On Monday evening August 21st, 2017 President
Donald Trump looking like a hostage, made a stony speech to the American people
regarding his generals taking over the war in Afghanistan. It was the first major speech given since the
removal of Donald Trump’s longest and most ardent supporter of the Trump
Agenda, Steve Bannon. The speech should
have been entitled: “Generals purchase
a plot for America in the Graveyard of Empires.”
Trump, in a morose tone spoke about the huge debt of
gratitude owed to our military families especially since 911. It was evident how heavy his heart felt as he
told those families they would be called upon once again to sacrifice their
loved ones to that bottomless pit in Afghanistan. When Trump, with the
enthusiasm of a hostage read off his prepared list of reasons why the decision
to sacrifice more troops to the unwinnable war is crucial to American
interests, it didn’t resonate.
Reading from his script, President Trump said “our nation must seek “an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices.” Really??
What outcome can possibly be worth the tremendous sacrifices already
made? Whose children will be the last to
die in the war in Afghanistan, the children of those Americans who already died
in Afghanistan? But then that would be
fine with the war profiteers.
Steve Bannon was the only one left putting the brakes on the
Pentagon and State Department’s ravenous appetite for war. With Bannon gone, The Intercept is reporting
“The White House is now run entirely by Hucksters, Democrats and
Generals.”
Excerpt:
THE WHITE HOUSE IS NOW RUN ENTIRELY BY HUCKSTERS, DEMOCRATS, AND
GENERALS
There is no one left in the White
House who has any idea what they’re doing. At least nobody conservative.
President Donald Trump never tires
of reminding audiences that he is not a politician, and he proves it on an
hourly basis. He is by turns a
nationalist, a populist, and a demagogue — but rarely acts as a traditional
conservative. With the far-right White
House strategist Steve Bannon gone, the
team left behind appears to be ill-equipped to maneuver the political
challenges needed to turn the administration’s ambitious policy goals
into successes…
Trump’s new chief of staff, John Kelly, is a retired general. His
national security adviser, H.R. McMaster,
is an active-duty general and the bane
of Breitbart, the far-right website Bannon used to run… Trump’s tepid 35 percent support,
meanwhile, is concentrated among readers
of Breitbart — which Bannon may return to. But no matter what Bannon does
or says, his firing will be seen by some of his base as a betrayal of the cause,
further eroding his support, leaving
Trump further isolated.
As John Kelly’s opponents are dispatched one by one, a defenseless
Trump may find himself among the targets. “Generals tend to suck at chief of staff, because the job is so
political, but they tend to be good
at getting a president to resign,” said one former senior Bush
administration official. Just ask
Richard Nixon, or his chief of staff,
retired General Al Haig.
That’s laughable, “Trump’s
tepid 35 percent support is concentrated among readers of Breitbart.” The media is so insular, so removed from the
American people after 16 years of an unwinnable war, it’s as if they inhabit a
different planet and speak a different language.
No, America will not accept an escalation of the Afghanistan
war based on “our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the
tremendous sacrifices that have been made”, especially the
sacrifices of lives.” The Generals are
giddy with their new found money and power and they are on a spending
spree. From The Anti-Media:
Excerpt:
Trump’s Pentagon to Spend Nearly $500 Million on Gitmo Construction
On top of that, the Pentagon wants to spend $124 million to build a
new barracks for prison troops, and another
$100 million on a “migrant tent city,” which would come with housing for another 5,000 US ground troops.
The Gitmo facilities were described as falling apart years ago,
though President Obama’s pretense of eventually closing the detention center
outright had them holding off on upgrades. With Trump eager to fill the
location back up, they are facing significant
construction costs.
While President Trump is still trying to sort out exactly how to word
his executive order, but the plan is clearly to expand the detention
center at Guantanamo Bay and start throwing more detainees into the facility.
The Pentagon’s planning ahead on picking
up spending at the site…
The Pentagon envisions some $500 million in new spending,
with roughly half set aside for a five-bed hospital, leading to criticism that THE
PLAN COSTS $50 MILLION PER BED. Pentagon
officials, however, warn that the old hospital is in serious risk of flat out
collapsing.
Really? You’re
warning us that the old Gitmo is in “serious risk of flat out collapsing” and
you want a billion dollars to build a new, and improved Gitmo. Shit, bulldoze the disgusting reminder of the
Bush torture chambers. Talk about
tearing down painful memorials. Whatever
prisoners you have evidence to try, put on trial and let the court settle
it. Put hardened criminals in American
prisons. We can take it, we’ve been
doing this a long time.
Gee whiz with America $17.7 trillion in debt who’s going to
pay for all that? Our politicians spend
for war like they are playing with Monopoly money. They talk about raising “the debt ceiling” to
pay for misadventures like the 16-year debacle in Afghanistan as if they are
just placing bets at a craps table. The
change of Treasury Secretaries from one administration to the next is just
Treasury passing the hymn book from Secretary to Secretary, no change of tune,
second verse same as the first.
We were warned about this during February, 2016 the last
year of the Obama Administration. From
Sovereign Man:
Excerpt:
Here’s why (and how) the government will ‘borrow’ your retirement
savings
According to financial research
firm ICI, total retirement assets in the
Land of the Free now exceed $23 trillion.
$7.3 trillion of that is held in Individual Retirement Accounts
(IRAs). That’s an appetizing figure, especially for a government that just passed $19
trillion in debt and is in pressing need of new funding sources.
Even when you account for all
federal assets (like national parks and aircraft carriers), the government’s
“net financial position” according to its own accounting is negative $17.7
trillion. And that number doesn’t
include unfunded Social Security entitlements, which the government estimates is another $42 trillion.
The US national debt has increased
by roughly $1 trillion
annually OVER THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS. The Federal Reserve has
conjured an astonishing amount of MONEY
OUT OF THIN AIR IN ORDER TO BUY A BIG CHUNK OF THAT DEBT. But even the Fed has limitations.
The Federal Reserve prints up money out of thin air, the
charges the U.S. taxpayers interest on those worthless securities to fund their
debt. Then when those funds are gone,
congress allows the Treasury to crack into private and public pensions to fund
their debt. Then the Federal Reserve
who’s practically insolvent, buys up the private and pension fund debt with
their worthless Reserve Notes. What a
scam.
According to its own weekly
financial statement, the Fed’s solvency
is at precariously low levels (with a capital base of just 0.8% of assets). And on a mark-to-market basis, the Fed is
already insolvent. So it’s foolish to
think they can continue to print money forever and bail out the government without
consequence…
But it’s just as foolish to expect
them to continue bailing out America, especially when they have such large
economic problems at home. US
taxpayers own the largest share of the debt, mostly through various trust funds of Social Security and
Medicare. But again, given the $42
trillion funding gap in these programs, it’s mathematically impossible for Social
Security to continue funding the national debt.
Social Security is not supposed to fund the national
debt. Thanks to George W. Bush’s tax
cuts, the entire burden of funding the government has shifted from the rich who
make their money not by working, but basically gambling other people’s money,
to the working poor.
This
reality puts the US government in rough spot.
It’s not like government spending
is going down anytime soon; it already
takes nearly 100% of tax revenue just to pay mandatory entitlements like
Social Security, and interest on the debt.
Plus the government itself
estimates that the national debt will hit $30 trillion within ten years…
And if you think it’s inconceivable
for the government to borrow your retirement savings, just consider the
following:
1)
Borrowing retirement funds is
becoming a popular tactic.
Forced loans have been a common tactic of bankrupt governments
throughout history.
Plus there’s recent precedent all
over the world; Hungary, France,
Ireland, and Poland are among many governments that have resorted to
‘borrowing’ public and private pension funds.
2)
The US government has already done this with federal pension funds.
DURING THE MULTIPLE DEBT CEILING FIASCOS SINCE 2011, the
Treasury Department resorted to “extraordinary measures” at
least twice in order to continue funding the government. What exactly were these extraordinary
measures? They dipped into federal retirement funds and borrowed what they
needed to tide them over.
In fact, the debt ceiling debacles were
only resolved because the Treasury Department had fully depleted available
retirement funds.
3)
They’ve been paving the way to
borrow your retirement savings for a long time.
Two years ago the government
launched a new initiative to ‘help Americans save for retirement.’ It’s called MyRA. And the idea is for people to invest retirement savings ‘in the safety and
security of US government bonds’.
Since then they’ve gone on a marketing offensive involving the
President, Treasury Secretary, and other prominent politicians.
(Most recently Nancy Pelosi published an Op-Ed in the
San Francisco Chronicle a few days ago promoting the program.) They’ve also proposed a number of legislative
reforms to ‘encourage’ American
businesses to sign their employees up for MyRA.
Just last week, Congress
introduced the “Making Your Retirement
Accessible”, or MyRA Act, which would charge a penalty to employers whose
workers don’t have a retirement account.
The proposed penalty is $100. Per
worker. Per day.
Imagine a small business with, say,
10 employees who don’t have retirement accounts. The penalty to Uncle Sam would
be a whopping $30,000 PER MONTH. There’s
a word for this. It’s called extortion.
Obviously when facing a $30,000 monthly penalty, an employer will pick
the easiest option.
Given the absurd amount of
government regulation on the rest of the financial industry, MyRA is the fastest choice. This isn’t about fear or paranoia. It’s about
facts. And the reality is that the
government in the Land of the Free is moving in the direction of borrowing more and more of your retirement
savings.
If you still remain skeptical,
remember that last year the government
stole more from its citizens through Civil Asset Forfeiture than thieves in the
private sector… Or that just 45-days
ago a new law went into effect authorizing the government to strip you of your passport if they believe in their sole discretion
that you owe them too much tax.
No judge. No jury. No trial. They just confiscate your
passport. This is happening. It’s a
reality that rational, thinking people should plan for.
You know, back in 2000 George W. Bush ran on privatization
of Social Security and tax cuts for the rich.
He didn’t win the votes in congress on Social Security but he won big
time with the help of Democrats to cut taxes on millionaires who, through those
tax cuts are billionaires today. What they didn’t tell you is this: after the controlled demolition of the Twin
Towers on 9/11 and the huge financial cost to American workers, they passed the
trillion dollar tax cuts for the rich.
In order to continue with the tax cuts for the rich and fund
the unending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan plus all the other wars, congress
came up with a funding parlor trick called “raising the debt ceiling.” Congress allowed itself to borrow trillions
from public and private pension funds to pay the bills that mounted up from the
untaxable trillions in Derivatives trading, untaxable Wall Street profits and
untaxable war profiteers.
Each year as a trillion more was piled on the debt, congress
would raise the “debt ceiling” without debate.
What they really were raising was the amount they would allow themselves
to borrow from your pension/retirement/savings account. From CNBC:
Excerpt:
Mitch McConnell: 'Zero chance' US fails to raise the debt ceiling
Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell says there is "zero chance" the U.S. government will fail
to raise the debt ceiling. Treasury
Secretary Steven Mnuchin wants Congress
to lift the borrowing limit by the end of September. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on
Monday insisted the U.S. government will raise the debt ceiling and avoid
defaulting on its debt.
"There is zero chance — no chance — we won't raise the debt
ceiling. No chance," McConnell said at an event in Kentucky with
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. "America's not going to default. And we'll get the job done in conjunction
with the secretary of the Treasury."
Mnuchin has called for Congress to
pass a bill to increase the borrowing limit by the end of September. By then, the Treasury will have exhausted its so-called extraordinary
measures to continue its
borrowing authority and risks defaulting on its debt.
So billionaire Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin will have
exhausted his so-called “extraordinary measures” by September. Remember what those extraordinary measures
are? Those extraordinary measures are
stealing every last dollars from our retirement accounts and our pensions that
was authorized the last time the debt ceiling was raised. Now Mnuchin needs a new authorization lifting
the amount he may steal from the nation’s retirement funds or the country will
default on its debt.
DURING THE MULTIPLE DEBT CEILING FIASCOS SINCE 2011, the
Treasury Department resorted to “extraordinary measures” at least twice
in order to continue funding the government.
What exactly were these extraordinary measures? They
dipped into federal retirement funds and borrowed what they needed to tide
them over.
In fact, the debt ceiling debacles were
only resolved because the Treasury Department had fully depleted AVAILABLE
retirement funds.
This is insane. Why
do the American people allow this heist to happen and then thank the
politicians for “avoiding the fiscal cliff” by robbing us blind to pay for
their wars and Wall Street’s untaxed profits.
And Mitch McConnell just matter-of-factly says “it’s a done deal.” Everyone agrees. Well guess what Mitch, not
everyone agrees, the people don’t.
The Democratic Party has become a wing of the Republican
Party. But now, Donald Trump is
threatening the raising of the debt limit if his Wall is not funded. From Bloomberg:
Excerpt:
Trump Shutdown Threat Complicates Congress's Debt Ceiling Plans
President Donald Trump’s threats to
shut down the government in October over border wall funding triggered concerns
on Capitol Hill and could complicate
Congress’s job of raising the debt ceiling…
Trump has made clear for months he wasn’t happy with the last bipartisan
spending deal in May… At the time, he tweeted that a "good" government shutdown may
be needed… House Speaker Paul Ryan
told reporters Wednesday that lawmakers
aren’t interested in a government shutdown in October…
Conservatives in the Republican Study Committee and House
Freedom Caucus are pushing for deep
cuts to entitlement tied to the debt ceiling which moderates in the
party are not prepared to vote in favor of. That means Republicans will likely need to assemble a bipartisan
vote that includes Democrats…
Bell said that in light of Trump’s
stance, the Senate may choose a different
path for the debt ceiling. "A partial government shutdown prompted by
failure to pass appropriations is one thing; a threatened default is in a
different galaxy," he said. "While
no one has a real plan that I can understand…
Congress could also temporarily lift the debt ceiling… “In a divided government when two parties
were fighting in 2011, that was not an option,..” “In complete control
government where leaders acknowledge that the debt ceiling has to be lifted,
this is a viable option and why we are not too concerned…”
One solution may be to find
a deal that allows both sides to claim victory. Congress could try to
pass a portion of the $1.6 billion requested by Trump, or it could approve
additional border security funding for other purposes…
So the Koch Brothers’ Freedom Caucus not only wants to raise
the limit on how much the Treasury can “borrow” from the public and private
pensions held in trust, no that’s not enough.
“The Conservatives in the Republican Study Committee and House Freedom Caucus are
pushing for deep cuts to entitlement tied to the debt ceiling… Get those a*& holes out of there. The worst part is that members of the Freedom
Caucus were brought into the Trump Administration by Mike Pence.
What’s even more revolting than slashing entitlements as a
sweetener to get more votes to “raise the debt limit” to fund escalation of the
war in Afghanistan, is that everyone in Congress knows this is bullsh*t. The war in Afghanistan isn’t ever going to
end, it’s part of the Pentagon’s 20-year plan for war. One of the very few honest congressman is
speaking out is Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
From Free Thought Project:
Excerpt:
Brave Congressman Explains How US Keeps Afghan Heroin Trade Alive at
Your Expense
Congressman Thomas Massie blows the lid off the US subsidized opium trade and
taxpayer funds flowing into the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
This week, President Donald Trump, just like his predecessor Obama, promised to continue the utterly corrupt
failure of a brutal occupation that is Afghanistan—despite running on a
campaign to end it.
For decades, the United States has been subsidizing—to
the tune of billions of US tax dollars—failed projects, infrastructure, military,
police, and yes, even terrorism. Yet
Afghanistan is worse off today than they were before the government lied to
Americans, claiming they were responsible for 9/11 instead of Saudi Arabia.
In a recent speech on the state of the Afghanistan quagmire,
Congressman Thomas Massie (R) KY, exposed some hard truths that very few
people in Washington are courageous enough to address…
For years, Massie has pointed out
that the US has blown billions of
dollars on failed projects alone. As
of last year, the number of failed projects totaled over 100 billion. To put this number in perspective, the entire amount of money the United
States allocates to spend on rebuilding
America’s crumbling highways every year is less than half of what it’s
blown on failed projects alone in Afghanistan.
In addition to $ trillion+ war, we've spent $113 billion rebuilding
Afghan... that's 2x our own $50 billion annual federal highway
spending! Massie noted that hundreds of millions of dollars were spent
on a hydroelectric damn that the US thought the Taliban would destroy.
However, they did not destroy it.
Want to know why, Massie asked, “They
get the electricity! We’re paying the light bill for the Taliban now. They get 30 percent of the electricity in
exchange for not blowing it up, or shooting the operators who are running
the damn.” US taxpayer dollars go to a
hydroelectric dam in Afghanistan that provides 30% of its power to the Taliban.
What's the goal in Afghanistan?
But it’s not just the wasted money
giving terrorists electricity, THE US IS ALSO PROTECTING AND FUNDING THE
DRUG TRADE. Of that wasted
$100 billion, $8 billion was spent failing to eradicate the Afghan opium trade.
Not only did (the) this massive amount
of money not stop the opium trade and production but it doubled it!
USA spent $8 billion to eradicate
poppy in Afghanistan and they doubled annual production of poppy (opium).
What's wrong with this picture? Western
profiteers are making a figurative killing off of heroin for the literal
killing of people in Afghanistan…
The lunacy of continuing the
occupation in Afghanistan, knowing the
only ones who benefit from it are warlords, drug cartels, the CIA, terrorists,
and the military industrial complex, is staggering. Innocent people will die, your children’s children will be forever
indebted to the Federal Reserve, and the global war machine—which knows no
home country—will be empowered and expanded. For what?
“I had hoped the Afghanistan war
would end soon, but now it’s inevitable that babies born during the war will be deploying to the war in 2019,”
Massie said shortly after Trump’s speech Monday night.
President Trump, drain the swamp. Your Administration has been overrun with
military swamp monsters who know only war. You very somberly gave your obligatory
Afghanistan speech on Monday, but by Tuesday you were ready for war. You burst onto the stage on Phoenix and took
on the Republican establishment full frontal.
From The Hill:
Excerpt:
The Memo: Trump allies say he needs
a GOP scalp
Republicans on Capitol Hill lament
President Trump's aggressive behavior toward them, but some people in the president's orbit are urging
him to up the ante even further. They
say that, far from making nice, Trump needs to instill fear so that lawmakers
do not feel at liberty to thwart him.
“Most members of Congress are
arrogant, and until a scalp is actually taken they are going to continue to be
defiant,” longtime Trump friend Roger Stone told The Hill. “All he needs to do is punish one incumbent and I think you’d see a
sea-change…” Other Trump loyalists
join Stone in arguing that the president
should neither forgive nor forget…
On Friday, Trump complained about
the Senate’s filibuster rule, which has been a longtime vexation to him even as
McConnell has indicated he has no interest in getting rid of it... And the president
took aim at Corker, who had publicly called his “stability” and “competence”
into question…
Public Policy Polling, a
Democratic-leaning firm, last month found only 30 percent of Republicans
approving of McConnell’s job performance, while 46 percent disapproved. For Trump, 81 percent of Republicans
approved and only 16 percent disapproved...
Stone argued that Trump is “far
more popular and more influential with Republican primary voters than any
members of Congress and any member of the United States Senate, and he has enormous leverage to go into
party primaries.”
“It is of first importance that the military be subordinate to civilian
government”
― John Rawls
On Monday evening August 21st, 2017 a stoic President
Donald Trump announced the Generals have taken over the Afghanistan War and
would be sending more family’s children to serve as cannon fodder to keep the
war profit gravy train running. By
Tuesday Trump was in his element. Knowing
the future lies not in the Party Elite but the people, Trump renewed his
commitment to a fair and just America for all its people.
While many hold out hope for the future under President
Trump, the Deep State is fighting to control the President. Right now the Generals have a bottomless wallet
and their first purchase was a trillion dollar plot for America in the
Graveyard of Empires”
By Patricia Baeten
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