July 27, 2016
+ The big news
of the morning was the vindication of a ground-breaking story that Margaret
Kidder wrote for CounterPunch
several months ago. Buried inside the 20,000 DNC emails released by Wikileaks
were documents confirming a tricky financial scam orchestrated by the DNC and
the Clinton campaign, whereby money that was meant for state Democratic parties
was re-routed to the Clinton machine in order to evade campaign finance laws,
thus making a mockery of Hillary’s recent pledge to get the Big Money out
of politics. We published Kidder’s explosive piece on the first of April and it
spread like lightning across the Net. Within a few days her exposé had been
read by more than one million people and had received more than 50,000 Facebook
shares (whatever that means). The Clinton machine shifted into attack mode,
their default position. The Clinton trolls first started rumors that the story
was an April Fools Day prank. When that attack floundered, the Clinton slime
operation set their sights on the author. The article was written by Margot
Kidder, the actress, they said with misogynistic condescension. You know, Lois
Lane. You can’t trust her. She had mental health issues. So much for feminism.
This kind of viciousness is standard operating procedure in Clintonworld. But
how wrong they were. Margot Kidder is one of the smartest people I know. She’s
very well read, is a determined researcher and writes with clarity and force.
She’s also fearless. Margot had the goods on them and now there’s no doubt.
Heroic work, Margot!
+ The Democrats are working
overtime to transform the DNC email episode into a story about
Russian hackers, Putin and Trump. One Democratic Party flack called it the most
outrageous political break-in since Watergate. Anything to divert attention
from the scandalous content of the emails. But there’s little hard evidence
that Russians were behind the hack. Cyber-expert Bill Blunden wrote to me this
morning: “Note that Julian Assange has said: ‘We have not disclosed our source,
and of course, this is a diversion that’s being pushed by the Hillary Clinton
campaign.’
“Thanks to documents released
by Ed Snowden, and other whistleblowers. It’s part of the public record that
intelligence services have invested heavily in tools that are designed to
subvert the process of attribution. It would be risky to presume that such
activities were limited to the NSA and GCHQ. Likewise classified programs like
JTRIG and HACIENDA are conducted with the explicit intention of obscuring the
source of cyber intrusions. Entities from the private sector are also involved
in this sort of activity.
“When dealing with an
organization with the requisite skill and resources, successful attribution is
highly unlikely. Subtle operational signatures can be mimicked and telltale
forensic clues can be counterfeited. Welcome to the wilderness of mirrors.
Peace, Bill.”
+ Sanders spent the morning
sternly lecturing his rebellious delegation. He warned them not to bolt the
Democrats for the Green Party. This is how Bernie repays Jill Stein’s kindness
in offering him her spot on the Green ticket. This was met by jeers and boos,
as Bernie the Used Car Salesman was rebuked by his own cohort once again. They
still ain’t buying the Lemon he’s selling.
+ What’s this? Anthony Weiner
is now giving testimonials for Hillary? How can she possibly lose? (I thought
Huma had him on home detention. Someone check Weiner’s Instagram photos
tonight.)
+ David Swanson writes in
yesterday’s CounterPunch that the DNC is now less popular than atheism. After today’s spectacle, the
Satanists will be gaining on them fast.
+ The New York Times
reported that Sanders is now faced with suppressing the revolutionaries he
inspired. The man started out as Danton, ends up as Edmund Burke…
+ Jesse Jackson sent me his
column this morning. It’s a dispiriting piece of writing. Few people could have
a better understanding of how an insurgent movement like the one Sanders led
was sabotaged by the party establishment. The Democrats screwed Jackson twice.
Yet Jackson writes that Hillary is the “clear choice” for president. Not the
“necessary choice” or the “lesser evil.” But the “clear choice.” This even
though Bill Clinton has repeatedly race-baited Jackson. That’s a strange kind
of loyalty.
+ Speaking of Hillary’s “life-long
commitment to children,” very excited to hear the remarks of infamous
child-killer Madeleine Albright tonight…
+ If only the Sandernistas had
the guts to boo that artifact of the Red Scare Era (which never really ended)
the Pledge of Allegiance, which is on its face an insult to the Constitution,
trashing the values it claims to venerate.
+ Here comes Chairwoman Marcia
Fudge on the stage with her gavel again. Hammers it on the podium. Gets shouted
down once again! Shuffles off shaking her head.
+ Bernie should have
negotiated to get Tulsi Gabbard a keynote speech in prime time, since she’s
about as close as the Democrats are likely to come presenting someone who will
speak out against interventionist wars. I bet we go through the entire
convention without hearing one word about drone strikes.
+ Sanders delegate Shyla
Nelson has moved Bernie to tears! To misquote Tom Hanks from “A League of Their
Own”: “There’s no crying in Revolutions, Bernie!”
+ Senator Barbara Mikulski
apparently didn’t get the memo that “brother” Democrats and “sister” Democrats
no longer covers all the bases.
+ Deb Haaland, the first
Native American chair of any state party, had the best line of the day so far
when she introduced New Mexico’s vote. “I’m proud to be from New Mexico, where
our state question is: Red or Green? … Chile that is.”
+ The dilated and euphoric
Oregon delegation seems to have spent their afternoon consuming edibles of
unknown origin.
+ Great to see the Puerto Rico
delegation holding up “Free Oscar Lopez Rivera” t-shirts. Maybe Obama was
tuning in, instead of playing golf. Perhaps he will even take action to finally
right this lingering injustice. The South Dakota delegation put Hillary over
the top. Too bad the delegation didn’t take that opportunity to call for the
pardoning of Leonard Peltier.
+ At 6:53 EST, Bernie wiped
out of all his delegates votes. Sandernistas you have now officially cast your
votes for HILLARY CLINTON. Now you can really cry.
+ So you find yourself
suddenly transformed by Bernie’s procedural magic wand from a Sandernista into
a Clintonoid and the first face that you see upon awakening to this new reality
is that of…the political grifter Terry McAuliffe, who earlier in the evening
told reporters what everyone else already knew that Hillary was going to “flip
on the TPP.” Get used to it. It will only get worse from here on out. Here
comes Nancy Pelosi!
+ It’s surely an ominous sign
for Hillary Clinton that the loudest applause of the Democratic Convention will
almost certainly be for the forced surrender of Bernie Sanders and the public
humiliation of his delegates.
+ The cognitive dissonance of
this convention is at max volume. How else can you explain how demurely Sanders
just delivered his movement to the machine that represents everything he was
allegedly waging war against: bailing out the banks, destruction of
Glass-Steagall, fracking on a global scale, abandonment of organized labor, trade
pacts from NAFTA to WTO to TPP, the death penalty, continuation of the drug
war, gutting of welfare, interventionist wars from Iraq to Syria, fealty to
Wall Street money, vindictive and racist criminal justice policies, inaction on
climate change, and blind loyalty to Israel.
+ Most of the
Sandernistas walked out after Bernie transferred (without their consent) their
votes to Hillary and had a sit-in outside of the convention center, where
nobody saw them or cared. What kind of Civil Disobedience is that? Why not
protest inside the hall, where the cameras are and the action is? A
last blown opportunity to shake the establishment.
+ Chuck Schumer just said that
“when Hillary tells you something you can take it to the bank.” Would that be
Citibank or Goldman Sachs? Schumer was followed on the stage by Elizabeth
Banks. Not making this up.
+ It was good to see Jimmy
Carter looking so fit after his brain cancer. Too bad they didn’t let him talk
about Palestine and the Last Apartheid state, which would risk exposing the
real fissures in his supposedly “unified” party.
+ Every time a politician
closed their remarks with “God Bless America” another bit of the Constitution
died. This obnoxious tradition, which has infected politicians on the Left and
the Right, has become a homegrown version of the dreaded Sharia Law.
+ Eric Holder prefaced his
remarks on criminal justice reform by arguing that the police need to be better
armed. With what? Guided missiles and drones? Hillary Clinton’s pimping for her
husband’s vicious Crime Bill by labeling young black men “super-predators”
seems to have been elided from the institutional memory of the Democrats. The
drug war will be retooled, with opiate users the new villains.
+ Holder says the Hillary
Clinton will be a champion of voting rights. This must come as a shock to the
hundreds of thousands of potential Sanders voters who found their polling
places mysteriously moved or closed, their ballots destroyed, or their votes not
counted.
+ I confess. In a tear-stained
convention, I misted up during the testimonials of the Mothers of the Murdered,
especially when Travyon Martin’s mother said that she was “an unwilling
participant in this movement. I would not have signed up for this. I’m here
today for my son, Trayvon Martin, who’s in heaven.” Too bad this heavy ceremony
was diluted and demeaned by giving an hour to the Incarcerator-in-Chief, Bill
Clinton, whose Crime Bill put 100,000 new cops on the street. Since the passage
of that infamous law in 1994, police have killed at least
20,460 civilians.
+ Taser me when Lena Dunham’s
stopped talking.
+ Skip that. Taser me when
Barbara Boxer stops sputtering clichés.
+ Did Rudy Giulani co-produce
the 9/11 video? The fact that they’ve brought up a NYPD detective, instead of a
fireman or EMT worker, suggests the DNC is compensating for the time devoted
they devoted to the Mothers of the Murdered.
+ 15 years later and 9/11
remains a go-to political tripwire, shamelessly exploited by both parties. Here
by Hillary’s surrogate as an invocation to “defeat and destroy ISIS.” Sound
familiar?
+ What’s with Howard Dean? He
can barely read the teleprompter. Did he share a joint with Lincoln Chafee
backstage?
+ Note to Hillary: You didn’t
bring about the ceasefire in Gaza. The bombing stopped after the Israelis ran
out of targets, having destroyed 70 percent of the structures in that narrow
strip of defenseless land.
+ So it’s all about making
women and girls more secure, is it? Have many women and girls have been killed
in Hillary’s wars in Libya, Honduras, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan,
and Pakistan? Probably in the 10s of thousands. So cheer up. Her body
count is about 400,000 lower than Madeleine Albright’s. But give her 8 years and
she may yet catch up.
+ Here comes Albright. Someone
serve her an arrest warrant! Lock her up! Lock her up! Albright’s sanctions on
Iraq led to the deaths of a half-million Iraqi children. When asked by Leslie
Stahl whether this death toll bothered her, whether the price was worth
it. Albright didn’t hesitate. “We think the price was worth it.” She must be
the world’s most evil grandmother.
Typically, Albright began by
invoking the Red Scare moved on to praising Harry “A-Bomb” Truman and ended by
demonizing Putin. The Cold War lives.
+ Shouldn’t Wellesley College
lose its accreditation having matriculated both Albright and Clinton?
+ What an odd short film
trying to sell everything that Bill Clinton (Madeleine Albright’s student) did
for poor people, neglecting to mention his destruction of welfare. Some of
these people called themselves Clinton Babies? It’s possible, of course, but
did they all have paternity tests?
+ Bill’s creepy account of his
courtship of Hillary at Yale makes him sound like a stalker.
+ Does Bill have Parkinson’s?
Whole lotta shaking going on. (Marc Solomon informs me that my diagnosis is off
the mark. Solomon said Clinton is suffering from a drug reaction: “They’ve had
him on Thorazine to shut him the fuck up during the campaign.”
+ Bill just can’t help from
making his speeches all about himself. More “I”’s in Clinton speech than
Trumps.
+ Clintonian Revisionism: Bill
now blames his defeat for reelection as governor on the Reagan landslide,
instead of his own hubris and incompetence.
+ In Bill’s tedious narrative
of the Life and Times of the Clintons there was sadly no mention of the most
honorable member of the clan: Socks the Cat.
+ Senator Warren is sitting in
the Clinton box with Chelsea, cheering every banality uttered by Bill Clinton,
even the whopper about how he “tried to bring peace and prosperity to America.”
Tell it to the people of Rwanda, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan and Serbia, President
Bill. Et tu, Elizabeth?
+ This being a family hour
show, Bill was forced to redact several inconvenient
chapters of his Scenes From a Marriage speech.
+ According to Bill, you can
take it from his friend Newt Gingrich that Hillary’s “tough on national
security.” That seals it for me.
+ The Clintons
gave Machiavelli a bad name. In fact, as my friend Jim Nicita says, “they
make Machiavelli look like a Prince.”
+ Jane Fonda. Once she went to
Hanoi to stop a war. Now she’s appearing in a music video for a war criminal.
Make it stop. I can’t watch anymore.
+ This whole night went
off like a Neutron Bomb of Identity Politics, where the only ones left standing
were demographic subsets and the Hedge Fund managers who fund the party. Is
that all you’ve got? Doesn’t that play right into Trump’s trap? Or have I
totally lost all political sense? The Democrats seem to have totally
abandoned class politics. We are witnessing the complete triumph of
neoliberalism.
Jeffrey St. Clair is
editor of CounterPunch. His new book is Killing
Trayvons: an Anthology of American Violence (with JoAnn Wypijewski and
Kevin Alexander Gray). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net.
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