President Trump disses “nerd ball” as party of losers elects new leader

Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.

Jim Morrison

The annual “star studded” extravaganza to reward the purveyors of fake news known as the White House Correspondents Dinner has been notified that President Donald Trump will not attend.  Since 1921 the purveyors of lies and fake news have been rewarded for their efforts to mislead the American people into supporting wars for Wall Street profits in what has been dubbed “the nerd ball.”  At the dinner the POTUS is “roasted” by the media whores who, in large part, make or break presidential candidates on behalf of the media barons who pay them.  From Bloomberg:

Excerpt:

Trump Says He Won't Attend White House Correspondents Dinner

President Donald Trump said he won’t attend this year’s White House Correspondents Association Dinner on April 29, following weeks of attacks on news organizations that included calling them “the enemy of the American people.”

“I will not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!” Trump said Saturday on Twitter.

In his first month in office, Trump has made attacks on the media a signature policy of his administration. On Friday, his spokesman Sean Spicer held a briefing for reporters that excluded news organizations including the New York Times and CNN that have written stories critical of the president. That followed a Conservative Political Action Conference speech in which Trump again lashed out at what he calls “fake news.”

The annual WHCA dinner -- dubbed “nerd prom” -- is a fundraising event where Washington’s journalists hobnob with politicians and celebrities. The correspondents association was founded in 1914 after President Woodrow Wilson threatened to do away with news conferences. The group started the annual dinner in 1921 and presidents have traditionally attended.

The reportage that Trump excluded the New York Times and CNN from a press briefing for writing stories that were “critical of Trump” is laughable.  CNN and the New York Times as well as the Washington Post and all of NBC and ABC “news” report nothing but fake news.  The Black Agenda Report recently wrote an article on one of the media whores who is sure to be present at the “nerd ball” Roland Martin.  

Excerpt:

Roland Martin: That Hustla Ova There Tryna Sell Us School Privatization

Roland Martin pretends to be a journalist. But what does a guy do when the one percent won't pay for an informed public? Roland is a hustla for hire, and he's found a dependable set of clients. Roland is all about blackening up and selling us the destruction and privatization of public schools, which is what both elite Democrats and Republicans want. Journalists tell the truth without fear or favor. Hustlas do what they're paid to do, and the charter school sugar daddies pay well.

Despite what his web site says, Roland Martin is no journalist. His daily news show doesn’t break any new stories. Roland traffics in celebrity interviews... And Roland consistently makes the shallow case for privatizing education on behalf of his sponsors, with corny tweets, videos and a series of so-called “town hall meetings”, though he’s plenty smart enough never to say the p word.

A journalist’s job is to research, to dig deep and to oppose official lies with facts. Journalists uncover, they publish and they popularize among ordinary people important truths that the wealthy and powerful would rather keep hidden. By that standard Ida B. Wells and Lu Palmer were serious black journalists. Roland Martin ain’t that. Roland is a competent and reasonably successful hustler, with a keen eye for what sponsors will pay him to write and to say.

Right now, the big money is in turning over public education to private operators of all kinds. Those operators and investors, whom we at Black Agenda Report call the charter school sugar daddies need public relations talent, and Roland the hustler is all over it…  As my colleague Glen Ford has documented over the years, privatizing education has been a pet objective of parts of the US ruling elite since at least the 1980s.

For more than a generation now there have been been deep right wing pockets willing to fund the careers of black educators, black preachers, business leaders willing to speak up for privatizing schools, whether they called their advocacy vouchers or charter schools or school choice, and to bankroll fake grassroots organizations pretending to a “movement” for the same…

Martin echoes Arne Duncan’s vicious old claim that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to public education in New Orleans.  For the record, after Katrina, the state of Louisiana closed more than a hundred New Orleans public schools and fired all their teachers and staff, seizing upon the disaster to create the nation’s first all-charter big city school system under what was called the New Orleans Recovery School District. Charter operators and contractors made fortunes, but New Orleans children didn’t do so well…

Yes, Roland Martin is a hustler but he is just one among many, and there are legions of media whores willing to line their pockets as they mislead the public. No doubt Martin will have a seat at the “nerd ball” as a reward for a job well done.  But how are the for-profit charter schools that Roland Martin dutifully hawks for his Wall Street puppet masters doing?  Let’s check with a REAL journalist to find out.  From USA Today:

Excerpt:

Hidden dropouts: How schools make low achievers disappear

Tucked among posh gated communities and meticulously landscaped shopping centers, Olympia High School in Orlando offers more than two dozen Advanced Placement courses, even more afterschool clubs, and an array of sports from bowling to water polo. U.S. News and World Report ranked it among the nation’s top 1,000 high schools last year. Big letters painted in brown on one campus building urge its more than 3,000 students to “Finish Strong.”

Olympia’s success in recent years, however, has been linked to another, quite different school 5 miles away. Last school year, 137 students assigned to Olympia instead attended Sunshine High, a charter alternative school run by a for-profit company. Sunshine stands a few doors down from a tobacco shop and a liquor store in a strip mall. It offers no sports teams and few extra-curricular activities.

Sunshine’s 455 students – more than 85 percent of whom are black or Hispanic – sit for four hours a day in front of computers with little or no live teaching...  Sunshine takes in cast-offs from Olympia and other Orlando high schools in a mutually beneficial arrangement. Olympia keeps its graduation rate above 90 percent — and its rating an “A” under Florida’s all-important grading system for schools — partly by shipping its worst achievers to Sunshine.

Sunshine collects enough school district money to cover costs and pay its management firm, Accelerated Learning Solutions (ALS), a more than $1.5 million-a-year “management fee,” 2015 financial records show – MORE THAN WHAT THE SCHOOL SPENDS ON INSTRUCTION.

But students lose out, a ProPublica investigation found. Once enrolled at Sunshine, hundreds of them exit quickly with no degree and limited prospects. The departures expose a practice in which officials in the nation’s tenth largest school district have for years quietly funneled thousands of disadvantaged students – some say against their wishes – into alternative charter schools that allow them to disappear without counting as dropouts…

The role of charter alternative schools like Sunshine – publicly funded but managed by for-profit companies – is likely to grow under the new U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, an ardent supporter of school choice. In her home state of Michigan, charter schools have been responsible in part for a steep rise in the alternative school population. She recently portrayed Florida as a national model for charters and choice.

So Roland Martin will join with other fake news purveyors to hobnob with celebrities like fake newswoman Campbell Brown who touts the wonders of for-profit charter schools that profit off taxpayer dollars to disappear minority students.  Another fake news purveyor is Josh Rogin who Larry Johnson at “No Quarter” dubs the King of Fake News.

Excerpt:

Josh Rogin, King of Fake News

Washington Post reporter, Josh Rogin, appears to have lost his mind. But it is not all of his fault. Where are his damn editors? Rogin does not get to unilaterally decide to publish whatever lie he decides to push for a day. He has to have permission from above.

The latest dust up came with Rogin’s account of a supposed brawl between Steve Bannon and General Kelly over green card holders:

“Two administration officials gave the following account of their exchange: Respectfully but firmly, the retired general told Bannon that despite his high position in the White House and close relationship with President Trump, the former Breitbart chief was not in Kelly’s chain of command…

General Kelly was adamant that Rogin got the story completely wrong. But this is not an isolated mistake on Rogin’s part. He is not a reporter. He is a politicized advocate…   Evidence? When senior foreign service officers with close ties to the Obama regime were essentially fired last week, Rogin “reported” The State Department’s entire senior administrative team just resigned:  The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era…

Rogin’s political agenda extends to foreign policy. He went after Tulsi Gabbard in a brutal fashion (How Tulsi Gabbard became Assad’s mouthpiece in Washington)…

Gabbard was not the first U.S. elected official to meet Assad. In the early years of Assad’s presidency, several senior U.S. lawmakers publicly traveled to see the young English-speaking optometrist-turned-ruler, in the hope that he might be a reformer, break with Iran and even make peace with Israel. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited Assad in 2007. Then-Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) led a delegation in 2009.

When the history of this sordid period in U.S. policy in the Middle East is written, Tulsi Gabbard will stand as a woman of courage and integrity. Rogin happily ignores the fact that it has been a U.S. covert program to arm radical Islamists fighting the government of Bashar al Assad…

And what is her reward? She is attacked by Rogin as a tool of Assad. Future stories by Rogin should come with a warning, BEWARE, FAKE NEWS. He has demonstrated that he is putting politics above telling the truth. That is not a journalist. That is an activist.

The fake news has replaced real news in America.  George W. Bush’s illegal war on Iraq would not have been possible without a compliant media echoing the Bush/Cheney lies about weapons of mass destruction.  After killing millions of Iraqis, American soldiers and completely destroying a sovereign nation, the media whores at the White House Correspondence Dinner got a big laugh out of the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

CNN is the largest purveyor of lies when it comes to Ukraine and Syria.  The former journalist Jake Tapper has become a carnival barker for war based on lies spreading fake news like few others.  His fake journalism continually begs for more wars, more destruction.  Tapper’s false claims that Assad gassed his own people, and the lie that Russia annexed Crimea are based on CIA fed falsehoods.  From Information ClearingHouse:

Excerpt:

What the US Representative to the UN Should Know About Annexed Crimea

The speech by the new US permanent representative to the UN Security Council, Nikki Haley, at a Security Council meeting on 3 February backed up the idea that the foreign policies of two American administrations – the previous one and the current one – will be continued…

The White House supported Haley’s statement on the need for Crimea to be returned to Ukraine, and the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, stated during a briefing that: «With respect to the sanctions, I think Ambassador Haley made it very clear of our concern with Russia’s occupation of Crimea. I think she spoke very forcefully and clearly on that».

It is interesting that Mrs Haley was speaking about the territory of Crimea rather than the people…  Do the Crimean people regard themselves as Ukrainian? And does Nikki Haley know the answer to this most important question? It is unlikely that the US ambassador to the UN wants to move the people out of Crimea so that she can give the peninsula back to Ukraine. Especially as she would have to move not only the living, but also the dead, since the ‘Ukrainian’ history of Crimea is very short, around a quarter of a century…

From the point of view of the people who live on the Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine annexed Crimea in 1991, grossly violating the rules of international law. Crimea became part of independent Ukraine illegally, and repeated attempts by the Crimean people to redress this injustice met with opposition from Kiev…

But did the Ukrainian nation have the right to self-determination in Crimea if the number of Ukrainians on the peninsula made up only 25.8 percent of the population?  The answer is obvious – no, it did not. This was the first step in the annexation of Crimea by the Ukrainian state, which, at that point, was the Ukrainian SSR separate from the Soviet Union.

The February (2014) uprising in Kiev was not supported by Crimea, but attempts by Crimeans to oppose it led to tragedy: on the night of 20 and 21 February, buses taking protesting Crimeans home from a chaotic Kiev were stopped by armed nationalists in the small city of Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi. The Crimeans were beaten, tortured, forced to sing the Ukrainian national anthem under threat of death…

In a referendum on 16 March 2014, the Crimean people once again confirmed their historical choice…  Just like Americans, Crimeans also want to live, be free and be happy. That is precisely why they spent decades trying to break away from the Ukrainian trident, something they finally managed in 2014 when they returned to Russia.

It seems that Nikki Haley, like millions of her fellow Americans, does not know the history of the Crimean people’s struggle against its illegal annexation by Ukraine, which began in 1990 and ended in 2014…

The purveyors of fake news have learned nothing from Bush’s disastrous Iraq War.  They continue to promote falsehoods about Russia, Ukraine, Syria, Libya, and Yemen in order to feed the military industrial complex’s insatiable appetite for war.  Those same whores that led America to its self-destruction in Iraq now are gathering their forces to destroy Donald Trump.  They tried their best during the GOP primary and failed, but refuse to give up.

While the gala nerd ball was being planned, the party of losers elected a new loser leader.  I’m sure the Bernie Bots are going to be whining and crying that Keith Ellison was passed over after being endorsed by St. Bernard.  What the Bernie Bots fail to understand is that both Bernie Sanders and Keith Ellison are war hawks.  From Black Agenda Report:

Excerpt:

Rep. Keith Ellison, the Personification of the Phony, Pro-War “Progressive”

“Ellison is part of the pro-war Left, whose primary mission is make self-described liberals and leftists comfortable supporting imperial wars.”

Keith Ellison, the Black U.S. House member from Minneapolis who is co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, says the U.S. should push for a no-fly zone over rebel-held areas in Syria. Ellison, who is also one of only two Muslim members of Congress, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, as did Republican Arizona Senator John McCain. It is a measure of how far to the right the Democratic Party has come under President Obama, that McCain, the war monger who likes to sing about bombing Iran, and Ellison, who claims to be a progressive, are in basic agreement over Syria.

“Both are raving American imperialists.”  On U.S. imperial policy, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between McCain, the hard-right Republican, and Ellison, who purports to be a progressive Democrat.

Yep, the Democratic Party is no more, the image of Donna Brazile handing over the gavel to Tom Perez signified the last nail in the DNC coffin.  Good riddance.

Donald Trump has two words for the White House Correspondents, bon appetite.  Trump has better things to do than to dine and dance with a bunch of high paid whores.  I applaud President Trump for putting an end to this disgusting tradition where people who should be in prison are treated like celebrities for a job well done.  That job being the betrayal of America and American values, the whole treacherous lot should be fired.

By Patricia Baeten

The British Empire and the Deep State wages war on Donald Trump

Forget the baseless allegations by the Deep State in America that Russia interfered with the American presidential election, the Shadow Government in Britain has waged a war against Donald Trump and will stop at nothing to remove him from office.  The color revolutions waged across Eurasia and the Middle East by the CIA have now come to America and the West.  FromLaRouchepac:

Excerpt:

British Frantic To Destroy Trump, Save the Empire

The Soros-directed, "color revolution" process has now hit the USA in full force. 

The mass demonstrations against President Trump, and the 24/7 news coverage denouncing him, are not only hypocritical, but demonstrate that the British are becoming hysterical that they are losing control of the United States.  Since the death of Franklin Roosevelt, and especially since the British assassination of John F. Kennedy, the British system has taken firm hold in Washington.

While Wall Street seized full control over the nation's economic policy, using British "free trade" to replace Hamiltonian directed credit, the British also used the U.S. as the "dumb giant" to wage colonial wars on behalf of London and Wall Street, from Vietnam to the perpetual wars against sovereign, peaceful nations in the Mideast under both Bush and Obama. This sustained the imperial division of the world into East vs. West, leading to Obama's final efforts to provoke a U.S./NATO war against Russia and China.

Now Donald Trump threatens to overturn the entire imperial system: establishing a partnership with Russia to defeat the terrorist scourge (itself a creation of the British and their controlled monarchy in Saudi Arabia); ending the free-trade policies which saw the West shut down its own industries while exploiting cheap labor in the underdeveloped nations; ending the anti-growth and anti-science hoax of global warming; and promising to restore the American System of economics through Glass-Steagall to rebuild American industry, infrastructure, and scientific research…

Now, the British "Stop the War Coalition" is leading protests against the very person who has stopped Obama's perpetual warfare! British agent George Soros is funding mass demonstrations against Trump in the U.S. for supposedly being anti-Muslim, while supporting Obama, who killed tens of thousands of Muslims and drove millions of Muslims out of their homes…

The most serious error made by the new President -- his choice of the anti-Glass-Steagall (and serial forecloser) Steven Mnuchin to be his Treasury Secretary -- was disrupted today by a boycott by the Democrat members of the Senate Finance Committee.

By refusing to attend the Committee meeting scheduled to vote on the Mnuchin confirmation, they denied a "bipartison" vote, as required, thus indefinitely postponing the vote and giving time for further efforts to block the confirmation… Given Mnuchin's 15-year association with George Soros, Republicans should also understand why his confirmation must be stopped…

For years, the Anglo-American oligarcy and their press whores have peddled the lie that Russian and Chinese "aggression" must be stopped to save "western values," when in fact Russia and China have taken the lead in fostering the historic but discarded values of Western civilization -- providing security and prosperity for their own people, and, through the New Silk Road process, taking that security and prosperity to the rest of the world.

The U.S., meanwhile, has fallen into mass unemployment and underemployment, the collapse of manufacturing, an unprecedented drug epidemic, and profound cultural decadence, while under President Obama the nation has been in perpetual warfare, with Obama proudly drawing up a drone "kill list" on a weekly basis. Was this "Western values?"

Yes, the “press whores” have been working overtime to destroy President Donald J. Trump peddling lies about Trump and his family.  After Trump took his case for protecting the American people from false flag terror attacks directly to the people over the weekend in Florida the media whores screeched “liar” in unison.  The loudest voice has been the Soros funded Democracy Now who promoted “Not my president day” protests.  

Excerpt:

Trump Doubles Down on Lies About Sweden

President Trump is doubling down on his false claim that Sweden is struggling with immigration-related security problems, after he faced widespread criticism and ridicule for appearing to invent a terrorist attack in Sweden while speaking at a 2020 campaign rally in Melbourne, Florida, on Saturday.

President Donald Trump: "Here’s the bottom line: We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening. We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany. You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden."

So what happened in Sweden that prompted Trump to tell a crowd of thousands of supporters that Sweden has experienced unprecedented terror attacks?  From Russia Today:

Excerpt:

Dramatic footage shows cars ablaze in Swedish riot (VIDEOS)

Cars were set on fire, police were pelted with stones and civilians were beaten up as violent clashes broke out between rioters and law enforcement in the Stockholm district of Rinkeby on Monday night.  Police say seven or eight vehicles were torched in the suburb of Sweden’s capital following unrest in the area, which has a high immigrant population. It’s unclear if any immigrants were involved in the incident.

The violence was reportedly instigated after police arrested a wanted person at a metro station in Rinkeby at around 8pm. Police say between 30-50 people were involved in the disturbances.

Video footage from the night of destruction shows large crowds gathered and several cars engulfed in flames. Firefighters can also be seen tackling the blazing wrecks as strong winds whip flames in all directions.  A police officer was injured during the fracas, forcing law enforcement to fire several warning shots, according to Swedish public service broadcaster SVT.  No injuries were reported as a result of the shots.

Benjamin Dousa, a Moderate politician from Rinkeby, told Expressen.se that riots and car burnings are part of everyday life in the district.  “On average, we have one riot in the month, a car fire per day, and the most shootings across the country,” he claimed, before alleging that there are between 800-1000 professional criminal youth in Rinkeby and some surrounding areas.  An investigation into the outbreak of violence and the attacks against the officers is underway. An investigation into the outbreak of violence and the attacks against the officers is underway.

You won’t hear that news in the mainstream media in America, no you will just hear Trump is a liar.  The mainstream media is owned by billionaires who have hatched a plot to impeach or assassinate President Trump before the new world order is crushed in favor of a more just, and democratic American led world order.  From Antiwar.com

Excerpt:

The Foreign Plot to Oust Trump

It stretches from London to Langley to Kiev – and several points in between

Oh, the irony! Amid all the accusations of foreign interference in the election, the first solid indication of it showed up with the publication of a slanderous unsourced memo written by a “former” British intelligence agent accusing Donald Trump of various “perversions” and claiming he’s vulnerable to blackmail by those evil Russkies. The “ex”-MI6 agent, one Christopher Steele – how’s that for a name straight out of a James Bond novel? – works for “Orbis Business Intelligence, Ltd.,” a high-toned London-based “private” spook agency usually hired by big corporations out to spy on their competitors or those pesky environmentalists.

According to press reports, Steele worked undercover in Russia for several years, cultivating a wide network of contacts who, today, regularly feed him information. It was through these contacts that he concocted a series of memos first reported by CNN and later published by BuzzFeed, the product of rumor, gossip, and innuendo – in short, the stuff “raw” intelligence is made of.

News accounts also report that it was Fusion GPS, a Democratic “research” firm that got the initial contract, and was paid by the Republican wing of the “Never Trump” movement…

To begin with, anyone who thinks Orbis is a “private” intelligence agency, totally separate from MI6, the legendary British intelligence service, is delusional. These agencies… are simply extensions of the parent organization, MI6, which is, itself, intertwined with similar spook outfits in the US and throughout Europe... 

When Trump began talking about how “obsolete” NATO is, their alarm bells began to go off. The alliance is the bedrock of the international security apparatus that nurtures and rewards this crowd, and the anchor of the expansionist agenda that envisions Ukraine and Georgia as the next entrants in the anti-Russian grand coalition.

Those alarm bells started screaming when Trump took up with Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader and spokesman for the rising nationalist anti-EU movement: the Brexit campaign dealt the internationalists a near mortal blow, and the Trump-Farage hook-up drove them up the wall. Like Trump, Farage is “pro-Russian,” i.e. he opposes the drive to war against Moscow, and the double victory of Trump-Brexit has the NATO-crats in a panic. Something had to be done.…

So let’s step back and look at the players: the CIA, MI6, “the head of an Eastern European intelligence agency,” and the “one of the Baltic states’ intelligence agencies” – an international coalition out to oust Trump.  Talk about “foreign interference” in American politics! This makes Russia’s alleged intervention look like child’s play.

The Never-Trumpers are demanding a “bipartisan independent commission” to investigate the alleged Russian connection to the Trump campaign: they might as well call it the Commission to De-legitimize Trump’s Presidency…  It’s hogwash of the sort we haven’t seen since the 1950s, when J. Edgar Hoover was “investigating” (i.e. harassing) anyone who didn’t toe the cold war line. But these people wouldn’t dream of investigating the many foreign connections to the anti-Trump campaign, stretching all the way from London to Kiev to the Baltic states (I’d guess Estonia).

My, my.  Talk about getting even with Trump for Brexit.  Sounds like the job of impeaching Donald Trump calls for a real, seasoned criminal.  A war criminal that produced the “sexed up” intelligence that allowed the British to dupe the U.S. to spend trillions of dollars on a war in Iraq.  From the CIA’s megaphone the Washington Post:

Tony Blair’s new mission: To change UK minds on Brexit

LONDON — Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair launched a campaign Friday to persuade the U.K. to rethink its decision to leave the European Union, saying those who want to remain should rise up and make their wishes known.  Blair argued that the Conservative government’s drive to leave the EU “at any cost” will hurt future generations and damage the unity of the country itself.  Last year’s vote to leave the 28-nation bloc was “based on imperfect knowledge” and Britons made their decision without knowing the true terms of Brexit, he said in a speech in London…

Blair spoke on behalf of Open Britain, which is campaigning for the government’s Brexit legislation to be amended to ensure that Parliament has “proper scrutiny” over any deal May negotiates with EU leaders. Among the group’s goals is for Britain to remain part of the bloc’s single market, guaranteeing unfettered access to 500 million people…

It wasn’t immediately clear how much support Blair may have in creating a wave of sentiment against May’s plans. The once-popular Labour Party leader suffered a fall from grace after he supported the United States in its intervention in Iraq.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson dismissed the speech, telling the BBC that people should “rise up and turn off the TV” when Blair comes on.

I’m with Boris Johnson, anyone that would give credence to a word the war criminal Tony Blair says is an idiot.  The British Empire was behind the campaign to fire General Flynn as Trump’s National Security Advisor.  From LaRouchepub.com

Excerpt:

British Use Flynn Ouster to Gear Up ‘Oust Trump’ Operation: Impeachment, Assassination—Whatever It Takes

Feb. 14, 2017 (EIRNS)—Yes, such Obama operatives as former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and the Washington Post, among others, played their designated roles in orchestrating the ouster of Gen. Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor. However, as Lyndon LaRouche has repeatedly advised, look to the British to find who is directing this chorus, and to what end.

Key British media today flaunted the intent that Flynn’s ouster not be the end, but the beginning of the drive to oust President Donald Trump from office, and to do so on the bandwagon that he has dared propose that the United States and Russia should cooperate for the greater good of all nations.

Look at British Broadcasting Corp., whose lead story throughout the day has been Flynn’s ouster. Remember that BBC still operates under a Royal Charter as it has since its founding in the 1920’s.  BBC’s target is Trump, with no less than six overlapping "news" stories to this effect. "Russia: The Scandal Trump Can’t Shake," one story is headlined.

Another trumpets that "the Flynn controversy may sharpen the focus on Donald Trump’s past pro-Russia statements." It insists that  "the really big question [is] what does this say about President Trump’s relationship with Russia?" Why does Trump "stubbornly refuse to say a bad word about ... Vladimir Putin. Not ever"?  BBC shamelessly revives the infamous dossier prepared by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele which circulated what were then admitted to be lies on Trump activities and ties in Russia, to imply that the American President is blackmailed by Russia…

The City of London’s Economist magazine joins BBC in dismissing Flynn’s ouster as but the sign of "some deeper infection…" Should such a Watergate impeachment scenario not work out, a contributing editor to the London Review of Books today raised another option: assassination of Trump: "There is no inherent harm in fantasising" about such a killing, Adam Shatz wrote on the LRB blog…

… In light of this, whose bidding do you think the Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders are doing as they dutifully line up to call for full-scale investigations into the Flynn affair?

So now that Flynn is out it seems war hawks like John McCain and Lindsay Graham are fawning over his replacement.  Hmmm, I wonder why.  From Stephen Lendman:

Excerpt:

Trump Chooses Hawkish National Security Advisor

On Monday, Trump named hawkish Army Lt. General HR McMaster to replace Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor (NSA).  Political pressure lead to his unfortunate sacking for harmlessly discussing sanctions with Russia’s US ambassador.

Twice passed over for brigadier general, McMaster earned two more stars in less than six years after getting his first one, a remarkable advancement - given to warriors, not peace advocates… Known as a tough, outspoken, detail-oriented intellectual with a reputation for battlefield acumen, he remains on active duty in his new position.

Acting National Security Advisor General Keith Kellogg will work with him as chief of staff, Trump announced.  A 1984 West Point graduate, McMaster earned a doctorate in American history at the University of North Carolina. His dissertation criticized US Vietnam War strategy, explained further in his book titled “Dereliction of Duty.”  The war’s illegality went unmentioned, US naked aggression against Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, nations threatening no others.

As a captain, McMaster won a Silver Star for service during the 1991 Gulf War, illegal by any standard, a walkover from mid-January to February 28, massacring tens of thousands of Iraqis. US aggression remains ongoing, defenseless civilians suffering most.

During Bush/Cheney’s war on Iraq, McMaster served under General David Petraeus, involved in his so-called counterterrorism operations.  Known for challenging conventional wisdom, a White House spokeswoman said Trump “gave full authority for McMaster to hire whatever staff he sees fit.”  Passed over for NSA, Trump said former UN envoy (neocon) John Bolton will serve in an unspecified administration role, a disturbing development, given his rage for endless wars…

He’s a warrior, in 2015 saying “(w)hat we have to do is really develop the ability to think clearly about future war.” Last spring, he lied, accusing Russia of invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea. “What is needed is forward deterrence,” he advised. Not good signs!

Washington has lots of hawks, doves in short supply - especially with disturbing hostility toward Russia, China and Iran, risking direct confrontation.

Well it seems to me that Trump’s new National Security Advisor is in direct conflict with the Trump Doctrine of cooperation and peace.  The British Empire appears to be hell bent on the destruction of America as we know it.  From LaRouchepub.com:

Excerpt:

Crush the British Empire Once and for All!

Jan. 24—Many have doubted the warning of Lyndon LaRouche, over these past 50 years, that the British Empire is still alive, and still dedicated to crushing the American System of Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. But today those doubts have been proven to be most foolish, as the imperial lords of the City of London and the British Monarchy have declared themselves, proudly, to be intent on destroying any effort to restore the American System in the United States, their former colonies.

The Obama years proved to be the total takeover of the U.S. government by the British System. The “free trade” model of the British, which America’s Founding Fathers had fought a revolution to escape, succeeded in eliminating all of the Franklin Roosevelt regulations and restraints on Wall Street, creating a speculative bubble reaching into the mega-trillions.

The British opium war on China was superseded in evil by the British and Wall Street banks’ “Dope, Inc.,” creating the worst drug epidemic in U.S. history, while Obama refused to jail the bankers responsible for either the financial crash or the drug money laundering, and openly promoted drug legalization.

Industry was dismantled under the guise of both “free trade” and the hoax that carbon was destroying the planet, all sponsored by Prince Philip’s World Wildlife Fund and related green fanatics. Space exploration and the scientific development of nuclear and fusion power were destroyed under the same British imperial model of enforced backwardness.

Perpetual, colonial wars have been waged against nations that were no threat to the United States, but were too close to Russia or China, using the British/Saudi-funded terror networks to remove governments by force. Obama and his British sponsors prepared for war with Russia and China with a massive military encirclement of both Eurasian nations.

The threat to this British control over the United States, represented by the defeat of the Obama/Hillary evil in November, has now forced the British out into the open, willing to kill to stop any chance that the Trump Administration might restore sanity. They must be stopped, and the British System destroyed, if civilization is to survive this crisis…

Remember that the British have a tradition of assassinating American presidents who have stood up against the Empire—Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy.

Karen Kwiatkowski over at Lew Rockwell has an interesting assessment on Donald Trump’s presidency, calling Trump the Perfect President.

Excerpt:

Trump is the Perfect President

A river of angst and anger is roaring, gushing, and flooding the country.

Trump’s psychological state, ability, intelligence, actions and intentions, impact and ramifications — suddenly everyone is wide awake and nervous.  Trump’s consistencies and inconsistencies are equally frightening, his exercise of power as the “most powerful man in the world” seem insane in so many ways…

Democrats and Republicans for decades eagerly created a massive currency printing debt-slave funded government, with a massive and terrible foreign policy.   They promoted an arrogant self-congratulatory exceptionalism, whether based on lies about how much they cared about human rights (they never did) or how much they cared about liberty (they cannot even spell the word).  Every president has served as a co-conspirator against the Republic, either as power addicts or puppets of power addicts who with dedication and commitment chipped and hacked away at the Constitution.

The politically active, ignorant government believers in this country have all worked hard to create the very problems of the state with which Trump is now saddled and accused.  I celebrate the Trump presidency as a wake-up call for the lying hypocrites who have created the government we now have.  Hypocrites like red “independent” states that are net takers on federal tax and redistribution schemes.

Human rights, equality and environmental advocates who have for decades tolerated and promoted a foreign policy that confidently destroys human rights, equality, and the environment.  Large swathes of angry people who know no history, learn through flashed headlines and images, doped up on government approved and subsidized prescription drugs and infotainment have come alive in their frustration…

America is now led by the best it can produce, the best it can elect.  And yet, Trump is unique in that he is fulfilling campaign promises, using executive power to shrink and reverse legislation, and for the first time in my lifetime, appointing actual people to the various posts of government, based on their passions and skills, or better yet, their past criticism of this or that agency.

This alone is unusual, experimental, and fresh.  Bureaucracies don’t reform themselves…   Lazy, slow, and not-so-sharp herd animals get eaten by wolves, sometimes ripped apart, and often killed gratuitously in the wolf pack’s excitement.   What surprises me is all the mewing and bleating from the herds’ supporters…

Fascism seems to be the word of the day – but our government is a long established crony capitalist state, one able, willing and eager to take by hook, by crook and by force, whatever it wants from any citizen of non-citizen alike.  This is old news.  Those who love the glory of the state, adore its power and enjoy its parental aura, have built and supported the state we have.  Donald Trump is the perfect man to lead it.

I certainly hope that he might also be the perfect president to destroy it.

Amen, Sister Karen.  So, forget the baseless allegations by the Deep State in America that Russia interfered with the American presidential election.  The Shadow Government in Britain is waging a war against our elected President, Donald Trump.  The Washington establishment populated by Republicans and Democrats are more than eager to assist in impeaching or assassinating President Trump to bring about the restoration of the British Empire.  Hopefully Trump will prevail and restore the power to the people where it belongs.

By Patricia Baeten

What hath America wrought? Trump fights Ninth Circuit Court to protect Americans “See you in court”

Statute:

Section 212(f) “Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or class of aliens as “immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

When Donald Trump was on the campaign trail and the San Bernardino terror attack took place Trump said he would place a temporary ban on travel from countries known as havens for terrorists until the government could figure out “what the hell was going on.”  Trump’s comments came after it was known that all of the terrorist attackers, from the Tsarnaev brothers, to the Pulse Nightclub shooter to the San Bernardino shooters were all well-known to the FBI before the attacks took place.  From the Activist:

Excerpt:

Was Orlando Shooting A False Flag? Shooter Has Ties To FBI, Regular At Club, Did Not Act Alone?

As mainstream media organizations continue to be afire with reports regarding the recent Orlando shooting, a number of details are escaping the public consciousness that might point to an even more sinister motivation for the killing of 50 innocent people at the Pulse nightclub. Most notably, that the attack could very well have been orchestrated by the FBI and other relevant U.S. intelligence agencies in order to guide public opinion, galvanize the American people, and for other “political” purposes.

Indeed, in my article “5 Reasons To Question The Official Story Of The Orlando Shooting,” I listed a number of questionable aspects regarding the shooting such as the fact that the FBI was well aware of Omar Mateen, his ideology, and his potential violence years before the attack yet did nothing, as well as the fact that his father is a Taliban-supporting TV host from Afghanistan. I also pointed out that Mateen himself had connections to a known ISIS recruiter and suicide bomber. In addition, I discussed the FBI’s history in relation to creating terrorist attacks in order to “bust” them and subsequently take the credit for stopping terrorist attacks…

According to CNN’s article, “50 Killed in Florida Nightclub, Shooter Pledged ISIS Allegiance,” two officials tell CNN that the FBI had investigated Mateen at some point for possibly having ties to or sympathizing with Islamic extremism…    One key aspect suggesting a false flag that should be looked for soon after the attack is any possible connection the suspect or group of suspects may have had with intelligence agencies…

For instance, on 9/11, many of the alleged hijackers had previously had close contact with the FBI, CIA, and other high-level intelligence agencies (both home and abroad). Likewise, the Tsarnaev brothers who have been accused of masterminding and carrying out the Boston Bombing had ties to the FBI before the attack.

The FBI did much more than simply “investigate” Mateen – they introduced him to “informants” as well. According to the New York Daily News in the article, “FBI spied on Orlando gay club terrorist Omar Mateen for 10 months in 2013: FBI Director James Comey…”  Mateen was not only connected to Mohammed Abu Salha, he also maintained ties with Marcus Dwayne Robertson, a notoriously violent radical Muslim/CIA Asset…

For some time Tony Cartalucci of Land Destroyer has been painstakingly documenting instances of the FBI organized, arming, funding, and directing domestic terror attacks only to foil those attacks later and claim success in preventing terror attacks on American soil as well as the possibility that many of these attacks simply do not get foiled but are allowed to take place for political purposes.

“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed.”  ― Mark Twain

After the Boston bombing attacks and the Pulse Nightclub attack, the San Bernardino attack had similar aspects, such as the shooters were known to the FBI.  From VeteransToday:

Excerpt:

LA Times suppresses truth on San Bernardino false flag

Mainstream media's fake news must not be questioned

Today’s LA Times disinformation piece, published on this, the first anniversary of the 12/2/15 shooting at the Inland Regional Center, raises questions concerning the much-discussed problem of “fake news…” The mainstream media, backed by big internet companies like Google and Facebook, claim that dissenting alternative media outlets are the prime source of “fake news” stories. But what happens when the mainstream media itself publishes fake news?

In reality, the mainstream media is almost nothing but fake news: The vast majority of mainstream “news” stories begin as press releases, that is, lies or spin generated for profit by a private, interested party…  The people who blew up the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001, and have since then massacred thousands in such follow-up operations as Bali, Madrid, London, Mumbai, Boston, Paris, San Bernardino, and Orlando, are powerful players…

…The false flag terror perps chose this strategy as an attempt to blow smoke over the real questions about the attack raised by real journalists (the alternative media)… 

Why did multiple eyewitnesses report that the shooters were “three large white paramilitaries” – a shooter team that could not possibly be mistaken for a bearded brown-skinned Muslim guy and his diminutive female alleged accomplice?

Why did police (or intelligence agents/organized crime assets whose cover job is police work) handcuff and execute the two Muslim patsies in a police car, then dump the bodies on the sidewalk?

Why was the most important alleged crime scene (the patsies’ apartment) not preserved according to normal police procedure, but instead immediately opened for a media propaganda stunt so that any evidence there would be ransacked, contaminated or destroyed?

The LA Times refuses to even acknowledge the existence of false flag interpretations of the shooting, and ruthlessly suppresses any such mention from its comments section. Instead, the official “radical Muslims did it” myth is taken for granted, and the “questions” that the FBI is supposedly “struggling to answer” involve whether any MORE “radical Muslims” might have known something was up.

It appears to me that the outrage over Donald Trump’s Executive Order for a temporary ban on immigrants from countries where the CIA has been funding and arming terrorists to overthrow the elected governments and/or providing bombs and logistics to Saudi Arabia and Turkey to destroy their nations, has more to do with disrupting American intelligence assets/patsies.  These war-torn nations, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen are unable to properly vet who is leaving their country to enter the United States, brewing a perfect storm.

President Barack Obama used his veto power on Friday to protect the Islamic kingdom of Saudi Arabia from lawsuits by families of the victims of the 9/11 Islamic atrocity — Breitbart

Saudi Arabia, who aided and abetted the 9-11 terrorists was not happy when Donald Trump, on the campaign trail called for a temporary ban on Muslims from countries that the Obama Administration designated “hotbeds of terrorism.”  From the Express Tribune:

Excerpt:

Trump hits back at 'dopey' Saudi billionaire

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump hit back at a “dopey” Saudi Arabian fellow billionaire after the prince branded him a disgrace and said he should pull out of the race for the White House.  Prince Alwaleed bin Talal had reacted to the Republican presidential frontrunner’s proposal earlier this week that all Muslims should be temporarily barred from entering the United States.  Saudi Prince Alwaleed calls Trump a disgrace to US, asks him to quit presidential race.

“Dopey Prince Alwaleed Talal wants to control our US politicians with daddy’s money. Can’t do it when I get elected,” Trump wrote on Twitter, in the same typically confrontational fashion that has been the earmark of his bombastic presidential campaign.

It came after Alwaleed, a devout but moderate Muslim, took exception to what his office called Trump’s “anti-Islam statement.”  “You are a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America,” Alwaleed had tweeted to Trump, referring to the Republican Party.  “Withdraw from the US presidential race as you will never win.”  Alwaleed is an unusually outspoken member of the Saudi royal family who chairs Kingdom Holding Co. The diversified firm’s interests include US-banking giant Citigroup.

Trump has been lambasted both in the US and abroad for his Muslim plan, which followed a shooting rampage by a Muslim couple in San Bernardino, California, which left 14 dead.

Forget about investigating Russian interference with the American presidential election, a known terrorist state has threatened Donald Trump and ordered him to drop out of the presidential election.  Investigate Saudi Arabia’s interference in American elections.

The job of the Ninth Circuit Court was to interpret the law and determine if Donald Trump was within his legal authority when he found that “the entry of any aliens from seven war-torn nations overrun by CIA backed terrorists was detrimental to the interests of the United States and therefore proclaimed that for a period of 90 days, he suspended entry of all immigrants or nonimmigrants until he could be assured that they were properly vetted, using extreme vetting.”

CIA-armed militias are shooting at Pentagon-armed ones in Syria - Chicago Tribune

The Ninth Circuit court decided to base their decision on emotion rather than the law.  In Syria, where the CIA and Pentagon have trained and armed terrorists on both sides of the US/NATO induced conflict, even Syria’s President Assad has stated the obvious, terrorists are among the refugees.  From Real Clear Politics:

Excerpt:

Bashar al-Assad: Terrorists Are Definitely Hiding Among Syrian Refugees

In an interview with Yahoo News's Michael Isikoff, the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that terrorists were definitely hiding among the more than 4.8 million people who have been displaced by the Syrian Civil War.   Asked if some of those who fled are "aligned with terrorists," Assad quickly replied: "Definitely."

"You can find it on the Net," Assad went on. "Those terrorists in Syria, holding the machine gun or killing people, they [appear as] peaceful refugees in Europe or in the West."  "You don’t need a significant number to commit atrocities," he noted. He also said that the 9/11 attacks were pulled off by fewer than 20 terrorists, "out of maybe millions of immigrants in the United States. So it’s not about the number, it’s about the quality, it’s about the intentions."

Secret Pentagon Report Reveals US "Created" ISIS As A "Tool" To Overthrow Syria's President Assad – Zero hedge

And if you don’t want to believe Syria’s elected President Assad, there’s this from IJR.com:

Excerpt:

Remember Those 'Moderate' Syrian Rebels That The U.S. Armed? ISIS Got Some Of Those Weapons Too

As the Syrian Civil War has waged on over the past few years, the United States, along with Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, decided to arm the Syrian rebels under the “Free Syrian Army” umbrella.  The shipments of former Yugoslavian Army weapons held by the Croatians, along with newly manufactured Croatian weapons, began in November 2012, according to The Telegraph UK. The weapons were flown out of Croatia on chartered flights to Jordan and then smuggled into Syria.

Fast forward to the rise of ISIS and their blitzkreig campaign across northern Iraq. An investigation by the arms control organization Conflict Armament Research has found that various U.S. supplied weapons have wound up in the hands of ISIS.  The U.S.-made small arm in question is the M16A4 assault rifle. It is the main service rifle of the U.S. Marine Corps and sees limited use in the U.S. Army. More importantly, thousands of them were supplied to the Iraqi Army. The source of ISIS's M16s, along with other U.S. made weapons, is likely captured Iraqi Army stocks.

As for the M79s, they were part of the arms shipments from Croatia that were meant for the Free Syrian Army. The weapons were either captured, or acquired by former FSA fighters as they joined ISIS.

Forget about what our NATO “allies” think about President Trump’s Executive Order, what do Europeans thinks of Trump’s temporary ban?  From Chatham House:

Excerpt:

What Do Europeans Think About Muslim Immigration?

President Donald Trump’s executive order to ban citizens of seven Muslim-majority states from entering the US for 90 days, and temporarily freeze all refugee arrivals (including Syrians indefinitely), has been interpreted widely as an attempt to curtail the inward migration of Muslims, which Trump and his supporters argue pose a threat to national security.

Trump’s policy has generated a backlash among some of Europe’s leaders…

Amid these competing views, where do the public in European countries stand on the specific issue of Muslim immigration? There is evidence to suggest that both Trump and these radical right-wing parties reflect an underlying reservoir of public support.

Drawing on a unique, new Chatham House survey of more than 10,000 people from 10 European states, we can throw new light on what people think about migration from mainly Muslim countries. Our results are striking and sobering… 

In our survey, carried out before President Trump’s executive order was announced, respondents were given the following statement: ‘All further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped’. They were then asked to what extent did they agree or disagree with this statement. Overall, across all 10 of the European countries an average of 55% agreed that all further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped, 25% neither agreed nor disagreed and 20% disagreed.

Majorities in all but two of the ten states agreed, ranging from 71% in Poland, 65% in Austria, 53% in Germany and 51% in Italy to 47% in the United Kingdom and 41% in Spain. In no country did the percentage that disagreed surpass 32%.

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. - Joseph Stalin

Therein lies the problem, world leaders including in the United States, do not care what the people want.  The leaders, aided by a universally corrupt media, worry not about re-election for they control the electoral process.  For instance in France where Francois Fillon, member of the conservative Les Republicans political party upended the election with his surprise primary win has been savaged by the media.  Fillon has been the victim of a vicious media campaign to discredit him.  From RussiaToday:

Excerpt:

French media brands presidential hopeful Fillon as ‘Putin’s friend’

French presidential hopeful Francois Fillon is “Vladimir Putin’s friend” and intends to “work ardently” with Russia, French media trumpeted after the country was caught unawares by the Republican’s victory in the first round of the center-right primary.  During the first primary on Sunday, Fillon, who served as prime minister in Nicolas Sarkozy’s government from 2007 till 2012, not only beat his former boss, but also came in first ahead of Alain Juppe, the 71-year-old ex-prime minister and mayor of Bordeaux.

Contrary to the current French establishment, Fillon advocates lifting the EU sanctions imposed on Russia for what Brussels (NATO) insists was “undermining of Ukrainian sovereignty” following the 2014 Euromaidan coup in Kiev.

“Vladimir Putin can rejoice. If Francois Fillon enters the Elysee [Palace], he will count a new friend in the circle of Western leaders. Indeed, like Donald Trump, the former French Prime Minister intends to work ardently with Russia,” Le Point wrote on Monday…

 “With the victory of Donald Trump and the possible duel [between] Fillon-Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential election, Vladimir Putin could end up with ‘friends’ in power in two of the major capitals of the West, Washington and Paris,” according to the publication…

The French media’s take on Fillon “is not surprising,” … saying that it mainly supports Paris’ alliance with the US and French-German relations. “Yet in reality there is a large part of public opinion in France that not often speak out openly, but know that there can be no balance in Europe without a renewed and consistent alliance with Russia…

The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses. - Malcolm X

As if cordial relations with Russia is a bad thing.  So the French media took it upon themselves to destroy Fillon, serving their elite masters.  From the New York Times:

Excerpt:

Fillon Scandal Indicts, Foremost, France’s Political Elite

PARIS — The president of the National Assembly does it. The president of the Senate defends it. Dozens of rank-and-file parliamentarians do it, too. Hiring your spouse, son or sister in France’s Parliament is perfectly legal.

So, with François Fillon, until recently France’s leading presidential candidate, in deep trouble for payments of nearly $1 million from the public payroll to his wife and children, many French politicians are asking: What’s the big deal?  The answer has, belatedly, come roaring back from much of the country’s press and public: They just don’t get it.

“Penelopegate,” a scandal named for Mr. Fillon’s wife, now threatens to sink the ambitions of a man who little more than a week ago seemed all but certain to become France’s next president.

But the scandal has done more than add another volatile element to France’s presidential campaign. It has also tapped a wellspring of anger in the French electorate and called into question the standard operating procedures of the political class… 

The uproar has similarly lifted the hopes of Emmanuel Macron, the former Rothschild banker and economy minister in the Socialist government, who is running an insurgent campaign atop his own newly formed political movement.

But I digress, so let’s get back to the Ninth Circuit court’s decision regarding whether or not President Trump had the legal authority to temporarily ban immigrants that he believes pose a danger to American citizens.  From Breitbart:

Excerpt:

Turley: Trump Making Same Arguments as Obama in Defense of Immigration Executive Order

Thursday on MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour,” George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley reacted to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision to uphold a stay by a lower to halt President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting immigration to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim nations.

Although the court ruled in the opponents of the Trump order’s favor, the law still was on Trump’s side and that the Trump administration was using the “virtually the identical arguments” the Obama administration had used in defense of its immigration policy.

“Well, it was a poorly crafted executive order, and it was a terrible rollout,” Turley said. “But I still think that the law favors the administration once you get to the merits. I don’t agree with many of those, some of those cases. But the courts have been highly deferential to the president, and they generally don’t second-guess. I think the people also have to acknowledge that the Trump administration here is making virtually the identical argument to the Obama administration.”

“The Obama administration argued the president’s judgment on administration was largely unreviewable,” he continued. “He argued that he could even refuse or order the failure to enforce immigration laws. But the arguments were very, very similar. And for all the Democrats objecting now, I didn’t hear a peep of objection from them when just last year these arguments were being made by the same Justice Department.”

I think a more pertinent question is not “was Trump’s order legal” but “what hath America wrought?”  The American courts have been corrupted to an unbelievable degree by the George W. Bush Administration.  From the Extreme Supreme Court to the lower and appellate courts, all are corrupt and packed with zealots, both right and left. 

It is not for the Ninth Circuit court to second guess the order but to read the law and interpret it.  Is it any wonder that Americans have lost all confidence in American jurisprudence?  Americans have nothing but contempt for the governing elite, the corrupt media and the courts.

By Patricia Baeten

Preserving the Juggernaut: Betsy DeVos approved as Education Secretary with tie-breaking vote of VP

When Donald J. Trump was forced to accept uber-right wing “conservative” Mike Pence as his running mate, it caused concern among some of Trump’s supporters.  But when Trump allowed Pence to select his domestic agenda cabinet members, concern turned to horror, especially since America lacks an opposition party with the now defunct Democratic Party.

Yes, there was the usual yapping and swooning among the remaining so called “liberal” democrats, but any dissention was watered down after those same Democrats approved Barack Obama’s public school privatizing stooge Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education.  From The Black Agenda Report:

Excerpt:

The Obama Education Legacy Part 1 of 3: Obama Appoints Another Privatizing Stooge Secretary of Education

Back in December 2008, when then President-elect Barack Obama announced Arne Duncan would be his Education Secretary, Black Agenda Report asked “Did Barack Obama Just Appoint an Underqualified Stooge and Privatizer Secretary of Education?”

We interviewed longtime Chicago teacher and union activist George Schmidt, who told us Duncan was an old friend of the president-elect with a spotty resume who'd come to the Chicago Public Schools straight from the mayor's office where he'd been a budget guy, and had never taught a day in his life.

Duncan had closed dozens of Chicago schools and replaced them with charters, often in neighborhoods under pressure from gentrifiers, and fired hundreds of qualified, experienced and largely black teachers. And Duncan had stripped hundreds of Chicago's innovative elected local school councils of neighborhood parents and rank and file teachers, whom reform laws in the 1980s had given veto power over principals contracts (which were limited to 2 years) and Title One funds of their power.

The rest is history. Duncan and Obama soon announced their intention to close and privatize (in their language “turn around”) what they called “5,000 underperforming public schools” across the country, with the “underperformance to be mostly indicated by low scores on standardized tests…

The nation's corporate media conglomerates played a vital role by popularizing the narrative that public schools were “failing” but not covering the waves of coercive testing, teacher firings, parent protests and school privatizations unfolding across the country.

"The national wave of school closings not national news because our nation's elite, from Wall Street and the hedge fund guys to the chambers of commerce and the business establishment, from corporate media and all the elite politicians of both parties from the president down to local mayors and state legislators are working diligently to privatize public education as quickly as possible.

They're not stupid. They've done the polling and the focus groups. They know with dead certainty that the p-word is massively unpopular, and that parents, teachers, students and communities aren't clamoring to hand schools over to greedy profiteers.

Is Betsy DeVos, sister of the owner of the world’s largest private mercenary army, formerly known as Blackwater, Eric Prince and wife of the heir to the Ponzi scheme Empire Amway, really any less qualified than Arne Duncan?  So you may ask yourself, how is it that charter schools are such a cash cow for hedge funds?  From Seattle Education:

Excerpt:

Charter schools: “There’s gold in them thar schools!”

How to Get Rich From Public Schools (Without Actually Educating) There’s gold in them thar schools!  Don’t believe me?

When you drive by an inner city school, it doesn’t exactly look like the Taj Mahal. Does it? Even relatively upscale suburban schools wouldn’t be mistaken for a house on MTV Cribs. And some of those fly-by night charter schools look more like prisons than Shangri-La.  But I’ve got it on good authority that there’s $1.3 trillion available for someone who knows how to take it.  That someone is Harold Levy, an expert on how to get rich through school privatization.

The former chancellor of the New York City School System has begun a second career managing an investment company.  “For-profit education is one of the largest U.S. investment markets, currently topping $1.3 trillion in value,” according to the Website for one of his master classes for rich investors.  Wooo-weee! That’s a lot of money!  To put it in context, that’s more than 10 times the amount the federal government spends on education per year. And it’s all yummy profit!

So how do you get your hands on some of those delicious taxpayer greenbacks?  You gotta’ invest.  No! I don’t mean increase education budgets for traditional public schools that can barely make ends meet! I mean invest in shiny new charter schools.  Here’s how it works.  Lend money to a for-profit company to build a new charter school. If you do it just right, you’re almost guaranteed to double or triple your money in seven years.

You’ll want to take advantage of the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC), which began in 2000 at the end of President Bill Clinton’s administration. This will give you a whooping 39 percent tax credit. But here’s the best part, since it’s money you’re lending, you also get interest on it! And if that weren’t enough, you can piggyback all kinds of additional federal tax credits on top of that – things like historic preservation or job creation or Brownfield’s credits…

But maybe you just aren’t into the whole hedge fund game. Maybe you’re not the banking and investing type.  You can still make oodles of cash off public schools through real estate.  Here’s what you do – buy up cheap inner city properties that can be renovated or repurposed for charter schools. Then when a school privatization firm wants to set up shop in an impoverished city like Philadelphia, Chicago or Detroit, it needs someone like you to open the door.

You’ll get to charge the charter corporation rent and – get this – that’s not price capped! You can charge whatever you want! As long as you’ve got a good spot and no one else is trying to beat you to it, charter corporations are willing to pay bookoo bucks to get their money-making enterprises rolling!..   there are plenty of examples of charter schools paying 25, 30 even up to 43 percent of their money just on rental costs! Ca-Ching!

Democrats and Republicans alike use the example of the New Orleans as the model of success in turning the entire public school system into a charter school Shangri-La.  From BlackAgenda Report.

Excerpt:

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan could not contain his gratitude to Hurricane Katrina, which killed or permanently displaced much of New Orleans’ Black residents. Other whites “wondered why they could not have been fortunate enough to have a black population swept out of town in a matter of days.” Katrina was welcomed by millions of whites as an opportunity for economic and ethnic “renewal” – a rationale that would justify genocide.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Louisiana, and the entire Gulf coast. More than 1,800 people died and thousands more were permanently displaced…   But this tragedy for multitudes was a gift to powerful people who wanted to turn New Orleans into Exhibit A for neo-liberalism…

In 2005 the ruling elites were over overjoyed because nature gave them the chance to do what they could not get away with easily. Overnight, New Orleans lost a huge portion of its poor, black population. The state legislature used the crisis to arbitrarily declare public schools as “failing” and converted them into charters. They fired 7,500 public school employees who won decisions in lower courts but were undone when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear their case. In short, New Orleans became the face of disaster capitalism and ethnic cleansing.

While millions of people watched in horror as the levees broke and homes were flooded, some watched with glee and, as Kristen McQueary of the Tribune editorial board admits, with envy too. They wondered why they could not have been fortunate enough to have a black population swept out of town in a matter of days…

She is not alone in longing for post-apocalyptic disaster capital triumphs. In 2010 her fellow Chicagoan Arne Duncan said that the hurricane was “the best thing to happen to education in New Orleans.” As education secretary his goal has been to undo public education as we know it and expand the control of charter schools throughout the country.

Parents have no rights in the charter school system but that is why they are desirable to people like Duncan and McQueary. There is no public input, no permanent employment. This dystopian hell is perfect in their eyes.

Oh how wonderful those charter schools are, they give parents a choice.  But that choice ends after their child is enrolled in one of those Apartheid charter schools.  From Aljazeera America:

Excerpt:

The resegregation of America’s schools

The Supreme Court ruled 60 years ago this May 17 in Brown v. Board of Education that “segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation,” is unconstitutional…

Today, segregation — both racial and economic — remains the core organizational feature of American public education. In 1980, the typical black student attended a school where 36 percent of students were white. Today, the average black student attends a school where only 29 percent are. Many black and Latino students attend schools where nearly every other student is nonwhite — including in supposed liberal bastions such as New York and Chicago.

Indeed, New York State’s public schools are the most segregated in the nation, according to a March report from the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles. In New York City, 19 of 32 community school districts are less than 10 percent white. That includes all of the Bronx, two-thirds of Brooklyn and half of Manhattan…

“Black children are more racially and socioeconomically isolated today than at any time” since data became available in 1970, Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a recent report.  What’s more, schools attended primarily by nonwhite and poor children are often woefully underfunded.  Take Philadelphia… after years of underfunding, is going through a spectacular collapse in the wake of budget cuts implemented by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett.

Many high schools here are more than 90 percent black. Among the many things city schools lack are sufficient nurses, counselors, music and art teachers and libraries. Things are rather different a few miles over the city line at Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, a leafy suburban town with a median household income of nearly $69,000. There, the funding is stellar. The student body: 8 percent black… 

  

A self-described reform movement, which calls for expanded charter schools and evaluating teacher effectiveness based on test scores, now dominates American public-education policy debates. It has largely abandoned the civil rights movement’s dream of integrated schools and instead blames public management and teachers’ unions for poor students’ troubles. Notably, the Civil Rights Project study found that 73 percent of New York City charters are “apartheid schools,” with less than 1 percent white enrollment.

So who is behind these charter schools?  Who is reaping the benefits of these apartheid schools?  From Mother Jones:

Excerpt:

Who's Really Behind Campbell Brown's Sneaky Education Outfit?

The former CNN anchor says her nonprofit seeks to protect kids from predators in the classroom. Its real agenda may be union-busting. 

Early one morning in July, former CNN anchor Campbell Brown appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe, pen in hand, notes fanned out in front of her. Viewers might have mistaken her as a fill-in host, but Brown had swung by 30 Rock in her new role as a self-styled education reformer, a crusader against sexual deviants in New York City public schools and the backward unions and bureaucrats getting in the way of firing them…

Brown was there to plug her new venture, the Parents' Transparency Project, a nonprofit "watchdog group" that "favors no party, candidate, or incumbent…" Shortly after it was launched in June, PTP trained its sights on the New York mayoral race, asking the candidates to pledge to change the firing process for school employees accused of sexual misconduct.

When several Democratic candidates declined, perhaps fearing they'd upset organized labor, PTP spent $100,000 on a television attack ad questioning whether six candidates, including Republican Joe Lhota and Democrats Bill de Blasio and Anthony Weiner, had "the guts to stand up to the teachers' unions."  Before founding PTP, Brown raised this issue in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in July 2012. But what she failed to disclose was that her husband, Dan Senor, sits on the board of the New York affiliate of Students First, an education lobbying group founded by Michelle Rhee, the controversial former Washington, DC, chancellor.

Rhee made a name for herself as public enemy No. 1 of the teachers' unions and has become the torchbearer of the charter school movement. In 2012, her "bipartisan grassroots organization" backed 105 candidates in state races, 88 percent of them Republicans. (Senor was also the spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority following the invasion of Iraq and served as a foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney in 2012.)…

But there is much more about PTP that is less than transparent, including its sources of funding and its overall agenda. As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, PTP may keep its donors' identities secret and spend money in electoral campaigns, so long as political activity doesn't consume the majority of its time and money.

Despite its nonpartisan billing, Brown's nonprofit used Revolution Agency, a Republican consulting firm, to produce the mayoral attack ad…  Brown failed to disclose that her husband sits on the board of the New York affiliate of Michelle Rhee's education lobbying group… 

Before Brown left CNN three years ago, her evening news show carried a memorable tagline: "No bias. No bull." She can't say the same for her foray into the education wars.

Well it appears CNN’s Campbell Brown and hubby, Dan Senor have their snouts firmly planted in the $1.3 trillion dollar charter school trough.  So much for transparency.   While hogs at the trough like Campbell Brown and Dan Senor line their pockets with taxpayer dollars earmarked for public education, what do the empty shell public schools look like for those left to fight for education scraps?  From the Rutherford Institute:

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In the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.)…  Unfortunately, when you’re a child in the American police state, life is that much worse. 

Microcosms of the police state, America’s public schools contain almost every aspect of the militarized, intolerant, senseless, overcriminalized, legalistic, surveillance-riddled, totalitarian landscape that plagues those of us on the “outside.”

From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment she graduates, she will be exposed to a steady diet of draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech, school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students, standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking…

If your child is fortunate enough to survive his encounter with the public schools, you should count yourself fortunate.  Most students are not so lucky.  By the time the average young person in America finishes their public school education, nearly one out of every three of them will have been arrested. 

More than 3 million students are suspended or expelled from schools every year, often for minor misbehavior, such as “disruptive behavior” or “insubordination…” For instance, a Virginia sixth grader, the son of two school teachers and a member of the school’s gifted program, was suspended for a year after school officials found a leaf (likely a maple leaf) in his backpack that they suspected was marijuana.

Despite the fact that the leaf in question was not marijuana (a fact that officials knew almost immediately), the 11-year-old was still kicked out of school, charged with marijuana possession in juvenile court, enrolled in an alternative school away from his friends, subjected to twice-daily searches for drugs, and forced to be evaluated for substance abuse problems…

It’s not just look-alike drugs that can get a student in trouble under school zero tolerance policies. Look-alike weapons (toy guns—even Lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, even fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in detention.

Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting...   Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers (SROs) have become de facto wardens in the elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepperspray, batons and brute force…

Indeed, the transformation of hometown police departments into extensions of the military has been mirrored in the public schools, where school police have been gifted with high-powered M16 rifles, MRAP armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and other military gear. One Texas school district even boasts its own 12-member SWAT team…

The term “school-to-prison pipeline” refers to a phenomenon in which children who are suspended or expelled from school have a greater likelihood of ending up in jail…  As if it weren’t bad enough that the nation’s schools have come to resemble prisons, the government is also contracting with private prisons to lock up our young people for behavior that once would have merited a stern lecture.

So with all the bipartisan theft of taxpayer dollars from the public school system to fund the cash cow charter school system, what is the up side?  Better education?  Better teachers?  Better results?  From Steve Lendman:

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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos

Long ago, inner city kids like myself had wonderful public schools with dedicated teachers, preparing us for higher education when even top colleges and universities were affordable.  No longer. Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Obama's Race to the Top (RTTT) wrecked public education the way it used to be…

NCLB leaves most kids behind. RTTT is a race to the bottom. Both agendas reflect schemes to destroy a nearly four century tradition.  Public schools in America don’t teach. They’re institutions of intimidation and totalitarian control. They produce uneducated youths unprepared for the adult world they’re about to enter - most facing a working lifetime of rotten jobs with poverty wages along with few or no benefits.

No wonder many end up in prison, America’s most vulnerable, mostly people of color, abused throughout the nation’s sordid history.  Can US primary and secondary education get worse? Instead of appointing an eminent educator, Trump chose the billionaire sister of Blackwater USA Eric Prince, Betsy Devos…

In late November, Trump nominated her to serve as education secretary. On January 31, she cleared the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on a party-line vote.  On February 7, the Senate deadlocked on her nomination 50 - 50 with two Republicans voting nay. Vice President Pence broke the tie, confirming her as Trump’s education secretary.

While Democrats feign outrage, and Republicans declare Trump deserves the cabinet he wants one thing is for certain, the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary is just another day in the life.  Our politicians are just preserving the juggernaut crafted by both Democrats and Republicans.  The real losers are the American people and their children, for us it’s “school’s out.”

By Patricia Baeten