Courage Under Joystick

Finally acknowledging that drone attacks take a psychic toll on the people performing them from afar in airless little trailers, the Pentagon plans to recognize these operators with the same military honors accorded to soldiers who kill in more direct physical proximity to their targets.

Since President Obama has made drone operators "increasingly important," according to the New York Times, it's only right that the folks fulfilling his Kill Wish List should be given some long-overdue recognition. Whether Obama and his successors will have the chutzpah to give out Medals of Honor to joystick operators in televised East Room ceremonies remains to be seen, however. It seems highly doubtful, given that the president has steadfastly refused to divulge the names and details of the "enemy combatants" he chooses to obliterate in this highly secretive program. The fact that up to 90 percent of the drone targets turn out to be innocent civilians might make the award ceremonies a bit fuzzy too.

Instead of his eyes welling up and overflowing with tears over wedding parties turned into funerals by his predator drones, Obama would probably have to be satisfied with getting just a little misty...  at the very least, he'll play Misty for us.

Michael S. Schmidt writes that computer geeks who launch cyber-attacks will also be eligible for the bright shiny medals.

“It’s way past time,” said David A. Deptula, a retired three-star Air Force general who pushed the military to embrace drones. “People should be acknowledged and rewarded for their contributions to accomplishing security objections regardless of where they are located.”

Current and former military officials had been deeply divided about whether to recognize the drone pilots. An initial Pentagon plan in 2013 to honor them with a “Distinguished Warfare Medal” was criticized by some veterans’ groups, which feared that the award would rank higher than combat medals like the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

Ousted Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel scrapped the first plans for the drone and cyber medals, but now that he's gone, the proposal to honor the office-based warriors of Obama's "smart" foreign policy during his last year in office is gaining new life. 

“As the impact of remote operations on combat continues to increase, the necessity of ensuring those actions are distinctly recognized grows,” said a Pentagon document outlining changes to how the military gives awards and other decorations.

The use of drones has been widely credited with diminishing Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. But civilians have also died in drone attacks, fueling anger toward the United States among Muslims across the Middle East.

Nothing will tamp down anger like the sight of Obama awarding medals to remote-control geeks who turn Muslims into pink mist at his explicit direction, right?

The Pentagon also plans to award more medals to soldiers who are still alive, so that they might at least get some personal enjoyment from them.

And, given that the wars are now permanent, medal recipients will no longer have to wait as long before collecting their shiny objects from the Commander in Chief. It will be a virtual assemblyline of medals, ribbons and plaques.

As war is modernized, so must its rewards be modernized. When all else (like public support) fails, bring out the symbols and put on a show. CNN, Wall Street investors, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley will love it and even help direct it.

Just as the Oscars help sell movie tickets, just as the movies in their turn help sell video game tie-ins, just as the video games help hone the skills of the drone and cyber-espionage geeks of the future, so too will military awards shows and brand new acting categories help to further enrich the war profiteers.

They'll cry for American children killed by guns, but revel in the billions of dollars in lethal weaponry that they manufacture, sell and deploy against other people's children, all around the world.

Greed Ain't Good

For those of you who missed it in the New York Times and on cable TV, here's Bernie Sanders in the Big Apple today, calling for the breakup of the banks. (Only kidding about the coverage in the corporate media: there was none. The media were too busy taking a group swim in Obama's coincidentally-timed tears.)

 It's interesting that for all the rumors of his lack of support among black voters, Bernie was rousingly introduced by his "twin," State Senator James Sanders of New York, who happens to be black. "In New York City, we're starting to feel the Bern!" he said. So much for Hillary Clinton, New York's alleged Favorite Daughter. He also got the endorsement of the state's Working Families Party, which traditionally adheres to the Democratic machine except in the most extreme cases of corruption in the establishment candidate. Oops. When the WFP endorsed centrist incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo over the progressive Zephyr Teachout in 2014, they lived to regret it.

But back to the very popular Bernie.

"To those on Wall Street who may be listening today, let me be very clear," Sanders said. "Greed is not good. Wall Street and corporate greed is destroying the fabric of our nation. And, here is a New Year’s Resolution that we will keep: If you do not end your greed we will end it for you."

Is that welcoming their hatred, or what?

Here's his eight-point plan for financial reform:

Break up huge financial institutions in the first year of my administration. Within the first 100 days of my administration, I will require the Secretary of the Treasury to establish a “Too Big to Fail” list of commercial banks, shadow banks, and insurance companies whose failure would pose a catastrophic risk to the U.S. economy without a taxpayer bailout. Within one year, my administration will break these institutions up so that they no longer pose a grave threat to the economy.

Reinstate a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act to clearly separate traditional banking from risky investment banking and insurance services. It is not enough to tell Wall Street to "cut it out," propose a few new rules and slap on some fines. Under my administration, financial institutions will no longer be too big to fail or too big to manage. Wall Street cannot continue to be an island unto itself, gambling trillions in risky financial instruments. If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.

End too-big-to-jail. We live in a country today that has an economy that is rigged, a campaign finance system which is corrupt, and a criminal justice system which often does not dispense justice. The average American sees kids being arrested and sometimes even jailed for possessing marijuana. But when it comes to Wall Street executives — some of the most wealthy and powerful people in this country whose illegal behavior hurt millions of Americans — somehow nothing happens to them. No jail time. No police record. No justice.

Not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy. That will change under my administration. “Equal Justice Under Law” will not just be words engraved on the entrance of the Supreme Court. It will be the standard that applies to Wall Street and all Americans.

Establish a tax on Wall Street to discourage reckless gambling and encourage productive investments in the job-creating economy. We will use the revenue from this tax to make public colleges and universities tuition free. During the financial crisis, the middle class of this country bailed out Wall Street. Now, it’s Wall Street’s turn to help the middle class.

Cap Credit Card Interest Rates and ATM Fees. We have got to stop financial institutions from ripping off the American people by charging sky-high interest rates and outrageous fees. In my view, it is unacceptable that Americans are paying a $4 or $5 fee each time they go to the ATM. And it is unacceptable that millions of Americans are paying credit card interest rates of 20 or 30 percent.

The Bible has a term for this practice. It's called usury. And in The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for sinners who charged people usurious interest rates. Today, we don't need the hellfire and the pitchforks, we don't need the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law.

We need to cap interest rates on credit cards and consumer loans at 15 percent. I would also cap ATM fees at $2.

Allow Post Offices to Offer Banking Services. We also need to give Americans affordable banking options. The reality is that, unbelievably, millions of low-income Americans live in communities where there are no normal banking services. Today, if you live in a low-income community and you need to cash a check or get a loan to pay for a car repair or a medical emergency, where do you go? You go to a payday lender who could charge an interest rate of over 300 percent and trap you into a vicious cycle of debt. That is unacceptable.

We need to stop payday lenders from ripping off millions of Americans. Post offices exist in almost every community in our country. One important way to provide decent banking opportunities for low-income communities is to allow the U.S. Postal Service to engage in basic banking services, and that's what I will fight for.

Reform Credit Rating Agencies. We cannot have a safe and sound financial system if we cannot trust the credit agencies to accurately rate financial products. The only way we can restore that trust is to make sure credit rating agencies cannot make a profit from Wall Street. Under my administration, we will turn for-profit credit rating agencies into non-profit institutions, independent from Wall Street. No longer will Wall Street be able to pick and choose which credit agency will rate their products.

Reform the Federal Reserve. We need to structurally reform the Federal Reserve to make it a more democratic institution responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans, not just the billionaires on Wall Street. It is unacceptable that the Federal Reserve has been hijacked by the very bankers it is in charge of regulating. When Wall Street was on the verge of collapse, the Federal Reserve acted with a fierce sense of urgency to save the financial system. We need the Fed to act with the same boldness to combat the unemployment crisis and fulfill its full employment mandate.

So my message to you is straightforward: I’ll rein in Wall Street's reckless behavior so they can’t crash our economy again.

Will Wall Street like me? No. Will they begin to play by the rules if I’m president? You better believe it.

Howard Fineman, a fairly middle-of-the road liberal writer for The Huffington Post, broke away from the group-think mainstream pack today, and actually admitted that Hillary might not be the shoo-in for the nomination his colleagues believe she is. 

Voters in 2016 are more skeptical than ever of leaders in all realms, beset by a lack of growth in real wages, and vociferously divided on immigration, race, religion, policing, guns, terrorism, refugees and drugs.
The kind of anti-establishment sentiment heard around the world -- from the early days of the Arab Spring to the darker nationalist movements in Germany and France -- echoes loudly in the U.S. Voters are drawn to the energy and electricity of candidates who vow to smash the power of institutions from Wall Street to Washington, from university campuses to the media.

Floating above it all, for the moment, is Hillary Clinton -- still the conventional wisdom's pick to become the next president.
The former first lady/former senator/former secretary of state has organized intensively and tried to address the economic disquiet in her Democratic Party with solid policy proposals that move her cautiously into the anti-Wall Street camp. But the mood of the country is more dangerous to her chances than her supporters admit or outside analysts recognize.
This isn't a good time to be the embodiment of a political insider. But she is. Clinton and her husband have grown very wealthy over their decades in politics. They have become experts at currying the favor of rich donors, many of whom are now their personal friends.

Greed ain't good. Time ain't on her side.

Give me a Bernie Vs Trump contest, and I might not follow through on my New Years resolution to cancel cable.

Exceptional USA: So Special, So Sick

The New York Times finally discovers what thinking people living in the real world have known all long: that Obamacare is not only not all it's cracked up to be, it's a disease unto itself. Insured Americans are still going bankrupt, getting sicker, and dying younger. (Hillary Clinton, for her part, has cold-bloodedly called such atrocities mere "glitches.")

The Times is even openly soliciting testimony about medical insurance nightmares from its readers.The lede of the front-page article is reminiscent of Rep. Alan Grayson's legendary 2009 rant on the House floor:

Here is the surest way to enjoy the peace of mind that comes with having health insurance: Don’t get sick.

The number of uninsured Americans has fallen by an estimated 15 million since 2013, thanks largely to the Affordable Care Act. But a new survey, the first detailed study of Americans struggling with medical bills, shows that insurance often fails as a safety net. Health plans often require hundreds or thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket payments — sums that can create a cascade of financial troubles for the many households living paycheck to paycheck. 

In the new poll, conducted by The New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation, roughly 20 percent of people under age 65 with health insurance nonetheless reported having problems paying their medical bills over the last year. By comparison, 53 percent of people without insurance said the same.

These financial vulnerabilities reflect the high costs of health care in the United States, the most expensive place in the world to get sick. They also highlight a substantial shift in the nature of health insurance. Since the late 1990s, insurance plans have begun asking their customers to pay an increasingly greater share of their bills out of pocket though rising deductibles and co-payments. The Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama in 2010, protected many Americans from very high health costs by requiring insurance plans to be more comprehensive, but at the same time it allowed or even encouraged increases in deductibles.

***

Sick and Sicker:

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson came uncomfortably close to channeling Heinrich Himmler as he outlined his reasons for rounding up Central American refugee families for imprisonment and quick deportation back to the countries they had fled out of desperation for their very lives. Many of the deportees face almost certain death upon their return. Johnson's cold-blooded statement:

 The focus of this weekend’s operations were adults and their children who (i) were apprehended after May 1, 2014 crossing the southern border illegally, (ii) have been issued final orders of removal by an immigration court, and (iii) have exhausted appropriate legal remedies, and have no outstanding appeal or claim for asylum or other humanitarian relief under our laws. As part of these operations, 121 individuals were taken into custody, primarily from Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina, and they are now in the process of being repatriated. To effect removal, most families are first being transported to one of ICE’s family residential centers for temporary processing before being issued travel documents and boarding a return flight to their home countries. 
Given the sensitive nature of taking into custody and removing families with children, a number of precautions were taken as part of this weekend’s operations. ICE deployed from around the country a number of female agents and medical personnel to take part in the operations, and, in the course of the operations, ICE exercised prosecutorial discretion in a number of cases for health or other personal reasons.

.... I know there are many who loudly condemn our enforcement efforts as far too harsh, while there will be others who say these actions don’t go far enough. I also recognize the reality of the pain that deportations do in fact cause. But, we must enforce the law consistent with our priorities. At all times, we endeavor to do this consistent with American values, and basic principles of decency, fairness, and humanity.

Contrast this to Reichsfuhrer Himmler's cold-blooded rationale for rounding up and deporting the Jews (and unlike Johnson's boasting, his speech was given in secret):

 I ask of you that that which I say to you in this circle be really only heard and not ever discussed. We were faced with the question: what about the women and children? – I decided to find a clear solution to this problem too. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men – in other words, to kill them or have them killed and allow the avengers of our sons and grandsons in the form of their children to grow up. The difficult decision had to be made to have this people disappear from the earth. For the organisation which had to execute this task, it was the most difficult which we had ever had. [...] I felt obliged to you, as the most superior dignitary, as the most superior dignitary of the party, this political order, this political instrument of the Führer, to also speak about this question quite openly and to say how it has been. The Jewish question in the countries that we occupy will be solved by the end of this year. Only remainders of odd Jews that managed to find hiding places will be left over.

 As Ian Buruma writes in Theater of Cruelty, "Evil deeds are often committed by people who have convinced themselves that they are doing something good. When Heinrich Himmler told his audience of SS officers in Posen in 1943 that 'exterminating' the Jews was a necessary duty carried out 'for the love of our people,' he was most probably sincere. No doubt he reveled in his own power, but I don't think he was evil for the sake of being evil. Himmler was not Satan, but a repellent human being with the means to put mad and murderous fantasies into practice."

Likewise, Jeh Johnson can ease his alleged conscience by adding social workers and medical personnel to his own de facto extermination squads. He sends "illegal" people to their deaths in the sincere belief that he is acting purely from decent and humane principles, for the love of Exceptional America.

Likewise, if millions of the beloved American people who are allowed to remain in the Homeland by virtue of their birth on American soil go broke, suffer and die prematurely through a lack of basic medical care, then the architects and defenders of the Affordable Care Act are smug in the knowledge that at least they are giving mercy to a chosen, select few. The unlucky others have been simply designated as necessary internal deportees. Despite Obamacare, as many as 17,000 legal Americans are still dying unnecessarily every single year. That is a feature, not a bug.

  Internal and external deportees are what the neoliberal thought-collective, the cold-blooded cullers of the herd, euphemize as the collateral damage of their "hard choices."

Sick, sicker, sickest.

Making Human Junk on the Upper East Side

The rich might not be so different from you and me after all. Even they occasionally experience twinges of conscience, especially during the winter holiday season.

In a New York Times advice-to-the-landed gentry column published on Saturday, one denizen of the plutocratic Upper East Side of New York City is torn about whether to say something if s/he sees something in the ongoing War of Economic Terror of the rich versus the rest of us. In this case, the "something" is a 16-year-old boy working double shifts as a doorman at a pricey building.

The condominium in which I rent an apartment employs a 16-year-old doorman. He recently worked a double shift on a Sunday, from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m., which violates state child labor laws. I find myself in an ethical quandary. Isn’t the condo open to prosecution for breaking child labor laws? Do we have a responsibility to this child to enforce the rules so he is not exploited? At the same time, what if he is the only wage earner in his family? Any thoughts on what to do?

How seriously the Times takes this question is evidenced by its accompanying illustration, casting the Doorboy as a cherubic white cartoon character straight out of South Park.

The Littlest Doorman (Michael Kolomatsky/The New York Times

South Park Stan

Thus is the stage immediately set for an orgy of conscience-soothing from the handful of legal experts that the Times approached to answer the pressing question of Resurgent Child Labor in the New Abnormal Economy. Racism doesn't ever rear its ugly head to further discompose the millionaires of the Upper East Side, home to the most extreme income inequality and concentrated wealth in the entire country. The Times' version of the doorboy is not only white and well-scrubbed, even his couture is non-sexistly correct. The crisp, Little Boy Blue uniform is ever so nicely balanced out by the girly pink pacifier. Ease yourselves, socially liberal plutes!

If the Times viewed the comeback of child labor as anything more than a passing social quandary for the pathologically wealthy, they might have gone the route of  sociologist Lewis Hine, whose Depression-era, WPA-funded photography of  "Kids At Work" literally saved the lives of thousands of effectively enslaved children. If the Times were honest, its editors would have made this shallow advice column front-page news, just as Hine's scathing  "Making Human Junk" broadside slapped the robber barons of yesteryear right where they didn't yet hurt.

One lawyer, while telling the Times that employing a child for 16 straight hours of guard duty for rich people is a clear violation of state and city labor laws, still advised caution on the part of the condo-dweller with a conscience. Reporting the offense might get the tenant evicted. Another expert suggested that the concerned citizen approach the doorboy directly, thereby putting the onus of labor violations directly on him. Ronda Kaysen, the writer of the piece, splits the difference, and suggests that the questioner approach her fellow tenants for further advice.

 When all else fails, oligarchic solidarity is just the ticket. Kaysen did not suggest inquiring about the child's personal situation, commuting time, hopes and dreams, or suggest increasing his tips into the realm of the living wage to enable him to cut down his hours, or god forbid, direct him to the Doormen's Union, which might picket the building.

Let's face it: the only reason for the obscenely wealthy to hire a child instead of an adult is because underage, underpaid, under-educated wage slaves are less likely to be unionized and more apt to be exploited. It was the organized labor movement and advocacy journalism that once put an end (on paper, anyway) to child labor in the first place. The new robber barons hate unions with the same brutal intensity as their pre-New Deal, pre-globalization predecessors.

And that goes for both of our corporate political parties and the antisocial donors who own and control them. Former Obama adviser David Plouffe, now in charge of public relations at Uber, is spearheading the anti-union charge at his own company. He most recently prevailed against mildly progressive New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, who had once sided with unionized taxi drivers before Plouffe and the 21st century robber barons of the Upper East Side made him an offer he couldn't refuse. It could always be worse. they tell us. Uber responsibly requires its low-wage workers to be at least 21 years old, with three years' experience behind the wheel. They are, after all, responsible for transporting millionaires, not simply carrying their packages and opening their doors for them.

It could always be worse. For instance,who can ever forget Republican Newt Gingrich's call to replace unionized school custodians with pupils working off their school lunches with their slave labor? The Newt is just one of thousands of  cold-blooded .01 Percenters whose Depression-era dreams are most likely of the wet variety, not the nightmare variety experienced by the masses.

If the Littlest Doorman looks, in real life, anything even remotely like the children photographed by Lewis Hine during the last Gilded Age-spawned Depression, it is apparently news that the Times doesn't see fit to print:

Hasta La Vista, 2015

So, I was having this problematic conversation with my fellow stakeholders of the gene pool about the price point of all the food gracing the holiday dinner table, and Donald Trump was in the background vaping his own fumes in his latest presser and breaking the Internet in the process,  and I was doing my pathetic best to avoid the awful physicality of my manspreading drunk cousin who only succeeded  in dribbling the secret sauce out of his flapping maw as he tried to walk back his insults by spewing inanities that he thought would give me life.

Phew. 

So, yes, fellow Sardonickists, it is possible to put all the Banished Words of 2015 into one nightmare sentence.

From the Word Police of Lake Superior State University comes the latest list of words (bolded above) that people are sick of saying, hearing, and reading.

Answering a question with the article "so" is just one of a dozen forms of wordplay that made it onto LSSU's 41st annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. The tradition created by the late W. T. Rabe, former public relations director at Lake Superior State University, is now in its fifth decade. Compilers hope this year's list will be so popular that it will break the Internet.
“Overused words and phrases are ‘problematic’ for thousands of Queen's English ‘stakeholders,’” said an LSSU spokesperson while ‘vaping’ an e-cigarette during a ‘presser.’  “Once something is banished, there's no ‘walking it back;’ that's our ‘secret sauce,' and there’s no ‘price point’ for that.”
Rabe and fellow LSSU faculty and staff came up with the first list of words and phrases that people love to hate at a New Year’s Eve party in 1975, publishing it on Jan. 1, 1976. Though he and his friends created the first list from their own pet peeves about language, Rabe said he knew from the volume of mail he received in the following weeks that the group would have no shortage of words and phrases from which to choose for 1977. Since then, the list has consisted entirely of nominations received from around the world throughout the year.

So the word that is most hated this year is So. Not in the sense of "OMG, I am so not liking Donald Trump," but rather, the way that politicians and other annoying people have of beginning the answer to every question with the word "So" as a more genteel replacement for "Um," "Er" or "Duh" -- in other words, So is a verbal trigger warning that informs you that you are about to be microaggressed.

Here is an example:

Reporter: Mr. President, is it true that you ordered the NSA to spy on American citizens?

Prez: So, as I have said many times before, the privacy of my friends is very important to me. But I welcome the opportunity to have a conversation about their civil rights with the stakeholders. It will really give me, and my last year in office, some legacy-burnishing life. What price point liberty, after all, you ridiculous little So and So.

So, with that, here is wishing all of you a very non-problematic 2016. Thank goodness there is no walking back 2015, unless it is to read all those horrendous Listicles breaking the Internet.

See you next year!

Perfect Stormtroopers

 Tim McGinty acted more like he was auditioning for The Weather Channel than doing his job defending "the people" as Cuyahoga County prosecutor. He explained away the assassination of 12-year-old Tamir Rice the same way that an oil company executive might explain away climate change: by cynically feigning ignorance.

It seems that the November 2014 Cleveland police killing of a child is just like Hurricane Sandy. Although both were obviously horrific, both were completely understandable, natural disasters. Crap just happens sometimes, soothed McGinty in announcing his grand jury's decision to exonerate the cop who shot Tamir for the "crime" of possessing a toy gun while black.

"It was a perfect storm of human error, mistakes and miscommunications," he pronounced at a Monday press conference, coinciding perfectly with Christmas vacation time and some really horrific winter storms that are helping to keep protesters off the nation's streets.

The officer, another Timmy with the last name Loehmann, had absolute reason to fear for his life as a black boy reached for his toy gun, insisted the prosecutor. McGinty forgot to mention that Loehmann has previously been fired from another police department for emotional lability issues, before being welcomed with open arms by the Kleveland Kops Klan.

From the New York Times:

The case began when a caller to 911 said a male was pointing a gun at people in a Cleveland park. The caller added that the gun was “probably fake,” and that the person waving it was “probably a juvenile.” But those caveats were not relayed to Officer Loehmann or his partner, Frank Garmback, who was driving the patrol car. Officer Loehmann, who is white, opened fire within seconds of arriving at the park. Officer Garmback was also spared any charges.

The shooting in Cleveland came just two days before a grand jury in Missouri declined to indict a white police officer in Ferguson who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. The Ferguson case became one of a series of police killings that drew protests — in New York, Baltimore, North Charleston, S.C., and other cities — by demonstrators denouncing the way the police treat African-Americans.

McGinty said the benefit of the doubt should always be given to police officers who often make split-second decisions about whether to kill people. If Loehmann felt in his own paranoid brain that a child presented a threat to him, then too bad for that child.

Tamir Rice's family and civil rights leaders had long suspected the grand jury no-bill of the officers, given that the prosecutor had drawn out the "investigation" for well over a year, combing the nation for the few experts who would eventually agree that the killing was justified. Even before the grand jury decision, he released his exculpatory findings to the public, setting the stage for Monday's announcement. As was the case in the Staten Island, N.Y. panel which "investigated" the police choke-hold death of Eric Garner, the closed grand jury procedure took the place of a public trial. The officers were never subject to cross-examination. No attorneys were allowed to defend Tamir Rice's rights.

Meanwhile, pending results of another internal review, Loehmann and his partner remain employed by the department, albeit on "restricted" duty.

The usual platitudes from the usual subjects have ensued. Ohio Gov. and flailing presidential candidate John Kasich admonished "those people" to "not give in to anger and frustration and let it divide us." He might as well have ordered the denizens of Cleveland to embrace their local police state.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, meanwhile, is nobly cutting short his Cuba vacation by a day or two in order to issue more platitudes regarding his own city's latest police assassinations of two more black people. "He will continue the work of restoring accountability and trust," smirked one of his minions.

While still basking in the Cuba sunshine before nobly cutting his vacation short, Emanuel managed to garble out this clumsy preliminary platitude: "Anytime an officer uses force, the public deserves answers and regardless of the circumstances we all grieve anytime there is a loss of life in our city." (thereby effectively reducing the homicides of a student and grandmother to an everyday natural occurrence.)

The fact that the younger shooting victim, Quintonio Le Grier, had mental health issues should also weigh heavily on Emanuel's alleged conscience. As Kari Lyndersen laid out in her exposé, Mayor One Percent, Emanuel had no qualms about dispatching his police thugs to quash protesters fighting against his closure of six of the city's mental health clinics in 2013. The cops have always had their tacit marching orders from his administration. 

And just because Obama's Justice Department has Chicago police tactics on its investigatory agenda is no guarantee of justice. Look at what's been not happening in Cleveland. Only two weeks after the Tamir Rice killing, the DOJ issued a very tepid report on the murderous cop culture in that Ohio city, following yet another tepid report chastising endemic police violence a full ten years prior to that. In both reports, the Justice Department took extra care to put partial blame on the victims of violent cop culture and urged everybody to just try to get along in the future.

"All of the residents of the city of Cleveland should recognize... that many Cleveland officers have pursued their profession in order to effect positive changes within the City and they make great personal sacrifices to do dangerous work.... Respect and trust must go both ways," hectored the DOJ report to "those people."

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Be afraid of Isis over there, and that way you won't have to be afraid of the Police State over here. Go see Star Wars, and may the make-believe Force Be With You as you learn to accept without question the justifiable force of your neighborhood perfect stormtroopers.

USA USA USA

Chicago

Cleveland

Playlists and Slayrides

I realized that the holiday news hole was a great big gaping maw when President Obama's release of his playlist of Christmas tunes stopped the presses right in their tracks. The cool president is into cool jazz! Who knew?

White House Christmas playlists: Did Obama and Biden choose ...

Christian Science Monitor-Dec 24, 2015

President Obama's playlist confirms that he 'is the only American president you could reliably trust to DJ a party.' Joe Biden's list is, well, just so ...

Obamas & Bidens Share Holiday Playlists on Spotify
Billboard-Dec 24, 2015

See Which Popular Holiday Songs Made the Obamas' Christmas ...
People Magazine-Dec 23, 2015

Barack Obama Christmas playlist: President reveals favourite songs
Blog-The Australian (blog)-Dec 24, 2015

Listen on Spotify: The Obamas' and Bidens' Holiday Playlists
Highly Cited-The White House (blog)-Dec 23, 2015

With These Spotify Playlists, the Obamas and Bidens Have ...
Blog-Wall Street Journal (blog)-Dec 23, 2015

Billboard

People Magazine

The White House (blog)

NBCNews.com

Bustle

CBS News

Explore in depth (289 more articles)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

***

So while I was exploring the Obama Family's tunes in depth, there came with a clatter the much less cool news that his administration also chose Christmas Week to announce that hundreds of Central American refugee families are to be raided and deported within weeks or even days. As we speak, Homeland Security is out there in force, spotifying all those asylum-seekers and ruining their celebrations.

 Who would ever have guessed that Obama, right after enthusing that A Charlie Brown Christmas was his absolute fave, and right after announcing the deportations, could then be so utterly cynical as to utter these unctuous words during his annual Yuletide greeting?

Today, like millions of Americans and Christians around the world, our family celebrates the birth of Jesus and the values He lived in his own life. Treating one another with love and compassion. Caring for those on society’s margins: the sick and the hungry, the poor and the persecuted, the stranger in need of shelter – or simply an act of kindness.
That’s the spirit that binds us together – not just as Christians, but as Americans of all faiths. It’s what the holidays are about: coming together as one American family to celebrate our blessings and the values we hold dear.

Talk about pulling away the Charlie Brown football! It seems that Obama and his team don't view families fleeing drug and gang violence in organized crime/CIA/DEA-destabilized countries (just like Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus fleeing Herod) as victims deserving of shelter. Ditto for Hillary Clinton, fresh off her own truncated tour as Everybody's Abuela (Mexican grandma.) The audiences laughed her right off the figurative stage, because they don't care for being "Hispandered" to. Plus, the campaign publicity shot of "Abuela Hillary" reading to children looks more like a torture chamber than a cozy grandmotherly bonding session. She seems incapable of making eye contact with her bored little subjects-in-bondage, even for crass propaganda purposes.

She reads to you before bedtime … 

Hasta La Vista, Baby!

 
 At least Obama has the sense not to call himself Tío Bendito as he rounds them up and kicks them all out while the tinsel is still fresh on the tree. He's always been more godfatherly than avuncular that way. As he schmoozed to Katie Couric during his first campaign, the sexy Marlon Brando-ish combination of "gentility and savagery" is what really turns him on, is what he really strives to emulate. He comes right out and admits that his idea of a cool family is the Mafia. This clip should help you understand what he means, exactly, when he talks about Family Values:

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Although Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley have both immediately condemned Obama's mass rub-outs deportations, Hillary has stayed mum.... grandly mum. But like Boss Obama, she has always been savagely critical of "irresponsible" desperate parents who've chosen to send their kids to El Norte in lieu of them getting raped or killed by gangs and paramilitary thugs. Those moms and dads and abuelas have to be sent a sternly worded message. Hillary even championed the imprisonment of women and children in Homeland Security "family detention centers" until Bernie Sanders  introduced a bill last summer to close them, and she was forced to don her flip-flops once again. Even then, it wasn't the refugees' freedom that she was espousing. It was their expulsion: 

 Now I think we have a different problem,” she said. “Because the emergency is over, we need to be moving to try to get people out of these detention centers, particularly the women and children. I think we need more resources to process them, to listen to their stories, to find out if they have family in this country, if they have a legitimate reason for staying. So I would be putting a lot of resources into doing that, but my position has been and remains the same.”  (send them all back.)

As a matter of fact, it was the judicially-ordered release of the detainees from these gulags earlier this year that convinced Obama that if he can't lock them up, he'll just have to kick them out. Even the ankle bracelets he fitted them out with (at their own expense, with jewelry rentals payable to the private prison industry) didn't give him the peace of mind that he so obviously craves. Aiding the poor and the persecuted apparently has limits, even for him. Especially during an election year, when corporate Democrats think they have to act as tough and monstrous as the Republicans in order to get angry white people to the polls.

 Heaven forbid that Donald Trump should steal the genteel, savagely responsible scapegoat vote away from Hillary Clinton.

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