Peter Martin — The CIA Democrats (in three parts)

An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political history.

If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the lower chamber of Congress.

First the banks, and then the military and spooks. Democrats?

Can't we just go back to lawyers?

WSWS
The CIA Democrats (in three parts)
Peter Martin

Mike Whitney — Did Hillary Scapegoat Russia to Save Her Campaign?

The “Russia hacking” flap has nothing to do with Russia and nothing to do with hacking. The story is basically a DNC invention that was concocted to mitigate the political fallout from the nearly 50,000 emails that WikiLeaks planned to publish on July 22, 2016, just 3 days before the Democratic National Convention. That’s what this is really all about. Russia didn’t hack anything, it’s a big diversion that was conjured up on-the-fly to keep Hillary’s bandwagon from going down in flames....

Once they figured that their presidential bid could go up in smoke, they decided to act preemptively, pull out all the stops and “Go Big”....

Counterpunch
Did Hillary Scapegoat Russia to Save Her Campaign?
Mike Whitney

Trump Jr. Took a Meeting, Bill Clinton Took $500K — Aaron Mate interviews Michael Sainato

According to reports, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe now includes the recently disclosed meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. The music publicist who arranged the meeting told Trump Jr. the lawyer had compromising information on Hillary Clinton on behalf of the Russian government, but the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, says she was only trying to lobby against the Magnitsky Act, which imposed sanctions on Russian officials. If that's true, then there's another interesting Clinton tie here. Hillary Clinton also opposed the sanctions when she was Secretary of State, and that only came after her husband, Bill Clinton, received $500,000 for a speech at a Russian investment conference in Moscow. According to leaked emails, Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign killed a Bloomberg story that tried to link Hillary Clinton's stance to her husband's paid gig, which means Donald Trump might not be the only 2016 candidate with a conflict of interest related to Russia. 

Let's get some perspective here.

TRNN

Trump Jr. Took a Meeting, Bill Clinton Took $500K

Aaron Mate interviews Michael Sainato

See also

It's official: The self-appointed foreign collusion police have forgiven themselves for colluding with a foreign government. It was all in the past. To quote Barack Obama after we "tortured some folks": Forward!

The familiar, "It's only bad when others do it," syndrome. Seems to be rampant in the American elite.

Russia Insider
High-Ranking Democrat Weighs in on DNC Collusion With Foreign Government: "No Biggie"

Michael Hering

Zaid Jilani — Study Finds Relationship Between High Military Casualties and Votes for Trump Over Clinton

Russiagate is a canard. First, the Democratic Establishment cannot own up to their lose, and secondly, Trump-bashing is red meat for the base and also a cash-machine.

This election was a rejection of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Ordinary Americans are facing economic stagnation, and they are tired of foreign adventures that result in endless war.

Hillary Clinton and her advisors did not get the message. So she lost, even though she preferred to run against Donal Trump as a pushover candidate.

Still clueless or in denial.

The Intercept
Study Finds Relationship Between High Military Casualties and Votes for Trump Over Clinton

Zaid Jilani

Taylor Link — Jill Stein denies being a puppet of Russia, blames Democrats for scapegoating election loss

WTF?  How long will take for the Democratic Party to erase the blot of McCarthyism in smearing Donald Trump and Jill Stein, and conspiring to deny Bernie Sanders a fair shot at the nomination?

Unless candidates for office in upcoming elections denounce it. And start critiquing themselves in earnest for their mistakes rather than trying to foist the blame on others by smearing them.

Democratic losses in special elections recently are sending a signal that is apparently not be received, or being interpreted badly.

And it is not only the Democratic Establishment that is caught up in this folly. A lot of so-called Progressive Democrats aka Bernie Democrats are too.

Losers.

Salon
Jill Stein denies being a puppet of Russia, blames Democrats for scapegoating election loss

Taylor Link

Bill Mitchell — There is more to the Job Guarantee literature than a few blog posts

I have noticed a new phenomenon – a sort of new myopia – has emerged as the blogoshphere has expanded. The knowledge set that people think they are empowering themselves with becomes rather constricted – sometimes to a selection of blogs they may have read, sometimes even to the last blog they read on a topic. So we get a range of views and prognostications emerging – held out as expert commentary in many cases – upon the basis of perhaps just a few blogs having been read. As a long-term blogger, I also see this syndrome in the comments section of blogs. Someone new turns up it seems having read the latest offering from someone and launches into an array of criticisms which have been previously addressed but the commentator hasn’t bothered to read. 

The point is that research is a lengthy process and opinions should only be formed with conviction when one is convinced they have read all the major offerings in the area of interest and considered the evidence base. 

Which brings me to the real point. 

Before I wrote blogs I had generated 25 or so years of academic research material – in journal articles, books, book chapters, commissioned reports – hundreds of items of work. That is standard fare for an active researcher chasing competitive grants. That is where one’s contribution to ‘knowledge’ (as far as it is) is to be found. I only started writing blogs as a way of promoting Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to a broader audience that would never read my academic work. I think that has been a successful strategy. But it has also created this ‘new myopia’. 

People think that the knowledge set available lies exclusively in blogs. It doesn’t. My blogs cut corners in writing style, referencing, and leave things unsaid that a more formal treatment would cover. The aim of the blog is accessibility and to provide an introduction to ideas which will encourage readers to delve further and arm themselves with deeper knowledge so as to promote informedprogressive activism. A case in point is recent deliberations about one of my pet topics – the Job Guarantee.

A week or so ago (May 16, 2017), the Washington-based Centre for American Progress published an Op Ed – Toward a Marshall Plan for America.... [paragraphing introduced for readability in this format.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
There is more to the Job Guarantee literature than a few blog posts
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Black — The Democratic Party’s “Centrist” Leaders Remain Clueless

On December 10, 2016, a New York Times article entitled “Democrats Have a New Message: It’s the Economy First” that unintentionally revealed that the Party’s “centrist” leadership and the paper remain clueless about how to improve the economy and why the “centrist” leadership needs to end its long war against the working class. This is how the paper explained the five “centrist” leaders’ framing of the problem....

Stuck in the Washington bubble. Economically clueless, in addition.

New Economic Perspectives
The Democratic Party’s “Centrist” Leaders Remain Clueless
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

William K. Black — Krugman’s Failure to Speak Truth to Power about Austerity

In the first column in this series I explained how Hillary Clinton, during the closing 40 days of her campaign, showcased repeatedly her promise to assault the working class with continuous austerity. I explained that her threat represented economic malpractice – and was insane politics. I showed that the assault on the working class via austerity was such a core belief of the New Democrats that their candidate highlighted that assault even as the polls showed massive, intense rejection of her candidacy by the white working class. I also noted that in this second series in the column I would discuss the failure of her campaign team, and her de facto surrogate, Paul Krugman to speak truth to power about the dual idiocy of her campaign promise to wage continuous war on the working class through austerity forever. 

The broader point is the one made so often and so well by Tom Frank – it is morally wrong, economically illiterate, and politically suicidal for the New Democrats to continue to assault the working class via austerity, “free trade” (sic) deals, and financial deregulation. The only thing worse is to then insult the working class for reacting “badly” to being pummeled for decades by the Party that once defined itself as the party of working people. The New Democrats decided to insult the white working class in response to polls showing that the white working class was enraged at Hillary Clinton. Arrogance and self-blindness are boon companions....

New Economic Perspectives
Krugman’s Failure to Speak Truth to Power about Austerity
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

Jonathan Easley — Sanders: Clinton will play vital role in future of the Democratic Party

Writing the obituary of the Democratic Party. I guess they didn't get the message. Rivals Barack Obama's idiotic "bipartisanship" that destroyed his presidency as it ate up his political capital.

The Hill
Sanders: Clinton will play vital role in future of the Democratic Party

Jonathan Easley

Michael Hudson — Break Up the Democratic Party: It’s Time for the Clintons and Rubin to Go – and Soros Too

The Democratic Party can save itself only by focusing on economic issues – in a way that reverses its neoliberal stance under Obama, and indeed going back to Bill Clinton’s pro-Wall Street administration. The Democrats need to do what Britain’s Labour Party did by cleaning out Tony Blair’s Thatcherites. As Paul Craig Roberts wrote over the weekend: “Change cannot occur if the displaced ruling class is left intact after a revolution against them. We have proof of this throughout South America. Every revolution by the indigenous people has left unmolested the Spanish ruling class, and every revolution has been overthrown by collusion between the ruling class and Washington.”[1] Otherwise the Democrats will be left as an empty shell.

Now is the time for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and the few other progressives who have not been kept out of office by the DNC to make their move and appointing their own nominees to the DNC. If they fail, the Democratic Party is dead.

It's going to take that and more than that. Younger blood needed.

The Democrats need more demographic balance in the leadership, too.

When Tulsi Gabbard was sworn in as a Democratic representative from Hawaii, she took the oath on the Bhagavad Gita as the first Hindu member of the US Congress and first American Samoan. 

Tammy Duckworth, who just beat Mark Kirk for a Senate seat, is the first American Thai-Chinese member of Congress. Gabbard and Duckworth are the first female combat veterans to be elected to US office.

Kamala Harris just won the Senate seat vacated by Barbara Boxer. She is African-Asian-East Indian American. Her background is in law, criminal justice and law enforcement. She is a natural born US citizen and is already being considered presidential material.

If they sound too establishment, there are others that could be recruited to join the bench. Democrats need to think out of the box.

Based on Bernie Sanders identification as a socialist, progressive Democrats should also be recruiting Kshama Sawant, who recently won a seat on the Seattle City Council as a socialist. She was instrumental in getting the minimum wage raised to $15 an hour there and was an Occupy organizer. Sawant in also a Hindu and an immigrant, born in Pune, India. She holds a PhD in economics (North Carolina State U). 

While the Democrats just suffered a devastating defeat across the board, they can take consolation of Hillary winning the popular vote, the electorate polling in favor of a Swedish economic model, and the democraphics going forward favoring them if they don't do stupid stuff like they just did in selection g HRC over Bernie Sanders.

"Every breakdown is an opportunity for a breakthrough," as an old friend who was an entrepreneur used to say.

Counterpunch
Break Up the Democratic Party: It’s Time for the Clintons and Rubin to Go – and Soros Too

Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

Bernie Sanders — Where the Democrats Go From Here

In the coming days, I will also provide a series of reforms to reinvigorate the Democratic Party. I believe strongly that the party must break loose from its corporate establishment ties and, once again, become a grass-roots party of working people, the elderly and the poor. We must open the doors of the party to welcome in the idealism and energy of young people and all Americans who are fighting for economic, social, racial and environmental justice. We must have the courage to take on the greed and power of Wall Street, the drug companies, the insurance companies and the fossil fuel industry.

When my presidential campaign came to an end, I pledged to my supporters that the political revolution would continue. And now, more than ever, that must happen. We are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. When we stand together and don’t let demagogues divide us up by race, gender or national origin, there is nothing we cannot accomplish. We must go forward, not backward.

Democratic leadership is there to pick up. So far only Bernie has stepped forward.

Polls suggest that Bernie would have easily won against Donald Trump. For this reason alone, he is the presumptive party leader.

While his endorsement of Hillary Clinton and campaigning vigorously for her disaffected many on the left, it cemented his position as a party loyalist signaling that he had decided to work within the party rather than bolt.

Now Democrats have to chose between continued triangulation and recovering their roots as a grassroots party. After having alienated the grassroots, it is going to take some convincing that the tiger has changed its stripes.

The Smirking Chimp Trump
Where the Democrats Go From Here

Bernie Sanders

John Chuckman — Breakdown of the Clinton Money Machine

As troubling as Donald Trump’s election may be, it carries greater hope for some positive good than the alternative of Hillary Clinton, who represented a corrupt, money-churning machine, writes John Chuckman.

Nothing is going to change for the better more than temporarily without getting the money out of politics, ending lobbying, and locking the revolving door.

Exposing the problem is insufficient. It must be solved and after the Citizens United decision, this will take a constitutional amendment in the US.

Other countries face similar challenges.

The fundamental problems globally are elitism — the cronyism to which elitism leads and corruption that the elite legalizes.

These issues will either be solved peacefully or there will be revolutions.

Consortium News
Breakdown of the Clinton Money Machine

John Chuckman, former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company

Favorite tidbit:

In hindsight, it might be just as well that Sanders was cheated out of the nomination. He proved a weak individual in the end, giving in to just the forces that he had claimed to oppose and leaving his enthusiastic followers completely let down. There he was, out on the hustings, supporting everything he ever opposed as personified in Hillary Clinton. Men of that nature do not stand up well to Generals and Admirals and the heads of massive corporations, a quality which I do think we have some right to expect Trump to display.

Mike Konczal — The “new liberal economics” is the key to understanding Hillary Clinton’s policies

This is the best the Democratic establishment can come up with?

Vox
The “new liberal economics” is the key to understanding Hillary Clinton’s policies
Mike Konczal, Roosevelt Institute fellow

Robin Scher — Chomsky Interview: ‘The U.S. Is One of the Most Fundamentalist Countries in the World’

“Today’s Democrats, Clinton-style Democrats, are pretty much what used to be called moderate Republicans. And the Republicans just went way off the spectrum. They are so dedicated to service to wealth and the corporate sector that they simply cannot get votes on their own programs.”

Alternet
Chomsky Interview: ‘The U.S. Is One of the Most Fundamentalist Countries in the World’
Robin Scher, AlterNet

Chuck Spinney — Reinventing Guns and Butter Politics for the 21st Century

The decrepitude of the (New) Democratic Party. Making war pay.

The Blaster
Reinventing Guns and Butter Politics for the 21st Century
Chuck Spinney