Geography Disposed

"Some say that these lands were first known many centuries ago, and that their situation was written down and the exact latitudes noted in which they lay, but their geography and the sea routes by which they were reached were forgotten..."
General and Natural History of the Indies, Captain Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo.



Geography has been digitized, a matter of satellite imagery. Capital busies itself exhausting colonial expropriation. States honor alliances that better serve the effort to extract resources from weaker nations over the sanctity of borders and sovereignty; unless it's a matter of keeping undesirables away or securing the wealth of an insulated elite.
Geography disposes. Its value is in the exchange of data points to augment market hegemony. Surveillance, Security and GPS targeting by high tech weapons are Geography's Golgotha.When colonial epochs peak, geography's end pens the epitaph.

As the Crow Flies

Black wings raise
petrol bows.
Dye day's grays
livid rose.

Staid air stifles
a piercing call.
Gates part, youths run,
old dons bear scowls.

Classical Shout Out Friday: Counter Christ

Apollonius of Tyana
"Because Telemachus was young, Homer thought he needed two dogs, and he sends them to accompany the young man to the marketplace of Ithaca, unreasoning animals though they are."

He healed the sick, raised the dead, and ascended to Olympus. Honored the Pagan Gods and quoted Homer, Sophocles, Plato, and Aristotle. Augustine raged against his enduring popularity.

Philostratus' Life of Apollonius reads like an Alexandrian Gospel. The Philosopher Hero harangues Emperors(Nero, Vitellius), toadies up to them too(Vespasian, Titus), and still has time to shoot the breeze with Gymnosophists(Naked Philosophers). Entertaining stuff.

Authority Answers Peaceful Protest's Right with Might

 We demand your protest be peacefully ineffectual. The smallest violation will be punished with deadly force. We don battle gear to better serve the community. Our aim is true. God Bless America, land of the free.


    

The Winter of Our Crushed Dissent

Officers of the Peace


Out of the decay of self-seeking capitalism, it was held, would arise the flower of the ages, the Brotherhood of Man. Instead of which, appalling alike to us who look back and to those that lived at the time, capitalism, rotten-ripe, sent forth that monstrous offshoot, the Oligarchy.
Too late did the socialist movement of the early twentieth century divine the coming of the Oligarchy. Even as it was divined, the Oligarchy was there---a fact established in blood, a stupendous and awful reality.
---Jack London, The Iron Heel.

Metternich/Napoleon: Two Modes of Reaction United in NATO

        "But, Karel, history is the memory of a people. You have only to distort that memory and....."
                                           ---Hugo Claus, The Sorrow of Belgium.


Would you like popular fascism or oligarchy? How about both? The imperial expansion of "Free Markets" accommodates. NATO weds Metternich's reaction with Napoleon's imperial hubris.

Ron Paul Lacks LoveSexy

This is not music, this is a trip.

Ron Paul champions "unfettered" markets while decrying the expenses of Empire and the Drug War. He naively believes states and markets are distinct entities. Expanding Markets require War Machines and Legal Strictures, including Regulatory Oversight, to protect and secure hegemony. They saddle the State with obligations that it funds by taxing the public. States have become apparatuses to aggressively secure and defend the expansion of Market Hegemony.

The Market's control of State policy has become more pronounced. Bank Bail Outs, aggressive wars, longstanding occupations, increased military spending, and regressive taxation all remain despite widespread unpopularity. Military operations abroad and surveillance and incarceration efforts within are contracted out to private enterprise. Mr. Paul decries the expense of bases, wars, and occupations but fails to recognize private enterprises are heavily subsidized by these "expenses". There's a reason why Boeing, General Electric, Northrop Grumman, Oil Cartels, Bechtel, XE, and Banks are posting record profits in a recession.

When we turn to the Drug War we see it benefits Alcohol Distributors, Pharmaceutical Co's, and Private Prison contractors. Again, market forces demand state action and reap rewards.

I applaud Rep. Paul bringing attention to costly and insane policies, but Imperialism and the Drug War would not exist without the expanding Market's rule through the State.

(H/T to JCrow for idea of posting about Ron Paul to attract traffic. Bonus posting pic of Prince to perhaps inspire Paisley Park's attention over use of image. JCrow is not responsible for content. I love Prince's music.)

Classical Shout Out Friday: That Good Old Comedy

Why, don't you know that for Homer the word "marketeer" is a term of praise--he applies it to Nestor and all his other fountains of wisdom?
--Aristophanes, The Clouds, Act I, Scene 2.


Aristophanes is timeless. His irreverent invective towards all pomp, demagoguery, and posturing dialecticians remains a joy to read. Unfortunately his work has been shelved, deemed vulgar. Only Lysistrata remains popular because of its bawdy anti-war message.

My favorite is The Clouds. It provides the best portrait of Socrates. Presenting Socrates as the King of the Sophists is a brilliant move, superior to Plato's virtuous, honey tongued, charmer.

From this Friday forward I will post a piece on a neglected(IMO) classical writer out of kindness to long dead whiteness. I hope to, like time, wind, and water, level mountains of dust.

These pieces will be scant on detail. Best to praise and provide a small portion to prompt appetite.







    

All Our Rowdy War on Terror Friends are Gettin' Put Down

This is what you get for Neoliberal Reform.




Mubarak and Gaddafi have been deposed. Assad and Saleh are teetering. What do they all have in common? Every one assisted the US in the "War on Terror". Mubarak, Gaddafi, and Assad have kindly tortured suspected terrorists US has rendered to them. Saleh continues to crackdown on a local resistance movement(falsely placed under rubric of AQAP) and welcomes drone strikes.

Gaddafi's fall is a Pyrrhic victory. Unrest will haunt Libya for decades as rival factions vie for Western dollars. Infrastructure was destroyed by US/NATO bombs. Distress and famine will grow as Libyan splinter groups crony up to Energy Cartels. These reservations won't silence the Imperial triumphalism coming out of DC.

FBI Implicates Freed Bengal Tigers in Ohio for Plotting with Iranian Quds to Attack Heartland

The New Face of Terrorism

A Department of Justice press release claims the FBI has unearthed another plot of the Quds Force, linked with a loose network of Central Ohio Marijuana dealers, to recruit Bengal Tigers in a terrorist attack on the Heartland.
An animal trainer was commissioned by a prominent Central Ohio Marijuana dealer, distantly related to an Iranian colonel, to free a force of deadly predators. The animal trainer contacted the FBI and offered to act as an informant. Anonymous sources have confirmed 18 Bengal Tigers aided in the planning and commission of the attack. The source went on to add the lead Tiger's cousin has a plush reserve at the Tehran Zoo.
National security experts state the plot was nearly exposed earlier this year. The execution of 14 Lions at the Tehran Zoo on January 18 may have been a precautionary measure in the early stages of planning.
Celebrity Zoologist Jack Hanna was called onto the scene and described the horrific attack as "Noah's Ark crashing into a city".


(Link to Mass Execution of Lions at Tehran Zoo story: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/01/18/iran-14-lions-killed-in-zoo/ )

53%'s Rich Pageant

Proud Servant of the State

Pride rises above squalor. Obeisance treasures a kind nod from above. Consuming vicarious majesty, like manna from Heaven. "Man can't live on bread alone."

Moral of History: Kick a man one thousand times, win his fealty with crumbs. Rinse, repeat.  


Of course many of the picture testimonials are fake. Still, the message begs obedience. Petit-Bourgeois proud of being exploited and living up to their masters' ideal. There are a million MBA's who are similarly inspired.

On the Established Political Journalist

"That he defends the supreme powers, as the Geese by their cackling defended the Romans, who held the Capitol; for they favored them no more than the Gauls their Enemies, but were as ready to have defended the Gauls if they had been possessed of the Capitol."
                           ---Thomas Hobbes, Epistle Dedicatory of the Leviathan.



(feel free to replace "o" in Capitol with "a" in translating to present)

Liberals Always Dream New Gracchi

                                 "In those years only the dead smiled,
                                  Glad to be at rest:
                                  And Leningrad city swayed like
                                  A needless appendix to its prisons."
                                     ---Akhmatova, Requiem, Prologue.





1: Historical Background

Cornelia Africana bore two sons as martyrs to Republican Rome. They attempted to legally end iniquitous land distribution as Tribunes of the Plebes. Wealthy Romans(mostly Patricians) were buying up enormous tracts of lands and evicting peasants from their small holder farms. The dispossessed peasantry poured into the city as a "classical" version of a trouble making and unsightly lumpen-proletariat.

Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were part of the establishment. Their father was a Censor, a scion of the Sempronia line. Mother was the daughter of Scipio Africanus.

In the struggle against iniquitous land distribution and urban blight they both exploited the sacrosanctity of the Office of Tribune of the Plebes to pass legislation favorable to small landowners. Their efforts were rewarded with assassination. They became martyrs to a cause that was merely reformist and only attacked a symptom of inequality while leaving the true institutional malady untouched. Such is the fate of most reformists.

After their deaths Rome quickly descended into an increasingly overt violent Oligarchy fostering Civil Wars against slaves, local Italian towns, and finally ending with concentration of all power in military leaders as Consuls(Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar). The Gracchi served as martyrs in the propaganda of populist Imperators like Marius and Caesar. Sulla and Pompey upheld the Senatorial Oligarchy. Caesar vanquished Pompey in their struggle and the Oligarchy surrendered itself, and the Senate, to Patristic Fascism. Caesar was assassinated before he had a chance to fully implement his Tyranny. It took his nephew Octavian, as Caesar Augustus, after defeating Marc Antony, to assume the title Princeps Senatus and use the facade of the Senate to mask his absolute rule.

2: Contemporary Application of Model

Liberals often dream one of their class will take up the mantle of dispossessed peoples. Only they can rescue them by reforming hallowed institutions of Democracy corrupted by evil doers(Partisans point at the other side). A new Lex Hortensia based upon an arcane precedent(like the Licinian Law)must be passed. They believe individual actors, if brilliant enough and divinely favored, can work wonders within powerful Institutions. Their call for "real" leadership in contemporary protests begs the masses to adopt new Gracchi as leaders. Read establishment Liberals on the Occupy Wall Street protests. Always the same tepid support anchored by "serious reservations".  

These pedantic pipe-dreamers forget the Gracchi, though heroic and with "their hearts in the right place", were assassinated by representatives of the Institution they attempted to reform. Furthermore, their martyrdom was exploited by Fascists to create populist support for Dictatorship as an antidote to unjust Oligarchy.

Perhaps the modern Liberal secretly hopes a few of their own sacrificed for the change he or she, deep in the shady copses of their heart, desires is "worth it"? Only then will the masses demand an "effective Leader" who can "cut through" bureaucracy and "get things done"?

This is a recurring dream of "enlightened" minds throughout history. It is also an enduring nightmare for those who can't afford the luxury of dreaming.

I do not believe contemporary Liberals, as a type, actually think much, if at all, about the Gracchi. I am using the Gracchi's failed reform efforts as a timeless model Liberals always propose to escape the horrors of social unrest and reinstate their disturbed repose.

Rebirth of Security Out of the Spirit of Entrapment

                          "Before being discovered, the savage was first invented."
                            --Giuseppe Cocchiara, Il Mito del Buon Selvaggio.


After the failure of security institutions on 9-11 the FBI had to implement more aggressive forms of combating "terrorism" to regain legitimacy. Of course it is just to state it, as a National Law Enforcement institution, has a rich history of failure.

In these perilous times, when income inequality is at a record high, and the Federal Government is buried, like a Titan, under a mountain of debt, an institution must strain to justify increased funding for its practices. In the past few years we have seen the FBI "discover" outrageous plots concocted by its own agents posing as Al Qaeda, Al Quds, et "Al"(humor) operatives. They provided material and funds to the would be terrorists, and ran entire operations until the glorious moment of discovery. This process was witnessed in the alleged Al Qaeda operation to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago by some poor Haitian Americans in South Florida, and once again in the Portland Christmas Bombing plot(A 17 year old Somali American was given money for rent, provided a plan, and a detonator).

Oddly the informants' activity in these operations are cloaked in impenetrable mystery. We know they selected the patsy, planned the operation and provided material. Oddly, their statements under oath were not recorded(per usual practice), and are heavily redacted. Details of their participation are not shared with the public or with the Courts. The FBI cloaks its entrapment schemes under a cover of necessary secrecy justified by "National Security Concerns".

Rest assured alarmist stenographers of the Corpress in the United States, with its battalion of "National Security Experts", rush to exaggerate the grave danger our heroes in the FBI thwarted. "Al Qaeda", "Terrorists", "Attacks on Civilians" run in caps just under a "Breaking News" title across television screens. The Director of the FBI and the Attorney General hold a solemn press conference and reassure the nation all is safe despite the "immense danger" averted.

The latest in this series of quashing deadly plots beggars credulity and has effectively "jumped the shark" for any future "entrapment production". We're told two Iranian nationals(linked with Al Quds) were connected, through an FBI informant, to a Mexican Drug Cartel, and adopted a plan concocted by another informant to acquire explosives and bomb a fictional restaurant to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. Furthermore, bonus #1, they planned to take out a few unnamed Senators and, bonus #2, bomb the Israeli Embassy. A plot arcane and implausible as a Gothic Novel has to be credible! One hilarious detail: the "plotters" allegedly used JPMorgan Chase bank to wire money from Iran to the United States(illegal under present sanctions) to fund operations.

It is well known JPMorgan Chase was fined earlier this year(August) for wiring transactions from Iran. It is also well known major banks launder billions for Mexican Drug Cartels.

Strange how this all came together! Strange how Iran has been happy with the present cooling of relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia! Strange how the FBI is continuing, with the aid of Big Banks, DEA and Drug Cartels to entrap foreign nationals into implausible intrigues which damage its home country's interests.

The Rebirth of Security Out of the Spirit of Entrapment is an arcane endeavor. It appears foolish to the world, like all deep wisdom. Such mystery bewitches Congressional committees to zealously defend more tax dollars to security institutions to help "keep America safe". Complete secrecy is justly warranted by
recent "success".  
   

Futility of Godwin's Law

I hope the above does not offend Net sensibility via similitude. Fascism is a dirty word these days. Can't imagine why. Bulletins in Public encouraging citizens to report "suspicious types"(collaboration) are a leitmotiv of Fascist states.

"Terrorists", Muslims resisting bombs, torture, occupation, sanctions and resource looting(highest forms of terrorism), are Neoliberalism's version of "the mongrel race".

Won't be long before Americans in the "Homeland" resisting plutocrats and their political lackeys become "suspicious types". They're already treated like mongrels--prisons, military.

Notes from Liberal Heaven

                                    "Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
                                     And mark that point where sense and dullness meet."
                                      ---Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, lns-50-1.



Admiring Pope's comme il faut poesy and proudly thinking, I am not ashamed to admit, how far we've come electing an African-American President. Albeit, his rhetoric's a smidge too leftist, but still, in action, he asserts values that have made our nation a global beacon. (Long drawl from pipe, deep furrowing of brow) He's taught medieval savages in the Middle East a thing or two about civilization. Like my dear old Father, he never spares the rod. (Air of melancholy) Alas, someone has to take up the burden of destroying those who threaten our liberty with anarchy.

I was watching a news program just yesterday and witnessed the most amusing spectacle. Slovenly attired and poorly groomed citizens were camping out in public space to protest various issues. How preposterous? How can these ingrates fail to appreciate and treasure the glory of Universal Suffrage?(Shakes pipe at imaginary audience in reproval) If I had time to so easily dispose of I'd walk down to these mobs and, braving the lack of refinement and rudeness, freely convince them of their good fortune. No catering to underachievers from me. I'd refuse to champion their muddled divisiveness like the radical Lawrence O'Donnell has(two angry puffs billowing like steam from engine)! This nation has handed the gift of liberty to them. How dare they spurn such sacred largesse?

At times it dawns on me that most Americans are spoiled(sighs and taps pipe crisply three times). All the things we've accomplished. Civil Rights Legislation, American investment wealth lifting people up from poverty in third world nations, and protecting, with our valiant men and women in the Armed Services, peaceful protest movements in foreign lands from the genocidal aims of well armed and ruthless dictators(adjusting Jacket to accommodate puffed up chest). If I wasn't so Stoic about the failings of human nature I'd be incensed(benign gaze through smokey haze).

Be thankful Americans. This rough patch is transitory. Good times are ahead. We won't let you down. As one great man said, "The arc of history bends towards liberty."  Do not allow that Progress to be stymied by strife. Markets lose confidence and people go tribal. We can't have that. As a polite man of the world, I'd never create strife or sow division so close to home. It's poor form(dusts invisible motes off jacket with left hand).

                                   

                                                      FINIS

Quean of Wall Street

                                                                                    "...carrying home
                                    To her imperial couch the stink of the whorehouse."
                                                              ---Juvenal, Satires, VI, lns. 131-2.
               

Seriously!

A career of fellating the world of finance has earned Ms. Burnett a Wall Street Prince. She is this generation's Andrea Mitchell. There are tons of excellent women journalists. The Corpress pushes brainless eye candy like they're Pimps of the Principalities. We know whose interests they serve.(Commercial Break)

The same interests Ms. Burnett has engaged.

  

Distant Chill

Winter's fingers
snuff wholesome fires.

Branches snap
brittle spines.

Come cush tones
of night and honey.
Comb ripe Suns
from this blight.

Breath's faint treble
intimates the end,
brusque words descend
still as snowfall.

Steve Jobs: Gilded Age Cult of the Entrepreneur (Smothering an Asian Slave Master with Adulation)

The orgy of grief over an Asian slave master, offshorer of labor, and exploiter of copyright laws is nauseating. His products are merely diversionary and in no way did they "change the world". He used his financial clout to bring about favorable conditions through legislation(Apple was heavily subsidized by US government) for the corporation he headed to not only profit immensely from advantageous copyright laws but also to proliferate slave labor(including children) in foreign labor markets. Chinese workers(again, many children) were subjected to inhumane labor conditions by Apple. The obscenity of American corporations exploiting slave labor production in Asia is a physical, and enduring, mark of the bigotry of NeoLiberal "Globalism". To them Asian laborers are still "coolies". Steve Jobs eagerly practiced this shameful exploitation. Celebrating his life is tantamount to celebrating the "wonderful talent and innovation" of a Southern Plantation Owner in 1850's America.

The Establishment Left: "It's wonderful to indiscriminately rain death from the heavens upon foreign ragheads, but please respect legality when targeting American citizens."

"As for mankind, if anyone in the pride of his power treats you with disrespect, you have all the future in which to take your revenge. You are free to please yourself: act as your heart directs."
                                   ---Homer, The Odyssey, Bk. 13, lns. 144-147.


Liberal establishment loyalists are torn. Obama has drone murdered two American Citizens! They are harried by Erinyes of legal ambivalence. On one side they praise the toughness Obama continues to show in murdering Muslims afar, BUT they have misgivings about the awesome power to smote mortals from the heavens used on citizens of the greatest nation forever, the United States.

Yes, the War on Terror must grant sacrosanct, Tribunician, legal status to all, even Muslim, Americans. I find their "legal" uncertainties tragic. It's obvious an American is, per War on Terror legal calculus, worth about 1,000 times a "barbarous" Muslim. When it's an American Muslim the ratio changes. Ah! To have such refined minds attuned to finding petty faults in mass murder based solely on legal chauvinism. American Exceptionalism extends to tender hearted "Liberals" too!

There is good news. Many have overcome legal uneasiness through Faith. Obama the Thunderer said he was guilty of treason. No need for evidence. He has two Jars at his side, an endless supply of bolts, and a splendid view from Olympus.

American Oddity

"...violence has been used again and again to support the structure of authority in American society. We are only puzzled when violence is used to attack that structure."
---John William Ward, "Introduction to Alexander Berkman's Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist". 






    

Apodictic: Rising Income Inequality Requires Increased Police Brutality(Poor Americans Already Know This)

The Love of Clenched Teeth and Poison

Paymasters cannot allow their hirelings to waste a thought on the humanity of any who protest "order". Just beat the ingrates and shut them up in cages. They'll pay for such impudence. Try getting a job with an arrest for civil disobedience on your record in this economy(snicker). Best to become a jackboot or sign up for the Imperial Resource Looting Enterprise. You'll get to travel! They'll learn you obedience. Plus you'll get to be a hero and kill poor "ragheads" for room, board, and eats----plus wages! Police here in the Homeland already have the right to kill undesirables(cf. Police murdering poor folks in Urban Areas). Brutality's a bagatelle. They let you live. Listen to Obama, "Stop complaining." It could be worse. You could be in Somalia with our torturers and arms dealers.

Or you could be the man in the photo above. Look at the zealous titillation written in CAPS across his face as he sprays mace in a woman's face. He's participating in the brutality he serves. Sure many despise him. He'll soar above it all and win rewards for his obedience. The State loves men like him. He's a valuable asset when accountability is only enforced by, and specifically not applied to, them.

Finally regular folks, not just poor minorities, in the Homeland will get a taste of what poor folks in every corner of the world have from security "American style". It's inevitable this violence would return home and level those spoiled by it. If you have a television, refrigerator, and an X-Box, how dare you ask for more? Those at the top don't like sharing the fruits of massacre and rapine. The GREATEST NATION FOREVER, The United States of Motherskullfucking America, was built on it! You think it can't easily apply that to its own? People in slave shacks, reservations, ghettos and prisons have known it from experience. It is an enduring aspect of liberal "culture". Brutality towards "undesirables" is Obscene(in the classical sense). Since when did "patriotic Americans" ever care? They lose patience when the Genocide of Natives and African Slavery are discussed. 

Now that the police are openly beating white protesters, even women, you're outraged. Too little, too late. Once you applauded the state's brutality towards the most reprobate, you tacitly condoned it towards anyone. Who decides what's reprobate? Obeisant claques that pay homage to mass murdering war criminals, torturers, and banking looters as Gods on Earth.

Appalachian Noir

I

Moon's yellow,
a sphere of clouded amber,
shines uneasy over black limbs.

Within,
Pagan Gods are preserved
like amphibians in formalin.

II

Hush. Sirens approach.
Nails of red light scratch our faces.

Time is short.

These bodies must explode.
Our flesh will fuse
forever.

Time is shed.
Nothing shall break us.
In one plot we'll 
transcend together.

The Palestinian Authority=Vichy Palestine

The PA collaborates with Israeli occupiers and killers. They do not represent the Palestinian people. Peruse "The Palestinian Papers" and see how they have always given up nearly everything for crumbs from Israel and the United States. The only good thing to come out of the fake statehood vote in the United Nations is that it may end the "Peace Process", repudiate the roadmap, and stop the United States from helping Israel steal land and brutalize Palestinians in the Territories while doing much worse in Gaza.

Thankfully the ghastly process fashioned at Oslo may also end. If the United States vetoes a yes vote it will alienate itself and its client, Israel, from all of the nations in the Middle East and an overwhelming majority of nations. That would be a good thing. The United States and Israel have arrogantly worked themselves into a dangerous corner.

If the bid fails, it will also undermine any legitimacy the Palestinian Authority claims. They are already unpopular in the Territories and Gaza for the above stated reasons. Much good may spring from an empty gesture at the UN. The two state solution will die a just death.

Monsieur Homais as a Contemporary Journalist

"Yes," said the pharmacist, "no imagination, no wit, nothing that makes a man shine in society."

------Pt. 2, I.

He has more customers than there are sinners in hell; the authorities treat him kindly and he has the public on his side.

He has just been given the cross of the Legion of Honor.

------Pt. 3, XI.

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary.

As Flaubert's Homais was a concise portrait of the post enlightenment philistine, Thomas Friedman is the present arch philistine of "Globalism". The offhand comments of cab drivers and hotel receptionists the world over are sucked into the vortex of his tireless banality. Billboards and corporate boardroom bon mots are first principles. Ultimately Friedman is the "Ugly American" as an intellectual tourist.

President Obama, bien sur, reads him religiously. Established media in the United States refer to him as a "deep thinker". Our contemporary Homais writes a column weekly for the New York Times.

It is no surprise our Homais is a Centrist. All forms of "extremism" upset him; bottle rockets at a country fair alarmed the 19th century Homais. Like the ass caught between two piles of feed, Friedman can't help braying about the danger of "taking sides".

Unfortunately, he carries and broadcasts the love of his own opinion much further than his literary forefather.

This renders his output less tolerable and culture's adulation("best selling books") of it more troubling.

Under the Exchange

"Electoral democracy greatly resembles the world of the Stock Exchange; in both cases, it is necessary to work upon the simplicity of the masses, to buy the cooperation of the most important papers, and to assist chance by an infinity of trickery; there is not a great deal of difference between a financier who puts grand-sounding concerns on the market, which come to grief in a few years, and the politician who promises his fellow citizens an infinite number of reforms, which he does not know how to bring about and which resolve themselves simply into an accumulation of parliamentary papers. Neither one nor the other knows anything about production and yet they manage to obtain control over it, to misdirect it and to exploit it shamelessly: they are dazzled by the marvels of modern industry and they each imagine that the world is so rich that they can rob it on a large scale without causing any great outcry amongst the producers; to bleed the taxpayer without bringing him to the point of revolt, that is the whole art of the statesman and the great financier. Democrats and businessmen have a very special science for the purpose of making deliberative assemblies approve of their swindling; parliamentary regimes are as fixed as shareholders' meetings. It is probably because of the profound psychological affinities resulting from these methods of operation that they both understand each other so perfectly: democracy is the paradise of which unscrupulous financiers dream."
-------Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, VII, I.

Dick Cheney: The United States Government Made Flesh

"For they illustrate the beginning of this disastrous institution---which Tiberius so cunningly insinuated, first under control, then bursting into an all engulfing blaze."

------- Tacitus, Annals of Imperial Rome.

It is difficult for "Americans" to gaze upon the living image of their government. Venal, cowardly, heartless, contemptuous of laws, and eager to ostentatiously preen over the glory of snooping, torturing, and mass murdering. They hate this walking mirror. Members of the Punditocracy are seized by a catharsis of slavish infatuation with the power he represents and a cringing abhorrence of his refusal to apologize for the global crime wave it spurred. Cheney, as a proud Patriot, takes pride in its exceptional scope.

If you ask God to bless America, you are asking him to bless Dick Cheney. He is its true spirit made flesh. President Obama is no better. He has a younger, prettier, face, buries the criminality in bromide, and smiles more. The spirit endures though the flesh may unravel.

9/11: Fetishism as Imperial Anodyne

Vain would be all attempts to convey the horror which thrilled the gathering spectators of this piteous tragedy.

---"Postscript to 'On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts'", De Quincey.

A nation has become a somnambulist trying to step out of a nightmare. This nightmare was tailored from its own terror. Imitation was not deemed flattery. Nothing has changed but the exponential rush to fetishism as an anodyne. Exceptionalism is a Neurosis that comforts us in gilded cribs. Security waxes fierce as the noon day sun. It blinds. The United States has never recovered from the audacity of its own violence returning home. It is now a terrorized nation utilizing terrorism to cow its people and murder all enemies. Anodynes are required. A housing bubble, low credit, fraud encouraged, impunity for torturers, and keep shopping!

All to no avail. The mass murder of thousands of poor Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya has not sated our leaders' bloodlust. This war, an Odyssey, must go on. Stop your ears and cover your eyes. Truth is a treacherous Siren.

Every avenue of communication must be monitored for your own protection. People can't have the luxury of privacy. In asserting the right to monitor all citizens the State requires complete secrecy for itself. Again, nothing has changed but imposing complete inability for any citizen to protest State violence and secrecy. Ubiquitous Surveillance has all the legal sanction of Aggressive War.

Incipit an Epic Rant on the "Innocence" of the United States Before 9/11/01

"Outraged chastity avenges itself in continuously fucking."---Blythe Tart

A Nation built on genocide(Native Americans) and exploitation(African Slavery, Chinese and Mexican Slavery on railroads, wage slavery, prison labor, looting through aggressive wars, etc.) has no right to speak of innocence lost. It's birth as a nation established the rule of white male elites who deemed Africans sub-human and Native Americans ripe to be pillaged. THE PAST "INNOCENCE" OF THE UNITED STATES IS THE GREATEST ANODYNE OF ALL. Since the invasion of Mexico in the 19th Century it has embarked on numerous aggressive wars--- Mexico, Philippines, Cuba, Central America, South America, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, etc. Not to mention funding acts of terror and mass murder in Indonesia, Iran, Yemen, Ossetia, Egypt, Lebanon, Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bahrain. How many millions have violently perished, before 9/11/01, from the "kinetic benevolence" of this "innocent" nation?

The Atomic Bombs dropped on the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki needlessly. Truman admitted he dropped them to send a message to the Soviet Union, not hasten the end of the war.

The cruel medical experiments practiced on poor folks in Central America just after World War 2. This "innocent" nation also infected black men in the "homeland" of "innocence" with syphilis, without their knowledge for a medical study.

Since its inception the United States has labored to make the aphorism, "There is no greater evil than innocence.", a truism.

Jusqu'a l'automne

Legs like ribbons 
brush over ground,



tindering dream's accord. 





Cruel when heaven's 
bright prescience


loses compass 
in meteor showers.



We seek rest, 
wary of umbrous bowers.

Sub specie saeculi

"Times when injustice reigned and a crime was legally sanctioned,....."
---Lucan, Pharsalia, Bk. I, ln. 2.






1. Nobody weeps over the past death of futurism.



2. At no time has so much power been held by so few. Odd those few persistently demand certainty.



3. Anarchists are realists, not cynics. No greater cynicism than believing we need powerful institutions for "the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness".



4. The War on Terror is murderous irony. We are expected to believe the United States and its allies are fighting against Islamic Extremists. No nation has supported and armed Islamic Extremists more than the United States in the past half century. It supported Fundamentalists in Egypt under Nasser. Utilized Iranian fundamentalist support to overthrow Mossadegh. Recruited and armed Wahabbi groups to infiltrate Afghanistan in the late 70's to topple a Soviet backed republic. Armed Iraqi Shiites to topple Saddam Hussein before the last Iraq bombing and invasion. Now the US/NATO is supporting Fundamentalist groups in Libya to overthrow Gaddafi's secular regime. Over 30,000 bombs fell on Libya to support insurgents affiliated with Al Qaeda. The CIA has long supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria. It also arms and supports the Fundamentalist Monarchy in Saudi Arabia. The United States wars on Islamic Moderates by supporting and arming Islamic Extremists. They are useful forces to destabilize social movements in Muslim nations. The United States abhors the "Arab Street".



5. Tell the poor to stop buying lottery tickets. Marketing pipe dreams is evil.



6. Partisans desire betrayal.



7. Political Science classifies the rage of institutional violence.



8. What if we laughed at every manifestation of seriousness? The sobriety of critique never rocks the boat. Sailors should drown seas with laughter.



9. Harpocrates doesn't shine any less because he's forgotten. Don't tell a soul.



10. Ten is more fetish than number. No greater failure than perfection.


11. The nation as household simile is the crassest form of introducing micro-economic fabulism into macroeconomics.

A Message from the President of the United States of AAAmerica(Courtesy of Obamaaa2012)

Keep shopping folks. The recovery's slow, but we're on the right track. Be sure to tune into my speech on jobs. I will say some wonderful things. The theme: "The United States, Forever a Triple A Rated Nation".

Leadership works best when it forges and promotes plans to help everyone. TARP, ACA, and HAMP are glorious examples of free enterprise and the government coming together to serve this great nation and its hard working people. Corporate leaders, Bankers and I have hashed out some wonderful work in the past few years.

What's that? None of this collusion has benefited you?

Well, wait a little. Don't be so fiercely rooted in the now. I won't be so beholden to electoral politics the next term. I'll be free to follow my heart and revisit ties to the community.

Why the concern? It will only be my past. To revisit the War Crimes and widespread Financial Fraud of the past decade would stir up too much trouble. Now is not the time to look back. The recovery is fragile and only a fool would invite more uncertainty. Markets need our vote of confidence. Let's look forward and watch as recovery dawns on tomorrow's horizon.

Until then I gotta raise a fuckload of money to cinch this election. You understand, don't you? Trust me. I am working for all of you. You're all heroes---(dramatic pause)---especially the brave men and women serving this great nation overseas.

God Bless AAAmerica

Obamaaa2012

To donate devote 401k contributions to BAC, GS, JPM, GE, GM, and CXW.

Triumph of the Revisionary Will(Honoring Global Leaders for Peace and Shitting All Over MLK's Legacy)

The most war mongering nation on this planet held a gala to honor those who take the lead in furthering peace and also felt it suitable to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.(a lovely twofer). The image above is of the former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sharing a tender moment with Reverend Jesse Jackson. Did Reverend Jackson absolve her of the half million Iraqi children murdered by sanctions she upheld? Did he ask her to atone for saying their deaths were "worth it"?

It gets much much worse. Dame Albright closed the precedings with a speech and received an award for her past and present efforts to take the lead in furthering peace. This is the woman who cornered Serbia into war with the Rambouillet Accords. She also quipped, "If we're gonna spend so much money on all those fancy weapons we might as well use them." It's a wonder the miniature replica of MLK's Memorial didn't explode contacting her bloody hands.

This festival of unintended macabre humor contained other horrors. It deemed the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, was another Global Leader for Peace. Israel is a warmongering Apartheid state. Gallows humor to have Ambassador Oren speak in praise of a man who'd righteously loathe Israel and anyone who represented it.

The hostess was Mrs. Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell. Her husband thought the Iraq War required no defense. Why? Because, in his words, it was all for oil. That's sufficient!

There were other speakers. The United State Trade Representative, Ron Kirk, especially stands out. He, along with the US State Department, backed the coup in Honduras because the usurper supported US Corporations exploiting laborers with sweat shops and sub-subsistence wages there. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a book extolling the DIGNITY of ALL LABOR. The United States Trade Representative loves "free trade" deals with dictatorships which destroy the rights of laborers to serve transnational corporations. He is an enemy of every laborer on this planet. His sole purpose is to destroy the rights and diminish the wages of laborers. This is a man Martin Luther King, Jr. wouldn't hesitate to condemn. Ron Kirk praising a man who not only spoke against, but also protested fiercely, the wealth inequality our dear Trade Representative daily strains every fibre of his being to uphold.

They attempted to salve the salt in decency's eyes with Reverend Jackson and a musical performance by Stevie Wonder---But, overall, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shabbily used as a front to praise warmongers, apartheid states, and plutocratic vampires as "Global Leaders for Peace".

Feel free to vomit. Then shower.

This Weak in Critique: Zizek Reproaches London Rioters with Left-Wing Infantilism

I POSTURE THEREFORE I AM.

I will not quote his abstruse and meandering clarity of hindsight. Alas, the lack of a manifesto. The inability to mount collective action against a powerful and well armed state. Zizek longed for "a night in which all riots are class conscious". No echoes of Lenin or regret over the loss of "objet petit a". A sad and chaotic affair no studious ideologue could find solidarity with. If only they'd quote Chesterton as good British lads. We pray future rioters will be suitably erudite and crack jokes about cartoons as representational apologetics.

Byron's Scorn

"I have seen some nations like o'erloaded asses
Kick off their burdens - meaning the high classes"

-----Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto XI, 84.

The Hell of Uncertainty, a "Free Market" Phobia

"If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty."
-----On Certainty, Wittgenstein, 115.


Uncertainty is killing free markets. Proposed regulation and tax hikes are terrorizing CEO's and investors. Keep in mind they are making record profits and enjoying an unprecedented growth in wealth. But uncertainty is used as a bogeyman to explain the lack of jobs and also to polemicize against regulation and more progressive tax policies. In a time of record income equality, growing unemployment and poverty it seems reasonable to ask more from a class that has benefited the most from tax-payer bail outs. Can they be certain the State will remain their steadfast lackey in the face of rioting majorities?

Economists from Adam Smith to Marx have noted that unfettered markets lead to greater income inequality and uncertainty. In their infinite wisdom the masters of our present day markets want less fetters, more income inequality enshrined in legislation, and greater uncertainty to produce certainty. This is a neurosis born of fear the free ride they are getting from their cronies in government and the people will soon end.

The main fear they have is being held accountable for their fraudulent practices. Since 2006 they have gone on a crime spree largely ignored, and at times staunchly upheld, by our leaders in Government. Fraud continues unabated and is a large part of their success. Will they be able to continue their illegal practices and loot every nation's wealth? Will the lower classes rise up and create conditions making it impossible for markets to sow their own brand of anarchy backed up by the state's monopoly of force? This is the true uncertainty. The elite looters fear the looted. They need the full and unconditional support of every state's security forces. They are getting it in the United States and United Kingdom, for now. The future is not promised.

Inspired by Charles Davis(False Dichotomy)

When a State and its Legal apparatus upholds criminal acts by officials and exacerbates wealth inequality through undemocratic policy, it violates the social contract and loses its right to govern.

The contemporary nation-state is a front for "globalist" cartels(Central Banks, Hedge Funds, Energy Corps, and War Contractors) who loot resources on a worldwide scale for the benefit of an elect few. Law, be it national or international, is willing to overlook financial fraud, torture, aggressive war, and ecological devastation if it serves the power of these privileged cartels.

Valery heralded "The Age of a Finite World" in 1931. Since then wars and wealth disparity have increased globally. It took a half century for the spoliation to return home to nest in nations whose power reaped the greatest rewards. The end, in every sense, of this age necessitates an effort by power to extract more rights and resources from everyone to maintain its "growth".

The National Security State, along with its Central Banking Heart, does not plan on going out with a whimper. It needs blood. The parasite tells the host it's a parasite, i.e. Power tells those it loots to sacrifice more...


I should stop drinking Bhang.
Nevertheless, I stand behind, not hiding, everything above. Mr. Davis is correct about institutions of power being an insular affair amongst elites.

But didn't James Madison establish the insularity of powers in the Constitution?

Godel read the US Constitution and was disturbed because he thought, logically, it contained contradictions that allow for democracy to deteriorate into tyranny--But he didn't marry well.(laughter)

The barbarous vestige of looking for lone heroes in modern "Democracies" echoes the individualistic nihilism of "Free Market" fundamentalism. Nowhere does central planning rig outcomes for so few at the cost of so many as in "Free Markets". Our media always sing about the heroic nature of the lone, sovereign, individual. The entrepeneur, etc It's a great con job. Make the petit bourgeois barnacle feel valorized by pipe dreams Madison Ave microwaves daily in 30 second nuggets......But God forbid people come together, organize, and strive to enact change!(That would be Marxism! Ecrasez l'infame!)

(a response to his post on Institutions of Power)

Cruel Summer, Austerity in the UK

"...but may I, before descending into my grave, see the humiliation of the arrogant bourgeois democracies, today shamelessly triumphant."

----"In Defence of Lenin", Georges Sorel.

One spark sowed a conflagration. The structural violence of Austerity Measures has solely fallen upon the poor and the young. Youth programs are eviscerated as university tuitions rise. All of these cuts and hikes made to secure the wealth and privilege of wealthy rentiers. The media, of course, acts as a handmaiden to cronyist authority by describing the riots as acts of "hooligans", and, when more candid, spouting racist and classist bigotry in commentaries. Their fear is real. They cannot speak the burning truth: Austerity is creating greater divisions, inequality, and inspiring rebellious anomie in the victims. Austerity measures implement looting by upper class "hooligans".

I applaud the rioters targeting shopping districts. It shows a deep recognition of their oppressors. Cameron and his crony regime chose the marketplace over people. In response the people are burning markets down. Sadly Cameron had to cut his summer vacation short to address the firestorm his policies laid out abundant pitch for.

No surprise the igniting spark was police brutality in a lower class, segregated, neighborhood. An "elite" police attack force shot a man needlessly in Tottenham. They attempted to cover it up and justify the murder by planting a gun at the scene and claiming they returned fire. Forensic examination found the "incriminating" bullet found embedded in a policeman's radio was police issue. A small protest at the police station resulted in a 16 year old women being beaten by officers. Police protect property and uphold class barriers. Killing a man and beating young women in a poor neighborhood enforces structural occupation, class division and dissuades the poor inhabitants from asserting their rights.

As inequality grows Police forces become more brutal and work harder to suppress any struggle against institutional attacks. Austerity is a weapon wielded by financial elites to plunder the lower classes. They started this war. The masters had hoped the "peons and parasites", phrases from The Daily Mail comments section, would stay cowered under the heightened brutality of their hirelings(police).

Buildings burn to ashes as rage buoys motes forming dark clouds over English cities.

Epitaph on the Debt Ceiling "Crisis" from an Illustrious Tomb

"Bankers do their best business when governments fail to do theirs."

-----Prince Talleyrand

A Response to Joshua Foust's Piece, "Why the European Right Can't Be Blamed for the Attacks in Norway", in The Atlantic

One is not surprised to see such a "balanced" apologia for Western prejudice against Muslims written from a person who has ties with USAID. Breivik's acts mirror what US/NATO policies do daily in Muslim countries. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and Somalia are bombed and subject to internal operations, support of tyrannies, torture, wholesale murder of any who resist occupation, armed, funded and sometimes practiced by Western Intel agencies. Also the US is largely responsible for planting the seeds of Fundamentalism in many areas by funding and arming Wahabbi groups and destabilizing regions to weaken states to secure hegemony over resources(Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Libya,Yemen and Somalia). Does Mr. Foust really think Al Qaeda is not an arm of Western Policy to deligitimize Muslim resistance to Western Resource colonialism? If you look at all the trouble spots in Africa and Asia you'll see two common elements: US/NATO Military presence and Intel Agencies alongside Al Qaeda. The surest sign US/NATO is losing in a region is the disappearance of Al Qaeda. In Afghanistan we are now fighting a Pashtun insurgency. Our patsies have gone. We supported Al Qaeda in Kosovo and Bosnia and we are now supporting them in Libya. The War on Terror is a propaganda bonanza aided and abetted by US NGO's who publish studies and promote the "humanitarian" side of Western Colonialism.

Breivik's insanity is matched by the calculated Islamophobic practice of Western policy. The US, along with NATO, is now bombing 6 nations that "happen" to be Muslim, with a huge military presence throughout NE Africa and West Asia. Is this accidental? Every month drone bombs slaughter civilians in these nations. Breivik's act is no more acceptable than Western aggression. His desire for attention for his greater aims are no more psychotic than Western NGO's analysis of why US/NATO's efforts just need to be fine tuned to work better for the colonized. Mr. Foust himself is an ideological psychotic who fronts the world's largest murder machine and often wrings his hands at the "policy mistakes" it makes. He always argues for a more intelligent and "balanced" colonialism. You'll never see him argue that US/NATO's intervention in these regions is aggressively looting resources and terrorizing people under the rubric of "security".

It's nice to see Joshua Foust defend McCants and other Intel parasites who live off the terror US/NATO inflicts on the people of many nations. Bogus Jihadi groups are infiltrated and guided by Western Intel agencies to provide timely alarm for US Populations as an argument for our growing military expenditures, enhanced security state measures and greater belligerence. Breivik's fears of Muslims are largely driven by Western States consistently warning their people about Islamic Terrorism as they bomb and occupy several Muslim nations.

In the Europe of Le Pen and growing Right Wing Nativism Breivik is not an anomaly. He is the face of Western Aggression towards Islamic nations turned against itself. But Foust grazes over the obvious terror practiced by US/NATO and sheds crocodile tears for his friends in the "Terror Analysis" business. They, like him, live off the terrorism US/NATO nations inflict daily against groups they funded and armed to further colonial aims. It's a good business to get in for people who like to think about how best we can humanely colonize people who resist our resource looting.

Mr. Foust needs to look inwards and examine the psychosis and corruption inherent in his own analysis before he bemoans US/NATO backing drug dealers(Afghanistan), black market human organ dealers(Kosovo), arms dealers and mercenaries. Colonialism can't have humanitarian aims. It can hire NGO's to trumpet its efforts to be more humane. They are promotional hacks attached like barnacles to the terror.

Joshua Foust is a paid ideological courtesan who fervently desires Western Resource Colonialism in East Africa and Asia becomes a kinder, gentler endeavor. He serves what he, in his ardent heart, at times finds abhorrent. I feel sad for the ethical gymnastics his mind must undergo to analyze the looting and mass murder of peoples all in the name of grandiose policies. He wishes to refine terror and oppression of peoples into something humane. Like our Humanitarian effort in Libya--which he, to be fair, is severely critical of. When the bombs stop falling and Gaddafi steps down(who knows?) he might leave his beloved Central Asia(Registan) and start opining on how the West can best serve Libyans. Apply, Rinse, Repeat ad infinitum.

Norwegian Wood: Terrorism Experts Rush to Erect Theories after Oslo Tragedy

"The longer things have been established the more the idioms; the harder times get, the more the idioms increase."



--"Rameau's Nephew", Denis Diderot.





Cable News anchors and invited "terrorism experts" couldn't hesitate to ascribe the bombing and shootings in Norway to Jihadists or Al Qaeda. They cited the level of sophistication and bemoaned Norway's "open society". Another lament, Norway is a peaceful nation unjustly attacked by the madness of "terrorism". Even "prestigious" American publications like the New York Times ran with headlines announcing Jihadist terrorist attacks in Norway. They even reported on a bogus admission of responsibility by a "terrorist" outfit.




The "experts" were convinced Islamic Terrorists were responsible because of the sophistication and scope of the attack. Their analysis concluded it had to be a Jihadi or Al Qaeda operation. Discussions about cartoons depicting Mahomet were given as possible reasons for the "attack". The aerial bombing of Libya by Norway's Air Force was not discussed. Norway's participation in Afghanistan as occupiers didn't garner a peep. Those inconvenient facts did not harmonize with the narrative of a peaceful Norway being unfairly targeted by insane Islamic terrorists.



Within hours of the bomb blast and shooting "experts" had already decided that Islamic terrorists were behind it. They had already depicted Norway as an innocent victim of Jihadi or Al Qaeda barbarians. Does this sound familiar? Their excitement to ascribe blame to those we terrorize daily with remote drone and manned aircraft bombings, invasion, and occupation is not accidental.



It's necessary to inoculate hints of blowback from our terror campaigns elsewhere by falsely stating attacks target "innocent victims". Recall that aerial bombings and drone strikes by the United State and NATO kill many times more civilians than all "terrorist" strikes combined.




A propaganda effort by Western Media went to waste. Only one man has been arrested in the attacks. He admitted to the bombings, was captured at the Labor Party Camp, and identitified as the shooter. A Norwegian man who had a history of writing Anti-Islamic screeds and affiliation with rightwing groups appears to be responsible.





The Western Media has moved on from irresponsibly applying blame to ostentatious grieving. Of course the white Norwegian male charged with the murder of 92 people is not called a "terrorist". When Europeans or US/NATO military operations mass murder civilians it is strategic action striking "terrorist operatives" or, when done by a civilian, the act of a crazed loner.



It's idiomatic. Western mass murderers are heroes or crazed loners. When Muslims resist occupation and the mass murder of their fellow civilians they are evil "terrorists".

Underground

Flash of love
scalds red
a girl's face.

Death's touch
blooms gray
on mother's face.

                                We dance
                                like frightened
                                acrobats.

Mysteries so deep
outlive the bloom
in blush's rebirth.

"Debt Ceiling Apocalypse" (A Deficit Monomania Soap Opera)

The hype surrounding the debt ceiling vote is amusing and alarming. The last time we had an apocalyptic economic crisis Rep. John Boehner wept on the House floor. Those tears were shed to support TARP. It was a handout of almost $800 billion in taxpayer dollars to recapitalize Banks that precipitated the crisis. Debt Ceilings have been raised over 70 times since the 70's. This time is somehow different. Why? There's a bipartisan consensus that something "serious" must be done(except for raising taxes on the wealthiest, increasing inheritance and investment income tax rates or cutting defense spending). When the word "serious" is used by Politicians in Washington, D.C. or corpress pundits, one must know something unpopular to the majority of people in the United States will be done. The majority will have to tighten their belts to insure wealthy treasury bondholders can collect interest.

This crisis is a case of deficit monomania. They must terrify people with economic armageddon to defend cutting Social Security and Medicare. It's the "serious" thing to do. Even President Obama is on board. He'd never dare raise taxes. Cutting defense is not on the table. Taxing investment and inheritance at the same rate as labor? NEVER!

The negotiations will be extended as close to the deadline as possible to necessitate a "serious deal". President Obama wants to do "big things". Speaker of the House Boehner wants to defend the banks and hedge funds, again. They agree more than they differ. The media coverage of the acrimony and focus on process is empty theater to persuade folks there's a real difference and, therefore, a crisis. Nonsense. The debt ceiling, like 70 times before, will be raised. I wouldn't put it past these political marionettes to go over the deadline to let the market crash and allow Wall Street pundits to "seriously" decry "the lack of confidence" and "uncertainty" that has extended the recession and high unemployment rates.

The same Soap Opera as the first TARP vote, when Boehner wept.

Meet Grover Norquist's Latest Pledge

He has previously shown reluctance to raise taxes on the wealthiest, despite rhetoric. Now he is farcically attacking "loopholes" to garner more revenue. Of course the telegraphed response from Republicans is, "if you close loopholes you have to cut overall rates". This is just like the tax plan for Corporate tax evaders. Understand the message: you cannot raise taxes on the wealthiest because any tax burden on them now could hurt the robust job market. After 10 years of record low tax rates on the wealthiest-->high unemployment, go figure? The answer, of course, is less taxes! President Obama will cut Social Security, Medicare and "move to the middle"(further Right) by erasing tax loopholes while lowering overall rates for our plutocratic "job creators".

Grover Norquist is smiling. His latest pledge is sitting in the Oval Office.

President Obama's Drone Bombing Policy for Dummies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHkvD7-u7y8

Fitting on this July 4th Holiday week-end.

"It blowed up real good."