Pathetic Democrats Steamrolled by Resurgent Republicans

It was a very cold morning indeed on the day of reckoning for the Democratic party and suicide hotlines across the fruited plain likely saw high volume into the wee hours of the night on Tuesday. In an electoral bloodbath as savage as a Rob Zombie slasher flick, the blue jackass party was thoroughly routed in the mid-term elections. It's not as though this was unexpected given the ominous signs of the last several months. The Dems were the recipients of voter wrath towards the miserably failed presidency of Barack Obama that now crawls on it’s mangy belly into the final two years of an eight year sentence to Hell in America. The whipping was thorough, so much so that even the most optimistic of Republicans had to be shocked as the sun came up on Wednesday.

Not only did the GOP regain control of the Senate but gained House seats and won a number of what were to be close Governor’s races. Florida’s reptillan Rick Scott beat back a challenge by flip-flopping party hopper Charlie Crist and union buster Scott Walker – who survived a recall attempt – won reelection in Wisconsin. As expected the turtle-faced wonder Mitch McConnell easily won in Kentucky and now will become Senate Majority Leader replacing the wretched Harry Reid. The ousting of Reid is truly a victory for all of America whether they know it or not as he along with Obama and the weasel queen Nancy Pelosi have become the public face of all things wrong with Democrats. A disastrous end of times for the recent party control of congress was pretty much preordained with her proclamation that "impeachment is off the table" back in 2006. Now the chickens have come home to roost but it would be more apropos if they were vultures in that the party is now a corpse.  

The early Wednesday columns are interesting to say the least.  Pundit Dan Balz weighs in at the 

Washington Post with “An unhappy electorate is toughest on Obama and the Democrats”:

Campaign 2014 surpassed its advance billing, as an electorate that was deeply unhappy with all its leaders handed the biggest rebuke to President Obama and the Democrats by giving Republicans control of the Senate. For Democrats, election night turned out far worse than any of them had feared.

At every turn in almost every state, the Republicans proved superior. They won nearly every competitive contest in states held by Democrats and held on to the states that had looked like they might go to the Democrats. Instead of slipping into the majority, the GOP stormed to power in the Senate.

That wasn’t all. In a year when incumbent governors in both parties were endangered, the Republicans prevailed and the Democrats did not, including in some of the bluest states in the nation.

Exit polls Tuesday portrayed an electorate that, while disgruntled, was not quite as Republican in its leaning as it was four years ago, when a tidal wave of dissatisfaction gave the GOP a historic victory. But if Democrats thought that might save them, their expectations proved groundless.

There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth on the so-called left but little to no real acknowledgement of exactly why voters have come to hate the Democrats. I have a number of progressive friends who either stayed home out of disgust with the Dems to punish Obama or went to the polls and voted for libertarians, Greens and no party affiliate candidates. I really don't expect Democratic party bosses to get it before 2016 election and they will only double-down on pushing a failed product that has fewer buyers now than ever. The preeminent Democratic party shill website Daily Kos ran live blogs on the election that became more grim as the pummeling continued. I found the image on the second to last one amusing:

Conservative website Breitbart's live-blogging of the Dem debacle is good although not quite up there in terms of pure entertainment value with the doomed liberal ones as the night wore on.

Democrats went to bed crying into their pillows last night but that is what happens when they stand for nothing and play with the fire of identity group politics - it is very easy to get burned come election day if those who you pander to don't show up. Could be that blacks, gays, Latinos and union types fully understand that the party only needs them until after the polls close and are tired of being shit on afterwards. An ominous sign for Democrats is that not even Bill Clinton could salvage their hopes when he was trotted out a few weeks ago to stump for candidates. This bodes ill for Hillary.

The Republicans, if they want to retain power and rescue America from doom will have to find some way of reaching out to these demographics for a winning coalition. Despite all that was wrong with him (and it was a lot) Ronald Reagan did and was successful. We will see whether the GOP is content to rest on their laurels after Tuesday's massacre or think beyond the next election cycle. Americans are pissed off and Obama will no longer be around to be a target for their frustrations. McConnell needs to move quickly before primary season starts and gridlock sets in anew although he may find the ambitious, fascist fanatic Ted Cruz to be a more serious thorn in the side than Obama ever was. 

And you have to just love this picture of the glimmer twins from Democratic propaganda organ MSNBC courtesy of the Huffington Post's Twitter feed.  No further comment is necessary on this one. I detest Rachel Maddow who along with Al Franken managed to escape from the wreckage of liberal radio venture Air America to prominent positions in the establishment while those critical of Democrats as well were exiled to obscurity. 

In the past it was at times fashionable to refer to the French as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” for their lack of enthusiasm in supporting America. Now that the magnitude of the colossal ass-beating given to Democrats by the electorate in Tuesday’s mid-terms is sinking in it is time to drag out the term anew.  This afternoon, speaking from the smoking ruins of the Democrat command center, the cheese-eater in chief delivered his surrender address. While it wasn’t exactly General Robert E. Lee giving it up at Appomattox it did have historical significance as a pathological narcissist had to formally acknowledge a crippling political defeat.

According to a story from Reuters entitled “After Republican rout, Obama tells voters: 'I hear you'”:

U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged on Wednesday that "Republicans had a good night" with sweeping election victories in Congress and said he got a message from voters that it was his responsibility to break a Washington gridlock.

Republicans seized control of the U.S. Senate in Tuesday's election and captured their biggest majority in the House of Representatives in more than 60 years. The party also won more than half of the 36 governors' races.

"As president, I have a unique responsibility to try and make this town work," the president, a Democrat, said at a White House news conference. "So, to everyone who voted, I want you to know that I hear you."

The president, whose unpopularity made him unwelcome to many fellow Democrats running for office, plans to meet congressional leaders from both parties at the White House on Friday to take stock of the new political landscape.

On Wednesday, he spoke with Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who is poised to become the Senate's new majority leader, and with House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner.

"I told them both that I look forward to finishing up this Congress' business and then working together for the next two years to advance America's business," Obama said.

What this surely means is that we are all about to get the mother of all ass-fuckings. There will be serious escalations of the war on ISIS, a huge infusion of cash to the military and with the deranged Senator John McCain now wielding a big stick a very dangerous flirtation with nuclear disaster. McCain has to one of the happiest men in America now with Congress firmly under GOP control and we may even see a return to the constitution in that they will be able to declare war. Bibi will be coming soon to address his legions of perverted fanatics and meat-puppets in a joint session railing for the bombers to be sent to Tehran. Bet the mortgage money on that one. 

Now the Democrats are turning on each other like starved rats trapped in a septic tank after getting walloped and trying to shed their own culpability. According to the Washington Post, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s staff is caterwauling about a lack of support from dear leader while David Axelrod went on MSNBC and called for a house cleaning. The circular firing squad is already forming but there is no honest discussion over what it is about the Democrats and Obama that Americans really hate so much. It is a deep state of denial bordering on fugue and there is no easy fixing of this hot mess in time for the next round in 2016 which the talking heads are already masturbating over.

Short of the Republicans getting drunk off of their own success and imploding – see the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks – the Democrats have very serious problems and Hillary Rodham-Clinton is not the cure. The Clintons used to be fresh back in 1992 when they were the sign of a new generation assuming it's position atop the nation’s political establishment and were adored by millions. That however was one hell of a long time -and more scandals than Bubba can shake Mr. Wiggly at - ago.

 Today Bill and Hillary Clinton are symbols of a terminally corrupt, atrophied, insider packed political class who have zero chance at connecting with younger generations. Obama pulled it off  back in 2008 but like everything else that the prince of petulance touched it all turned to shit leaving millions of new voters up for grabs. It was a stunning reversal of fortune and inexplicable why Obama abandoned the young but who needs them when you can field a "team of rivals" that was the darling of the political elite. 

So the Republicans have a chance to own the future if they are able to actually do something positive for Americans and make an attempt to appeal to millennials and non-white demographics. Rand Paul and Jeb Bush are among those already reaching out and the party is going to have to come up with an answer to harvest those disgusted with the Democrats to win in 2016 and beyond. Given the lack of depth on the Democrat's bench as well as a their total moral bankruptcy the party may be on the way to the scrap heap of history but the GOP also has to adapt to survive in a new era. The grumpy and gullible FOX News blue-haired fatty ingrates are dying off and in a couple of more election cycles there will be millions fewer racists to rely on. The old Republicans are as much a dinosaur as the Democrats and a good night of the long knives style purge to clean them out of the party would behoove those who run it. So here we sit in a one-party America - but that is always what it has been over the past several decades, only now it's out in the open,

But today is about whining and finger-pointing and people who were right about the Democrats laughing their jolly assess off and saying “I told you so”. I sure as hell am. I remember the days when I despised the Republicans as though they were Satan incarnate but in the Obama era, after the betrayals, bank bailouts and bellicosity towards Syria and Russia they have now closed ground and are running neck and neck. Fuck the goddamned Democrats, when they are nothing but less strident neocons and Republican lite why not just abandon the whole charade entirely and stop trying to differentiate between the two. No matter how loathsome that the party is at least the Republicans stand for something. The Democrats are just a pack of Judas goats and after Tuesday's baby-seal clubbing should just surrender and fold up their tents. 

And how fitting  is it that a former hog-castrator in Joni Ernst won a Senate seat in Iowa? It is a classic metaphor for how Mr. Obama’s balls have been chopped off once and for all. If it quacks like a lame duck, it is a lame duck.

The Road to Reagangrad: God Bless America and Nixon

Taking the high pitched roar of right-wing caterwauling over Rick Perlstein's outstanding new book “The Invisible Bridge” as a ringing endorsement I ponied up the coin and purchased a copy. Mr. Perlstein has written two previous books on the rise of the modern American right, the Barry Goldwater centered "The Coming Storm" and the classic "Nixonland". I have decided to review the book myself as I read it as well as adding my take on the material. I will be writing on at least one chapter per week and this is the first installment in what will be what I have called "The Road to Reagangrad" series. The book, which has a full title of "The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan" deals with a crucial period in our history as the USA!, USA!, USA! got it's ass kicked in Vietnam leading to the cynical revisionism that still has the psychic wounds of that goddamned disaster ready to pop up at any time - like a bouncing betty whenever it is politically expedient to tug on the trip wire.

The country was torn asunder during the period covered in "The Invisible Bridge" and the penultimate cynic Richard M. Nixon latched onto the return of prisoners of war from Vietnam which he exploited to the hilt. Reagan, who ran through Perlstein's previous books like a snake slithering through the tall grass burst forth into national demigod status by exploiting the same cultural divisions from the 1960's that Nixon did and "The Invisible Bridge" is a fascinating work in which The Gipper began to move into the limelight after Watergate sank Tricky Dick. Perlstein has done a truly great deed with his fine work on this part of our national history that began the moral and intellectual decline that has arguably created every serious problem that we face as a nation today in 2014.

PART ONE: GOD BLESS AMERICA and NIXON

Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people anyway. For years I've regarded his existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad. The Nixon I remembered was absolutely humorless; I couldn't imagine him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote Democratic but couldn't quite reach the lever on the voting machine.

  -Hunter S. Thompson

 The first chapter in "The Invisible Bridge" has Nixon still riding high in the aftermath of his historical 1972 presidential election wipe-out of the hapless Democrat George McGovern. The official title, "Small and Suspicious Circles" focuses on Nixon's disgusting and divisive "Operation Homecoming" in which he sought to accumulate political capital for his agenda by spinning the ass-kicking inflicted upon America in Nam as honorable in his typical divisive fashion. I excerpt the following from Perlstein:

It began twenty days after the president’s speech, at the airport in Hanoi. What the Pentagon dubbed “Operation Homecoming” turned the network news into a nightly patriotic spectacle. Battered camouflage buses conveyed the first sixty men to the planes that would take them to Clark Air Base I the Philippines; a Navy captain named Galand Kramer unfurled a homemade sign out the window, scrawled on a scrap of cloth: GOD BLESS AMERICA & NIXON. The buses emptied; officers shouted out commands in loud American voices to free American men, who marched forth in smart formation, slowing to accommodate comrades on crutches. ON the planes, and on TV, they kissed nurses, smoked too many American cigarettes, circulated news magazines with their wives and children on the cover, and drank a pasty white nutrient shake whose taste they didn’t mind, a newsman explained, because it was the first cold drink some of them had had in eight years. On one of the three plances they passed a wriggling puppy from lap to lap. “He was a Communist dog,” explained the Navy commander who smuggled him to freedom in his flight bag, “but not anymore!”

AND

In days to come cameras lingered on cafeteria trays laden with strawberry pie, steak, corn on the cob, Cornish game hens, ice cream, and eggs. (“Beautiful!”) sighed a man in a hospital gown on TV to a fry cook whipping up eggs.”

AND

The next stop was Travis Air Force Base in California, where for twelve long years the flag-draped coffins had come home. Now it was the setting for Times Square 1945 images: wives leaping into husbands’ arms; teenagers unabashedly knocking daddies off their feet; seven-year-olds bringing up the rear, sheepish, shuffling – they had never met their fathers before. From there the men shipped out to service hospitals around the country, especially prepared for their return with color TVs and bright yellow bedspreads to mask the metallic hospital tone; once more words like “God-God-God” and “duty-duty-duty” and “honor-honor-honor” and “country-country-country” echoed across airport tarmacs.

The POW’s for the most part eagerly performed in Nixon’s great dog and pony show to spin the loss of the war into a glorious and righteous cause. This would later morph into the commonplace “they didn’t let us win” whining and the right-wingers now forty years running crusade to destroy the free press. The loss in Vietnam was largely blamed on civilians, hippies, liberals and the media rather than to just accept the fact that it was an illegal war, based on lies and only benefitted the blood barters in the defense industry and the shameless fraud politicians like Nixon, Reagan and their ilk who took a shit on the war dead outside of their precious pilots who shot down and taken prisoner after their war crimes of bombing innocent women and children. Americans for the most part lined up to swallow the bullshit biscuits back then and they still do so today with the endless wars of the star-spangled Homeland of Oceania USA.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s classic novel Slaughterhouse Five the author uses the books of a fictional science fiction writer named Kilgore Trout to insert social commentary into his overall story. One of ‘Trout’s’ tales addressed the strange contradictions of a society that will accept with open arms one who kills civilians with state sanction during wartime while ostracizing one for silly, superficial reasons:

This, too, was the title of a book by Trout, The Gutless Wonder. It was about a robot who had bad breath, who became popular after his halitosis was cured. But what made the story remarkable, since it was written in 1932, was that it predicted the widespread use of burning jellied gasoline on human beings. It was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had no conscience, and no circuits which would allow them to imagine what was happening to the people on the ground.

Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. And then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race.

“The Gutless Wonder” spoke to the hollowing out of America’s souls by the trivializing, politicizing and packaging war as a product. Nixon was a master at this and Operation Homecoming was a harbinger of all of the dishonesty of 2014 with the regime of Barack Obama who becomes more Nixionian by the day selling horseshit to justify recommitting U.S. military forces to Iraq and pushing ever closer for a ruinous war with Russia. Not even Nixon was that crazy and despite his bellicose rhetoric I don’t believe that Ronald Reagan believed in a winnable nuclear war with Russia as Obama and his deranged State Department apparently does. And neither Nixon nor Reagan actually backed actual neo-Nazi worshippers of Hitler (although Nixon aide G. Gordon Liddy copped to being one in his autobiography “Will”) as Obama has done in Ukraine. Notable is that Fox News’ Roger Ailes cut his teeth in the business of selling the big lie under Nixon. But not all Americans bought the “Operation Homecoming” hogwash, at that time we actually had a functional national media. Perlstein cites columnist Pete Hammil who:

On Valentine’s Day in the liberal New York Post, pointed out that the vast majority of the prisoners were bomber pilots, and thus were “prisoners because they had committed unlawful acts” – killing civilians in an undeclared war. He compared waiting for the POWs to come home to his “waiting for a guy up at Sing Sing one time, who had done hard time for armed robbery”

Perlstein also writes of the growing backlash against Nixon’s phony Vietnam revisionist carnival of perversion to put a glorious sheen on Vietnam:

But in the New York Times, columnists like Tom Wicker rued “the warped sense of priorities on the home front” that allotted so much more attention to “these relatively few POW’s than the 50,000 dead boys who came home in body bags, some of them with smuggled heroin obscenely concealed in their mangled fleas,” and “for whom the only bracelet is a band of needle marks.” He noted that the administration had frozen funding for treatment of drug-addicted veterans and in its fiscal 1974 budget proposed to arbitrarily limit the allowable number of patients in veterans hospitals. Meanwhile the Times editorialized that in the “succession of hand salutes, stiffly prepared statements, medical bulletins, and canned handouts concerning the joys of steak and ice cream” of Operation Homecoming, the “hard-won” lessons of Vietnam are in danger of being lost.” Which, on the merits was sound editorial judgment. For that had been Richard Nixon’s intention for the POW issue from the start.

The typical grifters and profiteers were also cashing in by selling POW bracelets and other kitsch to the masses of asses. They were the forebears of the bottom-feeding parasites who were hawking the Bush era decks of playing cards with 52 members of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the George W. Bush action dolls and the media war glorification movies and television shows like the dangerous and insipid Fox torture infomercial “24” and later Showtime’s ludicrous “Homeland”. I again excerpt from the book:

Matchbooks, lapel pins, billboards, T-shirts and bumper stickers (“POWs NEVER HAVE A NICE DAY!) proliferated; fighter jets made thunderous football stadium fly-bys; full-page ads blossomed in every newspaper, urging Hanoi to have a heart and release the prisoners for the sake of the children.

The business of America after all is war and that remains a constant especially in these sick and forlorn times. But more were beginning to smell a rat with Nixon’s big con per Perlstein:

On February 21 the newspaper of record, noting how the POW’s praise for Richard Nixon sounded suspiciously close to the administration’s own catchphrases, reported that the “military’s repatriation effort was carefully programmed and controlled” by a team of nearly eighty military public relations men. The Washington Post’s ombudsman, Robert C. Maynard, echoed the argument the next morning in an essay headlined “Return of the Prisoners: Script by the Military.” “Not surprisingly, “ he concluded, we received a number of paeans to ‘honorable peace’ and could only wonder how that phrase happened to be among the first to pop out o fthe mouths of men in captivity for such long periods of time.” He also said, “They return to a society more surely programmed in ‘them-against-us’ terms than the one they left.”

One of the returning POW’s honored by Nixon was a certain admiral’s son whose name conjures up every rotten thing that America has come to stand for as we have become a warmongering bully abroad, a police state at home and have transformed from a democracy into a plutocracy. John McCain had it both ways - garnering favorable treatment at the Hanoi Hilton by making propaganda videos for the commies and then returning to participate in Nixon’s own dishonest propaganda operation at home. Today McCain is one of the lingering toxic byproducts of U.S. involvement in Vietnam as well as the failure to reach that necessary national reconciling of our collective sins, choosing instead to fall under the siren song of the snakeoil salesman Ronald Reagan.

 The first chapter of “The Invisible Bridge” closes with an orgy of adulation for the POW’s and their right-wing supporters at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The event, packed with celebrities such as actors Lorne Greene of the television horse opera Bonanza and one Marion Morrison (more recognizable by his stage name John Wayne) and hosted by Reagan himself who as the Governor of California would offer up a glimpse of the demarcation from reality that took place in the 1980’s once Reagan had ascended to the presidency. Perlstein writes:

Lorne Greene gestured for silence. The guests of honor marched forth in grand procession, two by two with their consorts, as the band struck up the anthem “Stout-Hearted Men”: “Start me with men who are stout- hearted men, and soon I’ll give you ten thousand more”.

The men held longest in Hanoi finally took the stage. “Let it loose!” Greene commanded. The crowd rose as one. Their ovation lasted eight minutes.

The evening’s host took to the podium. Governor Regan’s final peroration was addressed to the men: “You gave America back its soul. God bless a country that can produce men like you.”

Then Reagan hit the road to peddle the potent elixir of American exceptionalism that allowed him to change the trajectory of the country and which to this day threatens to end it once and for all.

 Next: The Road to Reagangrad: Oatmeal Meat

Republicans Circle Wagons to Defend Torture

Most defenders of  torture, which is prohibited under the Geneva Conventions are Republicans. This is sad as well as indicative of a deep, self-destructive streak that is going to continue to cost them elections at the national level. The time has never been more right for a serious alternative to to the ongoing wars, mass-surveillance, trampling of the Constitution and redistributing wealth into the military-security industrial complex. This is why so many are terrified of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's increasing popularity within the party.  He at least seems to represent a clean break from this ugly period in our nation's history and a return to the values that made this country great. Such values don't include torture - that is what Nazis, Communists and other despots do, we are Americans and actually aspire to higher standards.

On Sunday morning television in America, in particular on the so-called "news" shows, you get a good glimpse at the thorough rottenness of the political class. These are people who have squandered all of that which was earned with the blood of our forebears as they defeated fascism and communism for the sake of scoring cheap political points and covering their own asses. Yesterday morning was no different with numerous apple pie authoritarians trotted out to discuss the CIA surveillance of the Senate Intelligence committee overseeing the torture report. The 'debate' was however hijacked to mount a defense of torture itself. Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss, appearing on the CBS show "Face the Nation" with Bob Schieffer called the CIA's torture report "a mistake" and vowed to produce a "minority report" of his own defending the practice.

It is interesting terminology given that in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, with the imposition of mass surveillance that our country is increasingly resembling the dystopia depicted in the 2002 Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report" and the era of "Pre-Crime".  It is also notable that during the Iran-Contra scandal that a certain Republican named Richard B. Cheney also put together a "minority report" defending the actions of cowboys like Lt. Col. Oliver North that were conducted behind the back of President Ronald Reagan and could have gotten him impeached.

Saxby Chambliss by the way is the man who stooped to new political lows when he ran for Senate against Democrat Max Cleeland - a man who lost three limbs in Vietnam - impugning his patriotism and comparing him to Osama bin Laden. Chambliss by the way spent the time during the Vietnam war cooling his heels stateside courtesy of a series of draft deferments - just like Cheney did. None other than longtime Republican go-to guy, Senator John McCain has denounced the ads as “worse than disgraceful. It's reprehensible". Chambliss proclaimed that torture was essential in the capture of bin Laden (a story that has more holes than Swiss cheese) which was reinforced in the CIA-friendly, slick Hollywood produced infomercial for torture "Zero Dark Thirty". But alas that is a movie, not reality.

Facing shifting demographics as well as a growing trend of young voters becoming more attracted to libertarian ideas, such as those expressed by Senator Paul (at least when he isn't flip-flopping for political expedience) should cause the GOP to rethink getting behind guys like Chambliss and other dinosaurs. It is time to look towards the future and unless they stop defending practices that are antithetical to American values they will be more responsible than any for that looming disaster of a Hillary Clinton presidency.

The Executive Order Hypocrisy of John Boehner

Finally free from having to constantly defend himself from an overthrow by the back-stabbing little guttersnipe Eric Cantor, House Speaker John Boehner is cranking up the election year outrage. Boehner is filing a lawsuit against President Barack Obama's use of executive orders to bypass a gaggle of paid off obstructionists hellbent at wrecking America. Braying about Obama's circumventing of Congress in issuing the orders to deliberately flout the quaint and antiquated system of checks and balances that is pretty much extinct in the corrupt, lawyered-up and spied upon modern political system is pure hypocrisy on Boehner's part. But when it comes to the day to day operations within the brothel that is housed within the US Capitol building hypocrisy is the coin of the realm.

Boehner's publicity stunt is par for the course - he will inevitably call a press conference and may even break down into one of those fake crying jags that he was famous for prior to his ascension to Speaker - but his ridiculous lawsuit is going nowhere. The issuance of executive orders has always been used and abused by US Presidents although it is particularly dangerous in the era of the Unitary Executive which bestows the powers of a king upon the sitting president. Further exposing Boeher's cynicism and his grandstanding in rolling out this dog and pony show prior to the mid-terms in November is that Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush issued nearly three hundred such orders and I don't seem to recall any objection from the luminous, orange-tinted wino from Ohio. In fact Mr. Boehner himself personally wrote to President Bush requesting an executive order to be issued to exempt the historic steamboat Delta Queen from a certain maritime law so the suit against Obama is more of the same cheap political horseshit.

In fact the hallowed Ronald Reagan, who has become to Republicans what Vladimir Lenin once was to the communists in Russia issued 381 such orders (more than Bush or Obama) with the most dangerous being Executive Order 12333. Reagan, who in signing off on what is referred to by insiders as "twelve-triple-three" could even be tabbed as the father of the modern surveillance state instead of the father of the country that Boehner and the rest of his sleazy criminal syndicate party try to sell him to voters as being. According to a recent McClatchy story, Reagan's 12333 is the basis for all of the ongoing unconstitutional NSA mass warrentless surveillance and data-mining that has been ongoing and exposed by patriotic whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The McClatchy story on 12333 is entitled "Most of NSA's data collection authorized by order Ronald Reagan issued"and I excerpt the following from this story:

The National Security Agency's collection of information on Americans' cellphone and Internet usage reaches far beyond the two programs that have received public attention in recent months, to a presidential order that is older than the Internet itself.

Approved by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, Executive Order 12333 (referred to as "twelve-triple-three") still governs most of what the NSA does. It is a sweeping mandate that outlines the duties and foreign intelligence collection for the nation's 17 intelligence agencies. It is not governed by Congress, and critics say it has little privacy protection and many loopholes. What changes have been made to it have come through guidelines set by the attorney general or other documents.

The result is a web of intelligence law so complicated that it stymies even those tasked with interpreting it. As one former executive official said, "It's complicated stuff."

Confusing though it may be, the order remains the primary authority under which the country's intelligence agencies conduct the majority of their operations.

Neither the office of Attorney General Eric Holder nor that of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper would comment about 12333.

AND

The impact of 12333 is enormous -- and largely unknown. Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden suggest that less than half of the metadata the NSA has collected has been acquired under provisions of the USA Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the two laws that have received the most attention for permitting NSA programs.

Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA director, has ratified that impression, saying that the majority of NSA data is collected "solely pursuant to the authorities provided by Executive Order 12333."

Boehner never really challenges the NSA Stasi does he? That is other than the standard lip service that is paid by the pack of thieves, liars, grifters, obstructionists and de-facto lobbyists when it comes to putting an end to bulk collection of metadata (a limited hangout) but not real reform or accountability. He also is one of the many rats in high places who has referred to Snowden as a "traitor" for his act of great service to the American people. Just like the slime-coated Darrell Issa with his abuse of taxpayer funds to conduct his inquisitions into Benghazi and the IRS allegedly targeting right-wing political front groups abusing non-profit status Boehner is all about his own political survival. That is because his survival means a permanent tax payer funded occupation of his congressional seat where he can suckle at the teat of the very big government that he decries for the purpose of his own self-enrichment and aggrandizement. Neither Boehner nor Issa will do one damned thing about the rogue activities of the NSA nor address the executive order that their idol Reagan imposed upon the American people that has led us to the brink of turnkey totalitarianism. No, it is all about sticking it to the BLACK guy in the WHITE House and nothing fires up the rabble in an off year election than some good-old fashioned race baiting, we saw it in 2010 and will see it again in 2014.

In a functional democratic system as was set out by the Founding Fathers the suing an out of control Executive Branch in order to maintain that bygone system of checks and balances would be both right and admirable, too bad that we don't live in one and it is largely due to the corruption and moral bankruptcy of reprobates like John Boehner and his ilk.

Establishment Shaken as Eric Cantor Gets His Ass Handed to Him in Primary

Much as most of those who pay attention to domestic politics I was shocked to see House Majority Leader Eric Ivan Cantor go down in flames last night in his Virginia primary. Being that he is such a slimy son of a bitch I pretty much thought that he was immune. Unfortunately for Cantor so did he because according to accounts he didn’t bother with much campaigning, instead unleashing an onslaught of negative advertising against unheralded challenger David Brat. While the national circus that is the political paparazzi, the protectorate that surrounds the corrupt DC elite like an impenetrable force field and the Republican party sift through the rubble it is somewhat dishonest to refer to Brat, an economics professor as simply a so-called “Tea Party” challenger rather than a man who doesn’t fit into such lazily defined media categorizations and had a message that resonated beyond the GOP party base.

Despite the ongoing bogus political narrative in this once great country that only serves that very small percentage who  are able to buy clout that are classically described by the late, great Hunter S. Thompson as only standing for "the systematic destruction of everything this country claims to stand for, except the rights for the rich to put saddles on the backs of the poor and use public funds to build jails for anybody who complained about it". Cantor was one of them and watching him slowly circle the drain after voters in Virginia's Seventh Congressional District actually pulled the chain has to have them if not seeing the writing on the wall, at least understanding that the rotten system that they suckle off of will require more work from them going forward to keep their tickets punched on the gravy train.

While the emergent meme as of this evening is that it was Cantor's lack of racist fervor in keeping illegal aliens out of the country that led to his demise. This is pretty much total horseshit because the "undocumented immigrants" to use the politically correct term are a precious source of cheap labor for greedy corporate bosses who keep wages down. I excerpt the following from the Washington Post story  “Why Cantor’s loss is especially bad news for big business”:

The country's most powerful business lobbying groups already knew they had a problem with the GOP when Tea Party lawmakers nearly forced the country into a massive default of its debt last year.

But with Eric Cantor's shocking defeat Tuesday night, things for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable just got a whole lot worse.

For one, they lost a major defender of their favored policies--from the beneficial tax treatment of private equity income to immigration reforms favored by the country's biggest tech companies. But even worse for their prospects, Cantor lost to a challenger who specifically attacked him for his close ties to business -- going so far as to single out the BRT and the Chamber.

"The central theme of Brat’s campaign is that Cantor is beholden to business — specifically the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable," wrote Politico in April.

“If you’re in big business, Eric’s been very good to you, and he gets a lot of donations because of that, right?” Brat said at a local meeting of Republicans in Virginia, according to Politico. “Very powerful. Very good at fundraising because he favors big business. But when you’re favoring artificially big business, someone’s paying the tab for that. Someone’s paying the price for that, and guess who that is? You.”

It's true that Cantor enjoyed a strong relationship with business, especially with Wall Street. The industry that gave him the most campaign contributions was the securities and investment sector. Individuals from the private equity firm Blackstone were his biggest financial supporters. Cantor went to bat for the industry repeatedly over politically unpopular issues, including the taxation of income at private equity firms at the lower capital gains rate.

Liberals and progressives should take heed but they too are crying in their beer in the aftermath of the shocking defeat of Cantor in that their faux populism has been taken from them and used to far greater effect than they are ever able to muster. The defense of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continue to this day despite the fact that both of them are Wall Street puppets but the Democratic party shills and operatives are already crawling out to defend their corrupt party and the meager crumbs that the post-Reagan era Democrats throw in the direction of the poor. There is not one goddamned thing that the Democrats will do to take on big business, particularly financial parasites who fund them just as they do their Republican counterparts.  The defeat of Cantor by an unknown who nobody saw coming who just happened to be selling the right message at the right time doesn’t bode well for the establishment and that is the establishment of either criminal party.

But there is an even bigger loser within the entrenched special interests who were dealt a blow by Brat's win and that is the Israel lobby. Eric Ivan Cantor has long been one of the top Congressional lackeys of extremist Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his loss has to sting Bibi badly. According to a piece by Max Blumenthal entitled "The Bibi Connection":

While on a trip to New York days after the Republican victory, Netanyahu authorized another 1,000 more settlement units in East Jerusalem, a direct rebuke of Obama. That same day, Netanyahu held a meeting with the incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, and a leader of the right-wing in the House Republican Conference. Cantor’s office produced a summary of the meeting for the media that contained the remarkably crude statement: Cantor promised Netanyahu that “the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the [Obama] Administration and what has been, up until this point, one party rule in Washington.”

The neocon invested editorial department at the Washington Post is particularly restive with such warmongering propagandists as Jennifer Rubin bemoaning the fall of the House of Eric in one of her three screeds today entitled "Cantor, foreign policy and the GOP":

Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution, a longtime observer of Cantor, tells Right Turn: “Viewed strictly from the perspective of American foreign and defense policy, this is a major blow for the party and for the country. Cantor had been a very strong and articulate voice for a Reaganite foreign policy.” He wonders if “the success of ‘conservative populism’ has as one of its (presumably unintended) side effects the defeat of Republican internationalism.”

[That would be the same Robert Kagan who is married to Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland, chief architect of the coup d'etat and US backing of neo-Nazis in Ukraine]

Nevertheless, Cantor’s defeat did not turn on foreign policy, and the party as a whole seems to be abandoning its flirtation with isolationism. Graham, after all, is principally known as a foreign policy hawk, and he won going away. Likewise, perhaps the tea party’s most beloved figure, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has become a fierce defender of U.S. power and the chief critic of the president’s lead-from-behind philosophy. He’s pushed the party to stand up to Vladimir Putin and to pursue Iran sanctions.

[The deranged Ted Cruz can expect to soon be swimming in a reservoir of Sheldon Adelson's dirty money along with...]

 Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in both 2012 and in the pre-2016 election jostling, has argued in favor of rebuilding our military, standing by Israel and remaining vigilant in the war against jihadist terror.

Despite the loss of Cantor the Israel lobby has an extremely deep bench and there is no shortage of sleazy politicians eager to whore themselves out to right-wing Israeli interests while shitting all over the United States of America which they theoretically have taken an oath of office to serve.

But no matter who steps up to fill his shoes as one of America's preeminent political scum buckets the unexpected takedown of Cantor should provide a clear warning shot to a rancid establishment that the peasants are finally getting ready to start rolling out the guillotines.

Neocons Prepare to Crucify Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl

The strange serendipity that both Benghazi and Bergdahl each have eight letters isn't the only similarity between the two, with the negotiated release of Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in return for five Taliban members held in the pride of America, our Guantanamo Bay torture camp the sleazy political games are escalating faster than the covert US backed slaughter in East Ukraine. Despite dozens of legitimate areas of attack against Barack Obama that could bring them their coveted post-November election impeachment tribunal the Republicans and the neocons that infest their criminal party are honing in on Sgt. Bergdahl like a pack of braying, rabid wolves chasing down a wounded rabbit and they are going after his family too. Even the mob has a code of honor but when it comes to political jockeying for control over the cash spigots of the spoils system and the keys to the war machine there is no quarter to be given.

With the incoming fire from the chickenhawks, seeing in addition to the politics of the vilification of Bergdahl an opportunity to turn him into a symbol of the failure of their bloody clusterfuck wars of choice in Iraq but especially in Afghanistan "the good war" for his anti-military views as espoused in correspondence with his family prior to his disappearance and capture. Probably a good place to start to put together Sgt. Bergdahl's story - do not even waste time with the state-corporate media - would be in the Rolling Stone magazine article by the late journalist Michael Hastings who perished in that mysterious fiery vehicle incident last year. The Rolling Stone magazine story, entitled "America's Last Prisoner of War" is an insightful and nuanced piece on the confused young soldier, one that you won't find in the feeding frenzy ongoing since his release. It is an extremely long article but I want to excerpt what I feel are a few critical pieces that offer needed context in light of the neocon smear campaign:

After 16 weeks of training, Bowe graduated from infantry school in Fort Benning, Georgia, in the fall of 2008. While others in his training unit – A Company 2-58 – used their weekend passes to hit up strip clubs, Bowe hung out at Barnes & Noble and read books. He was already an expert shot from his days firing his .22 in the mountains of Idaho. When his parents attended the graduation, the drill sergeant told them, "Bowe was good to go when he got here." After completing the course, Bowe was assigned to the 25th Infantry Division in Fort Richardson, Alaska, not far from Anchorage. He arrived in October 2008.

At first, according to soldiers in his unit, Bowe seemed to embrace Army life. "He showed up, looked like a normal Joe," says former Specialist Jason Fry, who is now studying for a master's in theology. "When he first got to the unit, he was the leadership's pet. He read the Ranger Handbook like no other. Some people resented him for it." Bowe kept to himself, doing physical training on his own. "He never hung out with anyone, always in the background, never wanted to be in front of anything," says Fry. He surrounded himself with piles of books, including Three Cups of Tea, about a humanitarian crusade to educate girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as instructions on Zen meditation and an introductory ethics handbook with writings from Aristotle, Augustine, Kant and Hume.

After a month in Alaska, Bowe and his unit embarked for the National Training Center in Southern California to prepare for war. The NTC is a massive military installation in the Mojave Desert where real life combat situations are simulated under the most difficult conditions, often in extreme heat. It was a brutal experience for the platoon, and Bowe's unit struggled from the beginning. "The first week is incredibly stressful," a second lieutenant in the unit, Stephen Fancey, wrote on his blog. "I get overworked to the point where I start to get sick with a fever."

In his blog posts, which have since been removed from the Web, Fancey detailed a unit that seemed to have almost no discipline. The company's first sergeant, Fancey wrote, "calls the Captain a quitter, then calls me a quitter. Picture a 2nd LT screaming at a 1SG, who is screaming back in broken Puerto-Rican-fied English, and about 5 Privates sitting quietly in terror." As the combat simulations continued, the sergeant's behavior grew even more disturbing. He refused to go to the bathroom, preferring to pee into a Gatorade bottle by his bed, and he obsessed over his desire for a Diet Coke. After one botched operation, according to Fancey's blog, the first sergeant just gave up. "I need a Coca-Cola," he said. Then, upset at how screwed up the operation had become, he tore off his body armor and stormed off to his tent, screaming, "Fuck 'dis 'chit!"

The neocons are pushing hard in dragging out members of Bergdahl's unit to attack him as a deserter and blame him for the loss of life of several soldiers who were allegedly killed looking for him in the days after his disappearance - from a New York Times story "Bowe Bergdahl’s Vanishing Before Capture Angered His Unit" -  the following is of interest:

The furious search for Sergeant Bergdahl, his critics say, led to the deaths of at least two soldiers and possibly six others in the area. Pentagon officials say those charges are unsubstantiated and are not supported by a review of a database of casualties in the Afghan war.

“Yes, I’m angry,” Joshua Cornelison, a former medic in Sergeant Bergdahl’s platoon, said in an interview on Monday arranged by Republican strategists. “Everything that we did in those days was to advance the search for Bergdahl. If we were doing some mission and there was a reliable report that Bergdahl was somewhere, our orders were that we were to quit that mission and follow that report.”

And

Platoon members said Sergeant Bergdahl, of Hailey, Idaho, was known as bookish and filled with romantic notions that some found odd.

“He wouldn’t drink beer or eat barbecue and hang out with the other 20-year-olds,” Cody Full, another member of Sergeant Bergdahl’s platoon, said in an interview on Monday also arranged by Republican strategists. “He was always in his bunk. He ordered Rosetta Stone for all the languages there, learning Dari and Arabic and Pashto.”

[as if reading, learning the local culture and not drinking beer and eating BBQ with a bunch of fuckups is a sin]

And

The anger toward Sergeant Bergdahl increased exponentially after Sept. 4, when they learned that two members of Third Platoon, which routinely went on tandem missions with Second Platoon and who they believed were also searching for Sergeant Bergdahl, had been killed in an ambush. Pfc. Matthew Martinek and Lt. Darryn Andrews, both of them friends of Mr. Cornelison, died in the ambush. A Defense Department official said it was unclear whether the two men were killed directly because of the search for Sergeant Bergdahl.

 [It is a war zone and people do get killed in war zones, but it is always nice to have a scapegoat]

The interesting thing about the NYT piece is the mention that Bergdahl's fellow solders were being sought out and prepped for the media in sessions "arranged by Republican strategists" so the politicizing is there and per Hastings' Rolling Stone piece has always been there - I excerpt the following:

"The Hill is giving State and the White House shit," says one senior administration source. "The political consequences­ are being used as leverage in the policy debate." According to White House sources, Marc Grossman, who replaced Richard Holbrooke as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was given a direct warning by the president's opponents in Congress about trading Bowe for five Taliban prisoners during an election year. "They keep telling me it's going to be Obama's Willie Horton moment," Grossman warned the White House. The threat was as ugly as it was clear: The president's political enemies were prepared to use the release of violent prisoners to paint Obama as a Dukakis-­like appeaser, just as Republicans did to the former Massachusetts governor during the 1988 campaign. In response, a White House official advised Grossman that he should ignore the politics of the swap and concentrate solely on the policy.

"Frankly, we don't give a shit why he left," says one White House official. "He's an American soldier. We want to bring him home."

The tensions came to a boil in January, when administration officials went to Capitol Hill to brief a handful of senators on the possibility of a prisoner exchange. The meeting, which excluded staffers, took place in a new secure conference room in the Capitol visitor center. According to sources in the briefing, the discussion sparked a sharp exchange between Senators John McCain and John Kerry, both of whom were decorated for their service in Vietnam. McCain, who endured almost six years of captivity as a prisoner of war, threw a fit at the prospect of releasing five Taliban detainees.

"They're the five biggest murderers in world history!" McCain fumed.

Kerry, who supported the transfer, thought that was going a bit far. "John," he said, "the five biggest murderers in the world?"

McCain was furious at the rebuke. "They killed Americans!" he responded. "I suppose Senator Kerry is OK with that?"

McCain reluctantly came around on the prisoner exchange, according to those present at the meeting, but he has continued to speak out against negotiating with the Taliban. Opposition has also come from Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Republican from Georgia who won election with a vicious smear campaign against former Sen. Max Cleland, a decorated Vietnam veteran who lost three limbs in the war. Chambliss, according to Bowe's father, has insisted that America shouldn't make a prisoner trade for a "deserter."

Some top-level officials within the administration, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are very wary about making a swap for Bowe. "Panetta and Hillary don't give a shit about getting him home," says one senior U.S. official involved in the negotiations. "They want to be able to say they COINed their way out of Afghanistan, or whatever, so it doesn't look like they are cutting and running." (Both Clinton and Panetta, by law, would have to sign off on any exchange.) As with Vietnam, many in the military are resisting any attempt to end the war. "Even after Robert Bales" – the Army staff sergeant charged with massacring 17 Afghan civilians in March – "they are making the argument that the war is turning a corner," says this official. "They don't realize that the mission is changing. We don't need all those U.S. soldiers there anymore."

Given the political aspects of the Bergdahl situation it is no wonder that the FBI was investigating Hastings over the Rolling Stone story - as is evident by this story that was published on website VICE entitled  "Why Was the FBI Investigating Michael Hastings’ Reporting on Bowe Bergdahl?" that I recommend reading. There is far more to this savage neocon led mission to take out Bergdahl with extreme prejudice than meets the eye, outside of the election year political horseshit to turn him into "Willie Horton" - Hastings' reference to the 2016 Democratic party nominee Hillary Clinton and her own politically motivated reasons for not wanting Bergdahl released is a testament as to her true character or lack thereof. McCain's crazed ranting that the Taliban members were "the five biggest murderers in world history!" is just McCain being McCain but he is out front leading the charge of the sleaze brigade against Sergeant Bergdahl so his own motivations are telling.

The story will continue to develop rapidly as the corrupt media continues to seek out family members of those who were allegedly killed in the search for Sgt. Bergdahl to exploit their grieving for their cheap ratings and currying of political favors. Even the military, that most overvalued institution in our collapsing empire is caving to the politics and has now announced that they are going to investigate Bergdahl which shows that said institution whose only purpose is in killing people should not be revered as the God which it is by the fools in this star spangled lemming colony.

There will assuredly be more to come but it is important to get the true backgrond, Hastings' piece is a MUST READ.

Republican Swine Blast Freeing of Sgt. Bergdahl

You have to give the Republicans one thing in that they are consistently authority worshipping, anti-American, whiny, torture loving, warmongering media whores who no matter what the issue always have their eyes on whipping up the rabble for their next election. Take the just completed swap by the Obama regime of five of the occupants of the American concentration camp at Club Gitmo for captured US serviceman Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The outrage was as fake as it was predictable and just in time for the Sunday morning propaganda shows too. Even the strangely out of the limelight uber-fascist, right-wing talk radio bound Congressman Mike Rogers slithered out from whatever rock that he has been hiding under to appear on CNN's State of the Union with the insipid blathering sow Candy Crowley this morning.

The reemergence of Rogers was inevitable given the all-in National Security State establishment smearing of the patriotic whistleblower Edward Snowden after his NBC interview earlier this week - much of which was left on the cutting room floor including his comments on 9/11 being preventable - and the outgoing House Intelligence Committee boss is a fountain of lies and innuendo on that particular topic. I excerpt the following from the CNN rush transcript of today's appearance with Crowley:

REP. MIKE ROGERS (R-MI), CHAIR, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Well, I mean, obviously, we should be happy for the family. They have gotten their loved one back. That's very, very important.

 The methodology and what we used is very troublesome. Remember, al Qaeda in the Maghreb...

 CROWLEY: And by the methodology, you mean...

 ROGERS: Negotiating with terrorists.

 CROWLEY: OK.

 ROGERS: Remember, this was an individual who was held by a terrorist group in another country, Pakistan. We know that to be true.

Across Northern Africa, the number one way that al Qaeda raises money is by ransom, kidnapping and ransom. We have now set a price. So we have a changing footprint in Afghanistan, which would put our soldiers at risk for this notion that, if I can get one, I can get five Taliban released.

And the problem is, the way we're changing our footprint means we get less intelligence. And that's already starting to happen. And we will get more degradation of the ability to collect intelligence to even stop force protection efforts for our soldiers. That's why so many of us are so concerned about what really is a break with U.S. policy of not negotiating with terrorists.

AND

[following video from Susan Rice)

CROWLEY: Congressman, she said, look, the DOD, the Pentagon went to the Justice Department, asked them if it was OK given the laws surrounding who needs to be consulted about the release of these Gitmo prisoners and the Justice Department said, fine.

ROGERS: Well, there a reason that Congress is involved by law, by statute, by constitutional authority in these decisions prior to the notification has to be -- to keep Congress currently informed, number one. And the reason is you don't want to talk to each other about something as sensitive as this. That's why Congress is involved in these issues. And it happens frequently on some very sensitive issues.

Everything from the Osama bin Laden raid which was briefed to those members of us with the clearances literally months and months in advance and followed up to the day of the raid. So some notion that this was so secretive and so sensitive that it couldn't happen is just wrong.

And you know, she said she notified. I'm mystified by that. They didn't notify Congress appropriately and here is why. Other places that we have let the Gitmo prisoners go to these particular countries, by the way, which we paid them to take them, has been a disaster. It hasn't worked, which is one of the things that last year we brought up to them, it's not working.

So, if we're ever going to continue this, you need to change it. Well, they didn't like the advice and counsel they got from Congress and apparently decided they were going to go their own direction. I always think that's dangerous, just like the secret negotiations with Iran has huge consequences with our allies, this is going to cost huge consequences as well.

And I just don't understand why you wouldn't engage with people who have done this for a long time and bring, I think, good advice and counsel could have alleviated some of the problems that they're going to get into in the next days and months ahead, including the risk to our U.S. soldier.

Just the standard issue horseshit and lip-service to putting American servicemen and women at danger when the REAL thing that puts them in peril are the wars that Rogers and his fellow swine in Congress continue to bring home the bacon for their backers who profit enormously off of death. In any sane country guys like Mike Rogers would not only be barred from holding public office but mocked as the corrupt stooges of the blood barters and military contractors that they truly are. Unfortunately we don’t live in one. The other loudmouths bitching about "dealing with terrorists" are legion and more will be jumping on the bandwagon when Monday's RNC talking points email hits their inboxes. The hypocrites will spend days inveighing against the "Kenyan" in the White House over this one.  

But the biggest fraud in America when it comes to military heroism, Senator John McCain oozed his typical angry and deranged character traits in denouncing Obama for negotiating the release of Sgt. Bergdahl.  The official statement issued by McCain is as follows from his website:

“I am pleased that Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is finally being returned safely to his family and loved ones after nearly five years of captivity. All Americans share in the joy that the Bergdahl family feels today and for which they have waited so long.

“I have been informed that, in exchange for Sgt. Bergdahl’s release, the Administration is now in the process of transferring five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo to Qatar. These particular individuals are hardened terrorists who have the blood of Americans and countless Afghans on their hands. I am eager to learn what precise steps are being taken to ensure that these vicious and violent Taliban extremists never return to the fight against the United States and our partners or engage in any activities that can threaten the prospects for peace and security in Afghanistan. The American people, and our Afghan partners, deserve nothing less.”

The psychotic old war criminal  loves to have it both ways and in terms of sheer loathsomeness is right up there with his Vietnam era cohort John Kerry. McCain has a long and sordid history of talking out of both sides of his mouth with the most recent example being his palling around with neo-Nazis in Kiev right before the overthrow of the democratically elected leader by such elements. He also has built his career off of exploiting his time in Nam, not that dropping bombs on women and children, getting shot down, taken prisoner and then currying favorable treatment from his captors at the expense of other guests at the Hanoi Hilton whose fathers weren't admirals in the US Navy. His comments about Sgt. Bergdahl also show that the no soldier left behind military code of honor doesn't resonate with McCain, it was he who shamefully worked to sink efforts to find US prisoners of war in Vietnam. I excerpt the following from an article by Sydney Schanberg "McCain and the POW Cover-Up" that was re-published by The American Conservative in 2010:

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain’s role in it, even as the Republican Party has made McCain’s military service the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn’t talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a special forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington—and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that “men were left behind.” This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—the documents indicate probably hundreds—of the U.S. prisoners held by Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.

The article is well worth the time spent reading it although anyone who is awake knows that truth about McCain and his political career built on the myth that he was some kind of war hero but the bigger question on his participation in the POW cover-up is why?

Despite all of the angry bullshit dispersal exercises undertaken by the rancid Republicans all of that squealing and demagoguery about "not negotiating with terrorists" is laughable. These are the same people after all who have no qualms about arming Islamist militants, cannibals and al Qaeda affiliates in Syria nor throwing in with neo-Nazi goons in Ukraine. They are liars and always will be liars. When it comes to liars though, one need not exclude their reigning king who sits upon the throne at 1600 W. Pennsylvania Avenue. Obama could give a rat's ass about the troops and that includes Sgt. Bergdahl but like their more overtly fascist counterparts, Democrats too have elections upcoming in November so this is good public relations on their part, cynical as hell but it plays to the rubes.

In the end it all comes down to the festering boil on the ass of Uncle Scam at Guantanamo Bay - Republicans HATE losing their holy site for torture and Obama won't close it down because despite the power to do exactly that with a simple executive order he is a hypocrite of enormous proportion. The Republicans real problem is that after the trade that they will have five less live bodies to subject to torture - time to get the rest of them out of there close that filthy offshore future penal colony down - forever. 

So good for Sgt. Bergdahl, as much as I am opposed to the ongoing series of money-making, fucking wars launched by both the Democrats and the Republicans the man has done his duty and deserves to come home. The political scrum that the degenerate swine in this country and their bought and paid for media only spits on the troops with their continuing use of them as nothing more than props and political footballs.