Dick, Dick, Dick...I don't even know you anymore...

Semi-lucid war criminal Dick Cheney, while expressing solidarity with Obama after the drone strike that killed US citizen Anwar al Awlaki in Yemen, also insisted that Obama apologize for his speech in 2009 characterizing the Bush administration as a bunch of torturers, (I’m paraphrasing), claiming that the administration never tortured anyone and hadn’t flushed our traditional values down into a rancid cesspool with extraordinary rendition, water boarding and all of the other nefarious practices now seen by most clear thinking people as an overreach at best and disgusting and counterproductive foolishness at worst.   Right, Dick.  And Vlad the Impaler was just a misunderstood guy with anger management issues.  Why anyone pays any attention to this ridiculous gasbag other than to prosecute him is a mystery to me, just as it is a mystery why someone like Chris Christie would want the garbled endorsement of Teutonic prince regent and notorious law-breaker Henry Kissinger, a man who to this day is deathly afraid to show his face anywhere in Asia for fear of being “Pinochet-ed” into a dank and stinking jail cell somewhere, never to be seen again.

Cheney’s flailing attempts to justify what are now widely held to have been illegal and unconstitutional actions emanating largely from his office are pathetic.  When a “put up your dukes” warrior like John McCain calls you out and says flat out that it was torture you probably should just shred your passport, shut up and hope nobody comes knocking on your door with a warrant. 

The variety of voices criticizing the Obama administration’s reliance on drones to play kill Waldo with the al Qaeda leadership should give him pause.  It appears to be a low risk way to discourage them and the Taliban from getting together for fund raising car washes and bake sales but it is not ultimately making us safer and if the Pakistani security apparatus gets fed up enough with us pissing on their shoes to cook up another coup and install a more radical government we’d have more to worry about than who's living in what cave.  The single scariest foreign policy issue today is the nukes in the basement of the Islamabad post office.

Ron Paul’s overall political platform may be a little suspect and he is way too Libertarian to win the republican nomination but his foreign policy is admirable and he’s right about this.  Obama went too far in trying to increase his tough guy cred and defang the traditional republican aphorism that the democrats are soft on national security matters.  It’s bad enough that the state can kill citizens it deems to have committed a capital crime; Rick “Let me pull the switch” Perry and his well oiled Texas execution machine being the most efficient, unflinching and unapologetic example.  But deciding that a citizen living abroad – even one spewing the kind of toxic and hate-filled rhetoric as al Awlaki – is a worthy target for assassination, we are treading on a very slippery slope once trod mostly by the KGB.   

Apparently some genius inside the Justice Department wrote a John Yoo-inspired memo that purports to provide a legal justification for the assassination of US citizens abroad for saying the wrong things, without proof that they’ve done anything.   This follows in the twisted tradition established by Cheney and his half-mad cabal of closeted Brown Shirts serving the clown prince, Bush the Younger.   So Obama thinks he has license to go to any length necessary to take the fight to al Qaeda and the Taliban bastards who won’t stand still long enough so he can throw a straight right hand.   We’ll chase the tattered rabble right into the town square of some godforsaken stucco compound and use a Predator drone to blow it all up if it means we can take out some ersatz Tokyo Rose in a dish-dash.

After the candidate Obama used the perfidy and avarice of the whole Bush criminal enterprise to get elected, he decides that using a gun in a knife fight is a pretty good idea, if for no other reason than the entire ridiculous Afghan adventure has no foreseeable end game and therefore he has no reasonable option other than to say screw it, just take some people out and hope for the best.    Unfortunately this lends credence to the past high crimes and misdemeanors of Cheney and his half-baked band of reactionaries and makes Obama and this administration no better, a truly tragic outcome and maybe the perfect metaphor for the whole stupid adventure of the last ten years. 

Another week, another blast of indecision...

How did the responsibility and blame for the economic crisis – the mortgage mess and all of the accompanying shady dealing, unemployment, fear and loathing - shift from the geniuses on Wall Street and their political accomplices to Obama?  This is the really impressive sleight of hand performed by Faux News and the republican party.  Now there are ten candidates, all trying hard to pin all of the country’s problems on one guy; the guy who was elected to try to fix them and who has been obstructed at every turn and every step of the way by congressional leaders who are determined to see him fail.  How is that OK? 

This week once again provided evidence that there is some secret test the republican presidential candidates have to take to verify they possess the necessary level of idiocy before being allowed to run.  It is no wonder that republican audiences, such as the one assembled at the Reagan Library for some sort of celebration recently, are clamoring for Chris Christie – or anyone, frankly – to get in the race, because the woeful field so far seems to guarantee Obama a second term and to the rabidly anti-Obama true believers, that’s their worst nightmare.

“On day one we will immediately begin to change government so it starts serving the will of the American people.”  This quote is from Newt Gingrich’s web site and begs the question; what is the will of the American people?  And more importantly, how in the world do you think you know what it is?  You’re cruising the Med with your trophy wife, (#3), and running up a six figure tab at Tiffany’s and you think you know what the American people want or need?   Hilarious…In a recent interview I saw he kept repeating that the reason he is going to win is that he’s the only candidate whose ideas are “big enough”, an inexplicable phrase but one he clearly thinks will resonate because he said it three times in a 5 minute interview.

He has laid out a ten point plan in a new “contract with America”, itself a tired “big” idea that he used to screw the GOP and lose control of the congress for 10 years when he was speaker of the house.    Among the ten, nine are variations on the corporate welfare that is at the heart of republican party theology, (increase domestic energy production, with “from oil and gas exploitation” left unsaid), with only a nod to “investing in brain science” to show his humanity while he goes door to door with the storm troopers taking back food stamps and poor folks’ satellite dishes. 

Meanwhile, Michele Bachman, in a flurry of forceful speeches that, unfortunately completely missed the point, tried her best to slam Obama by saying the Arab Spring uprising were his “fault” as if millions of people rising up against dictators and oligarchies and embracing democracy is somehow a bad thing, presumably because it somehow lets the infidels get closer to the temple and threatens Israel and, by extension, her Old Testament hallucinations.   That the republican party – and the entire foreign policy elite for the last 60 years – has made a policy of Nixonian repolitik and coddled cardboard cutouts of leaders as long as they played ball with us is an ongoing embarrassment and the change in US policy  over the last three years maybe the one thing Obama has gotten right.  But the voices in Bachman’s head won’t let here accept the idea that just maybe the vast non-white majority in the Middle East may have a legitimate point of view. 

But, saving the best for last, there was Rick “Let me start over” Perry’s first major domestic policy speech,  in which he touted his record on taxes, health care, employment, and the environment while he has been governor of Texas for the last 10 years.    Let’s see…Texas is tied with Mississippi for last – or maybe it should be considered first – in the percentage of jobs that pay the minimum wage, or less.   Nearly 1.5 million Texans have dropped below the poverty line while he was busy creating his famous 1 million new jobs.  Texas also leads the nation in the number of its citizens that are uninsured and children that go to bed hungry, prison population and executions while also having the lowest high school graduation rate.  Wow, sounds like a god damn paradise to me. 

His wife reportedly defending him this week for his sputtering performance in the last debate, saying he never had a debate coach or a speaking coach, as if hiding his inconsistent policy positions and questionable record in Texas with a smoother delivery is the answer.   If he thinks offering up his Texas “miracle” is all he needs to clarify to win the hearts and minds of voters, he is dumber than he seems.  Or we are…

On a lighter note, an East Bay Velero gas station was robbed one recent morning at 3:30 AM by six people wearing Halloween costumes.  They took a fistful of cash from the till, a couple of six-packs of beer and twenty packages of condoms.   Must have been a really good, but really early, Halloween party.  

"Everything stops for tea..." Long John Baldry

“Are they -- someone like me, maverick, you know, I do go rogue, and I call it like I see it, and I don't mind stirring it up.... is a title and is a campaign too shackling? Does that prohibit me from being out there, out of the box, not allowing handlers to shape me?"

This quote from an interview on Faux News with our preeminent political philosopher, Sarah “Is that camera on?” Palin says a lot about her ambitions and let’s be clear – they are not to be president.  She reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, ("It would be so nice is something made sense for a change").  An aging and tired John McCain choosing her for his VP was, I am sure, flattering, but she has to know that being president requires a level of sophistication and – dare I say – intelligence that she has yet to exhibit.   Running around the country showing her ankles to the panting and dim witted republican base is fun, as is cashing the checks for her literary achievements, such as they are.   And who could resist the kind of fawning and clamorous media attention she gets everywhere she goes and every time she opens her mouth in public?  But she could be president like I could do brain surgery and trust me on this – both would end badly, tea party or no tea party.

The other ingénue winking from the back of the room – Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey – also continues to be coy about running but watching video of a recent speech he gave was instructive for a couple of reasons.  A woman in the audience stood up and essentially beseeched him to run, saying that his country needed him and “we can’t afford to wait until 2016…”.  Remember;  there are currently – by my count – 10 republican candidates for her to choose from and she is blubbering in public for Tony Soprano to run and save us all from the terrible, terrible negro devil currently in the White House.  I mean, c’mon – it’s a “white” house after all, right? Wink, wink… In an astonishing example of pot, kettle black, he actually started his speech by saying something to the effect of, “Now Obama is starting his 2012 campaign by trying to divide the country to win re-election”, apparently not having noticed his colleagues working extremely hard at that very thing for almost three years now. 

I can say right now with a high degree of certainty that this guy has no chance to be elected.  He’s obese.  And while I have no particular prejudice myself regarding the morbidly obese, there are large numbers of people in this country who would never vote for the guy because he doesn’t look presidential; he looks like Vinnie, the fixer from down the block.  You go see this guy to get a bet down before the 5^th race, not to have a cogent discussion on the strategic issues surrounding our policy towards China.   Like Palin said – in her usual tortured gibberish, about Herman Cain, who just won the Florida straw poll; “That Herb Cain, well he’s the flavor of the month”.   Christie’s rise to prominence is clearly a function of the dismal lack of an attractive choice amongst the Obama-hating posse trying to ride to the rescue of the party and the country at large.

  And besides; wither the tea party in all this?  What happened to tea party darling Michele “I’m just doing the lord’s work” Bachman, who dominated the media coverage for a solid month until everyone realized she was bat -shit crazy and a frightening and dangerous lunatic?   Rick “What did I say wrong?” Perry is still trying to get his Tony Lama out of his mouth and his fervent supporters are bailing on him in droves.   Even Roger Ailes, high priest of hyperbole and strategic misinformation, is now backing away from the rabble and that’s the most telling thing of all.

Will Bunch wrote recently in the Huffington Post about the demise of the tea party and what he said was right on:  “When historians look back on the surge and decline of the Tea Party Movement in America, and they will, I believe the focus will be how something that was real – anger and fear among a segment of the middle class that has been decimated by the decline of the US economy – was hijacked by a band of high-def hucksters, starting with media stars and their bosses seeking ratings, attention, and cash – not necessarily in that order.  The behind the scenes billionaires eager to save their oligarchy, and the craven politicians that they own, came later.”

The tea party’s popularity is running around 25% with likely voters, and,  with more and more public exposure to its anti-science, anti-immigrant, anti-government manifesto, obfuscating focus on deficit reduction rather than job creation and belligerent foreign policy, fading daily.  Now with Rand Paul holding up a pipeline safety bill in the senate because…well, because he can, sympathetic supporters will likely be fewer still.  It wasn’t bad enough that terrified middle of the road republicans, abandoning any remaining vestige of common sense or compassion, threatened a government shut down over their unprecedented refusal to provide disaster aid without cutting social services and a job-creating green technology bill.  Now with the very real threat of whole neighborhoods in Texas exploding in napalm-like fireballs, Perry's misguided and doctrinaire refusal to defer further cutting to some more appropriate opportunity makes him look like a thoughtless apparatchik straight out of Moscow, circa 1962. 

So I say come join us, Governor Christie.  Bring your straight talking coarseness and substantial girth and join the party’s party.  I think there’s room for one more…

Hope this shows up this time...

Next up; Governor Chris Christie...or is it Sarah Palin...or...Sonia Henie...?

Now that the empire is once again safe from the frightening prospect of a disoriented band of ner-do-wells spending too much time sitting on the back porch drinking schnapps all day and not paying the bills so the lights and cable get turned off and people whose houses blew away, were flooded or burned up in a Texas “global-warming-is-a-hoax” fire storm are no longer cursing the fools in charge while waiting for disaster aid, we can turn our attention back to dance of the republican pranksters running for president.   And what a wacky and ridiculous fish-slapping dance it is. 

Now that Rick “Wait…what?” Perry has completely befuddled his formerly rabid followers with his sputtering series of non sequiturs and pointless and ineffective attempts to get his rhetorical hands around Mitt Romney’s neck, and Herman Cain – a man who seems intent on simply proving that a black man can successfully run as a republican – won a completely unexpected 20 point victory in the Florida straw poll, all bets are off and Michele Bachman’s victory in the Iowa straw poll a mere six weeks ago seems very far away indeed.   Pundits and talking heads are falling over themselves trying to figure out what the hell to make of it all, leading to avid speculation and drooling anticipation of the heretofore coy and retiring Sarah Palin leaping into the void – a spectacular and mind-boggling proposition that would be wonderfully chaotic and clearly force a number of the lesser lights to throw in the towel.  (Hey Newt – Carnival is having a special on winter cruises to the Baltic).

Bachman, trying hard to put some kind of positive spin on her last place finish and 1.5% of the vote, sounded very much like the fox that couldn’t reach the grapes, saying her showing was no big deal, she didn’t try very hard and her campaign was still “perfectly positioned”, further evidence of her confused and hallucinatory relationship with reality.  She has fallen hard since those giddy days in August and appears to be in an ominous smoking spiral which doesn’t look like it will end well. 

Since participation in Florida was kind of spotty by the whole squawking flock, it may very well say less about Cain – still a looooooooong shot at best – than it does about the rest of them and, more importantly, how it appears that the restive republican voters – still a bit disoriented by the shouting and smoldering torches of the tea party – are leaning toward “none-of-the-above” and leaving a huge opening for those standing quietly on the sidelines like Chris Christie of New Jersey – a man who scoffed at the possibility of running just a few months ago and who now looks like he could at least be the flavor of the month for a while if he decided to run.  Just imagine the cacophony and bleating incoherence of a field that included both Christie and Palin in addition to the “Knucklehead-Eight” - Faux News personnel might just spontaneously combust.   Delicious…

The most interesting thing about the debate was the emergence of Gary Johnson, a proven, effective governor of New Mexico who is a libertarian, anti-war, republican along the lines of Ron Paul but without the “crazy” baggage and who one might well suspect has been excluded from previous debates, not because of his lack of support in “polls” – like the ones busy cheerleading for Bachman, Perry and Romney – but because he doesn’t carry the flag for the power brokers and king makers in the party.  He has effectively been excluded again from the next debate because he hasn’t reached the threshold of support ostensibly required, a chicken and egg argument that stifles his voice of reason, as the lack of popular support has handicapped Jon Huntsman.

On the other side of the aisle a newly energized and fiery Obama – yes, finally – has begun to at least swing back at Boner, McConnell and Cantor, laying the responsibility for government ineptness squarely at their feet where it belongs.  It may be a little late but he still has an enormous advantage over anyone in the current republican field because – as disenchanted as many of his supports are - they will surely vote for him over any republican unless they choose to not vote at all.  It is puzzling that he hasn’t taken this kind of bully pulpit stance before this, preferring to try to negotiate.  This, of course, has proved to be folly and self destructive and nearly crippled him.   You can’t negotiate in good faith with someone trying to destroy you; maybe he’s finally figured that out. 

Just as importantly, you can’t go on being reasonable and rational and a nice guy when your rivals are a bunch of pricks looking to hang you out to dry at every opportunity and are far less interested in accomplishing anything positive in a time of national crisis than in blocking any initiative you propose that doesn't follow their tory, royalist agenda.   Nice that you woke up, Barack – now you have to be sure to step on their necks if you can because they will continue trying to cripple you for the next year.  The next crisis created wholly out of republican yarn will be the super committee negotiations – an exercise in going through the motions if there ever was one and one almost guaranteed to be fruitless.  Count on a full blown Faux News sponsored media blitz leading up to Christmas with the hounds of the right baying through the night and painting you again as a failure and a weak, ineffectual leader who presided over cuts to defense that will be called catastrophic.  Count on it and get a strategy in place.

Finally, in a heartening development north of the border, the eminently sensible canucks greeted a promotional appearance by tired war criminal, Dick “enhanced interrogation” Cheney, with a sea of protest signs accompanied by robust and enthusiastic booing that I can only hope made the Lizard King uncomfortable enough to go back and retire to the rock he crawled out from under.  He should spend his days playing gin rummy with Kissinger in a room surrounded by portraits of Pinochet, Marcos and Robert Mugabe, debating imperialist foreign policy dogma and waxing nostalgic about their memories of Nixon.   Yeah, Dick – Saddam was an asshole; now go away.

Is Herman Cain the new #1...?

As the drama queens in congress once again strain credulity with a manufactured crisis and tedious hyper-partisan conflict and Faux News continues to shill for high income welfare, a $3.00 an hour minimum wage and Obama's ultimate failure, leading republican presidential candidate Rick "What did I say wrong" Perry suddenly finds himself losing conservative support faster than hot air out of an overstretched balloon, like the intellectually taxed gas-bag that he is.  Even his prayerful and exclusive connection to the lord himself may not be enough to save him after he not only shot himself in the foot in the last debate; he re-loaded his trusty sidearm and squeezed off a few more rounds just to be sure. 

 His good-ole-boy shtick is no longer charming and endearing – it is evidence of how dense he really is, making even the equally dense tea party rabble uneasy and pondering esoteric ideas like electability.  When even Bitch-Queen Ann Coulter is piling on you for coming across like your dim-witted cousin who usually sleeps in the barn, you’ve got a problem that maybe even Turd Blossom Karl Rove couldn’t overcome.   When he announced he was running I said the nomination was his to lose and it looks like that just what he’s going to do. 

The part that is annoying is not that he’s proving to be a dumb-ass bumpkin and losing supporters; he was a demonstrably dumb-ass bumpkin when he threw his spurs in the ring.  No, it’s the reason people are backing away from him that bugs me.  It’s not because he ran a pay-to-play political bordello in Texas that’s bothering the fired up republican faithful.  It’s not his willingness to give the oil and gas industry a sleeve job whenever they snap their fingers – hell, that’s a time honored Texas tradition perfected by the notorious Bush family cabal and treated with reverence by many of the Texas electorate. Borderline criminal duplicity also is, I believe, a requirement for full on membership in the republican party elite.  No, his people are getting pissed because he is in favor of letting children of immigrants qualify for financial aid and in-state tuition.  Michele Bachman’s head about exploded talking about his anti-conservative position that it is sensible for girls to get the HPV vaccination. The anti-government dimwits’ angry murmurs were loud and clear, insisting that the vaccination will lead to rampant promiscuity and general whorishness.  And Mitt “Doesn’t my hair look good” Romney continues to body slam him for his ridiculous take on social security, a stupid notion exacerbated by his equally stupid characterization of it as a ponzi scheme. 

Speaking of Michele “I’m naked under this coat” Bachman, it was hilarious listening to her go on and on about the sadly tedious story of Solyndra, the now defunct solar energy company that Obama visited and proclaimed a shining example of green technology.  Of course, they bet on the come and lost and so went bankrupt faster than you can say Lehman Brothers.  But fundamentally he wasn’t wrong – just happened to pick a bad example – plenty of green technology companies are doing well and the best is yet to come – clearly. 

But she bleats and blabbers about Solyndra as if it were the personification of everything evil about Obama simply because they took stimulus money and subsequently failed.  Maybe she prefers those companies who caused the fucking mess in the first place, took stimulus / bail-out money anyway, gave out obscene bonuses, played fast and loose with the money by lending it to the wives of executives for imaginary shell companies, who routinely outright bribe members of the impotent SEC and lie every time they open their mouths, like, say, Goldman Sachs.  Of course she also was fine with stimulus money being spent in her own district in Minnesota – just not for anything as scientifically complex as high tech solar panels.  And nothing that Obama was promoting.

Prior to the republican debates, interviews of the audience members are typically done to try to get a feel for the vibe in the room and a bigger bunch of dill weeds I have never seen assembled in one place: God fearing, gay hating, anti-science, anti-government, anti-immigrant Obama haters who seem to believe sick people should be allowed to just die if it costs them one god damned dime to keep them alive and who cheer Texas’ relentless stream of executions. They seem to have the collective IQ of a school of shrimp. 

Now as the duplicitous John Boner and his side kick, Eric Cantor, make the incoherent case for additional cuts before passing a budget with disaster relief and the republicans on the so-called Super Committee have halted negotiations in their tracks by saying new taxes or letting tax cuts expire or anything that hints at taxes has no chance of approval with them, the threat of the automatic across the board cuts looms with defense spending at the forefront.  Defense secretary Leon Panetta says such cuts would be disastrous so me thinks the recalcitrant elephants may find themselves hoisted on their own petard and struggling to explain how they abandon citizens whose homes have been damaged or destroyed and undermine our brave service personnel by stubbornly continuing to slavishly serve the interests of the wealthiest among us – some of whom are them.  I think Obama may have had this in mind when he signed off on what looked like a very questionable deal during the summer.   I can’t wait to hear the explanation.  Maybe they can get Rick “What’d I say wrong?” Perry to do the “splainin’.

Mr. Boner...that god damned dog is barking again...

The four head dwarves of the republican party – Sleepy (McConnell), Doc (Cantor), Dopey (John Boner) and Smiley (Kyl) - in an unprecedented act of sticking their noses where they don’t belong, sent a letter to Ben Bernanke today telling him that, in their opinion it would be best if the Fed took no action to help the economy and that further stimulus activities would piss them off no end.   Since these same four dick-heads have been publicly saying that they would do everything in their power to see to it that Obama is not re-elected, I believe this to be treason and all four of them should be arrested post haste and sent to live in downtown Gary, Indiana on $1,200 in Social Security income and $400 in food stamps.   See how many absurdly inappropriate pink ties you can buy then, Boner. 

This particular outrage is only the latest in a whole series of surreal and nightmarish political tableaus plastered all over the media in the last two weeks while I have been peacefully chilling on the West side of Kauai – huge props to Kekaha kine.   Hanging out there watching the surf it’s easy to forgot that there is a systematic effort underway to deceive the woefully uninformed average American voter into thinking that Obama is the enemy of their best interests and that the budding republican theocracy has the answer to all of their problems.  

 Rick Perry, good book under one arm and executioners switch in hand, suddenly is Israel’s best friend and is harping on Obama for “betraying” them for trying to be even handed with the Palestinians – whose fate only stands in for the entire newly restive Arab world.  Our heretofore utterly ineffective and frankly disingenuous policy having led nowhere, Obama is being vilified by the new soldiers of Abraham who have suddenly seemed to realize they can’t win an election without Jewish votes and are tripping over each to ingratiate themselves with idiotic foreign policy positions pandering to Jews and other old testament believers who covet Jerusalem as much as any 13^th century crusader.  Romney,  Rick “Bomb Iran tomorrow” Santorum – everyone but Ron Paul – have weighed in, acting like they are dying to get to the front of the line with the Sword of Truth held high to smite the filthy heathen terrorists and end up sounding like a bunch of ignorant, patronizing clowns.

Meanwhile Michele Bachman has been abandoned by old republican hand, Ed Rollins, who claimed ill health or family issues or some other transparently trumped-up excuse but who really came to realize -her victory in the Iowa straw poll notwithstanding - she has absolutely no chance of even finishing second.  With her unsettling combination of tea party support, Dominionism, theocratic leanings and anti-science posturing, she drives clear thinking independent voters running for cover.  A campaign picture released yesterday shows her as she wanders in a daze through hanging sides of beef in a meat factory, a strangely fitting metaphor for her candidacy to date.   Tonight’s third republican debate may very well go a long way towards further winnowing the field, or at least establishing with certainty who will be in the race to the finish line and who will be sitting in the back row lobbing Pee Wee Herman-like “that’s what you are; what am I?” bombs and sinking into obscurity.

Putative front runner Rick “We killed another one last night” Perry is finding it a little harder to run in his Tony Lama’s than he thought and is getting bludgeoned from all sides by his fellow republicans – and rightfully so – for his idiotic positions on everything from social security and evolution to who’s hotter – Ginger or Maryanne.   Now he’s being advised to “tighten up his message”, a tacit verification of his continuing incoherence as he crows about his miraculous job creation in Texas, never mentioning that they’re mostly minimum wage and worse.

While the merry band of knuckleheads preps for tonight’s debate, their congressional leaders plus leading economic genius and all around poster boy Paul Ryan have taken the Faux News talking point – class warfare – and run with it, insisting ad nauseum that every Obama initiative is “job killing” and every attempt to close tax loop holes and re-set a reasonable tax rate for people making over a million dollars per year is class warfare and, oh, by the way, also “job killing”.   And in their latest treacherous move, they are busy tying the provision of disaster aid to additional spending cuts, thereby denying help to average people whose lives are upside down while further sticking it to the poor and those unfortunate enough to live in the path of a hurricane, solidifying their position as elitist money worshiping sluts devoted to serving the gentry and giving the finger to the rest of us.   

And this barely scratches the surface…more to come tomorrow.