke told us – the masses are asses – and today it couldn’t be more true in the United States.  All of you elected men and women – vote for what is fair and the correct thing to do – not what is popular A democracy does not mean that the voters decide on everything although the neonazis in America think that’s the way it should be. We elect men and women to office becuase they are good choice. They are normally smart, well educated in one way or another, friendly and see both sides of an issue. We do not elect them beccause they loathe the same people we hate, or are the same religion we are.

Speaking of hate and using religion as the excuse to exercise it. The Supreme Court again slapped the teatards and other neonazis allowing people who are not straight and have sex only with the opposite sex to get married and enjoy the benefits of such.  They protecct gay, lesbian, and transexual Americans to live as if they were anyone else.  And – wow – they are and were – all along.

Last – even though the warmongering neofascista in congress have already begun to attack the President and Secretary of State John Kerry – and the entire world for wanting to create a no-nukes Iran which even Iran said it wanted – the deal has been made and Iran for at least 10-25 years will not be permitted to “nuke-up”. Now if only we demanded that of all the other nuclear powers including ourselves. Wouldn’t that be something.

The state of the nation otherwise is moderate. However on the horizon seems to be a potential reflection of what happened in China last week where it’s markets lost more than 30% of their value. We began to plummet as well but something stopped that – and it was “fishy” at best. Somehow as the market began to crash the New York Stock Exchange went dark – and no one was to blame. Hmmm.

In addition – inflation in the real estate sector is worsening to the point where the average family or individual can do nothing but rent a home – and at unbelievably high prices.  This is blamed on the USa being the most “exceptional” place on earth.  I might go with the “safest” place on earth because we are surrounded by two oceans – but that would be foolish. However, the realtors tell us that all the world that has the money is in a bidding war for American property particularly in New York City, Florida, and California.  I believe this is partly true – but remember what happened to Japan when they bought what seemed like half of New York years ago?  They were “had” but people like Donald Trump and were forced to sell these same properties at fire-sale prices not much longer afterward.

How long the average American will put up with ridiculous prices for real estate is beyond my guessing power. I might say – “sooner rather than later” as I watch NYC apartments selling for between 1 and 5 thousand dollars per square foot in the nicest sections of the city – but still over a million dollars in areas that no one would want to live in on a few years ago.

Something is rotten in America – and I think you know what it is.

Oh- the Pope knows as well.

22 June 2015

Charleston and the Age of Fox News’ (et al) “Break Your Back” Racism-Filled Nonsense 

By Jeff Koopersmith, Editor Emeritus

There is no such thing as Race – and journalists had better know that and get this disease out of the main.

I read David Remnick’s extraordinary piece this week concerning nine innocent churchgoers murdered by a  young man named Dylan Roof in Charleston. Roof, whose skin was white, murdered these nine people whose skin was far darker after spending an hour or more with them at a bible study held at the historical Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina near to where kidnapped and captive slaves worshiped underground prior to the Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the end of America’s Civil War – fought over Southern hatred of “slave deliverance”.

As Mr. Remnick evidenced in his piece, I too thought of Barack and also Michelle Obama, the President and First Lady of the United States and how they must weep soundlessly in our White House following years of what seems like unbridled murders of dark skinned Americans, at best in grim or eager circumstances from the shooter either from his fear, hatred, or simple absurdity.

Remnick reminds us that three thousand four hundred and forty-six dark skinned human beings that we know about were lynched in less than 100 years after the Civil War ended.

This was the way that white-skinned Americans terrorized dark-skinned people then, even for the smallest thing like talking the wrong way, or speaking to the wrong people – light skinned people, and especially women.

As time went on after that period dark skinned people were still being hung by trees in the night, or dragged by chains lashed to trucks or cars along Southern roads and dirt alleyways that tore their skins from their bones so dreadfully that coroners took days just to piece together those bodies.

What an irony it is stripping the skin off a person. The dragging of these men and women provided the truth – that there is a race called Human Beings, but these sub-races fabricated along the centuries do not exist anymore more than Fish of a different color or physical appearance are not Fish. There are no Negroes, or Blacks, or African Americans that can be identified by skin color, or musculature, or genius.  They are just part of the billions of us that belong to the human race.

Yes the media in Western Europe and these United States not only perpetuated these labels until they became – and remain – institutional as well as part of our normal societies.  Adolf Hitler took full advantage of this when he sikked his Gestapo dogs on human beings with the wrong noses, beards, fuller lips, and more normal traits of all human beings.

While Remnick – who I so very much admire – writes of..cruelty and unpunished murder as a legacy.  I disagree, it is not a legacy since it continues as viciously as before, merely wearing an altered mask that attempts to hide the fact that the lynching of miscellaneous sorts of human beings continues in America and around the globe.

Here in America society lynches dark skinned people, brown skinned people, yellow-skinned people, gay people, transsexual people, Jews, Catholics, and the poor (Etc.) no matter what the color of their skin or the tilt of their noses. It they are different, they are lynched.

However, the legacy that Remnick introduces is realty, only the weapons have changed and they are largely held and aimed by our media – but NBC, CNN, FOXNEWS, The New York Times, and frankly almost all media – including minority-owned media (although more thoughtful) – a term I loathe because people’s skin color does not make them a “minority”.  They are humans. We people are all humans.

We have made them a minority by defining them by idiotic qualities.

The Media has a much greater responsibility for turning Americans against each other than does any force in our culture since media is the most potent – even intoxicating – information source and educator than our families, our churches, and– especially our schools today – many of which directed by men and women who believe in definition by appearance or practice rather than merit.

When I point out the miserable manner in which Fox News alters the meaning of almost all happenstance it is only because their reach is so very broad and yet they are over and done with all the  basic precepts of truth which once guided journalism  and the rest of us.

It is not just Fox News or Rodger Ailes the spine-chilling head of that division of Rupert Murdoch’s empire which is to blame for creating an atmosphere so dissimilar to reality that one grieves over it or should.  The reason Fox awarded itself the “Fair and balanced” moniker follows.

According to  Roger Ailes, an artless and generally insignificant aide to Ronald Reagan nearly fifty years in the past, Fox must define itself as such because in truth it is both unfair and completely unhinged in its analysis not only of news, but of the world in general.

Fox taps on the shoulders of –so-called experts on everything from warfare to psychology but in fact none of them are – by any definition- experts. Fox uses lovely women and smiling men to push propaganda they read from notes or Teleprompters – not news.  Where Fox  does tell the truth – The Weather reports – it simultaneously stands against and mocks  all of science who know well that our weather is being raped by our gruesome atmosphere and diseased oceans that are, in fact,  destroying  not only all of us – human and otherwise on the planet, including the planet itself.

Allow me more direct examples than my indiscriminate charge that the media – and especially the news media – are killing our fellows.

Nearly ten years ago I wrote an op-ed piece titled “The Lynching of Michael Jackson”

(https://books.google.com/booksid=cwLAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=the+lynching+of+michael+jackson&source=bl&ots=yar9jB7Qr&sig=DpdX8g87_JDNygjeI_nifkVnEg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uI2FVfadAoqfNtqKs5gP&ved=0CDUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=the%20lynching%20of%20michael%20jackson&f=false)

It was the end of a series of my opinions about Mr. Jackson and the power of the media to destroy, or better said – push a man to destroy himself much as humans, over the ages, have been shoved into suicide by public scolding and sermonizing – a flagship of Fox News ethical canons. You might recall that Fox led the way, along with CNN to do everything but call Michael Jackson a child rapist.  He was no such thing.

Fox is not the only criminal in this regard – Today it seems like every cable and broadcast network is swimming in maltreatment of people’s skin color which has absolutely nothing to do with what they are – save for what the “racists” do to them.

Such is the power of news to drive one to defying death while in reality inviting it.

Remnick’s superlative lines regarding this topic are these:

But the words attributed to the shooter (Dylan Roof) are both a throwback and thoroughly contemporary: one recognizes the rhetoric of extreme reaction and racism heard so often in the era of Barack Obama. His language echoed the barely veiled epithets hurled at Obama in the 2008 and 2012 campaigns

One could be reading a teleprompter of Fox & Friends, or the O’Reilly Factor to mirror those sentences.

Another example – perhaps the most important – is Fox News’ continuing harping and sniggering at Americans trying to maintain what is called a “politically correct” national arena.

Of course Fox writers and readers and do not understand the word political or the meaning of the term political correctness. Everything in our lives is “political” – the word itself is rooted in the Latin for polity –

Oxford English Dictionary:  Civilization; civil order or organization; civil society.

Political should mean “of the polity” or simply “civil” – The term has been bastardized over the years into meaning something to do with government and politics thereby denigrating it, and of course said meaning stands today – Nevertheless when someone is “politically correct” it means that someone is civil in a societal sense – saying or doing what is expected and what is not uncivil.

So, we are down to brass tacks. In my opinion which spans many decades observing what we now call racism, but is categorically simply “getting control over others”. The war against nearly everyone but White Judeo-Christian people seems worse to me during the last 20 years – and although the government and the highest courts have ruled in essence that this type of action is illegal and a disgrace – it continues.

An umbra of this – and a very powerful one – is exemplified by those I call “minorities by color” who are driven to drugs, alcohol or worse by the beating drums of indecent media cradles.  I am thinking today of a dozen and more dark-skinned American celebrities:  Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, Bobbi Kristina Brown (Houston), Marion Barry, Bill Cosby, Diana Ross, Cornell West, Vanessa Williams, and Barack and Michelle Obama.

All of these people have suffered greatly from race-based media harassment – and uncivil, indecent abuse by nearly all news media both directly or indirectly. They accomplish this by public humiliation and deceitfulness about who these people are and what they are doing.

Without going into each of their dreadful stories, which could fill ten books, I add that I believe Michael Jackson, and Whitney Houston, were driven to their deaths via media callousness and the severity of it and that the others on this very short list of victims have had their lives nearly destroyed by the same.

Thanks to Getty Images for this photo

Jackson and Houston were incredibly wealthy, but of course other disappointments contributed to their disability to ignore or fight those who profited from their frailties or simply lied about them to sell advertising.

Fox News is again the prime example, but its cohorts are thousandfold on the Internet, in deceptive magazines, fake “foundations” and preposterous political organizations including for the first time – the Republican Party and the Tea Party, sadly.

Did Jackson and Houston expire by their own hand whether by choice, involuntarily, or unawares escape from this earth we will never know.

Whitney Houston’s young daughter Bobbi, although still “alive” remains comatose after her own flirtation with death. Bobby Brown’s career nearly disappeared as well, and that happened prior to the opening cannon fire from television especially on Whitney Houston.

The one thing these dozen tortured people have in common is that they are dark skinned human beings – otherwise known by White Americans as African-Americans, Negroes, niggers, or blacks – none of which describe them at all and none of which are charming in any way even though these same human beings have adopted these terms and use them.  All of them have been victims to a greater of lesser extent than others – but to listen to that idiot Jerry Seinfeld – who is not funny and never was to my mind — say he is “sick of being PC” on Fox News of course – is enough to turn most people’s stomachs. Being sick of PC is to be uncivil and there is really no excuse for that.

Just ask any Southerner.

What is the answer?

I do not know.  Fox News, for instance, is nothing more than a 24 hours a day 7 day a week commercial for neocons and worse, hides behind the journalistic shield even though Fox has nothing much to prove that it is a news network and everything to prove it is a monster more dangerous than anything Goebbels imagined under Hitler.

That notwithstanding, another problem is that true news organization which are getting fewer and fewer tend to defend even the worst hypocrites and posers who deal in fantasy not fact and call it news.  While I am always eager to throw punches at Fox and its like I always make certain never to lie about them even with the most overzealous my jabs.  Their compatriots tend to defend or ignore Fox’s crimes against humanity or ditto them in some, perhaps more fashionable but still destructive way.

Fox executives know exactly what they are and plan exactly what they are doing to move ultra-right politicians into important legislative seats and governorships and if you try to stop them – they attack you.

This was proved many years ago when I began to write about Fox breaking the Federal Election laws by running these non-stop commercials and so-called “interviews” of right-wing politicians while leaving the middle of the road or liberal-progressive candidates to their indecencies. At that time, this was against the law because Fox was using corporate assets in the billions to do so. Alas, the Supreme Court now tells us that Fox News is a person – and entitled to free speech. In time that will change – but in the meantime – what can be done?

Rodger Ailes then emailed me, threatened me and went as far as hiring a private investigator to dig up dirt on me about which he boasted.  I asked him what he found.  He told me that he found I had an order to support my son. Hmmm. Well of course I did, my son lived with me and the order for support was simply part of my wife’s and my divorce agreement. Each of us contributed love and money as needed.

Here is what I think. I believe that the media – including the NY Times and especially the Washington Post lately, should begin to clean up their acts and truly present a fair view of the world’s news and when it indulges in opinion – it should do so giving another side the opportunity to respond in kind. This was the rule before which was swept way by the same ilk that has tidied up and stowed away so much decency already.

MSNBC attempted to battle Fox News – but to be honest it should have contracted with Ailes to run the network from the liberal-progressive point of view. He would have probably done a great job and both would have lost their audiences in a vain attempt toward balance and fairness.

Perhaps Brian Williams, now 56, will join the NBC network’s cable channel MSNBC as breaking news anchor and special reports in mid-August.  Hopefully the MSNBC producers and Williams will choose to make a counter-attack on Fox et al and those that buttress them – especially after Fox bitterly burned him at the stake for things Fox News does on what seems an hourly basis – Lie.

NOTE: Be sure to read David Remnick’s piece in the New Yorker which fully examines Barack Obama’s challenging path toward balance in these intimidating times.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/charleston-and-the-age-of-obama

It’s a chef-d’oeuvre of truth.

There is No Such Thing as Race! Rachel Dolezal Lynched by All the Media in America

By Jeff Koopersmith

15 June 2015

Rachel Dolezal was the President of the Spokane NAACP chapter and has been allowing Americans to think she is an African-American or more likely ignoring Americans and others who describe Rachel Dolezal as an African-American and just being human.

Two things are certain:
1. There is total scientific agreement that essentialist and typo-logical conceptualizations of race are untenable. In short there is no such thing as “race”. Race is not determined by features or typical appearances. There is no race save the Human Race.

2. Rachel Dolezal was raised in a family of mixed race. She had dark-skinned siblings who racists would describe as Black or African-American as if all dark skinned people were only from Africa.

__________________________________

When this story broke that Rachel Dolezal was really of the White Race, there was a long pause among news editors. Of course right wing publications called for her dismissal as head of an NAACP chapter in Washington state. The middle of the road or leftish media stayed stuck – wondering just what to say.

The every-day violators pretended Rachel somehow gained something from allowing people to believe she was a dark-skinned or black American  But the truth is that she lost almost everything today except her pride – and what she lost was her position, her accomplishments, the respect of her own parents, and more.

There was nothing to be gained by Rachel Dolezal by being Black and a Woman in this, a tragic human rights culture.  She was smart enough to get into the schools she attended whether her color was white or green. She was able enough to be hired in an executive position by the NAACP in charge of an entire state’s activities on behalf of human rights and progress.

Then, somehow,  the dam broke and all of our news-cretins decided that Rachel was “posing” as an African American woman and somehow gaining from it- yet she had checked both WHITE and BLACK on forms and refuses to discuss race at all unless cornered to say things she would not normally say – much as I have, since science and the bible have never described any race but have identified Humans – which others later expanded to The Human Race.

Science agrees that there are us – living beings on earth that can be described as the Human Race – yet idiots do not describe fish as the Fish Race, or Apes as the Monkey Race, nor Polar bears as the White Race of Bears, or Black Bears as the Black Bear Race. These are simply fish and bears with different markings and different colored hair and surprise – there are both Black Polar Bears and White Black Bears et al.

It’s it interesting that most writers and news-people do not describe Asians as “The Yellow Race” – not for almost 100 years when English-speaking morons  for a relatively short time called Asians and especially Japanese people – “The Yellow Peril”.

So here we are, in the 21st Century where Americans voted TWICE for a Human president, Barack Hussein Obama, who is – of course, described by the media as an African-American, or a Black president.

He is neither – he is simply our American President whose father was a Human from Kenya and whose mother was a Human as well.  Barack Obama is also simply a Human,  and like all multi-genetic people which 99% of us are- could claim he was White, but to my knowledge Obama never has.

People at Fox News make their horrible snide remarks about President Obama’s race and predilection to help the poor and the dark-skinned in Chicago as an activist.  However Barack Obama is also white; could he not have done the same without Fox News mentioning it – disguised as a “left” or “commie” thing to do by their idiot news analysts?

Rachel’s parents are far more difficult to understand. For some, what appears to be very sick reasons, they allowed themselves to be put on television decrying their own daughter Rachel as “posing” as an African American.

Why they would do this is a question for a psychiatrist or perhaps a good lawyer?  Either way, this man and women, her mother and father,  seem to have an ego-centered idea of how to “punish” their daughter Rachel for “pretending” she was of the Black Race even though she is of the White Race – Both of which do not exist.

There can be no sane reason for doing so. Period.

Rachel told the press, as her life began to crumble, that she did not speak with her parents over a legal issue of some sort. To date – there is no explanation about the type of litigation this is, or was.  I believe it was something far deeper in Rachel’s mind that pushed her to disown that part of her known as “White”.

I will not repeat what the mainstream or neonazi media said about Rachel Dolezal except to write that she was called every mean, ignorant, and illiterate name in the book, and even though the NAACP seemed to stand behind her for a day or two – it appears they have decided to sacrifice her to stooges like Dr. Keith Ablow – a skinhead hair-brained psychiatrist for hire – principally by Fox News -the most racist cable-news channel ever witnessed in the West.

In addition Rachel Dolezal did a fine job with life – and an outstanding one in her position at the NAACP and successfully promoted political, educational, and economic justice for all people – not all Races.

I believe that Rachel suffered some kind of trauma brought on by society and possibly her parents. At worst if she was their only “pink” skinned child she might have felt somewhat removed from her siblings who were darker skinned and would be called American Blacks by the media I presume.

They were simply American people – All of them.

That trauma, perhaps, resulted in Rachel’s discard of any mention or interrogatory regarding race.  Since the NAACP does not hire only darker skinned Americans the question of whether Rachel is posing as Black or refuses to accept any label of race inasmuch as these labels have only been extended by ignorant and tyrannical interests throughout history. This is a fact, not a dream.

Race was originally defined as where a person lived, not what color, they were, or how big their noses or lips were, or how light or dark their hair was, or whether it was curly or straight.

People like Adolph Hitler and sadly, many American politicians and writers today, think it’s okay to deny science and pretend to themselves that there is something called Race and sub-races in the Human Race.

No matter how Rachel  is perceived by unthinking Americans who now seem to make up the vast majority of our population, I offer that whether she posed, acted, or did not act – the intent or non-intent of her actions did no harm to anyone, and instead allowed me to point  out this truth:

No Democracy, and certainly not 350 million mutts that make up the American population should ever discuss RACE as anything but a term used by idiots, dullards, or subversives.

Today I ask you to end all discussions and questions regarding RACE or Ethnicity on any application or for any reason, including inquiries from the Census Bureau or any other governmental organization, and also to call upon Congress to offer up laws which would make such a felony in the United States and a violation of human rights internationally.  They use “race” supposedly to offer help to the downtrodden – but every color of skin is recognizable as needy.

Enough is enough.

We should she be ashamed of ourselves for allowing this kind of treachery to go on this long.

Time to stop. And now.

FRIDAY 12 JUNE 2015

BY: JEFF KOOPERSMITH

What do we have now – like 40 presidential con-didates and a couple of serious contenders in the quadrennial race for the White House?

It is close to the official first day of Summer on the 21st of June but nothing much on the campaign trail is sizzling under the early broil.  Yet you can bet that the Republican Party is planning a strafing of Hillary Clinton’s reputation tomorrow as she throws her hat in the ring for a triumphant return to the White House and Clinton sanity.

Oh, Hillary is making her announcement tomorrow on an island off Manhattan that no one has heard of except those of us who live in the Big Apple.  The island is called Roosevelt Island – but was not owned by the Roosevelt’s even though they could afford it at the time.

Why Mrs. Clinton’s seemingly octogenarian-thinking group of “deciders” chose FDR Four Freedoms Park, on that island rather than a hot–contention primary state is beyond me, but I imagine she will tie herself to both Franklin and Eleanor as her silent mentors as she has often done in the past. I can hear her now “This Island was named for the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt…”

Four Freedoms Park the southernmost acreage on Roosevelt Island is a lovely place on the East River between Long Island City and Manhattan. People in fact live there – about 15,000 of them. So expect traffic on the Island Bridge from Long Island and the Ed Koch-Queensboro Bridge heading to Roosevelt Isle.

Well. I suppose any site with green grass and water and a nice Manhattan skyline view is not a “terrible” choice – yet I have to wonder if the Roosevelt Island Operation Corporation (a NY State thing) gave a her the best deal for a Saturday rental.

What I do worry about are the people of Roosevelt Island. Are they prepared? Have they stocked their shelves with Hillary memorabilia, shirts, flags, sunglasses and hats, Chanel jacket? Have the few restaurants in the area packed in more “American” style food – most important -French Fries and Diet Coke?

Who knows?- but of course the Roosevelt Island businesses and residents must be more excited than they have been in decades.

Yes Roosevelt Island is on THE MAP!

If you can’t find it – it’s just southwest of Rikers Island where many a politician has spent a few nights locked up in the worst local prison in the state – maybe the region.

Hillary would have made far more news had she chosen to announce at Rikers Island because, for one thing, there are as many residents in that huge correctional institution lots of whom are there for selling pot and more than a a thousand prison employees working – so she would be assured of a speckled crowd with a pinto past of at least 16 thousand and at a site most famous for mistreating people who looked at their windows at  the age of three years and gave up any hope there might be a wonderful life ahead.

Hillary Clinton worries about these people – and she could have also pointed to them as a disgraceful example of the illnesses currently suffered by our justice system and it’s components – A kind of omen reminding us about what’s coming from the opposite end of the nation’s non-thoughtful but super-rich.

Then again – not Rikers – it is a silly idea.

Why not have the Clinton Announcement on Roosevelt Island?  It’s prettier – easy to get to from Clinton HQ in Brooklyn and hopefully it will surrounded by yachts tooting their signals of approval that we, the voters, finally have a chance to maul and maim the Republican Party and once again deny it the White House – followed by the Senate and the House of Representatives.

That’s what we need to pray for as we pray for Hillary.

And I sure hope that close-by La Guardia Airport is ordering takeoffs toward to East or we won’t be able to hear what Hillary says!

If you don’t have your own body cam – get one!

By Jeff Koopersmith, Editor Emeritus – American Politics Journal

I’ve been writing an essay on technology and how it impacts my life. As I thought about it I came rapidly to the conclusion that we must all wear body-cams when leaving our houses – and even when we answer the door.

Today, the truth is that if you live anywhere but the Iowa hog plain you are photographed several times a minute in most American cities and two of three hundred times a minute if you live in London.

So, business, and many police and fire departments are far more intelligent than we. They wear their tiny cameras and get us on memory cards for all time. And – with corporate help they film us driving everywhere. They film us in almost all shops and gas stations. The even film us in elevators and some men’s and women’s rooms – which I hear is still illegal – except in New Jersey and Utah.

But we are all naked – I mean really and virtually nude without our body-cams.

For instance. We walk down the hallway in our five star hotel and a guy dressed as a bell captain holds us up and takes our cash and Rolex watch. We have no record of this! Thus the hotel can deny it and call the police saying we are “upsetting the other guests” by complaining – and our insurance company tells us “Prove it!”

Of course I am jesting a bit here – but if you think about it – clearly you will soon realize that I am right even if I am left.

If you have your body camera on at all times when not at home you can prove almost anything – and if you are good at Photoshop or some more sophisticated software you can prove anything you want to prove – especially if you are a criminal.

You see – that’s the trouble. Some few police who are corrupt and malicious can find someone to alter their memory sticks to make it look like every Black person tries to kill  or maim them – just in case they decide to kill a Black person on a whim. Yet if that Black person was wearing his or her own body cam there is at least a slight chance that his or her  memory stick would prove the cop was a maniacal murderer. And visa versa of course.

A bank teller could have her body cam altered to make it appear like YOU slipped her a note to give you all her cash. She could then take it herself.

On the other hand, you could walk into Tiffany and ask to see a few two carat wedding rights. You could take one but a little work on the memory would show you had no chance to do so – and moreover a little CGI could show the clerk putting the ring in her brassier.

By the way – there is no way, if done properly, that the FBI can tell the video was altered – that a trick.

I guess my point is this: If THEY (Defined as anyone but you)  are wearing body cams and have expert video techs then you must wear a body cam and have an expert video tech on call.

That’s all.

I am sure you can find both using Google.

BY JEFF KOOPERSMITH

10 May 2015 – I have kept a close watch on GOP presidential contest announcements and must tell you I am bored to death.  The only serious player thus far is Jeb Bush and he isn’t really playing at all.  The Fox News “leaders” – the likes of Rand Paul, Ben Carson, and Walker of Wisconsin haven’t made a front page story anywhere I can tell with the exception of their own web site.

Americans are again caught up in fear of Jihad this week following the Texas shootout at Pam Geller’s “Draw God” cartoon reunion which she claims celebrates Free Speech – but this celebration caused the death of two young would-be terrorists who seemed to be prepared to shoot up Geller’s little hate fest in what seems to be the xenophobic center of the Earth – Texas.

That said, a second runner up for news coverage is Texas again – this time because it appears to be targeted by the heavens for terrible weather including deadly “twisters” and other violent storms on almost a daily basis.

The third runner up seems to be cop-killers – and the horrible result of the deaths of too many police shot during what should have been normal stops – at least the way is being told.  This should be the first concern of the media because it reminds us that the first “bad shooting” in Ferguson, Missouri was only a small part of the frustration felt by minorities and especially African Americans who are reaping the unbridled but covered racism served up by Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes of Fox News.

Like the 1960s, the 1980s, and the 1990s – ghettos are erupting, not from hatred of police specifically but fear and loathing of those who implement society’s punishment to those of us who can’t cope – either because of ‘no fair chance’ or the latest remodeling of corporate and small business hiring that seems not to include hiring anyone but code writers and other computer-related positions along with part time jobs that do not offer enough hours each week to make the new hire eligible for medical insurance.

Again – the youngsters of Americans ghettos are looking at the window at 3 years of age and realizing they have little chance to make it according the dreams they see on television or computers.  So, at that young age, they simply give up – live day by day – and FOR the day – and end up being imprisoned for 10 years or more just for selling a joint of marijuana in the three-strikes-you’re-out states which are, thankfully, rethinking this kind of rule that dictates time to be served.

Killing police is such a terrible thing because the vast majority are not racist – understand with heart, the position that minorities are in, and are just as worried as the average Black man that all hell will break loose if they make the wrong move.  Police also understand that killing the police is like burning the flag – its people on the verge of insanity fighting back wildly and without sense.

Make no mistake – killing a copy just to kill a cop cannot be condoned.  There have been several instances where police or those with police power did deserve to be fought – but not killed without benefit of trial.  Yes, many police accused of violence based in race will never see a courtroom and will never face justice – but this is the arena to protest against – not the policeman as an individual.  Although can understand the hurt that can push a man to kill another – murder cannot condoned – not especially murder of cops – but murder of anyone – anyone.

That set aside – I can project that a few Republican contenders are already out before they barely started. One of those is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who has just gone too far to back-peddle re his mouth and his actions. Another is Ted Cruz who says the most amazingly ludicrous things and does not realize it. Rand Paul hangs on – but by his fingernails and when the real shoot-out begins – Ran Paul will not be left politically standing.

On the Democrat side the only new entry is Senator Bernie Sanders, now a Democrat but a believer in social responsibility that Americans are not now ready to accept. He will act, as someone to question HIllary Clinton as she marches on toward the Democrat nomination, but not without trouble due to early fire coming at her from Fox News and every nut ball Republican who thinks money given to a charity is linked to criminal favors, dead Americans in Benghazi are Hillary’s doing, and others who this week told us that Democrats were getting ready to seize Texas!

Once again I call on the Supreme Court to take a close look at what it has done allowing the very rich to give untold amounts of money to candidate causes.  It stuns me that the nine Justices  don’t unanimously see that the American voter CAN be bought. Just a couple of handfuls of Billionaires- around the world could write a check to any voter for a couple of thousand dollars at the drop of a hat.

Think about that – and do be scared – because in not such a straightforward way – this is happening today.

Bad enough that they follow Fox News Headlines, but Fox never addressed the possibility that the co-pilot was insane or a terrorist.

By Jeff Koopersmith

26 March 2015 WASHINGTON DC – It is disturbing enough that cable news has surrendered to the measly talents of Rodger Ailes and Fox News – following their outrageous “Breaking News”  items (three of fours days old) like a baby in a wet diaper, but this does not mean – “Stop Thinking” – it means PLEASE THINK – and tell the truth, and the possible, and potential.

Highest on the list this week is sickly slick and off-the -cuff coverage of the 150 some odd people killed in an “unexplained” air crash in the French Alps.

The first thing I did was wonder about the possibility that terrorism was involved. With one shot, terrorists from the Middle East could hit four of the biggest NATO nations – the USA, France, Spain, and Germany – killing innocent men women and children on the steep slopes of a heretofore unnamed mountain.

I tweeted this possibility long before anyone else as far I can determine two days ago – yet it took more than 48 hours before editors in newsrooms across this nation had the guts to discuss this – only in 5-10 second bites and then move on to all the other – didn’t-make-any-sense ideas from so-called experts on aviation. Today they actually “dared” to tell the story of the co-pilot that killed them all.

Only when the cockpit microphone tapes were heard did anyone realize or contemplate that this was no ordinary plane accident – if there is such a thing. Here was a thus-far unvetted pilot with little experience and a German sounding name who intentionally locked the cabin door and threw the no-penetrate switch at the same time leaving the commanding pilot out in the aisle smashing whatever he could get hold of to bash down that door.

Let me add here that such a switch is a moronic idea in the first instance. Couldn’t the geniuses designing these solid doors anticipated that one of the crew could be a terrorist or just plain insane? Haven’t they watched enough NCIS or Criminal Minds programs to cultivate such horrible imaginings?

What should have been done just after 911 was to give crew-members a third code – perhaps shared half-and-half between senior crew members (one set of numbers for each) that would override the final switch that kept this captain standing in pain and shaking in vain trying desperately to save those poor people who most likely saw it coming.

Yes, I can visualize is – can’t you?

Such a final switch flip is needed when the enemy is outside the cockpit doors trying to get in. But no one thought about the enemy already in the cockpit?

What a terrible waste of life – due primarily from the thoughtlessness of aircraft and security engineers.

And in the end – what difference does it make if only a third code – known specially just to pilots was the answer? That could have saved all these souls.

Think people think.

And you sleepy news editors – you have some smart people – even the on-air-personalities. Talk with them when something like this happens. One of them might have offered that a co-pilot-gone-nuts was a primary consideration – not the last.

I did.

In Defense of Liberalism

An Annual New Year’s Essay from American Politics Journal

By Jeff Koopersmith

Dec. 31, 1998 (APJ) — In 1996, around Christmas time, I wrote the original version of this essay.

It was updated last year.

Now another year has passed, and our editors thought I should look at it again for 1999 — keeping a tradition.

First things first.

I remain proud to be a “liberal.”

Very proud.

On this, the first day of 1999, whether, Christian, Jew, Muslim or Buddhist, ask yourself a simple question: “Would Christ have registered as a Republican?”

Of course not. Especially in 1999.

This collection of editorials, news, updates and research we call American Politics Journal are presented to the reader as an unabashed defense of democracy and liberalism as its highest pursuit.

I have stood by for nearly 20 years and watched the fiber of this nation begin to collapse — not from lack of “family values” but from the oversold tales of a small minority of fundamentalist right-wing conservatives and pseudo-Christians claiming, simply, “that Americans lack ethics.”

Men like William Bennett, William Kristol, Ralph Reed, Tim Russert and Sam Donaldson — who know nothing about poverty and the misery it causes — tell us that we need to “get Biblical” in order to get moral.

Tommyrot!

Today, The Christian Coalition, largely responsible for blaming societal problems on the lack of “family values” — a buzz-phrase for religious zealotry — remains under indictment through litigation aimed at its illegal support of Republican candidates. The Justice Department continues its criminal investigation of this group on charges of money laundering and other illegal campaign activities during last year’s election as well.

But this year, the Christian Coalition lost members in droves as well.

Things are looking up.

But even as the Kings are revealed as having no clothes, I also believe that the disappearing American dream — if it ever truly existed — is waning due to the frantic pursuit of unprecedented wealth by the few with so very little compassion for the many.

What caused this is fodder for volumes of material. Suffice it to say that the so-called Reagan Revolution — unrecognizable even by Ronald Reagan himself — spun out of control.

So wildly did it swerve that the Democrat party of today Has become a mirror image of the Republican Party of yesteryear!

Instead of a battle cry for increased popular productivity, the “message” was somehow twisted into “You’d better make more money now and faster or you may be out on the street.”

“…and you’d better do it alone!”

Thus, when one overhears a conversation among college seniors today, it’s unlikely to be about traditional collegiate liberal viewpoints and a matriculation made to “change the world for the better” but, more likely, a discussion of how to make the most money in the shortest possible time.

In fact, The Newt Gingrichs and Pat Buchanans of our world, spurred by the Christian Coalition’s former Director, Ralph Reed, have perverted the truth about American’s compassion, and twisted the minds of good “God-fearing” citizens by blaming the women’s rights movement, minorities, gays, undocumented workers, “illegitimate children,” the television and film industries, and victimless crime for our national ills.

This year, after 75 months of digging, they finally laid the blame Bill Clinton for the demoralizing of America using unproved, untested “facts” that Clinton lied under oath. As a lawyer, I can tell you that he did not lie nor commit perjury under oath. He came close but never crossed the line. He will never be convicted, nor will he ever sign a censure.

In truth, it is unbridled greed, born of a seriously flawed corporate and Republican political “ethic,” that has caused the most intense polarization of rich against poor since the end drew near for Czarist Russia. And it is this avarice that has targeted Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Nothing less, nothing more.

The good news is that Americans evidence unparalleled uneasiness about this “me against you” philosophy so deftly sold them by the “new right” snake oilists and fundamentalist religious groups.

They know that something is rotten on Capitol Hill, but most are hard-pressed to articulate it.

That is why American Politics Journal was born: to help focus these issues and to put complex issues into day-to-day, entertaining language.

But make no mistake, we are dead serious about our editorial stance.

Almost all political and attitudinal polls suggest that support for right-wing philosophies is now on a steep decline, but voters — willing to try anything — still rewarded the most “conservative” wing of the Republican party with a modicum of control over the Congress. I write “modicum” of control because it is obvious that the younger, right-wing members of the congressional classes of 1992, 1994 and 1996 and 1998 have not been able to complete their agenda for their variety of balanced budget or their brand of new tax cuts.

More important — they have not been successful in destroying President Clinton and the Presidency itself.

They never will be.

The pinchbeck of the Gingrichian GOP “Contract With America” — which was never signed or seen by even a small percentage of Americans — has in most part been breached, not only because of Democrat legislative interference and defense, but from GOP party infighting with wiser and more moderate Republicans who are themselves uncomfortable with this new craven ideology.

A Contract “On” Americans is more like it.

And there was more good news this year — Big Business is rethinking its support of whippersnapper Republicans. The smartest of corporate leaders I talk with see that polarizing rich against poor, have against have-not, white against black, American against Mexican is certainly not in their best interest.

Instability in the marketplace is the worst possible atmosphere for continued profitability.

However, this is not to say that right wing conservatism is dead. Hence years ago, I began, in earnest, to criticize, albeit sometimes too passionately, the direction toward which many Americans are being dragged through deception and, even worse, manipulation of truth.

It has cost me. But not enough to stop. I have reveived death threats. My family has been terrorized, and certain members of the government would love American Politics Journal to be “disappeared.”

Few journalists, editorialists and essayists are openly writing from the liberal viewpoint. In this last year, only one noteworthy television journalist — Geraldo Rivera — was actively pursuing fair coverage of the latest coup attempt by Congress.

Put quite simply, the highest-paid journalists are afraid to lose their jobs in corporate media hallways controlled now almost entirely by the right wing. Thus, we offer this daily, wholehearted if not linguistically flawed, view of America and her politics from the back benches and the dark alleys of reportage.

I am not a great writer or thinker. I’m often a hypocrite. I too love the things and beauty that money can buy.

I, like the Christian Coalition, wish that American families could all stay together; that women did not have to, or want to, work while their children were young; that crime did not exist except in the insane, and; that we all saw each other every week in churches, synagogues, mosques and temples.

I wish that some people, bereft from simply living, did not turn to drugs for solace.

But wishing is not real.

Truth is.

That is what separates the leeches from the doers. I am a doer. The Christian Coalition is an institutionalized leech — threatening congress with its very life, blackmailing members to vote their way “or else.” As God predicted, evil will come cloaked in goodness.

As we become more erudite and the world shrinks ever-quicker, the pressure on the average man and woman increases a thousandfold. A world where we can watch a war 12,000 miles away live and in real time is one surely fraught with complexity and so much misinformation as to addle the mind of even the most astute.

A world overwhelmed by poverty of money and soul, where the majority of people go comparatively hungry, is suffocating for most of us — including me. We become inured to the tragedy around us. And the Republican Party, eager to permanently fix our blinders, helps us to do just that.

I was reminded of this last year as I read a snotty little note in the New York Times from Ms. Abigail Thernstrom — the Harvard-employed woman who thinks “Blacks are getting too much attention.”

She was congratulating herself for saying that General Colin Powell owed nothing to affirmative action. What an outrageous statement from this ghoul who was wonderfully chastised in front of millions by the President only a year ago.

Let me again ask Ms. Thernstrom: “Did the decades of struggle by Martin Luther King, and ordinary white citizens like my mother or myself, result in nothing? Do you think General Powell would have been made an officer in 1918? How about 1928 or 1938?” It was the atmosphere so courageously crafted by Dr. King and others which stood Mr. Powell in such good stead. If he had been born a decade earlier or four decades later, he would not have been The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

That is for certain.

Blood was shed during the civil rights era, but not much flowed over white skin.

Ms. Thernstrom, like the right wing of the Republican Party, is a sorry bigot who sells evil in place of compassion. She is a privileged White woman fighting so hard to sell her insipid tomes. She, like many of her ultra-right Republican sisters, preach hate while pretending to educate.

How dare she instruct the destroyed on their great “opportunities” by using a sell-out, Colin Powell, as an example – a false idol — a specious icon of a Black man who can get ahead without quotas or affirmative action or whatever label you choose! Colin Powell — A Black Republican — is a living oxymoron like his comrades-in-disgrace, Ward Connerly and J.C. Watts, who openly fight against their own people in order to secure a place at the all-white country club called the GOP.

Are you a madwoman, Ms. Thernstrom — or simply an overeducated naive whore for conservative ideas long dead and dying?

Our human tendency is to hide, to seek comfort in our own, and protection in what it ours. It is this weakness — shared by all mankind — upon which religious fundamentalism and right-wing fanatic “evangelism” seek to capitalize — most often without planning or even realizing they are doing so.

But certain leaders, like Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Reed and televangesnake Pat Robertson know exactly and quintessentially what they are doing, and how to do it. They know how to bait and use people like Thernstrom, Connerly and Powell. Certainly their formula was stumbled upon — much like a baby discovering ice cream. But if was perfected as well, just as Hitler honed his propaganda in 1935.

Once Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, Henry Hyde and “the boys” found Nirvana in pitting us, one against the other, in the face of a designedly ever-shrinking pie, the masses, unthinking, hung onto the message like a gutter dog on a old soup bone. But then, this year, they went too far. They attempted to throw out a duly elected President based on entrapment — pure and simple — by the hoodlum prosecutor Kenneth Starr.

Well, Mr. Starr, you have your cake. Now choke on it.

I have spent most of my life, from age sixteen on, involved in politics — first as a volunteer, then as a professional, and finally as a financier of Democrat candidates and ideals. I have also worked with and for moderate Republicans and count many as friends. I recognize that many Democrats are also part of the problem, and fuel the fire of discontent. Republicans do not have all four corners on sowing greed and non-compassionate conduct — maybe only three.

However, it is Republicans who speak in the name of “family values,” yet practice the opposite by offering succor to the already rich — if only to gain more power. It was Newt Gingrich who preached family values while allegedly charging prostitutes on his American Express Card and reportedly serving his putative spouse with divorce documents on her thought-to-be death bed.

It is Henry Hyde, who lied to his constituents by omission — time and time again — about his ruinous affair with Mrs. Cherie Snodgrass — an affair which ripped her family asunder and ruined her husband’s life. It is Charles Canady, the rabid Florida moralist preacher who reportedly had an affair with the married Mrs. Becker and that forced her and her husband Robert into divorce court — another marriage destroyed. I spoke with Mrs. Becker. She was weeping and begged me to leave off — she had a teenage daughter. I did, until the story broke. . Then there’s the California Republican Congressman soon to be outed by Larry Flynt for having oral sex with a male in an alley and then fleeing the police as they closed in on him and finally arrested him — an arrest that was quietly “fixed.”

And there are more. Many, many more.

Yet it was these same men — merely suffering under general human frailty — who were the very cause of the suffering of Bill, Hillary ad Chelsea Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, her family and all of their their friends. Republicans continue to claim that Bill Clinton has brought this upon himself. But that is simply not true.

Let me ask you: how many of you would rush to the press, or to an acquaintance’s wife, to tell her of her husband’s infidelity? How many of you would then revel in it — only months later saying “It’s not about sex — it’s about perjury!”

How evilly convenient.

It was never about sex. It was about unseating a twice popularly-elected President who threatened big business with universal health care. It was about unseating a President who did not agree with William Kristol’s New Moralism. It was about unseating a President who did not worship at the false altars of Pat Robertson and his henchmen Ralph Reed and Jerry Falwell. It was about bribing a woman — Paula Jones — to sue the President for millions of dollars in, of all things, a federal civil rights suit! Civil rights, now embraced by the right wing, is today defined as extortion. It was about “hiring” the awful Linda Tripp to entrap her friend Monica Lewinsky into a series of moves designed to force the President to lie and to lie under oath.

But he didn’t fall for it. He knew what was up. He played their miserable game.

And he won.

It is the heart of the ultra right who deserve to be impeached — and impeached by their GOP colleagues for attempting an unconstitutional assault on the United States by plotting a coup against the White House. That’s what happened to Andrew Johnson. That’s what happened to Bill Clinton. Johnson won in the end, and so will Clinton.

Someone, somewhere — most probably a historian — thought they could rewind history and replay the Johnson impeachment trial — but with a different ending. It didn’t work. That “historian” was Newt Gingrich. He now sits alone planning his new “business” — monkey business, we’d guess.

Part of me feels that Republicans, so tired of being a shrinking minority in the early part of this decade, fabricated the notion that the United States is some terrible place to live — especially for the white middle class.

What else could they do but lie to gain power?

The truth is that this country is only a horrible place to live for those without means — minorities, women and gays — ever set upon by ignorant whites. And our women, who have endured countless rebuffs and insults to their intelligence and abilities — what are they even doing in the Republican party?

Have they given up or given in?

The truth is that America is a Garden of Eden compared to the rest of the planet! We have the lowest taxes, the greatest opportunity, the fairest of cultures, the warmest of hearts, the bravest of people — all while maintaining the highest relative standard of living on earth.

This has been the case for a long time — but less so since Republicans took the congressional helm. For they have twisted our fortune and made it their own in absolute disregard for truth.

They tell women that using contraceptives is “murdering their babies.” They say that “partial birth abortions” to save a deformed child from a back ward life is “killing.” They say that a woman’s right to choose is “murder.”

For those of you who have not had the privilege or inclination to travel outside our borders, I urge you to do so. Look about the world, search out its wealthiest cities and most dreadful slums. Linger in these places. Do not go abroad merely to sight see, but to learn about other countries — their tribulation and victories.

It is a humbling experience, and one that might shame those of you who complain so loudly about our lack of values. Compared to most of the world, our values, family and otherwise, are most high.

And when you come home, be sure to visit our American slums, the barrios on the Texas/Mexican border. The slums surrounding Palm Beach, Florida. Talk to émigrés — legal and not — and ask them how and why they came to our shores. Make acquaintance with Black and Hispanic families. Meet and talk with a gay man or woman.

Ask a thief why he steals. Ask a drug addict why he uses.

Do you really believe they’ll tell you that they chose this life?

In short, open yourself to information and contact with others unlike yourselves.

If you’re a “conservative’ Republican now, you’ll be ashamed.

Then, red-faced, ask yourself: “What would I do under their circumstances?”

You will be surprised at your indignation.

I assure you — the more you heed my suggestions, the hollower the words of the pseudo-Christian right and the frantic Republican stalking horse will sound.

Don’t believe me.

Don’t believe Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay or Ralph Reed.

Don’t even believe your parents or your best friends when they preach that which divides rather than that which unites.

Go out yourself and seek the truth. It is then that you may discover the true meaning of Christ, the Bible, the Torah, Buddha, the Koran and other great and small religions, leaders, teachers and Gods.

It is then that you will discover the beauty of our constitution. For all share a common ideology or theology — and it is not, as right wing fanatics would have you think, “caring about, but not caring for your fellow man.”

It is the Constitution, flaunted sinfully by the ultra right, that will, in the end, save rather than convict Bill Clinton.

One need only look at his or her own relationship to his family to see the fallaciousness of caring about but not caring for people. Imagine caring about — but not caring for — your children, your parents and siblings.

Just as a newborn cannot fend for himself, many through no fault of their own cannot care for themselves. This might be because of lack of opportunity due to racism or religious persecution. It might be from lack of intelligence, illness or even insanity. It might be born from hopelessness or helplessness.

It may be from the stunning blow of poverty that smacks three-year-old ghetto kids as they stare out the front window at their neighborhoods while leafing through your old discarded copy of Town & Country.

However and wherever, one cannot assuage need for care by simply stating that one cares.

This is what Republicans ask you to do. That is what they do. It is their only choice, because in order to give all Americans an equal playing field we would have to spend enormous amounts of money, money Republican incumbents are “hired and bribed ” to protect.

When have you heard a story about welfare bashers adopting a Black crack baby in order to preserve its life?

You’ll hear the Republican leadership constantly quote the “Founding Fathers” as if they were Gods. You will hear them invoke the words of Thomas Jefferson, and avid slavemaster, in their zeal to convert you to an 80 hour-a-week workaholic, laboring for the “man” that feeds the GOP its campaign cash and stops by Democrat treasuries as well.

And now that Americans are beginning to sense the false prophet’s words, The Republican National Committee, leaderless, seeks to cloud your minds again — this time with $100 million worth of lawsuits, investigations, false indictments, lives destroyed and wives shattered, children humiliated, and nations dissolved.

And for what? To be the top cops for a gang of multinational thieves more bent on luring the global economy than hugging their sons and daughters.

It sometimes seems impossible — this battle to convince Americans that there is more than money, more than military might, more than “getting what you deserve,” to define a good life.

This atmosphere of greed began in California under Republican sponsorship of tax cuts that devastated public education and social services for the poor and middle class. It was called “Proposition 13” and it made 50% cuts in Californian’s property taxes in 1976 and was nothing more than a payoff — a bribe to Californians in exchange for turning their backs on the weak and unfortunate. “Prop 13” is proof that even Americans can be cajoled into doing something that is neither right nor judicious — and certainly devoid of any “family values”

All that was California experimental fascism is now gone. The Democrats swept every important election in 1998 and will sweep in 2000 as well. Californians learned quickly that they do not want to live in a Neo-Nazi-controlled state governed by the likes of Pete Wilson.

A black man among white leaders said it best: Vernon Jordan, a true symbol of tolerance and opportunity and a man denigrated unjustly by Ken Starr, called Prop 13 “America’s Dirty Little Secret — Racism.” He was razor right. But now America’s dirty secret is forked. It aims not only at minorities, but also at the poor — white or otherwise. It is unacceptable to be poor in America. “There is no reason for it,” says our friend Mr. Gingrich.

While his more moderate pals like Senator Orrin Hatch are hawking Bible-based music CD’s for profit, Henry Hyde has pledged us another year of character assassination, despicable behavior and racist polemics. He and people like Dan Burton vow to spend another $50 million to “get the president” and the Democrats.

You see, I believe in cliché, and hackneyed thoughts when they are appropriate — That our nation, our world, is one big extended family, where everyone’s victories and defeats are visited on the other.

Nothing less could be true.

Americans know this, and that is why we send more money and people abroad to help the helpless than any people on earth. It is also why we send bombers to cripple evil.

We seem to know the misery of others, yet often forget the misery of our own.

Isn’t that just like us?

Krauthammer Lies Again –To Bill O’Reilly 

Another Ambisinistrous Delusion on Fox News.

Another Ambisinistrous Delusion on Fox News.

Neither O’Reilly Nor Krauthammer can prove their lies are truth

BY Jeff Koopersmith

WASHINGTON DC 17 MARCH 2015 – And there lies the key to Fox News and Right Wing strategy.

Lie about anything that can never be proved, one way or the other.

On March 16, the Evil-Intentioned Charles Krauthammer once again re-spun his web of lies about Hillary and Bill Clinton regarding Mrs. Clinton’s private e-mail which I have told you, once and again, was a great idea owing to the proven non-security of the United States’ computer array which appears to allow foreign nations and hackers to download secret intelligence and more.

Whether or not this was ordered by Republicans hoping to destroy their opposition and the President is still under investigation – but I am certain that GOP candidates and incumbents must have played at least a cheering role in many hacking contracts either directly or indirectly by contact with top malfeasors in the the field.

You will never hear O’Reilly or Krauthammer mention these whispers -nor that the GOP and/or the Tea Party might have hackers knowingly employed or secretly “volunteering” within the midst of those organizations without their knowledge. I can’t be certain – but rumors among those in the know abound and it’s unusual, is it not, to witness only Democrats and leading members of that Party being accused of horrors in Congressional Committees – and by the likes of Darrell Issa and Tom Cotton – among others.

Krauthammer told O’Reilly that ” It’s the 1990’s all over again”. Oh really? – Well then I am more certain that the majority of Americans who vote must now be extremely satisfied with the Administration’s performance and that their adoration of Barack Obama continues as it did with Bill Clinton until departed the White House with positive “numbers” in the stratosphere.

In fact, the more the Snorting-Republicans continue with these witch and warlock hunts, the more it will drive voters away from them – all but the most hate-filled and racist ones that is. And don’t get me wrong. I have dozens of Republican friends and acquaintances who are not wild boars bent on rooting out magically disappearing smut from any source whatever.

This was a Senator Joe McCarthy trick, and we all remember where that left him – or do you Senator McConnell?

If not Google it.

The only thing the Clinton’s “dragged out” was the Lewinsky scandal which was not a scandal at all until the right wing facist press began hunting them down as if they were two-bit pimps, planting rats in their midst, lying over and over, and then – to everyone’s shock – actually filed Impeachment Papers against Bill Clinton regarding his private life – not his white lies about that life.  Of course, Bill Clinton was not removed from office. And, of course the GOP was humiliated again.

Yet Krauthammer is correct in one sense – Just as it played out in the 90s – The people involved in the latest sophomoric tragedy trumped up against any Democrat target available will disappear into a similar nightmare to Ken Starr’s and dozens of other liars and hangers-on that were part of the Impeachment ruse –  tried and failed.

As to the several other forged “scandals” that the GOP has and will cook up about Bill and Hillary Clinton – like the impossible Whitewater activities which amounted to nothing and only made organizations like “Judicial Watch” which people with minds call “Prejudicial or Artificial Watch” look like the unprofessional stinkers they were then and are now – The Clinton’s, in fact, “dragged” nothing out, nor stonewalled anyone accept those plotting against them and conspiring not only to destroy their impeccable reputations but also to conspire against the Presidency itself.  They were, however, “dragged” through the mud for as long as possible.

Can you say De Ja Vous?

One out and out lie that the aging Krauthammer told O’Reilly yesterday re the Lewinsky scandal was that President Clinton accused Monica Lewinsky of being “a stalker.”

The truth is that a former Clinton aide claimed in an email to a well-known journalist, that Clinton told him Lewinsky herself had  told him this and “complained that she was being called ‘the stalker’ at the White House … and that if he didn’t have sexual intercourse with her she’d tell people that they did anyway.”  Nice huh?

I know of no public or private mention of this fact, but a prime journalist like Krauthammer should do his homework.

Krauthammer wraps up his lie-pie with this stupe-pinion – that the E-mail (non) scandal “Has Legs”. I suppose Charles thinks that is a cute term but it’s written or said,  “got legs” Chuck – and besides, it doesn’t have any legs.

Here are Krauthammer’s laughable reasons for these fictional “legs” – which i guess meant in 1920, that the lies about Hillary Clinton’s e-mail would “continue for years”.

1. “You can have three separate committees of Congress issuing subpoenas.” But fails to mention that those Committees are controlled or bludgeoned by the nut-ball Tea Party and the other Republican Party to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances before she even tells voters she is running for sure.

2. Then – as usual – Krauthammer gives himself a weak-kneed “back-door” and goes on to big-ears Bill saying “It may not be a story every day going on from now on in the median term, but it will not go away. It will keep popping up as these subpoenas and lawsuits go public and get to a crisis between now and election day and that’s why she can’t dodge it.

Wishful thinking Kraut?

Well, Krauthammer is being figuratively honest in his second harangue because he stupidly lays out in enough detail – the entire Republican strategy to capture the White House and who knows what other federal and state elective offices in 2016.

The GOP with the disloyal cooperation of the Tea Party goblins will present a new fake scandal monthly, then weekly, then daily as time goes by and the presidential round comes closer.

All of these phony fables will never have crossed American’s minds as scandals and will not be followed up because they will be impossible to prove.

To Republicans today, Justice means nothing – but the appearance of pursuing justice is everything.

Long after Bill O’Reilly and Charles Krauthammer are relegated to the trashcan of history, some graduate student will present a thesis comparing Fox News, Charles Krauthammer, Rush Limbaugh and the Czar of Liars – Fox Chief Roger Ailes with Senator Joe McCarthy.

McCarthy heaven help him – will be embarrassed.

The Republican Capitol Hill Club is in fact on Capitol Hill.  As in the Republic-controlled Congress, this is a place to meet people who give candidates campaign cash while getting drunk and eating well.  Don’t knock it – it’s a throwback to IKE – who warned us about the people who go there now.

Especially on SE First and “D” Streets. The Republican National Committee HQ building housing its private club – with the best crab cakes and crabs on the East Coast The Capitol Hill Club.  Other than eating and getting drunk, nothing much goes on in the building worth noting, but Tea Party wants to put a shooting range in the basement and a hot tub on the roof.

You cannot fuss about the Con-Ettes – the conservative side of the Capitol Hill Club’s bowling and volleyball arena on the roof of the auspicious club.

You can’t argue that the Bride of Nerdingham does not have a great back and makes her Big Macher – GOPer look like a tiny fool. This was their first dance.  No one attended the wedding party, because they forget to inform anyone. Nothing new for the GOP.  We welcome you to Munchkin Land!

BY: Jeff Koopersmith

Could there be a more boring topic that news media across the board can’t stop screeching about – Yeah, Hillary Clinton’s email server – which these fools think is actually in her basement somewhere.

The goons also think that email CANNOT be erased from a server. Oh, Really?

Check again CNN and Fox and all you other so-called reporters.

Of course – everything can be erased – the Department of Defense was the leader in erase-tech for years.

Here’s what I think. When Hillary became Secretary of State at a time when the world started to go mad, she used her head and, realizing that the likes of Mr. Snowden and a dozen other hackers, had already drained most all our Intel agencies of whatever they had on their “secret” servers.

It made sense to Secretary, soon Madam President, Clinton, that she could keep her email far safer by quietly and without much ado install an email server in an unknown locations with no government or agency tip-offs in the mix.

If that’s what she did – it’s exactly what I would have done.  And, if I’m correct she couldn’t very well tell that to hokey Trey Gowdy who would immediately call Sean Hannity to tell him a “secret”.  So Hillary probably bit the bullet and went along with the monsters in the mainstream and able media.  She did well – I think I would have walked out on some of those ridiculous questions spawned from nothing newsworthy in the small minds of News producers and editors.

I am also fairly certain that this tactic was far safer than using the State Department e-mail system.  And, by the way, there was no LAW about doing this.  The National Archives – not exactly a heavy hitter in the world of intrigue in The District – liked employees to make certain that the Archives got copies of everything. Maybe someone there was selling them?  Or maybe they were trying hard to preserve history.

Whatever.

I’ve spoken at some length with Bill Clinton before he was President and I can tell you he’s one of the smartest men around – and he wouldn’t marry a Loon – as O”Reilly calls anyone who does not agree with O’Reilly.  Hillary may be far smarter – smarter than the National Archives – and certainly smarter than anything or anyone the Tea Party spawned of late or ever.

I’m no genius – it took me all this time to figure it out for myself. Maybe Wolf Blitzer will use it some time.

“Gee! This darn thing is a little heavy!”

By Jeff Koopersmith

Is your heartbeat the key to secure banking? – No!

The BBC, in fact, covered this ridiculous idea today – It is  Halifax Bank’s silly idea to have their customers wear a wrist band (all the time it seems?) which monitors one’s heartbeat – kind of a Rich Band rather than wrist band – a good idea for people with heart conditions to wear and have monitored by a cardiologist.  The only thing more annoying might be that you have to recharge the wristband each night –  or your pals put it on a dog to mess with you as it records their woofing beats!

What’s invaded the minds of these bankers?  Anyone who has studied biology in the 9th grade knows that the heart vary almost always.  Thus, if you have your beating heart pattern stored in the Halifax Bank’s “Cloud” chances are the beat it gets through Bluetooth device on your wrist will not match the one frozen in the Halifax stratosphere.

Not to impugn this Bank .  I think Halifax is simply using this idea for a Free Media campaign. Let people like me write about how idiotic the idea is, and you get a free ad for the bank!

Simple – and not so dumb, huh?

In addition to the Logan Act, other criminal avenues exist

__________________________________________________________________

By Jeff Koopersmith
Editor Emeritus

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should be investigating the clique of rogue ultra-right U.S. Senators that organized the “Senate 47” letter to Iran signaling that the forty-seven Republican senators are more ready to go to war and risk American lives in the desert than to apply further diplomatic action with that nation. Perhaps they have not as yet begun – but perchance the FBI will read this piece:  The “Senate 45” have violated more than one law in my opinion and in doing so put the region and the United States in mortal danger.

Each time I watch Fox News – which is quite often as I like to keep up with what I believe are worst media enemies of the people – I feel great anxiety for my grandchildren and what they might face should the trumped up movement by half our population toward the ultra-right continues much longer.

It is for the well being of our children, and their children that I believe the Administration should take this appalling action by the Senate 47 and use it to smarten-up the ultra-right wing within the Republican Party as well as give breathing room to those Republicans who maintain some sense of equity and have been elected to fight for more responsive and less expensive government while at the same time taking care of those Americans and others less prepared to deal with the harsh realities of this 21st century and what might come next.

There is no room for nutty ideologues in American government at this juncture.

In fact there is a great need to clean them out because they are simultaneously causing distress within our domestic population as well as to our allies and other national leaders around the world.

The things they stand for, the crazed despots who entered Congress and elsewhere in state and local governments simply from backing by men and women dedicated, it seems, only to money. are far too dangerous and numerous today to be human.

This letter to Iran, sent behind all our backs, that the young Turks of the far right of the Republican party, may have done enormous damage and may have accomplished far worse than they could anticipate through their zealous actions aimed at humiliating the President and the State Department and every correct-thinking American who knows the important role diplomacy plays in our security.

And no – this is not 1930s Hitler where there was no instant communication, no great espionage abilities, no space-placed and other types of drone and, no Homeland Security that cannot easily be fooled by a tyrant sneaking around to cause havoc. We are not the British trying to deal with a maniac – we are a strong nation trying to give the world time to consider arming every nation with a beef with nuclear warheads.

Yes, we have witnessed just such a move in Georgia and the Ukraine recently. However the difference is that we knew what was happening even before it occurred and had it threatened us or our allies Mr. Putin would have been met with forces unparalleled in history.

My own hard-earned education allowed me to examine the Federal Law to find out what “The Founders” and subsequent American leaders thought about such a wild deviance from normal, even precious, practices within the Federal Government that have catapulted the United States into its current but now deteriorating reputation as the trusted leader of the free world, a nation to seek sanctuary from evil, and the giving-est people in history.

One thing I know for certain. America’s reputation has not been injured by Democrats and progressive action. It has been eroded by warmongering and greed resulting from neoconservative and now totalitarian thought spreading from the right. Ask any thoughtful European who is not a neocon and they will tell you the same.  I spent seven years in Europe living full time and listening around me and I know about that which I write here.

Despite many mistakes over our own history including several misplaced offensive wars, Americans were once proud that they took on external as well as internal miseries – perhaps too slowly – but finally successfully in many cases.

All leaders make mistakes, but few have lead nations of the caliber of the United States as a consequence. And few have had to do so under continuing racist pressure from the media, cheap-shot internet sites that whine about Wall Street’s ills, and maniacs like Rush Limbaugh who bank millions telling lies to the American people.

This week we Americans have been introduced to the despicable rapscallion members in the ultra-right in our Congress who now, in fact, control both the House of Representatives and the Senate although the Republican Party itself tries hard to deny this..

The fraudulent propaganda of the small but powerful fascist media has successfully turned half the American population against the tenets of post-WWII Americans as best demonstrated by the civil rights movement of the 1960s and continuing; the offer of affordable higher education; the love of music and art; and, a sense of imbued fairness in our public and private discourse.

This change from care to hate among 30% of our people has not occurred from the normal aging of our population which sometimes includes a  move toward more conservative opinion than at a younger age.

It has occurred because our population, over 50 years old, and not highly educated, has been subjected to a nonstop litany of right wing lies that have frightened previously more liberal blocs who now, with no inherent ability to digest and study complex critical thinking, take the ideas of entertainers like Bill O’Reilly, Dinesh D’Souza, and thousands of other cranks, mavericks and oddballs – as truth.  What is wrong with us?

The leading force and the smartest among them is one Mr. Roger Ailes, the chief of Fox News and other Rupert Murdoch owned enterprises.

Ailes sees himself as deliver from what he considers “handouts”. He believes primarily in making money and he has carefully chosen to cater to a select viewership for Fox’s News and Business programming on the older end of the age scale rather than the younger.

In this way he attracts old soldiers, older women, older men, and even some very successful lawyers and jambalaya singers , although most stay away from him and from Fox.

Fox has no massive internet presence that provides information. It is  to provide propaganda from the right side of the aisle and provoke any progressive thinker that dare questions their motives. Its on-air personalities – including those who Fox labels progressive are nothing of the sort. The progressives Fox trots out to do battle with 300% more conservatives,  are normally weak-minded, or desperately in need employment which is understandable. The Internet has changed the number of positions available to liberal or conservative for a chance to appear on-air news and finance shows as informative personalities.

Fox is also filled with friends of Roger Ailes on air and off. His “Brain Room” where right wing propaganda is conceived, written, and produced is, in fact, full of quite bright, well-educated and creative people. However, their abilities are aimed at crushing progressive thought and ideology in favor or what some might call just plain Greed and humiliation of the poorest among us..

What is more frightening however is that Fox News does indeed control many hundred thousand votes in this nation through manipulation of facts and creation of fantasy.  The apers who they have spawned can, and have, turned the tide in many congressional and even statewide elections. They are now graduating to attempt to control the White House choice in 2016.  Just ask one of the Fox Old Men – Mr.Britt Hume about the time, not long ago, when he gave Fox News credit for Republican victories.

Fox commandants are wily.  They  did not severely attack Barack Obama until it was clear that he would win the White House. Since then, in 2008, Fox News has, on an almost continual 24 hour a day basis lynched this president and anyone who supports him within and from without the government.

To me that is proof of a Fox-earned Golden Certificate of Racism. And Fox’s non-stop attack on social security, welfare, teachers, unions, immigrants, and more have resulted in humilating those not on the fictional “Easy Street” that Fox pretends we would have if only we could send “them” back where they came from until “they” wait in line for years to come to America.

Fox, as a primary leader in right wing propaganda is responsible for much of the change in American attitudes – such changes to my mind, and the majority of Americans not changes for good.

Those Republicans who are described as neocons – (new to conservatism) have become so mean-spirited even though the majority of them are highly educated.  But they look at the United States and nationalism as the most important element in controlling the population here and around the world. Their interest is not democracy. It my mind it is totalitarianism or worse – a yen to return to the Gilded Age where the poor and unfornate “knew their place.”.

Remember only a few of the strongest and wisest Republican senators refused to sign a direct letter, sent secretly behind the President’s and all of our backs, to the leadership of Iran. This letter, which in essence said – “either you do what we tell you to do or we and our allies will begin destroying your nuclear facilities notwithstanding the “collateral” damage that might occur.” In short – “we’ll bomb you back to the Stone Age and anyone who gets in our way. too bad, they will die.”

Meanwhile our Secretary State John Kerry has struggled to come up with a mutually gratifying agreement that would allow Iran to use nuclear power for its people, but disallow the pursuit of nuclear weapons to use on us or our allies.

The ultra-right wing of the Republican Party which controls that political party today, does so often by blackmail.

These men and women seem not to believe in diplomacy to solve any problem –  international or otherwise, all problems of great complexity, and issues of true potential and incredible destruction.

They live in a hallucinatory world lead by the likes of aged Senator John McCain and a host of low level, mostly retired hawks born from the military who now often work for industry. By appearing on right wing talk shows thereby succeeding only in hearkening the warning of wiser Generals like President Eisenhower, also a Republican, who counseled us more than once that such men, part of the “military-industrial complex” who President Eisenhower believed  might be the most malicious threat America from within.

His fears seem to be coming true.

As a Baby Boomer I can tell you in all truth that I hardly recognize my own country today – and this feeling is shared by tens of millions of us born between 1944 and 1964.

What kind of nonsense is this when the Iranians are right now sitting with our American teams of diplomats trying to work out an agreement that could assure the world that Iran had no interest in nuclear weapons as they have said – and only wish to continue with nuclear power projects would which allow them to export whatever oil they may have in reserve.

Today Iran sits under harsh, but called for, punishments which severely restrict their finances and the well-being of the Iranian population. Iran made its own bed in majority starting in the 1960s, the following ouster of the Shah of Iran (our ally) and the Islamification of that nation. Yet perhaps this bid by John Kerry and his people will act to put the brakes on nuclear insanity and give all sides a chance to rethink outrageous positions?

Worse or us, and for them, Iran began to meddle with neighboring nations, exporting and funding terror, as well as threatening to wipe the state of Israel off the face of the earth.  They gave the neocons here an excuse to go wild.

What is quite interesting is that Iran warred with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq toward the end of the 20th Century, but the US supported Saddam against Iran, and then turned around during the Bush Senior years to defend Kuwait against Saddam’s military foray so as to obtain for himself a warm-water port to export Oil.  Hilariously one can see anywhere online photos of Dick Cheney high-fiving Saddam who then became our mortal enemy almost overnight and his anger and personal frustration with President Bush the elder, some say was the cause for Bush the younger to invade Iraq after 911 even though no Iraqis were found have been part of the attack on the American homeland.

We play a sort of supporting role here before September 11th by picking fights with Iraq in the 1990s and threatening the stability of the Region largely populated by Islamic families who had little or nothing in comparison to the majority of Americans and the populations of our Western Allies. This of course is no reason to aid in the blowing up of embassies, the killing of marines, the exporting of IEDs “made in Iran” and the rest. Yet we are no “angel’ when it comes to warring interference with the nations of the world even though we could excuse our operations after World War II as saving the earth from communism which I have read about in depth – being convinced that for some immature nations communism might be the best stepping stone for eventual

For seven years the likes of Rush Limbaugh and worse – Roger Ailes & Co. the Fox News bandits whose leadership is now counted on to elect even more young cons to important and critical offices.

                           Senator Tom Cotton – The “Senate 47” Rodeo Clown

The Letter the Senate 47 snet to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

This is the letter that the forty-seven United States Senators sent to the Supreme Leader of the Republic of Iran without the American President’s knowledge. It smacks of the same idiocy I have seen throughout the most hawkish ranks of the government – and a reason to dismiss the Republicans who signed it as unprepared for their responsibilities. It is not a reflection on those who voted for these men and women – it is a mirror of the hatred that ensued and grew after we elected an African-American President as sure as I am alive.

HERE IS THE FORTY-SEVEN SENATOR’S LETTER:

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini –

It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. (An insult to their intelligence – not a great thing to write when an agreement of this import is being discussed at the highest levels of our government and other allied government of the United States)

Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two (is that a typo or the typical Tea Party error) features of our Constitution — the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices — which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.

BELOW IS IN ESSENCE WHAT THEY HAVE TOLD THE PEOPLE OF IRAN

Treaties and Agreements

First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them. (Congress may play a significant role – but not THE significant role – in fact the citizens of the United States play the most important role in law and in reflection)

In the case of an agreement, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate).

Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement. (The use of the word MERE here is to downgrade President Obama’s and Secretary Kerry’s and staff roles in this months-long treaty negotiation over how best to protect the American people and the region from bursting in a nuclear build up on all sides who can afford it.)

Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics.

For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms (which of course means nothing in this regard). As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most (many) of us will remain in office well beyond then — perhaps decades. (There is a ludicrous statement. For all we know – every republican up for election (one third of them) will be voted out of office because of their irresponsibility in 2016 and certainly the chances of a Republican being elected President is today – quite low from registration alone)

What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei(purposeful error in spelling Khomeini to humiliate the Iranian leadership?). (And; Are they sure about that? Perhaps the agreement which these senators have never seen or have the ability to understand today, might become an agreement between the U.S. the allies, and the President of Iran, who under Iranian law can make such agreements.)

The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time. (Of course this is not a discussion about an “agreement” yet even it was, anyone taking such an action has lost the ability to think, at a time of peace between the parties. No new president will most likely never revoke even such an agreement. This would be akin to luring Iran and others in the region to “Nuke Up” and cause what could be worldwide destruction through war)

Next are my mostly wishful or naive, or far too hard-hitting, suggestions to the Administration about the lies and half-truths from the Senate designed to frighten the American People and dissolve American and Iranian efforts toward peace:

These suggestions are encased in this Suggested letter from our President of the United States to Iran:

Ayatollah Khomeini –

I have been informed that your leadership and you as the Supreme Leader of Iran have received a letter from less than half the United States Senate saying, in part, that any agreement with the President of the United States or his designates will not be ratified (approved) by the United States Congress and particularly the U.S. Senate which is now controlled by men and women who are widely regarded as dangerously damaging to world peace and ill-equipped to make such judgments with regard to the plan now being discussed between American and Iranian delegates in Switzerland today. They, on both sides, have worked assiduously to overcome the few and several disagreements surrounding a final, and acceptable first to me, version of such treaty.

I apologize for the Senate letter, and the use of humiliating terms to describe the machinations and content of these negotiations and negotiators as well as the essence of American Law.

Never before in modern history have members of congress attempted to inject and obstruct complex negotiations designed to benefit both the United States and the party with which we negotiate – in this case, Iran.

Aside from these points, the Federal Law invites me to inform you that should the Attorney General through investigations by the FBI and other intelligence agencies find that this communication to you was part of an intentional conspiracy to overthrow this or any government, or a plot to force Iran into speeding its actions to obtain, and enable Iran, to deliver nuclear weapons regional or internationally, I will commence whatever action I can to stop this immature and senseless ship from sailing much further during our negotiations.

In addition:

Under the following laws, those responsible for drafting and sending this absurd letter to you – which is a direct attack on the constitutionally allotted power of the Presidency of the United States could be subject to arrest and imprisonment, we will further investigate who, what, where, and why such a letter to Iran was sent in dark of night.

I am personally not an expert in these criminal legal regards, however as you may have seen, even large New York and other news sources have attacked these senators for this outrageous intervention in a sensitive and highly important negotiation, so profound that these senators interventions could be interpreted as follows:

The Logan Act

(18 U.S.C.A. § 953 [1948]) is a federal statute making it a crime for a citizen to confer with foreign governments against the interests of the United States. Specifically, it prohibits citizens from negotiating with other nations on behalf of the United States without authorization.
Of course the neocons only read the first sentence and will usually claim that there illegal contact with other nations are “NOT AGAINST THE INTERSTS OF THE UNITED STATES – but this does not let them off the hook. What may, is that the Logan Act has never been used to indict a member of congress or any American thus far something the right wing media is pounding into American heads as I write.

TREASON, REBELLION, AND INSURRECTION

U.S. Code › Title 18 › Part I › Chapter 115 › § 2381
18 U.S. Code § 2381 – Treason

Current through Pub. L. 113-296, except 113-287, 113-291, 113-295

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States

U.S. Code › Title 18 › Part I › Chapter 115

Under Title 18 of the U.S. Code:

“Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

Again, it is clear that the high and utmost courts of the United States could find that these senators interfering with our mutual negotiators could be construed as giving Iran succor, as she is under heavy sanctions from the allies, and could very well be engaged in rebellion or even insurrection against the authority of the United States and its law by giving aid, comfort, or both to the pro nuclear faction of Iran that has more than once called for the nuclear arming of your nation.

These forty-seven Senators are unquestionably rebelling against my authority as President to halt rather than continue our diplomatic work – toward mutual fruition of the agreement we now discuss in Genève.

Thus these same Senators are engaging in at least partial rebellion against the laws of the United States and moreover the stated intentions of its founders by giving only the Executive Branch the power to engage in agreement negotiations and only at the end of such, to present said agreements to the Senate for approval based not on political power grabs of one party or another ( Here the Republican Party), but must be based on critical and truthful findings by the Senate of such import that such an agreement will or most likely could cause harm and destruction to United States citizen(s)and our interests.

Of course my conclusion here could be proved by Iran alone if Iran departs the agreement talks and then continuing, openly or secretly, to produce and be able to deliver nuclear weapons to the soil of America or its allies – and I trust this will not happen, and am glad to have heard that Iran is not taking these congressional thugs seriously.

This situation is far worse than regrettable – it approaches inane.

Thus, in this manner, the Senators involved are also rebelling and perhaps even fertilizing insurrection among sectors of the American population who tend to follow neo-fascistic tenets or worse – the suggestions of radio and television “stars” who have no idea of that which they speak about nor what the consequences of such actions could eventually be.

In essence the rebellion and insurrection clause of our law could be comforting to Iran, other U.S. opponents worldwide.

In a way, we send a message to home-grown American rebels who are lured into tragic situations by prevarication posed by Fox News et al, manned really by comedians that pose as newsmen or intellects or experts, which they are not.

Other U.S. law could push certain senators toward prison:

U.S. Code › Title 3 › Chapter 4 › § 301
3 U.S. Code § 301 –

General authorization to delegate functions; publication of delegations

“The President of the United States is authorized to designate and empower the head of any department or agency in the executive branch, or any official thereof who is required to be appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to perform without approval, ratification, or other action by the President”
(1) Any function which is vested in the President by law, or
(2) any function which such officer is required or authorized by law to perform only with or subject to the approval, ratification, or other action of the President: Provided, that nothing contained herein shall relieve the President of his responsibility in office for the acts of any such head or other official designated by him to perform such functions. Such designation and authorization shall be in writing, shall be published in the Federal Register, shall be subject to such terms, conditions, and limitations as the President may deem advisable, and shall be revocable at any time by the President in whole or in part.

Those laws above failing to induce prosecution by the Attorney General or other perhaps the following may allow this:

U.S. Code › Title 18 › Part I › Chapter 115 › § 2384
18 U.S. Code § 2384 –

Seditious conspiracy

“If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

The illegality of seditious conspiracy to oppose by force, prevention, hindrance, or delay may cause U.S. high courts to hold the signatories of their communication to you and Iran mentioned above to cause their arrest – and in so-doing cause addition unrest, even calamity, in the domestic United States by Americans you might know as Neocons, Warmongers, Corporate Arms interests, or Tea Party aficionados to take up arms against the United States from the United States as well as a conspiracy to attempt to have Iran turn her back on the peace agreement re nuclear arms that we both may realize is in our mutual interest.

Another law could also imprison these Senators:

U.S. Code › Title 18 › Part I › Chapter 115 › § 2385
18 U.S. Code § 2385 –

Advocating overthrow of Government

“Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or

(One could easily demonstrate that the collateral impact of such a letter as sent by the Senate 47 would be the potential destruction of the United States – either by Iran herself, or internally from those either supporting Iran, a variety of Islamic terror organizations, and domestically from those who are deeply unhappy with the government as it stand today.)JMK

AND SO ON: Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

If two or more persons conspire to commit any offense named in this section, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

As used in this section, the terms “organizes” and “organize”, with respect to any society, group, or assembly of persons, include the recruiting of new members, the forming of new units, and the regrouping or expansion of existing clubs, classes, and other units of such society, group, or assembly of persons.

And further:

U.S. Code › Title 18 › Part I › Chapter 115 › § 2387
18 U.S. Code § 2387 –

Activities affecting armed forces generally

(a) Whoever, with intent to interfere with, impair, or influence the loyalty, morale, or discipline of the military or naval forces of the United States:

(1) advises, counsels, urges, or in any manner causes or attempts to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty by any member of the military or naval forces of the United States; or

(2) distributes or attempts to distribute any written or printed matter which advises, counsels, or urges insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty by any member of the military or naval forces of the United States—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

As you may know this is already occurring due to Republican cheerleading to disrespect the Presidency. Almost any day you can see several supposed “experts” suggesting the worse about Iran and American efforts to come to an agreement that would stop nuclear arms pursuits in Iran and the region at this juncture.

Lastly The Ninth Amendment in the United States Bill of Rights is perhaps applicable in this sense:

THE NINTH AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

NON-ENUMERATED RIGHTS

The Bill of Rights among the U.S. Constitution are amendments to bring our American constitution forward and to protect the rights of others that are not therein mentioned specifically.  I believe and many Americans agree that the actions taken by ultra-hard-liners on the right are targets of that 9th Amendment.

The 9th Amendment is rarely written about or the source of litigation, but it could come into play if the Senators who wrote to the Iranian leadership re the nuclear peace talks are arrested – in part or in whole for threatening the very peace.

The Ninth Amendment had been mentioned infrequently in decisions of the Supreme Court Justice Douglas, writing the opinion of the Court, asserted that the “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.”

The Justice mentioned the text of the Ninth Amendment to support the thought that these penumbral rights are protected by one Amendment or a complex of Amendments despite the absence of a specific reference.

I quote a leading American jurist: “The language and history of the Ninth Amendment reveal that the Framers of the Constitution believed that there are additional fundamental rights, protected from governmental infringement, which exist alongside those fundamental rights specifically mentioned in the first eight constitutional amendments. . . . To hold that a right so basic and fundamental and so deep–rooted in our society as the right of privacy in marriage may be infringed because that right is not guaranteed in so many words by the first eight amendments to the Constitution is to ignore the Ninth Amendment and to give it no effect whatsoever.”

Some Americans and legal scholars believe that the 9th Amendment protects Americans from interlopers attempting, for political and power-grabbing reasons to cause a kind of detonation in the normal and accepted operations of the government not included specifically in more pointed laws than the ones I have pointed out in my letter to you.

Thus, Americans themselves are protected from poseurs and interlopers who attempt to humiliate one or more of the powers invested in our government via our Constitution – in this case The Presidency. The United States Constitution is a document that I take quite seriously and have taught at university.

Thus, I write to you, in Iran, personally and openly, to demonstrate to you – whether these laws are used to arrest the development of further intrusions in the powers of the Presidency or not, that I abhor the activity by over-zealous right wing politicians or those who are elected by similar thinkers or no thinkers at all, as you wish.

I want you to know that this is not only a complex matter, this silly letter – but one that you should ignore. The ridiculous threats encompassed directly or parenthetically in the letter you received from these senators , I believe threatens us all.

This letter nor the signatories have any force in law and are certainly not instructive in the rules of human decency.

To flaunt potential deaths and other harm – for what might become no reason at all – to tens of thousands of Americans or Iranians is perhaps the most irresponsible trespass or human decency and the art of diplomacy this nation has witnessed in more than 100 years.

I cannot apologize for these imprudent men and women, but I will promise that even though your people and mine might be tough negotiators we will not end our pledge to negotiate with your selected diplomats and others hoping to gain peace through discussion not war or threat thereof.

I and the majority of Americans do not wish war with Iran or any nation or people. My wife and my daughters, and your family as well should be able to rest easy in a peace we can, together, give them.

I hope this letter truly and without any attempt to humiliate you or Iran or the Iranian people will help your analysis of our position and of some of our flaws and  laws that supercede them.

We do not allow for any citizen – elected or not – to interfere internationally in that which they obviously cannot fathom.

While some on the right compare me to old and departed men prior to World War II who thought only diplomacy was important, as you know I stand ready to defend, by any means, our citizens and our allies. However I believe that discussion and agreement is far more tenable than the latter choice.

It is true that mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress is of tantamount importance – but hardly-veiled threats are never part of diplomacy in matter of such importance.

Many of us have made the error of intimidating or bullying others during our lifetimes and later regretting it.

I assure you that I will do whatever is needed to make certain that the 47 signatories to this document sent you without my knowledge – certainly because I would never have approved doing so.

I am dismayed by those elected officials who would rather choose to have our soldiers killed or be killed to get the right-wing’s business, as it is, done, rather than discuss and accomplish a lasting peace for as long as is possible, and hopefully endlessly, without jeopardizing either side of this or any issue.

Sincerely,

x______________________________________________

Jeff Koopersmith TOSHIBA THE WORST SERVICE FROM WHAT USED TO BE THE BEST MANUFATURER! i bought the most expensive QOSMIO – my third – 16 months ago WITH EVERY PLUS ITEM OVER 2800 DOLLARS AND MORE and is has been returned three tams for the same problem. Nothing was done about the true problem save for a reprogram was does not fix a lousy 256 solid state drive. THE SAME THING HAPPENED AGAIN BUT NO HELP UNLESS I WANTED TO PAY $400 BUCKS FOR YET ANOTHER NON-FIX – BUT YOUR “REPAIRS” ARE ONLY WARRANTED FOR 30 DAYS!!! SO YOU TOLD ME IT WAS TOO BAD. ARE YOU JOKING? – THAT IS THE LAST TIME! – I’VE HAD OVER 30 TOSHIBAS IN MY OFFICES – THEY ARE ALL GOING INTO THE TRASH – AND REPLACED BY BETTER AND LESS EXPENSE CUSTOM MADE LAPTOPS. I ALSO OWN A WEB MAGAZINE AND WE WILL FEATURE THE RUNAROUND AND THE LIES YOU HAVE TOLD ME, AS THE CEO OF MY SMALL COMPANY – DAILY!  THEY KEPT ME ON THE PHONE 1 HOUR AND 17 MINUTES THEN TOLD TO PAY THEM SEVERAL HUNDRED FOR SOMETHING THEY NEVER FIXED.  ALSO LOST TIME USING THE MACHINE OVER THE THREE PAST RETURNS – 11 WEEKS!

JEFF KOOPERSMITH,

KPBC, WASHINGTON, D.C.  

Some so-called “conservative” strategists at a 2010 gathering of mostly Republicans were gestapo-like. One the most fanatic is, Michael S. Greve, now a law professor at ho-hum George Mason University Law School, who urged his audience to destroy the health care law.

Greve said, (it) “has to be killed as a matter of political hygiene,” adding “I do not care how this is done, whether it’s dismembered, whether we drive a stake through its heart, whether we tar and feather it and drive it out of town, whether we strangle it.”

I would enjoy hearing a tape recording of the cheers such a hate-filled remark must have elicited from those who think only people of power and the wealthy are worth a damn.

Spoken like a true mouthpiece for the GOP – dominated “think tank” (not) which is more like a propaganda machine bent on destroying everything, plunging a stake through the heart of entitlement programs for the poorest Americans, and someone who would hearken back to the worst of American History by using the term “tar and feather it” as if this is an everyday practice in 21st Century America.

Today the Supreme Court will hear the most ridiculous challenge and the obvious arguments against  “Obama Care” seeking to “dismember” that law because, perhaps, the Congress was not aware that the federal government would make the plan work – even if the more neo-facist thinking  states that attempted to block health care for the poor by refusing to set up offices needed to implement it were disgrace by the federal government righting their wrongs.

The case was accepted by the Supreme Court based on a pleading from Thomas M. Christina, an employment benefits lawyer from Greenville, S.C. and mouthpiece for the, are you surprised (?), the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, cousin of the U.S. Chamber – the leading critic of anything fair to anyone but big business (and small), as well as the A.E.C. where Mike Greve peddles his nonsense.

Know your lawyers, their backgrounds, and their friends.  It’s an important thing.

I can compare them only to Ken Starr who hides out in Malibu these days trying to get a table at “any” restaurant.

A DECISION IN THIS CASE, King v. Burwell, 14-114, is expected by late June.

By Jeff Koopersmith, Editor Emeritus

So, someone finally said it.

“Follow (The lack of) Money in the Middle East for average Arab, Muslim, Islamic, or other warrior.”

And to make it special, Marie Harf of the U.S. State Department seems to have said it on the air first!

So, Kudos to Marie Harf! For a group like the GOP to attack everything our warriors do in the Middle East because the President will not say Islamic Terrorism (Nether will I) – is the greatest display of Republican right wing ignorance shown to the voters since men and women like them tossed The Crusades into the historical mulch.

What Marie Hart said to Chris Matthews on MSBNC is this: “We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s a lack of opportunity for jobs.”

Then to CNN figurine Wolf Blitzer she added: “I’m not the first person to say something like this,” Harf said. “Military commanders that we’ve had throughout many years here fighting this war on terrorism have said the exact same thing that in the short term when there’s a threat like ISIL. We’ll take direct military action against these terrorists. We have done that. We are doing that in Iraq and Syria. But longer term, we have to look at how we combat the conditions that can lead people to turn to extremism.”

Naturally the morons at Fox News jumped all her because they make themselves look even dumber or more evil than they are. They pretend these words of Ms. Harf’s are akin to “get ISIS a job” – and you can dream up whatever else simply by thinking about Hitler and what he might have said at this juncture to keep his people “in line”.

I was more than exultant that Ms. Harf had the bravery to spill the truth – the majority truth. Sure some of the ISIS/ISIL caliphate fantasies are in the minds of very smart and some very wealthy Islamics, but they are the minority and a very small one at that. The rest of those terrorists are simple and easily led by the nose – that’s apparent.

And yes, there are even hundreds of Americans among them – they are either thrillists or insane. Yet I can also guarantee you that many are tired of living in what appears to be the New America – which seems to only worship money and, only sometimes, mainstream “western” religions (Which appears to leave out Islam this days).

Thus, you can all put away the magnetism of Michael Flynn, the well-spoken, but very much in error former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency who told Mike Wallace’s little boy, Chris Wallace:

“”We are facing a form of a cancerous component of the Islamic religion which has a fanaticism to it … which is against our way of life, and they, in fact, have declared war on us…”

Flynn is very hot on religious war chanting it appears. Yet he seems, at best, to pass over quite a more reasonable explanation for ISIS’ appeal to young men and women in the region and in other like regions where generation upon generation has completely lost hope as they review their circumstances and realize that they and their children never had a chance in nations run by dictators and too often greed.

This is what I believe Ms. Harf was aiming at. However, she must be cautious because some of those dictators including some royalty are our allies and we are not in the position or the mood to turn our backs on them. Thus, she could say – Hey, look, these people live in mud and rock houses with dirt floors, no education – religious or otherwise and may survive on incomes of less than $1,000 per year per capita (according to the World Bank). So why are you surprised that they are pissed off?

Every American alive knows about or experienced the riots in this country not that long ago when minorities realized very much the same about their own futures. One hundred years after Lincoln “freed” the slaves – the fifth and sixth generation of them in the 1960s had little more than they did in slaver times the way I remember it.

Sure, some minorities in America made it and continue to do so more and more – but the percentage is yet quite small, but Fox News will tell you Hey, they do not live in stone houses with mud floors but they might yet recall how their grandparents lived and where they lived before the Second World War.

It was abominable – I know because I spent many young years in the Bronx among The Projects and saw firsthand how we warehoused our poor. What’s worse is that we continue. Do you think that young people in Chicago who shoot each other to death almost every night do so because they have wonderful teachers and lovely homes?

If you see that they perceive no peaceful future – then you might be able to transfer your domestic know-how to your Middle East projections and perhaps understand how the malicious but more privileged leaders of ISIS and its clones became immoral and moreover how easy it is to tell the worst off in the region a host of fairytales much like Hitler told the Germans almost one hundred years ago.

So, do you think it’s possible that young people of unfathomable poverty could be lured by the promise of their own Caliphate, where God would protect them, feed them, and house them while their children became highly educated and grew healthy and strong?

Is it too much to grasp that technology itself has allowed even the poorest human beings to know exactly how we and all the “industrialized citizens of earth” live in bright comparison to them, to their mom and dad and their brothers and sisters?

And can you imagine that they might get very angry when they realize or better yet are lectured by those who seek power form a different and abhorrent perspective – from the have-not perspective – so they learn that we in Europe and America are allied with the very enemies they loathe in their own region?

Don’t we recall that Al Qaeda was vocally and demonstrably antithetical to Arab Royalty – even though Bin Laden was from a billionaire Arabic family – many of whom lived graciously in the Untied States?

Yes, that is the truth and we should face it.

I do not think that Mr. Harf nor President Obama nor the State Department believes we can “build democracies” as the ill-informed and downright whacky people that surrounded George W. Bush in the White House. In fact they didn’t believe it either – but it was a great story about the pretentious “Arab Spring” introduced by Fox News and others like them. An introduction to horror and failure. No one of the “springing” nations has been yet able to form a working Democracy let alone provide much to their people. It takes generations. It took the United States generations and we still haven’t got it right.

Yet we try. And we must keep in mind – even as we dutifully slaughter the monsters that threaten to decapitate or burn our children and that lead and are in turn led by lies and half-truths – that these people are confusing the words of God – whoever’s – for their own purposes and because they believe that living like they have been is no better than being droned on the battlefield or burned alive by a smart bomb.

The world is theater my friends. Nothing is as it seems – and nothing ever was. Yes, it is true that these people have become monsters – but worse – they have become monsters who now know who we are, and how we live.

That combination is horrific.

Thus, we must not only stop the bloodbath on both sides, but also convince our allies, and our enemies that the only way the world can be at peace is by upping the ante and making it more difficult to decide to go to war because, then, all people will have too much to lose.

Americans, including me and my friends and all my fellows have far too much to lose. Isis and all the related groups in the Middle East and in Africa – have little or nothing to lose.

Therein lies their power. A power we can take away not only with weapons but with understanding.

Until the opulent leaders in the Middle East and the wealthy leaders in the West realize that we can no longer protect only ourselves without protecting everyone on earth to at least some acceptable standard – one that is reasonable by several measures – all we be will naught.

There are more than 200 nations on the earth today and the 6 billion of us will turn into 9 before we know it. The best off of those nations are fewer than 50, but we must use our brilliance and our equity and our hearts to come to some understanding of how to elevate the rest of the world so that the next group of people who have lost all hope by the age of five, will cease to exist.

Why? Because even if we wipe Isis and its ilk from the landscape – another band of extremists will quickly form somewhere and aspire to the same or worse.

That is what America stands for and realized all too well at the end of WWII. We and our allies rebuilt most of Europe and Asia after we helped destroy it.

Why not think or some way we and others can build without the need to first destroy so many of our own and our enemies?

You got that Fox News?

. . . And other non-whimsical and ill prepared to govern “Candidates” for President

“Of all the men and women who might run for the GOP presidential nomination Scott Walker has little or no chance to move into those big leagues. So, don’t get so enthusiastic!” – JMK

 

By Jeff Koopersmith Editor Emeritus

22.FEBRUARY.2015-WASHINGTON DC – Just who was last month’s Iowa Poll winner? Scott Walker of course (not) – if you do not know him well – he’s the governor of Wisconsin – isn’t he?

He won nothing but a lot of  overcooking by journalists we stupidly rely on.

Well, the first preposterous Iowa poll upon which some of the simple-minded  right might be relying on is the latest Bloomberg-Des Moines Register Iowa Poll of likely Iowa Caucus voters which in itself is an absurdly devious group to launch opinion surveys inasmuch as the Iowa Straw poll and the-certain-to-be-following Iowa Caucuses are nothing more than a cash cow for Iowan businesses and the pols who welcome the irrational from the media. Besides, Iowa –  is most likely the most boring place on earth:

The news media, from around the world if you can belief that are those who in fact cover this puerile state which just has to be FIRST to tell all Americans who their next GOP or DEM competitor will likely snap up the nomination for President of the United States.

I typically write a piece every four years titled “Who Cares What Iowans Think” – so I suppose this is a first installment for the 2016 presidential cycle.

Yes, who does care what Iowans think inasmuch as their annoying polls are almost always erroneous – mostly because the majority of Americans – except those who live in Iowa do not think nor vote like Iowans – in fact we joke at this middle-America hijinks as should we all.

Add to that the fact that Americans almost always lie to pollsters and cannot easily be reached by telephone any longer.

Get this – the latest Iowa Straw Poll  poll before Romney’s very expected (by me) choice “not to run” which he made because Jeb Bush would certainly thrash him in GOP primaries for presidential hopefuls thinks it has the handle on the GOP race..

The results of the Iowa Poll are a sidesplitting waste of whatever the “Register and Bloomberg” paid to launch it – as there is so little difference between the current and ever-growing mind-numbing list of potential GOP candidates for President, most of whom could not be elected to office by 50+1 percent – including in Iowa.

By the by – No one in this latest poll earned more than a 15% eager figure –  which points out that few if any are ready now to hitch themselves to a right-wing wagon.

The fun fragment is that Scott Walker is the governor of Wisconsin which is, sadly, not the brain trust of America but the Cheese Trust that seems to have a penchant for Velveeta.

Nor do most Americans give a hoot about what most people in Wisconsin think either – especially about Gov. Walker who is basically an ultra-right union buster who talks the good talk but is, in no way, competent to occupy the White House as his background in the “Fromage State” is, well – Cheesy.

However, because the year 2015 only truly started last week after we all recovered from a nonstop eating binge from Thanksgiving to New Year’s and Super Bowl stupors – the pundits on CNN, NBC, CBS and FOX were beside themselves with no news to report at all except that Katie Perry might show some skin at the Super Bowl – which she did not. And of course the Iowa Poll.

So they creepily oohed and ahed about Gov. Walker’s besting the nearly two dozen nuts that think they might get the Grand Old Party & Friends to bet billions on their winning abilities.

It is clear that Iowans, who in fact participate in the Iowa Caucuses are out of their political minds to vote for Scott Walker in this pointless poll or in 2016.

Tasking the next four spots in this poll were Rand Paul, Mitt Romney (not a contender), Mike Huckabee who the Register labeled as a Fox talk show host(a very fat talk show host)and not the former governor of Arkansas, and; Dr. Ben Carson who, believe it or not, is close to being a sniggering stock at the very hospital and research center where he was kind of a C- doc. This, according to a fellow in the know that I recently spoke to in New Mexico who described Carson, on our then-moving train, as someone who could never gain a post at the Salk Institute or even at lowlier Scripps which is nearly bankrupt today.

Here are some of them.

Ben Carson – who looks and talks like a newfangled Bill Cosby is a right-radical African American doctor who, I hope, does not carry the same baggage as Cosby seems to. Carson must be either a pet of Roger Ailes the Fox News chieftain, or just the best Black candidate with a doctorate that Ailes could dig up to groom for certain doom and appear on the comedy station Fox News.

The next two runner ups were Jeb Bush (almost a sure winner for the GOP nod) and Ted Cruz who reminds me of a 1950s car salesman, or a 1930s Communist living in Russia who cannot seem to spit out either an interesting, coherent, or provocative idea from his gurgles in Texas.

Ted Cruz – a progeny of the humiliating Tea Party thinks is surname will give him a heft portion of the Hispanic-American vote. Dream-on or Gram-on, Ted.

The rest of the pack would be uproariously comic if they weren’t so terrifyingly droll, and unprepared to run anything let alone the most powerful and plagued-with-trouble nation on earth. This includes Chris Christie who appears to be looking for a spot in a Comedy Club in the almost totally bankrupt “mecca” – Atlantic City, where Christie presides as Governor and suspected vengeful bridge closer-downer between Jersey and New York.

Then we have Jesus’ best friend – Rick Santorum whose claim to fame is a sort-of Vatican-sounding name – “We are now in the inner Santorum” – Santorum was lucky enough to be elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania and was tossed out long ago as he should have been.

To me, Sanctorum’s greatest achievement in life was that he fruitfully lobbied on behalf of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) to decontrol professional wrestling, and that the WWF should be exempt from federal anabolic steroid regulations because it was entertainment, not a sport. No matter that steroids turn athletes to mulch

My favorite entertaining candidate in the current pack of wolves is Gov. Rick Perry – the Governor of Texas and also see as a prior loser to most Americans.

Perry is a lot like George W. – a guy you might like to have a beer or whiskey with – but who reasons that way of dealing with immigrants clawing their way to the relative safety and American values – should be shot down at the border or at least tased into whirling around and spilling back into México or Central America where these people  are treated like slaves or household decor by the 0.0005% of their countrymen who control 99.9994% of the money.

Mahatma Bobby Jindal an Indian American is currently the governor of Louisiana – a state known of uncontaminated politics and the safest place to leave as soon as possible when New Orleans cedes from the state and becomes a principality.

Jindal has the most impressive educational background of the lot and served at every level of government in before winning the governorship in 2007. He’s been relatively quiet over the past few months, but has a lot of ultra-right-wing cred which he hurt him if he is serious about running. Jindal opposes abortion in general, but does not condemn medical procedures aimed at saving the life of the mother that indirectly result in the loss of the unborn child. In Congress, he voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment to restrict marriage to a union between one man and one woman. His Louisiana Governor’s office has been ranked last for transparency in the United States – which means he likes to hide “things”. Jindal opposes the Fairness Doctrine on the grounds that it is a desecration of the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech and vowed protection of property rights and, of course, that is gives the Koch Brothers and others like them a pass to raise billions to change your vote to any neo-fascist on the ballot thanks to our non-thinking, literalist Supreme Court.

The republican woman most likely to have been paid off one way or the other to challenge the GOP’s supposed war against women is creepily-like-your old school principal – Carly Fiorina had a 1% vote in this latest Iowa poll – with the top percentage a “high” of 15%. In 2005, Fiorina was involuntary asked to resign as chief executive officer and chairman of HP following “differences [with the board of directors] about how to execute HP’s strategy.] She has recurrently been ranked as one of the worst CEOs of all time http://www.cnbc.com/id/30502091/page/3 and was included in the “CNBC Portfolio’s Worst American CEOs of All Time”

Fiorina is followed by the more serious governor of Ohio – John Kasich who also spent time as a television host and the one person, aside from Jeb Bush that could offer semi-serious credentials to battle the third Bush for the Rose Garden – Americans love television hosts (except for Brian Williams) and film stars.

Yet the fact the serial bankrupter and nutty “You’re fired” based television program  producer and “star” named Donald Trump has to be mentioned here because he mentions himself so often during any presidential race or cheesy beauty pageant.  We featured him on the Cover of American Politics Journal during his presidential and okay – vice presidential yapping in 2012 of running against the Obama-Biden ticket. (see ning.com – mag covers for more American Politics Magazine Covers) http://apjclub.ning.com/

I almost forgot that Marco Rubio of Florida – the JFK pinup boy of the new right – polled 3% in Iowa last week. I like Rubio’s guts and some of what he says but many knowledgeable people think he’s being fooled by those around him who believe he could be elected to a national office as President. Rubio has the same problem – perhaps more – that does the GOP: He will not attract the growing Hispanic vote as his political views are at loggerheads with most researched Hispanic voter opinions. To his credit he loves Niki Minaj, as many do.

Rubio has less money than anyone in the U.S. Senate with a net worth in the six-figure minus column as reported by ABC news. However, should he run for the Republican nomination he will certainly get mysteriously more affluent. It pays to run for President even if you have little hope to win and Marco is smart enough to know that and to boost his power by running. Just ask Huckabee. Take a look at these Iowa poll results below if you want to be amused.  What? Why does Gov. Walker score so high here – and in the next and latest poll? :

I guarantee to write far more about Scott Walker if he gets any closer to truly running for President, and thus far, it won’t be admirable.

And you rubes: Stay hopeful – There’s always Sarah Palin.

#

“Of all the men and women who might run for the GOP presidential nomination Scott Walker has little or no chance to move into those big leagues. So don’t get so excited!” – JMK

By Jeff Koopersmith

Editor Emeritus

FEBRUARY 2 2015 WASHINGTON Who was the Iowa Poll winner? Scott Walker – you know him well – he’s the governor of Wisconsin – isn’t he?

Well, the first ludicrous poll upon which some of the severe right might be banking on is a Bloomberg-Des Moines Register Iowa Poll of likely Iowa Caucus voters which in itself is a ridiculous group to survey inasmuch as the Iowa Straw poll is nothing more than a money maker for Iowan businessmen who welcome the idiots from the media who in fact cover this silly state which just has to be FIRST to tell all Americans who their next GOP or DEM competitor will likely get the nomination for President of the United States.

I normally write a piece every four years titled “Who Cares What Iowans Think” – so I suppose this is a first installment.

“I CERTAINLY DON’T!

Yes, who truly does care what Iowans think inasmuch as their aggravating polls are almost always wrong – mostly because the majority of Americans – except those who live in Iowa do not think nor vote like Iowans – in fact we laugh at this middle-America hijinks as should we all.

Get this – the latest poll after Romney’s very understandable choice “not to run” which he made last week because Jeb Bush would trounce him.

The results of the Iowa Poll are a hilarious waste of whatever the “Register and Bloomberg” paid to run it- as there is so little difference between the current and ever-growing boring list of potential candidates for President, most of whom could not be elected to office anywhere – including in Iowa. No one polls more than 15%.

The fun part is that Scott Walker is the governor of Wisconsin which is sadly not the brain trust of America – nor do most keep give a hoot about what most people in Wisconsin think – especially Walker who is simply an ultra-right union buster who talks the good talk but is, in no way competent to occupy the White House as his background in the Cheese State is, well – cheesy.

However, because the year 2015 only truly started today – the pundits on CNN, NBC, CBS and FOX were beside themselves with no news at all except the Katie Perry might show some skin at the Super Bowl – which she did not. So they creepily oohed and ahead about Walker topping the nearly two dozen nuts that think they might get the Grand Old Party to bet billions on their winning abilities.

It’s clear that Iowans who actually participate in the Iowa Caucuses are out of their political minds because following Scott Walker in this silly poll and in the next four spots were Rand Paul, Mitt Romney (not a contender), Mike Huckabee who the Register labeled as a Fox talk show host (a very fat talk show host) and not the former governor of Arkansas, and Dr. Ben Carson who, believe it or not, is close to being a laughing stock at the very hospital and research center where he was kind of a C- doc employee according to a fellow in the know that I recently spoke to in New Mexico who described Carson, on our then-moving train, as someone who could never gain a post at the Salk Institute or even at lowly Scripps which is nearly bankrupt today.

Rand Paul

Dr. Ben Carson

Carly Fiorina

Ben Carson – who looks and talks like the newfangled Bill Cosby is a right-radical African American doctor who, I hope, does not carry the same baggage as Cosby seems to. Carson must be either a pet of Roger Ailes the Fox News chieftain, or just the best Black candidate with a doctorate that Ailes could dig up to groom for doom.

The next two runner ups were Jeb Bush (almost a sure winner for the GOP nod) and Ted Cruz who reminds me of a 1950s car salesman, or 1930s Communist living in Russia who cannot seem to spit out either an interesting, coherent, or provocative idea from his bubble in Texas.

Ted Cruz

The rest of the pack would be hysterically funny if they weren’t so terrifyingly unprepared to run anything let alone the most powerful and plagued-with-trouble nation on earth. This includes Chris Christie’s who appears to be looking for a spot in a Comedy Club in on the almost totally bankrupt states of Atlantic City where Christie presides as Governor and suspected vengeful bridge closer-downer between Jersey and New York.

Chris Christie

Then there is Jesus’ best friend – Rick Santorum who even has a kind of Vatican-sounding name – “We are now in the inner Santorum” – who was lucky enough to be elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania and was tossed out long ago as he should have been.

Rick Santorum

My favorite guy in this pack is Rick Perry – the Governor of Texas. Perry is a lot like George W. – a guy you might like to have a beer or a whiskey with – but who thinks dealing with immigrants clawing their way to the relative safety of American values – should be shot at the border or at least tased into turning around and running back to Central America or Mexico where they are treated like slaves or household decor by the 0.0005 percent of their countrymen who control 99% of the money.

Rick Perry

Bobby Jindal an Indian (as in India) American is currently the governor of the Louisiana – a state known for the cleanest politics and the safest place to leave as soon as possible when New Orleans cedes the state and becomes a principality. Jindal has the most impressive educational background of the lot and served at every level of government in before winning the governorship in 2007.

He’s been relatively quiet over the past few months, but has a lot of ultra-right-wing cred which he hurt him if he is serious about running.

Bobby Jindal

The republican woman most likely to have been brought off one way or the other to challenge the GOP’s supposed war against women is Carly Fiorina with a 1% vote in this latest poll -with the top percentage a “high” of 15%. In 2005, Fiorina was forced to resign as chief executive officer and chairman of HP following “differences [with the board of directors] about how to execute HP’s strategy.”[3] She has frequently been ranked as one of the worst CEOs of all time. http://www.cnbc.com/id/30502091/page/3 and was included in the “CNBC Portfolio’s Worst American CEOs of All Time”

Carly Fiornia

She is followed by the serious governor of Ohio – John Kasich who also spent time as a television host and the one person, aside from Jeb Bush that could offer serious credentials to battle the third Bush for the Rose Garden.

John Kasich

Yet the fact the serial bankrupter and nutty “you’re fired” based television programs Donald Trump – who we featured on the Cover of American Politics Journal during his yapping in 2012 of running against the Obama-Biden ticket – it was a favorite of both Republicans and Democrats alike in that former and disgraced speaker of the House Newt Gingrich thought he would be the best president that year.

The Donald – Donald Trump

Trump and Gingrich in the Rose Garden (2011)

I almost forgot that Marco Rubio of Florida – the JFK pinup boy of the new right polled 3% in Iowa last week. I like Rubio’s guts and some of what he says but many knowledgeable people think he’s being fooled by those around him who think he could be elected to national office as President. Rubio has the same problem – perhaps more – that does the GOP: He will not attract the growing Hispanic vote as his political views are at loggerheads with most researched Hispanic voter opinions. To his credit he loves NIki Minaj, as do.

Gorgeous Niki Menage and Marco Rubio

Rubio has less money than anyone in the U.S. Senate with a net worth in the six- figure minus column as reported by ABC news. However, should he run for the Republican nomination he will certainly get richer. It pays to run for President even if you have little hope to win and Marco is smart enough to know that and to boost his power by running. Just ask Huckabee.

Take a look at these Iowa poll results below if you want to be amused.

I promise to tell you much more about Scott Walker if he gets even close to truly running for President.

THE SILLY IOWA POLL RESULTS THIS WEEK

BE SURE TO COMPARE THE ABOVE NUMBERS WITH THESE NUMBERS BELOW?

CAN YOU SAY MULTIPLE PERSONALITY IOWANS?

By Jeff Koopersmith, Editor Emeritus

You had to weep when you saw Senator McCain on Sunday political talk shows this week.

Of course, he would not back off his comments to the Code Pink demonstrators who called for Hank Kissinger’s arrest during a Senate Committee Meeting where at least McCain was over-eager to hear the octogenarian-plus-eleven year old’s words regarding the state of foreign affairs.  Here is what he said even today about this scummy comments:

Video title: John McCain: ‘I Am Still Outraged’ At Kissinger Protestors”    Click here to see the video.

Even Chris Hitchens, who I abhorred for his reverso  politics (Bless his soul even though he never believed he had one) told us that Kissinger was indictable.

Hitchens presents a rather straightforward argument that make two undeniable propositions.  Hank conspired to murder, and on many other occasions, he was the driving force behind  be called war crimes.

Hitchens called this  a “lay-down” A case that shows facts and rules of law that are nearly insurmountable by defense. The murder victim was  General Rene Schneider, who was the Commander in Chief of the Chilean Army or who Chris called the army’s “Chief of Staff.”; According to Hitchens (and the 09 September, 1970 minutes of the “40” Committee, the Kissinger chaired secret panel that oversaw U.S. covert operations), the Chilean military was neutral re political affairs.

Schneider had a strong and committed sense of the rule of law and  upholding the Chilean constitution against a ready coup against newly elected Socialist President Salvador Allende by a right wing  gang of current and former Chilean military men. Using U.S. Government communications cables from the CIA and documents from the State Department, and White House, Hitchens relates the facts of Kissinger’s direct involvement in the direction, planning, financing, and general support by the organs of the U.S. Government in the plot to remove General Schneider.

Kissinger— rivals Pol Pot for the dishonor of being a person responsible for the death of the highest number of innocent people in South East Asia and even today still wields significant power in the United States; but his role as a happy warrior and fan of mass murder, totalitarianism and other atrocities seems to be buried and never openly discussed in the media.

Kissinger gave the thumb’s up  to Suharto’s invasion of East Timor and following and mass war crimes there, and he  helped President Nixon plan and hold harmless the Pinochet coup and reign of  terror, torture, and murder, He also personally orchestrated the first phase of the holocaust in Cambodia according to record.

According to Walter Isaacson Kissinger borrowed several hundred thousand dollars from which he borrowed from Goldman Sachs during the latter part of the 20th Century. You can read his list of huge corporate clients in Issacson’s book on Kissinger – Hank serves as a kind of personal National Security Adviser and Secretary of State for untold multinational corporations.

Kissinger, now over 90, I am sure felt he was doing the right thing – but that does not excuse his conduct no matter how he affords his ability to stay alive for so long.  One only wonders if he and Dick Cheney play poker together as friends or rivals?

2015 OBAMA STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS – HERE

A hero and mentor of mine, Mario Cuomo, has died.  He is survived by his wonderful wife Matilda, his children and 12 grandchildren.

Governor of New York for three terms, Mario led the charge against Reagan Republicans, reminding them almost every day that it was the common man who was in trouble in the early 1980s and not the wealthier of us.

There is nothing more to add save for the fact that Mario Cuomo was and will continue to be a true “shining star on a hill” and someone I was proud to study and know. Best of all – he was a helluva baseball player.

I am bereft

Jeff Koopersmith

Play this for him and you remember his soul:

It’s the Stupid, Stupid

By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers (crisispapers.org)

Barack Obama is not stupid and he says he doesn’t want his administration to do “stupid things” in foreign policy. So why, then, has he done a reckless, stupid thing by starting a new, two-theater war in the Middle East? And why did that war in Syria have to commence immediately as an existential necessity?

Even though I don’t agree, I can at least somewhat understand a rush to war when it comes to Iraq. The corruption and vacuum of leadership in that country opened up a rich shaft for the extremist jihadis of ISIS to mine — and they are moving inexorably toward Baghdad. But what was the absolute moral hurry to bomb inside Syria?; you mean the operation couldn’t have waited a few weeks so there could be a full-scale national debate, both in Congress and in the American polity in general, about the wisdom of such a dangerous move?

We should always be wary of hurry-up wars; someone (usually with $omething to gain) is trying to rush things along before the public remembers the previous such wars and how disastrous those turned out.

This whole Mideast situation is a chaotic mess, which cries out for more rational analysis. So let’s try to parse out as much as we can in terms of possible motives for war, along with pointing out the scary ramifications that always attend The Dumb. Here are 10 places to start.

1. MUSCLE BEACH

Ronald Reagan and CheneyBush were celebrated by the Right and some Independents for their “muscular” military policy — that is, taking the country to war. So Obama for years has been covering his, and Democrats’, perceived electoral vulnerability of being seen as “weak” and wishy-washy when it comes to national-security issues.

The speeches Obama has given in the past few weeks, justifying his somewhat amorphous military plans to crush and destroy ISIS could have been delivered word for word by George W.  No wonder the Hard Right Republicans are celebrating — while they lobby for sending foot-soldiers into Iraq and Syria ASAP. And no wonder the liberal left is discombobulated by their formerly anti-war leader’s dash toward militarism, especially with regard to bombing inside Syria.

2. NEO-CONS 2.0

The Cheney-ite neo-conservatives have a simple way of viewing the world: To them, the U.S. is the last remaining superpower and thus it should move aggressively to mold the world in its image, even if it takes a few more wars. The problem with such thinking is that such a geopolitical strategy didn’t work in the 1990s and it won’t work now: so many modern-day wars are asymmetrical and difficult for large, musclebound nations like the U.S. to fight successfully (see Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.)

From the standpoint of these smaller countries, “success” in this context means to bleed the superpower with a thousand cuts over many years. Stalemate becomes victory, since eventually the American citizenry grows weary of military quagmires and withdraws from the battlefield.

Why the rush to war in Syria? I suspect that Obama and his military advisors saw a golden window of opportunity they couldn’t resist: a greatly distracted Assad, an enemy in ISIS that almost invited the initial bombing runs and missile attacks by massing men and materiel right out in the open, a violent Sunni/Shia split in Islam, some Arab cheerleaders anxious to rein in extremist jihadis, the president free to act on his own since the U.S. Congress wanted to keep its fingerprints off a new Middle East war (hence, no debate), especially right before the midterm election.

3. A TRUE BELIEVER?

Another possibility: What if Obama’s war posture is not an act? Maybe he really believes what he’s saying. The progressive Left chose to see Obama as a liberal activist when he actually was much closer to the center-Right and beholden to the prevailing corporate worldview. He certainly was no pacifist. Recall that when the President received his Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, his acceptance speech to the assembled diplomats in Oslo inexplicably was a defense of going to war — the “just war” argument.

Obama today may truly believe in his own propaganda, that ISIS is the latest manifestation of pure evil and must be eradicated; forget the fact that many of the ISIS fighters originally were recruited, armed and encouraged by the U.S. as tough fighters in the Syrian opposition. Now Obama wants ISIS to be ripped, root and branch, from the face of the earth, despite opposition from potential allies.

Surely, Obama sees that no country is champing at the bit to put its soldiers on the ground in Syria. If other nations want to help at all in the Syrian theater, it will be mostly from the air and will mainly be in service to the U.S. air force and drones. (A somewhat reluctant Turkey seems willing to send combat troops, if it has to.)

As for the U.S., Obama promises no boots on the ground, unless there’s a damn good reason to do so. And, as the American people have figured out (see recent polls), there will be a “damn good reason” to do so.

Since Obama is not stupid, he must know that it won’t take much to make the U.S. change its mind about BOTG (boots on the ground). All it will take is a U.S. aircraft shot down by ISIS or Syrian missile, or when U.S. military members are taken prisoner and threatened with beheading, or when some major act of ISIS terrorism occurs inside “The Homeland” — or that can be blamed on ISIS Central, even if done by free-lancing jihadis. You can bet that in such circumstances, there will be BOTG very quickly, whether those of active-duty soldiers or large numbers of special forces operators.

4. THE TRUE TARGET IN SYRIA

The bombs raining down on Syria from the air are aimed at ISIS facilities and troops, but the actual goal is regime change in Damascus. (And, after that, maybe Iran.)

Surely, Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad, can see the handwriting on the wall, that he’s next in the U.S. crosshairs, so why is he being so relatively quiet as his country’s sovereignty is violated every day by U.S. bombers and missiles?

It seems clear, at least to me, that some accommodation with Assad — perhaps with tacit promises of weapon and cash — was reached before the U.S. bombing campaign began. In its most simplistic tactical form, that deal might have been something like this: “You stay out of our way — we will let you know in which regions of Syria we will be operating on that day — and you can continue to rule.” Assad perhaps figured: “I need to regroup and grow stronger, so if the U.S. wants to be my air force for a year or two, I’ll take it. In the interim, I can try convincing the U.S. that I’m their best hope in the region, even if they say they abhor my methods of control. That might mean that I would effectively be in the same camp as Israel, but ‘politics makes for strange bedfellows’ and ‘the enemy of my enemy is my (temporary) friend’.”

In addition, Assad is playing the nuclear card as further insurance the U.S. will not overthrow him: He’s revealed four heretofore secret chemical facilities which, if ISIS were to get ahold of, could ignite a firestorm of death and mass destruction all over the region and beyond.

5. ISIS STRATEGY

ISIS, at the moment, seems content to be the leading jihadi force in the Middle East region, even though its spokesmen like to poke a verbal stick in the eye of the “Great Satan” by promising attacks eventually on the American homeland.
The eventual goal of ISIS is to establish the modern equivalent of the 7th-century caliphate for all Muslims, and perhaps re-create the Islamic Empire over much of the rest of the world.
One key to doing this is to enrage the United States and its Western allies enough to draw them into the maelstrom that is the Middle East. Just as Osama bin Laden did with the attacks of 9/11. The naive, angry U.S. snaps up the bait and invades another  Muslim land.

Right now, ISIS is reaping the whirlwind from the air. Lots of damage, losing some momentum and so on, but bearable. What is likely to transpire: ISIS at some point ordering its troops to melt into the villages and urban settings for awhile, while it sharpens its guerrilla tactics and uses its social-network smarts to help round up thousands of new recruits. I would expect terrorist bombings in the capitals of Europe and in those Arab countries (Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, etc.) supporting the U.S.-led war.

Since it’s difficult to root out ISIS fighters from the air, eventually the U.S. and its allies will feel obliged to put boots on the ground, and the mousetrap will snap shut.

6. “UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES”

Wars look so contained and tidy on the map charts when they are started. It doesn’t take long before all hell breaks loose and there’s no way to put the bloody genie of war back in the bottle. And then the unintended consequences start, and battle plans have to be rethought as the casualties and slaughters commence.

There will be plenty of surprises as the new Syria/Iraq war unravels. But even now, we can anticipate some, such as factions switching sides, high-tech weaponry winding up in ISIS and other jihadi hands, new fighters coming onto the field, alliances breaking apart, key nation-state actors in Europe starting to change their minds, Putin’s Russia causing mischief, anti-war protests worldwide starting to grow in size, free-lance terrorists bombing inside the U.S. and its coalition partners, the broadcasting of videos of U.S. coalition tortures, etc.

Yes, the U.S. military can be amazingly successful at times. But in these wars, there will be no victory. Just slow bleeding — of U.S.  men and materiel and Americans’ sense of themselves as a moral people.

Does that mean that ISIS’ barbarities should be ignored? Of course not. Their medieval mentality and cruelties and desire to force conversions on a mass scale to re-establish the Islamic caliphate — all these must be confronted. Right now, the default mode of that reaction is violence (not that far removed from the extreme wars of The Crusades). The U.S. should be seeking more creative ways, involving larger alliances, and economic and political sanctions, to build a stronger moral/diplomatic/economic/political shield against ISIS. It may not ultimately work, but it can’t hurt and might actually help repel the advances of this group of cutthroats.

7. WISE ADVICE

As the old colonial system broke apart after World War II, the active principle for Western countries was “never fight a war on the landmass of Asia.” The new warning should be “never fight a war in the Middle East.” In that roiling, unstable part of the world, the social and political infrastructures are infinitely complex, virtually impossible for outsiders to understand, easy to get bogged down in the tribal, clan, religious miasmas, with constantly shifting alliances. In short, it’s easy to use missiles and bombs from thousands of feet in the air, but actually getting on the ground and trying to decipher the shadowy social/political rules and subrosa ways of doing business is the very definition of ill-advised policy. Has America learned nothing from its defeats in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan (lessons already learned by the Brits and the Russians in Afghanistan)?

As the U.S. gets bogged down in these new Mideast wars, it will spend down its treasury, its aging infrastructure will continue to deteriorate, the economy will collapse once again, the environment will continue to be degraded, the results of climate change will wreak more havoc on cash-starved localities, the gap between the uber-wealthy and the rest of us will grow larger, social revolution will become more necessary and real in the streets, etc.

8. ELECTORAL FALLOUT

It may turn out that the American Left will find itself joining forces, at least temporarily, with the rightist Rand Paulites to demand up-or-down votes on use of military force in Syria/Iraq.
Normally, the ruling party in power can count on the polity rallying around the flag and the troops doing the fighting. But whether the U.S. citizenry will continue to support these newest wars in the Middle East is unclear. It’s not even clear which political party is “in power” — the one that controls the White House? the one that controls the House? — or which military policies the populace might support: boots on the ground? drone and air force bombing??

My guess as I write this in early October is that the GOP is gaining traction using ISIS (“the terrorists are coming!”) to generate fear and anxiety, and that may be enough to tilt the midterm elections in their direction. The Democrats are split on the advisability of Obama’s war policies, and may not react in enough time (we’re less than a month away from election day) to win enough victories.

Needless to say, if the Hard Right continues to dominate the House, and becomes the majority in the Senate, the country is in for a catastrophic, post-election hard landing in every area imaginable, from economics to judicial appointments (especially to the Supreme Court) to educational slidebacks to fundamentalism and authoritarianism making massive gains in the public arena.

9. A HUMUNGOUS GAMBLE

Obama, it seems to me, is gambling that the good patriotic zeal of finally hitting back at somebody will accrue to the benefit of the Democrats in the midterm elections in November. But I’m not sure Obama can pull it off, hence the gloomy assessments above. Especially if Turkey and then NATO get sucked into the larger war, and Russia feels compelled actively to join the other side. WW3, anyone?

If the Syria/Iraq campaign is still going on in stasis in 2015 and the following year, and is viewed by the U.S. population as “Obama’s War,” stalemated and unwinnable, the Democrats may pay a high price at the polls in 2016, losing the White House and any hope for real traction in the years following.

10. WHAT CAN BE DONE?

What the U.S. needs is a full-scale social/political revolution, but though the need is certainly there, the “objective conditions” don’t seem to be in forceful play. This is true even as it’s becoming more obvious that we are moving slowly, incrementally toward a revolutionary tipping point.

Less than a month before Election Day, there doesn’t seem to be much direction and passion among the liberal/progressive left. Which means that the Democrats’ GOTV campaign will amount to little more than reducing the electoral damage rather than offering viable, creative, populist-Democratic alternatives.

If the electoral train hasn’t yet left the station, there may still be enough time for the Democrats to kick their strategy into high gear. But the Dems are notorious for snatching defeat out of the jaws of possible victory. As Tiny Tim might have said: “God help us, everyone.”#

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle, and now serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (crisispapers.org). Comments: crisispapers@comcast.net .

Fox News – Incessant, Mudslinging, Poseurs

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Destroying lives for cash and political power

By Jeff Koopersmith

It seems to me that almost the whole enchilada presented by Fox News is deceptive from the people who man most of its on-air spots, presenters, too dumb to be believable guest commentators.

I was sad to see Ed Henry, Fox White House lead –and always hesitant to agree openly with the nuts at the Fox Studios in New York – has seemingly given up now and must have been told to dedicate himself to destroying Barack Obama.

The Fox News cable network, viewed, in fact by almost nobody save for rare occasions (at most 8% of television news viewers) is now pulling out all the stops to make certain that the next few weeks brings with them a rasher of new non-scandals that are “direct, indirect, or tertiary” not only linked to the White House but to the President himself.

The latest fairytale and biblical travesty is round about nonsense about a young man who volunteered to do advance work for the White House. These are folks – largely unpaid – who perform the hundreds of smaller and mostly non-security-related tasks that help White House staff move the President or his family to different locations – whether around the block, or across the globe.

As you may know, the President, years ago traveled to Columbia where it appears that several male Secret Service agents frolicked at strip clubs and with prostitutes in Cartagena.

This week the idiots, though amusing idiots, on Fox early morning programming – and then throughout the ensuing days – put a young man, not with the secret service – but insinuated by Fox as a White House staffer – is alleged to have brought a working girl to his hotel room on that trip although the President was not in residence at that hotel, nor in the country at the time.

#OMGWHITEHOUSE!

Of all the nauseous audacity – grown men who are television personalities – not usually honored by the most moral behavior themselves, sit around on a cheaply staged Fox sets giggling about the White House’s immorality. It’s almost unbearable to imagine
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Worse, the Washington Post – very tightly tied to the CIA and other intelligence agencies in its younger days was the newspaper of record that introduced this ludicrous yellow story about a twenty-something law student written by David Nakamura who should know that his “investigatory EXCLUSIVE” was nothing more than a nice Gimme to evangelizing Republicans now attempting to destroy the Senate by electing a GOP majority that would certainly gridlock the entire national legislative effort – as if there was one.

The Post has, since Nakamura’s exclusive has moved back a bit from its story mounting a confused op-ed wondering about the hilarity that other news and comic sources are viewing this “scandal” and parenthetically to my mind, apologizing for it while trying also to keep ties with the women’s movement who is worried over child trafficking as they should be.

The young man involved suffers for something that untold millions of men and women and gays have done at his age without making international news. Of course, not happy with simply ruining the life of the kid, Fox adds that his father is a “big” contributor to Barack Obama. Now they both have had to hire an attorney.
The man’s reputation has become a water cooler snigger and all for what?

This fellow was not there to protect the President. He was a young man and we all know about young men and even older ones – just look up the Republican elected officials caught with THEIR pants down, not to mention what must go on in Mr. Murdoch’s disgraceful company here in America and aged Roger Ailes own troubles surrounding his alleged urgings for oral sex from employees.

Do you remember a time when private liaisons between men and women were not discussed openly because of their obvious “its human nature qualities”?

Well just like with Stalin and Hitler – some people’s human frailties are fodder for a new kind of unearned reputational murder, but murder just the same.

Where are the women’s groups re Fox News’ Eric Bolling of “The Five” that airs at 5 PM from New York – while the kids are eating. Bolling called a woman pilot fighting on our side in Iraq – “Boobs on the Ground” and has paid no price for it?

Or was it just a silly aside?

(The front page illustration here is how we must assume Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and particularly Eric Bolling who called a woman pilot fighting on our side in Iraq – “Boobs on the Ground” and has paid no price for it.)

Leon Panetta – Gone & Forgotten

NEW YORK – Am I mindless, or are we witnessing Leon Panetta becoming a 76 year old California hobgoblin running around peddling his book anyplace and anytime including an appearance on – of all programs – the Bill O’Reilly Factor- Fox News’ lowliest crowd pleasing “circus” while mauling the reputation of the very same President of the United States that put Panetta in command of the Central Intelligence Agency and later crowned him Secretary of Defense?

I collect these quotes Panetta is now creating – in context and out – but all of them seem bizarrely contemptible as he paints Barack Obama as a kind of geeky wimp who prefers to ignore the advice of people around him. I am familiar with that gaggle, and must say I might ignore them as well.

For now, I am expectant that Panetta will appear on added news and interview programs that are not controlled by that judder Roger Ailes. Nonetheless while I continue to watch Panetta’s careless beach boardwalk performance I suggest that readers with minds take a look at Charlie Rose’s CBS interview with our American Treasure Leon Panetta. Rose, a gentleman, not-so-pointedly probed him:

“There are those who say, you know, he appointed you to two of the highest positions that this country has to offer, just wait until he’s out of office before criticizing.”

Kudos to Charlie Rose for asking a most important question but allowing what I might characterize as a person-of-interest, but guilt-ridden perp, answer.

Panetta responded to that and other Rose questions thus:
The last two years, I think what happened was he looked at a country that was frustrated, exhausted by over ten years of war, and he wanted to turn a corner. He wanted to be able to get away from Iraq, get away from Afghanistan, and begin to refocus on this country, but also, hopefully, to get other countries to step up to the plate to deal with it. What we’ve learned by recent events is that if the United States isn’t providing that leadership, nobody else will*.

Here’s what I think. President Obama took President Eisenhower’s warning about the warfare zealots that have been with and around us for centuries. President Obama did not see – thus far – any need for the “Boots on the Ground” hue and cry of old men like Ailes and the on-air curiosities that work for him, or the freaks that man his “brain trust”.

You see, some people – even Presidents – especially those who value lives – are not anxious to send American boys, girls, women, and men to be killed blood-spattered in some filthy desert because several potentates in the region want to maintain their thrones and several American arms dealers, oil barons and military uniform hawkers quietly but effectively cheer them all on.

Panetta, himself a former Lieutenant in Army Intelligence, should know better. He may not have been on the front lines – but he must have witnessed the personal costs of warfare in his time.
Panetta ought also to practice “Loyalty and faithfulness”.

He reminds one of the type that walked out on Bill Clinton during his most gruesome trials only to save their own necks, or enrich themselves as did the miniature rapscallion, George Stephanopoulos.

So, here is my tentative conclusion. Panetta may be a stalking horse for Hillary Clinton’s presidential run. If so, then is seems evident that the President may have decided not support her presidential candidacy. If I am wrong, then Panetta is simply a greedy man seeking to leave a fatter legacy.

I can only hope that Hillary Clinton or Bill did not put Panetta up to this – because I, for one, was counting on helping her break that last glass ceiling before I take my leave.

More later – but keep this in mind. Bill O’Reilly in just an aged Long Island boy like I am. He has no particular skill except to sell himself to the highest bidder while he cover’s his behind by saying first yes and following it with no. Panetta has a shared background – he was just a smart kid from a good working-class family too.

Bill O’Reilly to my mind is most untrustworthy, yet I am pained that he did not see the Panetta pretense inasmuch as a poser can always spot an associate sham.

*See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drennen/2014/10/08/charlie-rose-scolds-panetta-shouldnt-you-wait-until-obamas-out-office#sthash.LquDBgaD.dpuf

Jeff Koopersmith tunes into FOX Nerws Channel – so you don’t have to – in his latest report from the media battlefield.

Continue reading Political News? What News? Everyone is Boring or Crazy These Days