Politics ‘Trump-Washing’ U.S. History Endangers Our Freedom Selective appeals to the truth from Jeff Flake and co. turn a dangerous blind eye on the wider problem of presidential lying. Kamala Harris seeks to capture the White House with a message built on vaporous “positive vibes” and “joy.” The Harris campaign is bolstering that message by portraying Donald Trump as a deadly peril to democracy unprecedented in American history. The former Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who hit that theme as hard as anybody during Trump’s administration, is back in the news after he endorsed Harris for the presidency.  Some media coverage is treating Flake’s declaration as another bellwether bailout for Republicans abandoning Trump. But Flake openly endorsed Joe Biden for President in 2020 and spent the last three years as Biden’s U.S. ambassador to Turkey.  In fact, Flake effectively joined the Democratic Party six years ago when he delivered what was touted as a “landmark” speech on the Senate floor on how Trump’s lies endanger democracy. The exaltation that greeted Flake’s performance settled any doubts about the venality or historical illiteracy of the U.S. media. Flake became the preeminent exponent of “Trump-washing” American history. Because the same myopic approach is permeating media coverage of the 2024 presidential race, Flake’s weaselry deserves reconsideration.  Prior to that January 17, 2018 speech, Flake received massive publicity after it was leaked that he would compare Trump to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Flake assailed Trump for calling the media “the enemy of the people,” since Stalin had used the same phrase 80 years earlier against his enemies. Actually, “enemy of the people” is an ancient phrase—and the title of a famous 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Flake’s jibe is on par with touting a Hitler quote on motherhood and then accusing any American politician who praised mothers of being a Nazi sympathizer. Flake began his oration by warning that “without truth… our democracy will not last.” He then proclaimed that, thanks to Trump, “2017 was a year which saw the truth more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country.” Had Flake “just fallen off the turnip truck,” as the late Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd liked to say? Flake was correct that Trump flogged facts early and often. But nothing Trump had done compared to the vast deceptions and idealistic swindles that Woodrow Wilson concocted to drag the U.S. into the First World War. Similarly, Trump’s babble about inauguration crowd sizes was chump change compared to Lyndon Johnson’s brazen deceits from 1965 to 1968 to justify rendering half a million American troops to Vietnam.  Flake idealized the pre-Trump era. Flake declared that America’s Founders understood “that good faith and shared facts between the governed and the government would be the very basis of this ongoing idea of America” and that without “shared facts, our democracy will not last.”  Sure, but what happens if the rulers do not “share” the facts? The federal government is classifying—i.e., labeling secret—trillions of pages of documents each year. Since 9/11, the Freedom of Information Act has become practically a nullity, stonewalling citizens and journalists seeking facts about federal policies. The Bush and Obama administrations vastly increased the use of the “state secrets” doctrine to cover up torture, targeted killing, and illegal surveillance. The Obama administration was also more aggressive than any other presidency in using Espionage Act prosecutions against journalists for disclosing federal crimes or follies.  Flake asserted that “2018 must be the year in which the truth takes a stand against power” and summoned fellow senators to help “restore reverence for our institutions.” But reverence is tricky to reconcile with honesty.  In reality, deceit has long been the DC default. Why else would the Pentagon get away with referring to “smart bombs” regardless of their perennial killing of women and children not bright enough to preemptively exit the blast area? The No Child Left Behind program was exalted regardless of how it swayed many, if not most, states to lower their academic standards to create an illusion of progress to satisfy federal mandates. And what about the Obama administration’s arm-twisting to relabel felons and ex-convicts as merely “justice-involved individuals”?  Counting on a shameless media for applause, Flake declared: “Here in America, we do not pay obeisance to the powerful.” Did Flake ever attend a White House Correspondents dinner, where media attendees grovel shamelessly to anyone who has twice appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe? Groveling is the preferred form of worship in the District of Columbia. Many senators relish the endless kowtowing they receive each day from parades of lobbyists and donors begging legislative favors.  If presidential lying was as toxic as Flake claimed, democracy would have perished long ago. History professor Leo Ribuffo observed in 1998, “Presidents have lied so much to us about foreign policy that they’ve established almost a common-law right to do so.” From Kennedy lying about the Bay of Pigs debacle in Cuba, to Nixon lying about the secret bombing of Cambodia, to Reagan lying about Iran–Contra, entire generations have come of age since the ancient time when candor constrained presidents.  Flake, going “full lofty,” asserted that “from our very beginnings, our freedom has been predicated on truth.” But the Founding Fathers recognized that politicians are conniving rascals—so the Constitution included a Bill of Rights that severely restricted the government’s prerogative to trample Americans’ freedom and privacy. As Associate Justice Hugo Black declared in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, “The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government.” Flake warned that Trump’s lies “have the effect of eroding trust in our vital institutions and conditioning the public to no longer trust them.” But what if those institutions long since forfeited trust?  On the day before his speech on lying, Flake took a dive on freedom. Five years earlier, the former NSA analyst Edward Snowden revealed how the National Security Agency had carried out “the most significant change in the history of American espionage from the targeted surveillance of individuals to the mass surveillance of entire populations.” Snowden offered a deluge of internal documents substantiating how NSA was ravaging Americans’ rights. But Flake voted to give new powers to the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless surveillance on Americans. Perhaps Flake believed that denouncing Trump absolved him from his congressional oath of office to defend the Constitution.  For Flake, like most Washington politicians, “truth” is a flag of convenience. When he first ran for the House of Representatives, Flake pledged to serve only three terms in Congress. In 2005, after winning his third election to the House, he announced that “it was a mistake to limit my own terms”—and he continued on the congressional gravy train until 2019. Maybe the American people just got lucky to have Flake in Washington so long? His devotion to truth did not impede him from signing up with CBS News after he left Congress.  Perhaps the starkest gauge of Flake’s character comes from his zealous support for war with Iraq. In October 2002, when the Bush administration was browbeating Congress for a resolution to give the president a blank check, Flake declared that supporting the resolution for going to war with Iraq “is our only reasonable option. War will no doubt come at great cost. When we visit the war memorials, we see that cost, but the cost of appeasement is far greater.” Supporting the war helped Flake get re-elected in 2002. Flake was not merely pro-war: He also exalted George W. Bush. He declared on the House floor, “I especially commend our President who so forcefully pushed for this resolution and who has so deliberately pushed for this resolution.” Did Flake repudiate Bush after his administration’s brazen lies to pave the way to war were exposed? No. Instead, Bush was a headliner for at least one major fundraiser for Flake’s 2018 re-election campaign—an effort he abandoned after he was forced to recognize how Arizona voters loathed him.  Flake was correct that presidential lying is an evil that deserves to be vigorously exposed and heartily condemned. Lies subvert democracy by crippling citizens’ ability to rein in government. Citizens are left clueless about perils until it is too late to avert disaster. Unfortunately, the more power the White House possesses, the more that it attracts ruthless individuals who do and say anything to win elections.  Regardless of who wins in November, Americans will not have an honest president. Is it too much to ask Trump’s opponents to stop peddling a fairy tale version of American history? If people believe that Trump is the only peril on the horizon, it will become far easier for Harris or other politicians to further ravish our rights and liberties. Americans must become far more vigilant about putting presidents and the federal government back on a leash.  The post ‘Trump-Washing’ U.S. History Endangers Our Freedom appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs Sheinbaum’s Inaugural Radicalism The new Mexican president may prove less of a pragmatist than her predecessor. Credit: image via Shutterstock Mexico’s whirlwind political year hasn’t slowed since the election of Claudia Sheinbaum as the country’s next president. Her June election as Mexico’s first female president was notable in itself and was quickly followed by divisive, far-reaching judicial reforms. Now, as she prepares to don the banda presidencial, Mexico has kicked up a diplomatic row with Spain. Sheinbaum is using today’s inauguration to bolster her left-wing credentials, refusing to invite Spanish King Felipe VI to her own coronation in Mexico City. She cited Felipe’s refusal to apologize to Mexico for alleged colonial crimes perpetrated against the Aztecs and other indigenous tribes a half-millennium ago. The row started with Sheinbaum’s mentor, President Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), who demanded in 2019 that the King and the Vatican apologize for what he called “abuses” of “what we now call human rights.” The Spanish monarch, to his credit, refused to engage with AMLO’s grievance politics and declined to apologize, perhaps recognizing that what we now consider human rights were undeniably enhanced after the barbaric Aztec empire was defeated. He also likely perceived that AMLO’s actions were inspired by his affection for half-baked 1970s social activism and his propensity to stir controversy for political gain. Untethered by the sometimes gross demands of popular democracy, Felipe simply ignored AMLO.  Tensions between Mexico and her mother country seemed to cool in the subsequent years, but Sheinbaum’s recent actions have rekindled the dispute as an opening salvo of her presidency. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who received an invitation separate from his monarch, was quick to point out the obvious political motivations of the act and was generally indignant in his response. Speaking from the United Nations, Sánchez retaliated by withholding diplomatic representation at the inauguration. “Spain and Mexico are brotherly peoples. We cannot, therefore, accept being excluded like this,” he said. “That is why we have made it known to the Mexican government that there will be no diplomatic representative from the Spanish government as a sign of protest.” As the former general secretary of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, Sánchez’s decision to issue a diplomatic rebuke is rather notable. Sánchez has spent years in Spain drumming up historical grievances of his own, particularly surrounding the Franco regime of the last century. Sheinbaum’s decision to alienate a potential partner, in this context, illustrates the depths of her radicalism and commitment to late-century anti-colonial ideology. The development has disappointed Mexican observers who believed Sheinbaum’s election presented an opportunity to cool a body politic increasingly gripped by polarization. Noting the Vatican’s recent calls for reconciliation, the Mexico News Daily editorial board claimed in August that “there is considerable expectation that Sheinbaum will be less confrontational than López Obrador, who often uses his morning press conference to attack political opponents, a tactic that many say foments, or at least contributes to, divisiveness in Mexico.” It’s clear from Sheinbaum’s time as president-elect that this wishful thinking will not materialize. Like AMLO, Sheinbaum is a figure who embraces near-meaningless grievance as a means of whipping up popular support. Sheinbaum’s signaling has implications for U.S.–Mexico relations. Millions of Mexican nationals living in the United States are eligible to vote in Mexico’s federal elections, and many did by mail and at consulates across the United States. The radicalization of Mexico’s politics, now devolving into something akin to American wokeness, impacts the perceptions and feelings of a large swathe of people living on the American side of the border. This presents a unique challenge to American sovereignty, threatening to further undermine U.S. border enforcement, trade negotiations, and impose foreign polarization on American policymakers.  To date, Mexican leadership has generally refrained from racializing security negotiations with American leaders. Under pressure from President Donald Trump, AMLO was even willing to commit to providing border security, supplying the bulk of resources necessary to enact the “Remain in Mexico” policy that helped reduce illegal border crossings to record lows in 2020. AMLO’s cooperation with Trump demonstrated that, despite his rhetoric, he was at core a pragmatist. The United States may find that Sheinbaum, at her core, is not. If Trump is reelected in a month and moves forward with his plans to carry out the largest deportation in American history, Sheinbaum’s radicalism and embrace of racialized politics could become a major diplomatic flashpoint. It’s easy to imagine how a Mexican president, armed with cynicism and a socialist base, would benefit from accusing American leadership of colonialism, racism, or any of the other buzzwords regularly employed to justify the destruction of Western democracy. The implications for the American body politic, now including nearly 40 million people of Mexican descent, are unclear but self-evidently negative. The necessary deportation program proposed by the Trump-Vance ticket, seeking to deport 13,000 murderers among others, will already be controversial enough in an intractably polarized country. If Sheinbaum chooses to dump fuel on the fire, the consequences related to assimilation and practical security could be long-lasting and irreparable. The post Sheinbaum’s Inaugural Radicalism appeared first on The American Conservative.

BREAKING! BlackRock Files For Bankruptcy! The Unbelievable Collapse of a Financial Giant? - DID BLACKROCK'S EVIL AND ARROGANCE SPELL THEIR DOOM? OR IS THIS SOME SORT OF SECRET POWER PLAY/MONEY TRANSFER? - BlackRock Has Indeed Been in the Process of Filing For Bankruptcy Since 2020. But I Have Not Found a Current Report on This From a Source that Can Be Validated - I Checked the Source Used in This Video, and it Appears to be True, but MAJOR CAUTION about this Particular Source. Q Tard, Fulford, QFS Reports are coming from this site. ***AND NO SOURCE FOR THE REPORT WAS PROVIDED*** - BlackRock's Filing For Bankruptcy Began Back in 2022. There are multiple articles on it in a Duckduckgo search, but I have not yet found a Recent Report that can be Validated... - September 30, 2024 The Real MLordandGod - FAIR USE FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES Mirrored From: https://www.youtube.com/@therealmlordandgod8763 * Source Used in Video Breaking News: BlackRock Files for Bankruptcy! The Unbelievable Collapse of a Financial Giant September 24, 2024 - https://sunnysjournal.com/2024/09/24/blackrock-files-for-bankruptcy-julian-assange/ - BREAKING NEWS: BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has shockingly filed for bankruptcy, marking the downfall of a financial giant built on corruption. Global sanctions and internal mismanagement have toppled this financial titan, sending shockwaves through the global economy. - In one of the most shocking turns in financial history, BlackRock has officially collapsed. Yes, the company that shaped economies and influenced global markets is now crumbling under the weight of its misdeeds. This colossal downfall raises a burning question: how could such a powerful firm fall so spectacularly? - The answer lies in the collapse of the corrupt financial machinery that fueled BlackRock’s rise. Sanctions have smashed the web of secret deals and hidden financial backdoors that once sustained it. BlackRock relied on unregulated strategies and opaque investment tactics, ignoring the warning signs as the world moved toward transparency. - (SEE FULL ARTICLE FOR MORE) *** Blackrock International, Inc. Files For Bankruptcy The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on December 15, 2020, and later converted it to Chapter 7 https://bkdata.com/business-bankruptcies/alexandria-louisiana/12-15-2020/blackrock-international-50922 *** Blackrock International, Inc - Files for Bankruptcy - https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/geopolitics/blackrock-international-inc-files-for-bankruptcy/ - Case Summary - https://bkdata.com/business-bankruptcies/alexandria-louisiana/01-11-2022/blackrock-international-50015 - On January 11, 2022 (the "Petition Date") Blackrock International, Inc. filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. The Debtor's case was assigned case no. 22-50015 and is pending before the honorable Judge John W. Kolwe in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court Louisiana Western District (the "Bankruptcy

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