The Powell Memorandum: The Looter Capitalist Manifesto

Warning Signs: Part Four

The Powell Memorandum

I have decided to resume this series on influential figures who foretold the rise of flag wrapped fascism and looter capitalism after for some unexplainable reason leaving it to wither on the vine for awhile despite it’s popularity. The first three installments featured the legendary (and largely ignored other than when the corporatist Hillary Clinton invokes to prove her bogus left wing bonafides – he was the subject of her thesis) organizer and activist Saul Alinsky, former FDR Vice President Henry A. Wallace who wrote about what an American fascist would do in a now classic 1944 New York Times piece entitled The Danger of American Fascism and was eliminated withe extreme prejudice from the political scene for his anti-fascism as a result and General Smedley D. Butler who dared to call a spade a spade in his classic tract aptly entitled War Is A Racketas well as blew the whistle on a coup plotted by then captains of industry and banking against President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This will be an ongoing if irregular series, typically I have no set thing that I want to write about and it is usually decided by whatever mood that I am in on any given day.

For this belated fourth installment in my little series I want to take a different tack by looking at the actions of a very influential albeit unmentioned figure and a leader in the corporatist war on America. Judge Lewis F. Powell Jr. was a Richard M. Nixon appointee to the Supreme Court and can be looked at in a historical perspective as the architect of the right wing infrastructure and father of the think tanks. Powell may not have fired the first shot in the class war that has gutted the middle class, redistributed wealth upwards and turned the mythical American dream into a nightmare of Darwinist debt slavery but his at the time secret 1971 memo to the Chamber of Commerce laid the groundwork for the looting spree and the rapacious piranha capitalism that was to come. The Powell Memorandumwas the manifesto of a malignant and cruel form of monopolist ‘fuck you’ capitalism that has now with the culmination of the looting spree and selling off of America for pennies on the dollar to sovereign wealth funds is beginning to feed off of itself kind of like that dude in the old Stephen King story Survivor Type in which a man stranded on a deserted island has to start hacking off pieces of his own body to eat in order to stay alive, or like a python consuming it’s own tail. I am going excerpt a few pieces of this very important historical battle plan against the working class here and there through this posting but you need to read the whole thing at the links that I have provided to get a real grasp of it’s raw monstrous magnitude.

The Powell Memorandum minced no words in laying out the threat to the abilities of huge corporations to anally rape the public with their toxic products and at one point essentially identified then consumer advocate Ralph Nader as public enemy number one (kind of like the uninformed did when he became a scapegoat for providing cover for Bush to steal the 2000 election in Florida but that is a story for another time). Notice the identification of the media and the college campuses as enemies of the system, in this document lay the seeds of the undeclared war against the middle class that has brought us to the brink of economic apocalypse brought on by a percolating deterioration of global stock markets that could blow at any time:

Dimensions of the Attack: No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. This varies in scope, intensity, in the techniques employed, and in the level of visibility.

There always have been some who opposed the American system, and preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism). Also, there always have been critics of the system, whose criticism has been wholesome and constructive so long as the objective was to improve rather than to subvert or destroy.

But what now concerns us is quite new in the history of America. We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.

Sources of the Attack: The sources are varied and diffused. They include, not unexpectedly, the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic. These extremists of the left are far more numerous, better financed, and increasingly are more welcomed and encouraged by other elements of society, than ever before in our history. But they remain a small minority, and are not yet the principal cause for concern.

The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. In most of these groups the movement against the system is participated in only by minorities. Yet, these often are the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.

Moreover, much of the media-for varying motives and in varying degrees-either voluntarily accords unique publicity to these “attackers,” or at least allows them to exploit the media for their purposes. This is especially true of television, which now plays such a predominant role in shaping the thinking, attitudes and emotions of our people.

One of the bewildering paradoxes of our time is the extent to which the enterprise system tolerates, if not participates in, its own destruction.

The campuses from which much of the criticism emanates are supported by (i) tax funds generated largely from American business, and (ii) contributions from capital funds controlled or generated by American business. The boards of trustees of our universities overwhelmingly are composed of men and women who are leaders in the system.

Most of the media, including the national TV systems, are owned and theoretically controlled by corporations which depend upon profits, and the enterprise system to survive.

The Powell Memorandum goes on to lay the specific groundwork for an agressive, extremely well funded and highly organized counterattack that would shift the discourse through the creation of the think tank infrastructure that would grow to the point where it could saturate the media with pro-corporate propaganda, bully and intimidate critics, cultivate activists, pack the courts and do everything possible to stack the deck in favor of those to whom avarice is a religious dogma. A good resource for some of this is former GOP operative (now with the great watchdog Media Matters) David Brock’s excellent book The Republican Noise Machine which provides much detail on the rise of the neofascist corporate state that used the Republican party as a tool for domination and the furthering of corporatist interests. There is also a long essay by Steve Kangas out there which addresses the think tanks and potential CIA involvement that I would recommend checking out called The Origins Of The Overclass that fully examines the sordid history of the CIA which is nothing more than Wall Steet’s Gestapo having risen out of that bastion of the elite Yale University but that is something I will take a look at at some future point in this series. The parts that I am going excerpt briefly below about the quashing of campus freedoms, the review of textbooks and the intimidation tactics subtly proposed are something straight out of Nazi Germany and the plan to saturate the media with propaganda are on a level with Herr Goebbels himself:

Powell On Higher Education:

The Campus

The assault on the enterprise system was not mounted in a few months. It has gradually evolved over the past two decades, barely perceptible in its origins and benefiting (sic) from a gradualism that provoked little awareness much less any real reaction.

Although origins, sources and causes are complex and interrelated, and obviously difficult to identify without careful qualification, there is reason to believe that the campus is the single most dynamic source. The social science faculties usually include members who are unsympathetic to the enterprise system.

What Can Be Done About the Campus

The ultimate responsibility for intellectual integrity on the campus must remain on the administrations and faculties of our colleges and universities. But organizations such as the Chamber can assist and activate constructive change in many ways, including the following:

Staff of Scholars

The Chamber should consider establishing a staff of highly qualified scholars in the social sciences who do believe in the system. It should include several of national reputation whose authorship would be widely respected — even when disagreed with.

Staff of Speakers

There also should be a staff of speakers of the highest competency. These might include the scholars, and certainly those who speak for the Chamber would have to articulate the product of the scholars. (Like Ann Coulter?)

Speaker’s Bureau

In addition to full-time staff personnel, the Chamber should have a Speaker’s Bureau which should include the ablest and most effective advocates from the top echelons of American business.

Evaluation of Textbooks

The staff of scholars (or preferably a panel of independent scholars) should evaluate social science textbooks, especially in economics, political science and sociology. This should be a continuing program.

The objective of such evaluation should be oriented toward restoring the balance essential to genuine academic freedom. This would include assurance of fair and factual treatment of our system of government and our enterprise system, its accomplishments, its basic relationship to individual rights and freedoms, and comparisons with the systems of socialism, fascism and communism. Most of the existing textbooks have some sort of comparisons, but many are superficial, biased and unfair.

We have seen the civil rights movement insist on re-writing many of the textbooks in our universities and schools. The labor unions likewise insist that textbooks be fair to the viewpoints of organized labor. Other interested citizens groups have not hesitated to review, analyze and criticize textbooks and teaching materials. In a democratic society, this can be a constructive process and should be regarded as an aid to genuine academic freedom and not as an intrusion upon it.

If the authors, publishers and users of textbooks know that they will be subjected — honestly, fairly and thoroughly — to review and critique by eminent scholars who believe in the American system, a return to a more rational balance can be expected.

Equal Time on the Campus

The Chamber should insist upon equal time on the college speaking circuit. The FBI publishes each year a list of speeches made on college campuses by avowed Communists. The number in 1970 exceeded 100. There were, of course, many hundreds of appearances by leftists and ultra liberals who urge the types of viewpoints indicated earlier in this memorandum. There was no corresponding representation of American business, or indeed by individuals or organizations who appeared in support of the American system of government and business.

Powell On The Manipulation of Media

Television

The national television networks should be monitored in the same way that textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance. This applies not merely to so-called educational programs (such as “Selling of the Pentagon”), but to the daily “news analysis” which so often includes the most insidious type of criticism of the enterprise system.12 Whether this criticism results from hostility or economic ignorance, the result is the gradual erosion of confidence in “business” and free enterprise.

This monitoring, to be effective, would require constant examination of the texts of adequate samples of programs. Complaints — to the media and to the Federal Communications Commission — should be made promptly and strongly when programs are unfair or inaccurate.

Equal time should be demanded when appropriate. Effort should be made to see that the forum-type programs (the Today Show, Meet the Press, etc.) afford at least as much opportunity for supporters of the American system to participate as these programs do for those who attack it.

Other Media

Radio and the press are also important, and every available means should be employed to challenge and refute unfair attacks, as well as to present the affirmative case through these media.

The Scholarly Journals

It is especially important for the Chamber’s “faculty of scholars” to publish. One of the keys to the success of the liberal and leftist faculty members has been their passion for “publication” and “lecturing.” A similar passion must exist among the Chamber’s scholars. Incentives might be devised to induce more “publishing” by independent scholars who do believe in the system.

There should be a fairly steady flow of scholarly articles presented to a broad spectrum of magazines and periodicals — ranging from the popular magazines (Life, Look, Reader’s Digest, etc.) to the more intellectual ones (Atlantic, Harper’s, Saturday Review, New York, etc.)13 and to the various professional journals.

Books, Paperbacks and Pamphlets

The news stands — at airports, drugstores, and elsewhere — are filled with paperbacks and pamphlets advocating everything from revolution to erotic free love. One finds almost no attractive, well-written paperbacks or pamphlets on “our side.” It will be difficult to compete with an Eldridge Cleaver or even a Charles Reich for reader attention, but unless the effort is made — on a large enough scale and with appropriate imagination to assure some success — this opportunity for educating the public will be irretrievably lost.

Paid Advertisements

Business pays hundreds of millions of dollars to the media for advertisements. Most of this supports specific products; much of it supports institutional image making; and some fraction of it does support the system. But the latter has been more or less tangential, and rarely part of a sustained, major effort to inform and enlighten the American people. If American business devoted only 10% of its total annual advertising budget to this overall purpose, it would be a statesman-like expenditure.

And Powell Lays Sums It Up…..

A More Aggressive Attitude

Business interests — especially big business and their national trade organizations — have tried to maintain low profiles, especially with respect to political action. As suggested in the Wall Street Journal article, it has been fairly characteristic of the average business executive to be tolerant — at least in public — of those who attack his corporation and the system. Very few businessmen or business organizations respond in kind. There has been a disposition to appease; to regard the opposition as willing to compromise, or as likely to fade away in due time.

Business has shunted confrontation politics. Business, quite understandably, has been repelled by the multiplicity of non-negotiable “demands” made constantly by self-interest groups of all kinds.

While neither responsible business interests, nor the United States Chamber of Commerce, would engage in the irresponsible tactics of some pressure groups, it is essential that spokesmen for the enterprise system — at all levels and at every opportunity — be far more aggressive than in the past.

There should be no hesitation to attack the Naders, the Marcuses and others who openly seek destruction of the system. There should not be the slightest hesitation to press vigorously in all political arenas for support of the enterprise system. Nor should there be reluctance to penalize politically those who oppose it.

Lessons can be learned from organized labor in this respect. The head of the AFL-CIO may not appeal to businessmen as the most endearing or public-minded of citizens. Yet, over many years the heads of national labor organizations have done what they were paid to do very effectively. They may not have been beloved, but they have been respected — where it counts the most — by politicians, on the campus, and among the media.

It is time for American business — which has demonstrated the greatest capacity in all history to produce and to influence consumer decisions — to apply their great talents vigorously to the preservation of the system itself.

I rest my case….

With the economy now on the brink of the abyss, the pocket Supreme Court once again having stripped the people of their rights to sue the bastard looters of Wall Street with their ruling that once again put another brick in the firewall to protect the oligarchy. With Justice Anthony Kennedy providing the swing vote to the Federalist Society fascist foursome of Scalia, Thomas, Alito and apple cheeked Johnny Roberts (their crowning moment was the effective nullification of Brown vs. Board of Education last summer) the interests of such grand scale purveyors of toxic snake oil packaged as ‘securities’ like Enron and those precious ivory tower investment banking houses the right of shareholders to seek damages against fraudsters and practitioners of financial chicanery has been rendered invalid. Of course you won’t see anything about this in the corporatist media that prefers to feature drooling, foaming at the mouth, wide-eyed Judas goats and barkers like the ridiculous Jim Cramer of “Mad Money” fame and ludicrously insulting sideshows like the Congressional hearings into the misuse of steroids in baseball (never mind the contradiction in not cracking down on the global narcotics rings that are largely overlooked by the CIA precisely because of the big bucks that the mega-banks book as profit due to ‘laundering’ drug money but that too is a story for another time) on their first day in session for 2008. The failure of the pocket media to give any credibility at all to the reformist John Edwards, suffocating him and his anti-corporate message in order to preserve the status quo by throwing in with the Clintons along with the aforementioned ruling are a testament as to the long-term effectiveness of Powell’s manifesto.

The huge influence of Powell’s manifesto on big business cannot be underestimated and it was implemented with maximum efficiency to change the nature of the discourse in America and to set the tone for the pollution of the media, the ongoing harassment of college professors by hate mongering clowns like David Horowitz and calculating monsters like Lynne Cheney and Joseph Lieberman and their front groups. The demonizing of the non-existent “liberal media” and the ludicrous concept of offering equal time to public relations hacks to rebut the truth is also a result of Powell’s blueprint. I would strongly recommend not only reading the actual document in it’s entirety but in getting it out to as many people as possible. With the system currently in it’s death throes it is of the utmost of importance to ensure that people know the truth about the forces that have ruined their lives. More importantly when the wheels do finally come off and the Wall Street house of cards collapses the same corporatists will be looking for scapegoats and with thugs like Rush Limbaugh (the latter day Father Coughlin) and his ilk there will be no shortage of those who will be blamed for a failed system built on greed and outright thievery.

May we live to see the day when the looter capitalism of Powell and his ilk will soon be taking it’s rightful place on history’s scrapheap of failed ideologies right alongside the equally oppressive and anti-human system of totalitarian communism.

The Establishment Strikes Back

Like a bad case of genital herpes the Clintons never really completely go away and with the regularity of the rising of the sun the punditry got it all wrong again. The ballots are all in from the New Hampshire primary and the DLC once again has their queen in waiting, the insurgents have been chastened and the myth that this coming election is about change has been put to rest with the ugly truth that it is really about corporatization, globalization, militarism and the building of an impenetrable firewall around the status quo. Oh, and those skeptics who may have questioned my labeling of Barack Obama as a ringer had best give that very simple and ugly possibility some sincere thought. He went down quicker than an altar boy and just like the traditional change agent Democratic party tomato can in the Granite State. Lost in all of the Barack vs. Hillary steel cage death match hyperbole was the largely ignored campaign of John Edwards who may not have Bill or Oprah but he does have a message focused on the unchecked rise of rapacious corporations and looter capitalism gone cancerous and dared to openly speak of the detritus of the undeclared yet ever present class war that has laid waste to the land of plenty.

As for the bloggers who exalted in Obama’s surprise win in Iowa I reference the classic quote of that great philosopher Winston Wolf who warned against irrational and premature exuberance “let’s not all start sucking each other’s dicks just yet” which should immediately be transcribed onto a post it note and should adorn all of their monitors for the foreseeable future. In their haste to coronate the warm and fuzzy Obama and stick the proverbial fork into Hillary’s pasty white ass they momentarily forgot who really runs the show in America and they have all lined up behind Mrs. Rodham-Clinton, and of course there is the matter of Israel and her signature of blood with the Lieberman-Kyl amendment. Coupled with John McCain’s Republican win and his magic Bobbsey twin sweater that according to some of the sort of rumors that populate the darkest corners of cyberspace is likely woven with the hair of blood red heifers and sacrificed goats the neocons scored a double win but more on Manchurian Mac in a little while.

Queen Hillary’s reestablishment of her aura of inevitability was largely helped by her much overblown show of emotion with the most shameless act of fake crying since the unctuous John Boehner last took to the House floor to bray his great choking sobs about supporting the troops so Wall Street flim-flam men could have the freedom to continue their looting spree with like pigs in a rutting frenzy or some other happy horseshit. The mini Gulf of Tonkin ‘provocation’ by Iranian patrol boats also helped to trigger the fear instinct that is always just below the surface in this tragic post 9/11 land of cowardice, torture and wretched dumbness and the assuredness that Rodham-Clinton would dive head first into a scrum for the nuclear launch code “football” before the corks on the Dom Pérignon were popped for the grand inauguration ball for the restoration of the Clinton dynasty was undoubtedly a factor in the minds of voters. The shameless invocation of al Qaeda by the candidate didn’t hurt her either, in fact the with all of the past few days of fear mongering, slander, crocodile tears and blaming the media for her woes you would have to ask yourself whether Rodham-Clinton was running for office as a member of the wrong party. William Kristol’s new co-worker Maureen Dowd of the damned liberal New York Times has a great piece on the resilient future queen and her astoundingly cynical display of ‘emotions’ that went over so well with the great masses of television addicted asses who are easily duped into buying such swill as genuine that is entitled Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?

Now of course as far as that party thing goes anybody with any sense who has spent any amount of time doing their homework knows that other than an absolute aberration like the Bushreich there is really not much actual difference between the two parties that have come to be the Coke and Pepsi of the American empire. For proof that that particular idea has existed for quite some time you can find it in the massive and highly important historical tome for those seeking an understanding of how things really work Tragedy And Hope written by Mr. Clinton’s mentor Professor Carroll Quigley:

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.

Big Bubba himself was out running the slime machine with his sniping about “fairy tales” and other cheap shots usually left to the hired help and vampires like James Carville, consider it an act of atonement for having made his spouse suffer through the indignity of a media circus after he was exposed for having his stogie smoked by that fat little thong wearing trollop Monica Lewinsky who lured the big lug in bearing gifts of pizza for tingly altoid juiced blow jobs back in less dangerous times. Some might say that it was below the dignity of a former president to act in such a manner but that is assuming that the big overly horny doofus had any dignity to begin with. Arguably had President William Jefferson Clinton had a little more personal control over his allegedly crooked cock and his ravenous animal craving for pussy or at the very least been a bit more discreet in his sexual dalliances like some of his predecessors had the good sense to do then the perfect storm conditions that led to the stealing of the 2000 election in Florida and the subsequent neocon coup d’etat and implementation of the fascist police state might never have occurred.

The hysteria and hostility towards Bill Clinton largely was responsible for Al Gore’s selection of Judas Lieberman as a running mate instead of Florida’s Bob Graham who would have had the necessary local connections to head off Jeb Bush’s vote stealing bandits at the pass. Now after two rigged elections we have an economy in shambles, no habeas corpus, a torture mad segment of the population brainwashed by the FOX TV Nazi Jack Bauer along with what Gore Vidal called “perpetual war for perpetual peace”, a constant state of dumbness, fear and loathing, a financial system that is a rapidly collapsing house of cards and millions of people who are coming to a slow rolling boil and who thanks to Jane Harman and Lieberman will soon be labelled as domestic terrorists. A hell of a price to pay for some sleazy afternoon sex and the strongest argument in favor of the merits of masturbation that one could possibly conceive of.

As for Senator McCain we have seen this movie before and were I one millionaire named Willard Romney I would right now be on the phone to Karl Rove offering up a seven figure retainer and first class tickets to Charleston where he can work roll out his sleazy dark gris-gris about Negro children born out of wedlock, drug addictions and insanity to keep the possibility of a McCain-Lieberman ticket trapped in the wet dreams of the war pigs at the American Enterprise Institute. If there is one saving grace in the detestable McCain’s win it is that we can all stop hearing about Elmer Gantry Huckabee and his Evangelical army for a little awhile it was beginning to wear a bit thin just like the ascendant Obama and his motivating of the slacker generation to get off of their lazy apathetic asses and vote for a change storyline.

The biggest winner last night in New Hampshire was the establishment itself for once again the two front runners had been restored to their proper places, the ringer did his job and the true agents of change John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich and the questioners of the existing order Ron Paul and Mike Gravel will now be slowly erased from the collective memory by the pocket media kingmakers. After the next set of primaries later this month in the heart of peckerwood nation, South Carolina and the Republicans will descend upon the diseased penis of America that is the state of Florida where the American Il Duce Rudolpho Giuliani has been barnstorming and preaching the gospel of 9/11 and skipping while treating the early states with the same significance that he gave to the Iraq Study Group. Then it will be on to Super Tuesday where two days after that grand American bacchanal The Super Bowl where the entire nation is transfixed by a typically lousy football game wedged in between multi-million dollar advertisements the still hung over denizens of the world’s biggest lemming farm will eagerly look to the big political enchilada of 24 state primaries that could potentially crown the new world champion of the empire of greed and blood and the inheritor of the keys to the war machine and the money spigots that fuel the spoils system that our national politics have become.

Ahhh fuck it, is it time for the new season of American Idol yet?

Working The Big Con in the Land of Corn

Mike Huckabee looks to bag his share of suckers in Iowa

The Christmas season is finally mercifully over and we can all go back to comfortably hating again. Retailers are nearly finished closing out their Chinese made plastic Santas and inflatable snow globes for pennies on the dollar and consumers are further ensnared by debt for baubles that they don’t need, the wretched bush league Illini defense still hasn’t stopped USC from scoring and the professional grifters are stepping up their activities out n the hustings. The deceitful charlatans are stepping up their move through the breeding beds of suckers in the godforsaken frozen wasteland of Iowa, trolling for the rubes that will largely set the agenda for the selection of the successor to the mockery that is George W. Bush – barring martial law of course. It is just all so fucking surreal as we watch the national pocket media kingmakers turn their focus to the land of corn and the pagan orgy of lies and sublime stupidity where those whose ears are keen enough can just barely detect the death knell of the republic on the icy early January winds out on the plains.

I just absolutely fucking hate electoral politics anymore – I’ll leave that bullshit up to the lame hacks and shills over on the so-called “A list” blogs – it is all such a big con game where the elitists and their corporatist media toadies pull off the magic act of selling charlatans to the masses of asses as though they were pimping any other product. The system as it is has been set up to filter out any candidate who may actually try to change things for the better in regards to the people or to blow up the fucking rotting militarist looter capitalist eat the young empire of greed and blood that the United States has mutated into over the past quarter of a century or so. The permanent campaign finally gets it’s first big test with the voters on Thursday with the Iowa Democratic caucuses leading off the next month or so of the big exhaustively hyped by a media entrusted to stick their fingers in the dike in order to keep the false façade of a sham democracy in a land run by transnational corporations, financial goliaths that specialize in chicanery bordering on outright fraud and the military industrial security complex that exports death and grown tyranny on our home soil. It is what author Peter Dale Scott refers to as “the deep state” and the amoral charlatans who are chosen to be our political ‘leaders’ are merely figureheads for the dark and nefarious forces that really have their claws on the levers of power.

That however is a story for another time so I digress…

The usual barkers and pitchmen have been pimping Iowa as though it were the fucking Super Bowl and of course despite a growing restiveness and awareness that we have all been played for fools Americans will eagerly line up at the bullshit buffet in their naïve and nostalgic longing for a country that long ago passed the demarcation point from any sort of sane society into this my team versus your team, praise Jesus and pass the ammunition, beggared third world debt ridden slave colony where your normal airing of American Idol draws more attention than the democratic process. Hell, they quit teaching anything even remotely resembling civics or history in schools around the time that Dutch Reagan was trying to have fucking ketchup classified as a vegetable for school lunches so could any other result possibly be expected by rational minds? I will give the Bushreich credit for on thing though, it has been so despotic, so controlling, so dishonest, so arrogant and so thoroughly rotten to the core that it (along with the internet) have succeeded in giving away the entire big con game and there is a growing undercurrent of resentment right now in America and it’s soon going to come to a slow rolling boil as the treasonous looters on Wall Street demand that corporations cut more jobs to keep the stock market up for just a little longer. 2008 will see inflation spike due to a Federal Reserve that has been allowed to run amok, playing games to keep their failed laissez faire looter’s paradise ideology which is a house of cards – all jokers that would have been mocked by sane economists prior to the ascension of Reagan and his voodoo economics witch doctors and their crackerjack propaganda apparatus built with the Powell Memorandum as a blueprint.

The ugly truth is that this country is now bordering on third world status and 2008 is going to be a very cruel year, foreclosures will continue as millions of people whose only crime was that they bought into the fraudulent ‘American Dream’ are thrown out of their over mortgaged equity challenged homes in droves. The credit crisis is going to metastasize throughout the entire system as the defaults on those evil little pieces of plastic in everybody’s wallets are going to rise and thanks to the fucking Democrats the bankruptcy laws no longer exist, for all we know the swine are ready to sign off on opening a vast gulag of debtor’s prisons and use slave labor to entice corporations to actually start to make things here again. Of course everything as the media tells you is ok, the economy is robust pay no mind to the Chicken Littles screaming that the sky is falling and that we are entering a recession, hell core inflation is low even if you are paying 3.50 a gallon for gas and upwards of 5 bucks for a gallon of milk. The conditions in America today eerily parallel those leading up to the Great Depression and the bill is coming due posthaste for all those years of living stupidly. A lot of people get this but those who have a vested interest in continuing to squeeze the last drop of blood and last cent of profit out of America need to maintain the illusion for just a little while longer.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or fucking cry after reading a story in the most recent edition of Newsweek magazine lamenting politically active Americans that was ironically entitled The Closing Of The American Mind which incidentally is the name of a book by Chicago school neoconservative ideologue Allan Bloom another disciple of Leo Strauss and a mentor of one Paul Wolfowitz. The piece that I refer to was written by Evan Thomas and starts out “Partisan warriors may love our polarized political culture. Everyone else is turned off and tuning out.” Given the mass feeding frenzy over the upcoming political season and the degenerate horse track gamling junkie treatment it is pretty damned humorous that America’s shitrag would roll out this silly little piece of propaganda lamenting the same ultrapartisanship that they didn’t see fit to bump their celebrity/health tips swill for when the laissez faire looting machine that fills their coffers wasn’t being threatened by the conventional wisdom that we as a nation are getting collectively fucked. I don’t exactly recall seeing the establishment hacks and the fishwrap that they used as a forum crying when Tom DeLay’s beltway mafia was running it’s spoils system.

Anyway, the Newsweek piece goes on to proclaim the following precious nuggets:

There are, as they say, two Americas. There is the America of the rich and the America of the poor, as Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards likes to point out. There is the America of Red States and Blue States, populated, as columnist Dave Barry likes to joke, by “ignorant racist fascist knuckle-dragging NASCAR-obsessed cousin-marrying road-kill-eating tobacco-juice-dribbling gun-fondling religious fanatic rednecks” and “godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving leftwing Communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts.”

These divisions seem to grow, and to grow more antagonistic, by the year. But the real divide, the separation that may matter more to the future of American democracy, is between the political junkies and everyone else. The junkies watch endless cable-TV news shows and listen to angry talk radio and feel passionate about their political views. They number roughly 20 percent of the population, according to Princeton professor Markus Prior, who tracks political preferences and the media. Then there’s all the rest: the people who prefer ESPN or old movies or videogames or Facebook or almost anything on the air or online to politics. Once upon a time, these people tended to be political moderates; now they are turned off or tuned out.

That Thomas discredits his own arguments in stating that only 20 percent of the population is politically active and that the rest are just gooving on the tube and other distractions is then followed by the incredibly stupid contradiction that voter turnout is in the low 50 percent range in his attempt to somehow paint the 20 percenters as some sort of fringe extremists. But with a 50 percent turnout of the populace aren’t the 20 percenters more representative of say at least HALF of voters? And if the later number referenced turns out to be true of only a 30 percent turnout then the politically aware and energized are representative of 2/3 of the electorate – outside the cloistered realms of beltway elitists that is. And Newsweek really doesn’t exactly practice what they preach, I seem to recall a recent orgy of self congratulation when the mag announced that they had retained the services of two of the biggest partisan hacks in the fucking country Karl Rove and Markos Moulitsas-Zuniga for commentators during the upcoming 2008 political season….so much for détente .

But back to Iowa where they are selling the one thing that has always been a hot commodity in America – HOPE. As I have already stated I deplore this advance purchase of stolen merchandise being conducted under the façade of legitimacy and pimped ad nauseam by the pocket media kingmakers but I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that I don’t find a bit of sick humor over some of the silly assed story lines coming out of the tall corn state. Queen Clinton is allegedly coming back after being battered back by Barack Obama (who I still strongly suspect is a ringer) along with the help of the great goddess of the weekday afternoon television empire Oprah Winfrey has made a surge to from many accounts pull into a dead heat with Mrs. Rodham-Clinton which in and of itself is impressive. If anyone has pull with the miserable yahoos in Iowa as well as the rest of the feckless weasels, losers and television addicted sheep, her following has a cult like devotion and on any given day if Oprah would tell them to eat a bowl of fresh dogshit at least a third of them would actually do it – and that is a conservative estimate. It offers the establishment a nice hedge against John Edwards too, his reformist, anti-corporate message is the sort that could resonate with people who are forced to choose between heat and meat in the bite ass cold Midwestern winters and once he has been relegated to also ran status along with Manny, Moe and Jack (Biden, Dodd and Richardson) and with Dennis Kucinich already painted as some UFO watching kook who is out in Mel Gibson’s cornfield waiting for the aliens to arrive the fix is likely already in for a Clinton restoration. I also found the references to Obama’s alleged past drug use to be amusing, especially considering all of the blow that flew through Mena, Arkansas while the Clintons were in the governor’s mansion but that is another story for another time. Suffice it to say that the establishment absolutely cannot have a reform minded candidate emerge from the brutal gauntlet of the rigged primary system to even have a legitimate sniff of power in this sordid mess of a country slowly being bled to death by looter capitalism so expect Hillary to be a mile high in Denver come August when the DLC holds it’s convention.

As amusing as the Democrat’s circus may be it is nothing like that of the Republicans who can ALWAYS be counted on to deliver the highest ratings on the freak show scale. The front runner, Il Duce Americano Rudolpho Giuliani is largely bypassing the state and focusing on Super Tuesday, his ghoulish wrapping of himself in 9/11 doesn’t go over very well when a gittar strummin’ preacher like Mike Huckabee is around, at least for now in the land of tall corn. Huckabee has been treated by the punditry like the second coming of Jesus Fucking Christ himself by the knuckle dragging foot soldiers of the ‘Christian’ Right and in something that I find to be quite humorous has in a way become the Republican party Wall Street establishment’s very own Frankenstein monster – after all, they only appeased the mouth breathing buffoons all too willing to put their kids to bed cold and hungry as long as they could wage total war against gays and Darwin but God forbid that a real Jesus juicer would have the audacity to actually occupy the Oval Office. The deceitful charlatans running the game were always in on the joke that George W. Bush was a white knuckle, mean as a snake dry drunk and former cokehead whose words were always betrayed by his deeds and that he would always be counted on to worship the moneychangers when it really came down to it but Huckabee justifiably scares the shit out of these people. I always predicted that the corporatists would one day have to throw against the Raptureheads and theocrats and the huckster from Hope with his populist outsider status worn on his sleeve could just have enough clout with the bible thumpers to be the one future Grand-Führer of the fetus wars who would also bring a bit of the real Jesus into the formula to finally run the moneychangers out of the temple – of course that they would be gassed along with the rest of the liberals, gays, hippies, feminists, Jews, Muslims, blacks and any other less than deserving human is a mere triviality.

Out of all the Hawkeye State bullshit I have to say that the rise of Huckabee who has Texas Walker Ranger Chuck Norris in tow as the real knee-slapper. It far surpasses for sheer over the top value the now resurgent candidacy of the pathetic John McCain who has been endorsed by his longtime warmongering crony Joseph Lieberman who showed up at a recent press event looking like the buttfuck twins clad in identical silly sweaters, the previously mentioned Giuliani hospitalization, the artful dodger and Massachusetts flip-flopper Willard Romney who may or may not believe that the devil was the brother of Jesus and is as slippery as a greased hamster at the annual Bohemian Grove gathering of elite hedonists and sodomites never ceases to amaze with his slickness, the ‘New Reagan’ Fred Thompson is occasionally seen wandering aimlessly and mumbling and just when the war against the brown menace is being stoked by the drooling, gun toting racist GOP freaks Tom Tancredo is nowhere to be found.

But my all time favorite bit of triviality in the runup to January 3rd had to be Huckabee’s utterly shameless Christmas commercial where he appeared with a fucking highlighted cross in the background that was Rovian imagery at it’s finest. The commercial was controversial to say the least but the greatest and most honest comment on this fucking disgrace was delivered by Ron Paul who while being interviewed on FOX let slip that the commercial brought to mind Sinclair Lewis’ classic statement on fascism with his hit it out of the park, spot on assessment that was allegedly supposed to be not a part of the actual interview:

“It reminds me of what Sinclair Lewis once said. He says, ‘when fascism comes to this country, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross.’ Now I don’t know whether that’s a fair assessment or not, but you wonder about using a cross, like he is the only Christian or implying that subtly. So, I don’t think I would ever use anything like that.”

Fucking Touche! In invoking Sinclair Lewis Paul pegged the entire fucking neocon movement and it’s alliance to the ‘Christian’ goose steppers who have taken the peaceful, loving and critical of wealth and hypocrisy Jesus Christ out of Christianity in favor of the Tim LaHaye/John Hagee version who chortles with righteous glee as he preaches his message of fuck the poor in between missions to drench Muslim children in napalm and white phosphorous and dreaming up plans to herd trainloads of gays into American gas chambers in the name of the great Christian nation. Huckabee is a cross between Lewis’ own Elmer Gantry and Andy Griffith’s Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes from the 1957 film classic A Face In The Crowd”.

Right The Fuck On! It’s no wonder that guy has crossover appeal and it’s equally obvious why he and Dennis Kucinich are treated as though they have leprosy by the party bosses – they are fucking rightfully horrified that what they are talking about may spread and infect moribund, fat assed Americans with a sense of moral outrage and a the seeds of an idea that maybe if they got their fucking asses off of their sofas and actually raised a bit of hell that things could change for the better.

But in the meantime we have the dog and pony show in Iowa, followed by New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and whatever dipshit enclave of uninformed and angry fuckheads that are able to be used by the oligarchy to set the pace and give the ‘momentum’ to the bought and paid for future leaders of this sad post 9/11 land of sheep and shame. Iowa is a perfect example of why our political system is so fucked up today, could somebody please explain exactly why that it is that a shitty little Midwestern state with a total population that is less than most major cities is given such importance in the process of choosing a candidate along with it’s inbred northeastern cousin New Hampshire?

Maybe the whole caucus thing is quaint but it’s an anachronism that ill serves the rest of America which as a whole is sure as shit a much more diverse place than two hick states with a whopping total of eleven electoral votes. Quite simply put as the great H.L. Mencken once put it: “No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby”.


Rubes are just easier to fool and it’s always the nature of lemmings to follow.

Let the games begin!