Reports: Deranged Susan Rice Buried a Shank in Chuck Hagel's Back

Following the Tuesday massacre at the polls three weeks ago it was inevitable that President Barack Obama would find scapegoats for he and the Democrats’ own dismal failures. The first marquee name blood sacrifice is that of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. The early consensus seemed to be that Hagel was a bad fit although stories have begun to seep out that the real reason for his ouster is that he was shanked in the back by Obama’s inner circle of advisors. Chief among those who appear to have their fingerprints on the blood dripping dagger protruding from between Hagel’s  shoulder blades is El Presidente's pride and joy Susan Rice.

Rice is likely still harboring a serious grudge over her embarrassing smack down by Republicans to replace Queen Hillary the Inevitable as Secretary of State. She is the bookend of Obama's duo of insane, ball-busting liberal interventionist bitches that also includes the deranged U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power. Power is the wife of the notorious Cass Sunstein, a stone fascist who has future Supreme Court Justice stamped all over him. The two of them are adherents to the foreign policy school best described by Australian journalist John Pilger as “Improve or We’ll Kill you” liberalism and are Hillary intimates.

It is now being reported by sources across the political spectrum that the decision to dump Hagel, a Vietnam veteran whose treatment has been disgraceful (although his performance hasn’t been very good either) was made by Rice. The conservative website Breitbart.com has a piece “Report: Hagel Clashed With Susan Rice Before He Was Fired”  whichstates that:

Outgoing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel reportedly had a disagreement with Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice before he was removed by President Obama this week. The New York Times reports Hagel had “a dispute” with Rice over Obama’s policy on Syria.

Hagel remained skeptical of the Obama administration’s actions in Syria. Last month, he sent a two page memo detailing his concerns about the policy. According to the Times, Hagel pointed out that Obama’s policy was “in danger of unraveling“ because it didn’t clarify its position toward Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Other analysts confirmed the Times report.

“He had a crappy relationship with Susan Rice,” Steve Clemons, the founder of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation tells NBC News.

The mainstream Politico, the “inside baseball” of the D.C. Beltway circle jerk also weighed in with a piece entitled “Dysfunction Washington can agree on” from which I excerpt:

It isn’t often that left, right and center agree about the Obama White House. But the firing of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this week produced a near-unanimous reaction: President Obama’s foreign policy team is dysfunctional and in need of a stronger tonic than the exit of a low-profile cabinet member with a light policy footprint.

Both Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and The New York Times editorial page agreed that, in the words of the Times, Hagel “was not the core of the Obama administration’s military problem. That lies with the president and a national security policy that has too often been incoherent and shifting at a time of mounting international challenges” and “tightly controlled… by a small group of aides.”

McCain, for his part, told a radio interviewer that his friend Hagel “was never really brought into that real tight circle inside the White House that makes all the decisions which has put us into the incredible debacle that we’re in today throughout the world.”

Senator McCain, well into the late stages of terminal derangement is usually as full of crap as a Christmas goose but his comments here are like that proverbial broken clock that is right twice a day. The foreign policy team of Obama is a disaster although a meddlesome, manipulative gaggle of Obama bots like Rice, Power, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and the embarrassing buffoon John Kerry bear more of the blame than Hagel. You can also add the Machiavellian Valerie Jarrett, a longtime Chicago crony of the pope of false hope and chump change to the mix as well.

More disturbing is that the move reeks of the typical politics of cynicism that Americans have come to recognize as an Obama administration trademark. The Democrats are going to need to immunize themselves from being called out as “chicken” and "terrorist sympathizers" as the brutal 2016 campaign season gets ready to kick off.  The exit of Hagel, who was allegedly brought in to manage the winding down of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and trim the fat at the Pentagon budget will herald the appointment of some bloodthirsty fiend who will give Democrats the cover that they need.

Obama has already re-committed U.S. troops to Iraq and just secretly re-escalated military action in Afghanistan. It really ill serves America when the lives of our servicemen and women are nothing more than pieces in a big political game but that is the way that the bastards who run this show think.  None other than Henry Kissinger himself once referred to those with boots on the ground as"dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy.

But at the end of the day the shit-canning of Hagel, a Vietnam veteran comes down to the one thing that it always does with the Obama regime and that is an amoral political calculus of the type that Kissinger made famous with his “realpolitik”.  By the way, Hillary is polishing all the right apples with the elite with her fawning review of Kissinger’s new book "World Order" as she contemplates a new color scheme for the Oval Office decor.

Despite his many obvious faults George W. Bush at least believed in something outside of cheap political gain when he sent U.S. forces into harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether you agreed with Bush or not there was at least some form of honesty there. Not like with Obama and his pack of loons and killer banshees who will march thousands into the meat grinder for cheap politics merrily “God Bless the U.S.A” while they twirl the handle.

This Week Obama Washed His Hands to Seal Doomed Democrats Fate

Some will see it as the final betrayal of a political Judas. Others, in particular those who have been drinking the toxic brew of hope and change flavored Kool Aid will cheer it. Wednesday night, in a much trumpeted and ballyhooed speech to the nation, President Barack Obama announced that he is now committing the United States to another war in a never ending series of which have driven the country towards moral and financial bankruptcy. He also washed his hands to seal the fate of the Democrats who are on the brink of an electoral wipe out on the first Tuesday in November. Rather than a necessary action in the best interests of the country, the military option is a cynical political move to protect the doomed Dems from being called "chicken". Just as his backing off of promised immigration reform did, the move to begin airstrikes and bombing will backfire, driving down turnout as Obama twists the shank into the backs of his base.

Obama also circumvented Congress and again is invoking his divine right as king and decider to decree who and when we will be bombing. The Obama announcement declared that airstrikes would commence in Syria against the spooky Islamic army of fanatics ISIS. But as often happens with liars, fiends and idiots (which Obama hits the trifecta) is that their best laid plans go awry and unintended consequences follow. So-called "moderate" rebels will be trained and given arms to fight ISIS but will more than likely end up being routed and allowing more U.S. equipment to fall into extremist hands or simply become disillusioned and join the cause.

Not that Obama gives a rat's ass, in just a little over two years he will be living in taxpayer funded luxury with full Secret Service protection as he plays golf, writes his memoirs and gets paid for giving speeches. He won't be around to see the final product and has already lit the proverbial bag of flaming dogshit that his successor will find parked at the door to the Oval Office.

The piece was short but tightly packed with demagoguery, appeals to American exceptionalism and all of the usual tripe that spews from El Presidente's trusty teleprompter. I excerpt the following from the transcript:

In a region that has known so much bloodshed, these terrorists are unique in their brutality. They execute captured prisoners. They kill children. They enslave, rape, and force women into marriage. They threatened a religious minority with genocide. In acts of barbarism, they took the lives of two American journalists — Jim Foley and Steven Sotloff.

So ISIL poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East — including American citizens, personnel and facilities. If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region — including to the United States. While we have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland, ISIL leaders have threatened America and our allies. Our intelligence community believes that thousands of foreigners — including Europeans and some Americans — have joined them in Syria and Iraq. Trained and battle-hardened, these fighters could try to return to their home countries and carry out deadly attacks.

AND

Now, it will take time to eradicate a cancer like ISIL. And any time we take military action, there are risks involved — especially to the servicemen and women who carry out these missions. But I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil. This counter-terrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years. And it is consistent with the approach I outlined earlier this year: to use force against anyone who threatens America’s core interests, but to mobilize partners wherever possible to address broader challenges to international order.

My fellow Americans, we live in a time of great change. Tomorrow marks 13 years since our country was attacked. Next week marks 6 years since our economy suffered its worst setback since the Great Depression. Yet despite these shocks; through the pain we have felt and the grueling work required to bounce back — America is better positioned today to seize the future than any other nation on Earth.

It is always sickening to see swine like Obama and his ilk exploiting the deaths of the Americans who were murdered on September 11, 2001 - in particular on the eve of the anniversary of those attacks. It is par for the course and President Barack Obama is one shameless motherfucker for doing so now.

The biggest losers will be the Democrats. Starting in November but potentially spilling over into 2016 where the hopes of Queen Hillary the Inevitable could even be dinged if Obama's latest foreign policy misadventure turns out to be a catastrophe. There are legions of progressives and left-leaning independents who have already concluded that the Democratic party is the political equivalent of the Ebola virus and are running away from it as fast as their legs can carry them. While there are the hypocrites who continue to support Obama for the same things that they were squealing like pigs for Bush to be impeached over they are going to be all that is left in the end and it isn't enough.

It wasn't that long ago that the Dems and their stable of dim-witted pundits like Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz were dancing on the grave of the Republican party. The truth is that Obama's regime has opened the door for a GOP revival if they are able to find the right message and messenger and let us all hope that it isn't Armageddon Ted Cruz who is in perfect position to exploit the war on Islam that Obama just has committed America to.

Obama Doubles Down on Iraq War Catastrophe

When you find yourself in a hole the smart idea is to stop digging, that is unless it is a grave. With the situation in Iraq deteriorating by the minute, thanks to the neocon ideologues who goaded George W. Bush into attacking and invading the country in 2003 the now fully blossomed leader of the imperial war machine is prepared to once again sink more American blood and treasure into the Mesopotamian meat-grinder rather than stand up on his hind legs to the keening squealing of the war pigs. The grand "Shock and Awe" adventure of using the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as an excuse to settle a family score with Saddam Hussein is now as critics once warned becoming the greatest foreign policy disaster in US history and Obama is ready to begin the air strikes against the militant Islamic uprising that is raging through the war-ravaged country and heading directly towards the Green Zone.  I hope that the profiteers who fleeced the American taxpayer to construct that grand palace of a US embassy included helicopter decks because the way that this is going conjures up images of the fall of Saigon.

The American elite are so drunk on their own propaganda, their crusading arrogance and a pathological hubris driven by the obscene concept of American exceptionalism that has within it sown the seeds or our own destruction that any acknowledgement to the lessons of history are not only ignored but spat upon by the best and the brightest whose only real talent is the spectacular fuck-up.  The worst thing that has ever happened to the American people and this country's image as well as whatever moral high ground was once occupied was the fall of the Soviet Union - a triumphal moment that was proclaimed to be "the end of history" by the think tank dwelling masters of the universe who were the brat pack of the post World War II era. But Barack Obama firmly within that camp for the huge self-inflicted wound that he is about to deliver to America in committing the beleaguered  US military to more violence in Iraq - in addition to his NATO gamesmanship that is getting ever closer to igniting a war with Russia that cold being an end to the empire if not the planet itself.

This is a man who is a fool and one who has shanked the country in the back in paying far too much attention to his legacy, the grand taxpayer funded presidential library that will be erected in his honor one day in the Windy City like the idols and Sphinxes of the Egyptian Pharoahs to consider the ramifications of the renewed involvement in Iraq. The decision has already been made according to some ominous accounts, I excerpt the following from The Guardian "Obama pledges US support to Iraq as Isis militants approach Baghdad":

President Barack Obama pledged the US would help the Iraqi government push back an Islamic insurgency threatening to overwhelm Baghdad on Thursday, saying he had “not ruled anything out”.

Amid mounting pressure in Washington for a robust response to the rapid advances made by forces of the Islamic State and the Levant (Isis), the White House is understood to be examining a number of options including air support for Baghdad.

But he also said the advance of the Islamists should act as a "wake-up call" to the Shia-dominated government of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has been accused of running a partisan government that has alienated the Sunni minority.

In brief comments to reporters after a meeting with Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, Obama said he was watching the situation in Iraq with concern and wants to ensure that jihadists do not get a foothold.The crisis escalated rapidly on Thursday as Iraqi Kurdish forces took control of key military installations in the major oil city of Kirkuk and the Sunni jihadi group Isis revealed its intention to move on Baghdad and cities in the southern Shia heartland.

Obama admitted that the scale of the insurgency in recent days demonstrated the need for more help. “I don’t rule out anything because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foot hold in either Iraq or Syria, for that matter.” The president said his national security advisers were “looking at all the options”.

Obama is too self-absorbed, too much of a power crazed, insulated narcissist to bother to consider that actions have consequences - bombing the shit out of the ISIS militants - who Obama himself bears a good deal of the blame for in arming vicious jihadists to topple the Assad regime in Syria - just may be the triggering event of the collapse of the entire rotten fucking house of cards. Particularly the economy because the oil speculators are already masturbating themselves raw over the payoff that will allow them to stick it to Americans at the pump with impunity. A gas price spike that drives pump costs to around 6 bucks a gallon would be catastrophic and could finally be the spark that ignites the smoldering but yet to ignite protests against the Empire at home. The defeat of the corrupt Republican House Majority leader Eric Cantor on Tuesday by an unknown who railed against Wall Street should be taken as what it is - a sign that judgement day is coming for the corrupt oligarchy that has subverted American democracy to lavish riches upon politically connected crooks, big banking houses and military arms hucksters.

The anger is building in what remains of this once great country and the pitchforks and torches outnumber the militarized police forces of the state - and many of them may join the party instead of defend the indefensible on the day when the shit finally hits the fan.

Obama is sitting on a powder keg and playing with matches and is flying so high off of his own perceived historical greatness that the he will be the one who is most surprised when it detonates.

White House Fumes as Putin Visits Crimea

The big bad Russian bogeyman Vladimir Putin just doesn't know when to stop, today he is shoving that burr up of the ass of our vainglorious leader Obama with a broomstick. Visiting Crimea, that now annexed chunk of Ukrainian corporate booty that was promised to the high finance parasites by Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland and friends to celebrate Victory Day.  The celebration is one of the commemoration of the crushing of the Nazis and Mr. Putin's visit has a certain building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue filled with the sound of puckering assholes. The botched and historically stupid operation to hijack Ukraine while Putin was distracted by the Sochi Winter Olympics and which is now disintegrating by the day is a constant sore spot with the king of the narcissists Barack H. Obama.

As the echoes from the fluttering spincters bounce off of the walls in the White House, El Presidentes silly little twit of a paid liar Jay Carney popped off in an interview with Democratic party propaganda mill MSNBC that - "Any effort that he engages in that further destabilizes the situation in the rest of Ukraine, including in the east and the south, is very unhelpful." Carney didn't mention (nor was he asked) about the destabilization of the region by US backed neo-Nazi militias and assorted fascist death squads like the ones responsible for that horrifying atrocity that occurred last Friday at that trade union building in Odessa where an untold number of federalists were butchered by Obama's wonderful freedom fighters. The US backed murders continue today as the illegally installed by coup junta government of "Yats"and his fascists with military vehicles and forces sent after civilians in the city of Mariupol. Maybe Obama can get together with his fawning sycophants in the media again tomorrow night and tell jokes while he presides over the murdering of civilians in Ukraine. Just another day in the Empire.

Putin's trip to Crimea was not only a big fuck you to the Obama regime but also a reminder that Russia was the key ally during the hallowed "Good War" that chopped up Hitler's war machine in Stalingrad and elsewhere, softening up the Nazis for the kill for which the Anglo-American Empire continues to falsely hog the credit for. Carney should show more gratitude, were it not for the Russians he would be speaking German today. There is nothing quite like the a Russian, particularly one like Putin bringing up the inconvenient truth that the sacrifices by the people of that land - by most accounts over 25 million dead - spared our god-kissed, exceptional nation tens of thousands of dead Americans who would have been sent home to mother in body bags were the Nazis not decimated on the eastern front. This is the truth, not that bullshit revisionist history that is strained through John Wayne's boxer shorts and spoonfed to the inhabitants of the star-spangled lemming colony. Perhaps the greatest sin of all concerning Putin was that spot on editorial in the New York Times on September 11th of 2013 where he let it rip.

In the column the Russian leader dared to invoke the forbidden history that during World War II that his country was an ally of the U.S. and Britain and helped to defeat the Nazis. It is arguable that Russian fighting against the Germans at Stalingrad, one of the bloodiest battles in the history of mankind turned the tide and allowed for the allies to win the war. The Russians chewed up the Nazis in that brutal winter mosh pit of misery that caused the lunatic Adolf Hitler to arrogantly lose a good chunk of his military power while delivering a crushing blow to German resolve. The extreme violence and devastation on the Eastern front were critical in allowing the Americans to successfully invade Europe and then roll over the Nazis as they roared towards Berlin. The Russians don’t get enough credit here while the sainted Sir Winston Churchill gets too much of it but such is standard western hypocrisy that we are constantly fed. Especially though when one of those hypocrisies was throwing in with the despotic Joseph Stalin who was right up there with Hitler when it comes to crimes against humanity but he was our kind of bastard at just the right time. The leadership of this country has quite an impressive track record when it comes to supporting ruthless scum who torture and murder their own people so that western business interests can open new markets and plunder resources. For a great history of American meddling, murder and regime change – at least up to when it was published – there is no better resource than William Blum’s classic book “Killing Hope”. 

Ironic that today on Victory Day that Obama and his filthy criminal infested administration have chosen to not only lie about history but through their actions in supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine are doing their damned level best to resurrect the Third Reich.

The Business of America is War

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel spoke on Tuesday in defense of the American war machine and while not explicitly mentioned during his remarks during a speech for The Chicago Council of Global Affairs in defense of the obscene profits generated by America's ongoing global crusades. What would a defense of the Empire and the permanent war be without one of those cherished references to World War II aka "the good war" and Hagel invoked the neoconservative talking point of "isolationism" like a professional card shark dealing dirty from the bottom of the deck. The term is steeped in innuendo to conjure up mental images of Hitler's Nazi war machine and most importantly for maximum emotional value the millions of murdered Jews who were slaughtered along with millions of others because of the disgraceful "isolationism" of the United States. Never is it ever permitted to have an honest debate about non-interventionism and minding our own goddamned business, this is the real reason why the two party criminal syndicate and their whores in the media are so relentlessly trying to keep Rand Paul out of any sort of a position where he may pose this question.

A brief synopsis of SecDef's remarks is excerpted from the organization's website as below:

Despite war-weariness among the American people, the United States faces new and complicated challenges, not least “Russia’s blatant aggression in Ukraine,” and must remain strong and engaged militarily in the world, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told The Chicago Council Tuesday morning.

“We must remain a nation of big shoulders,” Hagel said in a rhetorical tip of the hat to the 500 Chicagoans who turned out for his breakfast-time speech. “America must not succumb to the temptations of looking inward…We must never just return to the garrison.”

And

The nation’s active involvement after World War II and especially its embrace of alliances around the world led to an unprecedented era of prosperity–an era that still exists, he said. Americans may be “increasingly skeptical of foreign engagements,” he said, but this misses the point, because Americans themselves are the greatest beneficiaries of this policy.

As 13 years of war come to an end, Hagel said, America’s military faces “new threats, challenges, and opportunities” created by a “fractured” global landscape. Among these, he said, are the rise of China and other Asian powers, the increasing youth population in the Middle East, new technologies including the possibility of cyber warfare, an increased global economic interdependence, increased nationalism, new sources of energy, and the impact of climate change on such strategically vital regions as the Arctic.

But as these new challenges arise, “history and geography still matter,” Hagel said. As examples, he cited the war in Syria, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the “dangerous provocations” of North Korea, the “simmering tensions” between China and Japan, and “Russia’s blatant aggression in Ukraine.” The secretary suggested no solutions for any of these problems, but indicated that no solution would be possible unless the US plays a role, diplomatically and militarily.

As an example, he cited the commitment of the US and NATO to NATO members among Russia’s neighbors, such as Poland and the Baltic, who are upset about Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine.

Oh lord how the money rolls in when the bodies pile up, cue up The Battle Hymn of the Republic, grab some Kleenex and snap to in saluting our glorious flag for the business of America is war and will always be war until there is no more America. 

The latest cash cow is the US instigated growing bloodbath in Ukraine, one that is being cynically used now to justify the escalation of military spending as well as shilling for the Keystone Excel pipeline as one Senate Democrat, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu is doing and big energy is salivating over the wet dream of replacing Russia as the top supplier of energy to Europe thanks to the fracking boom. The warmongers in Congress are foaming at the mouth in denouncing Obama’s lame sanctions and becoming restive as it is an election year and more war machine dollars rolling into their states and districts is job security.  The corporate vultures were circling Ukraine even before the ousting of the democratically elected president – see State Department figure Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland’s appearance before assembled corporate interests boasting of the $5 billion taxpayer dollars that had been invested to destabilize the government in Kiev and open the doors for US businesses. Murder industry profiteers such as Lockheed are ecstatic in booming sales thanks to the chaos unleashed by the installation of the "Yats" occupying government and it's neo-Nazi/fascist muscle and are counting on being able to lure Putin into Ukraine to juice arms sales.

Sick and immoral but that's just the way that we roll in the USA, USA, USA!  

A Tale of Two Christmas Speeches

In a revealing contrast of Christmas messages from President Barack Obama as well as from Pope Francis the difference between the permanent warfare state of The Homeland and the message on the teachings of Jesus Christ were made clear. While the Pontiff delivered his initial Christmas message to the world from St. Peter’s basilica, calling for peace, in Sudan and in Syria even as the warmongers in America continue to push for war in both countries as well as a resolution to the forever intractable Israel-Palestine situation Barry was promoting militarism and empire. Obama, in Hawaii on holiday vacation with his family took time for the obligatory visit to a Marine Corps base for a public relations appearance to pay homage to our imperial stormtroopers.  He laid in on thick as he and the first lady milked the military appearance for all that it was worth, “Michelle and I know that we would not enjoy the freedoms that we do if it weren’t for the incredible dedication and professionalism and work that we do” crooned El Presidente. While it wasn’t exactly a surprise visit to a Baghdad war zone chow hall on Thanksgiving Day wielding a plastic turkey as a prop as his predecessor did it was more than surreal to hear the man whose NSA surveillance programs are a global disgrace and who dials up drone strikes that often kill innocent women and children taking about “freedoms” and holiday peace.

The always pervasive U.S. militarism can no longer be escaped, not even on Christmas Day in this armed madhouse of a country. It is now deeply embedded within the national DNA now, sporting events are rife with military references and metaphors, cloying and insincere homages to our blessed troops, million dollar flyovers of stadiums and mandatory suckling of all things military have siphoned off any form of enjoyment from all of it for a non-worshipper of the religion of the state.  It has gotten far worse too, since “the day that changed everything” and set the U.S. on a course of perpetual warfare, when in the aftermath the flags and bunting and regalia were a star spangled reincarnation of the state bachanallia of late stage Weimar Republic when everything also changed for another society that had a date with destiny and an unyielding love of militarism.

Writer Lawrence Vance had a piece over at Lew Rockwell.com entitled The Cult of the Uniform from which I excerpt:

There are a number of distinctly American symbols that evoke feelings of pride, nationalism, and patriotism. There is the Constitution. There are monuments like Mount Rushmore, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Jefferson Memorial. There are structures like the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell. There are buildings like the White House and the Capitol. There are also things that there are many of: American flags, bald eagles, dollar bills, and images of Uncle Sam and the Great Seal of the United States.

In the last ten or so years, these symbols have all been superceded by one image that is so powerful and so overwhelming that it drives some Americans to tears and causes others to act in the most nonsensical and irrational of ways.

I am referring to a military uniform.

Not just any military uniform, of course, but one of the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. And especially a uniform adorned with lots of badges, awards, medals, ribbons, and insignias. Naturally, a uniform that indicates that a member of the military has been in combat is far superior to a uniform not so ornamented.

The reverential status bestowed upon our servicemen and women, who are now just anointed with the title of “HERO” despite the majority of them never actually having engaged in any actual sort of heroic behavior as has been understood from previous days is a dangerous distinction in that it is a confirmation of a society that has already accepted authoritarianism. Put the “heroes” in full uniform and patrolling the streets of America when the day of the collapse finally arrives and it smells like tyranny. Obama also used his Christmas radio address to appeal to the better angels of Americans:

"For families like ours, that service is a chance to celebrate the birth of Christ and live out what He taught us - to love our neighbors as we would ourselves; to feed the hungry and look after the sick; to be our brother's keeper and our sister's keeper."

But it all rings very hollow coming from this leader of this country at this time in history. While the Pope used his Christmas address to also reach out to those of other faiths as well as atheists to call for peace and social justice it must always be remembered that we live in a corrupt land of hypocrisy where each and every year brings more income inquality and a callousness of our ‘leaders’. Were Obama a sincere man he would have spent the holiday acting more like Jesus, perhaps providing comfort in one of the plentiful tent cities that have sprung up while the national credit card continues to be racked for more wars and banker bailouts instead of making a phony public relations appearance on a Marine base acting like he gives a rats ass about the troops while his administration and the detestable congress continue to work ceaselessly to start more wars that they can then be marched off to serve as cannon fodder for corporate profits.

And most importantly of all, campaign contributions. As General Smedley Butler so aptly put it "War is a Racket" and nowhere on the globe more so than here in our god kissed land of destiny. 

Sunday Morning McCain: Poke the Bear Edition

It was to be expected that the nation’s preeminent warmonger Senator John McCain would turn up on the Sunday morning propaganda circuit this week. With the ugly outbreak of unrest in Kiev over the Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych’s shunning of the European Union in favor of a rapprochement with Russia it was prime territory for a career vulture like McCain to dip his beak into. During his appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" with the blathering sow Candy Crowley, yet another piss poor excuse for a journalist in the state-corporate media the bloodthirsty, corrupt old bastard used the forum to deliver a provocative shot at Russian President Vladimir Putin. The neocons of which McCain happens to be one have one flaming desire that is more deeply entrenched in their world conquering brains that even trumps turning the Middle East into a blazing inferno on behalf of the right-wing Israeli regime and that is a festering hatred for anything Russian. 

The warmongers have been furious ever since this summer when Putin punked Barry and the boys by providing temporary asylum to former government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton employee Edward Snowden after he absconded with the evidence that the NSA is far worse than either the East German Stasi or Stalin's dreaded NKVD. Not only the neocons but the entire Obama administration has been apoplectic over that one with El Presidente himself embarrassing the nation by acting as a petulant child in boycotting a meeting with the Russian president during the G20 gathering and threatening to boycott the upcoming winter Olympics. But then Putin upped the ante by forcing Obama and his regime, the rancid and traitor infested congress and even John Wayne's blessed America.

In what was the ultimate indignity on the most hallowed of days  that is September 11th, the anniversary of "the day that everything changed"  Putin served up a triple-decker borscht and shit sandwich with a vodka chaser by contributing an op ed piece to the New York Times. It was here where he dared to blaspheme the concept of American Exceptionalism from which I excerpt the part that embedded a bug up the puckering assholes of the neocons and the masses of asses whose reflexive flag-waving provides cover for the endless wars that have us on the brink of collapse:

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

The Putin column also came at the critical time when Obama, Kerry and the rest of those who always are willing to send some poor unfortunate serviceman or servicewoman off to die in idiotic wars of their own creation based on lies (see Seymour Hersh's London Review of Books piece "Whose Sarin") when the pope of hope was making the case for yet another war. The wound was still raw when Putin broke out the rock salt and started rubbing it in by taking advantage of a gaffe of exactly the type that a man with chronic diarrhea of the mouth like Secretary of Skull and Bones John Kerry is bound to make. When Kerry slipped up and inadvertently offered Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad could avoid the looming U.S. attack by voluntarily giving up his chemical weapons stockpiles Putin brilliantly came to the rescue and prevented what could have been a historical catastrophe that would ignite World War III. That never sat well with the neocons nor their caterwauling benefactors in Riyadh and Tel Aviv, it especially pissed off McCain and his toady Senator Lindsey Graham but it stopped a war.

Now McCain and the war freaks see an opportunity to get another bite at the apple by intervening in the Ukraine in the same meddlesome way that the U.S. war machine always has done since the end of the second world war. It truly speaks volumes (or maybe not) as to the sheer depth of the thorough corruption of the media when someone as unstable as the self-proclaimed "maverick" is allowed to appear on national television and declare that the U.S. could take "concrete action" if the Ukranian regime threw in with Russia rather than the E.U. I mean this guy lost the freaking election when he ran in 2008 but regularly makes deranged and bellicose statements on national policy in matters where he has zero business speaking for anyone let alone a bankrupt country that is so fragile at this time that just about anything of major consequence could trigger the collapse that has been so far been avoided only by smoke and mirrors and the ongoing government support of the rigged six ways from Sunday financial markets.

I have long admired the work of former Reagan administration official Paul Craig Roberts who did the right thing morally and broke with his party during the worst years of the Bush-Cheney regime. A straight shooter who calls it like it is Mr. Roberts latest column entitled "Washington Drives the World Toward War" warns of the dangers of lunatics like McCain and his ilk pushing for a conflict that would eventually draw in Russia and China and I excerpt the following:

As costly and destructive as these wars have been, they are far below the level of a world war, much less a world war against nuclear armed opponents.

The fatal war for humanity is the war with Russia and China toward which Washington is driving the US and Washington’s NATO and Asian puppet states. There are a number of factors contributing to Washington’s drive toward the final war, but the overarching one is the doctrine of American exceptionalism.

According to this self-righteous doctrine, America is the indispensable country. What this means is that the US has been chosen by history to establish the hegemony of secular “democratic capitalism” over the world. The primacy of this goal places the US government above traditional morality and above all law, both its own and international.

Thus, no one in the US government has been held accountable for unprovoked aggression against other countries and for attacking civilian populations, unambiguous war crimes under international law and the Nuremberg standard. Neither has anyone in the US government been held accountable for torture, a prohibited crime under US law and the Geneva Conventions. Neither has anyone been held accountable for numerous violations of constitutional rights–spying without warrants, warrantless searches, violations of habeas corpus, murder of citizens without due process, denial of legal representation, conviction on secret evidence. The list is long.

A person might wonder what is exceptional and indispensable about a government that is a reincarnation of Nazi Germany in every respect. People propagandized into the belief that they are the world’s special people inevitably lose their humanity. Thus, as the US military video released by Bradley Manning reveals, US troops get their jollies by mowing down innocent people as they walk along a city street.

With the exception of the ACLU, constitutional rights groups and independent Internet voices, the American people including the Christian churches have accepted their government’s criminality and immorality with scant protest.

The absence of moral denunciation emboldens Washington which is now pushing hard against Russia and China, the current governments of which stand in the way of Washington’s world hegemony.

The push will continue, the warmongers are relentless, the media is their battlefield and the American mind is one that has been indoctrinated into the glorious national narrative of war. As CNN's hapless Crowley lobbed the obligatory softball to McCain on his tried and true invocation of Der Fuehrer and by proxy the heroic and godlike Sir Winston for comparing Obama to Neville Chamberlain when the U.S. leader shook the hand of Cuba's Raul Castro at Nelson Mandela's funeral this week the vile old man only snickered. It is fitting because the joke is on all of us because  the neocons have flogged the Neville Chamberlain horse to death and it should have been sent to the glue factory long ago along with Senator McCain. 

But as long as Americans view the world through their exceptional blinders where the flag waves eternally over The Homeland and every war is a continuation of "the good war" our tickets with historical infamy will very soon be punched. 

Yet Another Obama Lie: U.S. Not Leaving Afghanistan

Not that another Obama fib should surprise anyone, along with "war criminal" another must for the top job is "liar" but all of that stuff about exiting Afghanistan... it's just like everyone can keep their insurance policies under Obamacare and the NSA isn't spying on you.  The ugly truth is that we live in an empire and Afghanistan has always been the apple of the eye of colonies throughout history. The harsh land and the often brutal tribal inhabitants have chewed up and spat out those with imperial designs in the past, the British, the Soviets, hell even Alexander the Great but we are an exceptional people and it will be different this time. The strutting Neocons long ago declared "the end of history" after the fall of the Berlin Wall and as the world's remaining superpower the by God United States of America would conquer the world for McDonalds and our other gleaming examples of our national greatness. Or not. The Neocons have been exposed as the loons that they always were with first the debacle of Iraq as well as the ongoing Afghanistan quagmire, a costly and futile occupation to which there is no end in sight save the inevitable bankruptcy and collapse of an overstretched and maxed out America. We are NEVER going to truly leave Afghanistan, it is just like Korea and Germany among other countries in which there were military actions, once the imperial footprint has been established it is there forever, more often than not kicking in the heads of the locals. 

With Iran on the burner, Iraq still a smoldering mess, military forces peppered throughout the most volatile regions on the planet and a rapidly deteriorating Homeland increasingly transforming into a fascist police state on the way to full blown banana republic the last thing that we need is to stay in Afghanistan. Granted that if anything has been proven to be true under the lamentable reign of Barry and the boys it is that Wall Street and the mega-speculators entrenched with impunity in their government subsidized casinos reign supreme. And there is a certain very profitable crop in the area that in a rarely whispered and forbidden secret provides a very lucrative revenue source to the money changers. That of course would be opium, a substance of which production at least according to this New York Times story is rising big time in 2013.  The laundering of drug profits has been an unspoken function of the big banks, probably for decades although such statistics are never truly made available but occasionally something slips out like this 2009 piece from The Observer entitled "Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor" and this from respected mainstream source Bloomberg from this very year entitled "Money-Laundering Banks Still Get a Pass From U.S.". Again, such crass revelations are never mentioned lest they risk rousing some of the sheeple but hard core researchers, for example Peter Dale Scott have been on the beat for years when it comes to big banks and drug money laundering. Hell, I more than half expect that such things are facilitated by agencies such as the NSA and the CIA has had the reputation for dabbling in the narcotics trade for quite some time now.

But Obama himself is but a transitory figure as are all U.S. presidents, soon he will be picking up his golden briefcase and retiring to the same lucrative afterlife as Bill Clinton and the Bushes, if Poppy lives long enough they can probably strike up a good foursome on some gated and exclusive golf resort on the taxpayer dime. This just the way that it works these days and probably has always worked at least since  John F. Kennedy had his brains blown out in Dallas fifty years ago this afternoon.  While he doesn't get into the drug business angle Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com was dropping his payload right on target again this morning with his column simply entitled "We're Never Leaving Afghanistan" from which I excerpt: 

This was supposed to be the "good" war, the "bad" war – Iraq – being bad because it was started by a Republican president. This was the war everybody – except for the most dedicated peaceniks (and, of course, us libertarians) – was for: it was a good war, a just war, a defensive war. They attacked us first, right? So we went in there and – twelve years later we’re still there, with no sign we’re leaving anytime soon.

Back in 2001, we warned against nation-building, and explicitly said: "Kill ‘em – and get out!" With Osama bin Laden dead, and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan practically extinct, Washington could’ve done exactly that many months ago – but the real aims of the "war on terrorism" have nothing to do with al-Qaeda, if they ever did.

In 2001, the US government decided to move in on the Middle East and effectively establish military control over the entire region. The invasion of Afghanistan, ostensibly in hot pursuit of al-Qaeda, was just a way to get our foot in the door, so to speak. The subsequent history of the region – the invasion of Iraq and Libya, military pressure applied to Syria and Iran – highlights the US battle plan for the region.

Obama said we’re withdrawing from Afghanistan, but he also said "If you like your insurance you can keep your insurance" – and we know how that turned out.

Indeed we do.  Despite all of the media hyperbole and weeping and gnashing of the teeth over former Nevada Gaming Commissioner Harry Reid's invocation of the "Nuclear Option" (a term I believe that was coined by his predecessor, Bill Frist of the HCA family healthcare colossus) to limit the filibuster it will soon become obvious that this too is a scam. It is only a matter of time until the bipartisan show of unity to ram more economic sanctions up the ass of Iran and all of the trivialities and playing possum can be done away with to do what we in twenty first century American does best, start wars at the expense of the long term stability of our once honored society in the days before the pigs hijacked it. 

As Far as Narcissist Obama is Concerned – Let Them Eat War

Despite mounting resistance, primarily coming from the international community the narcissist in chief, Barack H. Obama continues to ram his administration’s coming criminal attacks on Syria down the throats of those who see things as they are. Appearing at the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia the Nobel Peace Prize winner is the very epitome of imperial arrogance as he cast aside appeals to reason and a diplomatic solution to his idiotic self-created crisis. Obama along with his goonish Secretary of State John Kerry who has spent the better part of a week distorting and spinning the results of intelligence reports that show that the Assad regime was behind the Gouta chemical weapons incident are lying. Not only are they lying but they are bad liars whose daily contortions only serve to make them look even asinine and conversely more dangerous given their incompetence. Say what you will about the Bush administration and the neocons but at least they didn’t suck at lying, they were truly masters at the art of deception when it came to selling war to the sheeple. The clumsy efforts of Barry and the boys only ensure that the United States truly is losing credibility on the world stage and the worst is yet to come when their dirty little war of choice sets off a chain reaction that will once and for all implode the economy.  While the entire “recovery” has been nothing but state media hyped tomfoolery, the big banks and rigged markets are only sustained by the machinations of the mad money printer Ben Bernanke another ruinous foreign incursion will finally be what it takes to once and for all puncture the bubble of illusion.

This time the American war machine is about ready to run afoul of not only Russia but also China, a huge economic powerhouse holding an even more massive amount of U.S. Paper. Despite Obama and his rogue regime’s bellicose rhetoric and ample supply of ridiculous platitudes going through with this act of aggression on trumped up charges would be tantamount to national suicide. Not that these elitist criminal buffoons give a damn about the concerns of the little people but the peasants are growing restive and while you won’t see it on the corrupt state-corporate media we may finally have arrived at an outrage that is so great that it is able to catapult the chasm of the  two-party paradigm and unite disparate forces for a battle against a common enemy. The enemy is an out of control state that steals from taxpayers while bestowing largess upon the uber-wealthy interests who have the money to buy the system. It is a state that has no moral underpinning having long ago given into eternal war, stealing of foreign natural resources, torture, an obscene for profit prison gulag system that rivals Stalin’s, a herculean surveillance machinethat spies on innocent citizens and a paramilitary police state that could go into total lock down mode with a few minutes notice. The enemy is Leviathan, the state itself which has become as corrupt and oppressive as that shitty little island that our forefathers fled in order to found what was once a free country the envy of the planet.

The alliances against the behemoth may finally provide the long-awaited systemic transformation that unifies principled angry progressives who unlike the liberals did not sell their soul to the company store once Obama took power and libertarians along with paleoconservatives. The so-called tea party which sprung from the remnants of the Ron Paul movement and was quickly co-opted by the GOP is showing signs of being resuscitated in it’s initial form and not the catch-all, loosely organized collection of some of the crazier activist elements of the party base which included due too the lack of self-policing a good amount of racists. The libertarian principles from which it sprung are not being reasserted by such rebels as Republican Congressman Justin Amash, a hero to those who have finally had it with the weaponizing of the state against the people. Congressman Amash rose to prominence earlier this summer when he led the rebellionagainst Obama’s NSA Stasi as the systemic abuses of the Constitution were brought to light by Edward Snowden and Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald. He is not content to lay back in the weeds like so many of his cowardly peers and is aggressively pushing back in a testament to that rarest spirit of American dissent against government tyranny. He has set about mocking that geriatric war criminal John McCain by digging up an old tweet by the rabid old dog praising former Libyan dictator Colonel Muamar Gaddafi earlier this week and publicizing it. McCain, is corrupt and has been complicit in a good many of this country’s most egregious international and domestic crimes of the last thirty plus years. In an interesting side note, McCain’s sidekick Lindsey Graham has been shrilly invoking the destruction of Charleston Harbor by nukes to his constituents. These guys haven’t the capacity for shame, if Graham finally gets ousted in 2014 as he should then he has a hell of a second career in Hollywood.

Joining Amash in opposition is Democratic party firebrand Alan Grayson of Florida, a man who seems to revel in being a bug up the asses of the elite. Giving a voice to the skeptics who can see through Obama and Kerry as the heirs to Bush and Powell. Grayson has not only found a common cause with conservatives like Amash but is taking the fight to the administration in openly questioning the fishy official account of the Gouta gassing. This incident that has been used to justify the crossing of Obama’s “red line” provides the justification for the war, the basis for all of the Hitler and Munich invocations and is by its nature the weakest link in the case needs to be called out as bullshit. The rush to judgement weeks before the official results of the U.N. investigation are to be finalized is the Achilles heel of the Obama regime. It has been reported that Russia provided the United Nations with a report back in July detailing the U.S. backed militant rebels complicity in poison gas attacks and with the persistence of bulldogs like Grayson and Amash contesting the official story it could be possible that this report eventually finds its way into what remains of the U.S. media. This link is from McClatchy, one of the last vestiges of free reporting.

The establishment fears only one thing more than the truth and that is crossover appeal. When there is a break in the meticulously constructed dichotomy that even if briefly allowing for the revelation of the true enemy, not the phantoms and scapegoats it scares the hell out of the bastards. It was easy to marginalize and in the case of the Occupy movement send the paramilitary police goons to destroy it or in the case of the tea party to focus on only the racists, freaks and provocateurs to eliminate the threat to the establishment. When there is an alliance against the wars, the destruction of civil liberties and the preservation of the Constitution it is a true threat to fiends like Obama. This blossoming revolt against the bombing of Syria has the potential to become a true uprising against the usurpers but the propaganda machine will ensure that the largest obstacle to accountability will be the easily duped, foolish and credulous “center” that still believes the corrupt media.

And now it has been announced that Barack Hussein Obama, using the bully pulpit on the eve of the twelfth anniversary of 9/11 will take his lies directly to the American people in the push for WW III. It will be a variation on yellow cake uranium in Niger, smoking guns as mushroom clouds, aluminum tubes and all of the other horseshit sold by his predecessor to justify his war in Iraq that has left the country a humanitarian disaster and destabilized charnel house to this day. Even if attacking Syria didn’t have the serious implications of creating an irrevocable scenario with China and Russia that punches all of our tickets to Armageddon the best that could be hoped for would be a decade plus of brutal sectarian violence. Violence that Obama’s allies in Al Qaeda are already perpetrating but at the end of the day, stripped of the star-spangled facade this all comes down to money and there is plenty of it for the war machine once it’s current shill Obama and his pack of fellow reprobates order up the strikes.

Impeachment proceedings cannot be started soon enough so that this ridiculous and arrogant man can be removed from office before he kills us all.