Socialist Cadaver Bernie Sanders to Challenge Queen Hillary

With the rock solid fact that liberals are fools and suckers already established after they lined up to buy the snake oil of “hope” and “change” peddled by Barack Obama it is not exactly a reach to say that they will fall for pretty much anything. If the weepy, bleeding heart, butterflies, zebras, moonbeams and fairy tales crowd was gaga over the prospects of cigar store Indian Elizabeth Warren running for president, they are on the verge of a collective orgasm after Independent Bernie Sanders just announced his bid.

Not that you can really blame them in this case considering that the Democrats already coronated Queen Hillary years ago and that there will be no serious primary challengers in the blue jackass party. Nature abhors a vacuum and Sanders has rushed in to fill it on the so-called left but in their ecstasy over Bernie they are blinded to the possibility that they are being played for chumps yet again. Their one day splurge of donations to the Sanders campaign to the tune of $1.5 million shows their endless capacity for being scammed but as famous showman P.T. Barnum once famously remarked “there’s a sucker born every minute”.

Sanders, a crusty old independent Senator from Vermont - the land of liberal hippie ice cream tycoons Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield - has for years been a hero of liberals and progressives. He has railed against the pigs on Wall Street – Hillary’s biggest supporters – and raged against the war machine, carving out a cult like following of ardent admirers. Last week Senator Sanders made it official that he would be throwing his hat into the ring of the political circus.

As reported by CNN in the story “Bernie Sanders is running for president”:

Bernie Sanders is in.

The independent Vermont senator railed against the political machine — blasting "ugly 30-second ads," billionaire big-money donors and other "soap opera aspects of modern campaigns" — in a press conference kicking off his candidacy outside the Capitol on Thursday.

"I think the American people are tired of that," Sanders said.

He said he is running to thwart trade deals like the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership and to overhaul business tax rules so corporations operating in the United States cannot shelter their money overseas.

"Their responsibilities are not to shift jobs to China, their responsibility is not to avoid paying federal taxes," he said.

Sanders first announced his run in an email to supporters and media sent just after midnight early Thursday morning.

"After a year of travel, discussion and dialogue, I have decided to be a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president," he wrote in the email, highlighting economic inequality, climate change and the Citizens United Supreme Court decisions as key issues spurring him to run.

Sanders first confirmed to the Associated Press in a story published Wednesday that he plans to run for the Democrats' 2016 presidential nomination.

"People should not underestimate me," Sanders told The Associated Press. "I've run outside of the two-party system, defeating Democrats and Republicans, taking on big-money candidates and, you know, I think the message that has resonated in Vermont is a message that can resonate all over this country."

But it is only now that Sanders is about to hit the big time and draw the full focus of the state-corporate media which will rapidly snuff out the pipe dreams of liberals and those who live in a fantasy world – but I repeat myself – by smashing him like an annoying insect. Sanders is an avowed socialist which is going to go over with the establishment like a floating chuck of feces in a fruit bunch bowl. Obama was vilified over ginned up accusations of his extreme leftinesss but Bernie is actually a real socialist - he will be fed into the Fargo wood chipper by the corrupt media in a nanosecond. 

Obama was crucified over accusations that he was a socialist or even worse – a communism - both of which were inaccurate in that he is first and foremost a fascist whose administration has looted Americans for years to keep the big donors that profit from the Wall Street casinos happy. Sanders will immediately be torn to shreds for that alone which is going to help Hillary tremendously by allowing her to run to the right of him so that the bankster money will continue to flow to her campaign. Besides, Wall Street already understands that Hillary’s newfound populism is horseshit and they are all laughing at anyone who is stupid enough to buy into any of it.

Sanders also allows Hillary to somewhat escape from one problem that continues to dog her which is her age, something that will be ruthlessly exploited by ambitious whelps like Marco Rubio. She is 67 years old but that makes her a spring chicken next to old Bernie who is 73 and looks every minute of it. As the old wisdom always went, if you want to look thin then start hanging around with fat people and Mrs. Clinton benefits greatly vs. Sanders in image conscious America.

Some cynics would say that Bernie Sanders is simply a “ringer”, only in the race to provide the illusion that there is actual competition to Hillary on the so-called left and to provide a foil for her as she easily rolls to the 2016 nomination.  Those cynics, who are far more savvy than the average American voter would be correct as they so often are in the declining republic of Obamastan circa 2015.

Sanders has as much chance of being elected as I do. 

Chopper Whopper: NBC Anchor Brian Williams Exposed as Professional Liar

According to Greek mythology Icarus plunged to his death after his waxen wings melted when he flew too close to the sun. It is a fitting metaphor for millionaire celebrity NBC News anchor Brian Williams who had to retract and publicly apologize for a career burnishing fib that he told. Williams had regaled people with the tale that he had been on a helicopter that was forced down under fire in Iraq back when battle raged in 2003. But the pride of NBC Nightly News repeated his fairy tale one time too many and was called out for it.

As reported by Reuters in the story “NBC's Brian Williams apologizes for Iraq story after soldiers protest”:

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams said on Wednesday he was sorry for "making a mistake" when he said he was on a helicopter that was hit and forced down by rocket fire during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, after soldiers complained it was not true.

Williams made the claim on his broadcast last Friday while reporting a tribute at a New York Rangers hockey game for a retired soldier who provided ground security during the incident. Williams said he and his news crew were protected by a mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry after their Chinook helicopter was crippled by enemy fire.

That prompted crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment's Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire to tell the Stars and Stripes military newspaper that the journalist had arrived on a different helicopter an hour later.

In a statement responding to the soldiers, Williams said they were absolutely right and he was wrong.

"In fact, I spent much of the weekend thinking I'd gone crazy. I feel terrible about making this mistake, especially since I found my OWN WRITING about the incident from back in '08, and I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG in the tail housing," Williams wrote.

He said he supposed that repeatedly watching a video of himself inspecting the impact damage, plus "the fog of memory over 12 years," made him conflate and misremember events, some of which took place in a thick "Orange Crush" sandstorm.

The “fog of memory” that Williams uses as an excuse is more like the fog of bullshit and an obvious and shameful effort to deceive the American public. But that is why a guy like him makes the big bucks and the temptation was just too much to mix a lie of his own in with the big government propaganda that he recites. It is even worse than Dan Rather’s similar fall from grace after his sloppy work on a story about George W. Bush’s National Guard Service. Mr. Rather, long hated by conservatives for perceived bias was arrogant to the core and his blunder resulted in his unceremonious exit from CBS and Bush's reelection. Williams also should surrender his anchorman throne for this lie because how can he possibly have any credibility going forward?

A story from the BBC provides a bit more detail on the exposure of Brian Williams as a pompous liar:

His apology came after veterans who were on the helicopter that was hit posted comments on the broadcaster's Facebook page.

Flight engineer Lance Reynolds, who was on the helicopter that was hit, wrote: "Sorry dude, I don't remember you being on my aircraft. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened.

In a later posting he wrote: "The place we were shot at was a long ways away from where we even saw him and his crew. "

Replying to the criticism, Mr Williams said that "constant viewing of the video showing us inspecting the impact area - and the fog of memory over 12 years - made me conflate the two".

Mr Reynolds told the military newspaper Stars and Stripes: "It was something personal for us that was kind of life-changing for me. I know how lucky I was to survive it."

"It felt like a personal experience that someone else wanted to participate in and didn't deserve to participate in."

The hashtag #chopperwhopper has now appeared on Twitter, with many contributors criticising Mr Williams and questioning whether he should stay in his job.

The quote from Lance Reynolds is priceless, “sorry dude” though will not be enough from Williams who should do the right thing and resign. Not that NBC, much higher up the totem pole than Democrat party propaganda arm MSNBC should be spared from criticism over Williams’ whopper about the chopper. If anything this validates what conservatives have long been saying about the network’s credibility.

There is a line of celebrities with less baggage than Brian Williams who would work for less money and jump through flaming hoops to get a shot at his gig. Americans will adjust quickly because as they have proven time and again, they will just gobble down the bullshit biscuits no matter who it is that is feeding them the precious morsels.

Preaching From the Propaganda Pulpit on Easter Sunday

Pope Francis made a plea for peace in Syria and Ukraine on Easter Sunday while the warmongers here in The Homeland took to the airwaves to sell the exactly the opposite message. You would think that the corrupt state-corporate media, the neocons and the American political class would at least honor those who wish to celebrate the Easter holiday in peace with their friends and family. In actuality, it is a great time to go on the air with dishonest interviews of characters of ill repute, peddle outrageous lies and reach the maximum desired audience so as to bring their horseshit to family dinners. Easter Sunday was no exception and the usual array of scum was present on the telescreens to preach their message of fear, loathing and vengeance. Shameful but that’s just the way that we roll in the smoking crater of what is left of America these days.

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press with the always slimy David Gregory was none other than the US installed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk of the occupying coup government in Kiev. The neocon puppet “Yats” hit all of the talking points in a command performance on what is supposedly a holy day including the obviously faked leaflets distributed in Eastern Ukraine to force Jews to register.  This is a massive whopper that stinks of black propaganda and has already been discredited - outside of the pocket media that is. "Yats" also read all of his lines and delivered them with gusto when announcing the demonized and reviled Russian president Vladimir Putin's alleged moves to reconstruct the Soviet empire, it is the latest version of that restoration of the Islamic Caliphate what was used for so long to great effect to carry out the war on Muslims. 

The "exclusive" Gregory-Yats interview was more of the same crap that has been peddled to Boobus Americanus over the US instigated situation in Ukraine. I excerpt the following from the transcript (the entire thing is here):

DAVID GREGORY: The West including Ukraine, the United States, and Russia struck a deal to calm the violence in eastern Ukraine. What's it going to take for this deal to hold?

ARSENIY YATSENYUK: Well, much depends on the Russian Federation. As Russia triggered this violence and Russia supported these terrorists, and Russia was obliged to engineer a meeting to condemn terrorists and to condemn those so-called peaceful protesters with AK-74 in their hands, shooting into civilians and shooting into Ukrainian riot police. And if Russia pulls back its security forces and former K.G.B. agents, this would definitely calm down the situation and stabilize the situation in southern and eastern Ukraine.

DAVID GREGORY: When you hear President Vladimir Putin talk about Novorossiya, “New Russia,” where he talks about Ukraine being part of Russia, does that tell you that Putin will not stop until Ukraine is part of Russia?

ARSENIY YATSENYUK: President Putin has a dream to restore the Soviet Union. And every day, he goes further and further. And God knows where is the final destination. And he was very clear, saying this stuff in his state of the union two years ago. And I believe that you do remember his famous Munich speech saying that the biggest disaster of the former century is the collapse of the Soviet Union. I consider that the biggest disaster of this century would be the restoring of the Soviet Union under the auspices of President Putin.

DAVID GREGORY:Vice President Biden will be in Ukraine this coming week. My question to you, Prime Minister: Is Ukraine strong enough militarily to stop Russia in the east? If not, what specifically will you ask the Obama administration for? Do you need modern weaponry? Do you need advanced lethal weaponry to stop the Russians?

ARSENIY YATSENYUK: We need a strong and solid state. We need financial and economic support. We need to overhaul the Ukrainian military. We need to modernize our security and military forces. We need the real support. You know, it's easy to answer the question you just asked me. How can you stop the nuclear-powered state which is Russian Federation that spent billions of dollars to modernize their military instead of Ukraine? In the last four years, the former president, together with the Russian supporters, what they did, they just dismantled Ukrainian military and Ukrainian security forces. So we need to be in very good shape in order to stop Russia. And for this shape, we need to have and to get the real support from our Western partners.

DAVID GREGORY: So you need weapons?

ARSENIY YATSENYUK: We need financial, economic support. We need to modernize Ukrainian military and to overhaul all structures of Ukrainian defense system.

DAVID GREGORY: Final question. There have been ghastly reports coming out of eastern Ukraine this week about some kind of forces forcing Jews in the eastern part of the country to register with local authorities. What do you make of this? Are these accurate? Are Jews particularly at risk?

ARSENIY YATSENYUK: We got information that these so-called peaceful protesters with light ammunition in their hands, that they sent a number of bulletins saying that everyone who is a Jew to be indicated as a Jew. And today in the morning, I made a clear statement urged Ukrainian military and security forces and Ukrainian Department of Homeland Security urgently to find these bastards and to bring them to justice.

It’s even money that the “bastards” will be some patsies who get killed in a shootout with military or security forces with incriminating ‘ties’ to Putin and Russia. The reference to the “Ukranian Department of Homeland Security” may as well be to the Ukranian Gestapo – the term “Homeland” or “Heimat” is in its true European element rather than a disease that has taken root in America. 

The whole thing adds up to Americans being on the hook to engage in still more costly and dangerous foreign misadventures. With millions of our own citizens out of work, underemployed, homeless, all of the hungry children right here in the US, a financial system that is gamed to the hilt and markets that cannot function without the government propping them up, an outdated and decaying infrastructure and yet it is acceptable to send billions to an illegally installed government in Ukraine? David Gregory is set for life as are the political class and their media court jesters but it sends a very clear message to the rest of the population and that message is “Fuck You”.  Let them eat war and beg for seconds.

Nice country, cutting food stamps and unemployment benefits for those impoverished by a system hijacked by looters that have government protection while arming neo-Nazi militias. The Jew registration hoax has real legs and one could suspect that the timing of it was purposely planned to occur during the week of Easter and Passover.  Call it “Operation Easter Outrage” and that there is no caution other than the usual rush to judgment it is because it is known exactly where the leaflets came from and that it is a psychological operation that is targeting the American sheeple. The shameless opportunist Glenn Beck’s website “The Blaze” is hammering it as well in a shining example of how low that the credibility of the flagship of the NBC ‘news’ armada has fallen. For the more upwardly mobile the cherished World War II references (with the exception of the critical fact that Russia was a US ally) appear in a piece featured in Forbes Magazine targeted towards the high finance parasite demographic that is entitled - and I shit you not - “Is Vladimir Putin Another Adolf Hitler?” from which I excerpt:

As Mein Kampf makes clear, Hitler sought to unite all the people of German speech and culture into one state, or Reich, preferably by peaceful negotiation, otherwise by war and conquest.

 To do this Hitler needed to void the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany had signed after its defeat in the Great War of 1914-18. First he marched into the Rhineland, which had been demilitarized under the treaty, stationing regular army divisions and tanks there. The Allies–Britain and France–did nothing.

 Next Hitler marched into German-speaking Austria–an annexation known as the Anschluss. Having been stripped of their empire and reduced to an insignificant small state, the Austrians were glad to become part of almighty Reich. Again, the Allies did nothing.

 Hitler’s next claim was the Sudetenland. This was a territory on the border of Czechoslovakia inhabited by a German-speaking people who were absorbed into the new state against their will. The Allies allowed this landgrab to stand in an agreement reached at a Munich summit meeting in September 1938. This was regarded as a surrender to Hitler, but British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who negotiated the agreement, argued that Hitler was merely asserting the rights of the Sudeten Germans, who wanted to belong to his Reich.

 The falsity of Chamberlain’s position and Hitler’s deceit were proved within months. The Sudetenland’s annexation had made the Czech frontier indefensible, and in March 1939 Hitler invaded. The Czechs put up no resistance, and the rest of the country fell into Hitler’s hands without a shot being fired.

I have lived a good while now and I have to admit that I have never seen anything like the blanket propaganda that has been shoveled like so much manure into the public domain since Putin’s timely intervention to stop the Obama regime from attacking Syria based on false pretenses over a sarin gas attack that reeks of a false flag operation. One analogy that the neocons fail to mention is that Hitler could never have pulled it off without the German people falling into line and in many cases becoming his accomplices – it was accomplished largely through lies and a propaganda machine that had no equal. I would figure that the readers of Forbes would be more sophisticated than Glenn Beck worshippers but then again the entire country is now populated largely by idiots who have been fed a constant diet of lies across the entire demographic range so as to be effectively lobotomized perhaps I give the formally educated too much credit. 

And what would the Sunday morning gabfest be without Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul who just had to cynically milk the Boston Marathon bombing anniversary one more time with his dire warning that another bomb may blow up in Beantown on Monday on ABC's this Week to the delight of the grinning little shitbag William Kristol, the Joseph Goebbels of the modern era who is now a co-host.

Jesus Wept

Neocons Crow Over Ukraine Coup d'Etat

With the cherry on top of cake of the epic spree of Russian bashing that the U.S. establishment spewed forth for months during the lead up to the Sochi Winter Olympic games being the weekend coup d'etat that took place in Ukraine the Obama administration and American Neocons engaged in an obscene victory celebration. Returning to his normal Sunday morning bloviation circuit perch Senator John McCain railed against the hated Vladimir Putin from the bully pulpit of CBS's Face the Nation. McCain who has had a burr up his ass since he was shot down over Vietnam and ended up as a guest at the Hanoi Hilton but especially since Putin's September 11, 2013 New York Times Op Ed where he mocked the very concept of American exceptionalism was on the attack this morning as he gleefully contemplated Cold War V.2. Delivering a veiled threat that a cowardly bastard like McCain who can comfortably be assured that he will never have to back it up the venerated Arizona warmonger chortled "If I were Vladimir Putin, I would be little bit nervous" which is probably the case. With the lunatics running the U.S. war machine and their foaming at the mouth NATO toadies itching for the good old days Putin can't be pleased that the west is slowly but methodically encircling Russia, a large country that DOES have nukes.

There was obviously U.S. and European meddling in Ukraine and the timing so that it all fortuitously blew up right before the closing ceremonies of Putin's showcase event calls into question whether it was a coincidence. This is what the CIA and other intelligence agencies do for a living and McCain himself was in Kiev schmoozing with the 'rebels' in December so his glee from pissing in Putin's Olympic party punch bowl comes despite the blood that is on his own hands. Not that such a thing bothers the bloodthirsty old bastard, he has never met a violent situation that he didn't revel in, he may not have been as good when it came to dropping jellied fire from the skies on Vietnamese women and children but he is hell on wheels when it comes to being a professional provocateur. That a prolonged period of civil war and carnage may be coming to Ukraine is all the better for McCain and his connected military industrial complex cronies like Senator Kelly Ayotte who also slithered around on FOX News Sunday to decree that Obama needs to "up his game" in delivering retribution to Putin. What goes unsaid by any of these taxpayer funded psychopaths is that this is all payback first for granting asylum to government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and then sinking their grand war on Syria. Once again we have glaring evidence of exactly why this country is rotten to the core and on the verge of the great collapse - the media never calls bullshit on these professional liars.

When it comes to media bullshit I must admit that I am a bit perplexed over what all of the uproar is about over the FCC’s “newsroom study”. The Obama administration and the corrupt state-corporate media propaganda machine  already do their bidding.  The evidence is overwhelming, especially in light of the shameful anti-Putin jihad that was obviously orchestrated to taint the games and provide ample opportunity to launch a multi-faceted public relations blitz in the domestic media to mount the devil horns on the Russian leader. I excerpt the following from an essay from the liberal weekly The Nation by Stephen F. Cohen entitled "Distorting Russia: How the media represent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine":

The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines—particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin—is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.

There are notable exceptions, but a general pattern has developed. Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or “expert” views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War.

The history of this degradation is also clear. It began in the early 1990s, following the end of the Soviet Union, when the US media adopted Washington’s narrative that almost everything President Boris Yeltsin did was a “transition from communism to democracy” and thus in America’s best interests. This included his economic “shock therapy” and oligarchic looting of essential state assets, which destroyed tens of millions of Russian lives; armed destruction of a popularly elected Parliament and imposition of a “presidential” Constitution, which dealt a crippling blow to democratization and now empowers Putin; brutal war in tiny Chechnya, which gave rise to terrorists in Russia’s North Caucasus; rigging of his own re-election in 1996; and leaving behind, in 1999, his approval ratings in single digits, a disintegrating country laden with weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, most American journalists still give the impression that Yeltsin was an ideal Russian leader.

Since the early 2000s, the media have followed a different leader-centric narrative, also consistent with US policy, that devalues multifaceted analysis for a relentless demonization of Putin, with little regard for facts. (Was any Soviet Communist leader after Stalin ever so personally villainized?) If Russia under Yeltsin was presented as having legitimate politics and national interests, we are now made to believe that Putin’s Russia has none at all, at home or abroad—even on its own borders, as in Ukraine.

Cohen hits the target on several fronts in that short excerpt primarily that Boris Yeltsin was a filthy, drunken pig who enabled corruption on such a grand scale that he could be a CEO for Goldman Sachs yet the turd of his legacy has regularly been polished by the lickspittle press. He is also on the spot in that Putin has been vilified in a manner not seen since Stalin walked the planet, I am hard pressed to remember another Russian leader being so savagely trashed throughout the Cold War, not even Nikita Kruschev had so much shit thrown at him. Cohen who is a professor emeritus of Russian  studies at New York University as well as Princeton gives some well needed context on the true nature of the problems in Ukraine in this interview on the liberal Democracy Now  Such context is lacking in the establishment media.

Now that the Olympics are finally over at least that particular dead horse can no longer be flogged by mouthpieces for the empire but McCain and Ayotte represent the tip of the spear for the official talking points.  

In a fitting epitaph the "Miracle on Ice II" of the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team...well it sucks to be them as they were whacked by Finland 5-0 thereby depriving them of even a bronze medal for their troubles. Hell, at this time last week practically the entire media was proclaiming that the shootout win over what was a pretty lousy Russian team was the second coming of fucking Lake Placid. Not that the game would have even made it to the ridiculous bush league shootout had U.S. goalie Jonathan Quick of the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings not cheated by kicking the net off of its moorings during a Russian flurry. Fans of the team were understandably pissed and not only accused the U.S. referee of deliberately assisting to rig the game but even after it was over with when some reportedly chanted “make soap out of the ref” at a protest outside of the U.S. embassy.

One could only wish that someone would do such a thing to Senator McCain and rid us all once and forever of that most troublesome man. 

(Image: patdollard.com)

Here We Go Again: Explosive Toothpaste Alert

With the crown jewel of American cultural decadence that is the Super Bowl now receding into the recesses of the national memory the next great offering up of bread and circuses for the masses will be the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. While the Super Bowl was a national celebration of all that has gone awry in this once great country, in particular the worship of the militaristic security state this edition of the world games presents the establishment with a particularly fine opportunity to traffic in the fear and loathing that have become the coin of the realm. In the sad husk of what used to be (at least in theory) a democracy that was the envy of the world but s now just a desiccated and perverted dystiopa referred to as  the Homeland we shalt now be inundated with a plague of raw propaganda of biblical proportions. The state-corporate media are piling onto the host country as well as its hated leader Vladimir Putin who has been constantly mocked and vilified by the lackeys of the elite ever since that audacious New York Times column that ran on the twelfth anniversary of that most sanctified day questioning the asinine concept that is our blessed American exceptionalism.

The Russians have many problems given the recent spate of terrorist attacks as well as the much sensationalized infiltration of “Black Widow” suicide bombers and according to some accounts the refusal of House of Saud political fixer Prince Bandar bin Sultan (aka Bandar Bush) to guarantee protection for a price. Prince Bandar and the swinish monarchy in The Kingdom are still furious over the abandonment of the latest Middle Eastern war in Syria, jilted by both Putin and Barack Obama and have been caterwauling about it ever since. I tend to put some credence in the accounts of Bandar’s guarantee of Olympic safety as it is no secret that the House of Saud or elements thereof have provided funding to Islamist militant groups, pitting them against the Great Satan to spare them from launching a mass invasion of the opulent palaces of their oppressors. It is also of note that fifteen of the nineteen September 11, 2001 hijackers hailed from Prince Bandar’s own homeland.

But I digress. The domestic propaganda machine is set on high with the latest Olympic scare being about toothpaste bombs. This of course is meant for internal consumption in the United States of Kardashian where the populace needs to be kept in a constant state of fear to ensure their continued submission to the NSA Stasi and the police state forces that serve as enforcers of our own increasingly Draconian laws. Having a football free month of full spectrum media dominance with which to hype not only the dangers of Olympic terrorism but also to launch diatribes against all things Russian look for the fear card to be played often and dealt from the bottom of the deck. The tale of the explosive toothpaste is the latest in a line of the type of bullshit that Americans have been bludgeoned with to meekly accept the never ending war on terror. Christ, this is all straight out of the Bush-Cheney textbook, recall the days back when the child fondling, old woman harassing government goons at the TSA staked out their territory by confiscating an ever growing list of personal hygiene items from terrified travelers? Remember that there was once a time when our national airports actually did not old Soviet bloc checkpoints where state sanctioned theft, bullying and other forms of intimidation were enforced. We never had to take our shoes off nor be felt up by thugs nor marched through naked body scanners – the deadly explosive toothpaste bombs of a reminder that we all must sacrifice to remain free.

This week the “two minutes hate” is to be directed at Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak who inflamed the sensitivities of our leadership class daring to opine during news conference last week that the security in Sochi as far as the Russian state being able to guarantee total safety is “the same in Sochi as in Boston” and “For Example, in the United States, at the marathon, people died not so long ago”. OUCH! That has to really smart to have that vodka marinated, star spangled shit sandwich jammed down the throat particulary in the aftermath of the Super Bowl when of all people a (GASP)  “truther” was able to penetrate millions of dollars in paramilitary forces and high tech security to hijack the microphone during game MVP Malcolm Smith’s press conference to deliver his message that 9/11 needs to be investigated. That humiliating breach of the fraud of the security state illustrates what a scam that it all is, the man could have been wearing a suicide bomb and detonated in the middle of the crowd during the freaking game.

Kozak’s comments may have assoles aplenty in full pucker mode but he is spot on and the failure of the trillion dollar NSA all-seeing spy machine to stop two losers from setting off a pressure cooker bomb at the Boston Marathon finish line shows just how much of a lie that it is that the government police state can prevent anything - it is all about money, power and getting over. That Kozak chose to take a poke at Boston has to be especially galling to the chowder heads who after the bombing allowed a huge portion of their city to be put under a de facto state of martial law where black clad paramilitary police squads roamed the streets and conducted unconstitutional, warrantless, house to house searches. That the ever belligerent bad asses of Beantown, heralded as one of the birthplaces of the American Revolution would so easily throw up their hands, cower and kiss the whip had to really fuck with the local psyche. It was all washed away in the exploitation of the bombings though, hijacked by the Red Sox baseball team as a chintzy motiational tactic to power them to a World Series win which was then prompted as the cleansing of a most vile act that was perpetrated upon a city. The whole thing was sickening and as revealing of an American character now bereft of dignity and content to cower in fear at bogeymen invoked by the profiteers who run their government. To think that after the humiliation of the bombing, the further indignity of the rape of their rights by being placed under martial law and then the spectacle of watching the post World Series win pilgrimage of freaks to kiss the street at the finish line was as surreal as it was sickening. Samuel Adams had to be rolling over in his grave over that. 

There is also the ongoing exploitation of another American demographic through the use of disgusting ‘gay baiting’ and the continuing drenched in hypocrisy hectoring of Putin over his less than stellar record towards homosexuals. This is laughable horseshit coming from the Obama administration which has turned the exploitation of the gay community for votes into an art form. It is even more ridiculous when considering that a good numer of American states, largely comprised of  those down behind the cornbread curtain in Dixie have their own onerous laws against homosexuality in one form or the other (all denying personal rights) and the legitimately recognized portions of the American Christian establishment treat gays with the same sort of intolerance and hatred that the Ku Klux Klan espoused towards blacks or for that matter the establishment expresses towards all who do not heel to them.  You know, Jesus Christ never once denounced gays but he sure as hell preached many a mean sermon against hypocrisy of the type that The Homeland is drenched in.

The Olympic closing ceremony is to be on February 23rd making the next few weeks the perfect opportunity to those who want to get off the grid for awhile and just tune out all of the noise.

Media Spins McJob Gains as Sunny Holiday News

Positive psychology is to the corporate state what eugenics was to the Nazis

-Chris Hedges

In a manner typical to highly paid liars the state-corporate media is today trumpeting the joyous news that U.S. private sector hiring rose in November at the “fastest clip in a year” according to payroll firm ADP. There hasn’t been this much job growth since… oh…. the last holiday shopping season. The hoopla and cheerleading is just more of the same reheated heavy petting of cooked to a fine fricasse economic figures to put a big smile on the face of Americans in time to go out and buy more foreign made crap to celebrate the birth of Jesus. However today’s euphoria will be January’s malaise as retailers and restaurants will begin cutting the McJobs once the last possible Christmas spending nickle has been extracted by the maxed out and largely screwed over and on the way to out American sheeple. This type of chicanery always brings to mind that nifty little trick years ago when the corrupt government was trying to get hamburger flipper gigs reclassified as manufacturing jobs to falsely portray economic figures.

The one great thing that the pocket media always can be relied on (other than lying about wars, NSA spying, exploiting dead children and shilling for a long rotten system) is selling hope and there is nothing like hope for the Christmas holidays. The old showman P.T. Barnum had it pegged that there was a sucker born every minute and the greedy bastards who run this place never fail to capitalize on the whimsical, childish and asinine thinking that large chunks of the public gobble up like precious biscuits of bullshit. The truth is that the economy is a disaster (unless you happen to own a hedge fund) that has never recovered from the 2007-2008  collapase and subsequent depression that was in typical cynical manner played down with the cute little focus group tested “Great Recession” tag. The entire “recovery” was a sham led by the thoroughly dishonest dishonest Obama administration, Wall Street inside man Timothy Geithner and millions of dollars of propaganda and public relations. I recall back in early 2009 when the homes of greedy AIG executives were being swarmed and hostile sentiment against the big banksters who wrecked the economy was threatening to lead to serious reform. HBO liberal comedian Bill Maher actually called for two random bankers to be hung from the big board on the NYSE with their balls in their mouth to send a message and then a magical wave of hope washed across the land like a blessed kiss from God himself that all would be well.

The schmucks were played again as none other than Helicopter Ben Bernanke showed up on 60 Minutes to speak glowingly of the “green shoots” of hope as the now obviously faked recovery were sprouting. Americans for the most park set down their pitchforks and torches and accepted their impoverishment at the hands of the same slimy bastards who were now pacifying them with that golden nostrum of good old American ‘can-do’ and that if they all just worked a bit harder that they too could one day become members of the exalted one percent. Then they went back to sleep allowing Bernanke’s Federal Reserve to carry out the greatest wealth transfer and heist in history, creating money from nothing and providing it as an endless supply of gambling chips to the Wall Street casinos all the while pumping tens of billions of dollars a month into the grand-daddy of all stock bubbles.

I have long believed that one could indirectly trace every rotten thing that has gone so horribly awry in America to the denial and delusion associated with the entire ‘think positively’ confidence game. It only encourages apathy, dreaming and submissiveness and it was the naïve belief in the absolute legitimacy in grand scale fraud that is mutated crony capitalism and has destroyed the economy so that the fattest of the pigs can continue to gorge themselves. The national dogma that what is good for Wall Street is good for America, that the bill would never come due on those evil little pieces of plastic credit cards that were maxed out to be just like the images on the television which in the end are alas nothing more than the images flickering off of the walls of Platos’ cave to pacify the slaves.

The fraudsters who run the banking system were all too happy to inflate the housing bubble that the devastated this country's economy with neutron bomb style efficiency, leading to financial death while leaving the actual structures intact for the banksters to sweep up for pennies on the dollar.  The never-ending ATM that was phony home equity fueled the mass illusions as long as the flim flam men could scheme to turn that imaginary mortgage equity into derivatives and bad paper that was ultimately worth as much as low grade toilet paper of the 100 grit quality. And it only continued because the jackasses in this country believed the charlatans like  Alan Greenspan, Bernanke and Mad Money Cramer. They bought into it, did not question it as they should have and in the end were impoverished by it. Oh, and they allowed themselves to be conned again into bailing out the same banks, the modern day Pharaohs who reside in the temples of avarice that are Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. Damned fools, sheep and morons and we all have made to suffer because of the the pollyannas who skipped down the primrose path to perdition who fell for it all hook, line and sinker.

I am reminded of my days as an outside vendor representative who would make regular visits to a certain high profile national chain of convenience stores. The managers of these stores suffered from some sort of shellshock, they were walking wounded, broken people hounded by micromanaging corporate types, tyrannical district managers who always popped in at unexpected times and harangued by customers. They were psychically damaged material doing a thankless job for a pack of corporate pricks. What I remember in particular was one frumpy manager (looked like a dumpster in pantsuit) who had been transformed as some are by taking Jesus into their hearts. 'Sally' had found her own winning lottery ticket in life because she had just been recruited into the notorious Amway Inc upon which the DeVos family (which includes Xe/Blackwater’s Erik Prince) built it’s massive fortune.  Sally backed me into a corner and explained that she would soon be wealthy beyond her wildest dreams, out from under the corporate slave masters who she baked bricks for and that her entire mindset was changed after attending some Amway (brainwashing) sessions. I recall that she invoked a popular science fiction series while trying to explain the difference as though there were two parallel universes and that she had been able to transcend them…..it was like stepping through The Stargate she told me - everything was right on the other side, it was filled with wonderful positive and successful people and she too was going to leave the drudgery behind and join them. You can sell anything in America but nothing sells like hope, it’s like vails of ‘holy’ water sold in a leper colony, there is a reason that that a snake oil salespeople like Dr. Phil and Obama Medal of Freedom honoree Oprah are so revered in this country.

A few years after my conversation with Sally over the Stargate, after I had moved on to other things I happened to stop by that very convenience store to buy a six pack of beer and lo and behold there she was, toiling away behind the counter looking as sad, beaten and frumpy as ever. She had a look on her face like she had a big stinky turd in the inner front pocket of her green smock. The Stargate ultimately led to yet another boulevard of broken dreams as it always does in the blessed domain of the sheeple.

But for today and the coming weeks it’s all good. The McJobs report is a signal of economic rejuvenation and traditional seasonal hope, the stockings may be full of holes but they will be hung from the chimney with care as they always are by a hope-filled exceptional people. It won’t be Saint Nick stopping by though, only the Goldman Sachs Grinches.

Brit Government to Level Terrorism Charges Against The Guardian

My fellow Englishmen: tonight our country,  that which we stand for, and all we hold dear, faces a grave and terrible threat. This violent and unparalleled assault on our security will not go undefended... or unpunished. Our enemy is an insidious one, seeking to divide us and destroy the very foundation of our great nation.

- Norsefire Party Chancellor Adam Sutler

In a stunning reminder of exactly why the founding fathers told the tyrannical King George to stick his empire up his big fat ass the British government is about to go after The Guardian on “terrorism” charges. The state ire has been generated due to the ongoing production of stories on the NSA-GCHQ abuses of their surveillance machine to inform a public that the elite who run the system view with contempt. This has actually been coming for a good while now and the dye was pretty much cast when government goons forced the destruction of computer hard drives in the basement of the paper's London headquarters. A subsequent public hearing had the heads of the Queen's intelligence services spewing talking points on how the actions of a free press aided and abetted terrorism in a manner so ridiculous that it could have been on any of our own Sunday morning gab fests. Now it is escalating as the stories continue and the criminal governments jack up the pressure before the dam truly bursts - in testimony before parliament besieged Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger stated that the paper has published only 1 percent of the files leaked by former U.S. government contractor Booz Allen employee Edward Snowden. Rusbridger predictably faced accusations impugning his patriotism and love of country in a manner that mimicked the sort of conduct that is standard in the fascist inquisitions of domestic politicians the likes of Mike Rogers and the swinish terrorist supporter Peter King. A totally heavy handed crackdown more befitting of the fictional Norsefire party of V For Vendetta as any serious ruling government.

While the concept of freedom of the press in the U.K. is somewhat less than what is enjoyed here where most Americans simply could not give a rat's ass about anything other than the results of sporting events or the weekly finalists of Dancing With the Stars the crackdown is coming here as well. Rest assured that given the servile, duplicitous and venal swine in the U.S. Congress that every tool in the shed is going to be used by the usurpers of what was once a vibrant and free democracy until it was hijacked by the swine. NSA Stasi commandant Keith Alexander has already openly called for the government to halt any and all reporting on the NSA and the wheels are in motion to do exactly that, and it will be pretty much bipartisan or what passes for it.

The standard tactics would be to just smear and destroy journalists in the state-corporate media to trash their credibility and this is currently escalating with the ongoing plethora of preemptive hit pieces on former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald. The intentions of the man who has shaken the run amok NSA and the government that protects it to the roots has faced a fusillade of propaganda from many of the same recycled Bush era hacks (David Frum, Fran Townsend) who so loudly shilled for the ruinous Iraq war. Greenwald wisely left The Guardian just ahead of the Norsefire goons takedown of the paper to enter into a yet undisclosed new journalism venture with EBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar along with other serious reporters determined to get their stories out. In the America of old something like this would be praised as a great example as to the possibilities of capitalism but now the establishment, terrified of the truth and potential of any accountability decry the parlaying of one's skills into more lucrative and successful ventures. Success as it is defined in The Homeland only matters to those who can curry favor and buy influence. The most extensive attack on Greenwald and one that has been parroted was written by some douchebag named Mark Ames for something called Pando. I always have to give Greenwald credit for not letting any character assassinations go unanswered and he followed through with a blistering counter-attack against the establishment hack:

The other day I referred to those who "evince zero interest in the substance of the revelations about NSA and GCHQ spying which we're reporting on around the world", but "are instead obsessed with spending their time personally attacking the journalists, whistleblowers and other messengers who enable the world to know about what is being done." There are dozens of examples, one of whom is the author of a post this week at Pando.com which accuses me and Laura Poitras of having "promptly sold [the Snowden] secrets to a billionaire", Pierre Omidyar, and claims we made "a decision to privatize the NSA cache" by joining Omidyar's new media organization and vesting it with a "monopoly" over those documents.

I've steadfastly ignored the multiple attacks from this particular writer over the years because his recklessness with the facts is so well-known (ask others about whom he's written), and because his fixation is quite personal: it began with and still is fueled by an incident where The Nation retracted and apologized for an error-strewn hit piece he wrote which I had criticized (see here and here).

But now, this week's attack has been seized on by various national security establishment functionaries and DC journalists to impugn our NSA reporting and, in some cases, to argue that this "privatizing" theory should be used as a basis to prosecute me for the journalism I'm doing. Amazingly, it's being cited by all sorts of DC journalists and think tank advocates whose own work is paid for by billionaires and other assorted plutocrats: such as Josh Marshall, whose TPM journalism has been "privatized" and funded by the Romney-supporting Silicon Valley oligarch Marc Andreesen, and former Bush Homeland Security Adviser and current CNN analyst Fran Townsend ("profiteering!", exclaims the Time Warner Corp. employee and advocate of the American plundering of Iraq).

The entire thing with links is here.

The worst NSA stuff is still coming and the only way to prevent it is a jack-booted full blown Nazi crackdown.  When it does come out and it will despite government thugs across the pond launching the first fusillade which will soon be followed in The Homeland it is going to come out that not only does this NSA surveillance have very little to do with actual terrorism but the history will be equally stunning. When people realize that this monstrosity had its roots in the Reagan administration and that in 1981 none other than the Gipper himself set it into motion with Executive Order 12333 and that what Snowden has revealed is just the culmination of years of government criminality enabled by today’s technology all hell will break loose. The backstory is in a way even more important than the ongoing abuse as it will provide context and reveal that all of this could have been stopped at numerous junctures were it not for our thoroughly corrupt political class and their on the payroll cronies.

And they all know it which is why the heavy hand of the fascist state is about to take off the velvet glove.

CBS Retracts Benghazi Report: Another Black Eye for State-Corporate Media

It is Rathergate redux, another ugly retraction of a highly inflammatory political story by the CBS news program that presents itself as the gold standard of American journalism. In fast-breaking events the network was forced to repudiate its recent report on what really happened at Benghazi during that ugly night of September 11, 2012.  The tale told by Lara Logan was based on the account of a private security contractor (translation: a mercenary) named Dylan Davies who conveniently happened to have just had a book published by a CBS subsidiary Simon & Schuster under the product line of Threshold Editions which primarily peddles right-wing rot. The book entitled The Embassy House written under the pseudonym of Sergeant Morgan Jones was the basis for the 60 Minutes piece where the exploits of Jones/Davies were given a legitimate forum for a shocking eyewitness account that was a fantasy.  The “contractor” claimed to have been on the spot that night, engaged in some Jason Bourne style fighting with the attackers, allegedly killing one and then sneaked into the hospital to view the body of the murdered U.S. ambassador Christopher Stephens, according to the promo for the book which was described by the  publisher as an insider account where: “the embassy’s secret access that no one but Jones knew about – and that allowed him entry as the savage firefight raged on” and promises readers “Jones’s discovery of the murdered ambassador’s body and his confirmation that the killing was indeed targeted and sadistically brutal”. It was all hogwash and tepid hogwash at that.

The inconsistencies between the Jones/Davies account that CBS was pimping were so blatant that one wonders how such a ‘reputable’ news program could have made such amateurish blunders in vetting the damned thing prior to airing it. The book and CBS report both ignored accounts that contradicted the story by the merc’s employer Blue Mountain (he said that he lied to them) as well as an account that was provided to the FBI. Whoops, game over. On Friday morning Lara Logan appeared on the program CBS This Morning to personally apologize for the false story and the network has since issued a retraction, an apology and will reportedly air a corrected version this Sunday. Simon & Shuster/Threshold has also announced that it is pulling the book and requesting that stores return their copies which likely will be pulped and dumped into some toxic landfill where such garbage belongs. Another shining example of just dismal that the media has become in this desecrated country.

It will be interesting to see whether the FOX News, red state fascist, Republican dead-enders will own up to the lies of the 60 Minutes Benghazi ‘scoop’ now that it has been debunked and retracted. It wasn’t really that long ago when they pranced around with the scalp of a bowed and beaten Dan Rather on a stick after the notorious 2004 piece on how then president George W. Bush weaseled his way out of Nam into a National Guard unit in Alabama and rarely bothered to show up and his records "scrubbed" was similarly retracted. I would imagine that there will just be some sort of conspiracy theory floated that the Obama administration threatened CBS to pull the story and quite honestly given the Nixonian nature of Barry's war on journalists I can see how this could be believed by some outside of the normal right-wing media bubble. As much as I detest the false equivalence that so thoroughly permeates the corrupt mainstream media I am not just trying to kick Republicans and conservatives in the balls as the entire national media is complicit when it comes to selling the lies of the state, pushing for wars and engaging in political chicanery. This is why I avoid the American media like it were the black plague and get my news from foreign sources, aggregator websites that have proven reliable over the years and only use the domestic press for context and to see what the propaganda meme of the day is.

But as far as 60 Minutes goes, whether it was Dan Rather getting burned on forged documents about Dubya’s National Guard service or  a scandal merchant with a pseudonym pimping a book about the murder of ambassador Christopher Stephens CBS’s flagship program has now been punked again and no matter how many apologies, retractions and rebroadcasts it engages in the credibility is done and to anyone with any sense it’s not coming back. I can remember when the show used to be relevant instead of a forum for celebrity worship, the burnishing of the image of war criminals like Dick Cheney and a vital piece of the neocon Lie Factory. Back in the day the show actually WAS a great example of serious investigative journalism but that was before actually news reportage became subservient to corporate profits. The Michael Mann movie The Insider with Al Pacino and Russell Crowe is an excellent portrayal of how CBS began to stray from legitimacy when a report by tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand was censored by network management. It’s well worth the two hours spent to watch it.

Logan is probably doomed at CBS but there is always hope for recycled hacks who were caught pushing right-wing propaganda. Maybe  she can join disgraced Syrian war shill Elizabeth O’Bagy in a second act on Senator John McCain’s staff.  This all probably will work out in her favor rather than her main claim to fame being that she was gang-raped in Egypt during the Arab Spring uprising she now can hang her hat on the discredited 60 Minutes Benghazi story.  CBS, as it did in the aftermath of Rathergate will need to offer up a blood sacrifice for this latest debacle which as described by top executive Jeff Fager is "as big a mistake as there has been" in the history of the program.  This puts a huge ding in the (undeserved) credibility of the program and will need to be addressed in order to keep the advertisers and investors placated. When the heads eventually roll and the resignations are tendered it will be surprising of Logan isn't among the casualties.

The next question is will Senator Lindsay Graham, the princess of the Palmetto State  also retract his latest bitch fit threatening to filibuster all Obama nominations as he did when he called a press conference the day after the October 27^th ‘bombshell’ story?  Not likely, he will just slither onto the Sunday morning propaganda shows again tomorrow with the usual liars and scumbags, spin the CBS retraction to his benefit and begin the jeremiads against any deal with Iran to normalize relations with the U.S. It has already been well promulgated that Israeli megalomaniac Bibi Netanyahu has blown his stack over an impending deal and likely now plans to muster all of his congressional cat paws to torpedo any such agreement. It is bad enough to live in a country that is totally controlled by corporations, predatory financial gambling houses and a fascist element intent at eradicating privacy for all but it is even worse when foreign countries have become power brokers that are able to use their payrolled whores in D.C. to trump the will of American citizens by pushing for more wars that only they benefit from.

It sucks to be us in these sordid times of imperial collapse and tainted institutions and the worst is yet to come.