Don DeBar's Blog

When Larry Summer, Fareed Zakaria and John Bolton all agree that something is bad, that something must be REALLY good. "Trump's tariffs": Summer: "the biggest self-inflicted wound we’ve put on our economy in history" Zakaria: "a capricious, destructive and dumb use of American power" Bolton: "a harmful, hidden tax on American consumers...will cost conservatives and Republicans big time in coming elections"

Since at least February, 2022, the US has been at war, in material terms, with the Russian Federation in Ukraine. The war was the logical outcome of the US backed coup in February, 2014 which saw an anti-Russian minority in the western part of the country seize power from the elected president and almost immediately make war upon the sizable Russian ethnic population in the east. After 8 years of shelling of the civilian population in the eastern cities, and at the loud urging of both Russian-speaking Ukrainians and their domestic Russian families, Moscow stepped in to put a halt to the war. The war was the product of neocons in the permanent government, e.g., Victoria Nuland at the State Department, Geoffrey Pyatt (US Ambassador to Ukraine) and Michael McFaul (US Ambassador to the Russian Federation), and the neoliberal administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, with on-the-scene assistance from Senators John McCain, Richard Blumenthal, Lindsey Graham, and others. The...

Today, US senators Lindsey Graham (R), Sheldon White (D), Jeanne Shaheen (D) and John Cornyn (R) met with the US puppet head of the Kiev junta, Volodymyr Zelensky, in Munich. Graham called for increasing the pressure on Russia and China, including the admission of Ukraine into NATO. "We should stop worrying about making Putin mad and make them scared," he said, adding "the same with China." This frighteningly irresponsible bit of saber-rattling was in response to reports yesterday of a Trump-Putin phone call to discuss the possible terms of a peace deal. I am honestly sickened by the response of people who have the nerve to call themselves antiwar, progressive, antifascist and yet condemn Trump's effort here and blame Russia - and Putin personally - for the current state of affairs which, objectively, has the world at the edge of nuclear war. I suppose the intended, heavy-handed symbolism here is that "the meeting taking place in Munich should be a reminder...

On September 27, 2008, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and Republican hopeful John McCain debated the question of the US relationship with Russia. Although she was not invited to participate in the debate, Green party presidential hopeful Cynthia McKinney, PhD also got a crack at answering the question, thanks to the marvels of (then-) modern technology. COMPARE AND CONTRAST, and consider the history of the intervening 16 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzEwL6srvV8

 

Was the January 6 Capitol Breach used as cover for an actual coup? Trump's criticism of Pence's “failure” has deeper context FEBRUARY 5, 2022 - This past week, former US President Donald Trump again criticized former Vice President Mike Pence for Pence's handling of the disputed 2020 presidential election. Trump said that Pence failed in his duty as the President of the Senate at the January 6, 2021 Joint Session of Congress to ensure the integrity of the election when there were “obvious signs of voter fraud or irregularities.” Recently, Pence criticized Trump's earlier complaints about his handling of the January 6, 2021 Joint Session of Congress, which, as a part of the regular legal process of validating Presidential elections, was convened to certify the legitimacy of the Electoral College votes of the various states. Trump accused Pence of having acted as “an automatic conveyor belt for the 'Old Crow' Mitch McConnell to get Biden elected President as...