Drones Along the Fruited Plain

The all-seeing eye of the surveillance state took a couple of good pokes last week, a welcome occasion. It is long past time that someone took a stand and challenged the ongoing dismantling of what was at one time, at least theoretically a free country. The aftermath of Rep. Justin Amash’s amendment, the LIBERT-E Act to reign in Obama’s NSA secret police has the establishment desperately circling the wagons. In a show of bipartisanship unseen in recent history the toadies of the war machine and the oligarchs that it makes billions for are in a foaming at the mouth frenzy to put down the insurrection before it spreads. The risk of the somnolent, television lobotomized masses being roused from their apathy and stories of royal babies, brides killed in boating mishaps and a shameless wiener wagging Big Apple mayoral candidate and being roused and freed from their pods in the Matrix scared the hell out of the power structure. If there is one thing that really pisses people off that is having their privacy invaded, especially by an out of control, corrupt and contemptuous big government.

The reverberations of the too close for comfort defeat of Amash’s amendment and the rage over having Senate newbie Rand Paul (who unlike popular house-pet Marco Rubio does not know his place) speaking out cannot be tolerated. The House vote exposed a good number of self-proclaimed Republican enemies of big gubmint as the rank pack of opportunists, frauds and charlatans that they have always been. Fric and Frac, otherwise known as John Boehner and Eric Cantor were always as suspect as they are historically unprincipled but it was a shock to see Michelle Bachmann out herself as a full blown protector of the state and fascism.  It is now apparent that she has been playing her base for fools, schmucks and suckers for years with her bombastic demagoguery, she has always been in the bag for Leviathan and there are many, many others. Despite their now obviously staged political dog and pony shows these three in particular threw in with Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and other so-called liberals in defending Obama’s war on America. Now there is yet another outrageous revelation, that the Obama regime has been pressuring web firms for encrypted user password information.

Now emboldened, the 205 members of the House who voted to revoke the American Stasi’s impunity will guarantee that more challenges are coming and coming soon. We now have New Jersey Representative Rush Holt proposing a bill to repeal the USAPATRIOT Act, that insane enabling legislation that domestic enemies of the republic rolled out and crammed down the throats of shocked Americans while bodies were still being dug out of the World Trade Center rubble. The eradication of the USAPATRIOT Act would be a damned good place to start when considering taking the country back, a national movement to gather and burn copies of this gospel of fascism would get the attention of the bastards, especially were it to take place annually on September 10^th.  Such an idea would instantaneously shatter the left-right division that is exploited by the criminals running this country and doomed the Tea Party and Occupy alike, a broad-based coalition to roll back the usurpers of power and hold them accountable terrifies the establishment and this is why the savage pushback against Amash, Paul and the ongoing vilification of Edward Snowden has now been ratcheted up in intensity. There will also be hearings in Congress this week on NSA abuses that will include an appearance by journalist Glenn Greenwald who broke the stories on the mass surveillance, inducing many including the loathsome David Gregory, a loyal foot soldier in Obama’s war on the free press to suggest that he be arrested and tried.

The latest salvo was spearheaded by state media favorite and much ballyhooed lap band surgery recipient  Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey. The obese loudmouth who could have played Tony Soprano’s long lost cousin Porky threw his substantial bulk around like the proverbial bull in a China shop in launching a sleazy attack on the recent and growing libertarian, pro-civil liberties, anti-interventionist cadre within the GOP. In his best channeling of Rudy “Mr. 9/11” Giuliani he bellowed:

“Listen, you can name any number of people who have engaged in it, and he’s one of them. These esoteric, intellectual debates—I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation. And they won’t, because that’s a much tougher conversation to have.”

So now we are back to exploiting 9/11 for political means and even dragging the poor bereaved families of the victims into the slop, nice job lardass. The Neocons hate libertarians, they are their bête noire for they exemplify all that the war freaks led by that smirking little shitball William Kristol and his propaganda machine detest. A libertarian-progressive alliance would be the worst nightmare for the preening imperialists that used the events of September 11, 2001 as their winning lottery ticket for which to cash in and enrich themselves, justify their lunatic ideology and hit the reset button on over two centuries of American democracy. Christie, with his eye on the 2016 GOP nomination as though it were the buffet table at Golden Corral is just demonstrating his chops as the chosen one to assume the keys to Obama’s fascist machine. With Christie and Hillary it is a win-win scenario for the PNAC bunch and their wet dreams of Middle East conquest.

Joining in piling on Paul  was the deranged Congressman Peter King who surfaced on CNN Sunday morning to launch another of his trademark attacks, this time on Rand Paul. “I thought it was absolutely disgraceful that so many Republicans voted to defund the NSA program, which has done so much to protect our country”. King, his jowls quivering like jello also vomited up a fine morsel of the Neocon think tank provided tripe that has for so long poisoned the discourse as our descent into wars on half the planet and tyranny at home –

“When you have Rand Paul actually comparing Snowden to Martin Luther King or Henry David Thoreau ,this is madness, this is the anti-war Democrats in the 1960s that destroyed their party for almost 15 years”

King of course has zero moral authority considering his support for the terrorist IRA and his McCarthyite anti-Muslim hearings but he has always been a reliable go to guy for the fascists. It is this pathological love of state sanctioned murder, oppression, occupation and torture that is what is destroying this country. Guys like King and his ilk are corrupt reprobates, government gangsters and psychopaths with no qualms about gutting the last vestiges of the constitution in this once great country. You can throw in Christie and King with the other GOP phonies for their praising of Obama’s wars and domestic oppression programs.

It is notable that for a change neither Senators John McCain nor Lindsay Graham were on the tube this morning jacking off the likes of David Gregory and George Stephanopoulos, a welcome and refreshing respite. The duo have been the foremost spokesmen for murder inc. or Ike referred to it “the military industrial complex”. The two are always descended upon by hordes of media bottom-feeders whenever an outrageous quote is needed to bolster the case for more war. McCain is after all McCain, a self-promoter who may be bi-polar or just plain batshit crazy, how else to explain his erratic personality and ever shifting stances. He is also at war with the libertarian wing of the party, like the grouchy old man and the kids on his block, a veteran tantrum thrower, McCain's act only serves to turn him into a parody. Then there is Graham, the Senator most likely to be discovered in an I-77 truck stop restroom with someone’s crank in his mouth. Another staple of bloviation day talking head propaganda shows, Graham is a reliable hysteric and Pentagon congressional embed who in his shrill but syrupy Gomer Pyle twang always manages to float the most screwball of trial balloons. Most recently his stumping for an October war on Iran. There is never any money to fix anything in this sorry country, to address the looming economic collapse rather than speed it up but there is always money for more war, arming of flesh-eating terrorists, torture centers and mass spying. I just wonder what the NSA has found over the years trolling through this guy’s emails and phone records. Man, have our national priorities ever become terminally fucked up since the day that those buildings fell.

Finally, it yet another sardonically humorous bit of news the Obama administration on Friday sent a letter to Vladimir Putin stating that the United States would not torture Edward Snowden if the Russian leader only collaborates with his terrorist regime and sends the heroic whistleblower off to his doom. Now I may be getting up there in years but it used to be pretty much a given that the U.S. did not have to give a non-torture guarantee but that was before Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and every other CIA torture black site were revealed to be present although obscured by red, white and blue bunting. I look forward to hearing what Putin has to say after he stops laughing over this latest self-inflicted national humiliation by the Nobel Peace Prize winner who draws up kill lists with his orange juice in the morning.

The Obama Stasi Rolls On

Coming on the jack-booted heels of Friday's rubber-stamping of the NSA's extension to vacuum up of all Verizon customer phone data a bi-partisan effort yesterday beat back an attempt by insurgent Congressman Justin Amash. Joining Amash was longtime thorn in the side of the establishment John Conyers who tried in vain to reign in the civil liberties shredding surveillance colossus. Amash, a Republican from Michigan has now offered proof that even a teabagger, like a broken clock is occasionally right. It would be nice to see more of them drop the zany cultural populist issues and back up their anti-government rhetoric by joining with progressives to stop the juggernaut while there is still a sliver of time left to do so. That sliver gets tinier by the day and the forces arrayed against the destruction of the tattered remnants of a free society only get bolder and further consolidate their already dangerous positions of power. The Obama administration has proclaimed that it is above the law when it comes to spying on Americans and that their divine right of kings shalt not be challenged in court. In the same sort of twisted legalese that the Bush administration used to justify torture the Obama mob pushed back against the recent anti-spying lawsuit by the ACLU, claiming that it is in the "public interest" and cannot be challenged in a court of law.

The aforementioned pro-civil liberties amendment to a Defense Department appropriations bill (the country may be broke but there is always money for more war) want down in defeat 217-205 with such staunch and strident opponents of big government as John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Michelle Bachmann defending the American Stasi. I suppose that there should something of merit in the amendment even being brought up, something that would have been inconceivable earlier in the post 9/11 era of fear, loathing and the extortion of taxpayers to fund their own enslavement. However, there have been some changes in attitude since Edward Snowden's leaks but the defeat of the bill only provides more evidence that the system it rigged and that greed, war and oppression are the real things that bring Republicans and Democrats together. In a rare preemptive strike, El Presidente Obama even came out and had his flacks and shills issue a press release urging the defeat of the Amash amendment. NSA Commandant Keith Alexander also called for an emergency private briefing to rally the troops on the hill against the amendment lest his grossly perverted amassing of power take a hit. The whole rank process once again proved that in this rapidly decaying system there would be no challenge brooked nor the governed to be asked for their consent. The Alexander private decree is just like those secret courts that are the antithesis to any serious concept of democracy. Alexander is the strutting epitome of a military dictator salivating over the coming crackdown.

It is by now brutally evident to pretty much anyone who has bothered to read this far that we have a huge problem right now in America. It is a problem that dwarfs all others simply because the ability to collect and store information on all citizens is the primary lynchpin of a full-blown fascist state. But such a state also needs a propaganda spewing media machine, a desperate and poorly informed public, a paramilitary police and a myth of a constant outside threat that is used to justify the need for increasingly radical measures. The mass collection of the data is absolutely crucial in that it will be used when the ubiquitous outside threat is formally changed to an internal one.  That will be the time that the state will ruthlessly crush all perceived threats that may one day work to organize, inform, challenge and reverse the tide. As has been reported the NSA is now capable of conducting three hop data queries which as explained by Philip Bump at Atlantic Wire:

Think of it this way. Let's say the government suspects you are a terrorist and it has access to your Facebook account. If you're an American citizen, it can't do that currently (with certain exceptions)—but for the sake of argument. So all of your friends, that's one hop. Your friends' friends, whether you know them or not—two hops. Your friends' friends' friends, whoever they happen to be, are that third hop. That's a massive group of people that the NSA apparently considers fair game.

Theoretically anyone who is currently reading this website and about the entire country would be fair game for future pickup, interrogation, detention, torture and possibly even more extreme measures. This is not hyperbole either, as history has repeatedly proven, power always corrupts and in an end stage capitalist system such as the United States in the 21st century where the elite continue to gorge themselves at the expense of the vast majority and to do so with impunity and the full sanction and protection of the state it is inevitable that a backlash is coming. The backlash will not be tolerated under any circumstances as those who are elite will have no mercy or pause if their ill-gotten gains are ever threatened. When that does occur the pickup lists will be massive and generated instantaneously and that for profit prison system that rivals Stalin's gulags will provide wonderful temporary housing for the enemies of the state. Programs have already been rolled out encouraging citizens to watch and rat each other out for any type of vaguely "suspicious" behavior so the conditioning is already in the minds of Americans. Decades of movies and television programs have cemented into the consciousness a reverence bordering of worship of the police while the police have subsequently become armed to the teeth and transformed into paramilitary forces. This began with advent of SWAT teams late in the last century and now even Dogpatch USA likely receives war zone grade equipment from the government for their local cops. Radley Balko, author of Rise of the Warrior Cop writes in his article A Decade After 9/11, Police Departments are Increasingly Militarized that: 

Over the last several decades Congress and administrations from both parties have continued to carve holes in that law, or at least find ways around it, mostly in the name of the drug war. And while the policies noted above established new ways to involve the military in domestic policing, the much more widespread and problematic trend has been to make our domestic police departments more like the military.

The main culprit was a 1994 law authorizing the Pentagon to donate surplus military equipment to local police departments. In the 17 years since, literally millions of pieces of equipment designed for use on a foreign battlefield have been handed over for use on U.S. streets, against U.S. citizens. Another law passed in 1997 further streamlined the process. As National Journal reported in 2000, in the first three years after the 1994 law alone, the Pentagon distributed 3,800 M-16s, 2,185 M-14s, 73 grenade launchers, and 112 armored personnel carriers to civilian police agencies across America. Domestic police agencies also got bayonets, tanks, helicopters and even airplanes.

AND

The September 11 attacks provided a new and seemingly urgent justification for further militarization of America's police departments: the need to protect the country from terrorism.

Within months of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the Office of National Drug Control Policy began laying the groundwork with a series of ads (featured most prominently during the 2002 Super Bowl) tying recreational drug use to support for terrorism. Terrorism became the new reason to arm American cops as if they were soldiers, but drug offenders would still be their primary targets.

In 2004, for example, law enforcement officials in the New York counties of Oswego and Cayuga defended their new SWAT teams as a necessary precaution in a post–September 11 world. “We’re in a new era, a new time," here,” one sheriff told the Syracuse Post Standard. “The bad guys are a little different than they used to be, so we’re just trying to keep up with the needs for today and hope we never have to use it.” The same sheriff said later in the same article that he'd use his new SWAT team “for a lot of other purposes, too ... just a multitude of other things." In 2002, the seven police officers who serve the town of Jasper, Florida -- which had all of 2,000 people and hadn’t had a murder in more than a decade -- were each given a military-grade M-16 machine gun from the Pentagon transfer program, leading one Florida paper to run the headline, “Three Stoplights, Seven M-16s.”

And according to Balko, the Obama administration is actually accelerating the militarizing of the police.


So what exactly do you think is going to happen when the interrogations begin? And another question, are you the type who wallows in denial by reassuring yourself that - I have nothing to worry about if I'm not doing anything wrong? Well you should worry and worry like hell because the probability that you are already linked to someone is pretty much a certainty. Oh, and there is an NSA fortress in Utah that will ensure that there is more than enough storage and computing power to see just what those "three hop" queries may turn up on you. The inquisitors as they always do, will be able to cut deals and people will gladly tattle on just about anyone to save their own asses because this is the way that it works in any closing society where the authoritarians are in total control. During the Nazi transformation of Germany such a system, albeit limited by the lack of high-technology existed and was used not only by the state but by enemies looking to settle scores and others to provide tips that did not exactly lead to enemies of the regime. As Richard J. Evans wrote in his book The Third Reich in Power: 

So many denunciations were sent in to the Gestapo that even fanatical leading Nazis such as Reinhard Heydrich complained about them and the district Gestapo office in Saarbrücken itself registered its alarm at the ‘constant expansion of an appalling system of denunciation’. What dismayed them was in particular the fact that many denunciations appeared to be made from personal rather than ideological motives. Leading figures in the Party might have encouraged people to expose disloyalty, grumbling and dissent, but they wanted this practice to be a sign of loyalty to the regime, not a means of offloading personal resentments and gratifying personal desires. Thirty-seven percent of 213 cases subsequently studied by one historian arose out of private conflicts, while another 39 per cent had no discernible motive at all; only 24 percent were clearly made by people acting primarily out of political loyalty to the regime. Neighbors often denounced noisy or unruly people living in the same building, office workers denounced people who were blocking their promotion, small businessmen denounced inconvenient competitors, friends or colleagues who quarreled sometimes took the final step of sending in a denunciation to the Gestapo. School or university students even on occasion denounced their teachers.Whatever the motive the Gestapo investigated them all. If the denunciation was without foundation, they usually simply relegated it to the files and took no further action. But in many cases, denunciation could lead to the arrest of the person denounced, torture, imprisonment and even death.

But if you see something, say something, Homeland Security commands it and it is all for your own safety and happiness.

When former Booz Allen employee Edward Snowden blew the whistle on NSA operations just remember that he warned that all that was missing for "turnkey tyranny" to ensue would be a change of policy. That of course would be public policy, this government works under the veil of secrecy and this has been ongoing for quite awhile while Americans tuned out of  working to be informed and tuned into Dancing With the Stars or some other televised crapfest. The real policies were birthed from the still smoldering ruins of WW II with the creation of the National Security State and the CIA (formerly OSS) and NSA (formerly Armed Forces Security Agency). Riding high after whipping up on the Germans and Japanese the powers that be were out to make damned sure that unlike the Third Reich the American Empire would last for a thousand years and with the right kind of luck for eternity.  Largely comprised of the Wall Street elite such as Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner and others the CIA would along with the military component NSA make the planet safe for big American money no matter what the consequences were. The methods did not matter and morality was never a consideration as it was all done under the pretense of fighting communism, a reliable bogeyman until the USSR collapsed. Whether it engaged in propaganda campaigns, funding foreign right-wing groups and death squads, assassinating leaders who refused to come to terms with the capitalist mafia, overthrowing regimes to install U.S. friendly despots who reveled in murdering their own people and to wage war, a very lucrative business indeed. The metastasizing of the National Security State and it's components throughout American society would be a gradual process, and again, the ability to conduct anti-Constitutional spying on its own citizens was critical for any of it to work. Challenges had to be eliminated, be it the infiltration of domestic leftist groups, blackmailing of aspiring politicians and even termination with extreme prejudice were just tools in the box, all dependent on the situation at the time. The advent of computer technology, especially over the past quarter century has rapidly accelerated the process. Former NSA whistleblower Russell Tice recently gave an interview where he confirmed that reporters, lawyers, judges and aspiring politicians were spied on by the agency  including then Senator Barack Obama. This revelation like all other inconveniences to the establishment never made it into big media (they are too busy sniffing the royal baby turd as of late) instead being relegated to internet talk shows and alternative media sites. Now the pocket media can just invoke the magical talisman of "conspiracy theorists" and it all goes away. Move along, nothing to see here.

Years before Snowden's exposure of NSA criminality, Tice came out during the Bush years and eventually revealed that journalists were being spied on. He did so most notably in an interview on the since cancelled MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann Another Bush era whistleblower named Thomas Tamm gave his account in an interview with Newsweek that exposed NSA activities, notably a program called Stellar Wind.  September 11, 2001 would prove to be fortuitous in that it provided justification not only for an eternal "War On Terror" but also ensured that the growth in surveillance, policing, military and propaganda funding would be unlimited and the oversight virtually nonexistent, further more it provided the impetus for the reconfiguration of America into the ominously sounding Homeland. Now communism, the Manichean Devil that justified all evils perpetrated by the United States government finally had an official replacement in terrorism. Not that the construction of the all knowing surveillance and police state ever took a break, it has been a progressive construction project. Before PRISM there was PROMIS, ECHELON, REX 84 COG (Continuity Of Government) and TIA (Total Information Awareness) and no public debate was ever held on any of this yet it fundamentally changes our entire society. You see the policy has always there but only as a component of the secret government that functions outside of the public sphere and transcends presidential terms, it never sleeps. The real horrors along with the final descent of this country into all out fascism will be when that which has been constructed in private becomes the official public policy of the United States of America. I suspect that we will see that in our lifetime and probably sooner rather than later if it can't be slowed.

Obama is just doing his part in providing the official cover for these programs by defending the indefensible and making damned certain that his Justice Department will go after any leakers with hammer and tong in order to make examples of them as is being done with Bradley Manning who is now undergoing a show trial, Ed Snowden when captured will face much worse than Manning and  sadly a good amount of the public will actually cheer on the persecutors as they destroy him physically, mentally and legally. Obama just keeps the machine running and provides a happy face until the rest of the work that really matters  is done. He is a presidential placebo and anyway, the real  details are way above his paygrade and he already has his golden parachute. Obama just like his loathed predecessor who have both been instrumental in building the coming tyrannical system are set for life now. He is a part of the club (the one that you are I are not in) and he recently signed off on lifetime Secret Service protection for himself and George W. Bush. Both of them will be sitting pretty when the shit finally does hit the fan which will likely be sooner rather than later and they will not have to bother with hearing the screams from inside their fortified homes, elitist vacation resorts and exclusive golf courses.

The enemy in the event there was ever any doubt is US.

More on the Pillorying of Rolling Stone

 Hey Boston, Why not attack the NYT? You hate the Yankees anyway.

The past week has been filled with the typical lies, hysteria and political grandstanding over the wholly manufactured insult to the victims (please) inflicted by Rolling Stone magazine. Rolling Stone, which does produce some of the last remnants of serious investigative journalism in this rapidly closing society featured a cover picture of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhoknar Tsarnaev along with an in-depth story of how the young man went so bad. Rather than take the time to actually read the fucking piece the usual swine in the state/corporate media fired up the "Mighty Wurlitzer" and scrambled the winged monkeys. Thank God for the royal birth across the pond so this campaign of crap finally gets flushed out of the headlines, the venom directed at Rolling Stone by the sycophantic suck-up presstitutes whose investigative skills end at scribbling down anonymous notes by the beltway elite at a Washington area bar or cocktail party only betrays their betrayal of the craft.


One more vomit inducing exhibit is this - purportedly  in order to avenge the honor of Boston some nincompoop named Sgt.Sean Murphy of the Massachusetts State Police was relieved of duty after leaking an unauthorized picture of Tsarnaev after he was cornered like a rat by a virtual army of paramilitary police. So of course Murphy, much like fat George Zimmerman has become a martyr to the cause of escalating right-wing insurrection against the government and of curse the hated libruls (sic). This morning while reviewing the early news I practically choked on my coffee laughing at this ludicrous story on Fox News's website. The story, entitled Thousands rally online in support of Massachusetts cop who leaked bomber photos. Now anyone running short on time would glance at the headline and possibly assume that angry mobs were taking to the streets but that would of course be wrong. The key word of course is "online" and the piece in Fox's typical pants on fire fashion refers to a Facebook page very originally set up and named "Save Sgt. Sean Murphy". Not to be lost in the weeping and gnashing of teeth is that Fox covered every ridiculous teabagger rally that consisted of six or seven indignant pasty white fatties standing around in the parking lot of their local Waffle House with a "Show Us Your Birth Certificate" sign as though it were the million man march. The day that Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch are both finally dead and roasting on spits in Hell will be a great day for America, that is if anything is left of it after their Julius Streicher inspired "journalism" brainwashed and inculcated violent behavior in so many for so long.

As for Boston and the ongoing keening about the trauma that the victims are being made to suffer because in a land where at least there is some remaining concept of a "free press" and "freedom of speech - DEAL WITH IT! If you take the time to go out and look on the internet at some of the collateral damage that is inflicted on innocent civilians in the foreign lands occupied by the American Empire I would say that you all got off pretty lucky. Especially since a good amount of you support the ongoing foreign wars and murder of women and children by bombs, drones and missiles and as the propaganda that was used to sell fear to the schmucks - the homeland is a battlefield too.This is the dark side of the country that you live in and don't preach that freedom isn't free or any of those other horseshit slogans, you Bostonians are after all the ones who allowed the paramilitary goon squads to put portions of your city under martial law, allowing the police and Homeland Security forces entry into your homes without warrants all to find one little punk. You people make me sick. Sometimes life sucks but it sucks one hell of a lot less when you don't live in a country that is in America's bombsites, the carnage in Iraq is unbelievable and it has been going on for one hell of a long time and that is just the most recent example, go and read up on how many civilians were slaughtered or incinerated by U.S. military forces in Vietnam. Better yet, go and research the U.S. support of murderers and torturers over the last fifty or so years, a word of advice is that you had best have a strong stomach when you read what has been perpetrated in the name of "freedom".

Skittles From Heaven

"Barack promised change - and sure enough, things changed for the worse"

- Joe Bageant

El Presidente Obama promised "change" during his steeped in dishonesty run for the top job and he made good on that like a charm on Friday by changing the subject. Obama decided to inject himself into the fulminating aftermath of the George Zimmerman trial, a roiling cauldron of racial trouble best left unstirred by the feds. This is not only rubbing salt into a still open wound but also providing a very fortuitous distraction from his NSA Gestapo having their telephone spying operations that were again renewed by the secret court without any public acknowledgement. The Obama remarks on the slaying of Trayvon Martin. "He could have been me 35 years ago" and the underlying threat of the DOJ contesting Zimmerman's acquittal not only serve as cover for the sinister machinations of the police and surveillance state but also only throw more fuel on the fire of our ongoing national downtrend in race relations, sure to fire up the rabble on both sides. Earlier in the week, Attorney General Eric Holder also made a foray into freshly wrapped case while speaking at an NAACP convention in Orlando. It was a wonderful opportunity to distract from his Justice Department's disgraceful persecution of reporters, whistle blowers and all who do not abide with every vile aspect of this increasingly malevolent administration. Holder too would prefer not to draw too much attention to the furious and ongoing hunt for former NSA contractor Booz Allen leaker Edward Snowden who will be brought back to Der Homeland in shackles and tortured as an example to all. Were this an earlier and less sophisticated time Snowden would just be publicly drawn and quartered like the Mel Gibson character in Braveheart but years of human experimentation in Gitmo and other CIA black sites have allowed the government to develop other methods. It is a sick and debauched evolution that fittingly belongs at Treblinka but that's the way we roll post 9/11. Not that I am an insensitive prick but the only real issue right now that is an existential threat is the NSA spying on everyone and everything.

Now let me preface what I am about to say with this: I am a law abiding, gun owner and a firm believer in the Second Amendment and our constitutional right to bear arms. I also believe that citizens of this country have the absolute right to use their legally ownerd firearms to stop harm to themselves and their families when threatened in a situation and location where it is merited. That being said I am embarrassed by the clownish antics of the gun lobby and  especially the NRA, an organization that long ago ceased to stand for anything but jacking up the profits of the gun and ammo manufacturers as they terrorize those most susceptible to paranoia and disinformation. I also feel nothing but disgust when there is an ugly public spectacle where  a death is caused by someone who is irresponsible (like George Zimmerman) because all that does is give more justification to the special interest groups that are hellbent on restricting gun ownership rights. This always results in a political feeding frenzy with both parties and their lackeys looking to score maximum points with their base voters. The administration shamelessly trots out poor Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords as a shill to sell policies while the opposition seems to have settled upon as their chief spokesmen for gun rights the jagoff Texas Senator Ted Cruz (Harvard educated and born in Canada) and the washed up, mangy former rock star Ted Nugent, a draft dodging baby daddy. I cannot possibly see how any self-respecting American would want to be associated with ANY of these assholes.

Obama has idiotically (but predictably) seized upon the Zimmerman verdict in all of its serendipitous travesty to shift all attention away from his administration's dismal civil liberties and human rights record. Now apparently aligning himself with Obama is the dyspeptic old fool John McCain, as usual slithering onto the Sunday morning bloviation circuit where state propaganda reigns. Consider that McCain also ardently defends big government whenever it comes to war, surveillance, show trials and torture. McCain also grumpily bitched about the ridiculous manufactured scandal over this week's Rolling Stone magazine cover featuring Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. McCain practically sprayed flecks of spittle in denouncing the cover as "stupid", he obviously is still pissed off over the less than flattering expose that the magazine did of him a few years back entitled "Make Believe Maverick". You know when you are truly fucked when "bi-partisanship" only seems to exist whenever it comes to the media kingmakers and the need to ensure that civil liberties will never be restored, the military industrial and surveillance industrial gravy train will continue to roll. That Obama and McCain and the rest of the ready for television assclowns are treated with reverence as voices of authority truly shows how prophetic that the movie Idiocracy really is.

But I digress...


The Zimmerman case itself was exactly what you would expect in the state of Florida, the diseased penis of America where the freak flag always flies high and where the sitting governor is a man whose main claim to fame was that he once presided over the company responsible for the largest Medicare fraud in U.S. history. This is not a normal state and ranks right up there with Texas when it comes to oddities, freaks, perversion and general lunacy so just keep that in mind when considering all of this. That being said and not to get bogged down in any of the racial aspects of this thing but had the tubby self-proclaimed  neighborhood watch captain just listened to the cops and stayed in his car the nation would have been spared this entire sorry circus. Instead, with visions of Clint Eastwood movies dancing in his thick skull the out of shape 29 year old ignored the police advice and went after the black teenager, a lithe and muscular young man who just may have had more than a little bit of thug in him. A fight of some sort occurred and Zimmerman was getting the worst of it and then Martin was shot, nobody will ever know what really happened despite whatever hogwash is being peddled by both sides. The ghoulish media, the opportunists of both right-wing and left-wing stripes, worried gun industry lobbyists and the rancid Florida judicial system descended like vultures to feed on this tragedy. The entire nation was then subjected to yet another smutty televised trial (my god, has there ever been a country so obsessed with trials and punishment?) that much to the delight of Nancy Grace (who I strongly suspect gets sexually aroused over the slimy tales she covers) and the rest of the bottom feeders who were able to seamlessly transition from the Jodi Arias circus. We have come a long way from Judge Wapner in this land of court porn, once the potential for making money off of the crap was realized during the O.J. Simpson trial and the Rubicon was crossed. But that is another story for another time.

The Zimmerman case was a mind-boggling mess from the get go and the verdict was bound to set off a hellstorm of controversy no matter what the end result was. The only other witness to the incident is dead and as the saying goes, dead men tell no tales. George Zimmerman's father was a retired judge who appeared to be pulling strings behind the scenes, the alwyas 'fair and balanced' Fox's Sean Hannity gave the shooter a national platform from which to pontificate and Zimmerman's defense was be well funded by donations. The state of Florida botched it by bringing the second degree murder charge in the first place as reasonable doubt could have been established by a third-grader. The prosecution was so inept that at times it seemed to morph into Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden and the it wouldn't have been a shock to see Dancing Itos show up. Then there was the disastrous decision of putting Trayvon Martin's mush-mouthed girlfriend Rachel Jeantel on the stand without even bothering to consider that her inability to think or speak clearly would be exploited ruthlessly by the defense should have them all disbarred. The jury selection was farcical and lacked diversity and their credibility was immediately trashed days after the verdict when one of the ladies, known only as "B37" went on national television in an obvious attempt to cash in. I suppose that the less cynical should be surprised but anyone who has been carefully watching the descent and dismantling of America for a period of time recognizes the symptoms.

And now Obama is getting involved. The man has already proven that he is grossly incompetent and could fuck up a two car funeral and cynical aspirations aside over knocking the NSA revelations out of the news this is only going to lead to more problems. Never has a president been marketed so successfully and then turned out out to be an inept dope, the problem is that so much of the country is so dumbed down, brain washed and tuned out that they still keep buying his bullshit even long after the sell date has passed. The man actually is making many Americans come to the conclusion that maybe George W. Bush wasn't that bad and after all he did once send me six hundred bucks. Obama just allows his rogue Federal Reserve Chairman provide an endless flow money to the degenerate gamblers on Wall Street whose schemes will soon deliver the killing blow to the mythical American Dream.

So this is the sorry state as it currently sits as of Saturday morning in the soon to be smoldering ruins of this once great country. Detroit filed for bankruptcy the other day, it should be lost on nobody that the city was at one time an example of American economic and manufacturing prowess but that was back in the days before corporations were able to offshore jobs by the millions. Offshoring is like crack cocaine to short term profit driven executives and hedge fund hyenas and as brutally evident by 2013 Detroit - crack kills. And at this point free enterprise and honest capitalism is dead, we now have crack-ho economics as our national foundation. Nice.

Just imagine how a good explosion of race riots could bolster the case for not only more NSA spying, even stricter laws, more secret courts and of course further militarizing of the police. This will come in especially handy for Obama's successors when the economy finally careens into the abyss that is drunkenly stumbling towards thanks to Wall Street's overflowing punchbowl and Bernanke's heavy handed bartending.