Fifty years ago, no self-respecting person on the left would have dreamed of aligning themselves with the FBI or CIA

Things have changed in fifty years.

The FBI and the CIA have been rehabilitated. Comey and Brennan are heroes of the resistance. And, unlike fifty years ago, anything you read in the New York Times is Guaranteed Gospel Truth! Back in the day, your first reaction to mainstream media claims was always skepticism. 

Now, NYT/WaPo/CNN/PBS are the go-to platforms for truth-seeking lefties.

That's not all that's changed. Fifty years ago, the Black Resistance to 350 years of oppression gave rise to inspirational leaders like Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and MLK. Today, Black Resistance to 400 years of oppression is centralized in the corporate-sponsored BLM astro-turf movement.

Fifty years ago, most people still viewed the Democrats as the party of unionized labour. Now it's the party of union-busting hedge-fund billionaires.

Fifty years ago, Republicans were the war party and Democrats were at least more likely to talk peace, if not actually cease and desist from dropping our Paveway instruments of democracy on recalcitrant third world peasants. Today the Democrats are as keen on perpetual war as the old war party ever was.

Sadly, what we have witnessed over the last fifty years, is the wholesale betrayal of the interests of everyday working people, of all ethnicities and creeds, by both parties.

Sooner or later, blowback is coming...

Where is this Trump thing going, and why?

I think American society has reached a tipping point. There are too many people who realize that the status quo is not working in their interest. In a "democracy," that signals change.

And we're not talking about change between a Wall Street friendly GOP vs. a Wall Street friendly Democratic Party. We're talking about real substantive change. As in fuck Wall Street, lets take America back from the banksters.

It is noteworthy that this anti-status-quo groundswell is happening in spite of the best efforts of the corporate media. In a nutshell, too many folks have concluded that the corporate or mainstream media are nothing more than the propaganda arm for the Wall Street crowd.

There are certainly manifold ironies around the fact that it's a Manhattan billionaire who has become the standard bearer for this groundswell of anti-establishment sentiment. But, there are reasons why it couldn't be anyone else.

The Citizens United case essentially slammed the coffin lid on the last vestiges of democracy in America. That left the American public vulnerable to the machinations of whichever political machine could mount the most persuasive advertising campaign.

Or, in Trump's case, to the machinations of a media personality who was able to massage his celebrity status and name recognition into a broad-based populist campaign.

The reasons that Trump's alleged misogyny, racism, hooliganism, and overall boorishness don't hurt his campaign is that these traits prove that he is not part of the political establishment, and the people are screaming enough already at that establishment. That's why they're going to Trump rallies.

That's why they're going to vote Trump in November.

What happens after that is anybody's guess.

Shit show in South Philly

Good to see the Democratic Party coming together like that, ain't it?

The aging charlatan from Vermont succeeds in pied piping the biggest influx of youthful idealists to the Party since JFK, only to stab them in the back at the eleventh hour! And didn't Sarah Silverman do a great job of putting the whiny ingrates in their place? Let them pout and protest in the streets with their fellow travellers of BLM, while the grown-ups stay in the room and fawn over Hillary.

But OMG, who knew that Hillary had such a long and rich history of good deeds? She's done more good deeds than Mother Teresa herself, that gal has! That must be why the who's who of the GOP warhawk faction have been abandoning ship and falling in behind her... Armitage, Scowcroft, Kagan... they're scared to death Trump might put the bombs in his bombast, so they're scurrying for the skirts of the Beltway's greatest humanitarian of all time?

Ya right.

What's been truly telling in the news coverage over the past couple of days is how effective the damage control has been around the disastrous Wikileaks email dump on the weekend. As you tour the mainstream news sites you find virtually no discussion of, let alone outrage over, the egregious corruption at the highest levels of the Dem machine revealed in those emails. Instead, there's a tsunami of bullshit about Putin being behind the hack.

Hillarious!

American democracy; truly the greatest show on earth!

Trump was never a right-winger

A lot of your mainstream liberal news platforms continue to pee their pants over the entire Trump-white-supremacist-right-winger-racist ball of yarn.

Donald Trump became all those things the day after he declared for the GOP nomination. Before that, he was just a pretty normal rich Manhattan liberal. There's literally thousands of them in Manhattan; in fact, Manhattan has the highest concentration of rich liberals anywhere in the world!

I've never been a Trump fan. The egregious self-promotion always put me off. Maybe I was just jealous.

But I became a fan when I saw how deftly this Manhattan liberal hijacked the Grand Old Party.

Hundreds of millions of donor dollars down the drain as Rubio and Cruz and Bush were all left at the curb.

Since then, the supposed "liberal" media have been doing their best to paint Trump in the darkest possible tones. To some extent I get the Trump anxiety. He does say some outrageous shit and he does aim for the headlines with that shit, but I think there's still the real DJT behind all that PR, and that's a dyed in the wool Manhattan liberal.

But what else is the "liberal" media to do? Admit that negotiating with North Korea is a good idea?

Admit that making peace with Putin is a good idea?

Admit that America's working class took it up the ass for NAFTA and every "free trade" agreement that's been signed since?

So I see their conundrum. And that conundrum does not form in a vacuum. It forms in an environment very much shaped by the beltway boffins who stage manage America's foreign policy, energy policy, defence policy, wars on drugs, immigrants, terror, and the working class, and of course the finance policies that allow government to bail out crooked banks but not struggling home-owners.

When your "free press" is that deeply embedded in the anus of the power elite, it's no wonder that this particular Manhattan liberal has been re-purposed as a "right-winger."

Trump to ban bulldozers and power-shovels from border wall project

Multiple media sources are reporting that an internal GOP briefing note found in a dumpster in North Dakota may provide a snapshot of a possible Trump employment strategy. Apparently Trump's team toyed with the idea of banning power equipment from the Mexican Border Wall project.

They could be on to something. Think about how many jobs will be created! It'll be wheel-barrows and hand shovels all the way! Research shows that a single power shovel displaces 1500 hand-shovellers, and on a two thousand mile border project... hell, Finning Tractor and Cat are gonna go outta business!

But think of how many unemployed would be redeemed.

Then again, where in America are you going to find half a million shovel-wielders?

Oh great!... illegal Mexican immigrants are gonna build Trump's Mexican wall.

GOP announce Jindal-Trump ticket for 2016

Well, its not actually the GOP, it's just the think tank here at Falling Downs.

But think about it. That's a combo that could grow legs, and long ones at that.

That's a combo that could take Hillary to the wood-shed.

The fact that whupping Hillary a year and a half out utterly consumes the GOP and the media speaks volumes re: the dismal state of American democracy.

Bobby Jindal. When I was a kid, the idea that a Paki could possibly find himself in the governor's mansion in the great state of Louisiana would have been met with unmitigated ridicule.

Unless he was there to serve tea.

But hey, he's got this far, why not go all the way?

After all, he's proven his bona fides as an unquestioning mouthpiece for big money.

And why not The Donald as his second fiddle? After all, Donald is the great American success story personified... all he did was inherit Daddy's tenement empire. Given the straight line that NYC real estate has made straight up over the past 50 years, how could he not become a billionaire? We'll just forget about all those failed casinos for the moment, which should work out OK, because if there's one thing the American voter is good at, it's forgetting.

The race is on!

How Ron Paul will change the world

Doesn't matter who wins the GOP nomination. It'll be business as usual. Just like it's been business as usual with the switch-over from Bush to Obama.

Keep the too-big-to-fail banksters happy, keep the beltway think tanks happy, keep the usual war-profiteer cancer-profiteer lobby crowd happy, and the train of manifest destiny will just keep a-chugging along into oblivion.

Unless Ron Paul gets the nomination.

To be sure, there's more than enough in the Paul platform that I disagree with.

At the same time, Paul is the only candidate who is not like the other ones.

If Paul were to follow through on his promise to close all foreign military bases, the world would change, and the future of the world would change.

I know there is a lot of American pride wrapped up in all the good stuff we bring to the world. Freedom. Democracy. American Idol. Nascar.

George W made the claim that "they" hate us for our freedoms.

Let's stay home and take care of our freedoms, and let the people of Libya, Iran, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Mexico, India and Pakistan worry about theirs.

Why should America go bankrupt worrying about the freedoms of the rest of the world?

Of course, when you think about it, it's not really that much about "our" freedom.

It's about the freedom of a small clique of oil companies and Wall Street banks and war profiteers to keep making profits and keep driving policies that make the rest of the world hate us.

We've seen promises of change before, so let's not get our hopes up.

But Ron Paul just might change the world.

Republicans for Obama

Sounds crazy, but it's coming soon to a town hall near you; Republicans for Obama.

It's bubbling away on the back burner right now. It will burst into full bloom after Ron Paul wins the GOP nomination.

And that's probably a done deal. Who's left? Newt and Perry tripped up by the demands of campaign paperwork, Cain undone by the stuck zipper on his trousers, Bachmann  done in by the unstuck zipper on her lips, Palin and Huntsman and Trump sitting this round out... It's starting to look a lot like Paul vs. Romney.

Romney is the "corporations are people" candidate. Good luck with that.

Ron Paul is the isolationist candidate. Let's just bring a million American soldiers home and, and... do what? Have them build housing for the homeless? No can do. We need them off the payroll to hit that trillion dollar budget reduction target. So we'll just add them to the ranks of the unemployed.

The more folks think this through, the better Obama looks. Keep paying for uncountable military bases on foreign soil? Check. Keep antagonizing the People of the Towel with pointless interventions in their countries? Check. Keep funding idiotic blue-sky military programs that do nothing but suck money out of the real economy and enrich war profiteers? Check. Keep bailing out too-big-too-fail banksters? Double check.

The closer Republicans look at Ron Paul, the more they will realize that Obama's their man.

Newt drops ball in Virginia; Adelson pissed

Newt Gingrich has missed the filing deadline to run in the Virginia primaries.

Having earlier claimed that he intended to deliver the papers personally he later changed his story and said he'd missed his flight from Iowa due to hassles with unionized airport workers.

Whatever the truth, one thing is for certain. Not being on the ticket in Virginia is a serious blow to the Gingrich campaign. Insiders with knowledge of the matter say Gingrich moneyman Sheldon Adelson hit the roof when he heard the news.

"What kind of schmuck misses a deadline? This is the future of the free world we are talking about! He missed a fucking deadline?! Millions and millions I have put on this schlemel, and he misses a deadline?"

In other GOP leadership news, Rick Perry missed the deadline too. In his case, though, it's obvious he just didn't have any support. That crock about creating all those jobs didn't hold much water after folks found out they were all minimum wage jobs. And the fact that he bellies up to the trough at the Texas treasury for a double helping every month didn't help his case either. Perry is toast.

Meanwhile Ron Paul got his paperwork done and handed in and will be on the ticket in Virginia.

Gingrich proposes changing name of Republican Party

Newt Gingrich has proposed that his party change their name to Likud Party of America.

The move comes at a time when Gingrich is surging to a commanding lead in the race to lead the party in the 2012 elections, and the public seems willing to go for virtually anything that comes out of Gingrich's mouth. The LPA would continue its present policy commitments of creating more wealth for rich people while telling poor people to work harder and stop complaining.

Apparently the move comes as a result of the diminishing faculties of Gingrich's major donor, Sheldon Adelson. "Sheldon is not as sharp as he used to be and gets the checks mixed up sometimes" an anonymous insider revealed. "A million bucks intended for Netanyahu will end up with Newt's people or vice versa. It takes weeks of hassling with the banks to get it all straightened away. With the name change all he has to write in there is 'Likud' and there'll be no more confusion."

A spokesperson with the Romney campaign claimed that this is just more proof that with Newt, whoever waves the checkbook calls the tune.

Corporations are people but Palestinians aren't; what to expect from a Gingrich Romney ticket

It's the GOP dream team, Newt and Mitt. The wily carpet-bagger and the slick corporate front-man. Two rich old white guys putting their personal interests on the back burner to do a spot of public service.

Newt has done well for himself in his past adventures in public service. His net worth went from nothing into the tens of millions in the course of his decades of public service. If he can do half as well for America as he's done for himself we'll be in good hands with Newt.

Mitt made his fortune before he became a public servant. Made it in the magical Rumpelstiltskin economy, where gnomes in the know spin straw into gold without ever ever doing any productive work. Mitt understands that real wealth comes from crafty paper-shuffling, not from making stuff or providing useful services. Mitt understands with his heart and soul that yes, corporations are people too.

And it's so true. Corporations get a bad rap in America. I've seen corporations at the food bank, being shunned by the other patrons. How do you think they feel when that happens? Hey, they're people too, dammit! I hope when Mitt gets to the White House corporations will finally get the respect they deserve.

Newt is the perfect VP for Romney. It would not be possible to find a candidate more committed to egalitarianism and justice. Newt is one hundred percent committed to whoever he is making a speech in front of at any given moment.

Yesterday he was sucking up to AIPAC and he said some rude things about Palestinians. You know darn well if the Emir of Qatar pays him to make a speech next week, he'll be singing the praises of the Palestinians and saying rude things about Israel. That's what's great about Gingrich; he treats all checkbooks equally. That speaks volumes of his commitment to fairness.

Obama couldn't ask for a better GOP ticket in 2012.