Kiriakou writes: "Trump's phony populism is really nothing but racism, classism, and what has become of the conservative movement in this country."
Donald Trump. (photo: AP)
Trump's Populism Is Really Racism and Classism
13 September 15
he word �populist� is so overused in American politics. It used to describe a politician who stood with working people or who talked on the stump about inconvenient truths. Now it just means blowhards like Donald Trump, who can�t help but humiliate themselves by pandering to the lowest common denominator among American voters. Trump�s phony populism is really nothing but racism, classism, and what has become of the conservative movement in this country.
Trump is crushing his Republican opponents in early primary and caucus states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina and in nationwide polls. That tells me a lot of Republican primary voters are easily duped at best, and racist idiots at worst.
Trump can�t even keep his own positions on the issues straight. The September 5 issue of The Economist notes that Trump has claimed to be �very pro-choice� and �pro-life.� On guns, he has claimed to support taking all guns off the streets and to �fully support the Second Amendment.� A few years ago he called for a single-payer health system; now he says he opposes Obamacare and will replace it with �something terrific.�
Trump told reporters recently that he wants to build a wall along the border with Mexico, force the Mexicans to pay for it, and expel not only the estimated 11 million undocumented workers in the United States, but also their children who were born here and who are, whether Trump likes it or not, American citizens. Trump obviously doesn�t know history. This is exactly how other fascist governments have gotten started in the past: Expel the �foreigners� and purify the country.
It is Trump�s foreign and military policy ideas (and utter lack of credentials) that frighten me the most.
Last week, the New York Times reported that Trump confused Iran�s Revolutionary Guard�s Quds Force with Iraq�s Kurds. Trump didn�t know who heads the Quds Force. Well, he said he did, and then he told the reporter, �Go ahead, give me a little, go ahead, tell me.� He finally admitted that he didn�t know the players among the world�s various terrorist groups, but he said that wasn�t important. �You know, I�ll tell you honestly, I think by the time we get to office, they�ll all be changed. They�ll be all gone.� We should be so lucky.
Nobody seems to know who, if anybody, is advising Trump on foreign policy. He told NBC�s Chuck Todd that his �go-to� person on foreign policy is former Bush-era ambassador to the UN John Bolton. This is the same neo-con John Bolton who claimed in 2002 that Cuba was selling biological weapons to rogue states and that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger, neither of which were true.
Trump�s military qualifications are even more frightening. It�s not just that he doesn�t have any. It�s that he pretends he does, and he appears to have convinced himself that he knows what he�s talking about. Trump attended a military academy in upstate New York, from which he graduated in 1964. He told a biographer, with whom he later cut all ties, that he �always felt that I was in the military� because of his education at the military school. �I had more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.�
The draft dodger Trump famously criticized Senator John McCain earlier in the campaign, earning the consternation of many mainstream conservatives but no apparent punishment in the polls. �He�s not a war hero,� Trump said of the decorated war hero who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in a Vietnamese prison camp. �He�s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren�t captured.�
So who is advising Trump on military issues? According to Trump, it�s �Jacobs,� apparently referring to retired colonel Jack Jacobs. Jacobs, however, said that although he has met Trump, he has never advised him in any way.
My own belief is that Trump is so arrogant, that he believes himself such a genius, that he has no advisors. He doesn�t think he needs them. He�s just winging it. Do Americans really want a president who describes trade with China as �the greatest theft in the history of the country� and who says that �every single country that does business with us is ripping America off?� Do Americans really want a president who has repeatedly filed for bankruptcy, yet still declares that he�s the �greatest businessman in America?� Do we want a president whose knee-jerk reaction to criticism is to launch personal attacks against the person making the criticism, even when he comes off as an unhinged maniac? Apparently some of them do.
MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber took a lot of heat in 2014 for saying that American voters are essentially stupid. The sad truth is that he�s right. At least, the 28 percent of Republicans polled who think Donald Trump ought to be the next president are.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
John Kiriakou is an associate fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies. He is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
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Right on, Dave. Given that the Pentagon isn't required to account for its expenditures in any detail to Congress*, why would anyone begin to think we would? Oh, right, that comment was from "Iraqi officials..."
*Defense Spending Is Overstated, GAO Report Says
Or do we deal with it by letting the Fed print more of those pieces of paper ?
Seriously, if you were able to total up all the money that "went missing" or was "wasted" during the 8 years of the Bush/Cheney regime, it would be in the trillions of dollars. The reason the US economy is so bad right now is the 8 years of misrule by the Bush/Cheney regime.
Read Thomas Fran's The Wrecking Crew about how Repbulicans deliberately wreck government and its programs. He's got it just right -- looters and wreckers. It is funny that our mass media gets so hysterical when a riot breaks out and a few store windows are broken and some stuff looted. But when a Republican regime loots the entire nation of trillions of dollars over 8 years, the mass media does not even peep!
how stupid are we that we let them take our government and loot the treasury time and time again. we're STUPID!
and it's in the news again. GOP DESTABILIZING ECONOMY TO WIN POWER.
destabilizing the economy, flushing us down the toilet in the process, to gain power in congress, and then getting power to flush us down the toilet again.
you're right rm LOOTERS AND WRECKERS. THEIVES!!!!
Read Thomas Fran's The Wrecking Crew about how Repbulicans deliberately wreck the government. Medicare part D is the biggest giveaway ever a half a billion dollars to the insurance companies every year while they decimate those who cannot afford the added insurance payments and copays. This will soon have a bigger cost than the one time giveaways. "I want to shrink government until it will fit in the bathtub so I can drown it."
And you're right about Thomas Frank's book. I read it and thought I knew the extent of the problem - it's worse. Much worse. We're about to lose our democracy.
Somebody, somewhere, knows where this money is. It's just top secret right now.
Anyone who votes Republican these days is either stupid, willfully ignorant or filthy rich. Anyone who votes Democratic can expect their elected officials to follow in the path of Republicans. Anyone who votes for a third party is giving their vote to a Republic or a Democrat, depending on how right- or left-leaning the third-party candidate is.
We're screwed.
Unfortunately, the laugh is on us. It is our [tax] dollars being flushed into the void.
Welcome to the plantation.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/dispatches-iraqs-missing-billions/
This is not fresh news. It's only fresh to people who have never heard of it. The above link will take you to a website where you will be able to play & watch, free, an unabridged complete version of a documentary titled "Iraq's Missing Billions." This came out in 2006 & was aired many times on FSTV. I recorded it multiple times on my DVD burner, but if you wish to watch it, just go to the above referenced site.
If you have the latest version of Real Player, it would be better for you to download the video as a .FLV file to your hard-drive first so you can watch it at your leisure. Real Player allows you to do this. It is a large file. You can then watch the film using Windows Media Player, but I would suggest that you download & install the latest version of Media Player Classic. The quality of the video may not be the best played full screen, but it will suffice.
This is an amazing & unbelievable video to watch when you see how they handled the billions of dollars in actual real cash & how they ultimately protected it, which was a complete joke. I would tell you to enjoy it, but it will probably get you angry as to how the money was spent & how it disappeared. Enjoy anyway.
When Bush started banging the drums for war I listened to what all the administraion hacks and their media promoters said and none of it rang true. Yet someone had to gain by our going to war. I finally decided, still prior to the war, that it had to be a giant money-launderin g operation designed to turn public funds (tax dollars)into private profits. I guess every war has that motivation but, perhaps it is not quite as blatant as it was this time.
Stealing all the money that belonged to the Iraqi people after having destroyed their country is even more appalling though. But as Obama and the new U.S. Ambassador to Iraq said- "That's all in the past. Let's look to the future."
Has it ever occurred to them, or to anyone else for that matter that EVERY CRIME IS IN THE PAST. But we still lock criminals up and these people deserve to be locked up, for life-or maybe suffer a trial like Saddam!
Do they really expect us to believe that no one knows what happened to the money? and that it can't be found? How dumb do they think we are?
What is most salient is the corporate media was passing the missing 6+ billion as some sort of accounting snafu.
Is it any wonder that one of the smallest nations in the world is paranoid about its political independence when surrounded by these nations?
I am not talking about the right or wrongs of Israels actions on it own behalf. I am talking about its paranoia.
The United Nations seems totally incapable of stopping these outrageous actions totally outside the confines of of the United Nations Charter.
Either the Charter stands for something or it doesn't.
If the Charter stands for nothing than let's get the hell out and quit wasting our money and our young men and women on a meaningless piece of paper.
Wasting money in Iraq and other mid east countries will continue as long as Israel is in fear of its existence and money will continue to be wasted on meaningless wars.
there you are , jail the bastards !!!
Cut Medicaid to cover it...
Cut School Funding to Cover it...
Cut Student Loans to cover it...
Cut funding for Planned Parenthood to cover it...
Cut the Budget for the EPA to cover it...
Cut the Budget for the FDA to cover it...
Cut Funding for FEMA to cover it...
Stop fixing OUR Infrastructure to cover it...
Cut Anything but Defense Spending and...
MOST CERTAINLY--- DO NOT RAISE TAXES ON THE SUPER DOOPER GLOBAL CORPORATE WEALTHY to cover it.
Just ''cut cut cut'' those pesky '''social things''' so unnecessarily there for All Americans---and then--Cover It...
and then--- Let IT Go..!
Don't Mention IT or anybody involved with IT again...
Its in the Past now where all Big Corruption belongs in Modern, 21st Century, DeRegulated, Corporate-Under Taxed,Corporate -Media-Controll ed, Far-Less-Republ ic, Far-More-Corpor acratic America...
So what if a few got super rich. There's plenty to go around if only we would get rid of THE NATIONAL BUDGET with only a few Corporate-Belov ed Exceptions.
You want to be ''rich''.. right..?
Apparently...
The only guy in jail is that poor sap that sent out the truth.
As huge a crime as it is--- What's $6 Billion in missing cash compared to he even larger, more massive 'Treasonous' crime of $12 Trillion in Deficit Spending by Government Regulation/Taxa tion Hating, Global Corporatist 'Bushie' CONservatives who set about deliberately draining the Treasury into the hands of their Corporate Supporters and running up massive Deficits and National Debts in order to FORCE the end of the modern, middle class creating, 'FOR' The People Government which was created by the New Deal and Great Society Concepts and Budgetary Formulations born out of that Great Ideology which the 2% Wealthy Global Corporate Class and Republicans have been systematically attempting to dismantle ever since the creation of it all began..?
And, whether those who believe in less and less and less and less and 'Less Government' understand what they effort for or not, as a deliberate agenda or not--- in the end, it ends up being done FOR THE SAKE OF CREATING A GLOBAL-CORPORAT E-OLIGARCHICAL- WORLD EMPIRE CENTERED WITHIN AMERICA where 2-3% of the Wealthiest Corporate People on Earth achieve dominion over EVERYTHING...
I'll bet lots of those gunny sacks full of cash are in the closets of stateside GIs and contractors now retired and living the rich life.
Hmmmmmmmm Little Timmy Gietner was the NY Fed.... Check his and Paulsons and all the GS guys... They are more than Willing to create Fraudulent dark vault deriv's why not a flat out load it in a truck and drive off scheme too. They new when it was leaving. BUt My moneys on the BUSH crime family!
The hubris extant at the time of the invasion of Iraq defied any oversight and yes, if anybody has worked in the Middle -East or overseas in general, bribery is a way of life (they are just more open about it than the Beltway crowd) just like bargaining for goods is (I could have retired rich just on the bribes I was offered in Indonesia). But any such sum(s) could and should have been at least estimated in a "contingency" clause in each contract to keep the warlords (I mean the local ones) happy and on the "right side".
And don't forget that cosy photo of Rumsfeld and Saddam fondly shaking hands when he was "our good guy". You don't suppose all that passed between them was accounted for, d'you? Or maybe it all came out of the still heavily and secretly funded C.I.A. "Black Budget" which even most legislators aren't even party to?!
It is written that in the end-times, evil will shamelessly strut about in broad daylight. Sound familiar?
`We the People` need to stop giving the Government the money and more important, the ability to continue taking and adding to the taking.
I am not satisfied with the distribution of my taxes and especially of the use of my future taxes.
Lets pay attention to the other 364.5 days expenditures also