Crafted for the Struggle: August 2018

Thursday, August 30, 2018

foxagandizeme: Trump tells bizarre lie, claims interview where he admitted firing Comey over Russia...

Trump tells bizarre lie, claims interview where he admitted firing Comey over Russia was ‘fudged’

Donald Trump started the morning with a string of allegations, including accusing NBC and Lester Holt of “fudging my tape on Russia.” Which would appear to be a claim that Holt had somehow altered or edited the interview that he conducted with Trump on May 11, 2017, just after Trump fired James Comey. In that interview, Trump admitted that the reason for Comey’s firing was that he refused to halt the Russia investigation.

Trump: In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story.

Since that interview, Trump has neither backed away from that statement nor made any public claim that Holt altered the interview. In fact, both Trump and attorney Rudy Giuliani have adopted the “article two powers” defense, arguing that Trump can fire anyone he wants for any reason. Why Trump is now making a claim that Holt “fudged” the interview in some way isn’t clear. It’s even less clear why Trump would believe that Holt already “got caught” fudging the interview or that it “hurt [NBC] badly.”

It’s possible that somehow Trump has conflated together that interview with Lester Holt over confusion about contradictory statements from Michael Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis. However, in recent days, Trump has showed no hesitation to drag unsupported conspiracy theories from the depths of the alt-Reich web directly into his tweets—such as yesterday’s claim that China had hacked into Hillary Clinton’s email. Trump may be surfacing some alt-Reich claim that technology for modifying what people appear to do or say in a video, so called “deep fakes” were used to make him appear to say that thing that … he said, and hasn’t denied saying for over a year.

That’s just a guess. Sometimes Donald Trump’s morning tweets are a growl of semi-articulate rage from the great orange Bulk. More often, they’re point by point recaps of whatever Steve Doocy is saying at the moment. Honestly, we should all be grateful that Fox apparently gives Trump some sort of direct feed. Otherwise, half his tweets would consist of numbers we should all dial to Buy Gold Now. But on other days, and with increasing frequency, Trump’s tweets appear to be coming from the level so far down the hole the rabbits have been left behind. This is one of those mornings.

And the clearest message these fresh tweets deliver is: Trump is really, really afraid.

Just to be clear, Trump is going to continue his Orwellian gaslighting and doublespeak until Muller’s investigation, Congressional oversight under a Democratic Party led house and crack investigative journalism puts an end to it. An end to the endless lies.

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foxagandizeme: The Neoconservative Comeback While Trump is frantic over the walls closing in from...

foxagandizeme:

The Neoconservative Comeback

While Trump is frantic over the walls closing in from his fealty to Russia, his campaign ties to Russia and their conspiracy against the United States electoral process, his corrupt, villainous administration and his obstruction of justice, that group of George W. Bush era neoconservatives that brought us the worst foreign policy disaster in United States history is back with their eyes on war with Iran, finishing Syria and possibly even North Korea.

[This article by Lawrence Wilkerson is a must read.]

We are going to have to do a better job of messaging. The conservatives that voted for Trump do not want these neoconservatives back in the Trump administration with their drumbeat of war with Iran, Syria, North Korea and wherever else these well funded, war hawk, get-rich-from-US-defense-spending think tanks think we should go.

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foxagandizeme: Criminal Justice Reform Is on the Midterm Ballot Andrew Gillum wasn’t expected to win...

foxagandizeme:

Criminal Justice Reform Is on the Midterm Ballot

Andrew Gillum wasn’t expected to win Tuesday night’s Democratic primary for the Florida governor’s race, even after he won Senator Bernie Sanders’s endorsement weeks ago. The 39-year-old Tallahassee mayor was outspent five-to-one by the frontrunner, and even more so by the two billionaires in the race, but he triumphed nonetheless—a key victory for the insurgent progressive wing of the Democratic Party. If he prevails in November, Gillum would be only the second black governor in the South since Reconstruction and Florida’s first Democratic governor since 1999.

In his victory speech, Gillum highlighted an issue that’s received short shrift from Florida policymakers in recent years. “Beneath my name is also a desire by the majority of people in this state to see real criminal-justice reform take hold,” he told a crowd of supporters at his Tuesday night victory rally. “The kind of criminal-justice reform which allows people who make a mistake to be able to redeem themselves from that mistake, return to society, have their right to vote, but also have their right to work.”

The message could apply anywhere in the United States. But it carries greater resonance in Florida, which ranks among the most carceral states in the union. While crime has plummeted nationwide since the early 1990s, Florida’s prison population hasn’t seen significant declines. Instead, the number of people serving more than ten years in prison tripled between 1996 and 2017. Lawmakers abolished parole for most crimes by 1993, which requires the state to keep many prisoners behind bars who don’t pose a danger to society. Even today, the state has shirked the broader reform-oriented trend on both the left and the right.

Gillum has campaigned on a platform that could change that.