In Blow to Obama Loretta Lynch Hearings Delayed Over HSBC Questions

A funny thing happened on the way to the slam dunk appointment of new U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The Senate confirmation hearings have stalled amid questions about Lynch’s involvement in a sweetheart deal with the corrupt British megabank HSBC. Granted that it is probably just more of the same political theater but the Republicans have a chance to blow up the process and prevent Lynch from ever assuming office as the nation’s top law enforcement official. This would be a damned good thing in consideration of her past affiliation with the Timothy Geithner led New York Federal Reserve.

As reported by the website of beltway news organization Politico in a story simply entitled “Loretta Lynch's delayed vote over confirmation”:

Democrats are now increasingly slamming Republicans’ handling of President Barack Obama’s nominee for attorney general, accusing them of slow-walking the veteran federal prosecutor’s confirmation. Their newest evidence: the Senate Judiciary Committee’s decision Thursday to postpone voting on Lynch until after next week’s recess — which means she won’t get a final floor vote until March, at least five weeks after her confirmation hearing.

The confirmation pace stands in especially stark contrast to how quickly the GOP-led Senate has taken up Ash Carter’s nomination for defense secretary. He first appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee Feb. 4, was swiftly reported out of that panel earlier this week and is headed to a Thursday confirmation vote.

“There’s so many similarities between the Lynch nomination and the Carter nomination,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), one of Lynch’s biggest boosters. “And to move Carter so quickly and to slow down Lynch is very troublesome, and I think they ought to move her ASAP.”

One reason for the lag on Lynch is that after Obama nominated her in November, Senate Democrats agreed to postpone her confirmation into the new Republican-led chamber at the GOP’s request. Democrats meant it as a gesture of goodwill, and they also believed Lynch would be confirmed in either a Democratic- or GOP-controlled Senate.

But now the Democratic anger is beginning to flare up.

The story goes on to cite many whiny Democrats caterwauling in outrage over the treatment being given to Lynch. Naturally the loudest is Senator Schumer, a notorious whore for the big Wall Street casinos and the New York Fed that ensures that the Ponzi scheme will never end. While Politico doesn’t get into the specifics of Lynch’s HSBC dealings The Guardian provides more details. The following is from the story “Republicans seize on HSBC scandal to hold up Loretta Lynch's confirmation”:

Senate Republicans are seizing on the global tax scandal engulfing HSBC to delay the confirmation of Loretta Lynch, Barack Obama’s nominee for attorney general, the Guardian can reveal.

The Republican chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, Chuck Grassley, was on Friday preparing a fresh tranche of questions for Lynch about the huge cache of leaked data showing how HSBC’s subsidiary helped conceal billions of dollars from domestic tax authorities.

Grassley and another Republican senator are planning to investigate whether Lynch could have done more to stand up to the world’s second largest bank.

Lynch negotiated a controversial settlement with HSBC in 2012, after the bank admitted to facilitating money-laundering by Mexican drug cartels and helping clients evade US sanctions.

Now there are questions over why she did not also pursue HSBC over evidence that its Swiss arm helped US taxpayers hide their assets.

The secret bank files – obtained and examined in detail this week in a series of reports by the Guardian, CBS 60 Minutes and other media outlets – reveal that HSBC’s Swiss arm colluded with some high net-worth individuals to hide their assets from tax authorities across the world.

The new data, leaked by a whistleblower, was obtained by French tax authorities and shared with the US government in 2010, raising questions over why the Department of Justice has yet to take action against HSBC in the US.

Lynch is as dirty as Eric Holder if not worse. She wouldn't have gotten the nomination if there was any intention of going after the too big to fail banks and the criminals who wrecked the economy and are still ripping us off to this day. Lynch played a key role in the HSBC drug money laundering probe and despite her rhetoric to the contrary she is just one more fox that is going to be put in charge of the hen house. With both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush being cozy with the hedge fund hyenas and Wall Street moneychangers she could help to assist the transition for Obama's successor. Kind of like a liaison between D.C. and lower Manhattan as the revolving door keeps spinning.

This is a big blow to Barack Obama who has never failed to be a footstool for Wall Street schemers and Federal Reserve crooks. His malodorous administration was counting on the immunity talisman of being a black woman with parents who had backgrounds in the civil rights movement to allow him to install another protector of the banksters. It will only be a matter of time until the race card gets played if Lynch's appointment drags on because that is just the way that Obama and the slimy Democrats roll anymore.

Another Phony: Liberal Hero Elizabeth Warren Opposes Fed Audit

Liberals and progressives are the type that come to mind when considering P.T. Barnum’s famous quote that there is "a sucker born every minute" and they never stop trying to live up to being chumps. In 2008 they bought into the Barack Obama snake oil and after having ample evidence that it was a defective product, came back to buy another batch in 2012. The O-Bots are still living in a constant state of denial about the reality that their illustrious leader is one of history’s greatest bullshit artists and are still waiting for Obama to be Obama. But he is doing exactly that and the great marketing  to sell all of that “hopey changey stuff” was always bogus which is why Advertising Age magazine named Obama as their 2008 Marketer of the Year.

The “new” Obama with the so-called left is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren who advertises herself to be an opponent of too big to fail Wall Street gambling houses – except when she isn’t. Ms. Warren is just another phony and a Trojan Horse for the establishment designed to stick it to liberals only with a sugar coating. She has always been a devious flip-flopper, word-parser and deep cover agent for the elite and now her true nature is on full display. Warren has come out in opposition to efforts to conduct an audit on the grand temple of the moneychangers that is the Federal Reserve.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal “Sen. Warren Opposes ‘Audit the Fed’ Bill”:

A critical question for Sen. Rand Paul’s effort to expand oversight of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate decisions is whether he could win support from the central bank’s leftist critics in Congress.

But one of the Senate’s most prominent liberal Democrats says she’s not on board.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), a member of the Banking Committee and an outspoken critic of the Fed’s oversight of big banks, said she does not support Mr. Paul’s proposed legislation, which she said could have “dangerous” implications for monetary policy.

“I strongly support and continue to press for greater congressional oversight of the Fed’s regulatory and supervisory responsibilities, and I believe the Fed’s balance sheet should be regularly audited – which the law already requires,” Ms. Warren said in an emailed statement. “But I oppose the current version of this bill because it promotes congressional meddling in the Fed’s monetary policy decisions, which risks politicizing those decisions and may have dangerous implications for financial stability and the health of the global economy.”

It’s not surprising at all that another prominent Democrat turns out to be a complete fraud but liberals should have seen this coming when she exaggerated her Native American heritage back when she was worming her way into power. But they are still waiting for Obama to be Obama, the Michael Jordan of politics just studying the defense of the Detroit Pistons Bad Boys before he will explode in a whirling dervish of sheer will, breaking down the opposition and winning the championship. Or the black Spock who is playing ten dimensional chess while all of his opponents are still playing checkers. Got news for the libs, it ain’t going to happen and your puppy love crush on Elizabeth Warren is just going to break your bleeding hearts once again.

By openly throwing in with the Fed the woman has now outed herself as just one more member of the controlled opposition that protects a system gone to rot.

Will New GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell Really Allow Fed Audit?

The news that Harry Reid - who was just ousted as Senate Majority Leader - was injured during an “exercise accident” is a perfect metaphor for the Democratic party being hit by a truck in the November mid-terms. The former Nevada Gaming Commissioner turned politician suffered multiple injuries including “broken ribs” and “facial bones” when a piece of gym equipment broke and the pathetic little twerp fell hard. Unfortunately for America, Reid’s injuries were not sufficiently serious to keep him from returning to the Senate for the opening of the new session of Congress this week. However, word is out that Reid will no longer be the obstacle blocking a long overdue audit of the temple of the money changers that is the Federal Reserve.

As libertarian financial blog Zero Hedge reports in a post entitled "Audit The Fed" Bill Gains Momentum, Yellen Starts Damage Control”:

After years of being blocked by Democratic leader Harry Reid, The Washington Times reports, the Senate will finally get a chance next year to vote on legislation to force a broad audit of the Federal Reserve's decision-making. Ron Paul's flagship legislative efforts have been picked up by his son and now has the backing of the leader of the new Republican majority, Sen. Mitch McConnell, whose office says the legislation will earn a floor vote. While the bill is not a sure thing, it appears to have The Fed worried as Reuters reports, Yellen and other Fed officials are lobbying Capitol Hill to drop the audit push.

So it is finally time for the incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to show whether he is sincere in doing the will of the American people after the mandate that voters just delivered to Republicans. Whether McConnell has the principles or the stones to take on the banking parasite that has been sucking the life out of America remains to be seen but there is at least a tiny sliver of hope. The story cited by the Zero Hedge piece from the Washington Times reports that the auditing of the Federal Reserve:

Has the backing of the leader of the new Republican majority, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, whose office says the legislation will earn a floor vote.

But the Washington Times story -“Congress poised in 2015 to order audit of Federal Reserve long sought by Ron Paul” also reports:

But despite overwhelming support in the House, where the legislation has twice passed, the bill is not a sure thing in the Senate, and the Fed itself is pushing back. Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen said earlier this month the Fed remains opposed to stricter oversight of its monetary policy decisions, and Reuters reported she and other Fed officials are lobbying Capitol Hill to drop the audit push.

The grandmotherly Obama appointee Yellen has not yet won the coveted prize of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year as did Chairman “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke but the wagons are being circled and the woman’s power should not be underestimated. The absolute last thing that the power elite in this country will allow is for even a shred of transparency be imposed upon their long-running racket of creating money out of nothing and inflicting crushing debt slavery upon the serfs. Hordes of the best arm-twisters of the banking and speculative trading lobbies will be descending on D.C. like a plague of locusts this coming week and that bodes ill for any serious audit of the Fed and the institution’s protection of Wall Street casinos.

So now it is up to Mitch McConnell to stand up and do more than simply allow a “floor vote” on scrutinizing the moneychangers. Such a vote would be doomed to failure once the graft machine has successfully bought off enough Senators to derail the audit but it would provide cover for McConnell. He can then claim that he honored the will of the people before he gets down to business in cutting deals with Emperor Barack Obama to further destroy what remains of the American middle class by pushing through the TPP.

Phony Democrats Exploit Minimum Wage Hike for Cheap Political Gain

The Democrats and particularly President Barack Obama have been politicking over raising the minimum wage in a transparent attempt to attract low-income voters. While it is understood that it is difficult to exist on the meager sum provided by jobs such as Wal-Mart greeters and Whopper floppers, the opposite side of the argument is that government forced wage hikes will only result in higher prices that will be passed on to the customers. Not to appear insensitive but if working at one of America's fast food chains or an emporium of made in China products does not provide a sufficient income then find another job or join the military. Not that there are many decent jobs anymore in America since the day that rapacious corporate bosses discovered offshoring which has been like crack cocaine to them ever since. The U.S. manufacturing base has been sent packing and the only businesses that truly thrive in the USA! USA! USA! are in financial chicanery, surveillance and the police state. 

Having found a winning issue look for more Democrat demagoguery over the minimum wage. It is a nice mix along with their bogus identity politics issues, the sudden interest in domestic violence now that two big name NFL players have been outed as wife and child beaters. There have already been strikes by fast food workers in several U.S. cities to demand higher wages but it is just more of the same false hope and chump change that Obama has been peddling to the suckers since he slithered into office on a carpet of lies. It isn't like the Democrats have actually done one damned thing to address the major problems of offshoring jobs and allowing Wall Street banksters to loot with impunity and as the late George Carlin so eloquently put it in his classic rant "The American Dream":

The table is tilted folks.  The game is rigged.  And nobody seems to notice.  Nobody seems to care.  Good, honest, hard working people. Blue collar, white collar, doesn't matter what color shirt you have on.  Good honest hard working people continue... these are people of modest means... continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don't give a fuck about them.  They don't give a fuck about you.  They don't give a fuck about you.  They don't care about you.  At all.  At all.  At all.  And nobody seems to notice.  And nobody seems to care

Now the backlash is beginning as it inevitably would. Fast food and chain restaurants are beginning the process of going to automated systems which will eventually render the concept of a $15 per hour burger flipper obsolete and silly. Per a story that appeared in the Washington Post entitled "McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a machine":

Battling the worst sales slump in a decade and competition from build-your-own upstarts like Chipotle and Smashburger, McDonald’s is expanding a test concept built around ordering via tablet. Just tap on a screen and watch as your burger’s toppings (and calories) pile on, then wait for an employee to bring it over. No human interaction necessary.

McDonald’s move towards dehumanization, launched as a pilot last winter and expanded across San Diego last week, is part of a larger trend of chain eateries turning tablets into your full-time restaurant buddy: equal parts menu, server and paycheck. Applebee’s, Panera Bread and even airport bars have installed tablets to allow diners to order food or booze without a wait.

Chili’s became the U.S. king of human-less ordering this summer when it installed more than 45,000 tabletop tablets nationwide. Marketing executives said the tablets can speed up service and operate like table-side billboards, encouraging impulse orders of appetizers and desserts. A spokesperson for Ziosk, which made the tablets, said guests who used them spent more money, finished quicker and paid better tips.  (The future, as one professor predicts: “Robot baristas, robot Realtors and robot sales agents.”)

While the WAPO story specifically speaks of customers being able to place their own orders (no more getting the wrong food at the drive-thru) a more seismic shift is coming. Michael Krieger of the Liberty Blitzkrieg blog recently wrote of the next iteration of the dehumanizing of fast food jobs. The piece which is entitled “360 Burgers per Hour” – Meet the Burger Flipping Robot that Could Change Fast Food Forever":

The main reason is that if employers are forced to pay these employee more, the employers in this industry are likely to move as quickly as possibly to fast-food preparing robots. This isn’t just some pie in the sky fantasy either, there’s a company called Momentum Machines that has already assembled a product that can make a burger in 10 seconds, or 360 burgers per hour.

Equally important, the entire argument of raising the minimum wage cannot be had without discussing the impact of technology. As I and many others have highlighted over the past several years, one of the most troubled segments of the U.S. economy consists of fast food workers. They simply cannot survive on the wages being paid to them by employers and need food stamps, disability and second jobs merely to make ends meet. In theory, raising the minimum wage will help these folks the most, but will it really? I think not.

As the saying goes, "be careful of what you ask for, you just may get it" and Democrat's sudden concern for a working class that they shanked in the back decades ago is nothing more than political pandering. Big businesses are rapidly adapting to implement new technology in order to eliminate the positions altogether. There are self-service checkout stands appearing in stores across the nation now. My local Wal-Mart neighborhood grocery store has them and they are great. It saves time and the upside to having to bag your own groceries is that no dumb ass is putting the potatoes in the same bag with the bread. The Wal-Mart greeters will likely be the next to be jettisoned, they are annoying and only are really needed on Black Friday to hold back the amped-up mobs of shoppers looking to score the door buster items.

Once again another great Obama idea goes up like a flaming bag of dog shit and the ones who get screwed in the end are the suckers who bought into it. But there will be plenty of jobs soon enough with the brilliant idea of funneling more arms to the Syrian rebels which will quickly end up in the hands of ISIS. The future of America is war and as such there is no greater big government employment program than bringing back the draft to provide those displaced fast food workers with new gigs.

JACKPOT! Speculators Win Big as Iraq Shuts Down Refinery

Nothing can collapse the economic house of cards that is the phony Obama recovery faster than a massive spike in prices - oil and food or simply just oil as the black gold drives damned near everything and keeping the hoax of the "recovery" alive is getting tougher by the day for the big boys and their footstool at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. With the brutal wave of violence raging through Iraq, still a mystery as to the exact cause but the US warmongers supplying arms to religious zealots including admitted cannibals is a probable factor the early winners are already in and they are the oil future speculators and other commodity traders who just had a collective orgasm over the splendid news that Iraq has just shut down production at the country's largest oil refinery.

According to a story at Reuters, "Iraq's biggest oil refinery shut down, foreign staff evacuated":

Iraq's biggest oil refinery, Baiji, has been shut down and its foreign staff evacuated, refinery officials said on Tuesday, adding that local staff remain in place and the military is still in control of the facility.

Militants from al Qaeda splinter group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized Iraq's second-biggest city of Mosul last week and other Sunni armed groups have advanced into the town of Baiji and surrounded its refinery.The refinery shut down overnight, the sources said.

Baiji is one of three oil refineries in Iraq and only processes oil from the north. The other two are located in Baghdad and the south and are firmly under government control and operational.

“Due to the recent attacks of militants by mortars, the refinery administration decided to evacuate foreign workers for their safety and also to completely shut down production units to avoid extensive damage that could result," a chief engineer at the refinery said on condition of anonymity.

Potential "extensive damage" to the refinery itself maybe but certainly not to the high-rolling swine in the oil cartels whose profits are about to erupt like a geyser of money stolen from the schmucks who are doomed to lives of quiet desperation because in America they have no political clout. Nor will there be "extensive damage" to the summer parties of the con artists and government subsidized thieves while they frolic drunk, naked and flying higher off if their own arrogance than the pure cocaine that they will be inhaling by the mini-dune. The posh enclaves of the looter class at The Hampton's and Martha's Vineyard will resemble something out of The Wolf of Wall Street if not the sheer excesses of Roman orgies that are still notorious for their gross excesses centuries later. This is time to celebrate the coming tidal wave of money that will be lifting the yachts of the many at the expense of the few who are already suffering under the crushing burden of stagnant incomes and rising food prices - stick around, it's only going to get worse.

While Obama has once again lied to Americans in sending troops back into Iraq - there will be more following the token initial insertion of special operations personnel - the conflagration has all of the signs of further escalation especially since the US installed Iraqi leader of a failed country with an army of falafel eating surrender monkeys paid for by the US taxpayer accusing the Saudis of genocide.Not that our "partners of peace", those degenerate, terrorist funding perverts in the House of Saud would ever do such a thing, after all - it isn't like fifteen of the nineteen September 11, 2001 hijackers didn't hail from The Kingdom. The Libertarian financial blog Zero Hedge nails in in their typical fashion sans the sugar-coating in the piece entitled "This Is Not Going As Planned: Iraq Prime Minister Defies US, Accuses Saudi Arabia Of "Genocide""- from which I excerpt:

Shortly after the US revealed that, in addition to aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships it was also sending a few hundred "special forces" on the ground in Iraq, contrary to what Obama had stated previously, Washington made quite clear it wants Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to embrace Sunni politicians as a condition of U.S. support to fight a lightning advance by forces from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Then something unexpected happened: Iraq's Shi'ite rulers defied Western calls on Tuesday to reach out to Sunnis to defuse the uprising in the north of the country, declaring a boycott of Iraq's main Sunni political bloc and accusing Sunni power Saudi Arabia of promoting "genocide."

In fact, as Reuters reported moments ago, the Shi'ite prime minister has moved in the opposite direction of Obama's demands, announcing a crackdown on politicians and officers he considers "traitors" and lashing out at neighbouring Sunni countries for stoking militancy.

Not only did Iraq defy the US, but it also called out America's BFF (or at least formerly so until the arrival of Iran, which the US is aggressively, and inexplicably, rushing to make its new key partner in the region) for being the real aggressor behind the scenes? How dare Maliki point out the truth - doesn't he know that those US troops in Iraq can just as easily be used to depose the current regime as "fight" the Al Qaeda Jihadists the US itself armed in the first place?

Apparently not, and instead of seeking a broad coalition with Sunnis as the US ordered, the latest target of his government's fury was Saudi Arabia, the main Sunni power in the Gulf, which funds Sunni militants in neighbouring Syria but denies it is behind ISIL.

"We hold them responsible for supporting these groups financially and morally, and for the outcome of that - which includes crimes that may qualify as genocide: the spilling of Iraqi blood, the destruction of Iraqi state institutions and historic and religious sites," the Iraqi government said of Riyadh in a statement.

 As Reuters notes, Maliki has blamed Saudi Arabia for supporting militants in the past, but the severe language was unprecedented.

AND

But where it would get most messy - literally - is if as the previously reported shuttering of Iraq's largest refinery leads to electricity blackouts for Baghdad. Because nothing gets people in a murderous rage quite as 115 degrees and no air conditioning.

The criminal elite and the political class that has now fully unchained itself from any accountability to the American people, while they ride high today, arrogantly fucking over 99+ percent to fund their bacchanals had best pay heed to that which is being whispered on the warm summer winds that for now only serve to gently rock the yachts at Cape Cod and other privileged locales. With their decadent lifestyles fully dependent on manipulation and stealing from others soon the "murderous rage" from the smoldering oppressed may be a hell of a lot closer than Baghdad.

Escape Velocity: DJIA 16,000 +

It is a glorious feeling of American euphoria today on Wall Street and in the luxurious confines of the looter class. Pigs are flying as the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared above 16,000 today for the first time in the history of the index. Not that this is really any sort of a true economic barometer of our days prior to collapse but it is what the shills, presstites and state-corporate media are given to push as an indication of a vibrant and resurgent American economy. Pumping 85 billion a month into the now bigger than ever banks thanks to the squadrons of helicopters on constant altert courtesy of Chairman Ben Bernanke and his onerous Federal Reserve, an institution that exists only to ensure that the high-rollers will never have to eat their speculative losses. The cooked to a fine fricassee markets have been in hyperdrive since last week’s command performance by Bernanke successor Janet Yellen who promises to keep the punchbowl filled with booze and the easy money that provides the heroin fix to the junkie banks flowing into the grand New York City gambling houses.

Things are so good that even Turbotax Tim Geitner just landed a new gig over at Warburg Pincus, yet another of those parasitic private equity houses that specialize in vulture capitalism or more appropriately sucking the blood out of the busted out average American and then picking the last morsels of flesh from their bones. The ongoing economic gaming of the system now enters the next stage and Yellen’s coming escalation of the QEuphoria is going to make Bernanke look like Paul Volcker by the time she is done feeding the pigs and inflating the Fed’s balance sheet to astronomical proportions. With the sweet, sweet spike now intravenously and permanently inserted into the arm of the zombie banks the final crushing of the remnants of our once vibrant middle class, at one time the envy of the world is about to be snuffed out for good. While I was driving home this evening I noticed that gas prices have jumped 26 cents a gallon overnight so the speculative feeding frenzy is already on and there is nothing like four dollar per gallon plus right in time for the holiday season to stomp the jackboot of the corrupt bankster state down on the windpipe of a reeling country.

Barack Obama now will also go down in history as the president who finally destroyed American capitalism, not that his immediate predecessors don’t have their own fingerprints on the murder weapon. Whether it be Bush’s maxing the national credit card with costly and unnecessary wars or Slick Willie’s collusion with slimeballs like Robert Rubin to eliminate the Glass-Steagall act and tear down the firewall between actual honest commercial banking and immoral degenerate gambling it is a joint effort. Hell, even the sainted Reagan bears more than his share of the blame for the orgy of deregulation that was just bound to be hijacked by greedy, well-funded special interests who while preaching “free markets” were ensuring that the rules would be rigged so that the only thing “free” would be the boatloads of illicit money that the pigs would eventually extract by permanently fixing the markets. 

Former Reagan budget director David Stockman caught hell from both sides of our false paradigm of a two-party system when he wrote the scathing piece “Sundown in America” in the New York Times. His book The Great Deformation is an extended version of the article that earned him the scorn of the presstitutes and the elitist defenders of a system gone to rot. The Bircher element of the far-right has always pushed the Obama as Marxist whopper when the man is actually by virtue of the system he presides over a fascist and Marx could have never dreamed of nuking capitalism the way that Barry and the boys have with their ongoing government subsidizing of the markets at taxpayer expense. To give Marx a bit of credit capitalism always has held within itself the seeds of its own eventual destruction in that everything becomes commoditized and all is for sale, including government officials, judges, statehouses, universities, the media etc. In the past most of the looting was done abroad as the imperialist policies of this country plundered with aplomb and the big money had the U.S. military on call. Former United States Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler nailed it when early in the last century he proclaimed:

“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Now the chickens have come home to roost and with foreign lands plundered and occupied the strip mining of America itself began. I have always thought of the analogy of the old Stephen King short story “Survivor Type” as a wonderful metaphor for cancerous vulture capitalism of the type that now exists. In the tale a dude finds himself marooned on a barren Pacific island after a shipwreck. The character is a former surgeon who was involved in drug trafficking and had in his possession a huge cache of heroin (we keep coming back to this substance when discussing Wall Street banks for some reason) and no food. During the story he begins imbibing the drug and eventually has to start slicing off parts of his own body which he then eats in order to survive while he awaits rescue. This is what American capitalism is today, the politically connected corrupt classes have destroyed free enterprise and the spirit of being the best at what you do/produce. In short the pigs have broken the back of American entrepreneurial ladders into the upper class and turned the American dream into a nightmare.

Today’s 16,000 Dow record will be trumpeted by the house shills and the crooked court jesters like Mad Money Jim Cramer but it is all a lie, just like everything else in this debased land as it careens towards the inevitable final collapse. Not that I am any sort of a qualified financial consultant but it doesn’t take an Harvard doctorate in economics to see that the best investment for the near future is in canned goods.

I don't know just where I'm going…But I'm goin' to try for the kingdom if I can…Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man…When I put a spike into my vein…Then I tell you things aren't quite the same…When I'm rushing on my run…And I feel just like Jesus' son….And I guess I just don't know…And I guess that I just don't know

- “Heroin” by Lou Reed 1972-2013

Wall Street Casinos Jubilant as Bipartisan Deal Looms

To the moon Alice! The Dow Jones Industrial Average rocketed up 323 points on Thursday as the imminent bipartisan effort to preserve the ongoing government subsidizing of America’s great gambling casinos on Wall Street was locked and loaded. In a much hyped meeting  between Obama and Republicans an agreement to kick the debt ceiling can down the road to allow for “negotiations” and postpone the cancelling of the maxed out national credit card sent the crack ho markets soaring. The jubilation on 'the street' is a celebration of more of the same brand of crony capitalism, rigged financial markets that are unable to function without a constant stream of government supplied heroin in the form of free gambling money and QEuphoria got their latest fix. As of market closing time on Friday, the DJIA was up another 111 and change as the negotiations between Barry and the congressional mob wasn't fully consummated although the lights had been dimmed, the sheets turned down and the tube of KY jelly parked upon the nightstand. This thing is just about over and the only ones who will be screwed - again - will be the regular American peasants who don't have the ability to buy the juice in Washington like the big boys do.

Today's White House dog and pony show had the added attraction of the presence of the Texas Zamboni aka Senator Ted Cruz, the Harvard educated former Supreme Court clerk elitist turned cultural populist with a snake handler for a daddy and an eye on a his own gig at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  The state media reveled in the presence of the oily Cruz and his confrontational digs at El Presidente and the biggest media whore to emerge since John McCain basked in the press attention. Cruz was tolerated like an unruly and petulant child is but when it came down to it the deal cutting was being done by the de facto lobbyists executing their marching orders to keep the government gravy train running efficiently when it comes to preserving the inflated markets. There will be a deal in the very near future, that ridiculous October 17th deadline that was hyped incessantly by the presstitutes was always bullshit and anyone with any common sense understood it.  Here in the Homeland, the "new normal" is government supported financial markets, the 'too big to fails' will never be allowed to simply go out of business as lousily run outfits would in a true capitalist environment. The big boys know very well that as George Carlin put it in his scathing and brilliant rant "the American Dream" put it - "the table is tilted... the game is rigged".  The propagandists in the corporate-state media will continue to sell the big lie of the triumphant American capitalist system but the troth is that the markets are totally dependent on free chips from the discount window. Yet another cramdown is coming for the peasants thanks to Barry and his corrupt administration wgi are at this very moment engaging in yet another sellout of America in favor of big money special interests. It must be getting close to Halloween because the ghost of Karl Marx is out and cackling hysterically at how the corrupt American system has vindicated his criticism of capitalism.

Oh but there was much sound and fury over the so-called tea party representatives refusing to cave on the debt ceiling but the big business hustlers, including the Koch Brothers were starting to sweat the implosion of the house of cards economy.  Then suddenly, like a burst of god’s own sunlight beaming down through the dark clouds of collapse a miraculous and serendipitous occurrence of bipartisanship arrived to save the day. Did you really believe that after over five years of shoveling house money extracted from the hides of the little people was going to be blown up by a pack of occasionally earnest but more often incurably useful idiots and their ‘principled’ stance against debt and the deviltry of Obamacare? Nope. Just like those other wonderful aspects of 21st century America - war, torture, domestic spying, building more prisons, rigging the laws to ensure that those for profit prisons are packed with revenue generating human flesh to keep the bribes flowing, propagandizing, censoring journalists and all of the rest of the cornucopia of fascist wonders that rose out of the smoking wreckage of the World Trade Center the big con of the Wall Street Banks, their Federal Reserve and the traders and hedge fund hyenas will endure forever. There is zero way that the sitting government, or for that matter ANY of their bought and paid for successors are ever going to end the fleecing of America.

Combine that with the announcement that Janet Yellen would be replacing the esteemed Ben Bernanke at the Fed and inheriting command of the helicopter squadrons and an even bigger proponent of subsidizing the markets than Chairman Ben and it is Christmas in October for the pigs. But the average schmuck continues to get hammered in our star-spangled banana republic, the proper nickname of which should be the “Land of Fuck You, I Got Mine” and of which the national anthem, a homage to our dependent markets would be Lou Reed's "Heroin".

Freedom isn't free, unless of course you can afford to buy the government itself. Is this a great country or what?

QE-UPHORIA

In a move that has been reported as shocking on a level right up there with Breaking Bad's classic just aired episode Ozymandias our esteemed top central bank racketeer eschewed the long predicted "tapering" of his Quantitative Easing lunacy. In a last shot to the gut of the American economic diaspora living in tent cities from sea to shining sea Helicopter Ben Bernanke made damned sure that his precious subsidizing of the same gamblers, con artists and ivory tower dwelling grifters who destroyed the economy in 2008 would have a very Merry Christmas again this holiday season. While the usual idiots in the state-corporate media gasped it was sure as hell not a surprise to me, nor to anyone else who has been onto this ongoing hustle for years.  Chairman Ben has presided over an unprecedented transfer of wealth upwards to the looter class that he and his private Federal Reserve have always served the interests of. In pre-collapse America the usurious bastards hold all of the cards and will not be satisfied until they own absolutely everything. It is the logical extension of the “ownership society” in that at the end of the day the banksters and their Washington embedded lackeys own all of our asses.

The ongoing Quantitative Easing under Bernanke is only allowing for the continuation of the ongoing thievery until he has safely left office and handed the keys to the printing presses over to Janet Yellen or some other establishment stooge - maybe Turbotax Timmy Geithner can be brought back for an encore performance. Rest assured that Chairman Ben will be have left the Marriner S. Eccles building and will be sequestered in some gated enclave of an elitist pig pen protected by the best mercenaries that money can buy when the shit does finally hit the fan and the economy implodes for good.  Ben knows very well that he is a “made man” and has nothing to fear while  once the streets erupt with violence when the monetary system has been rendered worthless and it will take the equivalent of the proverbial wheelbarrow full of Riechmarks to buy a bag of Doritos.

And ugly it will be, consider that a good many of the citizens of this giant lemming colony don't have more than a day or so of food on hand at any given time. When the ATMs are no longer functioning watch out because the absolute last place that you want to be would be anywhere the local supermarket which will be overrun with looters within a day or so. It will take complete martial law to prevent the total disintegration of society when Bernanke's financial WMD detonates but that after all is the inevitable endgame in a number of scenarios that would seal the fascist transformation of this once great country.

In the classic 1980's Bruce Willis movie Die Hard an international group of thugs invade and take over Nakatomi Plaza, holding hostages and all under the pretense of terrorism for political reasons. The real truth is that the terrorist ploy was designed to provide cover for a massive robbery and in the end all the hostages would be marched up to the roof of the building which mined with C4 explosives would be blown up, killing all of the hostages and allowing the perpetratorss to escape to their beaches of choice where they could bask in the sun collecting interest on their plundered loot.  It is a fitting metaphor for what Bernanke, Geither, Hank Paulson, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, Vikram 'the bandit' Pandit and a cast of tens of dozens of other sordid miscreants are in the process of successfully pulling off in America.

It is all abetted by the gross incompetence of a certain Barry H. Obama over at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who has not only the ticking down time bomb of the ruined American economy on his tab but also myriad other abortions including the NSA Stasi, another war that is currently in the gestation stage and of course Obamacare. His crowning achievement is a so-called health care ‘reform’ rip-off that will one day rank in the top ten in the bunco artists hall of fame. Not only does this law allow for the insurance parasites to feed off of millions of new customers who are forced by the police state to purchase the overpriced policies but it allows already bloated and greedy corporations to begin to kick family members off of insurance plans and into the arms of the bloodsuckers. Soon it will be all employees currently covered by employer provided insurance plans who will be sold down the river into bondage with the proverbial big government gun pointed at their heads and Obama will have his finger on the trigger. Welcome to modern day American, the land of ‘f**k you, I got mine”.

There is today much hullabaloo over the Republican led House bill to defund Obamacare as a condition to not shut down the government but don't pay attention it because it is total horseshit and only more political chicanery that provides cheap fodder for the talking heads and distracts from the real problems. Both parties are in on the con because the oligarchy owns both teams lock stock and barrel. Jimmy Carter had it right when he recently lamented the demise of a functioning democracy in America but he being shunned like a leper by the rulers can just be shushed like the drunken crazy old uncle who shows up once a year to ruin Thanksgiving and vomit into the sweet potato pie. Move along, nothing to see here.

But as to the travesty of the Federal Reserve’s continuation of bailing out the bankers and rigging the markets. Bernanke’s ‘unexpected’ move to continue full Q.E. had the pigs squealing with glee as they will continue to have their criminal schemes underwritten by the taxpayer and protected by the Obama administration. According to St. Louis Federal Reserve President Fred Bullard “While I expect to see inflation rise during the coming quarters, I want to see evidence of such an increase before endorsing less accommodative policy action by the FOMC”. This statement regarding inflation is as asinine as it is dishonest. One of the primary reasons that the criminals who run the big con are continually able to base their ongoing crack-ho economic policy of buying garbage mortgage backed securities it is due to this Hitlerian whopper. What is never mentioned is that core inflation rates conveniently omit food and energy prices, exactly the two areas where Americans are getting the screws put to them the hardest by the scum that runs the system. Just take a look at what you have been paying at the grocery store since this Q.E. game began, the prices are higher and the packages smaller and it is only going to get worse because this is the "new normal".

It is hard to hold the currently configured system in anything less than utter contempt - that is unless you are one of the TV addled, low-info drones who still believes what they tell you on cable news shows. As the late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson once so brilliantly put it the rulers only stand for - ".. the systematic destruction of everything this country claims to stand for except the rights of the rich to put saddles on the backs of the poor and use public funds to build jails for anybody who complained about it.”  He was of course referring to his personal bête noire Richard M. Nixon but as we have seen with his paranoid streak, use of government agencies such as the IRS and DOJ to go after political foes and support of an all seeing surveillance state Barack Hussein Obama has left Tricky Dick in the dust.

And so it goes on, the tightening of the screws....

Skittles From Heaven

"Barack promised change - and sure enough, things changed for the worse"

- Joe Bageant

El Presidente Obama promised "change" during his steeped in dishonesty run for the top job and he made good on that like a charm on Friday by changing the subject. Obama decided to inject himself into the fulminating aftermath of the George Zimmerman trial, a roiling cauldron of racial trouble best left unstirred by the feds. This is not only rubbing salt into a still open wound but also providing a very fortuitous distraction from his NSA Gestapo having their telephone spying operations that were again renewed by the secret court without any public acknowledgement. The Obama remarks on the slaying of Trayvon Martin. "He could have been me 35 years ago" and the underlying threat of the DOJ contesting Zimmerman's acquittal not only serve as cover for the sinister machinations of the police and surveillance state but also only throw more fuel on the fire of our ongoing national downtrend in race relations, sure to fire up the rabble on both sides. Earlier in the week, Attorney General Eric Holder also made a foray into freshly wrapped case while speaking at an NAACP convention in Orlando. It was a wonderful opportunity to distract from his Justice Department's disgraceful persecution of reporters, whistle blowers and all who do not abide with every vile aspect of this increasingly malevolent administration. Holder too would prefer not to draw too much attention to the furious and ongoing hunt for former NSA contractor Booz Allen leaker Edward Snowden who will be brought back to Der Homeland in shackles and tortured as an example to all. Were this an earlier and less sophisticated time Snowden would just be publicly drawn and quartered like the Mel Gibson character in Braveheart but years of human experimentation in Gitmo and other CIA black sites have allowed the government to develop other methods. It is a sick and debauched evolution that fittingly belongs at Treblinka but that's the way we roll post 9/11. Not that I am an insensitive prick but the only real issue right now that is an existential threat is the NSA spying on everyone and everything.

Now let me preface what I am about to say with this: I am a law abiding, gun owner and a firm believer in the Second Amendment and our constitutional right to bear arms. I also believe that citizens of this country have the absolute right to use their legally ownerd firearms to stop harm to themselves and their families when threatened in a situation and location where it is merited. That being said I am embarrassed by the clownish antics of the gun lobby and  especially the NRA, an organization that long ago ceased to stand for anything but jacking up the profits of the gun and ammo manufacturers as they terrorize those most susceptible to paranoia and disinformation. I also feel nothing but disgust when there is an ugly public spectacle where  a death is caused by someone who is irresponsible (like George Zimmerman) because all that does is give more justification to the special interest groups that are hellbent on restricting gun ownership rights. This always results in a political feeding frenzy with both parties and their lackeys looking to score maximum points with their base voters. The administration shamelessly trots out poor Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords as a shill to sell policies while the opposition seems to have settled upon as their chief spokesmen for gun rights the jagoff Texas Senator Ted Cruz (Harvard educated and born in Canada) and the washed up, mangy former rock star Ted Nugent, a draft dodging baby daddy. I cannot possibly see how any self-respecting American would want to be associated with ANY of these assholes.

Obama has idiotically (but predictably) seized upon the Zimmerman verdict in all of its serendipitous travesty to shift all attention away from his administration's dismal civil liberties and human rights record. Now apparently aligning himself with Obama is the dyspeptic old fool John McCain, as usual slithering onto the Sunday morning bloviation circuit where state propaganda reigns. Consider that McCain also ardently defends big government whenever it comes to war, surveillance, show trials and torture. McCain also grumpily bitched about the ridiculous manufactured scandal over this week's Rolling Stone magazine cover featuring Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. McCain practically sprayed flecks of spittle in denouncing the cover as "stupid", he obviously is still pissed off over the less than flattering expose that the magazine did of him a few years back entitled "Make Believe Maverick". You know when you are truly fucked when "bi-partisanship" only seems to exist whenever it comes to the media kingmakers and the need to ensure that civil liberties will never be restored, the military industrial and surveillance industrial gravy train will continue to roll. That Obama and McCain and the rest of the ready for television assclowns are treated with reverence as voices of authority truly shows how prophetic that the movie Idiocracy really is.

But I digress...


The Zimmerman case itself was exactly what you would expect in the state of Florida, the diseased penis of America where the freak flag always flies high and where the sitting governor is a man whose main claim to fame was that he once presided over the company responsible for the largest Medicare fraud in U.S. history. This is not a normal state and ranks right up there with Texas when it comes to oddities, freaks, perversion and general lunacy so just keep that in mind when considering all of this. That being said and not to get bogged down in any of the racial aspects of this thing but had the tubby self-proclaimed  neighborhood watch captain just listened to the cops and stayed in his car the nation would have been spared this entire sorry circus. Instead, with visions of Clint Eastwood movies dancing in his thick skull the out of shape 29 year old ignored the police advice and went after the black teenager, a lithe and muscular young man who just may have had more than a little bit of thug in him. A fight of some sort occurred and Zimmerman was getting the worst of it and then Martin was shot, nobody will ever know what really happened despite whatever hogwash is being peddled by both sides. The ghoulish media, the opportunists of both right-wing and left-wing stripes, worried gun industry lobbyists and the rancid Florida judicial system descended like vultures to feed on this tragedy. The entire nation was then subjected to yet another smutty televised trial (my god, has there ever been a country so obsessed with trials and punishment?) that much to the delight of Nancy Grace (who I strongly suspect gets sexually aroused over the slimy tales she covers) and the rest of the bottom feeders who were able to seamlessly transition from the Jodi Arias circus. We have come a long way from Judge Wapner in this land of court porn, once the potential for making money off of the crap was realized during the O.J. Simpson trial and the Rubicon was crossed. But that is another story for another time.

The Zimmerman case was a mind-boggling mess from the get go and the verdict was bound to set off a hellstorm of controversy no matter what the end result was. The only other witness to the incident is dead and as the saying goes, dead men tell no tales. George Zimmerman's father was a retired judge who appeared to be pulling strings behind the scenes, the alwyas 'fair and balanced' Fox's Sean Hannity gave the shooter a national platform from which to pontificate and Zimmerman's defense was be well funded by donations. The state of Florida botched it by bringing the second degree murder charge in the first place as reasonable doubt could have been established by a third-grader. The prosecution was so inept that at times it seemed to morph into Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden and the it wouldn't have been a shock to see Dancing Itos show up. Then there was the disastrous decision of putting Trayvon Martin's mush-mouthed girlfriend Rachel Jeantel on the stand without even bothering to consider that her inability to think or speak clearly would be exploited ruthlessly by the defense should have them all disbarred. The jury selection was farcical and lacked diversity and their credibility was immediately trashed days after the verdict when one of the ladies, known only as "B37" went on national television in an obvious attempt to cash in. I suppose that the less cynical should be surprised but anyone who has been carefully watching the descent and dismantling of America for a period of time recognizes the symptoms.

And now Obama is getting involved. The man has already proven that he is grossly incompetent and could fuck up a two car funeral and cynical aspirations aside over knocking the NSA revelations out of the news this is only going to lead to more problems. Never has a president been marketed so successfully and then turned out out to be an inept dope, the problem is that so much of the country is so dumbed down, brain washed and tuned out that they still keep buying his bullshit even long after the sell date has passed. The man actually is making many Americans come to the conclusion that maybe George W. Bush wasn't that bad and after all he did once send me six hundred bucks. Obama just allows his rogue Federal Reserve Chairman provide an endless flow money to the degenerate gamblers on Wall Street whose schemes will soon deliver the killing blow to the mythical American Dream.

So this is the sorry state as it currently sits as of Saturday morning in the soon to be smoldering ruins of this once great country. Detroit filed for bankruptcy the other day, it should be lost on nobody that the city was at one time an example of American economic and manufacturing prowess but that was back in the days before corporations were able to offshore jobs by the millions. Offshoring is like crack cocaine to short term profit driven executives and hedge fund hyenas and as brutally evident by 2013 Detroit - crack kills. And at this point free enterprise and honest capitalism is dead, we now have crack-ho economics as our national foundation. Nice.

Just imagine how a good explosion of race riots could bolster the case for not only more NSA spying, even stricter laws, more secret courts and of course further militarizing of the police. This will come in especially handy for Obama's successors when the economy finally careens into the abyss that is drunkenly stumbling towards thanks to Wall Street's overflowing punchbowl and Bernanke's heavy handed bartending.

This Week's Two Minute Hate

"The preparations for Hate Week were in full swing, and the staffs of all the Ministries were working overtime. Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxworks, displays, film shows, telescreen programmes all had to be organized; stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumours circulated, photographs faked..”.

- George Orwell's 1984

In a rapidly escalating exercise of ginned-up outrage the corporate/state media, it's lackeys and stooges who serve as carrier pigeons for establishment lies have launched a propaganda campaign designed to steamroll everything in front of it. It will be joined by the opportunistic and whorish politicians who have repeatedly drop-kicked this once great country in the balls for the sole reason of aggrandizing themselves. The target this time is Rolling Stone magazine over the new issue sporting a cover picture of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev which media miscreants have wailed portrays him as a "rock star" like Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan.As of this evening the firestorm is spreading as efficiently and rapidly as those wonderful incendiary bombs that our domestic murder industry (euphemistically known as "defense") efficiently produces with the maximum dispersal rate for melting the flesh from the bones of innocent women and children in any of our ongoing wars. This thing is hot and the temperature is rising by the minute as the hysteria spreads like a bad case of orally transmitted genital herpes. Not that many have actually read the story which by all accounts is not exactly a tribute to the rotten little bastard but a study of how a seemingly innocent young man could become a ruthless monster who digs planting IEDs at the finish line of a storied race in order to inflict maximum damage on unprotected innocent people. 

Not that any of the berserkers bother to mention in their ridiculously over the top attack pieces that the subtitle on said magazine cover reads "How a popular promising student was failed by his family, fell into radical Islam and became a monster",  but when a good deal of the media whoppers in this country are in fact lies of omission it fits the pattern. The national propensity for knee-jerk reactions to demagogic manipulation by a venal, in the bag media is likely nothing that anyone who is reading this post will be surprised by, you can get everything but the truth in the modern era American media.  The establishment knows exactly which buttons to push and when in order to elicit the desired response. The faux outrage over Rolling Stone's cover this week serves to nudge Obama's surveillance state, his ruthless Justice Department and those secret FISA courts all the closer to the memory hole and then the flush lever will be hit. By the Sunday morning weekend gabfests I expect to see this dog and pony show trotted out as yet another example used to persecute, marginalize and ultimately criminalize any journalists and publication that aren't fully aligned with the Obama regime and the national security state that he is currently the putative head of.  There are now along with the tantrums boycotts as mega-drugstores CVS and Walgreens have announced that they will not sell the current issue of Rolling Stone (although they still will stock beer, wine, rubbers, tobacco, sexual lubricants, dildos, ingredients to make bathtub meth and soft core porn magazines that may encourage -gasp - masturbation) and the pressure is mounting. I am a terminal cynic (although not nearly as cynical as the pigs who run this system) and it would not shock me if the offices of Rolling Stone were visited by government goons and paramilitary thugs in the very near future.

The Real TERRORIST?

This entire carnival of perversion is yet another luminescent display of the terminal hypocrisy that currently inflicts dumbed-down, riled-up and fucked-over America. Our leader in historical infamy, El Presidente Barack Obama has appeared on the cover of said magazine no fewer than FIVE times. The man is an accomplished liar, war criminal (by definition every U.S. President is one), murderer (by proxy) who has a daily "kill list" delivered after breakfast, a man responsible for the ongoing terrorism of the illegal wars and occupations (including the upcoming one in Syria) and as recently revealed in an embarrassing manner by government contractor Booz Allen leaker Edward Snowden, presides over a fascist surveillance apparatus that is a high tech equivalent of the East German Stasi. Obama has authorized repeated drone strikes on civilians, signed off on killing American citizens without due process and has declared an unprecedented war on journalists and whistleblowers by invoking the archaic and vile Espionage Act more than any other U.S. President in history. Oh, and my dear fellow Americans, now that the precedent has been set and the beta testing done on the so-called "bad guys" with brown skin in foreign lands, the drones are even now coming home to roost. You just might want to pay attention to an ugly little story that the pocket media here in Der Homeland is hiding under the avalanche of tabloid bullshit and the Rolling Stone cover onslaught  - Obama's NSA is not only sucking up ALL of your phone calls, emails, texts, web searches etc. but is also building a relational database that could potentially like everyone to whatever vague and secret definition of who is a "terrorist". Remember that Muslim convenience store owner who ran your credit card the last time you gassed up? 

But I digress... 

The REAL outrage should be why none of the corrupt sucklers to power in the state/corporate media have bothered to honestly cover the criminals on Wall Street who were not only responsible for wrecking the economy but are back doing the same thing now.  The gods of crony finance capitalism were not only given a free pass by Obama's rancid administration but are currently using their wholly owned Federal Reserve to inflate a mammoth stock bubble that will be the mother of all economic catastrophes when it inevitably blows up. The Dow hit 15,548 and change today, gas prices are rocketing towards 4 dollars a gallon again and the pigs in the commodities exchange pits are rutting furiously as their greed beggars millions. Hey, be glad that you live in America, no matter how fucked up that this place is at least you don't have to watch your kids starve like you did if you had to live in a third world country where bankster induced food price spikes cut devastating swaths of starvation/genocide that will one day rival those of Stalin and Pol Pot. But of course you won't see this on CNBC, Bloomberg or even read about it in the cursed librul [sic] New York Times.

And finally....

I am sure that there is no small amount of jealousy and hatred directed at Rolling Stone by the shills for high finance and military power. It was after all this magazine that published the story The Runaway General that led to the indignity of former JSOC commander Stanley McChrystal being forced into an early and shame riddled retirement. The tale was written by journalist Michael Hastings who recently perished in a bizarre fiery car crash amid rumors that he was being investigated by Obama's FBI Gestapo. Hastings was a real journalist who did his damnedest to hold power accountable in the manner that one could imagine being the intent of the framers when they drafted the First Amendment. The corrupt corporate media would much rather cover the Kardashians or some other tawdry and meaningless pseudo scandal or exploit the poor victims of natural disasters for cheap emotional bling than actually bother reporting high crimes of state and corporations for that is what toadies do. While Rolling Stone was running cutting edge pieces by Wall Street beat reporter Matt Taibbi explaining exactly how the criminals in their ivory towers ruined the economy and then got away with it the mainstream media had a different objective. They just churned out puff pieces, apologies and hagiographies by the bushel providing cover for the looters and plunderers. After a very short period in early 2009 when it appeared that there just might be accountability the corporate media closed ranks and in no time at all Ben Bernanke was Time's Person of the Year. The outrage is very selective in this rotting carcass of a once great country, lionizing scum and covering up for real criminals is a sure ticket to the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. A Bacchanal of an event that is nothing more than a sweaty drunken mosh pit of swine swimming around in their own stinking excrement. This annual pox on any concept of a free press is befitting of charlatans like David Gregory and his ilk and is what happens when a free press chooses the sleazy fornication with power over holding power accountable. They collect their thirty pieces of silver and then eagerly serve as a firewall to the type of mass corruption and criminality that destroys societies.

And let's not kid ourselves, is there any American institution more responsible for the downtrend of this country than the rotten to the core media?

Name One!