What's the old saying about One bad apple spoiling the whole barrel?
Well, if that's true, then Congress is one stinking putrid Swamp.
Neither the democrats nor the republicans give a good god damn about
the rank and file American People. They are far too busy scrambling
for the Super Pot of Gold, dangled before them by the Empire's
Billionaires. Let them go. Since they choose to ignore us, then
let's simply declare them null and void, and set up our own
government. Now, wouldn't that be a real Hoot? The Congress turns
around and discovers that no one is behind them anymore.
Carl Jarvis
Oh well, it's time to wake up and crawl out of bed.
On 1/16/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Chelsea Manning announced that she will run in the Democratic race to be
the Maryland Democratic Senatorial nominee. The other piece of news which
is
relevant is that the DCCC is announcing support of corporate Democratic
candidates before primaries have even started.
Miriam
Cardin's Anti-Russia Views Make Him a Fitting Opponent for Chelsea Manning
By Norman Solomon (from Truthdig)
Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, has served two terms. (Pablo
Martinez Monsivais / AP)
The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin, has
become a big star in national media by routinely denouncing Russia as a
dire
threat to American democracy. The senior senator from Maryland personifies
the highly dangerous opportunism that has set in among leading Democrats on
the subject of Russia.
Chelsea Manning confirmed on Sunday that she is challenging Sen. Cardin’s
re-election effort in the Democratic primary this June. Her campaign has
real potential to raise key issues. One of them revolves around the kind of
bellicose rhetoric that heightens the dangers of conflict between the
world’s two nuclear superpowers.
In a typical foray into reckless hyperbole, Cardin told a public forum in
November: “When you use cyber in an affirmative way to compromise our
democratic, free election system, that’s an attack against America. It’s an
act of war. It is an act of war.”
Cardin is far from the only member of Congress to use “act of war” rhetoric
about alleged Russian cyber actions. Republican ultra-hawk Arizona Sen.
John
McCain has hurled the phrase at Russia. But the most use of the phrase
comes
from a range of Democrats, such as Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal and
the normally sensible Northern California Rep. Jackie Speier.
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As his party’s ranking member of the key Senate committee on foreign
policy,
Cardin is at the tip of the anti-Russia propaganda spear. After three
decades in Congress including nearly a dozen years in the Senate, he’s an
old hand at spinning. No one has worked harder to get political mileage out
of “Russiagate.”
Last week, Cardin upped the ante with the release of a report that he
commissioned. In effect, it’s a declaration of red-white-and-blue jihad
against Russia.
The report—which accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin of “a relentless
assault to undermine democracy and the rule of law in Europe and the United
States”—received massive coverage in U.S. news media. Conservative and
liberal punditry voiced acclaim.
“Never before in American history has so clear a threat to national
security
been so clearly ignored by a U.S. president,” a solo statement by Cardin
declares on the opening page. With the truly repugnant President Trump in
its crosshairs, the report’s most polemical claims—no matter how debatable
or ahistorical—have predictably gotten a pass from mass media.
But the much-ballyhooed report is a carefully selective and distorted
version of history.
The expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders, the U.S. interference in
dozens of countries’ elections (including in Russia during the Clinton
administration), Washington’s support for repressive regimes in the past
and
present—such realities didn’t merit consideration or mention. Nor did facts
such as the USA’s role as the world’s biggest arms merchant. Or the
aggressively deadly U.S. military interventions in the recent past and
present, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya.
Such omissions are essential to the self-righteous tone of the Russiagate
frenzy. Only with silence about basic truths of U.S. foreign policy can
officials in Washington pose as leaders of an angelic nation that must
confront satanic Russia.
In light of what is at stake for human survival—with the odds of nuclear
war
shifting ominously because of the agenda that he’s helping to push—Sen.
Cardin can be understood as someone who avidly fits into patterns of
nationalistic and militaristic madness. The sad fact is that he has plenty
of company on Capitol Hill. Lemmings are bad enough, but conformists who
would drag all of humanity over the cliff with them are far worse.
Democratic leadership used to be much saner. Five decades ago, it was the
fanatical Republican standard bearer Barry Goldwater who scorned reaching
out to the Kremlin—while Democratic President Lyndon Johnson wisely sought
détente with Russian leaders on behalf of peaceful coexistence and reducing
the risks of nuclear conflagration.
Right after being sentenced to prison in August 2013 for heroic
whistleblowing that exposed many U.S. war crimes, Chelsea Manning released
a
statement that quoted Howard Zinn: “There is not a flag large enough to
cover the shame of killing innocent people.” A nuclear war between the
United States and Russia would do more than kill vast numbers of innocent
people. Scientific research tells us that a nuclear holocaust would make
the
Earth “virtually uninhabitable.”
The extreme hostility toward Russia that makes such an outcome more likely
must be rejected. Sen. Ben Cardin is one of the loudest and most prominent
voices for such hostility. He should be challenged.
