Exclusive: In a last-ditch effort to salvage Hillary Clinton’s campaign, establishment Democrats are slinging McCarthyistic mud, joining in smearing independent journalists and blaming everything on Russia, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
The Clinton machine – running on fumes after Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid – is pulling out all remaining stops to block Donald Trump’s inauguration, even sinking into a new McCarthyism.
In joining a recount effort with slim hopes of reversing the election results, Clinton campaign counsel Marc Elias cited a scurrilous Washington Post article that relied on a shadowy anonymous group, called PropOrNot, that issued a “black list” against 200 or so Internet sites, including some of the most respected sources of independent journalism, claiming they are part of some Russian propaganda network.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. (Photo credit: Department of State)
In classic McCarthyistic fashion, no evidence was supplied, simply an anonymous smear. But The Washington Post, which itself has devolved into a neoconservative propaganda conveyor belt, published the attack apparently without contacting any of the targeted groups.
Despite the obvious journalistic problems with this article, the desperate Clinton campaign treated it like a lifeline to its drowning hopes for reversing the outcome of the Nov. 8 election.
Announcing that the Clinton campaign would join the recount started by Green presidential nominee Jill Stein aimed at three key Trump states – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – Clinton’s campaign counsel Elias mentioned the Post story as one of the reasons.
“The Washington Post reported that the Russian government was behind much of the ‘fake news’ propaganda that circulated online in the closing weeks of the election,” Elias wrote.
Pro-Clinton media outlets piled on. Daily Kos wrote that “Even if they never touched a voting machine, there’s absolutely no doubt: Russia hacked the election.”
Besides the three recounts, the Clinton campaign’s last-ditch scheme to blame Russia for Hillary Clinton’s failure also involves lobbying the electors to the Electoral College to flip their votes from Trump to Clinton. The argument is that Trump must be part of some grand Russian conspiracy along with those 200 Web sites.
As bizarre as this conspiracy mongering has become, it is quickly emerging as a new Washington “group think.” All the “smart people” at the major networks and newspapers – as well as many Democratic insiders – are just sure that it’s all true.
They have conflated the hysteria over some “fake news” sites – apparently run by some entrepreneurs who realized that pro-Trump “news” got lots of clicks whether the stories were real or not – with the reality that some independent news sites have questioned the U.S. government’s extreme anti-Russian propaganda.
Plus, there was the claim by James Clapper, the Obama administration’s Director of National Intelligence, that the U.S. intelligence community believes that Russian hackers were responsible for giving Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks. There, too, however, Clapper has provided no evidence to support his claim, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has denied receiving the leaked emails from the Russian government.
The Russians Did It!
Nevertheless, the Russians have become the latest scapegoats for why Hillary Clinton lost. It wasn’t that she had severe problems as a candidate, carrying heavy baggage from a long line of controversies and recording extremely high negatives from voters. It couldn’t have been that lots of Americans didn’t like or trust her or that she offered no inspirational message or coherent narrative of how she would govern.
Russian President Vladimir Putin greets Secretary of State John Kerry before meetings at the Kremlin on Dec. 15, 2015. (State Department photo)
No, it had to be the Russians. Of course, previously, the Clinton campaign had blamed the defeat on FBI Director James Comey, who announced just days before the election that he had reopened an investigation into Clinton’s private email server and then closed the inquiry for a second time, thus reminding voters of Clinton’s self-inflicted email scandal.
Though presumably the Clinton campaign is not suggesting that FBI Director Comey is another Russian agent or “useful fool,” blaming him at least had some evidentiary logic, in that he did reopen and then re-shut the Clinton email investigation.
But the Clinton campaign’s Russian complaint comes across even more like a dog-ate-my-homework excuse, except that it also has this ugly side of accusing professional journalists of treason because they wrote skeptical articles that some anonymous Web site didn’t like.
The complaint about alleged Russian hacking of emails also represents an attempt to divert attention away from the fact that the information published by WikiLeaks appears to be entirely true. By all accounts, the leaks revealed genuine communications between Democratic Party leaders and people in the Clinton campaign.
WikiLeaks also revealed the contents of Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and other special interests, words that she delivered to these groups of insiders but wanted to keep from the American voters.
However, somehow this truthful information has morphed into “fake news” without anyone explaining how that transformation occurred. Through the black magic of simply saying “Russians” a few times, truthful information becomes “fake” and everyone’s judgment becomes hopelessly clouded.
The point is that even if the Russians did uncover this information and did deliver it to WikiLeaks, the reason that it was “news” was that Clinton had decided to make millions of dollars in speeches, trading off her government service, and then chose to conceal the contents of her speeches from the public.
However, instead of criticizing Clinton for her excessive greed and her obsessive secrecy, these Democrats are blaming the Russians, a classic case of sending out a red herring.
The Truth as ‘Fake News’
The same point holds true for Secretary of State Clinton’s disastrous decision to evade State Department regulations on handling official documents by instead channeling her emails through a private home email server, thus endangering national security secrets. That was her choice. The Russians weren’t involved (unless someone thinks that Hillary Clinton is also a “Russian agent” set on sabotaging her own campaign.)
![U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh on March 30, 2012. [State Department photo]](https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/6884183372_b0227798b7_b.jpg)
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh on March 30, 2012. [State Department photo]
The reason for the party’s reforms after the raucous 1968 convention was to take the presidential selection out of the hands of party insiders and give it to the voters. What the emails revealed was that the Clinton machine had become the new-age Democratic Party bosses making sure their candidate prevailed.
Again, even if the Russians were behind the hack, they would only have been providing the American people with newsworthy information about how their democracy was being turned into a sham. The Russians didn’t create the sham; the Democratic insiders did.
And, regarding the anonymously developed “black list” of independent media sites, there is no evidence there either that these sites were distributing “fake news,” the focus of the current mainstream media hysteria. It was just news that PropOrNot — and presumably its fellow-travelers at The Washington Post — didn’t like.
As for Consortiumnews, which was one of the sites that was slimed, we are very careful to present well-reported and well-researched information. Granted, it sometimes isn’t what the U.S. State Department wants the American people to hear, but that is because the State Department has become a manufacturing center for propaganda and disinformation during both Republican and Democratic administrations.
It is not the job of independent journalists to simply retail the propaganda that the State Department and other agencies of the U.S. government produce, or that any other government produces. But that seems to be the anti-journalistic attitude that we now see at The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Mainstream Media’s Shame
Tragically, the mainstream U.S. media has become a major disseminator of endless amounts of “fake news,” including highly misleading and false coverage of the Middle East and of the New Cold War. Possibly the most destructive modern case of “fake news” was the reporting by the Post and Times about the existence of Iraq’s fictional WMD.
Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)
But there are more recent cases. For instance, the Times and Post have studiously ignored the reality of neo-Nazi and other ultranationalists serving as the tip of the spear for the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014. Occasionally, one of their field reporters will mention the inconvenient truth about the Azov and other battalions running around with Swastikas and SS symbols, but the newspapers will then turn a blind eye to this ugly reality or minimize its significance.
So, neo-Nazis are okay in Ukraine – and if any independent news outlet mentions their existence, you end up on a Washington Post-promoted “black list.” However, if some claim is made linking Russia to a neo-Nazi outfit or to some coup plotting – no matter how hazy or dubious the claim – it is trumpeted as loudly as possible.
For example, the Post’s lead editorial on Friday asserted, “In NATO member Hungary, Russian agents have been fingered for training with a neo-Nazi militia; in the tiny Balkan state of Macedonia, which is on the verge of joining the [NATO] transatlantic alliance, Moscow is accused of plotting a violent coup.”
Though the Post admits the evidence is “incomplete,” it presses ahead with the allegations. Yet there is no self-awareness or self-criticism; since the Post strenuously supported the violent coup in Ukraine that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych, a putsch spearheaded by armed neo-Nazis, many of whom have since been incorporated into Ukraine’s security forces and have received U.S. military training.
In the weeks before the coup, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was caught conspiring with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt on how to “midwife” or “glue” the change in Ukraine’s leadership. “Yats is the guy,” Nuland enthused about Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who was indeed installed as prime minister after Yanukovych was forced to flee for his life.
However, simply recalling that history apparently now is forbidden in Official Washington.
Behind the Clinton Machine
There’s also the little-discussed issue of how the Clinton machine evolved and currently works. A short version of that history is that the Democrats got pummeled in 1988, in part, because Republicans “weaponized” their advantage in campaign cash to launch devastating attack ads against Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, including the race-baiting Willie Horton ads.
President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea parade down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 1997. (White House photo)
Sensing that they couldn’t beat the Republican money while trying to represent the average citizen, the national Democrats largely abandoned the working class to join the dollar chase. They developed a pro-corporate agenda pushed by the Democratic Leadership Council and its brightest star, Bill Clinton.
After winning in 1992, Clinton and his understudies, the likes of John Podesta, institutionalized this relationship between the Democratic Party and various financial and other special interests. Then, after Clinton left office in 2001, his money machine’s business model adapted, with the Clinton Foundation and various Democratic-led Beltway consulting firms expanding or setting up shop.
The key to the strategy was always that Hillary Clinton would eventually become president and therefore foreign governments and domestic interests had to stay on the Clintons’ good side.
The expectation was that Hillary Clinton would get elected in 2008, but her path was blocked by the charismatic Barack Obama. Obama, however, bailed the Clinton machine out by naming her Secretary of State. So, the Clinton influence with foreign potentates remained.
After Clinton left the State Department in 2013, the business model still thrived because she was widely viewed as the clear front-runner to succeed President Obama – and both Clintons cashed in by giving speeches to various business groups and foreign interests for several hundred thousand dollars a pop, totaling in the millions of dollars.
You might have thought that the Clinton machine would have shielded Hillary Clinton from this apparent pay-to-play operation but instead she joined Bill Clinton in raking in the dough, a sign of startling arrogance or stunning greed.
The idea that Hillary Clinton could “power through” the obvious conflicts of interest that these speeches presented and that she could hide from the voters what she told Goldman Sachs and other well-heeled groups further revealed an extraordinary hubris. Clinton and her entourage brushed aside demands from Sen. Bernie Sanders and his populist backers that she disclose what she had said to the rich and powerful.
That brazenness made her vulnerable to the WikiLeaks disclosures late in the campaign revealing her friendly advice to Goldman Sachs and the others. Again, the only reason that was “news” was because Clinton and her team had stonewalled public demands for the information earlier. But rather than taking the blame for that judgment, they blamed the Russians.
The next question for the national Democrats is what will replace the Clinton machine or will it just be retooled in some new way that keeps the money pouring in. Clearly, the old business model of hitting up donors with the implicit club of a Hillary Clinton presidency in the closet will no longer work.
That means possibly leaner years for both the Clinton Foundation and Clinton-related businesses, such as the Podesta Group, a lobbying firm led by John Podesta’s brother, Tony, which has collected annual lobbying fees in the tens of millions of dollars.
But the Democrats risk a bleak political future if they don’t break away from the corporatist model that Bill and Hillary Clinton have personified over the past quarter century. Or maybe the Democrats can just keep on blaming the Russians.
[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Orwellian War on Skepticism“; “The Fake News About Fake News“; and “Washington Post’s ‘Fake News’ Guilt.“]
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
SO — the CIA is undermining Trump Why surprise? They MURDERED Kennedy.
DADDY Bush — CIA Director.
Bill Clinton (and Hillary) SNITCHED on his anti-war Comrades TO the CIA.
BABYBush — well.
Obama CIA ASSET …. ….. seemed to rise out of total obscurity (a hallmark of intelligence assets)
any questions?
Two names, ONE CRIME FAMILY
W-rong Bush calls HILLARY his SISTER IN LAW:
http://www.teaparty.org/bush-hillary-sister-law-71099/
http://redalertpolitics.com/2014/12/07/bush-calls-hillary-clinton-sister-law-says-brother-jeb-beat-2016/
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=bush+clinton+drug+dealers
Alcoholic Barbara Bush says her sons call Mr. Clinton “my brother by another mother.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bush-and-clinton-unlikely-partners-in-crime/
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/world_news/Americas/article1484263.ece
Bushs and Clintons: partners in crime research theMENA airport research Prescott Bush&NAZIS.
Now do some searches on CIA crime, corruption, drug dealing, Kennedy’s MURDER, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMbEhP2irDM
THEN look at the 1953 Iran coup, the Iraq WMDs, their complete failure with knowing & blocking 9/11 and ISIS ………..
This may work out for the best — people will finally look at what a PILE of SHIT the CIA really is and get rid of it.
mayhaps, but also smells like Ass Unstein, that un-American POS…
The wholly corrupt, self-aggrandizing, self-enriching Clintons have finally propelled the Democratic elite’s ship of fools onto the reef. The entire crew is shipwrecked, both politically and morally, still they continue to offer excuses: The Russians and Comey drove us into the shallows, cry the Clintons; The deplorables didn’t understand our message, says Pelosi; The media gave Trump the megaphone, it wasn’t our fault, say them all. But what that despicable crew won’t admit is that by long ago abandoning the working and middle class in favor of Wall Street and the military-industrial-corporate state and by recycling Hapless Hillary they gave us yet another TV pitchman, The Donald.
What was chump change to Goldman Sachs and other corporate bribers, in the aggregate, made the Clintons rich. And of course Secretary of State Clinton’s pay to play diplomacy saw such defenders of democracy and human rights as Qatar and the Saudi Arabia swell the coffers of the Clinton foundations with altruistic donations of large sums of oil money. My only joy in all this is watching Bill and Hillary’s Blue Chip political stock and speaking fees plummet into the penny range. Ironically, the day after the election the fickle investor class roared its approval with the Dow rebounding to a near record high.
As for the rest of us, well we’re all in Donald Trump’s tiny hands now with their twitter calloused fingers.
I know it’s a “petite” complaint, but the expression, “rank-in-file” doesn’t make any sense except as corruption of the original expression, “rank and file”. Those of us who have marched know that the expression comes from the terms for the line of marchers next to each other, which is called a “rank”, and the line of marchers ahead and behind each other, which is called a “file”. Thus the expression expresses a unit in which every member is in step, and can be easily ordered by the leader as to which direction the unit will go. That expression can’t be used to describe democrats.
Hallelujah! Someone has finally presented a simple and clear explanation of the gigantic global political extortion racket Bonnie & Clyde Clinton have been running all these years.
As for the greedy and arrogant Queen of You Owe Me, she and her monied-up “I’m With Her” juggernaut/cult of “experienced” enablers, alibiers, fixers, surrogates, apparatchiks, coat carriers, political pimps and backstabbers, ran the worst campaign in history and “earned ” their well-deserved defeat.
In the end as it was in the beginning, she had nutin’. Two grotesque cards to play and both were jokers. Pussy! and Putin!
The November 28, 2016, Chicago Sun-Times, Fran Spielman article: “Black Politicians Unite After Murder of Congressman’s Grandson” outlined specifically the exact plan that Todd Elliott Koger has shared with the Congressional black leadership, the “Movement for Blacklivesmatter,” Rev. Jesse Jackson, private foundations, and the like. In fact, Mr. Koger had already complained that the Urban League also usurped this proposal.
None of the black leadership named in the Chicago Sun-Times article had previously demonstrated any interest for the suggestion until apparently “word got out that Mr. Koger also shared the Plan with Donald Trump.” That is, the black leadership named in the Chicago Sun-Times’ article has always taken direct issue with Mr. Trump arguing that “BLACKS ARE NOT LIVING IN THE PRECARIOUS SITUATION OUTLINED.” Donald Trump was the only one willing to listen to Mr. Koger (blacks have been voting almost 50 years “straight” Democrat and our situation remained the same or worst).
First Mr. Trump issued an online video that addressed our plight. Next he went to Michigan and then took the message to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Thereafter, Mr. Koger packaged the visual optics and shared Mr. Trump’s fight against the “status quo” with black America to grow an arsenal of black Trump supporters.
When “sh*t hit the fan” in October 2016 and everyone started to run from Mr. Trump . . . Mr. Koger suggested the need for a new “writing” for black America to put things back on track. Thereafter, Mr. Trump almost immediately issued a “New Deal For Black America.”
Donald Trump owes his victory to “predominately black Democratic strongholds of Pennsylvania” who were convinced to give Mr. Trump more votes than the previous Republican Party presidential candidate. African Americans like Todd Elliott Koger convinced hundreds of thousands blacks in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and various other states to boycott the vote and/or the traditional “straight” Democratic Party vote.
Mr. Trump’s “margin of victory” is realized when you combine this with an increase of “Obama white voters” in Wisconsin and Michigan voting Trump in 2016. Trump won Pennsylvania by 1.1 percentage points (68,236 votes), Wisconsin by 0.9 points (27,257 votes), and Michigan by 0.2 points (11,837 votes). If Hillary Clinton had won all three states, she would have won the Electoral College 278 to 260. She fell short in all three.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dieNd5h_qpw
As if Parry and co. offer proof after proof that the Dems are lying about Putin was hacking the election I needed still more proof so I went to Snopes.com to see what they had to say.
Guccifer 2.0 Claims Responsibility for Purported DNC Network Hack
Although the DNC has blamed Russia for a computer network security breach, little surrounding the hack has been confirmed or verified.
http://www.snopes.com/2016/06/17/guccif … -dnc-hack/
Although I think Snopes has it right on this point, they are not a neutral judge.
They also have a political agenda and often offer no evidence pro or con for their adjudications.
Read Snopes with caution.
This article in a nutshell:
-Anyone who criticizes my boyfriend Putin is part of a vast neoconservative conspiracy (and he uses ‘McCarthy’ a 100 times) that involves all of mainstream media
-Western media is mostly propaganda, unlike Russian media which only reports objectively and is in no way controlled by the Kremlin.
-This website is not a mouthpiece for the Kremlin even though we never say anything remotely critical of Putin and promote debunked Kremlin conspiracy theories like blaming Ukraine for MH17.
-Russia didn’t hack the democrats’ emails, and even if they did (there is overwhelming evidence that they did) it’s fine because it shows that Clinton said stuff in private that she didn’t say in public. (Really?!? Can you imagine if Russia had hacked Trump’s emails and published them what we could have uncovered? But of course they didn’t. They focused on Clinton to get Trump elected and this is why Russia is correctly accused of interfering in the US election.)
Hasbara “Joe” blows a nut of prop related projects: Washington Post, New York Times, Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council.
The signature is glaringly apparent: The military-industrial-media complex has officially declared war on media organizations that are not aligned with the “regime change” agenda and not ready to automatically demonize “imperial” Russia.
The Hasbara near battlefield is MENA (Middle East North Africa region) with Syria as current major focus.
The Hasbara far battlefield is the old Pale of Settlement.
It’s all about settling very old scores. But that takes far too much ‘splainin’ for the “Joe Blows” of the world. Easier to roll with the “Russia did it” cop-out.
That’s it in a nutshell. Niemals vergessen.
No, please Abe, educate me with your infinite wisdom. Teach me how anyone who disagrees with you is a Zionist pig and how brownnosing Putin (peace be upon him) is the only path to eternal bliss so he can fight the ‘military-industrial-media complex’ by spreading pacifism and freedom of expression (except in Russia of course). Liberate me from the Machiavellian brainwashing of the Washington Post!
Hasbara 101: The “anyone who disagrees” Troll
Comrade “Joe Blow” performs his schtick in the comments section here
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/08/05/why-many-muslims-hate-the-west/
I can’t find the complete list of 200 so-called “fake news” sites. Apparently it went viral and propornot took it down. Is there a mirror site anywhere?
See if this helps….
http://theantimedia.org/washington-post-anti-media/
Scroll down inside the article, and there you will find the list.
Thanks Joe! Looks like a good place to start to broaden my horizons. I also found it here:
http://www.propornot.com/p/the-list.html
Put that list here, if you find it. It’ll tell us where to go to get real news. I pretty much spend my “news paper” time here, and on Counterpunch, E.I.R., Tarpley.net, Alternet, and Common Dreams. A few more sites would be good. I don’t do MSM of any kind, anymore.
EIR? Not Larouche’s Exec Intel Review I presume?
The very one. Try it out. He and his wife Helga were the progenitors of the Silk Road/World LandBridge policies; been pushing it for fifty years BECAUSE it’s what FDR would have done. Whatever else he’s accused of (bogus IMO) he’s a dedicated FDR man, and an OBVIOUS victim of character assassination. China calls Helga “the Silk Road lady”. Here is a clue: someone who is really tarred and feathered and blacklisted by The Establishment is worth looking into. This guy LaRouche has been fighting the fascistic Establishment since FDR died (or was poisoned on the cruiser ride back home from Potsdam). The guy is 92 years old, personally knew “Wild Bill” Donovan and his guys, and KNOWS, first-hand, what happened to our Nation’s intelligence community in the Post-War 40s. He carries on their FDR tradition with Executive Intelligence Review.
HR 6393 has been passed while no one was paying attention.
Read this…..
http://theantimedia.org/house-bill-russian-propaganda-websites/
And while the Liberals sell it, the bipartisan neocon/neoliberal congress votes for it. Why are these guys always on the same page when it comes to liberties and the economy? These “look, SQUIRREL” wedge issue distractions are by far the best “fake hoopla news” that I’ve ever seen.
Clinton or Trump, this bill was probably the ultimate goal so future real journalism can be deal with.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/114-2016/h593
Thank you for the link..I’ve been meaning to look that up. Not that it does any good, other than to confirm my opinion of our sleaze ball rep. People keep voting him in though. I think it takes too much effort for people to use critical thinking when it comes to their own party and I think it takes too much effort to investigate and learn about our options…they just go with name recognition.
WHAT, WITH THE CLOTH OR SOMETHING?
RE: “The same point holds true for Secretary of State Clinton’s disastrous decision to evade State Department regulations on handling official documents by instead channeling her emails through a private home email server, thus endangering national security secrets. That was her choice. The Russians weren’t involved (unless someone thinks that Hillary Clinton is also a ‘Russian agent’ set on sabotaging her own campaign.)” ~ Robert Parry
SCREAMIN’ JAY HAWKINS SEZ: Putin used some of that old Rasputin magic to put a spell on Hillary Clinton!
What a well researched masterpiece
Bernie president….
What happened to the good o’ days when conservative politicians and journalists were the bad guys and the conservaDems wore their truth, justice and American way façades? We (yes, it’s a mouse) were living in an ignorant partisan bliss and the Obama presidency had to go and ruin it.
As for Hillary’s brazenness, she should have listen to what my great-grandpa Ronnie used to tell me, “Well, if you’re gonna live by the rigged electronic vote counting machines, you better be ready to die by the rigged electronic vote counting machines…go fish.”
The only explanation I can see for the progressive loyalty to Hillary is blind party loyalty. It’s like Jack Nicholson’s line to Tom Cruise, “You can’t handle the truth”. Or slightly revised, “You don’t want to see the truth”. They can’t believe they are just wrong.
The only explanation I can see for the progressive loyalty to Hillary is blind party loyalty.
Blind party loyalty is certainly one explanation, but there are other factors. In the case of celebrities such as Meryl Streep and George Clooney, among others, there is probably a social class element. An understandable fear of Trump would be another as would double standards and hypocrisy. The alleged progressives in the Democratic Party bailed out on Hillary and switched to Bernie Sanders who, along with many of his Sandersnistas, did a 180 and voted for the candidate with the qualities they once despised. Then, of course, there are the interminable lies told by all candidates and a gullible populace willing to believe them. To paraphrase Mencken “no one ever lost an election underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
I saw this quote somewhere…”It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.”
Second the other posters, great article and I shall, before the end of the year, donate to this fine Web site.
I’ve said this before, and I’m sure people are tired of hearing it, but the election was stolen. It was a long process, it began when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2012, and it preceded the rise of the creature who is about to be inaugurated as the “dear leader” of our country.
Republicans have followed a focused strategy to knock likely Democratic voters off the rolls for years now, and they succeeded in the measure of 1.1 million voters. When these voters showed up to the polls, they were told they weren’t on the rolls as registered and were given provisional ballots. These ballots aren’t counted – ever. When you look at the exit polls versus the “certified” vote totals, it becomes even more suspicious – they didn’t agree in at least four swing states. These exit polls are internationally recognized standards, they aren’t in doubt.
Analysis is good, clean elections are more important.
Great piece again by Consortium News. And great comments by the readers.
I just don’t know what to think anymore. I consider myself a pretty good judge where politics is concerned. I’m watching as the facade crumbles and the cheapness of the structure is revealed. What will we do? It’s all so fragile.
Sorry!
@Charles
It is completely fair and true: 1)The DK is pro-Clinton, without a doubt, and 2) the quote in question was published on that particular media outlet. They own it.
Excellent article and comments. This “Fake News” Russia bashing neocon/neoliberal/neoMcCarthyism is laughable except for the millions of seemingly progressive Americans that are swallowing this lure hook line and sinker. The dumbing down of the population is almost a done deal. There is a black list of Professor’s that dare to question the status quo and the gun sales are growing exponentially. Have we entered the “Dark Ages America”? Will the exodus from America pick up speed and soon Costa Rican villas will be filled with expatriates? Already there are 250,000 Americans living here in the Philippines and the Canadian immigration clerks are working overtime to process the information and application requests. I am concerned for my family still residing in the USA. I will budget my income to include a donation to Consortium News. I have become disillusioned with all the other left gatekeepers. That is the problem, there is so few online media remaining that can be trusted to tell the unvarnished truth.
Is there any truth in the Comet Pizza sicko stuff ? There is so much going around the Internet. I think it is all faked . It started with The Intelligence Files . Then when Assange internet connection was severed . All of the sudden it was tied to Wikileaks. I think the Clintons have him and 3-5 other reporters from Wikileaks. That the guy that Obama sold the Domain and toot part of our Internet to . Found them , that’s why I don’t believe anything that is coming from Wikileaks anymore. They have been taken over. That they are deliberately sending out fake news to discredit them Seriously if that Comet Pizza stuff and Spirit Cooking stuff was true . There would have been imeadate arrests . .
There cannot be “immediate arrests” without doing a thorough investigation into the matter first and my understanding is that the NYPD detectives ARE investigating.
This is the video I saw that makes me believe the allegations regarding “Pizzagate” might prove to be true:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4OP–ZXOjc
Just looking at the “art” in Tony Podesta’s house made me nauseous.
I can picture Wolf Blitzer interviewing the Podesta brothers, and the narrative of this interview, is to how bad these “fake news” stories are getting told on the Internet. I’m sure that somehow Russia’s name would get attached to this terrible misinformation campaign, and that laws need to be passed so as to stop this spread of evil propaganda.
Of course, if there is any truth to these PizzaGate stories, then the hammer of the law should come down hard on these sickening preverts.
After writing my above comment I saw this on ZeroHedge….
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-04/pizzagate-explodes-after-man-arrested-comet-restaurant-shooting
Robert Parry writes that “Daily Kos wrote that ‘Even if they never touched a voting machine, there’s absolutely no doubt: Russia hacked the election.’”
This is not really fair. Mark Sumner wrote that on Daily Kos. Daily Kos itself allows a certain amount of dissent, though they have indeed narrowed their tolerance for it. In any case, DK is not a monolith.
I quit reading the Daily Kos site years ago. Can’t remember the specific reason or reasons, but it was enough to make wading through the crap there not worth the time. And this election?
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/4/1495813/-March-15-and-Daily-Kos-transition-to-General-Election-footing
I will no longer tolerate malicious attacks on our presumptive presidential nominee or our presidential efforts. What does that mean?
example = Saying you won’t vote, or will vote for Trump, or will vote for Jill Stein (or another Third Party) is not allowed.
I saw this on other devout “Hillary” sites. I don’t have to put up with this kind of nonsense, and I won’t.
If it comes down to “toe the line or leave”, I leave.
By the way, the mention of “Kos” caused me to dig out an old article I recall reading from years ago claiming Kos is CIA.
hXXp://truth-about-kos.blogspot.com/2007/08/indictment-of-markos-ca-moulitsas-ziga.html
Don’t know how accurate it is, and in any event probably most US “journalists” are in the pay of US Intelligence.
Denying discussion of Hillary’s bloody history would make sense if electing her was the primary interest of the site.
Kos is a f***ing bore.
Dear Mr Parry,
If, in this election cycle, there was to be a “real” not a “fake” run-off for the Presidency , it should have been between “Bernie” and “The Donald”.
This was the race that should have happened, but didn’t.
Everybody knows that the back room bosses at the D.N.C. used chicanery to deliver the democratic nomination to Hillary…when I don’t believe she deserved it, or won it.
There was enormous support for Bernie…and had the D.N.C. been forthright about it, he would have had the nomination….and the race for the presidency would have had enormous drama.
The whole country would have been ignited by these two “anti-establishment” candidates, in their appeals to the electorate and the differences in their vision for our country and its future.
Both nominees would have provided a bonafide “peoples choice” for the Presidency, from both sides of the spectrum.
And it would have been an authentic “cut throat ” race for the Presidency….
With real issues that mattered to the people , being debated and discussed.
The D.N.C is so corrupt, it sold out the democrats true front runner, and shamed the entire party in the process….dooming it to failure.
Hillary lost last month for the EXACT same reason she lost to President Obama, eight years ago……..She voted FOR the Iraq war.
I cannot imagine a nominee ever winning the Presidency who voted for that mind-bending catastrophe…..I just can’t.
Can you ?
alexander, you comment took the words right out of my mouth, great perception on your part.
I compare the recent Hillary supporters claims for why she loss, as being the same that if you discovered all the lights were out in your house, and you then proceeded to change every light bulb you could, but you purposely overlooked checking the electric breaker box first. If the Democrate’s ever wake up to why they really loss the 2016 presidential election, they will discover it was due to their cheating Bernie out of contention for the nomination to be the party’s choice.
Although I found this article on HuffPo, and with this there maybe hope left that at least some have got the memo…well sort of, read the article.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-hillary-clinton-lost-podcast_us_58420694e4b017f37fe4c532
If the Democrate’s were smart they would leave Wall Street for Main Street.
https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15350547_1471324556229155_160296425492467401_n.jpg?oh=c954d2d703d9a8dab4444272e77af958&oe=58B03073
Don’t call him a secretary
Why don’t they just go away ?
Awful people….
Their pollution reaches around the world and clutters its entire history
Michael Fish, Canada
USUAL GOOD PIECE. HOW ORWELLIAN THAT THE CORPORATE MAINSTREAM MEDIA’S WASHINGTON POST ATTACKS SUPPOSED “FAKE NEWS” SITES WHILE IN THE VERY ACT OF DOING SO, IT PEDDLES–FALSE NEWS !
The Dems need to go back to their FDR/Progressive/’Democratic Socialist’ base.
Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems that the standard the Clinton camp use to determine news’ fakeness is simply this: “fake news is stuff that, though true, we’d prefer to keep hidden because it is damaging to us when it becomes public.”
Wouldn’t such a standard qualify the released Access Hollywood tapes as also ‘fake news’ about Trump and a kind of ‘hacking of the democratic process’?
Or is American democracy simply another word for a participatory process which inevitably leads to the selection of Hillary Clinton as the president of the United States?
The whole final paragraphs of this article, subtitled “Behind the Clinton Machine”, was fascinating. I never thought of Bill and Hillary as using the idea (or threat) of her presidency as a club to hold over oligarchs and nations to keep therm plying the Clintons with money. I wonder what will happen now? Will the whole money game switch seamlessly to Trump? Or will there be even a tiny struggle for supremacy?
Good article Robert Parry. I donated to Consortium with pride and pleasure. I hope your other readers will join in, we’d all hate to lose you.
Excellent piece, Mr. Parry.
Yes, the corrupt machine is trying to hang on by its fingernails.
Evidence:
Podesta Group lobbyist, Jaime Harrison, who is also the Democratic Chair of the SC Democratic Party has been put up by the Clinton machine for DNC Chair.
After the stunning loss to Trump, Bernie’s choice for DNC Chair, Keith Ellison received the endorsement of Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer (although the White House is stunningly against this honest New Dealer).
Lies and distortions are already being spread against Keith going back to his rightful criticism of Israeli government’s cruel treatment of Palestinians, which few in Washington have the moral center to criticize.
Already the MSM’s Chuck Todd has proclaimed Ellison’s bid for DNC Chair doomed.
Podesta, as we know from the leaked emails is a sleazeball.
Voters are sick of the Podesta – Clinton machine. But they are willing to further damage the Democratic Party by having their inside guy by hook or by crook squeezed back into the DNC.
Thanks for this look at the DNC response to the election. Those in politics are mostly infantile bully conspirators and will never admit errors. Truth and Justice are not even in their language. Their idea of representing a group is to build a fake concensus by conspiracy and deceive them with groupthink. Political animals cannot correct errors and must be discarded.
With the warmonger down, Trump will discredit himself and accidentally strengthen progressives. Whether they win or not depends on rejection of the Dems in favor of a real progressive party that combines insight with advantages for the lower middle class, at the expense of the wealthy who fund elections.
But with money in control of mass media and elections, probably the MIC/WallSt/zionists will continue to control the left and field fake liberals as a backstop to the Repubs. The money trail will prove their betrayal. Their return to upper-middle-class fashion accusations like misogyny, antisemitism, homophobia, climate denier, and now russophile, selected to keep young activists away from the real issues, will betray them.
The Dems continuing demonization of Russia is really the best proof of their intolerable risk to national security. Stein’s joining in to challenge the vote on behalf of Clinton is a complete betrayal of her alleged constituency. Most likely she is a closet zionist like Sanders and should be rejected by cautious progressives.
Ellison supported the attacks on Libya and Syria. Good riddance if he is indeed off the table.
My sources tell me the FBI hacked into Hillary’s emails. More important, WAY MORE IMPORTANT was what was in those and earlier hacked emails. Hillary wanted to back NATO up Putin’s nose so we could spend more money on a new Cold War. Some people found that dangerous.
WE CAME, WE SAW, SHE LOST, HAHAHAHAHA.
She lost all by herself.
They didn’t have to “hack”. They had the emails from their investigation. All that had to happen was one or more fbi agents with access to them had to leak them.
While one can describe the corporate merger with the Democratic party as obscene, what truly IS obscene is the willful ignorance of the faithful who still remain “with her” and condemn the Russians and fake news.
I was about to make a similar point. The tragedy, perhaps the real tragedy, is the plethora of gullible people who buy into this claptrap from the mainstream corporate media, the Republican and Democratic parties, and the accomplices of both parties. Websites such as Consortium News, those cited by Drew Hunkins above, CounterPunch, Truthdig, Shadowproof, and several others can play a vital role in educating the curious, but they won’t reach that vast audience of sleepwalkers who only get snippets of biased infotainment between commercials from the pressitutes on CNN, MS-DNC, FauxNews and others and who believe they are well-informed.
After the roasting the WaPo article received from real journalists it is amazing that the Clinton propaganda team should use this as evidence of the validity of their grievances. Like the “Syrian Observatory of Human Rights”, which is still quoted with NO justification, this use of the propornot laughable list shows how desperate the Hillaryites have become.
Great point rosemerry, but unfortunately many folks buy right into the snake-oil. I have fellow liberal minded progressives who mock, ridicule and deride me vociferously b/c I refuse to lap up the anti-Putin, anti-Assad, anti-Moscow propaganda.
In fact, I’ve been invited by an anti-Putin Trot activist to a debate where he’s going to argue that denunciations of the Putin admin are the responsibility of the progressive left in America b/c all Putin’s been doing over the last ten years is running an imperialist kleptocracy. Good grief. With lefty activists like this it’s no wonder the U.S. left is in shambles in so many ways.
There is virtually no real left in the US. Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, is basically an old-fashioned labor New Deal Democrat. Anything to the left of that is totally marginal. We have a bunch of so-called progressive gatekeepers like Noam Chomsky, Democracy Now, the Nation (which I have subscribed to for many years and am stopping this year out of disgust for failing to discuss the growing neo-McCarthyism in the Democratic Party), In These Times, etc. All of these sources will ultimately support the Democratic candidate, no matter how Wall Street dominated she/he is. That is not a real left. The left has been hollowed out since 1968.
Excellent synopsis Mr. Berk.
It’s almost getting to the point where I only read a handful of intellectuals religiously, they are: Robert Parry, James Petras, Paul Craig Roberts, Michael Parenti, John Pilger, William Blum, Diana Johnstone and a couple of others I’m forgetting at the moment.
Of course I do peruse other “left” and “centrist-establishment” opinion pieces and exposes but it’s often only to marvel at the manner in which they simply repeat and repeat and repeat the same anti-Kremlin talking points over and over and over again until it becomes “what all the smart and respectable people” know to be true and hardens into an orthodoxy.
A part of me fears down the road that the historical record may never be able to straighten out all the baloney, which is truly frightening. But it’s trumped by the prospects for nuclear annihilation with Washington’s incessant saber rattling toward Beijing and Moscow.
A part of me fears the MSM who have almost unanimously bought into the Clinton machine’s PropOrNot Black List. All of me fears the coming T-rump regime.
Agree. See my comment to Joe Lauria’s HYPOCRISY AND
DIRTY POLITICS.
—–Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
The Dems continuing demonization of Russia is proof of their intolerable risk to national security. With the warmonger down, Trump will discredit himself and accidentally strengthen progressives. To win they must reject the Dems in favor of a real progressive party that brings advantages to the lower middle class at the expense of the wealthy who fund elections.
The Dems will continue to field fake liberal candidates for the MIC/WallSt/zionists, using fashion issues to keep progressives away from the real issues. Stein’s joining in to challenge the vote on behalf of Clinton is a complete betrayal of her alleged constituency. Most likely she is a closet zionist like Sanders.
Frankly, the ProporNot website has David Brock’s slimy fingerprints all over it.
“.. #RECOUNT2016 FAQ We are not “working with” Hillary Clinton’s campaign in any way ..Greens have been behind electoral reform efforts for years, including the 2004 Ohio recount that sent an election administrator to jail and prompted California to ditch hackable DRE voting machines..”: http://www.jill2016.com/are_you_cooperating_with_hillary_clinton
http://www.jill2016.com/recountfaq
Is that why so many members of the Green Party are upset? Since you obviously missed the Green Party statement I pasted it below for you.
“The decision to pursue a recount was not made in a democratic or a strategic way, nor did it respect the established decision making processes and structures of the Green Party of the United States (GPUS),” the official press release asserts. “The recount has created confusion about the relationship between the Green and Democratic parties because the states chosen for the recount are only states in which Hillary Clinton lost. There were close races in other states such as New Hampshire and Minnesota where Clinton won, but which were not part of the recount. And this recount does not address the disenfranchisement of voters; it recounts votes that were already counted rather than restoring the suffrage of voters who were prevented from voting.”
The Green Party is a bunch of radical nutcakes controlled by Moscow Center. That’s why they have abandoned Jill Stein, who is trying to get us some electoral honesty. Look, if the Trump people think honesty is unfair, then why don’t they start their own recount petitions in states like New Hampshire and Minnesota. IT’S BECAUSE TRUMP KNOWS HILLARY CLINTON WON AND HE’S AFRAID TO CHALLENGE THAT FACT! So get over it, Consortium News, Trump is a Manchurian Candidate and that’s that.
19 of 72 WI counties refuse to show their ballots, smallest WI county is over 2% off? “..DAY 1 – WISCONSIN RECOUNT RESULTS ARE IN..”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa1UrStgoGw http://elections.wi.gov/publications/statistics/recount/2016/12-1-spreadsheet