Rachel Maddow has been on hiatus for quite a while now, working on other projects which is a good thing for her because while her 5-nights-a-week MSNBC show is must watch TV, the “corporate Democrat” nature of the network clearly holds her back.
What makes her presentations so compelling, for me anyway, is that whatever the topical news subject might be covering, she not only goes back several steps in the timeline while researching it, she also seems to bring you through her own process of learning as well. So while she might open her show talking about something like the presidency of Boris Yelstin, her verbal corkboard shows takes you from there to the Q Anon conspiracy.
But far be it from me to provide anything else that might act as a “spoiler” for the classic Maddow experience contained within the following two videos, all that is left is for me to strongly recommend just watch them, enjoy and learn. JLP
The current crisis between the US and Iran was created by Trump so no matter what he does about it, the whole situation was totally unnecessary and it’s clear that his is in way over his head when it comes to foreign policy.
Article by Makini Brice in Reuters.com on Monday, June 24, 2019
Trump made the comments amid an escalation in tensions with Iran, as Washington has blamed Tehran for attacks on two oil tankers
I’m certainly not going to pretend to be anything of a foreign policy expert, but the situation regarding Iran and it’s capacity to make nuclear weapons appears to be very simple.
Few agreements are perfect, even fewer international treaties are. This is because thrashing them out involves compromise.
Whether or not Trump appreciates this, his viewpoint has always been that the JPCOA, negotiated by Obama and the international community was a ‘disaster’, mostly because he doesn’t trust them to hold up their side of the bargain.
So he pulled the US out of the agreement and increased sanctions not only on Iran, but also on anyone doing business with them, yet all the while still holding them to their side of the agreement he ripped up???
Before any of the events of the past week, the situation was already absurd, all due to Trump’s own actions.
Now as he makes the sanctions even tighter, it comes at no surprise that the Iranian equivalent of John Bolton is going to have an itchy trigger finger and thus we have seen an attack on a Japanese vessel as well as the shooting down of an unmanned US drone.
Now we’re expected to think the POTUS is some kind of hero because he pulls out of planned retaliation at the last minute??? Then he tells Chuck Todd that the only thing he wants from Iran is ‘No Nuclear Weapons’ only to add ‘Stop terror campaigns’ in a tweet a couple of days later?
Now a whole week after the attack on the Japanese vessel all of a sudden he’s whining about having to protect the shipping lanes????
I know I’m no expert on foreign policy, but I didn’t seek election and I certainly didn’t do so by telling everyone I could make the situation better. He has made it abundantly clear that he hasn’t a clue.
Despite being a congresswoman for just a few months, both major US political parties are pushing a narrative that Representative Ilhan Omar from Minnesota is unworthy of her position.
“You have to wonder if she is an American first”
Brian Kilmeade, Fox News
I’m sharing this Young Turks video not to highlight the actions of Fox News, more to point out that it is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to elite opposition to Congresswoman Omar.
Nobody who has watched Fox News with a critical eye will be surprised by the blatant spin presented in the above video – Omar’s words are taken wildly out of context.
The Washington Post also did a good job in this video putting her words into the proper context…
But Rupert Murdoch’s right wing spin factory is not the only source of this misrepresentation, and her statement referenced here is far from the only example.
She was recently attacked for remarks she made that referenced AIPAC, a powerful lobby group that represents the Jewish-American community.
Again, whatever side of the issue you might be on, we have to wonder why her words were so blatantly taken out of context, not only by Fox News and Republican politicians, but also by the leadership of the Democrat Party and most significantly, the mainstream media.
It’s not as though the CNNs and MSNBCs are normally shy when it comes to playing clips of quotes when it suits them. For example, how many times has Trump’s infamous ‘grab them by the pussy’ line been given airtime? Seems to be at least once or twice a week even now.
Yet Congresswoman Omar’s quote, in which she clearly referred to herself when the entire passage is taken in context, was frequently branded as ‘Anti Semitic’ on political panels without her actual statement being played.
It took a comedienne to do what the broadcasters couldn’t…
Why the widespread revulsion against Omar?
Is it because she is Muslim? Is it because the Washington establishment is genuinely concerned that she does not put ‘America first’? Is it because they really do believe she is anti-Semitic?
None of the above, as far as I’m concerned. I believe the push against is all about one of her first appearances on the House Foreign Relations Committee.
One of the principle consequences of the 2018 Midterms was that although the House was won back by the Democrats, the Progressive caucus was so strong that Nancy Pelosi had to make several concessions to guarantee that she returned to the Speaker role.
Among those concessions was the placement of prominent Progressives on key House committees like Intelligence, Judiciary, Ways and Means and in Omar’s case, Foreign Relations.
When she had one of her first opportunities to ask questions at a hearing, it was to none other than Elliott Abrams, who was involved in many questionable foreign incursions by the US in the past, and has now been appointed as President Trump’s ‘special envoy’ for Venezuela.
OMAR: On February 8, 1982, you testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about U.S. policy in El Salvador. In that hearing, you dismissed as communist propaganda reports about the massacre at El Mozote in which more than 800 civilians, including children as young as 2 years old, were brutally murdered by U.S.-trained troops. During that massacre, some of those troops bragged about raping a 12-year-old girl, girls, before they killed them. You later said that the U.S. policy in El Salvador was a “fabulous achievement.” Yes or no, do you still think so?
I haven’t taken the time to check all of the congressional records since 1982 (or mainstream media interviews for that matter) but I’ll bet anything that Abrams hasn’t asked a question like this publicly in that time.
That is why Omar is being so blatantly smeared; the ‘Military Industrial Complex’, a major donor for prominent politicians from both parties, do not want questions like that asked in a public forum. In fact, the President himself gave the game away in one of his attacks on her “She should resign from Congress, or at least from the committee.” (paraphrase).
Just to be clear, I’m not 100% aware of Omar’s politics, but when anyone is taken so wildly out of context it needs to be pointed out.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time.”
Before I start on the theme of this article, have you ever seen a US president more obsessed with his predecessor? It has gotten to a stage where he just throws his name into his statements without any real context.
Anyway…you have no doubt read volumes on what happened in Charlottesville and it is not my wish to delve too much further into the horrific events, at least not here.
What I want to point out is something I feel is crucial for the progressive platform to gain more followers, and it is a very simple one.
Rumour has it that human civilisation once believed premises like the earth being the centre of the universe, or at other times that it was a flat plain as opposed to a spherical planet. Maybe such misconceptions don’t effect people’s everyday life, but then again it’s hard to have a philosophical grasp on existence when you don’t even have the fundamentals correct.
So what I’d like to challenge is the way we label political ideologies as ‘left’ and ‘right’, because it suggests some kind of balance between the two. On the most basic level, what we call the left represents a society that is fair to everyone while the right does not.
But to properly understand where the conflict comes from you first must appreciate how it started. Whether you believe in evolution or creation, there must have existed a time when the human race had no elitism. Then as it became clear that certain resources were more valuable than others, some people took control of them and were selective about those with whom they were shared.
Over time those who had control over the resources got better and better at holding on to that power. Countries with tyrannical leaders simply run roughshod over their opposition, while those which claim to be democracies use a variety of tools to make sure elections go the way of the ruling classes.
Donald Trump became president on the back of one of these tools, ie supporting a specific group of voters he felt could help get him elected; in this case middle to lower class white men who felt that the civil rights movement had somehow discriminated against them.
Because this movement provided votes for the Republican party, it is considered to be on the ‘right’. And because the obvious racist and fascist leanings of this movement, it has become fashionable to label them as ‘alt-right’. Even with this distinction though, the fact that it is called any kind of ‘right’ seems to lend it equal status to whatever is called the ‘left’.
As the mainstream media fully supports the left-right paradigm, the President can claim, however wrongly, that he is being fair to ‘all sides’.
What we who have been shoved on the ‘left’ of this pseudo-spectrum must do is renounce it. A society that purports to be fair to all citizens is not half the argument. It is the only one. Of course we won’t all agree on how it is to be achieved, but given we believe in fairness, chances are the discussions are going to be devoid of such words as ‘fire and fury’.
Anyone who feels they have to ‘tone down’ their views to somehow ‘be fair’ and ‘not exclude the conservative opinion’ is basically validating the very argument that conservatives want.
The white men who marched on Charlottesville are bigots. Nothing they feel was ‘taken from them’ was really theirs in the first place. To offer them any sense of legitimacy is not being fair, it’s not being balanced. It is turning back the clock on American society to a time when the ruling classes needed only the crudest, most basic tools to hold on to power, as opposed to the more intricate ones they use today.
Progressives need to stop allowing themselves to be defined by a scale that doesn’t really exist.
All of the US intelligence agencies claim Russia hacked the 2016 election…
Trump – ‘Maybe it was Russia. Maybe it was China.’
Just one US intelligence agency, one that has gotten this info wrong before according to Rachel Maddow, claims the North Koreans have found a way to miniaturise nuclear warheads to fit their long-range missiles…
Trump – ‘Fire and fury’
Yet another fine example of a businessman revolutionising government?
#IANWAE
PS – apologies once more for lack of regular posting – we hope to get back to it soon.
Whatever you might think about Donald Trump and his administration, their tenure in the White House, a shade over six months old now, has been a rollercoaster ride with something new to report each and every passing day.
The biggest drawback to this obsession with the latest Washington shenanigans is, of course, the fact that although Trump & co might provide us with easy one-liners and online memes, there is also a very serious side to the story in that we are talking about the government of the most powerful nation in the world.
It’s all very well to ridicule the man in power right now – but it’s pointless unless you can suggest a reasonable alternative.
That alternative is the broad tent that is the Democratic Party, and the 2016 campaign in particular has divided it into two distinct factions….the “corporate wing”, essentially those in the most senior positions in Washington right now, and the “progressive wing”, ie those who follow the social equity platform of the likes of Bernie Sanders.
Here is a recent quote from the Washington Post to ponder…see if you can guess which side of the Democratic tent it came from…
“When you lose to somebody who has 40 percent popularity, you don’t blame other things — Comey, Russia — you blame yourself. So what did we do wrong? People didn’t know what we stood for, just that we were against Trump. And still believe that.”
Obviously I want you to think that’s a Progressive, when in actual fact it’s one of the most senior corporate Democrats, Minority leader of the Senate Chuck Schumer.
Ever since the election, Schumer and his counterpart in the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi have been as much under attack from their left as from their right, probably more so. And most of it was deserved.
But there has to be a point at which even progressives realise that the Schumers and Pelosis still represent the front line of the resistance to the current terrifying incarnation of the Republican Party, and once and a while they need to be given a bit of slack, especially when they are making noises that sound like they come straight out of the Bernie Sanders playbook.
I’m not one to give the Democrat leadership too much praise – the best thing that be said about the likes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is that at least their corporate policies aren’t as bad as their opposition. What I would rather do is change the narrative – it’s not about how much or little we appease the wishes of the “one percent”, rather it’s about formulating policies that are fair to everyone whether it benefits the rich or not.
To promote this mindset I fully understand the need to hold big-donor politicians to account no matter what their stripes. But what do we do when they start using slogans that reflect our agenda?
Of course it’s natural to be sceptical when they start to look as though they’re drinking the Bernie KoolAid. But care must be taken to ensure healthy scepticism doesn’t morph into petulant rejection.
For now anyway, I am willing to give the likes of Schumer a chance. After all, it can’t have been easy to keep 48 Democratic senators united against Trumpcare – you can be sure one or two of the “Blue Dogs” (more right-leaning Democrats) were courted by the GOP and none have budged.
If the Democrats really want to adopt progressive values to their platform – remember they did at their convention last year only many feared it was empty promises on paper – they need to be supported, voted for, and put under pressure when there are any signs of them failing to deliver.
After all, that’sq what being a ‘Democrat’, with a large or small d, is meant to entail. JLP
The bible on which Donald Trump was sworn in as President was still warm from his touch as Sean Spicer launched the administration’s first attack on the mainstream media. We later learned they were considered “the enemy of the people” and purveyors of “fake news”.
But all that changed once the attacks were being launched in a more conventional military fashion. Then all the insults were miraculously forgotten.
Among the most notable admirers of Trump’s unique foreign policy style, which involves informing fellow super powers of your actions over chocolate cake apparently, was CNN’s Fareed Zakaria who claimed that he was “finally being presidential”.
Look – of course he’s entitled to his opinion, nobody is disputing that. But this article of his in the Washington Post appears to be a sign of him being unable to cope with the backlash he received from the “Left”, as he goes the route of cherry picking the most abusive comments and constructs an absurdly straw man view from the “liberal” standpoint.
From the response on the left, you would have thought I had just endorsed Trump for pope. Otherwise thoughtful columnists described my views as “nonsense” and a sign that the media has “bent over backward” to support Trump. (Really?) One journalist declared on television, “If that guy could have sex with this cruise missile attack, I think he would do it.” A gaggle of former Obama speechwriters discussed how my comments were perhaps “the stupidest” of any given on the subject.
So basically when your opponents use hyperbole it means they’re “deranged” yet it’s ok for you to suggest you had endorsed Trump for the papacy?
A lot of people disagree with you, Fareed. Get over it.
Meanwhile here’s Lee “Geeky Jesus” Camp with his take on the whole affair, which would be much closer to our view here at FPP. Yes, we know his show is backed by Russia Today. But while we don’t always agree with his show’s viewpoint, it often makes a lot of sense.
For another example of the gap in opinion here’s The Young Turks appraising Fox News’ “This is what freedom looks like” narrative…
First Person Plural 