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Greetings good citizen,

Looks like today’s top story is yet another slap in the face to intelligence of the public.

How much of this tripe are you expected to swallow?

Dow Average Surpasses Record High as Market Opens
By PETER EAVIS 39 minutes ago

Since a low point in March 2009, the Dow Jones industrial average has more than doubled, stunning even the most seasoned stock market watchers.

Economically speaking, the past five years have been a train wreck in slo-motion for the 99% while the >One Percent has waxed ever richer, largely due to their control of ‘paper wealth’.

The higher the Dow goes, the poorer YOU get!

The curious part is YOU aren’t expected to notice the connection here. You see the shares in your IRA/401k rising and you cheer up…until you realize you’re ‘running in place’.

Actually you continue to fall behind because the rise in share price only partly compensates for the fall in purchasing power YOU’RE being ‘hammered’ with.
(THEY have a lot more shares so they’re making up for the ‘shortage’ with ‘volume’.)

Did I mention that the >One Percent has declared ‘Open Season’ on peasants?

We have long ago determined that the stock market is utterly divorced from anything to do with the economy; yet our corporate owned media still uses it as ‘barometer’ of economic health.

And ‘Once upon a time’ it used to be.

But how do you make sense of the Dow’s record high in a job market plagued by record unemployment?

The ONLY answers are FUNNY MONEY and/or COOKED BOOKS!

(Probably a combination thereof.)

Which begs the question of how long can our civilization survive these levels of dishonesty?

We’re back to the old sod about the stock market remaining irrational longer than you can remain solvent. (BECAUSE all MONEY is FUNNY!)

Perhaps now would be a good time to address this distressing charge I keep pointing to.

Why bother working if money is largely ‘meaningless’?

And that would be to take away the ‘wrong message’ from my very true insistence that (all) money IS ‘funny’.

Money only works for the individual. Society itself doesn’t ‘need’ it. (In fact it has proven quite harmful in the, er, ‘wrong hands’.)

We all know that money or ‘representative wealth’ can be manipulated. This is especially true under legal systems that are purposefully designed NOT to prevent this.

Sure we have laws AGAINST ‘counterfeiting’ but we have a very poor definition of what is or isn’t ‘counterfeit’.

Today’s top headline is a classic example of ‘counterfeiting’ but we don’t have a mechanism under which to prosecute this kind of ‘manipulation’ of the money supply.

Raising share prices arbitrarily is NOT illegal…although it SHOULD BE.

UNDERSTAND there is no basis in reality for the Dow (now largely comprised of financial sector stocks) to be at the highest level in history.

Can you say, “Stick ‘em up!” good citizen?

Because you now NEED to earn more to obtain the same level of purchasing power you had before the Stock Market robbed you. Money the already too rich to spend it didn’t need in the first place.

So why are they taking it?

What answer do you arrive at good citizen?

Are you think along the lines of how they intend to flush as much of the surplus population down the toilet BEFORE it rises up and demands its fair share?

You really don’t need to look too far for a motive, the old ones work just fine.

Oddly, the old ones have become ‘preventative maintenance’ at this stage in the game.

The ‘relatively well-armed’ US civilian population is the ONLY factor keeping our new oligarchs in check.

If not for an armed citizenry, I’d be in a gulag right now…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Deficit

Greetings good citizen,

Naturally the rhetoric behind these mysterious ‘budget cuts’ appears to be as ill-informed as the rest of us are.

Is what’s happening now the end result of not reading what you’re being forced to vote upon?

Common ‘trick’ in modern politics…funny how one of the ‘advantages of democracy' was its alleged ‘deliberateness’, that everything was discussed and debated BEFORE it was put to a vote.

But (like many Republican budget appropriation bills) they get slipped into other, unrelated legislation and voted into law…’unwittingly’.

And that SHOULD BE illegal…but under our current system of ‘anything goes justice’, it is not.

So we are faced with (apparently) ‘indiscriminate’ cuts across social welfare programs…(gee, wonder WHO would have done THAT?) while the civilian branches of the military (that provide oversight) are bearing the brunt of cuts to the Pentagon’s budget.

Once again it looks like the Conservo-Whackos have been (as they will undoubtedly claim later) 'framed perfectly' for this crime against civilization.

We all know it’s those commie, (code) pinko, One Percent lovin’ LIBERALS that want to slash social security and throw poor, defenseless old people out in the streets!

Sure…

Liberal isn’t quite right…it’s those never met a tax cut they didn’t like LIBERTARIANS that ‘sneak’ stuff into other legislation so it can get passed into law unread and undebated.

In fact, the Libbies are so unpopular they can’t get a candidate elected beyond the state level.

And this ‘underhandedness’ is the reason why.

Their ideas (that even their rank and file are ignorant of) are so radical as to border on criminal.

You’d never voluntarily live under Libertarian rule but the cannibal capitalists (who already own everything) think it would be ‘fun’.

That’s why our bought and paid for justice system ignores ‘irregularities’ like unread legislation being slipped in with legitimate business and getting passed ‘en masse’.

Again our much-criticized corporate owned media has ignored this issue completely because their corporate masters want it this way.

The evidence that our government has been hijacked continues to mount while the vaunted ‘4th Estate’ remains mute.

Even more bizarre is how if you read this fact on the Internet, it automatically becomes a conspiracy!

Only the paper you pay two bits for tells you ‘the truth’ (as our corporate masters see it…reality be…oh well.)

And somehow this is NOT a ‘conspiracy’…

Let’s set aside the fact that nobody knows/can explain where these ‘budget cuts’ come from (although we can guess fairly accurately.)

And turn our attention to ‘the deficit’ (that the Republicans have quintupled since Reagan took office.) [And somehow this escapes being a conspiracy too…curious, don’t you think?]

If we start from the basis that ALL MONEY IS FUNNY and compound that with the fact that MOTHER NATURE DOESN’T HAVE A CASH REGISTER we have to ask the obvious question ‘WHAT DEFICIT?’

Actually no such thing exists…it is ‘faulty accounting’ driven by capitalist economics but the ‘conservo-whackos’ like to pretend it matters!

How unfortunate is it that this whole charade is a power trip made worse by extreme mis-management?

Even more disturbing is how this entire ‘conspiracy’ to push our current civilization off of a cliff can be chalked up to ‘Social Darwinism’ by the very ones who have been marked for extinction!

Even more ironic is how they’ve marked themselves (although in most cases their parents did it for them.)

Naturally I’m hoping for a public debate…how sad is it good citizen that my chances of success are roughly equal with Bradley Manning’s chances of being acquitted (despite not having committed a crime.)

Once again I end a piece with the admonition ‘what happens next is up to YOU!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Impasse

Greetings good citizen,

The Kabuki dance that passes for our government is being presented to convince you that the BAD (non-existent) LIBERALS are responsible for the ‘automatic austerity’ that somehow found its way into law.

Naturally, to that end, we have this headline:

Boehner Halts Talks on Cuts; G.O.P. Cheers
By ASHLEY PARKER

Speaker John A. Boehner seems to have decided that he may have more to lose by negotiation over the impending spending cuts than letting them happen.

Just to provide a clear starting point you must be aware that the ONLY reason the Republicans have retained control of one branch of Congress is to provide the ‘illusion of conflict’.

The voters of this nation aren’t that stupid…but they are powerless, thanks to the mis-steps of the founders.

Conservative rhetoric aside, we all KNOW who is responsible for the economic devastation being visited upon us.

The conservo-whackos keep pointing to the liberals (who no longer exist) claiming they are responsible for policies that passed during conservative administrations!

Why is there A SINGLE conservative in government today? Because the electoral process is rigged!

Hanging chads and all…(like we need to go there.)

The >One Percent tells their very willing puppets what to do and they do it.

Is this eventually going to get those puppets lynched? Undoubtedly! But that day has yet to come.

I remind you good citizen that the only people who need secrecy are people who are up to no good as we see in this headline from today’s front page:

Soldier Admits Providing Files to WikiLeaks
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Pfc. Bradley Manning confessed in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks.

Even more tragic than his arrest is the track record of the current administration towards ‘whistle blowers’.

And naturally, the, er, suspension of the young Pfc.’s rights makes the whole situation reek of justice being steam-rolled.

But that’s the funny thing about coups…they don’t give a fig about justice! They exist to PROTECT THE GUILTY!

Once you start doing that your whole justice system falls apart.

World’s largest inmate population…broken justice system, guess what? They’re related!

Record income inequality and a corrupt banking sector…related again!

You don’t have to look very far to find links that stretch right down to the local level.

The ‘rot’ goes right to the core!

Here you sit, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Miraculously things haven’t come unraveled (yet) but tick-tock good citizen, that old clock just keeps ticking off the seconds to zero (and you know it's going to happen soon because nothing is being done to head it off.)

(Ironically, acting to prevent derailment will be the most likely cause of one!)

Hmmn…maybe that’s what’s behind the latest Republican strategy!

Hanging in the balance here good citizen are school systems across the nation.

However, this situation is not unprecedented, across the south school systems closed during the (former) Great Depression due to ‘lack of funds’.

Given our inevitable conversion to a Banana Republic, this will be viewed as ‘no big loss’.

Thanks to ‘financial manipulation’ we have already been rendered ‘uncompetitive’ by those (union busting) conservative ‘haters of freedom’!

You either cut the schools or you cut fire and police…and you know the only reason Fire and Police protection exist is to protect the >One Percent…

YOUR tax dollars at work…protecting those who oppress you!

Same as it ever was.

So…what do we do about our ‘runaway government’?

Short answer, replace it.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Amazing!

Greetings good citizen,

The Dow is regaining yesterday’s losses (if only because they can) which is to point out the obvious, that NOTHING has been done to ‘fix’ the economy…although (apparently) YOU aren’t supposed to be ‘concerned’ about that…

Like my ‘economic desert’ scenario, a ‘broken economy’ spells disaster for the residents thereof.

Currently the global financial system is on central bank life support and is (thanks to ‘creative accounting’) doing much better than the ‘real economy’ as this article demonstrates:

U.S. Banks in 2012 Post Highest Profits Since '06 – FDIC
By REUTERS
Published: February 26, 2013 at 11:54 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. banking industry in 2012 recorded its highest earnings since before the 2007-2009 financial crisis, according to data released on Tuesday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The FDIC said the industry's full-year earnings were the second-highest on record at $141.3 billion, an increase over 2011 of $22.9 billion, or 19.3 percent. But the head of the agency said growth would probably slow this year, and warned that bank profits could dive if Congress does not reach a federal budget agreement that prevents automatic cuts.

Bank earnings peaked in 2006 at $145.2 billion.

Much of the earnings growth in 2012 came from banks reducing the amount they set aside in case of losses on loans, the FDIC said. Banks also saw gains on loan sales and higher servicing income.

"While there is still room for further income growth, we don't expect the pace of earnings growth to continue at these levels," FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said.

Um, se habla ‘creative accounting’?

Why does it look to me like the predatory banks are looting the public treasury?

Facts on the ground tell us that banks should be shedding people like mad, they don’t have the ‘income’ to support the people they have because a vast majority of their customer base is a serious credit risk.

Again we bash into the solid fact that fifty percent of US families are on some kind of food assistance program…why is that? Because cheapskate capitalist employers won’t pay their people enough to buy food AND keep a roof over their heads!

[Have to ‘stay competitive’ you know!]

Followed by, “What does how big a bonus I got have to do with anything?”

Same thing in the financial sector…how can these criminals reward themselves for screwing up the global financial system beyond repair?

We’re back to the need to re-define why you get a bonus!

(Because these guys clearly don’t understand the concept.)

Worse, they seem to think we don’t either…

The world clearly isn’t falling apart (Because all money is Funny) but that’s the ONLY reason. (Otherwise we’d be up to our buttocks in reptiles right now!)

Let me explain it a bit more clearly…because you won’t hear this from one of their stooges or anyone else who can get within a thousand miles of a major media outlet.

The banking ‘business model’ is broken!

There aren’t enough customers to keep these monsters afloat.

ALL of the banks (around the entire world) went bust in December 2007.

And until the global economy is re-balanced, they’re NEVER going to be profitable again!

It’s simply not there to be had!

Interest rates locked at Zero are ‘self-explanitory’. There is no money in banking…So, how did the banks have one of their best years since the crash?

Can you say ‘Loot’?

Not that this really matters…what you SHOULD be losing sleep over is that sudden stop that will occur when they decide to ‘derail’ our existing civilization.

(And they’ll do this to throw the law off of their trail.)

Do we have weeks or days remaining good citizen?

The nasty problem here is even they don’t know.

You have to keep your eyes on the exits and even then there will be about a jillion ‘false starts’.

Like the market going up and down for no discernable reason.

I preach to the choir when I point out that our civilization is already ruined.

I was watching the run up to WWII on the Military channel last night and experienced serious ‘déjà vu’.

Nobody dares prosecute the criminals for fear of what they’ll do…

Well good citizen, they’ve already bankrupted us…And A Simple Plan can stop that in its tracks (because it only deals in real assets in real time, none of this derivative nonsense.)

But the decision to change from today’s predatory system to tomorrows equitable one remains to be made…

And guess who gets to make that choice?

YOU!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Workie-workie!

Greetings good citizen,

Today’s topic is the world of work. While some, er, ‘freethinkers’ argue that work is unnecessary, they can’t argue their way around that fact that if nobody works, nothing gets done.

And you’d be amazed at how few people want to participate in ‘productive ventures’ (at least on a ‘trade basis’.)

They’d rather ‘decorate’ rocks and trade those for food than do the actual hard work of tilling the soil and growing crops or tending to the needs of the livestock because if someone doesn’t do either, there won’t BE any.

But our ‘why workers’ point to nature shows like ‘Yukon men’ or ‘Alaska the last frontier’ and their ‘self-sufficient’ lifestyle and claim that’s how it should be.

When the shows themselves focus on how as the population rises, it becomes harder and harder to bag enough game to make it through the 8 month long winters.

Yet each episode demonstrates how Mother Nature herself is a cruel taskmaster. You’ve only got so much time to get the job done and if you don’t finish or if things are a little ahead of schedule, too bad.

Which is to say every one of our ‘frontiersmen’ works their ass off just to survive.

Mind you, nobody ‘pays’ them to do what they do. (Well, the TV crew must pay ‘em something but there isn’t anyplace up there to buy the stuff you need.) So the money buys fuel, ammo and tools like ATV’s, new boats and bigger guns.

Most of us grew up in a society that doesn’t make us work ‘hard’ (Compared to what our ancestors had to do to survive.)

The miracle that is ‘money’ enables us to live comfortably without having to do EVERY LITTLE THING for ourselves.

So it is that we have encountered a different, er, ‘situation’ than the one our ancestors faced…although, truth be told, this situation is far from ‘new’.

Now we have more workers than work…what a happy situation because now everyone can do a smaller chunk of the task at hand and everybody wins more ‘free time’.

But that’s not how it works under (more for me) capitalism.

Worse, more for me capitalism is extremely wasteful…now that the population is approaching the ‘carrying capacity’ of the planet, don’t you think it’s time we start addressing the inefficiencies and inequities of the ‘more for me’ mindset?

Yes, ‘need’ drives the entire picture…and it’s what keeps the ‘more for me’ crowd living in the lap of luxury.

How, er, ‘frightening’ is it that the already filthy rich don’t need but a fraction of the wealth they have gouged out of the rest of us?

It SHOULD scare you spitless.

Because if money were being used ‘correctly’ the more for me bunch wouldn’t have the lock they have on our species survival they have now.

The very fact that the uber wealthy exist demonstrates the main flaw in capitalism.

Sadder perhaps is the >One Percent’s ‘legalization’ of their unjustified avarice.

When the giants of our society had the Supreme court (which they own, lock stock and barrel!) declare that the purpose of commerce was to enrich its owners!

Whereas the original and most commonly accepted definition of the purpose of commerce is to serve society’s needs ‘at a reasonable profit’.

How much trouble do you think ‘we’ (as a species) are in considering the conservo-whackos did away with the anti usury laws? (Never mind stripping you of your right to due process!)

Um, boys and girls, the >One Percent have declared ‘open season’ on us and there isn’t a darn thing we can do about it! (I was going to say they declared war upon us but that would imply we have the ability to fight back…which we don’t!)

The real riddle is what these weasels are going to tell our sons and daughters when they order them to open fire on us?

Now here’ s a scary thought. Considering the basic theme of most video games, how many of ‘em will even hesitate?

We aren’t ‘The Family of Man’. We are a collection of (pseudo) ‘rugged individuals’ a la John Wayne or Captain Kirk.

And guess who has fed our children THAT particular illusion?

While we did nothing to stop them.

Which is to point out good citizen that there are some real ‘monsters’ loose at the top of our society.

And they should be made to PAY for their CRIMES.

Illegal and immoral are two separate concepts and you can only wonder why…because immoral SHOULD BE illegal. Yet these sicko’s are going to use the ‘I’ve done nothing illegal’ defense as they stand amidst the smoking landscape that their actions turned to scorched earth.

Then, the real coup de grace, they’re going to ‘apologize’.

And we will respond with ‘take a hike mac!’

So let’s recap, shall we?

We have a world that we have ‘tamed’ and COULD BE working a lot less than we currently do…but we have been saddled with a system of commerce that doesn’t need all of the available workers.

Now the, er, ‘beneficiaries’ of this twisted system are trying to keep things from changing, which HAS RESULTED in the collapse of the commerce system.

(In case it looks like I went screaming off the reservation towards the end there…I did not.)

The question, good citizen, as always, is ‘what are we going to do about it?’

Anyway,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Revolting

Greetings good citizen,

Seems as though the only people visiting the new page are the folks who ensure you’re complying with the terms of service…which doesn’t bother me at all.

Truth be told I ‘catch’ myself (when I’m composing) all the time. The angst that I let flow freely behind the firewall doesn’t like being ‘redirected’ into, er; ‘less provocative’ terms.

However, the time has come (and for my longtime readers I add ‘once again’) to discuss the ‘purpose’ behind this blog.

While I am very ‘opinionated’, I don’t try to tell you what to think. I feel I have my work cut out just trying to provide you with things to think about.

So the focus here is not ‘what to think’ but merely to think…as in ‘at all’.

One of the obstacles I encountered in trying to popularize A Simple Plan was nobody felt the need to learn a better way of doing things. Their parents taught them what to do and they’d teach their kids, worked for them and it will work (sort of) for you.

No irony should be lost on the fact that YOU dear reader, are the first generation (since the founding of this nation) that this strategy WILL NOT work for.

You CAN’T tell your kids what your parents told YOU because THIS ISN’T THAT WORLD ANYMORE!

The now famous “Go along to get along” advice is more likely to get your children killed than to help them move ahead in life.

What advice DO YOU give your children these days?

Sorry, can’t help you out because if WE don’t derail this crazy train there won’t be anything left to save!

Sort of brings us full circle to the need to discuss ‘alternatives’ to the way things get done now.

Your parents didn’t have to worry about such things, survivors of the Great Depression and TWO ‘wars to end all wars’; they know what worked and how to make the world ‘tick’.

But that’s not the world their kids have left for yours.

The New Deal planted a rather insidious seed in the minds of the privileged few…and the fact that they nearly destroyed the world’s economy AND THEY WEREN’T PUNISHED FOR IT wasn’t lost on these people born with a sense of entitlement.

Oh how their parents ‘suffered’ paying those workers all of that money they would have had to pay the tax man! (And that’s the only reason companies ‘competed’ for help…they don’t do it in Banana Republics because the government doesn’t dare tax them the way the New Deal Democrats taxed the Wall Streeters!)

Now it’s a hundred years later and we’re right back where it all began! Only this time there is nobody on the side of the downtrodden and destitute.

Because the One Percent has added a ‘lead lining’ to the go along to get along canard. You either do what they tell you or they’ll find somebody who will (and YOU’LL never work in this town again! A ‘hangover’ from the old days.)

While this tactic is the main ingredient opposing armies are made of; nobody has the backing to field the force these battalions of the ‘dispossessed’ can bring to bear.

Thus do the ‘entitled’ continue to press their advantage.

While whole armies of the dazed and confused remain clueless as to what to do about it.

Because nobody remembers that our government was designed by the very same ‘entitled people’ we are unable to wrest control from now.

Not that most of you need any convincing that we have some dangerous if not downright ‘feral’ people in charge of, well, the world as it turns out right now.

If we, the governed, don’t clip their wings (and soon) we will be unable to.

Although the ‘bad news’ is we don’t have the tools to clip their wings with…and you’d think the people who had just fought a bloody revolution would have thought about that but no. The ones who get to decide what comes next get to toss out any ‘limitations’ on their ambitions!

Thus do we have an empty toolbox.

We shouldn’t feel bad, everybody else has a system modeled after ours…so they’re tool-less to!

Which brings us to the topic of what are we fighting for and what can we ‘replace’ the current broken system with?

Because if we only change who’s in charge, our kids will find themselves faced with the same problems we face today.

It’s not ‘who’ runs thing but HOW THEY ARE RUN that MUST BE changed!

And that’s what the next series of posts will touch upon, and ‘alternative’ to how things are currently done.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Exceptional

Greetings good citizen,

As the snow flies outside (first serious storm of the season) the stock markets of Fantasyland have resumed their relentless upward march.

Besides someone sneezing, it appears those who cook our nation’s economic books have outdone themselves:

U.S. Trade Deficit Shrinks
By REUTERS 8:58 AM ET

The trade gap shrank in December to its narrowest in nearly three years, the government said, suggesting that the economy did better in the fourth quarter than initially estimated.

Chinese Imports and Exports Soar in January 6:11 AM ET

I’m guessing the intention is to confuse the average reader but the headline tells us our trade deficit is shrinking while the footnote tells us our trade partner is going gangbusters…

I guess it makes sense if you flip it over and ignore the first part.

Which is to point out that the Chinese are NOT back on track for double digit growth, which drove them into the number two spot globally a couple of years ago.

The part that, er, puzzles me is how stupid the corporate owned media thinks the rest of us are? (We know it’s pretty dang stupid but the average clown on the street knows China’s double-digit growth was due to the capitalists of this country ‘exporting’ our jobs to the world’s most populous labor pool.

Once that stopped, the ‘growth’ disappeared’…so today’s decidedly false claim is once again a matter of ‘context’…

So no good citizen, it is just plain foolishness to claim the ‘economy’ (anywhere on the planet) is ‘booming’.

The Chinese economy may be doing ‘better than expected’ but you need to temper that with ‘expectations’ barely exceeded ‘death warmed over’.

Which brings us to our second offering of this snowy Friday

The continuing saga of American Exceptionalism!

America Is Far from #1

The latest Global Competitiveness Report comparing 144 countries shows the sorry state of our country's development.
February 7, 2013 |

"The Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013,” by the World Economic Forum, is the latest annual ranking of 144 countries, on a wide range of factors related to global economic competitiveness .

On each of their many rankings, #1 represents the best nation, and #144 represents the worst nation.

Gross Domestic Product is the only factor where the U.S. ranks as #1, which we do both on "GDP” and on “GDP as a Share of World GDP.”

Health Care has the U.S. ranking #34 on “Life Expectancy,” and #41 on “Infant Mortality.”

Education in the U.S. is also mediocre. On “Quality of Primary Education,” we are #38. On “Primary Education Enrollment Rate,” we are #58. On “Quality of the Educational System,” we are #28. On “Quality of Math and Science Education,” we are #47. On “Quality of Scientific Research Institutions,” we are #6. On “PCT [Patent Cooperation Treaty] Patent Applications [per-capita],” we are #12. On “Firm-Level Technology Absorption” (which is an indicator of business-acceptance of inventions), we are #14.

Trust is likewise only moderately high in the U.S. We rank #10 on “Willingness to Delegate Authority,” #42 on “Cooperation in Labor-Management Relations,” and #18 in “Degree of Customer Orientation” of firms.

Corruption is apparently a rather pervasive problem in the U.S.

On “Diversion of Public Funds [due to corruption],” the U.S. ranks #34. On “Public Trust in Politicians,” we are #54. On “Irregular Payments and Bribes,” we are #42. On “Judicial Independence,” we are #38. On “Favoritism in Decisions of Government Officials” (otherwise known as governmental cronyism), we are #59.

On and on it goes, good citizen.

The whole article makes rather disturbing reading although it isn’t particularly ‘shocking’. I am far from being the sole ‘voice in the wilderness’ decrying the downfall of our hijacked and badly mismanaged civilization…

And you won’t ever see the criminals stepping aside and offering up the controls with a sarcastic ‘think you can do better?’ They know they’ve got it wrong…but they’re getting filthy rich doing it.

Which is why they’re disinclined to stop…until they break something important or we make them stop (and it will probably take a combination of both. Because once the machine stops giving milk the new ‘top priority’ will be ‘covering their tracks’.)

Considering they’re being none too careful about how they loot, the obvious solution will be to ‘destroy’ the record keeping equipment.

Now how would you go about a monumental task like that?

Let me give you a hint, it also produces a flash that is said to be ‘brighter than a thousand suns’.

Put a few of those puppies into the hands of the criminals who kill with drones and let me know what you come up with…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: We need a ‘hero’ who can put a few megaton ‘frag’ on Washington DC AND Wall Street.

If not, the senseless deaths worldwide will continue.

Entertaining

Greetings good citizen,

As oil remains stuck in the $96 dollar a barrel range, the Dow has dropped a hundred and fifteen points in just a shade over an hour’s trading.

Which is to point out that the destruction of our civilization proceeds ‘on schedule’.

I have selected three headlines from today’s business section for your, er, ‘amusement’:

News Analysis
A scene from the 1954 film “Tobor the Great.”
Raging (Again) Against the Robots
By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Robots have once again gripped the nation’s imagination, stoking fears of displaced jobs and perhaps even a displaced human race.

Many is the story about ‘machine intelligence’ and a robotic ‘takeover’ of our planet, or even our galaxy since robots aren’t subject to the same narrow band of operating conditions organic life is restricted to.

Like time travel this is a bogeyman that will remain a staple of the fiction writer. While we have already created machines that can ‘learn’, we have yet to imbue one with ‘a sense of purpose’ nor has one developed this uniquely human trait on its own (yet.)

Our ‘problem’ with a ‘pile of bolts’ is limited to the capitalists love of a tireless worker that you only pay once.

This ‘displacement’ of humans from the fabrication of commodities severely damages the economy (all of which are local!)

Not that the robot is to blame. It is the, er, ‘skewing’ of the distribution process robots cause (profits go up because prices DON’T go down, yet you have significantly reduced the number of people able to buy the product!)

Cost to produce has gone down but the number of buyers has also shrunk…so where’s the ‘win’?

The CEO grabbed it because he’s paid based on ‘production efficiency’!

The rest of your civilization LOSES!

Did I mention that the serious mismanagement of our civilization is rapidly reaching ‘critical mass?’ The people making decisions are getting paid to act AGAINST the interests of society at large?

And the owners don’t care because the books (which are thoroughly cooked) look fine.

Which leads us to their puzzlement over why their employees are ‘unhappy’.

A job has become its own reward in our resource scarce environment…(if you can’t live on what it pays tough!)

No need to hand out pay increases when your workers are thankful to be getting a paycheck at all while so many of their peers aren’t.

Beginning to see the problem? It’s not the robots at all…it’s the crazy capitalists and their gross incompetence!

Which provides an excellent segue to our next article:

Vast Oil Reserve May Now Be Within Reach, and Battle Heats Up
By NORIMITSU ONISHI

Monterey Shale deposits, which could turn California into the nation’s top oil-producing state, is stirring conflict between drillers and environmental interests.

Map Map: California’s Hydraulic Fracturing Hotbed

Did the first thing that popped into my head also pop into yours? Which is to ask is it a particularly wise idea to be ‘fracking’ in a ‘seismically sensitive’ area like the Island just off the coast of Los Angeles?

But apparently the capitalist don’t care! Or worse, we are a lot closer to the end of our energy rope than media would have you believe.

Can you imagine the ‘Wile E. Coyote moment’ when the gas pumps go dry and the public sits there dumbfounded because they didn’t know we were close to running out?

Which brings us to the age old question if the world was going to end tomorrow would they tell us?

Probably not…imagine the chaos if they did! (And no, it would NOT be ‘anarchy’.)

Even this, the expansion of the wasteland that passes for ‘entertainment’ speaks volumes regarding the mindset of those in charge (and their endless incompetence.)

The Media Equation
Shunning the Safe, FX Indulges Its Dark Side
By DAVID CARR

Behind FX’s recent success is its willingness to give its shows creative freedom.

Between decidedly reckless ‘reality programming’ (that plays fast and loose with the facts) and the merging of the fantasy world with the real world via computer graphics…the ‘credibility gap’ is growing enormous!

Which is to point out that shows no longer ‘entertain’ as much as they tax the imagination.

There are several shows out there now that have what can only be called incredible ‘plot holes’ in them…and this is due to the ‘failure of imagination’ coupled with capitalist censorship.

Yes good citizen, TV has become a vapid wasteland because of the zero tolerance policy the corporate owned media has towards anything that challenges the ‘supremacy’ of capitalism.

When you are confined to a very narrow and contradictory box, the creative process is either stifled or it increasingly defies logic.

If Bram Stokers original demon had half of the powers he is currently endowed with (by hack writers) we’d ALL be vampires!

But the things impressionable young girls believe should never be confused with reality…

So why is dumbbell ‘praising’ Fox?

Could it be that ‘corporate owned media’ thing (that cuts HIS paycheck too?)

Something to ponder while you wait for a vampire to grant you the invincibility you’ve longed for your whole life!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Animals

Greetings good citizen,

In a rare trifecta, the top stories on today’s NY Times provide us with a ‘snapshot’ of the current status of, er, ‘our’ civilization (Which is actually two societies that are no longer even pretending to ‘co-exist’.)

What do YOU make of this puzzling first piece?

Israeli Airstrike in Syria Targets Arms Convoy, U.S. Says
By ISABEL KERSHNER and MICHAEL R. GORDON

Israel carried out a strike deep inside Syria, American officials reported, saying they believed the target was a shipment of antiaircraft weapons meant for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

So, was it a ‘surgical strike’? Did the Israeli ‘aces’ only destroy the boxes ‘addressed to Hezbollah’?

Of course not, this was like a drone attack at a funeral (anyone who was a friend of the deceased was a terrorist…and therefore deserving of ‘summary execution’, which, make no mistake about it, is PRECISELY what a drone attack is.)

Um, I’m not the only ‘unbeliever’ out there but if I’m wrong then hell is filling up mighty fast, wouldn’t you say?

How much sympathy do you think anyone has for ‘tiny Israel’ when they dispense with the entire justice system and murder with impunity?

Which is to opine that this is not ‘civilized’ behavior. If the rest of the world behaved like the Israelis regularly do it would be paved in glass already.

Moving on, we have this perplexing story that hints at communism not being completely crushed in China…(to the chagrin of the capitalists.)

Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months
By NICOLE PERLROTH

The timing of the attacks coincided with reporting for an investigation that found that the relatives of China's prime minister had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings.

Seems it doesn’t matter what kind of government you are subjected too, it has a price and the capitalists are paying whatever it takes!

So the ‘politicians’ sell out their countrymen for a ‘better life’ for themselves…

Funny how that ‘monkey see-monkey do crap works, isn’t it?

How do you suppose we break that ‘cycle of corruption’ if NOBODY is ‘trustworthy’?

How about ‘your money is for you’?

Stopping the ‘counterfeiters’ is where it all starts. Most of what’s floating around like turds in our badly broken financial system is ‘fluff’ and prices no longer have any basis in reality.

How bad is it? Did I mention ‘trifecta’?

U.S. Growth Halted as Federal Spending Fell in 4th Quarter
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

The government played a role in slowing the economic recovery as cuts in military spending and other factors overwhelmed the Federal Reserve's expanded campaign to spur growth.

Stocks Slip on Wall Street

[That last blurb snuck in and wasn’t intentional despite it being pertinent.]

But that’s nothing, I reported yesterday that GDP slipped and it had something to do with government spending.

Today it appears the story is a bit deeper and much more disturbing, our economy (such as it is) is on ‘life support’ tied to a printing press!

(Worse, the printing press is tied to a machine gun aimed at the hornets nest we call the Middle East!

How long do you think the ‘hosers’ in charge can keep this crapshoot afloat?

Probably just long enough to steal a lifeboat and load it full of the family jewels before bugging out to a tropical nirvana!

They won’t make it…but they ‘believe’ they will and to them that’s all that matters.

(Soon to be the plot of a major motion picture, yes, Hollywood IS ‘shameless’, which is bizarrely unrelated to its pervasive tastelessness… (Which has more to do with the bean counters than the art itself.)

all of which becomes moot when there is no longer a civilization to play to…

How ironic is it that the >One Percent thinks we are already there?

So, in aggregate, what do our top stories tell us?

In the first we see absolute ruthlessness in support of the ‘status quo’. Why is Israel ‘helping’ Assad? Because he keeps the Syrians out of Israel.

We’re back to the old ‘Devil you know’ scenario. Doesn’t matter if his people hate him as long as he holds up his end of the bargain and ‘peace’ reigns in the region.

Put a ‘wildcard’ in Assad’s slot and who knows what will happen next? Perhaps this new leader will unite the rest of the Arab world against the (thieving, murdering) West and upset the delicate balance of global energy supply and demand.

And everything north of the tropic of Cancer will freeze, in some cases, to death.

Our next story points at pervasive governmental corruption. How can anyour civilization survive if our ‘self-professed betters’ keep throwing the rest of us under the bus?

Then we have our ‘war-driven’ economy. What does this say about our children’s future?

As a sidebar/closer has anyone else noticed the, er, ‘eruption’ of desperate acts across the nation over the past couple of weeks?

While many of these incidents appear to be mental health related, we should still view them as the proverbial ‘canary in a coal mine’, a makeshift ‘barometer’ of social health if you will.

The more ‘nothing left to lose’ you see, the less control they have over the situation.

And it CAN BE STOPPED, they just have to ‘change course!’ (And stop treating people like animals…)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Handwriting (on the wall)

Greetings good citizen,

While you’re busy making sure nobody grabs your gun out of its holster (thereby distracting you from other things happening right under your nose.)

A barrel of oil has crept back up to $96 a barrel while the price at the pump hovers around $3.50 a gallon locally (funny how those two numbers, the price per barrel and the price per gallon keep becoming ‘disconnected’, yet another ‘distraction’ considering ALL MONEY IS FUNNY! The price is whatever they want it to be because THEY certainly don’t need the money! And for the pinheads out there, the ‘they’, in this instance, refers to the >One Percent.)

But wait, there’s more! How many of you noticed that the Dow is within spitting distance of setting a new record?

Which really makes you wonder why they (same they) bother because we all know the number is total fiction?

Tomorrow they could claim the Dow hit 44,000 and nothing would change (besides the fact that the rest of us would all become poorer relative to the nation’s shareowners.

Well, how unfortunate for the rest of us that articles like this feed the notion that the One Percent is planning to kill most of us off.

That same month, the online publication Market Oracle reported that “ [t]he new ‘water barons’—the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires—are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace.” The report reveals two phenomena that have been gathering speed, and that could potentially lead to profit accumulation at the cost of communities and commons —the expansion of market instruments beyond the water supply and sanitation to other areas of water governance, and the increasingly prominent role of financial institutions.

In several instances this has meant that the government itself has set up public corporations that run like a business, contracting out water supply and sanitation operations to those with expertise, or entering into public–private–partnerships, often with water multinationals. This happened recently in Nagpur and New Delhi, India. In most rural areas, ensuring a clean drinking water supply and sanitation continues to be a challenge. For-profit companies such as Sarvajal have begun setting up pre-paid water kiosks (or water ATMs) that would dispense units of water upon the insertion of a pre-paid card. It is no surprise that these are popular among people who otherwise have no access to clean drinking water.

With climate change, however, the water crisis is no longer perceived as confined to developing countries or even primarily a concern related to water supply and sanitation. Fresh water commons are becoming degraded and depleted in both developed and developing countries. In the United States, diversion of water for expanded commodity crop production, biofuels and gas hydro-fracking is compounding the crisis in rural areas. In areas ranging from the Ogallala aquifer to the Great Lakes in North America, water has been referred to as liquid gold. Billionaires such as T. Boone Pickens have been buying up land overlying the Ogallala aquifer, acquiring water rights; companies such as Dow Chemicals, with a long history of water pollution, are investing in the business of water purification, making pollution itself a cash-cow.

Understand good citizen this story would be about air if they thought they could get away with it.

Under Manslow’s hierarchy of needs, you will only survive a couple of minutes without air, a couple of days without water and roughly a month without food. Shelter is a slider depending on the hostility of the environment. In a mild climate it comes last but in a harsh one it can supercede water!

You’d think history would have taught mankind the ‘futility’ of hoarding anything, water in particular.

It also provides us with a definitive example of one of the things that shouldn’t have a ‘price tag’ attached to it.

Yet the capitalist thinks everything has a price…and they think nothing of exploiting a situation.

Worse, they are the first ones to cry, “it’s not personal, it’s business!”

Let’s take a step back and look at this for a moment…the ‘businessman’ says he’d love to help you out BUT there’s MONEY involved here. (Keep in mind that ALL MONEY IS FUNNY!)

Stick a gun in his face and all of a sudden HE’S THE ‘VICTIM’!

Did I mention the need to redefine the term ‘criminal’?

The water is no more ‘his’ than it is yours but who is the (criminal) court going to believe?

Which brings us to another ‘marvel’, the fact that you will find humans living in even the most inhospitable environments this planet has to offer.

And despite capitalist insistence that this is due to ‘rugged individualism’ it is in fact due to the overwhelming desire to escape the rabid capitalists!

How can you be ‘free’ when those who run our society do their worst to nickel and dime you for everything they can?

YOU know Mother Nature doesn’t have a cash register (and so do the creeps, that’s why EVERYTHING requires a ‘permit’ under capitalism and guess what? Those permits aren’t FREE! Worse, they can be arbitrarily ‘denied’.

But I digress, the ‘real bad news’ here is it is only a matter of time before the combination of water and energy scarcity erupts in civilization ending ‘class war’.

Under the ‘judge for yourself’ category, real estate ads have started touting a location’s remoteness as a ‘selling point’ and some even use the term ‘bug out’.

What does that tell you?

Think handwriting on the wall…(especially when they try to play the ‘who knew’ card…)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Ruled by Fools

Greetings good citizen,

It is hilarious that the so-called ‘Progressives’ are accusing the conservo-whackos of living in a ‘permanent fantasy world’ when they persist in serving up tripe like this…

Before we begin this latest excursion into ‘wishful thinking’ let me repeat my ‘mantra’, there is NO WAY to ‘fix’ capitalism with capitalism! All of the fixes are ‘predatory’ too!

6 Economic Steps to a Better Life and Real Prosperity for All
We've got to break out of the old ways of thinking about the economy.

Step one.) A People’s Bank
One area where this logic can be seen at work is in the financial industry. At the height of the financial crisis in early 2009, some kind of nationalization of the banks seemed possible. It was a moment, President Obama told banking CEOs, when his administration was “the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” The president opted for a soft bailout, but that was not the only possible decision.

Banking is ‘personal’ yet the capitalists have turned it into a ‘profit center’ (for themselves) by forcing the rest of us to pay outrageous prices for what we can’t do without.

How do you think a ‘People’s bank’ is going to solve this?

It won’t because it can’t. Nationalizing the banks wouldn’t make them any less predatory. They would still operate on the principle of borrow cheap and lend dear.

The ‘real alternative’ to predatory banking is to make banking an internal function of the payroll process. Your money ‘stays put’. They don’t lend it to anybody (they don’t need to.) We won’t stop the capitalist ‘crazy train’ until we put the brakes on the insane practice of money making money!

Then we get banks out of the ‘lending business’ because all of the things you needed to ‘borrow money’ for are…‘gimmes’!

If you step back and look at it good citizen, the whole borrowing process is nothing but an elaborate extortion scheme…but what would you expect from CRIMINALS?

Moving on:

Step Two.) Move to Universal Healthcare

That austerity and failing reform might open the way to "evolutionary reconstructive" institutional change is also suggested by emerging developments in healthcare.

Cost pressures are also building up—and, critically, in ways that will continue to undermine U.S. corporations facing global competitors, forcing them to seek new solutions. The federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that healthcare costs will go up from the 2010 level of 17.5 percent of GDP to 19.6 percent in 2019. It has long been clear that over the long-haul cost pressures are ultimately likely to force development of some form of single-payer system —the only serious way to deal with the underlying problem.

Again, under a ‘sane’ system, healthcare would be FREE, but that’s not what dummy is proposing here, is it?

How sad is it that Plato’s ‘unimaginative worldview’ persists to this day? (He couldn’t imagine a world without slaves.)

But anyway:

Step Three.) Build Community Wealth

“Social enterprises” that undertake businesses in order to support specific social missions now increasingly comprise what is sometimes called a "fourth sector” (different from the government, business and non-profit sectors). Roughly 4,500 not-for-profit community development corporations are largely devoted to housing development. There are now also more than 10,000 businesses owned in whole or part by their employees; nearly 3 million more individuals are involved in these enterprises than are members of private sector unions. Another 130 million Americans are members of various urban, agricultural and credit union cooperatives. In many cities, “land trusts” are underway using an institutional form of nonprofit or municipal ownership that develops and maintains low- and moderate-income housing.

I find myself speechless with the utter ‘blindness’ the above bullet point displays. We’re talking ‘whales and tic tacs’ here! All I have to say is see my initial ‘mantra’ and hold that up to this (capitalism saving) proposal!

Those ‘pretending’ to be Progressives are in fact Libertarians, free-market lovers to the end!

But I digress:

Step Four.) Leverage City Assets [!!]

Yet another arena of institutional growth involves municipal development. By maintaining direct ownership of areas surrounding transit station exits, public agencies in Washington, DC, Atlanta and elsewhere earn millions, capturing the increased land values their transit investments create. The town of Riverview, Michigan has been a national leader in trapping methane from its landfills and using it to fuel electricity generation, thereby providing both revenue and jobs. There are roughly 500 similar projects nationwide. Many cities have established municipally owned hotels. There are also nearly 2,000 publicly owned utilities that provide power (and often broadband) to more than 45 million Americans, generating $50 billion in annual revenue. Significant public institutions are also common at the state level. CalPERS, California’s public pension authority, helps finance local community development needs; in Alaska, state oil revenues provide each citizen with dividends as a matter of right; in Alabama, public pension investing has long focused on state economic development.

Rope-a-dope has the whole situation wrong! The only reason the capitalists ‘gave away’ free internet and in some cases free electricity was to boost the sale of hand helds!

There have been some mighty expensive ‘ruses’ perpetrated on the public to 'mask' the gutting of our economy and this dummy is just keeps falling into the traps left and right!

Next!

Step Five.) Organize for the Long Haul

You can think of the slow buildup of democratizing strategies as the pre-historical developmental work needed to clarify new principles for larger scale application. Just as in the decades before the New Deal, state and local experiments in the “laboratories of democracy” may suggest new larger scale approaches. The new direction has four aspects; democratization of wealth; community, both locally and in general; decentralization in general; and substantial but not complete forms of democratic planning. Let’s take a look at each of these.

Follow the link to the main article…

Politics is largely ‘media driven’. Control the media and politics cease to matter…but these Ivory Tower types don’t seem to get that, thus do you get the above stupidity!

And lastly…

Step Six.) Cut Corporate Power Down to Size [!!!]

To deal with economic issues, ecological challenges and local community stability, we must also come to terms with corporate power dynamics. Public corporations are subject to Wall Street’s first commandment: Grow or die!” You can’t just wish or regulate that idea away.

If I could only remember where I put that magic wand…

What is this guy smokin’?
You are right to be wary of people offering to ‘save the world’ with a few simple changes…those changes need to alter the path of humanity and not just perpetuate what’s broken.

To his 'credit' he channels my proposal regarding a shortening of the workday/week to reduce unemployment...but he only proposes 'half of the package'!

You CAN'T reduce the workweek (and resultant paycheck) without corresponding cuts in the worker's expense picture!

Employers have NO PROBLEM with what are currently 'part-time' workers. They don't want to deal with doubling the workforce for the same amount of output because it is 'no win'. (In most cases it would increase cost/decrease profit but capitalism is goofy like that!)

Ironically, we return to the age-old debate where on the surface it appears we have a ‘money problem’ when in reality we have a massive ‘legal’ one.

Until we can truly institute a ‘lawful government’ we will continue to be ‘mis-ruled’ by man…and the likes of unimaginative types such as this writer who thinks more of the same will fix things, somehow!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Useful

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we find ourselves on the cusp of that relic of the New Deal formerly referred to as ‘the weekend.’

We still call them weekends but the week no longer ‘ends’ for the vast majority of us. For the unemployed the weekend represents two bad days to prospect for a job despite the best chance of finding work being in the 24/7 service/retail sector…where it is impossible to get forty hours, never mind forty-one.

So, yeah, the unemployed usually suspend their search for work on Saturday and Sunday because they retain hope that their new job will provide them with those two days off.

Call it ‘tradition’ but we have the Sabbath built into our psyches. (The fact that one is Jew and the other Christian is of no consequence, we have ‘become accustomed’ to having those two days off.

Ironically, our brave new world seldom provides ‘days off’ period.

Some of us are expected to report to work seven days a week but only for a few hours a day (usually ‘peak time’.)

So you only work 28 hours but you have to go back & forth 14 times to get even that little bit!

And you don’t have a ‘day off’…

Now, if you only work four hours out of twenty-four you have most of every day off BUT, in the relentless world of retail, the only days off you get (for now) are Thanksgiving and Christmas.

How ironic is it that you (as a part-time employee) don’t get paid for either of them?

Isn’t capitalism great? (All capitalists think so!)

363 days a year you must wake up and make yourself presentable. Drive yourself to the work place to perform your duties (as assigned that day.) Stay on the job until you are granted permission to depart…(can’t just up and leave come quittin’ time in retail!) and all of this for a minimum wage job that has absolutely zero loyalty.

Screw up even once and you’ll be out the door so fast your head will spin.

But that’s the (broken) ‘make yourself useful’ meme of capitalism. People are ‘disposable’. (And if the people you have disposed of become ‘troublesome’ you have the police shoot them down.)

Sort of going off the rails here when it was my ‘original intent’ to point out that weekends are rapidly becoming ‘a thing of the past.’

And this phenomenon is not restricted to the ‘rabble’ doomed to work short hours for shorter money, people who are routinely dismissed with the threat, ‘be happy you have a job!’

That threat extends to the ‘rank and file’ workers in cubicle land as well. Now the pay is slightly better and the atmosphere (slightly) more ‘professional’ than retail but the threat remains the same…or perhaps it gets turned on its head when the boss asks ‘how many of you can speak Hindi?’

Which might explain inexplicable stories such as this one:

Morgan Stanley's $481 Million 4th-Quarter Profit Beats Estimates
By SUSANNE CRAIG 42 minutes ago

Morgan Stanley reported adjusted earnings of 45 cents a share on Friday, driven by gains in wealth management and investment banking.

On a planet with a broken financial system, how the, er, heck does any bank ‘earn’ 45 cents a share without committing fraud?

Banking is (irretrievably) broken good citizen. The imbalances in the global economy CAN NOT BE ‘corrected’ without a complete overhaul that starts with a ‘clean slate’ (across the board.)

So ‘fictions’ like the one above are exactly that.

Which leads us to our next, er, ‘questionable data’:

Economix Blog
Lifting the Veil on the Fed's 2007 Discussions
By DAVID LEONHARDT 27 minutes ago

The Federal Reserve has just released the transcripts of its meetings in the pivotal year of 2007, when the housing bubble started to burst and the global financial crisis began.

Now that they’ve had five years to ‘muddy the waters’ naturally this work of fiction will have gaping holes in it but it will be downplayed as a side effect of the ‘whole truth’ being ‘unknowable’.

Here is another episode of 'the story that refuses to die' despite the corporate owned media not even hinting that globalization is responsible:

Praised but Fire-Prone, Battery Fails Test in 787
By JAD MOUAWAD and CHRISTOPHER DREW

Lithium-ion batteries are popular because they are powerful and charge quickly, but Boeing has had serious problems with the technology on its new Dreamliner.

Powerful Chemical Cocktail, With a Drawback

And anyone who didn’t see the ‘design-flaw’ card coming needs a serious reality check.

Of course it was a design flaw…but why did the design flaw occur?

Was it because the system was designed in Bejing and built in Seattle? It goes without saying that there was ‘no need’ to test it because it is ‘proven technology’…in the end, stupid is as stupid does.

Yet again, this old dog doesn’t need new tricks, the old ones still work fine!

G.E. Profit and Revenues Top Estimates
By REUTERS 7:40 AM ET

General Electric reported a better-than-expected 7.5 percent rise in fourth quarter profit and a sharp increase in its backlog of equipment orders, sending shares up in premarket trading.

Funny how profitability is easy when you’re half manufacturer and three-quarters bank! If you don’t ‘turn a profit’ from sales you just have the banking arm ‘cook the books’!

Speaking of cooked books and their ‘unintended consequences’:

Shell’s rig was grounded after being set adrift in a storm.
As Shell’s Arctic Drilling Hopes Hit Snags, Its Rivals Watch
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JOHN M. BRODER

Shell’s drilling program, the subject of two federal inquiries, has had problems environmentalists say highlight the dangers of prospecting for oil in the severe Arctic environment.

Talk about your ‘common threads, for years environmentalist have been screaming about the dangers of arctic drilling BUT the ‘too stupid to listen’ crowd goes ahead and does it anyway!

Will they have the chutzpah to say they’re ‘sorry’ after they despoil the arctic chasing what little crude there is?

No, I doubt it, nor will anyone be executed for their ‘hubris’ as has happened here:

At Algerian Oil and Gas Fields Once Thought Safe, New Fears and Precautions
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Local oil executives said foreign oil service companies were in the process of quietly removing several hundred workers until they were confident that the security situation was stable.

Odd how the article implies there was some kind of intelligence indicating the security situation was less than ‘ideal’ but apparently that ‘memo’ was, um, ignored a few moments too long with hostages being taken and killed.

Well, we all know the capitalist credo, ‘profits before people!’ (Power to the shareowners! And oh how they hate the O word! Which is why I use it every chance I get!)

What O word is that, you ask?

The one they can’t defend, ‘Own.’

And for our last entry:

Chinese Economy Expanded at End of 2012, Data Shows
By BETTINA WASSENER

Though there was improvement, economic data also underlined the view that the pace of future growth is likely to remain well below that seen in recent years.

Geez good citizen, I was going to cut this and the story above it off but as it would turn out, they are the two most important stories in today’s offering.

Especially this last offering because it translates to the One Percent’s ‘acceptance’ that the economy as it exists today will constitute the ‘new normal’.

Unemployment will remain as it is as energy prices climb beyond the reach of marginalized citizen.

Which begs the more basic question of whether or not you are still a citizen if the capitalist can’t find a use for you?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Educate

Greetings good citizen,

How pathetic is it that many of the following headlines are either ‘spin’ or rely on accounting gimmicks for their veracity?

But the lead story belabors a point I have been making for decades:

The Education Revolution
Next Made-in-China Boom: College Graduates
By KEITH BRADSHER

China is making a huge investment in its universities, hoping to leverage its enormous population into 195 million college graduates by the end of the decade.

No irony should be lost that China has overtaken the US as the world’s premiere ‘economic superpower’ on the strength of its ‘blue-collar’ workforce.

Shifting back to our curiously missing OWS protestors, what does this (capitalist profiteering) mean to those who already got soaked big bucks, studying for jobs that will not appear anywhere near here?

I repeat, All economies are LOCAL and no amount of ‘koom-bye-ya’ can alter that!

Let me take it one step further and state unequivocally that it is ‘impossible’ to establish global capitalism as the world’s economic system because of its predatory nature. Resources must be ‘managed’ not ‘exploited’!

Global capitalism gives us stories like this one:

The 787 that made an emergency landing in Japan on Wednesday. All 137 passengers and crew members were evacuated safely.
Regulators Around the Globe Ground Boeing 787s
By CHRISTOPHER DREW, JAD MOUAWAD and MATTHEW L. WALD 51 minutes ago

The directives in Japan, Europe and India follow a Federal Aviation Administration ruling Wednesday that it was grounding the planes operated by U.S. carriers.

Design errors, easily corrected or the by-product of the decades long ‘global race to the bottom?’

This is what happens when you put psychopaths in charge of ‘shaking up’ your supply chain. All of the routine safeguards get thrown to the winds in an effort to ‘bull’ their way to a profit. (by bringing their part of the project in under deadline and under cost, thereby maximizing their ‘bonus’!
Seriously good citizen, these people have lost sight of the rationale behind the awarding of ‘bonuses’ (especially considering half the time management rewards itself for failure!)

And remember, THESE PEOPLE CONSIDER THEMSELVES OUR ‘BETTERS!’

They are ‘superior’ to us…at least in their own minds.

But hey, after Wells Fargo made money producing mortgages, we have the (alleged) ‘dummies’ foundering in the same pond…so who are you supposed to believe?

DealBook
Profit Drops 63% at Bank of America After Mortgage Settlements
By BEN PROTESS 6 minutes ago

The bank’s widely expected drop in fourth-quarter profit comes after it settled legal claims over its mortgage business. It earned 3 cents a share, narrowly beating estimates.

Um, talk about lunacy! Here they are, bleeding from the eye-sockets, settling billion dollar claims against them (for mortgage fraud.) Somehow they still ‘beat the estimates’…and Wall Street is giving them a spanking anyway!

Seriously good citizen, if this story isn’t complete and utter, I don’t know what is!

Somebody’s getting robbed and I have a bad feeling about who that somebody is…

In a related story:

DealBook
Facing Legal Costs, Citigroup Disappoints in 4th Quarter
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG 9:30 AM ET

As the bank works to clean up its mortgage mess, it reported fourth-quarter profit of $1.2 billion, or 38 cents a share, significantly below analysts’ estimates.

Did Vikram empty out the main vault as part of his ‘separation package?’ You know how these ‘Master of the Universe’ types operate…

“Sure, I’ll leave…just make sure my golden parachute has a platinum liner!”

Apparently this is something ‘the analysts’ aren’t privy too.

And yet more ‘disappointment’ from the global stage…

DealBook
Rio Tinto to Book $14 Billion Charge; C.E.O. Replaced
By JULIA WERDIGIER and NEIL GOUGH 8:27 AM ET

The mining giant blamed challenges in the aluminum business and at its coal unit in Mozambique for the write-down, and said Sam Walsh would succeed Tom Albanese as chief executive.

I may have dubbed the local rag as the Daily ‘cops behaving badly’ gazette but the business pages of the world’s media are dominated by the details of CEO’s behaving badly (and getting fooked for it…sometimes.)

Then we have this last ditty that lead me to my previous musing regarding the veracity of today’s reporting:

Economic Data Lift Stocks
By REUTERS 52 minutes ago

Wall Street opened higher after some cheery economic reports on unemployment and housing starts.

It’s been two years good citizen and no change as far as my unemployment status. I’m still twiddling my thumbs as are many of my over fifty peers.

Seems the girls of the over fifty club have joined us recently and if you think that’s a coincidence, tell it to Santa Claus!

Part of what I do here is shine a light on the stories the corporate owned media ‘neglects’ and the other part is providing some much needed ‘food for thought’ that should be fueling public debate.

The corporate owned media is paid to ‘pretend’ that things couldn’t be better, our problems are largely in our heads…and they’d be correct about that because it is their fault our head isn’t pointed in the correct direction!

But that’s an issue for another day,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Only in America!

Greetings good citizen,

In yet another jaw dropping example of capitalism at its finest we have a citizen using his garden hose as a flame-thrower after a nearby fracking operation contaminated his water well.

Which is not nearly as disturbing as what the EPA did when confronted with this, er, ‘intelligence’.

I cannot stress enough that the loss of control over our justice system indicates the loss of control over our society itself, and the extent to which treason has permeated the public realm.

(The people elected to serve us are NOT serving the public but those who funded their election, the One Percent…and that is ‘treason’…which has a long standing punishment.)

Again I ask what is it going to take before you reject this greedy grasping and punish the criminals who have impoverished the rest of us for so long?

How long must we suffer before you are willing to act?

The case isn't the first in which the EPA initially linked a hydraulic fracturing operation to water contamination and then softened its position after the industry protested. A similar dispute unfolded in west-central Wyoming in late 2011, when the EPA released an initial report that showed hydraulic fracturing could have contaminated groundwater. After industry and GOP leaders went on the attack, the agency said it had decided to do more testing. It has yet to announce a final conclusion.

Hydraulic fracturing — often called "fracking" — allows drillers to tap into oil and gas reserves that were once considered out of reach because they were locked in deep layers of rock. The method has contributed to a surge in natural gas drilling nationwide, but environmental activists and some scientists believe it can contaminate groundwater. The industry insists the practice is safe.

Range Resources, a leading independent player in the natural gas boom, has hundreds of gas wells throughout Texas, Pennsylvania and other mineral-rich areas of the United States. Among them is a production site — now owned by Legend Natural Gas — in a wooded area about a mile from Lipsky's home in Weatherford, about a half-hour drive west of Fort Worth.

Geez, what a surprise, the EPA backed off once the conservo-loonies got into the act!

Color me shocked…(yawn.) Welcome to midnight in America, and they say the darkest hour is just before dawn…so you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Understand good citizen it is precisely this practice (of contaminating groundwater) that is projected to put the US back on top of the energy exporting world…because we won’t be using it here! (Or at least that’s the plan.)

Which is the ‘sidebar’ to the bizarre predictions of the worlds first country to tap out its energy reserves will suddenly ‘resume’ its role as the world’s biggest energy exporter.

What does that tell you about the rest of the world?

It should be teaching you a boatload about the ‘funniness of money’. You won’t have enough to of it to buy energy but others will (cuz they is keepin’ massa’s factories running!)

Does ANYBODY see the ‘end game’ here?

How about a little taste of today’s business headlines?

Wednesday, January 16, 2013 Last Update: 10:30 AM ET

Deepening Crisis for the Dreamliner
By HIROKO TABUCHI and BETTINA WASSENER 6:41 AM ET

The two largest Japanese airlines said they would ground their Boeing 787 aircraft after a string of problems was capped by an emergency landing in western Japan.

Yet more proof of the stunning failure caused by globalization mixed with a generous portion of unbridled greed!

And speaking of unbridled greed:

DealBook
JPMorgan Cuts Dimon’s Pay, Even as Profit Surges
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG 37 minutes ago

JPMorgan Chase touted a strong quarter, but still chose to sharply cut the pay of the chief executive, Jamie Dimon, in light of a multibillion-dollar trading loss last year.

DealBook: JPMorgan Report on Trading Loss Takes Aim at Top Executives 50 minutes ago

Funny how we start off with corruption in government and it leads us straight to the now defunct engine of the US economy:

DealBook
Goldman Sachs Earnings Soar
By SUSANNE CRAIG 49 minutes ago

Goldman Sachs reported a fourth-quarter profit of $2.89 billion, or $5.60 a share, beating analysts’ estimates.

DealBook: Goldman Profit Blows Through Expectations 8:56 AM ET
Stocks Pull Back Despite Bank Earnings 53 minutes ago

Does anyone else find it curious how the customerless banking sector manages to make record profits as the global economy founders helplessly?

Share prices keep rising but for no discernable reason…is it theft, fraud or both?

Which leads us to the next article:

Walmart Plans to Buy American More Often
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

The retailer’s 10-year commitment, totaling $50 billion, comes as it is under pressure over its overseas sourcing following a deadly fire in November in Bangladesh.

So a little ‘bad press’ and Walmart is suddenly humble and contrite are they?

Somehow I don’t think it would be that easy, just like the idiots who believe peaceful protests are the solution.

If we don’t start burning things down, nothing is going to change (and if we don’t burn most of it down what does change will be all bad!

American Airlines Reports a Profit
By JAD MOUAWAD 55 minutes ago

Lower costs helped the airline, which is operating under bankruptcy court protection, post a profit, compared with a loss a year ago.

And how did AA post a profit? They did it the ‘old fashioned way’ they wrung the savings out of their employees!

Lastly we have this story that begs the question of who thought it was a good idea to rescue these idiots in the first place (sadly, it was Hank Paulson and his successor Lloyd Blankfein!)

A.I.G. Seeks Approval to File More Bank Suits
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

A.I.G. must win a court fight with an entity run by the New York Fed, which the insurer says is blocking its efforts to go after banks that harmed it financially.

Only in America, good citizen could you read such a litany of woe and not think the bottom was going to fall out tomorrow due to public outrage…and believe you-me, the public is plenty outraged…they just can’t narrow it down to who…yet.

But fear not! The corporate owned media will offer up a scapegoat quicker than you can say debt ceiling! (Another grossly mis-reported story of politicians playing the public for chumps with the ‘assistance’ of the bought and paid for media.

But I have kept you beyond your time, good citizen and for that I apologize.

Try and remember when ‘Only in America’ was a good thing…(despite it being a lie then too.)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Unintended Consequences

Greetings good citizen,

While I am not particularly a strong supporter of the NRA I do support what they stand for, a part of the human social contract that predates civilization itself.

Why is nobody ‘defending’ the right of the individual to defend themselves? (Probably because of our long, er, ‘tradition’ of enslaving the weak…but that position doesn’t play well in the press.)

So how do you think the public will react to this news?

New York Has Gun Deal, With Focus on Mental Ills
By THOMAS KAPLAN and DANNY HAKIM

The state Senate on Monday passed a plan that expands a ban on assault weapons and includes measures focused on the mentally ill. The Assembly planned to vote Tuesday on the bill.

Newtown Families Look Beyond Gun Control

As we have observed from our perch in larger society, the mentally disturbed don’t wear signs proclaiming their ‘abnormality’. Worse, more than a few are CEO’s and hold positions of respect and power.

How do you say ‘no’ to a screwball like that?

Short answer, you don’t.

There is already legislation on the books prohibiting the certifiable from ‘legally' owning firearms, so what good does passing 'stronger legislation' do…beyond providing the fig leaf of ‘taking a stand’?

We may as well outlaw evil! (How sad is it that our legal system isn’t up to the task of ‘defining’ evil, much less legislating against it!)

So how, er, ‘serious’ do you think this is?

Obama Willing to Use Executive Orders on Guns
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and JENNIFER STEINHAUER

President Obama is expected to signal his intention to engage in the biggest Congressional fight over guns in nearly two decades.

‘Executive orders’! Seriously good citizen, did we just elect ourselves a ‘dictator’ (A la W?)

How ‘tenuous’ our grip on ‘democracy’ reveals that it has been a ‘for show’ arrangement from the beginning. Our betters couldn’t risk even experimental self rule because the 'riff-raff' (a.k.a. you & me) doesn’t know what’s good for them!

Like these jerks have a handle on that, take a good look at the world today and assure me it is in ‘good hands’.

Naturally we fall back on the problem with denying the mentally ill access to firearms, who decides who is or isn’t ‘mentally ill’?

Remember my post of a few days ago, where I re-named the local rag as the Daily Cops Behaving Badly’ gazette?

Well, guess who gets to decide who does or does not get a firearms permit?

Political appointees!

And if you’re not of the same ‘political persuasion’, your chances drop exponentially.

But I digress, let us return to the issue that smacks rather loudly of ‘martial law’.

We lost habeas corpus via ‘executive order’ (and haven’t regained it…) What do you suppose is going to happen if El Presidente is ordered by the One Percent to disarm ‘the rabble’?

Can you say automatic civil war?

As I comment in the preamble, the right to protect yourself predates civilization. Anyone who would deny you that right deserves death! (On the basis that they want to enslave you by rendering you defenseless!)

As many right to arms advocates say, they can have my gun any time they want it…bullets first.

(Which led to the counter expression of they can have my gun by prying it from my cold dead fingers.)

Left to our imagination here good citizen is what living in a nation without habeas corpus and the right to bear arms would be like?

You would no longer have to wonder about the ‘despair’ felt by someone living in a third world dictatorship experiences, it would become your daily reality!

They have already stripped you of your legal right to protest unjust imprisonment, removing your right to defend yourself would strip you of your ONLY defense against unjust seizure.

Wouldn’t ‘society’ protect you?

Think about that one and try not to laugh. If you aren’t a card carrying member of the One Percent it is vanity to think your presence would even be missed much less noticed outside your immediate family.

Yeah, we need to tread very carefully indeed, considering what history has shown us how ‘unarmed civilians’ have been treated, and we’re not even talking the distant past…

Should I disappear good citizen, look for me underneath a pile of corpses, cuz I ain’t going ‘quietly!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Occupy Who?

Greetings good citizen,

Monday again and the ‘nonsense markets’ are up to their usual shenanigans, mostly reflecting the ‘will’ of the One Percent.

But that isn’t the headline that caught my eye. In fact it was the opposite question that popped into my head when I saw this story in today’s AlterNet newsletter

Is the Tea Party Over?
The answer all depends on what you mean by "Tea Party."
January 12, 2013 |

Photo Credit: A.M. Stan

There's a new parlor game in your nation's capital, played by reporters and pundits who begin with a single question: Is the Tea Party dead? Endlessly entertaining to ponder, it's a question whose answer depends on your definition of the Tea Party movement.

Are you talking about the 900 grassroots Tea Party groups in 2010 whose numbers have now dwindled to 600? Or the popularity of the movement among most Americans?

Or do you measure the "Tea Party" as a marketing plan by the right wing in its 50-year quest to bend the Republican Party to its will and bring the nation to its knees?

The opening question, as C.K. Michaelson is fond of phrasing it, is ‘asked and answered’.

The Tea Party has been around for years and isn’t going anywhere. Conspicuous by its absence (and thus the title of today’s offering) is ‘Occupy Who?’

What happened to that ‘loose confederation’ of ‘concerned students’ who peered into the future and saw stuff that would have made even Orwell balk?

Did they scare themselves into submission or did those magical acronyms do the trick?

(I’ll never get a job teaching with a FBI record hanging over my head!)

Thus did the ever so tenuous ‘movement’ to protest the rule of the oligarchs ‘vanish’ in pretty much the same way it coalesced.

Which is not to say the OWS ‘participants’ have, er, ‘abandoned’ the cause, they haven’t.

What they were looking for then and what they are looking for still are ‘answers’.

The trouble with being young and knowing all the answers (as they were spoon fed to you) is you begin to realize how little you actually ‘know’ with any degree of certainty.

Everything you have been taught has six inches of ‘whitewash’ covering it, whether it needed it or not! It’s done for ‘consistency’…so it all ‘blends’.

As I age I am seeing this ‘goo’ being applied to days of my youth and the national tragedy that was Vietnam.

The misguided vendetta against already wobbly ‘communism’ was really just a ‘trial run’ for the GWOT!

If we get kids young enough, will they ‘kill on command’?

And the answer turned out to be yes.

Well, good citizen, what do you suppose ‘the answer’ to that one is?

You’re correct again, I don’t ‘know’ either BUT I’m pretty sure throwing EVERYBODY in the INTELLIGENCE community in the big house would provide a clear starting point to correct 50 years of military ‘adventurism’.

I know I am not alone in ‘theorizing’ that something went radically wrong after WWII and the introduction of the ‘nuclear age’.

Just how far would/did ‘our betters’ go towards insuring that nuclear technology didn’t fall into the hands of ‘the rabble’? [Iran anyone?]

Aren’t those the ‘battle lines’ we are seeing today? Did the ever-paranoid capitalists see their doom written in a mushroom cloud wielded by those they have oppressed?

Worse, the ‘hate’ doesn’t stop there. There are those among us who ‘believe’ the human race isn’t worthy of the (totally fictional) ‘kingdom of heaven’, and would see us all ‘eradicated’ so that nasty Jesus wouldn’t be able to ‘save’ us (allegedly) again.

Which is to opine that there are some mighty unbalanced individuals out there. (Start with ANYONE who claims to speak for ‘spirit in the sky’…then proceed to the entire crowd born with the proverbial ‘silver spoon’ stuck in just about any orifice!)

But I digress, somewhat anyway.

Where is OWS and more importantly, where are its ‘children’?

The Tea Partiers have been with us for long time under different guises, soon they will abandon their tri-corner hats and start pretending it wasn’t them at all! (In typical conservo-looney fashion!)

I, perhaps unkindly, predicted the demise of OWS when it became obvious they were as ‘rudderless’ as the alleged 99% appear to be.

They ‘identified’ the enemy easily enough…and then they sat there and did nothing. And when the cops came they fled.

Somehow I don’t think that will be the case next time but I’m just ‘thinking out loud’ here.

When the ‘second leg’ of the downturn hits and the people take to the streets, chances are good the One Percent will be A.) long gone and B.) quick to ‘appease’ the protesters with mock trials for low level offenders…

But seriously good citizen, justice, five years delayed, will not repair the economy or our badly broken society.

While the Libertarian leaning ‘progressives’ speculate on the fate of the Tea Party, the rest of us can continue forgetting the movement that wasn’t…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Uncertainty

Greetings good citizen,

As we slog forward into an uncertain future those who would drive our civilization over a cliff to mask their crimes against humanity care not what happens after that.

My advice, as always, is to prepare. (And NOT like the idiots on ‘doomsday preppers’ who obviously have a screw loose…besides being decidedly homicidal! If you need further convincing that the world after the collapse is going to be uncommonly hazardous, watch the show!) Hint: it’s the trigger happy preppers you have to watch out for! Stumble upon their ‘hide’ and they will open fire first and ask questions afterwards!

In a flicker of insight on an otherwise direction-less horizon we have this article that belabors the obvious in a couple of directions…

Our Economic Pickle
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

The debt-ceiling debate is unlikely to alter one major factor contributing to income inequality: stagnant wages.

Now that it is ‘on the table’, who (and how) will the issue of ‘stagnant wages’ be addressed?

‘Employers’ have no problems raising their prices in pace with inflation (driving inflation ever upwards) but are ‘strangely reluctant’ to raise their ‘employee/customers’ purchasing power.

The ‘strategy’ could be called ‘out-waiting the competition’, the longer they wait to raise their employees pay, the more they keep for themselves.

Ultimately, your NOT being paid a living wage is being driven by the ‘owners desire’ to wax rich (at, ultimately, ALL of our expense.)

It’s lower prices we don’t pay and fair wages you don’t get, because the idiots who sign your paycheck follow their mother’s advice and PAY THEMSELVES FIRST!

Funny how this advice isn’t so sound when you put it into this context, is it? It creates a ‘penny-wise and pound-foolish’ situation that is crumbling all around us as we sit here contemplating how we got ourselves into such a, as the article calls it, ‘Pickle’?

We will see in the article after this next one who WON’T be working to save us from employer greed

But the other article first:

News Analysis
The Low Politics of Low Growth
By ANNIE LOWREY

What if it is the weak economy that is driving the fiscal failures in Washington?

How odd is it that the question answers itself? (But this can be attributed to the ‘muzzle’ the ‘write for hire’ crowd is forced to wear.)

I find it astounding that our, and let’s face it, none of them has a grip on reality, ‘politicians’ continue to flog the concept of ‘perpetual growth’ as the key to future prosperity.

How can you ‘grow’ when there has been NOTHING ‘new’ since Pong? Every other technological marvel is merely the ‘fleshing out’ of potential that was already there.

So ‘exporting jobs’ (to make it more profitable for the ‘owner’) also doesn’t encourage (local) economic growth. It really only serves to make the owner richer than he/she deserves to be.

But are our politicians focused on their ‘primary job’ of managing our civilization for the benefit of our species?

Let’s have a look:

TOP NEWS
Obama Will Seek Citizenship Path in One Fast Push
By JULIA PRESTON

President Obama and lawmakers from the two parties believe that their best chances for passing substantial legislation on immigration will come early in his second term.

Like healthcare, NOBODY is looking for a ‘solution’ to an already over-populated, far too competitive job market!

It’s been opined that this (European satellite) was built by ‘immigrants’. (It was even somewhat true when most of the immigrants hailed from Europe…)

Not that providing EMPLOYERS with a ‘cheaper labor pool’ to exploit is ever a justification to ‘streamline’ the immigration process, especially when you get a load of how they intend to go about it.

You’ll get your ‘citizenship’ all right but first you’ll have to do your military service. You will be sent to foreign lands, meet new, interesting people and kill them.

What used to be scabs to keep the factories humming (cheaply) will become fodder for the endless wars the capitalists wage, merely to keep the population (and by extension, the unemployment rate down.)

There won’t be any ‘resource wars’. Resources are all sold openly on the (alleged) ‘free markets’ so what’s to ‘fight’ over?

Even the current conflict in the Middle East is over a police problem that should have been handled ‘internally’ by local law enforcement.

BUT NO! Our (block-headed) government had to use military force instead of foreign aid and providing foreign governments the tools to handle the problems itself.

Worse, our (rogue) government supports criminal regimes like the Israelis who openly subjugate the former inhabitants of the nation they now ‘occupy’ and use military force to maintain the upper hand, in open defiance of international law…not that ‘respect for the law’ is real strong here either.

But that’s another issue altogether as the ‘over fifty crowd' prepares to fight for its survival!

BUSINESS
Over 50, and Under No Illusions
By CAITLIN KELLY

Many people aged 55 to 64, who had been dreaming of easy retirement, have had to remake their lives to find work during the recession and its aftermath.

As many of us close in on the ‘finish line’ of our professional careers (most of them in tatters…the careers and our humble selves.) We are encountering the above mentioned ‘lawlessness’ that offers us no recourse to what is likely to turn into a very deadly confrontation.

While we have long lamented the ‘rudderless’ condition of our crumbling society, this was no accident. It didn’t ‘wear out’, it was snapped off by those who could (through manipulation) afford to ‘buy’ the justice system…(something many will pay dearly for because so many already have!)

Note how the capitalist credo is parroted here in the headline. How the ‘over fifty crowd’ are (unsuccessfully) ‘making themselves useful’ as they ‘sprint’ (more like limp/drag) themselves toward a finish line that (mysteriously) keeps backing away! (So a wretched few can be rich…)

Yes, good citizen, we’re all going to be each other’s ‘financial advisors’ and manage each other’s money and sell each other houses neither of us can afford.

With those ‘encouraging words’ I thank you for letting me inside your head,

Gegner