Tag Archives: presidency

Can You Steal a Presidency That Doesn’t Exist? by Martin Sieff

Posted on January 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

About one out of thirty-three people watched not-the-president’s inauguration, or at least had the television on as he droned. It was a day of the living dead. From Martin Sieff at strategic-culture.org:

The presidential inauguration of Joe Biden passed over peacefully: But then it wasn’t a presidential inauguration at all.

The dark genius vision of Philip K. Dick, America’s Kafka, greatest and therefore most widely feared and ignored of U.S. writers proved unerringly true again. The Reality of Things is far too difficult, far too disturbing to even attempt any more. Just hang a a handwritten tiny note on any piece of junk and 330 million Americans will happily believe that it is more real than reality. Though in reality, not even that.

The official viewing figures of the Biden inauguration on January 20 are now in, and they have even been published. They have predictably been presented as more proof of the restored triumph of American “democracy.” Yet the simple figures took an extraordinarily different story.

The four great national U.S. television networks – CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox – together enjoyed a combined a combined audience of 10.5 million viewers for the Inauguration and its festivities.

Let me repeat that: 10.5 million viewers. Out of a national population of one third of a billion.

Bad sitcoms and witless, violent brainless crime dramas on television prime time get scrapped for posting figures better than that.

Yet 81 million people we are told – more Americans than ever before in the nations 232 year constitutional history – voted for Biden against that Threat to All That is Holy and Decent Donald Trump.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Government, Horseshit, Media, Politics

Tagged ,

America’s Recline And Flail Goes On, by MN Gordon

Posted on November 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

Whoever is president will be stuck with an economy on a life support drip feed of debt. From MN Gordon at economicprism.com:

Ok, so, when your pally is a doorstep
Step over him and coat
When your mommy is a French press
In a café called no hope
Your belly aches
On benches where buses never go
Now tally up the misprints
And tell them told you so

– Tell Them Told You So, by Swingin’ Utters

The Worst Job In The World

Nothing’s shocking in 2020.  Not lockdowns.  Not pandemic hysteria.  And certainly not election chaos.  To the latter, it was expected all along.

At the time of this writing, and perhaps with the aid of fraud, it appears Kamala Harris will be the next President of the United States.  Here we’ll pause to offer a word of congratulations.  Well done, Ms. Harris.  You’ve just signed up for the worst job in the world.

No doubt, the rewards of being President, these days, are few and far between.  Just ask President Trump.  The work hours are terrible, the pay is far less than that of a corporate CEO, and you’re endlessly surrounded by shabby politicians.

They laugh at all your dull jokes.  They tell you what you want to hear.  They expect to be rewarded with cushy Cabinet positions because they stumped for you in Cleveland or some other mistake of a place.

What’s more, the hand towels aboard Air Force One have the shoddy over washed roughness of those at a turnpike Motel 6.  With the exception of being a flatus odor judge, we can’t think of a smellier job than being President of the United States.  Can you?

There’s little privacy.  Newsrooms across the planet psychoanalyze your every facial expression; many conclude you’re mentally ill.  You can hardly wander the halls of your own home in your bathrobe – during night hours no less – without it making front page news.

Our advice to Harris: Quit while you’re ahead.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Debt, Economy, Government, Politics

Tagged ,

Which Branch of Government Is the Worst? A Ranked List, Ryan McMaken

Posted on November 23, 2019 | Leave a comment

The permanent bureaucracy makes the top of the list, probably because it’s both permanent and a bureaucracy. From Ryan McMaken at mises.org:

The US federal government is divided up into a variety of institutions, with the three main “branches” of government designed to compete against each other. Theoretically, these three branches were initially thought to place checks on the other branches of government, thus minimizing abuses of power by the federal government overall.

Things haven’t really worked out that way. Thanks to the rise of political parties, coordination between the branches — along party lines — has often replaced competition between the branches. Moreover, as political parties vie for the a controlling majority in the various branches, they are loath to limit the power of these institutions lest these partisans limit their own power in the process. Nor do the different branches represent different socio-economic groups in the manner imagined by John Adams in his Defense of the Constitutions.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Government, History, Intelligence, Law, Military, Politics

Tagged , , ,

Trump vs. Warren And The Fake Battle Against The Elites, by Brandon Smith

Posted on November 22, 2019 | 1 comment

A classic pattern in American politics is for a “reformer” to come along, push all the right hot buttons and attack the right people and institutions, get elected president, and then become part of the establishment he attacked. From Brandon Smith at alt-market.com:

It seems like a simple and easy to identify pattern, but for some reason the public keeps falling for the same old globalist tricks. A well-worn tactic the money elites use to endear certain puppet political candidates to Americans is to encourage those candidates to use anti-elitist rhetoric, only to then flood their cabinets with those same elites once they get into office. The rule of politics seems to be, “Say whatever you want to get the people on your side, but once you’re in office, you do as we tell you…”

These candidates will aggressively attack the banks, corporations and wall street, lamenting the rapid decline of the middle class or “working class”. They will point out that a mere handful of ultra-rich, the top 1%, control more wealth than nearly half of the population combined. They will seize upon the travesties of the poor and argue for “change” to bring balance back to the system. They will pretend to expose the crimes of the banking cabal and the upper echelons of Wall Street. They will put on a grand show; and then, they will do the bidding of their masters and play the role they were groomed for…

Americans are suckers for fake “people’s candidates” and always have been.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Government, Media, Politics

Tagged , , ,

Rule by Fiat: National Crises, Fake Emergencies and Other Dangerous Presidential Powers, by John W. Whitehead

Posted on February 20, 2019 | Leave a comment

Shutting down the government until he got his way on the wall would have been vastly preferable to declaring an emergency and Trump exercising emergency powers. This will come back and bite supporters who are cheering his move on the ass. From John W. Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”—Richard Nixon

Who pays the price for the dissolution of the constitutional covenant that holds the government and its agents accountable to the will of the people?

We all do.

This ill-advised decision by President Trump to circumvent the Constitution’s system of checks and balances by declaring a national emergency in order to build a border wall constitutes yet another expansion of presidential power that exposes the nation to further constitutional peril.

It doesn’t matter that the legal merits of this particular national emergency will be challenged in court.

The damage has already been done.

As reporter Danny Cevallos points out, “President Donald Trump only had to say ‘national emergency’ to dramatically increase his executive and legal authority. By simply uttering those words … Trump immediately unleashed dozens of statutory powers available to a president only during a state of emergency. The power of the nation’s chief executive to declare such an emergency knows few strictures — it was designed that way.”

We have now entered into a strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.

This attempt by Trump to rule by fiat merely plays into the hands of those who would distort the government’s system of checks and balances and its constitutional separation of powers beyond all recognition.

This is about unadulterated power in the hands of the Executive Branch.

This is about corporate greed disguised as a national need.

Most of all, however, this is about the rise of an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Government

Tagged ,

Why This Iraq War Veteran Has Created Panic In The Democratic Party, by Tyler Durden

Posted on January 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

Tulsi Gabbard running for the Democratic presidential nomination will make that moribund race much more interesting. For one thing, she’s not a fossil. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Hawaiian Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s just announced 2020 presidential bid has unleashed fury from both the right and the left, but more so from within her own party, and especially from corners long focused on regime change in Syria and who generally lobby for a more muscular “boots on the ground” foreign policy from Ukraine to Syria to Afghanistan. Some pundits have already gone so far as to say “keep an eye on her finances,” suggesting illegal foreign campaign funding through Damascus or Moscow.

Congresswoman and Army reserve officer Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii

Both neocons and liberal interventionists alike have united to slam the anti-war progressive as “Assad’s mouthpiece in Washington” and an “Assad apologist” and of course there’s the customary “Putin puppet” slur — the latter because as journalist Michael Tracey puts it, she “hasn’t been sufficiently Russiagate-crazy for Democrats”.

The former charge was regularly sounded after her early 2017 trip to Damascus to meet privately with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a diplomatic gesture to personally investigate the West’s regime change efforts and its consequences for the Syrian people. The move was slammed by fellow Congressional Democrats, who raised questions over possible violation of the Logan Act.

Continue reading→

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Government, Politics, War

Tagged ,

Break the Cycle: In 2019, Say No to the Government’s Cruelty, Brutality and Abuse, by John W. Whitehead

Posted on January 3, 2019 | 1 comment

The Founders are spinning in their graves. From John W. Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”—Edmund Burke

Folks, it’s time to break the cycle.

Let’s make 2019 the year we say no to the laundry list of abuses—cruel, brutal, immoral, unconstitutional and unacceptable—that have been heaped upon us by the government for way too long.

Let’s make 2019 the year we stop living in a state of utter denial, desensitized to the government’s acts of violence, accustomed to reports of government corruption, and anesthetized to the sights and sounds of Corporate America marching in lockstep with the police state.

Let’s make 2019 the year we refuse to allow the government’s abusive behavior to be our new normal. There is nothing normal about egregious surveillance, roadside strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, censorship, retaliatory arrests, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, indefinite detentions, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, or pay-to-play politicians.

Here’s just a small sampling of what we suffered through in 2018.

The government failed to protect our lives, liberty and happiness. The predators of the police state wreaked havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government didn’t listen to the citizenry, refused to abide by the Constitution, and treated the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers shot unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—were armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies were allowed to fleece taxpayers. Government technicians spied on our emails and phone calls. And government contractors made a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

The president became more imperial. Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents (Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.) have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill. The powers amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The presidency itself has become an imperial one with permanent powers.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Debt, Economy, Foreign Policy, Government, History, Intelligence, Law, Media, Military, Morality, Politics, Privacy, Surveillance, Taxes, War

Tagged , , , ,