Eat This Obama: Will Russia Ban McDonalds?

Despite months of  sanctions applied by the Obama regime and it's EU lapdogs against Russia over the alleged arming of rebels fighting the US puppet government in Kiev, the bear is biting back. In a symbolic shot after last week's latest round of idiotic economic warfare waged by Barry and the boys, the Putin regime is retaliating by going after the iconic American 800 pound gorilla of fast food that is McDonalds. In a Bloomberg piece from last week entitled "Russia Eyes Banning U.S. Chicken And Some European Fruit" it was stated that in addition to American poultry imports that the Russians were scrutinizing McDonalds cheese over food safety concerns. If the Russians really wanted to to stick it to Mickey D's and other U.S. chains they should look at the meat, especially given the recent resurgence of the noxious "Pink Slime" additive by many of the nation's beef suppliers. For that matter so should Americans because this garbage is being foisted off on us too in a sleazy way to hide rising food prices.

A Washington Post piece that was published online yesterday "As the West steps up sanctions, Russia starts banning food" states that:

In the past few days, the scope of the limitations has expanded rapidly: As of Friday, Russian officials have banned most grain imports from Ukraine, stopped bringing in produce from Poland and are murmuring about potentially expanding the food blacklist to include European fruits and vegetables, U.S. chickens, and flagship items from U.S. fast-food restaurant chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC, according to reports. Separately this week, Wendy’s announced it would be closing its locations in Russia.

The ongoing ridiculousness of the narcissistic Obama's 'my dick is bigger than your dick'  feud with Putin is only going to hurt American businesses and investors in the long run. Why do you think that both the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers so vehemently opposed the escalating tit-for-tat sanctions? Like it or not, we now live in a connected global economy and the snits of thin-skinned political leaders have the capability of inflicting enormous damage on both corporate profits and American jobs.

Not that Mr. Obama gives a rat's ass.  Especially when considering how his NSA Stasi has dealt a long-term blow to U.S. high tech businesses, particularly in cloud computing which has been touted as the future with their ongoing undermining of privacy, tampering with product that is intercepted while en route to the buyer and undermining of encryption. This is a serious personal vendetta against the leader of a nuclear armed power and the interests of everyone but Obama and his gaggle of morons are of little importance.

I don't eat at McDonalds anymore. My personal opinion is that the food is about as healthy as low-grade industrial sewage and puts one at a serious risk of longtime colon problems, diabetes and heart disease. That being said, the corporation is one of the most successful long-term money makers as well as an iconic American brand right up there with Coca Cola. My personal choice not to eat there aside, there are a lot of Americans who are investors in what was up until the time of Obama's latest tantrum a sound long-term proposition .  The Chamber of Commerce and other business interests know fully well the negative effects on long term profits that can be inflicted by an incompetent idiot and this doesn't take into account the potential for World War III which under the three-headed monster of Obama, Kerry and Biden becomes more likely with each passing day.

I have often had difficulty buying into the entire "run government as a business" argument but I must admit that given the recklessness of the Obama regime that I am coming around very quickly.

Haughty Obama Hits Russia With More Sanctions

Late Wednesday the pathetic Obama administration fired yet another salvo at the Russian bear showing that they are as determined as ever to provoke a new cold war or maybe even a hot one with a nuclear armed power. Despite warnings from American business groups such as the US Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers that the months running dick-measuring contest between El Presidente and Russian leader Vladimir Putin would be harmful to American business the sanctions were leveled anyway. It is obvious that Obama has a huge inferiority complex and his thin-skinned temperament along with a monumental incompetence that is a now apparent to all but the Kool Aid drinking armies of O-Bots and he is now taking a run at the worst president in US history.

The old war criminal and neocon talking point spewing zombie Dick Cheney has remarked in his latest freakish tirade that Obama was "the worst president of my lifetime" although only because he has not militarily occupied the entire Middle East. But when you strip the statement of the reason behind it crazy Dick Cheney is right but it is not for the lack of warmongering but rather for doubling down on Bush-Cheney policies like mass surveillance and covering up torture as well as his regime's unprecedented free pass to the looters on Wall Street to loot the country with impunity while doing zilch to help the average American. Hell, at least George W. Bush sent everyone $600 which immediately went back into the economy instead of being hoarded by banksters who shower themselves with bonuses for their ongoing rape of the US taxpayer.

Obama's economic dream team has successfully crushed the middle class into pulp on the verge of eradication and still the money-changers are calling the shots while not one prominent banker responsible for the 2008 economic implosion has gone to prison, Forget that ridiculous and ballyhooed $7 billion settlement with Citigroup over the role of organization in the mortgage securities scam, that is horseshit - Citi's stock actually went up that day and the people who lost their homes as a result of fraud will get chump change out of it all. The perps all walked - walked away that is with nothing but a mere slap on the back of the wrist by the crooked Eric Holder's Justice Department. At least the protectors of predatory finance capitalism are still facing some opposition even if it is only symbolic and in the end matters nothing. Democratic party Senator Elizabeth Warren humiliated the stammering mummified creature who is Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, Obama's latest identity-based appointment. The blog Liberty Blitzkrieg has a great post with a video of the grilling here where Yellen obfuscates in order to avoid having to answer questions on why the too big to fail banks are bigger in 2014 then they were when Lehman Brothers went under.

But back to the sanctions. Having to this point failed to bait Putin into sending the Russian military into Ukraine to stop the US backed ethnic cleansing and murder of anti-Kiev, anti-fascist, anti-austerity rebels where he can then be fully demonized by a corrupt western media machine the Obama regime is fuming. How long can the false narrative be maintained and the truth that America has been funding (although likely indirectly) vicious neo-Nazi militias and murdering mercenaries to put down resistance to their illicit coup d'etat back in February. The fighting against the death squads and military from the US-EU-NATO Axis of Aggression backed Kiev junta continues largely because the eastern Ukranians know that they are inevitably doomed under a pro-Nazi regime led by Porky Poroshenko and his Hitlerian threats of vengeance -“for every life of our servicemen, the rebels will pay with tens and hundreds of their own” and are fighting for their lives. It has all of course been blamed on Putin by a corrupt media propaganda machine - one of the best essays on this sinister disinformation machine comes from a blog by a writer named Vera Graziadei who describes herself as a 'British Ukranian Russian actress and writer' and does a masterful job in flaying the lie machine - the piece is entitled "The Cunning Demons of Russian Propaganda, Or What The BBC Forgot To Warn Us About" and is a must read.

It is the entirely false narrative that allows for Obama and his loathsome regime to unnecessarily push the world closer to the brink out of petulance and dear leader's narcissism. Being punked by Putin over his offer of asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and then watching the Russian leader act like an adult by pissing on the parade of their imminent attack on Syria over a bogus sarin gas incident last summer has been a burr up Obama's ass ever since. The new round of sanctions ups the ante in that - according to The Guardian -  includes: "two major energy firms, a pair of powerful financial institutions, eight weapons firms and four individuals". Of note is the timing of the announcement - right after the BRICS summit where the developing economic powers continue to work to wrest themselves free from the tractor beam of the US centered financial Death Star.

Putin denounced the latest round of sanctions and warned that they were not in the long term interests of the US corporations operating in Russia - the US Chamber of Commerce gets this too although not Obama - and excerpting from a piece at libertarian financial blog Zero Hedge entitled "Putin Responds: "US Sanctions Will Boomerang And Cause Very Serious Damage":

It took just a little over an hour for Vladimir Putin to respond to the latest, most provocative and toughest round of US sanctions yet. The response, appropriately enough, came just after the BRICS summit in Brazil, where the world's developing countries yesterday announced the formation of both a BRIC bank and a $100 billion currency reserve to provide a liquidity alternative to the insolvent developed world's central banks. Here Vladimir Putin was asked to comment on the new package of sanctions against Russia announced just minutes earlier by Obama.

Putin's response: "We aren’t the ones introducing sanctions, you should ask them."

"Sanctions have a boomerang effect and without any doubt they will push U.S.-Russian relations into a dead end, and cause very serious damage, and it undermines the long term security interests of the US State and its people." he said to reporters while elaborating that said he needed to see the details of the sanctions to understand their full scope Reuters added.

And as was largely expected, Putin's next jab was right where it hurt: energy.

"This means that U.S. companies willing to work in Russia will lose their competitiveness next to other global energy companies."

Putin said the sanctions will hurt Exxon Mobil Corp which has been given the opportunity to operate in Russia. "So, do they not want it to work there? They are causing damage to their major energy companies," he said.

While we don't know for sure, we are confident that following the press conference Putin sat down with the rest of the BRICS, which command a population of just over 3 billion not to mention the world's fastest growing economies, and realized that for all the posturing, it is really a game of reserve fiat vs energy, with the US controlling the former, while the BRICS, and especially Russia, dominating the latter. And as long as the BRICS don't have their own monetary system, they will be reliant on the every swift (pun intended) whim of Janet "price-to-equity ratio" Yellen and her central planning kind.

We are just as confident that he and his peers are currently contemplating how to no longer be bound by the former ever again.

The sanctions are of course idiotic and self-defeating and it really is only a matter of time until the corrupt US based rigged casino is faced with alternatives where the deck isn't stacked - the only ones who don't realize this are idiots, narcissists and those who are drunk off the bitches brew of highly distilled American exceptionalism.

.

Ultimatum of the Finger Wagger: Kerry Again Threatens Russia

Secretary of State John Kerry, the epitome of the ugly American is once again wagging his finger in the face of Russia and President Vladimir Putin. According to Reuters, the top Skull and Bones alum over at Foggy Bottom has ordered Putin to immediately disarm anti-austerity, anti-fascist freedom fighters in Eastern Ukraine. Currently engaged in more plotting with his EU counterparts in Brussels to complete the absorption of Ukraine into the EU and later NATO, the buffoon that is the American top diplomat continues to push the envelope. The Obama regime's ongoing reckless actions towards Russia endanger the lives of billions and if just one hot-headed idiot decides to unleash a tactical nuke or two in a burst of the emotion that is being nurtured by their bellicosity it could bring doom on a global scale. This incredibly stupid personal vendetta by Kerry and Obama and their cadre of neocon fanatics is not going to end well for any of us and the only ones who are unable to see it are those with the ability to stop it.

The Reuters Story, entitled "Kerry tells Russia to disarm Ukraine separatists 'in hours'" states that:

Washington and other Western powers have stepped up pressure on Russia to take concrete action to defuse the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where a ceasefire between Russian-speaking rebels and government forces has appeared to be crumbling.

"We are in full agreement that it is critical for Russia to show in the next hours, literally, that they're moving to help disarm the separatists, to encourage them to disarm, to call on them to lay down their weapons and to begin to become part of a legitimate process," Kerry told reporters in Paris.

He added that EU leaders would discuss possible sanctions on Russia at their summit in Belgium on Friday.

Washington has said it also has new sanctions ready to go, but Kerry said the United States would prefer not to be in "sanctions mode" and wanted Russia to take action without pressure.

"We would like to see a cooperative effort between the United States, Europe and Russia and the Ukrainians," Kerry added.

Separatist rebellions erupted in eastern Ukraine in early April after street protests in Kiev toppled Moscow-backed leader Viktor Yanukovich, and Russia in turn annexed the Crimean peninsula. Eastern rebels have called for union with Russia. Moscow denies Western accusations that it has allowed fighters to cross into Ukraine along with heavy weapons to confront Ukrainian government forces.

The proposed next round of U.S. and EU sanctions would target Russia's financial, defense and high-tech industries, said U.S. officials.

Could the act of war that is the launching "financial neutron bomb" be coming soon? Pay no mind that Putin just acted to deescalate the situation by requesting parliament revoke his authorization to use military force in Ukraine and is continuing to be the the only rational party involved in this mess. It wasn't Putin who started it, that is unless you go back to last summer when he intervened to prevent the imminent US massive air attack on Damascus bringing both Obama and Kerry much embarrassment and then there is that Snowden asylum thing too. The propaganda machine is already spinning Putin's move as just another one of this devilish acts of trickery while the new Cold War and all of the trillions of dollars that it would generate in profits to the death industry gets ever closer.

Americans have no idea whatsoever of the reality in Ukraine, the state-corporate media has covered up this gross violation of international law from the onset. There was the fomenting of unrest by organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy to turn out the protesters in the streets of Kiev against legitimately elected president at the time Viktor Yanukovych and the subsequent infiltration and hijacking of the protests by bloodthirsty neo-Nazi thugs who were able to introduce violence. Senator John McCain, a psychopath and by the way that he is treated by the media, the de facto US President was photographed in Kiev palling around with neo-Nazis right before the sh*t hit the fan. Then there was that still mysterious killing of both police and protesters by snipers that ignited the smoldering powder keg and led to the ouster of Yanukovych along with the installation of a US backed puppet regime lead by former central banker Arseniy Yatsenyuk or "Yats" as he is affectionately known by former Dick Cheney aide and current Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria "f*ck the EU" Nuland. She is also the woman who handed out cookies to anti-government protesters in Kiev in a public relations exercise and boasted to US corporate interests about the $5 billion dollars of American taxpayer money that has been funneled into Ukraine over the years to ensure that the country would be safe for corporate plunder when the time came.

The best laid plans to surprise Putin with the Ukraine coup d'etat being executed while he was occupied with the Sochi Winter Olympics naturally weren't without failures. Really, anything that the neocons touch as a result of their lunatic dreams of global conquest carry within it the seeds of their own destruction and Ukraine is the latest example. There was Putin's initial request to use military force in Ukraine and then the lightning fast secession of Crimea along with the subsequent vote to join Russia along with the official annexation. This was an unforgivable transgression despite the fact that Crimea always was a part of Russia until Nikita Kruschev (legend has it he was drunk at the time) gave it away in 1954. The corporate forces that were ready to pillage and loot with impunity after the installation of "Yats" were furious as were the neocon geniuses whose prized target - the Russian naval base at Sevastopol was snatched from their claws immediately. The puppet government struck back and into the east went the goons and neo-Nazi militias to commit their heinous atrocities such as the murderous and barbaric acts at the Odessa trade union building which has for all intents and purposes been flushed down the memory hole. Christ know that we can't tell Americans the truth that their government is now on the side of the same Nazi scum that their fathers and grandfathers risked all to defeat in World War II.

The people in the east, knowing from history the full potential of the horrors wrought by Nazi ideology unleashed did what they could do - they fought back and are holding their own to this day despite the US-EU-NATO Axis of Aggression sanctioned use of they military on civilians - including the use of incendiary munitions such as the ones used in Gazaand Fallujah. Ukraine has a new puppet leader, a corrupt oligarch installed to much hoopla in a bogus election named Petro Poroshenko aka "the Chocolate King" and early indications show that he is hellbent on doing the bidding of the US power structure in crushing the uprising in the east under that evil and ubiquitous justification of fighting "terrorists" - which is coming very soon to America.

Poroshenko is eager to please his western masters and after formalizing the deal with the devil for the Ukranian people that is the EU austerity agreement his is upping his rhetoric towards Putin. According to The Guardian in a story entitled "Ukraine president accuses Russia of doing nothing to end 'disastrous' war" the Chocolate King was providing the cover for the coming round of sanctions in the Obama regime's ongoing provocations of Russia. I excerpt the following:

Speaking in Brussels, Poroshenko stated bluntly that the rebels were under the control of Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. "I think now Russia has done nothing," he said. "We are talking of Russian citizens, Russian officers, Russians by origin, Russian soldiers of fortune." He characterised the Kremlin's strategy in Ukraine as "not very pragmatic" and "very emotional".

AND

Asked if Ukraine would get Crimea back during his presidential term, Poroshenko smiled and said: "Yes"

It was more of the same vintage Russia-baiting as that recent absurd accusation from NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen that the Putin government was secretly working in close coordination with European environmentalists in fighting the "fracking" industry. From The Guardian story "Russia 'secretly working with environmentalists to oppose fracking'":

The head of one of the world's leading groups of democratic nations has accused Russia of undermining projects using hydraulic fracturing technology in Europe.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), and former premier of Denmark, told the Chatham House thinktank in London on Thursday that Vladimir Putin's government was behind attempts to discredit fracking, according to reports.

Rasmussen said: "I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations - environmental organisations working against shale gas - to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas."

It was something straight out of the John Birch Society Blue Book and yet here is the leader of NATO hurling about a dangerous and baseless charge that could have dire ramifications in the United States where the fight against the destructive practice of "fracking" is facing growing opposition. Given the actions of the NSA and the constitutional wrecking crew of both the Obama and Bush administrations it is not much of a reach to believe that US domestic activists are already being subjected to surveillance and cases are already being built against them. it is a certainty that these are exactly the targets that the NSA is really going after and this will likely be exposed once Snowden's list is revealed. They will have good company too in that antiwar activists and bloggers and independent media writers who dare to question the corrupt system that now dominates politics in The Homeland are going to be on it too.

The runaway train that is hurtling towards a hideous endgame over Ukraine that will likely result in World War III continues to pick up speed, Poroshenko's demagoguery and the predictable reaction by Russian political figures who have again been stabbed in the back by the west continue to jack up the tensions. Not that Putin adviser Sergei Glazyev was wrong when he called the new boss in Kiev "a Nazi" for the recently inked austerity deal as reported by The Guardian:

Sergei Glazyev, an adviser to Putin, told the BBC before the signing that "Europe is trying to push Ukraine to sign this agreement by force" and said Petro Poroshenko, the president, lacked the legitimacy to make the deal.

"They organised [a] military coup in Ukraine; they helped Nazis to come to power. This Nazi government is bombing the largest region in Ukraine." He said he "of course" believed the Ukrainian president was a Nazi.

Not that you will read about that in the US state-corporate media, at least not in anything even resembling the actual context but his is correct - the coming carnage in the east is going to make that slaughter at the Odessa trade union building look like a picnic. The real way that the Kiev junta think about their Russian speaking countrymen has been made obvious by not only the murderous actions of rampaging neo-Nazi militias but also by Yatsenyuk himself when he slipped up about two weeks ago and referred to the anti-austerity fighters as "subhumans" or as the many in Ukraine who cling to the legend of their hero, Nazi-collaborator and mass-murderer Stepan Bandera would describe them - untermensch.

But Kerry continues to pontificate, threaten and wave that damned finger of his as though this country still has that most priceless commodity that is the moral high ground - only the rubes, drunk on their star-spangled fat asses off of the toxic elixir of "American exceptionalism" as preached by snake oil salesmen like Obama believe that garbage - because when you throw in with the admirers of the twentieth century's greatest criminals the Nazis, it has been ceded forever.

The Ugly American: Obama Throws Tantrum over Ukraine

There was once a time when I thought that the prospects of a Sarah Palin presidency were the blood thirsty old bastard McCain to have kicked the bucket had he beaten Barack Obama in 2008 would be the end of the world as we know it. But in now watching this current reckless administration careening around I have to admit that I was likely wrong. Palin was an abject moron but it is precisely that quality which would have limited the amount of damage that she would do in that she would have been kept a good distance from the nuclear launch codes and relegated to a purely figurehead role while the adults actually ran the show. Hell, if George W. Bush didn’t manage to blow up the planet in eight years we could have muddled through under the brief tenure of the ‘Killa from Wasilla’ until a suitable replacement was put into office. Now I fear that with the actions of the inexperienced, incompetent narcissist Obama who has been locked in an ugly feud with Russia’s Vladimir Putin - that began with the granting of asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and then boiled over with his intervening to stop the Obama-Kerry attack on Syria –it is Obama himself that is the greatest threat to this country that exists today.

Real leaders don’t throw tantrums as Obama is doing with his overreaction to Putin sending his military into Crimea after the western backed coup d’etat in Kiev dislodged the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych in favor of a western puppet. Obama has denounced Putin and dispatched Secretary of Skull and Bones John Kerry to Ukraine to shore up U.S. support for the illicit government that was put into power after gangs of violent fascist thugs including neo-Nazis turned the streets of Kiev into a fire illuminated bonfire of anarchy. Pissed off over years of obstruction and warfare with a corrupt GOP that is desperate to wrest controls of the corporate spoils system away, humiliated by the unconstitutional rampage of his NSA Stasi that Snowden revealed, saddled with an economy that only can function with the ongoing anal raping of the American taxpayer to funnel  tens of billions of dollars a month into a failed system of Wall Street gambling and surrounded by lackeys and sycophants Barry is going berserk over being once again punked by Putin. 

El Presidente  just cancelled "trade and investment" talks with Russia and his Secretary of State has been threatening to oust Russia from the G8 entirely, the Pentagon has also suspended military ties and they are just getting warmed up. Obama can't be happy this morning after once again being used as a foot-stool by Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and like the drunken bully who takes it out by drop-kicking the poor dog or smacking the wife and kids around after a bad day at work is hellbent on doing the same to Putin. The problem though is that when it comes to experience and actual leadership Barry is strictly in the bush leagues when it comes to playing ball against a seasoned veteran. Putin will take the early 'rope a dope' flurry of blows delivered by the petulant head of a rapidly impotent global bully and will ultimately turn the tables therefore inflicting yet more embarrassment and indignity upon The Homeland. He is already upping the ante by rightfully stating that Yanukovych was taken out by an "unconstitutional coup" and referencing that place where the corrupt western media will not go - that the putsch was assisted by fascist hooligans and neo-Nazi thugs: “I agree with Maidan’s demand for cardinal change in power … but there is the danger that a fascist element will come to the fore, and some anti-semite will come to power” - according to The Guardian.

Oh, and he is threatening to cut off gas exports. In a thinly veiled threat against the prospective members of Obama's  'coalition of the willing' to punish Putin with economic sanctions Gazprom made it known that Europe would find itself increasingly dependent on Russian gas in the years to come.  We will soon see just who has the stomach to indulge Obama's latest outbreak of childishness. 

The old warhorse himself Pat Buchanan (whom I don’t always agree with) calls a spade a spade with his latest column on the Obama hissy fit enabled by the neocon embeds within state institutions such as the media. The piece is entitled “Tune Out the War Party!” from which I excerpt:

With Vladimir Putin’s dispatch of Russian troops into Crimea, our war hawks are breathing fire. Russophobia is rampant and the op-ed pages are ablaze here.

Barack Obama should tune them out, and reflect on how Cold War presidents dealt with far graver clashes with Moscow.

When Red Army tank divisions crushed the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956, killing 50,000, Eisenhower did not lift a finger. When Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall, JFK went to Berlin and gave a speech.

When Warsaw Pact troops crushed the Prague Spring in 1968, LBJ did nothing. When, Moscow ordered Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski to smash Solidarity, Ronald Reagan refused to put Warsaw in default.

These presidents saw no vital U.S. interest imperiled in these Soviet actions, however brutal. They sensed that time was on our side in the Cold War. And history has proven them right.

-AND-

The Washington Post calls Putin’s move a “naked act of armed aggression in the center of Europe.” The Crimea is in the center of Europe? We are paying a price for our failure to teach geography.

The Post also urges an ultimatum to Putin: Get out of Crimea, or we impose sanctions that could “sink the Russian financial system.”

While we and the EU could cripple Russia’s economy and bring down her banks, is this wise? What if Moscow responds by cutting off credits to Ukraine, calling in Kiev’s debts, refusing to buy her goods and raising the price of oil and gas?

This would leave the EU and us with responsibility for a basket-case nation the size of France and four times as populous as Greece. Are Angela Merkel and the EU ready to take on that load, after bailing out the PIIGS – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain?

If we push Russia out of the tent, to whom do we think Putin will turn, if not China?

This is not a call to ignore what is going on, but to understand it and act in the long-term interests of the United States.

Many things can be said about Buchanan, both good and bad but what cannot be denied is that he has been there before when it comes to geopolitics particularly as a crucial member of the Nixon administration and accompanied Tricky Dick to China back when Obama had barely grown out of wearing diapers.  His advice should be heeded as that of any rational person when it comes to this rapidly escalating and thoroughly unnecessary pissing contest between Obama and Putin.

I don't have much confidence in the adults intervening in time to prevent Barry from soiling himself once again on the world stage.

(Image: patdollard.com)