Twilight Zone's Last Gleaming

Welcome to our annual day of forced patriotic revelry, mattress sales, and Founding Fathers in bad makeup peddling crappy cars on TV.

And, of course, the roar of the flag-waving crowds:

That was the scene this week in Murrieta, California. It once was a nice, quiet, All-American little farming town, founded a scant hundred or so years ago by a (ahem) Spanish immigrant who later turned his land over to a sheep-herding brother.

 And like most victims of the Wall Street Greed Machine-fueled housing bubble, Murrieta experienced a radical population surge of more than 200% in the first decade of the New American Century. Among the top ten employers of this teeming cauldron of humanity are Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes and Sam's Club. Oh, and a health insurance company and a Bible center. It's been rated the safest city in Riverside County. It even has an annual Town Song contest! Life, despite the usual hardships, was imagined by the citizenry to be pretty good in Murrieta.

And then came the busloads of brown-skinned refugee children fleeing from crime-ridden countries, where there are no Sam's Clubs but plenty of the same American-made weapons and ammo they sell in Sam's Clubs. And all-American hell broke loose. You probably saw it on TV. 

The only good thing coming out of this is that although the buses were forced to flee by the angry mob, the spectacle was sickening enough to get some people re-thinking the whole "let's deport em all" mantra being sung across the allowable political spectrum: all the way from Point A (Fox News) to Point B (Hillary "It Takes a Village" Clinton and the conservative Democrats.)

  The national backlash forced the libertarian mayor of Murrieta, one Alan Long, to protest that his townsfolk are not as rabid as they seemed on TV:

 We’ve heard some of those passionate people seeing the clips on the news and coming to a conclusion that Murrieta’s not compassionate,” Long told Fox News. (my bold) “It’s a shame that two minutes of video time on the news channel really stereotypes our city.”

 Video surfaced on Wednesday that showed protesters from Murrieta blocking Homeland Security buses full of undocumented children and adults from entering the town to be taken to facilities for screenings. Protesters held signs that read “Stop Illegal Immigration” and “Illegals Out!” The buses were rerouted to San Diego out of fear for the safety of those on the bus.

Taking a cue from President Obama, who insisted about a year ago that his drone strike war against innocent civilians is Not Who We Are, Long sputtered: “Showing a bunch of angry people isn’t really a true reflection of Murrieta."

To prove it, he boasted that the town contains 700 different charities. (Charity does begin at home, after all.) And when he urged the townsfolk to protest, he thought they'd do the right thing and contact their elected representatives. Never mind that he is an elected representative. And gosh oh golly, never in a thousand years did he imagine that his ovine flock could turn into a verbal lynch mob. His main concern is that he didn't want the innocent interlopers to be jailed in detention centers.

City Manager Rick Dudley posted a similar message on the town's official website. It reads, in part:

Sadly, too many people took this as encouragement to protest the arrival of buses carrying the women and children to the Border Patrol station in Murrieta.  Protesters came from around the southland to oppose the arrival of undocumented immigrants to Murrieta for processing.  In the face of the protest, three buses were turned around and the protesters claimed victory.  This was not victory.  It was a loss for the city of Murrieta, for the community that we live in and love.  It made this extremely compassionate community look heartless and uncaring.  That is NOT the Murrieta that we all know and love. 

There appear to be two sides to this issue – those who believe Mayor Long was encouraging them to stand in front of the buses in protest, and those who believe that Murrieta does not recognize that the US is the envy of the world and that people want to migrate here, even at the risk of their lives and the lives of their children.  Both sides are wrong.  We understand that people want to come to the US to seek a better life for their families, and we are a compassionate people who want to help.  But we also are a country whose legal system is based on the rule of law, and the people migrating must do so within the boundaries of the law.  The protests resulting from the incorrect interpretations of Mayor Long’s comments have given our community a black eye. 

They want to have it both ways. They totally ignore the conditions that made the Hondurans and Guatemalans embark on the dangerous flight from violence, poverty and corruption in the first place. They still think these people can be sent home and then go through some sort of bureaucratic process that involves waiting in some nonexistent line.

There is, of course, no line. For the poor and the dispossessed, there never has been and never will be.

This being Fourth of July weekend, the SyFy channel is running its Twilight Zone marathon. One of the most popular episodes of the whole series is a cautionary tale called "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street." Written by Rod Serling during the height of the Cold War, it tells the story of a nice little town that becomes a victim of mass hysteria. The townsfolk go completely nuts as they convince themselves that they're being invaded by aliens. Of course, they are only invading themselves with their own suspicions and paranoia and group-think. The results are tragic, neighbor turns against neighbor. And as the aliens themselves look at them from above, they realize that these humans don't even require an alien invasion. They're self-destructing, all on their own.

As Serling narrated at the end of the story,

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill...and suspicion can destroy...and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own - for the children...and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is...that these things cannot be confined...to the Twilight Zone.

Happy Independence Day, everybody.

Let's Light a Firecracker Under Neoliberalism's Butt

Nothing like using the Fourth of July weekend to deflect our attention from the latest round of secret negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership, eh?

The culprits of the corporate coup will be converging in the Canadian capitol tomorrow. And you, dear readers, are cordially invited to write them a friendly note, hopefully disengaging them from both their comfort zone and their buffer zone. The public policy group Open Media International is collecting signatures and remarks for the delectation of the plutocrats. So may the pitchforks start jabbing inside their heads as they mull, among other abominations, restricting our Internet access and controlling our Internet speech.

Attending on behalf of the American corporate persons (who now have freedom of religion as well as freedom of speech) will be Trade Czar Michael Froman, late of Citigroup, along with Obama's new ambassador to Canada: Bruce Heyman, late of Goldman Sachs. They will be among the unnamed hordes happily giving up their glorious Fourth in hopes of scoring more profits for their firms. And since most of those firms are transnationals, the free traders of late capitalism usually are not hampered by such niceties as patriotism to one's native land.

Interestingly enough, the Canadian power elites seem royally pissed that Obama has foisted Heyman, crass money-bundler from Chicago that he is, upon them. (They were pissed off at Obama to begin with, given his delay in approving the Keystone XL Pipeline.) According to a Financial Post editorial, Heyman has recently been trying to pull a "fast one" on the Canadians by insisting that the TPP can still be rammed through even if Obama fails to get fast-track authority from Congress. A posh dinner meeting with a former Canadian diplomat (Frank McKenna) was tense.... and hilarious:

Things didn’t go too well either when Mr. McKenna tried to get a U.S. commitment to fund the customs plaza that Canada needs to support a new bridge it is building at the Detroit-Windsor crossing, where the U.S. trade with Canada is greater than with all of Japan. “We support nice infrastructure between our two countries,” Mr. Heyman said. “This is a financing issue and I think it’s best that we wait and have those discussions privately.”

When Mr. McKenna moved to raise “another issue that has turned out to be bothersome,” Mr. Heyman cut in: “Do you have any good issues here you want to talk about? I try to take this at a high level and make this a lot of fun. I’m sorry you’re all bummed out here. We have this incredible relationship. C’mon.”

Mr. McKenna kept his cool: “When you’re the small partner in a relationship the irritants do become quite significant,” he calmly explained.

Mr. Heyman remained clueless. “Frank,” he asked, “did you ever buy a new car? You get a new car? And you have that new car, it smells great and it looks beautiful and everything else. And you bring that new car home and you realize there’s a scratch on the bumper that you didn’t notice when you bought it. And you go inside and start thinking about the scratch all day long. Ever do that?”

Mr. McKenna deadpanned: “No.” But the American went right on with his analogy that effectively belittled Canada’s concerns as trivial next to its good fortune in being a U.S. neighbour.

Oh, Canada! The style of journalism as practiced by our neighbor to the north is quite refreshing, especially when one plutocrat bitch-slaps another. You just don't see such snappy coverage of elite brouhahas in the New York Times' Wall Street P.R. apparatus known as DealBook, for instance. 

Meanwhile, the Council of Canadians is wondering why the negotiators are being so damned secretive. It seems the Canadian government forgot to even tell its own citizens about the meeting!  So, what else is new? Join the club. And sign the Open Media petition -- it's ecumenical.

And the Mission Keeps Creeping Along

Under the forever-War Powers Resolution invested in him as unitary executive, Barack Obama has in one fell swoop just doubled the number of troops being (re) deployed to Iraq. They are being sent to "protect American interests" ( aka the plunderers from Big Oil and their taxpayer-funded Embassy support staff) and as "advisers" (armed thugs to keep on eye on the corrupt and weakening Maliki protectorate whose function has always been to provide cover to the plunderers from Big Oil).

It is the very model of a modern major mission creep. Here an adviser, there a drone, everywhere is war.

Or, as Obama put it in his letter to Congress,

In light of the security situation in Baghdad, I have ordered up to approximately 200 additional U.S. Armed Forces personnel to Iraq to reinforce security at the U.S. Embassy, its support facilities, and the Baghdad International Airport.

This force consists of additional security forces, rotary-wing aircraft, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support. This force is deploying for the purpose of protecting U.S. citizens and property, if necessary, and is equipped for combat. This force will remain in Iraq until the security situation becomes such that it is no longer needed. This action has been directed consistent with my responsibility to protect U.S. citizens both at home and abroad, and in furtherance of U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct U.S. foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive.

Translation:  He's only ordering a threatening drizzle now, but just in case he changes his mind, (and he probably will, based on ever-changing weather conditions "on the ground") he is also issuing a severe storm watch, which will last until the end of time, or until the oil is depleted. For purposes of obfuscation,  he is defining Blackwater or whatever the hell they call themselves these days as "US citizens both home and abroad." He is defining Halliburton, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron and their various and sundry offshoots as "national security and foreign policy interests."

The Baghdad Embassy, as a de facto American state-within-a-state (much like Vatican City)  is not being evacuated. As the largest "diplomatic mission" in the world, the 5 million square-foot fiefdom was built at a cost of $750 million (allegedly with the help of slave labor trafficked in by contractors) and employs/houses more than 5,000 people. It has its own power and sewer infrastructure, as well as an Olympic-size swimming pool, so that the plunderers and rentiers can cool off between their pillaging jaunts in that desert heat.

And while Obama and the stenographers of the corporate media are spreading their propaganda, the Embassy itself is heavy into its own propaganda, still striving the win the hearts and minds of Iraqis who have managed to survive the war and the ensuing occupation. This past February, before ISIS invaded the country, Iraqi students were being brainwashed instructed on great American presidents and the great American wealth trickling down upon them like so many Heavenfire missiles and American-installed puppet leaders. The Embassy Ministry of Truth explained it thusly:

In recognition of President's Day, Embassy officers spoke with Iraqi students about visionary leaders from U.S. history. Streamed live from the Baghdad American Corner to five other corners, this engagement was an opportunity for Iraqis to learn how American leaders such as George Washington helped set the United States on a path towards democracy and prosperity.

During the question and answer session, the students discussed how to identify transformational leaders among the candidates for the April parliamentary elections.

Maybe one way they're being taught to identify "transformational leaders" is to read White House/Pentagon-planted stories in the New York Times. If they read today's front page, for example, they would have learned that discredited CIA plant and WMD story-telling plutocrat Ahmad Chalabi is being passive-aggressively "talked about" to replace Maliki as the new potted plant:

 On the face of it, Mr. Chalabi as prime minister seems, at best, highly unlikely. His exile-based, C.I.A.-financed Iraqi National Congress never built much of a grass-roots following in Iraq, and he suffered from the Americans’ growing unpopularity as the war dragged on. His role in promoting what many now view as concocted evidence of weapons of mass destruction under Saddam Hussein badly tarnished him.

Hey, but there are plenty of tarnish-removers available on the Free Market! Just look at how the corporate media has so ably removed the tarnish from such war criminals as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz and put them back on TV, all shiny and new, as though they were monarchs in exile.

The Times goes on to explain that Chalabi stalwartly stayed in Iraq throughout the war, by choice, and just narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in which six (!) of his security guards suffered unfortunate fatal collateral damage. Just like George Washington at Valley Forge! Oh, and he's also a centrist technocrat all of a sudden. Very Obama-like, as a matter of fact. Very able to co-opt the varying factions into the Big Oil veal pen.

And to prove his worthiness, he has even been invited back to the Embassy! 

Remember, citizens: Always look forward, never look backward. Why have memories when there are visions for sale?

Supremes Being Supreme: Feudalism Edition

So the neoliberals and the theocrats had a torrid affair and just gave birth to a great, big, fascist monstrosity.

The black-robed Inquisition known as the Supreme Court has blessed the anti-union union and officiated at the baptism.

There shalt not be any Obamacare-subsidized birth control for you, ladies, and guaranteed living wage, benefits and union rights just got a swift kick in the ass for good measure. And Goddess help you if you happen to work as a home health aide in a Christian family-owned agency in the Land of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. You will not only have to continue working as a drudge in the New Servant Economy till you die, but you will have to risk pregnancy while doing so. And since your collective bargaining powers are kaput, there's even a chance you'll have to be working, pregnant and barefoot. Shoes for the kids will trump shoes for yourselves.

And if you're taking it into your pretty little heads to do an end run around the court ruling, and traipse on over to one of the Planned Parenthood clinics still standing in order to score yourselves some cheap contraception, think again. Those people with their anti-abortion signs are watching you, too.... from inches away, thanks to a unanimous ruling by both liberal and conservative justices on the court.

 Since contraception has, essentially, now been equated with abortion in many an ignorant, narrow Unhobbled Lobby of a little mind, the Inquisitors-for-Life have duly decreed that an egg not ovulated is an egg condemned. 

And whoever said that conservatives don't believe in immigration reform is nuts. Tear down that contraceptive wall  between ovary and uterus!  Give every egg that is willing to work hard and play by the rules a free fallopian tube pathway to full American citizenship. The waiting period is only nine months -- and from then on, the survivors will enjoy a lifetime of low-wage non-union jobs, or a one-way school-to-private prison pipeline, leaking oil and gas pipelines, an opportunity to serve in the forever wars.... oh, and the freedom not to be insured for birth control themselves.

And lucky you: if ever the cops stop you in your travels to hell and back, they still won't be able to search your cell phones without a warrant. The Supremes may be immune from protesters, thanks to their own buffer zones, but they do have cell phones, apparently. They also get paid enough to afford cable TV, since they just ruled against against that much more affordable Aereo cloud service provider. They must have figured that if a TV network can't double-charge consumers via forced ad-watching and cable fees, it amounts to a slap in the face of the Market God (and the Market God, remember, has just been decreed a person with religious rights.)

But there is actually some good news on the horizon if you are a non-corporate person living in the Feudal States of America. That whole three-part balance of powers edifice has become so top-heavy with One Percent influence that it's beginning to crumble from the cracks of populist outrage. The American Way of Government is losing its legitimacy. The American People are becoming apostates and losing their faith in all three branches of the Unholy Trinity!!!

From a Gallup poll released simultaneously with today's Supreme Auto-da-fé:

Americans' confidence in all three branches of the U.S. government has fallen, reaching record lows for the Supreme Court (30%) and Congress (7%), and a six-year low for the presidency (29%). The presidency had the largest drop of the three branches this year, down seven percentage points from its previous rating of 36%.

It's only when governments begin to lose their legitimacy, when the whole edifice starts to crack, that populist movements can take hold in order to effect change. The unanswered question is whether Crumble-vania will veer even further right and slide off the fascist cliff, or whether the Left can awaken as it did during the previous social upheavals of the 30s (New Deal) and 60s (Great Society.)

Let us pray for the latter scenario. And let us hope that this constant chipping-away at Obamacare will, ironically, create a new pathway to true universal health care. The apostates at the gate are demanding it.

Hell Is Empty & All the Mercenaries Are Here

It's even worse than we imagined. A private mercenary force ostensibly working for the US Government issued a direct death threat against a US Government investigator, and then the US Government essentially turned tail and ran away in abject fear, leaving the private mercenary force behind in Iraq to kill at will.

As usual, the wrong people are in jail (namely, Iraq War whistle-blower Chelsea Manning). And ironically enough, the reporter who broke this blockbuster Blackwater death threat story is himself now facing jail time for the crime of committing journalism and refusing to divulge a source. From James Risen of the New York Times:

Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.

After returning to Washington, the chief investigator wrote a scathing report to State Department officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had created “an environment full of liability and negligence.”

Blackwater has since changed its name a couple of times, but it's still very much in business. At least the Nisour Square shooters are finally on trial in Washington. It was because the massacre had gone unprosecuted by the US Government that Iraq had refused to allow American military forces to remain in the country after the "official" war ended. So, do you suppose that this belated prosecution could represent the US Government's too-little, too-late attempt to get back into the hell of its own creation for more mayhem?

Meanwhile, the Bushies have a lot of explaining to do. Namely, former Secretary of State Condi Rice, who was at the helm when the death threat against one of her own investigators was swept under the rug.

And also, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who continued to use the services of Blackwater under one of its creepy new names, "Reflex Responses." (This does kind of admit that they shoot first and ask questions later -- if, that is, their brains actually harbor a rudimentary moral compass) There was that little matter of Hillary looking the other way as former Blackwater owner Erik Prince had recruited mercenaries from the jungles of Colombia to start a private army for a potentate in the United Arab Emirates. Ironically enough (again!) it was Chelsea Manning who'd tipped off "Dirty Wars" journalist Jeremy Scahill about Prince's latest independent military antics in the Middle East.

Hillary and Erik at one time even shared the same P.R. rep: Mark Penn.

Manning is in jail. Risen may be going to jail. The Bush war criminals roam free. And Hillary is inevitable.
 

The Emperor of Ice Cream

It's the presidential summer of comfort food love. 

In the cruel absence of any economic relief for struggling Americans, and in the sordid presence of too much economic relief for the war profiteers of the global battlefield, Barack Obama is doing what he does best. He's out campaigning, mingling with the masses, and ... eating. Scarfing down gallons of soft vanilla ice cream and all-American burgers for our vicarious pleasure. To show that He Is One Of Us. To make us forget his alter egos of Emperor of Drones, Friend of Wall Street, and Deporter-in-Chief of thousands of refugee children and their families.

He poked the Grand Old Party in the eye by whipping into the Grand Old Creamery during a campaign stop last week. He even, according to The Hill, cynically played at placating the sycophantic press corps by plying them with fatty sweets:

"Press, you guys want some? On me. No? Is that unethical?” Obama asked reporters who accompanied him to the Grand Ole Creamery, a Twin Cities chain. “I’m trying to soften you up.”

 Obama told employees of the shop that one of his first jobs was scooping ice cream at Baskin Robbins — eliciting a groan from the workers at the rival parlor.

“No, the point is that my first job was scooping ice cream,” Obama said. “One of you might be president.”

The president ordered a scoop of Black Hills Gold, a caramel-based ice cream with pralines and cookies, in a homemade waffle cone. Obama said in his experience, scooping chocolate was more difficult than flavors like praline because it was harder.

Obama hit the ice cream parlor after a visit to the Golden Fig, a specialty food store whose owner wrote Obama a letter.

During the same visit, Obama railed against the very corporate media he was trying to bribe by accusing them of focusing on "frivolous issues" (such as polls that make him look bad)  instead of serious topics like ice cream flavors and the plight of the middle class.

It was on the eve of the last Great Depression that Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Wallace Stevens wrote what many consider to be his masterpiece. Called "The Emperor of Ice Cream," it describes the human revelry at a wake. While people carouse in the kitchen, smoking it up and gorging on sugary sweet confections, a woman's corpse moulders in an adjoining bedroom, her face carefully hidden from view, but her ugly bare feet protruding:

 Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

And thus is the president embarking on what his propagandists are dubbing "Day in the Life" tours, in which he is portrayed as a chained-bear monarch breaking out of his gilded cage to mingle with regular folks at the Great American Wake. And you, too, can be entered for a chance to win a life-affirming trip to the funereal ice cream parlor, as did the lucky Rebekah of Minnesota last week. (No cigars for the proles or the press, but Obama did just quietly axe proposed health warnings on boxes of high-end cigars for the high-rolling ruling class.)

 The alliterative presidential whipping of concupiscent curds will, the White House hopes, serve to drown out the terrorizing buzz of drones in the desert skies of Iraq and Texas, the growling of the empty stomachs of the one in five American children living in poverty, as well as such scandals as veterans dying while waiting for medical appointments.

The White House press release on the Summer of Ice Cream Love couches the propaganda in typical Father Knows Best boilerplate prose:

The President will keep fighting his economic priorities in the weeks and months ahead, because he knows the best way to expand opportunity for all hardworking Americans and continue to strengthen the economy is to grow it from the middle out.

Notice the Freudian slip, fighting his fictional priorities instead of fighting for them.  But you have to admit that the metaphor for growing from the middle out from all that frothy curd is pretty damned clever. Wallace Stevens, eat your heart out!

But anyway, let the lamp afix its beam on Obama, who in between junk food orgies, spoke to America in his Weekly Address:

Hi, everybody.  This week, I spent a couple days in Minneapolis, talking with people about their lives – their concerns, their successes, and their hopes for the future.I went because of a letter I received from a working mother named Rebekah, who shared with me the hardships her young family has faced since the financial crisis.  She and her husband Ben were just newlyweds expecting their first child, Jack, when the housing crash dried up his contracting business.  He took what jobs he could, and Rebekah took out student loans and retrained for a new career.  They sacrificed – for their kids, and for each other.  And five years later, they’ve paid off debt, bought their first home, and had their second son, Henry.

So bootstraps, people.  Bootstraps! Despite crushing debt and job loss, Rebekah and Jack took on more crushing debt and worked crappy jobs in order to pay off their original crushing debt and somehow, magically, they got approved for a mortgage anyway. And they had a second kid. So what are the rest of you complaining about? Spread the embroidered sheet, cover her face!

In her letter to me, she wrote, “We are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, very hard times.”  And in many ways, that’s America’s story these past five years.  We are a strong, tight-knit family that’s made it through some very tough times.

Yep, your president is hiding the corpse in the bedroom by dragging out the dead clunker called America is Just Like a Family again, spreading the discredited mantra that 'tis Austerity helps us grow. Even though we are still mired in a recession, the Wall Street head of our family has made it through its own extremely tough time of destroying the economy and on top of that, being forced to accept a taxpayer bailout. So rejoice, all ye who enter hell's Dairy Queen!

Today, over the past 51 months, our businesses have created 9.4 million new jobs.  By measure after measure, our economy is doing better than it was five years ago.

But as Rebekah also wrote in her letter, there are still too many middle-class families like hers who do everything right – who work hard and who sacrifice – but can’t seem to get ahead.  It feels like the odds are stacked against them.  And with just a small change in our priorities, we could fix that.

 The problem is, Republicans in Congress keep blocking or voting down almost every serious idea to strengthen the middle class.... 

Rebekah isn't lingering in the death room, and so can you. She is getting "ahead" with more crushing debt, but other families like hers are being rebuffed by creditors. Sob. And just think, Obama could dry your tears with just one tiny ripped-off corner of a one-ply Kleenex being hoarded by the Weeper of the House, who is dawdling like a wench in yesterday's dress! (Unlike an Emperor dawdling without any clothes at all.)

 This obstruction keeps the system rigged for those at the top, and rigged against the middle class.  And as long as they insist on doing it, I’ll keep taking actions on my own – like the actions I’ve taken already to attract new jobs, lift workers’ wages, and help students pay off their loans.  I’ll do my job.

He'll keep bringing you flowers wrapped in last month's newspapers and spooning verbal ice cream (instead of clamoring for government-created jobs or restoring food stamp cuts) down the parched throats of the starving.

Have a great Fourth of July, everybody – and good luck to Team USA down in Brazil.

The neoliberal remedy: Ice cream sandwiches and circuses on steroids, located, as ever, in a billion-dollar stadium smack in the middle of a teeming slum. We must turn our backs on the suffering in order to revel in the nationalistic glory of whipped up curds of muscular athleticism.

Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Suckers and Smoke

President Obama must be making e-cigarette users, cigar connoisseurs and their addiction-promoting suppliers choke up with joy. That's because his administration has either burnt restrictions on sales right down to the filter, or else drowned health warnings in the burbley grave of a hookah pipe. It seems that Big Tobacco lobbyists flacks converged on the White House and pitifully wheezed that regulations meant to protect the public health would hurt their bottom lines.

You know the drlll. We must not let the perfect pair of lungs be an enemy of the free market good.

Despite pleas from health organizations, the Obama administration has tossed FDA concerns about the dangers of electronic cigarettes with the usual cavalier promise to "revisit" the e-cigarette issue at such time that more scientific studies prove harm. And regarding cigars,  a cost-benefit analysis conducted by now-HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell concluded that that the human lives saved by issuing warnings are just not as important as corporate profits.

You read that right. The person who stomped all over public health to placate the lords of carcinogenic capitalism has just been confirmed to a major cabinet position designed to protect the public health.

Obama seems to have ignored a letter sent to him and signed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and Legacy. Reports of poisonings from candy-flavored nicotine containing "e-liquids" have already tripled from 2012 to 2013, with sometimes deadly results.

But lest you think Obama is a complete wimp, you should also know that he did not give in to the poison-peddlers without the pretense of a fight! Even though kids will still be allowed to buy their electronic ciggies both online and over the counter, he and Burwell bravely drew a red line in the sand on those dangerous vending machine sales to minors. If young folks want their e-ciggies, they'll have to show their gumption by asking for them directly. Inserting some coin and pushing a button is taking the easy way out, and not showing enough grit and determination and personal responsibility.

And thus, for the profitable time being, the youth of America can suck away to their lungs' content. If they start succumbing in greater cost-benefit analytical numbers, then the government can always revisit a clampdown on the manufacturers. Or so soothed an FDA spokeswoman who did not dare criticize her boss because of that whole Insider Threat anti-whistleblowing program that Obama has got going. Meanwhile, the public can still feel free to comment... if they

To repeat, and to be fair, when Burwell decided to blow away the proposed regulations, she hadn't yet been confirmed as the new protector of the public's welfare.  She was merely acting as one of the main protectors of corporate welfare during her stint as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

It was Burwell's job then (and, let's face it, now) to crunch the numbers, weigh business profits against human costs, and then to decide whether proposed regulations in the public interest are really worth the plutocratic aggravation. As Reuters explains,

The FDA has authority under a 2009 law to regulate cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and roll-your-own tobacco, but must issue new rules before regulating e-cigarettes, cigars, hookahs, water pipes and other tobacco products.

In April, the FDA issued a proposal which would subject the $2 billion e-cigarette industry to federal regulation for the first time. It would ban the sale of e-cigarettes to people under the age of 18 and vending machine sales.

The proposal disappointed public health advocates who criticized the agency's failure to restrict flavored products or television advertising, which they say attracts children, and criticized the agency for not moving to restrict online sales, where it can be harder to verify a person's age.

In its draft, the FDA had proposed "prohibition of non-face-to-face sales (e.g. vending machines)." That would have opened the door to a ban on online sales. But OMB edited the sentence so that the prohibition refers only to vending machines.

So, I guess the FDA rationale was that if they made their regulatory language fuzzy enough, that would eventually put the kibosh on the very lucrative internet e-cig marketplace. How very naive of them, thinking that they could sneak in an anti-capitalist gateway regulation drug of this sort! The FDA obviously didn't know their OMB from a hole in the wall. You do not pull a fast one on Sylvia Mathews Burwell or the ruling class racketeering world from whence she came.

Oh, and let's not forget about those designer cigars and the plutocrats who smoke them. Apparently, putting a health warning on filthy cigars would outrageously mar the pleasures of the filthy rich.... who like to indulge their expensive passion on their very special occasions. It just would not do to tamp down their enjoyment. It would totally waste the post prandial Downton Abbey smoking rooms to which the gents retire with their glasses of Port.

  It's not like the Rockefellers and the Trumps chain-smoke their stogies, for crying out loud! But anyway,(again via Reuters) let the Republican Cigar Caucus tell it in their own hack-neyed way:

In a December 2013 letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and Sylvia Mathews Burwell, who was director of OMB at the time and is now Secretary of Health and Human Services, 24 Republican lawmakers asked that premium cigars be exempt.

"As you know," they wrote, "premium cigars are a niche product with an adult consumer base, much like fine wines. The majority of people who enjoy a cigar do so occasionally, often in social or celebratory settings."

When the proposed rule came out in April, some public health advocates expressed dismay.

"The part of the proposal we are deeply troubled by is the sweetheart deal for the cigar industry," Erika Sward, assistant vice president for national advocacy at the American Lung Association.

As the Lung Association and the American Cancer Society both point out, the Obama administration's exemption of cigars from FDA rules will also enable sellers of those candy-flavored cigar-like products popular with minors to also take advantage of the deregulation. Put something in a fancy box and put a label on it and a ring around it, and presto chango -- a cigar is a cigar is a cigar.
 
Meanwhile, the Tobacco lobby is bribing assuring Congress that their e-cigarette ads only target adult smokers. And if the kids happen to watch them, it must be the parents' fault for owning a TV.