Guest Post By Tim Russo: How To Fght Anti-Semitism Smears Against Bernie-- Scorched Earth

I’m probably the only American on earth, quite literally, who’s followed every single deployment of the antisemitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party, and the radical left since the day Corbyn decided to run for Labour leader in 2015. All of them-- click around my site. Fight me. As such, I’ve been waiting for the now building tsunami of these same smears against Bernie Sanders like a kitty kat tapping my wee wittle feeties for a few years. Now that this tsunami has begun to arrive, and will never stop, here’s my advice for whenever you hear someone claim, or insinuate, or wonder (just wondering!) that Bernie Sanders, a Jew, is antisemitic. This advice is for anyone, Jew or Gentile. Equally useful.

1. Fuck. You. The only way this smear works is to assume that a Jew must hate themselves so much as to hate all Jews, an assumption which itself is of course antisemitism to its stinking core. Bernie must hate himself, a Jew, because everyone hates Jews, riiiiggghhhtttt?????? Thus, the person confronting you with the smear that Bernie Sanders is somehow antisemitic hates Jews themselves, deeply, whether they know it or not. Thus, you are staring vicious hate straight in the face. What an opportunity, then, to fight the best of fights. If it is a close friend bringing this hideous pile of shit to you, be strong, and be prepared to end that friendship in a blaze of glory, because you should not be friends with antisemites happy to prance around with it in public. Put your dukes up, for the Lord works in mysterious ways, and let them fucking have it. You’ve always wanted to burn a bridge or two, admit it, so, flame on! Channel Sherman marching to the sea through Atlanta. Burn it to dust.

2. No quarter. None. The gravest error the Labour Party made in the face of these endless smears was to take them seriously. Upon becoming Labour leader, Corbyn launched “investigations,” convened “committees,” created a “process” for “discipline,” thereby chaining Labour to the smear like a stone around their neck. MP after MP was hauled before these idiotic collections of brain dead apparatchiks to answer for every single coarse word they ever uttered about anything, but most of all, Israel, (we’ll get to that), and every person they ever so much as shared a bus stop with. It wasn’t just MPs-- random people online, children, grannies-- the whole internet was scoured for sacrificial lambs to tie to the stake, then lather rinse repeat. It remains ongoing and will never end. Never, ever, go down that road-- someone asks you for “proof” or demands anything at all, you tell them you will fuck their ass so hard they’ll shit the proof out their own mouths.

3. Unleash it all. You took notes in 2016, remember? You saw how every single concern troll bait and switch worked against Bernie. You took them all seriously, earnestly debating, playing nice. Remember where that got you? Nowhere. (then President Her lost to an orange billionaire shitting into golden toilets tossing babies in cages. Hear Her Roar!) This smear is your opportunity to stop playing nice, and let it all fly like the wind. Spread your wings, channel your anger into righteousness, and set phaser on blast, comrade. Rejoice in it. Revel in it. Shine on you crazy fucking diamond.

4. Fuck Israel. The paper trail of these smears leads directly to lobbyists literally on the Israeli government’s payroll, every single time (google Luke Akehurst). The point of the smear is to protect western military aid to Israel and perpetuate Palestinian oppression. FACT-- the state of Israel is not Judaism. To boot, for my entire lifetime, the state of Israel has jacked America up in more horseshit than any other nation state on earth, to the point that now they are inserting themselves into our political processes to smear an actual Jew. (election interference! oh bloody hell never mind) Thus, Israel can go fuck themselves. You’ve always wanted to let fly on Israel, now is your chance. Fuck them and the horse they fucking road in on, I am so sick of this piddly ass little country the size of god damned Rhode Fucking Island dragging us around by our short and curlies just so a bunch of Rapture Awaiting Holy Fucks can rub their AR-15 on their pencil dicks to jack off imagining every Jew incinerated by the end of days. Blow me.

5. Keep going. The good news is that deployment of this smear against Bernie Sanders means he’s winning. As the saying goes, you are seeing the whites of their eyes. Ready, aim, fire. At will. Delight in it. If you’re in public, make a scene. Wave your arms around wildly like you’re Groucho Marx or some shit. Leave an indelible warning that if you hear a single utterance of this type one more time, you will crawl up that person’s ass with a microscope and display their entrails across the interwebs for all to see, then put the kettle on, take a rest, and do it again. You’ll enjoy it tremendously. Trust me.

6. Magnify the backfire. Deploying this smear against an actual Jew is so disgusting, the bigger your blowback, the better. It will all benefit Bernie, and already is. Thank whatever god you pray to for this opportunity to be an instrument of his or her will. Then do it again.

Another Point Of View: Lessons for Bernie from Britain 2019

-by Tim Russo

Yesterday, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party couldn't wait to declare that Corbyn's loss in the U.K. meant that only a right-wing Democrat could beat Trump here. Bloomberg-- an actual Republican calling himself a Democrat and trying to buy the Democratic nomination-- called the election results in the U.K. a "catastrophic warning" to Americans. In a swipe at Bernie, he asserted that "Americans want change but I don’t think they want revolutionary change." Status Quo Joe also tried pinning Labor's loss on Bernie and Elizabeth, arguing that Boris Johnson’s resounding victory should warn Democrats against veering too far left in their fight to defeat Trump. Biden, at a fat cat fundraiser in San Francisco, gloated "Boris Johnson is winning in a walk... Look what happens when the Labour Party moves so, so far to the left. It comes up with ideas that are not able to be contained within a rational basis quickly." So let's turn to our old friend Tim Russo to get a broader understanding of this than Status Quo Joe or Little Michael will ever have. Tim worked for both the successful Bill Clinton campaigns and in the U.K. for Tony Blair's 1997, 2001 and 2005 campaigns. He knows something about U.K. electoral politics.
-DWT

Trying to reverse an election result is suicidal. The good news from yesterday’s election is we will never again hear anyone claim #RussiaDidBrexit. British voters wanted Brexit in 2016, and they will damn well have it, even if they have to get it by giving a landslide to Boris bloody Johnson, mate. In the US, voters wanted Trump, and no amount of “impeachment” performance art smearing of Laurie Anderson’s shit into her own hair (Hillz) while Yoko Ono screeches in the corner scratching at the strings of a cello with her teeth (Pelosi) will reverse that. The opportunity for Bernie Sanders here is abundantly clear-- he should oppose impeachment. Should have done so some time ago, but there’s still plenty of time to step away from the cliff Labour has spent 3 years hurtling itself over.

It’s suicidal to compromise with centrists, which is why centrists propose it. Since becoming leader in 2015, and accelerating since the 2017 election which saw Labour nearly win, Corbyn bent over backwards to reach out to the Blairite rump of centrist New Labour dead enders, who refused the Brexit result, demanding another referendum. It was folly. On Brexit, Corbyn thus contorted himself and Labour into a caricature. Everyone knows Corbyn’s been at best an EU skeptic his entire life. Corbyn’s (and historically, Labour’s) natural position is to argue Lexit-- a left Brexit-- that the EU is a capitalist vampire squid feeding upon us (conveniently, also true). But by this 2019 election, Remoaners hell bent on a second EU referendum had forced Corbyn to not just put a second referendum into the Labour manifesto by last September’s party conference, reversing the 2017 promise to respect the 2016 Brexit result. They even forced Corbyn, on national television no less, to the point of promising himself in a debate last month to not even take a position in that promised second EU referendum, a plainly seen cowardice Corbyn claimed as some sort of “leadership”. Idiocy.

Winning the nomination is only the opening bell. It’s a common Yankee mistake to assume the smear that Labour under Corbyn became a Nazi antisemitism hive comes from the Tories. Third Way Blairite dead enders launched that smear in spring 2015 before Corbyn even became leader, and have only accelerated it. Not a day has passed since Corbyn became Labour leader in 2015 without knives of this nature plunged into his back, deeper every single day, by his own party. Centrist petty bourgeoisie will not just go away-- they are in an existential fight for their existence as capitalism slowly collapses around them, thus will only get more desperate, foul, and dangerous.

Go for broke. When Corbyn became leader, my only policy concern stateside was whether or not Labour under Corbyn would promise in an election manifesto, as it had before World War II, to abolish the medieval relic of the City of London Corporation, the world’s largest tax haven black hole. Never happened, in both Corbyn manifestos. Since the City is a thousand years old, has no constitution, and is nothing but a set of fangs sucking on the world, if history remembers Corbyn for anything for very long, that failure will be what sticks. Corbyn regularly pre-compromised in this manner, for example, promising that re-nationalization of British rail would be somehow “funded”, as if “shareholders” needed “compensation” for their trouble. Why? That’s like having to pay someone who stole your house then destroyed it to get your house back. Complete madness.

A movement must become a machine. Corbyn’s Obama like tendency to pre-compromise reached full flower in the 2018 conference fight over whether or not to subject Labour MPs to mandatory re-selection every election (like a US primary), rather than as now, automatically. This was how the movement within Labour wanted to get rid of the recalcitrant coup plotters-- just toss em out. Alas, Corbyn again compromised with the snakes whose sole purpose was to poison him, creating a strange “trigger process” requiring massive organization merely to put selection on the agenda of a local constituency Labour Party. Unless institutionalized, movements fizzle into moments, which is what happened to Corbyn’s moment. Like Occupy and the Arab Spring before it, or Bernie Sanders 2016 after it, when a movement is slowed to a stop, it scatters to the four winds in a thousand directions, becoming disillusioned and despaired, incapable of being reborn. Movements are not bottomless wells of energy to be tapped on demand. They must be capitalized on, immediately, to become machines which operate independently of any leader, or moment, or idea. A movement must become power, or it is wasted and lost.

There’s always a bright side. There is simply no point in taking seriously any of the people who wish to destroy you. You must defeat them, then build power on top of their dead carcass. The forces of capital know this very well-- they don’t need to rely on the ephemeral moments movements create; they already have power, bottomless billions of it, and will never stop using it. Likely proving this deliciously will be McKinsey Pete Buttigieg in the next 2020 debate. Even Liz Warren, capitalist who loves markets to her bones, will preach at us to #BeCareful! about moving too leftward! To a fundraiser of ghoulish rich rattling their jewelry at him, of course, the slowly bleeding out Joe Biden gasped for breath with this same ‘warning’ as if Brexit never occurred, as if he hadn’t crafted capital’s incarceration police state end stage with his own hands still dripping with the oil blood of Iraq, whose greenhouse gases burn the planet to a cinder for profit as Joe sucks on his wife’s fingers. No wonder Uncle Joe has trouble breathing-- he’s choking on what he himself has wrought. I had hoped a Labour victory this month would show the world a socialist party could win in half of the transatlantic “special relationship” that is the foundation of neoliberal capitalism. I guess we’ll have to settle for a few hard lessons that really need to be internalized before the Iowa caucuses on February 3, 2020, to show a socialist can win in the more important half of that transatlantic relationship. Timing is everything, as the saying goes.

Is There Anything To Learn From The U.K. Elections? Part I

"Massive" 43.6% win

Before people kill themselves over the terrible results in Britain yesterday, remember, more people voted against Boris Johnson and the Conservatives than voted for them. His party only took 43% of the votes. The British version of gerrymandering gives him a commanding control of Parliament, not the will of the people, despite all the crowing from the corporate media and rightist politicians from Trump to Biden. This is what actually happened:

• Conservative Party- 13,966,565 (43.6%)-- 365 seats (+48)
• Labour Party- 10,295,607 (32.2%)-- 203 seats (-59)
• Liberal Democrats- 3,696,423 (11.6%)-- 11 seats (-1)
• Scottish Nationalists (Scotland)- 1,242,372 (3.9%)-- 48 seats (+13)
• Green Party- 835,579 (2.7%)-- 1 seat
• Brexit Party- 642,303 (2.0%)-- no seats
• Democratic Unionist Party- (Northern Ireland) 244,128 (0.8%)- 8 seats (-2)
• Sinn Féin (Northern Ireland)- 181,853 (0.6%)- 7 seats
• Plaid Cymru (Wales)- 153,265 (0.5%)-- 4 seats
• Alliance Party (Northern Ireland)- 134,115 (0.4%)-- 1 seat
• ocial Democratic and Labour Party (Northern Ireland)- 118,737 (0.4)-- 2 seats (+2)

Cas Mudde is an international affairs professor at the University of Georgia who writes for The Guardian. He's not buying all the Biden-Bloomberg and corporate media crap that Labour's loss in the U.K. means the Democrats have to move right. "In many ways," wrote Budde, "the results were in line with broader trends in Europe, notably that (radicalized) mainstream rightwing parties are quite successful, as, for instance, in Austria and the Netherlands, while social democratic parties are getting hammered virtually everywhere, irrespective of whether they are 'moderate' or 'radical.' The idea that British elections are most similar to U.S. elections is based on a simplistic understanding of the two political systems. It is true that both share a first-past-the-post system, with single-member districts, leading to a two-party system, but that is about it. The UK has a parliamentary system and the US a presidential one, which puts much more emphasis on one person and makes the undemocratic electoral college the key decider."

But most importantly, all elections are still primarily national rather than global. The British election had its own, partly unique, issues and candidates. First and foremost, the election was about Brexit, an issue irrelevant to the U.S. electorate. Also, Corbyn was an extremely controversial candidate. While very popular within the (new) party base, and among millennials, 61% of Brits had a negative opinion of Corbyn, which included particularly older white men, who vote in large numbers. This unpopularity was only partly related to his “hard left” platform; issues such as his weak stance against antisemitism and his non-position on Brexit didn’t help either. To be fair, Johnson isn’t popular either, but he is much less unpopular than Corbyn.

So, which lessons can we draw for next year’s presidential elections? Many, although most are general lessons, not specific to this result.

First, unpopular candidates can win elections-- a lesson we should already have drawn in 2016. It doesn’t matter whether a majority of the population dislikes you, but that a majority of the voters likes you. Trump’s base might be small, but it is mobilized and united.

Second, internal divisions, over candidates and policies, will harm both support and turnout. While Corbyn has a pretty strong grip on the party membership, which is why he can probably stay on to oversee his own succession, he has been involved in an ongoing and public conflict with much of his parliamentary party. Moreover, the party was internally divided over key issues, most notably Brexit. This all meant that the Labour party contested the elections with an unclear profile. Given the divisions within the Democratic party, and the open animosity between donors and supporters of both “moderate” and “radical” candidates, there is a serious risk that this could harm the Democrats in 2020, too.

Third, the electoral system is key to any successful electoral campaign. Plurality systems are extremely disproportional. In Thursday’s election the Tories got one seat for every 38,304 votes, while Labour needed 50,649 votes for each seat-- the numbers for the Liberal Democrats and Greens were 331,226 and 857,513, respectively. Moreover, Corbyn’s “dramatic” result last night was only 3% lower than the 35.2% that won Tony Blair his third election in 2005. The U.S. system is even less democratic, given that the electoral college trumps the popular vote.

Fourth, and most importantly, campaigns matter. Yes, Labour had fantastic short videos, and an incredibly detailed and elaborate election manifesto, but its campaign missed a clear focus and target-- obviously, in large part because Corbyn was unwilling to take a clear position on the key issue of the election. In sharp contrast, the Tories had a clear message (“Vote to deliver Brexit; vote to respect the referendum”), however problematic in reality, and spent much of their money on Facebook in the last week of the campaign, when many voters decide whether and who to vote. The Trump campaign has been spending millions of dollars on Facebook for the last year, pushing a very similar message-- in the language of its leader, “DEMOCRATS WANT TO STEAL THE ELECTION.”

What this all means is that Democrats should put much less trust in general polls, as in a highly polarized country like the US average levels of public support do not necessarily tell us much about who will win the presidency. What matters is who shows up. Republican voters know who and what they will show up for. Do Democratic voters?

Part II will be tomorrow in this same time slot.

Boris Johnson Saw The Election Results In Kentucky, Louisiana And Virginia And Decided To Keep As Far From Trump This Week As He Can

Trump is trying to make the British parliamentary elections about himself, which brings great joy to Labour and great heartburn to Boris Johnspm and his Conservatives.

More than a few people say that Trump's toxicity cost the GOP the governors' mansions in beet-red Kentucky and Louisiana and both houses of the state legislature in Virginia. Virginia Republicans held their losses to a minimum by persuading Trump to stay on his side of the Potomac and not come into the state and campaign for GOP candidates the way Bernie and other Democrats were campaigning for legislative candidates. But in Kentucky and Louisiana Trump made numerous forays to campaign with Matt Bevin and Eddie Rispone, clearly making each election a referendum on himself. The night before the balloting in Kentucky, Trump told a huge audience in Fayette County, addressing Bevin "If you lose, it sends a really bad message. You can't let that happen to me." But they more than let it happen too him. In 2016 Hillary beat Trump is Fayette County 69,776 (51.2%) to 56,890 (41.8%). Last month Beshear beat Bevin, Trump's candidate there with a much higher Democratic and independent turnout than in the presidential election-- 73,397 (65.5%) to 36,915 (33.0%).

I suspect that a British expert of U.S. politics explained what happened in Kentucky, Louisiana and Virginia to Boris Johnson because soon after those elections, Johnson publicly called for Trump to stay out if the British elections when he's in London this week for a NATO summit. "What we don’t do traditionally as loving allies and friends, what we don’t do traditionally, is get involved in each other’s election campaigns. The best (thing) when you have close friends and allies like the US and the UK is for neither side to get involved in each other’s election."

Trump has already been denouncing Jeremy Corbyn and urging Johnson to form an electoral coalition with Nigel Farange's neo-fascist Brexit Party.

Last week, the New York Post reported that "Corbyn has used Trump’s praise of Johnson as one of his focal messages to attack the Conservatives in his campaign, saying they would sell off parts of the much-loved state-run National Health Service to the US businesses after Brexit if they win the election. The Sun newspaper reported on Friday that senior Conservative Party figures feared [Trump] could say something during his two-day visit that upsets their campaign."

Over the weekend, Washington Post reporters William Booth and Karla Asam wrote that "Trump just can’t seem to stay away from British politics. He’s fired off comments on topics including Brexit, his low opinion of a British ambassador, and how his Trump-branded golf course in Scotland 'furthers U.K. relations.' So there’s little surprise that the American president is playing an outsize role in Britain’s upcoming elections-- for good or bad, depending. In Britain, more than any other country aside from the United States, Trump has sought to bolster his political allies and trash his detractors."

One British Conservative former parliamentarian, an old friend, told me today that "Trump sees Boris winning big and wants to glom onto that to burnish his own sagging image at home-- after losing every election he's interfered with... Whenever Trump gets involved it's always about himself and that's the last thing any of us want over here. He's poison."

Last week, the New York Times's Annie Karni explained why Johnson is trying to avoid a one-on-one meeting with Trump, even though Trump is scheduled to meet with Merkel and Macron. Trump is very unpopular in the U.K. and is widely seen as a bull in a china shop even by people who don't especially dislike him. Karni introduced her piece by reminding her readers that he "barreled into London like a bowling ball on his first trip to Britain as president last year, testing the special relationship by criticizing then-Prime Minister Theresa May’s approach to Brexit in the pages of The Sun ahead of his visit while praising her political rival at the time, Boris Johnson."

Johnson hopes Trump is pacified with a reception-- which Johnson won't be attending-- at Buckingham Palace hosted by Queen Elizabeth, especially now that Season 3 of The Crown is a hot on American TV.

It is unusual for the president not to participate in a bilateral meeting with the leader of NATO’s host country. While the president’s schedule was still in flux, one official said the reason for not scheduling a meeting was that Mr. Trump was “very conscious of the fact that we do not interfere” in other country’s elections.

The official also noted that Mr. Trump “likes Prime Minister Johnson personally.”

It went unspoken by the White House that Mr. Johnson has been desperate to keep Mr. Trump at a distance in an election where the American president is now seen as radioactive to many of his supporters. “What we don’t do traditionally as loving allies and friends, what we don’t do traditionally, is get involved in each other’s election campaigns,” Mr. Johnson said in a radio interview last week.

Whether Mr. Trump is able to heed the “stay away” signals Mr. Johnson has been waving in his face remains to be seen.

If he does, it would mark a big departure from his style on previous visits. Mr. Trump’s interview with The Sun defined his awkward trip last year to Britain, where he was forced to dismiss his own, recorded interview as “fake news” while standing next to Mrs. May at a news conference.

The White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, said on Friday there were currently “no plans” for a follow-up interview with The Sun, a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch.

But Mr. Trump has a history of making life difficult for foreign leaders hosting him abroad. In May, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan rolled out the red carpet for him during a state visit, Mr. Trump seemed to undermine all of the pomp and circumstance by downplaying concerns about North Korea’s tests of short-range ballistic missiles, even as Mr. Abe called them a violation of United Nations resolutions.

During his two days in London next week, Mr. Trump is scheduled to participate in a working lunch with representatives of Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Britain. He also has meetings scheduled with the prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, whom he clashed with over his interest in potentially purchasing Greenland, and the prime minister of Italy, Giuseppe Conte.

“We have a good story to tell,” Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary, said in an interview, noting that European allies have stepped up their financial commitments to the organization. Mr. Stoltenberg said he also expected the leaders to address China as a new challenge to NATO.

“NATO has been focused on Soviet Union, Russia, then terrorism,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. “Now we also need to understand and address the consequences of shifting global balance of power and the rise of China.”

Senior administration officials also described the anniversary gathering as a “celebratory leaders meeting” and said that Mr. Trump was “greatly looking forward to it.”

Republicans Will Do Anything To Sabotage The Impeachment Against Trump

"Please stop using the Latin phrase 'quid pro quo' regarding the impeachment inquiry," is what 33 writers suggested in the NY Times yesterday. "Most people don’t understand what it means, and in any case it doesn’t refer only to a crime. Asking for a favor is not a criminal act; we frequently demand things from foreign countries before giving them aid, like asking them to improve their human rights record. That is not a crime; the crime is President Trump’s demand for something that will benefit him personally. But using this neutral phrase-- which means simply 'this for that'-- as synonymous with criminality is confusing to the public. It makes the case more complicated, more open to question and more difficult to plead. Please use words that refer only to criminal behavior here. Use 'bribery' or 'extortion' to describe Mr. Trump’s demand to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, making it very clear that this is a crime. The more we hear words that carry moral imputations, the more we understand the criminal nature of the act."

Eric Swalwell, a guest on Face the Nation was good with that yesterday. He picked "extortion," as you can see if the clip up top. "We have" he told Margaret Brennan, "enough evidence from the depositions that we've done to warrant bringing this forward, evidence of an extortion scheme, using taxpayer dollars to ask a foreign government to investigate the president's opponent."

Adam Schiff by Nancy Ohanian

This is all driving Trump out of his adderall-infected mind. On Saturday he tweeted or retweeted 82 times, many of the tweets fighting against impeachment. He mentioned "impeachment," "impeach" or "impeachable" nine times, "Schiff" eleven times, the same number of time he mentioned "whistleblower."

And if he wasn't crazy enough before, what do you think this Rolling Stone title will do for him: Trump Sycophant Lindsey Graham Says 'Whistleblower' Is From the 'Deep State'. The loony and instinctually deceptive South Carolina closet queen and Senate Judiciary Committee chair has been all over the map on the transcripts. He boasted he hasn't and never will read the transcripts and the following day said he's read every word of them and has come to the conclusion there's no there there. "I’ve written the whole process off. I think this is a bunch of B.S.," he insisted. He's cracking up almost as much as Trump is.

Peter Wade wrote in his Rolling Stone piece that Trump and his regime "are too incompetent even to attempt the extortion plan, saying that the administration’s Ukraine policy was 'incoherent,' adding, 'They seem to be incapable of forming a quid pro quo.' So, the over-the-top Trump sycophant decided to go full Alex Jones and has turned to conspiracy theories to take heat off of the president. On Sunday, Graham told fellow Trump ally and Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that the whistleblower, who initially brought the Ukrainian scandal to light, is part of the fictional entity called the deep state while also accusing Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of wrongdoing.

Unfake News by Nancy Ohanian

Lindsey: "When you find out who is the whistleblower is, I’m confident, you’re gonna find out it’s somebody from the deep state. You’re gonna find out find they had interactions with Schiff and this thing’s gonna stink to high heaven." Wade added that "With public hearings set to begin next week, we can expect more of the same from the president’s defenders. Trump’s actions have given them few other options."

Whites are now a minority in Kevin McCarthy's district Central Valley district and yet-- for some reason they have refused to answer satisfactorily-- the DCCC has continued never recruiting a candidate to run against him. Odd, isn't it? You can walk-- hike-- from the northern tip on Adam Schiff's district (Soledad Canyon Road) to Quartz Hill at the southern tip of McCarthy's district-- straight through CA-25. But it wasn't very neighborly for McCarthy to assert on Fox News yesterday that Schiff is single-handedly orchestrating a calculated coup against Trump and that Pelosi is the speaker in name only. Like everyone in DC, McCarthy is aware that Schiff doesn't make a move without clearing it with Pelosi first. McCarthy, as always, is just continuing to suck up to Trump. Why doesn't the DCCC go up against this pathetic clown?





Russia's on-going interference in the Brexit campaign-- and European elections-- were test cases for their on-going interference in American electoral politics. Other than Devin Nunes and Moscow Mitch there aren't many people who can deny that Russian money flooded into elections in Germany, Holland, France and the U.K... and then, the U.S. Now, in the midst of a U.K. snap election, is Russian money financing the Conservative Party again?

Yesterday, the Sunday Times reported that Britains' intelligence agencies are furious over Boris Johnson blocking publication of a report on Russian money flows into U.K. politics. Wealthy Putin cronies in London-- some of whom have become close with Johnson-- have given millions of dollars to the Conservative Party. Alexander Temerko, for example, who has worked for the Kremlin’s defence ministry and speaks about Johnson as a friend, "has gifted more than £1.2m to the Conservatives over the past seven years." The giving has increased dramatically since Jonson moved into Number 10 Downing Street. Between November 2018 and October 2019 Russians connected to the Kremlin have been around half a million pounds into the Conservative Party.

Culprits include Russian bankster Lev Mikheev, energy oligarch Alexander Temerko and Lubov Chernukhin, wife of Putin-s uber-corrupt former finance minister Vladimir Chernukhin. In 2014 Lubov donated £160,000 to the Conservative Party for a game of tennis with Johnson and former prime minister David Cameron, as well as a further £30,000 for dinner with the current Education Secretary Gavin Williamson. In total-- just last year-- Lubov gave the Conservatives £450,000.

A Labour Party official, Andrew Gwynne, responding to Johnson blocking publication of the report by pointing out that "Billionaires fund the Conservative Party, so this sordid cover up shouldn’t be surprising. The Tories blocked this report and oppose tax transparency so their billionaire backers can continue to rip us off unchallenged."

The Tories insist they're not purposely blocking the report, just that it takes a long time for things to get published.

Suddenly it matters which one is Lev and which one is Igor

And speaking of Russians... how about Ukrainians? Late yesterday, the NY Times dropped a doozy on Trump's head, Giuliani Associate Sats He Gave Demand For Biden Unquiry To Ukrainians. Lev-- of Lev and Igor-- went to Kiev before Zelensky's inauguration and announced that unless the new government publicly announced that it was investigating the Bidens, "Mike Pence would not attend the swearing-in of the new president, and the United States would freeze aid." Lev will be swearing to this when he testifies before Congress in the impeachment inquiry. This directly challenges the narrative of events from Señor Trumpanzee and his goon squad and directly links Giuliani "to threats of repercussions made to the Ukrainians, something he has strenuously denied." Igor denies there was any ultimate. And Giuliani said "Categorically, I did not tell him to say that."

The dispute represents the clearest indication yet that Mr. Parnas, who was indicted along with Mr. Fruman last month on campaign finance charges, has turned on Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani.

...Mr. Parnas’s account of the meeting, if corroborated, would reveal the earliest known instance of American aid being tied to demands for Ukraine to take actions that could benefit Mr. Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign. It would also represent a more extensive threat-- to pull Mr. Pence from the inaugural delegation-- than was previously known.

...Only three people were present at the meeting: Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman and Serhiy Shefir, a member of the inner circle of Mr. Zelensky, then the Ukrainian president-elect. The sit-down took place at an outdoor cafe in the days before Mr. Zelensky’s May 20 inauguration, according to a person familiar with the events. The men sipped coffee and spoke in Russian, which is widely spoken in Ukraine, the person said.

Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, Joseph A. Bondy, said the message to the Ukrainians was given at the direction of Mr. Giuliani, whom Mr. Parnas believed was acting under Mr. Trump’s instruction. Mr. Giuliani said he “never authorized such a conversation.”

A lawyer for Mr. Fruman, John M. Dowd, said his client told him the men were seeking only a meeting with Mr. Zelensky, the new president. “There was no mention of any terms, military aid or whatever they are talking about it-- it’s false,” said Mr. Dowd, who represents Mr. Fruman along with the lawyer Todd Blanche.

In a statement on Friday, Mr. Shefir acknowledged meeting with Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman. But he said they had not raised the issue of military aid. Mr. Shefir said he briefed the incoming president on the meeting. Mr. Shefir was a business partner and longtime friend whom Mr. Zelensky appointed as his chief adviser on the first day of his presidency.

“We did not treat Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman as official representatives, and therefore we did not consider that they could speak on behalf of the U.S. government,” Mr. Shefir said. He added Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman had requested that Mr. Zelensky meet with Mr. Giuliani.

Mr. Shefir said in his statement that he had told Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman “that we could consider meeting with Mr. Giuliani, but only publicly and officially and only after the inauguration of the newly elected president.”

The statement from Mr. Shefir, issued in response to an inquiry from the New York Times, did not directly address Mr. Parnas’s claims that he had delivered an ultimatum about American aid in general and Mr. Pence’s attendance at the inauguration. A representative for Mr. Zelensky did not respond to a request for further comment.

Mr. Bondy, Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, challenged Mr. Shefir’s characterization. “It would simply defy reason,” he said, “for Mr. Shefir to have attended a meeting with Mr. Parnas if he did not believe Mr. Parnas spoke for the president, and also for Mr. Parnas not to have conveyed the president’s message at this meeting.”

Mr. Pence did not attend the inauguration. His office said in response to questions from The Times that it had told Ukrainian officials on May 13, a week before the swearing-in, that the vice president would not be there.

Pence, Lev & Igor, Trumpanzee, Rudy-- The Gang's All Here

Foreign Correspondent: Boris, Brexit, and the British Election

-by Reese Erlich
@ReeseErlich

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Britain’s tousle-haired answer to Donald Trump, came into office promising to leave the European Union by October 31. He declared that he would rather “die in a ditch” than stay in the EU past that date. But by mid-October he had to ask the EU for an extension and, while not dead, Johnson may be lying in a ditch of his own making.

Britain and the EU have extended the deadline for their divorce, known as Brexit, this time to January 31. Parliament, meanwhile, voted for national elections to be held on December 12. Johnson hopes to win a majority, ram Brexit through parliament, and then implement his party’s anti-worker, conservative policies.

Britain’s Labor Party, led by unabashed leftist Jeremy Corbyn, strongly criticizes Johnson’s Brexit plan as hurting working and middle income people. Corbyn promises to negotiate better terms with the EU and then put the agreement up for a popular referendum. While polls show Labor trailing the Conservatives in the upcoming elections, Corbyn could pull out a surprise victory given widespread hatred of the conservatives.

But it will be tough sledding. Brexit has deeply split British society and presents a serious conundrum for left and progressive forces. Leftists who have long opposed EU membership because of its neoliberal policies seem to be in the same camp as ultra-right wingers who advocate leaving the EU based on xenophobia and racism.

Liberals and social democrats, who favor staying in the EU because it provides some worker and environmental protections, find themselves in bed with Britain’s largest capitalist corporations.

Robin Hahnel, an economist and professor emeritus at American University who now lives in Portland, Oregon, puts it in perspective: “Brexit is a clusterfuck for everybody.”

EU and neoliberalism

The European Economic Community, the EU’s predecessor, began in 1957. The EU was formally established in 1993, and it became an economic and political bloc competing with the United States. The EU eliminated tariffs among member states and created common rules for everything from naming cheese to environmental protection. In 1999, Europe issued a common currency, the Euro, which further consolidated EU power.

While paying lip service to helping Europeans improve their quality of life, in reality, the bloc’s biggest powers-- Germany, France and Britain-- imposed neoliberal policies on its weaker members in the interest of greater corporate profits.

Left and progressive forces have opposed EU for good reason. Like NAFTA and similar trade agreements dictated by Washington, the EU has benefited certain corporations to the detriment of workers. Bankers in Berlin and bureaucrats in Brussels made decisions that couldn’t be changed by elected governments.

For many years, as a leftist backbencher, Labor Member of Parliament Corbyn opposed British membership in the EU.

“He knew EU membership prevented democratic control of the British economy,” Hahnel tells me. “The EU was the brainchild of neoliberal corporations.”

During the 2008 world recession, conservative German bankers wouldn’t allow member countries to create significant, budgetary deficits. While the Obama Administration primed the US pump with federal spending-- and not nearly enough of it-- the EU was constrained by fiscally conservative policy.

“The EU institutionalized austerity and draconian budget cuts in countries such as Greece,” Costas Panayotakis, a sociology professor at the New York City University College of Technology, tells me. “That created popular discontent, and contributed to far right and anti- immigrant sentiment. Boris Johnson is part of that wave.”

While the EU has been a disaster for working people, it’s policies aren’t easy to reverse. The EU has created a vast web of trade agreements, regulations and economic interdependencies.

Leftist debate

There’s fierce debate within the European left about how to proceed. The communist parties of Britain and Ireland, for example, see the EU as a capitalist institution that can’t be reformed. They want Britain and Ireland to leave the EU as a first step towards unraveling it altogether.

Social Democrats, including a significant number of Labor Party members, advocate joining with other European leftists to reform the EU by adopting environmentally and worker-friendly policies.

But that’s not the debate that dominates British political discourse.

Brexit has exposed long simmering divisions within the Conservative Party, split between those big capitalists who make money with European trade and those who think they can make more going it alone. Johnson, for example, claims once the UK has left the EU, he will negotiate more favorable trade deals with the EU and the United States.

Getting a favorable trade deal from Donald Trump? Good luck Boris!

Meanwhile, Britain’s ultra-right wing has adopted leftist rhetoric to denounce the EU for increasing unemployment and spending billions of pounds that could have been used to fund the country’s National Health Service. (Yes, the right wing in Britain supports a single payer health system.)




The right wing then demagogically blamed immigrants as the source of the problem, although attitudes have changed since the 2016 Brexit referendum.

As if the debate wasn’t complicated enough, voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland strongly support staying in the EU. People in both areas want closer ties with Europe as part of their resentment of rule by London.

Scotland has a strong nationalist movement, and if the British government pulls out of the EU, it would strengthen calls for independence. Similarly leftist Irish republicans in Northern Ireland favor staying in the EU. If the UK pulls out, that could lead to a reinstatement of a hard border between the north and the Republic of Ireland, something that was abolished years ago.

Boris' plan

In mid-October, Boris Johnson negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the EU. It contained unpopular provisions, such as 39 million pounds ($50 billion) to make up for British revenues that would have been paid to the EU. Additional divorce payments would be due after the end of next year if a final agreement isn’t reached. It also avoided creating a hard border with Ireland, but angered right-wingers in Northern Ireland who called the plan a “betrayal.”

But Boris’ plan, like the one proposed by his predecessor Theresa May, mostly leaves key issues unresolved. Once outside the EU, Britain, and Europe would have to negotiate a new trade agreement, which could take years. Would the UK abide by existing trade rules in the meantime, racking up billions of pounds of new divorce payments along the way?

The Labor Party is split between trade union and traditional leftist opponents of the EU on one side, and centrist members who favor EU membership on the other. So Corbyn has forged a compromise.

Corbyn hopes that with a Labor victory, he could negotiate a better agreement with the EU and then submit the plan for a national referendum. Corbyn says he will remain neutral and allow voters to decide whether to accept the new withdrawal plan or stay in the EU.

But, that’s seriously risky, says sociologist Panayotakis. People are exhausted by all the Brexit delays, he observes, and Johnson may continue to be seen as the champion of people on the right and left who oppose EU membership.

“It may seem wise for Corbyn to move to the center,” Panayotakis says, “but it may be more risky than people realize.”

Batty Boris' First Vote As PM-- Humiliating Defeat Over A No Deal Brexit

William Pitt The Younger, a Conservative, was elected to serve as Britain's youngest prime minister in 1783 (age 24) but that isn't why he is known as the Younger. That was to distinguish between himself and his father, who was prime minister a few years before him. Having lost his first election (the University of Cambridge seat) he was given a rotten borough by a family friend. He opposed Britain's continued war against the American colonies (the American Revolution) but spent much of his life fighting Napoleon. Pitt was the only prime minister to lose his first vote in Parliament-- until yesterday.

Today, batty right-winger, Boris Johnson, was defeated by a grand coalition of Labour, Lib-Dems and Conservatives who want to stir his plan to crash out of Brexit without a deal. Johnson had threatened he would treat the balloting today as a "confidence" vote. He lost and immediately turned around and called for a snap election. Since I brought up Pitt, it's worth mentioning that he lost a no-confidence vote a few months (1784) after being elected but dealt with it by refusing to resign (with the backing George III and the House of Lords).

Batty Boris And Pitt The Younger

The mechanics of what happened today is the Commons voted 328-301 to seize control of the agenda, in effect, making it possible for them to introduce legislation tomorrow. 21 Conservatives, including several former cabinet members, Philip Hammond, Rory Stewart and David Gauke, joined the rebellion that led to Johnson's stunning humiliation. Johnson has said the 21 will be refused the right to run for their seats as Conservatives. At least one already joined the Lib-Dems. And Winston Churchill's grandson, Nicholas Soames, who voted against the government announced he will not stand for reelection.

Tomorrow's bill will allow Parliament to move the deadline from October 31 to January 31. The Conservatives plan to announce an election on October 15 but there's a problem. Johnson needs a two-thirds majority (432 members) to pass it and he doesn't even control a bare majority (325). Jermey Corbyn-- with the backing of the Lib Dems and the Greens-- has already said election should come after a no deal Brexit is off the table. These are the 21 Conservatives Batty Boris kicked out of the Conservative Party right after the vote:

Batty Boris' full statement, delivered on the floor of Commons after his historic humiliation this afternoon:

Let there be no doubt about the consequences of this vote tonight. It means that Parliament is on the brink of wrecking any deal we might be able to strike in Brussels.

Because tomorrow’s bill would hand control of the negotiations to the EU. And that would mean more dither, more delay, more confusion.

And it would mean that the EU themselves would be able decide how long to keep this country In the EU.

And since I refuse to go along with that plan ... we are going to have to make a choice, Mr Speaker. I don’t want an election. The public don’t want an election.

But if the House votes for this bill tomorrow, the public will have to choose who goes to Brussels on October 17 to sort this out and take this country forward.

Everyone will know if the Rt Hon Gentleman is the prime minister [a reference to Jeremy Corbyn], he will go to Brussels, he will beg for an extension, you will accept whatever Brussels demands and we’ll have years more arguments over Brexit.

And by contrast, everyone will know that if I am prime minister, I will go to Brussels, I will go for a deal and get a deal but if they won’t do a deal we will leave anyway on 31 October.

The people of this country will have to choose.

The leader of the opposition has been begging for an election for two years.

I don’t want an election, but if MPs vote tomorrow to stop the negotiations and to compel another pointless delay of Brexit, potentially for years, then that will be the only way to resolve this.

I can confirm that tonight we will are tabling a motion under the Fixed Term Parliament Act.

Trump is thoroughly detested in the U.K. and his coziness with Batty Boris is hurting the Conservative cause-- just as it is doing in the U.S.

Will A Snap Election Rid Britain Of Boris Johnson Before Halloween?

The unelected, goofball far right prime minister of Britain, Trumpist Boris Johnson, has a special Halloween cooked up this year-- crashing Britain out of the EU and triggering a Great Recession for his country, for Europe and possibly worldwide.  Tomorrow Labour and the Lib Dems are joining together-- presumably with some rebel Tories-- to defeat Johnson's plan by offering a law to delay the Brexit deadline again, past Halloween. Voters-- and a majority in Parliament-- oppose a No Deal Brexit so this should be relatively easy, right? Nope,of course not. This is England.

Johnson announced over the weekend that he will expel and Conservatives who back it. That means they won't be able to run for reelection as Conservatives. Former Cabinet Minister David Gauke told the BBC that Johnson seems "quite prepared for there to be a rebellion and then to purge the rebels from the party. Their strategy, to be honest, is to lose this week and then seek a general election having removed those of us who are not against Brexit, not against leaving the European Union, but believe we should do so with a deal."

This is a full-blown Conservative Party civil war even though, by kicking rebel MPs out of the party, Johnson kills his own majority in Parliament. Peter Walker and Jessica Elgot for The Guardian: Johnson is treating the vote tomorrow like a No Confidence vote. He is expected by many in Parliament to call a snap election, which requires a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons.

The backbench rebels, spearheaded by the Tory former ministers David Gauke and Philip Hammond and the backbenchers Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve, are expected to attempt to take control of the Commons agenda on Tuesday, when parliament returns from the summer recess.

They would then seek to push through a bill mandating an extension to Brexit before parliament is suspended at the end of the week.

Earlier on Monday, Gauke predicted the expected vote on the backbench bill could be “very tight” but said government threats to deselect Conservative MPs who defy the party on the issue could increase the number of rebels.

Gauke said he had written to the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, and his successor as justice secretary, Robert Buckland, asking for clarification about comments by Michael Gove, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who declined to rule out the idea that the government could simply ignore the bill if it were passed by MPs.

“It would be very helpful if the government could clarify that they believe in the rule of law,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Gauke declined to say what the bill could seek to achieve. But another leading rebel, the former Tory MP Nick Boles, said a likely consensus plan would be to delay Brexit by a couple of months from 31 October, to allow enough time for a deal to be reached but not enough time for a second referendum.

The stakes for would-be Tory rebels became markedly higher at the weekend when Downing Street confirmed Conservative MPs who backed the no-deal blocking measure could lose the party whip, meaning they would be unable to stand for the Tories in the next election.

Downing Street has also repeatedly refused to say whether Johnson could simply ignore the backbench legislation if it was passed.

American Elites Need To Feel The Fear The British Elites Feel Today

It’s nice-- very nice-- that Macron pulverized Le Pen and her fascist party. In Sunday’s parliamentary elections, Macron’s party won 350 seats, an absolute-- and unassailable-- majority in the 577 member National Assembly. Le Pen’s fascists won just 8 seats. That, though, is different from having reason to celebrate a great progressive victory. Ultimately, the fact that Macron detests and reviles Señor Trumpanzee is just funny and admirable, not governance. Neither Macron, a centrist former banker, nor his prime minister, conservative Édouard Philippe, is remotely progressive. They literally define conservatism: preservation of the status quo. The turnout, its worth noting, was the lowest in living memory. I was in France for the election. People seemed motivated primarily to stamp out fascism, not to embrace Macron and Philippe. As the French used to say-- or at least the French Jews-- “feh!”

Now across the Channel, on the other had, there really is a reason for progressives to celebrate. Though Jeremy Corbyn isn’t Prime Minister yet, he smashed the Conservatives and sent waves of fear through the British elites. Last week, The Nation carried an interview with veteran British journalist Paul Mason, which you can listen to here:



The point that Mason wanted to get across though, is that Corbyn’s moral victory was something of beauty and something that shouldn’t be underestimated-- and something that can be imported into America. “What happened,” he explained, “has no parallel in modern British politics since 1945. Labour didn’t win a majority, but they won a moral victory because the government had called the election to get a bigger majority of its own. It was predicted on the night before that it would get a majority of 100 seats. In the end it got no majority. There is now what we call in Britain a hung Parliament, which would be as if Congress was controlled by nobody. Theresa May, the Conservative prime minister, is clinging on, but what happened was that really massive numbers of young people voted for Labour-- not just under-24-year-olds, but under-35-year-olds. Something like half of all under-35-year-olds voted for a party that was vilified by the media as a kind of terrorist-supporting threat to national security… [Corbyn] started out far behind, polling 25 percent. The first thing he did was claw back to about 35 percent by publishing the most left-wing manifesto of any Social Democratic Party in the world. It called for renationalization of the railroads, the postal service, and some energy firms. It called for what we call ‘Robin Hood taxes,’ taxing not just the incomes of companies and rich people, but also taxing the wealth of rich people. Taxing the unearned wealth, the property speculation, the stock-market speculation. This would bring in billions, which he said we would spend on free college education for everybody who wants it. That is revolutionary-- and it’s not surprising so many students came out to campaign for the Labour Party in the last few nights of the election. On some urban streets, people were opening their windows and saying, What’s going on? Is there some kind of disturbance? Why are 100 young people coming down my street and knocking on my door? It felt like a sort of velvet revolution in parts of Britain.”

Key figures on the right of British politics are now saying that, to stop Jeremy Corbyn, they have to be prepared to ditch everything. They have to be prepared to ditch what is called “hard Brexit,” which is walking away from Europe without a deal. They have to be prepared to ditch austerity. We’ve had seven years of spending cuts and attacks on the welfare state, and they’ve got to be prepared to ditch that. They’re in full panic mode. As a reporter on British politics and economics, I haven’t seen the ruling class of England in a panic like this for a long time. They realize that their defense lines are falling away. The normal defense lines for British capitalism run not just through the Conservative Party, but also through the Labour Party. But once Corbyn took control of Labour and decisively moved its political programs to the left, the only thing standing between the working class and young people on one side, and the minority and the elite on the other, is the Conservative government. And that just effectively fell apart. It’s a minority government, with no power to legislate.

…[I]t’s not enough to have the combination of a strong leader and a well-worked-out program. The left also needs a ground game. We have this movement called Momentum, a movement to get support within the party. That movement was able to have a million conversations with voters in the space of six weeks, talking to people on their doorsteps, just the way the Sanders people did. Then Jeremy Corbyn in the last days of the election campaign stepped out of the role of party leader and started to speak on behalf of the nation. He’d absorbed so much pressure, so much vitriol, and so many attacks—he assured people that it was possible to go beyond the pain barrier. I think the Sanders movement, or whatever comes after it, has to do popular politics. It’s not the same as populism. It’s like gaming. You go into the dungeon and you kill the boss. You need someone who can do that. And Corbyn proved he could do it.

Help Randy Bryce battle the elites of both wretchedly corrupt DC parties and get down into that basement and end the political career of Paul Ryan next year. No DCCC handler is going to talk Randy into "going centrist," the way they did with Ossoff in the final stages of the GA-06 campaign. Randy stands for deeply held values and beliefs, rooted in his life's experiences. After he wins in 2018, by campaigning on those beliefs-- not on a DCCC-dictated GOP-lite platform-- we’ll see if progressives have the strength to smash the conservative Dems and their donors and beat Trump with a Corbyn, not with a Macron.