SCOTUS Makes it Official: Democracy For Sale

Two events this past week should provide a wake up call to any who still believe that they really live in a functional democracy - we don't. That much has been apparent to anyone truly paying attention before Citizen's United flipped the latch on the gate and unleashed the pigs to feed. Today's predictable Supreme Court decision in ruling against the cap on campaign donations is more of the same only now it is completely out front that democracy is for sale to the highest bidder. The R-A-T-S being R-oberts, A-lito, T-homas, S-calia and the always phony fifth vote in the media hyped 'divided country' courtesy of Anthony Kennedy proved once and for all that the corporate state is ascendant and that the rest of use are pretty much fucked barring a sudden appearance of a true representative of the people. It ain't going to happen. This should alarm so-called conservatives as well even though the big money comes through admitted Republican sugar daddies like casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and the fake libertarian Koch Brothers but it could also be the much demonized George Soros or a resurgent labor movement and unions. This decision only continues to nullify the actual power of the regular Joe or Jane in terms of being a participant in a representative government.

The second event is of course the garish festival of scumbaggery that took place out west in Nevada at a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coaliton where a parade of prospective 2016 GOP presidential nominees groveled before the billionaire kingmaker that is Adelson who is shopping for a button pusher. As in the nuclear button that will trigger the opening of missile silos across the fruited plain for a nuclear strike on Iran - from the groveling of the whores (no offense to prostitutes) who showed up, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Scott Walker and John Kasich along with a parade of warmongers, neocon lunatics and hangers on there will be WW III if Adelson gets his way and he has the money to do it along with the pocket judges at SCOTUS. That is if sitting President Barack Obama and his own gaggle of neocons don't manage to get us all incinerated first with their ongoing provocation of Russia and Vladimir Putin.

The greater problem than the official rubber stamp on the big EBay auction in Washington is that the majority of Americans have no idea of what is going on, zilch. They are only active participants (outside of the vastly ignorant religious fanatic activists who are riled up by GOP demagogues come election time) in actual presidential elections and of course Dancing With the Stars, American Idol and the Super Bowl MVP vote. They will be the first ones who will be shocked when one day it finally dawns on their dumb asses that their very country has been sold out from under them while they have been sold down the river for chump change.

Adelson being the high-rolling borderline cadaver that he is will get his man or absent that the unprincipled old man will just fly in Hillary Rodham-Clinton and guarantee her the White House, the parasitic neocons did originally spring from the Democrats before attaching themselves to the Republican host. Now that the Democrats have under Obama proven to be the same reckless warmongers, callous violators of civil liberties, defenders of NSA Stasi surveillance on millions of innocent Americans as their more overtly fascist competitors it would be money well spent. Really it would make sense, the flock of GOP aspirants to the throne gets progressively worse as the candidates have to pander to their insane base of racists, armed to the teeth NRA types, religious fanatics and neo-Confederates which makes it harder to win a general election. Hillary would be Adelson's best bet and with the aforementioned Koch Brothers likely backing her opponent it would be a billions of dollars spending arms race that would be the modern equivalent of the great gold rush with media being the biggest winners and the 99 percentile of Americans being the losers - again. Besides, when it comes to starting wars Republicans are pikers, the big wars are presided over by Democrats - Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson come to mind. Anymore there is very little actual difference between the two parties and big money understands this better than most.

Let the spending spree begin...

Escape Velocity: DJIA 16,000 +

It is a glorious feeling of American euphoria today on Wall Street and in the luxurious confines of the looter class. Pigs are flying as the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared above 16,000 today for the first time in the history of the index. Not that this is really any sort of a true economic barometer of our days prior to collapse but it is what the shills, presstites and state-corporate media are given to push as an indication of a vibrant and resurgent American economy. Pumping 85 billion a month into the now bigger than ever banks thanks to the squadrons of helicopters on constant altert courtesy of Chairman Ben Bernanke and his onerous Federal Reserve, an institution that exists only to ensure that the high-rollers will never have to eat their speculative losses. The cooked to a fine fricassee markets have been in hyperdrive since last week’s command performance by Bernanke successor Janet Yellen who promises to keep the punchbowl filled with booze and the easy money that provides the heroin fix to the junkie banks flowing into the grand New York City gambling houses.

Things are so good that even Turbotax Tim Geitner just landed a new gig over at Warburg Pincus, yet another of those parasitic private equity houses that specialize in vulture capitalism or more appropriately sucking the blood out of the busted out average American and then picking the last morsels of flesh from their bones. The ongoing economic gaming of the system now enters the next stage and Yellen’s coming escalation of the QEuphoria is going to make Bernanke look like Paul Volcker by the time she is done feeding the pigs and inflating the Fed’s balance sheet to astronomical proportions. With the sweet, sweet spike now intravenously and permanently inserted into the arm of the zombie banks the final crushing of the remnants of our once vibrant middle class, at one time the envy of the world is about to be snuffed out for good. While I was driving home this evening I noticed that gas prices have jumped 26 cents a gallon overnight so the speculative feeding frenzy is already on and there is nothing like four dollar per gallon plus right in time for the holiday season to stomp the jackboot of the corrupt bankster state down on the windpipe of a reeling country.

Barack Obama now will also go down in history as the president who finally destroyed American capitalism, not that his immediate predecessors don’t have their own fingerprints on the murder weapon. Whether it be Bush’s maxing the national credit card with costly and unnecessary wars or Slick Willie’s collusion with slimeballs like Robert Rubin to eliminate the Glass-Steagall act and tear down the firewall between actual honest commercial banking and immoral degenerate gambling it is a joint effort. Hell, even the sainted Reagan bears more than his share of the blame for the orgy of deregulation that was just bound to be hijacked by greedy, well-funded special interests who while preaching “free markets” were ensuring that the rules would be rigged so that the only thing “free” would be the boatloads of illicit money that the pigs would eventually extract by permanently fixing the markets. 

Former Reagan budget director David Stockman caught hell from both sides of our false paradigm of a two-party system when he wrote the scathing piece “Sundown in America” in the New York Times. His book The Great Deformation is an extended version of the article that earned him the scorn of the presstitutes and the elitist defenders of a system gone to rot. The Bircher element of the far-right has always pushed the Obama as Marxist whopper when the man is actually by virtue of the system he presides over a fascist and Marx could have never dreamed of nuking capitalism the way that Barry and the boys have with their ongoing government subsidizing of the markets at taxpayer expense. To give Marx a bit of credit capitalism always has held within itself the seeds of its own eventual destruction in that everything becomes commoditized and all is for sale, including government officials, judges, statehouses, universities, the media etc. In the past most of the looting was done abroad as the imperialist policies of this country plundered with aplomb and the big money had the U.S. military on call. Former United States Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler nailed it when early in the last century he proclaimed:

“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Now the chickens have come home to roost and with foreign lands plundered and occupied the strip mining of America itself began. I have always thought of the analogy of the old Stephen King short story “Survivor Type” as a wonderful metaphor for cancerous vulture capitalism of the type that now exists. In the tale a dude finds himself marooned on a barren Pacific island after a shipwreck. The character is a former surgeon who was involved in drug trafficking and had in his possession a huge cache of heroin (we keep coming back to this substance when discussing Wall Street banks for some reason) and no food. During the story he begins imbibing the drug and eventually has to start slicing off parts of his own body which he then eats in order to survive while he awaits rescue. This is what American capitalism is today, the politically connected corrupt classes have destroyed free enterprise and the spirit of being the best at what you do/produce. In short the pigs have broken the back of American entrepreneurial ladders into the upper class and turned the American dream into a nightmare.

Today’s 16,000 Dow record will be trumpeted by the house shills and the crooked court jesters like Mad Money Jim Cramer but it is all a lie, just like everything else in this debased land as it careens towards the inevitable final collapse. Not that I am any sort of a qualified financial consultant but it doesn’t take an Harvard doctorate in economics to see that the best investment for the near future is in canned goods.

I don't know just where I'm going…But I'm goin' to try for the kingdom if I can…Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man…When I put a spike into my vein…Then I tell you things aren't quite the same…When I'm rushing on my run…And I feel just like Jesus' son….And I guess I just don't know…And I guess that I just don't know

- “Heroin” by Lou Reed 1972-2013

Black Friday Devours Thanksgiving

I wonder what the over/under Vegas betting line is on people who will be trampled to death this coming Black Thursday-Friday weekend is? The biggest and baddest shopping day of the year for maxed-out and busted-down Americans has now been extended into Thanksgiving Day itself so we could be hearing the stories before the turkey gravy has had adequate time to congeal. On a positive note it offers an exit strategy from having to deal with those annoying relatives that one must tolerate for the holidays, when Uncle Dan has become heavily intoxicated and is ranting about Obama the Muslim, the “queers” getting married and America going to hell over legalized pot. Why hang around when you can go and mingle with even bigger assholes down at your friendly local big box retail outlet? As it sits right now Black Friday has officially jumped the shark with the bleed over into Thanksgiving as well as all of the “fun” of anticipating the deals being spoiled. Most of the big retailers have already released their ads and the deals are not what they once were.

Wal-Mart, the emporium of the burgeoining underclass opens at 6 on turkey day, there are such deals as a $98 thirty-two inch LED HDTV, a $38 Blu-Ray player and $299 iPad mini’s with a $100 gift card that you can use to buy even more Chinese made junk in the store. The variation of the normal retail bait and switch is Big Smiley’s 1 hour in stock guarantee on these and other coveted sale items. Guaranteed along with the inevitable deep discounts on movies, video games etc to generate a violent stampede through the big box store that will demolish all in it’s wake as it roars into the electronics department, normally located in the back of the store. The big day is always good for at least one horrendous incident at Wally World whether it be a stomping as the doors are thrown open or some poor old lady betting sucked under by a mob destroying the discount DVD displays. It should be mandatory for every Wal-Mart Super Store to have paramedics circling the building in the event that a victim is in need of immediate evacuation. I always get a kick out of the pictorial features of The People of Wal-Mart and just taking a gander at the dregs of humanity on display should have any sane person wanting to stay the hell away.

There will be early openings at Target, Best Buy, Toys R Us, Kohls, and the list is growing but none are as shameless as K-Mart though which has drawn criticism for plans to open at 6 in the morning on Thanksgiving Day and stay open for 41 hours straight.  It is not only dishonorable to family unity but is nothing less than sheer unadulterated greed, the real losers being the poor, forlorn employees who not only are unable to spend the day with their family but have to man the frontlines when the hooligans are unleashed - their employer could at least provide them with store colored riot gear. Plumbing the bottom of the barrel though is Macy’s who gussied up their 8 pm opening with the hogwash that the deals would begin “after families across the country have finished their holiday meals and celebrations”. My God where has the humility gone? The greedy bastards have been taking a ding in sales as the  government barometer of “consumer confidence” has taken a tumble so they are all in on Thanksgiving openings. What’s next in this soul less husk of a country, post-Christmas clearing sales at 11:59 on December 24th? What a disgusting orgy of consumerism, the Fox-o-sphere and crazy religious freaks constantly wail that the dirty liberals have “taken the Christ out of Christmas” but fail to hold retail giants to the same standards. That is a story for another time though.

There are those who bemoan the destruction of the American family and you can put down Black Friday’s absorbtion of Thanksgiving as Exhibit A on the list of culprits.  We really have so little time as it is and should honor tradition and spend the holidays with loved (and loathed) ones, after all they are family.  While I thankfully don’t have an obnoxious drunken “Uncle Dan” to tolerate during the annual pig-out feast I do have the misfortune of having to deal with my chronically bitching Jewish mother in law, a woman whose guiding philosophy of life is that everyone exists solely to kiss her big ass and once you get that straight well just sit back and enjoy the sweet potato pie. I also have a bigoted stepfather from some ass backwards Louisiana town down behind the cornbread curtain who could do everyone a favor and just find a local klavern hall to hang out in with others who share his views.  I am very thankful that  I don’t have to deal with him on turkey day but like the proverbial “jelly of the month club” he is the gift that keeps on giving come Christmas. While they are both annoying pains in the ass they are after all family,  the ones that people should be spending the holidays with instead of throwing down with total strangers in a scrum at the big box outlet. Sometimes it is best to just follow Bluto Blutarsky’s advice by drinking heavily.