"Someone else is pulling the string..."

You may be expecting me to eulogize Muhammed Ali. This blog usually stays away from eulogies -- and besides, others can speak of Muhammed Ali far better than I. (This piece does a good job.) But his name did come up in these pages before -- mostly in relation to a couple of stories I had written about Al Sharpton.

Although Ali's death prompted me to revisit that research trail, this post is not about him. It would be more accurate to say that this story is about Sharpton. But on a deeper level, it's about something much larger.

Before you get to the end, you should be able to guess the true reason for this post.

We will begin our journey by repeating an earlier story. In 2008, Al Sharpton was making Bill Clinton out to be the worst racist since George Lincoln Rockwell...

Why is Al Sharpton saying these ridiculous things? It's his job. Let's review some history that has been swept under the rug.

In an earlier post, we discussed a book called Overworld, by Larry Kolb. Kolb is the son of a CIA officer who was tasked by Agency luminary Miles Copeland to charm his way into the entourage of none other than Muhammad Ali. (Ali's enormous popularity in the Islamic world made him a useful ally.)

Kolb wasn't the only one in that entourage with an agenda: Al Sharpton did everything he could to get close to Ali.

Reverend Al was just Reverend Al. Around so much of the time, and usually so quiet you barely even noticed when he was there and when he wasn't.

Then one afternoon I was in the Soup Burg on Madison Avenue at 73rd...reading the sports section of New York Newsday I'd found on my stool when I sat down. And when I finished with the sports and flipped the paper over tot he front page, there was a big black-and-white photograph of Reverend Al looking shifty and a huge headline: THE MINISTER AND THE FEDS.

Under that, I read: "For the last five years, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Jr., one of the city's most vocal and visible black activists, has been secretly supplying federal law enforcement agencies with information on boxing promoter Don King, reputed organized crime leaders and black leaders and elected officials, according to sources. And in a two-hour, wide-ranging interview with New York Newsday, Sharpton, 33, said he carried concealed microphones in briefcases and accompanied undercover federal agents wearing body recorders to meetings with various subjects of federal investigations. He also allowed the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York to install a tapped telephone in his Brooklyn home."

Al Fuckin' Sharpton, I thought in surprise as I stared into his face. I should've known. Al Sharpton! Muhammad had always said the government had someone spying on him or, as he liked to put it, that there was a "nigger in the woodpile."

Not exactly the way I'd phrase it. But I do think this story belongs on the internet record somewhere, since Wikipedia's entry on Sharpton makes no mention of this Newsday interview.

So why was Al Sharpton spying on behalf of Uncle Sam? Simple: Federal agents compromised Sharpton during a cocaine bust in 1983.

The television show HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel showed a 1983 FBI videotape in which Al Sharpton is seen talking about laundering drug money with former mobster Michael Franzese, a Mafioso-turned-undercover-FBI informant posing as a cocaine dealer.

Sharpton got into this mess through his friendship with boxing promoter Don King, a longtime friend of his. Franzese, a former Colombo family captain, alleges that a South American drug dealer looking to launder money through boxing promotions approached him. According to Franzese, Sharpton was going to arrange a meeting between the dealer and King.

On the tape, Sharpton is clearly heard accepting an offer of $35,000 as his cut on the coke deal. He did not know that the South American drug lord offering this business proposition was actually FBI agent Victor Quintana.

During his presidential campaign, Sharpton told the public that the drug bust was no big deal because no indictments were issued. Of course no indictments were issued. That's why Sharpton went to work for Uncle: To avoid an indictment.

And that's also why you don't hear much about Al Sharpton and the FBI on the teevee. If Sharpton weren't working for Uncle, you know damned well you'd never see his face on the tube. Even the right-wingers never mention Sharpton's work as an informant -- and they almost never bring up the drug bust, because they can't say much about that incident without mentioning his subsequent career undercover.

(Incidentally, Sharpton and his enterprises also owe about $1.5 million in taxes and penalties. Remember that episode of The Simpsons in which Homer went undercover after being nabbed by the IRS?)

So keep Sharpton's past in mind when you see him get on TV and say inane things about Bill Clinton. Sharpton is just a talking doll. Someone else is pulling the string.

A lot of other writers have raised suspicions about Sharpton, but I don't think that many other bloggers have talked about just what it was that made him so easy to blackmail.

In that 2008 piece, I said "someone else is pulling the string." I can now name the string-puller: Roger Stone, the sleazy dirty trickster who is going to make his long-time friend Donald Trump president of the United States. Stone was...

....the organizer of the 2000 Brooks Brothers riot, where a group of republican operatives stopped a Miami Dade vote count that was going in Gore’s favor, then a consultant on various sundry candidates, including Al Sharpton, Tom Golisano and Larry Klayman.

(Side note: In a sense, Klayman gave us the Hillary Clinton email scandal, at least indirectly. Her alternative email system was set up to allow her to communicate with Sidney Blumenthal and Tyler Drumheller without being forced to share everything with Klayman.)

In the past, I've cited this Pando story. It bears repeating.

Sort of like how Vermont front-runner in 2004, Howard Dean, was finished off by the one-two of Dean’s screechy “woo!” gesture, and Al Sharpton accusing Dean of being anti-black during the debates.

As it turns out, Al Sharpton entered the 2004 Democratic primaries on the payroll and orders of Roger Stone, who directed Sharpton’s attacks from the race politics-left against Howard Dean. And as the New York Times revealed that year, it was Donald Trump who took credit for introducing Al Sharpton — a one-time FBI informant — to his old friend and lobbyist, GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone.

In early 2004, with former Vermont governor and articulate antiwar candidate Howard Dean electrifying Democrats and antiwar voters and posing a potentially deadly threat to the Bush campaign, Roger Stone secretly funded and staffed Al Sharpton, and sent him into the Democratic Party primaries to smear Howard Dean and suck the life and joy out of his campaign. It worked.

Again, quoting the great Village Voice reporting by Wayne Barrett from 2004:

While Bush forces like the Club for Growth were buying ads in Iowa assailing then front-runner Howard Dean, Sharpton took center stage at a debate confronting Dean about the absence of blacks in his Vermont cabinet. Stone told the Times that he “helped set the tone and direction” of the Dean attacks, while Charles Halloran, the Sharpton campaign manager installed by Stone, supplied the research. While other Democratic opponents were also attacking Dean, none did it on the advice of a consultant who's worked in every GOP presidential campaign since his involvement in the Watergate scandals of 1972, including all of the Bush family campaigns.

The Times quoted Trump in 2004 taking credit for introducing Al Sharpton to Roger Stone. But it was Barrett’s merciless reporting on Sharpton’s “blackface bucks”—the legions of race-baiting Republicans who donated cash and resources to Sharpton’s anti-Howard Dean run—that is something worth re-reading today...

More here:

Wayne Barrett would also document a second prominent time when Stone would use a candidate for divisive purposes, and this would be Al Sharpton in the 2004 Democratic primaries. “Sleeping With the GOP: A Bush Covert Operative Takes Over Al Sharpton’s Campaign” would detail how Stone would provide loans and staff for Sharpton’s campaign, with the intent to divide the democrats in 2004 as they had been in 1972. While the Club for Growth bought ads against Howard Dean in Iowa, Sharpton would attack Dean for the lack of black men and women in his Vermont cabinet. It was just like in 1972, when black protesters had suddenly shown up outside Edmund Muskie’s hotel room, demanding why he had ruled out the possibility of a black vice president. A member of the Nixon CREEP committee, Donald Segretti, would later take credit for that. “Top level consideration should be given to ways and means to promote, assist, and fund a Fourth Party candidacy of the Left Democrats and/or the Black Democrats,” wrote a Nixon strategist and speechwriter in 1972. “There is nothing that can so advance the President’s chances for reelection – not a trip to China, not four and a half per cent unemployment – as a realistic black…campaign.” That Nixon strategist was Pat Buchanan, before he himself became a third party threat to conservative voter unity213.

The desire to support and fund the creation of a fourth party, one led either by Eugene McCarthy or one with black candidates catering specifically to a black demographic, for the express purpose of splitting the Democratic vote, is made explicit in the tapes of the Nixon White House, a plan approved by the then president himself.

And now we journey into the heart of Mordor. The following quote comes from Stone's unpublished autobiography.

What you are about to read may be the most important words you will read this election season.

I practice the politics of polarization -- a politics that is brutal, psychological and effective. It is the politics of division, galvanizing those who bear a grudge against the establishment, rallying the resentful, the jealous, and the angry against the elites. In an America as large and diverse as we are, the politics of unification is a non-starter. It is unrealistic to think that one could voice one or the other of the political philosophies of the two major parties to unify the country around any course of action. The politics of unification is, at heart, about only so much as you need to unify your 51%.

My goal is to ensure that the reader approaches politics with an educated, skeptical and more jaundiced vies after reading this book. In the world of politics, not everything is as it seems.

Can you now guess the real subject of today's post?

The truth about Al Sharpton, the press and CDS

Thanks to Bill Clinton and the Community Reinvestment Act which he championed, many African-Americans got small business loans and home loans that they otherwise would not have received. Al Sharpton wants you to forget about that. That's why he's excusing Harry Reid's inane "negro dialect" comment while pretending that Bill Clinton is the most odious racist since George Lincoln Rockwell.

Why is Al Sharpton saying these ridiculous things? It's his job. Let's review some history that has been swept under the rug.

In an earlier post, we discussed a book called Overworld, by Larry Kolb. Kolb is the son of a CIA officer who was tasked by Agency luminary Miles Copeland to charm his way into the entourage of none other than Muhammad Ali. (Ali's enormous popularity in the Islamic world made him a useful ally.)

Kolb wasn't the only one in that entourage with an agenda: Al Sharpton did everything he could to get close to Ali.

Reverend Al was just Reverend Al. Around so much of the time, and usually so quiet you barely even noticed when he was there and when he wasn't.

Then one afternoon I was in the Soup Burg on Madison Avenue at 73rd...reading the sports section of New York Newsday I'd found on my stool when I sat down. And when I finished with the sports and flipped the paper over tot he front page, there was a big black-and-white photograph of Reverend Al looking shifty and a huge headline: THE MINISTER AND THE FEDS.

Under that, I read: "For the last five years, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Jr., one of the city's most vocal and visible black activists, has been secretly supplying federal law enforcement agencies with information on boxing promoter Don King, reputed organized crime leaders and black leaders and elected officials, according to sources. And in a two-hour, wide-ranging interview with New York Newsday, Sharpton, 33, said he carried concealed microphones in briefcases and accompanied undercover federal agents wearing body recorders to meetings with various subjects of federal investigations. He also allowed the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York to install a tapped telephone in his Brooklyn home."

Al Fuckin' Sharpton, I thought in surprise as I stared into his face. I should've known. Al Sharpton! Muhammad had always said the government had someone spying on him or, as he liked to put it, that there was a "nigger in the woodpile."

Not exactly the way I'd phrase it. But I do think this story belongs on the internet record somewhere, since Wikipedia's entry on Sharpton makes no mention of this Newsday interview.

So why was Al Sharpton spying on behalf of Uncle Sam? Simple: Federal agents compromised Sharpton during a cocaine bust in 1983.

The television show HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel showed a 1983 FBI videotape in which Al Sharpton is seen talking about laundering drug money with former mobster Michael Franzese, a Mafioso-turned-undercover-FBI informant posing as a cocaine dealer.

Sharpton got into this mess through his friendship with boxing promoter Don King, a longtime friend of his. Franzese, a former Colombo family captain, alleges that a South American drug dealer looking to launder money through boxing promotions approached him. According to Franzese, Sharpton was going to arrange a meeting between the dealer and King.

On the tape, Sharpton is clearly heard accepting an offer of $35,000 as his cut on the coke deal. He did not know that the South American drug lord offering this business proposition was actually FBI agent Victor Quintana.

During his presidential campaign, Sharpton told the public that the drug bust was no big deal because no indictments were issued. Of course no indictments were issued. That's why Sharpton went to work for Uncle: To avoid an indictment.

And that's also why you don't hear much about Al Sharpton and the FBI on the teevee. If Sharpton weren't working for Uncle, you know damned well you'd never see his face on the tube. Even the right-wingers never mention Sharpton's work as an informant -- and they almost never bring up the drug bust, because they can't say much about that incident without mentioning his subsequent career undercover.

(Incidentally, Sharpton and his enterprises also owe about $1.5 million in taxes and penalties. Remember that episode of The Simpsons in which Homer went undercover after being nabbed by the IRS?)

So keep Sharpton's past in mind when you see him get on TV and say inane things about Bill Clinton. Sharpton is just a talking doll. Someone else is pulling the string.

Looks to me that we are experiencing a gale-force blast of Clinton Derangement Syndrome in the media. That's to be expected. Obama is proving to be Dubya II -- and as his ratings tank, the powers behind Obama have no choice but to mount yet another anti-Clinton Hate rally. It takes one hell of a lot of propaganda to convince the public that the third-best president of the 20th century (after the two Roosevelts) was a failure.

In the post below, I directed you to Bob Somerby's work-in-progress "How He Got There," an online book about the 2000 campaign which brought George W. Bush to power. You should read Somerby's introductory material in close conjunction with this CDS-addled piece by Eric Alterman, a self-confessed "poker buddy" of Game Change author John Heilemann. (That's the hot new Obot propaganda book about the 2008 election.)

Alterman on Game Change:

Here's who comes off horribly: Bill Clinton, Mark Penn, John and Elizabeth Edwards, Reille Whatshername, Cindy McCain, Rudy G., Sarah Palin. Here's who comes off pretty bad: Hillary Clinton. Here's who comes off OK: John McCain, Patty Solis Doyle. Here's who comes off great: Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, David Axlerod, David Plouffe, Steve Schmidt, Rick Davis. Here's who gets a free pass: Everybody in the media, pretty much, but especially ABC News, CNN, and their lobotomized debate questioners.

Somerby on the 2000 campaign:

I began discussing this topic in real time, in March 1999, at my web site, The Daily Howler. At the time, I had no idea how remarkable the press corps' performance during Campaign 2000 would be.

On the other hand:

By that time, the press corps' peculiar relations with President Clinton had led to one important book–Gene Lyons' Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater (1996). Before Campaign 2000 was finished, Lyons would team with Joe Conason for a second book, The Hunting of the President (2000). Here too, Lyons and Conason discussed the press corps' decade-long, pseudoscandal-driven pursuit of Bill Clinton.

In March 1999, Clinton's vice president began his own run for the White House. With remarkable speed, the press corps' pursuit of President Clinton was seamlessly transferred to Candidate Gore. Given the narrow way Campaign 2000 was decided, the press corps' twenty-month war against Gore almost surely decided its outcome.

Get it? Get it?

The same press corps that told you to hate Clinton and Gore...
...also told you to love Bush and Obama!!!

Now re-read what I said about Al Sharpton. The bit about someone pulling the string.

(By the way, the graphic at the top comes from here.)

More on Larry Kolb, "Overworld," Muhammad Ali, and Al Sharpton

A few posts down, I discussed Larry Kolb's book Overworld, which details his history with Adnan Khashoggi, Muhammad Ali, and the CIA. Espionage runs in the family: Kolb's father Lewis Kolb was, we are told, a senior counterintelligence officer operating out of the Philippines.

Frankly, I had come to believe that the family name was something other than Kolb, since no-one by that name appears in any CIA history known to me, and Google does not link to any independent source confirming that there once was a spy named Lewis Kolb. But son Larry assures me that the man did exist, and he has provided evidence to that effect. I reproduce, with permission, a photograph of Lewis Kolb, as well as a relevant section from a WWII-era document. (Kolb retains copyright on these images, so don't reproduce them without permission.)

Well, now I feel silly for ever suspecting that Ed Lansdale's kid became part of Muhammad Ali's posse.

Another correction: In my original post, I said that L. Fletcher Prouty had identified Lansdale as one of the three "mystery tramps" photographed in Dealey Plaza on you-know-which date. In fact, Prouty identified as Lansdale another man who seemed to be signaling the tramps while passing. Daniel Ellsberg, who also knew Lansdale well, disputes this idea.

The book contains all sort of juicy information. One tidbit I wanted to pass along here concerns Al Sharpton, who -- according to Overworld -- was forever trying to ingratiate himself into Ali's entourage.

Reverend Al was just Reverend Al. Around so much of the time, and usually so quiet you barely even noticed when he was there and when he wasn't.

Then one afternoon I was in the Soup Burg on Madison Avenue at 73rd...reading the sports section of New York Newsday I'd found on my stool when I sat down. And when I finished with the sports and flipped the paper over tot he front page, there was a big black-and-white photograph of Reverend Al looking shifty and a huge headline: THE MINISTER AND THE FEDS.

Under that, I read: "For the last five years, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Jr., one of the city's most vocal and visible black activists, has been secretly supplying federal law enforcement agencies with information on boxing promoter Don King, reputed organized crime leaders and black leaders and elected officials, according to sources. And in a two-hour, wide-ranging interview with New York Newsday, Sharpton, 33, said he carried concealed microphones in briefcases and accompanied undercover federal agents wearing body recorders to meetings with various subjects of federal investigations. He also allowed the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York to install a tapped telephone in his Brooklyn home."

Al Fuckin' Sharpton, I thought in surprise as I stared into his face. I should've known. Al Sharpton! Muhammad had always said the government had someone spying on him or, as he liked to put it, that there was a "nigger in the woodpile."

Not exactly the way I'd phrase it. But I do think this story belongs on the internet record somewhere, since Wikipedia's entry on Sharpton makes no mention of this Newsday interview. Kolb goes on to say that the feds had compromised Sharpton during a cocaine bust, which Sharpton claims was a set-up.

Kolb does not mention when he first disclosed his CIA connection to Ali -- a connection which puts Sharpton's "spying" into perspective. Ali must have learned about Kolb's history at some point. A later episode in the book pictures Ali and Kolb receiving a direct request from (then) Vice President George H.W. Bush to participate in efforts to free the hostages in Lebanon -- which Ali went on to do, at no small personal risk. Unfortunately, he was able to secure the release of but one hostage.

Interestingly, this passage of Kolb's book portrays the elder Bush as the real power within the Reagan administration, much as Cheney seems to be the real power in the current administration.

Now entering: The Stone Zone (Or: Bernie's Big Secret)

Politico offers a clickbait pictorial of the 16 worst political dirty tricks of all time, and it's definitely worth a look. What Politico doesn't tell you is that several of those "tricks" bear the mark of Roger Stone, the man now seeking to cap off his career by oozing Donald Trump into the Oval Office.

In fact, pretty much all of the other tricks could fit into the Stone playbook.

There are a few good articles about Stone that you can find on the internet. There is also a quasi-legendary piece by Jacob Weisberg which seems to have disappeared completely. If you can find it, you're a God Among Researchers. Until it turns up, I direct your attention to work of Toobin and Labash.

Even if you've already read all of that, the real truth about Stone goes far deeper than you know.

If you feel brave enough to take a course in Advanced Stone Studies, you should look at a long investigation published on a little-known blog called I Talk You Bored. The unknown author of this site offers the equivalent of a book-length biography of Stone -- replete with copious footnotes and documentation.

For me, at least, that piece is anything but boring.

(The author is also a Twin Peaks fan. I like this guy.)

This investigation contains a gruesome recounting of the work done by Stone's associates on Carl Paladino's 2010 NY gubernatorial campaign. Interestingly, that election has given rise to a lawsuit in which Stone is named...

Even by the detestable norms of New York politics, the election mailer that arrived in thousands of area mailboxes back in 2010 was grotesque.

Disguised as a "sexual predator alert," it described Warren Redlich, then a Libertarian Party candidate for governor, as "a sick twisted pervert" who "defends sex with children."

"If you encounter this man, proceed with caution," the mailer said. "If you see this man near a public school, call the police."

The claims had no basis in truth and, as you might imagine, they didn't go over well in the Redlich home.

In fact, it wasn't long before Redlich, a former Guilderland Town Board member, filed a defamation lawsuit against three notable names in New York GOP politics: Roger Stone, Michael Caputo and Carl Paladino.

Ancient history? Not quite.

Last month, a New York City judge ruled the lawsuit could go to trial, while observing that "politics is too often a dirty business" and that, if true, the action by Stone, Caputo and Paladino was "reprehensible."

Stone is ... well, how exactly do I describe Roger Stone? A book wouldn't do the subject justice.

He's a self-described political dirty trickster who's been doing just that since the Nixon administration. He typically works for conservative candidates, but not always. He advised Al Sharpton's brief presidential run, for example.

Ah, but why did Stone push Sharpton into that race?

We've known for a while that Al Sharpton is quite compromised. Larry Kolb's book Overworld offers some interesting insights into the man. (See here.)

The book-length Stone expose written by the unnamed "Twin Peaks freak" offers further details of the Stone/Sharpton relationship...

Wayne Barrett would also document a second prominent time when Stone would use a candidate for divisive purposes, and this would be Al Sharpton in the 2004 Democratic primaries. “Sleeping With the GOP: A Bush Covert Operative Takes Over Al Sharpton’s Campaign” would detail how Stone would provide loans and staff for Sharpton’s campaign, with the intent to divide the democrats in 2004 as they had been in 1972. While the Club for Growth bought ads against Howard Dean in Iowa, Sharpton would attack Dean for the lack of black men and women in his Vermont cabinet. It was just like in 1972, when black protesters had suddenly shown up outside Edmund Muskie’s hotel room, demanding why he had ruled out the possibility of a black vice president. A member of the Nixon CREEP committee, Donald Segretti, would later take credit for that. “Top level consideration should be given to ways and means to promote, assist, and fund a Fourth Party candidacy of the Left Democrats and/or the Black Democrats,” wrote a Nixon strategist and speechwriter in 1972. “There is nothing that can so advance the President’s chances for reelection – not a trip to China, not four and a half per cent unemployment – as a realistic black…campaign.” That Nixon strategist was Pat Buchanan, before he himself became a third party threat to conservative voter unity213.

The desire to support and fund the creation of a fourth party, one led either by Eugene McCarthy or one with black candidates catering specifically to a black demographic, for the express purpose of splitting the Democratic vote, is made explicit in the tapes of the Nixon White House, a plan approved by the then president himself.

What's past is present.

I have given you just one indication -- one among many -- of why I suspect that Roger Stone is the secret power behind Bernie Sanders. Bernie himself may not be aware of what's going on. But if you read the above-linked bio of Roger Stone, as well as the pieces by Toobin and Labash, you will know.

More to come.

Sharpton

There are some stories that will be forever new. For example: In 2003, a lot of people reacted to The Da Vinci Code as though nothing like it had appeared in print before, even though Holy Blood, Holy Grail had appeared roughly twenty years earlier. (Nine years from now, some literary entrepreneur can sell the yarn yet again, to similar gasps.)

The Daily News has just printed a story about Al Sharpton's work as an FBI informant, a revelation which we are supposed to consider electrifying.

Sharpton’s role as an FBI informant was first disclosed in 1988 — but The Smoking Gun obtained hundreds of pages of secret court filings and FBI memos that provide stunning new details of his cooperation. The documents depict Sharpton operating easily in an underworld of violence and corruption, helping the feds collect essential information.

Why not spill the rest of the beans? "Sharpton versus The Mob" seems a very dashing story. "Sharpton snitching on black luminaries" seems rather more tawdry.

In an earlier post, I quoted from a book called Overworld by Larry Kolb, the son of an intelligence officer tasked by the CIA's Miles Copeland to worm his way into Muhammed Ali's entourage. Ali suspected that his entourage included at least one federal snitch (not counting Kolb -- who, for some reason, doesn't seem to think of himself as a snitch):

Reverend Al was just Reverend Al. Around so much of the time, and usually so quiet you barely even noticed when he was there and when he wasn't.

Then one afternoon I was in the Soup Burg on Madison Avenue at 73rd...reading the sports section of New York Newsday I'd found on my stool when I sat down. And when I finished with the sports and flipped the paper over tot he front page, there was a big black-and-white photograph of Reverend Al looking shifty and a huge headline: THE MINISTER AND THE FEDS.

Al Fuckin' Sharpton, I thought in surprise as I stared into his face. I should've known. Al Sharpton! Muhammad had always said the government had someone spying on him or, as he liked to put it, that there was a "nigger in the woodpile."

Not how I would have phrased it, but Muhammed Ali may do that which others may not. It's worth noting that Sharpton was flipped by the feds after he was busted in a coke deal in 1983. He was caught on tape talking about laundering dirty money with a mafioso who had himself been flipped.

It occurs to me if these sorts of aggressive tactics had been used against the "malefactors of great wealth" who gifted us with the 2008 economic crisis, Goldman Sachs probably wouldn't exist anymore.

Bucking the system

Spy blimps. The animated Batman TV series depicted a Gotham City under the watchful eyes of police blimps. And it was cool.

Now we have the real thing, right here in Baltimore. Not so cool.

The project is called JLENS – or “Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System.” And you couldn’t come up with a better metaphor for wildly inflated defense contracts, a ponderous Pentagon bureaucracy, and the U.S. surveillance leviathan all in one.

Built by the Raytheon Company, the JLENS blimps operate as a pair. One provides omnipresent high-resolution 360-degree radar coverage up to 340 miles in any direction; the other can focus on specific threats and provide targeting information.

Technically considered aerostats, since they are tethered to mooring stations, these lighter-than-air vehicles will hover at a height of 10,000 feet just off Interstate 95, about 45 miles northeast of Washington, D.C., and about 20 miles from Baltimore. That means they can watch what’s happening from North Carolina to Boston, or an area the size of Texas.

Cost: $2.8 billion.

The right's big lie about the police. Even I am astonished by the outrageous lies we've heard from the right-wing propagandists. In a direct replay of a tactic familiar to anyone who can recall the civil rights era, the rightists are claiming that outside agitators have whipped up "hysteria" about police abuses.

Conservatives want you to think that the problem has nothing to do with anything that the cops have actually done. Nope. Conservatives blame agitators like Al Sharpton -- as though Sharpton (who is well-known to have functioned as an FBI stool pigeon) possesses that kind of sway. Conservatives also blame Obama, as is their wont. Obama once did have substantial sway over much of the left, but 2014 sure as hell ain't 2008, and Obama-mania is over. Besides, "no-drama Obama" hardly qualifies as any kind of agitator; he's not even a critic.

You will notice that conservatives keep the focus on controversies involving race. They never address the fact that seizure-happy modern cops have conjured up all kinds of resentment because they now use the citizenry as a revenue-generating machine.

Rudolph Giuliani took this conservative meme to absurd lengths when he claimed that Barack Obama instructed black people to hate the police. Of course, the president never said any such thing.

(Right-wingers also keep repeating the claim that Obama has gone around the world "apologizing" for America. Does anyone really believe this nonsensical accusation?)

And then we have this idiot...

The poisonous effect of those lies has now manifested itself in the cold-blooded assassination of two NYPD officers.

The highest reaches of American society promulgated these untruths and participated in the mass hysteria.

President Barack Obama announced that blacks were right to believe that the criminal-justice system was often stacked against them. Obama has travelled around the country since then buttressing that message. Eric Holder escalated a long running theme of his tenure as U.S. Attorney General—that the police routinely engaged in racial profiling and needed federal intervention to police properly.

University presidents rushed to show their fealty to the lie.

The article goes on and on like that. The bottom line: Don't blame the cops. Blame the cop-haters. Black people and lefties just have a totally irrational hated of anyone who wears a badge.

What an inane proposition!

Nobody wants to hate the cops -- far from it. Women and men of good will have been forced to become "cop critics" because police behavior keeps getting worse. That's the sitch, plain and simple.

That said, I must confess that I've never had any personal reason to bear any animosity toward the police. Frankly, I have always gotten along well with most of the law enforcement personnel I've met, and I certainly respect the hazards of their duties. Of course, the treatment I receive from cops probably has something to do with the fact that I'm white, male, no longer young, and usually dressed like a respectable member of the bourgeoisie (even though I'm actually far too poor to be part of that class).

But my own (mostly) benign experiences with the police can't change the fact that, in many places around this nation, their behavior has gotten out of hand.

One of the best articles on this topic you will ever read comes to us from Dakinkat at Skydancing. Although I've always considered her a phenomenal writer, I don't think that she has ever before written with this kind of passion. She recounts a personal experience which is nothing less than infuriating.

(As many of you know, Kat lives in New Orleans, where police corruption is as traditional as Mardis Gras, gumbo and fast talk. Wasn't there a murder-for-hire operation within the NOPD in the 1990s?)

Again, Rudy Giuliani and others need to know that my feelings towards the police have nothing to do with the President or any politician and my guess it that any one that’s seen what I’ve seen, knows what I know, and been through what I’ve been through thinks similarly . You cannot possibly live within the borders of a large city that is populated with diverse peoples and not really feel this way unless you’re gated up with a lot of privileged white people. Not all police officers are rotten but the system and good cops protect the rotten ones. This makes them accessories and under most criminal laws, it makes you guilty of something. If you think all cops are wonderful, you must live in a suburban enclave with mostly white people where police never ever go or where they only show up when the odd little inconvenience happens. You could not possibly live in place where whites are the minority. You could not possibly live in parts of town where they feel they can get away with anything. You’ve probably never ever lived in a place and time where you’ve been dive bombed by black helicopters and drones and felt like you’ve lived in the middle of a war zone for extended periods of time because of the presence of highly militarized police. I’ve lived in both circumstances. If you don’t think being white gives you a big ol’ pass in the world of policing, then you’ve really lived a very sheltered life.

You really should read the rest. It's a rant, but it's a truly great rant. 

Why do so many people rationalize evil deeds done by their leaders? Washington's Blog offers some remarkable insights into a phenomenon that has long puzzled me. Why do so many talking head "experts" on teevee accept without qualm or question the government's claim that North Korea was behind the Sony hack? (Right now, I'm talking about political "experts," not computer experts. The tech guys tend to be much more open to the idea that the hacker was a non-state actor.) Why did all respectable pundits immediately accept the claim that Bashar Assad ordered those infamous sarin attacks, even though it always seemed likelier that the rebels were the ones who used chemical weapons? Why did so many people accept the lie that Saddam was behind 9/11? Why, for that matter, do the makers of elite opinion maintain their quaint faith in the ludicrous findings of the Warren Report?

Why do we stick up for a system or institution we live in—a government, company, or marriage—even when anyone else can see it is failing miserably? Why do we resist change even when the system is corrupt or unjust? A new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, reveals the conditions under which we’re motivated to defend the status quo—a psychological process called “system justification.”

In system justification theory, people are motivated to defend the status quo. There is a need to see it as being good, just and/or legitimate. People not only want to hold a favorable view of themselves and the groups they associate with, but they also hold favorable views of an entire, overarching social system. There is a lot at stake here on an individual psychological level that may not have anything to do with the particular candidate, or government or social issue.

There are consequences for trying to buck the system. What will happen if you try to introduce a different type of political or economic system? You tend to be mocked, marginalized or completely ignored. People need to believe that the systems they believe in are legitimate. But this can cause bias and very dangerous blind spots when it comes to the issue of corruption in these systems.

According to the research, four particular situations significantly increased the likelihood that system justification would occur:

1. When a threat to the system occurred.

2. When one is dependent on the system.

3. When there is no potential escape from the system.

4. When one has low personal control of their lives.

I'll add this. Many of us accept the fabrications told by "the system" because doing so makes our lives much less stressful. Institutional corruption necessitates rebellion, and rebellion involves risk. Rebellion can take many forms -- but all of those forms require labor and sacrifice, and most people would rather not make the effort. We all have troubles of our own: Families to raise, mortgage payments to make, exams to pass, businesses to run. It's easier to rationalize away the evidence of a corrupt social system.

Obotism is still a problem

Cenk Uygur has been "axed" to leave MSNBC because he hath dared to criticize President Obama. He was, in fact, one of the first prominent Obama supporters to turn on the president, so I'm not at all sure what MSNBC was expecting when they hired Uygur in the first place.

Uygur will be replaced by Al Sharpton, who has a history as an FBI informant. Sharpton remains a die-hard Obot. I'd prefer to have someone else speak on behalf of my values, thank you very much.

Remember when CIA-guy Tom Braden represented "the left" on TV's Crossfire?

White lies. Plus: The Hulk is Catholic

Here are a few brief items worthy of your attention...

White lie 1: Remember when I warned you about Buzzfeed? This garbage article provides a remarkable illustration of my point. The title alone may make you retch: "Can Obama's "Chemical Warfare" Keep The White Vote Down?"

If you read the piece carefully, you'll see that it makes no sense whatsoever. The author cites numbers which argue that Obama needs to retain his share of white voters. A nonsensical article of this sort is nothing but an excuse to put scare words into print. For chrissakes -- "chemical warfare"? What the hell is this guy talking about?

I'm hardly an Obama fan -- I still think that he has been a lousy president -- but if Romney surrogates have stooped to this kind of bilge, then this campaign has entered a very ugly phase.

White lie 2: There's a new Super PAC devoted to helping Romney through racism.

FightBigotry.com, a new Super PAC registered with the Federal Election Commission this week, makes no bones about its aim. It intends to run an attack ad that it says will hit President Barack Obama for “his disturbing, yet crystal-clear pattern of tacitly defending black racism against white folks before and since being elected president.”

FightBigotry.com’s founder and treasurer is Stephen Marks, a well-known Republican opposition researcher whose 2008 book Confessions of a Political Hitman detailed his work in what he called “the dark side of politics.” In 2000, he launched an attack ad under the misleading name “Americans Against Hate,” attempting to tie Al Gore to controversial comments by Rev. Al Sharpton. Another Marks spot in 2004 attempted to link John Kerry to convicted murderer Willie Horton.

I wonder if John Ellis, the author of the afore-linked Buzzfeed article, works for Marks? Sure seems like it. At any rate, you'd have to be one very insecure and paranoid white person to believe this "war on whites" malarky.

Some of my readers may say that Marks' slimeball tactics constitute a justifiable rejoinder to the slimeball tactics employed by the Kossacks and other Obama surrogates back in 2008. Believe me, I still feel infuriated when I think back to those days: Blogland was flooded with robo-comments implying (or stating) that anyone who voted against the Lightbringer must be a racist.

But bad as that was, Marks is up to something worse. What he hopes to do is inexcusable and obscene.

Green truth: Yes, Dr. Bruce Banner's religion is a matter of established canon. The Hulk is Catholic. There must be a dozen jokes germinating within the previous sentence. I leave it to you, the reader, to make them bloom.

You know who else is Catholic? Catwoman. She may be a bit lapsed.

Daredevil and Nightcrawler may be the only observant Catholic superheroes. And they both look devilish. I wonder if the writers were trying to make a point...?

By the way, the Thing is Jewish. His co-creator, Jack Kirby, was very clear about that.

My favorite Jewish superhero is Kitty Pryde of the X-Men. So is it permissible to save the world on the Sabbath?

And they call DAN RATHER irresponsible?

Note these three recent GOP attacks:

1. As part of the $200 million campaign to scuttle Social Security, a GOP front group derived from the unbeloved "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" is running an ad accusing the AARP -- the AARP! -- of being anti-troop and pro-gay marriage. (The ad was pulled.)

2. David Horowitz is trying to smear Barack Obama and Al Sharpton as allies of the Ayatollah Khomeini and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Horowitz believes the link to be literal, not figurative.

3. Bobby Eberle's GOPUSA site (the infamous employer of "Jeff Gannon") published an anti-Semitic screed damning George Soros as a "Shylock" in whom "Satan lives."

The conservatives have gone nuts. I speak literally. They are mentally ill.

American political debate has never sunk to such barbaric, pre-human levels. Are the "Christians" in red-stateland so incapable of independent thought that they can be swayed by such puerile attacks? Comparisons to the Nazi era are unfair to the Nazis; even Goebbels maintained a greater respect for the intelligence of his audience.

Keyser Soze and Bernie Sanders (updated)

The above feed came from this excellent post by John Cole. There you have it, the whole Bernie plan, out in the open: Elect Trump and destroy the Democratic party. Actually, though, it's not really Bernie's plan...

*  *  *

A certain type of movie has a certain type of twist ending.

At the very end of the movie, we learn that an unassuming minor character was actually the arch-mastermind, the hidden string-puller, the Evil One in disguise. The protagonist suddenly realizes the truth. The film replays brief flashbacks, intercut with the hero's horrified expression: Oh my God... Now I understand...

The Usual Suspects pulls off this trick, as do Unbreakable, The Illusionist and a number of other films. Diabolique is probably the first -- and best -- example of this kind of twist ending, the kind that forces us to re-evaluate everything we've seen.

Reading up on Roger Stone has made me feel like I'm living in that kind of movie. Stone has been a recurrent "hidden" villain in the pages of this blog -- and I didn't even know it.

Stone did not create the PUMA movement of 2008 -- that happened on Riverdaughter's site, and I trust her thoroughly. But Stone's forces were quick to seize upon any fissures within the Democratic party.

It's an old gambit. In 1972, Nixon's men (of which Stone was one) sought to have the Democrat run against a black candidate, just to force the leading Dems to criticize that candidate. Within the black community, those criticisms would be portrayed as racist. Leftist whites would have been of immeasurable help in spreading this Nixonian propaganda.

(Do you recall the GEMSTONE plots from Watergate? This particular plan was code-named "coal." Cute, huh?)

In 2008, a black man was arrayed against a white woman. If the woman won, McCain would have picked a black veep. But the black guy won, so McCain picked a female.

That's how Stone thinks. That's how he operates. His number one ploy is to create divisions within the Dems.

Half the PUMA movement in 2008 (your humble host now understands, as flashback scenes play in the great cinema of his mind) was a Republican ratfucking operation. It's easy to tell who the real PUMAs were: They're the ones who support Hillary now. The ratfuckers were HillBuzz and No Quarter, run by Larry Johnson of the CIA.

Have you seen Johnson's site lately? Pure poison.

Birtherism originated on Johnsons' site. I'm proud to state that I was among the first to demonstrate that Johnson's evidence was a pack of lies.

And now, the Trump sites are claiming that the PUMA crowd (which they falsely construe as a bought-and-paid-for arm of the Clinton campaign) originated the birther trope. Another lie. Riverdaughter, Dakinikat, Alessandro Machi -- we were all opposed to that birther nonsense.

Birtherism was gifted to the world by the ratfucker PUMA sites, primarily No Quarter.

How do we know that No Quarter was working with Roger Stone? In a word: "Whitey."

There were only three sources for the rumor that Michelle Obama was caught on tape using the epithet "whitey" -- Larry Johnson, HillBuzz...and Roger Stone. Stone pushed the meme as hard as he could on TV.

HillBuzz went so far as to claim that Obama had made the outburst at a specific luncheon. I spent an entire day trying to track down people at that luncheon. When I finally got through to two journalists who were there, I found out that the claim was false.

That was my first "Oh my god -- Kevin Spacey was Keyser Soze all along!" moment.

I understood who Larry Johnson really was. (Okay, I had suspicions -- after all, look at the guy's resume. I even tried to trick him into showing his true colors. That's a long story best told another time.)

But I did not understand the Roger Stone connection to Johnson, even though it's obvious now. It was kind of brilliant -- introducing the birther meme on sites that could (superficially) be placed in the Clinton camp.

In truth, I should have understood the HillBuzz connection all along. They've been promoting the inane notion that Obama is gay. (Does that sound like Stone or what?) One site referred to "Mr. HillBuzz" as the "craziest homocon since Roy Cohn."

(That's a reference to Stone's mentor -- who, according to Stone, was not gay: "He just liked to have sex with men." Stone, I think, could do it with anything and anyone. That guy could lay a brick.)

Escorts. The flashbacks keep coming: Now I understand...now I understand... 

If you're a longtime reader, you know that I spoke at length with Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called DC madam. She could not understand why she was singled out by the Bush Justice Department when other escort providers were allowed to go about their business unhindered. She thought that one of her girls had formed a relationship with a bigwig on the level of Dick Cheney.

But the facts laid out in the preceding post suggest an alternative scenario.

In order to comprehend my point fully, you should first understand that Stone has gone to amazing lengths to take down any Indian casinos which compete with Trump casinos. His attacks on the Seminoles in particular were quite obnoxious.

By taking down Deborah Jeane Palfrey (a.k.a. "Pamela Martin"), the Bush DOJ made sure that a competing agency -- which just happened to bear the name Trump International -- had a clear field.

Actually, there was another competitor called The Emperor's Club. That escort service was destroyed by the Eliot Spitzer scandal.

And how did that scandal come to light? Roger Stone somehow found out about Spitzer's bad habits and sicced the FBI on him. Funny thing: No-one really knows how Stone learned what he learned. And you certainly can't expect to get a straight story from Stone.

Bmaz at Emptywheel noted that the FBI's investigation into Spitzer pre-dated Stone's letter to the Bureau. I cannot say for sure what the sequence of events was, but I do know that the Bush administration owed a lot to Roger Stone. If not for Stone's "Brooks Brothers" riot, Al Gore might have been president.

We've all thought that Spitzer was the only target of that scandal. But what if it was a twofer? What if one main goal was taking down another competitor to Trump International Escorts?

Now, Roger Stone -- the man who brought down Eliot Spitzer, the worst enemy the Wall Street bandits ever faced -- is trying to portray Hillary Clinton as being in Wall Street's pocket.

Roger Stone is a master of the high hypocri-seas. He has played libertarians against establishment candidates and vice-versa -- at the same time. Everybody must get Stoned.

And that brings us to Bernie. This is not the big Bernie piece I've promised. But we must note that a headline like this one -- Amid Democratic infighting, polls are improving for Trump -- is precisely what Stone wants to see.

This is the reason why Stone created the Sanders movement, just as Stone previously created the movements of John Anderson, Ralph Nader and Al Sharpton. (True, the Sharpton thing kind of petered out prematurely: Roger Stone is not infallible.)

I've learned that the fight in Nevada broke out because Sanders couldn't provide delegates who were both Democrats and Nevada residents. The BernieBots brought in Republican ringers, then tried to force a last-minute rules change.

It's pretty obvious that Bernie Sanders is working with the Trumpian hordes. Why else would a "socialist" hire a hatchet man like Jeff Weaver -- who, according to a number of sites, is actually related to Karl Rove?

Josh Marshall says that the vile behavior of the Bernie movement traces to "the top," by which he means Sanders. No. Bernie is not the top. "Keyser Soze" is the top.

Y'know those shots fired into an empty Sanders HQ in Nevada? An obvious false flag. The idea may even have been whispered into Weaver's ear by his relative Karl Rove. (Remember when Rove bugged his own office to smear an opponent?)

The Clinton camp had nothing to gain from that broken window -- they were, in fact, making headway in portraying the Sanders supporters as maniacs (as in fact they are). Whenever you face a whodunnit of this sort, ask "cui bono?" and the answer quickly becomes pretty obvious.

Now let's go here:

Sean Spicer, the chief strategist and spokesman for the RNC, spent much of the evening tweeting Sanders-friendly commentary on the debate, often with the pro-Sanders hashtag #FeelTheBern. At one point, Spicer gently chided Sanders for what he deemed a poor response to a question and added, “come on we are trying to help u.”

After the debate, the Republican political action committee America Rising promoted the narrative that Sanders won the debate. “Clinton needed a win last night. Instead, everyone is talking about how well Bernie Sanders, her chief rival, did,” spokesman Jeff Bechdel wrote to reporters.

Meanwhile, American Crossroads, a group co-founded by Karl Rove, is airing an ad in Iowa bolstering a core tenet of Sanders’s case against Clinton: that she has received large sums of campaign contributions from Wall Street, and therefore can't be trusted to crack down on big banks. “Hillary rewarded Wall Street with a $700 billion bailout, then Wall Street made her a multi-millionaire,” a narrator in the ad says. “Does Iowa really want Wall Street in the White House?”

These Republican operatives are attempting to pick their Democratic opponent in the general election, and they’re making clear they’d rather face Sanders than Clinton. It is age-old political manipulation tactic, typically used with some subtlety.

Now go here:

The theft of highly valued, early state Hillary Clinton voter data by the Bernie Sanders campaign was unethical, absolutely worthy of DNC sanction, and possibly criminal.

The Sanders’ campaign response to the exposure of getting caught was, on the other hand, surprising and, regrettably, worse than the theft itself. Instead of quickly taking responsibility, mitigating damage, and moving forward, Bernie himself was nowhere to be found [Update: directly challenged at the debate, Sanders apologized], while Jeff Weaver relished the role of a Democratic Karl Rove, projecting the fault of the accused onto the accuser.

Worse still, Weaver carried this message of reverse victimization to Sanders’ supporters, creating an epistemic closure narrative worthy of the worst of conservative media.

From Toobin's classic piece on Stone:

Stone’s rules: “Attack, attack, attack—never defend” and “Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack.”

That's what Weaver and his tools (I'm looking at you, Salon) do all the freakin' time. If Weaver is a lefty, why is he using the Stone playbook?

I've met a few socialists similar to Sanders in my time. They are usually harmless. They've never before been capable of this sort of vileness. No real socialist would ever get within ten feet of a consummate creep like Jeff Weaver.

Now go here for a discussion of Stone's days with NCPAC (a group he helped found):

They would help Ron Paul win his first election in Texas; they would take down John Culver of Iowa, George McGovern of South Dakota, Frank Church of Idaho, and Birch Bayh of of Indiana. It was not about ideology, it was about you winning and the other guy losing. “We want people to hate Birch Bayh without even knowing why,” explained Dolan.

Sound familiar?

(We haven't even begun to look into the spooky links to Stone's ops. Church was the worst enemy the CIA ever had.)

Keyser Soze, I now believe, was the one who rigged the comments of every left-leaning blog in 2008, pitting black against white, male against female.

Keyser Soze is the one rigging the comments now. Keyser Soze freakin' owns Reddit.

Throughout so many years, I've tried -- in my own small way -- to do battle with an enemy whose name I did not know and whose face I could not recognize. Belatedly, I understand.

I know who Keyser Soze is.

Time to go, Bernie (added note)

From Talk Left:

Looks to me like Bernie Sanders' supporters caused the chaos at the Nevada Democratic convention.

At the point where Sanders' personal goals interfere with those of the Democratic Party (on whose ticket he is seeking a place), it's time for him to go. That time has come, in my view.

Goodnight Bernie, please come back in 2020, on some other party's ticket.

Sanders won't leave and he won't tell his zombie followers to behave. Everything Sanders has done, is doing and will do proves my theory: He is dancing to Roger Stone's tune, just as Al Sharpton and John Anderson did in previous elections.

What a coward Bernie is. I used to admire him; now I cannot stand that man. If he got within spitting distance of me, he'd need a beach towel.

ADDED NOTE: A reader has pointed out the eerie similarity between the BernieBro riot in Nevada and Roger Stone's "Brooks Brothers" riot in Florida, 2000.

If the trick worked before...

Here are some videos of the Sanders mob in action. Disgusting!

Also see here:

It was only a little over a week ago that dozens of angry Bernie Sanders fanatics turned an appearance by Hillary Clinton in East L.A. into a gauntlet of screams and obscenities directed at her supporters. In spite of that fact, backed up by a whole slew of first-person accounts and on-scene pictures and video, there are still those out there who maintain that tales of Sanders's rabid fan base attacking anyone who supports Clinton, either on social media or in person, amount to nothing more than a myth. That there simply is no problem, or that if there is, it has a direct equivalent on the Clinton side. They deny the months of atrocious and often delusional behavior online and now, as the path to the nomination for Sanders has narrowed down to nothing, the very public lashing out against the sworn enemy of these dedicated disciples -- Clinton.

I don't expect what happened at the Nevada Democratic Convention yesterday to convince any of those particular people given the depth of their denial, but for the rest of us it's yet another example of just how far off the rails the Sanders campaign has gone. So what did happen? It started when Sanders supporters on hand at the Paris Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where the event was being held, complained that a "minority report" they'd produced, alleging that 64 Sanders supporters had been denied delegate status, wasn't accepted by the state party. State Democratic officials explained that they'd denied the report because those supporters' records couldn't be verified or they weren't registered as Democrats by the necessary deadline. In response to that, a large group of Sanders supporters on-hand rushed the stage and loudly booed and shouted down Sen. Barbara Boxer when she called for unity against the Republican threat. They angrily rejected appeals for calm.

Yet the BernieBots continue to lie and lie and LIE about what happened.

That's how it is with these zealots: everything's a conspiracy against Sanders; he's not really losing by millions of votes, the votes in his favor are simply being suppressed; there's no problem with his rabid acolytes behaving like tantrum-throwing children, it's all a lie perpetrated by the greatest liar of all, Hillary Clinton. This is what it looks like when delusional devotion trumps the ability to accept reality.

CBS disallows comments on internet stories about Obama

Why won't CBS allow comments? Because every Obama story gets inundated with disgusting, childish, racist insults.

CBSNews.com does sometimes delete comments on an individual basis, but Sims said that was not sufficient in the case of Obama stories due to "the volume and the persistence" of the objectionable comments.

No doubt the name-callers whose comments were deleted complained that they were victims of censorship!

CBS had no choice but to suspend commentary altogether. Otherwise, CBS would function, unintentionally, as the vehicle for sentiments the company considers low, unworthy, dangerous, degrading and wrong.

There are times when I kid myself -- when I think that we have, as a nation, largely conquered our founding evil. I know that people across the political spectrum say that they would vote for a black man. For many years, here in Los Angeles, we had a black mayor, and he was generally held in high esteem. The time is right for a black president. The time was right ages ago.

And yet.

As you know, Republicans love to pass around email "jokes" about well-known liberals. I've noticed a pattern: The "jokes" which attack Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton -- and now Obama -- have a bite, an edge, a meanness that exceeds anything the conservatives spew about Michael Moore, George Soros or any of their other betes noirs. Even Hillary has an easier time of it.

I now support Obama's candidacy, even though I remain unsure that he can be elected in our present climate of ugliness. No: Precisely because I doubt that he can be elected.

Guiliani or Thompson will probably beat him; either man could probably beat any Democratic candidate. But Obama has many virtues: He's good on (most of) the issues, he can think on his feet, and he has charisma. Despite his troubling lack of experience, he would probably do well in office.

More than that. I want the privilege of saying that my political party was the first to nominate a black person. You may insist that this is the wrong reason to support any candidate, and you may be right. Hell, Obama himself would surely tell me not to support him for that reason.

But I don't care.

I can't think of any better way to say screw you to those sunzabitches who forced CBS to take this step.

Now read this

For an important perspective on Burkett and the document fiasco, read this piece by James Moore, whose keen vision spots Rovian fingerprints.

I will repeat my previous advice: View with extreme caution the Murdochian squib on veteran filthy trickster (and Al Sharpton manipulator) Roger Stone. Stone is too much the wild man for a brilliant, calculated maneuver of this sort.

The telling incident: Stone refused to deny involvement. If he were involved, he would of course offer a quick denial.

What do YOU think?

A correspondent directed my attention to the following letter to Bev Harris, published on the Jeff Fisher page. I do not know who wrote it; it is signed "r.g.". I will presume that this missive is an "open letter," and thus available for partial republication here.

My correspondent considers this text hokey. I'm not at all sure what to think. Do not presume that I endorse the conclusions here; for legal reasons, I've disguised certain names. For the unexpurgated version, follow the link.

As Mike Myers (imitating his mother-in-law) used to say, discuss among yourselves...

Jeff has specific evidence of a widespread vote fraud perpetrated through a Juvenile Detention / Rehab facility called **** Schools In South Miami, with connections to Mel S*** and possibly Joe K***....

These connections lead directly to Jeb Bush and of course the White House. By using Juvenile Detention & Drug Rehab facilities and under the guise of criminal computer retraining, we believe S*** has financed a well tested vote fraud scheme to assure his cronies Jeb & George Bush, among others, guaranteed elections.

Specific evidence includes copies of internal memo's and emails as well as testimony of the MIS Director of one Florida facility where much of the hacking was perpetrated. The work was replicated and limited to one location to avoid easy detection.

The MIS Director is currently in hiding. Jeff can reach him.

By internally tampering with Diebold Optical Scanners as well as Diebold Electronic E voting machines, the hacking, (done from remote locations under the control of Mel S***'s facilities (see below), votes were altered, switched, deleted or detroyed in numerous Florida, Ohio and New Mexico counties and then switched from John Kerry to George Bush.

It is very likely that other races have been effected as well such as Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina , etc. WHERE POLL DIVERGENCES WERE NOTED IN RECENT POST ELECTION STUDIES.

Mel S***'s Drug Rehab and Juvenile Detention Center's are under investigation and are and have been sued for a huge laundry list of extremely abusive behaviors...

The vote fraud system was first tested in 1999. Used in the Florida Presidential Election in 2000. Tested again successfully in Jeb Bush's race against Janet Reno and then Bill Mc Bride and finally in the 2004 Presidential Election. Also Georgia.

The second part of this scheme seems to be that they also cover their tracks by using the names of Felons and others purged falsely onto the Felon voter roles. This I believe allows them to seem to use legitimate numbers by first inflating the roles and them flipping or using them in some places with out drawing to much attention. This also may be why we saw so many overvotes in places where there weren't enough felon votes. This last sentence is my speculation.

The scheme used computers at their facilities, an MIS director who trained juvenile delinquents under custody as well as others to hack into Diebold systems around the country and place software kernels that would raise votes for one candidate while deleting the others.

This would explain both the erratic polls discrepancies reported in especially swing states but also here in North Carolina.

These software fixes are supposed to leave no audit trail. This also would explain the seemingly random glitches of people voting Kerry and getting Bush on review or the strange over vote errors. I believe by the seizing of evidence under your FOIA we will be able with the help of experts to discover the audit trail and other evidence of tampering...

Mel S*** made his money, hundreds of millions, building Shopping malls. This was not enough as he wants much more power and influence and has been willing to donate millions to the Republican Party over almost 20 years to buy his access and influence.

And now due to his complete disregard for basic civil and human rights (his abusive facilities are legendary) he is willing to exploit drug addicted juveniles and others under his companies custody to do his dirty work under threat and penalty of death or semi permanent incarceration. After all who would believe a junkie right?...

Information being gathered through the investigation launched by 16th Congressional Candidate Jeff Fisher of Florida currently has the attention of the FBI, DNC under Cam Kerry, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, 60 minutes, The Nation & others.

Please contact us as soon as possible...

I don't know if I should write this

What to write? What to write? I spent all day yesterday trying to think of the right way to respond to the injustices of Ferguson. Anyone unfortunate enough to get within listening distance heard some pretty brutal words -- the kind of words which, if published, might have gotten me into trouble.

The following may seem intemperate. Those around me have heard worse.

While downtown Baltimore yesterday, I talked to an older black guy who derided the rioters in Ferguson. He recalled the riots of April 1968, which destroyed a sector of this city which has never been properly rebuilt. (One of those areas surrounds the cemetery where the fetid cadaver of Allen Dulles lies not far away from the corpse of John Wilkes Booth.) "Rioting never solves anything," he said. Maybe he was right, but I still didn't want to hear it.

Some thoughts:

1. White people -- on teevee and elsewhere -- keep repeating that Michael Brown "charged" the officer's car. McCulloch clearly stated that there was conflicting testimony on this score. The fact that so many white people use that term unthinkingly proves their racism.

I'm sorry, but the R word is justified in this instance. You cannot presume from the outset a point of questioned testimony that should have been determined at trial. Racists consider testimony "credible" only when it buttresses their preconcieved notions. We have to ask ourselves why some pundits don't want "their" witnesses to face cross-examination. What are they afraid of?

2. A man in a car (especially a man in a heavy vehicle like a police cruiser) never -- NEVER -- has anything to fear from a single unarmed individual. That's what the gas pedal is for.

Well, to be fair: If the car is out of gas or trapped between two other cars, the driver may have reason to fear. But Officer Wilson was not in that situation. He could have scooted out of the way and, if need be, called for back-up.

3. McCulloch kept repeating that the Grand Jury made its decision based on physical evidence. It is clear now that this decision was based primarily on Darren Wilson's testimony.

4. McCulloch could have gotten an indictment if he wanted one. As the commonly-heard saying has it, a DA can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. A grand jury was convened purely to allow McCulloch to blame others for his decision.

5. As a reader of this blog put it: "Differing accounts of what happened huh? That's USUALLY why they have trials." Those twelve words sum up this entire post. If we allowed trials to occur only when all witnesses agree, we'd have a lot fewer trials.

6. Wilson's testimony seems to have been a prime example of what the cops in L.A. call "testi-lying." See video above.

7. Why should we trust what the police call "physical evidence"? Why should we trust their testimony? The cops -- in that town and in other towns -- have been running a racket, using poor working people as a cash register. Check out the revealing words about forfeiture in Ferguson's budget (pdf)). And check out this piece. Even the NYT has published an uncharacteristically hip article.

At trial, a clever attorney could have reminded the jury of the many things the cops have done to earn the community's mistrust and hatred.

Frankly, that's the kind of spectacle I long to see.

I would love to see juries automatically presume that the cops are lying in every single case. Not one syllable cops say should be trusted. If a cop says "He wore a blue jacket," presume that the jacket was some other color -- even if you have a photo proving that the jacket was blue.

More than that. Jurors and other citizens should do everything possible to make the lives of cops miserable. A cop's kid should be spat on every single day he goes to school. Cops should wake up to see paint buckets emptied on their cars. Why? Here's why. And here's why.

Keep treating cops like garbage until cops stop acting like garbage. And a hearty FUCK YOU to any thuggish cop who boo-hoo-hoos about being hated by the very people he is trying to serve when he's out there every day putting his life on the line yada yada yada. Cops are hated for good reason, as you can see here.

For the average citizen, the police are worse than the mafia. Until the cops stop functioning as a hyper-mafia, they should be treated the same way the heroic Vietnamese treated French and American soldiers.

I used to have a great respect for policemen. Seriously. I was taught from an early age to revere those guys, and I would love nothing more than to return to that attitude. But damn it, there have been too many stories like this one. And this one. And this one. And this one. And this one.

Cops need to be taught a lesson, and that lesson is this: Actions have consequences. If cops have become robbers -- as indeed they have -- well, they chose that course, and now they must take the consequences.

8. Let's not blame "outside agitators" for the Ferguson riot. Come on: Nobody takes the Revolutionary Communist Party seriously. They're clowns. Frankly, I've always thought that Bob Avakian worked for the feds. The RCP was Ronald Reagan's best recruiting tool on the UCLA campus, back when I was a student there. As for Al Sharpton: He definitely worked for Uncle.

The real "outside agitators" in Ferguson are the cops. The robbing, thieving, ultra-corrupt cops.

9. If a guy like McCulloch recommends peaceful protest -- well, what more evidence do you need? Obviously, peaceful protest is useless. Peaceful protest is what the Establishment wants you to do. (Yeah, I said it: The Establishment. Time for that useful term to come back into circulation.) The Establishment considers protest to be part of the system -- a way for the oppressed to blow off steam.

No.

Do not waste your time with protest. Rebel.

Each of you will have to work out the specifics of how to rebel, although the words written above may suggest an idea or two. But the following two pieces of advice may be of some help.

First, history tells us that the most effective forms of rebellion are planned events, done in cold blood.

Second, being a rebel is like being a boxer: You don't win if you hurt yourself. You have to hurt the other guy.

Added note: I'm getting a lot of hits from the Free Republic. Guess they hate me. Oddly enough, this is one of the few posts I've written containing links to sites run by Libertarians. In these strange times, the usual right/left dichotomy doesn't always tell the full story.

"Rape apologia"

Even in these grim times, people want to talk about below-the-waist matters -- and nothing else. Few care to discuss the "Dreyfus" treatment handed out to poor Bradley Manning, whose only crime was attempting to expose a Pentagon lie. The hot topic is the "rape" (well, rape-ish) allegation against Julian Assange.

All males are penis-monsters, or so we are told by some denizens of blogistan left. Therefore, on some cosmic level, Bradley Manning deserves everything now happening to him. Of course, he is also gay, which means that lefties will grant him a few sympathy points forever denied to one so monsterific as (say) my unforgivably hetero self.

Julian Assange is very, very monsterific indeed. He's male and...(cue the old-time radio music)...he likes to fuck! He likes to fuck women that he has no intention of marrying or even dating on a long-term basis!

As one of my fellow (male) bloggers put it, apparently expecting agreement, Assange "can't keep it zipped." That, it seems, is his true crime. The rape accusations are presumed to be true, because the accuser is female, and women are genetically incapable of lying.

Under our new cultural rules, a woman who sleeps with an entire army division is simply expressing her individuality and empowerment and growthfulness and all of that uplifting stuff. But any man who wants to fuck a woman is an abusive bastard. We remain haunted by the words of Marilyn French: All men are rapists.

This argument is eerily reminiscent of 2008, when the Obama cultists screamed racism at anyone who did not favor their candidate, because there could be no other reason for standing against the Lightbringer. Similarly, anyone who criticizes Israel's ghastly actions in Gaza and Lebanon must be an anti-Semite.

Welcome to the world of identity politics. No more of that messy, frustrating searching-for-truth stuff: Nowadays, everything comes down to group solidarity. Shirts versus skins. Life is simpler that way.

In a private communication, a reader expressed the situation thus:

I'm literally being told "STFU". And this is even despite that fact that I've articulated that I think Assange was a jerk and committed major boundary violations.

One thing I’m told: “questioning the veracity of a victim's actions, regardless of your own circumstances or experience, is rape apologia.”

Note the wording: The accuser is not an accuser -- she is a victim.

I was under the impression that her "victim" status was the very issue at question. It seems, however, that this issue has already been settled before trial, before the presentation of facts -- settled by the mere act of accusation. Even at trial, cross-examination is not permissible. In our brave new world, cross-examination equals rape apologia.

Petitio principii. Begging the question. It's the most insidious of all logical fallacies -- and it's the ideologist's favorite weapon.

"What's this, Cannon? Are you arguing for a return to the bad old days, when a rape victim could expect to have her entire sexual history held up to public scrutiny?"

In answer to that question (which must have popped into the noggins of a few of you), let's look at a famed courtroom case that first made the public skeptical of an accuser's unsupported testimony. The last century gave us many "trials of the century," and this was one of them.

Alexander Pantages. Do you recognize the name? He built what was once my favorite old-time movie palace, now a legit theater near Hollywood and Vine.

In 1929, he owned a large number of major theaters in big cities across the nation. This operation came under the envious eye of one Joseph P. Kennedy, who was then trying to establish himself in film production and distribution. Although Kennedy made a generous offer, Pantages refused to sell his theaters. Kennedy vowed to have them one way or another.

That's when a 17 year-old vaudeville dancer named Eunice Pringle brought a rape accusation against Pantages.

If you think that journalists covering rape trials used to favor males and condemn females, you're wrong. Look up the contemporary coverage of the Pantages case. She was pictured as a mere schoolgirl, a virginal blossom sullied by a fat, greasy foreigner in his 50s.

(Interestingly, the newspapers showed far more sympathy toward Pantages' wife Lois, who, that same year, was found guilty of vehicular manslaughter.)

The newspapers made no inquiries into Pringle's sexual history, yet they published an avalanche of sordid allegations about Pantages -- even though they were irrelevant to the matter at hand. Eventually, these allegations resulted in a secondary trial.

People did not complain when a male's sexual history was placed under public scrutiny. As then, so later: How many so-called liberals objected when Bill Clinton was asked irrelevant questions about his private life during the Paula Jones deposition?

Pantages was found guilty. He hired a couple of sharp up-and-coming young lawyers, who successful engineered a new trial -- precisely on the grounds that the judge on the first trial has disallowed any examination of Pringle's history.

I can guess what you're thinking:

What? They let the jurors hear about her private life, just as they had heard about the private life of the accused? Outrageous!

Outrageous or no, that testimony was heard -- and guess what? Pantages was acquitted.

For good reason.

The record demonstrated that Pringle, a trained actress, had always repeated her story word for word, never changing a syllable -- indicative of coaching. This young lady also had a short but notable history as a con artist. Moreover, she had a rep for sexual promiscuity -- and yes, that news was relevant: A promiscuous 17 year old is more likely than a virgin to allow herself to be used as bait in a honeytrap.

Lawyers reconstructed the crime (which allegedly took place in a broom closet) and proved that Pringle's description of events was physically impossible. The jury then heard evidence that Pringle's manager had made a demand for hush money.

I first read of the Pantages rape case in a book which asserted without qualification that Joseph Kennedy had engineered the Pringle accusation. More cautious writers insist that no hard evidence links the Kennedy paterfamilias to Pringle. Still, most historians familiar with the case believe that the whole thing was a set-up.

No-one can dispute that the scandal ruined Pantages. He lost two years of his life and was forced to sell his theater chain at far less than its value -- to Joe Kennedy.

In the 1970s, many feminists asked why the accuser in rape trials had to undergo so much unfair and obtrusive questioning about past habits. The reason can be summed up in a name: Eunice Pringle. She changed the way American jurisprudence -- and American journalism -- regarded rape accusations.

Is it really the case that anyone who views an accuser suspiciously is a "rape apologist" produced by a "rape culture"?

Consider the Tawana Brawley case. I never condemned Al Sharpton for championing her cause. When women turn on the tears, they wield a weapon more powerful than C4.

Consider Crystal Gail Mangum.

Consider Danmell Ndonye, who withdrew a false accusation of rape after video evidence surfaced demonstrating that the sex had been consensual.

Consider television weather forecaster Heidi Jones.

Consider Paula Jones, who at first told friends that Clinton was "sweet, very sweet" -- and then changed her story, making herself out to be the victim of sexual harassment. Remember?

In late 1997, Judge Susan Webber Wright ruled Jones was "entitled to information regarding any individuals with whom President Clinton had sexual relations or proposed to or sought to have sexual relations and who were, during the relevant time frame, state or federal employees."

Fishing expeditions are permissible when males are targeted.

Ann Coulter considered Paula a "good Christian girl who had suffered sexual harassment." Then she -- Paula -- posed nude for a very hefty sum of money. Labor deserves payment.

Consider Gennifer Flowers, whose story kept growing like topsy. She also got the Penthouse pay-off. Bob Somerby:

Do famous accusers say things which aren’t true? Yes, they sometimes do—although the mainstream press, and the liberal world, worked quite hard to bury that fact during the Clinton jihad. One example: It seems abundantly clear that Gennifer Flowers made up a whole lot of crap about Clinton. (She raked in a whole lot of dough for her trouble.) But so what? By 1998, a jihad was on, with all the fools chasing Clinton around, determined to prove he was vile. As a result, the fools all stood in line to vouch for Flowers’ moral grandeur.

Lucre is not the sole motive. More often than not, accusers are prompted by something other than money.

There are a number of individuals -- male and female -- who wander through life in a haze, unable to determine the difference between reality and fantasy. These people can seem very convincing. I know this from personal experience.

Time to make a confession: I spent quite a lot of time in the 1990s researching a book which would have dealt, in substantial part, with the then-raging controversy over Satanic Ritual Abuse allegations. In that era, there were quite a few women leveling charges at a bizarre occultist named Michael Aquino. I talked to some of these women. Although they had made no formal complaints to the police (at least, not to my knowledge), they eagerly told Aquino-raped-me tales to various writers.

Unknown to these claimants, I had also conferred with a woman named Linda B., who had had a brief (consensual) romantic liaison with Aquino some years before the media discovered him. Linda -- who had parted with Aquino on less-than-amicable terms -- gave me a physical description.

None of the women making "satanic rape" accusations could describe the man accurately. One woman even pretended to faint when I asked for a description! In fact, the accusers didn't even know the correct way to pronounce his name.

I've had more experience with fantasists of this sort than you can possibly guess. They demand victimization status. They crave sympathy the way an addict craves an armful. They can shoot enough moisture out of their eyes to fill the California aqueduct.

(There are also plenty of male fantasists out there. They don't blubber as readily, although they do get weirdly angry over their imaginary abuses.)

For a perfect example of the breed, read the tale of Lauren Stratford, alleged rape victim, Satanic abuse victim and Holocaust survivor. Nothing she said was true. Not one word. Yet some people still believe her -- and some of the believers are motivated by feminist mythology.

I never met Lauren, but I've met women like her -- more of them than you can ever guess. They lied and lied, right to my face. When I finally admitted that I could not believe their allegations, they started making up lies about me.

To this day, I shake with outrage at the memory. In a sense, they were rapists.

So don't you fucking DARE try to tell me that women can't lie.

Here's the truth:

In a study that span nine years, sociologist Eugene J. Kanin’s findings were that in the United States, 41% of rape allegations are false. Kanin discovered that most of the false accusers were motivated by a need for an alibi or seeking revenge. Kanin was once popular and highly praised by the feminist movement for his groundbreaking research on male sexual aggression. His studies on false rape accusations have received very little interest.

Some people have criticized Kanin's methodology. But when Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld of the Innocence Project studied the FBI's testing of semen samples, they found that DNA had exonerated the accused "rapists" in a quarter of all cases. Keep in mind that semen samples are not obtained from many rape accusers. Keep in mind, too, that a false accuser would have to be pretty damned bold to maintain the charge even after physical evidence has been placed on a microscope slide.

Should accusers be investigated and cross-examined? Damned right.

They should be grilled about everything relevant, including, in certain instances, their sexual history. If men have to go through that kind of humiliation, then women should not be exempt. All arguments in favor of double standards are casuistry.

Each case must be judged on its merits; each case demands an individualized approach to investigation. Too often, when objective evidence (such as a video tape) is absent, the only way to get closer to the truth is to allow jurors to learn as much as possible about both accused and accuser.

Yes, that process can be grim, unpleasant and unfair. But what choice is there? The only alternative is to give the Lauren Stratfords of this world free reign to rewrite reality.

No, I am not saying that every female is a Lauren Stratford. That's no more true than is the idea that we live in a "rape culture." But I believe that there are thousands of Laurens out there.

Anyone who respects our legal traditions should never tolerate any question-beggers who automatically refer to accusers as "victims" before the airing of evidence.

In the Assange case, we have a woman who cried rape even though she threw a party for the guy after the incident, even though she slept with him after the incident, and even though she complained to her fellow upper-class activist hipsterettes that he was the world's worst screw. She was not some traumatized, battered Iowa housewife with nowhere to go, and I am infuriated by the scoundrels who have attempted to frame her story in those terms. She belongs to the Swedish equivalent of the "Whole Food Nation." I am never going to believe that someone like that would throw a party for a guy who took her without consent.

This piece has it (mostly) right:

What this unappetising spectacle of feminists telling us that everything with a dick is capable of rape really represents is an attempt to assert one longstanding liberal orthodoxy – that rape is rife – over another, newer liberal orthodoxy – that Assange is an untouchable, saintly speaker of truth to power. This is a competition of victimhoods, with the feminist set within the liberal elite feeling aggrieved that their favoured victims – women, everywhere, at all times – have seemingly been elbowed aside by a new pet victim: Assange and political hackers. There is no meaningful principle at stake here; rather we’re witnessing a clash of miserabilist, conspiratorial outlooks, with one side insisting that all women are at potential risk from ‘rape culture’ and the other side arguing that Assange is at risk from the military-industrial complex’s ‘power culture’.