Sunday, January 31, 2016

CAN HILLARY CLINTON CREATE THE DICTATORSHIP THAT BARACK OBAMA STRUGGLED SO HARD TO BUILD?

January 31, 2016

Hillary hagiography for immature minds

One feature of the totalitarian mindset is a need to brainwash children into believing that The Great Leader was destined for importance from birth. At its most grotesque, this impulse finds expression in absurdities such as the propaganda North Koreans were subjected to on the birth of the late Kim Jong-Il, who inherited his dictatorship from regime founder Kim Il-Sung:

Legend has it that a double rainbow and a glowing new star appeared in the heavens to herald the birth of Kim Jong Il, in 1942, on North Korea's cherished Baekdu Mountain.

Nothing quite like that has (yet) appeared about Hillary Clinton, but an effort to canonize her in the minds of the next generation is well underway. Kyle Smith of the New York Post reviews the slightly-less-grotesque-than-North-Korea effort of children’s book author Michelle Markel, titled, Hillary Rodham Clinton: Some Girls Are Born to Lead.

Ms. Markel evidently began work on this propaganda effort before the Hillary campaign banished the name Rodham to the memory hole. Evidently, the association with the Clinton brand is key to her appeal. The Rodham brand may well make a comeback if Hillary actually takes office as president, but for now, it is a distraction from the branding effort. Markle should really get with the program.

I haven’t read the and don’t plan to unless they send me a review copy (highly unlikely), so I will quote Smith:

Aimed at ages 4 to 8, [it] is meant to instill in girls a thrilling sense of gender pride, even if the book (like Hillary’s campaign) has a difficult time identifying anything she has actually accomplished, other than giving speeches and being in the proximity of famous men.

Awkward, that. But no real obstacle in terms of the propagandist’s art. After all, what did Kim Jong Il ever accomplish, aside from murdering any possible rivals and ruthlessly suppressing all dissent?

The BS comes early and often:

On page one, we’re informed that “in the 1950s, it was a man’s world” and that girls “weren’t supposed to act smart, tough or ambitious.” Little Hillary, looking spunky in a bright-red dress, is set off against a gray and brown array of celebrated men of the time, including Nat King Cole and Jackie Robinson. “Only boys had no ceilings on their dreams,” go the harrumphing words.

So Nat King Cole, who was once attacked on stage during a concert by a gang of white supremacists, and Jackie Robinson, a sharecropper who on the baseball field had to listen to an opposing manager yell the N-word at him and shout “go back to the cotton fields,” had it easy compared to Hillary, the daughter of a wealthy businessman?

Actually, Hillary’s father was not wealthy, and not really that successful in his drapery business. Some years were good, but others provided little income. I suspect the economic insecurity Hillary experienced growing up has a lot to do with her compulsive need to acquire wealth and the trappings of power. Her father, a white male, is disqualified from victim status, but Hillary, a female, was truly a victim:

After “upstaging boys in class” — not just succeeding but “upstaging boys,” because it’s important that your little girl learn to see life as an us-against-them situation — the teen Hillary “met with poor black and Latino teenagers in the inner city.” Brave Hillary! Later, in law school, we learn that Hillary “walked up and down dangerous blocks in Texas, registering voters for the presidential election.” “Dangerous” apparently means “populated by Latinos,” because below these words is a picture of Hillary talking to brown-skinned people on a sidewalk.

Smith takes glee in pointing our various contradictions in the story. Markel does appear to trip herself up quite a few times. Luckily for her, 4 to 8 year olds are not the most attentive analysts.

Girls are also told that, in the early Clinton administration, Hillary was “tough as nails” but (next sentence) “after Congress turned down her health plan, she was crushed.” And that (page 17), they should be excited about Hillary’s Arkansas work “at a top-notch law firm,” even though the two people she is pictured with, Vince Foster and Webb Hubbell, respectively committed suicide and were imprisoned amid scandals.

The review featured on the Amazon page for this book comes from The School Library Journal, making it clear that this book is intended for schools. To her credit, reviewer Laura Simeon found the hagiographic approach a bit much:

...this picture book biography depicts Hillary Rodham Clinton's story as one of endless heroic struggles on behalf of the oppressed. Clinton is described as an excellent student who took an early leadership role among her peers, was inspired by hearing a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and later fearlessly advocated on behalf of women, people of color, children, and the poor.... The tone is relentlessly positive, making it difficult to get a well-rounded sense of Clinton as a person, and there is no reference to any of the political controversies surrounding her or Bill Clinton.... VERDICT A beautifully produced, if excessively laudatory, biography of a significant contemporary political figure; recommended for general collections.

I have to wonder about the poor boys who are assigned this book in school, or who have to sit and listen to it read to a class. They are cast as oppressors who have it easy in life. But that seems to be thrust of most government schools in this era, perhaps one reason why boys fare much more poorly in schools than girls.

The other intended audience for this book, children of feminists, is artificially small thanks to the popularity of abortion in that demographic segment. I suppose Hillary’s granddaughter, Charlotte Rodham Clinton Margolies Mezvinsky, will have it read to her endlessly. Poor tyke, but lucky for her, Hillary needed a grandchild to soften her image.

It turns out that there is an entire genre of Hillary books for children:

That totalitarian impulse is pretty widespread. But heck, the 2008 Hillary campaign indulged in it quite explicitly:

Compare to:

I must be an awful human being, because I am reveling in the déjà vu Hillary Clinton must be experiencing, as her presidential campaign appears to be heading toward collapse.  And this time, the humiliation – and peril &ndash...

Nine times Clinton Foundation donors got special access at State:

Nine examples of State Department access Hillary Clinton granted to her foundation's top donors.

That dream is slowly crashing and burning. Even without a criminal referral or indictment, Hillary’s chances are fading fast.

January 14, 2016

Hillary’s long goodbye

By Thomas Lifson

I must be an awful human being, because I am reveling in the déjà vu Hillary Clinton must be experiencing, as her presidential campaign appears to be heading toward collapse. And this time, the humiliation – and peril – is far greater than anything 2008 dealt her. To state the obvious, her longstanding preference for pantsuits is one thing, but the orange jumpsuits of a federal penitentiary are quite something else.

I realize I am getting way ahead of myself here, that predictions are always risky – especially about the future, as Yogi Berra reminded us. We don’t yet know if there will be a criminal referral from the FBI, though the D.C. rumor mill is operating at full steam, averring that 50 more FBI special agents have been added to the case, making the total team well into triple digits. That the FBI would devote that level of resources to the case suggests that they are tying up any possible loose ends, to have an airtight cases presented to Loretta Lynch. (More on this later.)

Potential legal peril aside for the moment, the humiliations she faces are daunting for a woman of her arrogance. Her husband’s penchant for illicit sex with women far younger and more attractive is once again being thrown in her face, and this time the trusty old injured wife gambit not only doesn’t work, but is being used against her, painting her as an enabler of a sexual abuser.

Back in the impeachment days, she could count on the mainstream media to keep a lid on negative information and portray her husband’s accusers and investigators as a bunch of sex-obsessed prudes. Not only have the internet and cable news forever destroyed the cofferdam around embarrassing news these days, but substantial chunks of the mainstream media no longer see themselves as guardians of the Clinton empire. For one thing, a Democrat president is not being threatened with removal from office. For another, she is not the only game in town. Just as in 2008 they could abandon her for a younger member of a minority, one who was a far more skillful campaigner, now they have the elderly Bernie Sanders carrying the actual torch of socialism, and drawing enthusiastic crowds.

And then there is the small matter of all the knives in the hands of members of her own party that have been sheathed all these decades since she and Bill first entered the White House as tenants. She has made a lot of enemies over the years, snubbing some, ignoring others, and behaving with the arrogance and self-centeredness that has been a visible part of her character ever since she entered pubic life. There is a struggle underway for the future of the Democratic Party between the Obama faction and the Clinton faction. When she appeared inevitable, an uneasy truce prevailed. But if she may be tied up with a criminal defense case, that would solve a lot of problems for the Obama-ites.

That is something to ponder as we await a possible criminal referral to the Department of Justice and A.G. Lynch’s response.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden very publicly “regrets every day” his decision not to run for president.

If, as speculated, Elizabeth Warren were to align herself with a Biden candidacy, perhaps as the veep nominee, it would palliate the socialist Sanders supporters.

The old certitudes about the Clintons have crumbled. Bill no longer is a vibrant, likable, vigorous exponent of hope; he is instead a hollow shell, a creepy degenerate who reminds us of our own mortality after heart bypass operations and drastic weight loss.

I am convinced that the greatest prize of all for Hillary was not Air Force One or the other perks; it was going to be the ability to put Bill in his place. After Hillarycare crashed and burned, she was removed from the co-presidency she believed she had won, fair and square. And it had to rankle. There must have been a moment when he reminded her that his name, and his name alone, appeared on the ballot, and that his decision was final.

Oh, how she must have looked forward to pulling rank on the first gentleman!

That dream is slowly crashing and burning. Even without a criminal referral or indictment, Hillary’s chances are fading fast. Sanders looks as though he may sweep Iowa and New Hampshire. Once that happens, it is 2008 all over again. The Democrat establishment may not want Sanders on the ticket, but they are fully capable of drafting Biden, Warren, Booker, or another Dem, and then changing the convention rules to nominate whomever they want. But I doubt that will be necessary. The gears of the FBI are turning faster and faster. Policy requires that if a politician be accused of wrongdoing, it be done as long before an election as possible.

Time is not on Hillary’s side.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/hillarys_long_goodbye.html#ixzz3xFVCi5oA

THERE IS NO GREATER DISCIPLE OF OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS THAT HILLARY CLINTON. OBAMA'S BANKSTERS KNOW THIS AND HAVE INVESTED MILLIONS VIA BRIBES PAID TO THE PHONY CLINTON FOUNDTAION CHARITY OR SPEECHES BY BILLARY!

"The result: 95 percent of all income gains during the Obama presidency going to the richest 1 percent of households!"

Obama’s State of the Union address and the breakdown of American democracy

Obama’s State of the Union address and the breakdown of American democracy

14 January 2016

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism…A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.”

George Orwell in “Politics and the English Language,” 1946

**

The final State of the Union address given by President Barack Obama on Tuesday night was a litany of lies, banalities and military threats. The speech underscored the inability of the American political establishment to honestly address a single social question facing the broad masses of the population.

The address was generally praised by the media as a statement of confidence in America’s future. In fact, it combined bluster about the strength of the US economy absurdly at odds with economic and social reality with self-praise for “taking out” the enemies of American imperialism and assurances of more military havoc to come.

To the extent that Obama touched in passing on the growth of social inequality, the ever greater domination of the corporate-financial elite, falling wages and rising poverty, these pervasive features of social life in America were ascribed to cosmic forces of “change” entirely disconnected from government policies in general and those pursued by his administration in particular over the past seven years.

There is an objective significance to the reduction of the State of the Union address, an American political tradition that goes back to George Washington, to an empty and cynical media spectacle. This process did not begin with Obama. It has been underway for decades, in parallel with the ever further turn of the ruling elite and both big business parties to the right and the widening chasm between the entire political system and the broad mass of working people.

While there was never a golden age of American bourgeois politics, the annual State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress once had a certain democratic content. There was a time when the president in the form of this speech sought to make a sober assessment of the actual state of the nation’s economic, political and social life and the condition of its relations with other nations. It was both a means of internal communication within ruling circles and a report to the broader population.

In Abraham Lincoln’s December 1862 message to Congress, the Great Emancipator spoke in favor of abolition. “Fellow-citizens,” he declared, “we cannot escape history… In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free and honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.”

In a later period, Franklin D. Roosevelt pledged a “Second Bill of Rights” that would include provisions ensuring “freedom from want.” (The proposal was a dead letter almost as soon as it was made.) In 1963, John F. Kennedy cautioned that “the mere absence of war is not peace.”

Even some of the more reactionary presidents of an earlier period could seriously acknowledge the existence of social problems. In 1922, Warren G. Harding began his State of the Union address by declaring, “So many problems are calling for solution that a recital of all of them, in the face of the known limitations of a short session of Congress, would seem to lack sincerity of purpose.”

The immense growth of social inequality in parallel with the dismantling of much of US industry, the decline in the global economic position of American capitalism and the increasing domination of a parasitic and quasi-criminal financial elite have made any objective accounting of the real “state of the union” a political impossibility. All those in attendance Tuesday night were well aware that the important policy decisions on both the domestic and international front are made neither by the president nor Congress, but rather by the military brass, the intelligence establishment and Wall Street. The same conviction is growing within broad layers of the population who are increasingly alienated from and disgusted by the entire political and economic set-up.

Having come to power by posing as an opponent of the war in Iraq and the militarism of the Bush years, Obama could hardly make an honest assessment of his foreign policy, which has added to the war in Afghanistan new wars in Libya, Syria and Iraq, an expansion of drone assassinations and a policy of military provocation against Russia and China that has brought the world closer to world war than at any time since 1945.

A major part of his address Tuesday was given over to boasting of America’s destructive military power and his readiness to use it. Responding to his critics among the Republican right, he proclaimed: “The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. Period. It’s not even close. It’s not even close. It’s not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined. Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world. No nation attacks us directly, or our allies, because they know that’s the path to ruin.”

Having posed as a critic of Bush’s anti-democratic buildup of the police powers of the state in order to get elected, Obama was in no position to discuss his expansion and institutionalization of police state measures such as pervasive government spying; the jailing and persecution of whistleblowers like Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden; the shielding of the authors and organizers of torture programs; the militarization of the police and defense of killer cops.

Among the most blatant lies in Obama’s speech was the assertion, “For the past seven years, our goal has been a growing economy that works better for everybody.” Had Obama added “who counts” to the end of this sentence he would have been closer to the truth.

Trillions of dollars for the banks and speculators whose recklessness, lawlessness and greed triggered the Wall Street crash and ensuing depression, not a single “bankster” prosecuted in seven years—that on one side. On the other, sweeping wage reductions for autoworkers imposed by Obama’s “Auto Task Force,” and austerity, school closures, pension cuts and attacks on health benefits for millions of working people under “Obamacare.”

The result: 95 percent of all income gains during the Obama presidency going to the richest 1 percent of households!

In what has become a hallmark of American political rhetoric, Obama concluded his speech with sheer bathos: “I see [the voice of America] in the worker on the assembly line who clocked extra shifts to keep his company open, and the boss who pays him higher wages instead of laying him off… The protester determined to prove that justice matters—and the young cop walking the beat, treating everybody with respect, doing the brave, quiet work of keeping us safe.”

A political system that must resort to such stupid and transparent posturing is a political system in terminal crisis. The mounting indignation and militancy of the masses will seek new avenues of struggle outside of and in opposition to the entire rotten edifice of official politics.

Eric London and Barry Grey

Obama’s final State of the Union: Lies, evasions and threats

According to a report by the National Association of Counties issued on the eve of the State of the Union address, of the 3,069 counties in the United States, 93 percent are worse off than before the 2008 financial crash according to at least one of four economic indicators: total employment, the unemployment rate, the size of the economy and home values.

Obama’s final State of the Union: Lies, evasions and threats

By Patrick Martin
13 January 2016

The final State of the Union speech delivered Tuesday night by President Barack Obama was a demonstration of the incapacity of the American political system to deal honestly or seriously with a single social question.

Obama evaded the real issues that affect tens of millions of working people in America every day of their lives. He painted a ludicrous picture of economic recovery and social progress that insulted the intelligence of his television audience—and went unchallenged by the millionaire politicians assembled in the chamber of the House of Representatives.

Summing up what he called “the progress of these past seven years,” Obama gave first place to “how we recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations.” The so-called “recovery” has been a bonanza for corporate profits, stock prices, and the wealth and income of the super-rich. For the working people who are the vast majority of the population, it has been a disaster.

By most social indices, the American people are worse off in January 2016 than when Obama took office seven years ago. The real wages of working people have fallen, social services have deteriorated, pension benefits have been gutted, and cities such as Detroit and San Bernardino have been forced into bankruptcy.

According to a report by the National Association of Counties issued on the eve of the State of the Union address, of the 3,069 counties in the United States, 93 percent are worse off than before the 2008 financial crash according to at least one of four economic indicators: total employment, the unemployment rate, the size of the economy and home values.

In 27 states, not a single county has recovered fully from the 2008 crash and the deep economic slump that followed. These include such major states as Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

Obama, however, painted a picture of nearly unblemished economic advance, declaring, “The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world.” He boasted, “We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history. More than 14 million new jobs; the strongest two years of job growth since the ‘90s; an unemployment rate cut in half.”

BLOG: AS OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY SABOTAGE OUR BORDERS, E-VERIFY AND REFUSE TO ENFORCE LAWS PROHIBITING THE EMPLOYMENT OF ILLEGALS!

The president did not acknowledge that the post-2008 “recovery” is the weakest on record, that the vast majority of the new jobs created have been low-wage and many of them part-time, or that the drop in the unemployment rate is primarily due to the withdrawal of millions of people from the work force because they lost all hope of getting a decent-paying job.

He went on, tellingly, to cite the auto industry as a symbol of success, declaring that it “just had its best year ever.” This perfectly expresses the utter blindness, not just of Obama, but of the entire political establishment. The “best year ever” was for General Motors, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler, which enjoyed record profits, not for the auto workers who produced those profits.

Real wages for auto workers have dropped sharply since the Obama White House forced through a 50 percent cut in wages for all new hires as part of the bankruptcy reorganization of the industry in 2009. Mass discontent among auto workers was expressed at the end of 2015 in the rejection of contracts at Fiat-Chrysler and Nexteer, a major supplier, and in widespread demands for strike action, smothered by Obama’s stooges in the United Auto Workers union.

“Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction,” Obama concluded. The social position of the American working class has, in fact, suffered a dramatic decline, through the combined efforts of the corporate bosses, the unions and the two capitalist parties, the Democrats and Republicans.

The president conceded that economic inequality has grown in the United States, but he described it as the outcome of long-term trends such as globalization and automation, as though the policies of his administration—bailouts for Wall Street, budget cuts and wage cuts for workers—had nothing to do with it.

In the seven years since the financial crash, brought on, as he admitted, by “recklessness on Wall Street,” not a single banker or speculator has been prosecuted or jailed. On the contrary, the billionaires have greatly increased their wealth, gobbling up 95 percent of all new income since Obama entered the White House.

Obama listed a few other policy “successes,” claiming that “we reformed our health care system, and reinvented our energy sector… we delivered more care and benefits to our troops and veterans.” He was referring, however, to a series of social disasters: the reactionary attack on health benefits for workers and their families known as Obamacare; the devastation of Appalachia and other energy-producing regions; and the abuse of ex-soldiers, wounded in body and mind, by the Veterans Administration.

Obama sought to defend the foreign policy record of his administration from criticism, mainly from the Republican right, where demands are being raised for military escalation in the Middle East and stepped-up attacks on democratic rights at home in the name of fighting “terrorism.”

While he claimed to reject an American role as the world’s policeman, he nonetheless boasted, “The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It’s not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined.”

He continued, “Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world,” winning the bipartisan standing ovation that always accompanies any mention of American soldiers engaged in combat overseas.

Obama indulged in the glorification of killing that has become an essential part of the degraded spectacle that passes for political discourse in America. Describing the US war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, he claimed, “With nearly 10,000 air strikes, we are taking out their leadership, their oil, their training camps, and their weapons.”

He called on Congress to pass an Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS, but vowed to wage war with or without legislative approval. The leaders of ISIS, he proclaimed, “will learn the same lessons as terrorists before them. If you doubt America’s commitment—or mine—to see that justice is done, ask Osama bin Laden. Ask the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, who was taken out last year…”

Then he declared, in language that will be noted by nations all over the world, that when it comes to waging war against potential adversaries, “our reach has no limit.”

Obama concluded his speech with an appeal to his Republican opponents to work with his administration and pull back from the extreme anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that has characterized the contest for the Republican presidential nomination.

In a clear reference to Donald Trump, he argued that “we need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This is not a matter of political correctness, but understanding what makes us strong.”

Obama was making an argument, not so much that racism and bigotry are intrinsically wrong, but that they make it more difficult for American imperialism to maintain its dominant world role. “When a politician insults Muslims,” he said, “it makes it harder to achieve our goals.”

The lottery and social despair in America

The lottery and social despair in America

9 January 2015

This mania, so generally condemned, has never been properly studied. No one has realized that it is the opium of the poor. Did not the lottery, the mightiest fairy in the world, work up magical hopes? The roll of the roulette wheel that made the gamblers glimpse masses of gold and delights did not last longer than a lightning flash; whereas the lottery spread the magnificent blaze of lightning over five whole days. Where is the social force today that, for forty sous, can make you happy for five days and bestow on you—at least in fancy—all the delights that civilization holds?

Balzac, La Rabouilleuse, 1842

The jackpot in the US Powerball lottery has hit $800 million, since there were no winners in Wednesday’s drawing. In the current round, which began on December 2, over 431 million tickets have been sold, a figure substantially larger than America’s population.

Go into any corner store in America and you will see workers of every age and race waiting in line to buy lottery tickets. With the current round, the lines are longer than ever. Americans spend over $70 billion on lottery tickets each year. In West Virginia, America’s second-poorest state, the average person spent $658.46 on lottery tickets last year.

Powerball players pick six random numbers when they purchase their tickets, with a certain percentage of sales going to the jackpot. If no winning ticket is sold, the jackpot rolls over to the next round.

The totals for the Mega Millions and Powerball national lotteries have been growing every year. This year’s jackpot has eclipsed 2012’s record of $656.5 million, the $390 million payout in 2007 and the $363 million prize in 2000. The jackpots have grown in direct proportion to ticket sales.

State-run gambling programs such as Powerball have been promoted by Democrats and Republicans alike as a solution to state budget shortfalls, even as the politicians slash taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals and gut social programs. From the standpoint of government revenue, lotteries and casinos are nothing more than a back-door regressive tax, soaking up money from the poor in proportion to the growth of social misery.

The boom in lotteries is global. Lottery sales grew 9.9 percent worldwide in 2014, after growing 4.9 percent in 2013.

Psychology Professor Kate Sweeny has noted that lottery sales grow when people feel a lack of control over their lives, particularly over their economic condition. “That feeling of self-control is very important to psychological well-being,” Sweeny says.

There is ample reason for American workers to feel they have no control over their lives. According a recent survey by Bankrate.com, more than half of Americans do not have enough cash to cover an unexpected expense of $500 or more—roughly the price of four name-brand tires.

Some 62 percent of Americans have savings of less than $1,000, and 21 percent do not have any savings at all. Most Americans are one medical emergency or one spell of unemployment from financial ruin.

For all the talk about “economic recovery” by the White House, the real financial state of most American households is far worse than before the 2008 financial crisis and recession. As of 2013, Americans were almost 40 percent poorer than they were in 2007, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. While a large portion of the decline in household wealth is attributable to the collapse of the housing bubble, falling wages and chronic mass unemployment have played major roles.

The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of consumer finances. A large share of this decline has taken place during the so-called recovery presided over by the Obama administration.

In addition to becoming poorer, America has become much more economically polarized. According to a separate Pew survey, for the first time in more than four decades “middle-income households” no longer constitute the majority of American society. Instead, the majority of households are either low- or high-income. Pew called its findings “a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point” in American society.

“Is the lottery the new American dream?” asked USA Today, commenting on this month’s Powerball jackpot. The observation is truer than the authors intended. For American workers, achieving the “American Dream” of a stable job and one’s own home is becoming increasingly unrealizable.

Following more than 10 million foreclosures during the financial crisis, America’s home ownership rate has hit the lowest level in two decades, and for young households, the rate of home ownership is the lowest it has been since the 1960s.

For the tens of millions of America’s poor, and the more than 100 million on the threshold of poverty, the dream of winning the lottery has replaced the “American Dream” of living a decent life. A lottery ticket is a chance to escape to a fantasy world where money is not a constant, nagging worry, where one is not insulted and bullied at a low-wage job by bosses whose pay is matched only by their incompetence. The lottery is, as Balzac aptly described it, the “opium of the poor.”

Using the same phrase to describe religion, Marx noted that the “illusory happiness of the people” provided by the solace of religion is, in fact, a silent protest and distorted “demand for their real happiness.” It is the intolerable social conditions that compel masses of people to seek consolation in a lottery ticket that will propel them into revolutionary struggles.

Andre Damon

Survey finds a majority of Americans unable to pay for major unexpected expenses

Survey finds a majority of Americans unable to pay for major unexpected expenses

By Nick Barrickman
9 January 2016

A new survey put out by the personal finance management site Bankrate.com on Wednesday found that more than half of Americans could not weather a sudden financial crisis without having to borrow money from friends and family or being forced to reduce the amount spent on other items such as dining out, paying cable or cell phone bills, or other basic features of a “middle class” lifestyle.

The survey, conducted last month among a pool of 1,000 Americans in conjunction with Princeton Survey Research Associates International, found that only 37 percent of those surveyed would be able to pay an emergency expense of $1,000, such as an emergency room visit or the cost of repairing a broken down vehicle, out of pocket.

Sixty-three percent of those surveyed would not be able to cover such a sudden expense without either cutting down on expenses elsewhere, borrowing or resorting to credit. The survey found that nearly four in 10 Americans had suffered such a financial setback in 2015.

“Without an adequate rainy-day fund, we are all living on a very slippery financial slope,” Gail Cunningham of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling told Bankrate.com. “The unexpected, unplanned expense is going to rear its ugly head and usually at the most inopportune time…Things as small as a flat tire or one trip to the emergency room can wreck the budgets of those who do not have an adequate amount in their savings account,” she said.

For Americans making less than $30,000 per year, only 23 percent would be able to cover such a sudden expense on their own. This was contrasted by nearly 60 percent of those making over $75,000 annually who could say the same. Nine percent making $30,000 or below stated that they did not know how they would cover such expenses, meaning that they were one expensive setback away from personal financial ruin.

The poll comes amid a slew of other reports detailing an immense drop in the living standards of a significant section of the US population, a component of the growth of social inequality more broadly.

Since the 2008 financial collapse and the subsequent economic “recovery” in 2009, 95 percent of all wealth gains have gone to the top 1 percent in society. A report released in November by the St. Louis Federal Reserve showed that Americans’ personal savings in 2015 were half of what the average was in the early 1980s.

A US Federal Reserve report released in 2014 found that nearly six in 10 Americans had lost all or part of their savings due to the financial impact of the 2008 economic crisis, while a 2015 study by GOBankingrates.com revealed that the majority of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings to their name. A report released the Pew Research firm last month revealed that the number of middle-income homes as a portion of the population had largely vanished in the span of a few decades.

The figures come as the US Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates for banks and other financial institutions, which will likely lead to further difficulty for individuals who rely upon credit in order to finance their costs of living.

The expenses eating away at the typical individual’s savings read like essential items for living in modern society. According to Bankrate.com, the largest expense for one-third of all Americans outside of food and shelter consisted of utilities such as water, electricity or phone service. For those over the age of 50, one in five cited medical bills as their largest co

Saturday, January 30, 2016

IS SHE AMERICA'S MOST UNWANTED CRIMINAL? - Hillary escaped Whitewater indictment, compared to 'Mafia kingpin'

Hillary escaped Whitewater indictment, compared to 'Mafia kingpin': Prosecutors looking into the Clinton-era Whitewater scandal considered indicting then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, tied closely to four charged in the affair, but decided in 1998 not to after an internal debate rated a possible conviction at just 10 percent.
Judicial Watch released documents provided by the National dArchives that showed the statements of the case against Clinton and Webster Hubbell, her former Rose Law Firm partner and former Associate Attorney General in the Clinton Justice Department.
One document released by Judicial Watch gave the odds of a conviction:

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: THEIR CRONIES CELEBRATE THE ONGOING LOOTING of AMERICA - Wall Street celebrates mounting signs of US slump

Wall Street celebrates mounting signs of US slump

30 January 2016

On Friday, the Commerce Department released the latest in a series
of economic reports pointing to a dramatic slowdown in the US economy,
with vast global implications. The response of Wall Street was a
euphoric surge on US markets, sending the Dow Jones industrial average
up by nearly 400 points and leading every major stock index around the
world to close sharply up for the day.

The Commerce Department
said US economic growth fell to a near-standstill in the last quarter of
2015, with the gross domestic product (GDP) expanding at an annualized
rate of just 0.7 percent, down from 2 percent in the third quarter. The
grim report included a dramatic fall in business investment and a marked
slowdown in consumer spending.

This followed a report Thursday
that durable goods orders, a key indicator of manufacturing output,
tumbled by 5.1 percent in December in the sharpest monthly fall since
the 2008–2009 financial crisis.

These statistics coincide with a
series of mass layoff announcements by major US corporations. They
include 16,000 layoffs at retailer Walmart, 10,000 at oilfield
contractor Schlumberger, 6,000 at chemical company DuPont, 4,000 at
education resources company Pearson LLC, 2,000 at the Norfolk Southern
rail network, 3,000 at consumer products conglomerate Johnson &
Johnson, 886 at mining company Alpha Natural Resources, 829 at mobile
phone service Sprint, and 800 at technology company VMware.

Also
this week, a number of giant US-based corporations, including United
Technologies, Boeing, Apple and Caterpillar, reported poor figures for
the end of 2015 and even worse estimates for 2016. Apple is anticipating
its first annual revenue decline since 2003. Caterpillar, saying its
revenues fell 20 percent last year and this year’s revenues could hit
the lowest level in six years, announced Friday that it would eliminate
670 US jobs and close five plants in the Midwest.

How is the giddy upturn in stock prices in the face of signs of an economy sliding into recession to be explained?

For
the broad mass of the population, economic stagnation and slowdown mean
a further descent into economic distress, unemployment and outright
poverty. The recent developments explode the claims of economic
“recovery” and confirm that the destruction of decent-paying jobs,
pensions and social services that followed the Wall Street crash of 2008
is not a temporary condition, but only the beginning of a permanent and
escalating attack on working class living standards.

For the
financial aristocracy, on the other hand, the signs of slump are welcome
indicators that the Federal Reserve will continue to pump trillions of
dollars into the financial markets, delaying further interest rate
increases and perhaps rolling back the initial increase it imposed in
December. Bankers and hedge fund speculators were rubbing their hands on
Friday in anticipation of still more cheap credit to underwrite their
parasitic financial operations.

The euphoria on Wall Street was a
demonstration of the essential character of what the government and
media call economic “recovery.” Just over two weeks ago, President Obama
in his State of the Union address praised the economic “surge” that had
made the US economy “the strongest, most durable… in the world,” and
said claims “America’s economy is in decline” were a “fiction.”

There
has been no genuine recovery in the real economy. Instead, a massive
diversion of public resources has been carried out to rescue and further
enrich the financial oligarchy at the expense of the productive forces
and the working class. The focus of domestic policy has been to
subsidize the utterly parasitic and quasi-criminal speculative
activities of the banks and financial institutions, starving the real
economy of productive investment, in order to engineer a further
concentration of income and wealth among the top 1 percent and 0.1
percent of the population.

Now, with the slowdown in China, the
crisis of the “emerging market” economies, the collapse of industrial
commodity prices, and signs that the mountain of debt is unraveling, the
financial elite is demanding even more free cash to prop up its Ponzi
scheme operations.

At the same time, it is demanding the
squandering of even greater sums to finance its wars for geo-political
dominance and economic plunder in the Middle East and its preparations
for war against its nuclear-armed rivals Russia and China.

The
mounting economic crisis, for which the ruling class has no rational or
progressive solution, intersects with and exacerbates geo-political
tensions around the world and social tensions at home. The
corporate-financial elite, fearing the spread of social opposition,
prepares all the more feverishly the means for violent state repression
against the working class.

The deepening economic crisis is
playing out against the backdrop of an election that has already
revealed deep-seated popular alienation from and disgust with the entire
political system and both big business parties, and a profound crisis
that threatens to tear apart the two-party system through which the
American ruling class has exercised political domination for a
century-and-a-half.

There is a growth of working class militancy,
reflected in the opposition of auto workers to the sellout contracts
imposed by the United Auto Workers last year and protests by workers in
Flint against the poisoning of the city’s water supply and by teachers
and students in Detroit against intolerable conditions in the schools.
At the same time, the broad support for the candidacy of Bernie Sanders,
who calls himself a socialist and denounces inequality and Wall Street,
even as he seeks to channel popular opposition behind the Democratic
Party, reflects a political radicalization and growth of anti-capitalist
sentiment among working people and youth.

There is growing fear
within the ruling class of impending social upheavals, reflected in a
wave of articles and studies on social inequality and worried
commentaries on the implications of the support for Sanders. On Friday,
the Wall Street Journal published a column by Peggy Noonan, a
former speech writer for Ronald Reagan, under the headline “Socialism
Gets a Second Life.” She writes, “The rise of Bernie Sanders means that
accommodation is ending, and something new will take its place,” and
adds, “Do you know what’s old if you’re 25? The free-market capitalist
system that drove us into a ditch.”

The coming struggles of the
working class must be guided by the understanding that its interests are
incompatible with those of the financial oligarchy that dominates the
economy and political system. The euphoric response of Wall Street to
economic news that spells growing distress and suffering for countless
millions is a demonstration of an irreconcilable conflict of social and
class interests.

The fight to secure basic social rights—to
decent-paying jobs, education, health care, housing, pensions—and halt
the drive toward a new and catastrophic world war is a fight to break
the power of the ruling financial oligarchy and end its private
ownership of the banks and corporations. It is a fight against the
capitalist system itself.

Andre Damon

Friday, January 29, 2016

BILLIONAIRE DONORS AND THE SLEEZY CLINTONS

Billionaire Clinton Donor Avoids Prison

By Henry Percy

"Full participation." Ahem. As in, "Hey Monica, come into the Oval Office, I've got a little somethin’ for ya"?

Wyss has an affinity with the former president in other ways: he settled with Jackie Long, a former employee of the Wyss Foundation, for $1.5 million for sexual assault. Long was particularly offended by Wyss’s donation to the “No Ceilings” project.

Oh the unfairness of it all! Wyss is trying to help women; he just wants to advance their “full participation.”

By the way, should you feel inclined to help the Clintons in their quest for "the full participation of girls and women," there’s a prominent, red “Donate” box at the top of the webpage. If you miss that, next to it is a pulldown labeled "Ways to Give." You'll be delighted that it's open ended: there are five ways to expose your wallet, followed by "More Ways to Give" followed by “View all Ways to Give” in larger type. Hard to miss. And couldn’t be simpler.

Isn't it wonderful how this self-effacing couple empowers you to let them reach into your pocket? Especially when you consider how they pulled themselves up out of poverty: “We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt … It was not easy. Bill has worked really hard. And it's been amazing to me. He's worked very hard."

I’ll say, Hillary, it’s been amazing to many of us. Almost brings a tear to my eye.

Henry Percy is the nom de guerre of a writer in Arizona. He may be reached at saler.50d[at]gmail.com.

In 2009, Hansjorg Wyss, the former CEO of Synthes, was indicted for directing “subordinates in executive management meetings to conduct illegal human drug trials.” Five people died. Four top executives went to prison. But not Hansjorg Wyss.

Billionaire? CEO? Big Pharma? One percent? Evil evil evil. But donate to progressive causes and all your sins are washed away. You see, Wyss has given hundreds of millions to liberal causes, including a pledge of $5 million to the “No Ceilings" project, “a Clinton Foundation initiative to inspire and advance the full participation of girls and women around the world.”

"Full participation." Ahem. As in, "Hey Monica, come into the Oval Office, I've got a little somethin’ for ya"?

Wyss has an affinity with the former president in other ways: he settled with Jackie Long, a former employee of the Wyss Foundation, for $1.5 million for sexual assault. Long was particularly offended by Wyss’s donation to the “No Ceilings” project.

Oh the unfairness of it all! Wyss is trying to help women; he just wants to advance their “full participation.”

By the way, should you feel inclined to help the Clintons in their quest for "the full participation of girls and women," there’s a prominent, red “Donate” box at the top of the webpage. If you miss that, next to it is a pulldown labeled "Ways to Give." You'll be delighted that it's open ended: there are five ways to expose your wallet, followed by "More Ways to Give" followed by “View all Ways to Give” in larger type. Hard to miss. And couldn’t be simpler.

Isn't it wonderful how this self-effacing couple empowers you to let them reach into your pocket? Especially when you consider how they pulled themselves up out of poverty: “We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt … It was not easy. Bill has worked really hard. And it's been amazing to me. He's worked very hard."

I’ll say, Hillary, it’s been amazing to many of us. Almost brings a tear to my eye.

Henry Percy is the nom de guerre of a writer in Arizona. He may be reached at saler.50d[at]gmail.com.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

HILLARY CLINTON and the FACE OF HIGH TREASON

Memories of the Walker family spy ring and British double agent Kim Philby could be resurrected if a new angle of the FBI investigation works toward its logical conclusion.  Catherine Herridge of Fox News reports that the FBI is going directly t...

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/01/hillary-clinton-face-of-high-treason.html

"It was not long ago that reports surfaced about Hillary's informal intel network and the Clinton tactic of securing patronage jobs in the intelligence
community for promoting their own interests."

January 28, 2016

Hillary's email scandal now potentially a matter of high treason

By John Smith

Memories of the Walker family spy ring and British double agent Kim Philby could be resurrected if a new angle of the FBI investigation works toward its logical conclusion. Catherine Herridge
of Fox News reports that the FBI is going directly to the intelligence
agencies that generated the assessments to determine the original
classification level.

The investigators "will go directly to depose specific individuals in agencies who generated the highly classified materials."

This
is the prudent and smart thing to do in order to get specifics on the
classification authority and to compare original documents with those
that were stripped of classification markings. But there is potentially
something deeper and more sinister going on.

Recently, Col. Mike Ford
reported to A.T. readers and scooped the rest of the media, explaining
how U.S. classified computer systems work and how material stored on the
systems cannot electronically "spill" or "jump" between systems. In
other words, it takes a conscious act to print, copy, scan, etc.
classified documents and then put them on an unclassified system.

That
the investigators are going to the source of the documents is actually
just scratching the surface of what could be a major scandal
encompassing the agencies themselves. Just because the State Department
has JWICS (Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System) and
connectivity to the I.C. (intelligence community), that doesn´t mean Hillary, Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, or even most people at State INR
(Bureau of Intelligence and Research) would have access to SAP (Special
Access Program) material. There are only certain people who read on to
specific programs. Bosses would not necessarily have access to
programs their own analysts are working on and vice versa; that's why
they're called compartmented. In fact, Fox News confirmed that at least
one email had an "HCS-0" marking, which is extremely sensitive HUMINT
information.

The
JWICS recognizes those individuals who have been read on to the
different compartments – or not. In my opinion, the underlying reason
to go to the sources of the assessments is to not only determine
original classification, but to root out those who had access to those
programs. This means Clinton-friendly members of the I.C. who were read
on were not only "grossly mishandling" classified information, but
committing espionage within the I.C. itself.

It was not long ago that reports surfaced about Hillary's informal intel network
and the Clinton tactic of securing patronage jobs in the intelligence
community for promoting their own interests. This is why the
intelligence source in the Fox News report said, "The bureau [FBI] does
not waive its primacy in espionage cases."

The FBI appears to have moved from a criminal investigation into an espionage investigation.

Sunday, January 17, 2016

BRIBES, BANKSTERS and BILLIONAIRES - The Life of Hillary and Billary Clinton - The Juan and Evita Peron of D.C.

This article is about Joseph Stalin but contains a remarkable paragraph that notes as follows.  ‘[Former President] Truman had numerous offers from large corporations for work, but turned them all down, stating:

“I knew that the...

January 17, 2016

Clinton fails the Truman Test

By Jerome J. Schmitt

This article is about Joseph Stalin but contains a remarkable paragraph that notes as follows. ‘[Former President] Truman had numerous offers from large corporations for work, but turned them all down, stating:

“I knew that they were not interested in hiring Harry Truman, the person, but what they wanted to hire was the former President of the United States. I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and the dignity of the office of the Presidency.”’

When reading this passage, one cannot help but think of the stark contrast set by Bill Clinton and his wife as Secretary of State. Clinton has coarsened grievously both the American Presidency and Post-Presidency. Truman was truly from another era of honor and respectability. Today, half the country wants to return Bill and Hillary to the White House despite their overt faults and derelictions.

This article is about Joseph Stalin but contains a remarkable paragraph that notes as follows. ‘[Former President] Truman had numerous offers from large corporations for work, but turned them all down, stating:

“I knew that they were not interested in hiring Harry Truman, the person, but what they wanted to hire was the former President of the United States. I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and the dignity of the office of the Presidency.”’

Peter Schweizer: Clinton Cash Still Rolling in for Bill’s Pardon of Fugitive Marc Rich

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AP/Ruth Fremson, Guido Roeoesli/AFP/Getty

by BREITBART NEWS17 Jan 2016544

Peter Schweizer–Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News, President of the Government Accountability Institute, and best-selling author of the political blockbuster Clinton Cash–writes in the New York Post about Bill Clinton’s presidential pardon for Marc Rich, the businessman who faced criminal prosecution for illegally trading with America’s enemies.

From the New York Post:

Fifteen years ago this month, on Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, Bill Clinton issued a pardon for international fugitive Marc Rich. It would become perhaps the most condemned official act of Clinton’s political career. A New York Times editorial called it “a shocking abuse of presidential power.” The usually Clinton-friendly New Republic noted it “is often mentioned as Exhibit A of Clintonian sliminess.”

Congressman Barney Frank added, “It was a real betrayal by Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified. It was contemptuous.”

Marc Rich was wanted for a list of charges going back decades. He had traded illegally with America’s enemies including Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, where he bought about $200 million worth of oil while revolutionaries allied with the Khomeini held 53 American hostages in 1979.

Rich made a large part of his wealth, approximately $2 billion between 1979 and 1994, selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa when it faced a UN embargo. He did deals with Khadafy’s Libya, Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, Kim Il-sung’s North Korea, Communist dictatorships in Cuba and the Soviet Union itself. Little surprise that he was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.

Facing prosecution by Rudy Giuliani in 1983, Rich fled to Switzerland and lived in exile.

What bothered so many was that Clinton’s clemency to Rich reeked of payoff. In the run-up to the presidential pardon, the financier’s ex-wife Denise had donated $450,000 to the fledgling Clinton Library and “over $1 million to Democratic campaigns in the Clinton era.”

As Judge Abner Mikva, a counsel in the Clinton White House and mentor to President Obama, noted that even Obama “was very, very dismayed by the Marc Rich pardon and the basis on which it appears to have been granted.”

But does the story end there? Is it possible the payoffs continued after he left office?

The stench of the scandal in early 2001 sent people scurrying. Days after it was revealed that a senior UBS executive named Pierre de Weck had written a letter to Clinton “to support his request for a pardon,” the Swiss banking giant cancelled its discussions with Clinton about a lucrative post-White House speech, apparently “worried that a large speaking fee would create an appearance of impropriety.”

Even Bill Clinton eventually admitted that the pardon had been “terrible politics.” “It wasn’t worth the damage to my reputation,” he said.

But while the pardon was a political mistake, it certainly was not a financial one. In the years following the scandal, the flow of funds from those connected to Marc Rich or the pardon scandal have continued to the Clintons.

Rich died in 2013. But his business partners, lawyers, advisors and friends have showered millions of dollars on the Clintons in the decade and a half following the scandal.

Read the rest of the story here.