A lot of people think that Salon is in the tank for Bernie. No. They're in the tank for Trump -- officially.
Sanders supporters, you've been conned. Salon has used you. Lied to you. Salon is doing what it can to elect Trump because Salon is heavily funded by the Department of Defense and by investment banking.
Don't believe me? Before the end of this post, I'll prove it.
First, though, let me state that I've never seen a more infuriating collection of half-truths and outright lies than the nonsense you'll find at the other end of the above link. The writer of that piece of garbage wants us to believe that Trump is some sort of peacenik anti-neocon, even though he is enthusiastically supported by John Freakin' Bolton -- one of authors of the Iraq war -- and even though his foreign policy advisers are Walid Phares (the Lebanese mass murderer) and the ultra-reactionary Joseph Schmitz. Trump has pretty much admitted his intention to declare war on Iran. Yet we're supposed to consider Hillary a war-monger.
Outrageous. I don't see John Bolton, Phares or Schmitz offering any pro-Clinton commentary. And I would note that Salon, in publishing this piece, is doing precisely what Donald Trump wants.
Of course, the consummately loathsome Salon hack H.A. Goodman (not an actual progressive, but a highly deceptive supporter of libertarian Rand Paul) chimes in with a post urging the FBI to uncover (nonexistent) dirt about Hillary Clinton.
Please, FBI — you’re our last hope: The Democratic Party’s future rests upon your probe of Hillary Clinton’s emailsCan you believe this? Goodman is such a freak that he wants an FBI investigation to be guided not by the evidence, but by Clinton Derangement Syndrome.
Salon is irredeemable. Do not subscribe to it, do not write for it, do not read it. Expose it. In its current incarnation, Salon is no longer anything like the fine site that David Talbot originated.
We know that Salon has struggled financially for years. It's a money pit. The question which few bother to research is this: How does Salon stay alive?
Although Salon routinely scores Hillary for taking speaking fees from bankers, this stance is pure hypocrisy. The site still exists because it receives massive financial injections from an investment banker named Bill Hambrecht, whose other interests indicate that he is motivated by profit.
His shadowy donations to Democratic congressfolk appear to exemplify the very problem that the supporters of Bernie Sanders claim to abhor.
Why does Hambrecht keep tossing millions of dollars down a financial sinkhole? Nobody knows. But I know this: Salon cannot pretend that it receives no money from the world of investment banking.
Hambrecht & Quist was acquired by J.P. Morgan. Bill Hambrecht left the company he started, so we cannot fairly blame him for the sins of the parent firm. But if Morgan had not received TARP funds after the crash, Hambrecht & Quist (hit hard by the crash) probably would have just gone out of business. And if that had happened, would Bill Hambrecht now be in a position to toss money at Salon?
If the answer to that last question is "no," then is it unfair to posit that TARP indirectly funded Salon?
Hambrecht's daughter Betsy was Salon's CFO and is now the CEO. She used to work for Goldman Sachs. Yet Salon has the gall to berate Hillary's alleged Wall Street ties!
I should also make clear that Hambrecht's "OpenIPO" model is considered a less-corrupt alternative to the traditional form of IPOs. However:
A rule called Regulation A, dating to 1933, permits firms to sell up to $5 million in securities without filing a full registration statement with the SEC. If Congress and the SEC were to lift that ceiling to $30 million, says Mr. Hambrecht, more small companies could go public more easily. Of course, small stocks have always been a favorite sandbox for fraudsters, touts and pump-and-dump promoters, so investors always need to be on guard when investing in these companies.A President Trump would be able to give Hambrecht what he wants -- and when that happens, boy-o-boy-o-boy: All hell will break loose. Pump-and-dump schemers like Jonathan Lebed will go freakin' nuts.
The other main funder of Salon -- in fact, he's the Chairman of the Board of Salon -- is Adobe Systems co-founder John Edward Warnock. Now that Salon has become a pro-Trump propaganda site, we should rethink our attitude toward Adobe products.
Adobe keeps Salon alive. But why? Salon loses buckets of money every year. Salon makes no sense as a business venture.
Bernie supporters may not know that Adobe has spent millions of dollars -- using former government employees -- to lobby Congress, primarily in support of Defense authorization bills.
Are you curious to learn why Adobe has spent big money to make sure that congressfolk vote yea on things like the Department of Defense Appropriations Act (2015), the Carl Levin National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2015, and the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015?
I'll tell you why: Adobe spends money to bolster the Defense/Industrial complex because Adobe itself is heavily tied into the Department of Defense and the world of classified intelligence.
Hit the above link, and then go here.
And here.
Adobe Systems Federal is an Adobe subsidiary, set up entirely to work with the Department of Defense. It works closely with Carahsoft Technology (of Reston, VA) which bills itself as "The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider." Almost needless to say, they've received funding from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's investment organization. Check out the "Company" that Carahsoft keeps.
Adobe Systems Federal is located in Maclean, VA. How much do you want to bet that they'll start winning lots of contracts when Trump becomes president?
"I do the best deals." -- D. Trump, 2015.
Bottom line: Salon would not be alive today without cash infusions from an investment banker (one who wants to make life easier for pump-and-dumpers) and a Defense contractor. Everything that Salon has published about Bernie Sanders is pure hypocrisy.
You've been hoodwinked, progressives. Played for suckers.
A few words about H.A. Goodman: Here's his resume -- what we know of it. Anything about it seem "spooky" to you? The Foreign Services Institute is not the CIA, but it may fairly be considered part of the intelligence community. If you do a little Googling, you'll find a pattern: Example. Another example. Another example. Another example.
It may be telling that Goodman studied International Relations at USC, which has a longstanding relationship with CIA -- in fact, the Agency openly recruits there (also see here). Two former directors of the Agency ended up at USC: David Petraeus and John McCone. (I need not remind my readers that the intelligence community has a long history of seeding their own into the field of journalism.)
Even fellow Sanders supporters think H.A.G. is full of shit. In his hilariously misleading pro-Rand Paul piece, Goodman tried to convince readers that Paul does not want to dismantle Social Security; the opposite is true.
Walker Bragman wrote the pro-Trump piece which triggered my research into Salon's funding. Bragman, who apparently considers himself the True Voice of Progress and a Defender of the Downtrodden, is a smirky, arrogant, and very pale hipster from East Hampton, "one of most desirable zip codes among the monied set."
15 comments:
Trump could win this. The shenanigans in New York's voting might have helped Clinton, but they won't in the full election. And Trump would make it plausible that a Republican could win New York, because it's his state. Obviously Hopsicker just published some sinister information regarding the voting company involved.
Interesting post on Salon, which I hope reaches a wide audience. People are being taken for a ride by the ICIJ's Panama story too.
I hadn't heard of Joseph Schmitz, but I looked him up because I like to police usage of the term "reactionary", which sometimes obscures how capitalism's overall clock runs forwards, not backwards, even if there are cultural aspects of society in which it may run backwards. I can't fault the usage in respect of Schmitz. The guy describes himself as a "former foetus" and says that on that basis his feelings about abortion are similar to the feelings that "most women" (his words) have about rape. What a kook. He's Opus Dei, right?
Is it looking like a Trump win, then?
It's hard to imagine that all this effort will lead merely to a Tea Party 2 under a Clinton presidency. If I'm not mistaken, the McCain and Romney campaigns didn't run such ops on such a scale?
CNN is a far bigger threat than Salon. It has been in the tank for Trump since he announced his candidacy. It has been virtually the Trump News Network.
Still highly doubt it be will win.
Holy crap, you've discovered a mainstream news site with ties to the oligarchy and the deep state? It's like you went to the beach and discovered water.
Meanwhile, the Salon article is a thought exercise--how might Trump be worse than Clinton or vice versa, and it seems fairly evenhanded to me. I know enough about both to know they're both unacceptable, as do most progressives. Nevertheless, "Bernie Bros!!!!!", amirite?
I look forward to your deep-diving screed about "Hillary Bros": http://www.caucus99percent.com/content/how-low-will-clinton-trolls-go-they-hacked-bernie-facebook-accounts-post-child-porn
1. Trump can't win in ny.
2. Salon may well be hypocritical about their complaints regarding links to GS. But one can't argue that HRC isn't absurdly close to GS. You may not consider that a problem. I think that 2008 was caused by politicians being too close to wall street, and that the problem is ongoing.
3. Sanders has lost. Some of us are sad about that. At this point HRC can either move left to heal the rift or move to the centre to try and win moderate Republicans. I bet she goes for the latter and she delivers a couple of hippie punches while she is at it. What can i say? Mazeltov.
4. My reason for supporting Bernie is that I think people are underestimating quite how bad the economic situation is in the US. This is the recovery. The next recession is not so far away. The proxy variables I focus on are the life expectancy for whites (deaton-case), and the decline in self identified middle class from 61% to 51%. These are cataclysmic numbers - soviet union collapse type numbers. Im wrong a lot, and I may well be wrong about this but I think the US is on course for a spectacular economic collapse. If that collapse happens with the prevailing conventional thinking still in place, a lot of ordinary people will suffer terribly.
I think the popularity of Sanders and Trump is the populations way of trying to warn the elite they are already in extremis. Ignoring that message is probably a mistake.
But hey, what do I know?
Harry
I've talked about the Facebook hack. Clearly the work of either the BernieBots themselves -- remember how Karl Rove bugged his own office to frame an opponent? -- or Roger Stone. I favor the Stone theory.
Obviouisly Hillary's camp did not do that. Why on earth would she? The Clintons have always run clean elections, and on that night she pulled far ahead. You don't cheat when you're winning handily.
Whether Hillary goes for reconciliation is her business. I will not reconcile. I used to admire Sanders a great deal, and gave him positive coverage when he entered the race. Now, he makes me retch. He has run a FILTHY campaign.
Harry says Hillary was "absurdly close to GS." No she wasn't. Jeez, I can still recall 2008 when Josh Marshall was decrying the Goldman Sachs money bestowed on Hillary, while ignoring the even greater amounts that were lavished on Obama.
The point is, Salon is RUN by a Goldman alum. And funded by a Wall Street investment banker.
The hypocrisy is both dizzying and emetic.
Harry's question was whether Hillary will move to the left ideologically or to the right. That's a very good question.
b: Of course I'm predicting a Trump win. I always predict the worst.
Everyone who makes predictions is wrong sometimes. Therefore, it is safest to predict the worst outcome on all occasions. That way, when you have to admit that you got it wrong, you do so only at those times when something NICE has happened -- which certainly takes the sting out of making a humiliating admission.
Anon: Candidates traditionally veer to the left or right (depending on the party) in the primaries and then head for the center in the general. I don't know why it would freak you out if Hillary did that.
Oh wait...I know: Clinton Derangement Syndrome. When Hillary does something that every other winner of the nomination has done, we're all supposed to be HORRIFIED.
A good many liberal ports in the blogosea have been shitting on that eminently shitable Salon sausage. I've despised Salon for years because I could smell rotting garbage in nearly everything they wrote. I vaguely recall some incredibly hysterical pieces back when the Duke Lacrosse scandal had all the liberal knickers in a knot. (Believe it not, I had some highly inflammatory comments and emails back then because I sent up flares that the true story, i.e. the facts. was not what was being passed around like an STD. Anyway...) Another great bit of research, Mr. Cannon. Kudos. I will make sure your post is starred in my meager space.
No wonder Joan Walsh left Salon.
So I can see that I may have offended. If so I apologize. I have no issue with your point about Salon being a by-product of GS. Ìt makes perfect sense. In the past I worked in finance and for consultancies which held an affiliation with the Dems. I have my own impressions about HRC relationships with the financial sector. Others will have different impressions and I think it's a personal judgement. I think there is a serious FP issue with HRC and you of all people will be aware of it. There is no need to elaborate. You have employed your judgement to decide how important it is, and what the facts are. Who am I to tell you different?
But it does occur to me that a lot of the friction within factions of the Dems is an intergenerational issue. We are transitioning from the incumbent leadership of the Dems to its next generation. The irony is a 74year old is leading that generation, but it's not so weird. He is the last hippie standing. It doesn't look as if that transition is going to be without rancor. Neither is it going to go away, but I don't think it's a bad thing. Science progresses one death at a time. Why shouldn't politics be the same?
I don't get why you and others are so angry with Sanders supporters, but then I haven't seen their offensive emails and comments. The fact that there are other bloggers who are equally angry confirms your point. I suspect the ultimate problem is that kids today are not so polite.
We disagree about the electability of Sanders, but I can see that your case is much stronger than mine. I need to employ a leap of faith. Never a good sign.
Best wishes and apologies
Harry
A British exit from the EU, a Trump entry into the White House, the election of dozens of AfD deputies to the German Bundestag next year - could easily be. Maybe Marine le Pen in the Elyseé too. Am I keeping with the optimistic spirit? :)
Joseph, like Harry, I have serious problems with Hillary on Foreign Policy. And yes, Joseph, almost all candidates move to the center to consolidate a majority. I think Hillary is needs to be very careful with that strategy. She has spent the last several years trying to move to the right (if she wasn't already comfortable there), to be 'strong on defense', etc. to try and bring around the mythical moderate right to her once they realized that this cycle's clown posse on the right is even more ridiculous than in '12.
This time, the more left, or liberal, or progressive or whatever the Bernie crowd calls itself (and I am one of most of the terms) aren't going to just fall in line. I believe she really has to to some work to convince them to come along. going further right will not do that, and she needs that group more than the center right to win, IMHO. And yes, I know all the arguments of cutting off noses to spite oneself and it will be a disaster if Trump wins. The court, trade, war (though Hillary will be hard to rein in from our neo-con mess). She will have to sell the program hard, because the liberal left is finally getting tea-party pissed about being ignored and lied to for years, including by her husband and O. It puts her on a tightrope in high winds. I hope she pulls it off. I am not under the illusions of youth - that was the 60s for me. So I will support her once the convention is done. Until then, I want Bernie moving her further left. For all of us.
Hope that isn't just a rambling mess... ;)
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