RSS
In case you hadn’t noticed, someone recently loosed a satirist in American politics. Let me give you an example. You remember FBI Director James Comey, who gained a certain notoriety by stepping into the limelight 11 days before the recent presidential election via a very publicly dispatched letter to the Congressional leadership. It focused on an FBI investigation into emails from Hillary Clinton believed to be on a computer that disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner shared with his wife and Clinton aide Huma Abedin. As Comey admitted three days before the election, when it came to that investigation, there was no there there. This seeming non-event about an investigation of no significance would, in fact, prove historic. It represented the first intervention by the national security state, that ever more powerful fourth branch of our government, in an American election campaign and might well have played a role in putting Donald Trump in the Oval Office. (Just last week, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General announced that it would look into the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s email and, in particular, whether Comey’s late-in-the-day intervention “violated policy or procedure when he sent Congress notification about new evidence his department had discovered.”)
You may by now be wondering where the promised satire is, but be patient. Comey made his first public appearance since his pre-election dramatics at a recent Senate hearing and was asked whether the FBI might be investigating possible ties between Russian officials and the Trump campaign. In response, he offered this: “I would never comment on investigations — whether we have one or not — in an open forum like this, so I can’t answer one way or another.”
Of course he wouldn’t! As Senator Angus King of Maine responded (in an understated but tickle-your-ribs fashion that would have been quite suitable for Saturday Night Live), “The irony of your making that statement, I cannot avoid.”
Indeed, who could? In the Trump era, we now clearly live in a world created expressly for SNL. But instead of belaboring the point, let me turn you over to TomDispatch regular William deBuys so he can outline the series of absurdist events that gave us our new huckster-in-chief, our very own billionaire in the Oval Office in what can only be termed the most improbable election of the 1% era of American politics or perhaps any era at all.
- New from Trump University
Election Rigging 101
William deBuys • January 19, 2017 • 3,300 Words
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
You definitely sound like a whiny SNL character. But I suppose that’s what you’re paid to do…
Tom, you’re losing me.
Trump or Hillary ? Now Trump is in ,we are supposed to get excited because he wants good relation with Russia and we are supposed to feel delightedly relieved because Clinton would ahve ensnared us in WW 3. Clinton has met her comeuppance . What about Tump?
He wants good relation with Russia but wants to poke China on multiple front . Is it not internally inconsistent ? He wants t screw Iran. What the F** Iran has done to him or to his country ? How will that bring business back to US? How is that consistent with his pro business anti war stance ? He wants to build a wall .Fine go ahead and build it on US soil .Why a you setting this for failure by asking Mexico has to pay for it and be true American – get some American company do it .
Trump has said many things That is pure politics . But what about his supporters ?
These are very same supporters who support war and then express dismay when war hits home , the pocket and the bodies – all 3 whammy same time .They are against globalism not because of some doctrinal faith but because eventually they were failed just like the rest of the world middle class had been. They want to go to Kabul and Baghdad and kick some ass .But start complaining when the juggernaut on return journey kicks their asses as well . I bet that none of them showed up against Bush’ wars . I will bet none of them would show up against our Chinese or Iranian adventure either . They hail anti abortion stance but gleefully agree with state sanctioned murder abroad or ignore death of infant from lack of medical care . They morally and religious supported draconian drug polices until the shit went up and started revolving over their heads as it gt stuck in the rusted fan blades .Now suddenly they believe in treatment and legalization or decriminalization. Their forefathers supported each and every wars US have fought from Korea to El Salvador to Iraq . They support drug wars against other countries .
So what is actually going on with this crowd? They want the cake and eat it too. They wish that the world were still stuck in 19th century where English ruled the waves, America ruled the sky and peace flowed with honey to their homes in the suburbs making any hard work to eke out a livelihood unnecessarily redundant . They thought fighting communism in Vietnam was good to prevent domino effect But the domino has fallen on their lap after killing millions in Vietnam and Cambodia and setting the place on fire for generations .They think it is their right to walk away and pay no price .
They want America behaves exactly as it has been doing for decades and deliver exactly same fruits it been harvesting before-literally from Central America or oil from Iran or Iraq or S Arabia or Venezuela .
The fruits don’t come anymore but juggernaut still demands the blood .
Trump will need more than knee jerk twitting to set the affairs right . Like UK , America needs Brexit But it has no place to exit from excepting its own mind set.
They are unhappy with this developments . That is their anger with the globalization .
I’d have to say that you are most gullible. Anyone that has any sort of historical knowledge know that people have gotten long prison terms for doing less than what Hillary did. The idea there is no “there” there, is most hilarious.
Maybe you should pick up some Anusol for all that butt hurt, pajama boy. An awful lot of people weren’t voting for Trump so much as voting against Hillary, and well they should have. Hillary is Joe Stalin in drag.
You spew raw hatred like this at the folks in flyover country, and then you can’t understand why they don’t vote for your candidates. At least the old fashioned socialists pretended to like us.
Woah the comment section is kinda exploding.
Chills people, there is a lot of future to work on!
Re: KA
I’m backing off of my anti-war positions. Because anti-war people all range from totally ignoring the Open Borders issue, to supporting Open Borders. ‘Eff ’em. These people are monomaniacal. Let them move toward us for once. Until I start seeing some quid pro quo, bomb the world for all I care.
In other words: CTRL-F for “migr,” + 0 hits = ALT-F4.
Here’s a clue for you about Iran. Google “Iran hostage crisis”. Ted Koppel made a whole career out of the visibility he got on TV every night for a year and a half reporting on the Iran situation and our hostages that Khomeini took. What’s there now is a continuation of that Shia regime.
Many of us were against Bush’s wars but could do nothing about it, even though we saw through some of the lies about 9/11 . As a child I didn’t understand why we were in Vietnam. Maybe someone wants revenge for those mistakes. But electing Hillary doesn’t pay for them in any way I can see. It would just have been compounding the mistakes.