Want to listen to a different take on the crisis in Venezuela?

PODCAST: Revolutionary Left Radio

“Venezuela In Crisis: Defending the Bolivarian Revolution.”

George Ciccariello-Maher is a writer, radical political theorist, and currently Associate Professor of Politics and Global Studies at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He has taught radical theory and politics at Drexel, U.C. Berkeley, San Quentin State Prison, and the Venezuelan School of Planning in Caracas. He holds a B.A. in Government and Economics from St. Lawrence University, a B.A. Hons. and M.A. in Social and Political Sciences from St. John’s College, University of Cambridge, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from U.C. Berkeley.

His first book, a history of revolutionary movements in Venezuela entitled We Created Chávez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution, was published by Duke University Press in 2013. He recently published a short follow-up on the political dynamics of the post-Chávez era entitled Building the Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela (Jacobin-Verso, 2016). His third book, Decolonizing Dialectics, will be published in early 2017, also by Duke University Press.

  Roger Stone published a book about the Bush Family’s corruption, dirty dealings, sweetheart financial deals and bad behavior.  And, now, he’s with Trump?

“Bush Crime Family: The Inside Story of an American Dynasty.”  “The Making of the President  2016.”

Roger Stone, Anthony Scaramucci, Donald Trump – these are people who have no principles.  They want more than anything else to be famous, or infamous, they don’t care.  They want to be the darlings of the media, bad little boys and they think they are so very cute.  They aren’t serious people. They are acting parts, playing games and endangering people’s lives.   They have to be stopped.

“Don’t confuse Roger Stone with the character I play,” Mr. Stone said with a chuckle in an interview with the New York Times in 2017.

This is not a game.

I haven’t been able to make myself watch the HBO film on Roger Stone, but I did listen to part of a program on Fresh Air about Stone, which was depressing enough.  Stone, evidently, has been planning Trump’s run for the presidency since at least 1997.

Fresh Air.  “Following the Man who Created President Trump.”  July 13, 2017.  HBO.  “Get Me Roger Stone.”

Things I’m thinking about today:

• how John McCain can keep a straight face while posing as a hero when he came back to Congress to move forward the Republican take away of health care for the rest of the country;
• why the Democrats are allowing Manafort, Trump, Jr. and Kushner to testify in private.

https://www.thenation.com/article/sean-spicer-has-embarrassed-himself-badly/

John Nichols from the Nation Magazine

The Young Turks Podcast – July 21, 2017.  Listen to the Young Turk folks talk about Yemen, Sean Spicer and Films.  Well worth a listen.

•  Trump is signaling that if Mueller goes into his (Trump’s) finances, Mueller will be exceeding his mandate as Special Counsel (which Trump spells as Council).  This means that the Trump Administration is going to claim that Mueller should be fired for going outside his mandate.  The right-wing media has evidently been backing him up on this line of argument.

Podcasts

The Intercept has a great podcast on (scum of the earth) Eric Prince.  There is also an interview with Tavis Smiley on the real Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We must make our choice.  We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”  Louis Brandeis

Betsy DeVos (estimated family net worth: 5.6 billion)
Steve Mnuchin (500 million)
RexTillerson (325 million)
“Trump has also scoured the executive ranks of the banking giant Goldman Sachs for many of his senior advisers, includingGary Cohn as his top economic adviser and Dina Powell as a special adviser on economic initiatives.”

I’m sorry, I know that we are expected to fall all over ourselves praising Melania Trump because she managed to utter a few public words, but a chill went up my spine when she said: “As you may know by now, when you attack him [Trump] he will punch back 10 times harder.”  Is it me or is there something deeply creepy about that choice of words given Trump’s history with women?  Maybe it’s just having lived through the O.J. Simpson trial, but I felt a definite shudder when those words came out of Melania Trump’s mouth.

And, it hasn’t escaped my attention that there seems to be no personal relationship between the two of them.  They are completely uncomfortable together and as physically awkward around each other as two feral cats needing a nap.  They act like they’ve never been in the same room with each other, much less the same bed.

But, be that as it may…MSNBC anchor Tom Brokaw is predicting the demise of the Trump campaign tonight.  I’ll believe it when I see it.

The polls will be closing in Wisconsin in about an hour.

Stories that are attracting my attention:

• The Panama Papers. The Prime Minister of Iceland has stepped down after massive protests of citizens that he do so.  This resignation makes the Prime Minister the first casualty in what promises to be a series of revelations about those named in documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm which handled offshore shell companies and tax shelters.  Last night Rachel Maddow said that individuals in the U.S. hadn’t been named simply because reporters hadn’t had time to get through the enormous amount of information to get to them.
• The Trump Misogyny Machine. Ann Coulter, a Trump supporter, tonight said in an interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC: “Women can be very suggestible.”  She was talking about women who found Trump’s misogyny insulting.  According to Coulter, silly women are letting the media tell them to be insulted by Trump’s unending sexist narrative.  But, nobody respects women more than Trump.  Just ask him.  Just a note: Why would any professional journalist have Ann Coulter on their program?  Oh, I forgot, it’s Chris Matthews.
• The Clinton Entitlement Machine. I have listened to two interviews in the past few days, one with Barney Frank and the other with James Carville that really got up my nose.  Both men were nasty, emotional and extremely indignant that Bernie Sanders was running against Hillary Clinton and that stupid people were voting for him.  James Carville said that the administration of Bill Clinton and Barak Obama had been successful and popular and so just what the hell did people think they were doing voting for Bernie Sanders?  How dare they?  Frank blamed voter discontent on the fact that democratic voters hadn’t come out to vote in off year elections.  Had they come out and voted, Frank reasoned, Democrats would have been elected and voters’ concerns would have been spoken to.  Frank, then, essentially blamed the voters for their own discontent.  They brought this on themselves, said Frank in a contemptuous and offensive tone.  Carville kept repeating: I just don’t understand it, talking about the stupidity of people voting for Sanders. Well, I just don’t understand the attitude of the Clinton campaign.  This is still a quasi-democratic country.  People are allowed to run against Hillary Clinton and question her record, even if they are on the Democratic side.  The only way I can explain the attitude is that the Clinton people think that she is entitled to this nomination.  The attitude and what underlies it will deeply offend and alienate Sanders’ supporters who the Democratic Party needs to get elected.  It’s like pitching a temper tantrum because you’re not getting what you feel you are entitled to.  Well, nobody is entitled to the nomination and if the Clinton people keep whining because Sanders is raising tough and legitimate questions about her record I can’t imagine how they are going to respond when confronted with a Republican nominee.  The Clinton campaign is just reminding people why they hate career politicians so much.
• Finally, what the hell does MSNBC think they are doing filming some of their news programs with anchors sitting in front of rooms full drinking, eating, chattering people? It’s distracting, juvenile and unnecessary.  We are not frat boys sitting in a bar.  Oh, yes, I forgot, it’s Chris Matthews.

We were treated, yet again this morning, to another of Joe Scarborough’s  self-congratulatory rants.  According to Joe, he has been saying for decades things that other people have just now picked up on.  This is an almost daily theme with Joe.  It’s hilarious.

We are all just so stupid that we haven’t realized that Joe is the smartest person in the world.  How could we have missed it?

Why are we subjected to three hours of this every weekday morning?  I have to agree with something I read recently saying that MSNBC is just flat out of ideas.