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.
Thursday, August 10, 2017
Is Trump Too Mentally Unstable To Solve The North Korea Issue?
Tensions are heating up between the U.S. and North Korea, and Donald
Trump appears to only want to escalate the situation. After warning
North Korea that they would be met with “fire and fury” like the world
has never seen, he took to Twitter to brag about the state of our
nuclear weaponry. Trump desperately wants to launch a nuclear attack,
and the results will have global ramifications for the U.S. Ring of
Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Link 1 - https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s...https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/895252459152711680
Link 2 – https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/895254168570605568
Link 1 - https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s...https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/895252459152711680
Link 2 – https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/895254168570605568
Trump’s Nonstop Lies Are Finally Starting To Bother Republican Operatives
GOP strategist Ana Navarro has finally had enough of Donald Trump’s
nonstop lying, and during a recent media appearance she compared the
president to a used car salesperson who just keeps making things up to
make a sale. Trump’s lies are certainly growing out of control, but he
doesn’t appear to be pulling back any time soon. Ring of Fire’s Farron
Cousins discusses this.
Link – http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/345698-gop-strategist-trump-thinks-hes-a-tv-host-or-used-car-salesman-not
Link – http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/345698-gop-strategist-trump-thinks-hes-a-tv-host-or-used-car-salesman-not
Married To The Mob: Investigative Journalist Craig Unger On What Trump Owes The Russian Mafia
https://democracynow.org
- A new exposé and cover story in the September issue of the New
Republic, titled "Married to the Mob: What Trump Owes the Russian
Mafia," examines how the Russian mafia has used the president’s
properties to launder money and hide assets. We speak with the author,
investigative journalist Craig Unger.
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
Oh Go Fuck Yourself, Glenn Greenwald
Oh golly. That’s a hard one. Let’s get out our abacus and some scratch paper and weigh the pros and cons.Greenwald, who likes to remind his readers every now and then (constantly) that he really really really really really doesn’t like America, and who is in theory a liberal who embraces liberal values, but totally isn’t, is just not sure whether Donald Trump’s plans to rip healthcare away from millions, deport the fuck out of every brown-skinned person he sees, and so on, are worse than the generals — Mattis, McMaster and Kelly — SUBVERTING TRUMP’S AGENDA by sneakily getting appointed to sweet-ass cabinet and White House positions by Donald Trump, and then sort of trying to rein in some of President Fuck-Bonkers’s most dangerous tendencies.
Oh and he’s mad about the Deep State, because of course he is. Greenwald spends a lot of his column beating a straw man to death, claiming that all the sane people who HAAAAAATE Trump, many of them conservatives who worked tirelessly to keep him from getting elected, and who have been in “COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY, MOTHERFUCKERS” mode since Greenwald’s pals at WikiLeaks and the Russians he is SO IN LOVE WITH (he would deny that accusation, but ya know, actions speak louder than words, and also fuck him) helped Trump get elected, think Greenwald and his weirdo friends are dumb for believing there is a “Deep State.” This is a false construct. We very much know there is a Deep State, and we know it makes Greenwald and Sean Hannity shit the bed, so we make fun of them about it.
But he’s really really confused about which is worse: that Trump is in office and beating the shit out of American institutions and the Constitution, or that the so-called Deep State (normal people refer to them as “career public servants”) is trying its damnedest to protect the Republic from Trump’s damage. The horrors! It reminds us of that thing Anthony Scaramucci whined during his 120-some-odd-hour tenure as White House Communications Director, about how there are some White House staffers who “think it is their job to save America from this president.” It’s almost as if there is a wide consensus among thinking Americans that the traditions we hold dear are in danger, and that we should do something about it. (Also, to all those people, thank you!)
But Greenwald can’t abide that, because how DARE the Deep State Military-CIA-Industrial Complex act all high and mighty like they for real care about protecting America from the authoritarian dipshit in the White House, when it’s very clear that #BothSidesDoIt anyway? How could Donald Trump possibly be more evil than the United States Of America has always been since forever?
Is it really hard to imagine any group that’s hurt people more than the Bush era neocons? What kind of pathetic What-About-Ism is this, GLENN? Is it not possible to simultaneously believe that the neocons empowered by George W. Bush did a lot of really bad shit (and that America in general has some blood on its hands), AND ALSO that Russia under Putin, the Rwandan genocide, North Korea, hell, a bunch of Communist governments going way the fuck back, are WORSE? What about ISIS?No matter how much of a threat one regards Trump as being, there really are other major threats to U.S. democracy and important political values. It’s hard, for instance, to imagine any group that has done more harm, and ushered in more evil, than the Bush-era neocons with whom Democrats are now openly aligning. And who has brought more death, and suffering, and tyranny to the world over the last six decades than the U.S. national security state?
The dead exploded babies his beloved Russians killed in Aleppo?
HOW ABOUT FUCKING POL POT, GLENN? IS THAT WORSE?
It’s handy that he only goes back six decades, otherwise he’d have to contend with little things like Hitler and Stalin and oh God what the fuck kind of #SlatePitch would we be reading then?
Don’t get us wrong — we don’t think it’s ideal that generals are in all these positions, or that #DeepState patriots are doing what they’re doing, and during ANY other presidency, we’d probably be appalled. But to use Greenwald’s construction, what president has done more to abuse power and subvert American institutions in his first six months of office than Donald Trump?
Anyway, this is very stupid, and what we’ve come to expect from Greenwald, who also is PRETTY SURE the Trump-Russia story is a buncha lies. As soon as he finds the time, we’re sure his Intercept website will publish a journalism exclusive claiming to have found the 400 pound New Jersey dude Trump always claims REALLY hacked the 2016 election, and we will have to tell him to go fuck himself all over again.
What tedious fuckery.
The Alt-Right And Glenn Greenwald Versus H.R. McMaster
Donald
Trump has scrambled the political spectrum in certain ways, and one of
them has been to introduce a new set of players to the national scene.
“Nationalists” or “populists” (as they now call themselves), or the
“alt-right” (as they used to call themselves), have been vying with
traditional Republicans for control of the Trump administration. The
nationalists tend to be pro-Russia, virulently anti-immigrant,
race-centric, and conspiratorial in their thinking.
Their current
project is a political war against National Security Adviser H.R.
McMaster, a conventional Republican who displaced the nationalist
Michael Flynn. The nationalist war against McMaster has included waves
of Russian social-media bots, leaks placed in the nationalist organ Breitbart, and undisguised anti-Semitism.
Most
observers outside the nationalist wing have treated McMaster as the
sympathetic party in the conflict. The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald is a
notable exception. Greenwald has depicted the conflict, much like the
nationalists themselves have, as the machinations of the deep state to
prevent the authentic, democratically legitimate populist
representatives of Trumpism from exerting their rightful authority.
Greenwald himself is not a nationalist, and is certainly not a bigot,
but the episode has revealed a left-winger’s idiosyncratic sympathy for
the most odious characters on the right.
Greenwald lays out his thinking in a deeply, if inadvertently, revealing column denouncing anti-Trump saboteurs in the deep state.
The
foundation of Greenwald’s worldview — on this issue and nearly
everything else — is that the United States and its national-security
apparatus is the greatest force for evil in the world. “Who has brought
more death, and suffering, and tyranny to the world over the last six
decades,” he writes, “than the U.S. National Security State?” (This
six-decade period of time includes Mao’s regime in China, which killed
45 to 75 million people, as well as the Khmer Rouge and several decades
of the Soviet Union.)
In Greenwald’s mind, the ultimate expression of
American evil is and always will be neoconservatism. “It’s hard, for
instance, to imagine any group that has done more harm, and ushered in
more evil, than the Bush-era neocons with whom Democrats are now openly
aligning,” he argues.
The
neoconservatives have lined up against Trump, and many Democrats agree
with them on certain issues. Since the neocons represent maximal evil in
the world, any opponent of theirs must be, in Greenwald’s calculus, the
lesser evil. His construction that “it’s hard … to imagine” any worse
faction than the neocons is especially telling. However dangerous or
rancid figures like Steve Bannon or Michael Flynn may be, the
possibility that they could match the evil of the neocons is literally
beyond the capacity of his brain to imagine.
A
second source of Greenwald’s sympathy for the nationalists is their
populism. The nationalists style themselves as outsiders beset by
powerful, self-interested networks of hidden foes. And while their
racism is not his cup of tea, Greenwald shares the same broad view of
his enemies.
Trump
“advocated a slew of policies that attacked the most sacred prongs of
long-standing bipartisan Washington consensus,” argues Greenwald. “As a
result, he was (and continues to be) viewed as uniquely repellent by the
neoliberal and neoconservative guardians of that consensus, along with
their sprawling network of agencies, think tanks, financial policy
organs, and media outlets used to implement their agenda (CIA, NSA, the
Brookings/AEI think tank axis, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, etc.).”
It
is certainly true that all manner of elites disdain Trump. What’s
striking is Greenwald’s uncharitable reading of their motives, which
closely tracks Trump’s own portrayal of the situation.
Many elites
consider Trump too ignorant, lazy, impulsive, and bigoted for the job.
Instead Greenwald presents their opposition as reflecting a fear that
Trump threatens their wealth and power. (This despite the pro-elite tilt
of his tax and regulatory policies — which, in particular, make it
astonishing that Greenwald would take at face value Trump’s claim to
threaten the interests of “Wall Street” and its “financial policy
organs.”)
The
opposition to Trump naturally shares a wide array of motives, as would
any wide-ranging coalition. Greenwald’s column consistently attributes
to those opponents only the most repellant beliefs. He doesn’t even
consider the possibility that some people genuinely believe McMaster is a
safe, responsible figure who might help dissuade the president from
doing something terrible.
Greenwald emphasizes, “Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO and George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary, went to the pages of the Washington Post
in mid-2016 to shower Clinton with praise and Trump with unbridled
scorn, saying what he hated most about Trump was his refusal to consider
cuts in entitlement spending (in contrast, presumably, to the Democrat
he was endorsing).” It is true that Trump promised not to cut
entitlement spending. Greenwald’s notion that this promise placed him
“presumably in contrast” with Hillary Clinton ignores that fact that
Clinton also promised to protect these programs.
The
passage about entitlements appears deep in Paulson’s op-ed, which
Paulson began by lambasting Trump for encouraging “ignorance, prejudice,
fear and isolationism,” among other flaws. Greenwald asserts that
Paulson identifies Trump’s hostility to cutting entitlements as “what he
hated most” about the Republican nominee, but nothing in the op-ed
indicates this is what Paulson hated most.
Greenwald just made that part
up.
The
same concoction of motives is at work in Greenwald’s contempt for
McMaster and John Kelly, the new chief of staff. The pair of former
generals “have long been hailed by anti-Trump factions as the Serious,
Responsible Adults in the Trump administration, primarily because they
support militaristic policies — such as the war in Afghanistan and
intervention in Syria — that are far more in line with official
Washington’s bipartisan posture,” he writes.
Note
that “primarily.” Greenwald is arguing that news coverage treating them
as competent managers, as opposed to the amateurish nationalists, is
propaganda by the elite plumping for greater war in Afghanistan and
Syria. He is implying that if Kelly and McMaster took more dovish
positions on Afghanistan and Syria, their public image would be
altogether different. Greenwald supplies no evidence for this premise.
In fact, McMaster’s most acute policy struggle has been his efforts to maintain the Iran nuclear agreement, one which has placed him on the dovish side, against an established neoconservative position. Greenwald does not mention this issue, which fatally undermines his entire analysis.
The
final point of overlap between Greenwald and the nationalists is their
relatively sympathetic view of Russia. The nationalists admire Putin as a
champion of white Christian culture against Islam, a predisposition
Greenwald does not share at all. Greenwald has, however, defended Russia’s menacing of its neighbors, and repeatedly questioned its ties to WikiLeaks.
From
the outset, he has reflexively discounted evidence of Russian
intervention in the election.
“Democrats completely resurrect that Cold
War McCarthyite kind of rhetoric not only to accuse Paul Manafort, who
does have direct financial ties to certainly the pro — the former
pro-Russian leader of the Ukraine,” he asserted last year. (Manafort did have financial ties to that leader, a fact that was obvious at the time and which Manafort no longer denies.) Democratic accusations that Trump had hidden ties with Russia were a “smear tactic,” “unhinged,” “wild, elaborate conspiracy theories,” a “desperate” excuse for their election defeat, and so on.
As
evidence of Russian intervention piled up, Greenwald’s line of defense
has continued to retreat. When emails revealed a campaign meeting by
Russians on the explicit promise of helping Trump’s campaign, Greenwald brushed it off
as politics as usual: “I, personally, although it’s dirty, think all of
these events are sort of the way politics works. Of course if you’re in
an important campaign and someone offers you incriminating information
about your opponent, you’re going to want it no matter where it comes
from.”
This
closely tracks the Trump legal team’s own defense of the Russia
scandal, a fact that is probably coincidental. (There are only so many
arguments to make.) Greenwald is not a racist, and is the opposite
of a nationalist, and yet his worldview has brought him into close
alignment with that of the alt-right. A Greenwaldian paranoid would see
this quasi-alliance as a conspiracy. The reality of his warped defenses
of Trump is merely that of a monomaniac unable to relinquish his
obsessions.
Trump Just Helped Prove How Fake His Twitter Following Is
This is what happens when your biggest fans are bots.
Like pretty much everything else about his presidency, Donald Trump’s Twitter following is a lie. His social media fan base is mostly made of fake accounts; his legion of followers overwhelmingly comprised of automated bots.
This weekend, Trump inadvertently reminded us how phony his social media popularity is when he shined a light on what he erroneously believed was an adoring supporter. That Trump booster turned out be a Twitter bot—just one of the millions of fake accounts that exist solely to bolster the popularity of the most unpopular president in American history.
On the heels of the president basically catfishing himself, Twitter has since suspended the fake account and a slew of others just like it.
http://www.alternet.org/media/trump-just-helped-prove-how-fake-his-twitter-following
Like pretty much everything else about his presidency, Donald Trump’s Twitter following is a lie. His social media fan base is mostly made of fake accounts; his legion of followers overwhelmingly comprised of automated bots.
This weekend, Trump inadvertently reminded us how phony his social media popularity is when he shined a light on what he erroneously believed was an adoring supporter. That Trump booster turned out be a Twitter bot—just one of the millions of fake accounts that exist solely to bolster the popularity of the most unpopular president in American history.
On the heels of the president basically catfishing himself, Twitter has since suspended the fake account and a slew of others just like it.
http://www.alternet.org/media/trump-just-helped-prove-how-fake-his-twitter-following
Airbnb Has Blocked The Accounts Of Attendees Of A Far-Right Rally
By Shannon Ho
Airbnb has deleted accounts and
canceled bookings of users who appear to be connected to "Unite the
Right," a far-right political rally set for Saturday in Charlottesville,
Virginia.
Neo-Nazi and white
supremacist website The Daily Stormer had organized a series of large
rally-weekend gatherings through the home-sharing site, Airbnb told NBC News.
Concerned Airbnb users flagged the thread, leading the company to
investigate potential violations of its user contract, which calls for
unbiased hospitality.
Airbnb said
they decided to remove the far-right lodgers because they were "pursuing
behavior on the platform that would be antithetical to the Airbnb
Community Commitment."
Jason
Kessler, organizer of the "Unite the Right" rally and self-described
"pro-white" activist, said Airbnb's blocking of certain users is
"outrageous and should be grounds for a lawsuit."
Clay
Hansen, the executive director of the nonpartisan Thomas Jefferson
Center for the Protection of Free Expression in Charlottesville,
said Airbnb's choice to terminate accounts does not violate the First
Amendment.
"I would say that
while Airbnb's actions wouldn't necessarily comport with general free
speech principles, they are a private company and are entitled to enact
and enforce their terms of service as they see fit," Hansen told NBC
News.
The rally, scheduled to take
place Saturday in Charlottesville, is shaping up to be the "the largest
hate-gathering of its kind in decades," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
As
of Tuesday, Aug. 8, almost 700 people said they would be attending, and
another 1,200 showed interest in the event on its Facebook link. The
rally aims to "to affirm the right of Southerners and white people to
organize for their interests."
"It's
the racial targeting of white people for their ethnic advocacy,"
Kessler wrote in an email to NBC. "Would Airbnb cancel the service of
black nationalists or Black Lives Matter activists for their social
media activity? Of course not!"
White
supremacists gathered in Charlottesville in May to protest the removal
of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's statue. They chanted "All White
Lives Matter" while carrying torches. Klu Klux Klan members also
protested there in July for the same cause.
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
How Racist Can The White House Get? (Answer: Very)
Posted by Rude One
The last couple of days have been banner ones for racists of just about every stripe, from backwoods yahoo country fucks to ostensibly educated white nationalist shit crumbs, from pandering politicians to true believers. Let's just run it down:
1. The Department of Justice is exploring whether the federal government should be "suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants." It's as if they believe that diversity on college campuses is a bad thing, probably because it makes people more sympathetic to people of other races. And how can you have a race war if that happens?
2. President Donald Trump announced his support for the RAISE Act, which is an anodyne acronym masking a shitty policy. It looks to cut in half the number of legal immigrants coming into the country, and it emphasizes skilled workers who can speak English. Oh, and only spouses and children can come over with immigrants.
When nutzoid hate-filled jizz goblin Stephen Miller, a senior policy advisor and winner of "Man Who Most Looks Like a Star Trek Alien" was asked about the racist implications of the proposal, he went into an outrage froth that coated the gathered reporters in a glistening film of saliva. It reached a spittle-flecked climax when Miller attacked CNN's Jim Acosta for daring to suggest that one purpose of the bill might be to bring in more white people, saying that "it reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree." Fuck's sake, "cosmopolitan" means you give a shit about the world. The opposite of "cosmopolitan" is, more or less, "xenophobic." Or it's just an anti-Semitic dog whistle (which is extra weird since Miller is Jewish). Either way, between that and a bizarro attack on the meaning of the Statue of Liberty, it was a fucking train wreck of an appearance.
3. The Washington Post printed transcripts of Trump's late January phone calls with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. While they are masterpieces of fuckery, dickishness, and doltishness, it's also worth pointing out how fucking openly racist Trump is willing to go when talking about refugees.
When Turnbull presses Trump on honoring a deal on at least vetting refugees to possibly take them into the United States, Trump goes twitchy with paranoia. He knocks Cubans: "You remember the Mariel boat lift, where Castro let everyone out of prison and Jimmy Carter accepted them with open arms. These were brutal people." Yeah, see only 2% of the 125,000 Cubans who came here in 1980 were deemed criminals who needed to be deported. The rest fucking made Miami what it is today. (Oddly, Miller brought up the Mariel boat lift in his remarks yesterday. These Trumpers are consistent in their assholery.)
Then, after Turnbull insists that the U.S. live up to its obligations, something Trump is well-known not to give a flying rat fuck about, the president says of the refugees who have been living in horrific conditions on islands off Australia, "I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people...maybe you should let them out of prison." Who knows where all these milk jobs are, but Trump equates "refugee camp" with "prison," which would probably shock a lot of the little children who are there.
This shit is so blatant it'd make a robed KKK member say, "Whoa, a little obvious there, fella."
Look, we know Trump is racist. We knew it for years, from the Central Park Five to birtherism to the Muslim travel ban. It has been one of his most consistent traits. And we know that Trump has surrounded himself with racists, with people who are directly connected to white nationalist groups. And we know that Trump's supporters are racist (yeah, you are, fuck off).
And now we're seeing the policy implications of that. Trump used to ask various non-white groups, "What the hell do you have to lose?" in electing him.
It's pretty clear that the answer is "a future."
The last couple of days have been banner ones for racists of just about every stripe, from backwoods yahoo country fucks to ostensibly educated white nationalist shit crumbs, from pandering politicians to true believers. Let's just run it down:
1. The Department of Justice is exploring whether the federal government should be "suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants." It's as if they believe that diversity on college campuses is a bad thing, probably because it makes people more sympathetic to people of other races. And how can you have a race war if that happens?
2. President Donald Trump announced his support for the RAISE Act, which is an anodyne acronym masking a shitty policy. It looks to cut in half the number of legal immigrants coming into the country, and it emphasizes skilled workers who can speak English. Oh, and only spouses and children can come over with immigrants.
When nutzoid hate-filled jizz goblin Stephen Miller, a senior policy advisor and winner of "Man Who Most Looks Like a Star Trek Alien" was asked about the racist implications of the proposal, he went into an outrage froth that coated the gathered reporters in a glistening film of saliva. It reached a spittle-flecked climax when Miller attacked CNN's Jim Acosta for daring to suggest that one purpose of the bill might be to bring in more white people, saying that "it reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree." Fuck's sake, "cosmopolitan" means you give a shit about the world. The opposite of "cosmopolitan" is, more or less, "xenophobic." Or it's just an anti-Semitic dog whistle (which is extra weird since Miller is Jewish). Either way, between that and a bizarro attack on the meaning of the Statue of Liberty, it was a fucking train wreck of an appearance.
3. The Washington Post printed transcripts of Trump's late January phone calls with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. While they are masterpieces of fuckery, dickishness, and doltishness, it's also worth pointing out how fucking openly racist Trump is willing to go when talking about refugees.
When Turnbull presses Trump on honoring a deal on at least vetting refugees to possibly take them into the United States, Trump goes twitchy with paranoia. He knocks Cubans: "You remember the Mariel boat lift, where Castro let everyone out of prison and Jimmy Carter accepted them with open arms. These were brutal people." Yeah, see only 2% of the 125,000 Cubans who came here in 1980 were deemed criminals who needed to be deported. The rest fucking made Miami what it is today. (Oddly, Miller brought up the Mariel boat lift in his remarks yesterday. These Trumpers are consistent in their assholery.)
Then, after Turnbull insists that the U.S. live up to its obligations, something Trump is well-known not to give a flying rat fuck about, the president says of the refugees who have been living in horrific conditions on islands off Australia, "I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people...maybe you should let them out of prison." Who knows where all these milk jobs are, but Trump equates "refugee camp" with "prison," which would probably shock a lot of the little children who are there.
This shit is so blatant it'd make a robed KKK member say, "Whoa, a little obvious there, fella."
Look, we know Trump is racist. We knew it for years, from the Central Park Five to birtherism to the Muslim travel ban. It has been one of his most consistent traits. And we know that Trump has surrounded himself with racists, with people who are directly connected to white nationalist groups. And we know that Trump's supporters are racist (yeah, you are, fuck off).
And now we're seeing the policy implications of that. Trump used to ask various non-white groups, "What the hell do you have to lose?" in electing him.
It's pretty clear that the answer is "a future."
Monday, August 7, 2017
Saturday, August 5, 2017
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.
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.
“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.
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.”
Friday, August 4, 2017
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/
"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/
Thursday, August 3, 2017
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
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/
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
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
Monday, July 31, 2017
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
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.
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.
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