Trump Reverts To Psychotic - Blames Obama For Wiretap Conspiracy

"Those who said Trump finally made the presidential pivot last Tuesday in his speech, now need to recant. Trump can't help himself. Claiming Obama bugged him is an extremely serious charge.  Trump needs to put up or shut up." - Political Science Prof. Larry Sabato, quoted in The Financial Times

"The demagogue is one who preaches 'facts' he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." - H.L. Mencken

Well, it wasn't long before the unhinged Trump came through again, after he'd managed to control himself Tuesday night - likely with the help of a medley of anti-psychotics (and some ECT).  Recall, he for once remained to "work" in the White House last weekend, as opposed to wasting taxpayer money jetting to Mar-a -Lago. The strain showed, and finally erupted yesterday morning when he  launched a series of tweets that began at 5.35am. In one he wrote: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

He followed up with a string of tweets in the next half-hour that claimed Obama had "defied a court rejection to tap his office", and invited a “good lawyer” to make a case against the alleged process. In fact, as NBC legal expert Ari Melber pointed out, IF there was a wiretap it was more plausibly ORDERED by a judge on account of suspicion of criminal activity or collusion - possibly with a foreign power.  So in fact, Trump's tweets - as opposed to any victimization - may actually be open admissions that he has something to be guilty about, if such wiretaps were actually FISA -warrant approved. As for the lamebrain SC Reepo Lindsey Graham, who promised an angry SC town hall he'll "look into it". There's nothing to look into. If there were any legal wiretaps, and they were ordered by a judge through a FISA warrant, Trump is likely in deep shit. A FISA warrant isn't issued casually.

Obama’s former deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, had to impart some badly needed education - and  tweeted back at Trump: “No president can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you.”

Later an Obama spokesman, Kevin Lewis, issued a statement which read:.

“A cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any US citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.””

That statement by Lewis did not deny there was a wiretapping but did deny that Obama ordered one.

But my suspicion is that it's all just Trump's runaway paranoia at work. What would you expect from a nutball who fancies that conspiracy freak Alex Jones is some kind of oracle? In fact, this guy defines what it means to be a conspiracy fruitcake, i.e. a whacko who accepts conspiracies without an iota of evidence. (Like asserting Sandy Hook being a "false flag" where all the kids were actors).

The most way out Trump claim was the  comparison of the alleged surveillance of his Trump Tower communications to Watergate. This was  the conspiracy in which a 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters led to revelation of crime and cover-up at the highest level of government and, ultimately, the resignation of Richard Nixon.. Trump, no avid history reader, doesn't seem to know that the Watergate break -in was actually mounted to stop leaks with which Nixon had become obsessed. This is analogous to Trump's current obsession with the ongoing leaks out of the White House, and from intelligence operatives. According to WH insiders, Trump is beset with rage and paranoia as he's become fixated on a "death by a thousand leaks".  But the question Trump and his surrogates need to ask is 'why are people leaking?'  It must be because they are appalled by what they are seeing with an unstable fruitcake in the seat of power.

Most of us who studied Trump's pathetic excuse for a teleprompter speech, which a well-trained ten year old could give, were not surprised by his tweet storm outburst.  We knew that "Agent Orange", as this asshole has come to be known, wouldn't be able to contain his psychotic demons forever. Also, he was still smarting after one of his "pets" - Alabamy cracker Jeff Sessions- recused himself from investigating the Russkie ties. This was the final straw and likely led to his nutso charges yesterday which have most serious, politically savvy folks acknowledging he needs to be fitted for a straight jacket.

Of course, there is still that contingent of the media that inevitably overthinks Trump. They have this psycho fucker playing "three dimensional chess" in a strategic deflection move.  Thus many critics dismissed Trump's tweet storm  as an attempt to deflect attention from investigations of his ties to Russia.  This could be true as well, but I suspect it is more true that this nut we have occupying the White House is simply 52 cards short of a full deck. He lacks any impulse control whatsoever, and anybody that rises that early to tweet rage about a wiretapping conspiracy he read about on Breitbart.com, can't be all there.  As Dr. Pat Bannister would put it: "He is definitely suffering from paranoid psychotic ideations that require at least four sessions of electroconvulsive therapy each day."

Trouble is, this deranged psycho occupies the most powerful position on the planet and has access to the nuclear codes.  Make no mistake that this is an unprecedented attack by a president  (in name only basically)  on his predecessor. That alone is scary, apart from a lunatic like that having access to our nuclear triad when he should be strapped down for ECT.  But the other aspect is that the whackjob accusations were made in a series of early morning tweets, and as we know psychopathic individuals are prone to tweet their psychotic fancies early in the a.m.  Usually, they can't sleep, so they toss fitfully entertaining the paranoid fantasies in their febrile brains - and then let loose.  Which is what this turkey did.

In Trump's case as WaPo writer Chris Cillizza wrote, the "conspiracy theory candidate has become the conspiracy theory President". Adding that if Trump has evidence of this "grand wiretapping conspiracy" it's his duty to present all the facts given the burden of proof is squarely on him. . Except that what Trump is tweeting doesn't even make the threshold of a putative conspiracy theory. The latter requires - as Dr. Pat Bannister has noted- at least some basis in coherent reasoning and evidence, even if sketchy. What is on offer from Trump's Twitter account is paranoid ideation and groundless suspicion.

Of course, it wasn't long before a parade of imbeciles and like-minded screwballs tried to come to his defense and even intimated there "might be something to investigate".  Really? You mean like the grade A Repuke asshole from Iowa, Steve King, who insisted on CNN that Trump wouldn't just tweet these things "out of the blue". Oh yes he would, and for making that claim on national TV you need to be dispatched to a rubber room and put in a straightjacket too. 

Eventually, sober media heads - who finally pulled their heads out of their asses after heaping praise on Trump's "presidential" Tuesday performance - realized and showed the source of Trump's ideation were stories circulating in rightwing media, namely Steve Bannon's former fake news playground, Breitbart.    One of these farcical sites (and authors) actually  claimed Obama was attempting a “silent coup” against Trump.

Why would he do that? Obama was just elated to leave the place Jan. 20th to go off on his new life, liberated from unwarranted criticism from imbeciles and psychotic imps like Donald Trump and the Trumpies.  Obama wouldn't waste time on a fool and psycho like Trump, to tell the truth, realizing from the moment he met with him in the White House that he'd bring himself down by his own hubris.  However, and this is important, another concerned authority - maybe the former Deputy AG Sally Yates, if she suspected criminal hijinks on the part of Trump and his gang- might have gone to a FISA court for a warrant.. After all, his recent tarmac meets include with  a Russian "fertilizer" king visible on assorted runways as documented by David Cay Johnston.. Most recently at a Concord NH airport. Why would a Russian oligarch go to an obscure NC airport at the same time Trump's there? Coincidence? Yeah, and I suppose all those dead JFK assassination witnesses were coincidences too.

Clearing away the haze of spin and clutter in this case, here's what we do know: Just before last November’s election, the British former MP and novelist Louise Mensch reported that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court had granted a warrant to enable the FBI to conduct surveillance of “US persons” in an investigation of possible contacts between Russian banks and the Trump Organization.

Two months later the BBC published an article backing up Mensch’s original story about the FISA court warrant issued in October to allow the justice department to scrutinize transfers and communications between Trump associates and Russian banks. US intelligence agencies were investigating the link, it added.

The issue resurfaced this week in rightwing media, in Breitbart, and by conservative talk show  host Mark Levin. This Dodo made claims on his Thursday night show about alleged steps taken by the Obama administration to undermine Trump’s campaign to win the White House. Levin called the effort a “silent coup” by the Obama administration and said this, rather than Trump’s Russian ties, should be the subject of a congressional investigation.

As reporter Chris Cillizza has pointed out (ibid.) the error of Levin and his cohort has been to take a series of independent events, including Trump's joking about Russians hacking Hillary's emails during one campaign stop. the actual hacking and later Wikileaks' publishing of John Podesta's emails, as evidence of a conspiracy.

Of course, this "grand conspiracy" is all bull pockey.  If there is any deflection at work, it is definitely via the Reich wing media which more and more bears disturbing similarity to the Third Reich's after the Reich Press Law was passed on October 4, 1933.  Levin, like the Third Reich's propagandists, is playing the role of agent provocateur.

Of course, as Josef Goebbels - supreme propagandist of the Third Reich knew - the best propaganda always contains a kernel of truth. This is to make it more believable to the Munchkin imbecile contingent, and a bit harder to pierce for more intelligent, higher information folks. In this case, Levin's play hued to Goebbel's template since his comments were subsequently summarized by Breitbart News, in a report that also made reference to the FISA warrant reported by Mensch and the BBC.

Yesterday, Robert Costa, a Washington Post reporter, tweeted: “Per an official, I’ve confirmed that several people at the White House have been circulating this Breitbart story.” On Friday night and Saturday, Fox News hosts whom Trump is known to watch also remarked on the issue, with presenter Sean Hannity tweeting: “What did OBAMA know and when did he know it??”

Yeah, right! And uttered with the same frenzy as the nuts who travel to near Area 51 each year convinced there are buried alien bodies there. And they're prepared to try to see them even if they get arrested first for trespassing.

On another note, it appears the strain has been all too much for little Donnie the Psycho who had to take yet another weekend  vacay  to Mar-a-Lago. I supposed to clear out what few working brain cells he has left.  As usual, the spin is he is taking "a working vacation" - which I guess his PR toadies have to say given they are blowing $3 m each time Trump jets down to "White House South". But as I already observed this doesn't wash. If you are incapable of putting a full day's work in your normal work environment (White House) , you will not do it once you leave to go to a spacious hacienda with golf course, hot tubs and fancy restaurants.

Again, this is the same guy who bragged during the campaign:

"I would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done. I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off. You don’t have time to take time off."

It truly is a wonder anyone believes anything this guy says anymore, he's such a compulsive liar.

Especially when he tweets bollocks. Or wait, maybe he isn't lying. In which case he's a paranoid nut who needs to be put into a straight jacket.

Update:

Former Director Of National Intelligence James Clapper has flatly denied Trump's lame claim of a FISA warrant to bug Trump Tower. Read the details and see the interview on 'Meet the Press' Here:

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/05/watch-clapper-denies-trumps-wiretap-allegations-sunday-pundits-say-tweet-storm-meant-to-sidetrack-russia-probe/

In addition, FBI Director James Comey asked the US justice department to publicly reject claims made by Donald Trump that Barack Obama ordered his phones to be tapped during the 2016 election campaign. Comey made the request on Saturday because of his concern that the allegation was false and suggested the FBI had broken the law, according to the New York Times. Unnamed US officials confirmed Comey’s move to the Associated Press, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal..

With the responses of Clapper and Comey we can see where this is going and now more than ever it is evident that Trump's rash tweets are the manifestations of a paranoid psychotic embolism in his own brain.

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/71489/3-terrifying-reasons-for-trump-s-latest-rant

Neoliberal Weenies Go Nuts Piling Onto Russia for Giving Snowden Asylum

Oh, but to see just half the outrage and self-righteous verve on display (after Russia gave Ed Snowden temporary asylum for one year), directed at the REAL traitors and war criminals in this nation who are still walking Scott free. I am talking about Cheney, Bush, Wolfowitz, Perle, William Krystal and other Neocons who pumped up the phony basis for the Iraq invasion and occupation, instantly putting the U.S. on a par with Nazi Germany when it invaded Poland in Oct. 1939. But in this country these days, criminals walk - even if they practice torture, while those who expose wrong doing are tracked to the ends of the Earth.


But to behold the fiery rhetoric, i.e. from Neolib Weasel Chuck Schumer,  barking that "Russia has stabbed us in the back and each day Snowden is allowed to roam free is another twist of the knife!",  you'd think that nation was harboring a war criminal like Cheney or Bush, or a serial killer or genocidal madman, not a man who simply exposed the over reaching and trashing of the Constitution done by his own gov't.  Not a man who is a genuine patriot in every sense of the word, as opposed to a disgusting reprobate tool.

As for the unctuous Neoliberal Dems getting in bed with the Reeps to howl at the Russians for "destroying US- Russian relations" by giving Snowden temporary succor,  don't make me laugh! We've had quite enough failures of our leaders' rhetoric to pass assorted laugh tests, and this is one. In fact, the greatest damage to US- Russia relations was sown over a year ago when whatever asinine imps that hold sway in this fucked  -up country  (that dotes on the DOW's artificial numbers while its infrastructure crumbles) proposed a missile defense system in POLAND! Right on Russia's doorstep! Any one who's ever studied Russian history knows this was a stupid, foolish proposal!  It was solely designed to antagonize the Russians, and piss them off royally.  Giving Ed Snowden temporary asylum provided a relatively harmless way to get a dig out of crazy Uncle Sam, and let the world see him go nuts. Let me rephrase that: let the world see all the hollow Amerikkan paper patriots go nuts including all the useless politicos (like Chuck Schumer)  looking for a cheap bandwagon to grandstand on. Anything to appeal to the numskulls who want Snowden brought back and treated like Bradley Manning.

As I noted in an earlier blog post, http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/05/russian-angst-increases-over-us-missile.html

"why should the Russians believe the system isn't really designed to be used against them? Again, the U.S. militarists - driven by Paul Nitzke's feral document NSC -68  (mandating empire building)  end up putting their feet into their mouths, and at the same time possibly detracting from global nuclear security for all of us, if the Russians increase the megatonnage of their warheads in response."


Whoever proposed this system is also ignorant of Russian history going back to the czars, and Peter the Great. From long ago Russia has been suspicious and rightly so, of hostile munitions, forces, missiles assembled near its borders. In the same way the U.S. was in Oct. 1962 when it was learned Russian missiles were in Cuba. The U.S. went ape shit over 93 odd IRBMS and now expects the Russians to remain quiet while the U.S. assembles a "missile defense" system right on its doorstep.

Even the Poles themselves have been distrustful of this idiocy. As noted in the above referenced blog link. Stefan Niesiolowski, chairman of the defense committee in the Polish Lower House of Parliament pointedly observed such a missile system is not needed in Poland. As he pointed out ('Missile Gaffe Leaves Europen Unfazed', Wall Street Journal, April 22,  p. A8):

"There's no military threat and we haven't had a situation as secure as this in 300 years. The level of U.S. military engagement in Poland therefore is not of top importance."

Then WHY do it?

The answer is simple: the military -industrial complex ensconced in the U.S. wants to invent ever more specious reasons to piss away ever more billions of our taxpayer dollars.  This despite the fact our own domestic security is being compromised before our very eyes with crumbling highways, collapsing bridges and burst water and sewer lines. This is also why the M-I-C  want to have 30,000 unmanned drones airborne by 2015 - most to spy on us (the citizens of one Colo. burg plan to shoot them down if they fly anywhere near their town) and even trying to make a "deal" to keep us in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

Adding insult to injury: while  the Russians kept their side of the deal and expedited the dissolution of The Warsaw Pact (the putative counter to NATO during the Cold War Years), the U.S. - despite repeated warnings from expert Russianologists, made ever more "pacts" with former Russian satellites and expanded NATO to Russia's literal doorstep. This is stupid, ill-conceived.

The basis for this utter insanity? Paul Nitzke's nutso NSC -68 - the odious blue print for perpetual Pax Americana  -  which has fomented "hundreds of small wars" as well as the overthrow of democratically-elected governments such as that of Mossadegh in Iran (1953) and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. Read much of the sordid story behind the latter here:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/

Morris Berman notes (Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, W.W. Norton, page 118):

"Nitze emphasized the importance of perception, arguing that how we were seen was as crucial as how militarily secure we actually were. This rapidly expanded the number of interests deemed relevant to national security”.

Of course, the US of A has no monopoly on such perceptions, so the Russians are also entitled to theirs, so they can be forgiven for taking steps to thwart the deployment of a missile shield embodied in U.S. "perceptions" of self-interest. They can also be forgiven for giving a hypocritical superpower the finger for its staunch refusal to see its own crimes (such as blowing up Cu-455 over Barbados on Oct. 6, 1976 using CIA contract hires, and overthrowing democratically elected governments) , never mind the blind assholes who make up what we call congress getting their panties in a snit over Snowden's temporary asylum. Wonder why this country is going to hell in a hand basket? Look at the useless turds  (of BOTH parties)  we have in congress who were even taken to task in a Denver Post editorial for being "AWOL" on NSA oversight until Snowden blew the whistle. (See e.g. http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_23778669/congress-silent-spying-far-too-long )

Meanwhile, we civil libertarians, ACLU members,  hope a leash can soon be put on the NSA "patriots" who think trashing the 4th amendment really protects us. 

Oregon senator Ron Wyden is currently at the forefront of a growing chorus of political voices criticizing the FISA court for being biased towards the executive branch to the exclusion of all other positions. "It is the most one-sided legal process in the US, I don't know of any other legal system or court that doesn't highlight anything except one point of view – the executive point of view."


Wyden added: "When that point of view also dominates the thinking of justices, you've got a fairly combustible situation on your hands."

Of course, former constitutional law prof Obama ought to know better than to condone or be any part of this refuse. But as I said before, and say again, I believe he is petrified to go against the entrenched national security system having seen what they did to JFK 50 years ago. (I will have a future blog discussing how JFK learned that security system betrayed him and why he vowed to "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds".  )

What ought to immediately concern real citizens and real patriots, as opposed to the toadies, weasels and traitors in congress, is the recent way the New York Times has shown  how the court has secretly expanded its operations until it now holds the status almost of a parallel supreme court. 

The Times has also analyzed the make-up of the court and discovered an alarming bias within the ranks of its judges in favor of government. More than a third of the justices appointed to the court since its inception have had executive branch experience.

This is disturbing in the extreme and is reminiscent of the infamous Reich Courts operating under the Reich laws in Hitler's Nazi Germany.

If citizens don't soon wake up and light a fire under congress critters, Senators to get things done, we could soon very well be repeating history from 70 odd years ago.  As George Santayana once put it: "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it".

As for the howling and gnashing of teeth about Snowden's Russian  asylum, look at the tools doing it and then consider the source!  As for those pundits, or the ex-NSA tool that appeared on Chris Hayes' 'ALL In' the other night, damning Snowden for "running to Russia, a terrible civil rights flouter" - bull pockey. At least Chris' other guest, from Human Rights Watch, got it right: Snowden didn't "run to Russia" he was driven to Russia by the U.S.! It was the only nation with the chutzpah to stand up to the world's biggest bully. He surely wouldn't find any help among the European Union nations, all of whose leaders seem to have been converted to pod people by the NSA's tentacles.

.

MSNBC: Waxing Way More Neoliberal Than Liberal by Defending the Surveillance-War State

The reality of our modern, interconnected world is that information matters. Also, the authenticity and trustworthiness of sources. At specific times these become much more important than at others, such as in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives (mainly Iraqis) and trillions of dollars. Also, in the exposure of the extent of NSA surveillance on all of us by Edward Snowden, and the more recent news that the FISA courts approved a much broader definition of "relevant" to justify vacuuming up tens of millions of Americans' online and phone files indiscriminately.

As the Wall Street Journal reported this morning (and the WSJ is not exactly a left wing redoubt):

"The National Security Agency's ability to gather phone data on millions of Americans hinges on a secret court ruling that redefined a single word: "relevant."

In classified orders starting in the mid-2000s, the court accepted that "relevant" could be broadened to permit an entire database of records on millions of people, in contrast to a more conservative interpretation widely applied in criminal cases, in which only some of those records would likely be allowed."


Well, what that means, essentially, is also that the definition of "terrorist" or "terror suspect" was expanded as I noted in an earlier blog ('Between the Skeleton Key and the COG"). Thus, the conservative definition was tossed out the window, just as the more judicious, conservative FISA court was tossed by the Bushies in 2006, to permit more widespread searches, often without approval of a proper FISA court- issued warrant. Solution? Just change the FISA law to make it compatible with the warrantless searches earlier conducted. We can thank our rat-ass congress critters for doing that.

The issue now before us then is WHO in the mainstream, corporate -owned media will tell the people the truth, echoing William Greider's book title (from 1991): 'Who Will Tell The People?'. The answer appears to be very very few even at the once proverbial :"liberal" network MSNBC.  As I previously noted (last Mail Brane)  Chris Hayes remains the only one who will tell it like it is and doesn't knee jerk diss Edward Snowden like his colleagues, e.g. Melissa Harris-Perry, Ed Schultz, and even Lawrence O'Donnell and Rachel Maddow. All the latter appear to be captured by the "Man" and are spouting his bollocks to spread the PR that Snowden is-was the problem not the violation of our 4th amendment rights.

Thus Jeff Cohen's observation in his recent blog,

"The bipartisan consensus in support of our bloated Military/Surveillance State –which so  undermines our society as a whole– is reflected in Congress and both the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as mainstream media."


Appears to have validity and includes MSNBC. In terms of picking our culprits, whom I also term Neoliberal propagandizers, Cohen is blunt and hits on MSNBC's claimed liberal mouthpieces (except for Chris Hayes):

"a number of MSNBC talking heads have reacted to the Snowden disclosures like Fox News hosts did when they were in hysterical damage control mode for Bush – complete with ridiculously fact-free claims and national chauvinism that we’ve long come to expect from the “fair & balanced” channel.

As Snowden arrived in Russia from Hong Kong, MSNBC host Ed Schultz blustered on   about Snowden as a “punk” and “coward.” Railing about the “security of the country” in tones Hannity would approve of, Schultz questioned Snowden’s patriotism and credibility, asking: “If the United States of America is doing something so egregiously wrong in its surveillance program, how come he’s the only one speaking up?

  In O’Reilly-like blissful ignorance, Schultz seemed unaware of the three NSA whistleblowers who’d loudly spoken up way earlier than Snowden – and gathered for an illuminating USA Today interview a week before his tirade.


MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry has been condemning Snowden by contrasting him with civil disobedients who “love their country” and submit to arrest – while Snowden just wants to “save his own skin.”   She proclaimed: “This is different. This is dangerous to our nation.” Should we similarly dismiss Dan Ellsberg, who leaked the top secret Pentagon Papers to a dozen newspapers in 1971 by going on the lam from the FBI. Or Watergate’s “Deep Throat,” who saved his own skin by hiding his identity for 30 years after leaking secrets that helped crash the Nixon presidency?

  In a bizarre monologue attacking Snowden (who’s risked plenty, in my view), Harris-Perry hailed those who engage in civil disobedience for being willing “to risk your own freedom, your own body in order to bring attention to something that needs to be known. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested, attacked, smeared. Nelson Mandela went to prison for 27 years.”  Nelson Mandela? He wasn’t a civil disobedient who gave himself up. He was a fugitive, fleeing the apartheid police. He was on the lam domestically, like Snowden is now internationally. And some reports indicate that South African authorities were able to nab Mandela thanks to the U.S. CIA    

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has also disappointed. After doing a typically thorough presentation on the force-down of President’s Morales’ plane, she ended her report by expressing displeasure only that Washington had apparently gotten allies to go out on the limb “for nothing.” Her objection to the harassment seemed to be: it hadn’t succeeded. I didn’t hear opposition to the action had Snowden actually been on board and apprehended. "


I basically concur with these takes, especially on Maddow, who has earlier shown that she is not the pure- bred liberal she originally portrayed. For example, in an earlier blog: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/03/rachel-maddow-blows-it-on-her-gun.html I noted how she used the issue of gun reform to give credence to the "Oswald did it"  propaganda pushed by the now well discredited Warren Commission. As many long time  JFK  researchers have noted, this is the misshapen version of history pushed by those who would keep the people in the dark in terms of the Kennedy assassination.  Michael Parenti, author of the 'The Dirty Truth' has perhaps been most articulate in explaining what's at stake, what's been done by those who spread the "Oswald did it" hokum:


"To know the truth about the assassination of John Kennedy is to call into question the state security system and the entire politico-economic order it protects."

The question then becomes why is Maddow helping to protect this politico-economic order? A true liberal would not. Another disquieting aspect is how Maddow has never come out four square against the chained CPI plan to cut Social Security, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/03/asking-rachel-maddow-to-explain-herself.html

These are not small or insignificant issues, any more than Edward Snowden's disclosures concerning illegal (yes it is!) dragnet surveillance which certainly violates the 4th amendment.

Sadly, it appears Jeff Cohen is correct, that in certain instances and issues MSNBC can be as far off as FOX.

But then, this may be the nature of corporate -owned media. At least we must be thankful for some - like Chris Hayes- who won't just roll over for the power mongers! Truly courageous people who are able to articulate opposition to the state and its surveillance-war imperatives, instead of peddling PR pabulum that seeks to erode citizens' perceptions. Thereby converting citizens into accessories to their own constitutional subversion and people into sheeple.