Sardonicky

Friday, November 23, 2012

Eyasses for Obama

What with all the holiday hoopla this week, I had utterly neglected to check my email spam folder until this morning. And there, smooshed between "Your Arrest Record Online!" and "Remove Skin & Moles" was something from Obama for America, with the ominous subject "The Fiscal Cliff."

Not only is the OFA outfit still alive and kicking and flush with cash, it has pivoted from re-election mode to mass suicide pact mode. It's not enough that you re-elected the Manchurian Candidate to another four years of stealth Republican governance. He expects you to continue knocking on doors for him, to convince your friends and family to support his Grand Bargain of trillions of dollars of cuts to programs that benefit your friends and family.

Become an official Eyass* for Obama! Take the Fiscal Fledge Pledge. Spread those little deficit hawk wings of yours and fly like an eagle in the name of economic patriotism and allegiance to Your President. Strike while the afterglow of pretend victory is still hot. Spread the word far and wide: OFA now officially stands for Obama For Austerity.

Work Till You're 70.....Awwwwk.

Delving even further down in my spam bucket, I discovered I had missed the chance to participate in a survey of Obama supporters about "where we go from here." Whatever. Because, although the campaign committee failed to publish any alleged results of this alleged survey, the president seems convinced he has a popular mandate to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, food stamps and heating assistance! And it is up to us to spread the Cat Food Gospel!

Of course, the email does not say this in so many words. It is simply full of pablum and cartoonish numbered graphics. The never-ending Obama campaign is devoted to "keeping you informed about how the President is fighting for you so you can continue to talk to your friends, family, and neighbors. So here's the deal".....

"There's a lot at stake. With your help we'll continue to move this country forward. Spread the word on Facebook and Twitter."

Hmm. Nowhere does he give the exact details of his "concrete plan", but based on what he said during the campaign. the so-called balance is heavily weighted toward cuts -- at least three times the amount of what might be gained from revenue. It's a concrete plan, all right. Kind of like what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. One day the New Deal is here, the next it's gone.

He still persists in the notion that cutting the deficit will grow the economy, too. President Obama does not want to believe in the Keynesian warning that austerity during a recession will only make the recession worse. You worry about the debt during boom-times, not during hard times.

You have to ask yourself why this "grassroots" deficit hawk campaign was officially launched right at the start of the Thanksgiving weekend, that most popular of all times for stealth news dumps. The New York Times, as far as I can tell, is not touching it. They were, predictably enough, live-blogging about the Black Friday flocks of consumerists. But in the U.K., where the overindulgence holiday is not celebrated, The Guardian has a piece on it.

The Guardian does offer an explanation of sorts for the OFA email campaign, which is actually sort of heartening: Obama is desperate!!!

It (the grassroots effort) comes after reports of no progress by the Republican and Democratic teams left behind in Congress over the Thanksgiving holiday period to start work on a compromise package.

(snip)

They (Democrats) have left staff members from their teams to begin work on the framework of a deal, but the initial negotiations have not been fruitful. Republicans and Democrats have accused one another just setting out their standard party policies, with little in the way of compromise being offered.

According to The Guardian, House Speaker John Boehner has insisted that Obamacare, the president's signature achievement of a grand giveaway to private insurance predators, be put on the table, and he won't budge on the Bush tax cut extensions for millionaires. So, because there is simply no way that Obama can dismantle the New Deal without Republican collusion, he is seeking to hypnotize the starry-eyed masses into doing it for him. Be partners in your own destruction, proles. Show Barry you still have his back, even if it kills you.

So far, the only true grassroots supporters that Obama has are his millionaire CEO puppet-master rentier class at Third Way and their corporate media shills. As Paul Krugman laid out in a recent blogpost, CNBC has transformed itself into Austerity Broadcasting Central. The CBS Nightly News, too, has been running a feel-good Thanksgiving week propaganda campaign of how we will all die later unless we agree to die sooner. It featured such paragons of virtue as unindicted Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who offered the following cultured pearls of wisdom:

You're going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people's expectations. The entitlements, and what people think that they're going to get, because it's not going to–they're not going to get it....And you can go back and you can look at the history of these things, and Social Security wasn't devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career. So there will be certain things that the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised.

You're not going to get it. Get it, proles? This multimillionaire banker wanker and master of mile-a-minute Doublespeak thinks that working slobs retire at 40, and that your laziness is costing him your money. The sad part is that our so-called journalistic class seeks him out, panders to him and never once thinks of challenging his outright lies. But as interviewer Scott Pelley breathlessly informs the viewers, the Blankfein interview was a coup of sorts, a rare "get" in broadcast parlance, because Masters of the Universe rarely deign to pontificate in public. We should all be so honored to have a plutocrat of his stature telling us that suffering is good for us, and even better for the likes of him.

Get their backs, for the privilege of getting stabbed in yours. It's the Class War, and so far they are winning. They remain confidently convinced that the rest of us are assholes. But whether their flocks of potential eyasses will actually take flight only to commit hara kiri for the plutocratic cause remains to be seen.

Barry & His Blankie

*Eyasses: raptor birds, such as hawks and falcons, still in that vulnerable downy stage.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!

Since this is my blog and I make the rules, I hereby decree that you don't have to give thanks today if you can't help but feel like ungrateful little wretches. Personally speaking, I am always grateful on Thanksgiving when it turns out that my turkey has nicely thawed. There is nothing worse than trying to pry out a frozen congealed mass of guts from the belly of the beast at 7 in the morning. I did that under-the-faucet operation several years ago, and I don't ever want to go through it again.

If anybody is unsociably huddled in front of a computer screen on this day of family togetherness and joy, and would like to share a link, anecdote, dirty joke, or just complain, go for it. Last year I included a link to Howard Zinn which didn't work, but here again is the traditional Addams Family Thanksgiving Massacre video. An excerpt:

{as an Indian, ad-libbing during a Thanksgiving play}
Wednesday: Wait!
Amanda: What?
Wednesday: We cannot break bread with you.
Amanda: Huh? Becky, what's going on?
Becky: [whispered] Wednesday!
Wednesday: You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, you will play golf, and enjoy hot hors d'oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, "Do not trust the Pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller."
Amanda: Gary, she's changing the words.
Wednesday: And for all these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.

Happy Thanksgiving from All of Me Here at Sardonicky!

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Pre-Thanksgiving New York Times Kvetching Edition

Get all your bitching out of your system today. There will be plenty of time for forced bonhomie and fellow-feeling tomorrow.

I am in the middle of baking, so I am just going to list a few items to inspire, enrage, or possibly just contribute to your profound state of numbed apathy.

First of all, here are two things that the New York Times is not covering today:

Thing One: the Gray Lady threw a hissy fit when a satiric Twitter site illegally used its trademark snooty Old English font "T" in tweets making fun of the newspaper's insipid trending stories. The paper of record sent its army of lawyers after law student Benjamin Kabak and forced the shutdown of his account. It later relented, but only on the condition that the obviously satiric site officially identify itself as such. Because, we had no earthly idea that tweets like these were satire:

GUYS, there are *gasp* fake profiles on Facebook, and The Times is ON IT. nyti.ms/TDt1ut

Thing Two: the Gray Lady did not see fit to print the fairly blockbuster news that the United States Government allegedly hacked into the personal computer of then-President Nicolas Sarkozy of France as he fought his losing re-election battle against Francois Hollande. According to a French newspaper, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issued a non-denial denial: " We have no greater partner than France; we have no greater ally than France. We cooperate in many security-related areas. I am here to further reinforce those ties and create new ones.”

Napolitano, according to a White House statement, dismissed the hacking accusation out of hand with much cackling and guffawing laughter because she considered it “preposterous.” Yeah -- she just assumed it was, like, satire or something. She and her BFF DiFi wouldn't know Stuxnet if it hit them in the face.

But back to that humorless, yet hilariously funny, New York Times. Thomas Friedman's latest column is written in that trendy new genre known as Austerity Porn. It is all part of media-industrial complex's propaganda campaign which seeks to convince the masses that suffering is not only good for us, it will provide epidemic orgasms if we only give it a chance. A choice Friedmanesque tidbit:

There is a huge amount of innovative thrust building, bottom-up, in the U.S. economy today. If Washington could just get the macro picture right, you could see a real growth surge in America. We’re just a couple of grand bargains away from something big.

The Times chose to suppress my comment by quickly performing the Times Pick Segregation Trick. If they don't care for a popular comment, they simply highlight their own picks from the rest of the pack by presenting them in the first layer. Most people won't bother searching for their rejects. So in case you missed it, here is mine:

So, Mr. Friedman is advocating a massive government propaganda campaign to convince the proles that cutting back on our Social Security and Medicare and other "middle class" goodies will be fun for us. Something like a Mary Poppins for grown-ups. A spoonful of sugar in the form of better internet connections will help the medicine of retiring at 70 go down. Or some such nonsense.

CEOs and pundits throughout the land are serenading us with the same tired old tune called "Love the Pain." And Friedman's use of such words as "thrust-building" and "bottom-up" even add a sexy new slant to the genre of fiscal S&M. The plutocrats wield the whips, and we will swoon under their lashes. The president will do his part by making austerity excitingly patriotic. Friedman's multimillionaire financial guru is at the ready to impart some economic Viagra, keeping that dreaded deflation at bay.

Risky start-ups, here we come! But, if the addition of an Amazon warehouse to the Chattanooga landscape is your idea of boom-time, think again. These fulfillment centers have a less than stellar reputation in how they treat their poorly paid, no-benefit workers.

You know what would really stimulate the economy? A national living wage law to lift retail and warehouse workers out of poverty. Scrapping the cap on FICA Social Security tax contributions to make the trust fund solvent for generations to come. Medicare for All.

Forget the shared sacrifice. We should be demanding some shared prosperity.

Deficit Scold Theatre is playing out on virtually every TV station and in every corporate-controlled newspaper in America. Friedman is just going with the noxious flow.

Now excuse me while I go check on my pie.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Thinking Outside the (Big) Box

Black Friday, that uniquely American holy day of consumer obligation, has always depressed the hell out of me. It is the day when people all over this great land give up pretending to be thankful for family and friends. It is the annual orgy of self- indulgence. We are encouraged to partake in the twin national pasttimes of greed and competition. We pledge our retail allegiance by patriotically waiting in line for hours for the chance to jostle our fellow human beings aside in our quest for cheap crap.

On Black Friday, whatever else is happening in the world always takes a back seat. There may be wars, there may be strife, there may be misery. But news broadcasts and front pages always lead off with the size of the crowds, the trepidation of the retailers, the pomp of the bargains, the circumstance of the cash registers.

And we are all shocked, shocked when the inevitable and utterly unexpected tragedy occurs. There was that unfortunate $7.50-an-hour Walmart greeter who died few years ago when unruly New York shoppers broke down the doors and trampled him to death. In 2011, a deranged California woman attacked her fellow Walmart consumers with pepper spray to keep them from grabbing up the Chinese electronics.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if all that human energy could be channeled away from consumerism, and into social revolution for the greater good? George Orwell did:

He remembered how once he had been walking down a crowded street when a tremendous shout of hundreds of voices, women’s voices—had burst from a side-street a little way ahead. It was a great formidable cry of anger and despair, a deep, loud ‘Oh-o-o-o-oh!’ that went humming on like the reverberation of a bell. His heart had leapt. It’s started! he had thought. A riot! The proles are breaking loose at last! When he had reached the spot it was to see a mob of two or three hundred women crowding round the stalls of a street market, with faces as tragic as though they had been the doomed passengers on a sinking ship. But at this moment the general despair broke down into a multitude of individual quarrels. It appeared that one of the stalls had been selling tin saucepans. They were wretched, flimsy things, but cooking-pots of any kind were always difficult to get. Now the supply had unexpectedly given out. The successful women, bumped and jostled by the rest, were trying to make off with their saucepans while dozens of others clamoured round the stall, accusing the stallkeeper of favouritism and of having more saucepans somewhere in reserve. There was a fresh outburst of yells. Two bloated women, one of them with her hair coming down, had got hold of the same saucepan and were trying to tear it out of one another’shands. For a moment they were both tugging, and then the handle came off. Winston watched them disgustedly. And yet, just for a moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats! Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?

He wrote: Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

Well, that was 1984. And this is so 2012. The Occupy movement just marked its first anniversary! The winds of rebellion and consciousness are finally in the air! The proles who work and the proles who shop are revolting against Big Box Empire. Minimum wage slaves are walking out of Walmart and setting up picket lines in the parking lots. The high cost of low price will be forced into the consciousness of even the non-boycotting faithful as they file into the national cathedrals of consumerism this week.

If you are willing to join the ranks of the retail heretics, here is a handy tool where you can find a Walmart non-shopping event near you. Some demonstrations will be starting as early as Thursday, given that the greedy Big Box bosses have decreed that the mad dash must start before the turkey carcass even gets cold. So plan accordingly, support your local Walmart refugees, and shop locally this year.

Retail workers make barely a subsistence wage. The average Walmart pay is only $8.80 an hour, in a corporation whose heirs own more wealth that 45 million American families. That's right. The Waltons have as much money as 40% of the entire combined population of the United States. They reside so far out in the stratosphere of prosperity that they might as well be God. Yet, they unmercifully send their employees out to apply for Medicaid and food stamps. The Waltons are not only not makers, they are those dreaded "takers" on a grand scale. They are the poster children of the corporate welfare state.

Paying their retail workers a living wage would not hurt the Walmart bottom line. To the contrary, it would benefit the entire economy. The public policy group Demos has just released a report revealing that if the retail employees could be lifted out of the crushing poverty that they now endure, we would all be lifted up. Even the Waltons would grow richer, because their worker bees would probably end up spending most of their extra money right there in Walmart! And the effect on other shoppers of a wage increase would be negligible -- mere pennies more per shopping trip, according to the Demos study.

The greed of the Waltons is not an economic necessity. It is a self-interested choice. It's time that they and their ilk realize that extreme wealth inequality is not good for them, and it's not good for the planet. Every civilization that has all its riches concentrated at the very top has collapsed. Every single one. Divide-and-conquer is also a losing philosophy. Pitting public worker against private worker, pitting oppressed worker against impoverished spender creates a giant vacuum that eventually sucks down even the gilded garbage at the pinnacle of the landfill.

So let the banging of the pots and pans begin. Let's start jostling the plutocratic oppressors instead of each other. Let's shout about the stuff that really matters.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Let Them Eat Cake.... Or Not (Update)

The Twinkie obits are bloating the blogosphere, so I won't add anything further to the Dirge of the Ding Dongs. But let me take this (lazy) opportunity to repost what I wrote about the Hostess debacle last February. (The original post starts right below the Angry Twinkies pic.) You can't say you were not warned, junk food junkies of America! You've had almost a year to start hoarding. There are no bargains to be added to the Grand Bargain. Vulture capitalists are not only putting the company out of business, they are on a price-gouging rampage as well, adding insult to artery injury.

Now that the once-grand striking Teamster truckers have been reduced to effective minimum wage slaves, they can at least take comfort from the fact that they will no longer be ridiculed as the people who transport cupcakes. They will probably make more money by filing for unemployment benefits.

I suppose that Hostess will now magically off-shore its brand to China. Any day now, Twinkies will be flying off the shelves at Walmart. If they taste funny, it will probably be a result of the sugary filling being replaced by the same poisonous glycerin anti-freeze precursor they put in Walmart toothpaste and Walmart pet food.

(Originally posted last February)

Urban legend has it that Twinkies have a shelf life of decades: not only do they contain no actual food, but one ingredient is the same chemical used in embalming fluid. Even though this claim is ~~probably~~ bogus, all you Hostess junkies (and you know who you are) might want to start hoarding your supplies. In what has become a tried and true tactic of vulture capitalism, the private equity firm that bought out Hostess several years ago, and already forced it into bankruptcy once, is at it again. Wonder Bread, that miracle of unhealthy enzyme-enhanced sculptable softness beloved by kids, is in danger too. Either the worker bees cave, or Hostess may shut down for good.

It seems that the debt-riddled owners (they have been predatory, many, and varied) sloppily forgot to eviscerate the union's pension plan last time around, and are heading back into court to force the Twinkie-transporting Teamsters and the factory food workers to give up their contracts. Hostess executives from the Texas HQ went judge-shopping, and finally settled on a friendly New York bankruptcy court.

The judge with the reputation for coercing concessions from unions in bankruptcies to make the capitalist vultures happy and whole is one Robert D. Drain. I am not kidding. This guy is a living legend in the world of legal union-busting for fun and profit. Writes labor journalist Robert Vail:

Between 2005 and 2009 Drain presided over the infamous Delphi auto parts bankruptcy, in which the United Auto Workers saw its Delphi membership decimated.
More recently, he has been overseeing the case of the A&P supermarket chain. Just six weeks ago, about 30,000 grocery clerks and store employees represented by the United Food & Commercial Workers union were forced into broad concessions under circumstances just like those faced by the Hostess workers.

The workers are being asked to give up $659 million in wages and benefits over three years, in addition to relinquishing their pensions. All for the good of the bottom line, of course. Management will apparently try to appeal to the employees' sense of junk food junkie grass-roots solidarity and job security. They might even stir up anti-union sentiment by threatening to raise the price of SnoBalls to $5 for the already-struggling ~~indigent~~ middle class. Divide and conquer -- works every time.

The union boss is not having it. He represents the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union. (Not to editorialize or anything, but the combo of Twinkies and cigs doesn't exactly inspire sympathy. On the other hand, it is pretty cruel and irresponsible for a company whose products contribute mightily to America's bloated health care costs to cut the medical benefits of its own employees. I call this the WWDBA-- the WalMart Way of Doing Business in America). Anyway, the union boss's name is Frank Hurt, and he is mightily pained:

I find it deeply offensive and highly disingenuous for the company to claim that its financial woes are the result of its union contracts and pension and health benefits obligations. We contend that the company is in dire financial shape because of a string of failed business decisions made by a series of ineffective executives who have been running the company for the past decade.

For a junk food company, you'd think they'd know better than to indulge in that no-no of snacking: the double-dip. It previously filed for Chapter 11 in 2004, when it was known as Interstate Bakeries. The company also named a new chief executive, James R. Elsessor, who had taken over as CEO for Charles Sullivan, replaced by Tony Alvarez. Confused yet? Mitt Romney, amazingly enough, is nowhere to be found in this labyrinth, but that doesn't mean he's not lurking nearby. Interstate Bakery's stock, which had been at one time $34/share, fell to $2.05/share as they declared bankruptcy.

At the time it was the longest bankruptcy in U.S. history. During that time, it fought a 2007 bid from Mexican baked goods giant Grupo Bimbo and ex-Bill Clinton vulture capitalist pal Ron Burkle of the Yucapaipa Companies. With the leadership of Craig Jung, the company emerged from bankruptcy as a private company on February 3, 2009. The plan included a 50 percent equity stake by Ripplewood Holdings and lines/loans by General Electric Capital and GE Capital Markets, Silver Point Finance and Monarch Master Funding. Interstate's union workers made contract concessions in exchange for equity. Since declaring bankruptcy in 2009, Interstate closed nine of its 54 bakeries and more than 300 outlet stores. It also reduced its work force from 32,000 to 22,000 people and pulled out of some markets. (Wikipedia).

The next trial in New York's Southern District Bankruptcy court is scheduled for next month.

While you're waiting, do read the wonderful Charles Pierce's "In Defense of Twinkies", a masterpiece of junk food gourmandism and caloric history. An excerpt:

The Twinkie's formidable shelf life has aroused curiosity among bored undergraduates, the scientific community, and people who are, well, members of both. Most seriously, the Twinkie was subjected to a grim series of experiments eight years ago by a pair of young scientists at Rice University in Houston. They tested Twinkies for artificial intelligence (the cakes failed), electric resistivity (the filling bubbled a little, but that was all), and gravitational response, in which test a Twinkie was launched from a sixth-floor window, with the result that, upon contact with the sidewalk, only a small crack opened on the Twinkie's side. The pair also performed a solubility test, immersing a Twinkie in a glass of tap water. After 24 hours, they reported "the beginnings of a creamy ooze at the surface of the water."
"After 48 hours in the water," they continued, "the Twinkie had not changed any more in size. However, the creamy filling somehow oozed out of the center and was collecting on the surface of the water. The water itself was a very dark brown. When we attempted to pour the water out of the cup, it quickly became apparent that the Twinkie had no structural integrity at all. It ... turned into a lump of goo in the sink."
Pity. You should probably eat them if you're going to do anything with them. Or not.

Okay, I think it's time for a Twinkie run. Watch out for vulture capitalists scarfing up the supplies in the snack aisles, and attack if you must. I won't tell if you don't.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Location, Location, Location

Is anyone else noticing the irony of where the deficit hawks are pouncing on FDR's New Deal in anticipation of disemboweling it?

The apparatchiks of the plutocracy had their first Grand ~~Guignol~~ Bargain meet-up this morning in that historic bastion of populism known as the Roosevelt Room. The West Wing work-space actually gets its name from both Roosevelts, Teddy and Franklin.

This was akin to holding a Black Mass in St. Peter's Basilica. I live right across the river from the second Roosevelt's burying place in Hyde Park. So if I hear a rumbling from the east, I know it will be the sound of Franklin turning in his grave.

Leaders of both sides of the Right Wing Money Party emerged from the confab full of hugs and smiles and bonhomie. They expressed confidence in reaching a deal that will please their Wall Street paymasters. The big sell-out reportedly entails a few extra bucks from billionaires in exchange for the slow starvation of the rest of us. We are being told that our own destruction is why we voted them back into office. What they don't tell us is that the weighted votes of the plutocrats count a lot more than the numerical votes of the lower orders.

Oh, and they promise we will get the details of our demise just in time for Christmas. Deck the halls and ho ho ho.

A Way With Words

As Glenn Greenwald and others have cogently pointed out, the American media have been displaying a definite neo-con/neo-liberal bias when it comes to coverage of the recent Israel/Gaza violence. Israeli casualties are always mentioned in the first graf of New York Times stories, for example, while that much worse and so unfortunate "collateral damage" inflicted on the Palestinian side gets buried deep within the sixth or seventh paragraph.

And the coverage also reflects the dawning of the new age of War by Tweet. A series of graphic AP photos showing a grief-stricken Palestinian father holding his dead child have gone viral. The Times, while posting the image, obviously felt compelled to be fair and balanced by publishing a similar photo allegedly portraying an injured Israeli baby. It just so happens to have come directly from the Twitter account of the Israeli prime minister. Bibi seemingly has all the time in the world to tweet and post YouTube videos while waging his war.

Even as the Israelis bombed the head of the Hamas military into oblivion, it was conducting a parallel pre-emptive propaganda strike in social media. We saw it almost in real time. We Were There.

Meanwhile, the Times headlines today are again reeking of bias. We are told that Israel is "girding itself" for a ground assault. The connotion of "gird" is a positive and honorable one. Old Testament heroes girded their loins. Knights girded themselves in shining armor to do battle against dragons. Crusaders girded themselves to vanquish the infidel. And so it goes.

Hamas, meanwhile, in a much tinier subhead is "emboldened." This word has a negative slant. It connotes an articially fueled chutzpah or bravado, rather than bravery. The Oxford online dictionary give us this sentence as an example: "Emboldened by the claret, he pressed his knee against hers."

Such not-no-subtle language is in perfect keeping with the Gray Lady's role as quasi-official White House propaganda flack. As Greenwald points out, it behooves the United States to take Israel's side in the conflict:

US policy always lies at the heart of these episodes, because Israeli aggression is possible only due to the unstinting financial, military and diplomatic support of the US. Needless to say, the Obama administration wasted no time expressing its "full-throttled support" for the Israeli attacks. And one can't help but notice the timing of this attack: launched just days after Obama's re-election victory, demanding an answer to the question of whether Obama was told in advance of these attacks and gave his approval.

(snip)

Extra-judicial assassination - accompanied by the wanton killing of whatever civilians happen to be near the target, often including children - is a staple of the Obama presidency. That lawless tactic is one of the US president's favorite instruments for projecting force and killing whomever he decides should have their lives ended: all in total secrecy and with no due process or oversight. There is now a virtually complete convergence between US and Israeli aggression, making US criticism of Israel impossible not only for all the usual domestic political reasons, but also out of pure self-interest: for Obama to condemn Israel's rogue behavior would be to condemn himself.

And that, of course, will never come to pass. Full-throttle, after all, means unrestrained, no holds barred, full speed ahead, Marlon Brando on a motorcycle, earsplitting loudness and machismo. It's the American way.