The Times of Hillary Clinton

After the economy crashed in 2008, Wall Street got bailed out by Main Street. And the New York Times got bailed out by Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men.

Thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the corporate coup orchestrated and signed into existence by the Clinton administration, Slim had been able to corner the market on Central America's and much of South America's cell phone industry and extract billions of dollars from the Mexican people, whose lives and livelihoods have been irreparably damaged or even destroyed by NAFTA.

When Wall Street later crashed and burned as a direct result of the deregulation frenzy that reached its zenith during the Clinton-Bush years, The Times was very much part of the collateral damage. Management watched helplessly as its ad revenue poured down the tubes at a horrific rate.

 And then lo and behold: NAFTA beneficiary and world-class oligarch Carlos Slim swooped across the Rio Grande just in time, with a multimillion-dollar loan package designed to keep the Gray Lady in the style to which she had been accustomed.

A year ago, Slim doubled his holdings at the New York Times company, becoming its largest shareholder. His total stake in the Gray Lady is now valued at more than a third of a billion dollars.

 So why shouldn't the Times shill for Hillary Clinton? After all, were it not for a special clause in NAFTA expressly greasing the skids for his crony capitalist seizure of the entire Latin American telecom industry,Times Sugar Daddy Carlos Slim never could have vied with Bill Gates for the title of the richest man on the planet.

For the trickle-down NAFTA beneficiary New York Times to endorse Hillary Clinton before the first primary vote had even been cast, assigning a full-time political beat reporter to her before she even announced her run, are very small prices for the newspaper to pay for a lifesaving cash infusion of a third of a billion dollars -- and counting. The fact that the Times occasionally runs critical pieces on Clintonoid financial chicanery and war crimes is similarly a small price for Hillary to pay for the privilege of her coronation. After all, the Clintons have thrived off their self-imposed victimhood for many decades. That "vast, right wing conspiracy" has paradoxically worked as a protective shield for them all these years. It has also acted as a magnet, attracting liberal supporters who might otherwise  have found their behavior reprehensible.

The Times can, for example, run a scathing piece on how Hillary ruined Libya and then boast about how  balanced their coverage is. Hillary's operatives, for their part, can kvetch about the "unfair" Times coverage about her family charity/slush fund and rake in even more sympathetic dollars from the billionaire donor class and sympathetic votes from the Democratic veal pen. 

To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, even on her worst day Hillary doesn't seem as bad as the Republican nihilists on their best day.

Carlos Slim, meantime, is not only sinking his ill-gotten gains into the New York Times, he is funneling millions of dollars into the Clinton Foundation. Even as Hillary was starting her presidential bid in 2014, she traveled to Mexico for a  buckfest with one of her favorite oligarchs. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another presidential wannabe before defecting to the Born-Again Trumpians, joined the gluttony to make it a truly attractive threesome.  (As a non-U.S. American, Slim is not allowed to personally contribute to U.S. political campaigns, but the dark money enabled by Citizens United has taken care of that little roadblock very nicely indeed.)

The Empress and the Oligarch

 
Of course, there's been that minor glitch from the Left named Bernie Sanders and his populist uprising. That he has made criticism of NAFTA, the TPP, and other trade deals a centerpiece of his candidacy really must have ticked those Times people off.  If, as odious Times columnist Paul Krugman suggests, the "demagogic" Sanders were to tear up NAFTA upon his election to the presidency, global chaos would ensue. In other words, Carlos Slim might lose a few bucks. His telecom monopoly might even be in danger of a permanent break-up. The continued cash flow into Times Square might dwindle down to a dangerous trickle.

At the very least, thanks to the Sanders campaign, the global plutocracy and its inhumane job-destroying free trade deals have come under some rare scrutiny.

You see, we weren't supposed to notice that what Krugman once called the "beautiful thing" of NAFTA is actually a version of the shock doctrine. 

It created a serious crisis, and the serious people of the Neoliberal Thought Collective didn't let it go to waste.

Crises were created, farmers fled their lands, factories were shuttered, too-big-to-fail/jail banks extracted their due, and only the little people on both sides of the border have suffered.

 We weren't supposed to find out that the "externalities" of NAFTA cited by Krugman and other neoliberal economists-for-hire  are actually human beings who lost their homes, jobs and in some cases their very lives.  Beginning in those bubble-icious Clinton years, it became the duty of both the Mexican and the American media to mold public opinion into an abject acceptance of their lost jobs and plummeting wages and rising prices -- not to mention the violence spawned by government-enabled/sponsored narco-trafficking.

So the fact that the New York Times has been alternately ignoring and denigrating Sanders should come as no y-u-u-ge surprise. Bernie is a clear and present danger to neoliberalism and to the Clintonoid extreme center of which the Times is an integral part. He is a clear and present danger to the plutocracy-serving and plutocracy-enriched Paper of Record itself. His agenda threatens the bottom lines of investors and wealthy advertisers.

Desperate Times calls for desperate measures. Thanks to technology -- and a very astute blogger going by the name of Broken Ravioli -- the stealth shadow re-editing of a Times story by Jennifer Steinhauer has been outed in real time. The exposé was picked up and expanded upon by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone and other prominent writers. The subsequent special pleadings of the Times' editors: that such editorial manipulation goes on all the time, is eerily reminiscent of Hillary Clinton's insistence that just because she takes bribes doesn't mean that her bribers will necessarily get what they pay for.

Departing Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan has the detailed synopsis and all the links that are fit to print right here.

It should come as no huge surprise that Times editors apparently conspired to deliberately mangle a rare favorable straight news story about Sanders's legislative accomplishments into just one more blatant hit piece of an op-ed.  The fact that the vast majority of commenters are rightly upset about the paper's journalistic corruption, some even cancelling their subscriptions in protest, has apparently made no impact on the paper's management and its anti-Bernie agenda.

Compared to the hundreds of millions they rake in from high-end advertisers and the largesse of Carlos Slim, they apparently view reader subscriptions as slim (sorry!) pickings in the grand scheme of things. Besides, for every click on the popular readers' comment section, the Times makes money. It's an integral part of the new Extracting Sharing Economy.

Apparently mildly stung by the recent criticism, however, a few Times writers are now proceeding to the next stage of their neoliberal propaganda agenda: the awarding of the booby prizes. Timothy Egan, one of Bernie's more peevish centrist critics, suddenly wants him to stay in the race, just for old times' sake, seeing as how the campaign is Part Three of "Weekend at Bernie's."  Charles Blow, pivoting from his own castigation of white "Berniesplainers," now admits that there has, in fact, been a Bernie Blackout going on in TimesWorld. Even Krugman, Bernie-basher bar none, is hypocritically walking back his own role in NAFTA, in perfect sync with Hillary Clinton's own purely temporary anti-trade posing.

This sudden attempted rapprochement with, even fawning over,  Bernie supporters now that Sanders has little to no chance of defeating Hillary Clinton, is of course too little and too late. The motivation obviously is to herd all the disappointed millions of millennials into Hillary's pen, in the interest of party machine solidarity and anti-Trumpism. Yet, despite all their alleged writing talents, these hacks just never learned how to do nuance and psy-ops very well at all.

"Obama Quietly Signals That It's Time to Unite Behind Clinton," grossly blares the latest above-the-fold New York Times headline. 

 It is so painfully obvious that they want to be retroactively "caught trying" for the sake of their own tattered journalistic reputations.But judging from the outpouring of outraged reader commentary, people are no longer buying what they're selling. Especially since relatively few people even have the money to scale a paywall every bit as ridiculous and classist as the Great Wall between Trump's America and the global south.

"Read not The Times. Read the Eternities." -- Henry David Thoreau.

** Update: The aforementioned Charles Blow was impelled to post a Facebook video instructing us mere mortals about the differences between opinion-writing and news-writing. Incidentally, he disdains to  even glance at the published reader comments appended to his articles. But, he sneers, "knock yourselves out" writing comments anyway, because lots of comments contribute to his job security at the Times. Click, click, click.

I couldn't even stand to watch his whole condescending video lecture. Rima Regas has posted it on her blog, though, in case you're in need of a sardonic laugh or two.

Lacrimosa, USA

I know it's not over till it's over, but what a bummer the latest primary results have turned out to be, huh? So please excuse me if I wallow in a little self-indulgent Mourning the Bern until I can force another chunk of clarified anger out of my brain. Then, after the wallow, it's either keep feeling a possibly Bernieless Bern, or curling up into the fetal position for the next several months as we witness a presidential election between a fascist and a neocon.

And I do mean neocon. Here are two prime examples of the bellicose breed candidly schmoozing last week at Nancy Reagan's funeral:

 

And I do mean "witness" quite literally. Because an election whose one and only theme has become "Donald Trump!" has nothing to do with participatory democracy and everything to do with the ruling establishment trying to hold on to power by entertaining the viewing audience when not dividing and conquering them via the nonstop Trumpian hate speech they only pretend to deplore. If you're a Democrat, you are already being urged to swarm around Hillary, whose only honeyed attraction now is that she is posing as the anti-Trump. And even some Republicans are already pledging their allegiance to the Goldwater Girl in the event that Trump survives an orchestrated convention Dump.

And I do mean the "posing" part quite literally, too. The Clintons and the Trumps have been hanging out together socially for years. Their thirty-something heiress daughters were BFFs until they had to tamp down the public socializing for the electoral duration, while the political-media complex pretends that their beloved bipartisanship is suddenly an evil thing, for purposes of getting out the plebeian vote.(And in the case of Trump, even the plebeian vote may go out the window in the event of a brokered convention.)

 

And let me be blunt: clothespins are not an option for my face. This "contest" is truly one for the ages. The nose-holding and greater vs. lesser evil platitudes won't fly. Our choices are between greater evil and humongous evil. Never have two candidates ostensibly chosen by The People been more loathed by The People.

Meanwhile, since misery loves company.....

Hillary's Miracle Cure: Shop Around

(Optional soundtrack)


Happy Ides of March Eve of the third Super Duper Terror Tuesday of the year, everybody!

I must confess that, suffering as I am from a severe case of Presidential Horse Race overload, I paid only scant attention to last night's Democratic town hall from Ohio. But this exchange between Hillary Clinton and a middle-aged woman from the audience,named Joyce, really got my ear. It encapsulates the cynicism, cluelessness, and utter lack of empathy beneath a thin mask of technocratic concern that is at the very heart of the Clinton candidacy:

 QUESTION: I have voted for Obama, and then my health insurance skyrocketed from $409 a month to $1,090 a month for a family of four. I know Obama told us that we would be paying a little more, but doubling – over doubling my health insurance cost has not been a little more. It has been difficult to come up with that kind of payment every month. I would like to vote Democratic, but it's cost me a lot of money, and I'm just wondering if Democrats really realize how difficult it's been on working class Americans to finance Obama care.

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Wow, Thank you for asking me that, because. May I ask you, before you were buying your family health insurance in the individual family market? Were you getting it through the employer? How were you insured before?

 QUESTION:  I was purchasing it privately, because we both had bouts of unemployment. 

CLINTON:  So you were going to a broker and buying a health insurance policy. 

QUESTION:  Yes. 

CLINTON:  And in effect, it nearly tripled after you went on to the exchange and bought a policy under the Affordable Care Act, is that right? 

QUESTION:  We could not do that.  It was much more expensive than just purchasing private insurance from the insurance company. 

CLINTON:  So you are still buying private insurance directly? 

QUESTION:  Yes. 

CLINTON:  OK.  Well, first of all, let me say I want very much to get the costs down, and that is going to be my mission, because I do think that for many, many people, but there are exceptions like what you are telling me, having the Affordable Care Act has reduced costs, has created a real guarantee of insurance, because if you'd had a pre-existing condition under the old system, you wouldn't have gotten affordable insurance.

So it has done a lot of really good things, but, it has become increasingly clear that we are going to have to get the costs down.  And what I would like to see happen for you and your family is that if we can get the co-pays down, the deductibles down, get the prescription drug costs under control, that you would find an affordable plan on your exchange. 

And one thing that I would like you to do, and I'm not saying it's going to make a difference, but I would like you to just go shopping on that exchange.  As I understand it, Ohio has the federal exchange, is that right, Joyce?  Because they did not set up a state exchange.

So you have the federal exchange.  And to go on and keep looking to see what the prices are, because we have to get more competition back into the insurance market.  One thing that I want to work on with my friends from Congress who are here is we've got the get more non-profits that are capable of selling insurance back into the insurance market. 

You know, Blue Cross and Blue Shield used to be non-profits.  And then they transferred themselves into for-profit companies.  And there was some effort made under the Affordable Care Act to get some competition from non-profit institutions, some of them worked and a lot of them didn't.

I want to know what we can do, because if you could get a range of insurers, some of who were not-for-profit companies, that would lower costs. 

So there is a number of things I am looking at.  And what I want to assure you and your family of is I will do everything I can as president, working with members of Congress where necessary, to try to get the costs down. 

But I do want you to keep shopping, because what you are telling me is much higher than what I hear from other families, and so I want to be sure that if there is a better option out there for you, you're going to be able to take advantage of it.  

And then I'll work as hard as I can to get the costs down for everybody, and that includes prescription cost drugs, which are skyrocketing and increasing costs for everything else. 

***

How does Hillary Clinton verbally diminish and insult this woman living on the edge? Let us parse the ways.

First, she disingenuously professes shock at Joyce's plight. "Wow!"  She immediately casts her questioner as an anomaly in the wonderful world of market-based medical insurance for profit. Ignoring Joyce's all-too-common experience with precarious employment, Hillary pounces on her deficient shopping skills.

Joyce's big problem, in Hillary's view, is not that insurance companies are greedy. It's that Joyce has lazily put her trust in a greedy insurance broker. She gave up on Internet shopping too easily. She didn't shop around. 

Next, Clinton goes full Pangloss, reminding Joyce that it could always be worse. At least her pre-existing conditions won't be held against her any more. Of course she'll have to pay more, because her conditions are not the fault of the profit-driven insurance cartel contributing handsomely to Hillary's campaign and paying her generously for private speeches. It's not the insurance cartel's problem that healthy people aren't signing up for product in the droves that the White House originally predicted. It's not the insurance cartel's fault that sick people are gaming the system by daring to try and use insurance product, thereby forcing the cartel members to either drop out or merge, thus driving up rates.

As sure as the wind's gonna blow, Joyce, insurance companies will come and go, and merge, and screw you any way they can. So you better shop around. Try to get a bargain for your son, and don't get sold on the very first one. You gotta shop around. It is your duty as an American citizen.

Clinton also didn't bother asking the woman how many crappy jobs she has to work in order to make ends meet. She didn't ask if Joyce even has access to a computer or an Internet connection. She didn't ask if she has any time to spare in a futile quest to save a few bucks on her monthly insurance premium, which probably nears or even surpasses the amount the family has to pay in rent or their mortgage. She didn't want to know what it will cost Joyce in co-pays and deductibles, should she ever attempt to use her overpriced insurance.

To the contrary: Hillary bragged about working with her superdelegate "friends in Congress who are here" to magically cajole the private insurance predators into acting a little less greedy. Maybe reduce the co-pays a tad, if not the premiums.Yes, folks: these platitudes come from the same woman who calls Bernie Sanders's Medicare for All plan a severe case of magical thinking.

Hillary instead doubled down in implicitly blaming Joyce for not getting a better rate. Joyce's very typical horror story is apparently not what Hillary is used to selectively hearing. Her trite response is to keep on shopping till you drop  to save a buck on overpriced insurance product. Stop being such an inept consumer, Joyce, and maybe you won't keep feeling so sad and blue now.

Because in Hillary World, health is not a basic human right. In Hillary World, there are no people who must choose between taking medicine and paying the electric bill. In Hillary World, there is no precariat.

There are only consumers ripe for extraction and exploitation.

HR 676: Medicare for All. Everybody covered from cradle to grave. Pay a slightly higher tax rate and forget about shopping around till you drop, forget about premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

You better shop around. Voting for Bernie is probably still the best bang for your buck.

Spring Ahead

Don't forget to set your clocks ahead tonight, so that one more hour of your time can be extracted in the name of capitalism. But don't worry. It usually happens while you're asleep. You won't even feel a thing. Unless, of course, you get into a car accident on the way to one of your precarious jobs because you or a fellow motorist is exhausted as well as broke, hungry, and road-raged.

***

Speaking of rage, did you catch the Benito Trump Cancelled Rally last night? I watched it unfold on MSNBC as the ridiculous Chris Matthews did the play-by-play. He is shocked, shocked that Fascism has come to America right under his very elite nose. He is clueless, clueless that nonstop coverage of Trumpism and the presidential horse-race spectacle by his and other networks have led citizens to believe that politics is an infotainment sporting event sponsored by the WWF. He pretends to not understand that the corruption extends not only to his profession but to his own family circle. His guests and fellow-commentators are heavy contributors to wife Kathleen's multimillion-dollar congressional bid, one of the most expensive in lower House history.

As far as the "unrest" at the Trump arena went, it was pretty tame compared to, say, Ferguson and Baltimore. For one thing, police presence was very scanty -- too many white kids. Rahm Emanuel didn't send out the troops because he didn't want a repeat of 1968, when the Democrats ended up losing to Nixon.  So the Trumpenproletariat and the protesters were asked to leave. And aside from a few made-for-TV scuffles, they did. From what I saw,  most of the kids seemed more interested in taking selfies than rioting and beating each other up.

 If you were there and able to get close enough to snap a pic of a black guy and a white guy screaming at each other, then you made the producers of what passes for participatory politics very happy indeed. The media/political complex relishes the "divisiveness" of the lower orders as they flatter themselves that  "bipartisanship" is the highest virtue known to humanity.

***

Speaking of selfies, did you happen to catch Barack Obama at the SXSW conference? Just as the scuffles were breaking out in Chicago, our prescient president was warning us to not to "fetishize our smart phones." As long as the government can already "rifle through your underwear," he said,  you are very silly to keep defending the privacy of your electronic devices. You are all child molesters or terrorists until proven otherwise.... not that they'll ever bother proving otherwise.

From the New York Times:  

“If, technologically, it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system, where the encryption is so strong that there is no key, there is no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer?” Mr. Obama said. “How do we disrupt a terrorist plot?”

If the government has no way into a smartphone, he added, “then everyone is walking around with a Swiss bank account in your pocket.”

And Chris Matthews thinks that Trump is the only charismatic face of totalitarianism?

***

Speaking of terrifying cluelessness, Hillary Clinton has again attempted to revise history, this time claiming that the Reagans were warriors against the HIV epidemic back in the 80s, -- when, in fact, the Gruesome Homophobic Twosome went out of their way to ignore it. In later admitting her mistake, Hillary said she'd confused AIDS with Alzheimers, the latter of which Nancy publicized only because it affected her directly. I suppose we should forgive Hillary, though. When  Nancy was First Lady of the Land, Hillary was First Lady of Arkansas and probably too busy supervising her prison convict slave help to pay much attention to an epidemic affecting gay men.

Or. she might have experienced a Reagan moment and thought she was a contestant on Jeopardy rather than having a friendly funeral chat with Mrs. Alan Greenspan (Andrea Mitchell) on MSNBC. "I'll take 'Diseases That Begin With A' for $675,000, Alex!"

Hillary always brags that she's been tested. Is she sure about that?

Whether it's President Trump or President Clinton, we can expect another long slog of psychopathology and stupidity on top of the ingrained insanity.

Hopefully it will be neither. The words and actions of these candidates just yesterday alone is all the more reason to vote for Bernie Sanders. At his own rally on Friday he called for inclusiveness among the classes and the races and the generations.

Unlike Obama before him, he didn't smarmily call for cooperation between Republicans and Democrats, between red and blue states, among establishment elites. He called for solidarity among people.

That is not at all sending a giant thrill up Chris Matthews' leg. It is, however, sending a giant chill up the spineless spine of the Closet Fascist Collective, for whom dividing and conquering the electorate is not only their main governing strategy, it is the only governing strategy that they still have left.

Keeping Fear Alive is their only motto.

It Ain't Over

Despite beating all the odds and upsetting Hillary Clinton in Michigan, Bernie Sanders is still being pressured to leave the race. Why? Because those oh-so-accurate polls tell us that Bernie is behind in two state contests to be held next week. Plus, it is just too exhausting for the Empress in Waiting to keep up the populist pretense for very much longer. Have you looked at her lately? The woman looks very tired, and she is growing increasingly hoarse.

"The sooner I can become your nominee," she rasped at a rally right before her ignominious defeat, "the more I could begin to turn my attention to the Republicans."

So the establishment media's morning-after coverage of Bernie's unexpected trouncing of Hillary is a lot like Donald Trump's own post-victory speech/press con last night. It's a gigantic infomercial trying to sell us a bucket of branded mystery meat.

Here, for example, is what the New York Times sniffed right after Bernie's blowout: 

Hillary Clinton is leading Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in Florida and Ohio, according to polls released on Wednesday that show him looking vulnerable going into next week’s primary contests.

Losses in Ohio and Florida, where there are a combined 405 delegates at stake on March 15, could deal a significant blow to Mr. Sanders’s campaign and increase pressure on him to consider dropping out of the race.

A survey from Quinnipiac University shows Mrs. Clinton, the former secretary of state, dwarfing Mr. Sanders in Florida, with Democratic voters backing her by a margin of 62 percent to 32 percent.

Of course, some polls had Clinton beating Sanders by more than 20 points in Michigan, a fact which is not even mentioned in the article. Narrow journalistic  minds are focused on the "narrow path forward for Bernie" narrative like a pit bull's jaws clenched around a tender ankle.  If the pundits have proven anything, it's that they know how to mindlessly persevere for the plutocratic cause.

If regular people have proven anything, it's that they ignore opinion-molding polls and pundits.

They look around their communities and see the shuttered factories. They look at their bank accounts and see a big fat Zero. They open up the kitchen tap and see brown smelly water. They go to their mailboxes and find a utility shut-off notice. They open their doors to greet the landlord bearing eviction papers.

If they are among the lucky Americans who still have cable TV or internet access, they saw the Sunday debate where Hillary Clinton falsely accused Bernie Sanders of voting against the auto bailout. They heard her refuse to hand over the transcripts of her Wall Street speeches. They heard her say they might get new pipes for their drinking water in about five years.

If they saw Bernie Sanders appearing flustered at times, or were aware of his much-ballyhooed "ghetto-gate" remarks and gun gaffes, they obviously didn't care.

According to Michigan exit polls, he is gaining slow but steady support among black voters, who also look around and see closed factories and crumbling schools. Much to the chagrin of the Clintonoid Firewall Brigade, black people are not monolithic. People of all races and ethnicities are united in their knowledge of, and anger over, the job-offshoring trade deals that Hillary Clinton has always supported.  They notice that the auto bailout benefited the owners and punished the workers, and that General Motors, becoming aware of the affects that Flint's tainted corrosive water was having on their products, simply pulled up stakes and left without so much as blowing the whistle to their customers and neighbors.

Tellingly, Hillary lost big in Dearborn, home to many Muslim families. Voters notice that American wars have killed many Muslims. They notice the refugee crisis spawned by these wars. They notice that hundreds of Muslims have drowned trying to escape from Libya and other sites of her military adventurism. They notice that her sales of lethal weapons to Middle Eastern autocrats have enabled the mass slaughters of innocent Muslims. They noticed that Bernie Sanders aired commercials in Arabic.

The persevering pundits showed their own bigotry when they professed shock and awe that a Brooklyn Jew could get the Muslim vote. Oh, snap, said the pit bull.

Bernie Sanders has ecumenical appeal.  Who woulda thunk it? 

People simply don't like or trust Hillary Clinton. And the more the media-political complex props her up, the more they seem to telegraph their desire for a President Donald Trump. Donald Trump has been raking in the bucks for them, and would continue to do so if elected. This celebrity huckster is eminently available to journalists for whom access to the powerful has long trumped actual reporting and pursuing truth in the public interest.

Win One for Mrs. Gipper

There's nothing like the political-media complex invading your water-poisoned city to make your situation feel even more toxic than it already is.

Vanderbilt heir and CNN moderator Anderson Cooper immediately set the tone for last night's Democratic debate:

Before we begin tonight, we want to take a moment to remember former first lady Nancy Reagan. As probably know, she passed away this morning at the age of 94. Her grace and elegance in the White House, her deep love for President Reagan, and her strength and advocacy in the fight against Alzheimer’s and drug abuse will always be remembered. We would like to pause of a moment of silence in honor of Mrs. Reagan.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and an audience full of lead-poisoned Flint residents were then forced to bow their heads in remembrance of the Reagan Revolution against non-rich people. And thus did the ghosts of Ronnie and Nancy waft over the proceedings of an increasingly right-wing Democratic party. It was a sad spectacle of Clintonian bromides, pandering catch-phrases, and slick political deflections. As for Bernie Sanders, would it be cruel of me to posit that it was one missed opportunity after another? There's unfortunately a grain of truth in the corporate media's castigation of him as a "one-note" candidate who blames generic billionaires and generic Wall Street for all that ails us. What about the Clinton Foundation itself?

What establishment pundits won't say is that he should be calling out Hillary Clinton's wars and corruption, and explaining in more detail the entrenched Clintonian neoliberal ideology. He should be explaining how the Clintons have continued right where the Reagans left off. He should have called Hillary a scion of Reagan, if not a Goldwater Girl. He is a little too nice, despite the best efforts of the media to cast him as an arm-waving rudenick.

I'll give you just a couple of examples of lost opportunities from last night's debate. 

First, there was the standard boilerplate exchange over guns. Hillary actually faulted Bernie for the probable failure of a lawsuit being brought by Sandy Hook parents against gun marketers and manufacturers, pointing to his Senate vote against holding sellers accountable for subsequent crimes committed with the weaponry.

CLINTON: The gun manufacturers sell guns to make as much money as they can make.....

CLINTON: I was in the Senate. And they said, “give us absolute immunity.” No other industry in America has absolute immunity...

(CROSSTALK)

CLINTON: ...and they sell products all the time that cause harm...

(APPLAUSE)

SANDERS: So let’s say this. Let’s say this.

CLINTON: ... and they’re held responsible.

COOPER: Senator Sanders.

SANDERS: You know, I think it is a little bit — it is a little bit — look, what happened at Sandy Hook, what happened in Michigan, what has happened far too often all over this country is a terrible, terrible tragedy, and we have got to do everything we can, as I mentioned a moment ago, to end these mass killings.

But, as I understand what your question is — and, you’re not the only person whose heart was broken. I know, I was there in the Senate when we learned about this killing. It is almost unspeakable to talk about some lunatic walking into a — I mean; it is hard to even talk about it.

We all feel that way. But it, as I understand it, Anderson, and maybe I’m wrong, what you’re really talking about is people saying let’s end gun manufacturing in America. That’s the implications of that, and I don’t agree with that.

Wow. The USA is the largest arms manufacturer and weapons dealer on the entire planet. Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, personally brokered the sales of billions of dollars in lethal weaponry to the Saudis, who have used them to kill innocent civilians in Yemen and elsewhere. She's sold products that have caused great harm all over the world.

 Sanders also didn't mention revelations published last month in the New York Times that Hillary Clinton not only wrecked Libya, she enabled illegal weapons sales to Syrian rebels by way of Libya. He never mentioned her role in the right- wing coup in Ukraine. He never mentioned how the recipients of her official largesse have funneled countless millions to her family's private charity/slush fund.

He could so very easily have called Hillary out for her chutzpah in criticizing the greed of the gun lobby. He could have pointed out that she and her husband have been longstanding recipients of all kinds of legal immunity. But he preferred not to. All he said was that he doesn't think that we should end gun manufacturing in America.

And now for something completely new and corrupt:

(APPLAUSE) COOPER: Senator Sanders, on the — on the campaign trail, Senator Sanders often refers to a fundraiser in January that was hosted by executives from a firm that has invested significantly in domestic fracking. Do you have any comment on that?

CLINTON: I don’t have any comment. I don’t know that. I don’t believe that there is any reason to be concerned about it. I admire what Senator Sanders has accomplished in his campaign. I have more than 850,000 donors, most of them give less than $100. I am very proud of that.

And I just want to make one point. You know, we have our differences. And we get into vigorous debate about issues, but compare the substance of this debate with what you saw on the Republican stage last week.

This is just one example of how both Sanders and the media allow Hillary Clinton to get away with murder. She contemptuously refuses to comment on her corruption, whether it be donations from polluters or her refusal to release transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street. After she smarmily deflects the question by petting Sanders and reminding us that Republicans are much, much worse, neither Sanders nor Anderson vigorously insist that she actually answer the questions and accusations. That she would prefer not to is honored and respected. When she snidely responded she'd release her speech transcripts if the Republicans do, for instance, Sanders should have accused her of embracing the alleged ethics and playground tactics of the GOP. "I'll show you mine if Donald shows me his" displays nothing but cynicism and contempt for the American voter.

To be fair to Bernie, he did call Hillary out for NAFTA and welfare reform. But he also should have told the viewing audience that Marian Wright Edelman, whom Hillary constantly name-drops as proof of her undying devotion to children, actually cut the Clintons off decades ago when they condemned millions of mothers and children to poverty. He appeals to nationalism when the problem is global. He seems willing to go only so far in his attacks. He is especially loath to attack President Obama, who actually cut funding for lead testing in every year of his tenure, and only partially restored CDC funding for lead amelioration in this year's budget. He didn't mention that Obama himself refused to visit Flint after a recent visit to nearby Detroit, where he chest-thumped about the auto bailouts and mouthed only one tiny sentence about the water crisis. Why doesn't Sanders demand that the president deploy the Army Corps of Engineers to make immediate repairs to the Flint infrastructure? Why wait until a Sanders presidency for an immediate federal response? Delivering water in toxic plastic bottles is no solution. It's only a photo op for pandering politicians and cable outlets.

Needless to say, the corporate press's ridiculous main complaint about Sanders today is that at one point in the debate, he'd rudely asked Clinton to stop rudely interrupting him. There are  reports that the Clintonoids, irked at Bernie's staying power, want to goad him into becoming another Rick Lazio. Lazio was the weak, last-minute GOP opponent replacing a cancer-stricken Rudy Giuliani in her first Senate run; his campaign finally imploded when he "invaded her space" by approaching her podium at one of the debates. She played the victim card then, too... and she won.

The media are also complaining about Bernie's rather muddled answer to a Don Lemon question about racism, in which he seemed to park all black people into ghettos. A Tweet frenzy duly erupted from the faux-outraged media/political class. They really, really can't stand it when he tries enhance their race trope with his own message of an all-encompassing economic inequality. And he acts unreasonably flustered whenever they bring it up.

And thus is the underlying class/plutocratic cause of the Flint water crisis largely ignored in favor of sniping over partisan and identity politics. Both Sanders and Clinton shockingly demurred when asked about bringing criminal charges against the culprits, who hail from both political parties. They want to wait and see how it all plays out. They want Republican Governor Rick Snyder, who ignored the poisoning for well over a year, to simply resign from office. They didn't mention that the mayor of Flint herself is a Democrat. Ditto for the emergency manager, appointed by Snyder, who orchestrated the catastrophe by piping in corrosive water from the filthy Flint River to save money in the name of austerity.

As I have previously pointed out, the catastrophe in Flint can be legally classified as genocide under the standards laid out by the United Nations. A state or a ruler does not have to actually kill people, or even have the intent of killing people, to be guilty of genocide. A pattern of depraved indifference and damage to human life also qualifies as genocide. Henry Giroux rightly calls the Flint crisis an example of domestic terrorism. Flint is just the latest, most blatant example of what happens when democracy dies, and corporations rule.

Let us now bow our heads, contemplate what Reagan wrought, and then get back up and fight. Getting sucked in to endless presidential racehorse elections is anathema to bottom-up democracy... even when you like and support one of the candidates.

The Shy Assassins

The killers who maintain and act upon the White House Kill List are afraid that they might be killed if their identities ever become known. Therefore, lawyers for the Obama administration have requested that the individuals associated with drone strikes against Muslims be outfitted with the legal equivalent of a KKK hood for their own protection.

Of course, they don't flaunt their depraved cowardice in quite that way. They've magnanimously dropped their previous claim of "attorney-client privilege," for instance. I suppose that granting Obama and other government officials "client" status was a bit much, even for them. At the very least, it implied a little bit of guilty knowledge. And in this new age of populist outrage, the last word they want applied to themselves is privilege.

But far from checking their privilege, they're doubling down on it and calling it National Security.

The administration had been fighting a Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, which demanded that it release to the public details about its secretive Predator and Reaper drone attacks. But seeing the writing on the wall -- a federal judge was about to issue a decision directing the White House to comply -- Obama's lawyers are now offering a redacted version of his drone playbook.

Yes, they actually do call his hit list a "playbook."  Obama must fiddle with his Kill List the same way he fiddles with his March Madness basketball brackets. (Actually, he uses baseball cards for his Terror Tuesday sessions, but let's not quibble: it's almost college hoops season.) He and his wonkish bookies pretend that their drone targets are just like expendable athletes. When human beings can be reduced to numbers and statistics and charts and odds, killing them doesn't feel odd at all. It's all just an intellectual game.

Oops! Better Redact That Name, Mister Prez

As Politico's Josh Gerstein explains:

Last month, Manhattan based U.S. District Court Judge Colleen MacMahon issued an order requiring the Justice Department to produce the PPG document (sometimes called the Playbook), as well as two others, for in-camera review by her.

In a letter to the judge Friday, government lawyers said officials had long been debating making an edited version of the policy public and they have now decided to do so.

"Before receiving the Court’s February 25, 2016 Order, the Government was engaged in extensive discussions regarding the possibility of discretionarily releasing portions of the PPG. Lengthy, high-level,inter-agency coordination was necessary to ensure that the sensitive national security classification equities contained in that document remain protected. Following those deliberations, the Government has determined to waive privilege," Justice Department attorneys wrote.

Translation: They've never had any intention of sharing details of their assassinations with the public, but they must pretend to have been agonizing over the issue for months and years. They are worried about their own security and perpetual billions of dollars in profits for military contractors. For bullshit purposes only, greed and death are always euphemised as "national security."

The government has dropped its claims of attorney-client privilege and deliberative process privilege with respect to the drone-related memo — claims MacMahon signaled in her order that she was inclined to reject. Instead, the administration is claiming protection for portions of the memo under an exemption for classified information and another for intelligence sources and methods.

Translation: the redacted memo will probably resemble the 2010 memo which the government was forced to release when the ACLU brought suit over the Anwar al-Awlaki assassination. The attempted justification for the murder of a U.S. citizen by a politician (Obama) was written  by White House lawyer David Barron before his convenient and swift confirmation as a U.S. District Court judge. Barron is now said to be on Obama's short list to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

In the latest court case, an anonymous White House official too shy to be named told Politico that important lives would be directly at risk if all the details in Obama's Playbook ever came to light. "The Government is committed to protecting properly classified national security information, as well as law enforcement information, where disclosure could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual," he huffed.

Apparently, the lives and physical safety of the stateless human beings residing in "tribal areas" are not to be reasonably protected, let alone given even the slightest passing thought.

The Politico article concludes:

ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer said Friday he hoped the decision to release the so-called playbook on drones indicated a new willingness to allow more public scrutiny of the program.

"The release of the Presidential Policy Guidance is long overdue, and we are gratified that the administration has agreed with us that much of it should finally be made public" Jaffer said. "We hope that the administration’s decision to release this critical document reflects a broader commitment to make the lethal drone program more transparent. In that spirit, the administration should also release the legal memos that are the foundation for the program, basic information about those killed in past drone strikes, and detailed investigative files relating to strikes that killed bystanders.”

All credit to the ACLU where due, of course. But why prematurely praise the administration for the transparency it has historically lacked? I suggest that we just skip the aspirational accolades for now. Moreover, there is no demand from the ACLU that the "lethal drone program" actually be stopped entirely, given all the blowback from victims' friends and families that Obama's White House now seems to acknowledge.  

As Glenn Greenwald noted in an Intercept piece this week, all the media outrage centered on Donald Trump's vow to keep torturing people, and hunting down and killing the relatives of suspected terrorists is a pretty sick joke:

Here we see the elite class agreeing to pretend that Trump is advocating views that are inherently disqualifying when — thanks to those doing the denouncing — those views are actually quite mainstream, even popular, among both the American political class and its population. Torture was the official American policy for years. It went way beyond waterboarding. One Republican president ordered it and his Democratic successor immunized it from all forms of accountability, ensuring that not a single official would be prosecuted for authorizing even the most extreme techniques, ones that killed people — or even allowed to be sued by their victims.

If Donald Trump becomes president, official opacity will go right out the window. He won't be able to resist boasting about every single person whom he orders killed or tortured. Every drone strike will become the occasion for a chest-thumping press conference.

It's not Trump's agenda than has the Establishment quivering. It's his lack of a filter. When former CIA Chief Michael Hayden promised that the military would never follow an "illegal" order from a President Trump, he was only kidding. What he really meant is that the military would never allow Trump to expose the criminality that has been an operating principle of the deep state ever since its inception more than 200 years ago. 

Trump would be well advised to bring his own private goon squad to the White House to protect him against the Special Ops and the craven cowards who are currently scrambling to get their own names and deeds redacted from the Presidential Playlist.