Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 03, 2020 3:00 pm

Jacking up the drama....
White House Fenced In: Donald Trump to Spend Election Night

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One day ahead of the US presidential election, workers move fencing outside the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 02 November 2020. | Photo: EFE/EPA

Published 2 November 2020 (15 hours 33 minutes ago)

‘Non-scalable’ fence to be installed around the president’s residence ahead of election day, as Washington DC fears mass unrest if results not clear.


A new fence will be set up encircle the White House and surrounding areas in the lead to the November 3 election day as law enforcement in Washington DC is concerned about a possible increase of election-related protests and riots, especially if the outcome of the elections is not clear, CNN reported.

Image

The fence will encompass the Ellipse and Lafayette Square, and 250 national guardsmen will be added to the security perimeter reporting to Metro police. They will be on standby to respond to any social unrest.

But DC Metro police have been preparing its officers for well over a year, as it does ahead of every general election, ensuring that they are prepared to handle everything from civil
disturbance to crowd control to potential disruptions to metro transit, Patrick Burke, executive director of the Washington, DC, Police Foundation, previously told CNN. Police have also been working with intelligence officials to ensure the security of Washington, DC's airspace in the event of an attack from above, Burke added, as they routinely do when preparing for moments of heightened anxiety.


According to another report, the fence around the entire perimeter is described as "non- scalable." It will be similar to the ones used earlier this year when mass protests were
happening near the complex in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota. Many business owners in large US cities, including Washington DC, have similarly pessimistic expectations and have been boarding up their shops against possible vandalism and looting.

The extra layer of security marks the most high-profile example to date of authorities preparing for unrest following this year's election, particularly if there is no clear winner come November 4.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/The ... -0017.html
Well, mebbe it'll keep 'em in....Better, air drop the Biden crowd in there and make it a cage match. I'd watch.

This is as much provocation as precaution. It is a Secret Service order, part of the administration.The prez would love some 'violence' in order to play sheriff(and stepping out your door might be all it takes....) Which is not to endorse timidity, but rather to advise some serious and quick organization. Is BLM up to it? Regardless, tonight is proly not the night to hit the streets willy-nilly, mebbe a day or two, in order to get some clarity, and organizing.

I expect he will back down, tho it may take a day or two, and will not press for a coup unless there's a lot to encourage him and he does not get major discouragement from his class peers, which I do expect. In which case it will get very messy. Take care brothers & sisters, could be our 'Bloody Sunday'.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Sun Nov 08, 2020 1:17 pm

The unkindest cut:

Image

I must admit that I'll take some small pleasure watching this oaf twist in the wind as the rats bail out wholesale and his 'stock' drops like a stone. It ain't gonna change much of anything. Capitalism wins again.

So far the reactionary violence predicted in some quarters has failed to materialize. Might still, to some relatively insignificant degree but as with Trump's legal challenges ain't no game changers, this deal is done. There could have been some shenanigans, thumbs on the scale, to ensure this result but I don't think it was necessary. I'm sure it was a contingency.

'Sorry for the interruption and now back to our regularly scheduled Austerity, Imperialism and Environmental Doom.'
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 09, 2020 3:55 pm

News > U.S.
What To Expect From Trump in the Final Months of His Presidency

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U.S. President Donald J. Trump departs the White House for his golf resort in Virginia. Washington, DC, USA. November 08, 2020. | Photo: EFE/EPA/Pool/Mike Theiler

Published 8 November 2020

The outgoing president of the United States, Donald Trump, is not going to disappear in silence, according to experts, who predict that the next two months will be full of stratagems to dispute the results of the elections.

In this context, analysts are concerned about a latent possibility: that Trump will turn the transition into an exercise in abuse of power, personal enrichment, self-indulgence and purging.

On the one hand, the president's legal team, led by his advisor and former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, claims to have concrete cases in which Republican observers were prevented from entering the vote count rooms.

On the other hand, the authorities of the affected states themselves, some Republicans, categorically reject these statements and the first legal skirmishes have not had any effect.

The results from all states have to be confirmed, with all possible appeals and litigation resolved, before December 8.

The urgency is due to the fact that Americans do not vote directly for their president, but for the people who will represent their state in the Electoral College.

The Electoral College must meet on December 14 for the pledges from each state to cast their votes, which will be counted in a session of both houses of Congress on January 6.

In other aspects of the issue, there is the farewell and closing ceremony of Trump, both events full of uncertainties conditioned by the explosive character of the president, of whom "we will know more in these next two months than in the last four years," in the words of former advisor Miles Taylor to The Washington Post.

In addition to the persistent rumors of a new 'punishment purge' among his government team, it is possible that he will use his powers to grant pardons, with a purpose never seen before: to grant himself immunity from any future investigation of crimes, scholars say.

In this scenario, the transition process will take a back seat; from President-elect Joe Biden's team, neither support nor concession is expected.

Time for Trump to put his big-boy pants on, and admit he lost.
Unlikely to happen, even though all filed legal challenges would not remotely change the election result, even if they were granted. Facts matter in court, as they do in fighting COVID.

— Andrew Weissmann (@AWeissmann_) November 7, 2020
According to sources in his campaign to the aforementioned media, the idea is to take advantage of the broad powers granted to them by the Presidential Transition Act to avoid the obstacles that the outgoing president's allies could prepare for them.

A report issued last August by the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) fears that Trump will set himself two simple goals in this scenario: destroying incriminating evidence and making the most money as possible.

"People of all political orientations and ideologies who participated in all of our drills are confident that Trump will prioritize self-preservation and self-interest rather than ensuring an orderly administrative transition to his successor," the document concluded, published last August on the Quartz news website.

The TIP contemplates, for example, the possibility that the president will multiply his stays at his residence and headquarters from Mar-a-Lago, in Florida, with the consequent monetary diversion to his private companies as those in charge of feeding the security entourage that would be forced to accompany him.

Until mid-September, these visits totaled 1.1 million dollars in federal funds, which went directly into the coffers of the president's organization, Trump Enterprises.

But more realistic is the option that the president could resort to amnesty to protect those consultants who violate presidential record protection laws if they destroy documents that compromise Trump himself.

That variant was highlighted by USA Today; however, these are uncharted waters because it is not very clear what can and cannot be forgiven.

For all intents and purposes, the result is the same: 'He is going to use this period strategically to try, basically, to protect himself, his family and his money,' the former prosecutor of the special investigation into the Trump campaign, Andrew Weissmann, told the Washington Post.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Wha ... -0004.html

I think these some pretty good guesses. Rage, flailing, last ditch self-aggrandizement and CYA. What we will not see is Trump at the head of an army of play-patriots 'taking over the government. In fact I do not see him giving much vocal support to his super-fans at all, not if he wants to get out of this with his patrimony. Therein lay the rumored division of his inner-circle: those who would cut their losses in order to get some still substantial inheritance and those who, perhaps because of anticipated legal liability see total victory as their only chance to avoid serious consequences. If Trump goes away without too much fuss, without any extra-legal bullshit, he will remain rich and out of jail, however diminished. But if he don't play ball with his peers he will be de-classed and see the bary place.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 11, 2020 3:10 pm

The Trump presidency will end on Jan. 20, 2021. What is not clear is just how much more damage Trump will do to the country before that date arrives.

<snip>

Two days after Election Day, the former chief security officer at Facebook, Alex Stamos, tweeted, "This is the most intense online disinformation event in U.S. history."

https://us.cnn.com/2020/11/10/opinions/ ... index.html
Really? Whadda bout them Russians? Has any of these putzes even mentioned 'Russians' in the past week? Damage to 'the country'? Mebbe perhaps bourgeois democracy?

********************************************
The flurry of changes, announced by the Department of Defense in a statement roughly 24 hours after President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, have put officials inside the Pentagon on edge and fueled a growing sense of alarm among military and civilian officials, who are concerned about what could come next.

<snip>

The sources said the effort may be because Esper and his team were pushing back on a premature withdrawal from Afghanistan that would be carried out before the required conditions on the ground were met, and other pending security issues.

<snip>

Democrats were alarmed by the developments.
"It is hard to overstate just how dangerous high-level turnover at the Department of Defense is during a period of presidential transition. The top policy professional in the Department resigning the day after the Secretary of Defense was fired could mark the beginning of a process of gutting the DoD -- something that should alarm all Americans," House Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington state, said in a statement Tuesday.

<snip

The official added that no one at the Pentagon has an understanding as to what the grand plan is.

https://us.cnn.com/2020/11/10/politics/ ... index.html
Oh, I'm not alarmed, a little schadenfreude perhaps.

<snip>

And at the same time, when that tantrum involves the firing of the secretary of defense (via Twitter), threats of future firings that expose the national security apparatus to genuine instability and risk, and concerted and purposeful GOP attacks on the legitimacy of voting and the very concept of respecting election results, it is hard to dismiss it as mere empty theater.

<snip>

....Trump himself is engaged in little more than grifting the night away, and also that watching the putative machinery of democracy turned again toward the horrific spectacle of delegitimizing democracy itself is pretty freaking chilling.

<snip>

Consider, too, the nature of many of the election challenges that have been filed thus far. A good many rest in claims that pervasive cheating and fraud are everywhere—the whole system is rigged—and Republicans needed more access to ferret it out, by way of closer election monitors or more records. Those aren’t actual harms; they are paranoid delusions. Yet in the span of a week, this kind of allegation has poisoned significant quadrants of the population against the election results. No evidence is needed, under this theory. The mere conviction that it probably happened is sufficient.

<snip>

But the reason the days since the election have been so unsettling is that this one fixed and robust pillar of democratic rule—that the people cast votes and the votes count—is the very thing now under attack, not just with the careless words of a wounded president, but with the concerted alignment of a party that cannot now seem to accept anything short of a total vanquishing of its opponents.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... -rule.html
These liberal shmoes are correct to worry about de-legitimising our bogus democracy. As with 'fake news', another brick falls out of the wall. Anything that slows down the savagery emanating from the Pentagon is a good thing. That the Republicans seek advantage is a given, that they would kill the golden goose of duopoly is simple minded, Mitch & Co know how this works.

My current sig line is still in effect.It ain't gonna be pretty or painless.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Sun Nov 15, 2020 3:42 pm

NEW PENTAGON CHIEF ANNOUNCES TROOP WITHDRAWAL FROM MIDDLE EAST: "ENOUGH OF WARS"
14 Nov 2020 , 5:30 pm .

After being appointed Secretary of the Department of Defense by Donald Trump, Christopher Miller gave his first message to the American troops: "This is the critical phase in which we transition our efforts from a leadership role to a support one." Miller said. "We are not a people of perpetual war - it is the antithesis of everything we stand for and what our ancestors fought for. All wars must end."

With those words, the Pentagon chief projected what could be an attempt to promote the withdrawal of military troops abroad during the last weeks of Donald Trump's term, a plan that has been being discussed at least in Afghanistan .

"Ending wars requires commitment and collaboration. We faced the challenge; we gave everything. Now, it is time to go home," reads the memorandum sent to the Pentagon offices.

The presiding mogul fired former Defense Secretary Mark Esper a few days after the mainstream US media declared Joe Biden the winner of the presidential election.

The Task & Purpose website produced a profile of Chris Miller where it says that he was in the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) and participated in the military intervention in Afghanistan. He served "as director of the National Counterterrorism Center and has served as undersecretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflicts, as well as served on the staff of the National Security Council."

https://misionverdad.com/nuevo-jefe-del ... de-guerras

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Well, there's a lot who would argue that we are indeed a 'people of perpetual war', as would I and factual history. Nonetheless, "judge them by their actions, not their word", eh? And if this horrid administration did , almost by accident and in a backhanded way, end some foreign occupations, or better a bunch of them, who's to complain? Other than the jingos and 'masters of war'? Why, the Democrats, of course, who understandably are reflexively anti-Trump, and the historical 'war party' in any case. But not just them but their various leftish hangers-on. Peaceniks all, until the Pavlovian response kicks in. Then the cognitive dissonance is deployed , illogical and over emotional, the finished product looking something like humanitarian imperialism. Cause it always ends as "My Kaiser is better than your Kaiser." for the 'shy Trump voters' of the class war.

I wish the acting SoD good luck in this endeavour, though nothing else. Better move smartly tho, your shelf life is limited.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 18, 2020 3:34 pm

Freedom Rider: The Real Trump Coup
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist 18 Nov 2020

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Freedom Rider: The Real Trump Coup

Trump puts whiteness first and that means he will always have support and Republican leaders know it.

“The elites have created a failed state and that produces great cynicism and loss of trust.”

Joe Biden has garnered more than 270 electoral votes and thus is president elect. Ordinarily that information would be sufficient and the country would have accepted his victory and moved on, regardless of political affiliations or opinions about the winner.

But nothing in American politics has been ordinary since Donald Trump entered the scene. He announced, via Twitter of course, that he concedes nothing and declared that the election was rigged against him. In usual Trumpian fashion he doesn’t care what the media think, what Republican leaders think and he certainly doesn’t care what Democrats think. Twitter may label his missives as being false, but that label only carries weight with people who already dislike him. The 70 million who voted for him take exception to such claims.

Trump is a political force, even as he leaves the White House. He is the true face of the Republican Party, even as “never Trumpers” claim otherwise. Not only do his supporters agree that he was cheated, but they protest in support of him as they did in the Million MAGA March in Washington. They got what they wanted when Trump showed up himself to drive through an adoring crowd.

“Trump is the true face of the Republican.”

This is the coup, such as it is. There weren’t Proud Boys attacking black people on Election Day, there are just more aggrieved white people now than when he won in 2016. Trump gained an additional seven million votes in his losing effort. There is a reservoir of support for him but once again the pollsters didn’t know it.

It is obvious that many of his supporters keep their opinions to themselves. One Republican polling company predicted a Trump win. They were wrong, but not by much and they explain the need to find the “shy” Trump voter. They aren’t shy at all but they do cover up. Who wants to be thought of as a deplorable?

They may not come out of the closet to pollsters, but they support Trump strongly. It doesn’t matter how others feel or if social media companies tell them not to listen. Trump puts whiteness first and that means he will always have support and Republican leaders know it. It is ridiculous to ask why they won’t condemn him. He is probably the only one of their party who could have beaten Hillary Clinton and the only one who could do so well in a losing effort despite presiding over a pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 people in the country. Whatever their personal feelings, republican leadership know that their people still love him.

“There is a reservoir of support for Trump but once again the pollsters didn’t know it.”

It is interesting to watch the hand wringing because Trump is once again blowing up the political system. His claims of fraudulent voting are no worse than the Democratic Party and their friends among the elite establishment pushing the Russiagate fraud. People and institutions deemed trustworthy, prestigious and eminent, all turned the system upside down and did lasting damage to electoral politics, the media, and to public trust in government. The New York Times assisting the Democrats who delegitimized an election is no better than an AR-15-carrying Trumper from the hinterlands.

Despite evidence disproving their case, it is now accepted by most Americans that Donald Trump was a Russian agent or dupe and that Russian Facebook memes told black people not to vote. Anyone presenting a counter narrative is banned from the public sphere by the very people who peddled the fraud. MAGA hat wearers yelling, “Stop the steal!,” have harmed the country far less.

There are other skeptics who side with Trump in his claims of fraud. They are entitled to do so and should present some evidence for their claims. But they are also incorrect when they call the election a coup against Trump. However, the fault is not completely theirs. The elites have created a failed state and that produces great cynicism and loss of trust. Millions of people believe nothing they are told and lean on their opinions as if they were facts.

“The New York Times assisting the Democrats who delegitimized an election is no better than an AR-15-carrying Trumper from the hinterlands.”

The people undermining democracy are the establishment figures who gerrymander districts, the military industrial complex which buys off both parties, and the prosecutors who always find a way to keep black people behind bars. Donald Trump is exercising his legal rights and the media who censor him or editorialize instead of reporting accurately are the ones destabilizing the system yet again.

Of course, Trump would have less success if the Democrats offered people what they need. The state of Florida offers an object lesson. Floridians voted for Trump again but also voted to increase their state minimum wage to $15 per hour. The angry white racists will surely remain amongst us, but some of them would be peeled off if they saw a clear personal advantage in voting for Democrats. If that party were half as inclusive and as helpful to working people as it claims, there would never have been a Trump presidency at all.

There is no coup, just the corruption we are told to accept. Trump will throw bombs on his way out the door. He changed politics forever but the way to beat him is simple. Just meet the people’s needs. Had that happened, far fewer of them would have followed a failed businessman and reality television star who marketed himself as presidential material. Biden will succeed him but because the Democrats are dedicated to doing as little as possible to help the people, Trump may still win in the end. He had plenty of help from his opponents in making the country ungovernable.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/freed ... trump-coup

The Democratic Party had historically been the party of white racists. In the 60s the accumulation of contradictions required the Dems to adopt policies to bleed off the steam which brought the negation of blatant Jim Crow and many black folks to the party, to the utter dismay of that portion of their 'base'. Duopoly being the means of the ruling class controlling the political environment those racist could not be allowed to go their own way. Like a mechanism the Republicans, faced with being overwhelmed at the polls, grabbed up those votes with both hands, and Dick Nixon was just the piece of human feces to do it, though other Republicans would have had to do the same though mebbe without so much gusto.

Not that the Dems have abandoned the racist necessities of capitalist society, but they have had to conceal them and appearances are important in wielding public opinion. And by corralling the left-leaning with this facade they preclude serious class opposition

An idealist might wish it went otherwise, that the Republican Party not have pandered to racism, be upright and reject that foul path. Without constant reinforcement, racism as a ruling idea of our society would fade into disagreeable opinions of shitheads to be socially avoided and without political consequences. But the necessities of US politics forbids this, racism is to the ruling class as blood is to a vampire. Only the dictatorship of the proletariat can make racism practically irrelevant..
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Fri Nov 20, 2020 3:48 pm

Trump undercuts American democracy as he clings to power
Analysis by Stephen Collinson and Maeve Reston, CNN

Updated 9:27 AM ET, Fri November 20, 2020

(CNN)President Donald Trump is trying to steal a free and fair election that he lost by a wide margin to President-elect Joe Biden by tearing at the most basic principle of American democracy: He's trying to throw out hundreds of thousands of votes.

Trump's latest escalation of his attempt to subvert the result of the election followed a string of knock-backs in the courts and after a statewide audit in Georgia confirmed Biden's victory in the crucial swing state.
He asked state Republican leaders in Michigan to visit him Friday, hinting at a possible attempt to convince them to ignore Biden's big win in the state and send a slate of electors to the Electoral College that backs him and not the President-elect. This follows the President's calls to two Wayne County GOP officials, who are now seeking to take back their votes to certify Biden's victory.
Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who rampaged through an unhinged news conference Thursday, is in effect baselessly arguing that troves of Democratic mail-in ballots, many of them cast by Black voters, are illegal and that Trump has therefore won the election with room to spare.
"It changes the result of the election in Michigan if you take out Wayne County," Giuliani said at a crowded, mask-free and delusional news conference featuring Trump's crew of TV lawyers in Washington.
Giuliani's team is also making absurd claims of a massive, centralized, Democratic conspiracy involving long-dead Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, Cuba, China, the Clinton Foundation and George Soros to throw the election.

Many of Trump and Giuliani's maneuvers seem so desperate and outlandish that they are hard to take seriously. But constitutional experts are warning that the President is already doing irreparable harm to the nation.
"The problem is, he's speaking for the President of the United States," veteran Republican elections lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
"It is a sweeping, totally unsubstantiated attack on one of the basic foundations of the country -- our free elections."

<snip>

CNN election law expert Rick Hasen wrote on his website that the President's meddling with the Wayne County election officials "is very dangerous for our democracy, as it is an attempt to thwart the will of the voters through political pressure from the President."
"Even though it is extremely unlikely to work, it is profoundly antidemocratic and a violation of the rule of law. It's inexcusable," Hasen wrote.

<snip>

While most of the GOP continues to say Trump should have his day in court, Romney's statement encapsulated a different, more realistic take on the floundering legal challenges.
"Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the President has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election," Romney said in a statement posted to Twitter.
"It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President."

https://us.cnn.com/2020/11/20/politics/ ... index.html

I love the smell of 'liberal hair on fire' in the morning, it is the smell of bourgeois democracy rotting. But yes, all these clowns are right to be concerned as Trump attempts to knock the wheels off the wagon whut brung them there. Ds & Rs should be concerned that the dog&pony show which purports to justify injustice is being slammed about like a 'cannonfodder' pro wrestler. They would just as soon forget that the object of their ire is a end product of the capitalism to which they pray. More avatar than outlier and much more indictment and embarrassment of a ruling class long past 'sell date'.





*********************************************************************
The Trump administration's legal team—represented by Sidney Powell, the attorney for Trump's first National Security Advisor who was caught lying to the FBI, Mike Flynn—held a press conference Thursday in which she accused late Commander of the Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chavez, along with Cuba and China, of "communist interference" in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections.

Based on the testimony of "one very strong witness"—an unnamed Venezuelan source, purportedly an opposition military defector once close to Chavez—Powell falsely claims that Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, two electronic voting system companies involved in the U.S. elections, used technology created in Venezuela under the direction of Chavez in the U.S. presidential elections.

Powell claims that Chavez supposedly had the technology created to ensure he would never lose an election after the recall referendum in 2004 led to an allegedly unwanted result. The witness whose affidavit was submitted in Lin Wood's plea in Georgia on behalf of the Trump campaign was, according to Powell, with Chavez when the late leader saw how the voting technology operated to "make sure the election came out his way, which was the expressed purpose of creating this software."

Powell then makes the jump to allege that this witness, upon learning of Biden's widening advantage after mail-in and early ballots were processed in the week after November 3rd, knew that the same thing had happened in the U.S. elections as had occurred in the Venezuelan referendum more than 15 years earlier, purportedly due to Smartmatic technology.

more.....

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Tru ... -0012.html
Pathetically weak you say? Yeah, well, no more so than the last four years of trying to pin Trump and all societal discontents upon Russia, commies, 'the Axis of Evil', whatever...

Nothing less than a longshot 'Hail Mary' to recruit the so-called deep state to his side in what may be his last battle. Way late I think, can they not see all of those burnt bridges? The Dems maneuvered a mutually beneficial relationship with the spooks: the Dems would run with whatever accusations of Russian 'interference', however flimsy, the spooks threw out there, reinforcing the imperialist program, while they themselves benefit (theoretically...) electoral-wise. The kind of convergence of policy with politics that looks a sure winner. Not that it made much difference to the voters it seems, but it looked good on paper.

Trump, in assuming that the institutional memory of the spooks is shorter than his dick is stupidly mistaken, his most recent moves to remove occupation troops from the ME can only reinforce the desire to get the bull outta the china shop. The spooks, along with the generals are anticipating a return to 'normalcy' without the interference of an amateur.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 21, 2020 3:27 pm

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President Donald Trump speaks about Operation Warp Speed ​​at the White House Rose Garden on November 13, 2020 in Washington, DC (Photo: Tasos Katopodis / Getty)

"THE MARKETS COULD REACT NEGATIVELY"
JP MORGAN CHASE: "TRUMP CAN STILL GET REELECTED"
20 Nov 2020 , 9:35 am .

As President Donald Trump continues his fight to contest the presidential election in his favor, the New York bank, JP Morgan Chase, on Wednesday, November 18, warned its clients about a slim possibility that the Republican candidate could achieve the re-election.

Michael Cembalest, president of market and strategy at JPMorgan Asset Management, called the "remote risk" of a Trump victory an "American horror story" that would lead to constitutional chaos in a new "Armageddonists" assessment report .

"Bottom line: A LOT of very unorthodox things have to happen for Trump to be re-elected. Still, I'm not ruling anything out," Cembalest wrote, adding that financial armageddon could still happen in early January.

"The markets could react negatively if one considers that the United States, as a nation with the [largest] reserve currency in the world, is sliding towards electoral illegitimacy due to post-election maneuvers by political parties," he explained.

Legal experts and much of Wall Street have called Trump's effort to reverse Joe Biden's victory a long shot. The shared belief among most investors about Trump's impending failure has allowed markets to remain stable despite aggressive moves by the president to challenge the election results.

Cembalest said the president needs to "reverse or prevent" three states where the election was called for Biden to place the former vice president below 270. He set the stage for Trump's unlikely victory: in the event that states present a competitive list of voters, Senate Republicans could consider the Electoral Counting Act of 1887 unconstitutional.

In that "nightmare scenario for investors," he continues, "the Republican Party declares Trump the winner of three changed states, the Democrats disagree and refuse to participate." Ultimately, it would lead to what Cembalest calls an "inauguration duel [of the presidential inauguration]."

It is suspicious that one of the largest financial players in the world, king on Wall Street, draws these conclusions, which no matter how likely the scenario is, is a forecast that is already in place from New York.

https://misionverdad.com/jp-morgan-chas ... reeleccion

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We've been hearing that Trump is the choice of the ruling class, generally, that anything that contradicts that assessment is a red herring, from the infantile left who inevitably default to "resistance is futile". I guess life is easier when you think like a baby, no class anxiety.

He has costs too many rich people too much money and his messing with foreign policy makes the future unpredictable, which they also hate. And that is why I'm confident that he will go, like it or not.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 03, 2020 3:10 pm

(How could I possibly resist dragging Roman Empire analogies into the conversation?)

TRUMP AND JULIUS CAESAR, ASSASSINATED IN THE SENATE

Franco Vielma

3 Dec 2020 , 8:33 am .

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Vincenzo Camuccini's painting: "La morte di Cesare" (Photo: Archive)

Clearly, US President Donald Trump is losing his battles on the institutional fronts in order to reverse, which he says remains "massive electoral fraud" against him.

Since the November 3 elections and after the proclamation of Joe Biden by the media, Trump has led a crusade of struggles in the legal sphere to try to dismantle electoral "fraud."

However, the outgoing president is only racking up losses as the December 14 deadline approaches, when the votes of the electoral delegates will take place. It will be until this period where the states will give an inexorable and definitive result, after all the challenges and complaints have been overcome.

If the states end up favoring Biden as it should through the trend left by the popular vote, Trump will be left alone with the possibility of going before the highest US court to fight his case.

THE WORST SETBACK: AN INSIDE OPERATION
Perhaps the most significant defeat for Trump now comes with the signing of one of his highest officials and most highly trusted bureaucrats. The United States Attorney General, William Barr, an ultra-conservative and one of Trump's main allies, said on Tuesday, December 1, that the Department of Justice has found no evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential elections.

"To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could affect and lead to a different outcome in the elections," said the top US legal official, reported the BBC .

His comments are considered a great blow for Trump, who until this Tuesday the 1st had not accepted defeat against his Democratic rival. Barr had been appointed by the president to the unusual task of deploying his entire institution in search of "evidence of fraud," and now amid this setback, Trump's chances of making a strong case are virtually nil.

The news acquires relevance not only because of the official responsible for making it. Additionally, it is a blunt announcement, which in the media constitutes a blow of opinion clearly adverse to the narrative of the outgoing president.

"There was a claim that there would be systemic fraud and that the machines would essentially be programmed to skew the election results," Barr told AP News , referring to the claim that the voting machines had been hacked to cast more votes. to Biden.

Barr said the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security have investigated those allegations, and thus far they have seen "nothing to substantiate it."

In a controversial comment, referring to Trump without naming him and where Barr makes a clear distance, he adds: "There is a growing trend to use the criminal justice system as a kind of default solution, if people don't like something they want. let the Justice Department enter and 'investigate'. "

The announcement, in strictly technical terms, ruins the case of the Trump campaign by placing institutional, political and communicational elements that can be considered irreparable. It could already be assumed as controversial enough that the Department of Justice made itself available to the Trump campaign, which is in fact a partisan and private body. But now Barr has unmarked himself and has done so on the grounds that there is no fraud.

In reaction to the attorney general's comments, Trump's attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said in a joint statement: "With the utmost respect for the Attorney General, his opinion appears to lack knowledge or investigation into the substantial wrongdoing and evidence. of systemic fraud ", refers BBC .

With this, the differences between the institutional and political teams that surround Trump and how at the most key moment where the future of the president is in question, his relatives falter, because Barr could simply avoid an announcement of these characteristics and expand the position of your Department.

The collapse of the Trump campaign on its judicial front takes place after its failures in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Arizona, where after re-counts Biden's victories were certified and in parallel the state courts did not give rise to the team's demands Trump legal.

JULIUS CAESAR IN THE SENATE
The current situation in the upper echelons of American power makes the United States look like the Roman Empire in its most decadent stage.

Recently and in a fervent tweet, Trump alleged that Biden will only be able to assume the presidency of the country if he can demonstrate that the millions of votes he obtained were not illegal or fraudulent.


Discarding that it is another buffoonery by the president and the maintenance of a post-electoral epic, Trump would then continue to be convinced that there has been a "fraud" against him, and that due to the actions of his enemies and relatives, a institutional coup that is evicting him from power amid the formalities and appearances of such an unsophisticated political scaffolding.

According to the BBC, Trump has been privately complaining about the lack of support from Barr and the FBI in their attempts to attribute his defeat to fraud. The media notes that Trump would be facing off with Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, two traditionally conservative states that he lost to Biden, for not echoing his complaints.

Additionally, the president would be left alone in the aspiration that several states governed by Republican parliaments and won by Biden, turn the electoral votes in his favor contrary to the results of the popular vote.

The clash with Barr is not the first to occur within the bureaucratic structure woven by the outgoing president. Chris Krebs, who headed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, was fired in November after he questioned Trump's fraud allegations. The 2020 elections "were the safest in the history of the United States," he had said.

Various personalities in the power structure and the Republican Party have already openly alienated Trump, and these scenes of the decaying empire only make America look like Rome.

All things considered, the complex picture makes Trump seem like Gaius Julius Caesar being approached in the Senate to be executed by his adversaries and traitorous allies. Is William Barr the Gross June Mark?

The assassination of Julius Caesar, let us remember, took place in a context where the senators, or the Roman "deep state", were preparing to protect the imperial structure from its highest authority. They wanted to protect "the freedom" of Rome. Brutus conspired with Gayo Cassius Longinus and other senators to go into action: assassinate Julius Caesar to save the Republic.

Dozens of senators participated in the fray against the president and it happened precisely in the Senate, to make it public and force officials to take sides in favor of the consummated conspiracy.

Perhaps for several of the members of the US power structure, on the side of Trump and against him, the heritage to be safeguarded is the scaffolding of power itself and it is likely that the president's attempts to fight for what he believes to be legitimate, is for these groups an affront to the "freedom" and future of their "republic". Reasons why, among many others, they would prefer to separate him from power.

Whether or not there is electoral fraud, whether or not the president's complaints are legitimate, his fate points to his departure from office in situations that are already out of the ordinary .

Although Trump divided politics in the upper echelons of his country and maintained an open conflict with the traditional globalist-liberal elite, it is also true that during his term he had to live with the components of the power and state structure that he inherited. He made room at the same table with some of his natural enemies in the government structure and this, which in turn has enormous capacities for co-option and treason, has probably already dragged its most "loyal" collaborators.

Just like Gaius Julius Caesar, assassinated by many of them Pompeian senators, whom he himself pardoned and allowed to preserve their privileges and presence in the Senate, Trump seems to be now being crushed by the power structure and his acolytes, in a comparsa between members of the "deep state", members of the elite that oppose him and allies who now betray him.

Minutes before the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar, he had previously been notified by means of a document demanding full power back to the Senate, that is, to the structure of the State. Is Trump being notified by Barr that he must evict power?

The current crossroads in American politics is about to be resolved. At least in strictly political appearances, we could already assume that Trump has received about 23 stab wounds and that his body politic is already at the foot of the statue of Pompey.

This is how his passage through the US presidency and his power apparatus seems to end, but his political end is not. Trump is and will be from this time on, an inevitable point in American politics , with projections of influence and leadership that could be consolidated just like those held by other entourages, such as the Bushes and Clintons.

Finally, the underlying issue, the elite struggle that put Trump in power, is not over yet.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/tr ... -el-senado

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That was fun but I got a bone to pick.

As far as "the elite struggle that put Trump in power" goes Trump came to power through a combination of 1) strong support a a ruling class minority, 2)middle class frustration with the status quo artfully misdirected, including the racist component, 3) the arrogance of the ruling class majority who neglected to put safeguards in place to insure the victory of their chosen as they did in 2000.

Also, I don't think the Prez has ever forgiven anybody anything.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Sun Dec 06, 2020 12:38 pm

TARIFF FOLLIES
Posted by Greg Godels and Ed Grystar | Dec 5, 2020 | Featured Stories | 1

Tariff Follies
BY GREG GODELS AND ED GRYSTAR
November 20, 2020



To its credit, the United Steelworkers union (USW) has lifted the living standards and working conditions of millions of workers. Birthed from the militant 1930s Steel Workers Organizing Committee and midwifed by hundreds of Communist and socialist organizers, the USW became a strong advocate of industrial unionism and one of the more progressive forces in US political life.

But with the Cold War and the purging or repression of its most militant members, the USW abandoned the class-confrontation approach of its early years for a partnership with capital. In place of exercising the strength and power of a united membership, the union leadership chose a partnership approach, negotiating contracts based upon the notion that the worker and the boss had a common interest.

In the contest of the early Cold war, capital accepted some concessions to labor to guarantee US labor’s loyalty to US foreign policy objectives. In return for US labor leaders policing domestic radicalism in the workplace and for international collaboration in fighting Communism, the bosses tacitly agreed to accept wage and benefit growth commensurate with rising productivity.

With the onset of the economic crisis in the 1970s and with the ruling class turning toward market fundamentalism, capital reneged on its part of the partnership, attacking labor with vengeance. The implicit partnership was dissolved by one side.

Unfortunately, the other side– organized labor (in this case, the USW)– clung to the partnership. Despite restructuring, downsizing, plant closures, and concession demands, the USW stood by the philosophy of cooperation, what their critics called “class collaboration.”

Since we can remember, one expression of this affinity with corporate bosses has taken the form of seeking protection from foreign competitors. From inviting workers to sledgehammer Toyotas to advocating for steel tariffs, the USW leadership has maintained that what is good for steel corporations doing business in the USA is good for USW members.

In recent years, the protectionist demand was at odds with the political mainstream, including the union’s putative ally, the Democratic Party. Since the rise of Thatcher/Carter/Reagan/Clintonism, unfettered free markets have been an ideological fixation of all the bourgeois parties and their policy makers, placing tariffs and other protectionist policies beyond the pale.

But in 2016, the USW leadership found their savior. Donald Trump rudely arrived to occupy the White House.

Moreover, he kept his promise in 2018 to impose restrictive tariffs on all the imported steel coming into the United States. Unfortunately for the USW and their bet on protectionism, the Trump tariffs failed to meet their expectations. As The Wall Street Journal reports: “With the expanded production, about 6,000 jobs were added to the U.S. steel industry’s workforce after tariffs started in 2018, according to the Census Bureau. By the end of 2019, though, those gains evaporated as steel demand and prices sank.” [my emphasis]

Authors Bob Tita and William Mauldin (Tariffs Didn’t Fuel Revival for American Steel, WSJ, 10-28-2020) add that: “Higher prices [initially] also made steel more expensive for manufacturers that buy it, leading to the loss of about 75,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs, according to a study released late last year by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.”

In addition, foreign steel makers secured punitive export tariffs in retaliation, further hurting domestic US manufacturing.

The lack of growth in demand for steel in the USA has forced domestic producers to seek exports of steel to markets outside the USA in search of profits, the same strategy practiced by the “foreign” competition.

A major component of Trump’s 2016 victorious campaign message which helped him secure votes in the Rust Belt was his promise of major investment to rebuild infrastructure and create jobs. It never got off the ground because it was based on the false notion that capitalists will invest in the public good. Things like fixing public schools, hospitals, water systems, pollution control, and building mass transit systems simply don’t offer returns to investors even though they will provide for the public good, boost steel production, and create tens of thousands of steelworker jobs.

Instead, Trump, true to his real, big-business agenda, pushed a major tax cut that actually reduced the revenue available for any public investment. Rather than drain the swamp, Trump drained the public coffers and offered the syrup of “public private partnerships” that were supposed to entice capitalists to invest. They never did.

Not to be outdone, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports that the Republican-controlled legislature of Pennsylvania has now taken this phony concept to its practical conclusion which will result in the proposed tolling of many bridges in Pennsylvania as a way of making the “partnership” work to increase state revenues. Rather than tax the wealth of billionaires and corporations to obtain necessary revenues to rebuild in the public interest, we instead have tax cuts for the rich and privatization of necessary networks and services.

Understandably, the US-based steel industry sought to garner greater market share through the tariff program. However, the USW leadership failed to acknowledge one of the more basic laws of capitalism: with tariff-induced prices soaring and foreign competition locked out, domestic capitalist enterprises were incentivized to engage in an orgy of expansion and production. As a result of this classic overproduction-induced crisis, prices collapsed and the industry withdrew, with layoffs and closed facilities. Prices for hot-rolled coiled sheet steel increased by nearly half to $920 a ton after the tariffs were imposed, but are now below their pre-tariff level.

The advocates of tariffs as a remedy for layoffs and stagnant or declining wages and benefits forget that capitalism runs on profits and not sharing the wealth. The Communist, socialist, and other militant trade unionists who founded the union understood this truth. They sought a union that would fight the corporations for a greater portion of those profits for the workers.

Today’s leadership of the USW mistakenly believes that workers will benefit if “our” corporations are favored over “theirs.” They fantasize a world where foreigners are rapacious cheaters and US producers are inspired by the greater good. “Theirs” are driven by ruthless competition, while “ours” are committed to fairness and partnership. Lurking beneath the rhetoric is a not-too-subtle national chauvinism.

Surely, the experience with the Trump tariffs reveals that the protectionist approach not only slanders foreigners, but fails to protect domestic production, jobs, and compensation. Domestic producers, like their foreign counterparts, are ruled by the laws of motion of the capitalist system. Bust follows boom, whether it applies to a protected national market or a global unfettered market.

The union’s reliance on this cooperative approach with the steel corporations defangs it for the necessary independent political action program that could unite the membership and the general public in a fight for jobs and investment in decaying infrastructure. All research shows that this is a real path forward to create steel demand and union jobs. It’s plain to see and many studies document that America’s infrastructure is in horrible shape. Tariffs have not increased domestic demand for steel. The only way to increase domestic steel production is through a massive reinvestment program that not only rebuilds the decaying American infrastructure in the public interest but creates steelworker jobs.

Rather than casting their fate with their privately owned corporate rivals for the wealth created by the workers, unions should fight those rivals for a greater share. If they want to guarantee jobs, security, and compensation, they should struggle to eliminate the private corporations altogether. A real fighting union would be for public ownership of the steel industry.

https://mltoday.com/tariff-follies/

I don't think the prez had a 'real big business agenda', he had a 'Trump' agenda, any benefits that accrued to anyone other than himself purely coincidental. Pay-backs and bribes falling into the category of personal benefit, and note this done with other people's money.(another pattern there...)
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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