Lebanon’s Leaders Resign over deaths of 200, but Trump refuses Accountability for 163,462 Deaths
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Monday, the prime minister of Lebanon and his entire cabinet resigned en masse, reports Bassem Mroue at the Associated […]
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Was anyone surprised when Republican elites started flocking to Biden-- [bad link - try this ] first in a trickle and now in a steady stream?
So why would anyone be surprised that Biden-- who has spent his entire career in politics fellating Wall Street-- would be embraced by the banksters and junior-banksters who were FDR's and the working class' sworn enemies but have been assiduously cultivated by the Bill Clinton breed of Democrats?
Over the weekend, the NY Times published a piece by Kate Kelly, Shane Goldmacher and Thomas Kaplan, The Wallets of Wall Street Are With Joe Biden, if Not the Hearts that will thrill many Democrats and chill many others. The story barely mentions Bernie-- just once when he and Elizabeth Warren were dismissed-- but Bernie, fear of Bernie to be precise, was the impetus for Biden's rise among the financial elites. This story though is about how Trump is pushing Wall Street into the Biden camp. After donating millions to Biden to beat Bernie, that money "helped him build a strong lead in national polls." But with the threat of Bernie off the table, what would Wall Street do next?
"Wall Street," wrote the Times trio, "has fared extraordinarily well under Mr. Trump: deep cuts to taxes, slashed regulations and, until the pandemic hit, record stock prices. But in recent months, dozens of bankers, traders and investors said in interviews, a sense of outrage and exhaustion over Mr. Trump’s chaotic style of governance-- accelerated by his poor coronavirus response-- had markedly shifted the economic and political calculus in their industry. [...]
From DownWithTyranny, this link. Headlined there:
A Gamble That Paid Off: When Bernie Was Riding High, Wall St. Saw A Distressed Asset In Biden-- And Bought Low
A continuation -
In May and June alone, the Biden Action Fund raised more than $11.5 million. That tally-- a good measuring stick for Wall Street support because it was set up in part to draw contributions from that industry-- included $710,000 from Josh Bekenstein, a co-chair of Bain Capital, and his wife.
But Wall Street money has proved to be a double-edged sword for Democrats, as Hillary Clinton discovered when she was hounded four years ago for delivering private speeches to Goldman Sachs and other firms. Progressive voters and activists-- many of whom backed Mr. Biden’s more liberal rivals in the primary-- are particularly leery of any appearance of coziness with the finance industry.
Leery... imagine that! Why would progressives be leery of the working class' historical enemies? Everything that is wrong with the world... follow the money. Our Times trio wrote that when asked about Wall Street’s role in Biden’s current bid, the campaign spits out all the Biden bullshit about how he fights for the common man, which is quite at odds with his repulsive record of fighting against the common man. Our trio hates Trump so they refrain from noting that although they reluctantly admit that "As a senator from Delaware, Mr. Biden has for decades had relationships with credit-card companies there, but less of a presence in the financial power center of New York. He has counted a small circle of finance executives as supporters. Marc Lasry, the co-founder of Avenue Capital, for example, held a fund-raiser for Mr. Biden during his first run for president in 1988, and continues to back him now. The former hedge-fund executive Eric Mindich and the short-seller James Chanos have been supporters from well before the pandemic began. It doesn’t hurt that Mr. Biden has also not crusaded against Wall Street, the way his primary rivals Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders did. Financial executives mostly seem to believe that while their taxes would rise in a Biden administration, they would not be subjected to the kind of 'fat cat' rhetoric that soured some of their relationships with former President Barack Obama." Feel better now? How about this then? "'Rich people are just as patriotic as poor people,' Mr. Biden told donors at a fund-raiser at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan last year. At a Brookings Institution gathering in 2018, he said, 'I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble.'" Biden is wrong; they are.
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The giving has been so robust that the Biden campaign is now asking for at least $1 million in donations before it will confirm the former vice president’s attendance at an event, say bundlers.
As the checks roll in, the Biden campaign has been carefully cultivating its relationship with the business community, with a focus on Wall Street. The outreach has included offering private briefings ahead of major policy rollouts and dangling various donor packages for the upcoming, and mostly virtual, Democratic National Convention.
The visuals are great, and the current DWT set of posts - beyond the one quoted - are worth a look before they scroll off-screen. Also, the post from which the quote was drawn continues apace, discussing Reagan years, and contrasting US with our European counterparts. Link:
https://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/
A post from yesterday was updated with a "downfund the military" cite to a reposted item at Jaun Cole's website, plus commentary.
The military. CNN gives us as a pundit the first black general to become Secretary of State, when we all know he lied his cred away completely, fostering Bush getting us into the Iraq quagmire.
Deference to the military mind that did that, as someone to believe, there's a disconnect. Yes the man is bright and yes, he likely is saddened by how Iraq turned out and his role in selling that bag to us, but don't rehab him to the point of offering him as a pundit to explain things to US, (who without him and CNN presumably could not figure things out on our own). Where's the sense to that?
Insult? Plenty. Sense? Not much if any.
So go figure. Beyond simple piling on, why do it? Powell's burned his trustworthiness. It is that clear and simple. A step better than Geraldo Rivera on cred, or not, the level is set at the level of a bad joke.
Is the message that a general loyal to the last awful Republican president before Trump is currently putting aside party loyalty to trash Trump? Is that supposed to be a meaningful measure of something? What? That we do not already know Trump's limitations without Powell's remarks?
Is it that Powell is being offered as a paradigm figure to the black community? That's not saying much in favor of CNN regard for black people's discernment.
He did advance and prosper in the military's up-or-out ranks. So what? He sold it all away cheaply over Iraq, selling false intelligence he had to know as bogus when he spoke it. Frederick Douglass seems a better paradigm, but he's too dead from long ago to be offered as a CNN talking head. Pretty much the same with Bob Marley.
Is it that finding a black Republican who will repudiate Trump is that difficult? That is not saying a lot about black Republicans' diversity of thought or willingness to critique. Scott of South Carolina stays party-loyal over Trump. Who else?
To reduce our reliance on policing and prisons, racial justice leaders are urging that resources devoted to law enforcement be used instead to address the root causes of violence, such as the lack of affordable housing, health care, education and jobs.
[...] Making the necessary investments in our basic social safety net, however, will require redirecting far more than the $115 billion spent annually on policing.
The Pentagon, which was granted a whopping $740.5 billion by the Senate on July 23, should be next on the chopping block.
At the same time, the Senate rejected an amendment put forward by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, to cut 10% of the military’s budget, despite being supported by a majority of American voters.
This would have been a small but needed step in the right direction. However, it would not even have rolled back the increase in military spending since President Donald Trump took office.
In the House, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-California, introduced a far more ambitious nonbinding resolution, which calls for $350 billion in cuts to the Pentagon. Similarly, the Breathe Act — championed by Reps. Ayanna Pressley, D-Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan — recommends “dramatically” reducing the Department of Defense’s budget.
While many would dismiss the idea of defunding the armed forces as beyond the pale, some perspective is needed. The Pentagon’s bloated budget could, in fact, be lopped in half, and the United States would still have the largest military in the world, by far.
These legislative proposals are following the lead of the Poor People’s Campaign, which has identified $350 billion in cuts to the Pentagon, and the Movement for Black Lives, which for years has called for an even larger, 50% reduction in military spending.
Organizers have the Pentagon in their sights for good reason. Though police officers kill roughly 1,000 people each year, the death toll of the so-called War on Terror is exponentially higher.
[...] The Pentagon also plays a critical role in fueling the militarization of police. Thanks to the Defense Department’s 1033 program, which the Senate failed to curb this week, more than $7 billion of military-grade equipment has been funneled from battlefields abroad to local police departments in recent decades. From drones and mine-resistant armored vehicles to flash-bang grenades and tear gas, these weapons of war are now being turned on nonviolent protesters.
Defunding the Pentagon would also provide a much-needed boost to our economy, which is reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic.
[links in original omitted] Tons of fat to be trimmed. Policy thought here at Crabgrass is to start by halving, at least, the enrollments of the military academies. Getting fewer invested in sucking federal money away from better aims being the goal, trimming the academies makes sense.
With the bulk of military spending aside
from payroll and unneeded bases around the world and around the nation -
everyone in Congress aware of what's in district that way - closing
bases is a great idea. Why not. Don't just change names away from
Confederate generals, shutter them. But still private sector profiteers
of death are the big ticket spending hole.
War mongering does naught to improve quality of life stateside. It just consumes. It escalates the deficit, and who'd want that? Never mind the split between rhetoric and actuality, those wanting war mongering have vested interests in "War Is a Racket" dimensions Smedley Butler wrote of after the first World War.
So, stop militarization of police forces, spend on US to make citizen live both better and more secure, and set the war mongers to more fertile daily jobs and aims, swords to plowshares, etc.
That the oligarchs and plutocrat-owners of MSM want to keep citizens restless and insecure, we know that, but we outnumber them. If organized to where ballots, fairly counted, could be invested in true progressive candidates who'd deliver, things would be better. Better, that is, for US. For the inner party leech element, perhaps things reformed would erode something they treasure - power and control shared with the oligarchs, private sector and among them - who own the lobbyists and politicians who serve the oligarchs. Can you say "Mitch McConnell?" Can you say "Chuck Schumer?" (Not Mitchell nor Charles - they personalize their names for US, while bending US over.)
Reform has to start somewhere and if it is to be bottom up, it starts local - downfunding policing perhaps to start - and then taking away the perks the ruling class has, by its class warfare imposed upon US with MSM deceits and crooked politicians whose love of lobbyists exceeds love of liberty or duty; that is the big picture goal.
Not in my lifetime, not at my age, but the young are the hope. The Boomers had their chance but got managed into niches opposed to one another by ruler divide and conquer simplicities. And wow, today we hear a lot of "identity politics" which is today's buzzword. A euphemism for divide and conquer. When you have one party's sorry offering saying if you favor Trump over me you ain't black, black people - at least on the Internet - see that as manipulative and condescending. Which it is, as well is blind dumbness auguring big time bad times; with at the margin, yeah a bit better than Trump, but unsavory and unpromising and nasty.
Beside that, I believe Tara Reade. Clyburn and associates have done us in. Bloomberg's half a billion spending; and some deny there is a class war against the 99% - against US? Such a denial, or indifference to it, is killing us prematurely by overwork and stress, and by cheap stupid handling of a pandemic by the sad idiot who has to be moved out.
These are our best and brightest?
FURTHER: Shooting down Boomer hope. It was done. It was policy. No murderer was jailed. CHOP shootings, overnight, at Seattle's "zone" shut down the more localized event enthusiasm. No murderer jailed. Murderers should be jailed.
Link. [somehow this became a post headline with no body. learning the new Blogger interface has its fun and games]
The one-minute ad, which was shared exclusively with The Associated Press before its digital and television release on Thursday, is meant to drum up support among Black Americans, a key constituency for Biden, ahead of November's general election. The ad, titled “Better America,” also takes a direct swipe at Trump, without mentioning the Republican president by name.
“We must choose to fight for that better America,” the narrator states. “And just like our ancestors who stood up to the violent racists of a generation ago, we will stand up to this president and say, ‘No more,’ because America is better than him. So we choose to be bigger. We choose to be bolder. We choose to bring back justice, respect and dignity to this country. We choose Joe Biden to lead us all towards that American promise together.”
African Americans have largely supported Biden’s presidential bid and have been credited with single-handedly transforming the Democratic presidential race and cementing his status as front-runner after his decisive primary win in South Carolina.
But Black Americans, who form one of the party’s most loyal voting blocs, have been hit doubly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic — they have died from the virus at disproportionate rates across the country, and they’ve borne the brunt of its economic fallout. And in recent months, historic protests against police brutality and systemic racism have changed the national discourse around race, thrusting it into a national spotlight and at the heart of the presidential campaign.
The ad is part of the Biden campaign's planned $280 million digital and television ad buy that was announced Wednesday and will run through the fall.
