This Just In From Hillary's Think Tank

Stop the presses! Straight to my in-box from the blog of the "progressive" Center for American Progress (founded by Clinton campaign manager and lobbyist John Podesta) were the top two click-bait teaser headlines to make your Mothers Day Weekend like, totally, rock the vote:

Hillary Clinton's faith is poised to play a big role as she turns to the general election.

And, how Secret deodorant miserably failed at explaining the wage gap.

You might think this was just another one of one of those unintentionally funny non sequiturs, but hold on a sec.

I think it signals that Donald Trump will be unable to make this cold saintly woman sweat as he lobs his barrage of sexist insults at her. It's the next chapter in the Prescribed Hillary Narrative: sucking up some anti-Trump votes from the horrified religious right, while simultaneously allowing her to outdo a deodorant brand in explaining gender wage disparities. She is doubly poised for triangulation and armpit hygiene. And she's making no secret about it. She is cool, calm, and collecting. She is confident, and so should you be.

"I'm With Her" (Ad for Poise Deodorant)

The Secret deodorant brand might have landed in the liberal refuse dump right along with her paid speeches, but Hillary Clinton is still perfectly willing to share a couple of her other personal care habits with all of you everyday ladies out there... on this very Hillary Mothers Day weekend:

"My two secrets to staying healthy: wash your hands all the time. And if you can't, use Purell or one of the hand sanitizers. And the other is hot peppers. I for some reason started doing that in 1992, and I swear by it!"

 two secrets to staying healthy: wash your hands all the time. And, if you can't, use Purell or one of the sanitizers. And the other is hot peppers. I eat a lot of hot peppers. I for some reason started doing that in 1992, and I swear by it. Hillary Clinton
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/hillarycli458809.html

My two secrets to staying healthy: wash your hands all the time. And, if you can't, use Purell or one of the sanitizers. And the other is hot peppers. I eat a lot of hot peppers. I for some reason started doing that in 1992, and I swe
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/hillarycli458809.html

Hillary might be wise to rethink at least one of her product recommendations. Overuse of hand sanitizer and constant hand-washing are not just symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, they can be a health hazard in and of themselves.

 With its high alcohol content, hand sanitizer is harmful if swallowed by the poised-for-success kids or grandkids poised to climb their ladders of opportunity. It can turn your hands into sandpaper-like husks. It speeds up the skin's absorption of the toxic BPA lurking on the surface of the plastic bottle. Anti-bacterial soap kills protective skin flora, which you need to repel fungi, viruses and harmful kinds of bacteria. It, and some hand sanitizers on the market, also contain triclosan, which can damage the endocrine system. In animal studies, this chemical additive has been shown to reduce muscle strength while amplifying testosterone levels. Given that Hillary and her minions love to tout her "muscular" foreign policy credentials, this could pose a real threat to her hawkishness down the road.

Hand sanitizer is not effective against the norovirus, which causes many "stomach flu" outbreaks.  And most importantly, the germophobia which seems to afflict Hillary (and too many other Americans) could theoretically harm those with whom she comes in physical contact. Overuse of antimicrobial products can lead to a generalized resistance to antibiotics.  And since Trump, too, is a hardcore hand sanitizer addict and germophobe, the next six months might be hazardous to our well-being in more ways than one. This campaign could well turn out to be a real MRSA-thon unless Donnie and Hill can get over their squeamishness.  The handshake part of the debates alone will be a real hurdle for them. So they'll probably stick to the usual elite politesse: air-kissing.

And as far as religion and pandering to evangelicals are concerned, Hillary should dump this whole church lady routine and put more of her faith in actual science. After all, she's a Democrat, not a Republican.

Oh, wait....
 

Obama to Flint: Drink Up and Pipe Down

President Obama finally got around to bringing the pipes to the residents of Flint, Michigan this week. His rich baritone pipes, that is - not the kind they desperately need to replace the corroded system still leaching toxic lead into the drinking water supply of thousands of families.

Did you really think that the slow genocide of an entire city full of non-rich working people would qualify as a national disaster prompting an emergency presidential declaration and the immediate presence of billions of dollars and the Army Corps of Engineers? Since there is no immediate profit to be made from lead-poisoned children, the lead-poisoned children will just have to quite literally suck it up until some tax-averse charitable corporations can partner with politicians and figure out how to leach some extra bucks for themselves out of this tragedy.

The residents of Flint will have to wait years for the expensive new pipes, Obama vowed.  Meanwhile, in a downright bizarre effort to prove that lead in human bodies is not really as bad as it's cracked up to be,  the big man himself took a couple of tentative sips of filtered Flint tap water. (Presumably after it was thoroughly refiltered, retested and deemed safe by the Secret Service, who normally supply and serve Obama's a la carte potables.)

Unlike the emergency bailout of the Wall Street bankers, unlike the rescue of the state's auto industry, there is no "fierce urgency of now" in Obama's Flint playbook. Check out the typical neoliberal buzzwords in bold:

 We are ensuring that we have a plan for the system to work over the long term; and that we are certain that our kids here in Flint are going to be able to take advantage of their talents and opportunities well into the future.

Just because kids have ingested and bathed in near-lethal levels of lead and developed behavior and learning issues and broken out in sores doesn't necessarily mean they can't eventually "live up to their potentials", he soothed. Expensive fresh fruit and vegetables can even ameliorate the effects! (He doesn't give any tips on how to actually wash your produce, however.) And sometimes all it takes is a trip to the doctor to reassure parents that a little potential brain damage is not necessarily such a bad thing. The important thing now is that parents act responsibly, use the free filters and the expanded Medicaid being so magnanimously provided for them. Meanwhile, rest assured that politicians and bureaucrats are working hard on planning to come up with a plan for maybe eventually getting some additional funds that somehow never are an issue when it comes to spending trillions on Permawar and tax loopholes for the wealthy.

It may take a year.  It may take two years.  It might take more to get all the pipes replaced.  And in the meantime, folks have to be able to use water.  So trust that the tests have been done and the filter system works. 

It's safe to drink as long as you aren't below the age of six, chronically ill or immune deficient, in which case you are royally screwed.

 Third point.  In order for us to clean out the system, to flush out the contaminants, and to have confidence that, as we fix the system, it’s actually going to be safe for all the households in Flint, we need everybody in Flint to start helping us flush out that system.  And so I guess there’s a program called Flush For Flint.  It’s not the most elegant name.  (Laughter.)  But the concept is pretty simple if you think about it, and that is we need everybody to turn on their tap in the kitchen, in the tub for five minutes a day so that the water is running and whatever contaminants are sitting in there start getting pushed out. 

You will of course still have to pay for all that wasted water. If only we could flush out the whole contaminated pathocracy while we're at it. But no dice:

 Now, I understand if people are scared and they’re not using their water, that they may wonder why is it up to me to be part of this process of fixing it.  But the bottom line is, is if you’re not doing your part, then these outstanding folks around the table who want to help can’t do theirs.

Whether it's the housing crash or chronic joblessness and income inequality caused by Wall Street greed, at least half the onus must always be placed on the victims. Whether it's CIA "patriots (who) tortured some folks", or fine family men like Paul Ryan who cut social programs, they are all simply outstanding folks. So if you're not part of the public relations solution, you're part of the problem, proles! You have to have some skin in their rigged game.

 And what I’m encouraged by is I think a recognition at every level of government that we have to take what has been a crisis and see if we can turn this into an opportunity to rebuild Flint even better than before.

It's the dogma of creative destruction. Rich people view poor people as investment opportunities. The poor are reliable sources of profit, be it by forcing them to take out payday loans to meet their water bills, raising their rents, penalizing them unless they buy worthless junk health insurance, punishing them within the private prison system, using them as killing machines for profitable wars, experimenting with them in privatized schools, taking a cut from their food stamp balance every time they buy a gallon of milk, ad infinitum. The possibilities and the profits are truly endless. Flint is just one more opportunity for disaster capitalism to helicopter down and pounce once the pouncing is good.

I’m confident that we can do that if we’re all working together.  And I emphasized to the governor and I emphasized to the mayor that my job here today is not to sort through all the ins and outs of how we got to where we are, but rather to make sure that all of us are focused on what we need to do moving forward on behalf of the children of Flint.  That’s my priority.  And that’s got to be all of our priorities.

As per usual, there will be no accountability for the wealthy criminal class. Every man-made crisis must have either benevolence or ignorance at its core. Therefore, Governor Rick Snyder and the other officials who knew that the Flint water was contaminated for years and did nothing about it, will not be blamed and definitely not be prosecuted if Obama has his druthers. As he vowed at the beginning of his reign regarding the Bush-Cheney war crimes, his job is to look forward and not backward. The powerful must always protect their own kind and their own class, regardless of party affiliation.

 Last point. I think people are understandably scared when they hear that their child may have ingested some lead, it may have gotten into their system, and that that may have some long-term impacts or create particular challenges for kids.  But it is really important for all of us to remember that kids are resilient.  And every kid in Flint is special, and has capacity, and can do great things.  And the fact that they may have had some drinking water that was contaminated doesn’t automatically mean somehow that they’re going to have huge problems or that they’re not going to be able to reach that potential.

The glass is always half full of lead-tainted water. They don't call it Special Ed for nothing, after all. I'm just surprised that he didn't also nominate lead as an essential mineral. But wait, the best is yet to come:

When I was five or six or seven, a lot of homes still had lead paint in it. (sic)  I might have ingested some lead paint when I was two or three years old, because at the time, people didn’t know it.  So we’ve got an entire couple of generations of Americans who have done really we despite the fact that they may have had something that is not optimal.  And how lead interacts with any particular child is going to be different, and what each child needs is going to be different.  And some kids are going to be fine, and they’re not going to be affected.  Some kids may have more of an -- it might have more of an effect.  

He "might have " snacked on lead paint chips as a child, but look how awesomely well he turned out. Putting aside the utter sneering cynicism of that statement, let's take him at his word. Could his decision to drone to death hundreds and maybe even thousands of people residing on his presidential Kill List be a result of subtle organic brain disease that's left his IQ intact? Could his serial lying about corporate coups known as trade deals stem from a lead-based, neurological deficit in the areas of the brain which house aggressive impulse control and a moral compass?

Of course, the pathology does not belong to him alone. It's rampant throughout the media-political corporatocracy. It has been a long tradition of neoliberalism that the more abnormal the situation, the more vigorously the market-based thought collective will seek to normalize it. People can have their life-sustaining water poisoned due to the criminal neglect of their leaders, and then be urged to simply accept the band-aids of a little free medical coverage and a temporary filter for their faucets while their leaders stay wealthy and free and powerful.  If "folks" expect anything more, like emergency declarations and new pipes before next year, then they are harboring utopian delusions. They are letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.

Generally I don’t do stunts, but here you go.  (Takes a sip of water.)  Now, this had a filter on it.

 I reckon it's like those safe filtered cigarettes that the Marlboro Man who died of lung cancer used to advertise on TV.  But hey, if you only take one puff or one sip over the course of your entire lifetime, you most likely will indeed live long enough to reach your full, post-presidential potential. Ka-ching!

Meanwhile, even the Democratic mayor of Flint is not buying Obama's bullshit. Karen Weaver says the cheap filters are simply not working at all in many of the homes receiving the still highly contaminated water.

  But to hear the Neoliberal Thought Collective tell it, the only thing we have to fear is Donald Trump himself. The guy for whom scapegoating was a winning proposition is now the Scapegoat Du Jour. The whole world is apparently terrified of a Trump presidency. I imagine that his xenophobic Kill List would be even scarier than Obama's xenophobic Kill List. It would definitely be more sexist. 

Even neocon candidate Hillary Clinton is concerned enough to go email-trolling for donors to her brand new Stop Trump Fund.

 Dig that horror film devil-horned zombie hand coming out of the grave to grab you and bite you and turn you into another zombie!

Be afraid. Send Hillary a buck as she gathers together her own horde of Bush-Cheney neocons to fight the zombie menace. Then go guzzle some nice filtered water. 

Pathocracy: It's Even Worse Than We Thought

Despite the highly touted success of the Paris Climate Agreement,  corporate and government leaders have secretly colluded to all but ignore its already rather tepid recommendations. The planet will be permitted to burn as the plutocrats burn through all its extracted wealth. The capitalistic cancer will consume the host, with no cares or worries that it, too, will inevitably die right along with the host. 

The massive fire in the oil sands town of Fort McMurray, Alberta prompting the evacuation of some 80,000 people, is only the latest metastasis.

Thanks to a leak by Greenpeace International, a proposed transatlantic "trade" deal (TTIP) between the European Union and the United States reveals the full ugly extent of just one of the corporate coups now under discussion by the global ruling class racketeers.

Because of the leak of these secret documents, the people's dissent against getting hurt, burned out, evicted, or even killed in the name of endless profits for a select few billionaires can only grow stronger. The leak reveals the full extent by which United States intends to complete the client state status of the entire European continent. "The way is being cleared for a race to the bottom in environment, consumer protection and public health standards", warns Jorge Riss, director of Greenpeace EU.

The proposed TTIP agreement essentially allows the US to veto any regulations by European countries that would protect citizens' rights over those of corporations. Before the EU partners can even propose a new regulation, they would have to submit to a vetting process by the United States.

 And then there are the odious, extra-national corporate courts which would have final say over any disputes. If a country persists, for example, in banning cosmetic firms from testing their products on animals, the firms would be able to extract monetary damages from the citizenry for failure to comply with animal abuse in the name of endless profits. If Europe continues its ban on genetically modified foods, companies would quite literally be allowed to yank the food from  the mouths of babes in retribution.

Four aspects of the attempted multinational coup are of particular concern, says Greenpeace:

1.The longstanding environmental protections enshrined in the 70-year GATT agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) appear to have been totally dropped, putting profits over the lives of humans, animals and plants. The Paris Climate Agreement is rendered a moot public relations exercise.

2. Not only do the leaked texts contain nothing about climate protection, among the proposals is a clause deregulating the importation of fossil fuels, even such polluting fuels as tar sands oil. This importation has actually already been approved, even as the Paris Climate Agreement was being inked. Pipelines for the transport of highly flammable fracked North Dakota oil have already been constructed. The oil is bound for Europe. When those "I'm an energy voter!" TV ads talk about energy independence, they don't mean that fossil fuels will be stockpiled in the US for future use. They mean that Exxon-Mobil will grow richer as it exports its toxic product to the far corners of the world. 

3. Rather than accept the current bans on the use of hazardous substances in Europe, the United States wants its partners to be more careful about using them. It simply calls for better "management" of such things as inserting potentially harmful growth hormone into food products. The typical neoliberal weasel wording of "benefits outweighing risks" is rife throughout the leaked document.

4. The  documents make it clear that the world is wide open for continuing capitalistic predation. Big business will get its way and be allowed to intervene in even the earliest stages of any regulatory legislation by any sovereign nation. The leaked papers confirm that such multinationals as Monsanto and Coca Cola and Nestle have all been given seats at the table, while the general public has been excluded from the process. As a matter of fact, some details of the corporate coup have been designated to remain top-secret for the next 30 years.  The pathocrats know their takeover will not be popular. They have already threatened to criminally prosecute the leakers of their diabolical texts.

Since some European leaders had already started to waver (because of public protests) in their support of the deal even before Monday's leak,President Barack Obama personally interceded on behalf of the corporate interest he represents. As War on Want's John Hilary writes, his trip to the continent last week was made, in large part, to cajole his counterparts into doing right by the plutocrats. He was greeted by street protesters in Germany, where public approval for the trade pact had plummeted to 17% -- before the leak.

"Oh, merde", you might imagine Obama muttering. "Après moi le Greenpeace déluge. And just when I was revving up my self-burnishing Legacy Tour into third (way) gear!"

But guess what? There are no worries here in the Land of the Free, where the sycophantic press are still raving over Obama's weekend standup routine at the White House Correspondents' annual orgy. Judging from the laughter, it was even better than the time he joked about attacking his daughters' potential suitors with predator drones. It was even more hilarious than the time Bush pretended to look for WMDs under his desk.

And talk about his exquisite timing. Less than two days later, Obama published a truly hysterical op-ed in the Washington Post, joking about that that other corporate coup known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The latest scuttlebut has it coming up for congressional ratification after the November election, when all the players can wash their hands of any accountability. The lame duck session is the truncated, but very rewarding, political version of the gap year. It's that special time when all manner of crap can be tossed at the public without pressure or fear of consequences. They're all spinning madly in the revolving doors between public service and cashing in, or between cashing in and public service.

Meanwhile, I'm so weak from laughing over Obama's op-ed that I can't even stand to parse the whole thing. But here are a few nuggets of comedy gold straight from the glib pen of the Pathocrat-in-Chief, as dictated by his corporate masters. (parentheses are simply my interpretations of his free-floating dialogue)

Today, some of our greatest economic opportunities abroad are in the Asia-Pacific region, which is on its way to becoming the most populous and lucrative market on the planet. Increasing trade in this area of the world would be a boon to American businesses and American workers, and it would give us a leg up on our economic competitors, including one we hear a lot about on the campaign trail these days: China.

(The world is nothing but a plunderful market opportunity for billionaires. Never mind that Democrats and Republicans alike are worried that Trump's trash-talking of China is supposedly endangering America's stellar reputation abroad.  Obama can trash-talk China even better, and in complete, cogent sentences to boot. He can diss Chinese wage slaves in favor of American wage slaves and still not be called out on his own classism and xenophobia. He's got the rhetoric, baby!)

This past week, China and 15 other nations met in Australia with a goal of getting their deal, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, done before the end of this year. That trade deal won’t prevent unfair competition among government-subsidized, state-owned enterprises. It won’t protect a free and open Internet. Nor will it respect intellectual property rights in a way that ensures America’s creators, artists, filmmakers and entrepreneurs get their due. And it certainly won’t enforce high standards for our workers and our environment.

(He will protect his ultra-wealthy Hollywood and Silicon Valley donors at all costs. And he will hilariously complain that China isn't enforcing the high standards for labor and environment at the same time he's making damned sure that Europe's own high humanitarian standards for labor and the environment will be crushed into corporate dust through his efforts.)

 Simply put, once the TPP is in place, American businesses will export more of what they make. And that means supporting more higher-paying jobs.

(Simply put, American businesses will export more of what they make... in low-wage countries. As in the Nike sneakers that they hope to make in 40 cents-an-hour Vietnam. That will support more high pay for the CEOs who already rake in about 350 times the salary of the average American worker.)

This agreement also strengthens America’s national security. When fewer people suffer in poverty, when our trading partners flourish and when we bind our economy closer to others in a strategically important region, America is both stronger and safer.

(Obama here displays his full allegiance to the discredited, but still popular, Reagan Revolution, a/k/a the Neoliberal Thought Collective. If corporations are allowed to become bloated to bursting, some of that offal will trickle downhill to the impoverished, rather than being "bound" up like a bad case of constipation. This will make the plutocracy even more nationally secure and comfortable than it already is. America is the plunderer that will bind its almighty power to the still untapped and appetizingly exploitable regions of the world.)

 I understand the skepticism people have about trade agreements, particularly in communities where the effects of automation and globalization have hit workers and families the hardest. But building walls to isolate ourselves from the global economy would only isolate us from the incredible opportunities it provides. Instead, America should write the rules. America should call the shots. Other countries should play by the rules that America and our partners set, and not the other way around.

 (You're screwed, proles. Obama speaks the unbelievable truth when he touts the "incredible opportunities" that all those lost, off-shored jobs will provide to the obscenely wealthy, who just can't ever get enough. They set the rules for the whole miserable world. If that makes you skeptical, says Obama, then tough shit. America has to be meaner than China. America has to be a winner, just as the affable Obama is a winner.)

 The ruling class racketeers and the pundits are still trying to wrap their heads around the sudden electoral success of nastiness, as personified by Donald Trump. Historically, the bought-and-paid for politicians have managed to keep their own pathocratic tendencies very well hidden beneath their jovial grins and folksy speeches. It's the only way to keep the mob under control. It's the only way to keep the people laughing instead of weeping... or demonstrating on the streets.

Donald Trump is now emerging as the exception to that rule. He's figured out that misery and anger love company. He's co-opting a good chunk of the mob through the old fascist ploy of dividing them in hopes of conquering them.

Hillary Clinton doesn't appear to have figured anything out yet. But it's early days. Give her time. She's only been a major power player for about 35 years.

Obama's Bruised Ego Trip

Barack Obama actually seems to be jealous of Bernie Sanders. What cool, suave president wouldn't feel a bit miffed when his rock star status is suddenly usurped by a democratic socialist senator two decades his senior?  No matter that Obama's corporate party has now apparently successfully quashed the Sanders candidacy in order for the Clinton succession to proceed apace. Barack Obama is acting like a sore winner.

It started with a New York Times magazine puff piece of a vehicle through which Obama expresses his disappointment with all the ungrateful folks out there in America who are not sufficiently appreciative of the booming economy he has wrought. And that ingratitude, he says, is not the fault of any of his craptastic policies rewarding Wall Street and punishing Main Street. He magnanimously theorizes that the ingratitude is the result of his team's insufficient bragging in the wake of each and every one of their miraculous  accomplishments. He didn't toot his own horn loudly enough. Misplaced modesty was his enemy, even with the establishment of his own in-house marketing and propaganda shop.

Presidential Style: The Legacy Tour Collection

 
“We were moving so fast early on that we couldn’t take victory laps. We couldn’t explain everything we were doing. I mean, one day we’re saving the banks; the next day we’re saving the auto industry; the next day we’re trying to see whether we can have some impact on the housing market," he whined to Wall Street pitchman Andrew Ross Sorkin -- who made sure to tell us in the opening paragraphs that he got a coveted ride on Air Force One and several Oval Office invites in exchange for the favorable myth-making. Even more dramatically West-Wingish was the revelation that  the Secret Service was pissed off because  the blooming Obama-Sorkin bromance was interfering with the official schedule.

Jogging Our Memories: Tales of a Lonely Lapper

Obama -- described by Sorkin as "justifiably exasperated" by the vast public ignorance of his awesomeness -- brought down the deficit, fer cryin out loud! The unemployment rate went down with the creation of millions of new low-wage, part-time, temporary service sector jobs. He appointed the Cat Food Commission to make it appear that the rich would "share the sacrifice" with the poor. He gave us nationalized Romneycare, leading to some medical coverage for a small but ethically digestible number of  previously uninsured people.

The Times piece is only the opening salvo in the endless Obama Legacy Tour. The president has been actively lobbying friendly reporters to help him put himself back on center stage, from which he has been unceremoniously nudged stage-right by the presidential horse race. Still, it will be hard for the sloppy seconds to outdo Sorkin, whose journalistic prowess is so majestic that he actually broke through the Obama blood-brain barrier like a mind-reading shunt.

 Obama is animated by a sense that, looking at the world around him, the U.S. economy is in much better shape than the public appreciates, especially when measured against the depths of the financial crisis and the possibility — now rarely even considered — that things could have been much, much worse.

So pay no attention to your own senses. If an "animated" Obama senses from afar that your life is better than you think it is, then it naturally follows that you are naught but an inconsiderate inanimate object. Or, as Obama put it to Sorkin, we are "disoriented." And since we don't know our asses from a hole in the wall, it is perhaps understandable that we fail to sufficiently appreciate his "delicate balancing act."

Obama also took the obligatory jab at Bernie Sanders, whom he accused of speaking of the economy as though it were a mere "abstraction." Although the Sanders plan has only been to break up the largest banks, which own dangerously consolidated assets larger than the GDPs of most countries, Obama falsely accused him of wanting to destroy the entire economy.

“But there is no doubt that the financial system is substantially more stable,” he said. “It is true that we have not dismantled the financial system, and in that sense, Bernie Sanders’s critique is correct” — a reference to the Vermont senator and presidential aspirant who regularly calls to break up America’s biggest banks. “But one of the things that I’ve consistently tried to remind myself during the course of my presidency is that the economy is not an abstraction. It’s not something that you can just redesign and break up and put back together again without consequences.”

Then again, if you admit that our "economy" has been stealthily replaced by a plutonomy serving the interests only of the very wealthiest, Obama was probably right in acknowledging that Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and the rapacious global corporate and military plunder they enable are just about all that's propping Exceptional America up these days. There would be consequences of a breakup, which after a little initial upheaval, would probably result in a more equitable democratic system. 

Meanwhile, Obama is trying to win back some of the youth vote usurped by Sanders. The most secretive administration in history, led by a president who has been described by James Risen as "the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation," suddenly reached out this week to a group of student journalists visiting the White House.

But rather than urging them to afflict the comfortable and demand accountability from government officials, he admonished them to tell their peers to simply vote for more politicians like him (and presumably, Hillary.)

Times White House correspondent Julie Hirschfeld Davis was dutifully awed by and envious of Obama's awesome engaging with mere student reporters, given that the professional press corps are so into "access" and given that they are so rarely given it.

So Davis stuck with the stenographic semantic playbook of the Legacy Tour:

But it was a student who asked about how to restore Americans’ faith in democracy who provoked the most animated (h/t Andrew Ross Sorkin) response from the president, a former community organizer who campaigned on “hope and change” and has recently lamented his inability to change politics for the better.

After a long discourse on what is broken in politics — gerrymandered districts, a flood of undisclosed campaign contributions and negative advertisements — Mr. Obama cited the low turnout numbers in American elections, especially by young people.

“You can’t just complain; you’ve got to vote,” Mr. Obama said. “Don’t let people tell you that what you do doesn’t matter. Don’t give away your power.

Obama ignored the huge, record turnouts at the polls by young Bernie Sanders supporters, both at his campaign rallies and at independent-friendly caucuses and primaries. So I assume that the president's subliminal message to his audience is to resist joining the Bernie Or Bust campaign, or heaven forfend, aid a resurgence of the Occupy movement which was the fuel for the Bernie phenomenon in the first place. Obama wouldn't want to have to call out the troops again so late in his career. It took forever to purge those pepper-spraying cop pics from the Internet.

Don't complain, don't agitate, don't speak out, don't investigate. Just use all your power sparingly: vote. Preferably for Hillary Clinton. And who knows? Maybe a few of you lucky budding journalists will even get the chance to be embedded in one of her inevitable wars. 

Stuff is All Clumped Up and Stuff

With most modern candidates for high office protecting and serving the interests of the plutocrats regardless of their party, it can become a real challenge for the mainstream media to detect even an inch of ideological space between them.  In the last yawn of a presidential campaign, for example, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama were in basic agreement about Social Security (tweak it) and foreign policy. (war, terror, yay!). Romney had a particularly hard time disowning himself from the Affordable Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare, a/k/a Romneycare. Readers might remember that I called that particular team event "Rombama" while others opted for the more whimsical "Obamney."

This year, though, the ideological gap between the two front-runners is actually rather huge. Donald Trump hates women and trade deals. Hillary Clinton loves herself and trade deals. She's even devised a new campaign slogan to prove it: Love Trumps Hate. It's a perfect addition to her other slogan, Fighting for You (FFY, or Double F You).

But they do have three very important traits in common, joining them at head, (degenerating) hip, and tax shelter: Class, Wealth, and Corporate Status. Clinton and Trump may be immense existential liabilities to we the people, but to themselves and their heirs, they are merely limited liability companies.

Clinton + Trump = Clump.

In the interest of bipartisan civility and decorum, Donny and Hill really should consider holding their very first corporate-sponsored debate at 1209 Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware. The event could be hyped by the media as sort of a sentimental homecoming for each of them. It would be an extended family reunion, with the long-lost relatives personified in the form of millions of dollars in hidden assets. In between pretend-sniping at one another before a national audience, they can take breaks to spend more family time with their lonely money. Donny can fondle fellow racist Andrew Jackson on clumps of twenties, while Hillary coddles newly cool banker-hipster Alexander Hamilton as she dreams her feminist dreams of Harriet Tubman eventually trumping Jackson and breaking the money ceiling. (But not advancing the dream as far as repealing the welfare reform that dumped millions of women into outright poverty, or goddess forbid, using some of the Harriet Tubman twenties for reparations to descendants of the enslaved.)
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Orange Street is kind of a dump of a building right now. But just think about how all that dark money unleashed by Citizens United could transform this money pit every bit as effectively as it has transformed our representative democracy into an oligarchy. If we must be mere spectators at this quadrennial event, we might as well be dazzled by the spectacle.

I can picture it now: After the elite invitees listen to a pop diva singing the National Anthem and they pledge allegiance to the flag, they will all bow their heads in solemn remembrance of Queen of Mean, Leona Helmsley, who famously observed that "Only the little people pay taxes." 

  It can be a true family affair, because it turns out that the same corporate persons funding the elections and the debates have also parked their money at the Orange Street Foster Home for Excess Cash. Although it might seem impossible to you that Walmart, Apple, American Airlines, and 285,000 other rich entities could possibly share one cramped dump for all their untaxed billions, we have to remember that this is all about trust: the Corporate Trust Center, to be more precise. You gotta believe!

As reported by The Guardian last week:

Being registered in Delaware lets companies take advantage of strict corporate secrecy rules, business-friendly courts, and the "Delaware Loophole" which can allow companies to legally shift earnings from other states to Delaware, where they are not taxed on non-physical incomes generated outside the state.

See? All that cash can get clumped into one tiny dump because it is not really physical. Tiny Delaware is actually one of the biggest tax avoidance and tax evasion dumps on the entire planet. It's estimated to shelter about $9 billion in untaxed corporate revenue.

The Clump candidates have not explained why they are hiding their cash in Delaware.

Clinton, who has repeatedly promised that as president she will crack down on “outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting in Panama and elsewhere”, collected more than $16m in public speaking fees and book royalties in 2014 through the doors of 1209, according to the Clintons’ tax returns.

Just eight days after stepping down as secretary of state in February 2013, Clinton registered ZFS Holdings LLC at CTC’s offices. Bill Clinton set up WJC LLC, a vehicle to collect his consultation fees, at the same address in 2008.

A spokesman for Clinton said: “ZFS was set up when Secretary Clinton left the State Department as an entity to manage her book and speaking income. No federal, state, or local taxes were saved by the Clintons as a result of this structure.”

The Clintons’ companies share the office with several of Trump’s companies. They include Trump International Management Corp and several companies that form part of Hudson Waterfront Associates, a Trump partnership to develop more than $1bn worth of luxury condos on the west side of Manhattan.

Of course, this makes Hillary the much lesser Clump evil, since Donny has stashed nearly 400 of his "entities" into the Orange Street building. So, while Clinton weasel-words her way out of her hypocrisy by saying that she didn't actually "save" taxes (as opposed to spending her excess profits for taxes) Trump brags about his business acumen. He's doing Delaware a favor. "I pay you a lot of money, folks. I don't feel at all guilty, OK?"

Ironically, the Guardian Media Group publishing this big scoop also has "holdings" stashed away in Delaware.

It's a wonder that the plutocrats can even breathe in such a cramped, clumped atmosphere. The lack of oxygen might be one explanation for the dismal lockstep political coverage this year. The inbreeding of the media-political complex has resulted in the live birth of an intellectually sterile and deformed clump of sponsored content and click-bait coverage.

No Longer Feeling the Bern

Unless we all join together in a new anti-war movement and demand an end to global American aggression, there can be no political revolution and no real improvement in our lives here at home. 

In a televised town hall appearance last night on MSNBC, self-described Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders doubled down on both his support for President Obama's drone assassination program and for the U.S.'s  continued military escalations in the Middle East. Sanders called the presidential "kill list" perfectly legal, constitutional and necessary. He gave his stamp of approval to Obama's pivot from "no American boots on the ground" in Syria to ordering an additional 250 pairs of them to aid and abet Al Qaeda-linked "rebels" in the fight against ISIS.

Asked by Chris Hayes if he would continue Obama's drone strikes, which to date have killed thousands of innocent civilians ("collateral damage"), Sanders replied: "Look. Terrorism is a very serious issue. There are people out there who want to kill Americans, who want to attack this country, and I think we have a lot of right to defend ourselves."

 He added that as long as the extra-judicial executions ordered by politicians and bureaucrats are done in the current "legal, constitutional way" -- as defined by a couple of government lawyers-for-hire --he sees no problem with it.

Regarding this week's new deployment of hundreds more Special Ops troops to Syria, Sanders toed the company line to a fault. These human killing machines are merely acting as "advisers" to "Muslim troops," he insisted.

Sanders also supports the continued, open-ended deployment of 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. He was not asked about, nor did he address, the White House whitewash of the terroristic American bombing of a charity hospital last fall in Kunduz, resulting in the deaths of nearly 50 medical professionals and patients.

Nor did he speak out against the horrific new "rules of engagement" (secretly in effect since last fall) which allow for more civilian casualties in the air wars on Syria and Iraq and wherever else in the world a bomb falls. The Pentagon has quietly revised its standards for how many children can be ethically obliterated in the name of American exceptionalism.

USA Today reports that the generals have devised a handy little sliding scale with which to absolve themselves of any personal responsibility when they decide to bomb people to smithereens. Human beings in war zones are even ascribed a numerical value: "A strike with the potential to wound or  kill several civilians would be permitted if it prevented ISIL fighters from causing further harm."

The newspaper quotes one general celebrating the Obama administration's belated public pivot to hawkishness, likening it to Lyndon Johnson's no holds barred bombing offensives in Vietnam -- where those special advisers also initially only "helped" the South Vietnamese as the "best and the brightest" mission-crept their way into a bloodbath of epic proportions.

So, Bernie Sanders going on TV and spouting the same old platitudes in order to help us to overcome our "sickly inhibitions" about the latest unfettered war is the last straw for me. I am feeling something, all right. I feel like I've been burned. My feelings, of course, are nothing compared to what millions of people "over there" are experiencing as their homes and their bodies get burned to crisps by our leaders' bombs and drones.

As the great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh remarked the other day about the de facto American invasion of Syria, "Nobody ever seems to object too much when we put more people on the ground."

And sadly, that also appears to be the case with Bernie Sanders.  Now that he has virtually no chance of winning the Democratic nomination, he could have seized the moment last night to condemn war instead of embracing it. I'd been willing to pragmatically give him a bit of a pass on his historic lack of pacifism, in hopes that he might be elected and then pressured to ease out of the bellicose mindset. No more.

So enough with the hand-wringing over Hillary the Hawk and Ted Cruz's dastardly desire to carpet-bomb Syrians to death. President Peace Prize is already doing just fine in that department, and even the Empress-in-Waiting's Democratic primary challenger is effectively helping to grease the skids for her seamless transition to power. She'll just be the latest salesperson for Permawar. She'll just be a little more vocal than her smarmy male cohort in her unabashed enjoyment of it.

The invasion of Libya is probably just an election away. Obama, employing his usual lawyerly parsing, doesn't think such a move is necessary right at the moment, since it might send "the wrong signal" to that country's officials and citizens. He apparently doesn't believe that millions of refugees and hundreds of drowned children are not already enough of a signal.  

And as Trevor Timm writes in The Guardian, 

Libya is now engulfed in chaos and the number of Isis members is skyrocketing, largely thanks to the US and allies bombing the country and overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi five years ago. There are already drones flying over the country and special forces have already been in and out in the past year to conduct special forces missions. You can picture administration members soon arguing: we must invade the country to save it from the last time we bombed it."

Bernie Sanders will not be mounting any third party challenge, he says, because he doesn't want to end up like Ralph Nader. To me, there are worse things than ending up like Ralph Nader. What's worse is being complicit in mass killing.

And anyhow, Ralph Nader ending up like Ralph Nader continues to be a very good thing. He's spearheading (h/t "annenigma") what he calls an "historic civic mobilization" beginning with a four-day strategy session to be held next month at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Participants will receive professional training in how to effect revolution from the ground up, in their own communities.

The third day (May 25) of the Breaking Through Power convention will be exclusively dedicated "to the enhancing of peace over the waging of war."

"Revitalizing the people to assert their sovereignty under our Constitution is critical to the kind of government, economy, environment and culture that will fulfill human potential and respect posterity," Nader says. "The participating citizens will be asked to support the creation of several new organizations. One will be a Secretariat to facilitate action to stop illegal wars and their quagmires (e.g. the wars on Iraq and Libya and their brutal aftermaths)" by some of the same retired military and diplomatic officials and other activists who so stridently protested during the Bush administration before dissent was quieted in the belief and hope that peace would finally be given a chance under the Obama administration. 

I'm feeling the Ralph.

Equivocation You Can Believe In

You may have heard that while our lame duck president has been abroad wining, dining, golfing and making trade and weapons deals with kings, queens and oligarchs, he also took the time to chide the Black Lives Matter movement here at home. Young people having the audacity to show up at campaign fundraisers and rallies to call out the Clintons for their racist rhetoric and the mass incarceration rates they spawned through their crime bill should "stop yelling," admonished Barack Obama.

 No matter that the current president happened to be speaking at a town hall for young Britons, and that he was fresh off a round of golf with the same prime minister who's just been exposed for hoarding a vast portion of his inherited wealth in a tax-free shell company in Panama. There is never an inappropriate time or place when one of the most powerful men in the world gets a hankering to deliver sanctimony to the world's oppressed.

On this side of the pond, American protesters have gotten into shouting matches with both Bill and Hillary Clinton at their campaign events. Over in the U.K, meanwhile, British protesters have been out in the streets, calling for the resignation of David Cameron over the Panama Papers scandal.

Thus did Obama issue his subliminal warning to a whole swath of the transatlantic proletariat: Leave the poor plutocrats alone!

"You can't just keep yelling at them (the Clintons and by implicit extension given the venue, Cameron) and you can't refuse to meet because that might compromise the purity of your position," Obama lectured from high atop his pedestal.

There's that word again: purity. It's that straw-man quality of the left that neoliberals find so peculiarly odious. If you have the audacity to demand that the criminal justice system stop abusing and killing and unfairly imprisoning you and your loved ones right now, this very minute, then you are being unreasonably pure. The ongoing threat to your bodies should not be viewed as an existential emergency or as state terrorism run amok. It should be viewed as just another academic topic for polite discussion with your betters.  If you have the gall to loudly demand swift justice and basic human rights, then you are simply being annoying. And just as bad as that annoying purity, Obama went on, is the  cynicism. Aren't you getting the message that the wage-suppressing, job-destroying free trade deals masking global corporate coups are cause for celebration?

Since the recent police killings of unarmed black people in Ferguson, Baltimore, Staten Island and elsewhere, Obama has appointed various task forces to study the "issue." He's even invited some BLM activists to the White House for co-optive photo ops. Having been given a temporary "seat at the table," they should have been properly grateful.

 Over in Chicago, site of Obama's future billion-dollar shrine to himself, neoliberal pal Mayor Rahm Emanuel has bared his own pathological pragmatism by refusing to resign after covering up the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager. He is most recently showing how open he is to compromise by also ignoring the recommendations contained in a scathing report which proves that the Chicago Police Department is, indeed, institutionally racist.

The mayor is taking the initiative to eventually start making some of the changes to prevent further police murders, eventually:

CITY’S PLAN Eddie Johnson, the new police superintendent, has held “bridge meetings” with residents in recent days and has pledged to continue those. The Chicago police have also started using “restorative justice” to connect officers with young people of different cultures to discuss race, bias and other issues. “Trust is at the heart of good policing, safe communities, and is the central challenge facing Chicago today,” Mr. Johnson said in the mayor’s statement. “These reforms are a down payment on restoring that trust.”

Meanwhile, over at his Saturday event in London, Obama called for young people  protesting at the Clintons' campaign events, and marching against systemic racism, to "be more open" to compromising with their political leaders, even when their trust ratings are in the tank. He was specifically referring to activists who complained about Hillary Clinton's characterization of black youths as "super predators who must be brought to heel" during passage of the 90s-era crime bill, which has had the effect of incarcerating minority citizens in higher numbers than there were slaves in the mid-19th century.  Michelle Alexander has famously dubbed this practice of imprisoning people for relatively minor offenses The New Jim Crow: a modern variation of actual slavery. 


Jim Crow and mass incarceration are "problems" rather than outrages calling for mass outrage, according to Obama: “Too often what I see is wonderful activism that highlights a problem but then people feel so passionately and are so invested in the purity of their position that they never take that next step and say, ‘How do I sit down and try to actually get something done," he said while standing up and waving his finger, the better to be seen and heard all the way across the wide Atlantic.

Obama did what the rich and powerful always do whenever victims of injustice call them to account. They turn around and make themselves out to be the long-suffering victims. The president declared himself ever so sorely miffed at the "harsh tone" of the activists.

During the years of slavery in the United States, the rich and powerful had also urged patience and compromise from those impatient "purists" demanding an immediate end to the ownership of humans by other humans. The abolition movement was also chided for being too rude and too demanding. Even President Lincoln was initially an advocate for incremental change, gradual freedom for the enslaved... until the Purists convinced him otherwise

William Lloyd Garrison, the firebrand founder of the anti-slavery Liberator newspaper, at first went along with the slow and steady advice of political leaders. But in his opening editorial, he apologized for his previous equivocation:

"I unreflectingly assented to the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly ask pardon of my God, my country, and my brethren the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice and absurdity....

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice."

Barack Obama: You can't just keep yelling at them!

W. L Garrison: On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen - but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.

Obama: People.... are so invested in the purity of their position that they never take that next step... and sit down.

Garrison: I am in earnest - I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch - AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.

Guess what?  Garrison and the abolition movement stuck a fork in the apathy and they did make the slave-owning plutocrats topple from their pedestals. Lincoln eventually issued his Emancipation Proclamation, but it was the enslaved who effectively freed themselves.

People have always had the power. Now, as then, they are refusing to just sit down, shut up, and wait.