@Bisbonian

a synonym for "liberal," but without the free market connotation. It ain't. It's a favorite term of the Democratic Leadership Council and New Democrats. The first offshoot of the DLC was the Progressive Policy Institute, headed by Will Marshall, one of the DLC's first two full-time employees.

As head of the Progressive Policy Institute, Marshall was also one of the signatories of the 2003 PNAC letter, urging Bush to invade Iraq. Well, since Bush needed no urging to do that, the letter, which was published in the New York Times for the American public to read, was for the purpose of giving Bush cover, much as Powell's UN speech was used.

No one names their politics a synonym for "backward." And neither "forward," which was New Democrat Obama's 2012 campaign slogan, nor "backward" is a specific concept. Almost new legislation can be seen as "forward." Don't Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both neoliberals, and Glenn Greenwald, a longtime critic of neoliberals, all self-identify themselves and/or the policies they prefer as "progressive?" Sanders, too? So, exactly what does "progressive" mean? Is "progressive" the Chance the Gardener of political terminology?

Because "progressive is usually used either as a synonym for "liberal" and also as a synonym for "neoliberal," I try to avoid the term, except for discussing it as a term, as I am in this post.

“anything remotely progressive.” To the contrary, Democrats in Congress have opposed Trump’s agenda more militantly than did congressional Democrats during the Reagan and George W. Bush years.

I think someone doesn't understand what "progressive" is. Generally it means coming up with a way forward...even if you have to do it while fighting against being dragged backwards.

@on the cusp

Wishing you a fast and full recovery.

Did I misread something due to cataract surgery?

@detroitmechworks

for posting this great film of Tom Leher singing the song that makes the point that WWIII would only last an hour and a half.

And thank you for making this point:

Same shit different decade.

The brotherhood of big oil and psychopathic killers has been a Democratic and Republican fraternity all along.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrbv40ENU_o]

Same shit different decade.

@Fishtroller 02
the CIA has been in charge since before it existed in the sense that Allen Dulles was making fascism legally untouchable before he became the first director of the CIA:

https://www.panshin.com/trogholm/secret/rightroots/dulles.html

… Early in 1933, both Dulles brothers attended a meeting in Germany where German industrialists agreed to back Hitler's bid for power in exchange for his pledge to break the German unions. A few months later, John Foster Dulles negotiated a deal with Hitler's economics minister whereby all German trade with the United States would be coordinated through a syndicate headed by Averell Harriman's cousin. With the Nazis enforcing a favorable climate for business, the profits for Thyssen and other companies soared, and the Union Banking Corporation increasingly became a Nazi money-laundering machine. In 1934, George Herbert Walker placed Prescott Bush on Union Bank's board of directors, and Bush and Harriman also began to use the bank as the basis for a complex and deceptive system of holding companies.

The Hamburg-Amerika shipping line, which Harriman and Walker had controlled since 1920, had a particularly high degree of Nazi involvement in its operations. In 1934, a congressional investigation revealed it to have become a front for I.G. Farben's spying, propaganda, and bribery on behalf of the German government. Rather than advising Walker and Harriman to divest themselves of these tainted assets, Prescott Bush hired Allen Dulles to help conceal them. From 1937 on, the Dulles brothers would serve Bush and Harriman in all their covert dealings with Nazi firms. They also performed similar cloaking services for others, like the Rockefellers.

It goes without saying that Harriman, Walker, Bush, and Dulles were morally tainted by their connections with German firms like Thyssen and I.G. Farben, since they both funded and profited from Hitler's crimes against humanity. However, their entire enterprise was corrupt in a more subtle sense as well, in that its very basis was financial fraud on an unprecedented scale. That would have been true even if Hitler had never come to power. The real significance of adding the Nazis to the equation was that it upped the stakes, both increasing the potential rewards for the participants and forcing them into increasingly elaborate deceptions to conceal their frauds.

The part that I emphasized in bold type I think brings up a significant subject, the desperation of the deep state to prevent knowledge of their crimes. They continue, generation after generation, to live in fear of being brought to justice.

He would find the threads of this alliance going back into the Clinton Presidency. You know, the point at which I realize that the CIA has been in charge of everything for a long time is the point at which I read Family of Secrets by Russ Baker. It doesn't matter who is Prez... as soon as this person sits down for the first time in the Oval Office, he/she gets the "now let's tell you who is really in charge" lecture by the CIA. In fact, Glen might have wanted to expand the peeking behind the curtain of this group... or maybe he shouldn't.