PRESIDENCY or PRISON? - Can Hillary Clinton Survive Herself and Billary?

Hillary Clinton

anuary 17, 2016

Hillary keeping Bill on a tight leash

By Thomas Lifson

Hillary Clinton’s campaign can’t ignore the former POTUS – after all, without his political career nobody would consider Hillary for a political job of any consequence (never forget that she was fired from the House Watergate Committee, her first independent foray into politics). Looking back on her political career, she has done best when exercising the least power. Hillarycare led to her retirement from the “co-presidency” and her career as a senator was undistinguished. The less said about the results of her reign as the nation’s top diplomat, the better. 

In fact, her only personal political triumphs came when she performed as the emotionally injured wife a cheating husband who stood by her man. There are few humiliations more profound for a feminist woman than being an adjunct to a male career. Hence the insatiable quest for the presidency -- a way to get out of the shadow of Bubba.

Bill Clinton, for his part, knows that a return ticket to the White House is his chance at revenge for impeachment, and not so incidentally, access to Air Force One, even bigger speaking fees, and a unique place in history, the president so great he got his personally grating, unattractive loser of a wife elected.

But Bill on his own is a wild card.  He is a fundamentally undisciplined soul, subject to legendarily uncontrollable appetites, and in constant need of approval from others. Out among the masses, he can be like Harpo Marx spotting a pretty girl walking by, pursuing mindlessly the shiny object that captured his attention. At his advanced age and physical health, those shiny objects are not solely carnal, they involve attention, notice, and comment. In short: Bill is a publicity hog.

He helped screw up Hillary’s 2008 campaign by playing a race card in South Carolina.  This time around, who knows what he will do?

Thus, Hillary’s campaign is keeping him in a tight leash. Lisa Lerer of theAssociated Press writes about his appearance at a campaign rally in Keene, NH yesterday:

As Hillary Clinton fends off a rising challenge from Bernie Sanders, his wife's campaign aides are grappling with how best to deploy what she has described as her "not-so-secret weapon."

Their answer: very, very carefully.

During campaign swings through Iowa and New Hampshire, Bill Clinton treaded fastidiously through tightly controlled campaign events. A natural-born chit-chatter, he was not giving interviews. When he stopped to talk with reporters after one recent event, campaign aides turned up the music, making a conversation all but impossible.

Wow! That has got to drive Bill nuts. And it offers a chilling (for him)  preview of what could lie ahead in the event and unindicted Hillary goes on to win the presidency. Having his every move subject to overruling by Hillary. Even worse, having Hillary’s minions control his opportunity to be heard. I have to wonder if Bill really wants to help make that happen.

At least for the present, however, he is toeing the line:

His remarks to voters have been relatively subdued: long on history, statistics and nostalgia. He's dodged questions about Sanders and Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who's been baiting the Clinton family with comments about the former president's past sexual improprieties

"I'm not going there," Bill Clinton said on Wednesday, when asked about Sanders at a campaign event in New Hampshire. "I came here to tell people why I thought Hillary should be president and her ideas are better."

Stay tuned. The Clintons’ couple dynamics are complicated and intense. They can also be highly amusing on occasion.

Read more:http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/hillary_keeping_bill_on_a_tight_leash.html#ixzz3xXqgPFBy

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


Nine times Clinton Foundation donors got special access at State: Nine examples of State Department access Hillary Clinton granted to her foundation's top donors.


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

January 14, 2016

Hillary’s long goodbye

By Thomas Lifson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time is not on Hillary’s side.

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

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Wave of selling hits US markets

Wave of selling hits US markets

By Nick Beams
14 January 2016

US stocks markets tumbled Wednesday as oil prices continued to fall and voices in the finance industry, together with economic commentators, warned of the potential for a major crisis.

The sell-off was across the board, the Dow falling by 365 points, 2.21 percent, the S&P 500 by 2.50 percent and the Nasdaq down by 3.4 percent. The day opened with an uptick but large-volume selling soon set in, the prevailing sentiment being that it was necessary to get out without waiting to see what would happen during the rest of the day.

Commentators said the sell-off was not just about oil, which has been touching levels as low as $30 per barrel, but the fall in prices for all industrial raw materials induced by the slowdown in China.
The sharp downturn has come in the wake of a series of assessments by banking officials that the conditions for a new financial crisis are fast developing.

On Tuesday economists at the Royal Bank of Scotland issued an assessment that said investors faced a “cataclysmic year” in which stocks could fall by 20 percent and oil could go as low as $16 per barrel.

In a note to clients, the RBS said: “Sell everything except high quality bonds. This is about return of capital, not return on capital. In a crowded hall, exit doors are small.” It warned that the present situation recalled 2008 when the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off a global crisis. This time the trigger could be China.

The bank’s credit chief Andrew Roberts said China had set off a “major correction and it is going to snowball” with equities and credit becoming “very dangerous.” He warned that the London market was particularly vulnerable to a negative shock because of the large number of commodity companies in the UK. The prices of all industrial raw materials, not just oil, are moving sharply down, reaching lows not seen since the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis.

“All those people who are long [buyers of] oil and mining companies thinking that the dividends are safe are going to discover than they’re not at all safe,” Roberts said.

RBS’s prediction of a sharply lower oil price was matched by Morgan Stanley which said it could go to $20 per barrel. Standard Charter forecast an even bigger fall, to $10. “Given that no fundamental relationship is driving the oil market toward any equilibrium, prices are being moved almost entirely by financial flows caused by fluctuations in other asset prices, including the US dollar and equity markets. We think prices could fall as low as $10 per barrel.”

The Standard Chartered analysis points to the development of a vicious circle: a falling oil price sends down equity markets and then financial flow-on effects from the decline in stock prices lead to a further drop in the price of oil.

Following the RBS call to “sell everything,” the Guardian sought responses from a series of economists. While none went as far as the RBS, there was a distinct lack of confidence in their replies.

Erik Britton, director of Fathom Consulting, did not dispute that China would have a “hard landing.” He said it was headed for just 2 percent growth in gross domestic product, markedly less than the official government prediction of 6.5 percent for this year.

Jonathan Porter, the director of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, said he was “worried” by current events “but not yet panicked.”

“But if the current concerns turn into a systematic meltdown on financial markets, then all bets are off,” he added.

Chris Williamson, the chief economist at the financial data provider Markit, said the worry was that the RBS warning could become a self-fulfilling prophecy and if a financial market rout led to a new recession, “policymakers are seriously lacking in tools to fight the new downturn.”

The RBS assessment was echoed by comments on Wednesday from Albert Edwards, strategist at the Societe Generale bank, who has long held the belief that equity markets are considerably over-valued. He said the West was about to be hit by a wave of deflation from emerging market economies and central banks were not aware of what was about to hit them.

He told an investment conference in London that developments in the global economy would “push the US back into recession. The financial crisis will reawaken. It will be every bit as bad as in 2008–09 and it will turn very ugly indeed.”

The US economy was in much worse shape than the Fed realised, with the US corporate sector being “crushed” by the appreciation in the value of the dollar. “We have seen massive credit expansion in the US. This is not for real economic activity; it is borrowing to finance share buybacks,” he said.
In an assessment of the significance of the fall in the markets, which in the US have experienced their worst new year opening in history, an article in the Financial Times on Monday pointed to longer-term trends. In the wake of the financial crisis, “aggressive easing” by the Fed and other central banks, coupled with a “mammoth spending binge” by China, had suppressed market volatility for an extended period and created a tide that lifted global assets prices.

“Now that liquidity is draining away and the bill for China’s spending—in the shape of overcapacity in some industries and high levels of indebtedness—is coming due,” the article noted.

“The worrying signal from the current turmoil is that the investor herd truly has become fearful and thinks the financial system is broken. Namely, that quantitative easing has merely papered over the cracks of global economic imbalances, borrowed hefty investment gains from the future and left taxpayers and company bondholders with a massive rise in outstanding debt.”

International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde also pointed to longer-term trends in a speech delivered in Paris on Tuesday. She said emerging market economies were facing a “new reality” in which their growth rates would be significantly slowed.

“Growth rates are down, and cyclical and structural forces have undermined the traditional growth paradigm,” she said.

That paradigm was based on boosting exports and attracting capital inflows. On current forecasts, she said emerging economies would move towards advanced economy incomes at less than two-thirds the pace predicted by the IMF a decade ago. “This is cause for concern,” she said.

The World Bank last week warned that these economies faced difficulties in 2016 after growing last year at their slowest pace since the financial crisis of 2008.

Lagarde said the shift by the Fed towards ending its easy monetary policies, together with the continuation of these policies by other central banks, had the potential to trigger exchange rate ructions.

“This volatility could be induced not only by the divergence in monetary policies in major advanced economies, but also by uncertainty about their overall prospects and policy action.”
In an indication of the deepening recessionary trends in the global economy, she noted that oil and metal prices were down by two-thirds from their peak and were likely “to stay low for a sustained period,” placing several developing economies “under severe stress.”
That stress is already in evidence with major economic contractions in Brazil and Russia, but it is not confined there. The economic outlook for two developed commodity-exporting countries, Australia and Canada, is also worsening.
Former US treasury secretary Lawrence Summers added his voice to those warning about the state of the global economy in a comment published in the Financial Times on Monday. He said that while markets do sometimes send out false alarms, economic and financial authorities should take notice because “the conventional wisdom never recognises gathering storms.”
“Because of China’s scale, its potential volatility and the limited room for conventional monetary manoeuvres, the global risk to domestic economic performance in the US, Europe and many emerging markets is as great as at any time I can remember,” he wrote.
It is impossible to predict exactly how the present turmoil will play out. But two certainties have been established.
Firstly, that the 2008 financial crisis was only the beginning of a breakdown of the global capitalist economy, for which the ruling elites have no economic solution. In fact, their actions have only created further wealth for the ultra-rich, increasing social inequality, while setting up the conditions for another financial meltdown.
And finally, that the renewed turbulence is going to produce even deeper attacks on the working class which, on top on those already being implemented, will bring an upsurge in social and political struggles.

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

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

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

14 January 2016

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

George Orwell in “Politics and the English Language,” 1946
**
The final State of the Union address given by President Barack Obama on Tuesday night was a litany of lies, banalities and military threats. The speech underscored the inability of the American political establishment to honestly address a single social question facing the broad masses of the population.
The address was generally praised by the media as a statement of confidence in America’s future. In fact, it combined bluster about the strength of the US economy absurdly at odds with economic and social reality with self-praise for “taking out” the enemies of American imperialism and assurances of more military havoc to come.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eric London and Barry Grey

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


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

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

By Patrick Martin
13 January 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lottery and social despair in America

The lottery and social despair in America

9 January 2015

This mania, so generally condemned, has never been properly studied. No one has realized that it is the opium of the poor. Did not the lottery, the mightiest fairy in the world, work up magical hopes? The roll of the roulette wheel that made the gamblers glimpse masses of gold and delights did not last longer than a lightning flash; whereas the lottery spread the magnificent blaze of lightning over five whole days. Where is the social force today that, for forty sous, can make you happy for five days and bestow on you—at least in fancy—all the delights that civilization holds?
Balzac, La Rabouilleuse, 1842

The jackpot in the US Powerball lottery has hit $800 million, since there were no winners in Wednesday’s drawing. In the current round, which began on December 2, over 431 million tickets have been sold, a figure substantially larger than America’s population.
Go into any corner store in America and you will see workers of every age and race waiting in line to buy lottery tickets. With the current round, the lines are longer than ever. Americans spend over $70 billion on lottery tickets each year. In West Virginia, America’s second-poorest state, the average person spent $658.46 on lottery tickets last year.
Powerball players pick six random numbers when they purchase their tickets, with a certain percentage of sales going to the jackpot. If no winning ticket is sold, the jackpot rolls over to the next round.
The totals for the Mega Millions and Powerball national lotteries have been growing every year. This year’s jackpot has eclipsed 2012’s record of $656.5 million, the $390 million payout in 2007 and the $363 million prize in 2000. The jackpots have grown in direct proportion to ticket sales.
State-run gambling programs such as Powerball have been promoted by Democrats and Republicans alike as a solution to state budget shortfalls, even as the politicians slash taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals and gut social programs. From the standpoint of government revenue, lotteries and casinos are nothing more than a back-door regressive tax, soaking up money from the poor in proportion to the growth of social misery.
The boom in lotteries is global. Lottery sales grew 9.9 percent worldwide in 2014, after growing 4.9 percent in 2013.
Psychology Professor Kate Sweeny has noted that lottery sales grow when people feel a lack of control over their lives, particularly over their economic condition. “That feeling of self-control is very important to psychological well-being,” Sweeny says.
There is ample reason for American workers to feel they have no control over their lives. According a recent survey by Bankrate.com, more than half of Americans do not have enough cash to cover an unexpected expense of $500 or more—roughly the price of four name-brand tires.
Some 62 percent of Americans have savings of less than $1,000, and 21 percent do not have any savings at all. Most Americans are one medical emergency or one spell of unemployment from financial ruin.
For all the talk about “economic recovery” by the White House, the real financial state of most American households is far worse than before the 2008 financial crisis and recession. As of 2013, Americans were almost 40 percent poorer than they were in 2007, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. While a large portion of the decline in household wealth is attributable to the collapse of the housing bubble, falling wages and chronic mass unemployment have played major roles.
The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of consumer finances. A large share of this decline has taken place during the so-called recovery presided over by the Obama administration.
In addition to becoming poorer, America has become much more economically polarized. According to a separate Pew survey, for the first time in more than four decades “middle-income households” no  longer constitute the majority of American society. Instead, the majority of households are either low- or high-income. Pew called its findings “a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point” in American society.
“Is the lottery the new American dream?” asked USA Today, commenting on this month’s Powerball jackpot. The observation is truer than the authors intended. For American workers, achieving the “American Dream” of a stable job and one’s own home is becoming increasingly unrealizable.
Following more than 10 million foreclosures during the financial crisis, America’s home ownership rate has hit the lowest level in two decades, and for young households, the rate of home ownership is the lowest it has been since the 1960s.
For the tens of millions of America’s poor, and the more than 100 million on the threshold of poverty, the dream of winning the lottery has replaced the “American Dream” of living a decent life. A lottery ticket is a chance to escape to a fantasy world where money is not a constant, nagging worry, where one is not insulted and bullied at a low-wage job by bosses whose pay is matched only by their incompetence. The lottery is, as Balzac aptly described it, the “opium of the poor.”
Using the same phrase to describe religion, Marx noted that the “illusory happiness of the people” provided by the solace of religion is, in fact, a silent protest and distorted “demand for their real happiness.” It is the intolerable social conditions that compel masses of people to seek consolation in a lottery ticket that will propel them into revolutionary struggles.
Andre Damon



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

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

By Nick Barrickman
9 January 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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