Culture Warrior Neighbor States Declare War on Legalized Pot in Colorado

In what could be a blow to states’ rights Colorado voters face having their will nullified by two bible thumper infested neighbor states as well as the meddlesome federal government. In a lawsuit filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday – States of Nebraska and Oklahoma v. State of Colorado – the border states are seeking to overturn the amendment making marijuana legal. Not all voters were a mile high when the first pot stores threw open their doors for business on January 1, 2014 and the hardened culture warriors are fighting back in the biggest clash between states since the breakup of the old Big Eight. Not to be insensitive towards the sincere beliefs of others but it is the very bedrock fundamental of a democracy that people are able to make their choices at the ballot box and the majority wins. I get it that it sucks when you lose but once the votes have been cast the losers have somewhat of an obligation to fuck off and go away. 

Outside of Denver metro area, the state is a crazy quilt of hard core religious fundamentalism, old school western style conservatism and free-spirited libertarianism and it was inevitable that there would be a backlash over the legalizing of pot. What is troubling though is the interference of other states in what should solely be the business of Colorado residents. As reported by The Denver Post in a story entitled “Nebraska and Oklahoma sue Colorado over marijuana legalization”:

In the most serious legal challenge to date against Colorado's legalization of marijuana, two neighboring states have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the history-making law.

Nebraska and Oklahoma filed the lawsuit directly with the nation's highest court on Thursday. The two states argue in the lawsuit that, "the State of Colorado has created a dangerous gap in the federal drug control system."

"Marijuana flows from this gap into neighboring states, undermining Plaintiff States' own marijuana bans, draining their treasuries, and placing stress on their criminal justice systems," the lawsuit alleges.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said in a statement that he will defend the state's legalization of marijuana, saying that the lawsuit is, "without merit."

"Because neighboring states have expressed concern about Colorado-grown marijuana coming into their states, we are not entirely surprised by this action," Suthers said. "However, it appears the plaintiffs' primary grievance stems from non-enforcement of federal laws regarding marijuana, as opposed to choices made by the voters of Colorado."

Colorado voters in 2012 passed Amendment 64, which legalized use and limited possession of marijuana by anyone over 21. The new law, tied for the first in the nation to widely legalize marijuana at the state level, came after more than a decade of legal use and possession of marijuana in Colorado for certain medical purposes.

Stores able to sell up to an ounce of marijuana to any adult with a Colorado I.D. — or a quarter ounce to any adult with an out-of-state I.D. — opened on Jan. 1 this year. So far, recreational marijuana stores in Colorado have made more than $300 million in sales in 2014. The lawsuit does not target Colorado's separate medical marijuana system, where registered patients must be Colorado residents.

Nebraska and Oklahoma's complaint argues that Colorado does not have authority to pass laws that conflict with the federal prohibition on marijuana. Doing so, the states claim, violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

One could suspect that this move has much less to do with interstate drug trafficking than a desire to impose a narrow-minded moral judgment upon others. If Coloradans wanted to be subjected to the whims of entrenched culture warriors in Nebraska and Oklahoma they would move there. It is the same type of sneering contempt exhibited by Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber in his denouncing of Americans as too stupid to know what is for their own good. Whether that is entirely the case is up for debate but in fragmented late 2014 America cultural disputes bleed over into damned near everything as they have for decades. Perhaps there is even some degree of petty jealousy involved when considering that taxing marijuana sales has provided Colorado with a badly needed infusion of revenue.

The feds will wholeheartedly throw in with Nebraska and Oklahoma given the level of systemic corruption and cash that is at stake in a government long ago gone to seed. The legalizing of the devil weed is a threat to the ongoing ripoff that is the civil liberties destroying war on drugs as well as all of the state sanctioned looting enabled by drug-related asset confiscation programs. This is why police unions have fought tooth, fang and nail against eliminating the prohibition on pot. Other stakeholders in the war on letting people do whatever the hell that they damned well please – which is what a “free” country should practice – are the pharmaceutical and alcohol lobbies. The liberty-haters in Washington will gladly enlist the help of put-upon conservative populists to protect their sacred cash cows and keep the war on drugs as well as keeping the for-profit prison gulags stocked with warm bodies.

Marijuana is no more dangerous than what you can pick up legally for $10 or less down at your local liquor store. Alcohol is by far the most socially damaging drug and it is widely available – even in states like Nebraska and Oklahoma with their ridiculous blue laws - yet it is a multi-billion dollar a year industry.

It all stinks of hypocrisy just like everything else in Obamastan.

Congress Spends Millions to Strip Social Security Benefits from Dying Nazis

Living in America in these corrupt and sordid times means that we are represented by the largest collection of clowns, liars, cheats, charlatans and government gravy train riders in history. I speak of the United States Congress which outside of the Obama White House is the most dismal excuse for what passes as a functional democracy in memory. Never ones to rest on their tainted laurels for playing a crucial role in destroying America, the legislative body continues to plumb the depths of decency with theirslimy showboating and pandering.

The nadir may have been reached yesterday with the proud, bipartisan triumph of a vote to strip some former Nazis of their Social Security benefits. Yes indeed, kicking former Nazis off the government dole was a top priority of the American voters when they demanded change in the 2014 mid-term elections.  Is it just me or does November 5th seem like it was a long, long time ago.

According to a McClatchy story entitled “House votes to cut off Social Security to Nazis”:

Nothing unifies Washington like the Nazis, even if it takes a while.

After 15 years of largely rejected complaints to the federal bureaucracy, the House of Representatives voted 420-0 Tuesday to deny federal benefits to Nazi suspects after learning that many were receiving Social Security checks.

Although at least one member of the House had been trying unsuccessfully to turn off the checks for years, Congress was prodded to act by an Associated Press investigation in October that found “dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards who collected millions of dollars in Social Security payments after being forced out of the United States.”

Social Security benefits end if someone is deported because they participated in Nazi persecutions, according to the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax legislation.

However, the committee said, Nazi suspects could continue to get benefits if the Justice Department found them to be denaturalized, or stripped of their citizenship. They also continue collecting if they voluntarily renounced their citizenship and left the country to avoid formal deportation proceedings.

The story cites Democrat Carolyn Maloney of New York who chimed “This is certainly a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars”. Considering that the number of actual living Nazis is dwindling by the day – Hitler’s regime went down to defeat nearly 70 freaking years ago – this dog and pony show doesn’t exactly qualify as tax money well spent. It must really suck when there aren’t any washed up professional athletes to drag in front of silly steroid abuse tribunals but there is always an ample supply of stupid public relations tricks to fall back on in dumbed-down and hollowed out America.

But being a country where the government is accustomed to being the proverbial dog that gets wagged by the Israeli tail - being the megalomaniac and increasingly Hitlerian Bibi Netanyahu regime - pissing away endless dollars to appeal to anti-American, extremist Jews is just the way that we roll. 

But what is a political circus without an ample supply of clowns?

We Are Screwed: Obama Chooses Democratic Party Hack as Ebola Czar

Today President Barack Obama began to mitigate the damage that the arrival of the Ebola virus in the United States has done to his already dismal reputation. With the mid-term elections now only eighteen days away and the Democrats hemorrhaging worse than Thomas Eric Duncan, Barry stepped to the plate and is ready to name the nation’s first Ebola Czar. Meet Ron Klain, a Democrat party hack who formerly served as a chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden. Mr. Klain has no medical background but can be counted upon to be a reliable water carrier for the party which is what really matters.  Just when you think that the Obama operation can’t sink any lower they hit bottom and set up a drilling rig.

According to an article from Yahoo News, “Obama taps former Biden aide Ron Klain as ‘Ebola czar’”:

President Barack Obama has picked Ron Klain, an inside-the-Beltway veteran and well-regarded manager, to oversee and fix the wobbly federal government response to West Africa’s deadly Ebola outbreak.

“The president has asked Ron Klain to take on the task of coordinating his administration’s whole of government Ebola response,” the White House said. His formal title will be “Ebola Response Coordinator.”

Klain, a former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, “will report directly” to Obama Homeland Security Adviser Lisa Monaco and National Security Adviser Susan Rice.

His job will be to ensure “that efforts to protect the American people by detecting, isolating and treating Ebola patients in this country are properly integrated but don’t distract from the aggressive commitment to stopping Ebola at the source in West Africa,” the White House said.

Klain, a veteran of political knife fights like the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida, is generally well regarded in Congress by Democrats and Republicans for his managerial skills. As Biden’s chief of staff, Klain oversaw the implementation of the 2009 economic stimulus package.

Klain, a lawyer by training, currently runs Case Holdings, which oversees the business and charity interests of former AOL Chairman Steve Case. He is also general counsel at Washington-based venture capital firm Revolution LLC.

The announcement came a day after Obama acknowledged that “it might make sense to have one person” overseeing the process “just to make sure that we’re crossing all the T’s and dotting all the I’s going forward.”

Klain literally has credentials to die for.  You might recall that back in 2005 during the aftermath of the devastating Hurricane Katrina that another incompetent political stooge drew savage mockery and scorn from Democrats and liberals. Michael Brown, the hand-picked FEMA director of President George W. Bush rocketed to national infamy as New Orleans drowned. Bush ensured that he would forever become synonymous with cronyism of the worst type with his proclamation that "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job".  Brown had as much real life experience with disasters as Obama’s latest pet ass-clown has in epidemiology.

Naturally the Democrats are down with the appointment of a political apparatchik and brain dead buffoon to manage what could end up being a national catastrophe. Hell, with Klain’s appointment we are even more likely to experience a national Ebola outbreak. What on God’s green Earth is wrong with these people? Not to mention that this fixation with naming “czars” is creepy, such a title is decidedly un-American and is a better fit in one of history’s tyrannical communist regimes than a supposedly free country.

The entire Obama response to the domestic Ebola invasion – which his administration bears much responsibility for – has been underwhelming and idiotic. Days prior to his naming of a longtime party loyalist as "czar" he was promising an "Ebola SWAT Team". This should make Americans feel really good in the era of militarized police goon squads. SWAT teams are not your friends. They are the Kevlar clad government thugs who kick down the door in the middle of the night, throw flash grenades into the cribs of toddlers and gun down the family dog. It really makes a person wonder whether some of those sordid and sleazy internet rumors about El Presidente being a closet crack-head may have just a smattering of truth mixed in.

You just can’t make shit like this up!

Ukraine: The US Government is Lying about Everything

With the cat out of the bag about exactly what type of “freedom fighters” that the US is backing in Ukraine thanks largely to the selfie video of Svoboda party thugs pummeling a television executive it is obvious to any and all outside of The Homeland cocoon that the Obama regime is lying their asses off.  The fortified stone wall of bullshit that is the US state-corporate media parroting the official line on what was a neocon instigated overthrow of a democratically elected leader who had just agreed to placate protesters with early elections is astounding. It brings to mind the march towards the attack upon and subsequent occupation of Iraq, a country that did not even remotely threaten the US by the Bush administration and the neocon ideologues that drove policy in the early years of the new American century. The wall to wall vilification of Saddam Hussein was the prototype for the ongoing spree of demagoguery directed at Russian president Vladimir Putin and which has been so withering that it is obvious that this is all about more than Ukraine. It is about Snowden and Syria as well as a pitched battle to save what is the fully mutated form of parasitic global finance capitalism.

The video of the beating of Ukraine state television boss Oleksandr Panteleymonov went viral to the extent that even the corrupt US media had to acknowledge it. The antics of Senator John McCain’s neo-Nazi pals however was spun accordingly and dishonestly in this AP story “Ukraine Nationalist Antics Seen as Gift to Russia” from which I excerpt:

The assault, which prompted condemnation in the West, presents an important test for Ukraine's new pro-Western government.

First, it's eager to show a modern, democratic face to the world as it enters a landmark political association pact with the European Union. Perhaps more gravely, the nationalist violence plays directly into the hands of Russia's propaganda spinners: State-controlled media eagerly used the incident to portray Kiev's leadership as a hive of radical nationalists who terrorize Russian speakers, justifying the Kremlin's moves to protect them in Ukraine.

Tensions are high in Ukraine as the government debates whether to pull its troops from the Crimean peninsula, where Russian forces are seizing Ukrainian ships and evicting soldiers from military bases. Crimeans are eagerly lining up to apply for Russian passports, while Russian tanks and troops amass near the border with eastern Ukraine.

For Ihor Miroshnichenko, a lawmaker with the nationalist Svoboda party, those scenes of Russian domination were all too much.

And the broadcast of Russian celebrations seemed to add insult to injury.

To vent his rage, he led a group of Svoboda colleagues in storming the office of the First National channel's chief, Oleksandr Panteleymonov, used an insulting term used to describe Russians and punched him repeatedly, while an aide recorded the scene on video.

"Today Ukraine is in a state of war and in a state of partial occupation by Russia. And when war is going on, giving the air to the enemy — I believe it is state treason," Miroshenichenko, a former journalist who sits on the parliamentary committee on freedom of speech, told the Hromadske online television channel.

"I cannot imagine that Poland which was occupied by Hitler would give him airtime on the radio so that Fuhrer could explain his position."

Miroshnichenko admitted that he may have overreacted — although he refused to acknowledge that he actually beat Panteleymonov.

The TV executive said in a statement Friday that he is ready to leave his post, but only if there is a legitimate government decision to replace him.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk condemned the assault as undemocratic.

"These are not our methods," Yatsenyuk said in a statement. "A country which is going toward the European Union will continue to profess the basic principles and values of the European Community."

His position is complicated by the fact that Svoboda, a vocal force in parliament that took part in the protests that ousted the pro-Russian government, received several key posts in the Cabinet — including prosecutor general, the very figure who will be in charge of investigating the TV station attack.

The United States said it was "deeply offended by this incident, which was not an exercise in patriotism, but instead a reminder of the thug-like tactics previously employed by the Yanukovych regime," the U.S. Embassy in Kiev said in a statement. "This behavior has no place in a Ukraine committed to defending democracy, civil liberties, and individual freedoms, particularly press freedoms."

A sheer masterpiece of obfuscation, spin and pure bullshit is on display and the piece should serve as a vital inclusion in any textbooks on the required reading list for Goebbels 101.The Miroshnichenko excuse that he “may have overreacted” could only be taken seriously in a land where gun violence has become so commonplace that a man could be gunned down in cold blood in a Florida movie theater because of a similar overreaction that a box of popcorn was a threat to one’s safety, there are far too many other examples of such overreactions and the Miroshnichenko excuse is hogwash. The line about the “thug-like tactics previously employed by the Yanukovych regime” stretches the bounds of audacity as does the overarching theme of the piece itself which paints the thug as the victim. It is however no small defeat for the neocons and their propagandists in that they were forced to put out a story at all even if it was just a potpourri of fibs for damage control purposes.

The most problematic aspect of this entire bringing “democracy” to Ukraine and proxy war on Putin farce to the establishment is the prevalence of vicious neo-Nazis and fascists in the western puppet government of Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk. The pictures of our de facto president John McCain palling around with them should be eliciting some serious questions about exactly the sort of vermin that the US taxpayer is subsidizing. Anyone with a computer and the ability to use Google can easily find the sordid histories of McCain’s friends and their deplorable anti-Semitism – where is the ADL and the rest of the Israel Lobby on all of this? Their absence is a damning indictment of their agenda which is more about exerting influence on US foreign and domestic policy – as in the ongoing attacks on free speech at American universities – and one would think that if they had any credibility that they would be asking very serious questions about the composition of the recently installed government in Kiev.

If there is any one writer who continually amazes me with his ability to cut through the bullshit it is Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com, a website that is such a thorn in the side of the imperial warfare state that it was under surveillance by the FBI which is a badge of honor in this lamentable land of apple pie authoritarianism. Raimondo’s most recent piece entitled “Ukraine’s Mysterious Snipers” brings up the Obama-Neocon joint venture’s neo-Nazi problem. I excerpt the following:

There is nothing subtle about the views of Svoboda and Right Sector, the two parties which have moved into the leadership of the coupist "interim government": the former used to be called the "Social National Party," and was founded as a memorial to the views of Stepan Bandera, leader of the World War II pro-Nazi militia that fought the Russians and directly participated in the Holocaust. Right Sector, a paramilitary group in charge of "security" at the Maidan, is even more extreme; it was formed from the merger of several militant neo-Nazi groups, including "White Hammer" and "Trident." Neo-Nazis have come from all over Europe to join in Ukraine’s "national revolution.

Sooner or later, the ugliness of what is occurring in Ukraine is going to come out: you can’t hide a neo-Nazi "national revolution" under the very thin veneer of a "pro-EU" protest forever. And these guys are particularly unpretty – little more than thugs masquerading as political "activists." There is entirely too much to sweep under the rug here – and the lumps in the fabric are already showing.

And the lumps will only get more obvious as reports from those being beaten and politically persecuted in Ukraine continue to seep out which they inevitably will given a bit of time. The official denial that the US is backing and funding an un-democratically installed coup government infested with fascists and neo-Nazis has to this point been dismissed as so much Putin propaganda. However, as anyone who has observed the long and painful decline of what was once a powerful democracy into a dystopian society where the media has become nothing more than a propaganda organ for the now fully rogue Deep State that only uses the visible government as an exoskeleton it serves as just one more official lie on top of a mountain of them.

Corrupt Media Continues to Smear JFK Assassination Skeptics

The corrupt state-corporate media has been faced with a dual task this week in paying homage to the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy while hammering home the official state-endorsed explanation of the deranged lone gunman as his killer. Throw in the ongoing mockery of any who dare to question a government and media that lies about absolutely everything with the pejorative of “conspiracy theorist” and you have another fine example of how the American mainstream media has zero credibility with anyone who possesses the ability to think critically in late 2013. We have seen it repeatedly that the media only exists to peddle lies and propaganda of the rogue state, whether it be providing cover for the out of control NSA Stasi, pushing the war porn of dying children gassed at Ghouta to promote a war on Syria, relegating such suspicious deaths as that of journalist Michael Hastings to the memory hole, the discredited and blown up 60 Minutes Benghazi hoax and now selling a war on Iran the media is an institution that exists to obfuscate and hide the truth.

With all of the stories written on this gala anniversary week those that continue to smear anyone who questions the official state conspiracy theory of the JFK assassination as crazies or worse are illustrative of the utter dreck that has come to pass for American reportage. Despite more Americans today not believing that the patsy Lee Harvey Oswald was solely responsible for blowing Kennedy’s head off that November day a half century ago the state has much invested in the continued promulgating of the “lone gunman” explanation. I actually saw a piece that slyly compared doubters of the official state story to those who believed that the moon landing was staged. This is a dastardly tactic of diversion and discrediting by association that is a common line of attack for the pocket media defenders of the liars and thieves in high places.

Tarring skeptics and critics of a government that lies about absolutely everything anymore as “tin foil hatters” and “conspiracy theorists” completely dismisses the simple fact  that there are indeed always legitimate government as well as private conspiracies. The very definition of "conspiracy" according to Merriam-Webster being that it is "the act of secretly planning to do something that is harmful or illegal", in this rotting to the core society these are commonplace, daily endeavors.  But the state-corporate media would lead one to believe that political assassinations are never the result of such things yet considering the level of formal education that it takes to ascend to the propaganda parrot level in the disinformation machine one would think that at some point during their college careers that they would have learned of the assassination of Julius Caesar. Nothing quite demeans like the denunciation of “conspiracy theorist” applied as a scarlet letter to those who dare to ask the inconvenient questions and it has become so commonplace that it is practically a knee-jerk reaction used to slime those seeking the truth. Former Reagan Treasury official turned relentless critic of the post 9/11 fascist transformation Paul Craig Roberts put it quite well in a column from a few years back:

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While we were not watching, conspiracy theory has undergone Orwellian redefinition.

A "conspiracy theory" no longer means an event explained by a conspiracy. Instead, it now means any explanation, or even a fact, that is out of step with the government's explanation and that of its media pimps.

For example, online news broadcasts of RT have been equated with conspiracy theories by the New York Times simply because RT reports news and opinions that the New York Times does not report and the US government does not endorse.

In other words, as truth becomes uncomfortable for government and its Ministry of Propaganda, truth is redefined as conspiracy theory, by which is meant an absurd and laughable explanation that we should ignore.

When piles of carefully researched books, released government documents, and testimony of eye witnesses made it clear that Lee Harvey Oswald was not President John F. Kennedy's assassin, the voluminous research, government documents, and verified testimony was dismissed as "conspiracy theory."

In other words, the truth of the event was unacceptable to the authorities and to the Ministry of Propaganda that represents the interests of authorities.

---

There is really no point in rehashing the possibilities of who actually was been behind the killing of Kennedy, the man had made powerful enemies aplenty any and all of whom wanted him dead. What can be stated is that the ambush and the murder of the President of the United States in broad daylight among thousands of people took a serious set of stones, precision planning, influence with local authorites as well as elements of the national government and was not the random act of an amateurish loser with a communist sympathies and an ax to grind. The murder of Kennedy sent  a message and bore the traits of a precision operation that only serious professionals could pull off. With the elevation of Lyndon Baines Johnson to the presidency once the king of Camelot was dead the die was cast for an escalation in Southeast Asia that would bring home the enduring tragedy of the Vietnam War. As has been made brutally apparent in the twenty first century there is much money to be made when dealing in death and all of its ancillary enterprises, it was no different in the 1960s and fortunes were made, power consolidated and national morality cast aside with the bloodbath in Nam. Much of it still resonates to this day such a catastrophic wound it was to the national psyche and character.

But let there be no argument that Kennedy’s death paved the way for the assumption of total control of foreign policy by the Military Industrial Complex (that President Eisenhower ominously warned of in his farewell speech) to escalate the Vietnam War and declare war on the American public who dissented with the immorality of that damned war and took to the streets in protest. Their efforts would shake the very foundations of this nation’s corrupted institutions, terrify the ruling elite classes and create a climate where any means necessary to control domestic unrest would be utilized lest the existing order be toppled.

If one has ever seen the Zapruder film it is obvious that the killshot did not come from the rear and the school book depository where Oswald was allegedly shooting from a window, through a tree and at a moving target.

Who are you going to believe? The media or your own lying eyes?

Patriot Act Sponsor: NSA Spying Bad for Business

The damage that the rogue government spying programs are doing to American business and by extension what remains of a capitalist system thoroughly polluted by influence peddling cannot be underestimated. Big tech companies are going to soon be placed at a permanent competitive disadvantage to whichever foreign counterparts are able to create the needed infrastructure and implement effective controls though laws to protect customer privacy. The 'next big thing' which was the U.S. cloud computing innovation is now hamstrung by a corrupt government and a cancerous NSA spying colossus of which the revelations of misconduct mount daily. The most recent transgression is the Guardian story of the NSA cutting a secret deal with the Brits to gather and store the communications date of millions of innocent citizens. This is definitely not good for business. The American tech industry transformed the way that we all live and led the cutting edge of innovation in the 1990's during the computer boom back when we actually had an economy that still functioned it was however only a matter of time until the new American capitalist model of cheating, offshoring and rigging the regulations trimphed and we have been reduced to a shadow of our former selves as a result. 

There has been some degree of pushback against the rogue NSA of Barack Obama (formerly ruled by George W. Bush and in a few years Hillary Clinton) but the hydra is reconfiguring and going on the attack to protect itself. The leaks of former government contractor Booz Allen employee Edward Snowden have peeled back the red, white and blue facade of what more resembles a Stasi-Gestapo-NKVD system. There has been some attempt to take down this Goliath, first pushed by Michigan Congressman Justin Amash and most recently by man who introduced the  USA PATRIOT Act only to see it turned into a garrote around the necks of law-abiding Americans by a tyrannical police state. Sensenbrenner just had a column published in which he addresses the negative effect of NSA surveillance on commerce. I excerpt the following:

Technology companies revolutionized the global economy by creating an interconnected, high-speed international marketplace.

Internet and telecommunication companies empower businesses to conduct complex transactions and connect with customers, clients and governments across the globe, placing a premium on privacy, accountability and transparency.  These principles are the currency of their success, because as private citizens, we entrust these companies with very personal information.

The overreach by the National Security Agency (NSA) does more than infringe on American civil liberties. It poses a serious threat to our economic vitality. Reports from the business community are clear: indiscriminate collection of data by the NSA damages American companies' growth, credibility, competitive advantage and bottom line.

US companies seeking to expand to lucrative markets in Europe and Asia will find regulatory environments much less receptive to mergers and acquisitions because of NSA programs. German regulatory officials have made it clear, for instance, that AT&T, a massive American telecommunications company that provided customer telephone numbers to the NSA as ordered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the Fisa court), would undergo intense scrutiny to ensure it complies with German privacy laws before it can acquire a German telecommunications company. This mandate would certainly impede efforts to expand its presence in the region.

Of course, US tech companies do not exist in a vacuum, free from competition. Companies like Google, which exhibit clear dominance in the United States, compete intensely with foreign competitors around the world. American businesses will lose considerable market share if foreign competitors and regulators paint them as pawns of the US intelligence community. Cisco Systems warned that its revenues could fall by as much as 10% because of the level of uncertainty or concerns engendered by NSA operations. Cisco saw its new orders fall by 12% in the developing world, 25% in Brazil and 30% in Russia. This is in contrast to the 8% growth Cisco saw in the previous quarter.

The cloud computing industry will also suffer. Since many industries rely heavily on this technology, any disruption would ripple across all segments of the national economy. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the US cloud computing industry could lose between $22 and $35bn (pdf) over the next three years because of the NSA's overreach. And smaller cloud service providers that partner with U.S. companies have already cancelled contracts.

The true power of this most insipid and corrupt Congress is as usual fighting back against challenges to the dictatorial powers of the NSA surveillance colossus. House efforts are led by Republican Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a preening former FBI agent and one of the biggest fascists in congress is intent at playing J. Edgar Hoover with his beloved spying – one has to wonder whether sexual blackmail operations are another NSA function. A new bill to somewhat curtail the NSA's God mode, while still secret is being ramrodded though absent of any committee review in a move right out of the Tom DeLay era. While the maniacal Rogers works the House the Senate is working concurrently in protecting the American Stasi. California Senator Diane Feinstein aka DiFi, the impenetrable firewall of cellulite blocking any sort of reasonable restraint on NSA spying is front and center with her own bill that would  strengthen the unconstitutional surveillance. The Supreme Court is also joining the contemptible Congress in blocking oversight of oppressive NSA system and continue to use culture war rulings like this week’s Texas abortion decision as a smokescreen.  

Things are looking pretty bleak for privacy rights here in The Homeland and despite all of the lip service that is being paid to business the only businesses that truly matter to the elitist political class are Wall Street casinos subsidized by 85 billion dollars a month from the Federal Reserve, the arms industry that is always in search of new wars and big profits for pigs like Feinstein's husband and the surveillance industrial complex that will keep their critics in check, their history stored in that massive NSA facility in Utah waiting for the day to come when the crackdown begins. But the sheeple just go along about their daily business, Black Friday is coming and there will be a rush to get the Joe Boxer "jingle balls" hot item of the year. And in a textbook move the NSA is putting more lies into Christmas stockings . There is nothing like the holiday season to use in order to trot out more fear-mongering on behalf of the police state, take for example the Portland dupe who was set up by the feds to detonate a fake fertilizer bomb at the 2010 city tree-lighting ceremony. The rubes love the war on Christmas, when it’s not liberals taking the Christ out of Christmas it’s another evil Muslim who hates us for our freedom to buy garish Chinese made junk to honor baby Jesus. 

Is this a great country or what?

"Veterans" March on D.C. Not Exactly the Bonus Army

As a military veteran I always want to vomit whenever political groups and their operatives are able to dupe enough gullible former servicemen and women into acting as foot soldiers for those whose cynicism knows no bounds. Sunday's veterans march on Washington, a planned and staged event designed to wave the bloody flag instead of the "Where's The Birth Certificate" signs to allow for the red, white and blue cheesecloth that the usual suspects wrapped themselves up in in the latest jihad against Obama. Now I have been pretty much clear in my disgust with dear leader, his rotten to the core administration, his crony capitalist bailouts, the corporate giveaway that is Obamacare, drone strikes, NSA surveillance and war mongering but what truly nauseates me are the phonies who have attached themselves to the troops and past military veterans like barnacles on the bottom of a garbage barge. Take for instance the parasitic Sarah Palin who despite her neocon enthusiasm for eternal war and who has never met a gullible state media hack that she couldn't exploit who slimed out of her Alaskan rat hole to shrilly denounce the black Muslim devil in the WHITE House. Standing next to her was the Zamboni Cowboy Ted Cruz, a man whose raw ambition is only exceeded by an egomaniacal need to close the ground on television appearances on John McCain in a few short months. Any event that these two rancid excuses for Americans appear at is forever debased and defiled because of their presence.  

The loathsomeness of the king and queen of the dipshits actually does the impossible in that it makes Barry and his agents look tolerable by comparison.

This was a big weekend for the so called tea party which was co-opted years ago by plutocratic tax chiselers and well heeled Republican party strategists. There was the "Truckers to Shut Down America" invasion of the American Gomorrah on the Potomac which was about as noticed as a fart in a hurricane and of course the "Million Veteran March" which thanks to Teddy and Sarah and their ilk was a predictable failure. While there were probably a good amount of actual vets with good intentions the crowd was filled with ringers and the same type of angry freaks that are given freebie meals and bussed in by organizations underwritten by the Koch Brothers and Dick Armey. The piss yellow Gadsden flag that has come to be the official standard of American willful ignorance and the confederate flag outnumbered Old Glory and legitimate vets with serious grievances were supplanted by thugs and hooligans who destroyed taxpayer financed property and frolicked with the typical fascist abandon normally seen outside of mid-twentieth century German beer halls after one of Hitler's speeches.  I was always under the impression that being "conservative" meant having respect for the law as well as property but these are not your father's conservatives that march under the banner of Teddy the Conqueror. Event organizers are reportedly not happy that their protest was hijacked by American brownshirts.

I strongly support veterans groups but the two that I find the most credible, Veterans For Peace and the Disabled American Veterans were not to my knowledge  promoting this rancid carnival of perversion. The aforementioned presence of the Gadsden flag and the Stars and Bars were a dead giveaway that this thing was largely staged and  the pictures of the crowd that I saw had the trademark demographic composure of those garish displays of rabble rousing more associated with the anti-Obama pogroms than anything remotely related to traditional veterans gatherings. The U.S. military to it's credit is one of the most diverse and integrated institutions in the land yet the absence of brown and black skinned members was damning by their absence.  

It was a thoroughly undignified, cynical and tasteless display that only served to exploit veterans as political props but considering that the chickenhawk neocon types that normally promote this crap have no qualms about sending them off to die in foreign wars for idiotic reasons it is par for the course.  I reiterate, not that a good amount of those who showed up were no’ veterans, it is just that absent the legitimacy of honest vets organizations and the prominent presence of   liars, cheats and bottom-feeding social dreck there is really no way that they can be taken seriously. There was also a presence of members of the right-wing Oathkeepers paramilitary group, an updated version of the old Minuteman militia arm of the John Birch Society, an organization that should have been relegated to the trash heap of history long ago but which found an infusion of new life when Bircher alumni like Charles Koch, whose family fortune came from his daddy building oil refineries for the communist butcher Joseph Stalin began pumping money into the rebranding of the discredited loonies of the GOP base.

I am pretty sure that this piece is not going to go over well with some but as a libertarian I have a unique ability to be able to call bullshit on both of the terminally corrupt American political parties and all within their orbit - until one of these so called principled swine is willing to come right out and denounce the rotten system as well as to detach their own lips from the big government teat they are all frauds. Don't think that Cruz and Palin represent anything than two power freaks who salivate over gaining control over a big government that can be used as a bludgeon against their enemies and unimpeded access to the money spigots that provide the spoils for a system long ago rigged and rotten.

Sunday’s warm up act of such dubious nature will be overshadowed by an actual planned protest at the World War II memorial by a far more diverse collection of veteran’s organizations including the DAV on Tuesday according to some reports. The Cruz-Palin traveling circus should practice what they preach and respect our real veterans by staying the hell away tomorrow. Veterans have legitimate reason to raise hell, they will have to just get in line with the rest of the peasants and bend over so that the big boys on Wall Street can keep the casinos open. The ticking clocks and media hysteria will continue all the way until D-Day as in Default Day on Thursday and the predictable last second deal gets cut by Obama, McConnell, Reid and the rest of the chickenhawk clowns on the establishment payroll. Garish fakes like Palin and Cruz can’t be bothered with any principled opposition to the crony capitalist warfare state that is the real reason why veterans are being screwed out of their benefits by the same swine that sent them into the Middle East meat grinders for the benefit of the speculators.

Eighty years ago The Bonus Army, comprised of World War One veterans occupied Washington D.C. to protest the sitting government and demand that which was due to them for their service and suffering.  Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler who much to the dismay of the establishment used his influence and name recognition to promote the reality that indeed "war is a racket" showed up in support of them . The government, led by President Herbert Hoover eventually ordered that the military be used to break up the protests and send our veterans, who sacrificed life and limb in fighting for our "freedom" were driven out by Army troops led by a military man who would eventually come to be known as General Douglas MacArthur. The irony should not be lost in that MacArthur in his post-military career came to be supported by supported by sunbelt fascists and hard core right-wingers as they sought their man on a white horse who could eviscerate this country for their own greed and lust for power.  The sunbelt fascists evolved over time and now have finally found their man of action and transformation. While it is unlikely that Barack H. Obama, war criminal and terrorist will send in the military to break up this week's veterans protests it is even money that Teddy of Texas via Canada be welcomed as a red state savior in the equivalent of some southern beer hall this week.