Politics: desperate tyrant threats and border crises - and the criminal gang seeking permanent power

First some news blips. As if Putin's desperate gambles (supported by fellow autocracies) weren't enough: "Russia is ramping up malign disinformation campaigns against France, French President Emmanuel Macron, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), aiming to disrupt or discredit this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris."

As for President Biden's semi clamp-down at the U.S. border: he should accompany this with a warning to the leaders of Nicaragua, Guatemala, Venezuela etc. 

"You are waging war against your own people, making them refugees and hurling them at us. You assume that crime will then turn us into paranoid fascists. The experiment worked a bit, when Putin did it to Eastern Europe. And it's already worked on some U.S. citizens. So here's the deal. We must clamp down a bit on our deep American nature of welcoming kindness... just a bit and for a while. Only meanwhile, YOU cruel tyrants had better watch it. Waging war on your own people, you are also waging war on us."  

(BTW any leftists raging against this ought to go talk to U.S. Latino & Latina citizens, who have wanted this border action for a long time. Then talk to liberals in Poland, Hungary etc. about the success Putin had with this tactic, transforming European politics. If you want good things (continuing the massive progress of the 2021-22 Pelosi bills) then you need power. And that entails prioritizing.)

This and much else can be found in Polemical Judo.

== How to win ==

Alas, four years after I published it, to help in the 2020 election, there's not a single chapter or page of my book about political tactics that is obsolete.  Roughly 100 proposed methods that would likely be useful right now, at this critical time...

...and not one of those proposed tactics has been taken up or used. Not by any blue politicians or leaders. Not one of the 'generals' on the blue, Union side in this desperate phase of the recurring, 240 year US Civil War. As appalling as the confederate side's treasonous madness is the blue/union/democracy side's utter ineptitude at polemics... and dullard refusal to consider any fresh ideas.

I'll offer my book again, online. I can promise it'll be entertaining and eye-opening! Take a look at...  Polemical Judo: Memes for Our Political Knife-fight.

== One potential disaster … averted? ==

Remember in May when Earth got slammed by a Solar Coronal Mass Ejection… or sun-storm of ions hurled our way, in one of the largest such events recorded? Millions got to see aurorae as far south as Florida or as far north as Brisbane. And yet, there appeared to be none of the predicted fizzling and popping of power systems and fried computers. Oh, we’re not completely out of the woods… and this is no guarantee that a sharply pulsed and localized EMP event, triggered by some desperate Earthly foe, won’t knock us back on our heels.  But it does seem – tentatively – that desperate tyrants have to write off one of their ‘mad-gamble-weapons’. Which brings up a longstanding topic of mine…

A fundamental trait of any society is resilience: Never was it more relevant to discuss what we should have done by now... and can still do... to help our nations, civilization and families be more robust against the batterings of fate. Especially in a year when desperate foes might EMP us, or AI hallucinations run wild, or electricity nets fail, or...

In this "interview I recently did on resiliency", come see where I dissect a dozen areas we should be doing more, while prepper lords build refuge redoubts to ride out some coming 'Event.'

== More mundane… and terrifying political crises ==

Ever more, it seems that the United States Supreme Court has been (the majority) suborned into an instrument of enemies of the Republic. 

Justice Breyer Says SCOTUS Risks Creating “A Constitution That No One Wants.”  

And that was before that majority over-ruled the unanimous federal Appeals Court’s denunciation of South Carolina’s outrageous electoral cheating. As I’ve said for ten years. John Roberts has one* top job for his masters: protect gerrymandering. They are now desperate, fearing a Democratic win will let Hakeem Jeffries pass (and Biden sign) a renewed Voting Rights Act. Their #1 hope: enough flakes on our side will scamper off to the next Nader-Stein Kremlin agent. That or a Reichstag fire. 

(* Just as Roger Taney's top job was to protect the Fugitive Slave Act. History will rank them together.)

It seems like no week passes without more evidence of rabid partisanship or outright corruption by at least four of the six blatant right wingers on this court. 

But time passes. And they know that the 2024 election may affect even them. And as far as the oligarchy is concerned, keeping copntrol over the Supreme Court is even more important than Congress or the Presidency.

I wrote the preceeding paragraphs before the RNC and the choice as running mate - by ol' Two Scoops - of JD Vance, who is now self-immolating almost every day. And certainly we must gird ourselves for when/if Trump tells Kant Dance to ease himself out, on any excuse...

...and/or when/if the oligarchs say the same thing to Donald Trump.

Which is why I am daring to offer wagers (of course I must be given odds) that Donald Trump will no longer be the GOP nominee, by November. Amid his brownshirt/MAGA ravings, some of them (the few with actual knowledge) can recall how the Prussian aristocracy lost control of their Nazi tools, in 1934. They are desperate to set up a Bush-type tool and Nikki Haley is the Bush-in-waiting. But that means she must suck up to MAGA now, in calibrated ways. 

This Great White Hope is why the Romney wing has made no move quite yet, risking all our lives, in this scheme to set up Bush III. Though I will mention one more name you haven't heard in a while, because the Crown Prince of Bushism has been biding his time.

Paul Ryan.  Look for either of these names to come up, if JD (kant dance) Vance continues to self-immolate. 

Of course, never forget that we got Bush II because the fripper-flakes on the left flounced off to Kremlin agent Nader ... and then they flounced to the KGB's Jill Stein and gave us Trump. In both cases, their betrayal of the only coalition that can save civilization, was indefensible. But now?  

Well, Kamala appears to have staunched that self-destructive lefty-flake reflex, as Obama did.  Still, you freepers be on notice. Do it again and we will remember you. This time, we won’t forget.

== Is body shaming a legit tactic? No… but PARENTAL failures are! ==

Why fall for the trap of body shaming? Late-night comics are always making personal appearance cheap shots. (The fact that Donald Trump turns himself into a glowing pumpkin is what's important, not any of the fat jokes. Didn't make-up-wearing males used to draw ridivule from macho-ists?) 

Anyway, there's something far more devastating based on the biblical passage "By their fruits you shall know them." And sure, economic outcomes are always better from Democratic administrations, and they get <1% as many indicted appointees. (I do not exaggerate. Step up with wager stakes!)

But no, I mean something closer to that passage. 

Why does no one tabulate the lives of the children of those who lecture to us about family values? From Palin to Boebert to Green to Trump to so many others, GOP officials and lawmakers' 'fruits' appear to average as stunning examples of failed parenting. 

Is that why they so frantically attack poor Hunter? Without ever even naming a crime? Sure, a black sheep. Though when your brother was a spectacularly great American like Beau Biden, the average 'fruit' quality was still pretty damn high... Anyway I'd compare HB's entire life to any random month of any of the Trump boys.

And anyway... that part... the Hunter part... is over now.

Never mind that. Let's just see a statistical outcomes comparison of fruits! And wager me what'll be the outcome? Like rates that GOP pols' kids have trouble with the law or out-of-wedlock children. Or the fact that blue state sex education inarguably results in lower rates of STDs, teen pregnancy and abortion... and even rates of teen sex... than the puritanical finger-wag "sex ed" offered in red states! 

Red States (except Utah) where rates of nearly every turpitude average higher than the averages in Blue States! 

(Bets? First, look up the word 'turpitudes.' And include net tax-parasitism on the rest of the nation. Then recite aloud the Seven Deadly Sins... and TRY not to think of Donald Trump in every case?)

Our delusional neighbors use assertions as fact-canceling incantations. But I find that one phrase - "Let's bet $$!" - often rocks them back. They blink, suddenly remembering that facts and assertions are very different things. And - despite their macho - they run.

               Unattributed but brilliant jpeg meme floating the web: Anyone who finds the origin and reports it in comments gets 5 web points!
  

== Again, it’s TACTICS, stupid ==

Referring to testimony by former Trump confidant and lawyer Michael Cohen, Jim Wright on his Stonekettle posting says: "You know, I've had bad days. But it was never sitting in court listening as they read your name into the historical record forever as "Vonshitzinpants" bad."

Go ahead and giggle. But while giggling, alas, no one seems capable of using such things tactically!

The best thing The Lincoln Project could do is not just list all the former Trumpists who now denounce him. Sure, it numbers over a hundred. But next tabulate them… and finally punch it with:

"Trump has been 'betrayed' by more appointees who he formerly called "great guys!!" than all other U.S. presidents... combined. You can make up stories about that all you like, but one fact is indisputable.

"Donald Trump is a crappy judge of character."

That’s the sort of jiu-jitsu tactic that I offer in Polemical Judo.  

Moreover, if you can get anyone on any Democratic campaign - even the assistant staffer on a race for city council - to ask me, I'll send a PDF for free.  But I'll not put in the same kind of effort as I did in 2019 and 2020.  The book is utterly pertinent as ever.  I do have more to add... 

...but why should I bother?

== Finally... ==

Finally, might this be your most-influential political act? 

Right now Democratic Party mavens are measuring how many new, individual donors each of the VP front runners are bringing in. Thus you can influence Kamala Harris's choice, simply by being a $5 New Donor for any of the top candidates.

Just sayin'

Fight the insanity & stupidity... as if you're sane and smart

This one's been sitting in the queue for a while, while the craziness just piles higher, each and every day. So let me begin by addressing just the most fearsome of so many recent lunacies.

Congress must cancel the 2001 War Powers act that gave the president (based on those WMD lies) pretty much carte blanche. If they had a glimmer of gumption they would replace it with a commission of American sages who can - if unanimous - free the military chain of command to ignore or pause precipitate or suicidal orders from any POTUS.

This would likely pass any Supreme Court test. A president is "commander-in-chief" - a tactical role afforded by the Constitution, but Congress has the right to declare actual war and that right must be taken back. Now.

And sure, the saber rattling today is about North Korea. (Elsewhere I've offered a way to motivate China to act, at last -- by declaring they'll be liable for civil damages for any actions taken by Kim. Those accountants will take that seriously!) But come on. Korea? Really?

Bannon and Gorka and every other oligarchic power center, from the Iranian mullahs to the Saudis and many less-smart Israelis to our oil barons and -- above all -- Vladimir Putin all desperately want Donald Trump to distract the world from his troubles by pouring brief swarms of pippety-poppety tomahawks into Iran, making lots of flash and doing very little real harm, while oil prices skyrocket, the mullahs crush the Persian democrats and Putin gets a loyal protectorate. And yes, the mullahs would chortle with joy, as their power in Tehran is locked-in for another generation. It is the win-win scenario deeply desired by every despot on Earth.

But enough said about today's mania.  Let me now put in some bigger perspectives, before the next news cycle exhausts us, further.

== "Resistance" isn't futile. But do it smart ==

Never let it be said that the left lacks its own (much smaller but loud) array of impulsively emotional fools.  “Several thousand protesters marched through downtown Los Angeles on Sunday, waving signs and chanting, “Down, down, down with Trump — up, up, up with the people” as they urged Congress to impeach the president.” 

Oh sure, go ahead and march. But it’s absurd to use the “I” word, yet. Impeachment now would be the height of stupidity, for reasons that I lay down – clearly – here.   

But the simplest is that our civil servants and military officers are now totally alert and will stymie anything truly awful. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is the Republicans’ problem. His replacement - in contrast - would run a tightly disciplined White House packed with Dominionist fanatics, bent on ending the world… and I mean that literally. Go read my many reasons for patience.

Even better would be for some Democrats to use what is blatant about Donald Trump’s psychology!  Is not a single democratic politician able to see?  Actually see what we have before us? Or read a psychological profile?  The dems – led by Schumer, Warren and Franken – need to gather and pick straws.  And the short straw “winners” will have a simple duty – that I lay out here.  It must be done!  For the sake of our nation, civilization and children!

== Pundits: Good, the Bad the Hopeful and Ugly ==

I’ll start with the ugly. This essay, by Vijad Prashad is utter drivel.  A complete panic-rant.  It contains almost nothing that is either true or helpful. And hence, I urge you to read it and inoculate yourself against the kind of leftist babble that will not aid us in our mission of overcoming the right’s psychotic madness. Panic… does… not… help. 

In sharp contrast is this test of your maturity: "How I became a man without a party," by Bruce Bartlett, a lifelong Republican who served in the Reagan White House. (His latest book: The Truth Matters: A Citizen's Guide to Separating Facts from Lies and Stopping Fake News.) In moving gradually – then hastily – against the growing Republican/confederate insanity, he does not apologize for – or recant – at least some of the Reagan-conservative views that he then supported. Others, he admits, appear to have failed. But, he asserts, they sincerely seemed worth trying, at the time. In other words, while conservative, he is also a human being and citizen who is grownup enough to heed facts and evidence. 

Bartlett now freely admits what any sensible citizen must: that the entire conservative movement has been hijacked by monsters.

“The incompetence of the George W. Bush administration finally drove me over the edge…. In 2005, I wrote a book attacking Bush from the right called “Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy”. No Republican today would disagree with a word that I wrote, but, at the time, criticizing a Republican president was grounds for defenestration. I was fired from my job at a conservative think tank and banished from polite Republican company.”

“For a few years, I still considered myself to be a Republican, hoping that some degree of sanity would be restored. But it only got much worse. The election of Obama seemed to drive even moderate Republicans over the edge into hysterical hatred and opposition, egged on by the so-called tea party, which consisted entirely of people who knew absolutely nothing about government or policy except that they were mad as hell.

“This dictatorship of the idiocracy drove me out of the GOP. I began referring to myself as an independent. Once freed from needing to feign party loyalty, I found myself receptive to ideas I had once rejected out of hand. I wrote a book that was skeptical of supply-side economics — the Republican theory that tax cuts are the cure for every economic problem. I wrote columns sympathetic to the welfare state and other heresies. I lost the last few Republican friends I had.”

In other words, this fellow is an archetype of the people we must find, hunt down, and confront, grabbing their lapels until they agree to harrow with us out of hell. Nothing else will make the needed difference, more than luring ten million residually sane, decent, patriotic, science-admiring American “ostrich conservatives” to lift their heads out of denial. Just 10 million, out of a population of 360 million. If we can win over that many more Bruce Bartletts, the nation – and civilization – will be saved.

I referred to this elsewhere, in urging that the Democrats create a Big Tent that’s welcoming, even to Americans who retain this or that conservative trait or view. And yes, I describe where to find candidates who can invade red districts and do this on the ground. Taking our country back. See one spectacular example that has gone viral, a retired Marine Lt. Col. fighter pilot -- she may make a huge difference in Kentucky! Though overall, little good will be done unless these super-smart missiles are aimed into every single red state assembly and senate district, too.

Ah, but will we welcome these folks? Bartlett – apparently sincere – fears we won’t. He writes, “I’ve grown to hate my former party. You’d think this would make me a prime candidate for recruitment by the Democrats. But I’m not. First, no Democrat has ever reached out to me. I am not insulted by this, only surprised. And my efforts to suggest ideas to Democrats have been uniformly rebuffed. Like the Republicans, Democrats are wary of apostates and are only receptive to those born into their church, it seems.”

Like so much of what this former Reaganite believed, we must prove that this, too, is mistaken.

== The soup-du-jour ==

The article/essay that's circulating most widely, right now is "How America Lost Its Mind The nation’s current post-truth moment is the ultimate expression of mind-sets that have made America exceptional throughout its history," by Kurt Anderson, which appears in this issue of The Atlantic.  

It might not cheer you up.  (And I don't agree with every appraisal.) 

But now that the War on Science and against all fact-using professions has spread to include the "deep state" FBI, Intelligence agents and the U.S. Military Officer Corps, we really need to dust off our supposedly superior brainpower to solve the potentially lethal sickness of Idiocracy.

 == Hypocrisy at the top ==

Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert was released from prison in Minnesota. For 6 years this admitted child molester was head of the Republican Party and the GOP's standard bearer. He declared the "Hastert Rule" that threatened punishment against any Republican who, at any level or for any reason, ever negotiated - even over matters vital to the national interest - with any Democrat, helping Rupert Murdoch to turn the GOP into the most tightly disciplined partisan machine in U.S. history. 

Hastert's #2 Republican - Tom DeLay - who raised political cheating to a high art, also became a convicted felon. 

(Oh and count the number of Fox News ranters and GOP congressmen who have been revealed as sexual predators! Two recent examples? Members of the Oklahoma legislature were forced to end their time in office prematurely. State Rep. Dan Kirby (R) had a nasty habit of making unwanted sexual advances toward female members of his staff, while State Sen. Ralph Shortey (R) allegedly had an even nastier habit of paying for sex...with children. So, they're both out. Then of course there's more recent news about Fox's alleged sexual predator number... 20? Eric Bolling.)

Hastert's tenure, two heartbeats from the presidency, followed the previous top Republican - a 3x divorcé - and preceded the fellow who lied to us all about WMDs and plunged us into trillion dollar quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan.  But fundamentalists will make any excuse for the stunning immorality of GOP leaders - including the present "grabber." 

They excuse these opposite-to-Jesus stinkers for one reason. Because they hate the same folks. Scientists. Teachers. Journalists. Law professionals. Anyone who deals in facts.

When you have a common enemy, all is forgiven. And yes. Judge a movement and its members by who they proclaim as their enemies!  All the folks who look at God's creation - called objective reality - with Heaven's greatest gift. Honest curiosity.

== Miscellaneous Facts ==

The U.S. teen birth rate plummeted 53% since 2007, with a 9% drop in 2016 alone, as all of the vigorous Obama-era programs took full effect.

Robert Reich is pushing Medicare-for-all… and sure, yeah, I support it. But with open eyes, cause there are problems.  Medical care is unlimited, "non-fungible," and hence has to be rationed in one way or another. The old vile insurance system rationed by kicking out the sick and the poor to die. Europeans ration by committee and giving 'priority' to children who calculate out to have more quality years at stake. In pushing medicare-for-all, you are asking for the latter. Be honest about it. Yes it is better, but don't pretend it'll be problem-free.

And finally...

Oh, ye yanks out there; do you know any verses of the Star Spangled Banner, other than the first? Have a look - and listen to - the fifth verse added by Oliver Wendell Holmes, as our nation fell into treason and Civil War, back in the 1860s.

Here’s half:

When our land is illum'd with Liberty's smile,

If a foe from within strike a blow at her glory,

Down, down, with the traitor that dares to defile

The flag of her stars and the page of her story!

The reference to betrayal from “within” seems especially apropos, as a New Confederacy rises, bent on destroying our Great Experiment in ways far more devious and effective than mere secession. Read - and  listen to - the rest. Feel stirred, awakened, and roused to duty.

Doom and Gloom?

== You cynics aren't helpful! ==

Finally, someone (else) is making a key point — that liberals and progressives sabotage themselves with gloom, by proclaiming that no past reforms or interventions have done the slightest good.  Nothing has improved, everything is worse and none of the past measures that we strove so hard to achieve has ever worked! 

This reflex is not only counterfactual and kind of sick-minded... it is also spectacularly counterproductive, playing into the hands of those who proclaim: “Yep! Progressive ‘solutions’ never work, and progressives are the first to say so!”

In Progressives Lost the Election, but Their Ideas are Winning, Richard V. Reeves offers statistical evidence that the poor and middle class aren’t doing quite as badly in the U.S. as many have been railing. Does that make him an enemy of progress? Not when he shows relentlessly that:

(1) it was successive liberal interventions that prevented a plummet into poverty for tens of millions and 

(2) we still have a long way to go. Indeed, bragging about their product’s past successes would be the first thing done by any sane salesperson! Suggesting that many of our left-wing friends are not especially, well, sane.

“For progressives, doom and gloom will be a self-defeating political strategy, since it adds steadily to the sense that government doesn’t work. This will be especially true in 2016 after occupying the White House for two terms. The subtext of downbeat progressive rhetoric is, by implication: "Yes, we have already done all these things (the Great Society, tax credits, welfare reform, food stamps), but honestly, nothing has really worked, look how terrible things are becoming," writes Reeves, continuing:

“What they should be saying instead is: "Look at all these government initiatives that have really worked to reduce poverty, improve workplaces, lessen inequality, weaken racism, boost women’s chances, and improve wellbeing. So let’s do more of it! What’s the next problem that we can help to solve?"

Lest you right wingers crow, at this point, fie upon you!  If you had had your way for 70 years, this society would be a festering feudal cesspit of poverty, simmering on the edge of revolution. And you HAVE had your way in the US for 2 decades, and things ARE getting worse for the middle classes! Your oligarchs, in contrast, are doing great. Still, the aversion of our news media - of all kinds - to ever mention good news, is stunningly consistent, almost to the point of evil.

Just one example.  Since the Department of Health & Human Services began a campaign, three years ago, to eradicate fatal  hospital errors, there has been a plummet in Hospital Acquired Illness. Had you heard of this?  Of course not.

All of this riffs along with Steven Pinker’s important book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, wherein he shows absolutely that average per capita rates of both violence and poverty have plummeted, worldwide, every decade since humanity hit its nadir in 1943. 

I take head-on the fury that these facts arouse in people of the left, and the blindness of the right, in my TedX talk, Indignation, Addiction and Hope: Does it help to be mad as hell? (Follow the slides on Slideshare!)

Caught in the middle are the few remaining liberal-pragmatist problem solvers remaining in a country that once specialized in pragmatism and negotiation and simply getting the job done.

All of this shows that - although the Neo-Confederacy is our worst problem today — a froth of insanity and treason, incited by foreign petro-sheiks who mean us nothing but harm — there certainly is a fair amount of crazy, also, on the other side.

== Satire and Bullshit == 

The New Age Bullshit Generator randomly generates hilariously plausible, touchy-feely psychotech-quantum babble!  Farm-out man! Right-arm!

For a more compact version of this much-deserved satire, see: The Enigmatic Wisdom of Chopra.

But I recommend delving into the intellectual grand-daddy of New Age/postmodernist satirical debunkery, the "Sokal Hoax." 

Okay, I am having some fun skewering the ditzy far-far-left, this time. But let us never forget, cesspits thrive near all fanaticisms. And although the biggest threat right now to our rational enlightenment is the "bullshit mountain" of the Fox'd right, there is definitely a far wing of the other side that wallows in insipid fantasy. 

If you cannot turn your head and acknowledge this, then you have Fused Political Spine Disease and you are part of the problem, not the solution.

Get an ideological chiropractor.  Re-learn how to turn your head and see that dangers lie in all directions. Only then will you earn the credibility (as I have done) to say: "I am very aware of my own side's crazies... and that qualifies me to say, unequivocally, that the other side is worse!"

== Health Care ==

“For all the irrational disgust the right has for the ACA (Obamacare), the law itself is actually a boon to entrepreneurs," writes Steve Benen, It allows brash startups like Uber, Lyft and Airbnb to do their capitalist thing, attracting lots of independent drivers, etc, who can have the courage to take on that lifestyle instead of working for The Man, since health insurance can now be bought affordably outside working for a big company or corporation.  

Just to be plain, this was actually predicted, back when Newt Gingrich presented the ACA as his party’s alternative to “HillaryCare...” 

...before the GOP went completely bonkers and disowned its own… damn… plan. Simply because Barack Obama had the utter gall – the nerve – to … agree to it!  That gave their own damn plan cooties, it appears.

 == On Ebola ==

Pater Tenebrarum observed: “A friend recently asked us whether the massive Ebola outbreak in West Africa could be regarded as a “black swan” in the sense of Nassim Taleb’s definition of the term. After thinking it over, we concluded that yes, it can definitely be characterized as one. Evidently, something is very different about this year’s outbreak compared to previous ones, and a number of unexpected developments have occurred. Chief among them is that a hitherto firmly held belief had to be abandoned. It was thought that the very thing that that makes the illness rather terrifying, namely its high mortality rate, helped in containing outbreaks…  We can definitely state that the current outbreak is anything but “well contained”."

== ISIS CRISIS == 

George Monbiot sarcastically asks (in The Guardian) “Why stop at Isis when we could bomb the whole Muslim world? Humanitarian arguments, ifconsistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East.”

Midway into his attempt at satire, he offers this paragraph: “Is there not an urgent duty to blow up Saudi Arabia? It has beheaded 59 people so far this year, for offences that include adultery, sorcery and witchcraft. It has long presented a far greater threat to the west than Isis now poses. In 2009 Hillary Clinton warned in a secret memo that “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban … and other terrorist groups”. In July, the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, revealed that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, until recently the head of Saudi intelligence, told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.” Saudi support for extreme Sunni militias in Syria during Bandar’s tenure is widely blamed for the rapid rise of Isis. Why take out the subsidiary and spare the headquarters?”

Monbiot leaves out the biggest allegation against that desert kingdom — that it meddles in U.S. governance.  Not just with bribery and blackmail and the usual tools, but above all by supporting and maintaining Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda empire which has deliberately destroyed politics in America, pitting one half of the country (a re-ignited Confederacy) against the other half.  

The Bush family, virtually a branch office of that R’oil House, (holding hands with them and calling Prince Bandar “Uncle Bandie"), plunged us into so many calamities that every single metric of U.S. national health plummeted under the watches of George Senior and George Junior, plus Dick Cheney — losses that measure many trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.  Should we not consider all of that an “act of war”?

In any event, remember this in 2016.  That McCain and Romney distanced themselves from the accursed Bush clan... but surrounded themselves with factotums from the entire Bush-GOP 'brain trust' that delivered the worst governance seen in at least 80 years. Do not believe that anything has changed, till the whole house has been disinfected and cleaned. And finally hope for sane conservatism when that whirring sound goes away... the spinning of Goldwater and Buckley, in their graves.

  

== Bush and more Bush ==

Oh please, please please run, Jeb. By appearances, you seem the least loathsome of your wretched clan, whose terms in office featured exactly ZERO improvements in even one unambiguously attributable metric of US national health.  The first and second time that happened, ever in U.S. history. Indeed, nearly all such metrics plummeted across the spans of both Bush Administrations... a correlation so perfect that it tempts one to imagine it had to be deliberate.

And why not?  As we've seen, the Bushes are so intimately tied to one of the Middle Eastern royal families that W said "Uncle (Prince) Bandaar just about raised me."  A family also co-owns Fox.

So yes, by all means Jeb, run! If the Confederacy succeeds in imposing another Bush rule over the United States, then we in the loyal, Blue half will deserve what we get. And our nation's 200 year Civil War will be over, for good.

P.S. and BTW....  I am still looking for a guerrilla performance art coop who might do a piece of political humor that would far out-do Jib-Jab's famous 2004 "This Land" sketch. 

It might even put the kibosh on this "dynasty" thing, once and for all.