The Election March of the Trolls

Aug 29, 2011

Illustration by Mr. Fish

By Chris Hedges
We have begun the election march of the trolls. They have crawled out of the sewers of public relations firms, polling organizations, the commercial media, the two corporate political parties and elected office to fill the airwaves with inanities and absurdities until the final inanity—the 2012 presidential election. Journalists, whose role has been reduced to purveyors of court gossip, whether on Fox or MSNBC, descend in swarms to report pseudo-events such as the Ames straw poll, where it costs $30 to cast a ballot. And then, almost immediately, they blithely inform us that the Iowa poll is meaningless now that Rick Perry has entered the race. The liberal trolls, as they do in every election cycle, are beating their little chests about the perfidiousness of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama. It is a gesture performed not to effect change but to burnish their credentials as moralists. They know, as do we, that they will trot obediently into the voting booth in 2012 to do as they are told. And everywhere the pulse of the nation is being assiduously monitored through polls and focus groups, not because our opinions matter, but because our troll candidates understand that by parroting back to us our own viewpoints they can continue to spend their days lapping up corporate money with other trolls in the two houses of Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court and television studios where they chat with troll celebrity journalists.

The only commodity the troll state offers is fear. The corporate trolls, such as the Koch brothers, terrify the birthers, creationists, militia lovers, tea party militants, right-to-life advocates, Christian fascists and God-fearing red-white-and-blue patriots by proclaiming that unless they vote for Perry or Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann or some other product of the lunatic fringe of our political establishment, the American family will be destroyed, our children will be corrupted and the country will turn socialist. Barack Obama, who they whisper is a closet Muslim, will take away their guns, raise their taxes and bring homosexual couples into kindergartens.

For those, usually liberals, still rooted in a reality-based world, one that believes in evolutionary science, the corporate trolls offer a more refined, fear-based message of impending doom: If you abandon the Democrats we will be governed by Bible-thumping idiots who will make us chant the Pledge of Allegiance in mass rallies and teach the account of Genesis as historical and biological fact in our nation’s schools.

And underneath it all runs the mantra chanted in unison by all the trolls—terror, terror, terror. The troll establishment spins us like windup dolls and laughs all the way to the bank. What idiots, they think. And every election cycle we prove them right.

“The only people who grasp the distinction between reality and appearance, who grasp the laws of conduct and society, are the ruling groups and those who do their bidding; scientific, technical elites who elucidate the laws of behavior and the functions of society so that people might be more effectively, albeit unconsciously, governed,” wrote James W. Carey in “Communication as Culture.”

The trolls dominate or have neutralized every major institution in the country on behalf of their corporate paymasters. The press, education, Wall Street, labor and our political parties are managed by trolls or have been destroyed by them. Sometimes these trolls speak like liberals. Sometimes they speak like conservatives. Sometimes they are secular. Sometimes they are Christians. But the language they use is a cover for the relentless march toward a totalitarian capitalism and a kingdom where the trolls, if not the rest of us, live happily ever after. Rick Perry and John Boehner overtly make war on Social Security. Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi say they would like to save Social Security but are sadly powerless before the decisions of a congressional super committee they helped form. The result, of course, is the same. We get to choose the rhetoric and manner in which we are deceived and disempowered. Nothing more.

Read More: Here

Obama's Responce To Defrauded Home Owners: I Work For The Banksters!

Robert Scheer's Columns

Amnesty for the Indefensible

Posted on Aug 23, 2011

White House / Pete Souza

By Robert Scheer
They will get away with it, at least in this life. “They” are the Wall Street usurers, people of a sort condemned in Scripture, who have brought more misery to this nation than we have known since the Great Depression. “They” will not suffer for their crimes because they have a majority ownership position in our political system. That is the meaning of the banking plea bargain that the Obama administration is pressuring state attorneys general to negotiate with the titans of the financial world.

It is a sellout deal that, in return for a pittance of compensation by banks to ripped-off mortgage holders, would grant the banks blanket immunity from any prosecution. That is intended to short-circuit investigations by a score of aggressive state officials, inquiries that offer the public a last best hope to get to the bottom of the housing scandal that has cost U.S. homeowners $6.6 trillion in home equity in the past five years and left 14.6 million Americans owing more than their homes are worth.

The $20 billion or so that the banks would pony up is chump change to them compared with the trillions that the Fed and other public agencies spent to bail them out. The banks were given direct cash subsidies, virtually zero-interest loans, and the Fed took $2 trillion in bad paper off their hands while the banks exacerbated the banking crisis they had created through additional shady practices, including fraudulent mortgage foreclosures.

Yet the administration has rushed to the aid of the banks once again and is attempting to intimidate the few state attorneys general who have the gumption to protect the public interest they are sworn to serve. As Gretchen Morgenson of The New York Times reported:
“Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, has come under increasing pressure from the Obama administration to drop his opposition to a wide-ranging state settlement with banks over dubious foreclosure practices. …

“In recent weeks, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and high-level Justice Department officials have been waging an intensifying campaign to try to persuade the attorney general to support the settlement. …” Donovan has good reason not to want an exploration of the origins of the housing meltdown: He has been a big-time player in the housing racket for decades. Back in the Clinton administration, when government-supported housing became a fig leaf for bundling suspect mortgages into what turned out to be toxic securities, Donovan was a deputy assistant secretary at HUD and acting Federal Housing Administration commissioner. He was up to his eyeballs in this business when the Clinton administration pushed through legislation banning any regulation of the market in derivatives based on home mortgages.
Armed with his insider connections, Donovan then went to work for the Prudential conglomerate (no surprise there), working deals with the same government housing agencies that he had helped run. As The New York Times reported in 2008 after President Barack Obama picked him to be secretary of HUD, “Mr. Donovan was a managing director at Prudential Mortgage Capital Co., in charge of its portfolio of investments in affordable housing loans, including Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Administration debt.”

Read More: Here

Obama Wants To Help His Republicrat Friends Steal YOUR Money

Obama Pushes for Modifications to Medicare and Social Security

By: Jon Walker Friday August 19, 2011

Obama speaking in Illinois

At a town hall meeting in Illinois, President Obama reaffirmed that he will personally push for Congress to make Medicare and Social Security cuts part of any talk about deficit reduction or job creation. From the White House Transcripts:

When folks tell you that we’ve got a choice between jobs now or dealing with our debt crisis, they’re wrong. They’re wrong. We can’t afford to just do one or the other. We’ve got to do both. And the way to do it is to make some — reform the tax code, close loopholes, make some modest modifications in programs like Medicare and Social Security so they’re there for the next generation, stabilize those systems. And you could actually save so much money that you could actually pay for some of the things like additional infrastructure right now.
We can close the deficit and put people to work, but what’s required is that folks work together. That’s the big challenge. That’s the big challenge. (Applause.)
So the main thing is I’m here to enlist you in this fight for America’s future. I need you to send a message to your members of Congress, to your representatives that we’re tired of the games. We’re tired of the posturing. We don’t want more press releases. We want action.

“Modest modification” is classic political newspeak code for cuts. The “modest”change Obama indicates he would support, like raising the Medicare retirement age to 67, would cause very real hardship for some older Americans and make every seniors’ Medicare premiums go up.

Read More: Here

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The Silly Season Is Now Over, We Now Need to Speak Of Reality.

It has been fun to talk of nonsense, believe in absurd theories and act as if up was down and left was right. But all good things must come to an end. It would not be sensible to continue this exercise in fantasy any longer. From this day forward we will only communicate in real terms, speak using words as they are actually defined in the dictionary.

To start with we are not "USA, USA, USA, we're number 1", we are a declining global power that is behind most industrial nations in all the indicators that would make a nation "Number 1". We are at best ranked 25th in health care outcomes and we spend twice as much for this dismal result. Our per capita industrial output (using pre-recession numbers, 2004) is at best mid pack 15th and falling rapidly as manufacturing jobs are out sourced to Europe and the far east. At the beginning of the Reagan presidency the US was the largest importer of raw materials, led the world in exports of finished goods and was the world's largest lender. A true "number 1" among 1st world countries. Today we are one of the largest exporters of raw materials. The largest importer of finished goods. And the largest debtor nation in the world. And this is the exact definition of 3rd world status. And like most third world nations we spend over half our tax dollars on the military. Our military budget is about 47% of the worlds military spending. What we are is "number 1" among 3rd world nations.

So let's get started with our trip down reality road.

To start with corporations are not persons, they are not citizens, they are not people.  Corporations are a legal construct, an association of individuals, created by law or under authority of law, having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members, and powers and liabilities distinct from those of its members. The whole person, citizen thing was added to a supreme court decision, years after the decision was made, by a court clerk who worked for the railroads. We will talk more about this in a later post.

If corporations were persons and citizens then they should be equally liable under law as any other human citizen for crimes they commit. If they commit crimes of theft or murder they should, if they were persons and US citizens, pay the same penalty as you or I would pay. Have you ever heard of a corporation being removed from society for twenty years for theft, of course not because they are not persons and US citizens. 

Now wall street, is a grand casino, running a Ponzi scheme on the side. It does not contribute to American prosperity. Wall street does not produce anything of value for the American people. This collection of "security" vendors masquerading as banks is a net drain on the American economic system. The US government and Federal Reserve bank have given wall street money and power unequaled in history to any need or service they may provide.

The wealthy are not job creators. The wealthy are just people with a lot of money who will do anything to keep that money.

Jobs are created by businesses meeting the DEMAND for goods or services. Supply is what people with jobs create. This idiotic notion that supply creates demand was dreamed up by those that needed a reason to flip normal economic rational on its head so as to promote a tax policy that favored the wealthy over the middle and lower classes. They needed an economic theory that provided cover for transferring wealth to the already wealthy.

Money is not speech. Speech is the faculty or power of speaking; oral communication; ability to express one's thoughts and emotions by speech sounds and gesture. Money is any article or substance used as a medium of exchange, measure of wealth, or means of payment, as checks on demand deposit or cowrie. As anyone, except a right wing extremist supreme court justice, can see these two things are not the same.

So lets agree that even though things may crazy right now, we will at least stop being part of the crazy. 

CD
LGMC 

White House’s Scooby Doo Villain Perspective on Politics

By: Jon Walker Friday August 5, 2011

The Obama administration has a strange habit of inappropriately blaming the unpopularity of their actions on the fact that a few progressive writers didn’t do enough to sell the public on the good aspects of their deal.

It would seem the White House is basically taking the perspective of a Scooby Doo villain in concluding why their brilliant plans fail. Hanging upside down in a comically oversize net with their rubber monster mask removed they yell, “we would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling progressive bloggers!”

A Scooby Doo villain may think he has the incredible misfortune of the world’s most brilliant detective team arriving in his small town at the wrong moment to point out to everyone the tiny flaw in an otherwise ingenious scheme. The villain’s real problem is that running around at night in a crude rubber swamp monster outfit trying to scare everyone away from the old mill was just an incredibly stupid plan.

While it is true that a van full of unemployed teenage stoners may have been the first to point out the dozens of obvious problems with the plan, the scheme was so ill-conceived the villain was never going to get away with it anyway. It didn’t fail because of the meddling kids. If a cartoon dog and a thick-witted hippie can quickly locate all its problems, it wasn’t all that brilliant to begin with.

Similarly, the problem for the White House is not that a few hippie bloggers are pointing out the clear and obvious problems with their policies. The problem is that the policies are bad, and their unpopularity is due to the fact that they fail to deliver what they promise.

If people see the the positive tangible effect that a policy has on their lives, they won’t care what anyone has to say about it. Likewise, if a handful of writers sign on to the White House Happy Talk PR campaign, bad policy will never become broadly popular. The administration’s failure to convince either bloggers or the public about the benefits of a particular action is most likely a signal that it is insufficient, ineffective, destructive or incompetent.

Read More: Here

Thank God The Economic Tree Is Bearing Fruit.

I see that the fruits of our grand compromise are all ready dropping at our feet, the stock market is in free fall. It may seem to some that this is just a reaction to the bad labor news and to some extent it is but more importantly it is one of the the few long term indicators on wall street. The pros on the street make a living flimflamming the newbies and institutional investors, that is the short game, while some of the the long term investments they hold is the long game and those investments tell the future of where they think the economy is headed.

The republicrats have tied the governments hands economically, which will inhibit its ability to help the economy recovery, and the street knows this, so you will see over the next year the stock market slowly creep down. The pros will start to take their gains from the long term investments they have and start to switch to their short game of conning newbies and start shorting the institutional investors they "advised" in the first place.

The market is just a large wildwest casino where sharpies take the money of the miners and cowboys of main street. It has long since stopped being a place where companies would go to raise capital and investors buy into growing businesses to share in the profits made. Today a company's shares are traded as chips in the game, and the game has nothing to do with the real economy, main street, and that is where we live. So although it may be of interest to you because of a 401k or pension you may have, the state of wall street does not actually strongly affect the real economy, main street, it just gives a slight indicator of where things may be headed if you read it properly.

Just remember wallstreet is a casino and if you're sitting at the table wondering who the sucker in the game is, it is you.

Joe Lieberman Wants to Feed the Military Industrial Complex Our Social Security

August 03, 2011 07:06 AM

By John Amato

Sen. Joe Lieberman, who used to be a staunch ally for Medicare and Social Security is now throwing away any pretense that he was once a Democratic politician and would rather help destroy the lives of seniors in America to make sure funds flow to continue endless wars on Pam Geller's favorite target: Radical Islamists. In a new bill that he'll co-sponsor with Conservative Tom Coburn, they plan on helping to weaken one of our most cherished and valued programs, Social Security and send the cash over the the Military. he knows that Social Security is solvent for decades and doesn't add a penny to the deficit which has preoccupied the White House, GOP and the beltway media. It doesn't matter that Americans have said over and over again that they prefer defense spending to be cut, not our social safety nets.

Think Progress:

This past April, right-wing war hawk John Bolton suggested during an interview on Fox News that the United States should cut Social Security and Medicare to finance the defense budget.
During debate over the debt deal today on the Senate floor, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) appeared to endorse this call. Lieberman explained that he is working with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) on a Social Security spending reduction plan and that “we can’t protect these entitlements and also have the national defense…to protect us…with Islamist extremists”:

LIEBERMAN: I want to indicate today to my colleagues that Senator Coburn and I are working again on a bipartisan proposal to secure Social Security over the long term, we hope to have that done in time. To also forward to the special committee for their consideration. So, bottom line, we can’t protect these entitlements and also have the national defense we need to protect us in a dangerous world while we’re at war with Islamist extremists who attacked us on 9/11 and will be for a long time to come.

In a quick search I found a poll done by Reuters/Ipsos back in March which says:
A majority of Americans prefer cutting defense spending to reduce the federal deficit rather than taking money from public retirement and health programs, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday showed.
The poll found 51 percent of Americans support reducing defense spending, and only 28 percent want to cut Medicare and Medicaid health programs for the elderly and poor. A mere 18 percent back cuts in the Social Security retirement program.

This fearmongering fiend would rather back an out of control war hawk's idea from a nut like John Bolton, (who also is a hero to Pam Geller) than stand up for the Americans that already have been paying 600 billion dollars a year to the military.

As ThinkProgress’s Ben Armbruster notes, the Bolton-Lieberman plan is “is basically a reverse Robin Hood scheme: robbing the poor to pay the rich, or really, the Military Industrial Complex on steroids.”

Lieberman is bringing this to the floor because military spending is one of the triggers that will be activated if no deal is passed by the new Super Cat Food Commission. Congress nor the president seem to care that Americans also don't want Medicare cut to appease the deficit hawks.

Despite growing concerns about the country’s long-term fiscal problems and an intensifying debate in Washington about how to deal with them, Americans strongly oppose some of the major remedies under consideration, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The survey finds that Americans prefer to keep Medicare just the way it is.

WSJ/NBC:

Less than a quarter of Americans support making significant cuts to Social Security or Medicare to tackle the country's mounting deficit, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, illustrating the challenge facing lawmakers who want voter buy-in to alter entitlement programs. In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was "unacceptable'' to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security "unacceptable."

Could Joe have acted any quicker to defend his precious wars?

The Threat and the Picture That May End Obama’s Presidency

By: Scarecrow August 3, 2011 2:33 pm

The White House re-election team is spinning desperately to both change the subject from the debt limit bill and divert attention from its failure to address any real problem the country faces.
The President’s spokespeople would have us believe the bill was both necessary and good for the economy.  But if that is true, why are there no economists or politicians standing behind the President, applauding as he signs the bill?

The Budget Control Act of 2011, Aug. 2, 2011

It’s hard to avoid the most logical explanations for the President’s solitary act:  Despite his Party leadership’s complicity in voting for and sanctioning the bill, no sensible Democrat, and certainly no one running in 2012 for re-election, wanted to be in a picture that economists now, and historians later, may point to as possibly the most economically stupid and shameful act of surrender ever signed by an American President.
And even when Republicans like John Boehner are willing to take public credit for getting “98 percent of what I wanted,”  the White House certainty did not want to be surrounded by a bunch of jubilant Republicans holding up two fingers for victory behind Mr. Obama’s head as he signed his own surrender to their successful blackmail.
So the picture of the President shows him signing the bill alone, while Mitch McConnell brazenly celebrated the victory of economic blackmail and extortion on the Senate floor.  From the NYT:

“The debt ceiling should not be something that is used as a gun against the heads of the American people,” the president said.
But Mr. McConnell sees it differently.  . . .
Mr. McConnell said the just-ended debate in Washington created “an entirely new template” for future attempts to raise the debt ceiling.
“This kind of discussion isn’t something to dread; it’s something to welcome,” Mr. McConnell said. “And while the president may not have particularly enjoyed this debate, it was a debate that Washington needed to have.” . . .
“Never again will any president, from either party, be allowed to raise the debt ceiling without being held accountable for it by the American people and without having to engage in the kind of debate we’ve just come through,” Mr. McConnell said moments before the Senate vote on the deal he worked out to raise the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion.

So there it is.  The likely next Majority Leader of the Senate just told the President of the United States that even though the debt limit was supposedly raised enough to get through his first term, but at a terrible price to the nation’s credibility and institutions, the Republican Party will again hold the debt limit hostage in 2013 if he wins reelection.  And once again the Republican Party will blackmail the nation, exploiting a President that either agrees with their goals or cannot find the wisdom or the courage to defend the nation’s credit or its economy.
The economists warn us we’re facing a possible renewed recession to go with the continued depression being suffered by the unemployed and many others.   The economy needs a strong President who understands the economics of a  “lesser depression” (or “balance-sheet recession”).  It needs a leader who is prepared to mobilize the nation’s huge resources to overcome it and mitigate its damage.  And it needs a President who cannot be blackmailed by implacable zealots and is not afraid to call them out.  But those qualities don’t apply to Mr. Obama.  So how are the nation’s government and economy supposed to survive such an incompetent, feckless President?
There was once a time when Presidents looked to a group of respected elders who, in times of crisis, could get access to a President and tell him he’d truly screwed up, that he needed to change course.  I don’t know who these people are today.  Does  this President have anyone of that stature to whom he would listen?  Because the people who surround him appear as clueless and helpless as he is.
In another era, a much stronger, far more effective, and more politically astute  President, when faced with growing rejection of his war policies that were splitting the country, surprised the nation by saying “I shall not seek, and I will not accept . . .”  That moment has arrived for Mr. Obama, but there’s no one close enough and wise enough to tell him, and he doesn’t seem able or willing to figure it out himself.

Joe Lieberman Wants to Feed the Military Industrial Complex Our Social Security

August 03, 2011

By John Amato

Sen. Joe Lieberman, who used to be a staunch ally for Medicare and Social Security is now throwing away any pretense that he was once a Democratic politician and would rather help destroy the lives of seniors in America to make sure funds flow to continue endless wars on Pam Geller's favorite target: Radical Islamists. In a new bill that he'll co-sponsor with Conservative Tom Coburn, they plan on helping to weaken one of our most cherished and valued programs, Social Security and send the cash over the the Military. he knows that Social Security is solvent for decades and doesn't add a penny to the deficit which has preoccupied the White House, GOP and the beltway media. It doesn't matter that Americans have said over and over again that they prefer defense spending to be cut, not our social safety nets.

Read More: Here

Sentiment Crumbles On Relentless Euro Crisis, French, Italian And Spanish CDS Hit Records

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/02/2011


Despite Congress passing the debt ceiling hike, the market's reaction has been swift, brutal and vicious as ever more attention is being paid to Italy and the unforgiving European crisis. As both Spanish and Italian spreads hit new all time records, while CDS are at all time wides for the two countries plus France, the vigilantes are once again preparing to attack and test the ECB's resolve to keep the Euro alive: at this point it is obviously a losing game although expanding the EFSFS to $2 trillion is inevitable (at which point the reaction to German spreads will be swift).

In the meantime the scramble for safety is at 2011 highs, with gold on the verge of another record, while the 10 Year US Treasury touching a low of 2.685%, and UK Gilts touching record lows: remember - this is all to make QE3 more palatable when it does begin.

Lastly, Bloomberg's TJ Marta summarizes all the market indicators of a day in which sentiment has truly crumbled and in which we expect Italian bank stocks to be halted at least 3 times before.

Read More: Here

Deficit Deal: The Incremental Destruction Of The US Population Marches On…

August 2nd, 2011 

The deficit deal turned out exactly as expected. It will cut $2.4 trillion, most all of this will be at the expense of the poor, middle class, elderly and sick.

Meanwhile, the richest 0.01% will continue their plunder, unharmed in the slightest, still sucking the life-blood out of the real economy with their corporate welfare and Wall Street Ponzi.

And now we have an unconstitutional “super congress” that will do their dirty work and implement a harsh program of austerity. As this Bloomberg headline just summed it up: “Debt Deal Puts U.S. on Austerity Path as Economy Falters.”

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver was spot on when he summed it up by saying: “It looks like a Satan sandwich.”

Read More: Here