The best reason to support President Obama’s decision to dump Bush’s Star Wars program is that the neocons are outraged. They’re wrong about everything: the geopolitical world’s biggest losers, punditry’s equivalent of the Chrysler car design unit. Everything that comes out of the neocons’ brains is a guaranteed lemon. It’s hard to understand why the Hell these people still have jobs, let alone citizenship in the nation they ruined–until you remember that America stopped being a meritocracy a few decades ago, and only shamelessness and bluster are rewarded. (more…)

It’s a bad time to be an American these days, but a funny little incident in Iraq proves that US troops haven’t lost their sense of humor. Here’s what happened: ever since that admittedly brave Iraqi threw his shoe at Bush (and spent the next few months with his testicles wired up to a Sears Die-Hard), everyone and their grandma thinks that “the shoe is mightier than the sword.” (more…)

Quick question: why the fuck are Democrats boasting that they kept their mouths shut and their hands folded on their knees during every crazed speech Bush gave, unlike that bad ol’ Confederate Joe Wilson? Is that something the Dems should be proud of? If anything, Wilson’s outburst should make Democrats flush their own heads down the nearest toilet in shame for being such spineless pieces of shit right at the time that America needed an opposition most–a noisy, vicious, unpredictable opposition–to save the nation, us, and our grandchildren. Instead, they were polite, and they’re still proud of how polite they were. Do Democrats realize that by not having a tenth of Joe Wilson’s balls or the Tea Baggers’s fanaticism, that they enabled Bush to destroy the US military in two idiotic wars, and destroy the economy through plunder? What’s to be proud of? This is exactly why it’s so hard to be on the side of Democrats: they see what a real opposition looks like–ugly, frightening, unpredictable, breaking the rules– and they have this appalled Polite Society reaction, like a Southern Belle with white gloves on going, “Why I nevuh in all my life,” as if politics is a country club rather than a battlefield. (more…)

This article first appeared in Alternet

Now we know why America’s oligarchs are fighting to keep the rest of us stuck in the world’s worst health care system: the more we die, the more billions Wall Street will earn. A recent article in The New York Times exposed how Wall Street is licking its lips over a new scheme to make hundreds of billions in profits by creating financial instruments that will profit off of millions of terminally-ill Americans’ agony, desperation, and death. The only thing standing in the way of this massive new Wall Street scheme is the kind of health care reform that might allow Americans to live longer lives. Yep, this is what we spent trillions of dollars bailing out Wall Street for: so that they can kill us for profit. (more…)

What does the mysterious helicopter crash that killed one of India’s most popular politicians have to do with White House economic czar Larry Summers? Read on… (more…)

This article first appeared in Alternet.

America now has more military personnel in Afghanistan than the Red Army had at the peak of the Soviet invasion and occupation of that country. According to a Congressional Research Service report, as of March of this year, the U.S. had 52,000 uniformed personnel and another 68,000 contractors in Afghanistan — a number that has likely grown given the blank check President Obama has written for what’s now being called “Obama’s War.” (more…)

This is infuriating: According to today’s New York Times, most low-wage workers in America are victims of routine theft. The thieves: wealthy employers, who steal on average 15% of their low-wage employees’ pay by routinely underpaying them for their work, according to a new report.

Huge numbers of America’s low-wage workers don’t even earn minimum wage for their work. Only 20% of these wage-slaves dare to complain or consider starting or joining a union–and of those who do, nearly half suffer illegal punishment at the hands of their bosses and/or companies, either suspended or fired. And of course, the companies never worry that the government will do anything to them for illegally stomping on America’s vulnerable, because you know, government is a bad, bad thing.

We live in Dickensian times again, folks, except that ours is a degraded Dickens: our Dickensian victims don’t evince any of the pathos of Dickens’ 19th century characters, because officially, none of this is even happening. And if it is happening, it’s their own damn fault. (more…)