Yves here. This article gives a sobering picture of how disconnected Democratic party insiders are from the dangerous conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and their poor grasp of the America’s deteriorating stature and military reach. There is one sour note in this article. It take a recent report in the Washington Post, that Ukraine and Russia were negotiating an end to their energy war. Both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zarakhova and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denied it. At most, these “talks” were low-level feelers.
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, the authors ofWar in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022. Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq
DNC delegates unfurl banner during Biden’s speech at the DNC. Photo credit: Esam Boraey
An Orwellian disconnect haunts the 2024 Democratic National Convention. In the isolation of the convention hall, shielded from the outside world behind thousands of armed police, few of the delegates seem to realize that their country is on the brink of direct involvement in major wars with Russia and Iran, either of which could escalate into World War III.
Inside the hall, the mass slaughter in the Middle East and Ukraine are treated only as troublesome “issues,” which “the greatest military in the history of the world” can surely deal with. Delegates who unfurled a banner that read “Stop Arming Israel” during Biden’s speech on Monday night were quickly accosted by DNC officials, who instructed other delegates to use “We ❤️ Joe” signs to hide the banner from view.
In the real world, the most explosive flashpoint right now is the Middle East, where U.S. weapons and Israeli troops are slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinians, mostly children and families, at the bidding of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. And yet, in July, Democrats and Republicans leapt to their feet in 23 standing ovations to applaud Netanyahu’s warmongering speech to a joint session of Congress.
In the week before the DNC started, the Biden administration announced its approval for the sale of $20 billion in weapons to Israel, which would lock the US into a relationship with the Israeli military for years to come.
Netanyahu’s determination to keep killing without restraint in Gaza, and Biden and Congress’s willingness to keep supplying him with weapons to do so, always risked exploding into a wider war, but the crisis has reached a new climax. Since Israel has failed to kill or expel the Palestinians from Gaza, it is now trying to draw the United States into a war with Iran, a war to degrade Israel’s enemies and restore the illusion of military superiority that it has squandered in Gaza.
To achieve its goal of triggering a wider war, Israel assassinated Fuad Shukr, a Hezbollah commander, in Beirut, and Hamas’s political leader and chief ceasefire negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Iran has vowed to respond militarily to the assassinations, but Iran’s leaders are in a difficult position. They do not want a war with Israel and the United States, and they have acted with restraint throughout the massacre in Gaza. But failing to respond strongly to these assassinations would encourage Israel to conduct further attacks on Iran and its allies.
The assassinations in Beirut and Tehran were clearly designed to elicit a response from Iran and Hezbollah that would draw the U.S. into the war. Could Iran find a way to strike Israel that would not provoke a U.S. response? Or, if Iran’s leaders believe that is impossible, will they decide that this is the moment to actually fight a seemingly unavoidable war with the U.S. and Israel?
This is an incredibly dangerous moment, but a ceasefire in Gaza would resolve the crisis. The U.S. has dispatched CIA Director William Burns, the only professional diplomat in Biden’s cabinet, to the Middle East for renewed ceasefire talks, and Iran is waiting to see the result of the talks before responding to the assassinations.
Burns is working with Qatari and Egyptian officials to come up with a revised ceasefire proposal that Israel and Hamas can both agree to. But Israel has always rejected any proposal for more than a temporary pause in its assault on Gaza, while Hamas will only agree to a real, permanent ceasefire. Could Biden have sent Burns just to stall, so that a new war wouldn’t spoil the Dems’ party in Chicago?
The United States has always had the option of halting weapons shipments to Israel to force it to agree to a permanent ceasefire. But it has refused to use that leverage, except for the suspension of a single shipment of 2,000 lb bombs in May, after it had already sent Israel 14,000 of those horrific weapons, which it uses to systematically smash living children and families into unidentifiable pieces of flesh and bone.
Meanwhile the war with Russia has also taken a new and dangerous turn, with Ukraine invading Russia’s Kursk region. Some analysts believe this is only a diversion before an even riskier Ukrainian assault on the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Ukraine’s leaders see the writing on the wall, and are increasingly ready to take any risk to improve their negotiating position before they are forced to sue for peace.
But Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russia, while applauded by much of the west, has actually made negotiations less likely. In fact, talks between Russia and Ukraine on energy issues were supposed to start in the coming weeks. The idea was that each side would agree not to target the other’s energy infrastructure, with the hope that this could lead to more comprehensive talks. But after Ukraine’s invasion toward Kursk, the Russians pulled out of what would have been the first direct talks since the early weeks of the Russian invasion.
President Zelenskyy remains in power three months after his term of office expired, and he is a great admirer of Israel. Will he take a page from Netanyahu’s playbook and do something so provocative that it will draw U.S. and NATO forces into the potentially nuclear war with Russia that Biden has promised to avoid?
A 2023 U.S. Army War College study found that even a non-nuclear war with Russia could result in as many U.S. casualties every two weeks as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did in two decades, and it concluded that such a war would require a return to conscription in the United States.
While Gaza and Eastern Ukraine burn in firestorms of American and Russian bombs and missiles, and the war in Sudan rages on unchecked, the whole planet is rocketing toward catastrophic temperature increases, ecosystem breakdown and mass extinctions. But the delegates in Chicago are in la-la land about U.S. responsibility for that crisis too.
Under the slick climate plan Obama sold to the world in Copenhagen and Paris, Americans’ per capita CO2 emissions are still double those of our Chinese, British and European neighbors, while U.S. oil and gasproduction have soared to all-time record highs.
The combined dangers of nuclear war and climate catastrophe have pushed the hands of the Doomsday Clock all the way to 90 seconds to midnight. But the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties are in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry and the military-industrial complex. Behind the election-year focus on what the two parties disagree about, the corrupt policies they both agree on are the most dangerous of all.
President Biden recently claimed that he is “running the world.” No oligarchic American politician will confess to “running the world” to the brink of nuclear war and mass extinction, but tens of thousands of Americans marching in the streets of Chicago and millions more Americans who support them understand that that is what Biden, Trump and their cronies are doing.
The people inside the convention hall should shake themselves out of their complacency and start listening to the people in the streets. Therein lies the real hope, maybe the only hope, for America’s future.
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Dore and his wife made a video in Chicago a couple of nights ago, late night street roaming. As I predicted on the thread about 5 days ago, the one with Michael Hudson commenting, the Mag Mile (north Michigan Avenue), Gold Coast and Lincoln Park neighborhoods were completely fenced off from the rest of the city and heavily policed at all times. No protesters! Whoocoodanoode?
It’s not just DNC and RP conventioneers or Americans or Westerners. The MSM has done a remarkable job hiding this looming risk. People only know about the risks if they are following non-MSM news channels. The induced complacency is alarming.
What is that certain to be getting longer in the tooth meme, where the dog seated at a table amid a burning on fire small room or kitchen?
Have a cup of coffee, everything is fine. Trump and Republicans well, I say perhaps a seemingly lesser evil but still they are fully capable of evil, havoc and chaos. Foreign policy just seems wrecked.
Poker-playing dogs on velvet canvases, more art to peddle in Chicago and elsewhere.
Now being advertised as a chance to capture part of that Golden Age of American History.
Gaah! /s
I will vote for and hold the hats and coats of the Trumpistas as long as they guarantee that they will completely wipe out each and every cretin that now occupies the senior positions in the DNC not just in Washington but in every State. We can then start anew. I am colored and I approved this message.
Just like Biden’s dementia. The MSM will catch on less than 100 days till doomsday.
Is the pentagon war machine past its use by date?
If not, do the neocons think it is a year or two away and they need to get “their war” before their exquisitely specified profitable weapons are over matched by real weapons?
As for China; “how do we go to war with our factory” quoting Cmdr Salamander.
Sadly, the least insane saber rattler is Trump.
Shorter DNC: Let them eat vibes.
I hope no one is buying this, but I understand if they do. I think the need to feel any kind of positivity about anything is valid. But I’m starting to get such Obama 2.0 vibes from this campaign and it’s nauseating. (At least Obama could sell the BS. This time around, it’s clearly Kamala is the BS being sold.)
Overheard in Chicago?
I came here to chew gum joyfully and to kick ass, and I’m all out of gum.
“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass… and I’m all out of bubblegum.” — Nada
Source: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/111729/what-was-the-origin-of-the-famous-movie-quote-all-out-of-bubble-gum
Well, lest we forget (sic), “Uncle” Joe is still Pres….right down to the wire.
I’ve been catching up with HBO’s The Gilded Age where Julian Fellowes overlays the high point of pure Capitalist exploitation with the same suffocating layer of “nice” that he brought to the Edwardians in Downton Abbey. The latter was wildly popular among many middle class people since it assured us that the trivial obsessions of a class society justified both tolerance and interest in these oh so human plutocrats and the world of coal mines and child labor–invisible to them– should stay invisible to us as well.
Of course the rich don’t want to think of themselves as villains nor those do those warwashig Dems at the convention. Better to simply cover up the protest banners and pretend all is well in a world full of love and joy
This also plays to our now very upper class press but it remains to be seen how it goes over with the country at large. Empires crack when, as in Vietnam, they start killing off the poor to maintain the lifestyles of the privileged. Some are starting to say that the blatant propaganda at the convention is also suffocating. Will a majority of voters reject the show and instead repeat the now famous cry “I can’t breathe”?
Nevertheless…
https://annpettifor.substack.com/p/the-tragedy-of-the-superyacht-bayesian
You do have to give the Democrats points for chutzpah. They appear to be running Harris as an extension of Obama, i.e. his third term. Doing so requires them to memory-hole Joe, along with the past 4 years. And by association, memory-hole Kamala’s entire tenure as VP.
It’s audacious … and might work. Judging by the “stonk mucket” social mood is not horrible. However, events, as Lambert likes to say, may bat last.
A tactical nuke taking out NATO bases in Romania and Germany could concentrate stonk traders minds.
Perhaps they ought to be buying iodine pills instead of Gamestop?
Well if one wants to defend them what other pitch do they have? Joe was obviously going to lose.
It’s the “winning is the only thing” obsession of our politics that is the real problem. We have a fight among factions for the goodies that come with control of government. Poor Nancy may even be getting fewer stock tips now that she’s not Speaker.
had a chuckle the other day – the Dem shill Colbert was in Chicago broadcasting live and was interviewing Pelosi when they got a taste of Chicago –
https://www.thedailybeast.com/stephen-colberts-live-pelosi-interview-derailedtwiceby-protesters
No its not chutzpah its the Southpah. The Corporate Dems since the time of Carter and the DLC with Al From and Tony Coelho realized how captured the Black vote is and have forever led them by the nose to vote DNC no matter what. Let us all thank the DNC faithful flock in the South led by our most able CBC (Congressional Black Caucus). They are a gift and eternal gift givers. Thank you Jim Clyburn and thank you Jannie Jones
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/08/us/clyburn-biden-endorsement.html
All this endless hoopla, breathlessness about George Floyd and the occasional house invasion, shooting and body camera footage pearl clutching. The Obamas are behind Kamala, don’t you see? I mean, even if you do not believe in anyone, how can you NOT believe and trust our very very own Michelle?
I don’t think that the people at the Convention care about Europe or Russia or Iran or Gaza. It’s like they are reliving the glory days of the 90s when the Democrats were running the country and The West Wing was on TV and they were younger. A time when America was free to drop bombs or missiles on all these countries that could do nothing but take it. It’s the America that they grew up with and it is the America that they want. It’s like they want some magic in their lives.
For the Democrat party, the Convention is just a show. All those people there? Their votes are already locked in so the Party does not have to offer them a single thing. If all those people demanded free healthcare as a policy, then the party might have to actually listen but they will not so they can be ignored. And insulted too. When Michelle Obama of all people got up and started talking about “hope” with a smile, was she actually mocking all those supporters and making fun of them?
I have never understood this need to subsume part of your identity to a political party. Nay, have part of your identity depend on some politician. Especially one that nobody voted for and who still does not have a single campaign policy up on her website. Put not your faith in princes – they will always sell you out. People need to be more cynical come election time and hold out on voting for a party unless they get a material benefit in return. It’s how it is suppose to work.
Maybe Trump should start running ads implicating the recent mysterious deaths of certain retired NATO/US generals to skiing accidents, blood clots, or other natural causes (right … that’s the ticket!) to Project Ukraine. Or just start showing that old LBJ ad with the girl playing with a daisy, then suddenly the nuclear mushroom cloud explodes.
LBJ Daisy ad from 1964.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riDypP1KfOU
By 1968 LBJ announced he would not seek a 2nd term as POTUS.
Everywhere he went crowds were saying “Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids do you kill today?”
https://museumofprotest.org/portfolio/vietnamese-communists-evoke-protests-back-in-us/
About as devastating a political ad ever created….
> I have never understood this need to subsume part of your identity to a political party.
Tribal. Virtue. Signaling.
Democrats are the party of “virtue”, where Trump provides the near perfect antithesis – “a convicted felon” vs “a prosecutor”.
> Nay, have part of your identity depend on some politician. Especially one that nobody voted for and who still does not have a single campaign policy up on her website.
Musical Interlude … :) (via YouTube)
Nothing. Will. Fundamentally. Change.
War will endure. The exploitation of a permanent underclass will endure. Fealty to foreign influence will endure. The pluto-kleptocrat oligarchy will endure.
Chris you need a few chuckles
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2024/05/05
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2024/05/26
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2024/03/24
Thank you! #ComicDote
Of course, I would not be able to stomach the gross hypocrisy, lies, and bad acting in the shameful, stage-managed spectacle. With “progressives” like AOC and Sanders, we don’t need no far-right, authoritarian warmongers.
No worries for the Washington Consensus though, no matter the outcome of the so-called elections. Millions of duped, conditioned, misinformed, and gullible people will vote for one of two bottom-of-the-barrel scumbags who will continue genocide, provocations for nuclear war, kleptocracy, oligarchy…and despite boatloads of evidence to the contrary, millions still believe in the cult of US Democracy. This is yet another “historic” election.
So, vote early, vote often and vote Genocide!
Timely, as I’ve been giving what the Democrat Party is some thought this morning.
And the convention seems to be an expression of the deepest held beliefs and desires of the inner party, a faction of which picked Kamala as the Democrat candidate to replace Biden. The scores of attendees are what I’d consider the Democrat Party proper, the inner party, and the party functionaries, its more diehard supporters. So the convention is both a reward for faithful, unwavering loyalty to whatever the party claims it stands for, and a checkin such that everyone fully internalizes what whatever the belief system is for this incarnation of the party.
I’ve been mistaken in thinking that Democrat Party members are morons; this is simply rational in-group behavior. What’s truly scary is Democrat Party members are essentially unquestioning, mindless adherents to whatever the Inner Party line of the day is, for great masses of authoritarian followers are I think always a grave risk to anyone that might dissent or is not part of the tribe. Moreover, some portion of these people are likely intelligent, accomplished, and determined, and therefore can and will expend energy competently towards ends that are at odds with what is good for the typical American citizen. (And these aims likely are dual purpose, as personal advancement and recognition are likely rewards. And I bet those rewards can be quite sweet.)
So in short I think Democrat Party members likely represent truly dangerous people to the safety and prosperity of most of America, particularly as they assimilate and internalize the beliefs of the Democrat Inner Party, which is after all just a faction or set of factions from the capitalist ruling class.
I’m not sure how any grassroots effort could ever “take over” the Democrat Party from within. The institutional weight in opposition is hard to imagine, and would be unpleasant to weather. I don’t think Sanders ever had that intention.
I need to be more clear on my usage of “Inner Party.” There is a (A) very small group of electeds at the tippy top of the pyramid, probably no more than a twenty, who defenetrated Biden. Pelosi, Schumer, Obama, maybe Jeffries, the Clintons, the Obamas. That f(r)action needs a name. Anita Dunn (see today’s Water Cooler) is not in that fraction, but in (B) a FlexNet of providers who service the elected. That f(r)action needs also name. Both these f(r)actions are distinct from (C) “the base,” which is also distinct from the (D) voters, who are distinct from the (E) general population. On consideration, I would like to reserve “Inner Party” for (A).
Without HumInt, as our national security state calls it, I think, we’re somewhat left speculating on how the Democrat Party actually works in practice, but it does seem to have quite a few different layers, and at each layer there are probably players, with the pot(s) getting bigger for winning whatever the game is the further you progress, and a win is not always money. Obama gets to validate his narcissism, for example.
Um – “rational in-group behavior” – isnt that an Oxymoron?
If one wants to become cynical, peruse the MSM headlines and those of the “Opposition’. If Trump, then according to Harris: The end of Democracy. Meanwhile, Biden, who is still collecting a paycheck is trying to stifling the likes of Scott Ritter and the MSM, in lock step, is completely silent on world events as it goes gaga over Harris, who manages to say nothing about her policies. Not an ounce of leadership comes out. Under Biden’s leadership, what has been achieved in Ukraine? What has been achieved in Gaza? What has been achieved in fostering a disputes with China or Iran or Russia. Obama presents well, but ask Michael Hudson about his economic track record regarding low income evictions and utilizing Wall Street insider to fix the economy. As far as this ‘cynic’ is concerned, Trump is a natural born con artist and liar, the Democrats, as a group, are his equal.
That which is to be thrown down
is first lifted up.
— Dao De Jing
While MSM both mocks and publicizes Robert Kennedy, Jr., it has totally and I assume intentionally ignored the rationale third party, Jill Stein of the Green Party. I have no idea how she would actually govern if elected, but enough votes for her might at least get some real attention from Democrats. With both main parties deciding to to be totally unacceptable, it is time for a protest vote.
well she’s against the wars – stood with college protestors against the genocide and got arrested – has also stood against the proxy war in Ukraine – hardly a protest vote but worth giving her the numbers –
The fact that the Green Party will in the future receive federal election campaign funding if they get 5% of this vote is reason enough to vote for them, hoping to crack the uniparty war party.
yes, Ive noticed that, Kennedy is mentioned now and again.. not much but Stein is NEVER mentioned. Is that because she may be too attractive as an alternative to those who just cant vote for the Dems?
>few of the delegates seem to realize that their country is on the brink of direct involvement in major wars with Russia and Iran, either of which could escalate into World War III.
Before we take on the delegates over Russia and Iran, I think it’s fair to say few people realize, and the authors don’t mention, that we have an Israel lobby problem. By now, most people know that the Israel lobby has a veto over many high level appointments, especially within the State Department. This has been the case going back to the Clinton years.
It’s impossible to imagine that Harris will bring in anybody that is not vetted by the lobby. And that does not mean simply pro-Israel. It means someone who is unconditionally supportive, even obsessively supportive, of Israel.
On WWIII, I think this is unlikely. Of course, anything can happen while missiles are flying around but I think it is broadly assumed that there are a few trigger points that will make it more likely; and we’re not quite there yet.
First, a nuclear war would be more likely if nuclear country-A believed it could win a nuclear war, and avoid retaliation, with a nuclear armed country-B.
Second, a nuclear war would be more likely if nuclear country-B believed that its conventional forces were no longer able to defend itself against nuclear or non-nuclear countries.
Third, it is a clear warning to other countries when nuclear country-A begins to make significant changes to its nuclear arsenal, as well as a modernization plan of its nuclear arsenal.
I think the first and second applied to Russia prior to the SMO. Russia has since corrected the imbalance as Ukraine will not join NATO, and Russia’s conventional forces are now a match for NATO and the US.
that dangerous turn has it roots in 1993, where bill clinton completely warped america into a dangerous unstable out of control mess.
https://crisismagazine.com/vault/clintons-private-war
“Since World War II, the Vatican has consistently expressed horror at modern warfare’s “indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction.” The NATO forces inflicted heavy damage on Serbia, even using cluster bombs, a particularly nasty “anti-personnel” weapon. The first two NATO fatalities in Kosovo occurred after the war had ceased, during an attempt to defuse one of these bombs—in a schoolyard. Since NATO had, presumably by accident, struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three, it is possible that the schoolyard bombing was also unintended. But these are the kinds of things that happen in war and those who wage it must be held responsible for them.
Sifting the Ashes
The immediate result of the war was the intensification of the “ethnic cleansing” of Kosovar Albanians that Clinton had promised the bombing would halt. The ultimate results of the war are harder to foresee. Even if the war and follow-up diplomacy achieve lasting peace in the Balkans, the United States—alias NATO—has set a dangerous precedent by violating the national sovereignty of Yugoslavia. The war marks a clear departure from NATO’s own charter, which authorizes only defensive war against an aggressor. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has decided to redefine its mission. The Gulf War, at least, was fought against an aggressor who had violated another country’s borders; this time, NATO was the party violating the established borders of a foreign state.
Other sovereign states drew their own conclusions. Russia, China, and many others, unimpressed by Clinton’s humanitarian rhetoric, saw the war as imperialist, an assertion of the right of the United States to attack any country with internal policies of which it disapproves, provided, of course, that such country lacks the means of retaliating—as Yugoslavia did. The war would not have happened if Slobodan Milosevic had had the ability to bomb a NATO capital or two. The brutal treatment of Chechnya and Tibet might offer the U.S. moral grounds for attacking Russia and China, but of course, they are nuclear powers, and such action, however “moral,” is unthinkable.
The lesson for smaller countries is that they had better acquire arsenals against the day when they too may incur American disapproval. We can look forward to a new international arms race. The war’s break with international law has made the world even more unpredictable than it already was. As for the Chinese regime, it maintained a posture of rage (no doubt exaggerated for effect) at the bombing of its embassy and used the incident for anti-American propaganda even after Clinton had offered obsequious apologies.”
…
“Israel assassinated Fuad Shukr, a Hezbollah commander, in Beirut, and Hamas’s political leader and chief ceasefire negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Iran has vowed to respond militarily to the assassinations, but Iran’s leaders are in a difficult position. They do not want a war with Israel and the United States…”
Why doesn’t Iran respond with like assassinations of Israel’s politicos? Every response does not require a military intervention.
I really think that our present time at least from the 1990s onward, from the onset of the Neoliberal regime both here and in England is a watershed in terms of proving to all posterity, how elites can conquer, overwhelm the “mob” and subvert Democracy. A confluence of factors, technology foremost among them has made this possible. The advent of the Internet and the Cell Phone has converted conventional Bernays Brainwashing into bespoke brainwashing. Personal Cerebral Pickling Sauce if you will. Tailored to individual preference but all pointing away from the real culprits. Bannon pipes his marching hordes towards the “BORDER WALL!” while Farage leads them to “Immigrant Hotels” and the Congressional Black Caucus Hallelujahs the Southern Faithful to spiked gates of the DNC where they impale themselves with chants of “Hope! Hope!”. What I think is really admirable is how the elites of today assiduously heed the lessons of the Robber Baron era. Our current monopolists camouflage their greed. Our richest of the rich never flaunt and shun the limelight as much as possible. Did you ever hear about the second generation of the Kochs or Robert Mercer’s children? Nope, neither did I. Shell and Exxon never cross the $4.00 a gallon wall unless there is a definitive excuse like Ukraine. All in all, tomes could be written about the discipline of the 0.01% in stroking the Golden Goose between every savage squeeze of its innards to yield the golden eggs. They have truly mastered the art of giving an inch and taking several feet at every opportune moment. It seems like as if a thousand Machiavellis have been born and have gone to work in every family of the super rich to counsel them in how to play the long game. Consider – they have every lever of power in their hand now and yet except for the occasional Shkreli, they are keeping their powder very dry. The DNC along with the RNC are the chief cogs in this masterful 0.01% needle factory. When the Generals of K-Street assemble with the Pelosis and the McConnell’s in their usual steak restaurants of DC, I am pretty sure the so called Public Servants dole out wise counsel along with the gravy about how never to overreach with plenty of examples from legislative expeditions past where a Morgan or a Rockefeller or a Koch went too far and had to take a long sabbatical. This train of thought brings us to the real enablers of the 0.01% viz, the Watchdogs of Democracy which have developed pronounced frogs in their throats. If I were to pick the most egregious of the DNC enablers, I would choose the so called “liberal” media. The PBS, NPR, MSNBC, NYTimes etc. The “Fourth Estate” now reincarnated as the new Volksempfanger to spirit the educated masses away to “memory hole” land. I think if Jugashvili were reincarnated in America he would start with this Fourth Estate for sure to start his new revolution. I am sure he would say, “let me start with the nest of Stoleypns first”.