Kid Berwyn
Kid Berwyn's JournalThe Gravedigger of American Democracy
“If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell. He stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar, congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect for democratic norms, allowing McConnell to trample them even more. Nowhere is this vicious circle clearer than in the obliteration of traditional precedents concerning judicial appointments. Systematic obstruction of nominations in Obama’s first term provoked Democrats to scrap the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominations. Then McConnell’s unprecedented blocking of the Merrick Garland nomination required him in turn to scrap the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in order to complete the “steal” of Antonin Scalia’s seat and confirm Neil Gorsuch. The extreme politicization of the judicial nomination process is once again on display in the current Kavanaugh hearings.“
Source:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/10/25/suffocation-of-democracy/
Passport to Magonia
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/vallee_magonia.html
Three men and a woman, actually. They fell from the sky, it would seem, in the vicinity of Lyon in what’s now eastern France, early in the ninth century. They came from a place called Magonia.
So the local mob believed, as they prepared to stone them to death.
We have the story from Agobard, Archbishop of Lyon (c. 779-840), in a treatise directed against “the absurd opinion of the common folk concerning hail and thunder.” Agobard prided himself on his enlightenment; Scripture, not superstition, was for him the touchstone of truth. Here’s the story he tells, as translated by W. J. Lewis for the Internet Medieval Sourcebook:
“But we have seen and heard of many people overcome with so much foolishness, made crazy by so much stupidity, that they believe and say that there is a certain region, which is called Magonia, from which ships come in the clouds. In these ships the crops that fell because of hail and were lost in storms are carried back into that region; evidently these aerial sailors make a payment to the storm-makers, and take the grain and other crops. Among those so blinded with profound stupidity that they believe these things could happen we have seen many people in a kind of meeting, exhibiting four captives, three men and one woman, as if they had fallen from these very ships. As I have said, they exhibited these four, who had been chained up for some days, with such a meeting finally assembling in our presence, as if these captives ought to be stoned. But when truth had prevailed, however, after much argument, the people who had exhibited the captives, in accordance with the prophecy (Jeremiah 2:26) ‘were confounded … as the thief is confounded when he is taken.’ ”
Continues...
https://www.davidhalperin.net/the-mystery-men-of-magonia/
Tzar Bumba: Moron IS the Message
(With apologies to Marshall McLuhan)
The Bankrupt Unelected Moron is a living Weapon of Mass Destruction. Spewing weaponized hate magnified by corporate media 24/7, Trump is a perpetual supervolcano of nonsense and spin that is repeated and believed by fools. Worse, his star image as POTUS puts him as wasted space in the memory banks of smart people. Worst, he does so at the behest of Vladimir Putin.
Facebook has Shown 2.4 Million Users a Doctored Video of Nancy Pelosi, and it Isn't Going to Stop.
The social media site takes a pass on battling misinformation.Ali Breland
Mother Jones, May 24, 2019
Facebook is letting a video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) manipulated to make it appear as though she’s drunk or otherwise unwell stay on its platform even after YouTube has opted to remove it.
The video shows Pelosi talking at a public event on Wednesday, but is slowed down to make her seem less coherent and as though she’s slurring her words. Despite the video’s obvious inauthenticity, it went viral, accruing over 1 million views before being noticed by The Washington Post, the first outlet to report on it. The video has since racked up many more views after being tweeted by Rudy Guiliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney.
“What is wrong with Nancy Pelosi? Her speech pattern is bizarre,” Giuliani wrote in a now-deleted tweet. Guiliani later maintained that he had noticed some sort of “shift” in Pelosi’s speech.
The video appears to have originally gone viral on Facebook after being first posted on a page called Politics Watchdog. Facebook told Mother Jones that the video did not violate any of its community standards, and opted to keep the video up. A company representative said it would demote the video in its algorithms, which would preserve the video but make it less visible and harder to stumble onto. Facebook also pointed out that it began to display stories from fact-checking organizations it partners with, like Politifact, adjacent to the video. Most of the comments, however, that Facebook features prominently under the video take it as authentic and lambast Pelosi. As of Friday, the original version had 2.4 million views.
Continues...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/05/nancy-pelosi-drunk-video-facebook/
Art as money laundering.
It’s a thing.
The relative ease of laundering illicit funds through the art market is thought to have contributed to the rise in the value of fine art in recent years.
Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/european-business/economists-urge-tighter-regulations-to-curb-money-laundering-in-art-market/article26217852/
DEUTSCHE BANK, TRUMP, RUSSIA, SAUDI ARABIA: WHAT'S THE CONNECTION?
From WhoWhatWhy.org, a Deutsche primer:
Deutsche Bank: A Global Bank for Oligarchs — American and Russian, Part 1 (1/08/2018)
International banking colossus Deutsche Bank has a track record of deploying illegal financial trading, money laundering, and shady offshore tax shelters in the service of the global elite. Should anyone be surprised that Deutsche is on Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation radar?
Deutsche Bank: A Global Bank for Oligarchs — American and Russian, Part 2 (1/15/2018)
What do President Donald Trump and a number of Russian oligarchs have in common? Answer: Deutsche Bank. We pick up where we left off by examining how Trump first became involved with the international colossus — a bank catering to clients who understood that sometimes the line between profit and illegality blurs.
Deutsche Bank: A Global Bank for Oligarchs — American and Russian, Part 3 (2/01/2018)
Not only is President Donald Trump personally tied up with Deutsche Bank to the tune of $300 million, but his son-in-law Jared Kushner has his own history with the global banking giant. Part 3 looks closely at these relationships, and asks just how far President Trump’s Justice Department will be willing to go in probing potential illegality on the part of Deutsche.
Deutsche Bank: Where the Dots of Russiagate Connect (1/24/2018)
Martin Sheil, a retired branch chief of the IRS Criminal Division, discusses his WhoWhatWhy series on Deutsche Bank and how nearly all the main figures involved in Russiagate also have ties to the financial institution.
House GOP Leads Russia Probe… Away From Deutsche Bank (2/27/2018)
House Republicans who are supposed to be investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election say there is no need to look at Deutsche Bank. Here is why they are wrong.
Source: https://whowhatwhy.org/2019/05/01/deutsche-bank-trump-russia-saudi-arabia-whats-the-connection/
Bill Barr: The "Cover-Up General"
"At the center of the criticism is the chief articulator of Bush's imperial presidency," we reported in 1992, "the man who wrote the legal rationale for the Gulf War, the Panama invasion, and the officially sanctioned kidnapping of foreign nationals abroad"by FRANK SNEPP
The Village Voice, APRIL 18, 2019
The Village Voice, October 27, 1992
“Attorney General William Barr is the Best Reason to Vote for Clinton”
Excerpt....
SON OF THE CIA
It was 21 years ago, in 1971, that I first encountered William Barr. Both of us were working for the CIA at the time, he as a novice China analyst, I as a member of the agency’s Vietnam task force. Jovial and unassuming, he took his cues easily from an overly politicized office chief. It was a token of things to come.
Three years before, we had brushed shoulders unknowingly on Columbia University’s roiling campus. Both of us were on the other side of the barricades as antiwar demonstrations there blasted our generation into a decade of rage. Barr, a conservative student spokesman, preached toughness to the university administration, of which his father, then dean of the engineering faculty, was a leading light. Years later, this same damn-the-torpedoes zeal would commend Barr to his ultimate father figure, George Bush. When Cuban refugees penned up at an Alabama prison rioted and took hostages in the summer of 1991, deputy attorney general Barr ordered the place stormed. Soon afterward, Bush tapped him for the attorney general slot itself.
Barr first met Bush in the CIA. In 1976, having shifted to the agency’s legislative office, he helped write the pap sheets that director Bush used to fend off the Pike and Church committees, the first real embodiments of Congressional oversight of the CIA. Intimates say the experience was formative for Barr, turning him into an implacable enemy of congressional intrusions on executive prerogative.
“The most radical period I had probably was when I was sort of a moderate Republican,” he later acknowledged. Sure enough, Barr stayed safe within conservative clutches even after leaving the agency in 1977. Armed with a night-school law diploma, he asked for — and got — Bush’s backing for a clerkship appointment to Malcolm Wilkey of the Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. Years later, as attorney general, Barr would name Wilkey to investigate the House Banking scandal. Wilkey repayed the favor with a wrenchingly partisan inquiry. Feeding the press overheated charges of wrongdoing, he scored points off the Democratic Congress just as the administration itself was being pilloried for its failed economics.
Source...
https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/04/18/attorney-general-william-barr-is-the-best-reason-to-vote-for-clinton/
Chapter and verse since Jimmy Carter crossed paths with the Safari Club,
It’s Big Oil to the Rescue — or — the Seven Sisters Escape Justice Once Again with this guy Barr.
Absolutely GOP
Hidden Motives behind Key GOP Leaders’ Cooperation with Trump & Russia: An Evidence-based Examination of Irrational Behaviors & the Republican Congress Members Who Exhibit Themhttps://medium.com/@leannewattphd/hidden-motives-behind-key-gop-leaders-cooperation-with-trump-russia-an-evidence-based-bdd5694b7c3b
Senate Republicans Meet Lavrov in Moscow Ahead of Trump-Putin Summit
https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/senate-republicans-meet-lavrov-moscow-ahead-trump-putin-summit
One guy especially...
McConnell Has Done Everything in His Power to Hide the Truth
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/03/26/mcconnell-has-done-everything-in-his-power-to-hide-the-truth/
