Democrats Laying the Groundwork for 2016 Catastrophe

Democrats may have gone to bed crying softly into their pillows in the wee hours of early Wednesday morning last week but awoke determined to double down on exactly what it was that got their clocks cleaned in the first place. You would think that after receiving such an ass-whipping that there would be some sort of soul-searching and a rethinking of their overall strategy prior to 2016. But we are talking about the Democratic party here so the only logical thing to do with the iceberg in sight is to order the engine room to crank it up to ramming speed. On Thursday, Senate Democrats once again elected Harry Reid to be their leader.

The intrepid Reid's fingerprints were all over the great beat down of 2014 and early indications are that they will also be on the torpedo hit amidships in two years if Queen Hillary the Inevitable gets rejected by the electorate in her Quixotic quest for power. If Mrs. Clinton goes down she is going to take the entire party down with her and there is no Plan B for the future. Republican strategists must be salivating at the prospect of a Democratic party self-immolation -- that is if they can stop bickering among themselves long enough take advantage of the rare historical opportunity to deliver the killing blow to their nemesis. The scheming Karl Rove once spoke of a "permanent Republican majority" although he could never deliver it. That prophesy is within reach if all that the GOP does is simply stay out of the Democrats' way as they continue to march off the edge of a cliff like a pack of drunken lemmings.

According to a story from the website of The Washington Post entitled "Sen. Harry M. Reid sees dissent but holds onto Democratic leadership role":

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid faced the first internal opposition to his grip on power Thursday as at least six Democrats rejected his bid for another leadership term during an emotional meeting following last week's drubbing in the midterm elections.

Quelling a small but vocal rebellion, Reid (D-Nev.) won reelection to another term atop the caucus, now as minority leader after eight years in the majority. But his victory came only after a 31 / 2-hour meeting that became a forum for political grievances and a rollout of an expanded leadership team meant to balance the caucus's ideological and regional diversity.

Four straight election victories had produced unwavering support and increasing power for Reid in the Democratic caucus, but the repudiation on Nov. 4 tested his clout.

On Thursday, he listened to his critics complain about the party's campaign agenda, and some demanded that he steer away from confrontation with Republicans.

But Reid had no trouble securing the leadership spot because hell, if you are in a hole just keep right on digging until it becomes a grave. Common sense would dictate this but the Dems are just asking for a bigger shovel. This should do wonders for the party base that in a rejection of both President Barack Obama and the thorough rot of the party leadership stayed home in the mid-terms. There is already more trouble brewing with the desperate Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana getting behind a bill to approvethe Keystone XL pipeline in the Senate next week. The Democrats are also scrambling to ensure that there will be no real reform of the NSA Stasi's domestic surveillance and data-mining programs. This will endear the party to environmentalists and progressives who will vote Green, libertarian or just stay home. It is fascinating to watch this slow motion train wreck because the party is determined to stay the course leading towards political extinction.

Reid's smoothest early move has been to eliminate a potential key anti-Hillary voice in giving Senator Elizabeth Warren a "special" leadership post as an "envoy" to the party base or in cruder terms, a Judas goat. A column from The Boston Herald, "Harry Reid plays Elizabeth Warren like a chump with new post" sees this as the Machiavellian political masterstroke that it is.

Harry Reid and his loser Democratic colleagues dangled a meaningless leadership post in front of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and she took the bait.

Hillary Clinton must be getting a big, loud laugh out of this one. Warren is the biggest threat to her path to the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and now the Massachusetts senator is on the party's leadership team. The same team that just got smoked by the voters.

How can Warren lead a liberal insurgency against Clinton when she's no longer an insurgent? A few weeks ago she was getting headlines calling out the Senate for being sexist. Now the headline is, "Warren takes Senate leadership post."

Taking Reid's offer is a risky move for the freshman senator's future. If Democrats lose big again in two years, she will get part of the blame. After all, she is the "strategic policy adviser for the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee."

It brings to mind Lyndon B. Johnson's classic remark - reportedly about J.Edgar Hoover -that he'd rather have him "inside of the tent pissing out than outside of the tent pissing in". So it is all in on a proven bad game plan in order to feed the lust for power of the Clinton mafia who may have a crackerjack political organization but a bad product that may not be able to close the deal with voters. The much hyped war on women figures to be a big part of Hillary's 2016 campaign but consider all the good that it did last week when it went up like a bag of flaming dogshit left on the doorstep at DNC headquarters. But hey, this is just how the Democrats roll anymore.

After the Tuesday massacre Obama wasted no time in continuing to alienate progressives. He nearly immediately announced that more troops would be sent to Iraq and has spent the past week slithering around the Pacific selling the highly secretive TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) which is another job killing corporate giveaway. He has also renewed the vitriolic and lie-filled Putin bashing after a brief hiatus in a signal that the great neocon rebooting of the Cold War is on again. The reviled and demonized Russian leader got the message and is leaving early from the G20 summit after being set upon by the yappy little attack poodles of Uncle Scam, notably the fascists Tony Abbott and Stephen Harper, either of whom cold stand in for Norsefire Party Chancellor Adam Sutler in the movie "V For Vendetta". These dumb bastards just won't quit until their idiotic and childish games end up getting us all incinerated in a nuclear exchange and the jousting is only going to get worse in the coming presidential race. 

The imminent TPP deal is especially vile in that it indicates a degree of collusion between Obama and newly crowned Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who are on the same page when it comes to screwing Americans over for their corporate benefactors. McConnell is taking fire from the right though so he has now launched the smokescreen of Obama's "War on Coal"after dear leader wandered off the reservation with his recent climate dealwith China. This is the truest barometer of just how batshit fucking crazy that America has become in that every goddamned thing has to be a "war". There is the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on women, the war on obesity, the war on Christmas and far too many other "wars" to list here. What it all amounts to is a war on everything that was once decent in this country as well as a final pitchfork in the ass of anything that it was alleged to have once stood for. Why not just admit it that the war on stupidity was lost long ago. Our pathetically failed political system is a damning testament to that.

So now the perfect storm is coming for the Democratic party as it currently exists under the abominable master plan of running as less overtly fascist Republicans and cherry-picking special interest groups for votes. The turnout in the mid-terms was reportedly the lowest in 72 yearsand there is a reason for this that goes beyond the obvious voter suppression tactics and deluge of corporate money. As I recently wrote in my piece "The Democrats Got What They Deserved"the party has grave problems right now due to years of rottenness, fecklessness, deal-cutting and betrayal under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The term "cheese-eating surrender monkeys"has been used by the right-wingers with great effect when it came to vilifying the French for their less-than lockstep support of neocon wars of aggression. It could more appropriately be applied to the Congressional leadership of the Democrats, particularly with Mr. Reid who is already carving out a big wedge of limburger to nosh on in the new GOP controlled Senate.

The American nightmare continues but don't expect to wake up anytime soon because now all that the Republicans have to do is keep their shit together and come up with some sort of message that appeals to a marginally bigger slice of the demographic pie and they will control the political system for generations. They may not even have to do that considering that the Democrats are hellbent on hitching their wagon to the "drearily soulless, principle-free, power-hungry veteran of DC's game of thrones" that is Hillary Clinton. It was her hubby who wedded the Democrats to corporate and Wall Street interests and it is only fitting that she will be the one who finishes the job of destroying the party that used to stand for FDR style economic fairness before it sold it's wretched soul and sold the rest of us down the river in the process.

Financial Times Predicts Bright Future for Libertarians

An article in the online version of the Financial Times, “The tide is rising for America’s libertarians” by Edward Luce provides some valuable insight in that younger Americans, coming of age in the era of the abject failure of big government to do anything but subsidize Wall Street casinos, wage war and spy on everyone are turning away from the corrupt two party system. The system, now past any reasonable expectation of ever being fixed and getting worse by the minute cannot be fixed and while things are bleak for those of us who are currently entrapped by it the future belongs to the libertarians. 

The "Millennials" are faced with the dismal prospects in terms of finding satisfactory employment due to the failure of the preceding generations to ensure that the economic might of a post-war America, once the envy of the world would be preserved. Yet the system was hijacked by a self-centered political class, unethical corporate and financial interests and a bloated military that should be cut down to size but never has been due to the failure to heed President Eisenhower’s warning of the dangers of the military industrial complex. So here we are at the brink of collapse, millions of well-paying jobs offshored to third world countries for their low labor costs, an economy that has never recovered from the Wall Street triggered 2008 implosion and Janet Yellen moving into the Marriner S. Eccles Building to accelerate Chairman Ben Bernanke’s printing presses and a looming catastrophic war with Iran thanks to a pack of treasonous renegades in the Senate. It is no wonder then  that the young are turning away from the two-party criminal syndicate that supports only the interests of a small and very powerful oligarchy.

Unfortunately the article itself is behind a pay wall but a limited number of articles are available if you happen to actually sign up (no guarantee that GCHQ won't grab your ip address though ) for the most baic package. While respecting the FT as a valuable news source I feel that in the service of a greater good I am going to excerpt some pieces of what is a fairly short article at length here starting with the opening:

Robert Nozick, the late US libertarian, smoked pot while he was writing Anarchy, State and Utopia. He would applaud the growth of libertarianism among today’s young Americans. Whether it is their enthusiasm for legalised marijuana and gay marriage – both spreading across the US at remarkable speed – or their scepticism of government, US millennials no longer follow President Barack Obama’s cue. Most of America’s youth revile the Tea Party, particularly its south-dominated nativist core. But they are not big-government activists either. If there is a new spirit in America’s rising climate of anti-politics, it is libertarian.

The right to smoke pot (which should not be illegal) is an individual one and the prohibition against it is yet one more example of rampant government and societal hypocrisy. Alcohol which is probably the most damaging drug that exists in terms of addiction, health and family problems is both legal and widely available. There stands to be much money lost (campaign contributions) if there were to be a national legalization of marijuana. Such a thing would adversely affect alcohol sales as well as the budgets and profits of two of the greatest blights on 21^st century America: the failed and costly war on drugs as well as the for profit prison gulag system, one so vast that it would put anything that Stalin ever had to shame. Regarding gay rights and gay marriage the government has zero business in what consenting adults do in their own bedrooms and this is an area where far too often political pandering to intolerant zealots and narrow-minded bigots deprives a group of Americans of their Constitutional rights.

Fortunately the young are much more tolerant than their forebears who will be dropping like flies with each passing electoral cycle. There has also been an interesting trend where the young are becoming less religious, rejecting the judgmental hatred that has infiltrated and destroyed the Christian church in America. This is a very good thing because religion is one of the most potent tools that the state is able to wield in order to justify their ongoing Middle Eastern wars of aggression. Notable is the popularity of the books of Ayn Rand and the adoption of her philosophy of individualism. While I personally have little use for Rand and Atlas Shrugged, a boring tome that is  a bit too versed in a cruel form of Social Darwinism I do admire her rejection of religious dogma. What is rarely if ever suggested is that a large part of her allure is that it seems to be a gateway to questioning of the existing religious belief systems. Her most admirable trait is that she was an unrepentant atheist and as such she offers a bit of a gateway or an alternate belief system that is not based upon the primitive superstition that has been bastardized for centuries by kings and popes for their own needs to seize or cling to power and wage wars against the interest of the larger population. It is also impossible to economically compete in a modern global world of emerging high technology with the millstone of religion tied around our necks. Religion promotes subservience and a surrender of the individuality as well as the enslavement of one’s mind and it is encouraging to see this trend towards reason.

The FT piece particularly points out the extremist religious right that has for too long had inordinate control over the Republican party and particularly references Rick Santorum (man on dog sex) and the Texas Zamboni Ted Cruz, a very dangerous man with a snake handler for a father. The GOP, particularly the Karl Rove establishment has long nurtured the irrational beliefs and festering hatred of the religious right demographic and it effectively hijacked the libertarian lead tea party movement that once was largely populated by Ron Paul supporters, turning it into a political arm and effectively poisoning the brand. But while the young may be turning away from the radical clerics and their ultimate goal of having their hands on the NSA apparatus to go after their ample list of enemies it is also Obama who has badly lost the young.  I excerpt the following:

What does it mean for the Democrats? In terms of social values, libertarians are almost identical to liberals. Smoking pot and same-sex marriage both meet with big approval. The same is not necessarily true of guns. In spite of recent school massacres, 40 US states now have “concealed weapons” laws – many passed in the past 12 months. Again, millennials are surprisingly sceptical of gun control, say the polls. But it is on economic policy where they really part company with liberals. The Great Depression helped forge a generation of solid Democrats. The same does not appear to be true of the Great Recession. Franklin Roosevelt helped dig people out of misery in the 1930s by providing direct public employment. Mr Obama, on the other hand, has stuck largely to economic orthodoxy. He may have missed a golden opportunity to mould a generation of social democrats.

He has also inadvertently fuelled scepticism about the role of government. Mr Obama came to power in 2008 on a surge of voluntarism. He did so in part by appealing to youthful idealism about public service. That now feels like a long time ago. Distrust in public institutions has continued to rise during his presidency – most strongly among the youngest generation. The share of voters who identify as independents, rather than Democrats or Republicans, recently hit an all-time high of 42 per cent, according to Gallup. This is bad news for established figures in either party – and, indeed, in any walk of life. Hillary Clinton should beware. So should Jeb Bush.

Or Chris Christie now exposed as a foul and despotic type who more resembles Tony Soprano than a man who can be entrusted as a leader who won't make things even worse than the current occupant of the White House. On Obama and the youthful voters I can recall in 2008 when a friend of mine who is a good deal younger than myself bought into the public relations campaign of Obama, one of the greatest frauds in American political history to the degree that it won a series of awards as well as the Nobel Peace Prize for the first President who has authorized the extrajudicial murder of an American citizen. In year five of the Obama era it is pretty safe to say that the man is a phony, a product professionally packaged and sold to the gullible just like toothpaste, tortilla chips, beer or dog food. He squandered a historical opportunity to end the wars, reign in the out of control surveillance state and bring the irresponsible gamblers in Wall Street under control, not preside over a system that subsidized these failed and corrupt institutions to the tune of 85 billion dollars a month. Rather than reign in moral hazard and allow capitalism to function properly by letting poorly run businesses fail Barry has only accelerated the collapse. 

The Millennials who were conned into supporting the narcissist elitist Obama have much reason to be turned off and to feel the bitter sting of betrayal but a rejection of the existing big con of two-party politics puts them light years ahead of their parents and grand parents who bought into it all and now at the time when they are most helpless have been utterly betrayed by a government gone rogue.

While this all isn't much help in the short term perhaps the coming generations will be able to right the ship, that is if there is anything left of it.

(Image from The Financial Times)

Time to Punch Obama’s Ticket to Palookaville

Barrack Obama is now on the ropes, the false prophet of hope’s luck is now gone and it’s not coming back. The rats as in Democrats are sprinting for the lifeboats as the feckless aspirants to career lobbying jobs seek to cover their own asses in distancing themselves from the cascading fiascos of the Obama administration, the latest being the implosion of Obamacare. It was really a rotten program to begin with and it is a delightful bit of schadenfreude to see the Teflon coated snake oil salesman finally brought low and hoisted upon his own petard. The wretched political creature that is Obama wanted to have everything both ways, playing the end against the middle and cutting deals with the same Wall Street criminals who wrecked the economy and the rapacious insurance parasites with his corporate health care scam. Now after the implosion of what has to be the most half-assed website of all time the emperor of flimflammery has been shorn of everything but the skimpiest of fig-leafs and that is rapidly slipping as well.  How in the hell does something that has been so heavily promoted, faced so much opposition and is so important to El Presidente collapse like a shit souffle the minute it is rolled out?  Hell even some of the bloggers out there sitting around in their underwear in the basement would have been more competent than the buffoons hired by the White House – a firm named CGI Federal has been reported to have a history of problems. It should surprise nobody if they ended up as campaign contributors. Were Barry in office during World War II we would all be speaking German today. 

Seeing Obama this week during his forlorn Q & A session where he repeatedly apologizedfor "fumbling" the rollout was to see a man finally broken, largely thanks to his incompetent sycophantic advisers and his narcissism. It brought back  memories of George W. Bush’s magnum opus of political imagery when he appeared in Jackson Square in the Katrina devastated New Orleans French Quarter. The Bush spin machine trucked in floodlights to illuminate the scene for the bumbling Dubya’s televised address (not meant for the locals who had no power) after his administration, to borrow one of Barry’s numerous silly-assed sports metaphors ‘dropped the ball’.  There was a time in this country, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks when George W. Bush was invincible, he stood in the bubble of the World Trade Center with his megaphone and spewed jingoism wrapped nationalist tripe while the stench of rotting flesh still hung in the air of lower Manhattan. Bush was even then at the behest of Cheney and Rummy lying the country into two economically ruinous wars but he had the most ass-kicking club in the bag and unprincipled scum the likes of Karl Rove never ceased to use it as a bludgeon. I recall when there were billboards throughout the city that I live in promoting Bush, flags flew everywhere and SUVs roared down the roads with yellow ribbon magnets – it was like the freaking Weimar Republic. If there was ever a time in my life where I feared that the U.S. could actually topple into total dictatorship it was in 2002 and 2003. Then just when he was at the height of his power and in the early months of a second term  Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Big Easy and Bush’s credibility was destroyed forever.

Second terms are historically brutal for U.S. presidents. Nixon was ousted from the White House over Watergate, Bill Clinton was undone by a wandering trouser snake and a bold-faced finger-wagging lie to the American people and Ronald Reagan had Iran-Contra. Maybe Obama can redeem himself by sweeping into the mess hall at Bagram Air Base come Thanksgiving Day with a plastic turkey or have his NSA liars foil some mysterious terror plot but the ship has sailed and along with it goes Barry's credibility.  Maybe we can now finally be spared the horseshit about his "Grand Bargain" where he will gut Social Security for a few measly tax cuts to the rich. The knives are out in force for Obama and they should be. Let the Republicans flay him alive, he is already the lamest of ducks and Hillary Rodham Clinton is probably picking out the color scheme for the White House décor. He was always a phony and now is appropriately destined to become something akin one of his own sports metaphors – a political football and both the jackasses and the elephants will in the terms of one lawman named Buford T. Justice ‘barbecue his ass in molasses’.  The defection of 39 House Democrats last week is only the first trickle of the inevitable dam burst as the party officially pivots from Barry to Mrs. Clinton.

I always got a kick out of the liberals who I knew and their absurd idea that Obama was some sort of chess master, a political Jedi or to throw in another sports metaphor that Barry is so fond of - like Michael Jordan just studying the defense of the Detroit Pistons Bad Boys before he would explode in a whirling dervish of sheer will, breaking down the opposition and winning the champion ship. Bullshit. As Jordan once famously remarked at the height of his endorsement game when confronted about Nike’s use of sweatshop labor and suggestions that he should use his celebrity to take a stand against such practices the superstar refused to take a stand. When Jordan’s endorsement of notorious South Carolina racist Jesse Helms’ black opponent he huffed “Republicans buy shoes too”. Obama is more like His Airness in another way, he is just another amoral selfish prick milking the system for all that it is worth. The man has always been an incompetent and like his predecessor has always had apologists whose knee-jerk political loyalty or susceptibility to a cult of personality are immune to reality. There should really be some sort of minimal form of competency testing done before allowing Americans to vote especially with the evidence of the past decade of the dismal quality and non-existent morality of our elected "leaders'. As the great  libertarian writer H.L. Mencken once put it  "There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal." The entire system is a con and expecting it to produce anything other than the likes of Obama and Bush is foolish.

So as the band plays on and the ship continues to sink, the politicians seek to save their own lousy skins while the rest of us are trapped in steerage already up to our necks in water.