Wanna know Salon's dark secrets? The site is funded by the DoD and investment banking.

To paraphrase the guy who does the CinemaSins videos: This shit is shit.

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 emails

Can 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."