Author: Lansing Scott

“The father of these famous rightwing billionaires was Fred Koch, who started his fortune with $500,000 received from Stalin for his assistance constructing 15 oil refineries in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. A couple of years later, his company, Winkler-Koch, helped the Nazis complete their third-largest oil refinery. The facility produced hundreds of thousands of gallons of high-octane fuel for the Luftwaffe, until it was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1944.

In 1938, the patriarch wrote that “the only sound countries in the world are Germany, Italy and Japan”. To make sure his children got the right ideas, he hired a German nanny. The nanny was such a fervent Nazi that when France fell in 1940, she resigned and returned to Germany. After that, Fred became the main disciplinarian, whipping his children with belts and tree branches.”

Dark Money review: Nazi oil, the Koch brothers and a rightwing revolution

Obama’s Lost Army

This article answers a lot of questions I had about the Obama presidency from the beginning. Team Obama had amassed a huge base of enthusiastic volunteers & supporters from the campaign, using the most sophisticated digital connections available in 2008.

What happened with that massive political force after the election? Pretty much nothing. This piece explains why. Obama’s base was disengaged; his agenda stalled. Hope & change turned to disillusionment & despair. As a result, the GOP recaptured political momentum in a big way in 2010.

It didn’t need to happen that way. But instead of keeping a huge enthusiastic base engaged in the political process, the Obama administration basically said, “Thanks, we’ll take it from here.” And failed. Because DNC bigwigs wanted to make sure they didn’t lose control of their political movement. Instead, they lost control of the whole Congress. Dumb.

We need to make sure this doesn’t happen again. If we get a president Warren or Sanders in 2020, their progressive agenda will face a challenge in Congress. I suspect both Warren & Sanders campaigns understand this political dynamic very well now & won’t make a similar mistake, but we all need to make sure it happens. Because grassroots democracy requires full participation by the grassroots.

>>As we now know, that grand vision for a postcampaign movement never came to fruition. Instead of mobilizing his unprecedented grassroots machine to pressure obstructionist lawmakers, support state and local candidates who shared his vision, and counter the Tea Party, Obama mothballed his campaign operation, bottling it up inside the Democratic National Committee. It was the seminal mistake of his presidency—one that set the tone for the next eight years of dashed hopes, and helped pave the way for Donald Trump to harness the pent-up demand for change Obama had unleashed.

Adam Schiff spoke my mind with these epic questions in Congress yesterday. These are also the questions I’d ask those on the left who are now using a sentence fragment from the Mueller report—cited by an AG who was hired to protect the president—to tell everyone who closely followed this investigation that we were all wrong & foolish & should apologize for how wrong & foolish we’ve been.

To all those (Greenwald, Taibbi, and many others) who have recently been shaming the media & fellow progressives for believing this was an important investigation, I put Schiff’s questions to you: Do you think all of this is okay? Do you really believe that it would have been better if we never knew any of this stuff happened?

Do you think it’s okay to join in the right-wing narrative pronouncing this president innocent based on a BS letter from a cover-up artist without even waiting to see the full report? And then have the nerve to say that it’s the media & fellow progressives who have been jumping to conclusions & owe everyone an apology?

Do you think it’s okay to join in the chorus from Fox Noise & Twitler himself claiming that he’s been the victim here & it’s all the people who have investigated him that deserve to be punished?

Do you really think that’s okay??!!! I don’t think that’s okay.

Great summation by David J. Rothkopf, professor of international relations, political scientist and journalist, from his twitter feed.

“So we know this, Russian government representatives reached out to the Trump campaign in 2015 and undertook multiple initiatives and had multiple points and series of contacts with Team Trump for the next couple years. It’s not just the Trump Tower meeting.

It’s not just the interactions with Wikileaks. It’s not just the Russian ties to Cambridge Analytica. It’s not just Konstantin Kiliminik, a Russian agent working hand in hand with campaign chair Paul Manafort.

It’s not just the ties between Flynn and the Russians. It’s not just the links between the Russians and Eric Prince through the meeting in the Seychelles and beyond that. It’s not just the ties of Wilbur Ross. It’s not just the Trump Organization dealings with Russia.

It’s not just Jared Kushner’s dealings with Russia. It’s not just Kushner and Flynn’s dealing with Kislyak during the campaign. It’s not just the candidate Trump asking for Russian help. It’s not just the GRU hacking for which indictments have already taken place.

We can go on. But let’s not stop before we discuss the many benefits the Russians delivered to Trump via hacking, the dumping of files, the manipulation of social media and other avenues…all to support Trump over Clinton. Nor should we fail to discuss the benefits Trump offered the Russians since he gained power.

There was his covering up their hacking and his efforts to slow investigations of it. There was his denying the conclusions of the intelligence community about the Russians. There were the talks between Flynn and the Russians about waiving sanctions. There were the meetings with Trump when he was president when he handed over classified information to the Russians. There were whatever promises or concessions were made in Helsinki. There was a pattern of placating the Russians or failing to enforce sanctions for months and months. In other words, there was plenty of quid and plenty of quo ($50 million penthouse apartments and the promise of big deals or financing benefits aside.)

From the outreach to Cohen to just the first months of the admin, we can count more than a dozen separate avenues of connection at the highest level. In any normal campaign or administration, just one would set off alarm bells and have the president calling the FBI into action. But instead, in addition to those dozen avenues, the offers that were explicitly or tacitly accepted, benefits to both sides and the overt betrayal of the U.S. to advance the political or economic interests of Trump and those close to him, we have the president obstructing justice.

Actively obstructing. Threatening to fire all those getting closer to the truth. Lying and lying and lying some more and urging staff to lie and witness tampering and so on.

This is not a case of possible collusion. This is sweeping, multi-layered, high level conspiracy led by Vladimir Putin and the Russian intelligence community, and involving the active cooperation and complicity of a man who was a candidate for president and then president as well as his entire team.

This is the biggest scandal in the history of the American presidency and there is not another that is close to it. But that is not all we know.

The DoJ believes the president of the United States directed the commission of campaign finance felonies as a candidate. The NYT produced extensive and compelling evidence of serial tax fraud by the Trump family. The state of NY is investigating fraud in their charities.

The House will soon begin investigation of Trump money laundering [RICO]. A case involving his violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause is under way. In other words, as massive as the Russia scandal is, it might not be the biggest Trump scandal.

It might not even be the scandal that brings Trump down. But what we know is that all of these or any of these scandals must bring him down. This criminal has no business being the White House. He has no business walking freely among us.
2019 is going to be the worst year of Donald Trump’s life except for all those that will follow it. These cases will be investigated further and then proven. Some may be prosecuted while he is in office. Some may wait until he leaves office.

But someday this is already certain, no senior American public official–not Richard Nixon, not Andrew Johnson–will go down in more disgrace or be more reviled by history than Donald Trump. And that is as it should be.”

 

by Lansing Scott

Drunk Uncle Sam is on the lam. He escaped from DC and has been hitchhiking across the country, sleeping under bridges, & drinking his Thunderbird for months now. Hes almost reached Vancouver, BC, where he will formally apply for political asylum.

Asked to explain his sudden departure from his job as personification of the United States of America, Sam said, “Are you fucking kidding me? Like anybody would want this job right now? They wanted me to lead a campaign encouraging ICE agents to separate babies from their mothers. That was the final straw. Luckily Id skipped town before they could make me recruit support for that rapist judge Kavanaugh.”

Asked why he was seeking political asylum in Canada, Sam said, “I’ve been in an abusive relationship with this government. I cant take it any more! Were all in serious danger unless we vote against Republican control of government on Nov. 6.”

Pointing his finger at the camera, drunk Uncle Sam said, “I WANT YOU to get out the vote in this election! Im not fucking kidding! DO IT!”

My pet peeve of the moment:
I keep hearing progressives (including Amy Goodman today) refer to right-wing extremists as “conservatives.” Please people! There is nothing conservative about these far-right extremists who are working to destroy US public norms & institutions. It’s like calling anti-choice people “pro-life.” They are no such thing. Words matter! Do not accept the language of our adversaries! #ConservativeMyAss #wordsmatter