Fake Calls

The Making Of Donald Trump - Interview With David Cay Johnston

Randi Rhodes interviews David Cay Johnston, investigative journalist and author, a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting about his book - The Making of Donald Trump - Get the book here - every purchase supports the show: http://amzn.to/2cnN0z9

For the full show, get a commercial-free audio podcast at RandiRhodes.com and please subscribe to Randi's YouTube channel!




Randi Rhodes Number-one ranked progressive radio talk show host, political commentator, entertainer and writer. The Randi Rhodes Show, was broadcast nationally on Air America Radio, and Premiere Radio Networks from 2004–2014. Rhodes, represents aggressively independent media.

The Miami Herald described her as "a chain-smoking bottle blonde, part Joan Rivers, part shock jock Howard Stern, and part Saturday Night Live’s ‘Coffee Talk’ Lady. But mostly, she's her rude, crude, loud, brazen, gleeful self."

Rhodes and her show won numerous awards for journalism and broadcasting, including Radio Ink’s Most Influential Woman, Radio Ink’s Most Influential Women’s list (multiple years), TALKERS magazine’s Woman of the Year, and the Judy Jarvis Memorial Award for Contributions to the Talk Industry by a Woman.

A Chilling Theory On Trump’s Nonstop Lies

His duplicity bears a disturbing resemblance to Putin-style propaganda.

By Denise Clifton Aug. 3, 2017 6:00 AM

“26 hours, 29 Trumpian False or Misleading Claims.”

That was the headline on a piece last week from the Washington Post, whose reporters continued the herculean task of debunking wave after wave of President Donald Trump’s lies. (It turned out there was a 30th Trump falsehood in that time frame, regarding the head of the Boy Scouts.) The New York Times keeps a running tally of the president’s lies since Inauguration Day, and PolitiFact has scrutinized and rated 69 percent of Trump’s statements as mostly false, false, or “pants on fire.”

Trump’s chronic duplicity may be pathological, as some experts have suggested. But what else might be going on here? In fact, the 45th president’s stream of lies echoes a contemporary form of Russian propaganda known as the “Firehose of Falsehood.”

In 2016, the nonpartisan research organization RAND released a study of messaging techniques seen in Kremlin-controlled media. The researchers described two key features: “high numbers of channels and messages” and “a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions.”

The result of those tactics? “New Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”

Indeed, Trump’s style as a mendacious media phenomenon resonates strongly with RAND’s findings from the study, which also explains the efficacy of the Russian propaganda tactics. Here are the key examples:

RAND: “Russian propaganda is produced in incredibly large volumes and is broadcast or otherwise distributed via a large number of channels.” 

Trump is known for his high-volume use of Twitter, tweeting about 500 times in his first 100 days in office, using both his personal account and the official @POTUS account. His tweets often become the subject of news stories and sometimes provoke entire news cycles’ worth of coverage across the mainstream media, such as when he accused former President Barack Obama of “wiretapping” his campaign and suggested he might have secret recordings of ex-FBI Director James Comey. Both CNN and the Los Angeles Times keep running tweet trackers on the president. Trump has also appeared on White House-friendly cable news shows like Fox & Friends—a show he also tweets about effusively on a regular basis.

Trump is also a prolific liar on stage: Of the 29 false statements the Washington Post tracked last week, five came in a speech to Boy Scouts, two came from a news conference, and a whopping 15 came from a rally in Youngstown, Ohio. (Seven others came from, where else, his personal Twitter feed.)

The deluge matters, notes RAND: “The experimental psychology literature suggests that, all other things being equal, messages received in greater volume and from more sources will be more persuasive.”

RAND: “Russian propaganda is rapid, continuous, and repetitive”

Trump often repeats misleading statements in rapid, successive tweets. As the Post captured, in three tweets within 13 minutes on the evening of July 24, he railed against the “Amazon Washington Post,” and in three tweets between 3:03 a.m. and 3:21 a.m. on July 25, he railed against his old foe Hillary Clinton, calling Attorney General Jeff Sessions “VERY weak” for not investigating her, and wrongly saying that acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s wife received money from Clinton.

Why the technique works: RAND explains that “repetition leads to familiarity, and familiarity leads to acceptance.”

RAND: “Russian propaganda makes no commitment to objective reality”

Phony news stories are a staple of Vladimir Putin’s Russia—and as Mother Jones has detailed, Trump and his team have been caught repeating several that originated in Russian news outlets.

Trump also has a habit of repeating false statements that can be very easily checked—such as lies about the number of bills he has signed. On July 17: “We’ve signed more bills—and I’m talking about through the Legislature—than any president, ever.” And then on July 21: “I heard that Harry Truman was first, and then we beat him. These are approved by Congress. These are not just executive orders.” The historical record shows that many presidents—including Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton—all signed more bills within their first six months of office.

From RAND’s 2016 study

RAND notes that this propaganda strategy flies in the face of conventional wisdom that “the truth always wins.” However, the researchers found, “Even when people are aware that some sources (such as political campaign rhetoric) have the potential to contain misinformation, they still show a poor ability to discriminate between information that is false and information that is correct.”

Confirmation bias and emotion also factor in: “Stories or accounts that create emotional arousal in the recipient (e.g., disgust, fear, happiness) are much more likely to be passed on, whether they are true or not.”

RAND: “Russian propaganda is not committed to consistency”

Trump’s story often changes, even among his own false statements. The New York Times tracked five times this spring that the president changed his story about when China had stopped manipulating its currency—from “the time I took office” to “since I started running” to “since I’ve been talking about currency manipulation.” The reality is, China stopped manipulating its currency years ago.

According to RAND, this approach exploits relatively low expectations of truth among the public regarding statements from politicians. In Russia, “Putin’s fabrications, though more egregious than the routine, might be perceived as just more of what is expected from politicians in general and might not constrain his future influence potential.” In the United States, Trump may be taking advantage of historically low public trust in both the media and politicians.

RAND: “Don’t expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth.”

The Washington Post has called Trump “the most fact-checked politician.” Yet, the RAND research found that pointing out specific falsehoods was an ineffective tool against the propaganda techniques they studied in Russia because “people will have trouble recalling which information they have received is the disinformation and which is the truth.” The researchers acknowledged the challenges that other governments and organizations like NATO have in countering Russian propaganda, and advised against taking on the propaganda messages directly.

Some responses proposed by the researchers may also hold clues for media struggling to contend with Trump’s unprecedented behavior in the Oval Office. The researchers suggest making the first impression on an issue by priming audiences with accurate information, to get in front of a potentially misleading message. And they advise exposing the method: “Highlight the ways propagandists attempt to manipulate audiences,” they say, “rather than fighting the specific manipulations.”

For the American media, it may well be a matter of doing both, and often.

Trump Taking Another THREE WEEKS Off

Hypocrite isn’t a strong enough word for whatever the fuck Trump is… Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.



"Donald Trump recently called the White House a dump, and maybe that is why he is taking an almost three week vacation from “the swamp.”

Trump will begin his first “official” vacation since taking office Friday by heading to his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. According to the Associated Press, the reason behind the vacation may be because the White House West Wing needs to replace their 27 year old heating and cooling system, which would require all residents to vacate during that work.

The planned 17 day vacation is receiving a lot of attention because of Trump’s past remarks on vacations. Most recently he told GOP senators that they shouldn’t take an August recess and “we shouldn’t leave town” until they fix the health care system, something that has not happened yet.

Read more here: https://www.mediaite.com/online/low-energy-man-announces-three-week-vacation/

The White House Is A Dump Because A Black Family Lived There

By VermontKevin

That is what Trump means. It's a dump because the family living space was lived in by Black people.

Let me tell you a little story. The first house my wife and I bought was in a section of NYC that was slowly turning into a gentrified neighborhood. We bought our home from a very nice couple with three kids who were moving to the Midwest because he got a job editing a major paper out there. We made a lot of New Yorker jokes, and moved in and began to paint. And paint, and paint.

My now deceased mother-in-law visits. She stays for three weeks and about midway, at dinner, she announces:

"You never told me they were Black!" I assumed she was having a stroke and went for the phone.

"The family was Black! Did you have the place cleaned before you moved in? They have hairs that go everywhere!"

I and my wife sat at the table, stunned. Then she told the kids to go upstairs and watch tv.

"They smell!"

My wife told her to shut up, but I really could not say anything. I should have. I did discuss it with my kids after she left but I know I didn't do the right thing at the time.

My mother in law told the entire family we lived "in a slum." In a house "that Black people moved out of." The other racists in the family knew what she meant. Another family member told me to make sure to change the toilet seats.

That's what a racist like Donald Trump means when he talks about the White House being a "dump." Fuck anyone who voted for him, and anyone who helped.

FBI Horrified As Spy Says Russia Has Been Supporting And Cultivating Trump For Years

A "veteran" spy is alleging that Russia is cultivating, supporting and assisting Donald Trump and has been for at least five years. The spy said the response from the FBI was "shock and horror."

The report alleges that Trump and his “inner circle” have accepted a regular “flow of intelligence from the Kremlin and that Russian intelligence claims to have “compromised” Trump on his visits and could “blackmail him”.

http://www.politicususa.com/

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump/

Trump 'personally dictated' false statement about son's meeting with Russian lawyer

Trump personally dictated a statement that was issued after revelations that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 election. The Washington Post's Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig explain.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-dictated-sons-misleading-statement-on-meeting-with-russian-lawyer/2017/07/31/04c94f96-73ae-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html 

Fat Ass Chris Christie and all future N.J. governors barred from using beach mansion during government shutdowns

The New Jersey Assembly on Monday barred Gov. Chris Christie from using a house at Island Beach State Park during government shutdowns.

The Legislature voted 63-2 with two abstentions to prevent Christie — or any future New Jersey governor — from using the Island Beach State Park beach mansion during a government shutdown, officials said.

Assemblyman John Wisniewski of Middlesex County proposed the measure July 13 after Christie earned statewide ire when he was photographed sunning himself July 2 with his family on the beach after he shut down state beaches during a budget standoff.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/gov-christie-barred-beach-mansion-shutdowns-article-1.3371772

Anthony Scaramucci Out As White House Communications Director After 10 Days On The Job

By Lindsay Kimble

Just over a week into his new role as White House communications director, New York financier Anthony Scaramucci has been removed from the position, according to the New York Times and other outlets.

Multiple sources told the Times that President Donald Trump chose to remove Scaramucci at the request of the administration’s new chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly.

Scaramucci’s short tenure was certainly a whirlwind: after giving an expletive-laden interview to the New Yorker about his colleagues, Scaramucci’s wife filed for divorce on Friday.

It is unclear at this time whether Scaramucci is being completely removed from the White House, or whether he is taking on a different role in the administration, reports CNN.

This is a developing story, please check back for more information.

Very Normal

Death Of A Fucking Salesman

By Kevin D. Williamson

@kevinNR

Donald Trump can’t close the deal.

A few years ago in New York, Al Pacino starred in a revival of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, and the casting was poignant: In 1992, a much younger and more vigorous Pacino had played the role of hotshot salesman Ricky Roma in the film adaptation of the play; in the Broadway revival, a 72 year old Pacino played the broken-down has-been Shelley Levene.

Glengarry Glen Ross is the Macbeth of real estate, full of great, blistering lines and soliloquies so liberally peppered with profanity that the original cast had nicknamed the show “Death of a Fucking Salesman.” But a few of those attending the New York revival left disappointed. For a certain type of young man, the star of Glengarry Glen Ross is a character called Blake, played in the film by Alec Baldwin. We know that his name is “Blake” only from the credits; asked his name by one of the other salesmen, he answers: “What’s my name? Fuck you. That’s my name.” In the film, Blake sets things in motion by delivering a motivational speech and announcing a sales competition: “First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize? A set of steak knives. Third prize is, you’re fired. Get the picture?” He berates the salesmen in terms both financial — “My watch cost more than your car!” — and sexual. Their problem, in Blake’s telling, isn’t that they’ve had a run of bad luck or bad sales leads — or that the real estate they’re trying to sell is crap — it is that they aren’t real men.

The leads are weak? You’re weak. . . . Your name is “you’re wanting,” and you can’t play the man’s game. You can’t close them? Then tell your wife your troubles, because only one thing counts in this world: Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. Got that, you fucking faggots?

A few young men waiting to see the show had been quoting Blake’s speech to one another. For them, and for a number of men who imagine themselves to be hard-hitting competitors (I’ve never met a woman of whom this is true), Blake’s speech is practically a creed. It’s one of those things that some guys memorize. But Blake does not appear in the play, the scene having been written specifically for the film and specifically for Alec Baldwin, a sop to investors who feared that the film would not be profitable and wanted an additional jolt of star power to enliven it.

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That’s some fine irony: Blake’s paean to salesmanship was written to satisfy salesmen who did not quite buy David Mamet’s original pitch. The play is if anything darker and more terrifying without Blake, leaving the poor feckless salesmen at the mercy of a faceless malevolence offstage rather than some regular jerk in a BMW. But a few finance bros went home disappointed that they did not get the chance to sing along, as it were, with their favorite hymn.

These guys don’t want to see Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross. What they want is to be Blake. 

They want to swagger, to curse, to insult, and to exercise power over men, exercising power over men being the classical means to the end of exercising power over women, which is of course what this, and nine-tenths of everything else in human affairs, is about. Blake is a specimen of that famous creature, the “alpha male,” and establishing and advertising one’s alpha creds is an obsession for some sexually unhappy contemporary men. There is a whole weird little ecosystem of websites (some of them very amusing) and pickup-artist manuals offering men tips on how to be more alpha, more dominant, more commanding, a literature that performs roughly the same function in the lives of these men that Cosmopolitan sex tips play in the lives of insecure women. Of course this advice ends up producing cartoonish, ridiculous behavior. If you’re wondering where Anthony Scaramucci learned to talk and behave like such a Scaramuccia, ask him how many times he’s seen Glengarry Glen Ross.

What’s notable about the advice offered to young men aspiring to be “alpha males” is that it is consistent with the classic salesmanship advice offered by the real-world versions of Blake in a hundred thousand business-inspiration books (Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World is the classic of the genre) and self-help tomes, summarized in an old Alcoholics Anonymous slogan: “Fake it ’til you make it.” For the pick-up artists, the idea is that simply acting in social situations as though one were confident, successful, and naturally masterful is a pretty good substitute for being those things. Never mind the advice of Cicero (esse quam videri, be rather than seem) or Rush — just go around acting like Blake and people will treat you like Blake.

If that sounds preposterous, remind yourself who the president of the United States of America is.

Trump is the political version of a pickup artist, and Republicans — and America — went to bed with him convinced that he was something other than what he is. Trump inherited his fortune but describes himself as though he were a self-made man. 

We did not elect Donald Trump; we elected the character he plays on television.

He has had a middling career in real estate and a poor one as a hotelier and casino operator but convinced people he is a titan of industry. He has never managed a large, complex corporate enterprise, but he did play an executive on a reality show. He presents himself as a confident ladies’ man but is so insecure that he invented an imaginary friend to lie to the New York press about his love life and is now married to a woman who is open and blasé about the fact that she married him for his money. He fixates on certain words (“negotiator”) and certain classes of words (mainly adjectives and adverbs, “bigly,” “major,” “world-class,” “top,” and superlatives), but he isn’t much of a negotiator, manager, or leader. He cannot negotiate a health-care deal among members of a party desperate for one, can’t manage his own factionalized and leak-ridden White House, and cannot lead a political movement that aspires to anything greater than the service of his own pathetic vanity.

He wants to be John Wayne, but what he is is “Woody Allen without the humor.” Peggy Noonan, to whom we owe that observation, has his number: He is soft, weak, whimpering, and petulant. He isn’t smart enough to do the job and isn’t man enough to own up to the fact. For all his gold-plated toilets, he is at heart that middling junior salesman watching Glengarry Glen Ross and thinking to himself: “That’s the man I want to be.” How many times do you imagine he has stood in front of a mirror trying to project like Alec Baldwin? Unfortunately for the president, it’s Baldwin who does the good imitation of Trump, not the other way around.

Hence the cartoon tough-guy act. Scaramucci’s star didn’t fade when he gave that batty and profane interview in which he reimagined Steve Bannon as a kind of autoerotic yogi. That’s Scaramucci’s best impersonation of the sort of man the president of these United States, God help us, aspires to be.

But he isn’t that guy. He isn’t Blake. He’s poor sad old Shelley Levene, who cannot close the deal, who spends his nights whining about the unfairness of it all.

So, listen up, Team Trump: “Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers only.”

Got that?

 

READ MORE:

Who Killed Obamacare Repeal? Blame Trump
When a Diminishing President Is a Good Thing
Trump, Party of One

— Kevin D. Williamson is National Review’s roving correspondent.

The Past 5 GOP Presidents Have Used Fraud And Treason To Steer Themselves To Electoral Victory

By Thom Hartmann / AlterNet

People are wondering out loud about the parallels between today’s Republican Party and organized crime, and whether “Teflon Don” Trump will remain unscathed through his many scandals, ranging from interactions with foreign oligarchs to killing tens of thousands of Americans by denying them healthcare to stepping up the destruction of our environment and public lands.

  

History suggests – even if treason can be demonstrated – that, as long as he holds onto the Republican Party (and Fox News), he’ll survive it intact. And he won’t be the first Republican president to commit high crimes to get and stay in office. 

In fact, Eisenhower was the last legitimately elected Republican president we’ve had in this country.

Since Dwight Eisenhower left the presidency in 1961, six different Republicans have occupied the Oval Office.

And every single one of them - from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump - have been illegitimate - ascending to the highest office in the land not through small-D democratic elections - but instead through fraud and treason.

(And today’s GOP-controlled Congress is arguably just as corrupt and illegitimate, acting almost entirely within the boundaries set by an organized group of billionaires.) 

Let’s start at the beginning with Richard Nixon.

In 1968 - President Lyndon Johnson was desperately trying to end the Vietnam war.

But Richard Nixon knew that if the war continued - it would tarnish Democrat (and Vice President) Hubert Humphrey’s chances of winning the 1968 election.

So Nixon sent envoys from his campaign to talk to South Vietnamese leaders to encourage them not to attend an upcoming peace talk in Paris.

Nixon promised South Vietnam’s corrupt politicians that he would give them a richer deal when he was President than LBJ could give them then.

LBJ found out about this political maneuver to prolong the Vietnam war just 3 days before the 1968 election. He phoned the Republican Senate leader Everett Dirksen – here’s an excerpt (you can listen to the entire conversation here):

President Johnson: 
Some of our folks, including some of the old China lobby, are going to the Vietnamese embassy and saying please notify the [South Vietnamese] president that if he'll hold out 'til November the second they could get a better deal. Now, I'm reading their hand, Everett. I don't want to get this in the campaign.

And they oughtn't to be doin' this. This is treason.

Sen. Dirksen: I know.

Those tapes were only released by the LBJ library in the past decade, and that’s Richard Nixon that Lyndon Johnson was accusing of treason.

But by then - Nixon’s plan had worked.

South Vietnam boycotted the peace talks - the war continued - and Nixon won the White House thanks to it. As a result, additional tens of thousands of American soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, died as a result of Nixon’s treason.

  

And Nixon was never held to account for it.

Gerald Ford was the next Republican.

After Nixon left office the same way he entered it - by virtue of breaking the law - Gerald Ford took over.

Ford was never elected to the White House (he was appointed to replace VP Spiro Agnew, after Agnew was indicted for decades of taking bribes), and thus would never have been President had it not been for Richard Nixon’s treason.

The third was Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980.

He won thanks to a little something called the October Surprise - when his people sabotaged then-President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to release American hostages in Iran.

According to Iran’s then-president, Reagan’s people promised the Iranians that if they held off on releasing the American hostages until just after the election - then Reagan would give them a sweet weapons deal.

In 1980 Carter thought he had reached a deal with newly-elected Iranian President Abdolhassan Bani-Sadr over the release of the fifty-two hostages held by radical students at the American Embassy in Tehran.

Bani-Sadr was a moderate and, as he explained in an editorial for The Christian Science Monitor earlier this year, had successfully run for President on the popular position of releasing the hostages:

"I openly opposed the hostage-taking throughout the election campaign.... I won the election with over 76 percent of the vote.... Other candidates also were openly against hostage-taking, and overall, 96 percent of votes in that election were given to candidates who were against it [hostage-taking]."

Carter was confident that with Bani-Sadr's help, he could end the embarrassing hostage crisis that had been a thorn in his political side ever since it began in November of 1979. But Carter underestimated the lengths his opponent in the 1980 Presidential election, California Governor Ronald Reagan, would go to win an election.

Behind Carter's back, the Reagan campaign worked out a deal with the leader of Iran's radical faction - Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini - to keep the hostages in captivity until after the 1980 Presidential election.

This was nothing short of treason. The Reagan campaign's secret negotiations with Khomeini - the so-called "October Surprise" - sabotaged Carter and Bani-Sadr's attempts to free the hostages. And as Bani-Sadr told The Christian Science Monitor in March of 2013:

After arriving in France [in 1981], I told a BBC reporter that I had left Iran to expose the symbiotic relationship between Khomeinism and Reaganism.

Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the “October Surprise,” which prevented the attempts by myself and then-US President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 US presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.

And Reagan’s treason - just like Nixon’s treason - worked perfectly.

The Iran hostage crisis continued and torpedoed Jimmy Carter's re-election hopes.

And the same day Reagan took the oath of office - almost to the minute, by way of Iran’s acknowledging the deal - the American hostages in Iran were released.

And for that, Reagan began selling the Iranians weapons and spare parts in 1981, and continued until he was busted for it in 1986, producing the so-called "Iran Contra" scandal.

But, like Nixon, Reagan was never held to account for the criminal and treasonous actions that brought him to office.

After Reagan - Bush senior was elected - but like Gerry Ford - Bush was really only President because he served as Vice President under Reagan.

If the October Surprise hadn’t hoodwinked voters in 1980 - you can bet Bush senior would never have been elected in 1988. That's four illegitimate Republican presidents.

And that brings us to George W. Bush, the man who was given the White House by five right-wing justices on the Supreme Court.

In the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision in 2000 that stopped the Florida recount and thus handed George W. Bush the presidency - Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his opinion:

"The counting of votes ... does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner [George W. Bush], and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he [Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election."

Apparently, denying the presidency to Al Gore, the guy who actually won the most votes in Florida, did not constitute "irreparable harm" to Scalia or the media.

And apparently it wasn't important that Scalia’s son worked for the law firm that was defending George W. Bush before the high court (thus no Scalia recusal).

Just like it wasn't important to mention that Justice Clarence Thomas's wife worked on the Bush transition team and was busy accepting resumes from people who would serve in the Bush White House if her husband stopped the recount in Florida...which he did.  (No Thomas recusal, either.)

And more than a year after the election - a consortium of newspapers including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and USA Today did their own recount in Florida - manually counting every vote in a process that took almost a year - and concluded that Al Gore did indeed win the presidency in 2000.

As the November 12th, 2001 article in The New York Times read:

“If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won.”

That little bit of info was slipped into the seventeenth paragraph of the Times story on purpose so that it would attract as little attention as possible around the nation.

Why? because the 9/11 attacks had just happened - and journalists feared that burdening Americans with the plain truth that George W. Bush actually lost the election would further hurt a nation that was already in crisis.

And none of that even considered that Bush could only have gotten as close to Gore as he did because his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, had ordered his Secretary of State, Kathrine Harris, to purge at least 57,000 mostly-Black voters from the state’s rolls just before the election.

So for the third time in 4 decades - Republicans took the White House under illegitimate electoral circumstances.  Even President Carter was shocked by the brazenness of that one.

And Jeb Bush and the GOP were never held to account for that crime against democracy.

Most recently, in 2016, Kris Kobach and Republican Secretaries of State across the nation used Interstate Crosscheck to purge millions of legitimate voters – most people of color – from the voting rolls just in time for the Clinton/Trump election.  

Millions of otherwise valid American voters were denied their right to vote because they didn’t own the requisite ID – a modern-day poll-tax that’s spread across every Republican state with any consequential black, elderly, urban, or college-student population (all groups less likely to have a passport or drivers’ license).

Donald Trump still lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, but came to power through an electoral college designed to keep slavery safe in colonial America.

You can only wonder how much better off America would be if 6 Republican Presidents hadn't stolen or inherited a stolen White House.

In fact - the last legitimate Republican President - Dwight Eisenhower - was unlike any other Republican president since.

He ran for the White House on a platform of peace - that he would end the Korean War.

This from one of his TV campaign ads:

“The nation, haunted by the stalemate in Korea, looks to Eisenhower. Eisenhower knows how to deal with the Russians. He has met Europe leaders, has got them working with us. Elect the number one man for the number one job of our time. November 4th vote for peace. Vote for Eisenhower.”

Two of his campaign slogans were "I like Ike" and "Vote For Peace, Vote For Eisenhower".

Ike was a moderate Republican who stood up for working people - who kept tax rates on the rich at 91 percent - and made sure that the middle class in America was protected by FDR's New Deal policies.

As he told his brother Edgar in 1954 in a letter:

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history."

And Eisenhower was right - the only way Republicans have been able to win the presidency since he left office in 1961 has been by outright treason, a criminal fraud involving conflicted members of the Supreme Court, or by being vice-president under an already-illegitimate president.

And that's where we are today, dealing with the aftermath of all these Republican crimes and six illegitimate Republican presidents stacking the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary.

And this doesn’t even begin to tell the story of how the Republican majority in the senate represents 36 million fewer Americans than do the Democrats. Or how in most elections in past decades, Democrats have gotten more votes for the House of Representatives, but Republicans have controlled it because of gerrymandering.  

This raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the modern Republican Party itself. 

They work hand-in-glove with a group of right-wing billionaires and billionaire-owned or dominated media outlets like Fox and “conservative” TV and radio outlets across the nation, along with a very well-funded network of right wing websites.

  

The Koch Network’s various groups, for example, have more money, more offices, and more staff than the Republican Party itself. Three times more employees and twice the budget, in fact. Which raises the question: which is the dog, and which is the tail?

And, as we’ve seen so vividly in the “debate” about healthcare this year, the Republicans, like Richard Nixon, are not encumbered by the need to tell the truth.

Whether it’s ending trade deals, bringing home jobs, protecting Social Security and Medicaid, or saving our public lands and environment – virtually every promise that Trump ran and won on is being broken. Meanwhile, the oligarchs continue to pressure Republican senators to vote their way.

Meanwhile, a public trust that has taken 240 years to build is being destroyed, as public lands, regulatory agencies, and our courts are handed off to oligarchs and transnational corporations to exploit or destroy.

The Trump and Republican campaign of 2016, Americans are now discovering, was nearly all lies, well-supported by a vast right-wing media machine and a timid, profit-obsessed “mainstream” corporate media.  Meanwhile, it seemed that all the Democrats could say was, “The children are watching!”

  

Fraud, treason, and lies have worked well for the GOP for half a century.

Thus, the Democrats are right to now fine-tune their message to the people.  But in addition to “A Better Deal,” they may want to consider adding to their agenda a solid RICO investigation into the GOP and the oligarchs who fund it.

It’s way past time to stop the now-routine Republican practice of using treason, lies, and crime to gain and hold political power.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and author of over 25 books in print.

Cartoon Roundup

'Skinny Repeal' Defeated, Thanks To Democrats And Senators McCain, Murkowski And Collins

By Karoli Kuns

Tonight, Senator John McCain just paid red don back for his 'I like people who weren't captured' shit.

He was the third vote, with Senators Collins and Murkowski to kill the skinny bill.
I don't know what happens next.
---
All eight pages of the Trojan Horse "Health Care Freedom Act" have been published.

I could tell you what's in them, but the thing is, Senators don't want this to become law. They don't want the House to rubber-stamp this. This is just a placeholder to send over to the House so they can convene a conference committee, which will surely fail.

And when it fails, this will pass. So I guess that means you should know what's in it.

• Repeals individual mandate, effective January 1, 2017.
• Allows some tinkering by states to Essential Health Benefits
• Repeals device tax
• Defunds Planned Parenthood
• Raises limits to Health Savings Accounts

This bill will immediately increase premiums by 20 percent across the whole marketplace -- not just individual but also employer markets. It will also take away access for 16-17 million people.

I'm afraid (as are many of the health care experts I follow) that this will pass. I will update this post with more as it's available.

Cliven Bundy follower gets 68 years for role in armed Nevada standoff

By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) - One of two men convicted in the first of several trials stemming from a 2014 standoff led by renegade rancher Cliven Bundy against federal authorities in Nevada was sentenced on Wednesday to 68 years in prison for his role in the armed confrontation.

Gregory Burleson, 53, of Phoenix, was found guilty in April of eight felony counts, including charges of threatening and assaulting federal officers, obstruction of justice, interstate travel in aid of extortion and firearms offenses related to a crime of violence.

The uprising at Bundy's ranch near Bunkerville, Nevada, 75 miles (120 km) northeast of Las Vegas, grew out of a dispute in which federal agents seized Bundy's cattle over his refusal to pay fees required for grazing his livestock on government land. 

The standoff became a flashpoint in long-simmering tensions over federal ownership of vast tracts of public lands in the West, and a rallying point for right-wing militants who challenge the U.S. government's authority in the region. 

Burleson was the first of 17 defendants from the Bundy revolt to be tried, convicted and sent to prison. A co-defendant found guilty by the same jury faces sentencing in September. 

Four others granted a mistrial in April are being retried in Nevada. Two more groups of defendants, including Bundy and his sons, are scheduled to stand trial later this year and next.

Two others charged in the case pleaded guilty separately. One received a seven-year prison term, the other will be sentenced in January, said Trisha Young, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Las Vegas.

Two of Bundy's sons and four followers were acquitted of conspiracy charges in a separate trial in October stemming from their armed takeover of a federal wildlife center in Oregon in early 2016.

Wednesday's sentencing came days before various militia groups plan a weekend rally near Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

Burleson and the five others with whom he was tried were described by prosecutors as Bundy's "gunmen and followers," who showed up at his ranch from neighboring Western states armed with assault rifles and other weapons. 

Prosecutors said all six were among hundreds who descended on Bunkerville in April 2014 for a showdown with federal officers providing security during a court-ordered roundup of Bundy's cattle.

Outgunned by Bundy's supporters, authorities released the cattle and left the area. Although no shots were fired, prosecutors said Burleson and his five co-defendants aimed rifles at law enforcement.

Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Grant McCool and Lisa Shumaker

D.L. Hughley On John McCain's And Ted Kennedy's Actions At The End Of Their Lives

Fuck You, John McCain

Posted by Rude One

I know there are people who are more responsible than Arizona Senator John McCain for the passage of the motion to proceed to dismantle health care coverage for millions of Americans and give a big ass tax cut to the wealthiest in the country. I know that there is still a long, long way to go before any actual legislation that does all that passes, although it really just seems like a fait accompli at this point. And I know, I know, Christ, fuck, I know that in some cosmic sense it's wrong to attack someone who has an aggressive form of brain cancer and just had a blood clot removed from behind his eyeball, that such suffering ought to be given respect. But fuck all that.

Fuck you, John McCain, you petulant, pissant son of a bitch. Fuck you, fuck your legacy, fuck your pain, fuck your recovery, fuck your family, and fuck, fuck, fuck you. And I feel free to say that because, with his vote today to allow debate on some bullshit new health care plan, he said, "Fuck you" to hundreds of thousands of his state's constituents who will lose Medicaid coverage or be priced out of insurance or be pushed into some worthless policy.

The saddest response to McCain's announcement yesterday that he was returning early to Washington to vote on the motion-to-proceed was the hope that the mythical maverick McCain would show up and, likely having no more elections to run, would do the right thing by voting "No." That McCain never existed, and, except for issues like torture, he has been as loyal a Republican as any flea on the hairs on Mitch McConnell's waxy balls. Of course he was coming back to dick people over. It's what he does. He's a motherfucker, like every other Republican motherfucker. Motherfuckers fuck mothers. How many times do I have to say this? They fuck mothers. It's right there in the word. If they get a chance to fuck a mother, they will fuck that mother because they are motherfuckers. And the repeal of the Affordable Care Act is like a sticky blood orgy of motherfuckery. By the time the process is over, Republicans will fuck every hole and carve some new ones to fuck.

Not only did McCain vote, but then he saw fit to stand there and give a sanctimonious goddamned speech decrying how the Senate has become "more partisan, more tribal." He called for a return to some kind of era of comity, and he blamed both parties for what he sees as a breakdown in "regular order" in the Senate and the ability to work together. And all over the media, people acted like fuckin' Lancelot had just come riding in to save the day when it was really just a filthy one-eyed poodle with a chip on its shoulder and ankles to bite.

Let's contextualize: "Regular order" was stabbed to death by Republicans during the Obama presidency when the Senate GOP decided that every bill would be filibustered when they were in the minority and any idea of the President's would be blocked when they got the majority. John McCain barely squeaked a single fart of protest out from between his saggy ass cheeks. In fact, again, except for torture (sometimes), he went along every single fucked up time that Republicans threw themselves in the way of legislation passed by the House. And then he blew shit up like a common terrorist when Republicans got the Senate back. "Regular order," motherfucker? Suck a pig dick.

Shit, in his little vomit of a speech today, he smirked when he criticized Democrats for not engaging Republicans on the Affordable Care Act: "The Obama administration and congressional Democrats shouldn’t have forced through Congress without any opposition support a social and economic change as massive as Obamacare." Bitch, there were ten months of hearings and 160 Republican amendments got into the bill. So make a dildo out of your complaint about regular order and shove it up your worn out sphincter.

And let's contextualize further: What McCain voted for today was a phantom bill. It was a sham to get something out there so that the amendment process could start on the House bill. It was as far from regular order as having monkeys fuck on the floor of the Senate, although that's a fair analogy for what actually occurred.

The final fucking insult from McCain today was that he once again pretended like he might be a maverick. He said, "Why don’t we try the old way of legislating in the Senate, the way our rules and customs encourage us to act. If this process ends in failure, which seem likely, then let’s return to regular order." If you think that McCain will do anything noble, if you think he will put country over party or compassion over ideology, then you have no idea who John McCain really is: a shitty human being who tricked everyone into thinking he was better than that, a false idol, and a sad, miserable fool who deserves to be pissed on by everyone he passes. He had a chance to be a hero to the vast majority of Americans today, but he didn't care. Not even after receiving the government-paid health care he has gotten his entire life. And he gives a win to Donald Trump, who mocked McCain being a POW during the Vietnam War.

Fuck him.

Besides, he gave us Sarah Palin, whose stupidity, vapidity, and cruelty arguably paved over the gravel road and made the ride easier for Donald Trump.

So fuck him forever.

How Much Degradation Can We Stand? The Most Embarrassing Things Trump Said In Three Speeches

Posted by Rude One

Donald Trump, a man who wouldn't know honor if it bit his ass and screamed, "I'm honor," gave a speech to the annual Boy Scout Jamboree. During it, he unzipped his fly and pulled out his little dick, stretched it until it was near ripping and said, "Check out that dick, boys. Not bad. Not bad, if I say so myself. And you know I do." When he wasn't shaking his dick at the children, he was making jokes like he was starring in Hell's version of Catch a Rising Star, riffing and then stepping away from the microphone and swinging his Yeti-like arms for emphasis. It was like watching a brain-damaged ape trying to imitate Rodney Dangerfield.

The next night, last night, Trump had another one of his Nuremberg Rallies (yeah, I'm comparing him to Hitler - Do we have to wait until he's gassing people to do that?), this time in Ohio. An asshole in defeat, he is a throbbing, distended sphincter in victory. So he dropped his pants in front of the gathered 6,000 people and said, "I'm gonna make Democrats and Jeff Sessions and Lisa Murkowski kiss my fat ass!"

Well, not really. But it was two days of utter degradation, an embarrassing display put on by our goddamned president. You've heard some of the shitty things he said, but, believe me (as he would say), there was line after line of shame and shamelessness and dickishness and brazen fuckery. For instance,

At the Boy Scout Jamboree:

- "I am thrilled to be here. Thrilled. And if you think that was an easy trip, you’re wrong." Trump is acting like he personally hiked through the mountains of West Virginia to get to the event when he was brought there on a golden throne. Probably there was no golf cart go from the holding area to the stage. But he wants the kids to be grateful he made the effort.

- "By the way, what do you think the chances are that this incredible, massive crowd, record-setting is going to be shown on television tonight? One percent or zero?" Trump is obsessed with setting records. He could just become a professional hot dog eater and call up Guinness, but, no, he's gotta fuck with all of us.

- "I saw him at a cocktail party, and it was very sad because the hottest people in New York were at this party." In the midst of a rambling tale about William Leavitt, Trump dropped in that he went to a cocktail party with the "hottest people." Because of course he did. Because why would he waste his time with less than the hottest? Because what the fuck else would you tell a bunch of children and teenagers eager to race wooden block cars? A story about camping? He'd've had to have fucking camped to do that.

- "Do you remember that incredible night with the maps and the Republicans are red and the Democrats are blue, and that map was so red, it was unbelievable, and they didn't know what to say?" He told the Scouts about his election victory. Because of course he did. He also shit on Hillary Clinton. Because of course he did.

- "By the way, under the Trump administration, you’ll be saying, Merry Christmas again when you go shopping. Believe me. Merry Christmas. They've been downplaying that little, beautiful phrase. You're going to be saying, merry Christmas again, folks." It's fucking July. It's. Fucking. July. Anyone saying, "Merry Christmas" now is a fucking loser.

And then at his speech "Saluting American Heroes" in Ohio:

- "It's great to be back in Youngstown. It was an incredible time we had. And you know the numbers, and you saw for many, many years Democrats -- and they're really great -- but Democrats, they win in Youngstown. But not this time." Election victory. Because of course.

And then at his rally in Youngstown later:

- "Boy, he's a young one. He's going back home to mommy. Oh, is he in trouble. He's in trouble. He's in trouble. And I'll bet his mommy voted for us, right?" This was a reaction to a protester, bullying him and deriding him for doing what Trump did for years on Twitter when Obama was president.

- "We're gonna have it so that Americans can once again speak the magnificent words of Alexander Hamilton, 'Here the people govern.'" This was weirdly sandwiched between his proclamation that he was going to bring back factory jobs and his assertion that only the "late, great" Lincoln was more presidential than him. As usual, Trump gets history wrong. Hamilton was talking about Congress, especially that Congress was a check on the power of the presidency. In other words, "Here, sir, the people govern: Here they act by their immediate representatives" is a direct rebuke to Trump's desire to run roughshod over Congress.

- "So they'll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15, and others and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we've been protecting for so long." This was shortly after Trump praised police brutality towards people arrested as gang members. It's fear-mongering in its purest, most sinister form, a kind of propaganda that will get people worked up.

- "We will buy American and will hire, finally, American." Trump's own businesses are seeking visas to hire foreign workers. So, you know, fuck that lie.

At each of these occasions, the crowds, even most of the Scouts, cheered and chanted wildly.

This vertiginous ride we're on has gotten sickening. Trump has degraded the language, the laws, the nation, and us, all of us. How far into the dirt will he drag us before we finally either give up or fight back?

Talking About Pardoning Yourself Makes You Sound REALLY Guilty

Donald Trump takes to Twitter and emphasizes that he has the "complete power to pardon," drawing suspicion that his top advisers and even he himself might be facing criminal charges in connection to the Russia scandal.

Russian Mob Money Helped Build Donald Trump Business Empire - Trump’s Russian Laundromat

A stunning report in The New Republic alleges that, whether Donald Trump knew it or not, for decades he made a large portion of his personal fortune from Russian mobsters & oligarchs.



Trump's Russian Laundromat