Old Blood and Guts McCain Brays for U.S. Taxpayers to Arm Ukraine

You have to love the increasingly senile Senator John McCain. The deranged old bastard is one of the best examples of why term limits are so desperately needed in American politics and he is once again pushing for another costly war. This time though he is agitating for what could turn into a conflict against nuclear armed Russia, not some chickenshit hellhole like Iraq or Afghanistan. You just have to love these guys, they can’t even spend time doing their jobs by securing our own porous borders yet they want to risk provoking a nuclear exchange over an ongoing border dispute in freaking Ukraine, a country that the majority of our dumbed-down populace can’t locate on a map.

McCain’s latest screed was published as an op ed piece in the Washington Post entitled “John McCain: The Russia-Ukraine cease-fire is a fiction”:

Last weekend, I traveled with Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) to eastern Ukraine to meet with the courageous men and women fighting there for their country’s freedom and future. I arrived on a solemn day as Ukrainian volunteers grieved the loss of two young comrades killed by Russian artillery the day before. They had lost another comrade a few days before that, and four more the previous week. Their message to me was clear: The cease-fire with Russia is fiction, and U.S. assistance is vital to deterring further Russian aggression.

AND

During my trip, the Ukrainians never asked for the United States to send troops to do their fighting. Ukrainians only hope that the United States will once again open the arsenal of democracy that has allowed free people to defend themselves so many times before.

How we respond to Putin’s brazen aggression will have repercussions far beyond Ukraine. We face the reality of a challenge that many assumed was resigned to the history books: a strong, militarily capable state that is hostile to our interests and our values and seeks to overturn the rules-based international order that American leaders of both parties have sought to maintain since World War II. Among the core principles of that order is the conviction that might does not make right, that the strong should not be allowed to dominate the weak and that wars of aggression should be relegated to the bloody past.

Around the world, friend and foe alike are watching to see whether the United States will once again summon its power and influence to defend the international system that has kept the peace for decades. We must not fail this test.

The inclusion of young Tom Cotton, the Arkansas bathhouse Rambo who is a full blown whore for the military contractors that constantly fleece U.S. taxpayers smacks of the old man passing the baton to a new generation. McCain and the fascist warmongers have been feeding the American people bullshit for months now to start the new Cold War and to send arms and money to a Ukranian puppet government that not only tolerates but openly accepts extremists including neo-Nazis. Yet Americans are supposed to cough up our hard earned money that could be better spent at home to dick around in yet another foreign land that has zero bearing on our own national security. Putin may be world class prick - there is little argument on that - but only suckers and rubes believe that shtick being pushed about him recreating the USSR, the bottom line is what it always is: money. With Obamatrade being shoved down all of our throats by Congress including McCain it is by now obvious who they represent and in McCain's case he has always been a pimp for defense contractors.

Let’s hope that with McCain coming up for reelection again next year – his sixth damned term – that some pro-American conservatives such as the Tea Party gets their act together and sinks his miserable ass in the primary.  I haven’t seen this week’s Sunday morning McNews show guest list yet but it's likely that at least one one of these con artists or Obama’s lunatic new Secretary of Defense Ash Carter will be trotted out. The objective as always is to dupe Americans into sending our troops into harm’s way for nothing more than the continued profits of what President Dwight D. Eisenhower – who knew a thing or two about the subject – tabbed as the Military Industrial Complex.

Definition of Irony:John Kerry Visits Saudi Arabia on Anniversary of 9/11

You have to hand it to Secretary of State John "Skull and Bones" Kerry, as the nation's top diplomat the man scores right around zero on the political sensitivity scale. Kerry, who is a source of ongoing embarrassment to the image of the U.S. stopped off in Saudi Arabia on Thursday - the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that murdered over 3,000 Americans. Considering the dismal quality of the nincompoops at the State Department like Marie Harf, Jen Psaki and Victoria Nuland it is unsurprising that nobody bothered to take into account the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers hailed from The Kingdom.

Kerry was on his latest whirlwind tour to sell the disastrous policies of the Obama regime. This time it is the looming disaster of the war on ISIS that Barry rolled out in a tour de force of teleprompter recited bullshit in his speech on Wednesday night. Hell, when you have to fight the "terrorists" there are no greater authorities on "terrorism" than the decadent pigs in the House of Saud. They have a history of funding and supporting Islamist extremists. None other than Prince Bandar himself was dabbling in arming the rebels in Syria that included al Qaeda sympathizers and admitted cannibals last year before Kerry's diarrhea of the mouth gaffe allowed the hated Russian leader Vladimir Putin to sweep in and prevent a war. Now with the emergence of ISIS (or IS or ISIL as dear leader refers to them) there is the chance of another bite at the apple of a backdoor regime change against Bashar al Assad in Syria.

Americans yesterday honored the victims although whenever the anniversary comes, despite the ceremonies and solemn speeches on what has been labeled Patriot Day there are always the obvious omissions. First and foremost being that the overreaction to the 9/11 attacks have allowed for the slow but steady dismantling of the Constitution, the implementation of the Patriot Act, the expansion of a domestic surveillance state and of course the endless and costly Middle East wars. Wars that calculating swine like Obama never level with Americans about what it would truly take to forever rid the world of the influence of radical Islam. We are talking a total commitment here, one which would last for generations and require real sacrifice from the nation. We are talking about the restoration of the draft and the type of transformation of our entire society to devote generations to wiping out an ideology and that would take political courage of a nature that does not exist. It would also entail the cutting off of the head of the snake itself in Saudi Arabia.

Then there is the matter of those missing twenty eight pages of the 2002 "Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001" that are said to show some level of Saudi complicity in the attacks. The government has been fighting tooth, fang and claw to keep the information within this report hidden from the American public over the course of the administrations of two presidencies. I don't see that this report merited any mention in the coverage of the 9/11 anniversary yesterday. There is currently an ongoing effort being made by members of congress to have the contents of these 28 pages released which would do much to shed some light on the 9/11 attacks and who provided aid to the terrorists.

Yet there was John Forbes Kerry, the flip-flopping, finger-wagging windbag schmoozing and bribing the leadership of the very country that bore a share of the responsibility in bringing down the twin towers. You just can't make crap like this up.

Establishment Begins Building the Case Against Putin

You have to give it to the extremists that run the US government war machine these days, they are predictable to a fault. The morning after the apparent shootdown of a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet over Ukraine (once again, why was a commercial airliner routed over a war zone?) the warmongers are out with a vengeance in building their ongoing case against Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Putin's grave offenses have been (1) presiding over a government that dared to save NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden from a US torture chamber (2) intervening to stop what would have been a devastating air attack on the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al Assad who was blamed for a to this day unsolved use of sarin gas on civilians (3) working to facilitate an end to economic sanctions against Iran for their alleged nuclear program (4) not accepting the illegally installed US backed, neo-Nazi infested coup in Ukraine (5) refusing to bow to the demands of crazy old Uncle Scam therefore risking becoming an example of one who successfully stands up to a bully.

The lurid tales that have been churned out of the propaganda machine like so many sausage links made of tainted rat meat have duped already stupid and fear-addled Americans into accepting that Putin is some malevolent evil force out of a Marvel comics series and now with the downed airliner - the earthly manifestation of Mephistopheles himself. Sadly it will be gobbled up by the American common folk who will ultimately be the ones who foot the bill for the coming disaster of our warped foreign policy - just like they always do.

Leading point for the wrapping of the blame of the downing of MH-17 around the Russian leader's neck like the noose applied before the lynching are the usual vermin and scum that have risen to the apex of the rotten to the core and now bordering on biblical evil US government that lives high in the kingdom of Washington. Vice President Joe Biden rapidly identified the air disaster as a missile attack as though he already knew the answer - the veep is hardly one who is unbiased in the Ukrainian matter given his son landed a plum job with the country's largest gas company - which he likely did. Old blood and guts, Senator John McCain was bellowing his usual bullshit and crying for war - has there ever been a stronger argument for euthanasia? But the deal was sealed when none other than Queen Hillary the Inevitable, our historic first woman president in waiting let it rip on the Charlie Rose show last night. As in the Bush era, the "facts" were being fixed around the policy and the policy as it was even before this primo excuse for a war of some type against Russia have always been preordained.

The war propaganda and campaign of relentless demonization will pick up today and escalate to a thundering and rousing, flag-wrapped crescendo by the time that the usual assortment of freaks, stooges and war criminals are rolled out for the Sunday morning "news" shows. The warmonger's gazette, The Washington Post is pounding the war drums loudly already as the sun rises on Friday from the neocon bunker of their editorial page with a call to arms "The world must know whose weapon destroyed a passenger plane" - which anyone who has seen what the monsters running the USA!, USA!, USA! since September 11, 2001 already knows. The reports from the illegitimate occupying government in Kiev are taken as gospel by the state-corporate media and the "proof" will assuredly be provided and be as damning as the aerial photos of Saddam's mobile chemical weapons labs. I excerpt from WAPO:

In recent days there has been abundant evidence of Russia stepping up supplies of heavy weapons to rebels in eastern Ukraine, including advanced anti-aircraft systems. The Kiev government reported that two of its military aircraft were shot down in the past week, either by separatists, Russian planes or batteries operating from across the border. On Thursday came a greater tragedy: the destruction of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet with 295 people aboard. Ukrainian authorities charged that it had been struck by a missile fired by a Russian-made surface-to-air battery supplied to Moscow’s Ukrainian proxies.

If the reports are confirmed, the Ukrainian separatists and their sponsors in Moscow will be responsible for a heinous crime. The United States and its allies must insist that those responsible be held accountable — including those in the Kremlin. [TRANSLATION: PUTIN]

First the word of "Ukranian authorities" and the "Kiev government" are not to be believed or trusted, this is a US installed puppet regime packed with thugs, crooks, fascists, neo-Nazis and led by a corrupt oligarch whose fondness for Hitlerian statements of total retaliation to avenge the deaths of military forces killed by anti-austerity, anti-fascist federalists defending against ethnic cleansing indicated a depth of moral depravity that makes it easy to see why the US State Department and Obama regime back him. The WAPO screed goes on:

The White House continues to avoid measures that could inflict crushing damage on the Russian financial system and force Mr. Putin and the elites around him to choose between aggression in Ukraine and Russia’s economic future. Wednesday’s measures stop two banks from obtaining long-term debt financing in U.S. markets, but the treasury has not excluded those banks from the financial system nor taken measures against the largest banks. Though its bank was sanctioned, the energy operations of Gazprom, Russia’s giant, remain untouched.

Even before the tragic loss of the Malaysian plane, it ought to have been clear to the West that Russia’s aggression in Ukraine could not be overlooked or wished away. It is both criminal and intolerable and should be treated accordingly.

That is about as obvious a call to arms- even if it results in a civilization destroying nuclear war - as it gets but this is the depth of the systemic rot in our now fully amok and globally despised empire. The very least that the WAPO is calling for seems to be the dropping of what has been referred to as the "financial neutron bomb" which would in essence be an act of war. But war is what the establishment needs and has refashioned US society around as a the cornerstone for our continued existence - it is lucrative, keeps the bewildered herd in line with the ongoing worship of the flag and the state and most of all it is damned good politics in the permanent election cycle.

The feeding frenzy begins but the obvious blame lies with Obama himself because had he not presided over the original sin of the coup d'etat in Kiev then there would have been no war zone and the passengers of MH-17 would be alive today. The emperor not only has blood on his hands but it would not be a surprise if he bathes in it on a daily basis.

The Neocon vs. Rand Paul Pissing Contest Rages On

Senator Rand Paul has taken withering fire from the cheerleaders for American interventionism and global conquest at gunpoint for he is a very serious threat to the warfare and surveillance state as it currently exists and if he is not halted before the 2016 presidential campaign the idea that we do not have to be a nation crushed by the yoke of perpetual war may take hold. Paul represents the increasingly influential emerging libertarian wing of the Republican party and with growing popularity with the younger demographic - the youth that Obama shit on after mobilizing them in 2008 with his siren song of false hope and chump change - he has the potential to for the first time in decades provide a serious alternative to the corrupt sucklers of Empire.

Fresh off of being smacked down with a blistering and ridiculous editorial in the Washington Post by the ever more bizarre Texas Governor Rick Perry who in the hilarious words of Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo is "dumber than a steer who’s been zapped by a cattle-prod and still won’t move" and in the opinion of some (myself included), is a man of such enormous idiocy and grotesque buffoonery that he actually makes George W. Bush look like Albert Einstein - Paul punched back. The Senator from Kentucky's rebuttal was featured in the gospel of the beltway Politico in a piece entitled "Rick Perry is Dead Wrong":

There are many things I like about Texas Gov. Rick Perry, including his stance on the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. But apparently his new glasses haven’t altered his perception of the world, or allowed him to see it any more clearly.

There are obviously many important events going on in the world right now, but with 60,000 foreign children streaming across the Texas border, I am surprised Governor Perry has apparently still found time to mischaracterize and attack my foreign policy.

Governor Perry writes a fictionalized account of my foreign policy so mischaracterizing my views that I wonder if he’s even really read any of my policy papers.

In fact, some of Perry’s solutions for the current chaos in Iraq aren’t much different from what I’ve proposed, something he fails to mention. His solutions also aren’t much different from President Barack Obama’s, something he also fails to mention. Because interestingly enough, there aren’t that many good choices right now in dealing with this situation in Iraq.

Perry says there are no good options. I’ve said the same thing. President Obama has said the same thing. So what are Perry’s solutions and why does he think they are so bold and different from anyone else’s?

AND

I ask Governor Perry: How many Americans should send their sons or daughters to die for a foreign country — a nation the Iraqis won’t defend for themselves? How many Texan mothers and fathers will Governor Perry ask to send their children to fight in Iraq?

I will not hold my breath for an answer. If refusing to send Americans to die for a country that refuses to defend itself makes one an “isolationist,” then perhaps its time we finally retire that pejorative.

Today, the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t want to send U.S. soldiers back into Iraq. Is Perry calling the entire country “isolationist” too?

And he is absolutely right, Slick Rick Perry has absolutely nothing to offer besides the same bitching that always erupts like a bursting, fully ripened pustule from a party that has nothing new to offer rather than a keening cacophony of bleating every time that Obama - who they hate - so much as scratches his ass. While it will not likely please the movers and shakers within the GOP the knee-jerk opposition of everything Obama is not a substitute for a winning formula which they should understand by now after getting thumped by the black dude in two presidential elections despite his gross incompetence. This is a party that is in need of new ideas rather than the same alarmist and race-baiting bullshit that plays well to the borderline cadavers whose daily sustenance of outrage is provided by FOX News which plays them like a pack of stupid fucking donkeys. Perry's new glasses are a nice touch too but Barry Goldwater voters are dropping like flies with each passing election cycle and Rand Paul and libertarian ideas will be like sipping from the fountain of youth for a party that clings to a corpse like Reagan rather than just walk through that door into the future and a brave new world.

Perry's anti-Paul diatribe was a gut-wrenching mish-mash of warmed over neocon talking points, bogus historical references and more references to the hallowed Ronald Reagan than you can shake that cattle-prod at - it was one of the most over the top, thoroughly asinine pieces of tripe that the WAPO has published recently and that says one hell of a lot considering the lower than whaleshit level of the competition. While Senator Paul is not the man that his father is and has a tendency to go along to get along he still towers above the recycled garbage like Rick Perry, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker and blows away the sleazy political opportunists like Florida's Marco "Little Ricky" Rubio and that loudmouthed fat piece of crap up in New Jersey Chris Christie with his continued  insincere sucking up to casino magnate Sheldon Adelson the Daddy Warbucks of the neocon world domination project.

That most bitter of truths to the neocons is that an increasing amount of Americans are sick to death of their globe-trotting escapades of murder, torture and stealing of resources after the murders of women and children. The Democrats offer no viable alternative either as evident by the meddlesome adventures of the drone ranger Obama, the full-blown fanatical State Department and Cass Sunstein's wife over at the UN Samantha Power and their piling up of dead bodies based on the horseshit of humanitarian interventionism.

The 2016 election is a critical time in our nation's history for it offers what may be the last chance to banish the neocons - particularly since Hillary Clinton, a bloodthirsty bitch who puts Margaret Thatcher to shame would be a hero to the neocons and why not hedge their bets with a zany and pliable doofus like Rick Perry? Anything to keep Rand Paul and libertarian ideas out of the national conversation next year. The neocons understand this and that is why they are going right for Paul's throat, the Washington Post continues to churn out agitprop like today's offering from the high priestess of neocon bullshit Jennifer Rubin with the very creative title of "Rand Paul Isolated on Foreign Policy" from which I excerpt:

The extent of Rand Paul’s extremism is slowly coming to light. American Enterprise Institute’s David Adesnik has analyzed Paul’s recommended summer reading list. “The foreign policy section of the list consists entirely of works that blame the United States for the rise of Islamic extremism while offering solutions that verge on isolationism. Most of the books also express a sharp hostility toward Israel and toward those who believe that U.S. foreign policy should serve the cause of human freedom.”

Specifically, he includes Pat Buchanan’s anti-Semitic tract: “If Ron Paul’s message isn’t clear enough, the curious student may turn to another book on the list, Pat Buchanan’s critique of George W. Bush’s foreign policy, Where the Right Went Wrong. ‘America’s huge footprint on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia led straight to 9/11. The terrorists were over here because we were over there. Terrorism is the price of empire.’ . . . Buchanan explains that ‘the Beltway Likud was plotting and propagandizing for war on Iraq long before 9/11.’ The distinctive trait of this clique is that it sees ‘U.S. and Israeli interests as identical.’ ” Unfortunately it’s becoming clear that Paul’s views are virtually identical to his father’s (who has three books on his son’s list). Suffice it to say, there is no elected Republican in Congress who would embrace these ideas.

If that is the best that Rubin and the neocons are able to come up with, selectively picking through Rand Paul's reading list and crying "ANTI-SEMITE" then they are more desperate than ever. That particular pejorative was at one time the ultimate trump card when it came to squashing criticism of the Middle East conflicts in which Israel always benefited from at the cost of American blood and treasure but it has lost it's potency through overuse. Pity poor Rubin and her handlers whose primary accomplishment has been to diminish "anti-Semitism" to the point that it has lost any sort of effectiveness when it comes to real anti-Semites. But that is what happens when such a filthy abuse of the historically heinous persecution of Jews - a very real problem - is turned into no more than a cheap political tactic. We all know the fairy tale of the boy who cried wolf and by continually playing that very card scum like Rubin only harm those who are the real victims.

It is time for the neocons to give up the ghost and just go quietly into the dustbin of history before their deranged, remarkably Naziesque ideology destroys the planet. It is far past time to confiscate the keys to the war machine from these highly influential lunatics. 

(Image: Getty Images)

Neocons Hedge Bets in Backing Flaky Rick Perry

The very definition of a fixed horserace is when the same interests own both horses in that race. Such is the growing neocon push behind Texas Governor Rick Perry who has been cleaned up after his 2012 GOP primary season embarrassment to emerge as the Mexican bashing, American exceptionist promoting ringer in the upcoming race against neocon Democratic party candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. They even gave him Barry Goldwater style horn-rimmed glasses for his coming out party.

 The neocon central transmission beacon The Washington Post prominently featured an op ed allegedly penned by Perry entitled “Isolationist policies make the threat of terrorism even greater" in a broadside against the growing libertarian element in the party led by Senator Rand Paul. Make no mistake about it, the REAL enemy in the 2016 presidential and congressional elections are Americans who are fed up with our costly meddling in the world and the ongoing hatred that it generates – which is entirely justified when you consider that the military grade murder brought by the USA! USA! USA! – in foreign lands in which we murder innocent civilians for corporate profits and the spreading of “democracy” as a carpet bombing of enduring horseshit.

Dig the following from the Texas Governor’s WAPO propaganda spiel:

As a veteran, and as a governor who has supported Texas National Guard deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, I can understand the emotions behind isolationism. Many people are tired of war, and the urge to pull back is a natural, human reaction. Unfortunately, we live in a world where isolationist policies would only endanger our national security even further.

[First off Perry’s vaunted military service was not combat service, while not a draft dodger like the last Texas Governor to run for president Rambo Rick flew transport planes, like the line from Top Gun about “flying a cargo plane of rubber dogshit out of Hong Kong”. Even in a time where the cult of the uniform and the worship of all things military here in The Homeland Perry’s will be hard pressed to sell his military duties as something of valor – at least to those with any sense.]

That’s why it’s disheartening to hear fellow Republicans, such as Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), suggest that our nation should ignore what’s happening in Iraq. The main problem with this argument is that it means ignoring the profound threat that the group now calling itself the Islamic State poses to the United States and the world.

[Rand Paul supports the “terrorists” and if you vote for him so do you]

In the Islamic State, which came to prominence in Syria and now controls ample territory, weapons and cash in both that country and Iraq, the world is confronting an even more radicalized version of Islamic extremism than al-Qaeda. This group is well-trained, technologically sophisticated and adept at recruitment, with thousands of people with European passports fighting on its side, as well as some Americans.

[Is the anti-Muslim fear-mongering EVER going to jump the shark? When you have right-wing media promoting alarmist tales of a southern border invasion based on a “Muslim prayer rug” that was found in Arizona that was really just a fucking soccer jersey isn’t it time to just call all of the anti-Muslim bigots out as being crazy and moving on to real issues?]

This represents a real threat to our national security — to which Paul seems curiously blind — because any of these passport carriers can simply buy a plane ticket and show up in the United States without even a visa. It’s particularly chilling when you consider that one American has already carried out a suicide bombing and a terrorist-trained European allegedly killed four at the Jewish Museum in Brussels

[Reference to the Jewish Museum shooting is a thinly veiled plea for Sheldon Adelson’s millions come campaign season]

Yet Paul still advocates inaction, going so far as to claim in an op-ed last month in the Wall Street Journal that President Ronald Reagan’s own doctrines would lead him to same conclusion.

But his analysis is wrong. Paul conveniently omitted Reagan’s long internationalist record of leading the world with moral and strategic clarity.

Unlike the noninterventionists of today, Reagan believed that our security and economic prosperity require persistent engagement and leadership abroad. He, like Eisenhower before him, refused to heed “the false prophets of living alone.”

Reagan identified Soviet communism as an existential threat to our national security and Western values, and he confronted this threat in every theater. Today, we count his many actions as critical to the ultimate defeat of the Soviet Union and the freeing of hundreds of millions from tyranny.

At the time, though, there were those who said that Reagan’s policies would push the Soviets to war. These voices instead promoted accommodation and timidity in the face of Soviet advancement as the surest path to peace. This, sadly, is the same policy of inaction that Paul advocates today.

In the face of the advancement of the Islamic State, Paul and others suggest the best approach to this 21st-century threat is to do next to nothing. I personally don’t believe in a wait-and-see foreign policy for the United States. Neither would Reagan.

Reagan led proudly from the front, not from behind, and when he drew a “red line,” the world knew exactly what that meant.

[Just like Pleasantville, there are no roads leading out of REAGANGRAD for the Republicans who have yet to find a successful ideology with widespread appeal – such as the one that Rand Paul and a new national policy of minding our own damned business would equivocate. Were this embraced then the GOP just might win another general election in the next fifty years instead of babbling Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan and clicking their heels together in the hope of a different result than another embarssing ass-whipping by incompetents like Obama]

The neocons have made no secret that they would be ecstatic at the prospect of a Hillary Clinton regime, they can finally return to the Democratic party from which they left in disgust back when the unwashed rabble who were protesting the Vietnam War chose George McGovern as their candidate. Nothing will facilitate that becoming a reality than a Rick Perry Republican candidacy, if this is the matchup then Adelson can just pocket his filthy blood money and go to his grave knowing that heads he wins and tails we lose – just like the casino business.

Sunday Morning McCain: Fortress America Edition

This Sunday's all star lineup of war criminals, liars, charlatans, recycled political hacks and deranged fiends featured more than the usual gaggle trotted out to spew lies and engage in demagoguery but the one constant remains that mangy, deranged old bastard Senator John McCain. McCain - this week sans his little butt buddy Lindsey Graham, the Palmetto State princess - was in his usual dyspeptic and cranky form in pushing for increased US involvement in Iraq. The target of McCain's ire during his appearance on State of the Union with that annoying sow Candy Crowley was Senator Rand Paul, the most hated man (at least to the neocons and militarists) in the Republican party because he dares to speak of minding our own business and extricating ourselves from the money-sucking charnel house in the Middle East where American blood and treasure has been squandered for nothing.

Old Blood and Guts used his appearance to chime in on a range of topics, all wrapped in the dripping contempt towards that horrible black man who whipped his ass in the 2008 election - Obama may be a catastrophe but there is something very pathological in how McCain deals with it that makes one inclined to suspect that he just may be a racist. The race card is definitely overplayed in defending Obama and his reign of errors but it is difficult to explain the animosity that some have towards him and it's more than just a matter of policy. The cranky one opined on how much he admired the "restraint" that the equally deranged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown in his latest kill crazy rampage in Gaza - to a guy like McCain anything short of Hiroshima level destruction passes for "restraint". He also chimed in on the illegal migrant crisis where hordes of children have been showing up in the USA! USA! USA! - largely a result of decades of a murderous foreign policy in Latin America that was based on the use of death squads trained in torture techniques at the former School of the Americas to prop up corporate friendly despots. Then of course there was his attack on Rand Paul and his shilling for a return to Iraq.

According to a story in the "Inside Baseball" of the beltway circle jerk Politico (the SOTU official transcript was not available as of this writing) in a story entitled "McCain: Paul's 'fortress America' comes at 'heavy price'" the Senator from Arizona who was censured by his own state's Republican Party for being "too liberal" - that would be liberal in the sense of the word when it comes to the "improve or we'll kill you" foreign policy doctrine. I excerpt the following from Politico:

“Senator Paul is part of a wing of the [Republican] party that’s been there ever since prior to World War I … and that is a withdrawal to fortress America,” The Republican senator from Arizona said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “The things we’re seeing in the world today, in greater turmoil than at any time in my lifetime, is a direct result of an absence of American leadership, and we are paying a very, very heavy price.”

What McCain and the warmongers, the neocon policy wizards and the rest of the blood-suckers drunk off of their asses on American exceptionalism never mention when conjuring up their blessed world wars to make their points is that IF the United States wasn't sold out by then President Woodrow Wilson into entering World War I then the world that we live in would be a far different and arguably better place today. There would have been no crushing of Germany nor the subsequent humilation and that embittered little corporal and failed artist likely never would have found such a receptive audience with the rabble that gathered in the beer halls. Rand Paul should be saluted by all Americans for his willingness to question the very horrific direction that this country has been led by scum like John McCain and his absolute hard on to send others to die for his own political expedience. 

I don't know why John McCain continues to receive the amount of airtime and false credibility that he does, it is not like he won the election in 2008 and should have just retired with dignity instead of continuing to float around in the media bitching and whining and in foreign countries stirring up trouble - like palling around with neo-Nazis in Kiev and helping the snake that is Saudi Prince Bandar in arming jihadists - some of which ended up with ISIS. But dignity is beneath McCain, this is after all a man who according to many when he was a guest of the Viet Cong at the Hanoi Hilton after being shot down during his bombing of civilians made propaganda videos for the communists, it is a sad sign of our ongoing national moral deterioration that he is treated as some sort of honored figure but that is why we are lurching towards collapse now isn't it?

The Benghazi "Ringleader" Capture Diversion

In a very conveniently timed announcement the story was launched that US Special Forces troops have captured a man named Ahmed Abu Khattala, described as the “ringleader” of the September 11, 2012 attacks on the Benghazi embassy compound that resulted in the death of four Americans including US Ambassador Christopher Stephens and millions of dollars burned in political partisan witch hunts. The news of the capture of Khattala brings back memories of how all of those al Qaeda number three men were either caught or killed whenever the Bush administration needed media cover or to score cheap political points and this comes at a rather nice time for President Barack Obama who has just sent troops back into Iraq despite his having said only days prior that it was not an option. Score another one for Team America World Police, after that World Cup beat down of international powerhouse Ghana by the USA!, USA!, USA! the exceptionalism oozes from patriotic pores this morning.

The political elite are desperate to reboot the days of the aftermath of 9/11 to get Americans back onboard with the latest involvement in Iraq and the fearmongering is ratcheting up. US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, the wife of the slimy authoritarian Cass Sunstein has claimed that Khatalla aka "the ringleader" had been planning attacks on Americans in presenting her case for the incursion into Libya to rendition him. In more strident rhetoric than what Power was engaged in the neocons in The Homeland have spent the last several days since the mysterious emergency of the perfect new bogeyman ISIS making the case for a return to the Mesopotamian meat grinder and widespread US military involvement across the Middle East by claiming that the "new caliphate" in Iraq and Syria would be the birthplace of the next 9/11. Leading the charge of course is the Palmetto state princess Senator Lindsey Graham who appeared on the Sunday morning propaganda circuit to claim that:

"I think it's inevitable. The seeds of 9/11 are being planted all over Iraq and Syria. You don't have to believe me, this is what they're telling you they're gonna do. They're not hiding their agenda. They want an Islamic caliphate….They plan to drive us out of the Mideast by attacking us here at home" 

Just more of the same garbage from one of the nation's preeminent demagogues and liars, the ongoing trotting out of Senator Graham as some sort of great authority on the geopolitics of the era of the phony war on terror shows the  deep  and endemic rot of the domestic state-corporate media in that he is never once called on any of his bullshit. The media is nothing more than a fully functional propaganda arm of the Deep State and nothing that they say should be believed - for information go to selected foreign press outlets and only use the US stuff for context on the daily government spin.

Libertarian Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com is his usual ass-kicking self in today's column entitled  "Iraq: Will the Neocons Get Away With It Again?", subtitled "They lied us into war, and now they're back on television" from which I excerpt:

The "BS" in CBS is well-earned by this CBS News story speculating on the alleged near certainty of a terrorist attack launched by ISIS – the Islamist group now rampaging across Iraq – against the continental US. Headlined "Will ISIS Plan a 9/11-style Terror Plot Against the US?", it is filled with the opinions of various "experts" and habitual warmongers whose exhalation of hot air is no doubt contributing to global warming.

The usual suspects are cited: Sen. Lindsey Graham, the War Party’s answer to Richard Simmons, shrieks "the seeds of 9/11s are being planted all over Iraq and Syria," while Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Oceania), who is giving up his seat in Congress for the right-wing radio talk show circuit, is honing his demagogy by declaring "I guarantee you: this is a problem that we will have to face, and we’re either going to have to face it in New York City or we’re going to face it here."

The same neocons who succeeded in lying the nation into the war in Iraq to begin with are still being allowed to do exactly what with total impunity armed with updated versions of the same stale talking points. That CBS is leading point in pushing the next 9/11 narrative should not be surprising given the network's role in the Benghazi hoax that was pushed later last year on the embassy attack by their ace 'journalist' Lara Logan (who is the wife of a former military psyops expert involved in Iraq) and then using 60 Minutes, their flagship program to air a story that provided cover for unconstitutional NSA mass surveillance and data-mining programs that was an insider delivered infomercial. As Raimondo puts it there is no doubt as exactly what the "BS" stands for in CBS.

While Obama enjoys some political cover for the rendition of "ringleader" Khatalla and a temporary feel good hit of the potent narcotic of  exceptionalism it will only be hours until torture loving Republicans are swarming the usual state-corporate media outlets to decry the plans to try him in the US Court system. While our now fully decimated judicial system is nothing more than a franchise of kangaroo courts where the state and the police who serve it are the winners of a rigged game even that is too good for the more overtly fascist of our two party crime syndicate. It is already being demanded that Khatalla be sent to our offshore torture/concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, so desperate are they to keep that heinous blight on our squandered moral standing long enough to take advantage of the day when the constantly morphing definition of "terrorist" is expanded to include their political foes and critics of the warfare state.

You would think that rank and file Americans would have wised up by now but they are still the biggest suckers on the planet, mesmerized by snake oil salesmen like Obama and Graham, terrified of their own shadows and incapable of critical thinking having long ago been electronically lobotomized by the bullshit that comes from their televisions.

Support the Troops? NATO Kills Five as America Shrugs

Five American US Special Forces troops were killed in Afghanistan on Monday and there was no outrage, no media appearances by politicians braying their indignation and no saturation media coverage, hell for as patriotic as all of the folks over at Fox News are you would think that they would at least have brought in some washed up hack to provide an "exclusive" on the nefarious circumstances behind the "friendly fire" incident. You know that Turkey is a NATO member and Turkey is filled with Muslims, could there be more than meets the eye to these latest five wasted lives in a never-ending and unjustified war of aggression?

The killings of the US soldiers is described as follows per The Guardian:

An air strike has killed five US troops and one Afghan soldier in southern Afghanistan, the deadliest friendly fire incident of the war for Nato forces.

Helicopters were called in by US soldiers when they came under Taliban attack after a day's heavy fighting in Zabul province, east of Kandahar, Afghan officials said, but the pilots hit the wrong men.

"We had launched a clearance operation in an area with a high security threat," General Ghulam Sakhi Rughlewanai, the Zabul provincial police chief, said.

"When it was over and we were returning to base the enemy opened fire and [the US troops] asked for air support. The helicopters made a mistake and targeted their own people."

People get killed during wars and the only time that the vast majority of Americans bother to notice are when such deaths are seized upon for political reasons, for example the number of deaths that have been falsely attributed to by the drive by media of soldiers who were killed allegedly searching for Bowe Bergdahl after he went missing. Those are largely based on accounts from Bergdahl's former unit and the members who made the allegations had their media appearances arranged by Republican operatives. According to a recent New York Times story one of his fellow soldiers hated him simple because he read books instead of drinking beer. His unit also had disciplinary problems and a good share of fuck-ups, probably because they were too busy drinking and playing video games to bother with soldiering. The right-wing slime machine can bray all that it wants about the deaths but not one of them can be directly laid at the feet of Bergdahl for blame. The proof is so elusive that the secret Muslim narrative was trotted out despite the connection to Iran-Contra perjurer Duane "Dewey" Clarridge but where is the outrage over NATO, an organization that along with the US backs neo-Nazis in Ukriane and hard core Islamist militants elsewhere? The type of Islamic militants who took over the major Iraqi city of Mosul and according to reports seized one or more Blackhawk helicopters so Al Qaeda has an air force now.

The real problem are the wars and being that America really produces nothing besides bogus financial paper of which most of the value is the skim from transaction and broker fees and military and security services and arms those wars are never going to end. Thanks to the Bush regime and the neocons the entire Middle East has become unstable and while Obama triangulates about getting out of Afghanistan (while leaving behind a substantial military presence) the situation on the ground in Iraq deteriorates with jihadists moving to take territory daily. Soon calls will emanate from the neocon infested Congress and editorial pages for sending more troops into Iraq in a continuing cycle of violence that will only feed on itself while the weapons industry and their toadies in the House and Senate reap the rewards.

Americans though remain indifferent to it all and a large portion of them can't at any given time identify which country that the is the US establishment demon of the day on a map. The Obama White House and State Department continue to issue orders to other countries as though Barack were the king and John Kerry the court jester. Today's eruption of bellicosity is directed at the Iraqi regime of puppet leader Nouri al-Malik to "step up to the plate" and take action to quell the violence. The sheer arrogance of the American regime is evident in the use of the sports metaphor itself, another sign that the Empire is drunk on it's own propaganda and revisionist history. Iraq, and the entire Middle East was lost the minute that the Bush regime decided to attack there and now it is all falling apart despite trillions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost but leave it to the political class, especially in the latest leg of the permanent campaign season to try to double-down by feeding more servicemen and servicewomen into the meat grinder for the most cynical and insane of reasons.

And now NATO and the US war machine are trying to escalate in order to bring about regime change in Russia? A wise word of advice  as espoused  in the words of Colonel Trautman from the movie franchise that seems to be the basis for American foreign policy and be sure to have a good supply of body bags.

Pimping Death: Obama Goes to Europe

President Barack Obama has ducked out of the country at a convenient time to avoid the madness unleashed among the domestic authoritarian fascist demographic over the trade of five Taliban members from Gitmo for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. While the growing lynch mob that is being fully encouraged and abetted by Republican political operatives to maximize election year turnout resembling something that one would expect in 1933 Germany Mr. Obama is slinking around in Eastern Europe as America's top weapons salesman in using the trumped up Putin is rebuilding the Soviet Empire hoax to sell missile systems and other arms.

Fiction mirrors life as at the end of the movie "Lord of War" the Nicholas Cage character Yuri Orlov, a global arms trader in a pivotal conversation after he has finally been captured by the intrepid agent Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke) reveals that he will ultimately be released because: "the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss - the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year - sometimes it's embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns.Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can't be seen supplying". But he can sure as hell make the sales pitches and speeches, only instead of at weapons bazaars he makes them from foreign palaces and government locations as well as historically significant sites - usually linked to some past conflict for maximum effect. One has to wonder whether Obama will show up at the D-Day anniversary ceremony in Normandy with the patches of US arms manufacturers sewn onto his silk suit.

But the warlord in chief was in fine form this week as he laid out the bullshit and demagoguery necessary to start a new cold war with Russia that would represent a windfall for Murder Incorporated with the entirety of NATO spending billions on missile systems and other garbage instead on anything that even remotely benefits their people. While in Poland, Obama promised a sweetener of $1 billion in loot stolen from the American taxpayers that could be better used to rebuild our own crumbling country to the new foreign war effort. I excerpt the following from The Guardian article "Obama pledges $1bn to boost military in Europe in wake of Ukraine crisis":

Barack Obama has pledged a billion-dollar military programme of reinforcements in Europe to assuage east European alarm at the Kremlin's expansionist ambitions following the Ukraine crisis.

Arriving in Warsaw to mark 25 years since the first semi-free elections in the communist bloc produced eastern Europe's first non-communist prime minister, the US president pronounced the security of Poland and the three Baltic states, all Nato and EU members, sacrosanct.

Kicking off a week of intensive diplomacy in Europe focused on western responses to Vladimir Putin and Ukraine, Obama announced that he was seeking congressional backing for a billion-dollar fund to rotate more US troops in and out of Poland, to strengthen air patrols over the Baltic, and to beef up naval operations in the Black Sea off the Russian and Ukrainian coasts.

Obama then went to Brussels which in the post-war era has replaced Berlin as the epicenter of the global conquest machine to meet with the phony G7 (which doesn't include major economic powers China and Russia) to engage in more bombastic and bullshit filled rhetoric directed at Putin. El Presidente sounded just like one of those World War II Axis leaders as he delivered an epic teleprompter recital that defies reality to the extent that perhaps the job has driven Barack bonkers. I excerpt from The Guardian article "Obama and Merkel warn of tougher sanctions against Russia over Ukraine":

While Ukraine dominated Wednesday evening's Brussels dinner, it is also certain to loom large over events in France on Friday marking the 70th anniversary of the D-day landings. Putin is to attend and may have his first meeting with Obama since the Ukraine conflict turned violent in February.

In Warsaw Obama accused the Kremlin of resorting to the "dark tactics" of the last century in Ukraine, and pledged to resist Russian aggression in eastern Europe.

"The days of empire and spheres of influence are over," he said at the royal palace in Warsaw.

"Bigger nations must not be allowed to bully the small, or impose their will at the barrel of a gun or with masked men taking over buildings.

"Further Russian provocations will only mean more isolation and costs for Russia. After investing so much blood and treasure to bring Europe together, how can we allow the dark tactics of the 20th century to define this new century?"

Obama invoked the anniversaries this week of the D-day landings in France in 1944 and the communist bloc's first partly free elections in Poland in 1989 as key events in the fight to free Europe from tyranny.

He said: "We've been reminded by Russia's aggression in Ukraine, our free nations cannot be complacent in pursuit of the vision we share – a Europe that is whole and free and at peace. We have to work for that."

The US leader sought to allay fears that the west was reluctant to commit to eastern Europe's security. "As allies, we have a solemn duty to defend your territorial integrity. And we will," he told the Poles.

"We stand together, now and forever, for your freedom is ours. Poland will never stand alone. But not just Poland – Estonia will never stand alone. Latvia will never stand alone. Lithuania will never stand alone. Romania will never stand alone."

In Berlin Merkel, who is to meet Putin in France on Friday, demanded that the Russian leader act forcefully to prevent violence in eastern Ukraine, and to close the borders to arms and paramilitaries entering Ukraine from Russia.

"If this does not stop, we won't flinch from imposing more sanctions," she told the German parliament.

How on God's green Earth can such lunacy be countered? Especially in a nation like The Homeland that is filled with cowards, brainwashed dolts and heavily armed angry mobs all plugged into a Matrix style alternate reality delivered 24/7 via the electronic crackpipe?

His latest blistering diatribe against Putin a man against whom his narcissistic personal vendetta knows no end and Obama is prepared to risk the death of millions to prove that his dick is bigger than his political foe accused Russia of "dark tactics" in Ukraine. He either fails to realize that pumping billions of US taxpayer money into a destabilization campaign that led to a coup against the democratically elected leader in Kiev, and assisted by neo-Nazis who are now on a US sanctioned killing spree are exactly that - "dark tactics" or he is so isolated, clueless and otherwise totally incompetent that he should be removed from office immediately.

Sad that I still have conversations with liberals and Democrats who believe that the man walks on water and is some sort of chess master who despite the dismal record of the last five years is just waiting to spring his grand move. Every despotic society needs it's useful idiots though and US liberals along with the foaming at the mouth right-wingers shrieking for the blood of Bowe Bergdahl to assuage their loss of the latest two wars of US aggression only serve the dark forces that have wrapped a garotte around the neck of Lady Liberty and are applying the final hard twist.

 (Image: Getty Images)