Obama Brings Down the House at Annual D.C. Press Suckathon

Perhaps the most disgusting aspect of the dismal state of the mainstream media and it’s sucking up to power is the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner. The event provides the opportunity for the sitting US President to play comedian. He struts to the podium and delivers one-liners and perorms silly gimmicks to the delight of a gaggle of adoring, self-important media hacks whose invitation to the party is one of the key perks of being a government conduit for misinformation. Scoring an invite is the crown jewel for those covering the D.C. circle jerk and serves as a pat on the back from a corrupt regime for a job well done .

It is a garish and sickening celebration of Washington's own pompous self-worship and a pox upon what was once a democracy where power was checked by a diligent and critical press carrying out their duties as set forth in the First Amendment. Now it is only a festival of scumbaggery for political con artists and those that can only be described as presstitutes for their selling out of journalistic responsibilities in order to suckle power for the sake of career advancement.

The giant sucking sound from the royal city is reported on by The Guardian in the story entitled “Barack Obama lands the zingers at White House correspondents' dinner” from which I excerpt:

The president, Barack Obama, says he’s bringing a new attitude to the final quarter of his presidency: bucket!

“After the midterm elections, my advisers asked me, ‘Mr President, do you have a bucket list?’” he told those attending the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association. “And I said, well, I have something that rhymes with bucket list ...”

“Take executive action on immigration? Bucket! New regulations? Bucket!”

The correspondents’ association dinner is the night the president does standup comedy to raise money for scholarships for young journalists – and provides tongue-in-cheek payback for those already on the job as well as political opponents. A few of the presidential zingers tossed out Saturday night:

“Just this week Michele Bachmann actually predicted that I would bring about the biblical end of days. Now, that’s a legacy.”

“I have one friend ... just a few weeks ago she was making millions of dollars a year, and she’s now living out of a van in Iowa.” That was a crack about Hillary Rodham Clinton, who campaigned in Iowa in a van nicknamed Scooby.

Noting that Saturday Night Live cast member Cecily Strong impersonates CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin, Obama said that’s surprising. “Usually the only people impersonating journalists on CNN are journalists on CNN.”

On the TV series “Black-ish,” Obama said he had to give ABC fair warning. “Being black-ish only makes you popular for so long. Trust me, there’s a shelf life to that thing.”

“The polar vortex caused so many record lows they renamed it MSNBC.”

“Donald Trump is here – still.”

And they all roared with laughter, swilled champagne and marveled at themselves in all of their orgasmic resplendence. As for El Presidente, it was beneath the dignity of the office but so has everything else that Mr. Obama has touched since he took up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW to live high off of the hog on the taxpayer dole. I'll give Obama credit for his jabs at CNN and MSNBC but the rest of it was bad enough to have anyone with any sense decency scrambling for a vomit bag.

When the carcass of this once proud and free country is eventually hauled upon the autopsy table by future historians, the cause of death will be found to have been in large part due to the abject failure by the media to speak the truth. There is a reason why the federal government and those who hold the levers of power despise the internet and that is because the truth can be found and that truth shows that our “leaders” in the political elite are nothing more than gangsters who operate their rackets with the media having their backs.

The fawning ass-kissers present at Saturday night’s soiree will wake up from their hangovers on Sunday morning and bask in the glorious narcissism of the entitled for they will have earned their keep as professional liars who disseminate government propaganda. They wouldn’t dare stray from their official roles as lapdogs lest they not be invited back to the party next year.

Chopper Whopper: NBC Anchor Brian Williams Exposed as Professional Liar

According to Greek mythology Icarus plunged to his death after his waxen wings melted when he flew too close to the sun. It is a fitting metaphor for millionaire celebrity NBC News anchor Brian Williams who had to retract and publicly apologize for a career burnishing fib that he told. Williams had regaled people with the tale that he had been on a helicopter that was forced down under fire in Iraq back when battle raged in 2003. But the pride of NBC Nightly News repeated his fairy tale one time too many and was called out for it.

As reported by Reuters in the story “NBC's Brian Williams apologizes for Iraq story after soldiers protest”:

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams said on Wednesday he was sorry for "making a mistake" when he said he was on a helicopter that was hit and forced down by rocket fire during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, after soldiers complained it was not true.

Williams made the claim on his broadcast last Friday while reporting a tribute at a New York Rangers hockey game for a retired soldier who provided ground security during the incident. Williams said he and his news crew were protected by a mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry after their Chinook helicopter was crippled by enemy fire.

That prompted crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment's Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire to tell the Stars and Stripes military newspaper that the journalist had arrived on a different helicopter an hour later.

In a statement responding to the soldiers, Williams said they were absolutely right and he was wrong.

"In fact, I spent much of the weekend thinking I'd gone crazy. I feel terrible about making this mistake, especially since I found my OWN WRITING about the incident from back in '08, and I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG in the tail housing," Williams wrote.

He said he supposed that repeatedly watching a video of himself inspecting the impact damage, plus "the fog of memory over 12 years," made him conflate and misremember events, some of which took place in a thick "Orange Crush" sandstorm.

The “fog of memory” that Williams uses as an excuse is more like the fog of bullshit and an obvious and shameful effort to deceive the American public. But that is why a guy like him makes the big bucks and the temptation was just too much to mix a lie of his own in with the big government propaganda that he recites. It is even worse than Dan Rather’s similar fall from grace after his sloppy work on a story about George W. Bush’s National Guard Service. Mr. Rather, long hated by conservatives for perceived bias was arrogant to the core and his blunder resulted in his unceremonious exit from CBS and Bush's reelection. Williams also should surrender his anchorman throne for this lie because how can he possibly have any credibility going forward?

A story from the BBC provides a bit more detail on the exposure of Brian Williams as a pompous liar:

His apology came after veterans who were on the helicopter that was hit posted comments on the broadcaster's Facebook page.

Flight engineer Lance Reynolds, who was on the helicopter that was hit, wrote: "Sorry dude, I don't remember you being on my aircraft. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened.

In a later posting he wrote: "The place we were shot at was a long ways away from where we even saw him and his crew. "

Replying to the criticism, Mr Williams said that "constant viewing of the video showing us inspecting the impact area - and the fog of memory over 12 years - made me conflate the two".

Mr Reynolds told the military newspaper Stars and Stripes: "It was something personal for us that was kind of life-changing for me. I know how lucky I was to survive it."

"It felt like a personal experience that someone else wanted to participate in and didn't deserve to participate in."

The hashtag #chopperwhopper has now appeared on Twitter, with many contributors criticising Mr Williams and questioning whether he should stay in his job.

The quote from Lance Reynolds is priceless, “sorry dude” though will not be enough from Williams who should do the right thing and resign. Not that NBC, much higher up the totem pole than Democrat party propaganda arm MSNBC should be spared from criticism over Williams’ whopper about the chopper. If anything this validates what conservatives have long been saying about the network’s credibility.

There is a line of celebrities with less baggage than Brian Williams who would work for less money and jump through flaming hoops to get a shot at his gig. Americans will adjust quickly because as they have proven time and again, they will just gobble down the bullshit biscuits no matter who it is that is feeding them the precious morsels.

Democrats Whip Out Their Slick Willie

Outside of Adolf Hitler himself it would be hard to imagine a historical political figure who is as much a turnoff to so many as President Barack Obama. Barry is now officially radioactive to the point where his even speaking at a campaign stop to bolster a hapless Democrat’s election hopes sent hordes of disgusted Americans scrambling to the exits. One could say that he is about as popular as the Ebola virus these days which is particularly ominous for the staggering Dems as they are about to be given the knockout punch by voters. So what do the Democrats do?  They bring in the big gun, former President Bill Clinton to troll for suckers in the waning days before political Armageddon 2014.

Bubba Clinton’s stops include several in the Bluegrass State to stump for Alison Lundergan Grimes in her bid to upset longtime Senator and the man who would be Senate Majority Leader, the turtle-faced con artist Mitch McConnell. This comes despite the fact that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) pretty much threw in the towel last week by bailing on funding  her negative ads. It is as though the shameless old degenerate with the allegedly crooked penis is a man of miracles.

According to a story from the website of  Democratic party propaganda network MSNBC:

National Democrats may have abandoned Alison Lundergan Grimes in her fight to unseat Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell next month, but Bill Clinton isn’t giving up hope: The former president returns to the state Tuesday afternoon to campaign for Grimes in two rallies, his third visit since she won the Democratic primary earlier this year.

Clinton’s efforts to stump for the Democratic hopeful reveal his continued support. He will attend an event in Owensboro at 3 p.m. local time, and in Paducah at 7 p.m. local. He made his first appearance on her behalf in February, ahead of the state primary that Grimes later won by 37 percentage points. In August, Clinton visited the state again to address a crowd of supporters. And just last week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined her husband in Louisville, where she warned voters that they will regret taking a victory for granted.

Unlike President Barack Obama, whose approval ratings in Kentucky continuously hover near 30%, the former commander-in-chief remains popular among residents in the mostly conservative state. Thousands of residents flocked to hear him speak during his past two appearances in the Bluegrass State. And both Clintons carried Kentucky in their respective presidential campaigns.

Grimes is likely doomed but according to some reports she may end being beholden to the Clintons for their last ditch effort to bolster her hopes.  The Louisville Courier Journal published a story: “If elected, Grimes would owe the Clintons” and it is a good bet that the man who is incapable of keeping his dick in his pants is counting on exactly that. Slick Willie is probably just sizing up a prospective new piece of ass for his likely return to the White House as first husband in January 2017.

The mainstream media is already swooning over the restoration of the Clinton dynasty. The Washington Post is running a story entitled "Hillary Clinton is a bright spot on a gloomy Democratic election landscape" that states:

The presumptive Democratic front-runner for 2016 is among her party’s best assets to raise money and energize voters amid a gloomy election landscape for Democrats this fall, and she is campaigning hard even on behalf of apparent lost causes.

As a pair of events this week in California illustrated, Clinton’s efforts to raise money and get out the vote for Democratic congressional and gubernatorial candidates often dovetail with her own political agenda. Her first political season after stepping down as secretary of state has combined political boosterism for Democrats — including in key presidential states — with high-dollar fundraising and lucrative paid speeches.

The appearances give revealing clues as to what kind of candidate Clinton might be in two years — emphasizing women’s issues and striving to thread the needle between her hawkish, centrist history and the more liberal base that rejected her in favor of Barack Obama in 2008.

Here in San Francisco on Monday, Clinton gave a spirited call to arms to Democrats as she road-tested what is likely to be her economic message if she runs again. The November midterms, she said, come down “to a simple question: Who’s on your side?”

For conservatives who thought that the corrupt state-corporate media was in the bag for Barack I have news for you: you haven't seen anything yet. America just loves stories about goofy dipshit couples. I mean my God, in what other country could the reality TV series "The Osbornes" have been such a smash hit? Outside of  the endless wars, the imposition of a national domestic surveillance state, using the IRS to target political foes and botched responses to natural disasters and diseases, the media has suffered through years of boredom. There is nothing quite like the smell of tawdry sexual naughtiness and marital betrayal that is more alluring to our panty-sniffing tabloid press.

Like it or not, America is going to get reacquainted with the nation’s “first black president” William Jefferson Clinton very soon. I suppose that it was inevitable but the chubby little trollop who occasionally served as Bubba's humidor, Monica Lewinsky has recently surfaced again as well. If nothing else, the future is not going to be lacking for sheer entertainment value. That is if you have a really twisted sense of humor.

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?

Obama Yucks it Up With Presstitute Media at DC Soiree

The White House Correspondent's Association dinner is a public display of why there is no legitimate media in this country anymore. The annual event is an opportunity for the sitting US President to play comedian, delivering one-liners and gimmicks to a gaggle of adoring an self-important media hacks whose invitation to the party is one of the key perks of being a government conduit for misinformation and the crown jewel on the DC circle jerk circuit. It is a celebration of Washington's own pompous self worship and a pox upon what at least once in theory was a democracy were the power of the state was held in check by a critical press carrying out their duties in the traditions of the First Amendment. Now it is only a festival of political con artists and what can only be described as presstitutes for their ongoing selling out of journalistic ideals and responsibilities to suckle power and damn those who don't. 

While lacking the complete gaucheness and insensitivity that has been on display in the past - particularly George W. Bush's disgusting jokes and slide show about Saddam's missing weapons of mass destruction as Iraq was engulfed in violence and American troops were dying or Karl Rove's rap routine (note the slimy David Gregory)  this year's soiree was sickening in it's own way. The 2014 edition took place over the weekend at the Washington Hilton and in giving his performance Barack Obama was exalted as a great comedian by the adoring audience. Here are some pieces excerpted from El Presidente's remarks as published on the White House website:

I want to thank the White House Correspondents Association for hosting us here tonight.  I am happy to be here, even though I am a little jet-lagged from my trip to Malaysia.  The lengths we have to go to get CNN coverage these days.  (Laughter and applause.)  I think they’re still searching for their table.  (Laughter and applause.)

[Very presidential, joking about that missing airplane is as insensitive and dishonorable to the grieving families of the passengers as anything CNN has done in the 24/7 coverage]

We have some other athletes here tonight, including Olympic snowboarding gold medalist Jamie Anderson is here.  We’re proud of her.  (Applause.)  Incredibly talented young lady.  Michelle and I watched the Olympics -- we cannot believe what these folks do -- death-defying feats -- haven’t seen somebody pull a “180” that fast since Rand Paul disinvited that Nevada rancher from this dinner.  (Laughter.)  As a general rule, things don’t like end well if the sentence starts, “Let me tell you something I know about the negro.”  (Laughter.)  You don’t really need to hear the rest of it.  (Laughter and applause.)  Just a tip for you -- don’t start your sentence that way.  (Laughter.)

[Gratuitous establishment shot at Paul but I will give Obama credit here, the Senator is often his own worst enemy and the attachment to the racist welfare rancher for cheap political points and then Republican running from the man as if he had the Ebola virus is par for the course]

Speaking of Rand Paul -- (laughter) -- Colorado legalized marijuana this year, an interesting social experiment.  I do hope it doesn’t lead to a whole lot of paranoid people who think that the federal government is out to get them and listening to their phone calls.  (Laughter.)  That would be a problem.  (Laughter.)

[A truly disgusting comment that shows just how serious that Barack Obama is on reigning his NSA Stasi and their unconstitutional surveillance and data-mining programs - also the talking point "paranoid libertarians" is invoked again to stifle debate]

Anyway, this year, I’ve promised to use more executive actions to get things done without Congress.  My critics call this the “imperial presidency.”  The truth is, I just show up every day in my office and do my job.  I’ve got a picture of this I think.  (Laughter and applause.)  You would think they’d appreciate a more assertive approach, considering that the new conservative darling is none other than Vladimir Putin.  (Laughter.)  Last year, Pat Buchanan said Putin is “headed straight for the Nobel Peace Prize.”  He said this.  Now I know it sounds crazy but to be fair, they give those to just about anybody these days.  (Laughter.)  So it could happen.

[Of course Obama doesn't bother with the inconvenient truths that the trouble in Ukraine was completely provoked by the US and his State Department with their coup d-etat against the democratically elected leader and backed by neo-Nazi thugs like the ones who just burned down a trade union hall in Odessa the other day - something that Barry still has not acknowledged. The Putin bashing comes down to a thin-skinned narcissist avenging his wounded pride despite the possibility that his petulance could provoke a nuclear war - and they all laughed too...] 

n a more serious note, tonight reminds us that we really are lucky to live in a country where reporters get to give a head of state a hard time on a daily basis -- and then, once a year, give him or her the chance, at least, to try to return the favor.

But we also know that not every journalist, or photographer, or crewmember is so fortunate, because even as we celebrate the free press tonight, our thoughts are with those in places around the globe like Ukraine, and Afghanistan, and Syria, and Egypt, who risk everything -- in some cases, even give their lives -- to report the news.

And what tonight also reminds us is that the fight for full and fair access goes beyond the chance to ask a question.  As Steve mentioned, decades ago, an African American who wanted to cover his or her President might be barred from journalism school, burdened by Jim Crow, and, once in Washington, banned from press conferences.  But after years of effort, black editors and publishers began meeting with FDR’s press secretary, Steve Early.  And then they met with the President himself, who declared that a black reporter would get a credential.  And even when Harry McAlpin made history as the first African American to attend a presidential news conference, he wasn’t always welcomed by the other reporters.  But he was welcomed by the President, who told him, I’m glad to see you, McAlpin, and I’m very happy to have you here.

[Out comes the race card again - hey, it's an election year and both sides play it although one would expect that the sitting US President would deem such a thing as beneath the dignity of the office]

That is enough of it, if you want to see it the link is here and is yet another damning piece of evidence at exactly how low that we have sank in America. While the roast went on in Washington the roasted bodies were still being dug out of that burned down trade union hall in Odessa. I will give Obama a small bit of credit though, at least he didn't make any jokes about torture like that moron Sarah Palin did at the NRA convention. The event itself is a long-running tradition, much like that loathsome National Prayer Breakfast that ignores the separation of church and state and they are both a waste of time for anything other than the DC inside baseball clique and the careerist media toadies whose participation puts them in a position to prostitute themselves out to the power that they are supposed to be protecting the rest of us from. The only time that the event had anything worthwhile to offer was the classic 2006 demolition of then president George W. Bush by Stephen Colbert  that was accompanied by the sounds of puckering assholes and clicking china.

They are like H.L. Mencken would have referred to such as "jackals" and "jackasses"

(Image: Getty Images)

Obama's Move Now as Glenn Greenwald Returns to US

As he had previously stated he would, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald was going to force the issue and has now returned to the hallowed shores of The Homeland to accept his George Polk Award for his reporting on former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Mr. Greenwald, formerly of The Guardian whose new venture for First Look Media "The Intercept" arrived in New York on Friday along with fellow Polk Award winner Laura Poitras who has also been instrumental in exposing the anti-American, anti-Constitutional rampage of Obama's NSA Stasi which is yet another indignity heaped upon Barry the Narcissistic. Obama must be furious, his Ukrainian coup d'etat fiasco is imploding as the Europeans are starting to get antsy that their gas supplies are going to be cut off as a result of occupying deadbeat regime in Kiev not paying it's bills and the hated Putin is once again about to humiliate our idiotic commander in chief on the world stage. The US government should start buying KY Jelly in bulk thanks to the exploits of the Obama-Kerry team of unrivaled morons. 

Obama may not have been able to best Putin in Ukraine but he sure as hell can take it out on the now former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for the indignity of the botched Obamacare rollout - so much for all of that demagogic horseshit from the Democrats about the "war on women". The buck never stops here in Obama's White House and while Sebelius will spend the next few days nursing the black and blue marks on her ass from being drop-kicked by her boss the appearance of Greenwald provides El Presidente with a dilemma.

Does Obama follow through on the demands of the authoritarian freaks, criminals in high places and outright fascists like House Intelligence Committee boss Mike Rogers, the strangely effeminate psychopathic former NSA/CIA boss Michael Hayden and the lunatic terrorist supporting Peter King, the pride of New York's 2nd Congressional District and have Greenwald arrested? It would be a way to show everyone who is really boss - being the Deep State/COG unelected rulers who are above Obama's pay grade that the man at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is serious but it would also reveal exactly what type of country that we really live in. Obama has likely been chafing at the bit to call for that JSOC assassination team or dialed up drone attack to extra-judicially murder Snowden and I personally suspect that a damned good part of his current reckless game of my dick is bigger than yours with Putin even at the risk of a nuclear war or even worse Russia and others dumping the dollar comes from the festering animosity over Putin's saving Snowden from being apprehended for torture, humiliation, a Stalinist style show trial and then execution and having to endure the Chinese water torture of the ongoing stories by Greenwald and Poitras exposing what Snowden took - and the best is yet to come.

So does Obama have Greenwald and maybe Poitras detained, harassed or arrested to avenge his damaged sense of self-esteem and whip out a shovel of bloody chunks of red meat to the fiends like Rogers and his ilk or does he for once practice some restraint. It is a damned good question because no matter how it is handled or justified anything that the US state does to Greenwald and/or Poitras (or David Miranda which would be a typical gangster move befitting a vengeful swine like Obama) would present Putin with the precious gift of being able to call out the rogue American state as exactly what is and what it spends all of it's time pretending not to be.

 Now is the time for the authoritarian scum in this country to put up or shut up. 

Anti-Austerity Pushback Begins in Ukraine

The frantic Cold War obsessed, neocon infested US state-corporate media are blowing their mighty klaxons today as there is more festering unrest in Ukraine. Not that such a thing should be unexpected given the US-EU-NATO Axis of Evil hostile, neo-Nazi backed takeover that ousted the democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych only to replace him with a western puppet charged with looting the country. With the reported seizure of government buildings in the city of Donetsk and demands for secession from the illegally installed austerity government the western media is in the typical manner labeling the protesters as "pro-Russian" and "pro-Putin" rather than what they really are which is "anti-fascist" and "anti-austerity" which will further fan the flames of what may be - thanks to our failed political system in Der Heimat - an express train careening towards Armageddon.

What areat job by President Barack Obama in that his splendid little coup d'eat joint venture with the neocons whose insane, Hitlerian ideology of world domination has become fully cancerous and is metastasizing throughout every branch of the government is exceeding any reasonable expectations of disaster. What started as a contest in dick measuring in which El Presidente continued to come out on the losing end to the now fully vilified and demonized to elicit bloodlust from the masses of asses "Ras-Putin" the entire country of Ukraine is just about ready to erupt in a full blown civil war. The anti-austerity backlash by those who could truly be tabbed as "freedom fighters" and who will have to operate underground ala the resistance in Nazi occupied Europe during the "Good War" is the real thing when it comes to ousting a tyrannical and corrupt regime such as the one that the EU, US and NATO have installed in Kiev. The breadbasket of Europe is about to turn into abbatoir and the fault all lies within the bowels of the American Deep State and the even murkier shadow government as manifested within the Continuity of Government (COG) infrastructure has which never abandoned the use of Communism as some form of Manichean devil to serve as the justification for repression at home and militarism and subterfuge abroad.

The pencil necked technocratic geek Arseny “Yats” Yatseniuk - in between dishonest tirades about Russian invasions - seems to be scared shitless right about now and justifiably so. Before long the angry mobs in the streets will be outside his own window and looking to dangle his skinny little chicken-legged ass from the end of a rope for his selling out of his country to the global corporate parasites who are currently busy bemoaning the loss of billions of loot that could have been milked from Crimea had the people there not had the good sense to vote to rejoin Russia. Tuesday the crackdown against the freedom fighters began with the occupying government sending forth heavily armed paramilitary goon squad police to engage in an "anti-terrorist" action to oust protesters in Eastern Ukraine. It is the typical double-standard and hypocrisy of the US establishment and their European stooges to refer to what is a legitimate uprising against forced austerity and economic ruination and political persecution at the hands of their neo-Nazi backed usurpers in Kiev. Neither "Yats" or the loathsome and corrupt moral reprobate Interior Minister Arsen Avakov will bother with the inconvenient truth that the real "terrorists" were the ones in the streets of Kiev, throwing petrol bombs at police, engaging in organized thuggery and shooting innocent people - both protesters and police.

How this all plays out has yet to be seen but all indications from a Cold War fixated US establishment that is bereft of adult leadership as well as Obama's ongoing apparent insistence on making this a personal thing with Putin it's not looking good at all. Former Reagan administration Deputy Assistant Treasurer and prolific writer who has been writing on the ultimate decline of what used to be a free, mostly fair and decent society into the abyss Paul Craig Roberts nails it in his most recent column entitled "Obama Issues Threats To Russia And NATO" from which I excerpt:

It has dawned on the Russian government that being a part of the American dollar system means that Russia is open to being looted by Western banks and corporations or by individuals financed by them, that the ruble is vulnerable to being driven down by speculators in the foreign exchange market and by capital outflows, and that dependence on the American international payments system exposes Russia to arbitrary sanctions imposed by the “exceptional and indispensable country.”

Why it took the Russian government so long to realize that the dollar payments system puts countries under Washington’s thumb is puzzling. Perhaps the answer is the success of US Cold War propaganda. Cold war propaganda portrayed America as the shining light, the great observer of human rights, opponent of torture, upholder of liberty, defender of the downtrodden, lover of peace, and benefactor of the world. This image survived even as the US government prevented the rise of any representative governments in Latin America and while Washington has bombed half a dozen countries into rubble.

Russians emerging from communism naturally aligned with the propaganda image of “American freedom.” That the US and Europe were also corrupt and also had blood on their hands was overlooked. During the years of anti-Soviet propaganda, Washington was murdering European women and children and blaming communists. The truth came out when President of Italy Francesco Cossiga publicly revealed Operation Gladio, a false flag terrorist scheme run by the CIA and Italian Intelligence during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s that targeted European women and children with bombs in order to blame the communists and thereby prevent European communist parties from making electoral gains. This is one of the most well-known false flag events in history, having resulted in extraordinary confessions by Italian intelligence.

Now that the Russian government understands that Russia must depart the dollar system in order to protect Russian sovereignty, President Putin has entered into barter/ruble oil deals with China and Iran. However, Washington objects to Russia abandoning the dollar international payment system. Zero Hedge, a more reliable news source than the US print and TV media, reports that Washington has conveyed to both Russia and Iran that a non-dollar oil deal would trigger US sanctions.

The only recourse that the rest of the world has against the dangerous Leviathan in Washington and it's current Sun King ensconced within the control center of Mordor at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is to turn to economics, a game that the now thoroughly corrupt system of US looter capitalism - we cheat everyone, especially the TV mesmerized zombies on the star-spangled lemming farm - cannot win. So it is coming to a head. There has already been chatter that Russia will soon retaliate for those sanctions - the most effective to this point being a handful of McDonalds fast food restaurants abandoning Crimea - by effectively dumping the petrodollar in a trade deal with Iran. This would put the US political class and the neocons - permanently in bed with the government of the insane Israeli leader Bibi Netanyahu - in the optimal situation to engage in a climactic Godfather style wipeout of the enemies of the Corleone (or is it Lansky?) family that would instead be more like the last suicidal charge of a pack of over the hill outlaws at the end of The Wild Bunch as the Empire goes out on it's own terms.

Barring a move to impeach Obama immediately and get him the hell out of anywhere that his narcissistic streak that has driven him to pick a fight with a nuclear armed Russia where he has the ultimate trump card of the launch codes then we are truly living in a revisionist Cold War hell that is the modern incarnation of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Senator Dares to Ask if NSA Spies on Congress

When it comes to defiance of the NSA Stasi the U.S. Congress is not the place where one would expect to find either an abundance of principled representation nor much of a supply of backbones. While there have been a few outliers who have demanded that Obama’s surveillance machine be brought under control those such as Representative Justin Amash, USA Patriot Act creator Representative James Sensenbrenner and Senator Patrick Leahy for instance they are a minority who will ultimately be crushed by the machine as it goes back on offense.  The U.S. Congress is the largest collection of corrupt miscreants, quislings, perverts, charlatans, opportunists, hucksters, half-wits, knuckle-draggers, warmongers, gangsters, on the take defacto corporate lobbyists, chiselers, con artists and assorted swine on the face of God’s green Earth. The defenders of the criminals in high places using the surveillance machine for blackmail, industrial espionage, money laundering and even more nasty bits of business are coming together in defense of their own asses and a career of suckling at the public teat while never having to worry about getting a real job. So it is quite something when an actual question of validity is asked for NSA officials on their disembowelment of civil liberties and privacy rights.  Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders just did this when he in a letter asked whether the NSA has been spying on Congress as a part of their “collect it all” drive for global eradication of privacy and the coming roundup of dissenters.

The simple answer, although you couldn’t beat it out of the scum running the show at Fort Meade, in Bluffdale Utah,San Antonio and D.C.  is yes of course they are -at least on an unknown number of certain members not named Mike Rogers or Dianne Feinstein. However they will continue to fib, obfuscate, dodge, prevaricate, engage in selective recall techniques and trot out armies of legal eagles to bury the truth under a pile of weasel words all while they are fully enabled by the heads of the Intelligence Committees of both houses whose only purpose for their lofty positions is to prevent the billion dollar surveillance business and all of its accompanying revenue streams from ever being made to answer truthfully. It is pretty damned shameless when two days after a terrorist appeasing degenerate like Peter King (R-IRA) denounces the New York Times as terrorist appeasers for daring to suggest that former government contractor turned heroic whistleblower Edward Snowden be given clemency for exposing the blatant criminal actions of those in high places that the legal counsel to the perjurer James Clapper at ODNI comes out and has the stones to deny that the bastard lied in the first place.  The culprit is one Robert Litt, the general counsel to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (the Clapper) who has sent a written rebuttal to the New York Times (which should immediately be fed into the nearest shredder) offering up an excuse for the perjury. Now there is some chutzpah!

The knives for Sanders are already being sharpened for tomorrow morning's Sunday edition of the two-minute hate, you see Bernie Sanders is a - GASP -socialist and not only is he one but he is open about it. Rather than have any sort of a serious discussion about surveillance of elected officials there will be no answering of this very important question because Senator Sanders will be buried under an avalanche of horseshit as the state-corporate media will see to it that he is crucified upon a hammer and sickle. That much is as certain as the sun coming up in the morning and given the dismal quality of lunatics in charge of the government probably even more so. Senator Sander’s socialism only allows for the state-corporate media smear machine to more easily dismiss him as a crank, much as they did to Ron Paul and currently Senator Rand Paul, another NSA and PNAC global dominance critic. Best to not assist the payroll propagandists with cutting our own throats, the strategy of divide and conquer is as old as it is effective.

While Senator Sanders' socialism probably doesn’t sit well with a good many libertarians, paleoconservatives and those of differing philosophies when it comes to economic systems it should be clearly understood by all that in the current, corrupt authoritarian system that the government blade swings both left and right. Put into layman's terms it makes no difference to the corrupt operatives of the authoritarian state whose heads will be lopped off first because if you oppose it you are already in the database and your punishment has been preordained.

It is wise to recall the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller who was present in Germany in the 1930's during the rise of another authoritarian regime with a passion for surveillance:

When the Nazis came for the communists,

I remained silent;

I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,

I remained silent;

I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,

I did not speak out;

I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,

I remained silent;

I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,

there was no one left to speak out.

It is truly imperative for all Americans who are cognizant of the danger of the immense power imbued in the rogue government to put aside philosophical differences and unite against Leviathan. I have long been an advocate for a progressive-libertarian alliance against fascism and this also includes socialists, most of whom have an intense desire to eliminate the ability of the government to destroy the lives of its citizens through constitutional revisionism, secret courts, paramilitary police and most of all a vast and monstrous surveillance machine that grows increasingly powerful by the day. The most important duty of all for patriotic Americans today - one which will ultimately affect the lives of future generations yet unborn - is to stamp out fascism and that starts with bringing the surveillance colossus down and restrained by the Constitution.

WA-PO Fascists Rush to Defend Unconstitutional NSA Spy Programs

Organized opposition to the reigning in of the NSA Stasi was preordained and the usual suspects being neoconservative warmongers with zero respect for either the Constitution nor any concept of an America that is not on a permanent war footing are squealing like stuck pigs. With the reverberations to this week’s ruling by Federal Judge Richard Leon that only one of the myriad NSA programs  being the metadata gathering and storing for as yet to be revealed mysterious future use of bulk telephone records of millions was “Orwellian” and “likely unconstitutional” and then the tepid (but better than nothing) report of Obama’s NSA review panel beginning to finally batter the Stasi at Fort Meade the pitched defense has begun. The front lines of the war for public opinion are of course the D.C. neocon propaganda beacon that is The Washington Post. Not that the paper doesn't publish the occasional piece of excellent journalism, Barton Gellman has reported on the NSA casting the rogue intelligence operation in a considerably less favorable light than his colleagues in the teeming snakepit of an editorial section and Dana Priest has also has outstanding work to her credit like the Top Secret America series. However in the sewer that is the Washington beltway the paper is the preeminent news source although the cheesy tabloid style Politico is closing ground.

Today’s WaPo alone features a veritable holiday stocking bursting at the seams with fear-mongering, a prominently featured column, a joint effort led by former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey parses a boatload of legalistic bullshit in order to discredit Leon’s ruling – you have to give it to Mukasey, at least he is consistent in his contempt for the Constitution. The piece ends with the standard lie that turning America into a fascist police state is necessary to keep the sheep safe: “Most Americans willingly accept less privacy in exchange for the conveniences the Internet makes possible. But Leon’s analysis means that U.S. intelligence agencies cannot protect Americans from foreign threats using the same analytical tools that private companies employ”.  And any column that starts off with the following just cannot be taken seriously:

“A federal judge’s ruling Monday that the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) bulk telephone metadata collection is “likely” unconstitutional is wrong on the law and the facts. It conflicts with the opinions of 15 other federal judges who have sat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and approved the NSA’s metadata collection 35 times since 2006.”

The FISA court of course is a secret court where there is no representation present from civil liberties advocates nor attorneys arguing the opposite side. It is what it is, an official rubber stamp on the ever growing expansion of the government’s power to control the lives of the citizenry. It takes a real legal contortionist to pull some bizarre interpretation of the Constitution out of his ass that supports the existence of secret courts, this is truly a man who would be in good company in the service of Hitler’s Gestapo or Stalin’s NKVD.  But that is what the neocons have always been about, using the memes of the foreign menace to cloak the real threat to Americans which is the fascist bent of our very own government and the revolving door of fifth-columnists the likes of Mukasey who like termites have spent decade gnawing away at our cherished freedoms. Complementing the neocon former A.G. is the always reliable shill for the PNAC/Clean Break manifestos of the eternal Middle Eastern war that is Jennifer Rubin, a propagandist as loathsome as she is prolific.

Rubin, when she isn't openly lying she is smearing libertarians, embracing Obama whenever his policies and statements are steeped in the rebooting of the Cold War and backing up swine like Mukasey with drivel like this vomit inducing bit "The NSA review report should be tossed in the trash" in which she refers to a "pre 9/11 mindset" and backs Mukasey's defense of the secret FISA court that is not included within the U.S. Constitution from which I excerpt:

The House and Senate intelligence committee chairmen also will be highly skeptical of the report. In a curt statement, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) already declared, “Though I am still studying the details, I have serious concerns with some of the report’s 46 recommendations. Any intelligence collection reforms must be careful to preserve important national security capabilities. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Congress to enact meaningful reforms in the near future.”

Like Rogers, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has been a responsible defender of the NSA program. In response to the much-criticized district court ruling holding the program unconstitutional, she issued a detailed rebuttal pointing out that the ruling “differs from those of at least 15 separate federal district court judges who sit, or have sat, on the FISA Court and have reauthorized the program every 90 days — a total 35 times in all” as well as another district court judge from California. After pointing out that the Supreme Court will have the final say, she noted, “Those of us who support the call records program do so with a sincere belief that it, along with other programs, is constitutional and helps keep the country safe from attack. I believe the program can benefit from additional transparency and privacy protections — including additional public reporting and added court review provisions which were recently adopted by the Senate Intelligence Committee in the bipartisan FISA Improvements Act.”

There you have it, any column that not only defends secret courts but also hard core and corrupt fascists who use their plum congressional committee chair positions to wage war against the American people cannot be taken seriously.

While the NSA is defended the insipid Charles Kraüthammer wages a rearguard attack on – groan – Obamacare, the massive corporate scam that has deftly been repackaged as a Bircheresque communist takeover of America by longtime, well paid propagandists looking to rouse the rabble for a 2014 storming of the polls. Obamacare sucks, has been falsely sold as healthcare reform when it is nothing but a taxpayer subsidized gift to the parasitic insurance industry and has provided greedy corporations with the perfect opportunity to jettison those inconvenient drags on annual executive bonus amounts that are employee dependents. Only in a country as dumbed down as this one does this pass for communism, socialism or Marxism when it is what it is and that is fascism – a merger of corporate and state power, just like the ongoing government support of financial markets with 85 billion a month in free gambling money to Wall Street casinos. That all three systems do nothing but redistribute wealth to a corrupt, entrenched elite with varying degrees of the use of state power against those not connected is rarely if ever noted. But Kraüthammer has bills to pay too so the flogging of the dead horse continues and I have yet to see the sleazy bastard critique the loss of civil liberties under the rogue surveillance machine run by the NSA.

The Washington Post has long been one of the most sordid sources of big state propaganda in the land and has for too long been able to live off of the laurels of the Watergate reportage that led to the downfall of Richard M. Nixon. It was former publisher Philip Graham who was recruited by the CIA's Frank Wisner for Operation Mockingbird the agency's prototype program to transform media into state propaganda organs. The WaPo's legacy of collaborating with the deep state intelligence agencies will continue as the torch is now passed to the new owner, Amazon's Jeff Bezos who has sealed a $600 million deal to provide the CIA with cloud services.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.