Bush's snake oil doesn't sell well.

Mini mouse Bush has delivered his last State of the Union to the assembled Houses of Congress. This popinjay sought once again to justify a war he hoodwinked his people to fight on false premices, and extolled the virtures of an economy that has gone south. Herr Bush peppered his sibling sounds with trite phrases which brought the clowns in Congress roaring to their flat feet. His message never varies. It is always the same but his words cannot hide a US which has grown poorer since he's been in office; he has enriched his class of rich and super rich, of his cronies, and of his cheer leaders whilst the burden of taxes has fallen on the poor [but they don't count], but also the middle and even the six figured income upper middle classes. The US has allowed its infrastructure to rust and decay; it has neglected its children in education, in healthcare, and it has continued to have a very high rate of infant mortality for the world's only superpower [sic]!
He has nothing to say to the pensioner who digs in trash bins for food; nor for the poor and middle class families who work long and hard hours to make ends meet if they can; he calls for permanent tax cuts which his vermin of rich and super rich who pay less than their fair share and believe they're the salt of the earth and god's anointed leaders. Dolthead Bush has betrayed the American dream for his class' own self ends. His long years of nightmare are slowly coming to an end, but he leaves the US deeper in debt, with a gnawing, eroding recession eating at its bowels, and a war which had one object in mind, the control of oil and stationing of permanent military bases in Iraq, the better to control the Middle East. He proffers anothe false hope, he will broker a permanent peace between his client Israel which the US has funded unreservedly with us$bn a year in economic and military aid, without collecting a single dollar lent, and the Palestinians. He should talk! He's dishonest in the spirt and letter of his words. He continues to branish the sword the better to keep America unbalanced so that he can spread fear and carry out policies which benefit his bloodsuckers of a rotting class in which he was born, and for which he rewards for incompetence, dumbness, and encourages them in a radicalism which breeds contempt, war, and thuggery. It would be a stretch of the imagination to note that he spoke two days before the 75 anniversary of Hilter's coming to power in 1933. Still his policies have an imprint of policies and attitudes which Herr Hitler & co. wouldn't sneer at. Good bye mini mouse and a good year to you!

Israel's soufflet falls in the face of Hamas bold moves

The world media, with some exceptions, simply report that the Olmert government will now supply Gaza with fuel, food, medicine, so on and on. But they play down the boldness of Hamas' blowing up the Israel wall in the Sinai which along with its closing of Israeli's border with Gaza, turned it into a ghetto not unlike Warsaw. Yes, Warsaw...Olmert's policy aimed at starving the Palestinians in Gaza into starvation and submission in the pursuit of a policy of collective guilt because of Hamas' steadfast refusal to recognize the suzerainty of Tel Aviv over the life and death of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Olmert met defeat again by Hamas' action, but with less loss of life than Israel did in Olmert's mad war against Hizbollah and ultimately all of Lebanon two years ago. But all this is swept under the carpet owing to a collectively shared bias against Palestinians and Arabs.

The JFK myth

Caroline Kennedy who wears the mantle of her father and now her uncle Edward Kennedy have put money on Barak Obama. He, they say, has the same magnetism her father and his brother had in running for the presidency. He has awakened the youth who steadfastly embraced a political quietism, he has brought them back to the polls; he has aroused from a stupo[u]r a demoralised electorate long dissatified with the right wing drift of Bush & his cronies. He has become a cheer leader of 'yes we can' , 'race doesn't matter', a bringing together of Americans and a healer of the politically sick. 18Brumaire does not dispute Obama's appeal, but prick the bubbles of soundbytes, and what do you find...air, hot air. Some may say well FDR appealed to the American electorate in the same way. That, we fear, is a misreading of history. FDR had ideas to right the wrongs of a depression; he had a programme, but what has Obama?
He has positions, and say on healthcare he's very cautious in the face of a horrendous private healthcare system which favours the insurance industry who take your money in premiums but won't pay when you're ill, or short changes you every time they can, and almost with impunity. He has praise for the 'sainted' Ronald Reagan though he doesn't agree with his politics, yet we wonder why he does praise FDR? Let's face it, Obama like JFK rode in on his high horse of much promise, and like JFK will prove a timid leader and very conservative in his politics. He is relatively wet behind the ears, were he more bold than we think he is, that wouldn't matter much. He's not. Like JFK, he will have to bomb out his chest to prove in war and peace he's a macho man. And we all know how forceful JFK was when it came to Bull O'Conner--you had to drag him into the fight for civil rights. We all know how he let the CIA loose and fed the war in Vietnam, and what the tragic results of his 'new politics'.

Crumbling markets, very deep recession in the US, failure of Bushonomics

The Fed's lowering of 75bsp last week gave world markets a breather. Asian markets and European bourses regained in a day or two of trading lost ground. Herr Bush spoke glowingly of a debt relief package for the US, and the wonderous effect of the Fed's panicked decision to cut the prime lending rate so dramatically. Well, it didn't world. World markets are crumbling as we speak out of fear for a very deep recession in the US. Dolthead Bushonomics have failed all but the super rich, his cronies, and his vermin. His acolytes at the Treasury and the Fed have come up with the same old nostrums which won't do a tinker's damn for the economy in the US nor the markets abroad. Mini mouse Bush's surrogates and even he will tell you the fundamentals are basically good, but that's hawking snake oil. They won't attack the problem at its root, so the crisis will go from bad to worse, one day after the other. The subprime scam triggered off the scrambling for a safe economic port in a raging storm. As such the mighty US has had to put into hock or sell off its prime economic and financial jewels. Herr Bush remains unperturbed, believing in the long run history will prove him right. He talks endlessly of the example of Truman, but no Truman ain't he. He and his neo conservative agenda in war and peace is a disaster, and for that he will go down in history. He's a failure, and ain't that the truth!

Guess who's playing in London in February?

America's media have made much of the New York Philharmic's going to Pyongyang. They have waxed eloquent about the programme which will include Gershwin's 'American in Paris', as a way of showing the naughty North Koreans about freedom of expression and choice. They do not speak of the long negotiations as to the visit and to the programme selections. The very same media are silent so far about the visit of the North Korean National Orchestra's playing in early February in the United Kingdom. Our British ally whose relationship in this looking glass world of politics is a living embodiment of what Deng Xiao ping called China's relationship with North Korea, lips to teeth, and this is surely true for Blair's uncritical support in mini mouse Bush's war in Iraq. Still, London has welcomed delegations from North Korea before, and during the 1966 World Cup games during which the North Korean soccer team eliminated in the first run powerful Italy, a town in England adopted these footballers as though they were of the British soil born. So the parallel visits of orchestras have a meaning. They would have had greater impact had the US welcomed the orchestra from Pyongyang to play in New York.

Blame it on the French

This weekend's edition of 'The Financial Times of London' [26-27 January 2008] has a telling Pym cartoon: An avalache Recession in a billowing cloud of gathering snow is descending menacingly on the annual confab of makers and shakers and blowhards of the world's business, financial, and political community who haven't the slightest klew as to what disaster is awaiting them. Since they are at 6's & 7's to explain the wild roller coaster ride of ups and downs this past week in the world markets, many find an easy excuse by blaming the banal French trader Gerviel at Societe Generale for the percipitious downturn in bourses around the globe! Oh Lord, save us from the damn French! Bless the Yanks for boldly trimming the US prime rate by 75 basis points who rode as they did in the Great War and the second world war to our rescue!
Eyewash! The fault as we in the English speaking world never cease to hear is a line from Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar'--'the fault dear Brutus lies not in the stars but in us', or for the more religiously minded--'you can see the speck of dirt in your neighbour's eye but not the mote in your own'.
Easy money and the scam game of sophist financial instruments known in this world of acronyms as CD's, ABS's, CMBS have come to call for payment. And no one can really meet what's due but central banks who cannot nor won't allow economies to krash. The pain is in the relaxation and frivilous application of regulations and surveillance of the markets, or as in the case of the US, under the stewardship of Robert Rubin now at the troubled CitiGroup of separation of what banks and financial institutions can and cannot do--otherwise known as the Glass Segall[sic] Act, a cornerstone of FDR's New Deal to avoid the pitfalls and traps of the tripwire of a world depression that the Austiran KreditAnstalt tiggered. So although no one is whispering low depression, the naming of recession is coming more and more to the ears of the ordinary rate or taxpayer who for the past 8 years has never had it bad...in the US at least.
The devil may care insouciance of bankers, industrialists, the super rich, the coupon clippers, the venal politicians, the warmongers and rapists of the poor and yes the middling classes has much to own up to. Since this class of vermin is threatened to its foundations, they react in panic [vide Herr Bush's bathroom attendant Bernanke at the Fed!], and crown themselves with laurels of leadership and decisiveness, but they are doing this not for you nor for me but to save their miserable class of bloodsuckers...and in tow, they've a gutless press who entertain but never inform the public at large. And why should they? The media is corporately and oligarchily controlled, and so why should a Murdoch or a General Electric tell us the truth? Yet the man and woman on the street know the score but are so demoralised or lack the will to form political parties and pressure groups to impose their demands. But the coming storm may chasten the rotten stinking fish of the ruling classes! And ain't that a kick in the head?

A bipartisan breakthrough

Popping of corks...flutes of bubbly champagne of hope. Congress and mini mouse Bush have agreed on a bailout package for the ailing US economy. The benefits are for those who are not in dire need? Has anyone thought of slags in ghettos, the large pockets of urban and rural poverty, the rust belts, the growing army of the unemployed? Apparently not. Look at Davos where the powerbrokers of industry and government, the sychophants of the chattering classes and the usual flotsam and jettisam of the coupon clippers, are holding an annual confab. The mood there is hardly joyous. It is more awaiting for the other shoe to drop...the fear of economic uncertainty in the eye of an economic downturn and recession...And they don't know what to do these shakers and makers of industry and government and moulders of received wisdom!
Still Herr Bush and Congress think of but one thing, encouraging more the US consumer's thirst for acquiring things. Yes the American consumer is pulling the engine of growth worldwide; he's in deep debt, and yet he is told to buy more and go deeper in debt. He saves less than his vis a vis anywhere else in Europe or Asia. That how dolthead Bush sees economics...he learnt well at Harvard Business School and his track record of failures in the private sector says much about his acumen! Cuts in the in the prime interest rate may buy time, but it won't keep away the storm...nor will it save these rich vermin from their true reckoning.

Wolfowitz is baaaaaaccccccck!

Disgraced Paul Wolfowitz has a new job in the US government. Heaven help us! He's been appointed chairman of an blue ribbon panel advising the US government on arms control. His credential: architect of a phony war in Iraq which is costing the ordinary American slag to dig very deep into empty pockets, and a high death rate among his sons and daughters. He's was pushed out of the presidency of the World Bank for nepotism. He fought hard to leave with a good conduct pass, but he got less than a general discharge. Still, as a pooh bah of America's neo cons, he quickly found a cushy post as a 'scholar' at the American Enterprise Institute, a very conservative think tank if you didn't know that before. And there he molted until his new high salary post as weigher of sensitive issues--nuclear deals with India and Pakistan. Ain't that a kick in the head. The designer of a phony war in Iraq is now a thinker of arms control. You've to be very dense to not see the supreme irony in such an appointment. It simply proves the right wing mini mouse Bush administration never lets its cronies down. Remember, 'you're doing a heck of a good job, Brownie' at the time of the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? Well, you've have done a great job at the Pentagon in engineering a war in Iraq; you're a great guy who knows how to feather the bed of his squeeze at the World Bank, for which he got his pink slip!
Yesterday 18Brumaire commented on Condy Rice's putting Jay Lefkowitz, the Bush hitman on human rights in North Korea, in his place. She caught him poaching on the state department's turf on negotiations with Pyongyang on a nuclear deal. Now Wolfowitz who wrestled with her when she was national security advisor and then secretary of state, is in a good position to pillory her for a breakthrough with Kim Jong il. The tiresome right wing never gives up, in spite of the complete bankruptcy of their 7 year record in Herr Bush's regime. So, venal, corrupt, dishonest Paul Wolfowitz will push the envelope on North Korea and smooth the way for a deal with India even though it is rough going for the Singh government about the deal with the US.
Who's going to turn thumbs down on his criminal's appointment?

Exodus Gaza style!

Every year for 8 days, Jews worldwide celebrate Passover, commerating the Hebrews' trials and tribulation in the land of the Pharoahs, and their exodus out of the land of Egypt to the promised land led by Moses. Today the Palestinians in Gaza have much cause for celebration, for Hamas has not only blown up the thick concrete slabs of a wall denying them access to Egypt, but also dynamited the harsh, deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing directed against them by Israel. In other words, Hamas like Joshuah made the walls of their Israeli imposed ghetto fall down. In the media, pictures still or on video of the hundreds of thousands of Gazans pouring into the bordering towns of Egypt scurrying for the necessities of live which the Israeli had been denying them for even the merest of substance for survival. the outpouring of Palestinians through these concrete walls recalls the determination of displaced European Jews who evaded the embargo the British mandate authority imposed on any Jews wanting to reach Eretz Israel. And Hamas' actions belong to that catagory of will and exercise of self determination to a land which is rightfully theirs! Thus, Gazans have much cause for joy and for celebration and mark on calendars this red letter day of freedom and liberation.
Israel's ally Hosni Mubarek bowed to the inevitable, despite the heavy pressure from Tel Aviv and Washington to put away again a wall, and has allowed with a minimum of Egyptian police or military, Palestinians to buy food, medicine, and clothing, and fuel oil, and other necessities for life. In this way, he has tempered the anger of his own people against the harsh, vindictive policies of Tel Aviv against the Hamas elected government and the Gazans.
Israel through the tired voice of the arch Zionist Shimon Peres, sourly put the onus on Cairo; Gaza is now an Egyptian problem, not an Israeli concern. He thinks that Israel is above the law; it can pick and chose laws which favour its policies and dismiss other when they do not accord with Israel designs to chase Palestinians off land of theirs or reduce them to state of helots. He's wrong. Israel is not sui generis. It is a state like any other. If can hide behind the curtain of ha Shoah but its very machinations against the Palestians simply serve to show the world at large that it has learnt much from its Nazi masters who sought to clear eastern Europe of Jews, Gypsies, Poles, socialists, communists, gays, the mentally and physically handicapped, etc etc etc. This wholesale clearance of land they called 'Lebensraum', living space, which was to be settled by Aryans...and the cleansing of the land be in the west bank is of the same kind...it is for Jewish settlers...but instead of concentration camps and ovens...Israel will provide bantustans for a subject people, whilst the best land and its fruit go to Israeli Jews, much in the same way American settlers stole the land of Indian tribes.
It is obvious that the status quo ante is not possible. Herr Bush who has steadfastly backed Israel is not happy, nor are the Israeli at the turn of events. Too bad, boys! Hamas' forcefully opening up the Israeli built wall in the Sinai has once again thrown plans out of kilter. The struggle is not in the least over. Yet, Hamas has re affirmed in its own way that nothing is more precious than freedom and independence. Does this not sound familiar? It should! These are the very words that Ho Chi Minh used to defeat the Japanese, the French, and the Americans. Hamas is following in his footsteps.

Bush's bathroom attendant at the head of the Fed

Bathroom attendant Ben Bernanke as an economic scholar is known for his forcefulness in his ideas, but you won't find anything but a limp wrist of his at the Fed. He follows his master mini mouse Bush's orders. Till panic took hold of the stock exchanges around the world, he saw only strength in the market place and no need to take vigorous action. All that's changed...panic forced him to lower the prime lending bank by 75 basic point, and rumour has it it is going to compel him to another cut when the gouvenors of the Fed meet next week. The trick world, calming Asian markets but not European bourses, and worked on the NYSE today [23 January 2008]. Yet the volitility has played itself out...the public is fed spin pablum by the banks and the US government who are 6's & 7's as what to do...if they follow Herr Bush's advice, they'd rescue the rich and famous, the crony capitalists and vermin coupon clippers who have no idea as to how the turmoil is affecting yes the tax or ratepayer who is going to have to bail these greedy bastards out of the hole they've dug. It is a question of political will to change, but the will is not there...it's a 'save who can' and let the little people drown in the mire.
Who needs such sychophants? Certainly the American people deserve better. Well it's about time the American tax or ratepayer go boiling mad...and rose up and kicked these bloodsuckers out of office. And what's more looked to send Bush & his slimy, rotting fish to prison where they deservedly belong.