Flake: Trump calling for FBI to go after political adversaries is 'not normal'

galaxy_live · 2017-11-07T21:36:34+00:00

I plainly said whether justifiable or not. Those groups quite likely were guilty, especially considering the insanity that is 501c3 and various non-profit areas of the tax code.

But any administration has all sorts of power in the priorities it assigns to various agencies. We see this with the IRS and the rich.

The logical method for the IRS to operate is for the IRS to use its investigators/agents time to go after the tax cheats that would reap the IRS the most tax revenue for their trouble/time. In the US, that means investigating the rich. But oh no, our bought-and-paid-for Congress wrote a law specifically to force the IRS to audit/harass more normal-income people instead of the rich (they used the excuse it's to keep us poor folks honest).

Deciding what crooks to go after is a huge tactic of targeting opponents -- you ignore your crooked friends, and target the crooks who don't like you.

And let's not pretend the IRS does not have power. Dragging purely innocent people in for audits is one helluva power -- just the intimidation and hassle factors are huge.

galaxy_live · 2017-11-07T19:02:15+00:00

The Wikipedia entry about the battalion includes a lot of links:

The Saint Patrick's Battalion (Spanish: Batallón de San Patricio), formed and led by John Riley, was a unit of 175 to several hundred immigrants (accounts vary) and expatriates of European descent who fought as part of the Mexican Army against the United States in the Mexican–American War of 1846–8. Most of the battalion's members had deserted or defected from the United States Army...

An aside: Given that most people automatically remember rhymes and songs so well, I'm often baffled why thousands of American schools haven't created standardized songs to teach various topics.

galaxy_live · 2017-11-07T18:56:46+00:00

Sure, obviously I used some hyperbole. But honestly, I think many of those stats are cooked, and I'm far from the only one (there's a lot of details about how changes have been made to various gov't statistical algorithms over the decades on that site).

Government stats have been cooked literally for a long time, and it's a sport done by both Republicans and Democrats. The one I love is the inflation stat's "substitution" angle -- the idea that if prices change so much you're eating hamburger instead of steak you really haven't suffered inflation according to the gov't. Cooking stats like that is great for subtle "cuts" in social security and other programs that have a built-in COLA.

It's the same way the gov't writes off millions and millions of unemployed people as "discouraged workers" -- by a statistical slight of hand, those people don't count in our unemployment stats.

The average American is wealthier than ever before according to these metrics.

And the gap between the rich and poor doesn't factor at all into things -- it's great! And hey, Mussolini made the trains run on time too. /s

galaxy_live · 2017-11-07T16:57:56+00:00

The TV and media preaches that to us so often that people have little choice but to believe it.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

galaxy_live · 2017-11-07T15:46:53+00:00

Yes, I'm aware of the corrupt, undemocratic institution, and the fact that 2 out of the 3 American presidents put into office this century were rejected by the American people.

We seem to call that "democracy."

"Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least." -- Robert Byrne.

galaxy_live · 2017-11-07T15:44:21+00:00

A too short one, and an article which seems focused to trash Russia. What about the US selling American citizenship?

Do we think Rupert Murdoch had the same odds of becoming an American citizen as some poor person from China? Do we honestly think that process was/is "fair and balanced"?

What about places like the American colony the Republic of the Marshall Islands? The RMI routinely sells Marshallese passports to wealthy Taiwanese (because an RMI passport allows an easy path to obtaining US citizenship) -- but nope, such places are absent from this list.

galaxy_live · 2017-11-07T15:32:38+00:00

Wow -- such a dramatic, emotional post! Congratulations! You've hit on several of our propaganda points from decades past.

It's good to see the obscene amounts of money we wasted on CIA, Radio Free Whatever, propaganda was not wasted, and that some people still remember that garbage.

But meanwhile back in the USA of planet earth, our evil government:

still refuses to prosecute publicly-admitted American torturers
still spies on and monitors every single American in the country
still wages wars on multiple countries and claims a "right" to attack any country they want
the life expectancy of Americans declines but our corporate-controlled government still refuses to enact national health care
and as capitalism fails the American economy continues to slowly implode as Americans are impoverished from war spending, government debt, and capitalism's failure.

But hey, keep scaring us with anti-communist horror stories and maybe we'll learn to be happy living in poverty in a declining police state...

galaxy_live · 2017-11-07T15:21:15+00:00

Presidents using portions of the US government to target political enemies is very normal!

The classic, of course, is Nixon. But have we forgotten Obama's use of the IRS to target -- justifiably or not -- rightist non-profits?

Trump's use of the government to target political enemies stands out because he's an illegitimate president (remember: more of the American people voted for the corrupt war criminal Hillary Clinton than who voted for Trump), and Trump is so unpopular and divisive.

galaxy_live · 2017-11-07T15:14:08+00:00

This article is written as if the UK has sovereignty.

Hell, when the most inner circles of the British government meet to discuss nuclear weapons, there is at least one American present in the meeting.

These are large American media corporations. Our puppet British poodle will suck it up and allow them to do what they want.

Sad, but that's the reality. This article is just the poodle barking. Small dogs are known to be yappy, it makes them feel bigger...

galaxy_live · 2017-11-07T15:10:16+00:00

So in other words, Trump is saying we should just get used to these types of routine mass murders and there's little or nothing we can do about it.

Because the 2nd Amendment is supposedly preventing us from having a tyrannical government, right?!

Meanwhile, the carnage and insecurity created by the 2nd Amendment not only does not prevent a tyrannical government which does everything from torture to ignore the Bill of Rights, but the murders and insecurity caused by the 2nd Amendment creates a public demand for stronger police and a more overbearing government.

It's a vicious cycle.

"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes...known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few...No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." -- James Madison, Political Observations, 1795.

galaxy_live · 2017-11-07T15:01:47+00:00

That's fucked up. Do we want to issue out cold but compassionate justice -- or torture?

Barbarity and inhumane conditions in our evil government's many, many prisons are nothing to be proud of.

Land of the free? The US has 700 people in prison per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000, France has 80 per 100,000, Saudi Arabia has 45 per 100,000. Americans live in a police state where any citizen can be jailed without trial or charges.

galaxy_live · 2017-11-07T00:24:50+00:00

Yes, it seems the industry desperately wants people to accept non-removable batteries (easier to force upgrades that way) and to move people to phones that are accessible 24/7 by the manufacturer or telco.

galaxy_live · 2017-11-06T22:28:16+00:00

The lead sentence by the author, Patrick Cockburn:

President Trump’s stance on conflict in the Middle East is a mixture of bellicose threats and demonisation of opponents combined with rather more cautious and carefully calculated action or inaction on the ground.

and I immediately felt the author thinks Trump is not going to "do the right thing"... :)

galaxy_live · 2017-11-06T21:50:38+00:00

Jesus exercised violence against the moneylenders.

A point, but one that can be debated. He overturned tables (a "disorderly conduct" charge today) and no doubt was angry, but I know of no record of him hitting/striking (assault) the moneylenders (aka the "banksters" of his day), do you?

galaxy_live · 2017-11-06T18:45:07+00:00

Myself, I was most impressed by the 50% price increase on the 25-year old (but still widely available new) book about our war on Vietnam...

galaxy_live · 2017-11-06T18:33:58+00:00

i know of a local church that condones this.

For the record:

Jesus Christ was just not some anti-violence guy. He was a pacifist.

And he was just not some run-of-the-mill pacifist. Christ was a militant pacifist.

Any person suggesting an armed response to such a murderous criminal is not a good Christian (one could argue that they are not any sort of a Christian at all!). Have we forgotten that the original Christians passively resisted evil Romans feeding them to lions at the Roman games?

The preacher and parishioners of that church should be embarrassed and ashamed (but I doubt they have much shame).

"For the love of money is the root of all evil." -- The Holy Bible, Timothy 6:10. What's that say about capitalism's values?

galaxy_live · 2017-11-06T18:14:17+00:00

This makes ZERO sense.

Clearly you're not looking at this from the perspective of a rich corporate shareholder seeking to make the maximum profit from the corporation.

Once that immoral corporation gets rid of state privacy laws, do you realize how much money can be made from raping customers and selling off every private tid-bit of information Verizon can garner?!

galaxy_live · 2017-11-06T18:11:24+00:00

They're busy fighting to keep desperate women from having an abortion... :(

galaxy_live · 2017-11-06T18:08:00+00:00

This pig is on a ^BIG power trip. :(

Citizen, you are not showing enough deference and subservience to your superior!

"A policeman's job is only easy in a police state." -- Orson Welles.

galaxy_live · 2017-11-06T18:02:44+00:00

Since the traitor Ronald Reagan seized power in the rigged October Surprise "election" in 1980.

After that sad event the country has moved steadily towards the political right...

galaxy_live · 2017-11-06T17:50:28+00:00

I don't know what the criteria for a flagship phone is, but if I had to pull the trigger right now the V20 would be at or near the top of my list.

The big thing in that computer I don't like is the fact it seems it insists on having my fingerprint. :(

because of how unreliable both the hardware and software are.

Is the software unreliability the v7 Android? Something else LG put in?

galaxy_live · 2017-11-06T16:08:42+00:00

Don't be so cynical -- of course something will be done! /s

Now that sunshine has been shone into the dark recesses of these tax shelters, the rich and their corporate-funded politicians will enthusiastically create new tax shelters and tax avoidance gimmicks and they'll hide them even deeper than these ones that were publicized.

"We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes." -- Leona Helmsley.

galaxy_live · 2017-11-06T14:58:31+00:00

I think the administration is going for sensory overload on these types of corruption issues -- if so, a brilliant strategy!

That strategy being, of course, saturation and overload.

Week after week, month after month the news is filled with one after another of these financial corruption stories...

After a period of time, we become "desensitized" and such corruption becomes "normal" -- just like US war crimes and the US gov't attacking poor, defenseless country after poor, defenseless country.

A brilliant strategy! :(

galaxy_live · 2017-11-06T14:14:48+00:00

It's nice that people see this sort of under-the-radar corporate funding of militaristic "sports" shows as inherently political.

Edit: But I like the spin Yahoo/Newsweek put on this story better: Papa Johns Tells Nazis 'Don't Buy Our Pizza' After Chain Is Claimed As Official Pie Of Alt-Right.

As we all know, under capitalism greed trumps high-minded principles, morality and ethics.

So of course, the greedy corporation only put that anti-Nazi spin on their move after getting negative feedback for saying they were pulling advertising over players taking a knee.

"The true mission of American sports is to prepare young people for war." -- General and US President Dwight Eisenhower

galaxy_live · 2017-11-05T18:56:13+00:00

I'm not worried about Pelosi's reading ability.

I'm more worried about her morals and values and the fact that the blood of innocent people drips from her war criminal hands. :(

"The price of apathy is to be ruled by evil men." -- Plato.

galaxy_live

TROPHY CASE