Wall Street Rejoices as Bernanke’s Policies Will Live On

The confirmation hearings for Obama’s new Federal Reserve head Janet Yellen are an indication that more of the same failed policies will continue to subsidize the Wall Street casinos. With the 2014 mid-term elections looming and Obamacare looking every bit the disaster that could have been expected by letting the insurance companies basically write the law much credit to Senator Max Baucus, one of the most corrupt swine in the U.S. Congress. The website rollout was a clusterfuck of monumental proportions, people were jettisoned from the policies that the liar in chief told them they could keep and the brutal realization that greedy corporations were going to use the program to dump dependents from coverage hit Americans like another punch to the gut. This is a pummeling that they should be accustomed to under the rule of the penultimate footstool for Wall Street and bagman for corporate interests Obama and it is about to get worse. Today’s Yellen hearings sent the markets soaring in inverse proportion to Barry’s approval rating but while the speculators are approaching orgasm the vampires are taking flight to suck the last remaining drops of blood from the besieged middle class.

Wall Street gamblers are chortling with unabashed glee that Chairman Ben’s replacement is now on record as not only not going to put the helicopter fleet on stand down but is a damned certainty to continue to use QEternity to create digital money and funnel it into buying bad paper of the same banksters who destroyed the economy. This should surprise absolutely nobody who has been any paying attention to this ongoing scheme to artificially inflate the markets to enrich only the big boys and beggar the rest of us peasants. The perversion of capitalism will roll on under Calamity Janet as the bubble just gets bigger and bigger along with the catastrophic shock wave that will be released when it eventually explodes and there is no way that it will not do exactly that. They key is for the elitists to stockpile enough real assets, hire private security firms (mercenaries) to protect their compounds, fill up their wine cellars and get the hell out before it does. Let the little people deal with it when the ATMs no longer work and hordes of desperate people take it to the streets to engage in an existential struggle for food. The dollar will collapse along with the economic system and it will take a proverbial wheelbarrow full of Reichmarks to but a bag of freaking Doritos. For those who survive the scrum there will be plenty of food in the for profit prisons and relocation facilities that they will be sent to but Yellen and her ilk will be sitting pretty and watching the show.

Expect Yellen’s ticket to be punched in the true bipartisan manner that is always mustered from our rancidly corrupt politicians whenver it comes to time to protect the interests of the true owners of what George W. Bush once referred to as “the ownership society” - what it really means is that they own all of our asses. As the late George Carlin once nailed it, “it’s a big club and you aren’t in it”. There will be some Republican resistance although it will be portrayed by the state-corporate media as largely being confined to the noisy rabble that is the now discredited and co-opted tea party. At least when Ron Paul was still in congress we could count on the old man giving a good roasting to Bernanke when the former Time Person of the Year showed up to testify but Janet Yellen won’t get the same treatment. Any serious questioning is likely to be spun as a part of the Obama spinmeisters bumper sticker  war on women and she will get the free pass afforded to the moneychangers.

The Christmas bonuses will be awarded to the looter capitalists on Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange crowd will break into a chorus of “Joy to the World” as the greedy pigs gorge themselves on champagne and caviar as the sweet, sweet spike of the next fix is jammed into the arm of the junkie markets. Crack ho economics again, the holiday season will be one that is very festive in the enclaves of The Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard and other posh retreats where the hedge fund hyenas are the dominant indigenous species. The rest of the schmucks can mournfully scrounge through the remnants of Chinese manufactured crap in the bargain bins come Black Friday.  In America the elite reign supreme, it is as though it were their divine right as codified and enforced by the power of the state. Decades of television and movies have fully indoctrinated the masses of asses into glorifying ghoulish fiend CEOs and full blown swine like Donald Trump are to be honored as though he were the Pope. While “class warfare” may be a dreaded and unspeakable term in the lexicon of the elite it is only because it is a war that they have not only won but crushed all in their path, a blitzkrieg of greed that has become a testament to American ingenuity when it comes to rigging the system, tilting the tables and fixing the game.

Howard W. Campbell Jr. from Kurt Vonnegut’s classic novel Slaughterhouse Five:

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American journalist Kin Hubbard “It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.” It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand glued to a lollipop stick and flying fom the cash register.

Seep will be sheep and along with lemmings they shall wander the land, an economic diaspora in a wasteland of their own choosing.  As their “owners” continue to gorge themselves the flock of the forlorn are incapbable of anything remotely resembling the sort of righteous indignation that could get them back into the game. Shorn of their money and their pride and brainwashed by reality television such as “who wants to be a millionaire” they engage in silly squabbles and accept their enslavement by the moneychangers. They have conditioned to worship mammon and call it God, a false religion that ensures that the fatted calves will continue to live large in their comfortably secluded strongholds secure in their knowledge that Obama, Helicopter Ben and Calamity Janet will deliver the goods.  The only thing missing from the legions of suckers who continue to put up with this bullshit is a candy coating and a stick shoved up their assholes.

You never know thought, that stick may end up being a spit when the food trucks stop rolling a few weeks after it all has collapsed.

Calling a Spade a Spade: Obamacare is a Corporate Scam

As Barack Obama's approval rating continues to descend into the netherworld pit normally occupied by used car salesmen, child molesters and the U.S. Congress it is becoming clearer by the day that Obamacare is the largest vat of snake oil ever sold to the American public. Policies are being cancelled and blood sucking insurers are already wailing about a loss in profits due to delays in with implementation. The big fascist government just can’t deliver the yoked and chained chattel to the man fast enough to book those holiday bonuses. It is already an unqualified disaster – except to insurance companies who despite their current whining over delays will soon have millions of new customers, forced to buy a product from their private corporations with the threat of government enforcement providing the muscle. The mafia could only dream about having it this good.

I already have spoken to a number of people who I know personally who are getting the screws put to them by the greedball corporations that they work for over huge rises in health insurance premiums, particular when covering spouses or partners. The so-called tea party as led by big money funders, many with links to the Bircher Koch Brothers have repeatedly used the lie that Obamacare is “socialism”, a word that has been practically rendered meaningless so distorted has it become in the Homeland. That anyone can actually take seriously attacking Obamacare under this pretense shows just how asinine and gullible that the shock troops for big money actually are. We live in a hybrid socialist society, what the hell do people think that the police and fire departments or in cynical political speak “first-responders” are? None of the dummies marching around with their anti-Obamacare, anti-Socialism signs and placards understand this which they should on a basic level. I mean come on now, how many of them and the demographics are skewed with the age of the average tea partier being older would put their money where their mouths are and if they are so opposed to “socialism” then give back their Medicare and Social Security checks to balance the budget? Take a stand on principle which is pretty rare on the big star-spangled lemming farm. I doubt that the lines would be forming anytime soon.

The only level that Obamacare IS “socialism” is that it is the modern American form where the besieged and vanishing middle class continue to be shaken down to subsidize the corporations and the rich who can buy political influence. We do have “socialism” but in this down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, bizarro version of America it is inverted. That is the truth about his insipid scam of a health care “reform” program as it is with everything else these days – it all benefits those who have the means to purchase political influence in Washington, statehouses and courthouses.

The intent of the Orwellian named Affordable Care Act is of course to allow corporate America to kick employees to the curb and into the jaws of the ravenous health insurance industry parasite. Obamacare is to American health insurance with TARP and QE-forever is to the Wall Street banksters. Hell, let’s have some real socialized medical care, screw the bullshit Republican talking points and give me the Veterans Administration which really is socialized medicine. The facilities are owned by the government and the doctors are paid by the government and goddamn it, if it’s good enough for our precious troops then it should be good enough for everyone. Death panels? Hogwash, the real death panels are within the private insurance companies who are able to buy government access and use their congressional embedded shocktroops as defacto lobbyists to write the damned laws.

Americans need a national health care system that is honest, not this crony capitalist horseshit that Barry and the boys have rammed down our throats in the interests of placating campaign donors. The sooner the better too, given that Obamacare has now been revealed as a national debacle that will only accelerate the economic collapse. I can see no reason why people don’t get behind it, let’s see our damned tax money put to work actually providing something other than graft to grease the wheels of a corrupt system and the bombs to blow brown skinned foreigners to kingdom come. But there is good news, as the drop notices arrive in people’s mailbox and the open enrollments for employer health insurance programs show the real intent of this massive con job with the spike in dependent care rates people are starting to get it.

Even the liberal comedians are turning on Obama over the ACA fiasco, first it was Jon Stewart and most recently HBO’s Bill Maher who called bullshit on Barry’s DNC head Debbie Wasserman-Schultz for her defending of the indefensible.

“Obama had a great, I would say, almost sterling reputation for honesty…but I just think that credibility to a certain extent, that ship has sailed,” Maher said on his HBO program “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

Wasserman Schultz dismissed claims that Obama misled Americans.

“It was not a lie, let’s just be very clear. So let me knock that down right away,” Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said. “When the president and myself and every other Democrat that talked about that if you like your health care, you can keep it, that was referring to the overwhelming majority of Americans who had health care.”

Maher, who criticized the president earlier this week for lying, pushed back and argued that plans — albeit “crappy”— were being canceled under the new law.

“C’mon, let’s be honest. Obamacare says, basically, if you have a really crappy plan, you can’t keep it. That’s the truth,” Maher said. “But some people want crap, what can I say? And because of Obamcare, they are not being able to keep it. To me, that is a lie.”

Wasserman Schultz acknowledged “there was a minimum floor of benefits” so that Americans aren’t “all paying, at the end of the day, for everybody else’s health care.”

She called the debate over whether Obama lied as “arguing over minutiae,” a point Maher pounced on.

“To a lot of Americans, it’s not minutiae and I think they’re insulted when [they] hear [you] say that because they think it’s something important when the president doesn’t square up with them,” Maher said.

Not that I agree with much of what he says as he to this day  remains the penultimate party hack but the old warhorse Pat Buchanan righteously railed against Obama’s latest lie in his piece The First Hustler Runs the Big Con:

All along, it had been a bait-and-switch by the first hustler.

In Boston, Obama could no longer evade the truth. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who had purchased health insurance in the private market were getting notices their plans were being canceled.

That this revelation had blown a hole in his credibility did not seem to trouble Obama. Indeed, the president appeared impatient with the complaints. These were “substandard” plans anyhow, he said, the lousy offerings of “bad-apple insurers.”

“So if you’re getting one of those letters (canceling your insurance plan), just shop around in the new marketplace. … You’re going to get a better deal.”

Behind the arrogance is the realty: Obama has the veto power. No alteration of Obamacare, except for changes he approves, can be made before the winter of 2017. And by then, Obamacare will be so deeply embedded in law and practice it will be beyond repeal.

We won, you lost, was written across Obama’s face.

Yet, Obama’s victory calls to mind that of King Pyrrhus of Epirus over the Romans at Asculum as described by Plutarch. Counting up his dead friends, dead commanders and dead soldiers, the king remarked, “One more such victory and we are undone.”

The price Obama will be a long time paying for this victory is historic and huge.

First, there is the irreversible damage to his credibility and integrity. He conned the people into believing something he knew to be false — that all Americans would be allowed to keep the health care plans that they had and liked.

Come on Pat, the bastard lied about closing down our Guantanamo Bay penal colony/torture camp, the first of years of prevarications, misrepresentations and bullshit meter pegging total whoppers. Who, outside of liberal cretins and useful idiots can possibly believe on damned word that flies out of this man’s mouth? He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and has proceeded to participate in the drawing up of kill lists for his cowardly drone attacks. He lied about Wall Street being held accountable for wrecking the economy while his administration continued to shovel the taxpayer funded gaming chips into the ivory tower casinos of Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon. He lied about the Syrian regime gassing children at Ghouta and he is lying on a daily basis about his NSA Stasi. Jesus Christ, the man will call the night as day and piss down your back and tell you it is raining. What in the hell does Buchanan think that the primary qualification of the office is (other than war criminal), he worked for Nixon for God’s sake.

Obama has lied about this abortion of a health care “reform” since its inception. It is nothing but another giant corporate gift and the ordinary schmucks again get the shaft. Were this any serious effort to reform the system – and mind you that the existing private insurance con game that fills the coffers of middlemen while spending little on actual health care – it would have included a PUBLIC OPTION along the lines of Medicare. American business are at a continual competitive disadvantage in having to compete with countries that have a national health care system, this may be anathema to many of the free-market types but it is punitive to domestic business. Throw in the NSA debacle and the now in process flight from American tech companies who cannot be counted on to provide secure access and the future is very bleak indeed for what is left of American capitalism. It was Halloween a few days ago and the ghost of Karl Marx must be hoarse from laughing at what American greed has done to capitalism, it no longer exists.

Kentucky Kickback Symbolic of a Corrupt Political System

When it comes to the corrupt Washington Republican establishment are few better examples than Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell. As the Senate Minority Leader the longtime insider who at least to me is a dead ringer for Yertle the Turtle has just enraged conservatives with his latest bit of deal cutting with his counterpart, former Nevada Gaming Commissioner Harry Reid. With the twin manufactured crises of the partial government shutdown seemingly at a stalemate it was good ole Mitch who rode to the rescue to partner with the Democratic party Majority Leader to put down the insurgency led by Canadian born charlatan Ted Cruz and save the day. If there is a bit of an eerie déjà vu feeling it is because McConnell essentially played the same game back in January when the state-corporate media was caterwauling about the “Fiscal Cliff”, the baddest thing to come down the pike since the Y2K computer hoax.

Obamacare was saved and the can was kicked down the road on the debt ceiling until February when the same tired dog and pony show will be trotted out once more and McConnell will reliably be there to come through again. The man is a master at working the working the levers of the arcane rules of that parliament of whores that is the United States Senate to benefit himself and the “Kentucky kickback” is Mitch at his finest. The ink of Barry’s signature had barely dried when it was revealed that McConnell was the beneficiary of a particular piece of greasy pork that was embedded in the debt bill, a 2.1 billion dollar gift to the Bluegrass State in the form of a dam project. Conservatives cried bloody murder and justifiably so over this veteran flim-flam man’s latest act of political chicanery with the denunciations coming from high power lobbying group Freedom Works as well as myriad other luminaries. The slimy little opportunist Senator Marco Rubio, an ambitious little twit from Florida who rode the wave of the backlash against Obama into a sunshine state Senator’s seat has already come out to praise McConnell which speaks volumes. Rubio, after his election never failed to play the race card in promoting himself as the party savior who could deliver the critical Hispanic demographics to the GOP and immediately went neocon, serving up warmonger talking points to ingratiate himself to the three-headed monster of McCain-Graham and Lieberman.

McConnell deserves to be roasted for the Kentucky Kickback, not only is he a hypocritical bastard but is emblematic of the bipartisan cancer of corruption that has metastasized through Washington like some mutant strain of kudzu. The defeat of McConnell in 2014 should supplant all conservative efforts to tilt at the Obamacare windmills because despite the disastrous clusterfuck rollout it is here to stay thanks to the judicial seal of approval affixed to it by the Supreme Court and Chief Justice John Roberts, a career corporate water carrier. Good ole Mitch in defending the Kentucky Kickback admits that doing away with Obamacare is indeed an "impossible dream".  No, the likes of McConnell need to be purged once and for all because let’s face it, the GOP is on life support right now, totally dependent on the whack jobs of the religious right, neo-confederate base that infiltrated and hijacked the libertarian tea party movement with the financial backing of the same big business interests that are now vowing to destroy it. McConnell needs to be more than just defeated, he needs to be made into a symbol of what happens to amoral, corrupt, career gravy train riders, I can think of nothing that would better unite Americans than a diverse and ongoing crusade against the D.C. elites who have sold us all out for pennies on the dollar. While I find Texas Congressman Steve Stockman to be a loud-mouthed oaf whose desire for publicity drives him to pander to the likes of washed up rocker and draft dodging baby daddy Ted Nugent I do have to give credit where it is due. Stockman blasted good ole Mitch with both barrels during an appearance on the Glenn Beck Show:

“Unfortunately … you’re playing on a football team and you got a bunch of guys over in the Senate that are not playing on your team,” Stockman said. “It’s unbelievable.”

“Jesus Christ was sold out for 40 pieces of silver, apparently we were sold out for a $2 billion project,” he continued. “That’s horrible. That was a backroom deal that should never have happened…”

It is nice to see the scales falling from eyes on the right about the true nature of their “leadership”. I would also remind folks that back in the aftermath of the 2008 economic implosion when there was some serious talk about retribution over the degenerate gamblers who blew it all up it was good ole Mitch who showed up on Wall Street to save the day. With the support of McConnell, the insiders in the Obama administration (as well as the incompetence of dear leader himself), Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and a bought and paid for media the day was carried for the banksters. They have been busting all of our backs ever since with their endless subsidizing of the Wall Street casinos through Q-Eternity programs.

Mitch and all of the others like him have to go (to prison preferably but at least out of office) if there is any chance to still avoid the looming collapse that will occur when the bailout bubble bursts or if our buddies in Saudia Arabia and Israel succeed in dragging the U.S. into World War III. Sunday morning McCain needs to be another top target for ouster, the man who never fails to sink to lower levels of political depravity has now hit bottom and set up a drilling rig. The Arizona warmonger has used the Kentucky Kickback deal to keep the spoils system running and the  establishment war against the GOP insurgents to co-opt the fight against the implementation of Obamacare. Taking a break between pimping for wars and mass surveillance good ole John sees a golden opportunity for himself and is maneuvering into position as a defender of the rotten establishment. Wasn’t it just a week or two ago that he was defending Obamacare instead of using it at a lifeline out of his fading relevance? You just have to love the phony conservative flip-floppers, just like former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney whose state health care system served as a blueprint for Obamacare – they were for it before they were against it.

Time for Kentucky to kick back and ditch Mitch next year as a warning, it would be the equivalent of the GOP party bosses waking up one morning with a severed horse’s head in their beds.

The Shutdown Circus

The crisis du jour is of course the threat to shut down the government barring the passage of a continued funding resolution.  This is the new “fiscal cliff” and makes for a nice distraction in the corporate-state media but in reality is nothing more than . With yesterday’s GOP House vote to attach conditions that will effectively be the dagger in the heart for Obamacare, the grotesque excuse for healthcare/insurance reform that primarily benefits the parasitic insurance industry the countdown clock continued ticking. The coming media swarm will be similar to the Syrian dead children propaganda onslaught or any standard sort of a sordid sex scandal or missing white teenage girl story. But it won’t come to pass, at least in any meaningful form because the corrupt vermin in congress will be sure that any shut down doesn’t affect the crusading military or the fascist police state programs that are the real problems, not Barry’s half-assed corporate giveaway program. I am all for a government shutdown because it is way past time to reign in this out of control monster and end the war on civil liberties, nail shut the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington and send a good many career bureaucrats of our bloated government packing and force them to get real jobs rather than suckling at the taxpayer teat but this is phony baloney.

The ongoing Republican jihad against Obamacare simply is good politics for a base that has been fed shovels of bloody red meat straight out of the John Birch Society Blue Book ever since the run up to the 2010 mid-terms and next year is an election year.  The so-called tea party, originally a libertarian movement was hijacked by GOP high-rollers back in 2009, cleansed of the Ron Paul supporters in a purge similar to the night of the long knives and then used as an exoskeleton for a rebranded post-Bush GOP establishment. The political shock troops who were bussed into town hall meetings was comprised largely of the religious right party base, kooks, racists and bluehairs whose sheer gullibility was exploited by a cynical political party. This latest staged attack on Obamacare is just more rabble rousing because quite frankly the law is in the books and it is not going to be defunded or repealed after the penultimate corporate stooge, Chief Justice John Roberts provided the  big business seal of approval with last summer’s SCOTUS verdict to uphold the program. Greedy corporations are already drooling at the prospect of soon jettisoning dependents and employees from those costly employer subsidized insurance programs and into the feeding troughs of the insurance industry.  The GOP is just taking advantage of people whose support can only be ensured by continued lying and demagoguery. The term "socialism" which is most often used to mobilize the masses to agitate against Obamacare is ridiculous nonsense given that there seems to be no such objections to real socialist programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, the military, the police and fire departments, those who build the roads and keep the water running etc. But it sells well with the rubes.

Republican senator Ted Cruz, a slicker than spit on a griddle McCarthyist type is the flavor of the day with the easily duped who are always looking for the man on the white horse.  The Harvard educated former Supreme Court clerk is a dyed in the wool elitist with an ambitious streak who has mined the cultural populism for all that it is worth. Cruz is a freshman senator from Texas whose remember the Alamo style of belligerent rhetoric has earned him a following while he engages in the sort of relentless self-promotion that means only one thing – that he has eyes on assuming the keys to the war machine from Barry in January 2017. His staged 21 hour pseudo filibuster last week where he railed against Obamacare was a publicity stunt but one that endeared him to the always scummy David Gregory to the degree that he was the guest of honor on Press the Meet this morning.  Cruz has that potential star power that the Sabbath morning mental masturbation fests just adore, he may even be able to dislodge McCain and Graham if he continues to parlay his shtick. But Cruz also represents something very special to that certain twenty percent or so of the populace who have an authoritarian bent. As Eric Hoffer wrote in The True Believer:

No matter how vital we think the role of leadership in the rise of a mass movement, there is no doubt that the leader cannot create the conditions which make the rise of a movement possible. He cannot conjure a movement out of the void. There has to be an eagerness to follow and obey, and an intense dissatisfaction with things as they are, before movement and leader can make their appearance.

This element, which is anathema to a functional free society should be shunned and exiled to the fringes because they are as dangerous as hell. Cruz represents that most important thing that those with a predisposition to fascism have lacked – a Führer.  As thoroughly rotten as the regime of the narcissist Obama has been do you really want to see the now fully constructed and integrated police/surveillance state placed in the hands of a demagogic fanatic? It is imperative that those better elements of the so-called tea party join with libertarians and principled progressives (NOT liberals) and lead a movement to restore civil liberties, the rule of law and truly free market principles to this country before conditions allow a calculating lunatic to seize the reins of power. Perhaps a man like Rand Paul could be one to rally around, at least he seems to have a somewhat consistent set of principles and is not afraid to buck the system.
Even a former New York Times employed liberal is showing signs of warming to Paul. In his latest column for New York Magazine entitled “It’s Hard to Hate Rand Paul” Rich writes the following:

What separates Paul from many of his tea-party peers is his meticulous insistence on blaming Republicans and Democrats alike for the outrages he finds in every tentacle of the federal Leviathan. He also takes a moderate rhetorical tone, far removed from that of the other right-wing politicians, Fox News talking heads, and radio bloviators who share his views. “I believe no one has the right to pollute another person’s property, and if it occurs the polluter should be made to pay for cleanup and damages,” he writes in one typical passage. “I am not against all regulation. I am against overzealous regulation.” There’s no “Don’t Tread on Me” overkill in his public preachments. He harbors no impeachment fantasies and not so much as a scintilla of Obama hatred even as he leads the charge against what he sees as the oppressive government nightmare of Obamacare. This has been the case from the start. When Paul began running for the Senate, it was during the red-hot tea-party year of 2009, with its tsunami of raucous town-hall meetings and death threats to the president. Paul gladly accepted Palin’s endorsement, but never succumbed to those swamp fevers. Though the liberal editorial page of the Louisville Courier-Journal was dismissive of his views during his Senate race, it went out of its way to observe that the man himself was “neither an angry nor resentful person” and was instead “thoughtful and witty in an elfin sort of way.”

While Rich’s piece could be said to be the damnation of faint praise given some of the other statements on Paul in reference to a  number of things but that this could be written previously was not that long ago unthinkable and perhaps it offers signs of a breakthrough given the exposure of the NSA Stasi and the permanent warfare state. While I have never really thought that much of Senator Rand Paul, I did admire his father a great deal for his courageous stance during the darkest years of the Bush-Cheney regime - especially when he whipped out a reading list at one of those debates for the benefit of Rudy "Mr. 9/11" Giuliani. I must admit that I am slowly warming to Rand Paul because the next president of this country needs to reign in decades of abuses and begin holding criminals accountable for their actions. Given the rotten array of choices to succeed Obama – Hillary, that loudmouthed fat slob from New Jersey and the Texas Zamboni it would seem that Rand Paul is the cream of the crop. He needs no stronger endorsement than this comment from the virulent neocon propagandist William Kristol, a coward who never served in the military yet whose blood lust to feed American men and women into the meat grinder of combat knows no bounds sneered that Paul was the “spokesman for the Code Pink faction of the Republican Party.”

While Cruz and the House GOP continue to milk this ridiculous shutdown threat for all it’s worth, one yahoo – a back bencher who goes by the name of John Culberson and is of course from Texas invoked the holiest of post-democracy American folklore in exclaiming “I said, like 9/11, ‘Let’s roll!’.  That there are idiots like this guy who are equating their silly little political snit to the event that has justified the ongoing fascist crackdown on civil liberties, NSA mass surveillance and wars without end is a perfect example of the authoritarian element that I spoke of a couple of paragraphs ago. When the whole thing blows up soon and the shutdown is exposed as a confidence game Culberson and his ilk will only become more embittered and hell bent at doing whatever possible to escalate our collapse.

Christ knows that Obama isn’t doing a good enough job of destroying the country without the help of useful idiots.