Oprah Winfrey als president, is de VS compleet gek geworden?

Op de Intercept publiceerde Mehdi Hasan afgelopen maandag een artikel waarin hij zich al in de kop afvraagt of we helemaal gek zijn geworden, door nu Oprah Winfrey, u weet wel o.a. notoire belastingontduiker en presentator van een praatprogramma, als toekomstig president van te VS te zien......

Hasan vergelijkt een aantal presidenten en stelt dan dat Winfrey, die o.a. wel stabiel is i.t.t. Trump, een grote verademing zou zijn op Trump al leg je daarmee de lat wel erg laag...... Bovendien is ze geen seksist, of een fascist en wordt ze niet verdacht van het heulen met 'de vijand', zoals in het geval van Trump en Rusland...... Dat laatste had Hasan niet moeten zeggen, hij zou moeten weten dat dit gelul is van de democraten in samenwerking met een paar geheime diensten....... Het was zeker na de val van de Sovjet-Unie bijna gebruikelijk voor de komende administratie, als met Israël ook te overleggen met Rusland; dit had Hasan kunnen weten.

Voorts stelt Hasan dat we (in de VS. Ap) niet nog een president nodig hebben die een niet gekozen generaal en Goldman Sachs een deel van het werk laat doen........ Hasan moet toch weten dat Trump bepaald niet de eerste president is, die ofwel het leger min of meer liet beslissen wat te doen (waarna het werd gebracht als was het een plan van de president) en de banken de vrije hand gaf....

Maakt verder niet uit Hasan schreef een uiterst informatief stuk, waarin hij filosofeert en uiteindelijk stelt dat de VS echt geen tweede nitwit als Trump nodig heeft, een tweede steenrijke figuur, die deels het eigenbelang zal laten prevaleren........

Lees en oordeel zelf:

Oprah Winfrey for President: Have We All Gone Bonkers?

Photo: Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

Mehdi Hasan contact: Twitter @mehdirhasan

January 8, 2018

HAVE WE ALL gone bonkers?

On Sunday evening, #Oprah2020 began trending on social media after Oprah Winfrey delivered a rousing speech against misogyny and racism at the Golden Globe Awards. While Oprah has in the past ruled out running for public office, her longtime partner Stedman Graham just told the Los Angeles Times that “she would absolutely do it,” and CNN is reporting that Oprah is “actively thinking” about running for president.

Is #Oprah2020 really a serious thing?

Do people honestly consider the talk-show-host-turned-media-mogul to be a viable or appropriate candidate to run against fellow celebrity billionaire Donald Trump in three years? “I have no idea if Oprah would be a good candidate or president,” former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau wrote on Twitter, “but dismissing her out of hand because Trump is a celebrity seems short-sighted.”

Really? I’m old enough to remember when liberals gave a damn about experience, qualifications, and judgement; when Democrats mocked the idea of Trump — a former reality TV star and property developer who struggled to tell the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah — running for the presidency.

On the campaign trail, former President Barack Obama blasted Trump as “uniquely unqualified,” lacking in “basic knowledge” and “woefully unprepared” to do the job of commander-in-chief. In stark contrast, he argued, there had “never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.”

President Barack Obama awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Oprah Winfrey in the East Room at the White House on Nov. 20, 2013 in Washington. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Clinton called Trump “totally unqualified,” while an op-ed from the New York Times editorial board, headlined “Why Donald Trump Should Not Be President,” pointed out that the GOP candidate “has no experience in national security.” Three days after the election, Vox ran a piece headlined, “Donald Trump is the only U.S. president ever with no political or military experience.”

Well, dear liberals and Democrats, guess what? President Winfrey would be the second such president. Is this really what most Americans want or what the United States government needs? Another clueless celebrity in possession of the nuclear codes? Another billionaire mogul who doesn’t like paying taxes in charge of the economy? And how would it be anything other than sheer hypocrisy for Democrats to offer an unqualified, inexperienced presidential candidate to the American electorate in 2020, given all that they said about Trump in 2016?

Granted, Oprah isn’t a raging narcissist or a racist bigot; she doesn’t have ties to white nationalists, isn’t accused of colluding with a foreign government, and hasn’t been caught on tape admitting to sexual assault.

Oprah would be a far superior, smarter, and more stable president than Trump in every imaginable way. But that, of course, is a low, low bar.

As CNBC’s Christina Wilkie, in a rare dissent on Twitter, put it: “I love to watch Oprah saying inspirational things on television. But also I love to watch people who have political experience being elected to national office.”

What about former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan, some Oprah supporters might say? The Gipper, however, was also a former two-term governor from California. Obama, also accused of being a political lightweight when he ran for president, was a sitting senator, former constitutional law professor, and author of two acclaimed books on politics and policy. Even the know-nothing George W. Bush had won two gubernatorial elections in Texas before throwing his hat in the presidential ring in 2000.

Prior to Trump, the only presidents to never have served in public office prior to being elected to the White House were Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower. The first won the Mexican-American War; the second, the Civil War; and the third, the Second World War.

Does Oprah have anything on her resume to compare with that? Is emoting on TV and handing out free cars — even if it is, admittedly, part of building an impressive multi-billion-dollar media empire from scratch — really an acceptable substitute for political or military experience? Is that how debased the political culture has become?

Oprah Winfrey poses at the inaugural graduation of the class of 2011 at Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls on Jan. 14, 2012 in Henley on Klip, South Africa.
 Photo: Michelly Rall/Getty Images

DO I SOUND elitist? Perhaps. But what’s wrong with wanting people with intellect, experience, and qualifications to fill the most important jobs? As Oprah’s fellow celebrity liberal Jon Stewart once said: “Not only do I want an elite president, I want someone who’s embarrassingly superior to me, somebody who speaks 16 languages and sleeps two hours a night hanging upside down in a chamber they themselves designed.”

Well, the Oprah fans might argue, she could surround herself with big brains. But isn’t that the argument that Trump supporters make, too? Do we really want another president deferring to unelected generals and Goldman Sachs? And do we think a talk-show host who promoted the careers of hucksters Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz, while also giving a platform to the anti-science lunacy of actresses Jenny McCarthy and Suzanne Somers, is capable of constructing a Lincoln-esque “Team of Rivals”? A political and economic “Justice League?” Come. Off. It.

To be clear: I am not saying that Oprah can’t, or won’t, be president. Predictions are for fools, and Trump has proved that anything is possible.

Oprah’s supporters — rightly — might point to her strong record on standing up to racism and misogyny, not to mention her inspirational oratory and backstory. Her record on Iraq is better than Clinton’s; she once even hosted a show on universal health care with Michael Moore. It might also seem like an act of divine justice if Trump, hero to white nationalists and neo-Nazis, was replaced by a strong black woman.

Oprah’s critics — also rightly — might point to her fronting for global corporations and her role as “one of the world’s best neoliberal capitalist thinkers.” They might ask: What is Oprah’s position on drone strikes in Pakistan? On supporting the Saudi war in Yemen? On cap and trade? Single-payer? Tax reform? Does she have a plan for Middle East peace? Could a person who once seemed surprised that Indian people still “eat with their hands” really defuse a nuclear crisis on the Indian subcontinent?

But we have to go beyond the pros and cons of an Oprah presidency — I can’t believe I just typed that line — and consider some broader questions: How much damage is U.S. celebrity culture doing to U.S. politics? Why don’t ideologies, or even ideas, seem to matter anymore? Shouldn’t progressives be making the case for the virtues of government and collective action and, therefore, the importance of electing people of ability, experience, and expertise to high office? Shouldn’t they be arguing that billionaire TV stars have no business running for the most powerful job on planet Earth, regardless of whether they are an orange man called Trump or a black woman called Oprah?

Some pundits have suggested that the Democrats can’t win without a celebrity candidate like Oprah in 2020. “If you need to set a thief to catch a thief,” neoconservative John Podhoretz wrote in a New York Post op-ed in September 2017 that was retweeted by Oprah herself, “you need a star — a grand, outsized, fearless star whom Trump can neither intimidate nor outshine — to catch a star.”

This simply isn’t true. In August 2017, Public Policy Polling found Trump trailed Joe Biden (by 15 points), Bernie Sanders (14 points), Elizabeth Warren (7 points), Cory Booker (5 points), and Kamala Harris (1 point) in potential 2020 match-ups. Last month, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found Trump would lose to a “Generic Democrat” in 2020 by a whopping 16 points.

If five different senators plus a Generic Democrat can beat this Republican president, then why the liberal excitement over a talk-show host? And why draw the line at Oprah? What about Mark Zuckerberg? Mark Cuban? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson? Kanye? Where, oh where, does it end?

The liberal response to the rise of Trump cannot and should not be “let’s find our own bigger, better version of The Donald.” As columnist Emily Arrowood wrote in May 2016: “That Trump is acutely unqualified would be true even if he were Mr. Congeniality, a champion of the people with the aspirations of Jimmy Stewart in ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.’”

The irony is that Oprah may, in fact, be Ms. Congeniality. But she is still as “acutely unqualified” as Trump. Let’s get a grip, folks.

Top photo: In this handout photo provided by NBCUniversal, Oprah Winfrey speaks onstage during the 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Jan. 7, 2018 in Beverly Hills, Calif.

VS militair-industrieel complex houdt het 'land' in een wurggreep........

Dat de VS zo goed als failliet is, gezien de enorme staatsschuld, is nog voor weinigen die het nieuws volgen een geheim. Het feit dat de dollar nog steeds wordt gebruikt als grootste internationaal betaalmiddel (zo wordt de olieprijs in dollars uitgedrukt) en het feit dat een land als China enorme voorraden dollars in het bezit heeft, zorgt ervoor dat de VS door kan gaan met enorme investeringen (op de pof) in de oorlogsindustrie, ofwel in het militair-industrieel complex......

Op 1 december jl, plaatste JP Sotille een artikel over het militair-industrieel complex (MIC) op Consortiumnews (CN), een artikel dat Anti-Media op 3 december publiceerde. In dit artikel legt Sotille uit  hoe het kan, dat de VS de ene (illegale) oorlog na de andere begint, terwijl een groot deel van het volk oorlogsmoe is....... Niet alleen het angstzaaien voor figuren als de Noord-Koreaanse dictator Kim Yung-un, maar ook ronduit oorlogshitsen door lobbyisten van het militair-industrieel complex, zijn de oorzaak voor het belachelijke budget dat de VS jaarlijks uittrekt voor 'defensie' (lees: oorlogsvoering).....

Niet alleen het MIC lobbyt voor het opschroeven van het oorlogsbudget, maar ook politici als gouverneurs doen dat, daar het MIC voor werkgelegenheid zorgt...... Nog naast de vele politici die persoonlijk, of van wie familieleden/vrienden voordeel hebben bij een op volle toeren draaiend MIC........

Verder wijst Sotille op het feit, dat er naast het officiële budget voor 'defensie,' enorme kapitalen gaan naar zaken die alles met het militair-industrieel complex te maken hebben, maar buiten dit budget worden gehouden...... (dit gebeurd overigens ook in Nederland.....)

Lees het gedegen en ontluisterende artikel van Sotille, over een vereniging van terreurstaten, die de weg totaal kwijt is en grote terreur uitoefent over een deel van de wereld, waar ze niets, maar dan ook helemaal niets te zoeken hebben: 

The Truth About America’s Military-Industrial Complex Addiction

December 3, 2017 at 10:11 am

Written by JP Sottile

Polls show that Americans are tired of endless wars in faraway lands, but many cheer President Trump’s showering money on the Pentagon and its contractors, a paradox that President Eisenhower foresaw.

(CN) — The Military-Industrial Complex has loomed over America ever since President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of its growing influence during his prescient farewell address on Jan. 17, 1961. The Vietnam War followed shortly thereafter, and its bloody consequences cemented the image of the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) as a faceless cadre of profit-seeking warmongers who’ve wrested control of the foreign policy. That was certainly borne out by the war’s utter senselessness … and by tales of profiteering by well-connected contractors like Brown & Root.

President Dwight Eisenhower delivering his farewell address on Jan. 17, 1961.

Over five decades, four major wars and a dozen-odd interventions later, we often talk about the Military-Industrial Complex as if we’re referring to a nefarious, flag-draped Death Star floating just beyond the reach of helpless Americans who’d generally prefer that war was not, as the great Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler aptly put it, little more than a money-making “racket.”

The feeling of powerlessness that the MIC engenders in “average Americans” makes a lot of sense if you just follow the money coming out of Capitol Hill. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) tabulated all “defense-related spending” for both 2017 and 2018, and it hit nearly $1.1 trillion for each of the two years. The “defense-related” part is important because the annual National Defense Authorization Act, a.k.a. the defense budget, doesn’t fully account for all the various forms of national security spending that gets peppered around a half-dozen agencies.

It’s a phenomenon that noted Pentagon watchdog William Hartung has tracked for years. He recently dissected it into “no less than 10 categories of national security spending.” Amazingly only one of those is the actual Pentagon budget. The others include spending on wars, on homeland security, on military aid, on intelligence, on nukes, on recruitment, on veterans, on interest payments and on “other defense” — which includes “a number of flows of defense-related funding that go to agencies other than the Pentagon.”

Perhaps most amazingly, Hartung noted in TomDisptach that the inflation-adjusted “base” defense budgets of the last couple years is “higher than at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s massive buildup of the 1980s and is now nearing the post-World War II funding peak.” And that’s just the “base” budget, meaning the roughly $600 billion “defense-only” portion of the overall package. Like POGO, Hartung puts an annual price tag of nearly $1.1 trillion on the whole enchilada of military-related spending.

The MIC’s ‘Swamp Creatures’

To secure their share of this grandiloquent banquet, the defense industry’s lobbyists stampede Capitol Hill like well-heeled wildebeest, each jockeying for a plum position at the trough. This year, a robust collection of 208 defense companies spent $93,937,493 to deploy 728 “reported” lobbyists (apparently some go unreported) to feed this year’s trumped-up, $700 billion defense-only budget, according to OpenSecrets.org. Last year they spent $128,845,198 to secure their profitable pieces of the government pie.

And this reliable yearly harvest, along with the revolving doors connecting defense contractors with Capitol Hill, K Street and the Pentagon, is why so many critics blame the masters of war behind the MIC for turning war into a cash machine.

But the cash machine is not confined to the Beltway. There are ATM branches around the country. Much in the way it lavishes Congress with lobbying largesse, the defense industry works hand-in-glove with the Pentagon to spread the appropriations around the nation. This “spread the wealth” strategy may be equally as important as the “inside the Beltway” lobbying that garners so much of our attention and disdain.

Just go to U.S. Department of Defense’s contract announcement webpage on any weekday to get a good sense of the “contracts valued at $7 million or more” that are “announced each business day at 5 p.m.” A recent survey of these “awards” found the usual suspects like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. The MIC was well-represented. But many millions of dollars were also “won” by companies most Americans have never heard of … like this sampling from one day at the end of October:

• Longbow LLC, Orlando Florida, got $183,474,414 for radar electronic units with the stipulation that work will be performed in Orlando, Florida.
• Gradkell Systems Inc., Huntsville, Alabama, got $75,000,000 for systems operations and maintenance at Fort Belvoir, Virginia
• Dawson Federal Inc., San Antonio, Texas; and A&H-Ambica JV LLC, Livonia, Michigan; and Frontier Services Inc., Kansas City, Missouri, will share a $45,000,000 for repair and alternations for land ports of entry in North Dakota and Minnesota.
• TRAX International Corp., Las Vegas, Nevada, got a $9,203,652 contract modification for non-personal test support services that will be performed in Yuma, Arizona, and Fort Greely, Alaska,
• Railroad Construction Co. Inc., Paterson, New Jersey, got a $9,344,963 contract modification for base operations support services to be performed in Colts Neck, New Jersey.
• Belleville Shoe Co., Belleville, Illinois, got $63,973,889 for hot-weather combat boots that will be made in Illinois.
• American Apparel Inc., Selma, Alabama, got $48,411,186 for combat utility uniforms that will be made in Alabama.
• National Industries for the Blind, Alexandria, Virginia, got a $12,884,595 contract modification to make and advanced combat helmet pad suspension system. The “locations of performance” are Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

The Pentagon, headquarters of the U.S. Defense Department, as viewed with the Potomac River and Washington, D.C., in the background. (Defense Department photo)

Sharing the Largesse

Clearly, the DoD* is large enough, and smart enough, to award contracts to companies throughout the 50 states. Yes, it is a function of the sheer size or, more forebodingly, the utter “pervasiveness” of the military in American life. But it is also a strategy. And it’s a tactic readily apparent in a contract recently awarded to Raytheon.

On Oct. 31, 2017, they got a $29,455,672 contract modification for missions systems equipment; computing environment hardware; and software research, test and development. The modification stipulates that the work will spread around the country to “Portsmouth, Rhode Island (46 percent); Tewksbury, Massachusetts (36 percent); Marlboro, Massachusetts (6 percent); Port Hueneme, California (5 percent); San Diego, California (4 percent); and Bath, Maine (3 percent).”

Frankly, it’s a brilliant move that began in the Cold War. The more Congressional districts that got defense dollars, the more votes the defense budget was likely to receive on Capitol Hill. Over time, it evolved into its own underlying rationale for the budget.

As veteran journalist William Greider wrote in the Aug. 16, 1984 issue of Rolling Stone, “The entire political system, including liberals as well as conservatives, is held hostage by the politics of defense spending. Even the most well intentioned are captive to it. And this is a fundamental reason why the Pentagon budget is irrationally bloated and why America is mobilizing for war in a time of peace.”

The peace-time mobilization Greider referred to was the Reagan build-up that, as William Hartung noted, is currently being surpassed by America’s “War on Terror” binge. Then, as now … the US was at peace at home, meddling around the world and running up a huge bill in the process. And then, as now … the spending seems unstoppable.

And as an unnamed “arms-control lobbyist” told Grieder, “It’s a fact of life. I don’t see how you can ask members of Congress to vote against their own districts. If I were a member of Congress, I might vote that way, too.”

Essentially, members of Congress act as secondary lobbyists for the defense industry by making sure their constituents have a vested interest in seeing the defense budget is both robust and untouchable.

But they are not alone. Because the states also reap what the Pentagon sows … and, in the wake of the massive post-9/11 splurge, they’ve begun quantifying the impact of defense spending on their economies. It helps them make their specific case for keeping the spigot open.

Enter the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), which notes, or touts, that the Department of Defense (DoD) “operates more than 420 military installations in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico.” Additionally, the NCSL is understandably impressed by a DoD analysis that found the department’s “$408 billion on payroll and contracts in Fiscal Year 2015” translated into “approximately 2.3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).”

And they’ve become a clearinghouse for state governments’ economic impact studies of defense spending. Here’s a sampling of recent data compiled on the NSCL website:

• In 2015, for example, military installations in North Carolina supported 578,000 jobs, $34 billion in personal income and $66 billion in gross state product. This amounts to roughly 10 percent of the state’s overall economy.
• In 2014, Colorado lawmakers appropriated $300,000 in state funds to examine the comprehensive value of military activities across the state’s seven major installations. The state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs released its study in May 2015, reporting a total economic impact of $27 billion.
• Kentucky has also taken steps to measure military activity, releasing its fifth study in June 2016. The military spent approximately $12 billion in Kentucky during 2014-15. With 38,700 active duty and civilian employees, military employment exceeds the next largest state employer by more than 21,000 jobs.
• In Michigan, for example, defense spending in Fiscal Year 2014 supported 105,000 jobs, added more than $9 billion in gross state product and created nearly $10 billion in personal income. A 2016 study sponsored by the Michigan Defense Center presents a statewide strategy to preserve Army and Air National Guard facilities following a future Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) round as well as to attract new missions. 

President Trump speaking at a Cabinet meeting on Nov. 1, 2017, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Trump’s right and son-in-law Jared Kushner seated in the background.

Electoral Impact

But that’s not all. According to the DoD study cited above, the biggest recipients of DoD dollars are (in order): Virginia, California, Texas, Maryland and Florida. And among the top 18 host states for military bases, electorally important states like California, Florida and Texas lead the nation.

And that’s the real rub … this has an electoral impact. Because the constituency for defense spending isn’t just the 1 percent percent of Americans who actively serve in the military or 7 percent of Americans who’ve served sometime in their lives, but it is also the millions of Americans who directly or indirectly make a living off of the “defense-related” largesse that passes through the Pentagon like grass through a goose.

It’s a dirty little secret that Donald Trump exploited throughout the 2016 presidential campaign.

Somehow, he was able to criticize wasting money on foreign wars and the neoconservative interventionism of the Bushes, the neoliberal interventionism of Hillary Clinton, and, at the same time, moan endlessly about the “depleted” military despite “years of record-high spending.” He went on to promise a massive increase in the defense budget, a massive increase in naval construction and a huge nuclear arsenal.

And, much to the approval of many Americans, he’s delivered. A Morning Consult/Politico poll showed increased defense spending was the most popular among a variety of spending priorities presented to voters … even as voters express trepidation about the coming of another war. A pair of NBC News/Survey Monkey polls found that 76 percent of Americans are “worried” the United States “will become engaged in a major war in the next four years” and only 25 percent want America to become “more active” in world affairs.

More to the point, only 20 percent of Americans wanted to increase the troop level in Afghanistan after Trump’s stay-the-course speech in August, but Gallup’s three decade-long tracking poll found that the belief the U.S. spends “too little” on defense is at its highest point (37 percent) since it spiked after 9/11 (41 percent). The previous highpoint was 51 percent in 1981 when Ronald Reagan was elected in no small part on the promise of a major build-up.

So, if Americans generally don’t support wars or engagement in the world, why do they seem to reflexively support massive military budgets?

Frankly, look no further than Trump’s mantra of “jobs, jobs, jobs.” He says it when he lords over the sale of weapon systems to foreign powers or he visits a naval shipyard or goes to one of his post-election rallies to proclaim to “We’re building up our military like never before.” Frankly, he’s giving the people what they want. Although they may be war-weary, they’ve not tired of the dispersal system that Greider wrote about during Reagan’s big spree.

Ultimately, it means that the dreaded Military-Industrial Complex isn’t just a shadowy cabal manipulating policies against the will of the American people. Nor is the “racket” exclusive to an elite group of Deep State swamp things. Instead, the military and the vast economic network it feeds presents a far more “complex” issue that involves millions of self-interested Americans in much the way Eisenhower predicted, but few are willing to truly forsake.

* DoD: United States Department of Defense (ministerie van 'Defensie')

JP Sottile is a freelance journalist, radio co-host, documentary filmmaker and former broadcast news producer in Washington, D.C. He blogs at Newsvandal.com or you can follow him on Twitter.

Op-ed by JP Sottile / Republished with permission / Consortium News

==================================================

PS: het is ronduit een schandaal dat de reguliere westerse (massa-) media en het grootste deel van de westerse politiek buiten de VS, zo onbeschaamd durven te stellen dat de andere NAVO landen, zoals de VS meer moeten uitgeven aan defensie, terwijl zij dondersgoed weten, dat de VS zoveel uitgeeft aan defensie om haar belangen wereldwijd veilig te stellen. Het is als het pleiten voor enorme defensie uitgaven t.b.v. het koloniseren van landen die niet tot het westen behoren.......... Waarbij je niet moet vergeten, dat de grootste EU landen, Frankrijk, Groot--Brittannië, Frankrijk, Duitsland en Italië al 3 keer meer uitgeven aan 'defensie' dan Rusland, dat volkomen onterecht als de grote agressor wordt voorgesteld....... Terwijl niet Rusland maar de VS alleen deze eeuw al 4 illegale oorlogen is begonnen en verantwoordelijk is voor de moord op meer dan 2 miljoen mensen......