America's Worst Restaurant Chain Utterly Clueless About How to Reverse Declining Sales

It could happen to a more deserving group of corporate assholes:

February was an ice-cold month for McDonald's, with same-store sales dropping 4% in its troubled U.S. stores and 1.7% globally.

Sounds like these are troubled times indeed under the tarnished golden arches. So what does the company plan to do to reverse this decline?

"Consumer needs and preferences have changed and McDonald's current performance reflects the urgent need to evolve with today's consumers, reset strategic priorities and restore business momentum," the company said.

"Customer needs and preferences have changed?" Oh, you mean that minimum wage earners--like your own employees--are feeling the strain of working for such shitty pay that they can no longer even afford to eat out at McDonalds as much any more? If so, "resetting your strategic priorities" to "restore business momentum" would mean that your company along with every other minimum wage paying retailer out there needs to RAISE FUCKING WORKER SALARIES. But I gather that's the LAST fucking thing you assholes would consider doing.

Oh, but there seem to be some other silly ideas floating around:

At an investors' conference last week, McDonald's also said it planned to launch a mobile app this summer that may also be part of a loyalty program...

I just wonder if any of the empty corporate suits who get paid big bucks to come up with these stupid ideas ever actually visit their company's shitty restaurants--especially those located outside of tourist areas. Go in, sit down for a while and see how many of the downtrodden people for whom a trip to Mickey D's represents a big night out are carrying around fancy smartphones.

In addition, there was this little nugget:

"It's interesting that McDonald's had a 'Turnaround Summit' last week in an effort to address its U.S. sales decline. The focus for the fast-food chain will be on enhancing the restaurant experience, which it hopes will help curb the decline," says Joshua Raymond, chief market strategist at City Index UK.

Yeah, that's the problem right there. It isn't because McDonald's customer base can no longer afford to stuff the faces with its garbage "food" four nights a week, instead they just need to spruce up the large indoor toilets they call restaurants, as if most of their "discerning" customers even notice how drab and depressing the fucking places are--despite the hideously bright fluorescent lighting.

The article ended, of course, in the most laughable fashion possible:

In its own statement, McDonald's spelled out its goal in no uncertain terms: "To be a true destination of choice around the world and reassert McDonald's as a modern, progressive burger company."

Somebody please tell me exactly what it means to be a "modern, progressive burger company," because I have no fucking clue. It's too bad the corporate stenographer posing as a "business reporter" working for USA Today couldn't have at least ASKED some publicity flack at the company just what that meaningless pile of corporate speak bullshit really means. That might have at least been entertaining.

The good news in all this is that it sounds like McDonalds' corporate "leadership" remains utterly clueless as to how they can reverse their serious sales decline. It's probably to much to hope that the nosedive will continue all the way into bankruptcy for America's largest purveyor of shitty food and ugly ass retail buildings. But a blogger can dream, can't I?


Bonus: In this case, the real clowns are not Ronald but the empty corporate suits

No Kids, This is NOT "What Democracy Looks Like"

Okay, they're high schoolers, so I will cut them a little bit of slack:

Today, in response to the Friday night killing of unarmed black teen Tony Robinson by Wisconsin police, nearly 1,000 high school students marched the streets of Madison in protest, and stormed the state capitol demanding justice. "This is what democracy looks like," they shouted.

Sorry, kids, but I beg to differ.

Real democracy is boring. And it's a LOT of hard work. Just a few years ago in your own state of Wisconsin, the unions tried to effect supposedly democratic change against your asshole governor by storming the capitol in even far bigger numbers. They even went so far as to try and recall Scott Walker by referendum. And what was the ultimate result of all that fuss and fury?

When the Wisconsin State Assembly dropped the hammer on the state’s labor movement, the State Capitol was as quiet as a library. Maybe half a dozen ragged protesters stood outside the chamber hollering weakly, but the rest of the building and the grounds were serene. After two short post-vote press conferences, Madison sailed calmly on.

(snip)

Regardless of whether you’d characterize the right-to-work law as fanatical or not, it’s remarkable the extent to which Madison kept mum about its passage. Besides a few dozen Democratic legislators and a few hundred labor protesters the day before, the famously liberal city was placid as the conservative legislation rolled along. The liberals who have faced Walker have lost, and lost, and lost again, and progressive Wisconsinites’ stores of outrage seem, at least for the moment, to be exhausted.

Now, you could argue that Walker won in part because of the huge amount of money ($30 million) he was able to raise, mostly from out of state big business interests. But I would argue that he also won because the protests were co-opted by the hopelessly corrupt Democratic Party, which then put up a mealy-mouthed candidate running offering the same old lame ass centrist bullshit when, as the protests showed, what was needed was some good old fashioned angry leftist populism. That might have sustained the energy of the protests through the recall election and helped overcome the big money pumped in by the Koch Brothers (the percentage of the vote won by Walker in the recall election was nearly identical to that of his initial election victory despite the big money he raised). It also seems that once the protests themselves died down, most of those who participated put away their signs and went home to resume watching American Idol or whatever--sort of an echo to what happened with the Occupy protestors.

In and of themselves, protests are NOT representative of democracy but tend to happen when democracy is either being denied or has broken down. Take the case of 1960s America. The civil rights protests were followed up by years of hard work by such figures as Martin Luther King until civil rights laws were passed that finally put Jim Crow into his long overdue grave. The antiwar protests and the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention fiasco were followed by years of work by young leftist political activists that resulted in election reforms that led to the primary election system that (very temporarily) democratized the selection of candidates within the two party system. It was only when the voters, "exhausted" by years of protest, stupidly went back to sleep that the oligarchs saw their opportunity to begin slowly reversing the political changes wrought during the 1960s and early 1970s.

So while I applaud the protestors in this instance for at least getting angry about the latest questionable violent police action against a young black person, I caution them that they should not think a few days of sign waving at the state capitol is going to change anything. Get involved and stay involved and keep fighting the bastards with everything you've got. It's hard, it's often boring and not nearly as much fun as the rush that comes from taking to the streets. But if you're not willing to to do that hard work, which is the REAL work of democracy, then there is really no point in protesting in the first place.


Bonus: The whole world may be watching, but that doesn't mean it gives a damn

Dangerous Food Product to Have "Dangerous Ingredient" Removed; is Still a Dangerous Food Product

Here's a headline that made me chuckle:

Dunkin Donuts Removing Possibly Dangerous Material from Product

What, just one? I believe if you removed every ingredient in a Dunkin Donut that causes obesity, diabetes, gallstones, high blood pressure and heart disease you wouldn't have anything left but the hole (bah-dah BOOM!).

So what is it that's being removed?

Dunkin Donuts has announced it will be changing the recipe of its doughnuts.

The coffee chain said it will remove the titanium dioxide, a food coloring agent, from all of its powdered sugar products, including doughnuts.

Titanium dioxide is commonly used to brighten white substances, like powdered sugar or toothpaste.

Some groups said it could also lead to health problems like inflammation or even organ damage.

So, out with the product that sounds like it should go into making gulf clubs rather than something a person would actually eat because of vague warnings from the ever nebulous "some groups." And while its removal is likely a good thing, there's still the matter of the:

Enriched Unbleached Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Iron as Ferrous Sulfate, Thiamin Mononitrate, Enzyme, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Palm Oil, Water, Dextrose, Soybean Oil, Whey (a milk derivative), Skim Milk, Yeast, Contains less than 2% of the following: Salt, Leavening (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda), Defatted Soy Flour, Wheat Starch, Mono and Diglycerides, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Cellulose Gum, Soy Lecithin, Guar Gum, Xanthan Gum, Artificial Flavor, Sodium Caseinate (a milk derivative), Enzyme, Colored with (Turmeric and Annatto Extracts, Beta Carotene), Eggs; Glaze: Sugar, Water, Maltodextrin, Contains 2% or less of: Mono and Diglycerides, Agar, Cellulose Gum, Citric Acid, Potassium Sorbate (Preservative), Artificial Flavor.

Actually, I have no idea what most of that shit is, but it all adds up to 260 calories and 30% of your recommended daily allowance of saturated fat--for just one lousy glazed donut.

But hey, I'm sure this move will turn these little fat pills into virtual health food.


Bonus: "As if there has ever been a good reason to eat a donut"

DOJ Reports Show that the REAL Cause of Michael Brown's Death was Citizen Apathy

The two DOJ reports on the epic fuckery going on within the Ferguson, Missouri, criminal justice system ought to send a chill up the spine of every American, not just because of the blatant racism of the city police department but because of what the whole shitty situation says about the state of so-called American democracy. It's hard to know where begin with this hideous story. We could start with the fact that a part time municipal judge who apparently routinely jailed people for being late paying small municipal fines was paid over $56,000 a year for holding exactly TWELVE annual circuit court sessions--at a robust taxpayer funded hourly rate of $1,500. Oh, and that same asshole judge also owes the federal government $170,000 in back taxes. Motherfucker's got some gonads on him, I'll say that.

Even more appalling was the fact that from 2012-2014, 93% of all arrests made by the Ferguson PD were of black people. Additionally, two Ferguson cops and the county clerk have lost their jobs for sending racist e-mails, which is amazing given that the asshole police chief said that he would not fire Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown (Wilson resigned after the grand jury failed to indict him). E-mailing is worse than killing--that's the message here, I guess. And even before the DOJ reports were released, one of the Wilson grand jurors attempted to sue the county prosecutor for his mishandling the presenting of the case, and it was further reported that the prosecutor knowingly allowed one of the witnesses to lie to the grand jury.

So given all of the above, particularly the appallingly racist arrest record of the Ferguson PD, the key question is: how did all of this happen in a community in which as of the 2010 census more than two-thirds of the citizenry are black? Because, my friends, just as I stated in a much different context in my recent post about Hillary Clinton's e-mails, most American voters simply do not give a shit about the rampant abuse, fraud and corruption going on at all levels of their god damned government.

How else does a town that is overwhelmingly black end up with a nearly all white police department, and a racist one at that? How else does all the other corruption and petty bullshit that was going on in Ferguson happen for years on end with nothing being done about it? How else do the city officials get so fucking arrogant as to not only engage in these practices but then to order the jackbooted thuggery we saw being employed against the citizenry when it finally, many years too late, erupted into protest last year? I'll tell you how:

Voter turnout in the most recent mayoral election was approximately 12%. The Mayor ran unopposed.

The sad fact is that everyone in that town, black and white, protestor or not, should take a moment and reflect upon their own culpability at electing the shitheads who created the climate in which the Michael Brown shooting became inevitable. Darren Wilson pulled the trigger. He got away with the killing by claiming he feared for his safety. But by his own admission he was hassling Brown and his friend for the "crime" of walking in the street instead of on the sidewalk, and though we'll never know Brown's side of the story it seems likely HE reacted as the resident of city in which the police were viewed by most as an occupying army but the adult citizenry were to damn apathetic to do anything about it until after he was killed.

But don't get too cocky even though you may not live in Ferguson. It is exceedingly likely that your dismal 2016 presidential choice will be between the twin oligarchs Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. And THAT is the collective result of more that three decades of the vast majority of Americans being so ill informed that they--Republican, Democrat or even independent--have been making increasingly shitty choices, degrading the electoral system at the national level to the point where realistically there is no longer any more choice than there was for mayor of Ferguson last time around.

This does not mean that I advocate participating in sham election like the 2016 presidential contest other than to maybe cast a third party protest vote. But at the very least people ought to pay attention to what is going on at the local level, because the people who have control over your local government have the most direct control over your day-to-day life. Had literally just a few hundred voters in Ferguson lined up behind a reformist candidate for mayor last time around, Michael Brown might still be alive today.

So RIP Michael Brown. Sadly, it took your violent and completely avoidable death to wake up your friends and neighbors and get them to demand that things finally change in Ferguson, Missouri. What it would take to do the same on the national level I can't even begin to imagine.


Bonus: "I don't wanna be no mothafuckin 'accident'"

Auto Industry About to Take a Hit from Subprime Lending Cap

At the time I wrote yesterday's post about the dangerous bubble blowing in new car lending, I hadn't yet seen this article from Wolf Street documenting how the banks that finance auto loans have become so concerned about the perils of subprime lending that Wells Fargo, the nation's largest lender, is slashing its subprime auto lending by nearly two-thirds:

Wells Fargo, which originated $30 billion in auto loans last year, has for the first time put a cap on subprime auto loans, limiting the dollar volume of subprime loan originations to 10% of its total auto loan originations. The New York Times reported that the bank, “according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly,” has been “increasingly rejecting loans that dealers expected would be approved.”

And Wells Fargo’s subprime cap of 10% of loan volume is setting the tone for the rest of the industry, where the national average has been 27.4%.

Regulators are not only worried about the banks but also about the structured securities auto lending has spawned.

If subprime auto loans go bad in large numbers, as they’re likely to do, the structured securities based on them will take a hit, and investors will get to lick their wounds once again in their chase for yield. Banks and specialized subprime lenders will take a hit too. Megabanks like Wells Fargo might see their earnings get dented, but the amounts aren’t big enough to topple them. Smaller lenders that have specialized in subprime might not be so lucky. But the auto loan subprime bubble, when it implodes, won’t sink the US financial system as a whole; it’s just not big enough.

Yet if these lenders are cutting back on subprime lending in a drastic manner, all heck will break lose in the auto industry.

What what motivated me to write yesterday's post was the glaringly disturbing fact from the seemingly innocuous USA Today article I linked which said that the average amount financed for new car loans had risen by almost $1,000 in just one year. Immediately and without doing any other research, I recognized that such an increase indicated that a dangerous bubble had formed in both new car lending and the new car sales. To see my hypothesis confirmed so quickly by the lending industry itself was really quite remarkable.

I've said this before: it really doesn't take any fancy degrees or insider knowledge to decipher what is really going on in our economy and our society. All it takes is applying a little common sense to the information that is readily available out there. But sadly, common sense is out of fashion these days.


Bonus: This one is way too easy

Average New Car Buyer Pisses Away Over $7,000

I don't watch a lot of television, but when I do it usually isn't very long before I'm bombarded by the inevitable slew of new car commercials. Almost always, these commercials make sure to mention that 0.0% financing is available to "well qualified buyers." That's why it was a bit of a surprise to read the following factoid from an article in USA Today:

Americans' average new-car loan payment hit a record $482 the fourth quarter, and car buyers were paying an average 4.56% for loans, according to researcher Experian Automotive.

I wasn't math major but even I can deduce that with the availability of zero percent financing for most makes and models these days, if the AVERAGE new car buyer is paying that much in interest it means many people are paying a far higher rate than that. These are, of course, subprime buyers with bad credit. Without them, I would gather, the automobile industry would be in deep trouble.

The average interest rate, on the other hand, doesn't seem so bad considering the cost of auto loans historically. I remember being charged 12% on my first car loan back in 1990--I was a recent college graduate who hadn't yet established much of a credit history--and that was not an atypical rate back then. It would also be the LAST car loan I ever took out as I vowed not to ever let a bank fleece me like that again.

Yep 4.56% doesn't seem so bad in comparison, until you consider how much the price of new cars has soared in recent years. Here's USA Today again:

What's more, the Experian report shows that the amount borrowed to buy a new car in the fourth quarter hit a record $28,381, up more than $950 from a year ago and a $582 increase from the previous quarter.

Edmunds.com auto researchers show the average transaction price for a new vehicle in the fourth quarter was $33,352.

That means buyers were making down payments averaging about 15%.

Furthermore:

Experian says the average length of a new-car loan in the fourth quarter rose to an average 66 months.

Using all this data, I pulled out my trusty calculator and determined that if the average amount borrowed to purchase a new car is $28,381, the average interest rate paid is 4.56% and the average loan length is 5.5 years, then the average amount of interest paid on new car loans is a staggering $7,117, or more than 25% of the cost of the vehicle.

That's over seven grand that the average new car purchaser is pissing away by giving it to a bank, even in these times of supposedly wondrous 0.0% financing. So why are people doing it? USA Today again:

"In most parts of the country, vehicles are viewed as a necessity to everyday life, which is why we continue to see consumers willing to take out larger loans as the average price of vehicles continues to rise," said Melinda Zabritski, Experian's senior director of automotive finance.

Given how shitty or completely unavailable public transportation is outside of our major cities, it is true that most Americans cannot get by without access to a car. Where Experian's brain dead mouthpiece gets it wrong is assuming that people have to purchase new cars as opposed to used, or that they have to purchase the more expensive models. In fact, additional data from the very same article shows that used car purchasers are far more likely to buy without financing:

The new-car loan data hits home with most car buyers, because 84% of new vehicle purchases were made with financing. Used, 55.2%.

Which says to me that the average used car purchaser is far smarter with their money than the average new car purchaser.

But the most disturbing factoid in the whole article is the fact that the average amount of new car loans has increased by nearly $1,000 in just the past year. Given that incomes for people outside of the top 10% have been flat for many years, that annual rate of growth cannot be sustainable for very long. Which would indicate that American new car sales will begin to decline at some point in the near future...possibly dramatically.

No wonder most Americans hate math so much.


Bonus: "It's all mixed up," indeed

The Problem is Not a "Lack of Transparency" but a Lack of Americans Who Give a Shit

Yes folks, it seems that yet another jaw-droppingly stupid political "scandal" is upon us. This one involves none other than Queen Hillary, who during her tenure a Secretary of State apparently decided to forego using the State Department's e-mail system and instead conducted all of her official business on her own personal e-mail account.

The stupidity here begins with Clinton herself for yet again arrogantly and unnecessarily blundering her way into negative headlines. This is a woman who has been lusting after the presidency for at least most of this current century and who has been the presumed 2016 Democratic front-runner almost from the moment she took the oath to become Madame Secretary back in 2009. In other words, despite knowing the intense scrutiny her every move would be facing as the fateful election year approaches she deliberately chose to violate the Federal Records Act and give every appearance that she has something to hide. Or, as one particularly breathless (but partisanly neutral) editorial put it:

It will be framed as an issue specific to Clinton, evidence of her inability to lead the country in an open and transparent way (or, in this case, a legal way). It will also be used as evidence of her carelessness in handling government business in an non-secure manner.

More realistically, this latest Clinton scandal is further evidence of the secret ways in which the U.S. federal government operates. In recent years, U.S. citizens have grown accustomed to learning about the terrible government practices that have been blatantly hidden from them: the N.S.A. leaks, the C.I.A. torture report, the list goes on. The fact that the majority of Clinton’s Secretary of State emails are unavailable is hardly surprising. As Vox reports, that lack of transparency is nothing new. Several officials of the Bush administration were investigated towards the end of that presidency for covering up or deleting archives of emails that could have possibly incriminated the White House.

Yes, indeed, the list does go on...and on...and on. And that brings me to the second and more pertinent reason why the focus on this scandal is so stupid: because the real problem is not Hillary Clinton's lack of transparency. The real problem in that the vast majority of the American public most decidedly does not give a shit about it.

Oh sure, the Republicans and even a few progressive Democrats will fuss and fume and try to ride this particular (ahem) donkey for as much mileage as they can possibly get out of it. But what will happen after that? Precisely fuck-all, that's what. Just as has happened with all of those other "terrible government practices" Americans have learned about in recent years, this kerfuffle will also be largely forgotten by the time Justin Bieber farts out his next shitty music video.

That is the perverse beauty of the sham two-party democracy that is currently operating in America. "You're either with us or against us," is not just a bullshit phrase that our so-called "leaders" use to justify the neverending war on terror--it's also the way they make the whole system immune from infiltration by political outsiders.

If you despise Hillary Clinton it must be because you're a fundamentalist Christian, anti-science, gay bashing, teabagger troglodyte. The possibility that you might be an antiwar, anti-imperial, anti-Wall Street, environmentally minded individual who knows her ACTUAL RECORD ON THE ISSUES is not allowed to compute within the system. The same is true for libertarian conservatives whose positions on foreign policy and reigning in the Federal Reserve match those of Ron Paul. They'll be told they better line up behind whichever warmongering Wall Street creature wins the Republican nomination or risk seeing the White House occupied by a known 60s radical hippie feminazi commie.

It's also pretty amusing that it was the New York Times that broke this particular story given the paper's own dismal record of withholding information from the public about government surveillance and employing a reporter who fabricated stories used to justify the Iraq War. That's not to say that the Hillary e-mail fiasco is not an important story nor one that the ought not be reported. It's just that if her shady investment deals back in Arkansas; her Hillarycare debacle and the Lincoln bedroom fiasco as First Lady; her senate votes for the Patriot Act, Iraq War and Wall Street bailouts; and her advocacy for the Afghanistan surge, Libya bombing, drone missile campaign and Georgia's disastrous war against Russia as Secretary of State aren't enough to convince someone not to vote for her in 2016 I really doubt that her lack of e-mail transparency is going to be the issue that suddenly changes their minds.


Bonus: "With real arrogance burning inside...I drank in the whole wide world"

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 2016 (Part 2 – The Democrats)

Perhaps no prominent organization more perfectly reflects the decline and fall of American representative democracy than the Democratic Party. For it was the Democrats after their 1968 convention disaster in Chicago who begrudgingly decided to truly change their way of picking presidential candidates to reflect the leftist populism that was then ascendant within the party, and appeared as though it would be the dominant strain of American politics for the foreseeable future. The Democrats defused the power of their party bosses to choose their nominees much more thoroughly than the Republicans ever did—embracing primary elections in as many states as possible to choose the delegates who would pick their standard bearer. The Republicans eventually followed suit, but did so in a way that still left as much power as possible within the hands of the establishment.

Unfortunately for the Democrats the first product of this process, Senator George McGovern, the most liberal major party nominee ever, would in 1972 suffer the then-worst general election defeat in American history. Nevertheless, the pattern was set as insurgent candidate Jimmy Carter went from Jimmy Who? to the nominee in just a few short months in early 1976. Once again, however, an outsider candidate proved a poor choice politically even if in his single presidential term Carter attempted to guide America out of the moral swamp of the excruciating Vietnam and Watergate years. Regrettably, Carter's defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 was nearly as bad a debacle as the McGovern disaster and it soured the Democrats on true populist candidates.

As a result yet another insurgent candidate, former McGovern campaign manager Gary Hart, failed to topple establishment choice Walter Mondale for the nomination in 1984. Mondale’s whipping by Reagan was even worse than Carter’s and left the party in disarray on the national level, as the rugby scrum of pygmy candidates in 1988 and the disastrous nomination of Michael Dukakis that year showed. By 1992 hard lessons had finally been learned, as moderate “new” Democrat Bill Clinton adopted the insurgent’s playbook as his own to win the nomination. Unfortunately, Clinton's subsequent triumph in the general election (defeating a true insurgent candidate, Ross Perot, along the way), turned out to be a pyrrhic victory for Democratic activists.

By 2000 the Democratic establishment was firmly back at the helm, as Al Gore breezed to the nomination easier than any non-incumbent Democrat had going all the way back to Adalai Steveson in the 1950s. Had Clinton kept his dick out of Monica Lewinsky’s mouth--or had Gore just managed to run a more energetic campaign--he would have won easily, yet somehow he and 2004’s plodding establishment candidate, John Kerry, both managed to kick away close races to the worst president in American history.

By 2008 the Democrats smelled blood in the water and were hungering for a general election win, only to get sidetracked in a huge battle over identity politics as the first woman to have a realistic chance to win the presidency battled the first non-white man with the same aspirations even as the teetering Bush economy finally imploded in the background. Hillary Clinton was initially the establishment candidate, but Obama used the same insurgency tactics and bogus message of hope her husband had in 1992 to prove his electoral viability, and he then won over enough of the major players to secure the nomination.

More importantly but much less noticed was Obama’s decision to forgo federal campaign financing, which had been accepted by every major presidential candidate since Watergate but which severely limited the amount of donations a candidate could receive from any one source. With the financial backing of numerous Wall Street and big business players, Obama raised over $600 million during the 2008 cycle, a staggering sum at the time. In their elation at Obama’s victory, the Democratic party activists largely ignored the dangerous precedent his campaign had set just three years before the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision removed the last remaining barrier to America becoming a true elitist oligarchy.

Flash forward to the year before the 2016 race and it is uncertain whether any other “name” candidate will even try to challenge Hillary Clinton, who appears to have already locked up the support of the party establishment and the huge amounts of Wall Street and big business money that go with it. On an even monetary playing field, Elizabeth Warren would likely have a decent chance to be 2016’s version of Obama and knock Hillary off. But Warren has earned the permanent enmity of Wall Street due to her relatively modest attempts to reform the financial system. Even if Warren attracts large numbers of small individual donations like Obama did in 2008, she could never hope to compete with Hillary’s war chest and ability to dominate the airwaves in early primary states.

Bernie Sanders is the closest thing to a genuine liberal who might enter the fray, but he has less chance at the nomination than Warren and could only potentially affect the election’s outcome by playing a Ralph Nader-like third party spoiler role. Some liberal bloggers are so desperate they are actually advocating for Joe Biden to make what would be his third run for the nomination, conveniently ignoring the fact that Biden has spent the last six plus years carrying water for the Obama sellout presidency and before that spent decades as the credit card companies’ best friend in the U.S. Senate. Beyond those names, dreamers like Martin O’Malley and Jim Webb would seem to be angling to be an eventual vice presidential selection rather than making truly serious bids for the top spot.

So unless something dramatic happens between now and when the actual primary voting gets underway a year from now, the Democratic nomination is Hillary’s to lose. It is even possible that we might see something unprecedented in the years since primaries came to be the preferred method of selecting convention delegates in the early 1970s--a non-incumbent candidate walking to the nomination of a major party virtually unopposed. If so, it would be the most dramatic illustration yet of the corrosive effects of big money on American politics in the post-Citizens United era.

In the past couple of months I’ve heard numerous people express their dismay at the possibility of another Bush-Clinton presidential campaign, and such an eventuality should make it clear to all except the most completely thickheaded that American democracy is dead and and will be buried in 2016 under a mountain of presidential campaign cash that is already predicted to soar as high as $6 billion or more. That is an incredible figure when you consider that what it's really buying is merely an elaborate illusion that, especially at the presidential level, there remains even a dime's worth of difference between the two major parties.


Bonus: "I feel...like I've been here before"

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 2016 (Part 1 – The Republicans)

Nevermind that we still have over 22 months yet to endure the presidency of the man once known as Hopey-Changey, the political heavy hitters (and those who’ve deluded themselves into thinking they are heavy hitters) are already lining up to replace him. The one guarantee is that no matter who might come out on top in the November 2016 voting, nothing will fundamentally change in the lives of those non-billionaires delusional enough to participate in the balloting in the belief that it will. Nevertheless, being a former political science major I just can’t help myself when it comes to elections—I simply have to analyze them despite knowing that they have become a total sham giving Americans the illusion that they still have a real choice.

On the Republican side, it is worthwhile to keep in mind that despite couple of rouge billionaires’ attempts back in 2012 to rock the nomination process by backing and giving brief life to the likes of Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, the ultimate result was that the party establishment got the candidate it wanted—just like it always does. All you have to do to see what a lock the party establishment has is to look back on the nominees of the past 35 years.

In 1980 the establishment lined up behind Ronald Reagan, not only because he was viewed as malleable and thereby a safe choice, but because it was “his turn” after he had narrowly missed knocking off accidental incumbent Gerald Ford for the 1976 nomination. In 1988, George Bush senior was the establishment’s guy after he spent eight years in the vice president’s office carrying water for Reagan and doing penance for his “voodoo economics” comment during the 1980 campaign.

By 1996, it was Bob Dole’s turn after he had been Bush’s most prominent opponent in the 1988 primaries. In 2000, the establishment decided to line up behind junior Bush, seeing in him not only another malleable Reagan type figure, but a popular governor who was eager to avenge his father’s 1992 defeat. By 2008 John McCain, Bush’s most prominent opponent in the 2000 primaries, managed by his nearly eight years of post-9/11 belligerency to convince the establishment that he could in fact be trusted. Then once again in 2012 the establishment lined up behind McCain’s most prominent opponent in the 2008 primaries, and it was an added bonus that Mitt Romney was also a Wall Street guy himself.

So where does all of that leave the Republicans as we head into 2016? Well, let’s start with Chris Christie, who was probably the establishment’s preferred candidate until he goofed by being publicly exposed as a man unable to control himself from using his power against those with whom he has petty grievances. Not that Republicans have any qualms about abusing executive power, just that potential nominees need to adhere to the "Nixon rule" and do so by being nimble enough not to get "caught."

Meanwhile, Rand Paul (the "W" to Ron Paul's "HW") has been desperately trying to balance being the guy who can lock down the surely libertarian vote while winking and nodding his willingness to go along with the party's belligerent foreign policies. Unfortunately for the namesake of the Atlas Shrugged scribe, there is far too much distrust of him and his truly libertarian father and their previous lack of demonstrated enthusiasm for America’s quite profitable imperial misadventures.

Scott Walker, on the other hand, is the Koch Brothers’ preferred stooge who'll have some potential viability if the Democrat's favorite billionaire boogeymen put a huge amount of money into his campaign. Too bad though for Governor Union Buster that the Kochs do NOT necessarily represent the party establishment, and hence Walker could well be this year’s version of Rick Santorum--a tiresome monkey wrench who keeps the horserace going past early March.

Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson might be this campaign’s great Republican minority hopes, but each seem to be viewed as far too lightweight to be considered anything other Veep possibilities. Mike Huckabee is again hovering around with more than nominal support in the polls--no doubt from Christian conservatives--but it is hard to see the big money boys lining up behind the false prophet from Arkansas. Then you have Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz, who seems to sense that without the big money behind him he has no realistic chance. Or it could be that he just prefers being a Senator--where he can grandstand all he wants without ever being held accountable for anything.

That leaves one man standing: Jeb Bush. Funny that were it not for his now infamous last name, the same last name that allowed his imbecilic older brother to walk to the 2000 nomination, Jeb would be considered just as much of a shoo in for the nomination today. The Jebster and the establishment are in fact so desperate to disassociate him with past Bush family disasters that he even recently came out and tried to distance himself from his old man and his brother by laughably claiming that he would “be his own man.” Are the American voters really dumb enough to believe that load of horseshit? Why yes, of course they are.

So the $64,000 question is: can the Republican Party establishment overcome all of the resistance within the party that yet another Bush family candidacy (which would be the FIFTH in the past 28 years) will no doubt encounter from Tea Partiers and libertarians? Well, they were able to use their vast monetary resources—which are even more unlimited these days thanks to the Citizens United decision—to put the former governor of America’s most liberal state (and who as governor enacted his own version of Obamacare) over the top in 2012. However much the Tea Party may howl and the libertarians may sulk, the view of the establishment remains that putting forward one of those factions' darlings as the nominee will result in an electoral disaster--and they also might prove not completely reliable in the unlikely event that one of them was actually able to knock off Queen Hillary next year.

Hence, as of right now it would appear that Jeb Bush will likely be the Republican nominee in 2016. He already has a small lead in the nationwide polls, though it should be noted that Walker is currently ahead in Iowa. But as with the Democrats, it will be the ability tap into the really big money and saturate the airwaves in early primary states with teevee ads that will ultimately decide this nomination. More on the alleged people's party nomination tomorrow.


Bonus: Bill (prematurely) celebrates the political death of George Bush

Because, Your Honor, the Defendant is a Fucking Moron

When contemplating the many factors that are leading America towards its own spectacular downfall, one must maintain one's sense of humor lest depression grip ahold of one like a giant vice and squeeze all remnants of sanity from one's mind. Keeping that basic rule in mind, I'm always on the lookout in the news for a good laugh that might leave others who remain blissfully unaware of where our country is heading scratching their heads. Today's such story features a student from my graduate school alma mater, the University of Illinois at Chicago, who decided it might be fun to reenact scenes from the inexplicably popular 50 Shades of Grey.

I've not seen the movie, nor likely will I ever, but thanks to its ubiquitous presence in the media right now even I know enough about its plot to realize that if the idea of recreating its graphic sex scenes turns you on it would probably be a good idea to clue in your intended partner and obtain her consent. Alas:

Hossain used a knit cap to cover the woman's eyes, Karr said, and removed the woman's bra and underwear. He then began striking the woman with a belt. After hitting her several times, the woman told Hossain he was hurting her, told him to stop "and began shaking her head and crying," said Karr.

Hossain continued striking the woman — including with his fists, according to an arrest report — and she managed to get one arm, and then another, free. But he then held her arms behind her back and sexually assaulted her as she continued to plead for him to stop, according to Karr.

(snip)

During police questioning, Hossain reportedly admitted the assault and "doing something wrong" but said he and the woman had been reenacting scenes from 50 Shades of Grey.

Okay, so far it is yet another grim story of a male college student who thinks his female classmates are there solely for his own sexual gratification. Nothing funny about that, until I came to this quote that demonstrated the cluelessness of the judge assigned to the case:

After public defender Sandra Bennewitz noted Hossain's record of student leadership, Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr. responded: "Sandra, how can someone involved in all that let a movie persuade him to do something like this?"

Because your honor, he's obviously a fucking moron. It doesn't matter that he's a college student and not just pumping gas or flipping burgers for a living, nor does it matter how good his grades are or what "leadership" activities he's supposedly engaged in. Nope, being a modern day American means being well trained by Hollywood and the media in monkey see-monkey do. Hossain is in fact not at all different than the moron from Indiana who recently got so riled up after watching Fox News (while consuming 45! beers) that he went out and set a nearby mosque on fire.

I guess what amazes me is that a judge in this day and age could spend years on the bench watching as a parade of American losers passes before him and remain credulous that being a student in our completely broken higher education system might render one immune from being stupid enough to imitate something he saw in a popular a movie. It's the ability to engage in critical thinking, not IQ level or formal educational achievement, that prevents such stupidity, and America's modern education system is specifically designed to snuff out or at least prevent the development of a student's ability to think critically. Students are repeatedly told to get good grades and standardized test scores and not rock the boat, or they won't be able to get a good job when the graduate--trouble being that those who are capable of critical thinking tend to be boat rockers by their very nature.

So yes, your honor, the defendant's excuse is that he's a typical American moron who happens to have lower than normal impulse control. Really, he's not so unusual at all.


Bonus: Bill's likely review of 50 Shades of Gray likely would have been the same as it was years ago for Basic Instinct: "Piece of shit"

Putin’s a Thug, but He’s No Hypocrite

I just recently finished reading Masha Gessen’s book, The Man Without a Face, a journalistic recounting of the rise to power of Vladimir Putin, and how he managed to rather quickly snuff out Russia’s hopelessly corrupt democratic interlude under Boris Yeltsin and return the country to the kind of charismatic authoritarian regime a majority of Russians have always been more comfortable with. In light of the quickly rising tensions between Russia and the U.S. in recent years, it’s almost amazing to recall how positively western leaders initially viewed his anointment. None more so than the imbecilic George W. Bush and his now infamous claim to have looked Putin in the eye and seen a man he could trust.

It is fashionable in leftist and antiwar circles these days to defend Putin and Russia’s stance regarding Ukraine, and certainly U.S. meddling in that beleaguered country has been very bad for the Ukrainian people as well as a direct provocation towards Russia itself. But in our condemnations of yet another American imperial misadventure, lets us not forget one important fact: Putin is a vicious thug. And I’m not insulting the man by calling him that either given that, as Gessen recounts, he highlighted examples of his own personal thuggery during his first presidential campaign. Why would he do that? Because it was a subtle signal to the Russian voters that he would end the chaos of the Yeltsin years and give them what so many of them crave above all else: stability and a restoration of the idea of Russia as a great nation.

With the exception of about six months in 1917 and eight years under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, Russia has never been a democracy. And by taking advantage of Russia’s geopolitical weakness after the fall of Soviet Union by expanding NATO and encouraging Yeltsin to pursue harsh neoliberal economic policies, the U.S. did about everything in its power to ensure that Russia’s second democratic experiment would fail miserably. Russia in the 1990s needed a modern version of the Marshall Plan to get back on its feet, money that could have come from the so-called “peace dividend” if our so-called “leaders” had any imagination whatsoever. Instead, the country got knee to the groin intended to keep it down forever. The surprise is not that Russia turned to someone like Putin—the surprise is that the lunatics in charge of the American insane asylum are at all surprised that it happened.

Yes, Putin is a thug—but he makes no bones about it. Unlike our last two presidents, he doesn’t pretend that he’s fighting for freedom and democracy. As Gessen recounts, under Putin’s direction Russia has eliminated elections for ALL federal officials, except the presidency—and he has used the mechanics of power (including vote stealing) to make it all but impossible for any challenger to have a chance of defeating him or whomever he anoints to the job in his stead. Yet George W. Bush, having lost the 2000 election by half a million popular votes, sent an army of operatives to Florida to screw up recount activities there just long enough to allow the Supreme Court to install him as president by judicial fiat on a purely partisan vote. That same Supreme Court would a decade later issue the infamous Citizens United decision, which has not only made it all but impossible for any third party challenger to achieve victory, but has also made it all but impossible for a true outsider to win the nomination of either of the two major parties.

Under Putin, Russia has engaged in collective punishment by invading and indiscriminately bombing Chechnya in response to terrorist attacks—at least some of which were likely false flag attacks carried out by Putin’s old buddies at the FSB. At the very least, as Gessen recounts, Putin’s military response to terrorist hostage taking has been designed to maximize civilian casualties, whose deaths he has then used to justify curtailing the civil liberties of Russian citizens. Similarly, Bush and congress used the 9/11 attacks to inflict massive collective punishment upon Iraq and Afghanistan while greatly curtailing the civil liberties of American citizens. Obama has not only continued the mindlessly destructive war on terror, he has expanded it by dropping drones on Yemen and Pakistan, by bombing Libya until it became a failed state and lately by bombing Iraq and Syria in response to the rise of a mass terrorist movement his own policies did much to help create.

Under Putin, Russian opposition journalists have been murdered and Alexander Litvinenko, a whistleblower who fled the country, was assassinated—likely by the FSB. In America, journalists who have been too vocal in opposition to the many war crimes of Bush and Obama have been fired or otherwise lost access to the mass media—being instead relegated to relatively obscure blogs and websites. And while the most prominent American whistleblowers—Manning, Snowden and Kiriakau—are still alive, two are rotting in prison as negative examples to others and the other certainly would be had he not fled to Russia.

Under Putin, the Russian mass media has been brought under the thumb of the president and no longer reports anything but officially sanctioned information. In America a handful of large corporations control virtually all mass media organs, and while the media may at times still report corruption and abuses, it does not ever question the basic idea of American exceptionalism. The American mass media also constantly demonizes Putin and Russia, while the latter use their English language channel, Russia Today, to throw it right back in America’s face.

Under Putin, Russia has become a classic cleptocracy, with the president and his cronies stealing everything that isn’t tied down. The former FSB functionary himself is said to have a current net worth of around $70 billion. American presidents by contrast are well provided for when they leave office, making huge amounts of money from sweetheart book deals, consultancies and speaking tours. Meanwhile, during the presidencies of Bush and Obama wealth inequality has reached record heights as the elite cronies who put them in office have been allowed to engage in systemic fraud and corruption, and then were bailed out when their own corrupt schemes blew up in their faces.

Overall, when comparing the current American versus Russian systems a few minor differences are apparent—but they are mostly a matter of style. American presidents are far less likely than Putin to kill their own citizens but far more likely to indiscriminately kill citizens of other countries, for example. Bush and Obama have a far higher overall body count on their bloody hands, but Putin is by far the more personally corrupt.

Yes, Putin is a definitely a thug and thief. But unlike Bush and Obama, at least he’s not a hypocrite.


Bonus: "Mother Russia rain down down down"

Peak Oil vs The Military-Industrial Complex

I just wanted to point out to my readers an excellent essay just published by Tom Engelhardt on his TomDispatch blog that seamlessly weaves together post-9/11 trends, including militarization of local police departments, NSA surveillance, the war on terror, wealth inequality and the corrosive effects of big money on American politics. Englehardt, who has been a strong antiwar voice since the buildup to the Iraq War, concludes thusly:

In sum, we, the people, are ever less in control of anything. The police are increasingly not “ours,” nor are the NSA and its colleague outfits “our” intelligence agencies, nor are the wars we are fighting “our” wars, nor the elections in which we vote “our” elections. This is a country walking back nothing as it heads into a heavily militarized future. In the process, an everyday American world is being brought into existence that, by past standards, will seem extreme indeed. In other words, in the years to come an ever-less recognizable American way of life will quite expectably be setting in the west. Don’t be shocked.

Shocked? Hardly. In fact, to a point I agree with Engelhardt whole-heartedly--it is utterly hopeless to expect that America will ever willingly change course from its current trajectory. Ah, but that's the one little thing he's missing: willingly. Because sooner or later the ever-militarizing American future is going to run headlong into the increasingly imminent danger presented by Peak Oil (and resource depletion in general) and the somewhat less imminent but still rapidly encroaching danger of environment degradation and climate change. In short, it will be the physical forces of nature rather than politics which will eventually be America's nemesis.

So how long it that going to take? Well, dear reader, if I knew the answer to that question I would immediately abandon this blog, take the money I've saved up over my lifetime and bet the markets accordingly.

In hindsight, we can now say the peaking of conventional crude oil in the middle of the last decade almost caused a worldwide economic heart attack in the fall of 2008 (via electronic bank runs) that was only halted by the bailouts and trillions of phantom dollars being conjured up and injected by the central banks into the world financial system. At the same time, the initial Peak Oil-related explosion in world oil prices caused an all out effort to exploit unconventional oil and gas through the tar sands, fracking and deepwater drilling that had not previously been economically viable. I think it is safe to say that without all that unconventional production, we'd already be well into the backside of Hubbert's Curve and the catastrophic economic collapse many Peak Oilers anticipated back in 2008 would already be well underway.

So where does that leave us? Well, instead of oil being increasingly scarce and gasoline shooting to $10 or more a gallon domestically (as so often breathlessly predicted), we instead have a bizarre situation in which the price of the world's most important resource is now dramatically whipsawing up and down while the central bankers continue to inject their largess into the financial system. Given the insane levels of debt, sovereign and otherwise, all over the world all that is preventing if not collapse at least extreme economic chaos is continued faith in the system. And that faith in the system remains unshakable for the vast majority of the population. Not surprising, really. What other choice do they have?

What we're left with is a horrible situation in which those of us who oppose America's ever more unjust big business, war and empire policies (and, relatedly, abhor the massive destruction being wrought upon the natural environment) are left with the grim realization that the only way those policies will ever be reversed is via a worldwide economic collapse that will ultimately result in the deaths of hundreds of millions if not billions of people. And it WILL be a worldwide collapse--the global economy is far too interconnected to enable any country to escape it once it really gets rolling. The most chilling sights I saw on my cruise were the numerous giant container ship docks we anchored near and the continuous stream of such ships transiting the canal, piled high as they were with all manner of boxed up goods. Seeing that massive volume up close served as a reminder that it is virtually impossible for anyone these days to truly "unplug" from it all.

That said, anyone with any sense should not be actively rooting for economic collapse (though I'll admit I can certainly understand why one might be tempted to do so). But as Tom Engelhardt so conclusively spells out, even without a collapse in the near term future that future is going to be quite grim indeed.


Bonus: "Hubris and greed...let the fossil fuels burn. No way to keep the wings in flight...when the turbine engines don't move"