Edward Snowden ‏@Snowden 16m16 minutes ago
As he hands the White House to Trump, Obama just unchained NSA from basic limits on passing raw intercepts to others

N.S.A. Gets More Latitude to Share Intercepted Communications

I believe that real Progressives have just been through trauma. Our hope-y change-y president turned out to be a fraud, just another marketing product, brought to you by Chuck E. Schumer. I was warned in 2008 but would not listen.
Then Bernie showed up and I just could not believe my ears and eye. My god, a real Progressive and he is getting traction.

The destruction of Bernie's candidacy and the ascension of Hillary the Terrible by the Democrat Party was an eye opener. Were they always this unprincipled? Was it always about power above principle? Yup!

I can see clearly now, as the song goes. The Democrats are the evil twin brother of the Republicans, just a little bit better on identity issues. Having had my eyes opened, the vision is stark. I am really revolted by the Democrat establishment.

We despised the fact that the Republicans worked hard and openly to assure that Obama failed. Now the Democrats are showing us how it is really done. There are a lot of issues that I disagree with Trump, after all I am a card carrying Progressive. But, I hope that he succeeds in many areas, including creating jobs and keeping the peace. I really believe that screaming at Trump right now is a bad tactic. His basic theme is to make progress for Americans. Middle America figured that out and elected him. If you attack him, you are attacking them. We need to work with that and convince him that he is wrong on some issues, especially Climate Change.

I agree with you. As Cornel West said, the "racial symbolism" of the Obama presidency effectively froze progressives in their tracks for 8 long years, but Obama already did many of the things that people fear that Trump will do. He's been the Deporter in Chief, stood silently while Israel killed 500 Palestinian children in 50 days (actually he increased their military budget following that action), collaborated with big pharma to kill the public option, told Wall Street he would "protect" them (I guess against the 99%) etc.
Last night Bernie Sanders submitted an amendment to permit Medicare to negotiate for lower Rx drug prices. Guess who defeated it? 13 Democratic Senators. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz actually voted to support it. Maybe Bernie will start to figure out that the DNC isn't going to let him revolutionize their party. It's unfortunate that people like Cory Booker and Patty Murray were part of the Dem group that blocked Bernie's amendment.
I guess that between Cory Booker's rant on civil rights in the afternoon (designed to further his own interests for 2020) and the vote in the middle of the night on affordable health care, he got confused. One would think that it is obvious that affordable health care is a civil right. And one would think that Patty Murray would reflect on affordable health care as being important to women before she joined with those supporting big pharma and blocked its passage.
Everyone needs to communicate to these 13 Senators today to let them know that we will find primary opponents to oppose them. They are Bennett, Booker, Cantwell, Carper, Casey, Coons, Donnelly, Heinrich, Heitkamp, Menendez, Murray, Tester and Warner.
All of this outrage at Trump falls into his own plan to distract from the serious issues that are being pushed through Congress and the Cabinet hearings.

Democrats can’t win until they recognize how bad Obama’s financial policies were: He had opportunities to help the working class, and he passed them up

Shit

These kinds of articles are everywhere and in hindsight things will be seen to be worse and worse if they are already this bad.

Glenn Greenwald linked this 1 hour long assessment of Obama's presidency. Have not listened to it all.

Obama's Report Card - A Breakdown Of His Presidency

While some dems celebrate his final speech .....

Where would we have been if Bernie had not run????

I read in the last few days that Rex Tillerson visited the Obama White House 20 times during Obama's presidency.
Trump didn't just pull him out a hat -- he's been advising the White House for a long time. O

I have held your point of view since before the election. I didn't believe any of the things I'd heard and only half the things I'd seen. The Dem party had proven to me it was thoroughly entrenched in a corrupt power matrix when they chose to lose rather than win with Bernie.

Then yesterday I doubled down on Facebook. I announced that the Democrats were now a spectator sport, I would no longer point out the fallacies and propaganda. I couldn't say it and still have any friends left but they are too far gone for me to get through. It's become an example of Yogic non-interference, which is a strange way for me to identify my politics which used to have a foundation in activism.

I've gone through the same changes. I probably spent the first half of my adult life not trusting the intelligence services, looking for an answer in another branch of government, maybe the senate. I always wondered, after I'd read a Robert Parry column in the LA Times, how come someone like Gary Hart or John Kerry couldn't quite put his finger on the government corruption of the Reagan administration which seemed so obvious, or the conclusion that would be the logical inference of the evidence. I had to understand the whole concept of modified limited hangout. Kerry, who belonged to that secret group the Skull and Bones Society, had been trained in keeping secrets for his class, because secrets are necessary to keep the common folks in line. Pharoahs' courts did not break the secret that the pharoahs weren't gods. That was the cover story. The kings of Europe did not rule by the grace of God. There was a question as to whether, say, the king of France had God on his side versus the King of England.

There was no argument (in European ruling circles) about white people being graced by God as the age of exploration quickly turned into the age of exploitation. Much of those myths are still alive. It's now called racism.

In the 90s I came to the realization that it was a Democrat, Bill Clinton, who was changing the rules in favor of the rich. So who was on my side? And the side of our children? That's when I searched the Democrats for a true liberal, or true progressive (as the term "liberal" became obsolete). That was about the time I stepped down from being an officer in my union, freeing me up to use my mind for a better understanding the halls of power. It was back then that I learned about our government's long and treacherous post-war history with fascists. I saw the Republican Party, who harbored genuine fascists in their ethnic heritage unit, as a mostly fascist entity with all of evilness of fascism. Bonzo Goes To Bitburg.

Bush II's regime showed how far fascism would go. It would lie us into wars. It would screw the rest of us for the benefit of the wealthy. They would actually kill poor people around the world, not on a mistaken ideological battle against Communism, but for profit. I was ready for change, hoping for change.

Obama was what he was. As hopeless as Obama's eight years turned out to be, it was the State Department's behavior in Ukraine that slapped me awake. The same fascists that had been part of the Republicans' wretched ethnic heritage group during Reagan had somehow migrated over to the Democrats. Now fascism in the US was bipartisan.

Sanders was a destabilizing force for politics in America, but only enough to reveal the fun house that we'd been led through. Through the primary season I half-expected a lone nut leaping out of a crowd to shoot him. Now that the election is over most Democrats not discouraged by the Democrats' lack of work on the working class's behalf have dutifully returned to the fold, seeing the potential corruption of having someone from Exxon being our next Secretary of State, but not seeing Obama's corrupt relationship with Wall Street and our corporate world and unwilling to look at Hillary's disturbing relationship with the 1% and the fascists who serve them. H. Clinton was never more than a cold warrior. She hadn't ever really had a Road to Damascus moment in 1968, switching from Goldwater Girl to anti-war Democrat. Rather, she undoubtedly triangulated her future career as a Democrat and was a bright enough light to be recruited for a political career (more on that some other time). Despite a few photo op moments in her career she and her husband pretty much supported our Deep State's agenda. Imagine my surprise when I saw the changes in the map of Yugoslavia reflect the changes to Yugoslavia in the maps of WWII. NATO (the US) had changed Yugoslavia to similar little entities that Hitler had done. Surprise surprise, to me at least.

It was pretty obvious during the campaign that the entire Deep State structure, the media, the intelligence services, the rich, were all aligned behind Clinton. When in an early debate she said she supported a "no-fly zone" over Syria I jumped up off my couch and shouted, "That'll lead to war with Russia!"

Russia managed to outflank the US and its ISIS props in Syria. Between Russian airpower and its sophisticated anti-aircraft batteries the Russians could not be dislodged from the Mideast without a major war against Russia, and now it was a losing proposition for the US.

But Syria was never the main goal. The main goal has always been Russia. Just like Napoleon and Hitler, the Deep State of America wants to control Russia and the biggest prize in Russia now is that huge pool of oil and natural gas in central Asia. Our Deep State is well-oiled. When the US overthrew the elected government of Ukraine with the children of WWII's most despicable fascists, its main concern was shutting down the Russian gas pipelines that cross Ukrainian territory. While there is always money to be made, making Ukraine an ungovernable sore on the side of Russia was always the point. And the band of new age, computer-savvy Ukrainian fascists are nothing if not nihilists. They've maintained their wretched anti-Semitism and anti-Russian lusts, so much so that they are willing to destroy themselves to destroy Russia. And even after the Holocaust there are still a few Jews and plenty of Poles and Russians to kill in the region.

The Deep State's mistake this cycle was to underestimate America's dislike of the Clintons. Not overwhelming dislike, but just enough to lose the electoral college. That's why Clinton's leftover oppo researchers are still churning out puke. I think it's pretty clear that at this late stage the Democrats can't get the White House, but the Deep State still wants that war. That's why every day Trump's cabinet appointees must recite Russia's dangerousness. Eventually, Trump will succumb to the Deep State, one way or another. As much as I want an actual progressive Congress representing me, it won't happen any time soon with the current cast in D.C., and my greatest fear is the next war. And as awful and as flawed a leader as Trump is, he is really the only thing standing between the Deep State and a potential nuclear war.

It's going to be messy, but it's pretty clear that the Deep State is going to get its war. And, as I've noticed, the 99% never win wars.

Like Howard Beale in the movie Network, "first you have to get mad".
We should be mad, angry, outraged at what those at the top are doing. They are HURTING people. If that doesn't make you made, what will?

I'm waiting for more people to start questioning this political system.

that Trump will succumb to the Deep State, in regard to war with Russia? The matter seems very much open to question at this point, no?

It is one thing to be outraged at republicans, but not while the democrats are not doing any better on the issue--or even worse. It would be understandable if it were one or two issues, but not the wholesale corporate capture which has occurred. One of the great scandals of Wikileaks, which to many was not surprising, was the revelation that Clinton was totally a republican. Much more right than Obama. Nader once said the difference between gopers and democrats is at what speed do you want to hit the wall. But hit the wall you will.

And then what the democratic establishment and Hillary supporters did to Bernie and his supporters. The utter unmitigated moral, political, and organizational corruption was stunning even for me who worked elections in city dominated by a democratic machine.

I was interested in politics at an early age. I went to go see RFK during the Indiana primary while I was in middle school--I was one of the few people in the gym. About a month later he was dead. In looking back that may have been the beginning of the end of the party of FDR. With the defeat of Clinton, the party has a chance to reset itself back to the party of FDR--not happening as even now, the party establishment is attacking the actual FDR wing of the party, which barely exists anymore.