Print the Legend: The Official Death of Osama bin Laden

The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man with no respect for it. It is not a thing to be thrown about loosely, like small change; it is something to be cherished and hoarded and disbursed only when absolutely necessary. The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in Hell

 H. L. Mencken

I would have to say that in my opinion the greatest thing about the officially announced death of our very own Emanuel Goldstein, Osama bin Laden is the sheer joy of watching the Republicans having to eat their own shit. There is something wonderful about the super-sized helping of humble pie served up with one of those nice little toothpick American flaggie things planted in the middle of their slab now that the rotten fascist fifth columnists and neocons have been robbed of the most kick ass club in the bag, their shameless exploitation of the ‘terrorist’ attacks of 9/11/01 for political gain. The GOP has utterly terrorized the rubes, suckers and suburban Sally soccer moms for nearly a decade now, fundamentally altering the country in the process. You can bet the house on it that the fear and terror cards along with the inevitable Obama is a secret Muslim who along with buddies Bill Ayers and Louis Farrakhan attended wild drug fueled orgies where satanic ritual sacrifices were held were key components of their 2012 strategy. Remember the wild rumors about Hillary's secret lesbian trysts in the White House and the Christmas tree adorned with crackpipes and dildos? That one was a children's bedtime story compared to the volcanic eruption of lies, filth and toxic spew that the Koch Brothers money was funding this time around. The narratives were already well under way and likely were very costly, direct mailings, whisper campaigns, retainers for think tank scum like Dinesh D'Souza and his ilk for their libelous bulk purchased books all are going to have to be scrapped because in  less than a week it is all gone, it went up like a bag of flaming dogshit. To all those who have been justifiably revolted by this all too predictable heinous tactic of assassination though black propaganda and a corrupt media that amplifies and disseminates it just enjoy the sweet schadenfreude along with a side of delicious irony. 

Bin Laden is dead! The release of this week's latest edition of Time Magazine, the official 'news' magazine for the establishment with the evil one's stock picture with the traditional red X though it ensures that despite the caterwauling of the squealing little swine birthers, degenerate America hating pigs like Orly Taitz, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the neocon propagandists the official account is now locked down by the impenetrable firewall of conventional wisdom. Sure they can warble about having to see the pictures like the hilariously desperate Sarah Palin (perhaps she can finagle some sort of trade bartering beaver shots of Bristol for the pics of the now dead bin Laden) who still doesn't understand that her political career is over and that she is well into her next phase of being a gross parody of herself, not that she wasn't always a parody from the git go. Yes, they are going totally batshit over in the big carnival tent of the Republican party, barker in chief Donald T.Rump can now focus on selling tickets to the feces eating contest in the geek section. It is astonishing to behold, the party of shoot first ask questions later is bemoaning the capping of the unarmed uber terrorist and in what is the most hilarious thing of all the corporate media is now suddenly concerned about international law and did the execution of Osama violate it. Hell, that one is hilarious, nearly spit coffee on the keyboard when I read that. Just where in the fuck was the corporate media and the concern for international law when George W. Bush launched his illegal wars, bombed the shit out of civilians, presided over a vile and sadistic regime that made torture an official U.S. policy or for that matter when Obama continued to endorse predator drone strikes on civilian weddings? Double standards and it shows just how rotten to the core that the consolidated and interlocking media in this country has become. Oh, and now here's a real knee-slapper, the Republican whiners, continuing with their well-established culture of victimhood are pissy that none of the credit for taking out bin Laden is being given to Dubya or to his immoral and illegal torture programs. But at least it's consistent since they never saw fit that there should have been any of the blame  assigned to him despite the damned inconvenient fact that the 9/11 events occurred during his watch. Perhaps there can be a commemorative edition of My Pet Goat issued in order to honor Bush for his heroism on that morning. 

God Dammit, they cut into Celebrity Apprentice!

It is pretty obvious that the story of bin Laden's assassination by Seal Team 6 is the official story of the state and it is already being reinforced with the same type of groupthink promulgated by the corporate media that followed the original attacks. While the release of any actual photos of the body have been nixed by Obama on the grounds of national security the government has released bin Laden home videos that are making their way about the internet and media megaphones today. The post death storyline goes to great lengths to play down the mythic capacity of the man once built up to be the baddest motherfucker in the valley of the shadow of death. There have been stories describing bin Laden as "unkempt", "bored", "shabby", "frail" and "weary". There have been stories on the contents of his medicine cabinet, did he have eczema or some other skin condition? Was he using a form of Viagra? Xanax? Interestingly enough nothing seems to have been found that would indicate treatments for kidney failure. The official propaganda gains new layers by the day, this from an article in Time's Special Report issue:

Living the Good Live

So he wasn't in a cave after all. Osama bin Laden, master marketer of mass murder, loved to traffic in the image of the ascetic warrior-prophet. In one of his most famous videotapes, he chose gray rocks for a background, a rough camo jacket for a costume and a rifle for a prop. He portrayed a hard, pure alternative to the decadent weakness of the modern world. Soft Westerners and their corrupt puppet princes reclined in luxury and sin while he wanted nothing but a gun and a prayer rug. The zealot travels light, his bloodred thoughts so pure that even stones are as cushions for his troubled sleep.

Now we know otherwise. Bin Laden was not the stoic soldier that he played onscreen. The exiled son of a Saudi construction mogul was living in a million-dollar home in a wealthy town nestled among green hills. He apparently slept in a king-size bed with a much younger wife. He had satellite TV. This, most of all, was fitting, because no matter how many hours he spent talking nostalgically of the 12th century and the glory of the islamic caliphate, bin laden was a master of the 21st century image machine.

The deconstruction of the uber-fiend, peddled for years, most relentlessly by the insidious Bush regime to hold political power and justify their wars and associated criminality was well under way. The Republican party owned 9/11, wielded it as a trusty bludgeon and used it without mercy as they eviscerated the United States Constitution, turned torture into the guiding principle of national policy, looted the treasury and doled out ever more lucrative contracts to mercenaries and private war profiteers on the taxpayer dime. Whenever it was questioned one of those timely bin Laden videos or tapes just happened to pop up, up went the color-coded terror alert and the nuisance of having to come up with answers went away. For example when Osama bin Laden just happened to pop up on a video four days or so before the 2004 elections it provided a ringing endorsement for the terrorism of Bush and Cheney and with a bit of help in Ohio courtesy of Karl Rove's election stealing machine the king was coronated anew for four more years of hell. The Republicans seized bin Laden and along with him the mythic menace of the destroyer of worlds, it was as though George W. Bush had pulled the magical sword Excalibur from the stone of the smoking rubble of the World Trade Center and the use of the tragedy for political expedience was already official policy while the rotting flesh of the victims still hung heavy in the lower Manhattan air.

Later in the Time piece there is this:

No Hollywood filmmaker ever staged a more terrifying spectacle than 9/11, which bin Laden conjured from a few box cutters and 19 misguided martyrs. When the Twin Towers collapsed, he became the real-life answer to the ruthless, stateless and seemingly unstoppable villains of James Bond fantasy. It was necessary then, to find him and render him mortal again, reduce him to mere humanity - not just as a matter of justice but as a matter of self-defense. 

And it has been done, Barack Hussein Obama has stolen away the mighty sword while at the same time the Mighty Wurlitzer of the pocket media not only ensures that the truth of the death of the evil one will be that of the official story of the state but that the original dogma of the attacks themselves would be reinforced for all time. With the establishment of the official historical account (which as the maxim goes, written by the victors and sanitized to omit the dirt) not only does the questioning of any part of the 9/11 story become intolerable by bin Laden himself is being body scrubbed with his past CIA association being denied by think tank hacks like Peter Bergen in his prominent WaPo piece entitled Five Myths about Osama bin Laden. The usual gaggle of reliable neocon stooges like Charles Kraüthammer patting themselves on the back while trumpeting the great success of the phony war on terror, the sadists and authoritarian freaks on the right-wing decrying any criticism of torture, in Time's case making apologies for the ugly Americans celebrating the demise of the bogeyman with their idiot "USA,USA,USA" chants and viciously cracking down on those who happen to wander off the star spangled lemming farm. Take for example Pittsburgh Steelers running back whose most recent claim to fame was a key fumble during the Super Bowl that pretty much sealed his team's doom. Both barrels were turned on Mendenhall this week for his daring to use TWITter to weigh in on the orgy of glee during the national barbecuing of bin Laden's ass - "those of you who said you want to see Bin Laden burn in hell and piss on his ashes, I ask how would God feel about your heart?... What kind of person celebrates death?". For this the man was descended upon as if by a biblical plague of flesh-eating bats by the pocket media kingmakers, flag-sucking drones and assorted other imbecilic dwellers of the most befouled gutters of the mind. Were this a more primitive (or in our case futuristic) society, Mendenhall would have been quickly an ruthlessly hunted down, his tongue ripped out with fire heated iron tongs and his wayward fingers chopped off so as to never again engage in such heresy as well as to sent an example for others. 


We have been here before, any dissent from the Bush administration's blatant usage of the 9/11 event for reasons of politics and settling an old score with Saddam Hussein were affixed with the scarlet letters of traitor and anti-American. This is just the reverse form of the same primitive defense of the official religions. When it comes to doubts about the ceremonies, false idols and totems any who dare to utter the blasphemies must be dealt with summarily and with extreme prejudice. Any really serious examination of the scaly underbelly of the angry beast with millions of electronic eyes that is the Homeland in the new American century must be taken with a familiarity of the allegory of Plato's cave. Once you have been outside don't even bother to venture back to try to enlighten the other slaves for ye shalt be damned for your efforts if not drawn and quartered by a team of Clydesdales. 

Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared.

- Colonel Walter E. Kurtz

Maybe the real truth of the bin Laden story is that his former sponsors and associates within the American establishment finally just wanted to write the end to his story, tie up that last loose end because to do anything else would ensure a demise, sucked under in the quicksand bog of the wars without end. Obviously spooked by the recent Standard and Poor downgrade of the U.S. debt perhaps it was just an acknowledgement of that which is obvious in that the wars, especially the bottomless money pit in Afghanistan are destroying the country in ways that bin Laden or any other foreign enemy ever could. The bin Laden execution brings to mind the scene from the classic film Apocalypse Now when finally reaching the river's end Captain Willard is delivered to the compound of Colonel Kurtz who had gone rogue and was as a result marked for death by his own country's military leadership in order to terminate his command:

Kurtz: Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command?

Willard: I was sent on a classified mission, sir.

Kurtz: It's no longer classified, is it? What did they tell you?

Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.

Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?

Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir.

Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?

Willard: I'm a soldier.

Kurtz: You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.

Osama bin Laden was never going to stand trial, not in this Empire, not with what he knew. Despite the best efforts of the professional propagandists and spin doctors to downplay his longtime involvement as a valuable instrument of U.S. policy, most notably with the Mujahadeen in the proxy war against the Soviets back in the Reagan years in Afghanistan. What is now existent in popular culture as a noble effort, Charlie Wilson's War for example with the all-American Tom Hanks playing the flamboyant Texan Republican who used his seat in the U.S. Congress to promote arming Islamic radicals, a Reagan pet project right up there with letting good ole Ollie North run guns and drugs to fund arming the Latin American death squads. Were bin Laden to have a forum the potential revealing of such a duplicitous history could prove to be immensely embarrassing and in our sugar-coated, sanitized and flag-draped narrative we couldn't possibly admit to colluding with criminals, dictators, Nazi war criminals or Muslim fanatics in order to further an agenda largely dictated by corporations and plutocrats. Best to just send in the hit squad and be done with it, if that's what actually happened. 

Media analyst Danny Schecter puts it well in his piece Nailing Osama Bin Laden: Was it a military or amedia operation? Why now?

They could have captured him, but that would lead to the hassle of putting him on trial. Besides, what if he revealed his long connection with the CIA and US officials? Can't have that. So the kill order was given, along with a quick disposal of the body, mafia-style (as in “sleeping with the fishes)."

But we will never really know will we?

I have always personally believed that he was dead, at least since shortly after the towers fell and I have never been convinced that he played anything more than an ancillary role in the 9/11 attacks. The attacks as they occurred couldn’t have been carried out by anything less than a multi-national alliance of serious and I mean stone cold professional military personnel, intelligence pros, mole networks largely compartmentalized to provide plausible denial and government officials with the clout to influence both the behind the scenes preparatory work as well as the following cover-up. The weakest part of the entire story to me has always been Osama bin Laden and his flight-simulator trained Islamic fundamentalist fanatics like Mohammad Atta, Ninjas with box-cutters who could overwhelm a multi-trillion dollar intelligence colossus, circumvent the entire national air defense command, dupe U.S. allies and their intelligence services and then pull off with crackerjack precision three daredevil direct hits on U.S. buildings with such damage being done to the structures as to defy the basic laws of physics. Americans are stupid though and swallowed it all, rolled over and gave up their rights and begged for more tyrannical enslavement as their tax dollars were funneled to private military contractors (mercenaries) and private   intelligence firms operating with impunity, zero oversight and no loyalty except to the bottom line. Maybe in the movies Bruce Willis can assemble a crew of losers, party freaks, misunderstood geniuses and hard-assed oil patch roughnecks who could be trained by NASA in less than two weeks to go into space and destroy a killer asteroid but this is reality and when something smells like bullshit there is a 99.9 % chance that it IS bullshit.

The entire official story of 9/11 is one big lie but it is now a lie that like the assassination of President Kennedy will live on while any naysayers will be stigmatized and ghettoized in the predictable manner that "conspiracy theorists" are always treated by a corrupt state seeking to keep its skeletons in the closet with the doors nailed shut. What is now occurring is the death of the 9/11 Truth Movement, as the national wound that was ripped open on that Tuesday morning in 2001 begins to scab over there will be no tolerance for those who continue to pick at it. Already in the days after the big announcement there is a real chill in the air and the establishment is in all likelihood implement the Cass Sunstein plan to "cognitively infiltrate" groups that question the official government fairy tale of 9/11. Personalities who had previously done much good work in investigating 9/11, for example alternative media firebrand Alex Jones has essentially discredited himself through his willingness to feast upon the fruit of the poisoned tree that was the finally and hopefully permanently discredited Birther movement (which smelled like an Israeli black propaganda campaign from the get go) and as a result of this been immersed in a vat of horseshit. While playing fast and loose with themes friendly to the Council For National Policy like global warming denial and pandering to bigots for ratings by demonizing Meskins any of Jones' skepticism at the serendipitous death of bin Laden is easily mocked despite the legitimacy of such questions. There are others as well calling bullshit on the bin Laden murder and they will surely face immense difficulty and much scorn in pursuing this line of skepticism. My personal advice is that it just isn't worth it, there are too many other areas that are in more need of serious attention than wailing away at the tar baby that is Osama bin Laden. Again, where is the body? Why the changes of story? Why now? I defer to recent work by Paul Craig Roberts The Agendas Behind the bin Laden News Event and Russ Baker More Questions on bin Laden for provocative reading and unlike Alex Jones they have not self-immolated. 

This may sound like a cop out but as far as I am concerned an official admission that the man is dead works fine for me, whether it happened last weekend or nine years ago is at this point moot to me. In the end what is most important is that we are able to exit the bizarre, down the rabbit hole because it just may end up being a grave, parallel universe that we were catapulted into when the planes hit the building on September 11, 2001. That will have to suffice right now for nothing will ever have even the remotest chance of returning to a state of semi-normality or what is going to pass for that unless we are able to get some closure and an escape from the neocon Republican fear mongering that has mired us in unwinnable, bankrupting and immoral wars of occupation based on lies. Barring a real investigation into the 9/11 attacks, which by the way is NEVER going to happen, I personally think that it is best to just accept the official story of Osama bin Laden’s death as it has been put forth by the state and it’s organs. Face it, the story may have that now familiar rottenness about it but it’s just time to move on beyond the horrors of the last decade. 

I recall that one great line from the famous western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance :

“when the legend becomes fact, print the legend”

So it goes....

After Bin Laden: Onward to Weimar or Back to America

Now that the death of Osama bin Laden, allegedly the kingpin of the 'terrorist' attacks on September 11, 2001 that threw the United States into a bizarre parallel universe where war became peace and lies became conventional wisdom in a land where a choking, always present fear was the coin of the realm has been announced, it is a strange period, an interregnum. It is like that certain  'moment of clarity' that alcoholics occasionally experience, the one time that they can emerge from their disease, see the wreckage of their lives and be shocked into corrective action. In any sane country this could be a moment to reflect upon what we have become, all as the neocon tools and their propaganda have insisted has been justified on the existence of this evil evil man. We have had our civil liberties shredded, the Constitution has been gutted, the insane doctrine of preventative war has led to a Middle East and parts of Eurasia aflame, the bodies of both the guilty and the innocent can be stacked more than halfway to Jesus. We have seen our airports turned into abominable places where law abiding citizens are treated with suspicion, ruled over by drooling TSA government thugs, forced to remove our shoes, march silently through the naked body scanners promoted by the corrupt former head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, the 'pat downs', a grossly Orwellian term that in true American style puts a nice sugar coating on sexual assault have become more aggressive, children are felt up in front of their parents, potentially causing lasting psychological damage and if anyone dares to complain about it, the TSA has now come out and stated that they would be targeted for even more harassment.

Police departments have been militarized under the guise of fighting terrorism, a term that has over the last decade morphed into something as vague as to label legitimate political dissent as terror. The country has established a vast network of secret torture gulags or black sites, extraordinary rendition (or kidnapping) is standard operational procedure. Torture by the way now is the official law of the land, thanks to a sadistic gang of psychopaths in positions of power and assisted greatly by foreign media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose state favored, right-wing propaganda machine FOX polluted millions of minds with their insipid torture promoting series 24 featuring America's favorite Nazi Jack Bauer. We are all spied on constantly, arms of the national security state such as the NSA are out of control and engage in data-mining and predictive analytic patterning that comes very close to Philip K. Dick's Minority Report and the Department of Pre-Crime, if not official government entities then the spying is farmed out to the private intelligence firms that have raged through the nation like a mutant form of kudzu, all of it is being funded on the backs of the taxpayers who are forced to pay for our own enslavement. Chances are that if you live in a major city you have at least one fusion center where military, big government and local police intersect to spy on you. Habeas corpus is a thing of the past now and any American could find themselves scooped up and disappeared, just like in Stalin's Russia or in Hitler's Nazi Germany, totalitarian states that were built on the big lie of protecting the people from terror.

What truly bothered me yesterday was the outpouring of national bloodlust over the 'death' of Osama bin Laden. There were parties, fans at sporting events chanted USA! USA! USA!, the media was filled with slavering platitudes and other dreck celebrating the death of the evil one, even Sports Illustrated got in on the national orgy of vengeance slaked with ace football writer Peter King (not the I.RA. terrorist supporting, anti-Muslim wanna be McCarthy from Long Island who shamelessly used the news to deliver a kick to the hated Obama and to endorse torture) leading off his weekly column with a bit of red, white and blue rah rah. There were homages paid to national unity anew, just like that warm feeling of a national mob mentality that largely existed after 9/11 itself, never have I seen such an orgy of rapturous glee over an assassination. It could be that this is just a cathartic moment, one where a people beaten into submission by fear and yoked by a fanatical government hellbent on creating a police state finally rid themselves of both their demon and the fear that has enslaved them while they were beggared, ripped off and foreclosed upon to finance the hunt for the national villain .

More likely though it will be something far darker as things in the new American century have a tendency to be. The renewed unity comes at a time of severe economic privation, an increasingly restive populace fed a constant stream of anti-Muslim propaganda to dehumanize 'the enemy' and a fascist political party in the Republicans that is looking for that man on the white horse, desperately seeking to return to power in order to force their dystopian vision of a society upon others and now there is a police state infrastructure to back it up. The past week may have beaten back the more vile elements when Obama produced his long form birth certificate and newly minted GOP gladiator Donald Trump was publicly ridiculed but the bin Laden death (sans body as it may be) could rather than provide the aforementioned catharsis could instead go the other way and serve to justify all that has taken place since the day the planes hit the buildings. It is already being spun that the fascist, surveillance, torture state was instrumental in bagging the bad ass bogeymen, as the end justifies the means and the wars could despite the looming bankruptcy of the country be expanded rather than winded down now that bin Laden is officially deceased.

The beast has been loosed and now it has acquired a taste for blood....

Just my two cents over the mornin' cup o' joe

EE

Let Them Eat War: Mr. Obama Joins the Club

The moment the first explosions rocked Libya I knew that Barack Obama had just locked down another four years in the White House. This was his initiation, his right of passage, just like laying in a mock coffin and sucking off upperclassmen in the Skull and Bones tomb. By definition every U.S. President is a war criminal and our very own proud owner of the Nobel Peace Prize finally has that most precious of things, a war that he can claim as his own. Not that Afghanistan and Iraq which continue to burn, bankrupt and morally pollute didn’t qualify Obama for the exalted title of war criminal in chief but they are really Bush’s wars, now the Pope of Hope has pissed his name into the snow. Of course there is all of the happy horseshit about the international seal of approval including that of the United Nations but ultimately is is more war for a nation that remains to become weary of such bloody and ultimately futile adventures. The national credit card was long ago maxed out on wars of choice, the monstrous sword of Damocles that is the national debt hangs over the heads of every American currently alive and whomever happens to be born here over the next fifty years but there is always more support for America's favorite pastime - killing brown people.  

Eight years to the day after the abortion that was George W. Bush dialed up the attack on Iraq Mr.Obama took time off from his NCAA tournament bracket and green-lighted the attack on the devil Col. Gadhafi who like the earlier version of the "New Hitler", Saddam Hussein is killing his own people. Now there is change that you can believe in! Never mind the blatant hypocrisy of not launching a similar attack in support of those seeking 'democracy' in Bahrain courtesy of our great friends in the House of Saud (the irony that 15 of the alleged 19 September 11th 'hijackers came from Saudi Arabia is lost on the American sheeple) seeking to preserve their tyrannical and corrupt regime. Now that the warfare state has become the preeminent power in America, only nosing out the genocidal Wall Street speculators whose taste for rotting flesh that they can pick for their daily sustenance and who right now are in an orgy of mania on the level of hardened pederasts as they rut with each other in the commodities pits placing futures bets on crude. The D.J.I.A. (Dick Jammed In Ass) was up 178 points today despite the lack of positive real economic news that benefits the ordinary fucked-over schmuck who is now left to contemplate the coming of five-dollar a gallon gasoline and has yet to get a handle on the accompanying hyper-spike in food prices that will follow like a category five blast of an economic hurricane after the initial tidal surge. In a bit of news that I find both somewhat encouraging for a bizarre reason and terrifying the first signs of violence and rage connected to double digit food inflation manifested itself at a San Antonio, Texas area Taco Bell where a customer named Ricardo Jones went batshit over a price hike on his bag of Beefy Crunch Burritos and engaged in a potentially deadly standoff with local police after he fired an assault rifle at police. Such incidents are to be expected in a culture where gun violence is revered but somehow it seems to be crossing a line when an extra 3.50 tacked onto a bag of burritos could lead to a Heat style shootout with the blue boys.

Think that Obama is going to save you from the rapacious looter capitalist flesh-eaters? Think again, not only is the Pope of Hope now a real live War President but he got the message from the 2010 elections that anything other than boot-licking obedience to the banksters, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce outsourcing pimps and the rest of the corporate pigs will not be tolerated. Look for Obama to assume the traditional position for commander in chief when it comes to the finance oligarchs, assume the position of footstool and don't ever think of fucking with them again and they will be very kind to his reelection campaign. Barry O. is assured of another term for his willingness to have all of America take a haircut so that the Wall Street casinos can have plenty of comp chips to gamble with. Not even Wall Street and the Chamber are insane enough to tolerate even in moments of amusement the possibility of a Sarah Palin presidency leaving the rapidly fading star of the scumbaggers to embark on some sort of world tour to pitch the virtues of entrenched American stupidity, gross ignorance and xenophobia, today's stop will be in Israel where she will do Wasilla style crack-ho style lapdances for Bibi Netanyahu who likely only is going to spare the time wasted in bothering with her out of some sense of honor among thieves and a gift to his most reliable fifth-columnist William Kristol. Hell, Bibi entertained Fred Fucking Thompson in the run-up to the 2007-2008 GOP primaries so maybe hosting Palin is for sheer entertainment value, it has to be more exciting than trying to converse with a cadaver like that marble-mouthed lug of a bad actor.

CRUISE MISSILE LIBERALS LOVE WAR TOO!

The most disgusting thing of all regarding Obama and his wars, both in terms of military ordnance dropped on civilians and the ongoing war on civil liberties at home is just how down with it all that the liberals are with it all. Liberals, especially liberal Democrats LOVE war, as long as it can be wrapped up in some sort of a self-righteous humanitarian guise.The Libyan adventure gives them one that they can line up and salute for. It has been a long and sad regression on the 'left' since Rahm Emanuel and the conniving Democrats were able to successfully ostracize the anti-war movement back in the run-up to the Pelosi-Reid majority in 2006. Not only was impeachment of the Bushreich war criminals off the table but the law was laid down that any such criticism of the wars was taboo. Afghanistan was embraced by the Democrats as 'the good war' while the Iraq debacle was chained to Bush's neck like an albatross. Cindy Sheehan was excommunicated after she served her purpose to the corrupt and cynical DLC/Corporatist Democrats, MoveOn.org was bitch-slapped after they dared to question the motivations of the great General Petraeus and the assemblage of sycophants and travelers the likes of Ariana Huffington, Cyber Stalin Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and their ilk all fell into line and for the sake of political (and lucrative career enhancing) expedience all learned how to just stop worrying and love the bomb. Obama was elected in a landslide, reneged on his implied promises to close Guantanamo Bay, restore accountability and the rule of law and draw the wars down and the useful idiots on the 'left' all got onboard. Whether it was the silence over matters that would have in years past had them screaming for Bush's head on a pike or a rethinking of antiwar stances to now make supporting the obviously neocon ginned up Iran Green Revolution or biting on the bait of Time Magazine's cover of the Afghan woman with her nose cut off (see above picture) the once pacifist 'left' became apologists for Obama's murderous actions. Even Code Pink renounced their principles and whored out to the war machine once their guy had the keys.

And today as the bombs and cruise missiles continue to rain down on Libya there is more of the same sort of fatheaded liberal apologists, whether it be the insipid Bill Press who is on Sirius/XM morning drive time radio with the daily DNC talking points or the windbag Juan Cole on Antiwar.com Radio the support for this latest filthy, anti-constitutional attack on a country that didn't do one goddamned thing to threaten America was as vomitous as it was definitive as to the true character of the state worshipping hypocrites that they are. Chris Hedges pegged the liberals dead on for the cheese-eaters that they have become, first in his savage and dead bang diatribe Liberals are Useless and later on in his book The Death of the Liberal Class. Hedges, who has come to be the moral voice of these most immoral and diseased of times hits it spot on again in his recent piece Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand that speaks to the abject failure of American liberal institutions as they have been subverted with nary a whimper by a decades running coordinated and now unstoppable fascist/militarist element juggernaut:

The liberal class is discovering what happens when you tolerate the intolerant. Let hate speech pollute the airways. Let corporations buy up your courts and state and federal legislative bodies. Let the Christian religion be manipulated by charlatans to demonize Muslims, gays and intellectuals, discredit science and become a source of personal enrichment. Let unions wither under corporate assault. Let social services and public education be stripped of funding. Let Wall Street loot the national treasury with impunity. Let sleazy con artists use lies and deception to carry out unethical sting operations on tottering liberal institutions, and you roll out the welcome mat for fascism.

The liberal class has busied itself with the toothless pursuits of inclusiveness, multiculturalism, identity politics and tolerance—a word Martin Luther King never used—and forgotten about justice. It naively sought to placate ideological and corporate forces bent on the destruction of the democratic state. The liberal class, like the misguided democrats in the former Yugoslavia or the hapless aristocrats in the Weimar Republic, invited the wolf into the henhouse. The liberal class forgot that, as Karl Popper wrote in “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” “If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

Why is it that there is never any money to find socially beneficial programs, education, the rebuilding of a crumbling infrastructure, renewable energy programs or anything that is useful to actual human beings in America but there is always money for war? This speaks to a deep cancer in our society, our precious green and camouflage clad ‘heroes’ have been glorified through movies, television shows, print media, toys and video games that worship war. Ike knew what the hell he was taking about when he warned of the rise of the Military Industrial Complex and the accompanying costs to a society that at the time was filled with wonderful capability, economic and scientific advantage and a gold plated reputation coming out of World War II that was only beginning to be tarnished by the rise of the CIA, the brutal public murder of President Kennedy and the subsequent Vietnam War. Something went terribly awry in America around the time of the JFK killing and the same institutional elements behind that coup d'etat are still calling the shots. All else is subservient to the agenda of the American war machine,

As if any more confirmation that Obama was just a lightweight version of  Lyndon Baines Johnson without the social programs was needed the attack on Libya makes any more argument on that one moot. Mr. Obama was nowhere to be seen in Madison during the mass protests that none of the corporate media deemed worthy of coverage, choosing instead to focus on created news like a few dozen or so geriatrics, losers and deluded and easily duped freaks flying Gadsen flags and wearing those faggy Revolutionary War style wigs and tri-color hats descending on town hall meetings to vent their frustration at the mythical death panels that in real life reside inside insurance claims departments. He will however be seen pimping his manhood over the ongoing attacks on Libyan civilians. Hey, Bill Clinton bombed the shit out of Belgrade and contributed to the starvation and misery of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children with his bombings and sanctions, cruelty that his own Secretary of State Madeline Albright went on 60 Minutes to obscenely justify as acceptable.

I have to agree with Chris Hedges, Liberals ARE Useless....take my word for it, I ran with the pack for long enough before I was shunned as a leper for daring to say the obvious that if it was wrong under Bush, then it is also wrong under Obama. But being excommunicated from the world of the dueling cults of the jackass and the elephant is just fine with me. 

Meet the New Nazis, Same as the Old Nazis

The corporate media on Sunday sought to play on both the gullibility, the emotions and the misplaced sense of patriotism of the public when launching this bullshit biscuit into the lemming feeding trough. Gadhafi said the strikes were a confrontation between the Libyan people and "the new Nazis," and promised "a long-drawn war."

"You have proven to the world that you are not civilized, that you are terrorists -- animals attacking a safe nation that did nothing against you," Gadhafi said in a televised speech.

The Colonel might just be onto something there. The Homeland (formerly the USA) is currently engaged in an endless series of wars of conquest, employs a blitzkrieg style of attack strategy (shock and awe) in the initial attacks of target countries, is currently engaging in a campaign of ruthless persecution of a religious minority (the anti-Muslim hysteria), runs a gulag of secret prisons and torture facilities, has a government that not only spies on ordinary citizens but encourages them to spy on each other and rat out disloyal or bad citizen type behavior, employs a kangaroo court justice system in which ordinary citizens can be brought up on vague charges (terrorism) or just disappeared (the stripping of Habeas Corpus) and disappeared. All of this is facilitated by a pack of vicious thugs who worship state power (teabaggers and Christian Zionists) and was set into motion by a modern day Reichstag Fire (9/11). Then there is that magnificently efficient system of state propaganda in the corporate media that Herr Goebbels would have been proud of. In Der Heimat versus Hitler’s Nazi regime though at least the trains ran on time and the German infrastructure was the advanced envy of the world, so much that Eisenhower modeled the intrastate highway system after it. Today, in 2011 the roads are pocked with automobile chewing potholes and other defective surfaces, the bridges are crumbling and even when the government tries to do something to shore it up and look to the future as in the national high-speed rail initiatives American Nazi apparatchik in waiting like Florida Governor Rick Scott turns town the money in order to nurture the hatred of his own personal S.A. the teabaggers. Make no mistake, with the coming wave of hyperinflation and dollar devaluation there is going to be plenty of opportunity for the real goons to assert themselves after Obama’s piss-warm and utterly feckless regime which has failed to change anything falls and then the pogroms will begin.

When taking into consideration the OSS/CIA (Wall Street’s enforcement arm) post-WW II assimilation of thousands of Nazis, including serious war criminals into the service of American finance capitalism under the guise of waging the Cold War it’s apparent that the Third Reich didn’t really lose the war, it just changed venues.

Just my two cents

EE

The Great General Petraeus Dog and Pony Show

With King George’s shameless proclamation last night that things have improved so much in Iraq that he can start bringing some troops back home(just like a pickpocket giving you ten bucks as a gift after lifting your wallet) Petraeus Week is now in the books. The “Surge” has received due credit as a heaven sent panacea for the blood soaked debacle in the desert and the PNAC plans for regional conquest (or as loony Ledeen likes to call it “creative destruction” are back on track. Even Osama bin Laden made yet another of those amazingly serendipitous appearances that always happen to occur just when the Bush-Cheney junta needs to pull a bogeyman out of the hat although skeptics are wondering just how the big spooky was able to get ahold of O.J.’s fake beard. Of course ‘The Juice’ could probably use it himself right about now given the coming 24/7 media feeding frenzy over an alleged hotel room theft that will knock every relevant event out of the next few news cycles. The sixth anniversary of 9/11 came and went and was amazingly subdued compared to the vast orgy of right wing demagoguery and bombast used to exploit the victims in the past and other than the few memorials the day’s biggest event was the congressional testimony of ‘Potemkin’ Petraeus. Now, perhaps I am being overly cynical but there just may be a coincidence in scheduling the sales pitch on that particular day to once more time shore up the big lie that Iraq is somehow related to 9/11. Hell, I know that I’m a cynic but I have nothing on the rotten bastards who actually run the circus.

It has been a thoroughly disgraceful week that exemplifies how America has come to rot, our institutions infected with the terminal disease of systemic corruption, rampant perversion and raw hubris of Republican rule. The bin Laden video was just so over the top that it allowed what alcoholics often refer to as a ‘moment of clarity’ on just how far down the rabbit hole that we have gone since 9/11. The neocon’s on call fiend has actually managed to get younger since his last really big appearance when he endorsed the Bush-Cheney ticket mere days before the 2004 election. Of course much of idiot nation that is already flying low with broken radar in an all encompassing fog of TV torpor buys this bag of horse manure lock, stock and smoking barrel like the good little fearful lemmings that they are supposed to be.

The hew and cry of the Republicans and their fifth columnist media shills screaming like the big authoritarian piss babies that they are over Move On’s General Betray Us ad is par for the course for the red team to whom decorum and rules are of no consequence when they don't apply to their own tactics. The American Il Duce, Rudy Giuliani even deviated from his pathological ghoulish exploitations of 9/11 long enough to shriek with indignity that Hillary Rodham Clinton had smeared the great General Petraeus and attempted to tie her to Move On’s blasphemy of America’s newest military hero. The schoolyard bully mentality of a party of punks who go running to tattle to the teacher when they can’t keep the game sufficiently rigged in their favor makes the utter failure of the Democrats to fight back even more infuriating. The irony is that they would enjoy approval ratings much higher than inflamed hemorrhoids if they would embrace their base and Move On whose message is far more in line with the wishes of the American people than the crap shoveled out by the elitist filth and their pocket media. Another of this week’s big lies is that the centrist (aka Reagan Republican) Democrats who are denounced as though they were the second coming of Karl Marx are not nearly as outspoken about illegal wars as paleocons like Pat Buchanan and Paul Craig Roberts and most libertarians. Some of the most withering criticism of Petraeus, a PR flack with political ambitions masquerading as a soldier who was once described by his superior as an “ass kissing little chickenshit” and the off the chain criminal conduct of an administration run amok comes from the principled right who have been marginalized by the neocons. In fact two of the most outspoken blogs/websites against the Bush regime’s reign of terror are libertarian: Lew Rockwell and the outstanding Antiwar.com but they don’t get the establishment’s panties in a wad for the obvious reasons that the entire bogus left-right paradigm that pits us all against each other with sideshow ‘issues’ would be threatened and the sham democracy corporate status quo must be protected at all costs. There is a natural alliance with these people who are equally fed up Americans just waiting to bloom and any seriously minded politicians who sincerely are for reform would be foolish not to reach out.

The Dems are of course posturing and puffing about getting tough on Bush and Iraq and even threatening to block American Torquemada Alberto Gonzales’ likely replacement in rabid Republican ideologue Ted Olson but it’s all just window dressing and only suckers continue to fall for the same con over and over. By now we all know exactly what happens next with these feckless toadies, they just roll over and cave with nary a whimiper. Maybe they should just take Bobby Knight’s infamous advice that “if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it" rather than to continue insult our intelligence with meaningless rhetoric. While the charlatans are seeking capitulation and compromise American troops and dollars will continue to be fed into the meat grinder that is Iraq. Iran will also likely soon be attacked much to the delight of a certain highly influential special interest group that gives marching orders to the Dems (and that for the sake of argument shall remain nameless) and the Bush crime family will be free to continue their disembowelment of the constitution for another year and a half. It says one hell of a lot about the Democratic leadersheep when even the fucking John Birch Society is more of an advocate for the restoration of civil liberties than the Pelosi-Hoyer-Reid triad.

The elitist mentality of our beltway kings and queens was on full display during the Petraeus love fest. Not only did the entrenched establishment Democrat from the Show Me State Ike Skelton neglect to swear in the four star suck-o-matic for his testimony (Ray McGovern was ousted for bringing this up) but he was reportedly overheard referring to protestors as "assholes". This is the prevailing attitude by the Washington elitists to whom the First Amendment is just another annoying inconvenience. The real asshole is the entire stinking toxic waste dump inside the beltway and the rotten to the core gaggle solons who reside there. They are thoroughly vile, cowardly, corrupt and could give a rat’s ass about either the constitution or the people that they are at least in theory supposed to serve. Given the disgraceful conduct of this new Congress who were given a mandate for change it is long past time to stick an enema nozzle into the festering asshole that is the nation’s capitol and give the bulb a good hard squeeze.

The total failure to end this damned war or prevent the next one as well as the reluctance of any of the presidential candidates to take an aggressive antiwar, pro-worker stance shows why there is so much crossover appeal for a guy like Ron Paul who despite his problematic stance on other issues will END THE WAR. Americans are overwhelmingly against this crap, the illegal wars, the widespread looting, the plague of offshoring, the importation of low wage labor to take jobs that can’t be offshored, the subprime fiasco, unaffordable health care, a creeping police state and all the rest of the indignities of the past six and a half years and they want change.Sadly to this point the Democratic leadersheep and their inept strategists have been loathe to offer up anything other than fascism lite and that just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

The Bushreich Battle Of The Bulge

All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.

-Adolf Hitler

 In late 1944, battered and on the brink of defeat due to the failed delusions of global domination by an extremist right-wing megalomaniac and his one party state, the German regime in a desperate attempt to regain their mojo and turn the tables on the advancing American armies threw everything but the Berchtesgaden kitchen sink into a massive counteroffensive famously known as the Battle Of The Bulge. It is no slight coincidence that the similarities between the playbooks of both Rove era Republicans and that certain twentieth century European regime of the mention of which is verboten in many areas of the liberal and progressive blogosphere but they continue to manifest themselves in the tactics of this rogue regime that has hijacked America and is once again reverting to their bread and butter strategy of going back to the future. The stench of fetid sauerkraut and charred flesh will be wafting in on the early September breezes emanating from the think tank kitchens where the bitches brew of anti-American warmongering propaganda is concocted. The Pentagon has even set up yet another of their psyops chop shops to pimp the war and keep the killing machine in overdrive.

A relentless propaganda campaign of extreme right-wing nationalism swaddled in the stars and stripes, yet another ripping of the scab from the festering wound of Vietnam for political advantage, exploiting the tragedy of 9/11 and going to the ‘we cold have won but the liberals and media stabbed us in the back’ card will soon be jacking up the pro-war fervor of an ignorant and pathologically angry base of dead enders as the Bush-Cheney junta seeks to prolong the escalation of his war of civilizations and bludgeon all opposition into submission no matter what the consequences are. From all indications there is going to be a huge Republican neofascist counter attack against the thoroughly lame Democrats, war critics and civil libertarians that will be so savage and vicious that it will be a wonder if there aren't mass pogroms with blood running in the streets by the time that it is all over and the motherfucker brigades have been mobilized. Soon the screaming heads on FOX and CNN will be braying accusations of treason at the top of their diseased fucking lungs and the pocket media will provide cover for the warmongers. Longtime establishment shill George Will has already started with his recent Washington Post column that goes so far as to actually invoke Weimar entitled What September Won’t Settle:

Come September, America might slip closer toward a Weimar moment. It would be milder than the original but significantly disagreeable.

After the First World War, politics in Germany's new Weimar Republic were poisoned by the belief that the army had been poised for victory in 1918 and that one more surge could have turned the tide. Many Germans bitterly concluded that the political class, having lost its nerve and will to win, capitulated. The fact that fanciful analysis fed this rancor did not diminish its power.

And

When Gen. David Petraeus delivers his report on the war, his Washington audience will include two militant factions. Perhaps nothing he can responsibly say will sway either, so September will reinforce animosities.

One faction -- essentially, congressional Democrats -- is heavily invested in the belief, fervently held by the party's base of donors and activists, that prolonging U.S. involvement can have no benefit commensurate with the costs. The war, this faction says, is lost because even its repeatedly and radically revised objective -- a stable society under a tolerable regime -- is beyond America's military capacity and nation-building competence, and it is politically impossible given the limits of American patience.

In comparing the America that awaits the bogus Patraeus Report written by White House flacks with Weimar Germany Will also sees the all too obvious analogy – only this time with history as a guideline as to what happens when an angry, rogue element is allowed to wave the bloody flag to marginalize, dehumanize and ultimately destroy those who have betrayed the glory of the state and the “November Criminals” while building a totalitarian death machine that was doomed to self destruct but not before claiming millions of victims it is essential that the brownshirts be put down like the rabid dogs that they are.

Something is in the air right now, that much is for sure and this is not the same country that it was six years ago that is evident from the crazed screed of neocon operative Michael Savage wanna be cocksucker named Stu Bykofsky that proclaimed that America NEEDED another 9/11 to among other things “quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail”. What sort of a rancid and filthy goddamned place has this become when it is acceptable to openly advocate for the murders of thousands of innocents for the sake of rank political expedience for entrenched criminal sacks of shit and their miserably failed war that never should have been started in the fucking first place?

Extremist red state fascist sleeper cells are now being placed on full alert, treasonous fifth columnist apostate scum the likes of Pastor John Hagee along with that duplicitously rotten little dual loyalist bastard Joe Lieberman are out rousing the rabble of the Christian Zionist warmongers for yet more war against the enemies of God’s chosen land of Israel. Baring his fleshy butt cheeks as if to say "kiss my ass" at the contemptuous Vichy Democrats on his way out of Washington Karl Rove is now free to run amok. Now even veteran rat fucker Ari Fleischer is back with yet another of those swift boat style Orwellian named front groups called this one unbelievably named Freedom’s Watch that is going to launch a $15 million dollar blitzkrieg of slander, sewage and hate mongering just in time for that holiest of all holies -September 11th our great day of national fucking glory when the reset button was hit on the great experiment called democracy. I don't make this shit up although it seems like such daredevil freefall leaps of faith down the rabbit hole just can't fucking be real.

The Freedom's Watch website not surprisingly features lots of American iconography straight out of Frank Luntz’s playbook with flying flags, a glowering eagle and enough ‘patriotic’ fascist style horseshit to ensure wavering red staters and raptureheads that the Republicans are REAL Americans not those limp wristed, terrorist symp, faggot worshipping, defeatist enemies of America whose logo is a freaking donkey for God’s sake! The Fleischer spots are among some of the most shameless and dishonest moments in the history of American marketing. They are so thoroughly vile in nature that the only comparison that I can come up with was the ploy from the movie Used Cars where one of the lot lizards had Toby the dog play dead under a vehicle that was being test driven to lay a colossal guilt trip on the sucker inside to buy the lemon. The trick worked, the rube signed the dotted line and when the tailgate fell off on the way off of the lot Toby was wagging his little tail as the commission was booked. These damned Republicans remind me of the same sort of disreputable cheapjack swindlers who manned the Fuchs Brothers’ dealerships with the sole intention to prey on any moron who was credulous enough to be easily gypped and fleeced. They prey on weakness and have a sixth sense that gives them an uncanny, almost supernatural ability to smell the blood of the vulnerable upon which they feed just like the worst that nature has to offer like feral garbage rats, ravenous wolves and degenerate pederasts. The Democrats are on their heels now and the scent of desperation is in the air.

None of this of course would be happening were it not for the doublecross of voters by the new Democratic Congress who given power last November with a crystal clear mandate to ring down the curtain once and for all on the Bush-Cheney-Rove Axis of Evil’s bloody damned wars – both on Iraq and on civil liberties in ‘the Homeland’ a fucking stinking term of totalitarian language that is the antithesis to everything that America is supposed to stand for. Not once did the disgusting excuse for leadership exemplified by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Steny Hoyer and the too smart consultants already triangulating while running for 2008 draw a serious line on ending the madness and the death.

No, scratch that – not once did the gutless, contemptible charlatans in the Democratic Congress take a stand on ANYTHING! Impeachment was immediately taken off of the table, a smirky criminal Attorney General still is the nation’s top law enforcement official, illegal spying on American citizens has now been codified AGAIN, habeas corpus is still gone, this is still a torture state, the Fairness Doctrine has not been restored, corporate greedheads still have carte blanche to screw the middle class whenever they damned will please which is every day while the Wall Street looters are allowed to suckle at the government teat whenever their schemes unravel, millions are still uninsured, subpoenas are openly mocked and ignored, the same neofascist Supreme Court justices that were green-lighted by a Senate too timid to use the filibuster (which I might add is now loved by Republicans) to essentially overturn Brown v. Board of Education and I just don’t have enough time to keep listing the failures of this most disappointing and cowardly of Congresses. The spin can go on until Hell itself freezes over and the fingers can be pointed at the "Blue Dogs" but the fault lies with a party leadership itself that continues to piss on America and then claim that it's raining.

It is no wonder that their popularity rating is only slightly higher than colorectal cancer and they are about to be torn to shreds by a vile hydra that has regenerated itself because the timorous jackasses couldn’t close the deal and drive a stake through it’s heart when it was on the ropes.

The Blood Barters

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

-Bob Dylan “Masters of War”

Somewhere within that great morass of collective national ignorance are the great stories of our untaught and largely suppressed history and the real heroes who inhabit it. They are the real heroes whose sacrifice and efforts in building a great nation and a truly compassionate and progressive society are in direct conflict that those who have mounted a decades long drive to erase their efforts and to remake America into the cruel fool’s paradise of a militaristic, Social Darwinist, monopoly capitalist spoils system where the less fortunate are subordinated to be lesser humans, servants and cannon fodder for the never ending wars on which the engine of empire is fueled in the early days of this sordid new American century.

In our past lie the keys to our future but in the revisionist reworking perpetrated by the greatest propaganda machine that the world has ever known it will never be understood by the majority who take solace in tough talking cowboys and ‘plain spoken’ men who provide easy answers for an increasingly complex and dangerous world. History is always written by the victors rather than the vanquished and in a country where the victors have been corporatists, reactionary right-wingers and the military industrial complex it is no wonder that we are spoon fed distortions, oversimplifications and outright lies as history. The indoctrination into the warrior world of laissez-faire monopoly capitalism, the worship of the state and the acceptance of the grand destiny of God’s chosen empire begins with the constant onslaught of televised imagery, the war toys and the desensitization of violence and condoning of the exploitation of others from the earliest days of cognitive capability.

Television is the greatest tool for indoctrination and central programming that ever has been invented – bar none and to the corrupt oligarchy it is gospel. The tabula rasas of impressionable children have already been subjected to consumerism, class exploitation and the acceptance of a national mythology and the requisite violence by the time they even get to the classroom where the job will be completed by a system that no longer in any way encourages critical thinking and individualism – only acquiescence, obedience and conformity are desirable…those not adhering are then culled out and will face the lifelong stigmatism that has only two destinations, death or a place in the burgeoning network of privately owned, for profit prisons – another growth industry in America that nearly rivals that of the great war machine itself.

The blame for the dark cloud of willful ignorance upon the land over the true consequences of the waging of war lies not only with the purveyors of the immaculate Hollywood fantasies that transform industrialized slaughter into grand, glamorous adventured dripping with glory and valor but also with the media in its entirety (excluding the alternative media of course which lacks the firepower to compete with the corporate goliaths) that drums out the hypnotic cadence about the glorious potential that lies in the grand adventures that war brings along with that most precious of commodities that is American exceptionalism. Add a punditry composed of psychopathic hired guns who routinely decry pacifists and war critics as traitors while omitting the inconvenient truth that the vast majority of the luminaries of the right-wing attack machine have never worn a uniform in the service to the country.

The ongoing psyops campaign is relentless and has been far too successful in gene splicing Sinclair Lewis’ domestic fascism with a dystopian vision that not even Orwell himself could have imagined. Note this story citing a defense industry think tank that distorts the looting of the treasury and racking up of unpayable war debt like a plague upon the unborn by making the argument that the ongoing occupation of civil war ravaged Iraq as a "relative bargain". I mean give me a fucking break, this is what happens when highly compensated ‘experts’, bean counters and paid public relations flacks are retained to use a shadowy, state run media apparatus to sow disinformation and outright lies.

The story that did not merit much in the way of real coverage from the media conglomerates, their boards packed with members of interlocking directorates who also serve the energy cabal and defense contractors is the scandalous news that Halliburton will soon be fleeing the USA to relocate it’s corporate headquarters to Dubai. When the potential for something even remotely resembling oversight on Dick Cheney’s former (and some may argue current) employer suddenly becomes possible with a Democratic Congress armed with subpoenas and questions on no-bid contracts, mismanagement, war profiteering and outright looting then HAL is outta here.

That is the way that it always goes with the blood barters in the defense industrial complex to whom the cynical jingoism and invocations of patriotism don’t mean jack shit when it comes to trafficking in human misery, death and pestilence. The blood barters only see the color of money and not red, white and blue like the miserable dupes who they always so easily exploit to send their young off to die in illegal wars fought for greed and the imperialism of a rapacious strain of militarist capitalism run amok. But hey, war is all about glory, John Wayne, apple pie and the shoveling of the big lie of spreading democracy as though it were so much manure.

And leave it to the media to play down or otherwise skew the coverage of anti-war protests and the anti-war movement in general by low balling crowd counts, giving equal time to dead ender, right-wing counter protests by giving representatives (often ditto head dopes whose bellicosity and twisted world views mimic those of Michael Savage and other fascist propagandists) space in stories for their statements even if they happen to be outnumbered 100-1 in the interest of being ‘fair and balanced’ and always finding the one burned out hippie stoner in the crowd who is festooned with peace signs and carrying a guitar.

Jack Booted Republican Brownshirt Thugs?

The Washington Post’s latest bit of sleazy yellow journalism in the aftermath of yesterday’s march on the Pentagon is a perfect example of this tactic (note that while the counter demonstrators were a minority that the piece is spun decidedly to the right). Here is a portion of the story of the sort of jack-booted Republican thugs that turned out to harass the protestors think back to the Tom DeLay sponsored goon squad that terrorized Miami-Dade County in 2000 and stopped the recount – all that was missing yesterday was the Horst Wessel Song as a battle hymn (note that while the story does say that they were a minority the spin is decidedly to the right).

As war protesters marched toward Arlington Memorial Bridge en route to the Pentagon yesterday, they were flanked by long lines of military veterans and others who stood in solidarity with U.S. troops and the Bush administration's cause in Iraq. Many booed loudly as the protesters passed, turned their backs to them or yelled, "If you don't like America, get out!"

Several thousand vets, some of whom came by bus from New Jersey, car caravans from California or flights from Seattle or Michigan, lined the route from the bridge and down 23rd Street, waving signs such as "War There Or War Here." Their lines snaked around the corner and down several blocks of Constitution Avenue in what organizers called the largest gathering of pro-administration counter-demonstrators since the war began four years ago.

The vets turned both sides of Constitution into a bitter, charged gantlet for the war protesters. "Jihadists!" some vets screamed. "You're brain-dead!" Others chanted, "Workers World traitors must hang!" -- a reference to the Communist newspaper. Some broke into "The Star-Spangled Banner" as war protesters sought to hand out pamphlets.

"Bunch of hooligans in motorcycle jackets!" one war protester shot back.

The large turnout surprised even some counter-demonstrators. Polls show public opinion turning against the war in Iraq, and the November election was widely seen as a repudiation of the administration's policy.

So well-coordinated has the pro-war media become in the aftermath of Vietnam and the placement of right-wing operatives in every news outlet in America to parrot think tank created, focus group tested messages that reduce the entire anti-war movement (even though it happens to be a veritable melting pot of every demographic segment of America) into the same cartoon figures and caricatures that have been used to deviously and often subconsciously manipulate mass opinion ever since the military industrial complex and the corrupt system upon which it depends upon was deal that very serious one two punch of the fall of Saigon and the outing of Richard M. Nixon as a malevolent criminal. Nixon alas was only a symptom of a virulent stain of neo-fascism that while having long existed in this country has grown increasingly powerful in an inverse relationship to the decreasing attention spans and chronic intellectual shortcomings of the pubic at large. In reference to the media I love this line from Charley Reese (a small part of a larger overall condemnation of power from his latest column that I am stealing a portion of for my own purposes) that: … just remember that money buys whores, and whores service their customers.


Such is the culture of the Bushreich, where the sanitized, misleading and dishonest portrayal of American virtues and our divine moral superiority are exalted and those heroes from the past who spoke out have been effectively lost in a time warp. There is one great voice that does not turn up in textbooks and his message was a condemnation of the callousness of the blood barters and his voice was one that spoke from experience. He is the highly decorated (two medals of honor) former USMC General Smedley Darlington Butler.

General Butler was one of the earliest critics of American intervention and the plundering of foreign countries for the benefit of Wall Street looters who were all too glad to trade lives for profit. Butler wrote the scathing War Is A Racket that was a no-holds barred indictment of the early military-industrial complex. Butler told it like it was, not a convenient thing for the revisionist historians who write the textbooks to indoctrinate the good little Americans in the religion of the always great, always righteous and blessed land of plenty.

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.”

“During those years, I had as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best that he could do was operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Wall Street has always had a vested interest in dabbling in war and death, despite all of the rah- rah red meat exhortations of patriotism or more appropriately nationalism that serve to keep the masses energized those who operate behind the scenes only real loyalty is to wealth and in maintaining the interests of the elite - those who will never lose sons or daughters in any of the hellish wars that are waged primarily for their benefit. A connection that the overwhelming majority of the rest of the peasants will never be able to make due to an incessant barrage of propaganda and corporate brainwashing via the electronic crackpipe to keep the rabble in line.

I recently had an opportunity to catch Eugene Jarecki's movie Why We Fight that offers a very serious and dare I say bi-partisan look into the corruption of the military industrial complex and the dangers that it poses to American values. President Eisenhower warned of this in his farewell address over four decades ago but it went unheeded and the ongoing wars, military actions, occupations, weapons sales to other countries that have become a constant of American life ever since are a growing blight on our nation’s soul.

The best thing about Why We Fight is that it is immune to the sort of Rovian swift boating that followed in the aftermath of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 that had the weak kneed sissies on the DLC controlled 'opposition party' running for cover. The film features a cross section of neocon ideologues, politos and serious analysts including John McCain, Chalmers Johnson, Gore Vidal, Gwynne Dyer, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Karen Kwiatkowski among others and is inclusive to viewpoints from both sides of the ideological spectrum. This movie is not to be taken lightly and try as they may to discredit it the Republican slime machine will not be able to make hay so easily as it was when turning Moore into a caricature (a puppet terrorist in the ultra-sardonic and overly scatological Team America: World Police) or for the Democrats to find a convenient scapegoat for their fecklessness and inability to win elections. This is a powerful, truthful and enduring film that asks serious questions that the used car salesmen and charlatans that are our ‘elected’ representatives are not going to want to answer.

Why We Fight zeroes in on the bastard relationship between Dick Cheney and Halliburton – we essentially have a government contractor as Vice President, in the movie he is referred to as a “rolodex man” Outsourcing of military duties such as cooking, cleaning etc are outsourced for profit to private contractors like Halliburton. This is one of the fundamental ways in which the military had changed under the leadership of corrupt men like Cheney. When I did my time about a quarter of a century ago we had our own enlisted men performing the often dehumanizing duties like cleaning the ‘shitters’, cooking and working in support positions such as personnel and logistics.

This use of highly paid ‘contractors’ is a criminal scam designed to bilk the taxpayers into funneling more money to the parasitical firms in Cheney’s rolodex. Now all of these functions are spun off to contractors who then bilk the American taxpayers for billions in order to perform the same functions that our servicemen and women used to do. Talk about a royal scam, this is it. The disturbing rise of private mercenaries is also quite troubling, especially at a time when our own military is being destroyed and I’m sure that I’m not the only one in America questioning the true intent of the Cheney-neocons and unaccountable private armies for hire as provided by firms like Blackwater but that is a story for another time.

The movie is even more important today as the neocon madness is about to be escalated with an impending attack on Iran that is inevitable given the goading by Israeli hard-liners meddling with the U.S. political appartus. This great column by Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo along with it's links is well worth your time in reading if only to see the extent of the danger of having a foreign government (and an extremist one at that) in the driver's seat of the Rapture bus. Absent some very serious and immediate action by Congress to begin to reign in the monsters that have run amok then we are all in for some seriously troubling times with wars without end, continuing domestic unrest as the population is divided and pitted against one another as a diversion and the dead bodies on America's tab piling as fast as the blood barter's ill gotten gains. As Plato once famously stated: "Only the dead have seen the end of the war" and you can bet the house that there will be plenty of them as long as their deaths can be turned into another revenue stream.

Another Day In Der Heimat: Captain America Snuffed

In a star spangled bummer Marvel comic book icon Captain America, a stalwart of good ole fashioned head smashing patriotism since the days when he opened a can of whip ass on Nazis, the Red Skull and Hitler himself is reputedly being killed off in a perfect example of how art so often imitates life here in Der Heimat. Times change, it was about a year ago that DC comics rolled out their grand red meat project Holy Terror Batman pitting Batman against none other than the nefarious Osama Bin Laden – the caped crusader was likely summoned by George W. Bush himself by a secretive bat signal beamed out from the White House roof since the 'war president' had failed to smoke him out as promised and who better to call in than millionaire Republican donor Bruce Wayne's alter ego. But those were the days when 9/11 was still the most ass kicking club in the bag for Rove and the fear-mongering Republican neo-fascist swine and national disillusionment hadn’t turned into festering outrage over the mounting body count in Iraq, the despicable treatment of the politically inconvenient wounded as exposed by the great recent Washington Post stories on Walter Reed Hospital (grumpy old GOP lackey Bob Dole has just been summoned to the rescue in order to save face for the king)….and before the neocons were cutting deals with Bin Laden’s buddies to use as proxies against Iran but more on that later. Cap’s reported demise is a perfect metaphor for these sick times in this sorry land of the doomed, the apathetic, the greed heads and the terminally fucked. But I digress…

It sure as shit isn’t a perfect world like the one in which comic book heroes roam, dispense frontier justice and good and evil are strictly defined - that much we know but would it really take one to look at the long awaited day of reckoning for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and the office of the treasonous Vice President as a damned good start? Now that Cheney’s lackey Scooter has been convicted for perjury and obstruction for his role in the extremely convoluted process of leaking CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name to a myriad of media elitists in a setup full of blinds, double-blinds, cutouts and smokescreens that would put Tom Clancy, John le Carré and Robert Ludlum to shame it would be nice if the establishment press would do it’s fucking job for once and use yesterday’s verdict as a jumping off point for a flurry of investigations that could for once return some measure of dignity to a once honorable profession long ago taken over by self-interested, career oriented whores, shills and flacks for the metastasizing social cancer of zero sum corporatism and the ruling oligarchy.

As Libby juror Denis Collins let loose in yesterday's prominent interviews Scooter was the “fall guy” (or more appropriately put a firewall to Cheney and the neocons) for a much bigger, far more sinister network operating to undermine American security, cut deals with foreign governments hostile to American interests and implement a fascist police state on the back of a bogus, never ending war on terror. Collins stated that which was so painfully obvious when he was quoted as saying:

"It was said a number of times, 'What are we doing with this guy here? Where's Rove ... where are these other guys?"This could be a perfect opportunity to go straight for the throat of the fascist monster that has been gnawing away at American values since long before the passel of utopian parasites jumped aboard their addle brained, brand name host George W. Bush.

Congress should immediately announce hearings (rumors are already flying to that effect) into the real extent of the neocon lies that have mired this country in the life-sucking, blood soaked quagmire that is Iraq. Cheney should be ousted, Addington should be ousted, Rove could be frogmarched out in handcuffs and slimy Iran Contra pricks like Elliot Abrams who resurfaced like a colossal shit sucking leech in this criminal administration could finally be held accountable. They would have to build an entire new wing at Gitmo to house all of the felons and traitors who could be exposed. That roiling spring of filth The American Enterprise Institute could be investigated and the dual-loyalist agents of a foreign government exposed as the disloyal, traitors that they always have been. Maybe it is too much to hope for but wouldn’t it be nice to see the mainstream media focusing on the actions of PNAC instead of the headline grabbing exploits of Brittney Spears and her shaved dome...what the fuck's the difference anyway to the moron vassals and serfs in the rotting empire when it comes to their next hit off of the electronic crackpipe?

The Libby verdict could also serve to expose the Iran Contra style Secret Government that has long since operated in the shadows and which is anathema to the very concept of America. The restoration of the House of Clinton could be prevented, the imminent rise of Jeb Bush to the presidency could be stopped dead in it’s tracks as both crime families have links to the clandestine networks that subvert congress, form bastard alliances with foreign governments, run drugs and guns and carry out brutal search and destroy campaigns against ‘leftists’ who stand in the way of a rapacious global capitalism that rapes, pillages and destroys in the name of imperialism, crusade and avarice.

It’s a veritable Pandora’s Box of nightmares for the oligarchy – if it is opened that is and that is against the odds given the current level of systemic corruption that infects both the government and the major media outlets in the Heimat as it could blow the lid off of the entire rigged game and peel back the facade of legitimacy that is used to conceal the duplicity of some of America's so-called allies. Was the Plame outing and the subsequent shutdown of the WMD intelligence brass plate shop Brewster Jennings only a simple act of revenge against a war critic or was it a part of something far darker? Conservative pundit Pat Buchanan brought this up on Tuesday’s Scarborough Country that the real story is actually the forged Niger documents themselves and exactly what purpose did that clumsy act of espionage serve? Here is the transcript:

SCARBOROUGH: ... there are people on both sides that are afraid to open up this can of worms, afraid to investigate what Libby did, what Cheney did, what Rove did, what the president did because it will reflect badly on everybody up there.

BUCHANAN: It will reflect badly on those who gave those guys a blank check. But one question which is really relevant, Joe. Why did Cheney ask the CIA to look into Niger? Because they had a report out of Italy, forged documents saying the Iraqis were going for yellowcake, which meant they‘re working on a nuclear program, which would frighten every American into going to war. Who forged those documents? Why don‘t we have the answer to that? Some foreign agents or foreign intelligence agents forged those things to get us into war with another country. That‘s what I want to know, not that Scooter Libby foolishly went up there and lied in his teeth.

Craig Unger did a good piece on this very question in Vanity Fair that examined the documents last year called The War They Wanted, the Lies They Needed. He also recently wrote another very revealing piece on the hidden agendas of the neocon madmen and the Israeli hard liner connection to the planned and now ready to rip attack on Iran that will kick off World War III called From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq from which I will offer up a few relevant paragraphs below:

The neoconservatives have had Iran in their sights for more than a decade. On July 8, 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's newly elected prime minister and the leader of its right-wing Likud Party, paid a visit to the neoconservative luminary Richard Perle in Washington, D.C. The subject of their meeting was a policy paper that Perle and other analysts had written for an Israeli-American think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic Political Studies. Titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," the paper contained the kernel of a breathtakingly radical vision for a new Middle East. By waging wars against Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, the paper asserted, Israel and the U.S. could stabilize the region. Later, the neoconservatives argued that this policy could democratize the Middle East.

"It was the beginning of thought," says Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli-American policy expert, who co-signed the paper with her husband, David Wurmser, now a top Middle East adviser to Dick Cheney. Other signers included Perle and Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy during George W. Bush's first term. "It was the seeds of a new vision."

Netanyahu certainly seemed to think so. Two days after meeting with Perle, the prime minister addressed a joint session of Congress with a speech that borrowed from "A Clean Break." He called for the "democratization" of terrorist states in the Middle East and warned that peaceful means might not be sufficient. War might be unavoidable.

Netanyahu also made one significant addition to "A Clean Break." The paper's authors were concerned primarily with Syria and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but Netanyahu saw a greater threat elsewhere. "The most dangerous of these regimes is Iran," he said.

Ten years later, "A Clean Break" looks like nothing less than a playbook for U.S.-Israeli foreign policy during the Bush-Cheney era. Many of the initiatives outlined in the paper have been implemented—removing Saddam from power, setting aside the "land for peace" formula to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon—all with disastrous results.

 The usual defenders of the Bushreich media mockingbirds in the Money Changer's Gospel (The Wall Street Journal) and the Neo Con Gazette (National Review) are already in full Pardon Scooter mode with Rupert Murdoch's shitrag New York Post bringing up the rear and the loose cannon on deck that is the boorish Chris 'Pinky' Matthews is featuring another juror by the name of Ann Redington who is sympathetic to Libby and imploring Bush to pardon the little traitor - war is good for GE and cleaning the neocon house isn't conducive to keeping the stock prices up, especially with a market that is going schizo. A presidential pardon would be right in line for a piece of shit like Scooter, Daddy Bush and Bill Clinton have already set the precedent on granting amnesty to global criminals like Iran Contra operators Caspar Weinberger, Robert McFarlane and Eliott Abrams, terrorists like Orlando Bosch and tax cheating double agents of foreign governments and manipulators of global capital and commodities like the ultra-sleazy scoundrel Marc Rich - in an interesting bit of trivia Scooter Libby was Rich's lawyer - such are the nature of the incestuous relationships within the oligarchy.

Sleeping With The Devil: Speaking of incestuous and dangerous relationships with allies of dubious intent Seymour Hersh's latest bombshell in the New Yorker entitled The Redirection is an absolute must read for a look at the sheer audacity of the Bush-Cheney-Rove Axis of Evil and the neocon operators who treat foreign policy as though it were a game of Risk. According to Hersh’s piece the cloak and dagger types in the neocon mafia are funneling money to militant jihadist groups with sympathies towards Al-Qaeda and the sectarian violence that is killing and maiming American soldiers by the day and that sleazy little rat fucker Prince Bandar (aka Bandar Bush is back as a player). The House of Saud, Bandar and Israeli hard-liners are now working in concert with Cheney’s goon squads and other Sunni regimes to foment anti-Shiite violence in the region. American Enterprise Institute fellow and dual loyalist thug Michael Ledeen has a term for such Iran-Contra style subterfuge: Creative Destruction. Here is a sampling of the article:

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not been adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,” he said. “We ask for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s so frustrating.”

The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, “The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.”)

The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.

The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea change,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni states “were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq,” he said. “We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it.”

“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.”

Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.” Indyk, who is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of its new policy. “The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq,” he said. “It’s doubling the bet across the region. This could get very complicated. Everything is upside down.”


AND


The Administration’s effort to diminish Iranian authority in the Middle East has relied heavily on Saudi Arabia and on Prince Bandar, the Saudi national-security adviser. Bandar served as the Ambassador to the United States for twenty-two years, until 2005, and has maintained a friendship with President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. In his new post, he continues to meet privately with them. Senior White House officials have made several visits to Saudi Arabia recently, some of them not disclosed.

Last November, Cheney flew to Saudi Arabia for a surprise meeting with King Abdullah and Bandar. The Times reported that the King warned Cheney that Saudi Arabia would back its fellow-Sunnis in Iraq if the United States were to withdraw. A European intelligence official told me that the meeting also focussed on more general Saudi fears about “the rise of the Shiites.” In response, “The Saudis are starting to use their leverage—money.”

In a royal family rife with competition, Bandar has, over the years, built a power base that relies largely on his close relationship with the U.S., which is crucial to the Saudis. Bandar was succeeded as Ambassador by Prince Turki al-Faisal; Turki resigned after eighteen months and was replaced by Adel A. al-Jubeir, a bureaucrat who has worked with Bandar. A former Saudi diplomat told me that during Turki’s tenure he became aware of private meetings involving Bandar and senior White House officials, including Cheney and Abrams.

 AND

 The Saudi said that, in his country’s view, it was taking a political risk by joining the U.S. in challenging Iran: Bandar is already seen in the Arab world as being too close to the Bush Administration. “We have two nightmares,” the former diplomat told me. “For Iran to acquire the bomb and for the United States to attack Iran. I’d rather the Israelis bomb the Iranians, so we can blame them. If America does it, we will be blamed.”

Interviews with Hersh about the explosive revelations of The Redirection are all over the internet including at Democracy Now and Antiwar.com just to name a few - if you don't have time to read the piece at least download the programs and listen to them.

This could get really ugly very, very quickly unless the brakes are applied to the neocon express that is careening towards Armageddon much to the delight of the royal order of the rubber fetus in the rapture death cult. Outing the entire global conspiracy could be huge if the mainstream media finally has been shamed into doing it’s fucking job – bigger than diapered astronauts, Brittney, Anna Nicole or even the holiest of holies that is the latest daily pedophile story.

It is highly unlikely that any of this will be afforded the proper scrutiny by the media and the political hacks that is essential to maintain a functional democracy but with Captain America dead and America itself not far behind even the most cynical amongst us have to find something to hope for.

by Ed Encho