Demise Of The Denver Post Has Nada To Do With "Too Much Liberal Content"

The last gasp of the "Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire" now appears to be only weeks away. A steady stream of news regarding cuts to reporters, editors, photographers, videographers, page designers and  others, now threatens to end the 125 year run of The Denver Post which has won 9 Pulitzer prizes. For those of us who love to get our news and information from  hardcopy, print papers - this is an unmitigated disaster. Especially as the only alternative here in Colorado Springs is the cartoon paper known as The Gazette, which I take to be the print version of "Fox and Friends".

My love of newspapers probably began when,  as a seven or eight -year old,  I'd take out the "Green Sheet" from The Milwaukee Journal and work its various puzzles and games, and read the science articles.  Thenceforth in every place I lived, whether Miami (Herald), New Orleans (States Item and Times Picayune), Barbados (Nation, Advocate News), Baltimore (Sun, Evening Sun), or Colorado, I'd be sure to have the daily paper delivered.

There was something special about opening any of them up in the mornings to read the news, cup of Java at the ready with a few English muffins and avocado - maybe a hard boiled egg and slice of bacon.  But alas, in each locality, retrenchment often followed - usually preceded by losing the 2nd paper of the day . For Milwaukee,  it was the Sentinel (later folded into the Journal to become the Milwaukee Journal -Sentinel). For Miami it was the demise of The Miami News leaving only the Herald, and for Baltimore it was the folding up of the Evening Sun - - the paper that gave the great H.L. Mencken his start.

In the case of The Denver Post, I began to get worried some ten years ago when a number of liberal reporters like Cindy Rodriguez and Michael Booth were rendered redundant.. At that turning point the paper lost many of its liberal readers, and in truth, I cut my subscription down to 5 days a week.  I confess to being less interested in reading the blabber of conservative mouthpieces like Thomas Sowell, or their many clones hailing from assorted "think tanks" like the Hudson Institute, The American Enterprise Institute and others.

Then, in the last two years the Post's proportion of ads increased significantly while the original reporting - whether on the state's health care woes, the environment, higher education or assorted protests, dwindled. At that point I cut my subscription down to 2 days a week, Wednesdays and Sundays, opting to read The Financial Times online the other days.

Now, that appears to have perhaps been what many others did as well, given The Post now has its "marching orders" to cut the original 250 plus staff to 75  by July 1st.  More humiliating, the remaining core staff has had to move out of its original Denver News bldg. in downtown Denver, to a nondescript,  industrial building in Aurora.  

What hastened the paper's demise? The most immediate reason was that it allowed itself to be purchased by a hedge fund (Alden Global Capital of NYC) and thus was answerable to its shareholders.  As their pickings grew ever more slim, they began to demand the paper make severe cuts.  But as we know, nothing of quality ever comes of cuts. As one wry journalist (Jimmy Cozier)  in Barbados once put it  : "So, you're really gonna cut my legs off at the ankles and expect me to challenge competitors in a 5 K?"

For this reason the Post editorial board issued a plea in its April 8 Perspective section:

"Denver deserves a newspaper owner who supports its newsroom. If Alden isn't willing to do good journalist here it should sell the Post to owners who will."

True, but please, just leave out Philip Anschutz - who owns the rag known as the COS Gazette.

Then there is liberal gadfly Jon Caldara who wrote "many conservatives can't  hide their delight, at the Post being put on a ventilator."

Adding:

"It reinforces our view that papers are dying because we consumers want actual balance in reporting and the market is responding."

Ah yes, the market.  As I noted in my book, The Elements of the Corporatocracy, the market  is an abstraction which embraces the dynamics and exchanges in a money culture, consumptive society. Its priorities are not always benign but are faithfully reflected in the movement of speculative  financial markets. In the end it is nothing to base a culture or civilization on. After all. "the market" may be all agog and favor more apps that keep the hoi polloi addicted to their smartphones, or more tawdry electronic trash to fill up homes and storage units.  The market can never be an arbiter of reliable information, and by extension hedge fund ownership of a newspaper can never ensure its survival.

In Caldara's newspaper universe, every piece that attempts to educate the public about climate change, global warming, is "balanced" by a piece that denies it - or attributes it to a "natural cause" like the Sun.   But as I also observed in my chapter on the media corporatocracy, it is a myth to believe left wing or liberal views dominate the press. I cited a 1997 Nation piece, which read:

""The truth is that genuinely left-wing views rarely get a hearing. Norman Solomon had this confirmed while trying to peddle his column, when editors told him 'We've got progressive views covered - we run Anthony Lewis'.  The same Anthony Lewis who has described himself as a 'pro-capitalist, middle of the road tepid centrist', who supported George Bush Sr.'s Gulf  War."

This also explains why  - until the resurgence of robust liberal magazines like ''The New Republic', so many "leftist" authors, writers, journalists (like Greg Palast, Robert Scheer and others) were forced to go to Larry Flynt's Hustler to get their work published   There simply wasn't a place for them in the regular, "vanilla"  mainstream news papers, because corporate boards rejected what they had to offer. (For more on this see Norman Solomon's and Jeff Cohen's text, 'Wizards of Media Oz: Behind the Curtain of Mainstream News')

So I really don't know what planet Caldara inhabits but it's not the one I'm on where The Denver Post is more a centrist alternative to the extreme Right Colorado Springs Gazette.  The only other actual "left" paper, the COS Independent, is a weekly,  not a daily.  It is also of interest to note that, contrary to popular myths, even left blogs are struggling to sustain funding. See e.g.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jeff-tiedrich/78748/even-if-you-cant-or-wont-donate-there-are-other-things-you-can-do-to-help-us-out

And wifey informed me last night that even at "liberal" MSNBC there's a push to have more "Never Trumpers" appear than actual liberals.

Caldara and his whining ilk also bemoan the lack of more conservative intellectual material, which kind of shows me he needs a pair of better glasses.  He's obviously missing the op-ed fare from the toadies of the American Enterprise Institute, Hudson Institute, Stanford's Hoover Institute  etc. 

Besides, there isn't any genuine intellectual fare on the conservative side anyway, at least since William F. Buckley died.  As NY Times columnist and Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman has noted in a recent column:

"As others have pointed out, the real problem here is that media organizations are looking for unicorns: serious, honest, conservative intellectuals with real influence. Forty or fifty years ago, such people did exist. But now they don’t. To understand why, let me talk about what I know: the field of economics. This happens to be a field with a relatively strong conservative presence compared to other social sciences, and as far as I can tell even contains considerably more self-identified conservatives/Republicans than hard science. Even so, trying to find influential conservative economic intellectuals is basically a hopeless task, for two reasons.

First, while there are many conservative economists with appointments at top universities, publications in top journals, and so on, they have no influence on conservative policymaking. What the right wants are charlatans and cranks, in (conservative) Greg Mankiw’s famous phrase. If they use actual economists, they use them the way a drunkard uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.

The second problem with conservative economic thought is that even aside from its complete lack of policy influence, it’s in an advanced state of both intellectual and moral decadence – something that has been obvious for a while, but became utterly clear after the 2008 crisis."

And I have certainly given examples of this decadence in critiques of assorted  conservo  economists from time to time, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/03/americas-debt-disease-prof-marty.html

The ironic aspect of Caldara's rant is that even he admits in the end it is better to have a Denver Post paper than to be without one, i.e.

"From my point of view battling ever expanding government, we have a better chance slowing it down with a vibrant, even if liberal, paper in town."

He's partly right - but the D. Post still isn't a "liberal paper".   It's a centrist leaning paper - especially if you read its editorials, which features some liberal content - mainly in letters to the editor.

See also:

Denver Post Rebels Against Its Hedge-Fund Ownership - The New ...

BLOTUS Trump's Voting Fraud "Investigation" Shows He Belongs In a Strait Jacket

"Hmmmmm...if I believe it, it has to be real! Else I am insane and need a straight jacket!"

"The rehabilitation of reason is urgent because it is only through the proper use of reason that we can find our way out of the quagmires in which many big issues of our time have become stuck. Without a clear sense of what it means for one point of view to be more reasonable than another the position one adopts is ultimately based on nothing more than personal opinion or preference.

When we give up on reason, the only tool we have left is coercion."

- Julian Baggini, 'The Edge Of Reason', p. 3.

Let us concede that reason is an indispensable tool for arriving at truth. Many, such as Philosopher Julian Baggini - quoted above, would agree it's the best method we humans have for arriving at the facts, the objective reality of a situation. By the same token, those who would scorn reason in favor of pure opinion, random tweets or regurgitating fantasy travel outside the foundations of truth and make a unified governance all but impossible. The situation we have arrived at now in this country is that at least one third of Trump supporters - according to a PPP poll - have no use for reason or facts. See e.g.

http://www.politicususa.com/2017/01/25/poll-shows-americans-support-womens-marchers-donald-trump.html


Consider the claim of Trump then that there has been massive voter fraud that cost him the popular vote, including that "three to five million more voted illegally for Hillary Clinton".  Consider this is coming from the guy who actually WON the electoral vote - the only one that counts- and yet his ego is still too traumatized to accept that fewer citizens voted for him than his opponent.

Consider also that there is not one scintilla of evidence to support his fantastic claim - which btw-  is negated by 50 Secretaries of State (including from  37 Republican- governed states) that the integrity of their election processes were never compromised  Consider then that, also, the singular evidence is that Russian hacking played the dominant role in the 2016 election which actually helped catapult HIM to power. Anyone see anything backwards here? Inverted from reality?

ALL the intelligence agencies agree that Russian hacking at various levels, including of the RNC, was established to their satisfaction, and that is where the REAL voter fraud has occurred. Yet Trump, in his own bubble of flatus continues to pound the conspiracy theory he lost the popular vote because of a "rigged election"  when all the data show otherwise - except for the role of Russian hackers to bring HIM to power.

What's wrong with this picture?

Well, the absence of reality and reason in Trump's assorted ruminations. Even Jacob Chaffetz, head of the House Oversight Committee averred "I see no evidence for it", referencing Trump's voter fraud delusions. He asserted his committee would not be taking it up. Remember, this is the guy who went full bore on Benghazi.  Clearly, if anything of substance was really there, Chaffetz wouldn't dodge it.

Voter fraud itself, in the sense of being committed on a mass scale by "illegals", is especially an irksome and stupid claim which flies in the face of all evidence accepted by sane people.  So is the lamo Trump claim that being registered in more than one state is illegal or dead people being on voter rolls. As exposed regarding the first, there is Exhibit A - his own daughter Tiffany, registered in 2 states, NY and Pennsylvania, as well as his consigliere, Steve Bannon registered in 2 states(FL and NY) and son-in-law Jared Kushner(NJ and NY) . All a big storm in a teacup.

As for dead people on voter rolls, of course! Like a voter can't die (like my mom did) days before a vote (mid-term in 2014)  and then be left there until removed by the state (FL). At the time, the last thing on my mind when I learned mom died was contacting FL to have her name removed from the voter registry. Good god, are Trump and his minions totally tone deaf or mentally incapable of processing the vagaries of life - as well as death? And figuring out why a person's name may be on a vote registry long after their demise? WTF is wrong with these fools?

 Then take the case of alleged Colorado voter fraud and assorted "witch hunts" for it.  Colorado’s Republican Secretary of State Scott Gessler has been on the hunt for  voter fraud in the state since he took the office in 2011, claiming non-citizens were illegally voting in Colorado elections. But a  report from The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel shows that, to date, there have been zero prosecutions of Gessler’s suspects.

After originally claiming more than 16,000 non-citizens registered to vote in Colorado in 2011 and that as many as 5,000 of them had actually voted in 2010,, Gessler’s office finally released the names of only 155 people who they thought of as suspects. ....

Many of those people whose citizenship and right to vote were called into question by Gessler were found to be verifiable U.S. citizens, The Associated Press reported. In some counties, like Boulder, of those questioned, only legal U.S. citizens were found."

As Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett put it, quoted in The Boulder Daily Camera :

“Local governments and county clerks do a really good job regulating the integrity of elections, and I’ll stand by that record any day of the week. We don’t need state officials sending us on wild goose chases for political reasons.”

So Gessler, like another scare monger - Michelle Malkin- were mostly into "wild goose chasing" and stirring up voting fraud hysteria to reinforce the bogus Trump campaign claim that this past election was "rigged".  A claim now revived by Trump - aka BLOTUS ("Biggest Liar of The U.S") since he took office, the total irony of his wackjob blurtations being lost on him. But then we know irony can't be processed by the insane, any more than they can reason.

The actual voter fraud, however, has been voter suppression and the most classic case occurred in Florida in 2000 with that general election.  Greg Palast, author of 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy',  documented how 90,000 and probably more like 150,000 legal black voters were removed from voter lists in Florida, using the ruse that they were convicted felons,  not permitted to vote in that state. Jeb Bush awarded the contract to the firm that submitted the higher bid, Choicepoint.  It then scrubbed from the voter rolls all names that were clearly black (first name Jamail or Kinesha, for instance), that bore an arguable resemblance to a felon’s name.   This remains, along with the electronic scrubbing of D-votes in Ohio in 2004 (using electronic machines),  the two most massive cases of vote fraud.

But BLOTUS and his febrile followers can't be bothered with facts, or reason. And in this case of reason, they ought to be asking themselves why the person who actually WON and is now in the White House, is making such a big stink over it as opposed to getting the fuck over his little wounded ego.  Jeezus, hasn't he bigger fish to fry?

Oh, here's another chestnut one finds on some Trumpie blogs, in the form of the daft question:

"Why would any serious person object to an investigation into this issue of voter fraud?"

Well, a number of reasons! First, it's a waste of time. As in the election is over and the winner decided - by electoral vote not popular vote. SO where the fuck is the injury that merits the investigation? Trump is already in the Oval office so what exactly  is the investigation going to  settle?  It shouldn't take a genius to conclude the whole purpose is to soothe his widdo ego, that's all. In other words, it's a big McGuffin created to salve a wounded ego because the little bastard didn't win both the electoral AND popular votes! (Apart from trying to settle a score with the 3 million more Hillary voters!)

Second, as I noted above, there is NO genuine evidence for any voter fraud of the type the Trumpies are pissing and whining about. All the Secretaries of State have certified so, and that includes 37 Republicans.  This "voter fraud" the BLOTUS insists happened  has been proven to occur only roughly 0.00000013 % of the time see e.g.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/voter-fraud-real-rare/story?id=17213376

Third, such an investigation will cost money - paid for by Mr. And Mrs. U.S. Taxpayer. I for one don't want to see any more money squandered on fulsome bogus "investigations" by Repuke assholes who use them as the only way to get hard-ons. It's bad enough Trump is going to try to make us cough up the tax money to build his dumb ass wall - another case of detachment from reality.

Here's another choice canard compliments of the pro-Trump bloggers: The images of the Trump inaugural crowds were "artificially reduced" by the use of border frames! Hence, Obama's stills looked as though they had bigger crowds because of being unframed.  This is total madness, of course, because one need only go to the actual videos spanning the different events - produced by PBS- to show Trump's crowd was significantly less. But, of course, the Trumpies likely believe these videos are also faked. Such is the way of unreason and insanity.

Chris Hayes this evening on 'All In' brought up another point, ostensibly in Trump's defense, i.e. that he wasn't really a liar. That is, he truly believed  in his mind there was actual  voter fraud that denied him the popular vote, despite all the stats and evidence showed there wasn't any.

Okay but in this case, he may not be a liar, but he would be certifiably insane, given he is no longer able to separate fact from fantasy. The sort of condition that gets a lot of psychos admitted to Bellevue for ECT and long term therapy.

So ok, he's not a "liar" but then he must be insane. If he is insane he has no business being in the White House or near any nuclear football. He ought to be tied up in a strait jacket in a mental institution some place until they can bring him out of it, say with electric shocks, or lithium therapy or whatever the newest treatments are.

But this is a guy that should not be sitting behind that big desk signing executive orders and shooting his yap off about building giant Walls, torture, violating the Posse Comitatus Act to send troops to Chicago, or going after sanctuary cities.

No, this is a person bereft of reason as well as reality, who needs to be admitted into the nearest  mental facility as soon as possible. And if his followers are unable to see that, they merit the same therapy.  We cannot afford to have a nation where one third of its citizens are no longer grounded in reality, but tall tales and "alternative facts".

To quote Charles Blow of the NY Times:

"Trump does not simply have “a running war with the media,” as he so indecorously and disrespectfully spouted off while standing on the hallowed ground before the C.I.A. Memorial Wall. He is in fact having a running war with the truth itself.  ...Donald Trump is a proven liar. He lies often and effortlessly. He lies about the profound and the trivial. He lies to avoid guilt and invite glory. He lies when his pride is injured and when his pomposity is challenged.  Indeed, one of the greatest threats Trump poses is that he corrupts and corrodes the absoluteness of truth, facts and science".

Trump - Empowered Vote Challengers At The Polls ? Bring 'Em On!

According to the Brennan Center for Justice "forty six states have laws that allow private citizens to challenge the eligibility of prospective voters on or before election day."

In effect, as you are ready to enter a polling station, any cockeyed nimrod who somehow doubts your voter bona fides can stop you cold, and demand you produce proof of who you are. When Janice saw the segment on CBS Early Show yesterday morning she was livid: "What kind of nonsense is that? I have to show ID to a bunch of creeps?"

Well, technically, yeah. Of course, it is irrelevant for both of us anyway as we will be filling out our Colorado mail ballots at home. This will be after they arrive in the next week to ten days. (They are to be mailed out by October 17).

Much of the angst about "voter fraud" and especially non-citizens casting ballots in critical states - like Colorado- is fed by lying creeps like Michelle Malkin. She wrote in a recent column (Colorado Springs Gazette, 'It Could All Come Down To Colorado'):  

"Former Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler identified nearly 5,000 citizens in Colorado who voted in the 2010 election".

But strangely, although Gessler could  apparently enumerate these " non-citizens" he  appeared unable to have pressed charges. According to the Huffington Post:

"Colorado’s Republican Secretary of State Scott Gessler has been on the hunt for voter fraud in the state since he took the office in 2011, claiming non-citizens were illegally voting in Colorado elections. But a new report from The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel shows that, to date, there have been zero prosecutions of Gessler’s suspects.

After originally claiming more than 16,000 non-citizens registered to vote in Colorado in 2011 and that as many as 5,000 of them had actually voted in 2010,, Gessler’s office finally released the names of only 155 people who they thought of as suspects. ....

Many of those people whose citizenship and right to vote were called into question by Gessler were found to be verifiable U.S. citizens, The Associated Press reported. In some counties, like Boulder, of those questioned, only legal U.S. citizens were found."

As Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett put it, quoted in The Boulder Daily Camera :

“Local governments and county clerks do a really good job regulating the integrity of elections, and I’ll stand by that record any day of the week. We don’t need state officials sending us on wild goose chases for political reasons.”

So Gessler, like Malkin, is mostly into "wild goose chasing" and stirring up voting fraud hysteria to reinforce the bogus Trump claim that this election is "rigged". This also lends false support to Trumpies just itching to police the polls using voter challenge laws. We saw an earlier iteration of this shtick back in 2012 with the 'True the Vote" nonsense.

Now this is not to say there has NEVER been voter fraud. But the Reeptard Bozos are indicting the wrong side. It is THEIR side that has perpetrated the most infamous incident, in Florida back in 2000.  Greg Palast, author of 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy',  documented how 90,000 and probably more like 150,000 legal black voters were removed from voter lists in Florida, using the ruse that they were convicted felons,  not permitted to vote in that state. Jeb Bush awarded the contract to the firm that submitted the higher bid, Choicepoint.  It then scrubbed from the voter rolls all names that were clearly black (first name Jamail or Kinesha, for instance), that bore an arguable resemblance to a felon’s name.   This remains, along with the electronic scrubbing of D-votes in Ohio in 2004 (using electronic machines),  the two most massive cases of vote fraud.

As to actual voter impersonation fraud, it doesn't even make the "radar".  Specifically, it has been proven to occur only roughly 0.00000013 % of the time see e.g.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/voter-fraud-real-rare/story?id=17213376

The other bogus meme making the rounds is that in places like Colorado, "you have an all mail ballot system that makes it easy to misuse and commit voter fraud". Again, nonsense. Each mail ballot such as we use must be signed and the enabling for such balloting was already validated via use of Colorado ID cards from past elections (before the mail balloting law was passed).  Also, according to state precinct stats, barely 40 percent of ballots are cast by mail. Most people still prefer to show up in person - even braving longish lines - because it makes them feel more like "real voters".

Of course this is hogwash and malarkey. Anyone is a real voter who actually takes the time to complete a ballot. In our state the ballots are typically complex,  laden with special district issues and state referenda. This year the ballots include a raft of local tax issues, local district election spots, school boards etc. as well as assorted amendments,  e.g. Amendment 69 for single payer health care, Amendment 70 to increase the state minimum wage, Amendment 72 to raise cigarette taxes to $2.94 a pack and Proposition 106, the medical aid in dying initiative. Oh, and Amendment 71 to do away with further amendments.

Given the ballot complexity we have opted to fill them out at home then mail them in.

The saddest part of the "voter fraud" and "rigged election" bollocks is how it can erode democracy over time, creating more polarization and animosity toward the process. One woman calling herself "Rhonda", actually stood up at a Mike Pence rally two days ago and declared to the gathered peanut gallery:

"I'm on social media every day, all day. Nonstop, since last June. One of the biggest things I can tell you a lot of us are scared of is this voter fraud. There's a lot of us here saying when we go to vote we're gonna wear red. Our lives depend on this election. Our kids' futures depend on this election. I will tell you just for me, and I don't want this to happen, personally. but if Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself ...I am ready for a revolution. Because we can't have her in!"

Pence, give him credit, did respond in a low voice, 'Oh, don't say that'.

Pence at least had more insight than his running mate and this Reeptard woman. So let her try to summon all her disaffected yahoos to revolution. Within a few heartbeats they will all be brought down with RF radiation "barf guns" that I referenced some 5 years ago, and which are now ready to fire, e.g.


The device, according to The Economist (Oct. 15, 2011,  p. 89, 'Electromagnetic Weapons: Frying Tonight') emits RF radiation that "directly affects the human digestive and nervous system" to trigger violent projectile vomiting. It is estimated that one brief "spray" by such an RF device - say from a helicopter- can subdue  99% of a violently agitating crowd.

This lot - say angered Trumpkins at the election results - can be  reduced to paroxysms of non-stop vomiting within seconds. Unable to raise a whisper, far less a shout, they will have no choice other than to run back home....and away from the radio frequency-blasted  area. The good part is that instead of having to clean blood from the streets the authorities will just have to wash away the vomit.

Hell, the feds won't even have to bring out the Army or special Humvees outfitted with heavy artillery.

The best thing the Trumpies can do if the election doesn't go their way,  is to suck it up, take it like adults and move on. And don't even think of trying to delegitimize HRC via "impeachment" - like for the currently Wikileaks email releases. These merely show that Hillary and crew are the politicians we knew they were. But at least they're not the 'shit for brains' nutso whackjobs that mark Trump and his campaign.

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-boehlert/69339/wounded-trump-retreats-into-the-fringe-media-bunker

Election Fraud - Voter Disenfranchisement: Even On The Left

Two nights before leaving Barbados we watched the spellbinding  RT Today TV special  'Redacted Tonight',  hosted by Lee Camp and showing the extent of the election fraud in Chicago and how a subsequent meeting of  "officials" basically swept it under the rug.  See e.g.

http://leecamp.net/election-fraud-special-report/

Camp also covered the results of the primary elections. Exit polls,  which are an indicator of functioning democratic elections,  essentially gave the United States a failing rating. Elections’ boards are desperately struggling to explain themselves as voters' ballots go uncounted and the voting machines don’t seem to be working. Much of this echoed the findings in the documentary about the 2004 election fraud in Ohio, 'As Ohio Goes So Goes the Nation.'

What was most galling is how these malicious voter officials (featured in the video) could simply deny the facts, as in the misuse of exit polling data. Meanwhile, true to form,  the MSM and ardent disinformationists discounted the value of the exit polls, Lee Camp reminded history-challenged folk how exit polling has been used consistently as a valid independent check on the integrity of elections - including by U.S. observers in monitoring foreign elections.

Then the following night, Larry King's 'Politicking'  featured guest Greg Palast, famous for his book 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy' detailing how 90,000 and probably more like 180,000 legal black voters were removed from voter lists in Florida, using the ruse that convicted felons can not vote in that state. Jeb Bush awarded the contract to the firm that submitted the higher bid, Choicepoint.  It then scrubbed from the voter rolls all names that were clearly black (first name Jamail or Kinesha for instance), that bore an arguable resemblance to a felon’s name.

Just use Palast’s low estimate. 90,000 black voters x 30% turnout x 90% propensity to vote Democrat = 24,300 Democrat votes scrubbed – the 2,700 10% that would have voted Republican = 21,600 net Democratic votes. By contrast, the disputed ballots were on the order of 2,000 to the low 3,000s.

It was a tailor made voter disenfranchisement operation conducted by Jeb! and his compadre, Secretary of state Katherine Harris. Both will now live in on infamy for making the election close enough to be determined by the Supreme Court, an insult well documented in Vince Bugliosi's best ever (2001) book, 'The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President'.

As opposed to his meandering, bloated book on the Kennedy assassination, this one was concise, argued rationally (not hysterically using ad hominem) and precise in its target:  the five conservative  justices who felt it their bounden duty to interfere in a presidential election. In essence, gutting the provisions of the Constitution, by rendering tens of millions of voters redundant.

Anyway, on Politicking,  Palast  showed  evidence of how cheating has even erupted in Democratic primaries, as illustrated by himself and Lee Camp (RT correspondent) earlier using exit polls. Palast referenced 4 percent as being the normal deviation from exit polls, and then disclosed no fewer than 12 Dem primaries yielded actual vote counts outside this limit. In the case of New York, where Hillary supposedly enjoyed a "blowout" it was a 16 percent difference.

Palast also wrote at his site about problems with the New York election:

Francesca Rheannon, whom you may know as the host of Writers’ Voice radio, did the civic thing by volunteering to work the polls in a town east of New York City. “I just got off my 17 hour shift as an election official. In my election district, out of 166 Democratic voters, 39 were forced to file affidavit ballots. The last [election] I worked in, exactly ONE voter needed an affidavit ballot.”

That’s nearly one of four voters. Why? Their names had gone missing from the voter rolls.
An affidavit ballot (called a “provisional” ballot in most other states) is a kind of placebo ballot. You get to pretend to vote – but the chance it will actually be counted is …well, good luck. If your name is wrongly removed, kiss your vote – affidavit or not—goodbye.
Rheannon’s experience was hardly unique. In Brooklyn alone, over 125,000 names were quietly scrubbed from the voter rolls in the five months leading up to the primary. 

To put it in prospective, the number of voters purged equals about half of the number who got to vote. Scott Stringer, the New York City Comptroller will now audit the Elections Board–now that the election is over. 

Neal Rosenstein, the lead voting rights attorney for the New York Public Interest Research Group, which plans legal action, notes that part of the problem is that partisan hacks sit on the Elections board in New York—hacks from both parties.

Brooklyn is under the control of the Kings County Democratic Party, one of the last of the big city machines. Would they attack their opponents’ voter registrations? I don’t have to guess: in my wasted younger days, I was in the Brooklyn County elections office with the hacks where we were assigned by the Party to challenge voters’ signatures en masse. (I wouldn’t and nearly lost my state job.)

Lastly, columnist Leonard Pitts in his most recent article wrote about the Sanders' campaign loss in New York:

"Granted, nobody likes to lose. But the loss was fair and square AND THOSE CITIZENS OF Bernie NATION WHO CAN'T DEAL WITH THAT SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES!"

Ah, but if the NY primary was basically stolen, they don't have to be ashamed at all, It is Hillary's contingent that is responsible - as Greg Palast's piece and RT segment points out. He may not be blaming Hillary herself, but he is blaming the Dem operation in NYC and people will take note of that when it comes time for the "unity" calls.

 See also:

http://www.ora.tv/politicking/2016/4/29/greg-palast-discusses-how-party-elites-purge-unwanted-voters-0_1uu312rq2ym6

Trump Has "Zero Chance" Vs. Hillary In November? Think Again!

Two days ago I read a piece at salon.com  by Walker Bragman I thought I'd never see, ever:

http://www.salon.com/2016/04/29/a_liberal_case_for_donald_trump_the_lesser_of_two_evils_is_not_at_all_clear_in_2016/

That the "lesser of two evils" paradigm also dominating this election (at least for progressives) may not be an HRC choice at all, but a Trump choice was unthinkable back in February.Bragman actually went through point by point - including Supreme Court picks - showing why (especially if the Dems managed to snatch back the Senate) a Trump presidency might not be as apocalyptic as made out by many on the Left. That includes  scolds like Patton Oswalt, Bill Maher and George Takei - warning "do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, dumpkopfs!"

But is Hillary really that "good"? After her AIPAC speech and a recent NY Times write up on her war hawk nature, e.g.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clinton-became-a-hawk.html?_r=1

Many inquiring minds are wondering.

Probably most of Bragman's article would have been unthinkable even a few days before the New York Times posted its lengthy magazine article on Hillary's evolution as an unreconstructed war hawk - prepared to back Netanyahu to the hilt, as well as go after Iran or Russia. I read the piece too and it sent chills down my spine. I made the mistake of reading the Times' piece after re-reading the spell -binding 1959 novel of thermonuclear war, 'Alas, Babylon', by Pat Frank.  The scenes described of an accidental U.S. strike on Latakia - the Russian Naval base - could occur even today and ok, start the real thing - if cooler heads don't prevail.

Anyway, to counter a recurring anti-Russia U.S. narrative we recently beheld Trump saying we needed to work with Russia instead of making war on her, including setting up 'no fly' zones. He has a good point, but is that enough to throw caution to the winds and dispense with a lesser of two evils approach? I don't know.

But what ought to be alarming to many on the left, especially the pundit class,  is the many still dismissing Trump as a "clown". They might want to think again. People some months ago dismissed him as a Bozo but look where he is now. On the cusp of getting to the magic number of 1237 Reepo delegates. If one compares his odds at any Vegas' bookmaker's they are far more in his favor, than they are in Ted Cruz' (especially after Johnny Boehner dinged Cruz with the "Lucifer in the flesh" epithet - probably referencing that video where Cruz is reaching out to hug his daughter and the poor girl recoils in disgust.)

Former Loyola University PolySci and Philosophy lecturer Sean Illing in his own salon.com ;piece has been among the first to confess he was all wrong. As he writes:

"Pundits are paid to pretend they know things. But we have no special insight, no higher claims to truth. We’re wrong as much as we’re right, if not more so. Sometimes it’s clear what will happen, often it’s not. In the case of Trump, everyone – myself included – got it wrong.

When Trump descended preposterously from that escalator and announced he was running for president, we all giggled. Trump? President? Seriously? And yet all the polls suggested that he had real traction. But we assumed his star would fade. Then he started winning primaries – by massive margins. We downplayed it. Then he made one gaffe after another – insulting John McCain’s military service, hurling a menstruation jab at Megyn Kelly, calling Mexicans “rapists” and “criminals,” promising to ban all Muslims from entering the country. He even vicariously called Ted Cruz a “pussy.”

None of it mattered. Trump is now on track to receive the most primary votes in the history of the Republican Party. Let that sink in for a moment."

In fact, little of it has sunk in, as the political chattering class continues to give Trump no hope at all vs. Hillary. In only one memorable televised instance in the past two months did I see and hear a different take - from a Hillary female supporter (Jess McIntosh) from Emily's List. She told Chris Hayes on his 'All In' show that she viscerally feared a one on one debate between Hillary and Trump. In her own words, and I quote:

"It would kind of be like facing a mad monkey with a gun. And you just don't know what that monkey might do so there's no way to really prepare."

Indeed. But far more ominous is that if this election is close, it might be another GOP steal especially in states like Ohio using electronic voting machines. See e.g.:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/04/grim-news-fix-may-already-be-in-for.html

Greg Palast in an RT segment recently noted that the only reason Obama didn't lose the 2008 election is because his "numbers were way too big to enable a steal".  It may not be so this time, given Hillary's high negatives and also if she can't secure Bernie's people. Up to now, according to recent reports, she has indicated zero inclination to incorporate any of Sanders's' proposals into her platform. This is precisely the error that could conceivably render this general election close enough to steal. (Say by tossing OH to the  GOP by dumping a quarter million provisional ballots as in 2004)

Illing again:


"The political class is experiencing a collective cognitive dissonance: We just can’t quite believe this is happening. And yet it is happening – right now, in front of our faces. Barring something extraordinary, Trump will be the Republican nominee. Will he win the general election? Probably not. But he absolutely could win, and willing ourselves to ignorance won’t make it any less likely.
To read the latest “Insiders” report at Politico, however, is to discover how little pundits – on both sides – have learned. "

Will they learn enough before the November showdown? Who knows?  Who will be the most likely- Clinton or Trump -  to avoid a nuclear showdown with the Russians? That may be the true litmus test for determining the lesser of two evils.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/brian-cloughley/67070/is-washington-preparing-for-war-against-russia

R.I.P., Vince Bugliosi - Fervent (But Misguided) Warren Commission Defender

Vince Bugliosi died yesterday at the age of 80. Bugliosi had quite a history as an LA County  prosecutor (in the Charles Manson trial)  but will most likely be remembered by many of us as the author of the most massive tome ever written on the Kennedy assassination, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy .  Alas,  the book's  heft (by 3,5 lbs. weight, a total of 2,646 fulsome pages with CD Endnotes) was too much for  too many and literally defined "excess" though it was passionately written - perhaps too much so with multiple swipes at the conspiracy side.  Some of his hostile, anti-conspiracy chestnuts included:

p. 1258: " ... simple common sense, that rarest of attributes among conspiracy theorists ... " , 

 p. 1275: "But conspiracy theorists are not rational and sensible when it comes to the Kennedy assassination." 

 (p. 1277) " ... silliness is what all of the conspiracy allegations are about ... "

Vince, bless his antagonistic little soul, might have fared better had he pondered these words of Matt Ridley ('Maybe We're All Conspiracy Theorists', in  The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 10-11, 2011):

"How do we know that our own rational rejections of conspiracy theories are not themselves infected with beliefs so strong that they are, in effect, conspiracy theories too?"

Sadly, Bugliosi’s penchant for ad hominem didn’t end with the critical conspiracy community – authors but extended to key witnesses and others (e.g. Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden) trying to fight for the truth. For example, Bugliosi refers to the courageous African- American woman Aquilla Clemmons (who pointedly noted that a heavyset man shot Officer J.D. Tippitt, not Oswald) as a “kook”.

Sadder still, were the gazillions of errors, omissions, and misrepresentations. I do not intend to beat up on a dead man but readers who want the details can go to these links:

http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/green/BesmirchingHistory.html

http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2007/05/reclaiming-history-from-vince-bugliosi.html

http://www.reclaiminghistory.org/

I prefer to remember Bugliosi not for his wayward lurch into the Kennedy assassination, but for his more on- target earlier works  - that really ought to better define him. In that context perhaps his best work was embodied in his 2001 book, 'The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President'. This refers to the noisome interjection of the Court in the 2000 Florida recounts, basically handing the 2000 election to Gee Dumbya Bush. 

As opposed to his meandering, bloated book on the Kennedy assassination, this one is concise, argued rationally and precise in its target:  the five conservo justices who felt it their bounden duty to interfere in a presidential election. In essence, gutting the provisions of the Constitution, by rendering tens of millions of voters redundant.

The book - as opposed to 'Reclaiming History' - is an essential addition to every real citizen's book shelf, along with Greg Palast's 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy'  While Bugliosi attends to the Supreme Court travesty, Palast devotes his focus (in Chapter One) to what came before to make the election close in FL: the removal of  tens of thousands of African- Americans from Florida voter rolls - by reclassifying them as felons. This was masterminded by Jeb Bush (in cahoots with his Secretary, Katherine Harris), with Bush the same piece of crap who now wants to be President.

As an atheist I must also commend Bugliosi for his well -thought out 2011 book, Divinity of Doubt. Again, as compared with his Kennedy book, this one is tightly argued, no errors of fact that I could spot and most notably, he left the ad hominem out.

In a memorable, April 22, 2011 appearance on MSNBC's  'Morning Joe', Bugliosi gave a robust defense of his book and also delivered cogent replies to critical questions by Joe Scarborough. He began by dismissing the god-hood claim, showing that Jesus was not born of a virgin and that the claims for prophetic fulfillment in the New Testament hearken back to Isaiah 7:14. The Hebrew word used therein is not that for virgin (petula) but the one for “young woman” (almah). Hence, Bugiliosi argued there was a clear indication of no divine origin (which he ties to the gospel authors’ claim of being born of a virgin).

Not missing a beat, Bugliosi then launched into citations from Matthew showing that Yeshua’s own family (e.g. Mary) perceived him as quite “off the beam” or perhaps unhinged mentally, as he goes off preaching. When she questions him about launching off into these Temple preachments he in turn reprimands her to the effect, “Woman, know ye not that I must be about my father’s business?” Which confirmed in her mind that maybe he needs more help than she can provide.

Bugliosi then dispatched the resurrection as an actual historical event, citing references from Matthew in which a number of other people are also claimed to have been resurrected. According to Bugliosi, “Then that means that if others did it too then it has very little real significance. It’s no longer special. What I take away from that is that it’s purely mythological. We can say it is more symbolic than real”.

Interestingly, When Scarborough asked if he was an atheist, he quickly responded, “Absolutely not! I'm an agnostic".

But, of course, as I've noted before,  an agnostic atheist is exactly someone who withholds belief until there is evidence for a claim. A pure agnostic is one who asserts there is an impossibility of ever knowing enough to confer belief.  Clearly, Bugliosi fell in the former category - especially after Peggy Hewinson asked him whether he fretted on going to heaven, accepting what he does and writing such a book, Bugliosi responded tongue in cheek: ”Yes, I’d like to go on to heaven, but I want to take my reason with me!”

The interesting aspect of this take (in conjunction with his dismissal of Christ’s godhood) is that Bugliosi is really an agnostic atheist, as opposed to being a pure agnostic as he claimed. If he was a pure agnostic he’d also agree that the issue of Christ’s godhood - like God's existence- can’t be settled because we don’t have sufficient knowledge to do so. But that was not his approach: as he adamantly claimed to have refuted (“beyond any reasonable doubt”) both the resurrection and Christ’s divinity.

In any case, Vince will now be able to see how many of his earlier claims are true, and indeed, whether there is a "heaven". If there is, which I doubt, I believe he will also meet and greet Lee Oswald there - who will finally get to tell the old prosecutor how wrong he was about there being no conspiracy at work in the Kennedy. assassination- which framed Lee as the bad guy. Hopefully, Vince will finally pay close attention, which he wasn't able to do at the end of his physical life!

Jeb Bush Has Shown He's Not Qualified To Be President

Megyn Kelly: Did us a favor by exposing Jeb Bush for the Neocon extremist he is.

But then, in fairness, none of the other Reepo clown cavalcade are either. But given Jebbie was "leading the clown pack", his faux pas regarding the Iraq War has to make even his staunchest backers sit up and take notice - and maybe reconsider.

For those living under a rock, Jeb was being interviewed  by Megyn Kelly - a sometime FOX gadfly for the truth (like Shepherd Smith). She asked him point blank:

"Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the (Iraq) invasion?"

He responded:

"I would have but so would have Hillary Clinton, to remind everybody."

Which is total codswallop. Since Hillary has already stated in her 2002 memoir:

"I wasn't alone in getting it wrong. But I still got it wrong, plain and simple"

With the clear implication that had she to do it over again she'd never have approved the Iraq War Resolution.

Bear in mind again, Kelly wasn't asking Jeb as a Senator but as a potential President. There is a world of difference, and Jeb essentially admitted he'd have started that ill-conceived invasion and occupation even with the intelligence revision since then.. Given this, it's most incomprehensible that  he never said the Iraq War was a mistake which would have at least mitigated some of the blowback.

The outcry even from his own party was immediate and vehement.  Right wing talk show host Laura Ingraham, for example, ripped Jeb a new one on her 'Laura Ingraham Show':

"We cannot stay in this relitigating the Bush years again. You just can/t do it! You have to have someone who says, 'Look, I'm a Republican, but I'm not an idiot. I'm not stupid. I am a conservative, and I learn from the past, and I improve myself. I also don't bring in people who made the same stupid decisions in the 2000s, to get us into the 21st century."

Ingraham's blistering diatribe must have really stung, especially as it insulted Bush's intelligence and judgment so no surprise he tried to walk it back the next day, actually blurting:

"I interpreted the question wrong, I guess. I was talking about given what people knew then, would you have done it, rather than knowing what we know now."

Which is total unmitigated bollocks and discloses the man to be even more of an idiot, not to mention taking his viewers to be total idiots. Thus, the answer discloses a lack of attention as well as jumbled neural processing - something we can't afford in a president. Besides, why would any interviewer take the reference point back to what we knew then when this guy is alleged to be a presidential candidate now? The only logical context would be what we know now as a basis to guide the decision then.

If Bush's misfire on this Iraq War authorization question was all there is, it would be bad enough. But as Laura Ingraham observed in her tirade, this bought and sold imbecile also wants to bring in the same gang of neocons that engineered it!

Then there is Jeb Bush's  earlier baggage, to remind readers who may have forgotten. As then  Governor of Florida, Jeb - along with State Secretary Katherine Harris – used Choicepoint voter rolls to disenfranchise tens of thousands of African American Florida voters so his brother Dumbya  could win Florida's electoral votes in 2000. For those who want all the documented, sordid details, get hold of Greg Palast’s book, ‘The Best Democracy Money Can Buy', and read Chapter One.

Then there was Bush's iinterference - again as Governor - in the Terry Schaivo case. She had directives for her husband to carry out if ever declared brain dead, and Bush prevented him from doing so. (Ms. Schaivo suffered from bulimia which led to a potassium deficiency that triggered her heart failure -  a lack of oxygen, followed by coma and brain death.)

Bush's unseemly interference finally was halted in October 2002, when Florida's 2nd District Court of Appeal heard a week of testimony from five doctors who examined her, including two picked by husband Michael Schiavo, two by her parents and one picked by the court. Three doctors, including one appointed by the court, testified that Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery.

The two doctors selected by the Schindlers (Terry's parents) testified they thought  she could recover.The appellate court concurred with a lower court decision that Schiavo had no hope of recovery and that her feeding tube could be removed.

This travesty never should have occurred, far less been this prolonged, and Jeb Bush's aggressive government (and personal) intrusion was largely to blame.

This asshole has no business being anywhere near the White House any more than his dimwit brother. Hopefully, money cache or no, he will be weeded out early. Probably via making even more dumb ass comments on interviews - or in the debates.

See also ('Jeb Bush Isn't a Moderate: He's a Neocon Extremist')

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/62202/jeb-bush-isnt-a-moderate-hes-a-neocon-extremist

and:


http://www.salon.com/2015/05/13/jeb_bushs_worst_week_yet_how_his_iraq_debacle_could_doom_his_white_house_hopes/

Exposing More of Larry Schweikart's Lies About Liberals

"I fear that if you're an educated conservative, and you've had the misfortune of reading this book, you've already pulled a good deal amount of hair out of your head like I have........Forget that Schweikart is an abominable writer and harms the conservative movement by making it look like buffoonery. IN FACT.......you know what? .....Just forget this book ever came out"  - Reviewer on Amazon.com

"Schweikart discredits lies that he himself invented and attributed to liberals to make himself appear the hero. It is like the exterminator who releases mice into your house then charges you to get rid of them. "   Reviewer on Amazon.com

We now examine a few more of the ridiculous lies Larry Schweikart attributes to liberals in his book, '48 Liberal Lies About American History' .   

Lie #12: The Founders Envisioned a "Wall of Separation" Between Church and State, Keeping Religious Influence Out of Government

Well, Larry might be excused here, since most fundamentalist-leaning, right wing  radicals don't seem to be aware of Thomas Jefferson's (1802) letter to Danbury Baptists:

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."

It thereby became an unspoken, unwritten principle that has been practiced on many judicial levels since. And it pretty well embraced Jefferson's (and Madison's) vision of keeping religious influence out of government. The most famous ruling validating it? The 1962 case brought by Madalyn Murray O'Hair which has kept prayer out of the public schools - as it should be.

Lie #18: Senator Joseph McCarthy Concocted the "Red Scare," and There Was Nothing to Fear from Communist Subversives

Most of us, especially from Wisconsin, know the murky history of Joe McCarthy - but evidently this bozo doesn't. We know, for example, that he fomented hysteria about the "Red scare" that reached into almost every U.S. Dept. and agency and at one time bloviated in a Senate hearing about an astounding number of "communists" at  State  and in the military that ran "into the thousands".. He eventually discredited himself by his overreach and unsupported exaggerations, though he ruined hundreds of lives with his insane demagoguery. You can read more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

One more interesting fact: It was during the 'Red scare' hysteria of the early 50s  that the Children's Crusade 'Know your Commies' cards came out, e.g.

Lie #21: Columbus Was Responsible for Killing Millions of Indians

 Blatant exaggeration and red herring. Columbus himself did not "kill millions of Indians" and no liberal of any sense ever said he did. This is another case of what one reviewer described as Schweikart's tactic of inventing the lies himself than attributing them to liberals - analogous to the exterminator who releases mice in your home then charges you to remove them.  Those who want the lowdown on the effects of the arrival of the Europeans, including Columbus, on native Americans,  can consult James Loewen's excellent and quality book, 'Lies My Teacher Told Me'.

The key aspect to note? The Europeans brought smallpox with them to the New World, as well as other diseases (e.g. measles) which devastated native populations. But, as Loewen also notes, there was indeed a genocide waged but not over one limited period (i.e. Columbus' arrival) but over hundreds of years. (Culminating in the "Indian Wars" fought in the American West, punctuated by many massacres - such as at Sand Creek in Colorado.)

Lie #27: Richard Nixon Sent Burglars into the Watergate Office Complex

Schweikart can maybe be pardoned for this howler, because he wrote his screed before all the Nixon tapes were released (including new ones only recently). But even then he might have been able to obtain the deathbed account of E. Howard Hunt, one of the Watergate burglars,  who 'fessed up that  he'd been sent to the Watergate complex by....who else? Nixon!   Bottom line: 'Tricky Dick' basically hung himself by keeping a tape system originally installed by JFK, and using it to the point every nefarious word or plan was faithfully recorded.  By the time of the Watergate investigation in 1973 his 'goose' was basically cooked. (Though his supporters to this day hate to admit it.)

Lie #28: Neither Ronald Reagan's Election nor the "Contract with America" Proved the Triumph of Conservative Ideas

No liberal of any sense ever  "denied" (or proclaimed as a 'lie')  that Reagan's two terms "proved" the triumph of conservative ideas, because one can't deny what never existed in the first place. . What we have said is that too many millions got suckered by Reagan's "aw shucks"  demeanor into buying into conservatism more than they otherwise might. Much of this mental hijacking was superbly described by neuroscientist Robert Ornstein in his 'New World, New Mind'.

Ornstein noted how this "old Mind" (the regressive mind)  of a nation or people can be ramped up collectively and reinforced if its leaders also display and act on their own 'old Mind' predjudices, beliefs, etc. For example( p. 172):

"..the old mind has never been so much in evidence in American politics as in the second half of the Reagan administration"

Ornstein observed that Reagan's 'avuncular' persona and smile (which essentially disengaged too many  Americans' critical thinking centers) made it much easier for them to buy into the "morning in America" pap and swill he was busy feeding them. Never mind the half million tossed into the streets from mental hospitals, or the conversion of the U.S. to the world's foremost debtor and so on.

The populace' old Mind was its own worst enemy in perceiving the very real damage Reaganites were perpetrating (which has more recently been emulated by the Bushies as well as  Bushie leftovers- i.e. neocons, in Obama's State Dept.. ) Orstein points to the (then) 'Star Wars' program as yet another example of 'old Mind' workings (p. 169):

"The Star Wars program represents the continuation of a mind blindness to trends that have long made military thinking one of the clearest examples of old mind functioning. The rigid, unimaginative training of those who choose military careers apparently reinforces the brain's natural tendency to focus on the immediate and the near term and especially, to count on the environment to remain unchanged. So obvious is this effect that the comment that 'generals are always preparing to fight the previous war' has become a text book commonplace. "

The takeaway was that despite the face these assorted conservo  clowns have put on (e.g. Gee Dumbya) Americans bought into them in enough numbers to put them into power (or keep them there)  where they wrecked the economy even before Obama arrived! Sadly, those like Reagan, Bush Jr. et al have exploited Americans' dumb "faith in the future" i.e. that Repukes will do things better, despite the fact their very core plans (preserving massive tax cuts for the wealthiest) will do the opposite!

But let's go on:

Lie #30: George W. Bush Was Selected, Not Elected, in 2000, and Votes Were Stolen on His Behalf

This is the truth. The theft of the 2000 election was described in detail, including the publication of actual documents from Florida Secretary of State Kathleen Harris showing how Choicepoint was hired to put more than 53,000 black voters in Duval County on felons' lists (they weren't but they were put there, because Harris knew most black voters were democrats). The entire background and evidence is available - for those who want it  - in Chapter One of Greg Palast's 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.'

The unlawful elimination of all those black voters allowed Bush to take the 27 electoral votes of Florida, though he lost the popular vote by over a half million. Hence, the evidence is there that Harris, Jeb Bush et al, stole the election on his behalf.  The  Fla. recounts to try to show Gore actually won were doomed from the start because they didn't include all counties. In any case, the voter rolls would still have been short those 153,000 banned black voters.

Still, the  abrupt stoppage of the vote recount by the Supreme Court effectively halted the process and amounted to a "selection" of Bush Jr., as Vince Bugliosi pointed out in his book, The Betrayal Of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined Our Constitution and Chose Our President .

The truth is a bitch.

Lie #37: Global Warming Is a Fact, and It's a Man-made, American-Driven Problem

Actually, all the evidence shows that this is the case.  Anthropogenic warming  is certainly as much a fact as just about anything in science can be expected to be, and the evidence is all around us from collapsing ice sheets and glaciers, to the instability of the polar vortex, to increasing intense storms and heat waves to acidification of the oceans. As for being "American -driven", it largely is. It is also a fact that we are offloading many of the worst carbon-laden fuels and also coal, and tar sands oil to China. Hence, much of their CO2 output is actually derived from what WE have dumped on them!

Lie #47: The Reagan Tax Cuts Caused Massive Deficits and the National Debt

Again, this is true, though portrayed by Schweikart as "a liberal lie."  The fact is that before the Reagan era America was still largely a creditor nation, more capital inflows than outflows, holding more debt from other nations than debt owed to them. Reagan changed the dynamic by going on a $2,1 TRILLION spending spree, mainly for military hardware and toys as well as allowing ridiculous cost overruns for common materials (e.g. $75 hammers $3,000 each toilets).  In the wake, and coupled with Reagan's tax cuts, the country went from mainly creditor to debtor and the situation has remained the same since - as tax cutting has become a fetish with the Reepos.

Final Lie: History Textbooks Used in Schools Are Unbiased and Not Politically Correct

Again, this is true, though portrayed by Schweikart as a liberal lie. The problem is not, however, so much "political correctness" as the refusal to look at all the blemishes, fractures and conflicts of our history. In other words, our history books are overly sanitized, a point noted by James Loewen. Do any of the current history texts examine the duplicity of the Warren Commission in its findings on the JFK assassination? Of course not. Do any of them examine the My Lai massacre committed by American troops in Vietnam? No. Do any of them really examine the betrayal of native Americans in assorted treaties (concerning their land) and the many massacres ...such as at Sand Creek here in Colorado, or at Wounded Knee?  What about the nation's track of growing inequality? Is there any examination of the historical factors that have led to this? What about the origin of Army Security and spy programs and how they were mounted against unions, workers? I could go on and on, as Loewen does - which is why he refers to 'Lies My Teacher Told Me' - the title of his book.

But then teachers are constrained by their tepid history curricula and textbooks. If those are avoidant of the underbelly of American history, the history teacher will be averse to exploring it too. (One reason why any real American history teacher also needs Howard Zinn's text : "A People's History of the United States" as an accompaniment.

Our kids get bored senseless by history because it's taught as settled events and assorted dates to be memorized, as opposed to a sequence of conflicts, many of which are ongoing. The aim ought to be not to whitewash our history but to show it with all its boils, pustules and follies as well as internecine, unsettled conflicts and divisive issues.

We do our students a disservice by teaching them the nation's history is immaculate and getting them to buy that we are the "exceptional people of the world". We aren't!  We are no different from all other nations, and the delusional belief we are "special" merely feeds our hubris.