I draw your attention to this piece not to criticize Hillary Clinton or her campaign, or because it's utterly impossible that Russia or Russian actors, with or without the personal direction of Vladimir Putin, were behind the public release of the Democratic National Committee's and John Podesta's emails (I will point out that the emails themselves have been authenticated as genuine so that any negative effect is the direct result of telling the truth). There is an equal amount of evidence (if you can call it that) the Republican National Committee was also compromised, though that information did not receive the attention the DNC/Podesta story did either by oversight or design.

Nope, the point is that the "Liberal" Wing of the Neo Liberal Establishment is quite as willing to traffic in conspiracy theories and "Fake News" from dubious single sources provided they confirm their own biases as the Batshit Insane Radical Right that is the Republican Party.

I am no different except I do try to use reputable sources, at least 2 of them, and never, ever believe anything posted on Twitter by obscure nobody wannabes. I also don't have the amplifier of the Corrupt Corporate Media pushing my propaganda.

And I'm not a reporter. I'm a critic.

The Legacy Media decries "Fake News" because they long for their lost status as "Gatekeepers", not because they have any scruples about propagating falsehoods and propaganda even of the most Goebbels/Völkischer Beobachter sort (see Part 1).

What is a "Gatekeeper"? Well, another word for it would be "Middleman", someone who inserts themselves into a transaction to profit from it, taking money from both sides for their supposed services as a "facilitator" while in fact contributing nothing. A non-Media exemplar would be Health Insurance, which is not at all the same thing as Health Care. The putative "service" they provide is mediating between you and the catastrophic cost of serious illness. They do this by charging you exorbitant fees, excluding large portions of minimal preventive care (high deductibles), and "sharing the risk" with a larger population which is not actively sick.

Under the Affordable Care Act (an oxymoron commonly known as Obamacare) they are granted a lucrative Government Monopoly codifying many of their worst practices. True they are no longer allowed to exclude people because of prior conditions, but they are still able to deny people needed care on the whims of an actuary and are guaranteed a 20% profit and delivered a captive clientele by the police power of the State.

Why do we need them?

For years and years I've been 'out' about my Danish ancestry (grandson of an immigrant, the rest mostly German/English as befits someone born in Michigan) because I thought being a Pirate was pretty cool (Arrgh) and I don't want to defend the fact that I'm whiter than white, though following the "one drop" principle I'm no better than a no-maj muggle mud blood.

In fact most Danes aren't pure Saxons as the country itself is mostly a great flat muddy spot good for cows, milk, and butter at the mouth of the Baltic (deserving of the name Sea because it is saltier than Baikal or the Great Lakes) that has been contested by Scandinavians and Germans for millennia.

"My Grammy never gave me presents. She was too busy being raped by Cossacks."

Today's myth is the Yellow Star.

We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought. But I still believe in America and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.- Hillary Clinton

(W)e now are going to want to do everything we can to help you succeed — because if you succeed, then the country succeeds.- Barack Obama

Of course Steve Bannon is not literally Joseph Goebbels. Joseph Goebbels was born in 1897 and had a club foot. He had a PhD in literature and was a failed writer (the thinly disguised auto-biography, in 3 parts no less, Michael was so bad he could only get it published by the Nazi Party publishing house Eher-Verlag and at that it was so poorly received that Part II is lost). He tried to make it as a journalist (the last refuge of desperation for a writer) and couldn't even do that so he ended up with menial jobs as a floor trader at the stock exchange and a bank clerk before finding a gig as a propagandist (not at disrespected profession at the time, we would call it Public Relations or Party Communications, Goebbels made it notorious) for the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

I feel I haven't made that clear enough so there it is.

Look, regardless of how you vote, and did I mention- I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR OPINION EITHER!!!, you're going to wake up November 9th and an election will have happened and the question for the Left is how you move from that reality, which I do not presume to predict, to one which...

Well... what?

It's a pretty terrible way to go, especially for a swimmer, because you know, you're in control and you've never been so deep that a cool head and an "I'm not panicking" attitude hasn't been able to bring you to the surface. You have a lot of practice and theory to draw on, but you're not as strong as you once were and that last breath was not the one you thought it would be. You know some tricks that can make it seem better temporarily, relieve some pressure by exhaling and pretending but that's a poor substitute for air and if you do inhale you're done. Nothing but blackness, pain, and the infinite fall.

Have I depressed you? Not my intent but there's a reason I'm in Therapy and it's not because I'm such a sunny and cheerful guy. As they tell you, when the masks drop, make sure yours is secure before you attempt to save others. My Lifeguard training was mostly countless hours of perfecting techniques to make sure there wasn't a second victim.

My preface is metaphor to me. I'm perfectly safe, but conflicted. If you think you are safe too then you can join me in the pool. Plenty of visibility and no surprises. Or you can stand at the side and poke a boat hook at me, throw a flotation device, or just drag the bottom after I sink. Seriously, the first lesson of Lifeguarding is that there's hardly ever any reason to attempt a water rescue.

Do not count me among those who revel at opposition retreat, to regroup and rise again. You spare me at your peril.

Jeremy Corbyn's victory was crushing. There is simply nothing else to call it, 62 - 38 is a 24 point margin. In raw votes it was 119,980, almost as many as the 130,000 votes suppressed (in Britain they call it "gerrymandering" and are quite wrong to do so, it's an entirely different thing all together- "it's an entirely different thing"). 77% of the Party voted, you can hardly call it undemocratic unless, as the straw grasping Tory-lite Quisling Blairites do, you posit a "silent majority" of people who feel too intimidated to express publicly their 'I got mine' selfishness in the face of moral disapproval (and please, call it 'bullying' so you demean people who actually suffer persecution not privilege).

The reaction is not unexpected or unpredictable, legacy media is howling Dolchstoßlegende conspiracy theories about why they are no longer respected or trusted (duh), they and the PLP (nice blokes you'd share a pint with at the pub, not stinking radical entryist Trots) are consoling themselves with fantasies of redemption (unfortunately likely, we'll see, more later in any event)- in the words of The Mirror bowing the knee, or schism (good luck with that, Britain already has a "Center-Left" Neoliberal Party- the Liberal Democrats who by virtue of licking Tory boots now have a whopping 8 seats in Parliament, exactly the same as the Democratic Unionist Party, you know, Ian Paisley's Northern Irish sectarian thugs and terrorists).

Humiliated in fact if not in attitude the PLP lurches zombie-like chanting "reconciliation" instead of "brains" which if they had any would have stopped them from starting this coup in the first place. They live in existential fear that they'll be "deselected" and have to face what we would call a primary challenge from their constituency whom they've given no reason to support them.

'But the Media Guys still like us at the Pub!", they whine. Yeah, but your voters don't.

The Decline and Fall of the Neoliberal political consensus rests on two rocks, the preening pompous arrogance of the professional political class (including media) is one, and their abject incompetence and failure is another.

Who would you rather elect? A Gilded Class Twit like David Miliband who masquerades as a working people's delegate in Westminster and merely commutes to his constituency or Karen?

a woman born and raised in the area. Karen is a bus driver with a disabled husband, who has lived in a three-bedroom home for years — but the coalition thinks they have too much space and has cut their housing benefit. So when Karen attacks Cameron’s bedroom tax, she draws on personal experience of being forced to downsize.

The choice is more than obvious.