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US Presidents Are Always Evil Because The US Empire Is Evil: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

May 22, 2021

US Presidents Are Always Evil Because The US Empire Is Evil: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

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Joe Biden is a corrupt, murderous empire lackey. He is also a very normal US president. The same was true of Trump. The same was true of Obama. The same was true of Bush. If you can’t see this, it’s because propaganda and partisan politics have warped your perception of reality. US presidents will always be evil because the US empire is evil and only evil people will be allowed to participate in its operation.

By far the single most important job of a US president is to take responsibility for decisions on empire management that would have been made regardless of who is in office, whether Democrat or Republican or tuna fish sandwich. Their job is to provide the illusion of democracy, letting you feel as though you “voted out” the perceived perpetrators of various misdeeds while leaving the actual power structure responsible for those misdeeds fully intact.

It’s like rectifying a corporation’s misdeeds by firing the secretary. They just rotate in a new secretary every few years.

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Nobody is born supporting nonstop military expansionism and regime change interventionism. It takes a lot of education to make us this stupid.

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It’s always hilarious how the US pretends its “unwavering support” for Israel is some kind of principled stance based on morals and not the need to have a nuclear-armed military enforcer in the most resource-rich region on earth.

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Anti-semitic this, anti-semitic that. Hey, maybe supporters of a brutal apartheid ethnostate shouldn’t be the authorities that people look to on what constitutes religious bigotry.

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Opposing Israeli war crimes is anti-semitic. Opposing US imperialism is sexist. Opposing starvation sanctions is homophobic. Opposing proxy wars is misgendering. Opposing nuclear brinkmanship is kink shaming.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rule by Fiat: National Crises, Fake Emergencies and Other Dangerous Presidential Powers

February 20, 2019

Rule by Fiat: National Crises, Fake Emergencies and Other Dangerous Presidential Powers


“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”—Richard Nixon

Who pays the price for the dissolution of the constitutional covenant that holds the government and its agents accountable to the will of the people?

We all do.

This ill-advised decision by President Trump to circumvent the Constitution’s system of checks and balances by declaring a national emergency in order to build a border wall constitutes yet another expansion of presidential power that exposes the nation to further constitutional peril.

It doesn’t matter that the legal merits of this particular national emergency will be challenged in court.

The damage has already been done.

As reporter Danny Cevallos points out, “President Donald Trump only had to say ‘national emergency’ to dramatically increase his executive and legal authority. By simply uttering those words … Trump immediately unleashed dozens of statutory powers available to a president only during a state of emergency. The power of the nation’s chief executive to declare such an emergency knows few strictures — it was designed that way.”

We have now entered into a strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.

This attempt by Trump to rule by fiat merely plays into the hands of those who would distort the government’s system of checks and balances and its constitutional separation of powers beyond all recognition.

This is about unadulterated power in the hands of the Executive Branch.

This is about corporate greed disguised as a national need.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Volcker Recalls Another Time the Fed Was in the President’s Crosshairs

October 25, 2018

Volcker Recalls Another Time the Fed Was in the President’s Crosshairs

The central banker’s memoir recounts an awkward encounter with Ronald Reagan.

Reagan and Volcker in the Oval Office in 1981.

PHOTOGRAPHER: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/AP PHOTO

Donald Trump’s repeated public criticism of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy seems extraordinary, but he isn’t the first president to oppose raising rates. Paul Volcker, 91, has had firsthand experience with this, both in Lyndon Johnson’s Treasury Department and as Fed chairman during the Reagan administration, as he recalls in Keeping at It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government (Oct. 30, PublicAffairs), written with Bloomberg Markets Editor Christine Harper. Volcker, who was Fed chairman from 1979 to 1987, is credited with ending an era of double-digit inflation by pushing short-term rates as high as 20 percent.

Later in the fall of 1965, Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler became deeply concerned about a warning he had received from Fed Chairman William McChesney Martin. The Fed planned to raise its discount rate, the rate the Fed charges banks for short-term loans, with the presumed effect of raising all market rates. Martin’s clear aim was to forestall inflationary pressures as Vietnam War spending rose in an already fully employed economy. A spirited internal debate developed. The Council of Economic Advisers and the Bureau of the Budget lined up with Fowler in pleading for delay. Privately, I was sympathetic to Martin’s argument and hoped to persuade the secretary into a compromise: perhaps a quarter-percentage-point increase instead of the planned half-point.

The unfortunate result for me was the creation of a four-man ad hoc committee to examine the issue. The composition was odd. Although I was the Treasury’s representative, I was eager to compromise. Dan Brill, the Fed’s research chief, was strongly opposed to any rate hike despite his boss’s view. So were, in varying degrees, representatives from the CEA and the Bureau of the Budget (now the Office of Management and Budget). Predictably, we concluded that the decision could wait until January so it could be coordinated with the new budget.

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Congress Weighs Indefinite Detention of Americans

May 14, 2018

Congress Weighs Indefinite Detention of Americans

A Senate bill under consideration could allow Donald Trump to indefinitely jail American citizens without charge if they oppose U.S. military action, says Marjorie Cohn.

Under the guise of exercising supervisory power over the president’s ability to use military force, Congress is considering writing Donald Trump a blank check to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens with no criminal charges. Alarmingly, this legislation could permit the president to lock up Americans who dissent against U.S. military policy.

The bill that risks conveying this power to the president is the broad new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), S.J.Res.59, that is pending in Congress. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Corker (R-TN) and Democratic committee member Tim Kaine (VA) introduced the bipartisan bill on April 16, and it has four additional co-sponsors.

This proposed 2018 AUMF would replace the 2001 AUMF that Congress gave George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks. Although the 2001 AUMF authorized the president to use “all necessary and appropriate force” only against individuals and groups responsible for the 9/11 attacks, three presidents have relied on it to justify at least 37 military operations in 14 countries, many of them unrelated to 9/11.

But the 2018 AUMF would codify presidential power to make war whenever and wherever he chooses.

S.J.Res.59 allows the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force” against Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Somalia, al-Qaeda, ISIS (also known as Daesh), the Taliban and their “associated forces” anywhere in the world, without limitation.

Kaine: Introduced bi-partisan bill. (Photo from US Department of Education)

However, the bill contains no definition of “co-belligerent.” A president may conceivably claim that a U.S. citizen who writes, speaks out or demonstrates against U.S. military action is a “co-belligerent” and lock him or her up indefinitely without charge.

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Obama/Trump: Contrasting Deceivers

April 16, 2017

Obama/Trump: Contrasting Deceivers

On the surface, Donald Trump and Barack Obama may seem like polar opposites but they are alike in one fundamental way: both promised to challenge a corrupt and brutal establishment but promptly caved in, writes Sam Husseini.

Donald Trump won the 2016 Republican nomination and the general election largely because he was able to pose as a populist and an anti-interventionist, an “America Firster.” Similarly, Barack Obama won the 2008 election in good part because he promised “hope and change” and because he had given a speech years earlier against the then-impending invasion of Iraq.

President Barack Obama reaffirming his oath of office on Jan. 21, 2013, with his hand on Bibles belonging to Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. (White House photo)

Short of disclosure of diaries or other documents from these politicians, we can’t know for certain if they planned on reversing much of what they promised or if the political establishment compelled them to change, but they both reversed themselves on their core messages, committing what you might call a massive political fraud. Yet, what is perhaps most striking is how quickly each of them backtracked on their winning messages, particularly since they were both proclaimed as representing “movements” seeking to shake up the system.

Even before taking office, Obama stacked his administration with pro-war people: He kept George W. Bush’s head of the Pentagon, Robert Gates; for Secretary of State he nominated Hillary Clinton, whom he beat largely because she voted for giving Bush authorization to invade Iraq; he surrounded himself with other prominent Iraq War backers including Vice President Joe Biden and senior foreign policy advisers Susan Rice and Richard Holbrooke. Even before he was sworn in, Obama had supported the 2008 Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. [See from 2008: “Anti-War Candidate, Pro-War Cabinet?“]

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Emergency Powers Give Barack Obama Authority Over Just About Everything During A Major National Crisis

May 28, 2015

Emergency Powers Give Barack Obama Authority Over Just About Everything During A Major National Crisis

Presidents have always exercised emergency powers, but now thanks to dozens of new laws, regulations, court decisions and executive orders, Barack Obama is the most powerful president in all of U.S. history.  Of course the U.S. Constitution does not actually give the president any special powers during a time of national emergency, but over time presidents have decided that they should be able to exercise such powers and the courts have generally agreed with them.  During World War II and prior to that, these emergency powers were largely uncodified and were primarily used during times of war.  But since World War II things have completely changed, and this has particularly been true since 9/11.  Over the past decade or so, a whole host of extraordinary powers have specifically been given to the office of the president, and all that it takes to exercise them is a major “national emergency”.  So if we do have a full-blown economic collapse, a historic natural disaster, a significant war or a massive pandemic, Barack Obama could use the emergency powers that he has been given to essentially take authority overeverything.

There is not a single document or series of documents that contain all of the emergency powers that Barack Obama could potentially wield during a major national emergency.  As I mentioned above, these powers come from literally dozens of laws, regulations, court decisions and executive orders.  But in this article I will discuss a few important documents.  One of these is a presidential directive that was issued during the second term of George W. Bush.  It is entitled NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD – 51/HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD – 20, and you can take a look at it on the FEMA website right here.  This document is primarily concerned with the continuity of our federal government in the event of a catastrophic emergency.  So precisely what would constitute a “catastrophic emergency”?  The following is how the document defines that term…

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