Here’s a safe prediction:  by tomorrow a devout fascist will have been elected president.

Because that’s all that’s running. Of the two who have a chance, anyway.

Much may be made of election shenanigans: “rigged” votes, “stolen” votes. No doubt they’ll happen; and no doubt fraudulent accusations will be made. It’s crooks squabbling over the proceeds of crime. What different should we expect?

The national elections are a lot like the World Series:  there’s vast money and perqs riding on the outcome, serious enough that people will kill and die over it; and you have no influence over the outcome, and the outcome means nothing practical for you.

Of course the elections are rigged. Long before the herd gets allowed to make its hoofmarks on ballots. Because by the time a candidate is anointed by one of the allegedly distinct parties, they’ve already been thoroughly vetted by the people who really rule us, whoever they may be. It literally doesn’t matter to them who gets elected.

Either way, they win.

Guess who loses.

You don’t believe me? Don’t believe in “conspiracy theory”? (Ooh, do you have a mocking coming for that nonsensical non-thinking!)

Hope you loved the bailout. Both “bitter rivals” for Presidency did. So did the plutocrats who received the greatest single transfer of wealth from the many to the few in human history. And are continuing to reap more by the supertanker load. It’s the gift that keeps on giving! And taking.

You’ve heard the bad news:  more fascism ahead (although it’ll only be called that if McInsane wins the toss.) Now hear the worse.

It’s being smugly predicted by the Government/Media Complex glossfaces that this’ll be the biggest voter stampede in history. That’s tragic. It’ll mean people continue to buy the lie - when that spurious legitimacy is, functionally, all that government has. Remember:  no matter who you vote for, even if it’s for a third party, a write-in, or a blank, you’re voting for More of the Same. And you shall assuredly get it, good and hard. And so will the rest of us.

If you’re actually still thinking about whether to go and endorse your enslavement, impoverishment, and quite likely physical destruction, here’s a link to a last-hour plea for you not to be a wool-bearing even-toed ungulate from Alex Ryan’s Fear of Freedom blog, entitled, tellingly, “Please don’t vote“. (Hat tip to the invaluable Wendy McElroy.)

Just say “bah.” Instead of “baa.”

This one’s marketed as “the most important election in history.” Which it is.  The winner’s going to have a chance to preside over the implosion of the US empire.

And all he’ll really have is a front row seat.

Sanctify Yer Slavery Day Update, 3:03:53 PM MST: Big corporations are bribing people to vote, regardless of whom for.

Still think your vote means anything?

Update, 8:03:56 PM: here’s another perspective.

Judging from the evidence on his “Hooligan Libertarian“ blog, Kent McManigal is another New Mexican, who lives in Clovis.

Our second hat tip to Wendy McElroy for this one.

Why, indeed?

Really, could he be any worse than McInsane or O’Bomber? How?

They both stand four-square for war, torture, domestic spying, and massive welfare for the rich. Or hadn’t you noticed?

Anyway, click on the link to buy the swell shirt. I’m happy, at least, to be able to plug my pals Ray and Barb van Tilburg and their wonderful Offworld Designs. Ray’s an excellent artist who does tee-shirt designs for a lot of Midwest cons, including Archon. Plus they have tons of non-con specific designs, such as the above, which are nifty and wicked clever.

Even if they’re distressed by my usage of their design, if, like most people, they cherish the belief there’s an actual difference between the sock puppet on Leviathan’s left claw, and the one on His right.

But relax. It’s nothing to the pain that your guy will cause if elected. No matter which he is.

(And then again … not even a Great Old One can prevent the implosion of the Unitedstatesian Empire.)

So here’s another reason to question the judgement, if not the sanity, of those who - like all my liberal friends, Sarah Palin, and Stalin - believe whole-heartedly in the “power of government to do good.” We need these people to manage every aspect of our lives when they can’t, in its second year of operation, make the simple software fix to adjust to their own stupid law? What a great idea!

Even if there were some reason to believe government has, does, or ever will act with the primary motivation of making you or me safer, freer, healthier, or richer - and why should they? - this also reminds us to ask:  what would make us believe they could if they wanted to?

Once upon a time otherwise intelligent (and educated, which isn’t the same thing) people apparently believed that statement, uttered decades ago by John Maynard Keynes, among others, in reference to the national debt.

But what does it even mean? On the face of it, isn’t it transparent nonsense?  Let’s see you borrow $100 from yourself.  Does that mean you suddenly have $200?

Ah, but let me explain how it really works.

I take from you $100.  That shouldn’t bother you, because “we” - necessarily including you and I - owe it to “ourselves.” Yes?

Now, to pay back that debt, I take from you $100.  Because you and I are still part of “we.” And we owed that $100 to ourselves, yes?

So now we’re square. The debt has been repaid. Only a greedy bastard could possibly complain. Gitmo for you, Gordon Gekko!

Isn’t that simple?

Not convinced?  I give you the “bailout” - the largest single wealth transfer from the proletariat to the wealthy in known human history. In this case, the transaction above works out as $100 (plus a whole lot more) borrowed from you, and repaid to J.P. Morgan.

Which cosmic larceny, of course, is heartily supported by both presidential candidates.

It strikes me that it isn’t sufficient simply to point out (what should be) the blazingly obvious truth: the US has no sensible strategic military reasons for its occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s not just that those occupations are militarily pointless. “Pointless” isn’t value-neutral: it’s a very bad thing. Any pointless military action is an invitation to disaster.

Aside from the fact that they drain the US defense complex of the ability to defend the US against actual enemies – strongly suggesting no one in charge of US defenses believes any exist – and laying aside that the grotesque costs of the two pointless horror-shows have broken the economy to the extent that over a quarter-century of inflation-fueled boom has busted, probably beyond repair, we all seem to be overlooking one very important fact.

In the real world, successful pack alphas are never aggressive. They don’t go looking for fights.

Why? Because they can’t win anything.

If you’re the Alpha, that’s it. You’re top of the stack. What benefits can you gain by fighting?

None. There isn’t anything left. All you can do is keep the status quo. Or lose.

Three basic possibilities exist for the rewards to fighting for an Alpha:

1. You win. You keep your position. Also your life.
2. You win but are hurt. At the best you’re weakened and will be challenged again soon – and be more likely to lose. Otherwise you may bleed out slowly, get infected and die in agony, be just a heartbeat slow and get your back broken by a wildebeest. Getting your throat torn out by a challenger might be your kindest fate.
3. You die. Game over.

There. Clear enough? If you’re an Alpha (“the world’s only superpower!”) and you pick a fight the only possible outcomes are a) neutral; b) negative. If you think that’s a good bet, you probably helped conceive the invasion of, of all the horrible places, Afghanistan (see Empires, Graveyard of.)

For an Alpha the only justifications for fighting are to defend yourself and your position against a serious threat. (In the real world, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to fight for the “position” of a nation-state, at all, but I’m mooting that one now.) Follows, doesn’t it?

Now: how could anybody who isn’t delusional or just a pants-wetting coward really believe that Iraq or Afghanistan posed a deadly threat to the US? And do we want the mad or those terrified their own shadow has WMDs to control our destinies?  Maybe that’s a bad idea?

So it isn’t sufficient simply to point out (what should be) the blazingly obvious truth: the US has no sensible strategic military reasons for its occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. They also invite disaster – not just for the military, but the nation and its subjects.  The latter being us.

Addendum – please, don’t even write me any weak nonsense about how “al-Qa’ida” trained in Afghanistan. They also trained in Hamburg and south Florida, among other places. So what?

A few days ago I was out walking with my dog (whose innocent name I won’t sully by mentioning in such a foul and murderous context as politics) when it struck me that, for a lark, and since the two entities in question can’t seem to muster any actual disagreement with one another, I ought to publicly propose that Obama select as his running mate John McCain.

Then he went and did.

Because guess what? If it had, you’d be at war with Russia now.

Russian troops on the move

Russia, in case you’ve missed the last century somehow, has strategic thermonuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.

Feel better now?

(Of all things Wikipedia has pretty good ongoing coverage of the war.  Hat tip to Antiwar.com for alerting me to the fact.)

Youth, serve the Leader!*

Because you aren’t doing enough for the rich and the powerful already.

You selfish bastards.

Yep. Mussolini-style fascism, imported wholesale by Herbert Hoover and rebranded as the “New Deal” by the plutocrats who pulled FDR’s strings, rises again from the grave to stalk the living and suck out their lives to feed its evil.

Who am I kidding? Economic fascism - the Corporate State - is what we all grew up under. It never died.

But it still stalks the living to suck their lives and feed its evil. That part’s right.

Of course the cynical might ask who’s going to pay for all this. The government is beyond broke: its a few trillion in the hole. The answer is us, of course. But now how you think.

Rather, look again to Zimbabwe. Get ready to add three or four zeroes to the bills in your wallet.

And a couple more to the bills you have to pay to live.

Unearned feelings of not just self-worth but superiority are turning out, wicked fast, to be the most expensive habituation in history.

*Note: the bottom legend on the poster reads, “Everyone ten years in the Hitler Youth.”

Election '08: Any way you look at it, we lose.

The “election,” such as it is, hearkens back to 1996, when the rulers couldn’t be bothered to run a credible opponent to a highly vulnerable, overt charlatan of an incumbent, with the manner and sexual tastes of a televangelist, running instead another superannuated “war hero,” as unsightly in person as was his political record of serving Leviathan in the most persistent, and persistently self-serving, manner possible. (And if you’re excited by war-heroes, even authentic ones, as rulers, why not study some history – such as that of this man who won the Iron Cross First Class the hard way in World War I? How’d that work out?)

His rival will win the popularity contest, and frankly should – his appearance is at least not something to frighten naughty children with (and the true terror of the Republican’s face isn’t its age, it’s the overt evil and madness shining through.) Unless Israel attacks Iran, and the US’s rulers treasonously join in. Which will be the end of the election, the US, and quite possibly what we laughingly call civilization. As well as, likely, most of us.

But what’s exasperating is that his opponent is being marketed - seriously - as representing “change.” Yes: a brand shiny new wrapper for the same old maggot-writhing shit we’ve been fed throughout our lifetimes.

Every word attributed to this blatant sock-puppet of the ruling class is a study in demagogery by committee: carefully tested on focus groups wired-up to show what random combinations of words stir their pulses. How else can we account for the constant flow of content-free gibberish exemplified by the book title, The Audacity of Hope? What’s that? The Audacity of Dope, or The Audacity of Rope, would both make as much sense. If not more.

Here’s a little game to play. Have you ever indulged in the simpleminded amusement, at a Chinese restaurant, of having the diners each read their cookie fortunes aloud, inserting at the end of each the words, “between the sheets”? Okay, it’s lame: bear with.

Here’s a little variation you can play with the anointed Democratic sock puppet’s latest outgassing in Berlin. Let’s start with observing how the article’s very title – “Obama promises to ‘remake the world’” – reveals his real main point: asserting US global hegemony as blatantly and arrogantly as George W. did in his disastrous “you’re with us or against us” speech.

And now for fun and extra, if uncomfortable, insight, try inserting the phrase, “at gunpoint” at the end of each and every sentence in the speech. And you’ll see laid bare what he’s really promising.

It’s even less funny than the fortune cookie game. Too bad it’s true, huh?

Not that it’ll make any difference to most people who vote. It’s the same grotesquely arrogant US imperialism by which George Bush has made himself the most hated man on Earth – but with a new, new, new package!

Even if by some bizarre chance the creature quadrennially hired to play President actually enjoys the powers attributed to it, and isn’t merely the puppet hireling of the real rulers (which I believe the evidence frankly indicates) – what difference can it possibly make? Both candidates have already signed on to pretty much the whole Bush-fronted program of destroying liberty at home and destroying the US military, as well as any goodwill the hapless American people still may enjoy, by endless expanding aggression abroad, along with destroying the US and global economy with the hyperinflation needed to pay for it all. Zimbabwe, here we come!

That’s what exasperates me most about my friends who call themselves liberals. I love you as people. As for your political beliefs - well, look again at the name of the blog. Politics befouls everything it touches.

It’s not that you’re no better than conservatives. It’s that you’re no different from them. In a year’s time you’ll all be celebrating Obama™ torture*, Obama™ warrantless wiretapping, Obama™ imprisonment by fiat, Obama™ endless war of occupation in Iraq (he’s given himself the lie on withdrawal as wholeheartedly as he did on FISA, by promising to keep troops there to preserve … whatever: as long as there are invaders’ boots on Iraqi soil, there’ll be war); Obama™ war for UNOCAL in Afghanistan, and of course, Obama™ war on anybody Israel points at. And we can’t omit mega-Obama™ welfare to giant corporations.

By the way, is there any evidence, beyond the supertankers-full of bullshit we get dumped all over us in the name of “political commentary,” that Democrats spew less largesse to their “private” partners in the Corporate State (which in fact have not a whit more to do with free enterprise than the old Mikoyan-i-Gurevich Design Bureau under Stalin did) than Republicans? (Hint: why, no.)

And the liberals will be chanting to waterboard anybody who dares criticize a quantum of it all. Because desperately few if any of the liberals I know, or see and hear in the media, have any principled objection to any of these things. They’re just griped that a Republican is doing them.

And the conservatives’ objection, once the sock-puppet o’ state changes hand from right to left? That what’s been done to us good and hard the last few years, to their vociferous approval, is now being done by a Democrat.

*Hat tip to the invaluable Arthur Silber, who first publicly made the point about Democratic branding of State evil. It’s been festering independently in my mind for some time now; the above’s my take. You can count on my harping on it again.