Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Paul Ryan and GOP’s Final Solution for America: Death by trillions of tax cuts



I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."  ~~ Thomas Jefferson


Make no mistake about it, the GOP’s latest tax scam plan is designed to further enrich the banks and Wall Street on the backs of the middle class, the elderly, children and the infirmed.  After years of horrific legislation that has left America a hollowed out vessel unable to care for its own citizens, Paul Ryan and the GOP are ready to plunge a dagger into what’s left of the heart of America with their final solution, death by trillions in tax cuts for the rich.   From Salon:

Excerpt:

Why are Republicans so cruel to the poor? Paul Ryan’s profound hypocrisy stands for a deeper problem

Paul Ryan has dreamed of slashing Medicaid since his keg-party days — and that blithe hostility is widespread.  Republican Paul Ryan, like most other members of the U.S. Congress, is a millionaire.

Christa Patton is 68 years old. She is frail and no longer able to leave her home. She lives on a fixed income. Patton told Van Jones on a recent episode of his CNN show "The Messy Truth" that she would not be able to eat without the Meals on Wheels program.

Paul Ryan is the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. By his own account, in college he used to hang out with his friends and drink beer while sharing his dreams of cutting Medicaid. When Ryan was 15 years old, his father died from an alcoholism related heart attack. Ryan and his family then received his father's Social Security survivor's benefits. Ryan used that money to attend college. This was not the only money that Paul Ryan received from the federal government. His family built its wealth from receiving government contracts.

Like his idol Ayn Rand (who argued against the very idea of government and the commons yet received Social Security and Medicare), Paul Ryan has combined meanness, cruelty and callousness toward the weak and the vulnerable with gross and unapologetic hypocrisy.

Republicans like Ryan — along with the millionaires and billionaires who comprise Donald Trump's Cabinet and inner circle — literally want to take food, shelter and health care away from poor people like Christa Patton. Today's Republicans view these Americans as useless eaters to be disposed of by means both passive and active.

The rape and pillage of America began in 1913 when an illegal cabal meeting at Jekyll Island sold out America to the Rothschild banking cartel.  The cartel reached its zenith in 2000 with the overthrow of the American government and the installation of George W. Bush as President of the United States.  With all the chessmen in place the 911 attacks gave cover for the cartel to plunge America into endless war and the destruction of everything America ever stood for.  From Veterans Today:

Excerpt:

NEO – America Beaten, Down for the Count

The world knows America is done for… We could give dates, 9/11; or back in 1913 when America took on an illegal Rothschild central bank. Perhaps it really is 1913; and the America of today is the result of bleeding that began then.

It is always about debt. When nations take on a central bank, and all central banks are foreign owned, all controlled by the Rothschild family, their institutions crumble, the family, religion, their government, the courts, their media, all are targeted…  The reason 9/11 is critical has nothing to do with the endless war sweeping the world that it began, proxy armies, phony terror groups and teeming millions of refugees.

For America it announced the largest robbery in history, $10 trillion in assets, enough to buy the entirety of Europe, simply “disappeared.” Only days before 9/11 it was learned that $2.4 trillion was missing from the US military budget alone, according to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

What few know is that the group investigating, in their entirety, were killed on 9/11 during the incident at the Pentagon. We call it an incident because calling it a terror attack or even an airline crash is unsupportable without throwing away any reason whatsoever.  Then we ask, who does such a thing, who would take down America, destroy their government, collapse their economy as in 2008, and allow a nation to be led by a leader known to be clinically insane? … 

By the end of 2007, America’s 5 leading investment banks were bankrupt, having “misplaced” trillions in assets. Most major corporations were the same, broke, hopelessly, to the extent that the Down Jones Industrial Average had to be reconfigured as the leading companies in America were no longer viable…

Between 2008 and 2010, unemployment in America rose to over 10%. Personal savings collapsed and personal debt rose to unimaginable levels while key industries like arms, oil and pharmaceuticals … made record profits.  With interest rates dropped to almost nothing by Bush 43, millions of America families sought to protect assets through buying homes that would otherwise be unwise, overlarge, unaffordable, sold on the idea of a ballooning real estate market by media pundits…

Most homes lost 60% of value across America and those forced to sell took on a lifetime of debt. Similarly, retirement savings typically lost 72%. A million dollar 401k that would return $5000 a month for life based on Clinton era rates and market performance was now only worth a little over $200,000 with an income potential of $200 a month. America’s middle class would work into their mid to late 70’s, with skilled and management retirees sentenced to a decade of menial labor on behalf of the banks that organized the crash…,

This is the business model of the world’s banking system. This is what is meant by “globalism.”

“This is the business model of the world’s banking system” carried out by the traitors “elected” to congress, not by the American people but by the banking cartels who control the elections in America.  Now their lackey Paul Ryan, who has Social Security to thank for his education and leg up in life after the death of his father, will usher in the “final solution for America” on behalf of his benefactors.  From World SocialistWebsite:

Excerpt:

Following passage of Senate tax bill, US ruling class takes aim at Social Security and Medicare

The passage by the Senate of the Trump administration’s tax bill is a landmark in the decades-long ruling class offensive against the working class in the United States.

With no serious opposition from the Democrats, and with final passage of a tax bill by the end of the month following negotiations with the House all but assured, congressional Republicans are moving on to the next stage of the class war agenda: the gutting of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The Senate version of the bill adds $1.5 trillion to the federal budget deficit, triggering automatic cuts in spending for Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly, of half a trillion dollars over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and setting the stage for massive cuts in other social programs.

Last week, Trump declared at a Missouri rally, “We’re going to go on to welfare reform.” On Wednesday, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida told business executives: “Many argue that you can’t cut taxes because it will drive up the deficit.” On the contrary, he argued, the costs can be offset by imposing “structural changes to Social Security and Medicare for the future.”

After eight years of Obama’s pillage of Social Security, first through “GOP designed payroll tax holiday” followed by higher deductions of income from working people’s pay checks, along with no increases in SS benefits the truly savage attacks on the American people is under way by both parties.  Make no mistake about it, no one in congress is there to benefit the American people.  Both parties are responsible for the miserable state in America with their insatiable appetite for war.   Spending for war is never offset, and the military industrial complex is engorged with funds stolen from the American people.  From The Free Thought Project:

Excerpt:

In 2018 The US Gov’t Will Spend Nearly $2 Billion a Day — Solely on WAR

The price tag on the latest National Defense Authorization Act is $700 billion, which will cost American taxpayers nearly $2 billion every day in 2018.


While the United States Congress has struggled to pass legislation governing taxes and healthcare, it had no problem uniting on the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act—a bill that will ensure the U.S. continues to wage wars around the world, and that promises taxpayers will cover its costly expenses.  The price tag on the latest NDAA is a massive $700 billion, which means that for every day in 2018, American taxpayers will spend nearly $2 billion on war…

“This bill passed the House 356 to 70, including more than half of the Democratic caucus. It passed the Senate by voice vote—not a single Democrat opposed it…”  The 2018 NDAA approves $634 billion for the Pentagon.

This was done despite the fact that a recent report on the budgets of the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, found that between the two departments, they have lost over $21 trillion in the last 17 years—enough money to pay back the U.S. National Debt…

Almost a trillion dollars a year is spent to overthrow elected governments in countries that have the audacity to sit on top of some of the world’s largest mineral reserves.  With almost a trillion dollars a year given to the Pentagon and its slush fund the Overseas Contingency Fund, America’s warriors must receive the best medical care in the world after they are wounded.  But alas no, the only ones receiving gold plated medical care through the Pentagon are our arm chair warriors in congress.  From Veterans Today:

Excerpt:

NEO: The Unseen Victims of America’s War Machine

How many more lives will America’s wars claim?

When the war drums begin, the first victim is reason, this is no secret at all. I recently met with a group of Russian war veterans about this issue – how those who fight wars are victims just like the armies of refugees and the dead strewn across the landscape, and are now called “collateral damage”, which may well represent a countless multitude…

In a world where America openly supplies al Qaeda with weapons of mass destruction, where Israel and Saudi Arabia fight side by side, and where “alternative facts” are used to support government policies, dissent itself is now a form of terrorism.

Military veterans aren’t all equal. Just visit Washington DC or towns like Annapolis, Maryland. There the strutting peacocks in uniform have profited greatly from war, wars they risked nothing fighting, wars they were paid to support and defend, not the nation, the United States mind you, but war itself, the business, the racket, the game…

In 1970, I returned from Vietnam and began medical treatment in the huge government system run by the Veterans Administration. My own injuries seemed minor as I entered the filthy hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan where amputees lived on gurneys all over the building, stored in kitchen areas, storage closets, overflowing urine bags, the stench of gangrene, the moaning of endless pain and hopelessness…

This is what was really there, I saw it, I remember every minute of it. In 1938, American author and screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, wrote an anti-war novel called Johnny Got His Gun. Trumbo was later blacklisted as a Russian sympathizer and banned from writing though…

In 1938, disabled veterans were an inconvenience. They still are, except at election time when each new candidate promises to address the wrongdoing of their predecessor and, of course, in the end, nothing whatsoever changes…

In a facility where there are luxury suites for members of congress to receive the most expensive medical care in the world, free of charge, paid for by American taxpayers, disabled combat veterans lived in filth, in many cases medical treatment withheld until they agreed to sign away their rights to disability pension benefits...

Yes, Paul Ryan and his cadre of millionaire politicians receive their medical care in luxury suites free of charge while combat veterans live in filth and are forced to sign away their rights to a disability pension for fighting in wars that benefit the Federal Reserve Bank and its shareholders.  That is life in Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand’s America.  All their wealth and perks aren’t enough, now they want to pillage what is left of Medicare and Social Security to pay for tax breaks for their billionaire campaign contributors.  From Lew Rockwell:

Excerpt:

The Stupid Party’s Tax Plan

In 1986, big gubmint tax and spending slasher Ronald Reagan unveiled a tax “reform” plan that continued the massive transfer of wealth from the poor and working classes upwards to the very wealthy. Reagan’s plan eliminated essential deductions for consumer loans (auto, credit card, personal) and overhauled the deduction for medical expenses, so that they had to have amounted to 10% of an individual or married couple’s income.

Donald Trump, as always dominated by the disastrous neocon thinking of Republican leaders like Paul Ryan, has released a new tax “reform” plan… Perhaps the most inexplicable aspect of this plan is its attack- and there is no other word to describe it- on home ownership…

Homeowners will no longer be able to deduct the property taxes they pay on their home under this plan….  Eliminating or nullifying the tax incentives for home ownership puts home values and middle-class homeowners at risk…  The Republican tax plan also eliminates some of the remaining deductions that poor and working class Americans still benefit from.

Student loans will no longer be deductible. The medical expense deduction that Reagan slashed dramatically will be eliminated. There will no longer be deductions for alimony expenses or moving expenses.  As perhaps the most laughable aspect of the entire plan, it leaves the dreaded Obamacare mandate intact, which means Americans can still be penalized for not having health insurance… the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which served to force the very wealthy with numerous loopholes and deductions to at least pay some tax.

And the centerpiece of the plan is a huge cut in the corporate tax rate, from 35% to 20%. Making a mockery of Trump’s rhetoric about forcing companies to move their industry back home, the plan permits companies to keep their profits offshore. The estate tax is also being eliminated, a benefit which will only apply to the absolute One Percent…

This tax plan will negatively impact a struggling real estate market, offer little if any tax relief to anyone except corporations, and eliminate the remaining deductions that the poor and middle-class most benefit from. It isn’t populist, won’t help the economy, and it certainly won’t make things any better for the majority of citizens…  The Stupid Party mantra regarding the lower corporate tax rate is that this will “create jobs” and an incentive to give pay raises to employees… 

True tax reform would start with auditing and abolishing the Federal Reserve, and adopting an honest money system that isn’t based on fractional lending, or more bluntly counterfeiting. “Our” debt belongs to the bankers, and isn’t our responsibility. It should be repudiated.

Our spending should reflect American interests, as candidate Trump stressed repeatedly, but President Trump has ignored. Rebuild the infrastructure. Bring all the troops home and stop starting pointless wars. Guard the borders and deport illegal immigrants. End the foreign visa work programs. America First and all that.

So there you have it, the GOP’s latest tax scam plan is designed to further enrich the banks and Wall Street on the backs of the middle class, the elderly, children and the infirmed.  Paul Ryan and the GOP’s real plan has always been the same, the Final Solution for America, death by a trillion tax cuts.  Now Ryan and the GOP can collect their blood money and retire their flag lapel pins, they have served their Wall Street masters and themselves well.  Trillions stolen from the Treasury by Wall Street and no cop on the beat.  This is Paul Ryan and the GOP’s Final Solution, death to America.


 
By Patricia Baeten

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

They’re criminals, drug dealers, child molesters and rapists and they’re running our country


The American government is a rogue, criminal enterprise claiming to be a “Democratic Republic” but it is anything but.  What they really are, are unaccountable criminals, drug dealers and rapists funded by the fascist corporate interests feeding off the American people.  The latest charges of sexual misconduct are just the tip of the iceberg of corruption, filth, graft, theft, pedophilia and subjugation of the American citizens in a for-profit oligarchical fascist state.  This fascist state was carefully crafted by both major parties is what our populist President Donald Trump has inherited. 


These criminals, drug dealers and rapists control the elections in America and serve the for-profit oligarchical fascist state.  The labor laws that they have enacted in America have subjugated the American workforce into an indentured, sick, drug addicted populous to be used and tossed aside like garbage on the whim of the slave master.  From Jacobin Magazine:

Excerpt:

Where Despots Rule

In the workplace, workers can be surveilled by their employer, compelled to work long hours, and even denied bathroom breaks (a stricture that in one recent instance forced employees to wear diapers at work). In most parts of the US, employers can legally terminate employees for being “too attractive,” for having the wrong political affiliations, and for choosing a particular sexual partner. When American workers go to work, they enter a world marked more by unaccountable hierarchy than democracy and freedom...

The history of democracy is the history of movements to make government a public thing; that is, to make it the business of the governed — transparent to them, attentive to their interests, accountable to the public.  Private government is rule by authorities who tell the governed that the rules to which they are subject are none of their business, that they aren’t entitled to know about how their government operates, that they have no standing to insist that their interests be taken into account in how they are governed, that their rulers are not accountable to them…

Being humiliated, harassed, and abused by managers, subject to dangerous work conditions, being penalized for off-duty conduct that has nothing to do with on-the-job responsibilities, being pressured to support management’s political causes — such assaults on the dignity, safety, and autonomy of workers are of concern to egalitarians over and above issues of pay and benefits…

For centuries, marriage contracts worked like that. The man and the woman signed the marriage contract by mutual consent, but the contract specified that the man would have near-total authority over his wife. Until the late nineteenth century, upon marriage the woman lost her rights to own property and sign contracts in her own name, to work outside the home without her husband’s permission, even to leave her husband’s home without his permission. Until the late twentieth century, he was legally entitled to rape her…

The case of the employer-employee relation is similar. The state has determined the default terms of the employment relation through employment law. These establish a regime of “employment at will“: the employer can fire the employee for any or no reason, with very few exceptions, mostly having to do with discrimination. This grants bosses almost complete authority over workers, not only on the job but off duty as well.

Since the state has already put its thumbs very heavily on the scales in favor of employers, it is absurd to suppose that the employment contract is a product of negotiation between equals. Very few employees get a chance to negotiate at all...  Since they, like nineteenth-century husbands, have been dealt all the authority cards by default, why would they negotiate to give any of them to their employees?...

The legislated slavery of the American people has taken place under both corrupt parties and has infected every aspect of government.  Now we are being told that the GOP tax scam of giving trillions to corrupt businesses with no strings attached will trickle down to the people in more jobs and higher wages. 

Why would a business invest in humans when they have never valued human life in the past?  You can’t spend over a trillion dollars a year on wars of aggression and pass tax cuts for Wall Street vultures and expect a windfall of profits for working Americans.  From Information ClearingHouse:

Excerpt:

The Soul of the Nation is a Casualty of War

A Partisanship Of The Heart: Interior Measures Towards A Re-Visioning Of Capitalism’s Imperium Of Death - By Phil Rockstroh

According to a nationwide study conducted by the Center For Disease And Prevention (CDC) a greater number of US Americans died (approximately 65,000) from drug overdoses last year than were killed during the course of the Vietnam War.

All part and parcel of capitalism’s war against life itself. The emotional and physical pain, anxiety, and depression inflicted by the trauma inherent to a system sustained by perpetual exploitation has proven to be too much for a sizeable number of human beings to endure, thus their need to self-medicate.

The root of addiction is trauma. The soul of the nation is a casualty of war. There is not an Arlington Cemetery for these fallen, no hagiographic ceremonies will be performed over their graves nor statues erected in memoriam…

Growing up in a working class social milieu, as I did, I am confronted, more and more, by the news of the large number of men I grew up with who are dying in their 50s…  I’ve known, over the years, hundreds of human beings, born into and ensnared by the crime against humanity known as poverty, broken by the culture of greed and social degradation, and blamed by the clueless and the callous for the tragic trajectory in which impersonal fate and the wounding culture, by no fault of their own, has placed them…
                                                             
Truth is, the system, a hierarchy of ghouls, is maintained by harvesting the corpses of the powerless, by means of imperial slaughter and domestic, economic exploitation. Deep down, we know it..  It is time we dragged them back down to earth and subjected them to our earth-borne fury.

Hostility directed at the poor is the shopworn, demagogic sleight of hand trick used to distract from realities such as: Every mcmansion and high end luxury high-rise constructed creates multitudes of the homeless. Every low pay, no benefits, no future mcjob serves to decimate an individual, heart and spirit...

Unmoored from their sense of humanity by lashing angst and alienation, gunmen, in acts of warped libido, raise assault rifles and kill with no more connection to the strangers they slaughter than do stateside deployed pilots of the empire’s predator drones.

Moreover the beneficiaries of the system promote the lie, that shame should be the exclusive dominion of those broken by their system, a system, which is, in essence, a form of government-sanctioned gangsterism, by which they, the ruthless few, and they alone, benefit.

They’re murderers, criminals, drug dealers and rapists and they’re running our country.  They are wholly unaccountable and the people have no way of holding them accountable.  They claim to be Christians but their actions are Satanic serving their dark overlords.  They feed off misery, pain, hunger, ignorance which are abundant.  From The Intercept:

Excerpt:

CHILDREN ARE DYING AT ALARMING RATES IN FOSTER CARE, AND NOBODY IS BOTHERING TO INVESTIGATE

CHILDREN IN THE for-profit foster care system are dying at alarming rates, but the deaths are not being investigated, and autopsies are not even being attached to the now-closed case files, a two-year investigation has found.  The investigation, conducted and released in rare bipartisan fashion by the Senate Finance Committee, looked closely at one of the largest private providers of foster care services, the MENTOR Network.

The companies and agencies charged with keeping foster children safe often failed to provide the most basic protections or take steps to prevent tragedies, the investigation found.  In the wake of the report, shares of the MENTOR Network’s parent company, Civitas Solutions, traded sharply downward, but quickly rebounded amid a lack of press coverage…

The committee found that 86 children had died in the company’s care over a 10-year period, and the firm had conducted internal investigations in only 13 cases.

The political problem for foster children is a structural one. It would be hard to think of a group with less lobbying power in Washington, D.C., while the group homes that warehouse children are making significant profits off each one and are loathe to see that income dry up. Late last year, Hatch and Wyden made a push to reform the system with a bill that would privilege family settings over group homes, but a Baptist group home network in North Carolina persuaded its Senate delegation to block the legislation…

They’re murderers, pedophiles, drug dealers and rapists and they’re running our country.  They feign outrage at injustice while stuffing their pockets with blood money.  From Natural News:

Excerpt:

Memo to Merck CEO Ken Frazier: Your company has easily killed 100,000 times the number of those killed in Charlottesville violence

(Natural News) In case you haven’t heard, Merck CEO Ken Frazier resigned from President Trump’s manufacturing council, blaming Trump for the violence in Charlottesville that killed one protester and two police officers (whose helicopter fell out of the sky for yet-unknown reasons).

Yet Ken Frazier himself should be arrested and imprisoned for carrying out mass chemical violence against all Americans through the fraudulent sales of toxic, deadly prescription pharmaceuticals and vaccines manufactured and sold by Merck on a daily basis.

Nearly all of Merck’s drugs are “approved” by the FDA through an utterly fraudulent process of fake science, cherry-picked clinical trials and regulatory corruption and fraud. Remember, Merck is the same company whose own virologists filed a False Claims Act with the federal government, explaining they were ordered by Merck management to fake vaccine trial results in order to “trick” the FDA. Merck’s entire mumps vaccine operation is a complete and total fraud.

Merck has also been caught committing widespread scientific fraud by disguising its in-house propagandists as “independent science” authors for medical science papers that were published in mainstream science journals. Merck is to medicine, in other words, what Monsanto is to the food industry: They’re both steeped in evil, scientific fraud and deep deception…

Merck is also heavily involved in profiting off the opioid addiction epidemic that’s now ravaging America while generating record profits for companies like Merck. If anyone is committing mass violence against America, it’s people like Merck CEO Ken Frazier, a person who belongs behind bars for his continued sacrificing of human beings for corporate profits... The violence in Charlottesville is nothing at all compared to the violence carried out by Merck’s vaccine division alone, not to mention its other drugs.

In all, the violence witnessed in Charlottesville doesn’t even register compared to the chemical violence committed against millions of Americans every year by Merck and other drug giants. Yet have you noticed how the bought-off mainstream media never covers prescription drug violence? That’s because they’re all prostitutes for the pharmaceutical industry. 

In a truly just society, people like Ken Frazier would be arrested, indicted for widespread fraud and corruption, and spend the rest of their lives behind bars…

In a truly just society, members of congress would be arrested, indicted for widespread fraud and corruption and spend the rest of their lives behind bars.  But this is not a just society, this is a country run by murderers, pedophiles, drug dealers and rapists.  From World Socialist Website:

Excerpt:

Devastating toll of hunger on US school children

He noted that programs like food stamps, school meals and WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) had a major impact in alleviating hunger. But these programs are targeted for severe cuts, if not outright destruction, in the budget proposals of the Trump administration and congressional Republicans.

According to a report published Thursday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), the House Republican budget plan, scheduled for a vote in early September, would slash $2.9 trillion from programs for low-income and moderate-income families over the next ten years.

This includes a cut of $150 billion from food stamps alone, a reduction of 40 percent. According to the CBPP, “A funding reduction of this magnitude would end food assistance for millions of low-income families, reduce benefits for tens of millions of such families, or some combination of the two…”

While the Trump administration and the congressional Republicans propose to deal with the deepening poverty and social misery by deliberately making the conditions worse, the Democratic Party offers no alternative. The Democrats are not demanding hearings over hunger or the impact of the proposed budget cuts.

The American government is a rogue, criminal enterprise claiming to be a “Democratic Republic” but it is anything but.  What they really are, are unaccountable criminals, drug cartels and rapists funded by the fascistic corporations with money stolen from the American people.   

There will be hearings, there will be apologies after being caught molesting and raping children, women and men but the majority of the rapists, criminals, drug cartels and child molesters will continue their craft in the halls of congress untouched by justice for it is they, who run our country.



By Patricia Baeten

Monday, October 30, 2017

Trump campaign chair Manafort indicted to cover CIA’s overthrow of Ukraine


Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s ex-campaign manager, has been indicted for colluding with Russia during the 2016 election.  To understand the charges against Paul Manafort, that incidentally have nothing to do with the Donald Trump campaign, you must look at the CIA’s overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine. 

According to Wikipedia “Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych is a Ukrainian politician who was elected as the fourth President of Ukraine on February 7, 2010 in an election that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe called transparent and honest.”

Well there’s nothing America’s “elected” government hates more than transparent and honest elections.  We haven’t had one since 1996.  So, Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in 2014 in a CIA and State Department color revolution after he rejected a loan from the IMF for a more favorable deal from Russia. 


The Obama Administration was furious and Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham as well as Vice President Joe Biden and State Department’s Victoria Nuland all played prominent roles to overthrow of the democratically elected Yanukovych and the installation the billionaire chocolate magnate, Petro Poroshenko as President.    From Press TV:

Excerpt:

US ‘involved in criminal activities’ in Ukraine

The Obama administration is “involved in criminal activities” in Ukraine and facilitated last year’s “coup d'état” in Kiev, a former US Senate candidate says.  “They did so in conjunction with neo-Nazi elements in Kiev, they did so at the behest of Israel and the European central banks and the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” said Mark Dankof, who is also a broadcaster and pastor in San Antonio, Texas. 

“And of course this whole situation in Ukraine permitted the United States to continue the encirclement policy of Russia that has been going on since the end of the Cold War ,” he told Press TV on Monday...  Dankof cited Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland who revealed last year that Washington had invested about $5 billion to promote “democracy” in Ukraine.

“The worst aspect of this whole situation is that this [US] government continues to be involved in criminal activities in the eastern part of Ukraine, specifically targeting ethnically Russian people in the major urban areas of the eastern part of that country for genocidal activity,” he said. 

Ties between Washington and Moscow deteriorated last year after pro-Western forces ousted Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014…  The United States and the European Union have imposed several rounds of sanctions on Russia, including visa bans and asset freezes.  According to US officials, Washington is considering providing Ukrainian forces with lethal weapons.

Why did the U.S. Government provide lethal weapons to the Neo-Nazi’s to be for genocide against Russian speaking Ukrainians?  How is that promoting democracy? Oh, and that $5 billion Washington spent “promoting democracy in Ukraine”, was recovered when Ukraine’s gold was stolen and shipped in the dead of night to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.  From 21stCentury Wire:

Excerpt:

The Latest Heist: US Quietly Snatches the Ukraine’s Gold Reserves

According to reports out of Kiev (see links below), the US has quietly transfers 33 tons of Ukrainian gold out of the country and back to vaults in the US. Presumably, this sovereign wealth transfer would be counted as partial “collateral” for a fresh round of IMF, US FED, and ECB paper debt that is currently being organised for dumping into the Ukraine’s economic black hole.

Multiple inquiries to US Federal Reserve administrators into the location of the Ukraine’s gold have been met with the proverbial ‘pass the buck’, making tracking and tracking the final resting place of these 33 tonnes very difficult indeed – but one can expect that the NY Fed is probably the institution who has masterminded this financial heist…

It’s worth pointing out here that when NATO sacked Libya in 2011, one of the first items that came into question was the gold in Libya’s state-run central bank. Prior to the NATO takeover of that country, Libya had one of the highest per capita gold reserves in the world, alongside Lebanon, giving Libya a distinct advantage should it carry out former Libyan leader Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi’s long-term financial transition to a gold-backed Libyan Dinar. As you can imagine, this is no longer the case in Tripoli.

Additionally, like Libya, both Syria and Iran are two of the world’s last remaining nation states who both have state-run central banks and gold reserves which fall outside of the world’s private central banking syndicate.

The price of a Washington brutally forced “democracy” is paid in gold.  But I digress, so let’s get back to the indictments against Paul Manafort.  Mueller’s indictments which can be read here, seem to be some thin gruel.  According to Fortune, Paul Manafort offered private briefings about the Trump campaign to a Russian Billionaire close to Putin. Hmmm, here’s the official story:

Excerpt:

Paul Manafort Offered 'Private Briefings' About Trump Campaign to Russian Billionaire

In the middle of Donald Trump’s presidential run, then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort said he was willing to provide “private briefings” about the campaign to a Russian billionaire the U.S. government considers close to Russian President Vladimir Putin

Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni confirmed to The Associated Press that the email exchanges were legitimate but said no briefings ever occurred. The email involved an offer for Oleg Deripaska, a wealthy Russian who made his money in the aluminum business.  The July 7, 2016, email came a little over a week before the Republican National Convention, while Manafort was leading the Trump campaign’s day-to-day operations.

The Manafort email exchange regarding Deripaska is one of thousands of pages of material turned over to congressional committees by the Trump campaign…   The email is the first to indicate that Manafort was attempting to reach Deripaska while he was working on the Trump campaign… 

The Associated Press reported in March that before signing with Trump’s campaign, Manafort secretly worked for Deripaska and proposed plans… that he said could “greatly benefit the Putin Government…”   Deripaska sued the AP for defamation over the story in May in U.S. District Court in Washington, alleging the story was inaccurate and hurt his career by falsely accusing him of criminal activity.

Hmmm, seems like a lot of bullshit and suppositions regarding the relationship between Paul Manafort and this Deripaska guy.  This part seems really goofy “before signing with Trump’s campaign, Manafort secretly worked for Deripaska and proposed plans”… that he said could “greatly benefit the Putin Government…”   Really??  That just seems so crazy, so what is the story behind the Deripaska guy?  From The Telegraph:

Excerpt:

Vladimir Putin takes Oleg Deripaska to task

Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, publicly criticised his most faithful oligarch on Thursday in an attempt to deflect growing social discontent on to the country’s unpopular super-rich. 

Mr Putin, who is a master at dispensing ritual humiliation, likened Oleg Deripaska to a cockroach and forced him to accompany him on a tour of Pikalevo, a factory town that has witnessed the most serious social unrest Russia has seen since the start of the global economic crisis.

Last week Pikalevo’s residents vented their anger over job losses and unpaid wages at one of the oligarch’s local factories by blocking a major road and causing a 250-mile traffic jam…  The prime minister rounded on the hapless tycoon as they toured a cement plant…

He then ordered the tycoon to pay all outstanding wages – £830,000 – before the day was out. Mr Deripaska was Russia’s richest man until last year. He has suffered a dramatic reversal of fortune as mounting debt has seen his assets shrink from £17?billion to about £2?billion today.

Analysts believe the Kremlin has saved him from bankruptcy — partly as a reward for his unquestioning loyalty and also to prevent his assets falling into the hands of Western banks… 

Mr Deripaska’s factory is among three upon which the town depends for survival. Mr Putin has floated the idea of renationalising the factories, which were privatised after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Mr Deripaska is an unloved figure in Russia. He was among a number of men who built their fortunes during the chaos of the 1990s. He faces a June 11 deadline to restructure billions of dollars in debt owed to international banks.

Hmmm, Deripaska was billions of dollars in debt to international banks in 2009 when Putin made him pay his workers their back wages and then bailed him out.  Putin did so because it was in Russia’s best interests not to have foreign banks owning a Russian factory.  Now in 2017 Deripaska is suddenly worth 6 billion and he is key to proving Russia collusion charges against Trump? 

Through marriage Deripaska was related to the Deep State’s Russian puppet Yeltsin, maybe there’s a correlation.  From Global Research:

Excerpt:

US Meddling in 1996 Russian Elections in Support of Boris Yeltsin

Americans are outraged by allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an intelligence service to hack email accounts of the Democratic National Committee… But does the USA meddle in the presidential elections of other countries?  The answer to the first question, of course, is a resounding Yes…

Let us limit our discussion to one single case.  Readers will recall that in the run-up to the 1996 presidential election in Russia, opinion polls put the pro-western incumbent, Boris Yeltsin, in fifth place among the presidential candidates, with only 8% support.  The same polls showed that the most popular candidate in Russia by a wide margin was the Communist Party’s Gennady Zyuganov.

Moved to desperation by the numbers, well-connected Russian oligarchs suggested just cancelling the election and supporting a military takeover, rather than facing a defeat at the polls.  Neocons in the West embraced the idea–all in the name of Democracy, of course.  In the end, though, Yeltsin and the oligarchs decided to retain power by staging the election.

In keeping with Russian laws at the time, Zyuganov spent less than three million dollars on his campaign.  Estimates of Yeltsin’s spending, by contrast, range from $700 million to $2.5 billion…   In February 1996, at the urging of the United States, the International Monetary Fund… supplied a $10.2 billion “emergency infusion” to Russia.  The money disappeared as Yeltsin used it to shore up his reputation and to buy votes.  He forced the Central Bank of Russia to provide an additional $1 billion for his campaign, too.  Meanwhile, a handful of Russian oligarchs, notably several big contributors residing in Israel, provided more billions for the Yeltsin campaign. 

In the spring of 1996, Yeltsin and his campaign manager, billionaire privatizer Anatoly Chubais, recruited a team of financial and media oligarchs to bankroll the Yeltsin campaign and guarantee favorable media coverage on national television and in leading newspapers.  In return, Chubais allowed well-connected Russian business leaders to acquire majority stakes in some of Russia’s most valuable state-owned assets.

Campaign strategists for the former Republican governor of California Pete Wilson covertly made their way to the President Hotel in Moscow where, behind a guard and locked doors, they served as Yeltsin’s “secret campaign weapon” to save Russia for Democracy...  

It is now public record that the Yeltsin campaign conducted extensive “black operations,” including disrupting opposition rallies and press conferences, spreading disinformation among Yeltsin supporters, and denying media access to the opposition.  Finally, widespread bribery, voter fraud, intimidation, and ballot stuffing assured Yeltsin’s victory in the runoff election…

During Yeltsin’s second term, the “non-ideological” IMF provided another infusion of money, this time $40 billion.  Once again, more billions disappeared without a trace, much of it stolen by the President’s chronies, who placed it in foreign banks… 

Under Yeltsin’s tenure, the death rate in Russia reached wartime levels.  Accidents, food poisoning, exposure, heart attacks, lack of access to basic healthcare, and an epidemic of suicides—they all played a role…  “Western and Russian demographers now agree that between 1992 and 2000, the number of ‘surplus deaths’ in Russia–deaths that cannot be explained on the basis of previous trends–was between five and six million persons…”

By the time he left office, the American-approved President of the Russian Federation had an approval rating of 2%.  But by that time it didn’t matter:  the kleptocrats were safely installed in power, and American-imposed Democracy had achieved its aims in Russia’s “transition.”

That’s right, by the time Yeltsin left office “it didn’t matter because the kleptocrats like Oleg Deripaska were safely installed in power.”  And now Deripaska is the main link between Putin and the Trump Campaign.  Paul Manafort is just a scapegoat.  Manafort has been indicted for interfering with the CIA’s overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine. 

This kangaroo court that will hear the charges against Paul Manafort will be chosen very selectively.  If the Manafort case breaks wide open it will be the CIA, MI6 and the neocons and their minions in Washington who have the most to lose.  I don’t know about you, but I’m making popcorn and pulling up a chair.  This should be interesting.


By Patricia Baeten

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Five ex-Presidents beg for hurricane relief on telethon as GOP passes trillions in tax cuts for Wall Street




What a world this has become, we are truly through the looking glass.  In what world would a country with four of its territories and 3 states leveled by hurricanes and fires pass trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the extremely rich?  From World Socialist Website:


Excerpt:

From hurricanes to tax cuts: The ruling class gets down to business

Even as the horrific destruction caused by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma is still being tallied, the US political establishment is moving rapidly to its main order of business: A massive handout for the corporate and financial elite.

Amidst this destruction, however, the US stock markets are on the rise—increasing significantly on both Monday and Tuesday. The reason is evident: the ruling elite is licking its collective chops at the prospect of a major cut in corporate and individual taxes for the wealthy.

Over the weekend, even as Irma was making landfall in Florida, Trump seized the moment to press for “dramatic tax cuts and tax reform.” With “what’s happened with the hurricane,” he said, “I’m gonna ask for a speed-up.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs banker and hedge fund manager (net worth $300 million), said on Tuesday that the White House is “super focused” on tax cuts, and that the administration is considering backdating these cuts to January 1 to provide a “big boon for the economy”—that is, for Wall Street.

So while the ruling elite are licking their collective chops” over the impending tax cuts, what is congress doing for Puerto Rico?  The American territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, Virgin Islands and the Marianas Islands have been the victims of the GOP and Wall Street predators for decades.  The Islands have been raped and savaged by the GOP with legalized slave labor, sex slavery and forced abortions, in what the ex-Speaker Tom Delay called “a petri dish of capitalism.”  Now Puerto Rico is really hurting.  FromLaRouche Pub:

Excerpt:

Puerto Rico Faces Financial Disaster—There Is No Economy Left

Oct. 11, 2017 (EIRNS)—Puerto Rico’s Treasury Secretary Raul Maldonado told El Nuevo Día that the government will face a shutdown by Oct. 31 if Congress doesn’t intervene with additional funding.

In effect, there is no economy. Few businesses are operating, and therefore, people aren’t getting paid. Banks operate four hours a day. The official 12% unemployment rate will soar. McClatchy News Service also reports that the mainstay of the economy, agriculture, was devastated by hurricane Maria, with losses expected to top $2 billion, according to Agriculture Secretary Carlos Flores.

Nelson Morales, head of the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority (PREPA), told El Nuevo Día that without aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), or both, it will be impossible to restore full power to the island.

PREPA only has $500 million on hand, which is nothing compared to what’s required to rebuild the system. Yesterday, FEMA and the USACE said they had contributed $54.6 million and $115 million, respectively, to assist PREPA, which still a drop in the bucket. Sources told the daily that PREPA will need at least $3 billion, and that is probably a low estimate, given that the entire power system really must be built from scratch.

If the horrific conditions the Islands have been forced to live under weren’t bad enough, the GOP has now passed legislation to worsen their fate.  Under the cover of “hurricane relief”, the package passed by the GOP is anything but.  From The Intercept:

Excerpt:

PUERTO RICO RELIEF BILL CANCELS $16 BILLION IN DEBT — BUT NOT FOR PUERTO RICO

HOUSE REPUBLICANS UNVEILED a $36.5 billion disaster relief supplemental package on Tuesday night, intended to pay for relief and rebuilding efforts for the floods, hurricanes, and wildfires of the past several months. It includes money for Puerto Rico’s ongoing struggle with the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, though only a fraction of that headline number. In fact, $5 billion of the funds earmarked for Puerto Rico comes in the form of a loan, increasing the amount of money the island will eventually need to pay back.

And in a cruel irony, the bill also contains $16 billion in debt relief – just not for Puerto Rico’s crushing debt…

The island will get an additional $150 million loan to cover its matching funds for FEMA grants. Cities and states are required to put a small amount of money into sharing costs for disaster relief. That brings the total of loans to the island up to $5.05 billion. The appropriations committee allotted another $29 million for administrative expenses for the loan…

This is critical for Puerto Rico, which has trouble borrowing from private credit markets because of its existing $74 billion debt. But instead of replenishing the coffers with a grant, this is a loan — one Puerto Rico will also need to repay.

What the F*&K???  While congress is passing trillions in tax cuts for Wall Street vultures, they have appropriated $5 billion that is to go directly to pay the hedge fund vultures via Puerto Rico.   How could this get through congress?  Don’t the islanders have representation in the House?  From The Hill:

Excerpt:

House GOP kills voting rights for D.C., Puerto Rico, other delegates

Along strict party lines, House lawmakers on Wednesday shot down legislation allowing delegates to retain certain voting powers.

The surprise vote — the first of the new Congress — surrounded a provision of the Republicans’ proposed rules package that would prevent the six House delegates from presiding over, or voting as part of, the Committee of the Whole — a mechanism used to expedite legislation by effectively turning the entire chamber into a committee.

Under the rules of the last Congress, the six delegates — representing the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands and the Virgin Islands — were allowed to cast votes and preside over the Committee of the Whole. The Republican rules proposal would strip that power.

This is truly through the looking glass.  But this is just another case of Congress paying back their contributors.  If Puerto Rico were a state they would have been able to file bankruptcy.  That was not allowed by congress in this case, because Puerto Rico’s debt is held by the very vultures who fund their campaigns.  From Florida Politics:

Excerpt:

After taking donations from hedge funds holding Puerto Rican debt, Marco Rubio opposed bankruptcy

In opposing the bankruptcy filing for Puerto Rico, Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio said he does not believe in a “silver bullet.” Puerto Ricans should tighten their belts, he declared.

According to Casey Tolan of Fusion, what Rubio fails to mention is that he received thousands of dollars in campaign cash from individuals – particularly hedge fund executives – who would lose big if Puerto Rico filed for bankruptcy.

Tolan reports on campaign finance reports that show Rubio’s campaign received contributions from a minimum of six hedge fund managers holding Puerto Rican debt. The junior senator from Florida has been the only presidential candidate openly opposed to bankruptcy reform for Puerto Rico.

The GOP tax cuts are a loser for America, they always were and always will be.  Since the Reagan Administration the GOP talking points have been to push tax cuts as economic stimulus.  The claim that “tax cuts pay for themselves” is been proven false over and over again.  From Op Ed News:

Excerpt:

How and Why Did the U.S. Become the World's Biggest Debtor, and What Are the Implications?

How did a nation that was until relatively recently (in historical terms) the world's biggest net lender become the world's biggest net debtor? More importantly, what implications does this situation have for the U.S. and for the rest of the world?

To answer the first question we need to go back a few decades in time to the Reagan era, when I believe the seeds of the country's present debt problems were sown. President Reagan inherited a nation that was not only one of the two great military superpowers on earth, but also by far the world's wealthiest nation and biggest net lender…

Reagan was also an economic monetarist, a Right-Winger who believed in low taxes and small government at home, but also in maintaining a strong military defense force both at home and abroad.

In response to criticism from many mainstream economists that his economic policies of reduced taxation and increased government spending would eventually bankrupt the nation, Reagan pointed to the so-called "Laffer Curve," named after the economist Arthur Laffer. 

The Laffer Curve was interpreted by right-wing theorists to show that reduced taxation rates promote free enterprise and grow the economy, thereby, paradoxically, increasing, rather than reducing, Government revenue.

As things turned out, critics of the "Laffer Curve" were proven unambiguously right in practice. Massively reduced taxation under Reagan resulted proportionally in massively decreased Government revenue. This was just as most mainstream economists and common sense thinkers had predicted.

To make things worse, to go along with this sharp reduction in the Government's tax income, the Reagan administration simultaneously massively increased military spending--to levels the world had never seen. The combined massive reduction in Government income and massively increased expenditures overseas, and the consequent need for massive borrowing to make up the shortfall, transformed the U.S. virtually overnight from the world's biggest net lender to the biggest net debtor.

If there is one thing equally as scurrilous as the GOP tax cuts it’s the GOP budget.  Even Fareed Zakaria is calling the GOP budget plans fantastical delusions.  Trump’s right-wing GOP Budget Director Mick Mulvaney’s budget is looney tunes.  


Excerpt:

Fareed Zakaria slams Trump administration for smoke & mirrors budget

The number I want to focus on is three point four trillion dollars. At the end of May, the Trump administration released details of its proposed budget for the next fiscal year. And on July 13th the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released their analysis of President Trump's budget.

The CBO says the President's budget underestimated the loss in federal tax revenues caused by its proposed tax cuts by a whopping three point four trillion dollars. How could the smart Goldman Sachs guys on Trump's economic team, Gary Cohn, Steve Minuchin, make such a big basic math error. Actually, they did it intentionally.

The administration assumed that because of its tax cuts the American economy would grow by three percent a year for the next decade. The CBO instead says the president's plan would increase GDP growth to 1.9 percent which most economists agree is the sensible assumption. Note that the American economy has grown on average just 1.8 percent over the last years, no more.

This method of fudging the numbers is called dynamic scoring. Common sense would tell you that if the government cuts taxes it'll get less money in tax revenues. But sprinkle the magic pixie dust of dynamic scoring and you can project much higher growth rates and then the revenue numbers saw upwards in theory…

In fact, the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan. And After George W Bush cut taxes the national debt increased again. Bill Clinton by contrast actually raise taxes and ushered in stronger growth and higher tax revenues. But the mountains of evidence have not stopped Republicans from using dynamic scoring.

Science, logic and reason never permeate the GOP psyche.  Now they have passed the largest tax cuts in the history of the universe that will go directly to the top 1% with the “hope” that they will create jobs.  The House and Senate are reconciling their individual “Frankenstein” bills and one thing is for sure, whatever comes out will be a horrible nightmare for the American people. 

This is what America has come to, we have five ex-Presidents hawking for money on a telethon to repair damages from hurricanes. What a world this has become.  What kind of people are these in congress?  Are so they so sick and disgusting that they are unaffected by other’s grief.  What kind of politicians in a country with four of its territories and 3 states leveled by hurricanes and fires passes trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the extremely rich? 



By Patricia Baeten

Saturday, October 7, 2017

Itching for war, Deep State plots ouster of peacemaker Tillerson through Moron-gate



The position of Secretary of State is a unique one.  The SOS has a position that is more powerful than the Vice President as the position is almost a co-presidency.  America’s top diplomat advises the president on issues of foreign policy, but in the end advances the president’s agenda.  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is not a political insider has been the victim of a concerted effort to oust him by a consortium Washington elite.


The Deep State is itching for war, and their warmongering minions, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and CIA Director Mike Pompeo are now vying for the coveted position of Secretary of State.  After the ouster of President Trump’s National Security Advisor, General Mike Flynn, his replacement H.R. McMaster purged the NSA of Flynn’s advisors.  H.R. McMaster has surrounded himself with Obama holdovers whose mission is to thwart the agenda of the President Trump and the American people.  From Miami Herald:

Excerpt:

Washington loves Gen. McMaster, but Trump does not

For the Washington establishment, President Trump’s decision to make General H.R. McMaster his national security adviser in February was a masterstroke…

But inside the White House, the McMaster pick has not gone over well with the one man who matters most. White House officials tell me Trump himself has clashed with McMaster in front of his staff. On policy, the faction of the White House loyal to senior strategist Steve Bannon is convinced McMaster is trying to trick the president into the kind of nation-building that Trump campaigned against…

Trump has complained in front of McMaster in intelligence briefings about “the general undermining my policy,” according to two White House officials… 

The roots of the McMaster-Trump tensions begin in February, when the general was hired after his first meeting with the president. McMaster replaced another general, Michael Flynn. Both Vice President Mike Pence and Priebus supported getting rid of Flynn.   Trump himself has defended Flynn publicly…

For a president who puts so much value in personal relationships and loyalty, Flynn’s departure was a blow…

Then Trump’s inner circle began clashing with McMaster over personnel. This began with Ezra Cohen Watnick, who remains the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council. McMaster initially sided with the CIA and wanted to remove this Flynn appointee from his position, but eventually McMaster changed his mind…

That dispute was followed by a bigger one. Bannon and Trump, according to White House officials, pressed McMaster to fire a list of Obama holdovers at the National Security Council who were suspected of leaking to the press… The list of names was compiled by Derek Harvey, a former Defense Intelligence Agency colonel who was initially hired by Flynn. McMaster balked. He refused to fire anyone…

And finally, the White House chief of staff himself blocked McMaster this month from hiring Brigadier Gen. Ricky Waddell as his deputy…

The CIA controlled media has escalated the calls for Tillerson’s removal citing ANONYMOUS sources in the “Moron-gate” investigation.  Moron-gate is a creation of Fake News designed to drive a wedge between President Trump and his pacifistic Secretary of State opening the door for a GOP warmongering insider to take over.  From The Daily Beast:

Excerpt:

White House Aides Wanted Rex Tillerson to Resign for Calling Trump a ‘Fucking Moron’

The Secretary of State has few allies inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But he and Trump soldier on in a loveless marriage.  As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took to the microphones Wednesday morning to address reports that he had called his boss, President Donald Trump, a “fucking moron,” aides in the White House held out hope that he would offer his resignation.

Tillerson didn’t deny having questioned the president’s intellectual capacities. But he insisted that he wasn’t going anywhere either, much to the chagrin of three White House officials who vented to The Daily Beast in real time about how they wished he would “just leave,” as one put it.

“In a perfect world” he would have quit right then and there, another said.  The wish of certain White House officials to be rid of Tillerson is not confined to a select few inside the walls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It is a sentiment shared among many in senior staff that has been building for months...  

The latest point of tension between the White House and Tillerson came early Wednesday morning, when NBC News reported that Tillerson had strongly considered resigning over Trump’s July speech to the annual jamboree of the Boy Scouts of America… 

The report also detailed that Tillerson had called Trump a “moron;” … and that the Secretary of State had questioned U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s utility in the administration…

According to five senior Trump administration officials, current and former… it had been gossip within the White House that Tillerson had called Trump a “moron” or an “idiot” during an official meeting over the summer.  Trumptweeted repeatedly that it was a “fake” story and repeated the claim during a stop in Las Vegas to visit the site of the country’s deadliest mass shooting in recent history…

Tillerson has also frequently clashed with White House staffers…   and he has butted heads with Stephen Miller, the conservative senior policy adviser…

Widespread antipathy to Tillerson in the West Wing represents “a rapid deterioration of [his] relationship with the White House,” THE EX-OFFICIAL SAID. Just months ago, “Rex was [the] cabinet official you most often saw on public schedule meetings with the president.”

Unfortunately Steve Bannon is no longer in the White House as a voice of reason against the Washington war mongering juggernaut.  With General Flynn and Steve Bannon ousted from the Trump White House, President Trump is surrounded by a constant barrage from the CIA and the Generals.  From TheIntercept: 

Excerpt:

$21 Trillion Missing – U.S. Government a Criminal Enterprise – Catherine Austin Fitts

Investment advisor and former Assistant Secretary of Housing Catherine Austin Fitts says you can add $21 trillion of missing federal money on top of the $20 trillion U.S. deficit. It’s all in a new explosive report on Solari.com.  Fitts explains, “This is $65,000 for every man, woman and child resident in America...  We know that the U.S. government has been run like a criminal enterprise from a financial standpoint…”

The missing money is called “undocumentable adjustments,” but that may just be a polite name for theft, fraud and crime against “We the People…”  They have done that by basically hijacking the federal credit and using it to help centralize power under them. 

So, we have to reverse that, and the Constitution is the tool to hold them accountable.  All their arguments just fall down when you realize they have just stolen an enormous amount of money from the federal government outside the law. . . . The U.S. Federal government doesn’t have information sovereignty, and it doesn’t have financial sovereignty.  So, we have to return it to that, and we have to keep that mechanism open long enough to get this money back.”

Fitts contends the Deep State swamp creatures do not want to give the money back and want to tear up the U.S. Constitution in order to keep all those trillions of stolen dollars…  “You want to preserve the Constitution because you want to have individual sovereignty, and you want your taxes to only go into things that have financial and national sovereignty…  

They say we have $20 trillion in debt, and there is no money.  It’s a very different policy discussion if I can say, wait a minute, there’s $20 trillion in debt, but you stole $21 trillion . . . and we’re putting that back on the table for purposes of this policy discussion.”

In other words, “We the People” could pay off the entire federal deficit with the money that was stolen and still have $1 trillion left over.

Fitts also says, “Here’s the magic trick. You don’t need everybody to change this.  It only takes 5% to 10% of the population to completely turn this around.  It doesn’t take everybody, and that is one of the things that has got them so scared. . . . We don’t need to implode the federal government.  We need to take it back, clean it up and get it to run according to the law.”

So where did the $21 trillion congress stole go?  Into the shadow government set up after the 911 attacks.  Sure the shadow government existed before, but in 2000 during the recount of the Presidential election, the US Senate deregulated the insurance industry and derivatives trading causing the 2008 banking meltdown and the transfer of trillions of dollars from the Federal Reserve into the shadow government.  From Vanity Fair:

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON’S $8 BILLION SHADOW

Mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government with brawn. But the biggest, most powerful of the “body shops”—SAIC, which employs 44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells brainpower, including a lot of the “expertise” behind the Iraq war…

the largest government contractor you’ve never heard of: a company known simply by the nondescript initials SAIC (for Science Applications International Corporation)…  SAIC maintains its headquarters in San Diego, but its center of gravity is in Washington, D.C.

With a workforce of 44,000, it is the size of a full-fledged government agency—in fact, it is larger than the departments of Labor, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development combined.

Its anonymous glass-and-steel Washington office—a gleaming corporate box like any other—lies in northern Virginia, not far from the headquarters of the C.I.A., whose byways it knows quite well…   SAIC has been awarded more individual government contracts than any other private company in America.

The contracts number… in the thousands: SAIC currently holds some 9,000 active federal contracts in all. More than a hundred of them are worth upwards of $10 million apiece. Two of them are worth more than $1 billion.

The company’s annual revenues, almost all of which come from the federal government, approached $8 billion in the 2006 fiscal year, and they are continuing to climb. SAIC’s goal is to reach as much as $12 billion in revenues by 2008. As for the financial yardstick that really gets Wall Street’s attention—profitability—SAIC beats the S&P 500 average…

To get some idea of the scale: contractors absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000. In other words, more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly to SAIC or some other contractor rather than to the IRS…

An SAIC executive once gave a press interview and referred to the enterprise as a “stealth company,” a characterization that is accurate and that has stuck. “Nobody knows who they are…”

Which is all the more remarkable in light of two developments. The first is a mounting collection of government audits and lawsuits brought by former employees for a variety of reasons, some of them personal and some coming under federal whistle-blower statutes…

The second development is that several of SAIC’s biggest projects have turned out to be colossal failures…   One involves the National Security Agency, America’s intelligence-gathering “electronic ear” and for many years SAIC’s biggest customer…  Four years and more than a billion dollars later, the effort has been abandoned…  Happily for SAIC…  The company has been awarded the contract for a revised Trailblazer…  The contract is worth $361 million.

Another failed effort involves the F.B.I., which paid SAIC $124 million to bring the bureau, whose computer systems are among the most primitive in American law enforcement, into at least the late 20th century…  Three years and a million lines of garbled computer code later, V.C.F. has been written off by a global publication for technology professionals as “the most highly publicized software failure in history…”

Much to the embarrassment of a company entrusted with some of the nation’s most precious secrets, its San Diego offices were mysteriously burgled in January of 2005… burglars managed to break into SAIC’s headquarters, pry open 13 private offices, and walk out with one desktop-computer hard drive and four laptops.

By SAIC’s account, the computers contained personal data on thousands of present and past employees, presumably including the company’s many former C.I.A. operatives, N.S.A. executives, and Pentagon officials. To date, the burglary remains unsolved.

With all the war mongering and money making there is one faction that the neocons and neoliberals just don’t care about, that is our military members and their families.  From Geopolitics:

Excerpt:

No Wonder US Forces in Morale Crisis 

The spate of deadly US Navy collisions is a symptom of a wider morale crisis among American military forces. Part of the reason is that American troops are simply exhausted from being abused by political masters in Washington.

“Over-stretch” is one way of putting it. American forces continue to be assigned in overseas wars and operations around the globe with no end in sight. And for no credible purpose either.

This is not just a Navy problem. It affects all other branches of the US military: Army, Air Force, the Marines and National Guard.  When President Donald Trump announced his brazen U-turn sending more American troops back to Afghanistan, the move had the backing of the Pentagon’s top brass. No doubt stock prices for US arms manufacturers spiked.

But what about ordinary American soldiers? One can imagine renewed Afghan missions are not welcome, given that the US has been fighting its longest war – 16 years – in that country known as the “Graveyard of Empires.” 

Any army is only as good as the morale among soldiers. Morale depends on having a respected leadership and a credible just cause. In America’s case, there are neither of these attributes, therefore it is no surprise that morale diminishes, as does fighting effectiveness. Look at the appalling record of US military defeats or failures…

American troops no doubt know what’s going down on the ground. They will know that the Pentagon and CIA are arming and training terrorist death squads in Syria, Iraq, and, yes, Afghanistan.

I would like to tell our military members that help is on the way but I can’t.  The Deep State is itching for war, and if successful in strong arming Tillerson out as Secretary of State war is inevitable.  CIA Director Pompeo is the popular choice among the CIA controlled media.  Pompeo is the ideal choice for the Deep State, given his views Pompeo will be more than happy to scratch that itch.  From Stephen Lendman:

Excerpt:

Neocon CIA Director Pompeo’s Venom

The agency operates unaccountably, its diabolical agenda incompatible with democratic values and rule of law principles.  It’s mostly a global Mafia hit squad. Its unchecked power threatens everyone. As long as it exists, no one anywhere is safe.

Imperialism is tyranny by another name. The CIA acts as its enforcer. America is the United States of Amnesia, learning nothing from its imperial history, repeating the same mistakes, ordinary people at home and abroad suffering most.

Pompeo is the latest in a long line of rogue CIA directors. At an Aspen, Colorado security summit last week, he substituted venom and fiction for truth-telling.

Pompeo: “ The agency, along with our great partners from DOD and foreign partners are working diligently to defeat ISIS in” the Middle East.

Fact: Washington created and supports ISIS and likeminded terrorist groups, using them as imperial foot soldiers, the CIA heavily involved in arming, funding, training and directing their fighters.

Pompeo: “Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, and they now have a significant foothold in Syria.”

Fact: Iran is the region’s leading proponent of peace and stability. It’s aiding its Syria ally combat the scourge of US-supported terrorism…

Pompeo: “America’s interests (involve) providing the conditions (for) a more stable Middle East.”

Fact: America pursues its “interests” by raping and destroying one country after another in the region and elsewhere.

Pompeo: “Assad is not a stabilizing influence in Syria…(I)t is difficult to imagine a stable Syria that still has (him) in power.”  “He is a puppet of the Iranians and therefore it seems an unlikely situation where Assad will be sitting on the throne and America’s interests will be well served.”

Fact: Assad is overwhelmingly supported by Syrians, wanting no one else leading them.

Pompeo: Russia’s interest in Syria is to have “a warm water naval port, and they love to stick it to America.”

Fact: Russian/Syrian relations go back decades. They “stick it” to no other country. America “stick(s) it” to everybody everywhere.

Pompeo: Asked if Russia pursues a serious anti-ISIS strategy, Pompeo said “(no).”

Fact: Russia is smashing ISIS, driving Pompeo and other neocons in Washington nuts for defeating its imperial agenda in Syria.

Pompeo: “…America has an obligation to push back against” Russia.

Fact: America represents the greatest threat to world peace, Russia and China the best hope to preserve it.

Let’s hope President Trump doesn’t cave to the barrage of CIA controlled media reporting an “irreparable schism” between the president and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over Fake News’ fabricated “Moron-gate.”  The Deep State is itching for war and ready to go, the only thing in their way is Secretary of State Tillerson.  With General Kelly guarding access to the president and the CIA’s Mike Pompeo, personally handfeeding Trump the CIA’s propaganda laced pap in the Daily Briefing, God knows what will happen.  Hopefully Trump will hold strong.



By Patricia Baeten