Goodbye, Middle Class. Hello, Fear

In 1971, two-thirds of Americans lived in middle class households. Today, only half do. And their numbers keep dwindling.

Until very recently the vast majority of US citizens, no matter how unemployed, underemployed, and struggling they were, still considered themselves a part of the middle class. That fantasy is rapidly losing the magic perpetuated by political propaganda. Cold, hard reality is finally beginning to set in. More and more of us are willing to admit that not only are we dirt-poor, we are getting nowhere fast. 

In the same week that the Pew Research Center issued its stunning report chronicling the death of the middle class comes a new New York Times/CBS poll revealing that those refugees from the middle class are scared to death...of another terrorist attack. It is so much easier to be fearful of the Enemy Outside than of the Enemy Within, especially when the telephoning pollsters limit the questions to ISIS terrorism, and ignore economic terrorism. It is so much easier to turn to billionaire success story Donald Trump after watching nonstop doomsday terror coverage on CNN than it is to vainly scour the mainstream news for information on the sane, liberal solutions of Bernie Sanders. It's so much easier to blame "those Muslims" and "those illegals" for our woes than it is to blame the predatory plutocrats hiding in their boardrooms and their gated communities.

The poll also shows that attitudes toward gun control are shifting. "Only 44 percent of Americans favor a ban on assault weapons, 19 percentage points lower than after the mass shooting in Tucson in 2011," reports the Times. "And while 51 percent favor stricter gun control in general, that is down from 58 percent in October."

The harder and faster we fall from the middle class, the more weaponized we seem to get.

****

In his "Empowering the Ugliness" column today, Paul Krugman explores the similarities and differences between the rise of right-wing extremism in Europe (LePen) and the United States (Trump and the GOP). The European elites, he writes, have tried to freeze out the Right, while here in the U.S. the Right is embraced by the elites. He traces the American roots of extremism to Nixon's Southern Strategy, which is correct insofar as it goes.

 But then Krugman goes on to timidly tiptoe around the neoliberal mantra of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, avoiding how their project spawned decades of unfettered capitalism, and how it morphed into Clintonism, Bushism, and Obamaism. Austerity dictated by financialized capitalism has intensified, if not created, Western xenophobia. Maybe it's because neoliberalism has always been a bipartisan (deregulation, corporate coups known as "free trade") thing in this country, and Krugman must limit himself to searching across the pond and shooting GOP fish in a barrel during election season. He writes, "Even admirers and supporters of the European project (like me) have to admit that it has never had deep popular support or a lot of democratic legitimacy. It is, instead, an elite project sold largely on the claim that there is no alternative, (my bold) that it is the path of wisdom."

(Well, at least he smarmily admits that he admires neoliberal elitism.)

My published response: 

"There is no alternative" (TINA) was actually said by Margaret Thatcher as she and Reagan launched their global Neoliberal Project in the 80s. This project is governance of, by, and for high finance. When turbo-charged capital driven by a small group of plutocrats is allowed to speed across borders without any brakes, humanity and public institutions are left crushed and gasping in its wake.

Clinton and Blair added the sweetness of "social responsibility" to the free trade gas. Bush's wars of aggression and tax cuts for the rich were the toxic additives.

Trump, consummate entertainer and manipulator that he is, is TINA's end-product. Forsaking the dog whistle, he belches out the xenophobia that's been churning in the American gut for decades, if not centuries The only shocking thing about the Donald Trump Experience is that the elites of the media/political/military complex are shocked by it at all. After all, they created this monster.

Besides the Trump ugliness, there's the ugliness of what the Pope aptly calls a piecemeal World War III. There's the whitewash of the US bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital, and the cover-ups of racist police murders in Chicago and elsewhere. There's paranoid spying on citizens, mass incarceration, and an epidemic of gun violence. Wealth inequality spawned by TINA has reached such grotesque proportions that the middle class is no longer the majority.

It's ugly and it's cold and it's cruel out here. So let's Feel the Bern.

Protesting American Terrorism

From the point of view of the generals, the bombing of a Kunduz, Afghanistan charity hospital in October was a tragedy and the result of a series of unfortunate events and botched communications. Mistakes were made, leaves of absence were ordered. No outside investigation was deemed necessary, and no criminal charges are pending.

From the point of view of the people victimized by that attack, the destruction of the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital was an act of pure terror and aggression. 

Not satisfied with the attempted whitewashing by the Obama administration and Pentagon of the murders of at least 30 people, representatives of MSF (Doctors Without Borders) planned to demonstrate in front of the White House today before delivering a petition, signed by more than half a million people, demanding accountability for the atrocity. Protesters gathering in Lafayette Park were to be given white lab coats to display solidarity with the medical personnel killed and maimed in the military attack, an apparent clear-cut violation of the Geneva Convention ban on targeting hospitals in war zones.

While the mainstream media are busy fomenting the domestic fear over ISIS, and The Donald Trump Experience is sucking up all the oxygen in the echo chamber, and people are scrambling to Tweet out their condemnations of "his" Islamophobia, the Muslims killed in the hospital terror attack have been all but ignored. Since there was no photo gallery of the victims of that particular massacre gracing the front pages of American newspapers or profiles of them aired by cable outlets, MSF has provided its own, honoring the 14 doctors and nurses and support staff who lost their lives:

  Zabiullah, 29 years old and married (bottom row) was a poet as well as a security guard at the hospital.  At the time of his horrific death, he'd been working on Pashto language translations of several books. He was also writing a book about the famous Khan Abdul Ghafar Khan. "While he started working with MSF less than a year ago", says MSF, "he had already made lots of friends due to his friendly and kind manner". Here is one of his poems:

                                     تیر به شی وختونه خو یادونه به یی وی                                    
                                                                                    جور به شی زخمونه خو داغونه به یی وی

Time will fly, but its memory will remain,
Wounds will heal, but its stain will remain.

You can read the other bios by clicking the link above. And here's a tribute by MSF President Dr. Joanne Liu:

According to MSF's own internal report of what was essentially a terroristic attack by the US Military, patients were burned alive in their beds and fleeing medical personnel were decapitated or lost limbs after being deliberately targeted by the American gunship pilots. Besides the medics, 10 patients and seven other victims burned beyond recognition are among the dead.

President Obama apologized. President Obama sent his thoughts and prayers. President Obama ordered the military to investigate itself. President Obama is probably ever so grateful that despised fascist clown Donald Trump is obligingly deflecting all the media attention and cameras away from today's demonstration. You'd think that Trump and his aggrieved supporters were the only ones scapegoating Muslims all of a sudden. He is simply boiling up the xenophobia that's been simmering for decades, or really ever since the Pilgrims landed and started their own extermination crusade against "The Other". Trump is like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, only the latest monstrous byproduct of a radioactive swamp. He's a media sensation, thrilling horror fans everywhere, enabling the Lesser Evilists to wag their fingers at the scapegoated scapegoater with all the supercilious sanctimony they can muster.

Candidates are sending out nonstop email blasts urging us to show solidarity with Muslims by sending them (the candidates, not Muslims) our money. Hillary "We Came, We Saw, He Died" Clinton, who voted for the Iraq war that killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims and was later responsible for the bombing of Libya that helped create the horrific Muslim refugee crisis, is no exception:

Gimme

 

  Meanwhile, a monstrously vague synopsis of the military's perverted self-probing exercise, released on Thanksgiving Eve to little fanfare, was about what you'd expect: a box office dud with horrible acting and an inane script. From the New York Times:

Calling the airstrike a “tragic mistake,” General (John) Campbell read a statement announcing the findings of the investigation, which he said concluded that “avoidable human error” was to blame, compounded by technical, mechanical and procedural failures. He said another contributing factor was that the Special Forces members in Kunduz had been fighting continuously for days and were fatigued.
 General Campbell and his staff did not say how many people were being disciplined, or how. But a senior United States military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said one of those punished was the Army Special Forces commander on the ground in Kunduz during the fighting. The official would not identify the commander by name but said the officer, a captain, was relieved of his command in Afghanistan on Wednesday morning.

(snip)

The general confirmed that Médecins Sans Frontières, the French name of Doctors Without Borders, had succeeded in reaching the Special Forces commander to inform him of the attack about 12 minutes into the airstrike, at 2:20 a.m. But he said the strike was not called off until 2:37 a.m. — after the aircrew had already stopped firing. But that timeline does not agree with accounts by the aid group and other witnesses, who said the strike went on for more than an hour.

The aid group, which has called for an independent, nonmilitary international inquiry into the airstrike, was sharply critical of General Campbell’s remarks. “The U.S. version of events presented today leaves M.S.F. with more questions than answers,” said Christopher Stokes, the organization’s general director. “The frightening catalog of errors outlined today illustrates gross negligence on the part of U.S. forces and violations of the rules of war.”

 (snip)

In his account of the investigation report, which is said to be 3,000 pages long but has not been publicly released, General Campbell said that the targeting system on the AC-130 gunship that carried out the airstrike pointed to what proved to be an empty field. Realizing that was not correct, the crew on the gunship decided to target the Doctors Without Borders hospital as the building nearest to the coordinates that matched the description of the intended target.

“The investigation found that the actions of the aircrew and the Special Operations commander were not appropriate to the threats that they faced,” General (Wilson) Shoffner said. “We did not intentionally strike the hospital, and we’re absolutely heartbroken over what happened.”

Heartbroken, but not morally or criminally accountable. The folks were tired or confused when they deliberately shot at medical personnel in white coats,  and obliterated a building readily identifiable by its logo and a red cross on its roof.

 I guess that's what they mean when they tout American Exceptionalism.

Hillary Youth

Since Hillary Clinton is so invested (that hideous market-based word she uses to express her love) in children, who better to shill for her identity brand of politics than a group of little girls, laboriously reading letters to her that they supposedly wrote all by themselves.

Since when does a child barely able to pronounce the words on "her" letter commiserate with a multimillionaire over how hard it is to juggle grandma duties with commander in chief duties? As the kids say, I can't even.

  American fascism is finally fully out of the closet thanks to Donald Trump, and Hillary is seizing her own cult of personality moment. Her campaign TV spot features one little girl dubbed "Scout," American flag emblazoned on her shoulder, giving the military salute to her heroine. The final voice-over has another girl saying she's "available" to work for Hillary for candy in lieu of salary.

So much for gender pay parity and feminism in the Age of Hillary. "Scout" had better watch her back, because the Empress in Waiting is so invested in war and Wall Street finance that little girls, if they're not members of daughter Chelsea's social class, will be faced with two options. Be cannon fodder, or be collateral economic damage from crushing student debt coupled with low/no wages. Hillary may be a slick lawyer, but she is no Atticus Finch. She doesn't appear in the ad herself, promising to still be there when Scout wakes up in the morning.

Watch the spot, and decide for yourself if this ad doesn't exude a distinctly totalitarian odor.

All Is Calm, All Is Fright

President Obama is a master of the mixed message, and last night's address to the nation was no exception.

First, there were the skewed optics. Although staged in the small setting of the Oval Office, Obama forsook his desk and chair, choosing rather to stand at a podium before two completely unnecessary, auditorium-strength microphones. Instead of exuding fireside chat intimacy, Obama's purported reassurances were those of an avuncular armchair general rallying the anxious troops. It actually sounded more like a karaoke practice session conducted in the privacy of his bathroom.

Oh Pentagon, Oh Pentagon, How Beautiful Thy Branches

Then there were the words themselves. Although lauded by the New York Times  as being "tough, but calming," Obama did in fact try to placate his right-wing critics by resurrecting the alarming and once-abandoned "war on terrorism" jingoistic rhetoric of George W. Bush. Never once did he directly call out the fascist demagoguery of the Republican Party in general, nor the verbally dangerous Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in particular. From the Times editorial praising the speech:

The speech signaled how worried the White House has become about the trajectory the war against the Islamic State, or ISIS, could take if a sense of widespread panic, turbocharged by election year politics, started shaping domestic and foreign policy. While he didn’t unveil new initiatives, Mr. Obama called on Americans to reject the impulse to take actions based on fear.

“Even in this political season, even as we properly debate what steps I and future presidents must take to keep our country safe, let’s make sure we never forget what makes us exceptional,” he said. “Let’s not forget that freedom is more powerful than fear.”

Obama would have done better to urge the citizenry to shut off CNN and Fox and other corporate media outlets that have a vested financial interest in keeping the fear alive and the wars continuing.

He also ceded unnecessary xenophobic ground to Republicans and some Democrats who've demanded a stricter vetting process than the already draconian procedure for admitting refugees from Syria and other regions. He even falsely implied that the female shooter had entered the United States without a visa. She did, in fact, possess a fiancee visa. (The official transcript of the speech now bears that correction.)

The president did not profess any interest in peace. He just cited the need for more political cover to intensify the bellicosity. Those secret piecemeal surges by Special Ops and CIA troops under cover of darkness must really be getting him down.

Mr. Obama also issued a strong and timely challenge to Congress to approve a new legal authorization for the military campaign that was launched in August 2014. It’s time, he said, “for Congress to demonstrate that the American people are united and committed in this fight.”

He needs Congress to effectuate the pretense that 320 million US citizens are "united and committed in this fight." He needs to spread the blame to voters who elect the members of Congress who then give him carte blanche for war, for whatever blowback and mayhem might ensue from the further adventures of the profiteers of the Military Industrial Complex. He needs us to overcome our "sickly inhibitions" against war and bloodshed, lest we all die at an office Christmas party someday. He's about as calm-inducing as angel dust.

Oh, and by the way, Congress should do something about domestic gun control while they're also so eagerly doing Obama's bidding in appropriating billions of dollars every year for uncontrolled international arms sales and the frenetic domestic manufacture of assault rifles, grenades, tear gas, drones and nukes.

And while he urged us not to demonize Muslims, he said nothing about the thousands of innocent Muslim lives snuffed out by his predator drones. He said nothing about the letter he recently received from four former service members, warning him that his assassination crusade is creating more terrorists than it kills. As Ed Pilkington and Ewen MacAskill wrote in the Guardian last month:

The group of servicemen have issued an impassioned plea to the Obama administration, calling for a rethink of a military tactic that they say has “fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like Isis, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guantánamo Bay”.

 In particular, they argue, the killing of innocent civilians in drone airstrikes has acted as one of the most “devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world”.

“We cannot sit silently by and witness tragedies like the attacks in Paris, knowing the devastating effects the drone program has overseas and at home,” they wrote.

 The joint statement – from the group who have experience of operating drones over Afghanistan, Iraq and other conflict zones – represents a public outcry from what is understood to be the largest collection of drone whistleblowers in the history of the program. Three of the letter writers were sensor operators who controlled the powerful visual equipment on US Predator drones that guide Hellfire missiles to their targets.

 Needless to say, the Times and other major media outlets have ignored that open letter as well as the document, leaked to The Intercept by another whistleblower, revealing that about 90% of the Muslims killed by American drones have been innocent civilians, including women and children.

Instead, the Times grotesquely lauds Obama's war against terrorism in language couched in the civil rights movement. "Obama Says of Terrorist Threat: 'We Will Overcome It'," blared another headline from the Paper of Record. That article informed me that I am "jittery" about the people whom the president finally broke down and called "Islamic extremists," in a further cowardly attempt to placate the cacophonous media-political complex's demands for tougher talk. But you will be happy to know that the Times found his demeanor "serious, but not grim or angry."

Actually, I found his words utterly revolting and phony. His demeanor looked tired, gray and defeated amidst all the push me-pull you efforts to boost him up or keep him down, depending upon the corporate party persuasion of his official elite critics.

No doubt we'll miss him when he's gone, what with the looming possibility that either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be glaring and blaring out at us from our TV screens to announce the latest bombing campaign, with or without the official approval of a corrupt Congress.

******

Since the New York Times ignored Bernie Sanders in all the war-is-peace hoopla I gave him a boost in both my published comments on this Pearl Harbor Day. The op-eds by Hillary Clinton and Paul Krugman were so eerily similar, they might as well have been written in tandem.

First, Hillary went for comedy as she (or probably one of her economists-for-hire) hilariously feigned "reining in Wall Street."

My comment:

It's not just the outrageous speaking fees that Wall Street bankers paid to Mrs. Clinton, helping make her a multimillionaire. Her refusal to consider restoration of Glass-Steagall is the major tip-off that she will continue to be a loyal servant of the oligarchs.

Granted, its repeal wasn't the sole cause of the financial crisis. But her assertion that Glass-Steagall wouldn't have prevented the collapse of A.I.G. and Lehman is disingenuous at best.

Former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich calls it out as pure "baloney." Where do you think the funding and the lines of credit and the toxic mortgage products for these non-banks came from? From the too-big-to-fail monsters, of course. With Glass-Steagall in place, Lehman and Bear Stearns would probably still be around today, and people wouldn't have lost the good-paying jobs that have never come back.

 Without another Glass-Steagall in place, it's not a matter of if the banks will fail again. It's when.

There is no expansion of Social Security in Mrs. Clinton's economic plan. It's not enough to simply "protect" our great national retirement program from Wall Street's clutches. We must make the trust fund solvent into perpetuity by scrapping the cap on FICA contributions, as well as raising the monthly benefits above the poverty level where they now stand.

Wall Street needs reins, all right. But Mrs. Clinton's plan is tying it up with a pretty little ribbon and asking us to believe it's a lasso.

Feel the Bern.

Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs Cowers in Fear Before Hillary

****

Next, Paul Krugman (named-dropped approvingly by Hillary during the last debate, for agreeing with her on Glass-Steagall) wonders why, since the economy is "not so bad," the Fed is going to raise interest rates. As usual, he glosses right over the Democrats' willing complicity in implementing austerity.

My response:

This Panglossian refrain of "well, it could always have been worse" is getting tiresome. It's a slap in the face to the vast majority of people trying to survive in a nation with stagnating wages, record wealth inequality, and a political system where corruption has become normalized.

If we took just a tiny fraction out of the trillions we're wasting on endless war and surveillance and put it into a national jobs program and expansion of Social Security and true universal health care, the economy would recover from "not so bad" to soaring and healthy and vibrant. But there is no elite will to change things. Money rules politics, and the oligarchs have all the money.

Yes, the Republicans are pathocrats. But the purpose of the Democrats, erstwhile party of the working class and the poor, has devolved into fending off the right wing -- that is, when they're not accomodating them. It was President Obama, after all, who had the bright idea to seat the so-called Catfood Commission for "fiscal responsibility." That worked out so well that Democrats failed to go to the polls in 2010, and austerity got underway with a vengeance.

Yes, Europe didn't do stimulus and the employment situation stinks. But its countries still provide free health care and education to citizens. Their young people may not have jobs, but at least they're not drowning in student debt. Europe also don't imprison its citizens in record numbers.

We can do better. We can fill that glass. We can elect Bernie. 

****

The main terrorism we have to fear is the economic and ecological terrorism unleashed against the entire globe by the Neoliberal Project: governance by elected officials and unelected plutocrats with just the right ass-covering smidgen of "social responsibility." 

A Plutocrat (Bill Gates) and His Puppets

Miss Manners' Guide to Massacre Debate Etiquette

Mrs. Alan Greenspan (Andrea Mitchell) is all upset that Donald Trump is using the San Bernardino shooting to boost his candidacy. "Incredibly, his response is poll-driven," she groused to MTP Daily host Chuck Todd on MSNBC last night. "He said, twice, that 'every time there's a tragedy, my poll numbers go up!'"

Of course, she couldn't leave it at that, because whenever Beltway insiders get together for a chat, etiquette dictates that for every right-wing idiot, there has to be a left-wing counter-idiot.Therefore Mitchell went on to complain, "It's just that there's a creepiness going on on both sides, the fact that there was, you know, prayer shaming going on and the bloggers!"

Chuck choked out something like "prayer, for crying out loud, now they're attacking prayer of all things?" National Journal pundit Ron Fournier added that the partisan debate over the San Bernardino massacre has become as radicalized as the shooters themselves. The debate is irresponsible, he said, because both sides are attacking each other while cravenly ignoring the real threat(s). If they were serious adults, they would be bipartisanly selling the fear and the terror that every concerned citizen should be experiencing.

Fournier: He (President Obama) knows where this is headed and he knows his party is headed in the wrong direction ... In a sane political environment, if you have one party doing prayer shaming and another party demonizing and profiling Muslims, they'd be laughed out of politics. They would be marginalized. We wouldn't write about them [crosstalk] We have two very dysfunctional parties and a media now that is not even [crosstalk]

Mitchell: This is not a serious political debate.

Todd: No.

Fournier: It's dangerous.

Both sides do it! There is a serious Permawar going on here, yet Trump is demonizing Muslims for his own gain, and libruls are demonizing prayer for theirs. Oh, the humanity. Oh, the false equivalence.

What Andrea Mitchell ludicrously calls "prayer shaming" is nothing more than calling out politicians who Tweet their maudlin "thoughts and prayers" after every mass shooting, rather than Tweet out their demands for immediate gun control legislation. This has nothing to do with shaming religious people who pray. This has everything to do with exposing hypocrisy.  

Fournier is right that the "debate" has become radicalized. The chattering class is radically stupid and irresponsible for framing everything around partisanship, politics, and the interests of the ruling class in keeping us all afraid, very afraid. While complaining about partisanship trumping (sorry) terror, they're continuously wallowing in partisanship themselves. Heaven forbid that they examine their own alleged consciences for some insight in how they themselves are muddying the "debate" by churning up militaristic fever even as they champion horse-race politics.

The term "prayer shaming" has actually been around for awhile.  The Atlantic ran a piece by Emma Green, suspiciously published immediately after the California shooting. It was as though they had it on file and ready to go. This is obviously what gave Andrea Mitchell her convenient talking points: 

There’s a clear claim being made here, and one with an edge: Democrats care about doing something and taking action while Republicans waste time offering meaningless prayers. These two reactions, policy-making and praying, are portrayed as mutually exclusive, coming from totally contrasting worldviews. Elsewhere on Twitter, full-on prayer shaming set in: Anger about the shooting was turned not toward the perpetrator or perpetrators, whose identities are still unknown, but at those who offered their prayers.

 (snip)

There are many assumptions packed into these attacks on prayer: that all religious people, and specifically Christians, are gun supporters, and vice versa. That people who care about gun control can’t be religious, and if they are, they should keep quiet in the aftermath of yet another heart-wrenching act of violence. At one time in American history, liberals and conservatives shared a language of God, but that’s clearly no longer the case; any invocation of faith is taken as implicit advocacy of right-wing political beliefs.
The most powerful evidence against this backlash toward prayer comes not from the Twitterverse, but from San Bernardino. “Pray for us,” a woman texted her father from inside the Inland Regional Center, while she and her colleagues hid from the gunfire. Outside the building, evacuated workers bowed their heads and held hands. They prayed.

This is missing the point, I think. Nobody is "prayer-shaming" or making fun of religion in these Tweets. As a matter of fact, the prayer-shamer shamers and PC police should also probably alert us to the fact that actual thought-shaming is  going on here, too, since the more secular Thoughts invariably precede Prayers in these hypocritical Tweets. We should know that no alleged prayer can ever sail through the air without first attaching to itself the propaganda rocket booster known as magical thinking.

Actually, there is not much thought or insight of any kind in evidence within the mainstream media. There are, though, lots of buzzwords passing as mentation in an echo chamber, an embarrassment of bromides passing as political courage and will.

I nominate the term "platitude-shaming" to replace prayer-shaming. Or is that too radical?

Just Another Normal Massacre

So far, anyway (I'm writing this at 8:27 a.m.) the usual suspects of Xenophobistan are curiously mute about yesterday's mass shooting, allegedly committed by a husband (American) and wife (Pakistani) team who met in Saudi Arabia. Either it's to their credit that the warmongers of Congress and CNN are not screaming IsisIsisIsis! at the top of their lungs before seeing even a shred of evidence, or else they're afraid to offend their friends, the Saudis. Remember that the 28 redacted pages of the 9/11 Commission Report allegedly show a Saudi royal connection to that terror attack. And Saudi Arabia, despite its sordid and brutal regime, is a close partner of the US as well as its largest arms customer. President Obama  brokered the latest multi-billion-dollar deal of high-tech weaponry just this past fall.

I think it's safe to assume that if the wife had hailed from Syria, the usual suspects would have been jockeying for anti-immigrant position before the crack of dawn.

So I'm not going to speculate on the motive* behind the latest shooting. But I think it's fair game to speculate on the motives of the speculators. I think it is fair, even desirable, to watch the Thoughts and Prayers hypocrite squad squirm in helpless silence. I think it's also fair to speculate on a correlation between the frequent mass shootings and the epidemic of human misery wrought by the financial crisis and all its unindicted economic terrorists.

It's true that mass murder by firearm is rapidly becoming the New Normal, with not even a week separating the California massacre and the atrocity at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. These "incidents" are all melding into one sickening bloodbath. As the New York Times points out, there is, on average, one mass shooting in the United States every single day. Most of them are greeted by a giant group yawn. Most are simply not bloody enough or spectacular enough or politically co-optable enough to merit interruption by the mass media of its daily broadcasts of Donald Trump rallies.

From today's Times:

Including the worst mass shooting of the year, which unfolded horrifically on Wednesday in San Bernardino, Calif., a total of 462 people have died and 1,314 have been wounded in such attacks this year, many of which occurred on streets or in public settings, the databases indicate.

It is impossible to know whether the number of such shootings has risen in recent years because the databases go back only a couple of years. More data is available for mass shootings calculated by a different standard, one used by congressional researchers and other experts who study mass killings: four or more dead. But experts fiercely debate whether mass shootings by that more deadly standard have remained level or ticked up slightly in recent years.

Still, say experts, there is no real way to measure whether mass shootings are truly on the upswing. The US has been a violent country ever since the Pilgrims landed and started exterminating the aboriginals. But what is truly on the upswing, says criminologist James Fox, is fear. “A lot of that has been because of the nature of media coverage," he told the Times. "In the ’70s and ’80s, we didn’t hear about it on the Internet — because there was no Internet — and we didn’t have cable news channels that would devote 24 hours of coverage.”

We didn't have 24/7 coverage of Donald Trump and his closest fascist rival, the truly awesomely scary Ted Cruz.

Meanwhile, the Scottsdale (AZ) Gun Club is going ahead with its annual Christmas family fun extravaganza. For only $15 ($10 for members) you get your choice of weapons to hold while posing for a picture with Santa himself. As a special added bonus, they'll take your kids' fingerprints, for free.... because, freedom. Because taking fingerprints is what passes for responsible gun safety in gun states. 

 And in case you were worried about President Obama's recent ban on the importation of Russian-made AK-47s (pictured above) in order to punish Vlad Putin over Crimea, don't be. Because now they're made in America. Whoever said offshoring is destroying good American jobs is nuts, especially since the slogan of the new company is "Russian heritage, American innovation."

Although the new American assault rifle company is headquartered in Pennsylvania, the CEO refuses, for some reason, to divulge the location of his physical factory. So, you might ask, how is he advertising for those great-paying new American manufacturing jobs? Well, I wouldn't be surprised if he is using robots instead of humans from the Rust Belt.

It's the American heritage and it's the American way: Ka-ching and Ka-boom.

* On second thought, I wouldn't be surprised if postpartum depressive psychosis turned out to be a contributing factor. Six months after the birth of her first child, the culture shock of moving from a repressive society, husband just returned to work after a pretty long parental leave by American standards... the timing is certainly right. The husband could have been the follower in this madness, which seems to be a hybrid of workplace violence and terror attack and suicide by cop. I'm sure we'll find out eventually. But at the end of the day, what difference does a motive make? People are dead because guns are rampant.

When Everything Old Is New Again

Talk about feeling every arthritic inch the geezer. When I was Googling the netz to research my usual snarky story on Christmas toys and Christmas joy, I came across a piece by toy historian Philip Reed, who'd dredged up an old Gannett newspaper piece by Yours Truly, from way back yonder in 1978.

Then, as now, Star Wars was all the rage. Reading my old article brought back memories of how sick I was of Star Wars even then. And I wasn't the only one. Remember the parody by Bill Murray on Saturday Night Live? I used to sing that lounge lizard ditty under my breath all of the time, to the tune of the Star Wars theme song.... Star Wars, Nothing but Star Wars, Nothing but Star Wars, All of the Time.

I also used to sing it to my two stepsons when they came over on the weekends and announced that all they wanted for Christmas was Star Wars crap. When the older guy came to visit me again over the summer, and we were reminiscing, he said the thing he most remembers about those days was me, singing the Star Wars song parody to them over and over again, like a demented lullaby. All of the time. Oy vey. He got me singing it inwardly again, totally against my will.

  So you will be glad, or sad, as the case might be, to learn that Star Wars toys are only ranked Number 5 in popularity this year. It must be the toy version of the Vietnam Syndrome.

But don't despair. Because on top of the 2015 Wish List, according to Google (who else?) are drones. President Obama may once have joked that you'll never see them coming, but they're coming this year, right down the chimney. Whoosh. Maybe the drones can do us all a favor and blast the Star Wars crap right out of the sky.

Number Two is something called Shopkins, which I confess I have never heard of. Google them if you feel like it. I don't feel like it. There is enough crass consumerism without trying to make it sound like a cuddly kitty.

Hoverboards are in third place. Judging from the photo, they look just the perfect gift from stressed-out parents who in the olden days would just sarcastically tell the kids to go out and play in traffic. Seriously, this gizmo has "trip to the emergency room" written all over it. So make sure your Obamacare policy is up to date before putting it under the tree this year.

Look Ma, No Hands! (who needs teeth anyway)

Number 4 is Legos. There is nothing dangerous about Legos, unless you give them to a child who likes to eat tiny objects. Or unless you're a mom who foolishly walks around barefoot the week after Christmas, or who foolishly doesn't check for loose bits of plastic among the pine needles before vacuuming the rug. Legos are death to vacuum cleaners and toes alike. Take it from one who knows.

Number 5 is actually Star Wars-specific, not general Star Wars crapola. This year's hot item is a Droid. Maybe it will get the kids used to the Jobless Economy. No Luddite action figures this Yule, I guess.

But re-reading my old article, I was kind of stunned to remember that back in the day, they actually sold a doll that changed its skin color! Suntan Eric and his entire family of melanin addicts went from pasty white to deep bronze if you held them under the light, then back to privileged pale once rescued from the intense wattage.

And then there was Baby Wet N Care. I wrote,

 Not only does it wet, but its little derriere erupts in big red spots. But never fear: "YOU make her well, curing that unsightly diaper rash with a special cream, ingredients unknown.

And if you really care about Baby Wet N Care, you'll want to invest in the special "electronic beat stethoscope", sold separately. That, apparently, will diagnose baby's heart murmur before it's too late.

I don't know if another Baby accessory was a CPS worker, or if you were just supposed to use Suntan Eric's wife to play the part. If she was healthy enough, that is. The Suntan Family didn't come provided with any mystery lotion to protect them from those cancer-causing rays.

Toy-sellers could never get away with advertising this 70s doll today:

One of the more unusual dolls on the market this year is Ideal's "Whoopsie," about $13. The package makes it sound as though this creature comes from an advertisement in the back pages of a men's magazine. "Just squeeze my soft tummy," she coos on the label. "My hair flips up and I whistle "Whoopsie!"

However, there apparently is a thriving black market for vintage Baby Whoopsies, even films of her in action. I Googled her, but my conscience prevents me from providing any links.  Although I do think it's rather tempting to wrap her up, put her on a Hoverboard, and then aim a drone straight at her.

Stayed tuned for more Christmas cheer the rest of the month. Coming soon: another Sardonicky update on that perennial NSA favorite: Elf on a Shelf.