"Pope" Proves There is No "God"

"Pope" Francis, the Supreme Leader of the Roman Catholic Church, has spoken his strongest words yet in the years-long saga of the Catholic Church finally being exposed as a global pedophilia conspiracy. He called down "God's wrath," on pedophile priests and their higher-ranking protectors in his church. (His God, that is, not some other religion's deity, or any of the 2,500 known "Gods" that people have invented over the millennia- there are probably more lost in the sands of time.)

Well, why didn't his "God" get angry at the pedophiles and their protectors all these past decades?

Is his "God" lazy? Incompetent? Indifferent?

If the "Pope" has to call out for his "God" to react to all this, what does that say about his "God"? If his "God" really exists, he's a really awful "God."

I think rather it is yet more proof that this god, like all gods, is imaginary.

For that matter, here are a few of many other things a "Just God" might find objectionable:

Such as: the abuse and deaths of children in Catholic "orphanages"

Or the exploitation of enslaved Irish women in Magdalene laundries, regarded as scum for having had sex.

Or the Church's helping Nazis escape Europe after World War II. Or the failure to oppose the Holocaust.

What about the Inquisition, and the infliction of the most hideous tortures on their victims?

How about burning the scientist GIordano Bruno at the stake?

Either their "God" is a vicious, immoral sadist who approves all this stuff, or is completely callous and indifferent to the beings he alleged created "in his own image" (No, I don't capitalize pronouns of imaginary beings), or else "he" doesn't exist.

I think that last is the most charitable interpretation, as well as being true.

But the conclave called by the "Pope" February 21-24 to deal with the crisis of legitimacy of the Catholic Church (CC) wasn't just talk. There were proposals for action. (Well, okay, so far still just talk.) One proposal was the increase the Church-approved age for marriage for girls to 16, from 14. (It's currently 16 for boys.) Very enlightened!

A day before the conclave during which the "Pope"  threatened sexual miscreants under his command with "the wrath of [his] God," he deemed critics of the CC "friends of the devil." [1] 

The Catholic Church is a global authoritarian cult over 1,500 years old that has perfected techniques of mind control that enable it to mentally enslave over a billion people worldwide. It is also a criminal enterprise whose made members, the priests and bishops, have committed countless tens of thousands of sexual crimes, including pedophilia, in numerous countries, and the institution itself was an accomplice in these crimes by protecting the perpetrators, intimidating and silencing the victims, hiding and destroying evidence, and stonewalling for years until their walls were gradually broken down by outside pressure. The CC is clearly an illegal criminal enterprise under the U.S. RICO statutes, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act and others.

The chance that the CC will ever be prosecuted, however, is less than the chance of winning an American lottery (which is about one in 300,000,000.) RICO is reserved for going after unprotected drug dealing organizations, the Mafia, and leftwing movements.

The CC, which formerly ruled Europe until just a few centuries ago, has been the ally of reactionaries everywhere, especially reactionary governments such as the U.S. It creates little authoritarians, obedient to "authority," and punitive-minded, which is why so many police and secret police are Catholics.

1]  "friends of the devil" link. 2/20/19.

This pedophile business is such a headache.

The Irrefutable Proof That Calling Nicolas Maduro a "Dictator" is a Damned Lie: Juan Guaido Is a Free Man IN Venezuela!

Maduro is the elected president and head of state. Juan Guaido is the puppet of a hostile foreign power, who was instructed by the vice president of that power (Michael Pence of the U.S.A.) to declare himself president, and the next morning did so, self-administering a bogus oath of office to himself. Now he's running around pretending to be the president, usurping all the power he can, and that hostile foreign power has transferred control over Venezuelan government assets to Guaido.

Under what "dictatorship" would Guaido not now be undergoing severe torture in a secret dungeon?

Whatever Maduro is, he's not a dictator. And Venezuela is no dictatorship.

Unlike the U.S.' Great Friend, Saudi Arabia.

Guaido openly holds rallies. He calls on the armed forces to overthrow the government. The violent street thugs who are the tip of the spear of the opposition Guaido leads attack police, and are NOT shot dead. (Imagine if Occupy Movement participants or Black Lives Matter protesters had thrown rocks and molotov cocktails at police! There would have been a bloodbath, and the U.S. corporate media would have celebrated the massacres.) If anything, Maduro has for years been far too tolerant towards the reactionary violence, which has blockaded roads and burned people alive who were identified as government supporters.

We saw the exact same thing in Ukraine, where the neo-Nazi terrorists set police on fire (watch the youtube videos if you don't believe it!) and false flag snipers sent in by the U.S. murdered police as well as protesters. There as in Venezuela, the state failed to protect the people from terrorists, the nation from subversion by a foreign power, and itself from being overthrown because it failed to suppress terrorist violence. In both cases, the U.S. threatened the government if it cracked down on the U.S.-backed terrorists. (Obama in the case of the Ukraine, Trump and the imperialist thugs he's appointed in regard to Venezuela.)

And when I say "terrorists," I'm using the U.S. power establishment's definition of terrorism: politically motivated violence by non-state actors. They exclude state terrorism by definition. They have to, since the U.S. is the world's greatest sponsor of state terrorism, such as in Guatemala (250,000 murdered), Argentina (30,000 "disappeared"), Indonesia (one million "communists" exterminated in 1965), and numerous other places. (Sometimes the U.S. does the dirty work even more directly than merely "advising," such as the CIA's Phoenix Program in Vietnam, in which they murdered 50,000 Vietnamese or more.)

Let's take another look at Saudi Arabia, one of many repressive tyrannies the U.S. backs to the hilt. In Saudi Arabia, there are no elections for the rulers of the country, and anyone who criticizes or protests is arrested, tortured, and some are beheaded, even crucified.

No complaints from the U.S. Government or establishment media about THAT!

The "Crown Prince," a nasty piece of word named Mohammed bin Salman, imprisoned scores of rich Saudis and forced them to turn over billions of dollars. One or two died in the process.

But Maduro is "corrupt," don't you know! And he's "stealing the assets" of Venezuela. Like the oil money.

The oil money which John Bolton announced on January 24 will be turned over to U.S. oil corporations. He said this on Fox Business tv program. He absurdly added that this would benefit the American and Venezuelan people.

How so, John? Will the U.S. oil corps fund programs for the Venezuelan people? Will they provide cut-rate heating oil to poor people in Boston, as Hugo Chavez, Maduro's predecessor, did?

I don't think so, asshole.

U.S. propagandists aren't satisfied with branding Maduro a "dictator," which they apparently think justifies overthrowing him (never mind the scores of dictators the U.S. has supported, many of which could never have achieved power without U.S. help, and are reliant on the U.S. for staying in power), but these propagandists demand that everyone call Maduro "dictator." 

Just this morning, on the U.S. Government created and funded NPR national radio network, the host of the morning "news" show, the reactionary Scott Simon, started by griping that Senator Bernie Sanders "doesn't call himself a democrat, he refuses to call Maduro a dictator!" The fact that Sanders has been spewing anti-Venezuela propaganda mirroring that of the U.S. government and media apparently isn't good enough.

What nerve that Sanders has! Who does he think he is, to go against the political line of the U.S. Imperialist establishment! Does he think this is a free country or something? (OOPS!)

Smarmy unctuous reactionary dweeb Scott Simon, of NPR infamy

Bernie Sanders better get in line!

U.S. "friend and ally," the sinister Saudi "Crown Prince," Mohammed bin Salman. 

If you criticize him, he might cut you to pieces! (Think Jamal Khashoggi.) 

There's a dagger in that hand...

Pakistan Sponsors Another Terrorist Attack on Indian Territory

A powerful car bomb used to attack a bus in the Kashmir region of India murdered 46 Indian paramilitary police. The suicide terrorist was trained in Pakistan, the BBC reports. The terrorist group that bragged of the attack, Jaish-e-Mohammad, is based in Pakistan, where it is obviously protected by the military-controlled state, or else it couldn't exist and operate freely. (China has blocked UN sanctions on the terrorist group that India asked for. Obviously that's proof Pakistan is a state sponsor of this group, and China is covering Pakistan's back. Pakistan has invited China into the country to build port facilities and bases. [1])

Whenever one of these attacks occurs, Pakistan acts in a way that proves its guilt. Instead of vowing to track down the terrorist criminals, is lies through its teeth and plays dumb. (So far on this one it claims to be "gravely concerned" and rejects allegations that it was involved- even though the terrorists are based on its territory and the bomber was trained in Pakistan.)

Pakistan is a military-controlled state with a civilian government "beard" that pretends to rule the country. It hosts numerous Islamofascist terrorist groups- which it pretends aren't there. Just like they pretended to have no idea where Osama bin Laden was- the military dictator ("president") at the time, general Pervez Musharraf, and others even insisted they thought he was dead- when it turned out they had him stashed away in a military-dominated city with numerous military installations.

This latest terrorist assault on India occurred just days after friendly words from Pakistan's pretend ruler, the president, towards India. That's a pattern. The Pakistani military consistently sabotages any attempt to improve relations with India. Their power depends on using India as an external enemy and hate-object, to justify their dominant position in Pakistani society, as well as their budgets and outrageous domestic control. This attack also occurs on the eve of Indian elections, which means the Indian government will feel obliged to make a relatively strong reaction, thus stirring the pot some more and worsening relations, which the Paki military wants, and providing excuses for more Pak-sponsored terrorist attacks.

Over the years, India has shown incredible forebearance in the face of repeated Pakistani-sponsored terrorist attacks in its country. Most of these attacks are ignored by the majority of U.S. media. The U.S. in effect protects Pakistan by applying constant pressure on India not to respond to such outrages.

Note the contrast with the U.S.' own responses to such incidents against itself. When the U.S. allowed two planes to fly into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, and then detonated preplaced nanoexplosives to demolish the skyscrapers, and for good measure blew up number 7 World Trade Center shortly after 5 pm the same day, apparently to destroy records of Pentagon budget malfeasance and corruption, it used that as a pretext to invade not ONE, but TWO countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. And the Bush-Cheney regime's plan was to invade five MORE countries after THAT, as we know from General Wesley Clark, who has, on several occasions, described the plan. But since Iraq turned into a quagmire for the U.S., the rest of the plan couldn't be executed. The Bush-Cheney-neocons' eyes were bigger than their stomach, it turned out.

The region called "Kashmir" is divided roughly into thirds, one third in Pakistan, India, and China each.

Notice that Pakistan never sends terrorists into the part of Kashmir that's inside China. Gee, I wonder why. Here's why: Because Pakistan knows China would give them a bloody nose if they ever did that.

The point is, retaliation can be an effective deterrent. India needs to try it sometime.


The fact that the U.S. counsels- and pressures- India to take it lying down that a foreign power consistently sponsors terrorist attacks against it, something the U.S. would never tolerate against itself, is of course the height of hypocrisy. And never mind that the Deep State of the U.S. creates such attacks as pretexts, as in the FBI-arranged bombing of one of the Twin Towers in 1993, the bomb even built by the FBI's infiltrator, the Egyptian colonel Salem. (I've heard the audio that Salem made of his phone call to his FBI handler mentioning the fact that he built the bomb. The handler said nothing- apparently he wasn't surprised and already knew.) The U.S. has long privileged Pakistan over India. That's because India has been too independent for the U.S.' liking. Ever since India refused to join the Hate-The-Soviet-Union bloc that the U.S. was boss of (now it's the Hate-Russia bloc) India has consistently refused to take orders from the U.S., a grave sin in U.S. eyes. [Today India gave the U.S. another reason to hate it, advising buyers of Venezuelan oil to circumvent the U.S. financial system. See "Exclusive: India advises refiner to avoid U.S. system for Venezuela oil buying - source," Reuters, February 15, 2019.

1] BBC World Service, February 15, 2019. The BBC incorrectly claimed that Kashmir is 1/3 in Pakistan and 2/3rds in India. They seem to believe Pakistan is entitled to all of it. In fact, it wasn't long ago when the population was majority Hindu (driven out by Islamofascist terrorists). Kashmir in fact consists of the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir (which includes the region of Jammu, Kashmir Valley, Ladakh and Siachen), the Pakistani territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and Chinese territories of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.

Was the Pecker Gang "Extorting" Jeff Bezos or "Negotiating" With Him? BOTH!

Currently there is a tiff between The World's Richest Man, Amazon.com Supremo Jeffrey Bezos, and The World's Sleaziest Man, David Pecker, Boss of Bosses at a tawdry racket named American Media Inc. (Sooo, patriotic, that name!) AMI publishes smarmy, sensationalist rags sold at supermarket checkout stands, the most notorious of which is named the "National Enquirer." It specializes in ginned up sex scandals and celebrity gossip. Its target audience is bored housewives and others with low intellectual standards attracted by the tawdry. [1]

An AMI executive and an AMI lawyer sent letters to the lawyer of the investigator Bezos had assigned to find out how AMI got photos and private emails of him and his mistress. These two threatening to publish nude photos of Bezos (which they described in detail) UNLESS Bezos agreed to issue a public statement retracting his claim that AMI had a political motive in going after him, which they called "libel," and stuck to that position in future. More tellingly, AMI demanded that Bezos stop investigating how they obtained his emails and the photos. In other words, a classic case of both blackmail and extortion.

Rather than knuckling under to this criminal extortion/blackmail attempt, Bezos went public with it, exposing AMI's action.

The result in the establishment jabbersphere has been an avalanche of quizzical questions, Is It Or Isn't It Extortion? AMI, after a period of silence where they imitated a deer frozen in oncoming headlights, recovered their composure and said they were merely "negotiating" "in good faith," just a perfectly normal business practice! Much of the jabbersphere made it a He Said He Said story.

But that won't wash with this fact set.

Kidnappers negotiate ransom payments. Hostage-takers negotiate their demands. Criminals can negotiate in the commission of their crimes. Happens all the time. A bank robber can demand X amount of money, and be told it's not available, and settle for a lesser amount.

Blackmailers and extortions ALWAYS negotiate with their victims! They present their demands, and the victims respond. There is a back-and-forth about terms and conditions. Likewise with kidnappers.

The backstory here is that Bezos owns The Washington Post newspaper, which has been relentless in documenting Trump's endless firehose of lies, and is also upset that Trump is allowing the Saudi Arabian regime to get away with murdering one of their contributors, the Saudi Jamal Khashoggi. Pecker is a close friend and ally of Trump, who during the campaign used the rags he controls to relentlessly promote Trump every single week, and denigrate Trump's Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, AMI made illegal undeclared campaign contributions in the form of paying off at least one woman Trump has sexual relations with, by buying exclusive rights to her story and then not publishing it, effectively silencing her. AMI subsequently entered a plea agreement with Federal prosecutors. In return for no criminal charges being brought, AMI agreed to cooperate with their investigation, and to commit NO MORE CRIMES for a period of three years.

The fact that AMI tried to blackmail Bezos into ceasing to investigate how they obtained their material on him, led Bezos to believe that Trump had obtained or given it to them to use to embarrass him and pressure him to jerk the Washington Post's leash and ease up on criticizing Trump. Another suspicion was that Saudi Arabia was involved. Pecker put out, at company expense, a preposterous 100-page glossy magazine positively glorifying the murderous "crown prince" of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who has been bombing Yemen and starving its population with essential U.S. help, and who ordered the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi last year.

What a WONDERFUL tyrant!

The commentator Glenn Greenwald, who usually is trenchant and on-the-mark in his analyses, made a logically flawed argument about the case to say that it wasn't clear if it was extortion, it was in a grey area, because it happens all the time that people accuse each other of libel and then arrange to stop libeling each other. Except Bezos was NOT being libeled by AMI (AMI CLAIMED Bezos was libeling AMI by asserting they had a political motive in attacking him- which they obviously do), and Bezos never claimed they were libeling him. They published the true fact that he was having an affair, with whom, and of course embarrassing photos that are really of him are not libelous.

The "business model" of AMI is extortion and blackmail, coercing celebrities wishing to avoid career-damaging embarrassment to provide juicier "dirt" on others or to cooperate in other ways. Unsurprising that the sleazy Pecker is pals with the mega-grifter Trump. Trump attracts to himself like a dustmop collecting dirt dodgy and disreputable hustlers like Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen the Fixer, political mountebank and saboteur Roger Stone, and novice grifter Michael Flynn, who was in the pay of Turkey. Trump has frequently broken the law over the years, and he and his family have committed tax fraud for years and defrauded their tenants, as documented by the New York Times.  [2]

A number of Trump's appointed government officials have committed multiple acts of graft and corruption and malfeasance, such as his first EPA head Scott Pruitt, his first Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Ben "$30,000 Office Chair We Paid For" Carson, and others.

Previous regimes did a better job of hiding their moral corruption than this gang.

An example of the fine "journalism" produced by "American" Media, Inc. 

The barracuda bares its teeth: David Pecker, Sleaze Personified.

"You dirty little PECKER!"

1] There are other "titles" in AMI's staple of garbage publications. All peddle celebrity gossip and fluff, sexual titillation, and sensationalistic nonsense. These include a cheesier version of the Time Inc. magazine People, named Us (sic!). They used to publish an absurd supermarket tabloid, Weekly World News, which relentlessly promoted- in all seriousness, NOT tongue-in-cheek- fake stories of extraterrestrial aliens on earth, complete with cooked-up photos. The people who churned out this brain-poison for the lower uneducated classes were Harvard graduates. Cynical, soulless, amoral graduates, I presume. Calling such garbage, peddled year after year, and not as satire or irony, is properly viewed as psychological warfare against credulous members of the hoi polloi. Keep them dumb and distracted and confused. 

2] See from the New York Times, "Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father," October 2, 2018; "11 Takeaways From The Times’s Investigation Into Trump’s Wealth," October 2, 2018, and "4 Ways Fred Trump Made Donald Trump and His Siblings Rich." October 2, 2018, among other articles.

World's Richest Man Uses His Newspaper To Threaten Politicians- Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon

Jeffrey Preston Bezos, the World's Richest Man [1], likes to pretend that he's a hands-off owner of the Washington Post, a conceit that the bourgeois propaganda system (aka "the media") respectfully indulges him in. The Post is the elite daily paper of the of the empire's capital city, Washington, D.C. So it could be called The Daily Diary of U.S. Imperialism.

Unsurprisingly, turns out that's a lie.

Today he used his paper to send a warning/threat to politicians in New York City who are outraged at the $3.7 billion dollar bribe that the governor of New York State, Andrew "Son of Mario" Cuomo, and the NYC mayor, Bill "Big Liberal" deBlasio, handed Bezos to locate part of his operation in the city- something astute observers thought he was going to do out of necessity without bribes. (Since both Cuomo and deBlasio have presidential ambitions, and such ambitions could be aided by favorable treatment by Bezos' paper, that is one possible motive for the gigantic bribe in the form of tax exemptions and other emoluments.)

Now the Washington Post is running an article claiming that Amazon was considering reneging on its promise to set up shop in the largest city in the U.S., which is a leading global technology center in its own right, a key consideration for Amazon, which of course as an Internet company needs large numbers of digital drone workers. It cited the gripes by NYC politicians as the reason for this alleged reconsideration. [2]

Of course this greedy asshole's bluff should be called.

Bezos' rag, and Cuomo and deBlasio, speak of "25,000 jobs" that hang in the balance. How many of these jobs would actually be high paying, and how many slots would be filled by workers moving to NYC from elsewhere, is never discussed by the hypesters.

Ironically, while Bezos is extorting New York, he's complaining that American Media Inc. is extorting him. (Probably it is. I'll deal with that in another essay.)

Amazon's new digs, if they come to fruition, will strain existing infrastructure, which it won't contribute to due to the tax "relief" it's being gifted, will displace existing businesses and tenants, and drive up rents in the area.

Big favor.

That's what happens in a dog-eat-dog society of "winners" and "losers."

"I'm so RICH it's FUNNY!"

1]  Bezos has been "the world's richest man" since at least July 2017. Most of his wealth is tied to the price of the stock of Amazon Corporation.  His wealth hit a peak of $150 billion (1,500 millions) last year. As of the beginning of 2019, it is estimated to be a mere $125 billion. 

But don't cry for him. As of today, his mound of moolah is back up to $134 billion. 

"Bloomberg Billionaires Index," February 8, 2019.

"These are the 50 richest people in the world right now," Business Insider, January 4, 2019.

2]  "Facing opposition, Amazon reconsiders NY headquarters site, two officials say," Washington Post, February 8, 2019, listed under the misleading heading "Virginia Politics.

A Night of Guff from Presidente Trump

Trump the Grump put on his best face- but the xenophobia and racism still poured out liberally from his noisehole at the annual "State of the Union address" before Congress, a key political ritual of the U.S. political rulers.

He made a big deal, once again, about the horrible tidal wave of murderous drug dealing migrants pouring across the southern U.S. border, and vowed for the 7,000th time to "build'a wall!" Trump campaigns on appeals to anti-Hispanic racism and xenophobia, and he campaigns permanently. This was the longest part of his speech.

Trump also couldn't resist complaining for the 2,796th time (give or take) about being investigated. He claimed the Mueller investigation would damage the U.S. economy (apparently a stab at humor that the audience missed- not really) and threatened/pleaded that if the House Democrats launched investigations of him, that would stymie the passage of legislation. (A good thing, in my opinion, since the only laws both ruling political cartel parties agree on these days are horrible- they invariably increase domestic repression and the military budget, and back U.S. imperialist crimes, such as the recent open attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government, hailed by almost all Democratic party politicians in lock step with their Republican "rivals.")

Speaking of Venezuela, Trump took the opportunity to attack the government of Venezuela, while declaring the U.S. puppet Guaido the "legitimate" government, an act of naked subversion that both corporate capitalist parties fully support. And in the very next paragraph he used his denunciation of Venezuela to redbait the handful of genuinely leftist politicians in Congress: "Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence — and not government coercion, domination and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country." 

This kind of vicious demonization goes back as far as the late 19th century in the U.S. The capitalist ruling class has always been fanatically ideological as far as that goes. You can find the same sort of verbiage at any point in the last 130 years or so. And before that there was ruling class hysteria about the French Revolution and the Haitian revolution. The U.S. is reactionary at its very core.

The power establishment's media "analyses" of Trump's speech were completely oblivious to the extremely reactionary nature of the screed. To them, hard right politics are just normal.

In addition to the redbaiting, which the bourgeois media failed to denounce of course, Trump took the opportunity to break a campaign promise on abortion. During his campaign he said he wanted the Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade, and let each state decide its own abortion laws. Well no more. NOW he wants Congress to ban late term abortions. He attacked New York State specifically for a new law finally legalizing such abortions in the state, which Trump falsely claims in inflammatory rhetoric  that "the late-term abortion of children [sic]" has babies "ripped from the mother's womb moments from birth." This is the kind of demagogic lie that causes fanatics to murder abortion doctors.

But then, Trump has no problem with such violence.

Trump also called for "unity-" behind HIS policies, of course. Like every ruler, strongman, dictator, and "president," what Trump means by "unity," is "get in line and conform to my rules." Calling for "unity" doesn't mean "let's find a way to compromise together," it means "agree with ME!"

Of course the "opposition" party, the Democrats, agrees wth most of what Trump is doing and wants- like an ever-increasing military budget, shoveling endless billions into the maw of the military-industrial complex, and overthrowing "socialist" regimes, having a reactionary Supreme Court, lame regulation of business and light taxation of the rich. On those last two points, the differences between the parties are a matter of degree.

The Republican Congressmen leapt to their feet to bellow lusty cheers every two or three sentences of The Leader's Speech, some whistling in ecstatic enthusiasm. At one point the assembled party apparatchiks started chanting "USA! USA! USA!," a jingoistic standard.

No Trump speech or even off-the-cuff remarks would be complete without an absurd boast. Here's one from the speech: "If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea." Now, certainly the situation is better than it was under Obama, or Bush, or Clinton. But Hillary Clinton is too cautious to have gotten into a war with North Korea. But to show how phony these rituals are, this ridiculous remark was NOT greeted by laughter.

As is standard for these rituals, the entry of El Presidente is treated like the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, with wild, prolonged cheering and a sustained standing ovation. The Big Man's exit is marked by another display of bombastically phony enthusiasm by the assembled political hacks of the Leader's own party.

 A CBS "News" propagandist deemed the ending "deep poetry" and a generous offer to the Democrats. Just what was this profound windup? A bunch of mawkish platitudes. After bragging about America defeating "communism" and battling "evil empires," here's what he said:

Here tonight we have legislators from across this magnificent republic. You have come from the rocky shores of Maine and the volcanic peaks of Hawaii. From the snowy woods of Wisconsin and the red deserts of Arizona. From the green farms of Kentucky and the golden beaches of California.
Together, we represent the most extraordinary nation in all of history. What will we do with this moment? How will we be remembered?

I ask the men and women of this Congress: Look at the opportunities before us. Our most thrilling achievements are still ahead. Our most exciting journeys still await. Our biggest victories are still to come. We have not yet begun to dream.

We must choose whether we are defined by our differences — or whether we dare to transcend them. We must choose whether we squander our inheritance — or whether we proudly declare that we are Americans: We do the incredible. We defy the impossible. We conquer the unknown.

This is the time to re-ignite the American imagination. This is the time to search for the tallest summit, and set our sights on the brightest star. This is the time to rekindle the bonds of love and loyalty and memory that link us together as citizens, as neighbors, as patriots. This is our future — our fate — and our choice to make.

I am asking you to choose greatness. No matter the trials we face, no matter the challenges to come, we must go forward together.

We must keep America first in our hearts. We must keep freedom alive in our souls. And we must always keep faith in America’s destiny — that one nation, under God, must be the hope and the promise and the light and the glory among all the nations of the world.

Thank you. God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you very much.

Like I said, so much self-righteous, self-satisfied, self-aggrandizing boastful GUFF that's Made In The USA.

Billionaire Howard Schultz of Starbucks Creates National Unity With Announcement of Presidential Ambitions

With one brilliant stroke, the billionaire Howard Schultz has healed a fractured nation, creating common ground on which citizens of diverse and sharply conflicting views can unite.

Schultz announced his intention to run for president if the Democrats were so foolish as to nominate someone as that party's candidate that Schultz considers too far "left." Like maybe someone who wants, at long last, universal health care coverage under a single payer system. Schultz says "we can't afford it" But he does say "everyone has to right to access" health care, whatever that's supposed to mean, since "we can't afford it."  ("60 Minutes" interview, CBS.)

The American People answered as one: We don't want you for president.

A cascade of raspberries rained down on Schultz immediately upon his declaration of his willingness to "serve." No thank you, Everyone replied.

So let us take a moment to thank Howard Schultz, The Billionaire Unifier of a Divided Nation, for his "service."

"I can be your president. By the way, we can't afford health care for everyone." 

One Howard Schultz = 3,400 millionaires.