Obama's bark worse than his bite

The US is essentially bankrupt. Were it not for the dollars that the bankers can print endlessly through their personal playroom press at the Federal Reserve Bank, we'd not even have the proverbial pot to piss in. Without the dollar being the world's reserve currency, we'd be nowhere at all.

So now we have Barky Obama, leader of the free world, on the stage and giving his best imitation of a man instead of a muffin. The government has no choice but to downsize its military machine, lest it finally lose all credibility with its bankers in Asia, while still maintaining at least the fiction of having an overwhelming military machine:

Obama: Leaner U.S. military will maintain superiority | Reuters: "(Reuters) - President Barack Obama, rolling out a new defense strategy to shrink the country's armed forces at a time of tight budgets at home, pledged on Thursday to maintain the United States as the world's dominant military power.

"Our military will be leaner but the world must know - the United States is going to maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats," Obama told a news briefing at the Pentagon."

This, as all the rest of the world knows, is pure catshit. From the tinny yapping of a little dog, Barky Obama is also a changeling and able to channel a pussycat when called upon. His rhetoric has filled the catbox with fresh, fragrant turds.

The invincible US military is bulked up on steroids, so to speak. With "shock and awe," their remote-controlled gee-whiz weaponry was able to deliver death and destruction on a massive scale to a sleepy Baghdad at the beginning of the Gulf War, but when the awesome military machine got bogged down on the ground, trying to pacify as restive population, it was undermanned and under-provisioned -- not in it for the long haul. The US is good at quick and dirty, but not such a winner on a long, arduous slog. That was what lost the war in Iraq (only the appearance of "success" was gamed by taking sides in a nascent civil war), and it's what makes Afghanistan such a dismal prospect for the great white dopes.

Only the US public must not ever know the truth about their wholly unexceptional armed forces, which they support at what will become most unbearable personal sacrifice in the years ahead. The empire needs the support of a clueless and ignorant populace, gulled into believing in imaginary threats which hide under every bed. The oligarchy requires a willing suspension of disbelief, and of consciousness and awareness, too, if it is to pursue its goals of global hegemony and control over the energy resources of the planet over the medium term.

This was the subject of Pepe Escobar's most prescient essay today on Asia Times, where an unsuspecting public will never learn that the true stakes that have the US mired in all these god-forsaken backwaters like Afghanistan and Iran has nothing to do with terrorism or threats to the homeland, but with securing easy pickins' for the resource-extrication industry, so bravely championed by stalwarts like the Koch brothers, and their empire of right-wing propaganda organs -- hired guns of warmongering for fun and profiteering.

Poor Barking Obama, the puny, piddling poodle of the neo-con conspiracy. Force to walk the plank to dismantle cherished democratic social welfare programs, he does dirty double duty as the hitman on the left gunning for the military establishment, so some more gung-ho candidate can come along and tear his ass out the frame... this is the thanks you get for being a lackey in the USA.

Only the best for my puppy!