American Oligarchy
Trump-Pence Special Blue Collar MAGA Patriotic Average Joe Event:
Cover charge: $35,000- $50,000
+ Photo-Op with Dumbo: $100,000
+Share roundtable with Dumbo: $250,000/person
Blue collar average six-pack Joe types (a k a loser types) invited at no extra costs other than those listed here.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
First there was the real Western Frontier that shaped America.
Then there was the New Deal of FDR.
Then the Greatest Generation that helped save the world.
Then there was the New Frontier of JFK which ushered the graceful but brief era of Camelot.
Then the Great Society derailed by Vietnam and IndoChina….
Then the heroic era of NASA and space exploration culminating in the Apollo projects and what came later spanned a couple of generations.
Now we are on the eve of the Fourth of July 2018. Deep in the opportunistic age of MAGA which has ushered in the silly but very accurately expressive era of “I Really Don’t Care Do U“.
And That’s Not All, Folks……
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
Did you know: Adolf Hitler was thinking of emigrating to the USA from Austria? Just like Großvater Trumpf did from Germany? Like so many others in Europe did at the time. And almost around the same time, early in the 20th century. Then The Great War (WWI) started.
I believe there were some hints of that among his Mein Kampf rantings. Otherwise could there have been a President Adolf Hitler III, elected in 2016, without the murderous baggage of Nazism and WWII? He could even have been elected as a Democrat.
Imagine, Großvater Hitler could have saved the lives of tens of millions in Europe, had he followed the Trump-(f)s to America. His grandson could have ended up in the White House, screwing up America instead.
He (Adolf Hitler III) could have been elected even with a small acceptable toothbrush moustache and his vegetarian bent. He could win Red Beef states like Texas and Montana even if he were a vegetarian like his Grandpa Hitler.
He wouldn’t even be considered a maniac: instead he could have hired a real maniac like Ramsay or John Bolton with his bleached walrus moustache to screw up the Middle East and bomb more Muslim countries….
Some reports also claim that the immigrant Herr Trumpf, the Großvater of Donald, didn’t like it in America, wanted to return to Germany. But the Great War (WWI) started and precluded that. So he settled down in New York…..
There But for the Grace of God…………
Cheers (if you can)
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
Trump is going fully hard right now, on cruise control:
Tea Party war hawk Mike Pompeo nominated for top diplomat (oxymoronic). Tillerson was fired with a tweet yesterday as he was flying from Africa, as I mentioned here yesterday……..
Alleged supporter of Enhanced Interrogation/Rendition Gina Haspel to head the CIA……
Larry (Rah Rah Rah) Kudlow as chief Economic Adviser (but he can’t guarantee 4% GDP growth off CNBC programs)…….Here is how cavalierly Kudlow diagnosed the pre-crash economy of 2007: “What’s more, the entire market in sub-prime debt is just 1.4 percent of the global equity markets. On any given day, a 1.4 percent drop in world stocks would erase the same amount of value as the collective markdown of all sub-prime-backed bonds to $0. It’s just not that big a deal……”
Possibly chickenhawk/Vietnam evader John Bolton for National Security chief….
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Benyamin Netanyahu as Trump co-nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize…..
Kim Jong Un for ambassador to Pyongyang…… ?
Thomas Friedman as ambassador to the Court of Saint Saud in Riyadh…..?
Anthony Scaramucci is making the cable TV rounds again, whatever that means for now…..
It is Stormy Days at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (pun intended)…….
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
“And the beat goes on……
This time I’ll keep my feet on solid ground
Now I understand myself when I’m down
Like the sweet sound of hip music
There’ll always be something new
To keep the tables turning
Hey, this super song
There’ll never be an ending…
And the beat goes on……” The Whispers
“Betting Against Trump Was a Market-Beater. The companies the president disparaged have done much better than those he favored. Remember when President Donald Trump would call out a company by name, causing its stock price to gyrate madly, whacking a few billions off its market value with just one offhanded tweet? ……. Looking back on this one year later is revealing. From the November 2016 election until when we looked at it January 2017, the Oligarch Index was thoroughly trouncing the Drain the Swamp Index, 15.8 percent to 3.5 percent. Trump hadn’t even been sworn in, yet he was already making his heft felt in the marketplace. Things change…….”
So the famous bi-partisan, lobbyist-driven, Washington Swamp beat the Trump-favored Oligarchy in terms of market performance, at least for the first year. During the past year, the Oligarchy started quickly to morph into what it has always had the potential to be: a Cesspool……….
But still the Oligarchy is not done: it has at least three more years, potentially seven more years. The Swamp will expand and get more odorous for now, become more of a new oligarchy Cesspool. Until the next bubble created by deregulation and natural greed and hubris bursts. Then look out for all the flying “stuff“. Then the new need for “government” help and “regulation”. Back to 2008 and 2009, and……
Perhaps hopefully a more-lasting New Deal (after all, Milton Friedman is dead, along with his brilliant but misguided mind and his Nobel)……….
And the Beat Goes On…..
Cheers
M Haider Ghuloum
“Stormy Daniels Reportedly Spanked Trump With A Copy of Forbes Magazine. In the wake of a Wall Street Journal article that alleges Trump lawyer Michael Cohen paid off porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about a 2006 sexual encounter with now-president Donald Trump, several other stories about Daniels’ rendezvous with Trump have surfaced – including one account that she spanked Trump with a copy of Forbes…… “She says one time he made her sit with him for three hours watching ‘shark week.’ Another time he had her spank him with a Forbes magazine.”……..”
Talk about mixing ‘business’ with pleasure…..
I can see Steve Forbes’ famous lopsided smile/grin that some think lost him the Republican nomination so many years ago (he had no chance anyway). His magazine has been edified with the rump of a future (now current) President Trump.
The suddenly-wittier-than-usual Bill Kristol (of Weekly Standard) tweeted that it was a Supply-Side spanking: thus introducing a risky mix of dismal economics with kinky sex.
Which probably (hopefully) tells us what he really thinks of the theoretical underpinnings of the economic policies of Ronald Reagan, Steve Forbes, and possibly Trump (not clear if the latter focuses beyond self-interest).
Yet I have some doubts about this Stormy story, until I see, hear, read more. No savvy politician or prominent businessman (even some not-so-prominent ones) would engage such services in a hotel room. Probably not even a New York businessman-about-town who is steeped in the culture surrounding beauty pageants and reality shows. There is always the possibility, nay the probability, of electronic recording and taping and blackmail. So all this spank-gate can be fake news as well, even in the case of someone as impulsive as Donald Trump. Maybe, maybe not.
On the other hand: this that allegedly happened, if it happened, was a completely private matter. Besides, there are so many houses of glass around, on both sides.
Either way: way to go, Stormy….
Cheers
M. Haider Ghuloum
Donald Trump made another of his usual daily headlines this weekend. The headlines read: Trump, Defending His Sanity, Says He’s a ‘Very Stable Genius’.
A president of the United States needing to assert that he is “a very stable” genius. Meaning: he is not as unstable nor as stupid as the rest of the world believes him to be…..
He might be a genius in his own right. After all, as a newcomer he did defeat that other Democratic female genius, the former wonder woman of politics. What is at issue is the term “stable”.
Richard Nixon once famously declared to a Sam Donaldson question: “I am Not a Crook“, months before he was forced to resign.
Even Warren G. Harding, wherever he is now, is probably shocked at all this.
Abe Lincoln can’t believe how such a gaggle of aspiring Social Darwinist jungle-dweller quasi-Nazis have taken over “his” party. How the worst and least bright have floated to the top of “his” party in recent years, just in time to manipulate their new extremely insecure leader.
The no-nonsense Teddy Roosevelt, rightly known as a true patriot, would look at all this going on with “his” party, and very likely end up having his name headlined in a murder-suicide crime case. Dying twice is the same as dying once, he would argue.
Dwight Eisenhower? Ike would start planning a new D-Day for this weekend. Target? Camp David (as he named the presidential retreat), the new Normandie (or Normandy, if you prefer)…..
Stay tuned: unfortunately there’s more. The fun has just begun, I’m afraid…..
Cheers
M. Haider Ghuloum
A Dichotomy of Protests:
Kaepernick, Kaepernick, Kaepernick……
NFL, NFL, NFL…..
Iran, Iran, Iran…….
Fire and Fury, Fire and Fury, Fire and Fury…..
Right of Protest and Freedom of Expression…..
(FYI: this political outrage in Washington, it is all about regional rivalry, stupid)
Cheers
M Haider Ghuloum
One Tweet: “Florida rally cheers when Republican predicts Trump’s Jerusalem embassy decision may usher in Armageddon…..”
Another Tweet: “Trump came to my hometown last night and promised “borders on top of borders.” My state senator said Trump’s bringing Jesus back to life. And my Congressman wants to abolish the EPA. Now you understand why I always seem angry……”
Armageddon – coin-op machines in public toilets dispensing IRA-certified “protection” in the form of Trojan guns – underage sexual abuse (Biblical-style) for the public good – corporations as our (not their) new Jesus of this age – greed and smoke as the new salvation of humanity – corporate fundamentalist-political bullshit as the new gospel.
It looks like parts of the United States are ready to replace the terrorist Caliphate of ISIS with their own. Perhaps a milder gentler more Christian version of DAESH. Jesus and Christianity, just like Islam, have been hijacked again. It also looks like this has extended now to the nation’s capital of Washington DC.
It has miraculously transformed the Old Swap into a more pungent Cesspool. The old hashtag of #DrainTheSwamp is now passe, welcome to #TheCesspool….
Welcome to the new American Caliphate, its ideology a new Cargo Cult…..
And a Merry Christmas to you too….. 
M. H. Ghuloum
Behind all the euphoria about the results of the Alabama US Senate election yesterday, there is something dark and sinister to chew on:
Media report that 74% (three quarters) of white males and 65% (about two thirds) of white females voted for the Republican candidate Roy Moore (faux Christian accused of alleged sexual crimes and improprieties, strongly supported by President Donald Trump).
Some things have not changed as much as you would like to believe….
And a Merry Christmas to you too…..
Cheers
M. H. Ghuloum
