AMERICAN PARTY DUOPOLY

PAUL EDWARDS—The Parties–malformed twins joined at the wallet–are giant filtering mechanisms to identify and exclude minds of integrity and the morally courageous.  They are the Praetorian Guard of Capitalist Imperialism that has abused the world with impunity for so long that it believes it’s invincible, despite its serial humiliations.

JACK TUCKER—When in 2008 Bush Jr. returned to the ranch and full-time brush cutting, in rode Obama. Slicker than Slick Willy, he really sucker-punched liberals, who were desperate for some classy speech in the White House, someone who could correctly pronounce “nuclear” while promising to spend a trillion dollars on making a new generation of them. They got conned (I guess) when he immediately bailed out the banks and the Wall St. crooks, sent more troops to Afghanistan, cracked down on whistle-blowers, launched killer drones, increased surveillance, destroyed Libya and Syria, sent special forces throughout Africa, etc., smiling as he went marauding.

Lee analyses the sheer mediocrity and media-induced irrelevancy of Democratic party candidates “debates”. Everyone in the ultra-ambitious pack seems united to defeat Biden (the improbable favorite of older Democrats and the establishment), while sitfling any chances for Sanders or Tulsi Gabbard to gain traction—or “precious credibility”.

ANDREW LEVINE—Recall Trump’s rant against the squad. They are first of all “unpatriotic” for not wanting “to make America great again.” But worse, or just as bad, they are not Zionists. Two of them especially, Tlaib and Oman, have been openly critical of the Israeli state. No doubt, Trump could care less, but he has a base to please and, for some of them, bad thoughts about Israel are downright un-American. Trump and Republicans, following his lead, don’t put Israel and the United States on the same pedestal for the benefit of Jewish voters. All but the truly rich and heinous among them vote Democratic, and there aren’t that many of them anyway. They do it mainly to please benighted “dispensationists,” evangelical Protestants, interested in Israel not to keep Jews safe from anti-Semites, but in order to fulfill what they take to be Biblical prophesies of an imminent “end time” in which Jews who do not accept Christ will spend an eternity in hell.

ERIC ZUESSE—The scum that is at the top of the U.S. Government (including all recent Presidents) is bipartisan in supporting the Sauds and their Israeli ally, both of whom crave for America to invade and destroy Iran, which both of them consider to be their mortal enemy. Trump wants economically to strangle Iran to death without physically invading it, but that’s hardly less barbaric, and less unjustifiable, than an outright invasion (which still he might do) — and Iran never invaded nor even threatened to invade America.