Chris Hedges's Blog, page 34

Mexico Is Showing the World How to Defeat Neoliberalism

While U.S. advocates and local politicians struggle to get their first public banks chartered, Mexico’s new president has begun construction on 2,700 branches of a government-owned bank to be completed in 2021, when it will be the largest bank in the country. At a press conference on Jan. 6, he said the neoliberal model had failed; private banks were not serving the poor and people outside the cities, so the government had to step in.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) has been compared to the United Kingdom’s left-wing opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, with one notable difference: AMLO is now in power. He and his left-​wing coalition won by a landslide in Mexico’s 2018 general election, overturning the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that had ruled the country for much of the past century. Called Mexico’s “first full-fledged left-wing experiment,” AMLO’s election marks a dramatic change in the political direction of the country. AMLO wrote in his 2018 book “A New Hope for Mexico,” “In Mexico the governing class constitutes a gang of plunderers…. Mexico will not grow strong if our public institutions remain at the service of the wealthy elites.”

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The new president has held to his campaign promises. In 2019, his first year in office, he did what Donald Trump pledged to do — “drain the swamp” — purging the government of technocrats and institutions he considered corrupt, profligate or impeding the transformation of Mexico after 36 years of failed market-focused neoliberal policies. Other accomplishments have included substantially increasing the minimum wage while cutting top government salaries and oversize pensions; making small loans and grants directly to farmers; guaranteeing crop prices for key agricultural crops; launching programs to benefit youth, the disabled and the elderly; and initiating a $44 billion infrastructure plan. López Obrador’s goal, he says, is to construct a “new paradigm” in economic policy that improves human welfare, not just increases gross domestic product.

The End of the Neoliberal Era

To deliver on that promise, in July 2019 AMLO converted the publicly owned federal savings bank Bansefi into a “Bank of the Poor” (Banco del Bienestar or “Welfare Bank”). He said on Jan. 6 that the neoliberal era had eliminated all the state-owned banks but one, which he had gotten approval to expand with 2,700 new branches. Added to the existing 538 branches of the former Bansefi, that will bring the total in two years to 3,238 branches, far outstripping any other bank in the country. (Banco Azteca, currently the largest by number of branches, has 1,860.) Digital banking will also be developed. Speaking to a local group in December, AMLO said his goal was for the Bank of the Poor to reach 13,000 branches, more than all the private banks in the country combined.

At a news conference on Jan. 8, he explained why this new bank was needed:

There are more than 1,000 municipalities that don’t have a bank branch. We’re dispersing [welfare] resources but we don’t have a way to do it.  . . .  People have to go to branches that are two, three hours away. If we don’t bring these services close to the people, we’re not going to bring development to the people. …

They’re already building. I’ll invite you within two months, three at the most, to the inauguration of the first branches because they’re already working, they’re getting the land … because we have to do it quickly.

The president said the 10 billion pesos ($530.4 million) needed to build the new branches would come from government savings; and that 5 million had already been transferred to the Banco del Bienestar, which would pass the funds to the Secretariat of Defense, whose engineers were responsible for construction. The military will also be used to transport physical funds to the branches for welfare payments. AMLO added, “They are helping me. They are propping me up. The military has behaved very well and they don’t back down at all. They always tell me ‘yes you can, yes we do, go.’ ”

To concerns that the government-owned bank would draw deposits away from commercial banks and might compete in other ways, such as making interest-free loans to small businesses, AMLO countered:

There’s no reason to be complaining about us building these branches. … [I]f private banks want to build branches, they have every right to go to the towns and build their branches, but as they won’t because they believe that it’s not [good] business, we have to do it . . . it’s our social responsibility, the state can’t shirk its social responsibility.

Issues With the Central Bank

While the legislature has approved the new bank, Mexico’s central bank can still block it if bank regulations are breached. Ricardo Delfín, who works at the international accounting firm KPMG, told the newspaper La Razón that if the money to fund the bank comes from a loan from the federal government rather than from capital, it will adversely affect the bank’s “Capitalization Ratio.” But AMLO contends that the bank will be self-sufficient. Funding for construction will come from federal savings from other programs, and the bank’s operating expenses will be covered by small commissions paid on each transaction by customers, most of whom are welfare recipients. Branches will be built on land owned by the government or donated, and software companies have offered to advise for free.

About the central bank, he said:

We’re going to speak with those from the Bank of México respecting the autonomy of the Bank of México. We have to educate them because for them this is an anachronism, even sacrilege, because they have other ideas. But we’ve arrived here [in government] after telling the people that the neoliberal economic policy was going to change. . . .

There shouldn’t be obstacles. How is the Bank of México going to stop us from having a [bank] branch that disperses resources in favor of the people? What damage does that do? Whom does it harm?

AMLO has repeatedly promised not to interfere in the business of the central bank, which has been autonomous for the past quarter of a century. But he has also said that he would like its mandate expanded from just preserving the value of the peso by fighting inflation to include fostering growth. The concern, according to The Financial Times, is that he might use the central bank to fund government programs, following in the footsteps of Argentina’s former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, “whose heterodox policies led to high inflation and, many economists believe, the country’s current crisis.”

Mark Weisbrot counters in The New York Times, however, that Argentina’s problems were caused, not by printing money to fund domestic development, but by a massive foreign debt. Hyperinflation actually happened under Fernández de Kirchner’s successor, President Mauricio Macri, who replaced her in 2015. The public debt grew from 53% to more than 86% of GDP, inflation soared from 18% to 54%, short-term interest rates shot up to 75%, and poverty increased from 27% to 40%.

In an upset election in August 2019, the outraged Argentinian public re-elected Fernández de Kirchner as vice president and her former head of the cabinet of ministers as president, restoring the 12-year Kirchner legacy begun by her husband, Nestor Kirchner, in 2003 and considered by Weisbrot to be among the most successful presidencies in the Western Hemisphere.

More appropriate than Argentina as a model for what can be achieved by a government working in partnership with its central bank is that of Japan, where Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has funded his stimulus programs by selling government bonds directly to the Bank of Japan. The BOJ now holds nearly 50% of the government’s debt, yet consumer price inflation remains low — so low that the BOJ cannot get the figure up even to its 2% target.

Other Funding Options

AMLO is unlikely to go that route, because he has vowed not to interfere with the central bank; but analysts say he needs to introduce some sort of economic stimulus, because Mexico’s GDP has slipped in the last year. The Mexican president has criticized GDP as the ultimate standard, advocating instead for a model of development that incorporates wealth distribution and access to education, health, housing and culture into its measurements. But as Kurt Hackbarth warned in Jacobin in December, “To fully unfurl [his] program without simply ransacking other line items to pay for it will require doing something AMLO has up to now categorically ruled out: raising taxes on the rich and large corporations which, not surprisingly, make out like utter bandits in Mexico’s rigged financial system.”

AMLO has continually vowed, however, not to raise taxes on the rich. Instead he has enlisted Mexico’s business magnates as investors in public-private partnerships, allowing him to avoid the “tequila trap” that brought down Argentina and Mexico itself in earlier years — getting locked into debt to foreign investors and the International Monetary Fund. Mexico’s business leaders seem happy to invest in the country, despite some slippage in GDP. As noted by Carlos Slim, Mexico’s wealthiest man, “Debt didn’t go up, there is no fiscal deficit and inflation came down.” In November 2019, the Economy Secretariat reported that foreign direct investment showed a 7.8% increase in the first nine months of that year compared with the same period in 2018, reaching its second highest level ever; and at the end of 2019 the peso was up around 4%. Stocks also rose 4.5%, and inflation dropped from 4.8% to 3%.

Partnering with local businessleaders is politically expedient, but public/private partnerships can be expensive; and as U.K. Professor Richard Werner points out, tapping up private investors merely recirculates existing money in the economy. Better would be to borrow directly from banks, which create new bank money when they lend, as the Bank of England has confirmed. This new money then circulates in the economy, stimulating productivity.

Today, the best model for that approach is China, which funds infrastructure by borrowing from its own state-owned banks. Like all banks, they create loans as bank credit on their books, which is then repaid with the proceeds of the projects created with the loans. There is no need to tap up the central bank or rich investors or the tax base. Government banks can create money on their books just as central banks and private banks do.

For Mexico, however, using its public banks as China does would be something for the future, if at all. Meanwhile, AMLO has been a trailblazer in showing how a national public banking system can be initiated quickly and efficiently. The key, it seems, is just to have the political will — along with massive support from the public, the legislature, local business leaders and the military.

Trump Is Lying Through His Teeth About Social Security

In his State of the Union address, Donald Trump claimed that “we will always protect your Social Security.” But just two weeks ago, Trump said just the opposite. He was in Davos, hobnobbing with Wall Street billionaires. While there, he sat for an interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen, who asked him if “entitlements” would “ever be on your plate.” “At some point they will be,” Trump replied.

The word “entitlement” is how Washington elites refer to Social Security, as well as Medicare and Medicaid. Having “entitlements” “on your plate” is Washington insider-code for these vital programs. Insider code is necessary because cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is not only terrible policy but also deeply unpopular even with Trump’s base.

Either Trump was lying two weeks ago, or he was lying to the American people during the State of the Union address. It is not hard to see what is going on here.

In 2000, well before Trump ran for president as a Republican, he released a book with a chapter on Social Security. In this chapter, he displayed utter contempt for Social Security and its beneficiaries. Trump referred to Social Security as “a Ponzi scheme”—an outrageous slander, since a Ponzi scheme is a criminal ploy to defraud.

As the true elitist that he is, Trump called for raising the retirement age to 70, because “how many times will you really want to take that trailer to the Grand Canyon?” Trump said that he “plan[s] to work forever,” implying that everyone else should as well—even if they have jobs like nursing or construction that involve hard physical labor. He added that destroying Social Security by privatizing it “would be good for all of us.” The “all of us” to whom he referred were presumably his fellow tax cheats with inherited wealth.

But Trump demonstrated, well before running for office, that he understood the politics of Social Security. In a 2011 interview with Sean Hannity, Trump said that Republicans should be very careful “not to fall into a Democratic trap” of advocating Social Security cuts without bipartisan cover, or they would pay the price politically.

As a presidential candidate, Trump exploited that knowledge. He realized that even voters who tend to support Republicans overwhelmingly oppose cutting Social Security. Yet Republican politicians, at the behest of their billionaire donors, go against the will of their voters by supporting cuts.

Seizing his advantage by lying, Trump claimed in the Republican primary debates and on the campaign trail that he would not cut Social Security. Reinforcing his lie, he tweeted that “I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.”

But just because Trump realized that supporting benefit cuts is politically toxic doesn’t mean that his real views changed. Trump’s selection of Mike Pence as a running mate foreshadowed how he would govern. Pence supports raising the retirement age and led a group of House Republicans in criticizing George W. Bush’s Social Security privatization plan—for not going far enough! Once elected president, Trump chose another staunch opponent of Social Security, Mick Mulvaney, as his budget director.

Trump’s budget proposals reflect Trump’s, Pence’s, and Mulvaney’s anti-Social Security ideology. The 2020 budget Trump proposed last March would slash more than $84 billion from Social Security and its companion program, Supplemental Security Income, in just the next 10 years.

Fortunately, thanks to Democratic control of the House of Representatives, those budget cuts were dead on arrival. But Trump has found sneakier ways to attack Social Security. Through stealthy rule changes, which don’t need to go through Congress, the Trump administration is working to make it harder for Americans to receive the Social Security they have earned, and working to make it harder to continue to receive the benefits they now get.

As just one recent example, Trump’s administration is in the process of jamming through a rule change that’s designed to rip Social Security benefits away from Americans with disabilities. When Ronald Reagan made a similar rule change, hundreds of thousands wrongly lost their benefits and over 20,000 people died. The Reagan administration was forced to reverse the policy after massive public outcry. Now Trump wants to revive the disastrous effort.

Trump says one thing when seeking votes and something quite different when exercising his power. That explains his promise in the 2016 election and in his recent State of the Union address not to cut benefits. While people can be forgiven for believing Trump in 2016, despite his earlier comments, now his intentions are clear.

Trump has been working hard to undermine Social Security in his first term. But he has been constrained because he wants a second term. If elected to that second term, all constraints will be gone.

In Davos, surrounded by billionaires salivating over the prospect of gutting the American people’s earned benefits, Trump accidentally let the mask slip. He’s trying to put it back on, but it’s too late. We’ve all seen what’s underneath. If Trump is re-elected, supporters of Social Security will be in for the fight of our lives.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Nancy J. Altman is a writing fellow for Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. She has a 40-year background in the areas of Social Security and private pensions. She is president of Social Security Works and chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition. Her latest book is The Truth About Social Security. She is also the author of The Battle for Social Security and co-author of Social Security Works!

America’s Newest Proxy Battle Could Spark World War 3

This piece originally appeared on antiwar.com.

Academic historians reject anything smacking of inevitably. Instead they emphasize the contingency of events as manifested through the inherent agency of human beings and the countless decisions they make. On the merits, such scholars are basically correct. That said, there was something – if not inevitable – highly probable, almost (forgive me) deterministic about the two cataclysmic world wars of the 20th century. Both, in retrospect, were driven, in large part, by collective – particularly Western – nations’ adherence to a series of geopolitical philosophies.

The first war – which killed perhaps nine million soldiers in the sodden trench lines (among other long forgotten places) of Europe – began, in part, due to the continental, and especially maritime, competition between Imperial Great Britain, and a new, rising, and highly populous, land power, Imperial Germany. Both had pretensions to global leadership; Britain’s old and long-standing, Germany’s recent and aspirational – tinged with a sense of long-denied deservedness. Political and military leaders on both sides – along with other European (and the Japanese) nations – then pledged philosophical fealty to the theories of an American Navy man, Alfred Thayer Mahan. To simplify, Mahan’s core postulation – published from a series of lectures as The Influence of Sea Power Upon History – was that geopolitical power in the next (20th) century would be inherently maritime. The countries that maintained large, modern navies, held strategic coaling stations, and expanded their coastal, formal empires, would dominate trade, develop the strongest economies, and, hence, were apt to global paramountcy. Conversely, traditional land power – mass armies prepared to march across vast land masses – would become increasingly irrelevant.

Mahan’s inherently flawed, or at least exaggerated, conclusions – and his own clear institutional (U.S. Navy) bias – aside, key players in two of the major powers of Europe seemed to buy the philosophy hook-line-and-sinker. So, when Wilhelmine Germany took the strategic decision to rapidly expand its own colonial fiefdoms (before the last patches of brown-people-inhabited land were swallowed up) and, thereby necessarily embarked on a crash naval buildup to challenge the British Empire’s maritime supremacy, the stage was set for a massive war. And, with most major European rivals – hopelessly hypnotized by nationalism – locked in a wildly byzantine, bipolar alliance system, all that was needed to turn the conflict global was a spark: enter the assassin Gavrilo Princip, a pistol, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and it was game on.

The Second World War – which caused between 50-60 million deaths – was, of course, an outgrowth of the first. It’s causes were multifaceted and complicated. Nonetheless, particularly in its European theater, it, too, was driven by a geopolitical theorist and his hypotheses. This time the culprit was a Briton, Halford John Mackinder. In contrast with Mahan, Mackinder postulated a land-based, continental power theory. As such, he argued that the “pivot” of global preeminence lay in the control of Eurasia – the “World Island” – specifically Central Asia and Eastern Europe. These resource rich lands held veritable buried treasure for the hegemon, and, since they lay on historical trade routes, were strategically positioned.

Should an emergent, ambitious, and increasingly populated, power – say, Nazi Germany – need additional territory (what Hitler called “Lebensraum“) for its race, and resources (especially oil) for its budding war machine, then it needed to seize the strategic “heartland” of the World Island. In practice, that mean the Nazis theoretically should, and did, shift their gaze (and planned invasion) from their outmoded Mahanian rival across the English Channel, eastward to the Ukraine, Caucasus (with its ample oil reserves), and Central Asia. Seeing as all three regions were then – and to lesser extent, still – dominated by Russia, the then Soviet Union, the unprecedentedly bloody existential war on Europe’s Eastern Front appears ever more certain and explainable.

Germany lost both those wars: the first badly, the second, disastrously. Then, in a sense, the proceeding 45-year Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union – the only two big winners in the Second World War – may be seen as an extension or sequel to Mackinder-driven rivalry. The problem is that after the end of – at least the first – Cold War, Western, especially American, strategists severely miscalculated. In their misguided triumphalism, US geopolitical theorists both provoked a weak (but not forever so) Russia by expanding the NATO alliance far eastward, but posited premature (and naive) theories that assumed global finance, free (American-skewed) trade, and digital dominance were all that mattered in a “Post” Cold War world.

No one better defined this magical thinking more than the still – after having been wrong about just about every US foreign policy decision of the last two decades – prominent New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman. In article after article, and books with such catchy titles as The World is Flat, and The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman argued, essentially, that old realist geopolitics were dead, and all that really mattered for US hegemony was the proliferation of McDonald’s franchises worldwide.

Friedman was wrong; he always is (Exhibit A: the 2003 Iraq War). Today, with a surprisingly – at least with his prominent base – popular president, Donald J. Trump, impeached in the House and just acquitted by the Senate for alleged crimes misleadingly summed up as “Ukraine-gate,” a look at the real issues at hand in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, demonstrate that, for better or (probably) worse, the ghost of Mackinder still haunts the scene. For today, I’d argue, the proxy battle over Ukraine between the U.S. and its allied-coup-empowered government – which includes some neo-nazi political and military elements – and Russian-backed separatists in the country’s east, reflects a return to the battle for Eurasian resource and geographic predominance.

Neither Russia nor the United States is wholly innocent in fueling and escalating the ongoing Ukrainian Civil War. The difference is, that in post-Russiagate farce, chronically (especially among mainstream Democrat) alleged Russia-threat-obsessed America, reports of Moscow’s ostensible guilt literally saturate the media space. The reporting from Washington? Not so much. The truth is that a generation of prominent “liberal” American, born-again Russia-hawks – Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, the whole DNC apparatus, and the MSNBC corporate media crowd – wielded State Department, NGO, and economic pressure to help catalyze a pro-Western coup in Ukraine during and after 2014. Their opportunism seemed, to them, simple, and relatively cost-free, at the time, but has turned implacably messy in the ensuing years.

In the process, the Democrats haven’t done themselves any political favors, further sullying what’s left of their reputation by – in some cases – colluding with Ukrainians to undermine key Trump officials; and consorting with nefarious far-right nationalist local bigots (who may have conspired to kill protesters in the Maidan “massacre,” as a means to instigate further Western support for the coup). What’s more, while much of the conspiratorial Trump-team spin on direct, or illegal, Biden family criminality has proven false, neither Joe nor son Hunter, are exactly “clean.” The Democratic establishment, Biden specifically, may, according to an excellent recent Guardian editorial, have a serious “corruption problem” – no least of which involves explaining exactly why a then sitting vice president’s son, who had no serious diplomatic or energy sector experience, was paid $50,000 a month to serve on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

Fear not, the “Never-Trump” Republicans, and establishment Democrats seemingly intent on drumming up a new – presumably politically profitable – Cold War have already explanation. They’ve dug up the long ago discredited, but still publicly palatable, justification that the US must be prepared to fight Russia “over there,” before it has no choice but to battle them “over here” (though its long been unclear where “here” is, or how, exactly, that fantasy comes to pass). First, there’s the distance factor: though several thousands of miles away from the East Coast of North America, Ukraine is in Russia’s near-abroad. After all, it was long – across many different generational political/imperial structures – part of the Soviet Union or other Russian empires. A large subsection of the populace, especially in the East, speaks, and considers itself, in part, culturally, Russian.

Furthermore, the Russian threat, in 2020, is highly exaggerated. Putin is not Stalin. The Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union; and, hell, even the Soviet (non-nuclear) military threat and geopolitical ambitions were embellished throughout Cold War “Classic.” A simple comparative “tale-of-the-tape” illustrates as much. Economically and demographically, Russia is demonstrably an empirically declining power – its economy, in fact, about the size of Spain’s.

Nor is the defense of an imposed, pro-Western, Ukrainian proxy state a vital American national security interest worth bleeding, or risking nuclear war, over. As MIT’s Barry Posen has argued, “Vital interests affect the safety, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and power position of the United States,” and, “If, in the worst case, all Ukraine were to ‘fall’ to Russia, it would have little impact on the security of the United States.” Furthermore, as retired US Army colonel, and president of the restraint-based Quincy Institute, Andrew Bacevich, has advised, the best policy, if discomfiting, is to “tacitly acknowledge[e] the existence of a Russian sphere of influence.” After all, Washington would expect, actually demand, the same acquiescence of Moscow in Mexico, Canada, or, for that matter, the entire Americas.

Unfortunately, no such restrained prudence is likely, so long as the bipartisan American national security state continues to subscribe to some vague version of the Mackinder theory. Quietly, except among wonky regional experts and investigative reporters on the scene, the US has, before, but especially since the “opportunity” of the 9/11 attacks, entered full-tilt into a competition with Russia and China for physical, economic, and resource dominance from Central Asia to the borderlands of Eastern Europe. That’s why, as a student at the Army’s Command and General Staff College in 2016-17, all us officers focused almost exclusively on planning fictitious, but highly realistic, combat missions in the Caucasus region. It also partly explains why the US military, after 18+ years, remains ensconced in potentially $3 trillion resource-rich Afghanistan, which, not coincidentally, is America’s one serious physical foothold in land-locked Central Asia.

Anecdotally, but instructively, I remember well my four brief stops at the once ubiquitous US Air Force way-station into Afghanistan – Manas Airbase – in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Off-base “liberty” – even for permanent party airmen – was rare, in part, because the Russian military had a mirror base just across the city. What’s more, the previous, earlier stopover spot for Afghanistan – Uzbekistan – kicked out the US military in 2005, in part, due to Russian political and economic pressure to do so.

Central Asia and East Europe are also contested spaces regarding the control of competing – Western vs. Russian vs. Chinese – oil and natural gas pipeline routes and trade corridors. Remember, that China’s massive “One Belt – One Road” infrastructure investment program is mostly self-serving, if sometimes mutually beneficial. The plan means to link Chinese manufacturing to the vast consumerist European market mainly through transportation, pipeline, diplomatic, and military connections running through where? You guessed it: Central Asia, the Caucasus, and on through Eastern Europe.

Like it or not, America isn’t poised to win this battle, and its feeble efforts to do so in these remarkably distant locales smacks of global hegemonic ambitions and foolhardy, mostly risk, nearly no reward, behavior. Russia has a solid army in close proximity, a hefty nuclear arsenal, as well as physical and historical connections to the Eurasian Heartland; China has an even better, more balanced, military, enough nukes, and boasts a far more powerful, spendthrift-capable, economy. As for the US, though still militarily and (for now) economically powerful, it lacks proximity, faces difficult logistical / expeditionary challenges, and has lost much legitimacy and squandered oodles of good will with the regional countries being vied for. Odds are, that while war may not be inevitable, Washington’s weak hand and probable failure, nearly is.

Let us table, for the purposes of this article, questions regarding any environmental effects of the great powers’ quest for, extraction, and use of many of these regional resources. My central points are two-fold: first, that Ukraine – which represents an early stage in Washington’s rededication to chauvinist, Mackinder geostrategy – as a proxy state for war with Russia is not an advisable or vital interest; second, that Uncle Sam’s larger quest to compete with the big two (Eur)Asian powers is likely to fail and symptomatic of imperial confusion and desperation. As the U.S. enters an increasingly bipolar phase of world affairs, powerful national security leaders fear its diminishing power. Washington’s is, like it or not, an empire in decline; and, as we know from history, such entities behave badly on the downslope of hegemony. Call me cynical, but I’m apt to believe that the United States, as perhaps the most powerful imperial body of all time, is apt, and set, to act poorest of all.

The proxy fight in Ukraine, battle for Central Asia in general – to say nothing of related American aggression and provocations in Iran and the Persian Gulf – could be the World War III catalyst that the Evangelical militarist nuts, Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, unwilling to wait on Jesus Christ’s eschatological timeline, have long waited for. These characters seemingly possess the heretical temerity to believe man – white American men, to be exact – can and should incite or stimulate Armageddon and the Rapture.

If they’re proved “right” or have their way – and the Mikes just might – then nuclear cataclysm will have defied the Vegas odds and beat the house on the expected human extinction timeline. Only contra to the bloody prophecy set forth in the New Testament book of Revelations, it won’t be Jesus wielding his vengeful sword on the back of a white horse, but – tragic and absurdly – the perfect Antichrist stooge, pressing the red button, who does the apocalyptic deed…

DNC Calls for a ‘Recanvass’ of Iowa Results After Delays

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Democratic National Committee called on Thursday for a “recanvass” of the results of Monday’s Iowa caucus, which was marred by technical problems and delays.

”Enough is enough,” party leader Tom Perez wrote on Twitter. He said he was calling for the recanvass in order to “assure public confidence in the results.”

With 97% of precincts reporting, Pete Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are nearly tied.

The technical glitches plaguing the first contest on the 2020 nominating calendar have made an already complicated candidate selection process even more complicated, forcing state officials to apologize and raising questions about Iowa’s traditional prime spot in picking nominees.

The caucus crisis was an embarrassing twist after months of promoting Iowa as a chance for Democrats to find some clarity in a jumbled field. Instead, after a buildup that featured seven rounds of debates, nearly $1 billion spent nationwide and a year of political jockeying, caucus day ended with no winner and no official results.

Iowa marked the first contest in a primary season that will span all 50 states and several U.S. territories, ending at the party’s national convention in July.

At issue was an app that the Iowa Democratic Party used to tabulate the results of the contest. The app was rolled out shortly before caucusing began and did not go through rigorous testing.

A coding error yielded problematic results Monday. And backup phone lines for reporting the outcomes were jammed, with many placed on hold for hours in order to report outcomes.

President Donald Trump’s campaign seized on Perez’s announcement and tried to inject an added dose of chaos. Trump and his allies have repeatedly insinuated, without offering proof, that the Democratic establishment wants to deny Sanders a victory at any cost.

Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh tweeted that Perez’s announcement “translated” to “Bernie looks like he’s taking the lead and we can’t have that.”

Much of the political world has already shifted its attention to next-up New Hampshire, which holds the first primary election in the Democrats’ 2020 nomination fight on Tuesday.

The chaos surrounding the reporting breakdown has undermined the impact of Iowa’s election, which typically rewards winners with a surge of momentum heading into subsequent primary contests.

The two early leaders are separated by 40 years in age and conflicting ideology.

Sanders, a 78-year-old self-described democratic socialist, has been a progressive powerhouse for decades. Buttigieg, a 38-year-old former municipal official, represents the more moderate wing of the Democratic Party. Buttigieg is also the first openly gay candidate to earn presidential primary delegates.

Campaigning in New Hampshire, Sanders on Thursday called the Iowa Democratic Party’s management of the caucuses a “screw-up” that “has been extremely unfair” to “ all of the candidates and their supporters.”

Both Buttigieg and Sanders have declared victory. The Associated Press has not called the race.

Updated results released Wednesday showed Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Vice President Joe Biden and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar trailing.

___

Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, “Ground Game.”

Does Capitalism Invariably Breed Fascism?

What follows is a conversation between professor As`ad AbuKhalil and Sharmini Peries of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

As the impeachment trial of President Trump comes to an end, many are asking themselves, what was this about? Is it about stopping an authoritarian president from abusing presidential power, or is there something deeper at work? In other words, if the Republican and Democratic parties are, for the most part, merely representatives of different wings of the same US elite, that is of its business class, then perhaps the impeachment process is actually a big public spectacle of infighting within the US ruling class.

Professor William I. Robinson presents such an alternative conception of the Trump impeachment process. He’s a professor of sociology and global and Latin American studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He recently published an article for the Journal of Science and Society titled “Global Capitalist Crisis and 21st Century Fascism: Beyond the Trump Hype.”

We divided this conversation into two parts. In this first part we take a look at what 21st century fascism is, where does it come from, and how is it different from 20th century fascism, and how does Trump fit into this phenomenon? Then in part two, we examine the idea that the impeachment process is actually a struggle within the US elite.

With regard to the first part, and with regard to the rise of fascism, we have seen a tremendous rise of the far right and even of neo-fascist leaders and parties around the world in the past few years. The governments in Brazil, the Philippines, Hungary, Turkey, India, Poland, Italy, are all governed by the far right. Then, practically all countries in the world have far right political parties that have been on the rise. Now this rise of far right and even neo-fascist parties and movements is unprecedented since the 1930s. What is happening? Why is this happening now?

William I. Robinson: We have to look at the larger context here. We have to step back from the headlines, the impeachment headlines. We have to step back, for the moment, from the dynamics of Trumpism and we have to see that global capitalism is in crisis. It is in the deepest crisis at this point since the 1930s and that is the larger backdrop to all of these headlines around the world. That crisis has two dimensions. One is a structural dimension, and I’ll mention a little more about that momentarily, but the dimension of this crisis is one of state legitimacy in a capitalist economy.

What I mean by that is that the masses of people around the world no longer consider that the system is legitimate, that their governments are legitimate. There’s a growing popularity of socialism. And there’s this worldwide protest every day as we speak throughout Latin America and all throughout the world, this upsurge of popular rebellion from below. And the system cannot meet the needs of the majority and it is spiraling into this general crisis of capitalist rule.

So, the two forces that are on the ascent worldwide are on the one hand, these popular radical forces from below and the turn to the left. And then secondly, the rise of the far right that you mentioned in the introduction. We must see that fascism is at all times a response to capitalist crisis. It was a response to capitalist crisis in the 1930s and the 1940s and it is a response to capitalist crisis now in the early 21st century.

The ruling elites worldwide and the capitalist class worldwide has not been able to resolve this structural crisis and we know that global inequalities are reaching unprecedented proportion.

In this situation, capitalism enters into a structural crisis because the global economy is producing this massive amount of wealth, unprecedented wealth, and yet it cannot be absorbed by the global market because of the vast majority of moving downward and don’t have the income or the ability to really consume.  This leads to stagnation in the system.

How do you face up to this stagnation? How do you keep making profits and accumulating? And in the last 10 years since the 2008 collapse, but even before then, the system has turned to several mechanisms which are not resolving the structural crisis, they’re only prolonging it and one is unprecedented debt. Secondly, there has been this wild speculation in the global economy. A third mechanism has been investing all of these resources into the tech sector.

The fourth big way in which the global economy is moving forward in the face of this stagnation is militarized accumulation and accumulation by repression. Now wars and conflicts worldwide become major outlets for profit making or unloading that over accumulated capital in the face of these stagnation tendencies and they’re wildly profitable and not just worsen conflicts that we see all over, but also systems of social control and repression become wildly profitable. The persecution of immigrants and private immigrant detention centers become wildly profitable.

How do you control the global working class, which is rising up worldwide, which now sees the system as illegitimate? How do you resolve this crisis of legitimacy of capitalist hegemony? And this is where we want to start talking about 21st century fascism.

20th century fascism, is a triangulation of three things that came together. One was reactionary and repressive political power in the state. The second dimension was that political power aligned with and met the needs of national capitalist groups, an alliance of the state with capital around the fascist project. The third dimension of a fascist project in the 20th century, but this also holds for the 21st century, is a mobilization of fascist forces and ideologies in civil society.

But there’s a key difference between 20th and 21st century fascism. 20th century fascism brought together these repressive fascist governments and forces and civil society with national capitalist groups. Now, what we’ve seen in the age of globalization from the late 20th century and on, is that now capital is largely transnational. That’s why I speak about a transnational capitalist class. This fascist project is linking together with transnational capital, that’s one big difference. The other big difference is that there was a very powerful socialist and trade union and communist movements in the 1930s that were crushed by fascism. But now we have this mass rebellion from below, but we don’t have organized socialist and communist movements and trade unions are weak around the world. They’re gaining strength, but they’re now very weak.

One way to contain the grassroots is to create systems of mass incarceration where surplus humanity is locked up. But this other way emerging is this 21st century fascism.

What 20th and 21st century fascism share is the need that the fascist mobilization has for scapegoats. The fascist mobilization has to identify scapegoats to channel this social anxiety. The fascist project seeks to channel that social anxiety, those political tensions towards scapegoating communities.

Trumpism thus hinges around, for instance, the anti-immigrant rhetoric and the anti-immigrant campaign as a scapegoating. In the United States, significant portions of the white working class were quite privileged. They had rising standards of living and homes and secure jobs and so forth. Under capitalist globalization, there’s the majority of white workers who are moving with this downward mobility in this destabilization. Trump’s social base is really tenacious, and it is largely, not exclusively, but largely what were privileged sectors of the white working class that are now experiencing downward mobility and destabilization.

Full Transcript:

GREG WILPERT: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Greg Wilpert in Arlington, Virginia.

As the impeachment trial of President Trump comes to an end, many are asking themselves: “What was this about? Is it about stopping an authoritarian president from abusing presidential power, or is there something deeper at work?” In other words, if the Republican and Democratic parties are, for the most part, merely representatives of different wings of the same US elite–that is of its business class–then perhaps the impeachment process is actually a big public spectacle of infighting within the US ruling class.

Joining me to discuss this alternative conception of the Trump impeachment process is William I. Robinson. He’s a professor of sociology and global and Latin American studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He recently published an article for the Journal of Science and Society titled Global Capitalist Crisis and 21st Century Fascism: Beyond the Trump Hype. Thanks for joining us again, Bill.

WILLIAM ROBINSON: It’s a pleasure to be back.

GREG WILPERT: First of all, I want to recommend to our viewers the article in Science and Society that I just mentioned. I think it does an excellent job of outlining what the Trump phenomenon is about. We will link to the article in our website. Now, I want to divide this conversation into two parts. In this first part I’d like to take a look at what 21st century fascism is, where does it come from, and how is it different from 20th century fascism, and how does Trump fit into this phenomenon? Then in part two, I’d like to examine the idea that the impeachment process is actually a struggle within the US elite.

With regard to the first part, and with regard to the rise of fascism, we have seen a tremendous rise of the far right and even of neo-fascist leaders and parties around the world in the past few years. There’s governments in Brazil, the Philippians, Hungary, Turkey, India, Poland, Italy, all governed by the far right. Then, practically all countries in the world have far right political parties that have been on the rise. Now this rise of far right and even neo-fascist parties and movements is unprecedented since the 1930s. My question is what is happening? Why is this happening now?

WILLIAM ROBINSON: We have to look at the larger context here. We have to step back from the headlines, the impeachment headlines, and I know we’ll be talking about that in part two. We have to step back, for the moment, from the dynamics of Trumpism and we have to see that the global capitalism is in crisis. It is in the deepest crisis at this point since the 1930s and that is the larger backdrop to all of these headlines around the world. So the things that you just mentioned in the introduction to the upsurge in popular radical struggles from below to the impeachment and so forth. And that crisis has two dimensions that we want to focus on. One is a structural dimension, and I’ll mention a little more about that momentarily, but the dimension of this crisis is one of state legitimacy in a capitalist antimony.

And what I mean by that is that the masses of people around the world no longer consider that the system is legitimate, that their governments are legitimate. There’s a growing popularity of socialism. I’m sure the Real News Network viewers have seen that a poll was just released showing that over 50% of women in the United States now prefer socialism over capitalism and that is remarkable. And there’s this worldwide protest every day as we speak throughout Latin America and all throughout the world, this upsurge of popular rebellion from below. And the system cannot meet the needs of the majority and it is spiraling into this general crisis of capitalist rule. And that’s the context in which we need to see the rise of 21st century fascism. But let me say something also that we’re seeing with this rise in 21st century’s fascism, also a sharp political polarization worldwide.

So the two forces that are on the ascent worldwide are on the one hand, these popular radical forces from below and the turn to the left. And then secondly, the rise of the far right that you mentioned in the introduction. So if we’re talking about this threat of fascism, we must see that fascism is at all times a response to capitalist crisis. It was a response to capitalist crisis in the 1930s and the 1940s and it is a response to capitalist crisis now in the early 21st century. And I’m going to, in a few minutes mention a concept which is very useful to understand this global police state. But before I go there, I want to go back to the structural dimension of the crisis. The ruling elites worldwide and the capitalist class worldwide has not been able to resolve this structural crisis and we know that global inequalities are reaching unprecedented proportion. I’m sure that many of the listeners and viewers know this data.

In fact, the Oxfam just released its most recent report on global inequality to coincide with the World Economic Forum Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. And they pointed out the 2,300 billionaires now have more wealth than 5 billion people, most of the people on the planet. But the more significant data Oxfam came out with three years ago, and it is that 1% of humanity controls over 50% of the world’s wealth. 20% of humanity, that would be that portion that might be able to survive in these new mean streets of globalized capitalism, but even they have difficulty surviving. They control 94.5% of the world’s wealth. That means that 80% of the world’s population has a near a 4.5% of the world’s wealth and so in this situation, capitalism enters into a structural crisis because the global economy is producing this massive amount of wealth, unprecedented wealth, and yet it cannot be absorbed by the global market because of the vast majority of moving downward and don’t have the income or the ability to really consume. So this leads to stagnation in the system.

And we know that the global economy has been, it entered into a major crisis in 2008 and it has been largely stagnant ever since and we’re teetering on the verge right now of another global recession. So the system has a challenge of how do you keep accumulating in the face of this structural crisis. And let me just remind you where I’m going with this. I’m going to get to the political dimension of this crisis and that’s where the threat of 21st century fascism comes in. But we first need to see its structural grounding. So the ruling groups have this challenge of how do you keep the global economy going? How do you face up to this stagnation? How do you keep making profits and accumulating? And in the last 10 years since the 2008 collapse, but even before then, the system has turned to several mechanisms which are not resolving the structural crisis, they’re only prolonging it and one is unprecedented debt.

We know that corporate debt worldwide, we know that state debt worldwide, and consumer debt worldwide are at all-time highs and it’s not sustainable. That debt, the mounting debt means that the global economy sputters forward, but that mounting debt is not sustainable. Secondly, there has been this wild speculation in the global economy. We can really call it a global casino. The numbers are just mind boggling that 1.4 quadrillion dollars are speculated each year compared to just 75 trillion. 1.4 quadrillion dollars compared to $75 trillion as the whole global production of goods and services. So this wild speculation cannot continue either. And then a third mechanism has been forming all of these resources into the tech sector. If you follow the economic headlines, you see that there are now companies that are valued, their stocks are valued at over a trillion dollars and there is a new round of digitalization taking place, but that’s not going to resolve this structural crisis.

So finally, and now this is going to be the link between the politics and the economics of 21st century fascism. The other big way in which the global economy is moving forward in the face of this stagnation is what I called in that article, but I quote more generally, militarized accumulation and accumulation by repression.And what do I mean by that? I mean that now wars and conflicts worldwide become major outlets for profit making or unloading that over accumulated capital in the face of these stagnation tendencies and they’re wildly profitable and not just worsen conflicts that we see all over, but also systems of social control and repression become wildly profitable. The persecution of immigrants and private immigrant detention centers become wildly profitable. All of the systems in place in the Mediterranean and being expanded in Mediterranean for refugees coming from North Africa and the Middle East. These are wildly profitable. They are forms of accumulating capital in the face of over accumulation in the face of this stagnation, the structural dimension of the crisis.

I could go on with that, but let me now shift focus to this accumulation by repression will so and the challenge that the system faces here is how do you contain this rebellion from below? How do you control the global working class, which is rising up worldwide, which now sees the system as illegitimate? How do you resolve this crisis of legitimacy of capitalist hedgemony? And this is where we want to start talking about 21st century fascism. And I would add that expanding systems of transnational social control and of repression is wildly profitable, but it is also aimed at containing that rebellion from below, including from surplus humanity. We know up to a third of the world’s population is simply locked out and made surplus.

GREG WILPERT: Before you go onto the issue of fascism, I want to clarify that term also. I mean, in the sense of, you talk about also there being a difference between 20th and 21st century fascism. So first of all, what’s the difference and how does 21st century fascism resolve the issues that you’re talking about?

WILLIAM ROBINSON: Right, well, I mean, working backwards, it doesn’t resolve. It’s not going to resolve. I mean, the ruling groups are rudderless. They don’t know where they’re going with this. They’re not going to be able to resolve these issues, but certain groups are certainly trying with this fascist mobilization. So let me say that 20th century fascism, we can analyze it as a triangulation of three things that came together. One was reactionary and repressive political power in the state. So obviously you have the Nazis in Germany, you have Mussolini in Italy, you have Franco in Spain, but you also had in the 1930s, you had fascist movements in the United States and in other parts of the world. In many of those places, those fascist movements were not able to capture the state. But that’s the first element for the 20th century fascism where this reactionary and very repressive political power.

The second dimension was that political power aligned with and met the needs of national capitalist groups. So when we studied fascism in Germany, we know that Nazis controlling the state, did everything that a German capitalist needed to expand and make profit. And so you have that alliance of the state with capital around the fascist project. But the third dimension of a fascist project in the 20th century, but this also holds for the 21st century, is a mobilization of fascist forces and ideologies in civil society. So of course the Nazis were not just in the state, there was massive movements in civil society. The thing with Mussolini, the same thing now in the United States and now in India and in Palestine and Israel and around the world, which is why, Greg, and I know you will know, you’re both Latin American, spent many years in Latin America, which is why a lot of the far right regimes in Latin America, I would not say are 21st century fascist. You have a dictatorship in Honduras, but it’s not fascist.

So the key ingredient is when these three things come together and we do see a rapid fascist mobilization in civil society in the United States, everyone knows that if you just follow the headlines, not just the traditional Nazis and KU Klux Klan, but the far right militias, the nativist movements and so forth and so on. That is an expanding fascist mobilization in US civil society, very, very scary. And it is linking up with capital and Trumpism represents a far right and repressive political power. Now, I’m not saying that fascism already exists in the United States, but that three way coming together, the three way triangulation, these congealing in the United States and in different parts around the world. But you’re asking me what’s the difference with 21st century and 20th century fascism and there’s a few key differences, but before I get into that, Greg, I would like to just point out that if you look around the world, you see those three things coming together in the countries that you mentioned.

So in India we don’t just have a far right and repressive government in power. We don’t just have a government aligning with the needs of transnational capital in India, but we also have that fascist mobilization and that fascist mobilization of the RSS for instance, is an openly fascist organization and Hindu nationalist fascist mobilization in civil society. We see the same thing in Brazil in distinction, for instance, to Honduras, and we see the same thing in Europe, the countries that you mentioned or in Israel for that matter. But there’s a key difference between 20th and 21st century fascism. It’s a little bit more on the academic side. I don’t want to go into a lot of detail to confuse listeners, but 20th century fascism brought together these far, repressive fascist governments and forces and civil society with national capitalist groups.

So German capitalists benefited from German Nazis in their competition with British capitalists and French capitalist classes and US capital’s classes. Now, what we’ve seen in the age of globalization from the late 20th century and on, is that now capital is largely transnational. That’s why I speak about a transnational capitalist class. So this fascist project is linking together with transnational capital, that’s one big difference. The other big difference is that there was a very powerful socialist and trade union and communist movements in the 1930s that were brushed by fascism. The first thing that Nazis did in Germany was to wipe out the communist and the socialist and the trade unions. Then they went after Jews and gypsies and so forth and so on, and the same thing in Italy. But now we have this mass rebellion from below, but we don’t have organized socialist and communist movements and trade unions are weak around the world. They’re gaining strength, but they’re now very weak.

So the repressive juggernaut of this rising 21st century fascism is more aimed at containing the potential we rebellion and the growing rebellion of the working class from below, from the grassroots below, and they’re containing surplus humanity. Because we have a situation I mentioned, where about a third of humanity now is simply locked out and surplus. One way to contain them is create systems of mass incarceration where surplus humanity is locked up. But this other way emerging is this 21st century fascism. Now this is crucial, the next point I’m going to make and the distinction between 20th and 21st century fascism and what we’re seeing now. What they share is the need that the fascist mobilization has for scapegoats. Because remember, fascism is a response to capitalist crisis and masses of workers and the poor and the majority can respond to capitalist crisis by overthrowing capitalism, right? And threatening the interests of capitalist groups and their fascist representatives. And the fascist mobilization has to identify scapegoats to channel this social anxiety.

And because of globalization, because of that inequality I mentioned at the beginning of the interview where 80% of humanity and increasingly even more, that a 20% leftover is experiencing downward mobility, increased insecurity, increased destabilization, increased prospects of precarious employment and so forth. That generates tremendous social anxiety and political tensions. And the fascist project seeks to channel that social anxiety, those political tensions towards scapegoating communities. So Trumpism hinges around, for instance, the anti-immigrant rhetoric and the anti-immigrant campaign as a scapegoating. In India, the scapegoating is against Muslims and against lower castes and against other groups and Israel of course is against the Palestinians in Brazil is a deeply racist dimension to that scapegoating.

But the key thing is the crisis generates mass discontent and social anxiety and fascist projects scapegoat them specifically in the United States, Trump’s project has been to reconstruct what I can call a white racist historic block with this major dimension of racism in involving this China legal mass anxiety towards a racist consciousness among white sectors. But here’s the key thing, in much of the 20th century to now hone in on the United States, the significant portions of the white working class were quite privileged. They had rising standards of living and homes and secure jobs and so forth. Under capitalist globalization, there’s the majority of white workers are moving with this downward mobility in this destabilization. So Trump’s social base is really tenacious, and it is largely–not exclusively, but largely what were privileged sectors of the white working class that are now experiencing downward mobility and destabilization. So really Trump is charisma for his base, not for us, but for his base and his discourse and everything he’s doing really is targeting that social base.

GREG WILPERT: I wanted to get into exactly into those issues of the Trump’s base and who is fighting for them. But I wanted to do that in part two. So we’re going to conclude this part one of this interview with William Robinson, professor of sociology at UC Santa Barbara, and I would like to ask people to join us for part two, which will follow right now where we’ll discuss in what ways the Trump impeachment also should be considered an intra elite conflict. Thanks for joining us.

WILLIAM ROBINSON: Thank you so much.

NASA’s Record-Setting Koch, Crewmates Safely Back From Space

MOSCOW — NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who spent nearly 11 months in orbit to set a record for the longest spaceflight by a woman, landed safely Thursday in Kazakhstan along with two International Space Station crewmates.

The Soyuz capsule carrying Koch, station Commander Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, touched down southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 3:12 p.m. (0912 GMT).

Koch wrapped up a 328-day mission after her first flight into space, providing researchers the opportunity to observe the effects of long-duration spaceflight on a woman. The study is important since NASA plans to return to the moon under the Artemis program and prepare for the human exploration of Mars.

Koch smiled and gave a thumbs-up as a support team helped her out of the capsule and placed her in a chair for a quick post-flight check-up alongside her crewmates. Russian space officials said they were in good shape.

Koch, who grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and now lives near the Gulf of Mexico in Galveston, Texas, with her husband, Bob, told The Associated Press last month that taking part in the first all-female spacewalk was the highlight of her mission.

Koch said she and fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir appreciated that the Oct. 18 spacewalk “could serve as an inspiration for future space explorers.”

Parmitano and Skvortsov spent 201 days in space.

After preliminary medical evaluations, the crew will be flown by Russian helicopters to the city of Karaganda in Kazakhstan. Koch and Parmitano will then board a NASA plane bound for Cologne, Germany, where Parmitano will be greeted by European space officials before Koch proceeds home to Houston.

Skvortsov will be flown to the Star City Cosmonaut Training Center outside Moscow.

Trump Unleashes Fury at Impeachment Enemies at Prayer Event

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump unleashed his fury against those who tried to remove him from office at a prayer breakfast Thursday, a day after his acquittal by the Senate in his impeachment trial.

Speaking from a stage where he was joined by congressional leaders, including Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who led the impeachment charge against him, Trump shattered the usual veneer of bipartisanship at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

“As everybody knows, my family, our great country and your president have been put through a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people,” Trump said at the annual event. His airing of grievances came hours before he was to deliver a full response to the impeachment vote at the White House surrounded by supporters.

“They have done everything possible to destroy us and by so doing very badly hurt our nation,” said Trump, who triumphantly held up copies of two newspapers with banner “ACQUITTED” headlines as he took the stage.

His remarks were especially jarring and whiplash-inducing coming after a series of scripture-quoting speeches, including a keynote address by Arthur Brooks, a Harvard professor and president of a conservative think tank, who had bemoaned a “crisis of contempt and polarization” in the nation and urged those gathered to ”love your enemies.”

“I don’t know if I agree with you,” Trump said as he took the microphone, and then he proceeded to demonstrate it.

“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong,” he said in an apparent reference to Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, a longtime Trump critic who cited his faith in becoming the only Republican to vote for Trump’s removal.

“Nor do I like people who say ‘I pray for you’ when you know that is not so,’” he said, in a reference to Pelosi, who has offered that message for the president when the two leaders have sparred publicly.

The House speaker shook her head at various points during Trump’s remarks but did not appear to interact with Trump personally. Earlier she had offered a prayer for the poor and the persecuted.

Trump’s comments were a clear sign that the post-impeachment Trump is emboldened like never before as he barrels ahead in his reelection fight with a united Republican Party behind him.

Republican senators voted largely in lockstep to acquit Trump on Wednesday, relying on a multitude of rationales for keeping him in office: He’s guilty, but his conduct wasn’t impeachable; his July telephone conversation with Ukraine’s president was a “perfect call”; there’s an election in 10 months and it’s up to voters to determine his fate.

For Trump, there was one overriding message to draw from his acquittal: Even at a time of maximum political peril, it’s his Republican Party.

Trump had avoided talk of impeachment in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, holding his tongue until the Senate had cast its official acquittal vote.

By the next day, he was already moving to use impeachment as a 2020 rallying cry.

Trump tweeted after the Senate vote that he would mark his acquittal with a statement to the nation at noon Thursday to “discuss our Country’s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax!” The president’s supporters were being invited to join him at the East Room event.

Asked what Trump would say, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham told Fox News Channel that he would talk about “just how horribly he was treated, and you know, that maybe people should pay for that.”

“People should be held accountable. The Democrats should be held accountable,” she said. “People need to understand what the Democrats did was dishonest and it was corrupt.”

The president and his allies have been on a victory lap since Wednesday, sending giddy tweets needling his accusers and Democrats and celebrating.

Indeed, the night of the impeachment vote was one of revelry for members of the president’s circle. In Washington, many, including Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, his girlfriend, former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, and the president’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, gathered at the president’s hotel a few blocks from the White House, one of the few MAGA safe zones in the deeply Democratic city.

The president himself remained at the White House but worked the phones, calling several confidants to exult about the verdict, bitterly complain about Romney and to promise that his Thursday noon statement would not want to be missed, according to a person familiar with the calls but not authorized to speak publicly about private discussions.

The White House and Trump’s allies were also reveling over the ongoing chaos in Iowa, where the Democrats’ first presidential nominating contest was thrown into disarray by a tabulating mishap, with no official winner declared three days after the caucuses. T hat deprived any candidate of a clear victory and allowed Trump to paint the Democrats as incompetent.

Trump’s tenuous relationship with the GOP establishment has been a consistent theme of his presidency, and he has repeatedly put the party’s values to the test. But now, their fates are tied as never before.

Taking their cues from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, with whom Trump has a respectful, if not particularly close, relationship, GOP senators fell in line to block new witnesses and documents in the trial. The final vote Wednesday was no different: Only Romney, a longtime Trump critic, voted for removal.

Romney seemed to anticipate retribution, telling Fox News, “I have broad enough shoulders to bear the consequences.”

___

Follow Colvin on Twitter at https://twitter.com/colvinj, Lemire at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire and Miller at http://twitter.com/@zekejmiller

Bernie Sanders Reports Massive January Haul After Iowa Debacle

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign announced Thursday that it raised a staggering $25 million in the month of January alone, by far the biggest fundraising month of the senator’s campaign and a larger haul than his 2020 Democratic rivals posted in any full quarter of 2019.

The campaign said over 219,000 of the total 648,000 January donors were new, and the average donation was just over $18. Teacher was the most common profession of January donors and the most common employers were Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart, the United States Postal Service, and Target.

More than 99.9% of Sanders’ donors have not maxed out, meaning they can donate to the campaign again.

“Bernie’s multi-racial, multi-generational, people-driven movement for change is fueling 2020’s most aggressive campaign for president,” Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager, said in a statement. “Working class Americans giving $18 at a time are putting our campaign in a strong position to compete in states all over the map.”

Following its massive January haul—announced just days ahead of the Feb. 11 New Hampshire primary—the Sanders campaign said it plans to boost staffing in Super Tuesday states and make a $5.5 million television and digital ad buy in 10 states: Texas, California, Arkansas, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah.

MORE NEWS>>

– Bernie’s campaigns is launching an aggressive TV and digital ad campaign in:- AR, CO, MA, MN, NC, SC, TN, and UT.

– We are expanding buys we already have up in Texas and California.

– We are growing our staff across the Super Tuesday states

— Joe Calvello (@the_vello) February 6, 2020

The major ad buy is a signal that the Sanders campaign intends to remain focused on its broader path to victory amid the ongoing chaos of the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus, where the Vermont senator holds a 2,500 popular vote lead over Pete Buttigieg in a race that officially remains too close to call with 97% of precincts reporting.

“Our campaign is made up of hard-working staff, volunteers, and supporters who over and over again overcome adversity because we are led by a senator who’s spent his life doing what is hard and standing on the side of working Americans,” Sanders’ Iowa state director Misty Rebik wrote in a campaign memo sent to staff and reporters Wednesday.

“That is what makes our campaign not only uniquely positioned to defeat Donald Trump, but ready to take on every major power in this country, to build the largest multi-generational, multi-racial coalition ever,” Rebik wrote. “We are unstoppable.”

How California Will Be Stolen From Bernie Sanders (Again)

After watching Iowa devolve into chaos like a car crash in slow motion, I regret to inform you that California will be stolen from Bernie Sanders.

It’s happening now, and anyone with a vague understanding of what took place in 2016 should know how the grand theft will go down. But the good news is there’s still a chance to have a legitimate vote in the land of sunshine and broken dreams, which is why the Democratic National Committee probably doesn’t want you to read this column. So if DNC Chair Tom Perez comes around and dumps hot tea in your lap in the next few minutes, you’ll know why. (He has a lot of free time.)

California is one of the biggest prizes, with 495 delegates up for grabs. And it’s even more important this year because its primaries have been moved up to Super Tuesday, March 3. Right now, Bernie Sanders, aka  “Old Man Rational,” has jumped to the top of the California polls. So if you were the ruling elite of California and you wanted to rig your primary against people like Bernie Sanders, what would you do (Short of breaking the legs of anyone who gives change to a homeless man)?

Well, I guess one thing would be to make it really hard for a person to vote if he isn’t a full-on bread-and-butter Joe Biden-loving Democrat who owns a T-shirt featuring Barack Obama riding on a dinosaur. Candidates like Bernie attract a lot of voters who are outside the two corrupt Wall Street parties, i.e. independents. And independents are no small group. In fact

So if you’re an independent in California, when you registered to vote, some of you probably checked the box that said “American Independent Party.” There’s only one problem: The American Independent Party is a borderline neo-Nazi group. It’s the name of a party that opposes gay marriage, hates immigrants and apparently hates women, because the last line of its manifesto (of course it has a manifesto) actually states, “In consequence whereof, we call upon all men who value their God-given liberty to join us in pursuit of these political convictions!” (Emphasis added … but you could feel it.)

Can I also add that I strongly believe one can’t just follow racist, sexist crap with the antiquated phrase “in consequence whereof” and think that makes it OK? Rarely do you hear a story like, “The other day someone said to me, ‘In consequence whereof, I consider you a bucket of dicks.” And I responded, ‘Why thank you, my good man. Henceforth and forsooth, go screw yourself.’”

So, do you think a lot of independents in California accidentally sign up for the bigotry party? Yes they do. “A Los Angeles Times investigation has found that a majority of [the American Independent Party’s] members have registered with the party in error. Nearly three out of four people did not realize they had joined the party. …”

Therefore, Californians should be forewarned that if they want to vote for someone outside the centrists — say, Bernie Sanders — they need to change their party affiliation to either Democrat or No Party Preference. But it gets even worse.

In order to stop the “No Party Preference” people from voting, the state (read: the corporate Democratic machine) does not give them a ballot with the presidential choices on it … which is RIDICULOUS! Do they honestly think millions of people skipped work to stand in line at a polling place playing Pokemon on their phones for three hours in order to vote for the City Council’s assistant treasurer?! No! They showed up to tell Joe Biden to check into a retirement home. And there is indeed a way they can vote in the presidential primary, but it’s complicated.

To sum up — millions of California independents are accidentally signed up for a racist, homophobic party. Millions more are handed a ballot without presidential candidates. In consequence whereof — millions of people will not get to cast a vote in the primary. But, as investigative journalist Greg Palast has revealed, it gets even worse! He wrote, “… if an NPP voter asks the poll worker, ‘How do I get to vote in the Democratic party primary?’ the poll workers are instructed to say that, ‘NPP voters can’t get Democratic ballots.'”

The poll workers are not lying … kinda. NPP voters can’t get Democratic ballots, but they can get Democratic crossover ballots, which do include the presidential race. So as Palast explains, “…if you don’t say the magic words, ‘I want a Democratic crossover ballot,’ you are automatically given a ballot without the presidential race.”

You have to say the goddamn golden phrase to get to vote?! Poll workers are nearly instructed to lie to Independents unless the voter has the passcode. It is bananas that it’s this hard to obtain the correct ballot in California! (I’ve had an easier time procuring meth in a Mormon household.)

Because of these intentional hurdles designed to stop Independents from voting, millions of Californians will be handed something called a “provisional ballot.”

Let’s see, how do I explain a provisional ballot? You know when a little toddler has a ball and they go to throw it, and they cock their arm back and then the ball rolls out of their hand behind them, and they end up throwing nothing but air? But they think they threw the ball, so you can see them watching for where the ball is going to land? That’s a provisional ballot. It’s a lot of buildup, but you didn’t do shit. Because no one will ever count it.

In truth, a certain percentage of provisional ballots are indeed counted, but by the time they are, it’s too late. The results have been reported, and the provisional ballots are really just an afterthought. For this reason, Palast calls them “placebo ballots” — they’re designed to make you think you voted. So don’t accept a provisional ballot. Demand your right to vote in the presidential primary. Demand a crossover ballot.

Election integrity activists in California also recommend people vote early, which can be done right now, in person, at your county Department of Elections. That way you’ll have plenty of time to deal with what they call in the election integrity biz — fuckery.

Ironically, our government fights to make sure as few people as possible vote in our elections. Since the mainstream media has been captured by corporate America, only alternative media now reveals how the wealthy and the powerful game the systems.

So tell your sun-bleached Cali friends to demand a real ballot with the presidential candidates on it. I’m not going tell you or them who to vote for, but in consequence whereof the American Independent (Homophobe) Party is fighting for your rights, such as the right to speak like it’s the mid-1800s. (As long as you’re a white male landowner of military age. Immigrants and women need not apply.)

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If you think this column is important, please share it. Lee Camp’s new book, “Bullet Points & Punch Lines,” is available at LeeCampBook.com .

This column is based on a monologue Lee Camp wrote and performed on his TV show, “ Redacted Tonight .”

 

Kirk Douglas, Longtime Influential Movie Star, Dies at 103

LOS ANGELES — Kirk Douglas, the intense, muscular actor with the dimpled chin who starred in “Spartacus,” “Lust for Life” and dozens of other films, helped fatally weaken the blacklist against suspected Communists and reigned for decades as a Hollywood maverick and patriarch, died Wednesday, his family said. He was 103.

“It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us today at the age of 103,” his son Michael said in a statement on his Instagram account. “To the world, he was a legend, an actor from the golden age of movies who lived well into his golden years, a humanitarian whose commitment to justice and the causes he believed in set a standard for all of us to aspire to.”

Kirk Douglas’ death was first reported by People magazine.

His granite-like strength and underlying vulnerability made the son of illiterate Russian immigrants one of the top stars of the 20th century. He appeared in more than 80 films, in roles ranging from Doc Holliday in “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” to Vincent van Gogh in “Lust for Life.”

He worked with some of Hollywood’s greatest directors, from Vincente Minnelli and Billy Wilder to Stanley Kubrick and Elia Kazan. His career began at the peak of the studios’ power, more than 70 years ago, and ended in a more diverse, decentralized era that he helped bring about.

Always competitive, including with his own family, Douglas never received an Academy Award for an individual film, despite being nominated three times — for “Champion,” “The Bad and the Beautiful” and “Lust for Life.”

But in 1996, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him an honorary Oscar. His other awards included a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute.

He was a category unto himself, a force for change and symbol of endurance.

In his latter years, he was a final link to a so-called “Golden Age,” a man nearly as old as the industry itself.

In his youth, he represented a new kind of performer, more independent and adventurous than Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and other giants of the studio era of the 1930s and 1940s, and more willing to speak his mind.

Reaching stardom after World War II, he was as likely to play cads (the movie producer in “Bad and the Beautiful,” the journalist in “Ace in the Hole”) as he was suited to play heroes, as alert to the business as he was at home before the camera. He started his own production company in 1955, when many actors still depended on the studios, and directed some of his later films.

A born fighter, Douglas was especially proud of his role in the downfall of Hollywood’s blacklist, which halted and ruined the careers of writers suspected of pro-Communist activity or sympathies. By the end of the ‘50s, the use of banned writers was widely known within the industry, but not to the general public.

Douglas, who years earlier had reluctantly signed a loyalty oath to get the starring role in “Lust for Life,” provided a crucial blow when he openly credited the former Communist and Oscar winner Dalton Trumbo for script work on “Spartacus,” the epic about a slave rebellion during ancient Rome that was released in 1960. (A few months earlier, Otto Preminger had announced Trumbo’s name would appear on the credits for “Exodus,” but “Spartacus” came out first.)

“Everybody advised me not to do it because you won’t be able to work in this town again and all of that. But I was young enough to say to hell with it,” Douglas said about “Spartacus” in a 2011 interview with The Associated Press. “I think if I was much older, I would have been too conservative: ‘Why should I stick my neck out?'”

Douglas rarely played lightly. He was compulsive about preparing for roles and a supreme sufferer on camera, whether stabbed with scissors in “Ace in the Hole” or crucified in “Spartacus.”

Critic David Thomson dubbed Douglas “the manic-depressive among Hollywood stars, one minute bearing down on plot, dialogue and actresses with the gleeful appetite of a man just freed from Siberia, at other times writing not just in agony but mutilation and a convincingly horrible death.”

Douglas’ personal favorite was the 1962 Western “Lonely are the Brave,” which included a line of dialogue from a Trumbo script he called the most personal he ever spoke on screen: “I’m a loner clear down deep to my very guts.”

The most famous words in a Douglas movie were spoken about him, but not by him.

In “Spartacus,” Roman officials tell a gathering of slaves their lives will be spared if they identify their leader, Spartacus. As Douglas rises to give himself up, a growing chorus of slaves jump up and shout, “I’m Spartacus!”

Douglas stands silently, a tear rolling down his face.

As Michael Douglas once observed, few acts were so hard to follow. Kirk Douglas was an acrobat, a juggler, a self-taught man who learned French in his 30s and German in his 40s.

Life was just so many walls to crash through, like the stroke in his 70s that threatened — but only threatened — to end his career. He continued to act and write for years and was past 100 when he and his wife published “Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter, and a Lifetime in Hollywood.”

He was born Issur Danielovitch to an impoverished Jewish family in Amsterdam, N.Y. His name evolved over time. He called himself Isidore Demsky until he graduated from St. Lawrence University.

He took the name Kirk Douglas as he worked his way through the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, choosing “Douglas” because he wanted his last name still to begin with “D” and “Kirk” because he liked the hard, jagged sound of the “K.”

Douglas was a performer as early as kindergarten, when he recited a poem about the red robin of spring. He was a star in high school and in college he wrestled and built the physique that was showcased in many of his movies. He was determined, hitchhiking to St. Lawrence as a teen and convincing the dean to approve a student loan. And he was tough. One of his strongest childhood memories was of flinging a spoonful of hot tea into the face of his intimidating father.

“I have never done anying as brave in any movie,” he later wrote.

Beginning in 1941, Douglas won a series of small roles on Broadway, served briefly in the Navy and received a key Hollywood break when an old friend from New York, Lauren Bacall, recommended he play opposite Barbara Stanwyck in “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.”

He gained further attention with the classic 1947 film noir “Out of the Past” and the Oscar-winning “A Letter to Three Wives.”

His real breakthrough came as an unscrupulous boxer in 1949’s “Champion,” a low-budget production he was advised to turn down.

“Before ‘Champion’ in 1949, I’d played an intellectual school teacher, a weak school teacher and an alcoholic,” Douglas once said in an interview with the AP. “After ‘Champion,’ I was a tough guy. I did things like playing van Gogh, but the image lingers.”

He had long desired creative control and “Champion” was followed by a run of hits that gave him the clout to form Bryna Productions in 1955, and a second company later.

Many of his movies, such as Kubrick’s “Paths of Glory,” “The Vikings,” “Spartacus,” “Lonely Are the Brave” and “Seven Days in May,” were produced by his companies.

His movie career faded during the 1960s and Douglas turned to other media.

In the 1970s and 1980s, he did several notable television films, including “Victory at Entebbe” and “Amos,” which dealt with abuse of the elderly.

In his 70s, he became an author, his books including the memoir “The Ragman’s Son,” the novels “Dance With the Devil” and “The Gift” and a brief work on the making of “Spartacus.”

“We are living in a town of make-believe,” he told The Associated Press in 2014. “I have done about 90 movies. That means that every time I was pretending to be someone else. There comes a time in your life when you say, well, `who am I?'” he said. “I have found writing books a good substitute to making pictures. When you write a book, you get to determine what part you are playing.”

Douglas also became one of Hollywood’s leading philanthropists. The Douglas Foundation, which he and Anne Douglas co-founded, has donated millions to a wide range of institutions, from the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles to the Motion Picture & Television Fund.

In 2015, the foundation endowed the Kirk Douglas Fellowship — a full-tuition, 2-year scholarship — at the American Film Institute.

As a young man, Douglas very much lived like a movie star, especially in the pre-#MeToo era. He was romantically linked with many of his female co-stars and dated Gene Tierney, Patricia Neal and Marlene Dietrich among others.

He would recall playing Ann Sothern’s husband in “A Letter to Three Wives” and how he and the actress “rehearsed the relationship offstage.”

He had been married to Diana Dill, but they divorced in 1951. Three years later, he married Anne Buydens, whom he met in Paris while he was filming “Act of Love” (and otherwise pursuing a young Italian actress) and she was doing publicity.

He would later owe his very life to Anne, with whom he remained for more than 60 years. In 1958, the film producer Michael Todd, then the husband of Elizabeth Taylor, offered the actor a ride on his private jet. Douglas’ wife insisted that he not go, worrying about a private plane, and he eventually gave in. The plane crashed, killing all on board.

Douglas had two children with each of his wives and all went into show business, against his advice.

Besides Michael, they are Joel and Peter, both producers, and Eric, an actor with several film credits who died of a drug overdose in 2004.

Later generations came to regard Kirk as Michael’s father. Michael Douglas not only thrived in Hollywood, but beat his dad to the Oscars with a project his father had first desired.

Kirk Douglas tried for years to make a film out of Ken Kesey’s cult novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

In the 1970s, he gave up and let Michael have a try. The younger Douglas produced a classic that starred Jack Nicholson (in the role Kirk Douglas wanted to play) and dominated the Oscars, winning for best picture, director, actor, actress and screenplay.

“My father has played up his disappointment with that pretty good,’’ Michael Douglas later told Vanity Fair. “I have to remind him, I shared part of my producing back-end (credit) with him, so he ended up making more money off that movie than he had in any other picture.”

“And I would gladly give back every cent, if I could have played that role,” the elder Douglas said.

Kirk Douglas’ film credits in the ’70s and ’80s included Brian De Palma’s “The Fury” and a comedy, “Tough Guys,” that co-starred Burt Lancaster, his longtime friend who previously appeared with Douglas in “Seven Days in May,” “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” and other movies.

A stroke in 1996 seemed to end his film career, but Douglas returned three years later with “Diamonds,” which he made after struggling to overcome speech problems.

“I thought I would never make another movie unless silent movies came back,” he joked.

In 2003, Douglas teamed with son Michael; Cameron Douglas, Michael’s 24-year-old son; and ex-wife Diana Douglas, Michael’s mother, for “It Runs in the Family,” a comic drama about three generations of a family, with a few digs worked in about the elder Douglas’ parenting.

In March 2009, he appeared in a one-man show, “Before I Forget,” recounting his life and famous friends. The four-night show in the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City was sold out.

“I’ve often said I’m a failure, because I didn’t achieve what I set out to do,” Douglas told the AP in 2009. “My goal in life was to be a star on the New York stage. The first time I was asked by Hal Wallis to come to Hollywood, I turned him down. ‘Hollywood? That trash? I’m an actor on the Broadway stage!'”

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Associated Press writer Bob Thomas contributed to this report. Biographical material in this story also was written by former AP staffer Polly Anderson.