Zombies

Greetings good citizen,

Still ‘disoriented’ by this ‘backwards schedule’ (I’m up but I haven’t had breakfast yet because coffee will keep me awake and I need to go back to bed later!)

The posts are fewer but the message remains the same, the destruction of our civilization proceeds apace.

When it finally does collapse it will be swift and (insanely enough) unstoppable…mostly due to massive stupidity…but it is really just widespread ignorance.

Talk about your ‘dangerous games’, there will be no ‘recovery’ from the downward spiral our self-professed ‘betters’ have put us in until ‘justice’ has been served/restored.

And that is the one thing the guilty have no interest in…but they need to be tracked down and eradicated all the same.

Or they will serve as an example to a new generation of thieves, just as the ‘robber barons’ of old are the ‘heroes’ of today’s plunderers.

(You see, our grandparents thought they could ‘tax’ the robbers into compliance when letting them live [while keeping their plunder] was the original mistake.)

[And] justice won’t be restored until the link between prospering personally is severed from the exploitation of what we all need to live. (Forcefully creating a huge ‘underclass’.)

But I digress, let’s have a quick peek at today’s headlines:

Sponsors Now Pay for Online Articles, Not Just Ads
By TANZINA VEGA
The strategy of advertisers sponsoring or producing content that looks much like traditional editorial content has become increasingly common as publishers try to create more sources of revenue.

Who needs ‘truth’ when you can pay to have your, er, ‘point of view’ published as the ‘truth’?

How ‘Orwellian’ (and I’m thinking Orson and not George) when we see this kind of ‘abuse’ of the system we rely upon for our information.

War of the Worlds (the radio broadcast) was an ‘example’ of the power of the media. People believe what they see or read in the media because it is our ‘trusted source’ for news.

They aren’t obliged to advise you that 99% of what they publish as fact is actually the opinion of the paper’s management/revenue department.

So, as you now know (kinda) you should only believe half of what you see and even less of what you hear (because most of it is BS.)

More disturbing was an article on one of the ‘top rated’ TV shows on cable…The Walking Dead.

Besides ‘outperforming’ almost every other major broadcast in its Sunday night time slot, the scientifically improbable event is also used as an allegory for our current political climate…if not our society’s entire political philosophy!

[Leading to my earlier comment regarding the ‘ocean of stupidity’ our civilization is being drown in…thanks to the same ‘profit driven’ media.]

Moving on we have this ‘obvious outcome’ making headlines once again:

Greek Banks Suspend Merger Talks
By NIKI KITSANTONIS 9:45 AM ET
National Bank of Greece and Eurobank said they could not raise the necessary capital under the terms of Greece’s agreement with foreign lenders.

Remember when we actually worried and fretted over how we would ‘pay’ for things?

This is that ‘revisited’. How unfortunate is it, good citizen, that the scoundrels who (and remain at large) bankrupted the global banking system (with impunity) have proven what we all only suspected, that all ‘money is ‘funny’, essentially meaningless.

Why else would Geithner’s replacement be taking this position (given the US’s new found role as being ‘on top’ of the world’s remaining fossil fuel reserves?)

U.S. Treasury Chief Talks of Growth in Europe
By ANNIE LOWREY 11:53 AM ET
On his first trip to Europe as Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew met with European officials to discuss protecting the global recovery.

Difficult for me, after two years of being unemployed, to dismiss the nascent ‘recovery’…BUT, I returned to work by virtue of a skill that has all but disappeared from these shores, manufacturing.

I’m now in the position of being one of the few that knows how to do this stuff.

So my ‘good fortune’ isn’t due to a tide that is lifting all boats. I caught a lucky niche, bully for me!

Not so good for everyone else I’m afraid.

In our final snippet, let us examine yet another inescapable fact of the ground that is rushing up to meet us…

DEALBOOK
G.E. to Buy Lufkin Industries for $3.3 Billion
By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED 12:27 PM ET
The deal is the latest by G.E.’s oil and natural gas unit, one of the fastest-growing parts of the conglomerate.

So Mr. Dillenger, why DO you rob banks?

And he quipped, “Because that’s where the money is!”

Now how many of you are agree with Mr. Dillenger?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Morning in America

Greetings good citizen,

Still not up to regular posting but I thought you shouldn’t miss this excellent post by the incomparable Digby.

As many are noting of late, ‘the Reagan Revolution’ serves as a historical benchmark in the, er, ‘hi-jacking’ of the US government and its subsequent criminal takeover.

The ‘run it into the ground’ policy of the criminals (who disguised themselves as conservatives) becomes evident when we examine what they fondly refer to as “Morning in America.”

Tens of millions of US jobs flowed out of the country while imports flowed freely to hide the drop in GDP.

Our entire economy for the past 35 years has been an exercise in ‘creative accounting' (that has resulted in global bankruptcy.)

Which will soon manifest itself in the collapse of the global supply chain.

Sorry if I seem to be ‘cutting to the chase’ but my powers of concentration are greatly diminished by this disorienting shift change.

Shorter posts will likely be the rule until the situation stabilizes…or should I say ‘if the situation stabilizes.’

Time is running out.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

For Dummies

Greetings good citizen,

This night shift thing is kicking the crap out of me and posting is suffering. Again I apologize for slacking but at the end of the day health comes first (and I’ve gotta sleep!)

Anyway, one of the seldom touched upon topics…I don’t point to it often because if YOU visit THIS site (regularly and habitually) it doesn’t apply to YOU.

What doesn’t apply to you? The fact that a shockingly large percent of the adult population is STUPID.

Not just here in that ‘Awesome bastion of freedom and liberty, the good ol’ USA but around the globe, the hopelessly gullible are the rule rather than the exception.

As This article from Alternet points out:

In sum and all averaged out, it’s safe to say about 37 percent of Americans are just are not very bright. Or rather, quite shockingly dumb. Perhaps beyond reach. Perhaps beyond hope or redemption. Perhaps beyond caring about anything they have to say in the public sphere ever again. Sorry, Kansas.

Did you frown at that last paragraph? Was it a terribly elitist and unkind thing to say? Sort of. Probably. But I’m not sure it matters, because none of those people are reading this column right now, or any column for that matter, because reading anything even remotely complex or analytical is something only 42 percent of the population enjoy doing on a regular basis, which is why most TV shows, all reality shows, many major media blogs and all of Fox News is scripted for a 5th-grade education/attention span.

OMG LOL kittens! 19 babies having a worse day than you. WTF is up with Justin Timberlake’s hair?!?

It is this bizarre, circular, catch-22 kind of question, asked almost exclusively by intellectual liberals because intellectual conservatives don’t actually exist, given how higher education leads to more developed critical thinking (you already know the vast majority of university professors and scientists identify as Democrat/progressive, right?) which leads straight to a more nimble, open-minded perspective. In short: The smarter you are, the less rigid/more liberal you become.

And if you aren’t a meat puppet of the bloviating right wing noise machine, you already knew this…which is why you’re here, reading my blog.

The typical conservative can’t get through two paragraphs here without their heads exploding.
Seriously.

If we were to seek out this massive cognitive dissonance we’d need look no further than the invisible economic recovery that only exists in the corporate owned media.

We usually assume that economically distressed areas exist only in inner-city slums or rural backwaters. But areas plagued by persistent high unemployment almost never fit into conventional categories. Distressed areas share characteristics that make them unlikely to recover if the remedies offered rely only on the standard approaches to boosting the economy.

In distressed areas , government aid provides nearly one-third of residents’ incomes, compared to 17 percent nationwide. Upwards of 40 percent of the population in these areas lives on $30,000 a year or less, and the workforces there have low educational-achievement rates, with more than half possessing just a high-school degree or less. Most jobs are in low-end service industries, especially prisons, casinos, nursing homes, and retail. Such jobs offer few chances for upward mobility or skill enhancement.

For instance, unemployment in Yakima, Washington, has averaged 4 percentage points above the national average over the past 20 years—57 percent of its adult residents have only a high school degree or less. Similarly, in Rockford, Illinois, where the average unemployment rate has been 2.4 percentage points above the national standard for over 10 years, 53 percent of the population has no education past high school. To take one more example, a staggering 62 percent of the population in Danville, Virginia, has only a high school degree or less, and its unemployment rate has hovered 2.1 percentage points above the national average over the past five-plus years. In the country as a whole, by comparison, 43.3 percent of the adult population has no post-secondary education; in some thriving areas, the figure is much lower—for instance, Cambridge, MA (22.7 percent) and Seattle, WA (25.8 percent).

Oddly today’s headlines were crowing about a ‘building boom’ that has taken contractors ‘by surprise’.

This is (once again) a total ‘mis-reading’ of the housing situation. The few who can afford it want to buy ‘new’ houses, which has absolutely nothing to do with economic recovery and everything to do with economic outliers!

Time presses good citizen so I have to wrap this up, as disjointed as it may read.

I promise to do better come the weekend (although I have another ‘mandatory Saturday’ this week so my weekend is (virtually) non-existent.

I (once again) laud my readers mental alacrity and ability to read between the lines…if you couldn’t do that you wouldn’t be here (nor would you keep returning.)
Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The Rub

Greetings good citizen,
The, er, ‘stress’ of acclimating myself to a reversed schedule has rendered me more ‘incoherent’ than usual.

Doesn’t help that my perspective is contrary to the BS you’ve had hammered into your head since childbirth. [A phenomenon I find extremely curious because once it is confirmed, you should see it for the ‘self-serving tripe’ that it is without my coaching.]

For those of you not so quick on the uptake I will be more specific, I’m talking about that illusion that increasingly makes less and less sense, money.

I was reading an article online the other night where this professional ‘money manager’ was telling his readers that he charges his kids ‘rent’ (forcing them to ‘save’) so they will learn about the ‘value’ of money.

Understand dipstick’s ‘lesson’ is centered on the no longer viable idea that money pays interest (although that wasn’t the ‘example’ he used, he was using his ‘savings’ to buy stocks!)

So he equated spending money with ‘firing’ his personal money making ‘robots’ (what he referred to them as.)

He went on to claim that he had ‘earned’ $3,000 in annual ‘dividends’ from his holdings.

Do you know how few stocks pay dividends or that companies are under no ‘obligation’ to pay a dividend AT ALL? (Even if they’re crazy profitable.)

Well if you didn’t you weren’t about to be ‘educated’ by this idiot’s article!

Which is to reflect just how ‘unreliable’ professional monetary advice can be.

Worse, the most prominent ‘risk’ when it comes to investing is listening to advisors peddling their own self-interest!

Naturally, you’d expect ‘financial advisors’ to focus on the traditional ‘backbone’ of investment, that of ‘savings’. These days ‘ordinary’ savings vehicles don’t pay spit, which is why chucklehead is ‘speculating’ in the market WITHOUT telling you…although he does ‘volunteer’ what stocks HE invested in (hoping YOU will be STUPID enough to buy them!)

Now, back to reality. Markets around the globe are bleeding from the eyesockets today (which has nothing to do with nothing. Wall Street is so far divorced from Main Street as to be on a different planet, as disturbing as that realization and what it implies means to the average citizen.)


Which leads us to this headline:

To Reassure Investors, Fed Stresses It Will Not End Stimulus
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
Concerns about the effects of the Federal Reserve’s stimulus policy can dilute the policy’s impact by causing investors to doubt that rates will remain low.

What do you suppose the Fed is going to do when people realize the Fed is inflating away their purchasing power?

Can you say Banana Republic?

How are our two stories ‘related’?

Note the extremely poor ‘quality’ of what passes for ‘investment advice’ these days and how shamelessly the pundit uses his (probably already grown and gone) ‘kids’ as a ‘teaching tool’?

How bizarre is it good citizen that this is a perfect example of ‘what you don’t know’ causing insurmountable harm?

Once again your (deliberate) ‘ignorance’ only aids the grifters the government has failed to protect you from.

Not that ‘government the concept’ failed, it was (of course) the humans running it that have failed.

We’re back to ‘weakest links’…as you well know.

How can ‘The Bernank’ maintain this false façade?

Let us return to lesson one shall we?

ALL MONEY IS FUNNY!

I don’t mean just paper or coins, I mean ALL of it!

How ‘astonished’ would you be if I told you our financial system is based on Unicorns?

You’d probably think I was kidding but think about it.

You’ve seen money but you’ve never seen a unicorn so how can this be?

The whole concept of ‘debt’ is imaginary; that’s the first thing you need to wrap your head around!
The next step is really simple…there is absolutely zero difference between debt and unicorns…so there you are!

Even more disturbing is how prevalent the belief in Unicorns (debt) is.

Do you honestly believe Ben Bernanke has an endless supply of dollars at his disposal? (Especially after his masters have hollowed out the US economy?)

Of course you don’t!

But it works today because the price of disbelief is too stiff.

And there’s the rub!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

What?

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we have the corporate owned media using trivia to distract us from the real issues at hand.

JPMorgan Ignored Warnings in Loss, Inquiry Finds
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and BEN PROTESS 49 minutes ago

JPMorgan Chase ignored risk controls and withheld information from regulators during big trading losses last year, a Senate inquiry found.

A Senate panel report says that Jamie Dimon, chief of JPMorgan Chase, withheld details about the bank's daily losses.

Then our ‘guardians of society’ double up the information, attempting to confuse the matter even worse than it already is.

How inconvenient the very next article points to the real issue?

Pearl Brady of Brooklyn worries that it will be years before she will be able to put money away.
Younger Generations Lag Parents in Wealth-Building
By ANNIE LOWREY 49 minutes ago

A study finds that younger working adults are not doing better financially than the previous generation.

With ‘wealth management experts' opining we need to set aside at least a half a million dollars to retire ‘safely’ and with most workers earning less than 25 to 30 thousand dollars annually, the only way the majority can retire ‘comfortably’ is magic.

They’d fall short of the mark even if they saved every penny they ever earned!

In order to be a low wage drone for corporate USA, retirement must be an impossibility. (Not that this is news to the people being compared in this article.)

We have been saying all along we’d have to work ‘til we drop’ (IF we were lucky enough to find work after being ‘churned’ into pauper-dom!)

But the 4th Estate knows thinks YOU are STUPID.

How pathetic is it good citizen that a majority of the corporate owned media’s Blarney is insulting to the average person’s intelligence?

If we back up to our first post we have to scratch our heads and wonder what anyone is supposed to make of the banking sectors alleged ignorance.
Which is to point to what ‘everybody knows’. The crash of the financial system was deliberate and these clowns drove it off a cliff KNOWING the taxpayer was going to ‘bail them out’!

So what’s this nonsense about the banks ‘ignoring warnings’?

We’re talking the biggest heist of all time here!

It sure takes a lot of chutzpah to pretend (never mind actually assert) that they had no idea this whole situation was going to end in bankruptcy.

Sort of like this next headline…where once again we are played for ignorant chumps powerless to stop what’s going to happen next:

The drilling rig Kulluk was grounded in January 40 miles southwest of Kodiak City, Alaska.
Interior Dept. Warns Shell on Arctic Drilling
By JOHN BRODER 8:32 PM ET

The government wants a detailed plan on how the company plans to address safety issues before allowing it to resume exploration.

A REAL government would never have permitted this nonsense in the first place but we all know the political lapdogs are ‘going through the motions’ of pretending to protecting the public while they allow private enterprise to doom our civilization.

We don’t need MORE fossil fuels, we need to use what little there is left much more judiciously.

But the >One Percent doesn’t do privation well (if at all.) Isn’t it bad enough they have to ‘put up with’ the rest of us using THEIR stuff?

Speaking of which:

DealBook
Fed Rebukes Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase Over Capital Plans
By PETER EAVIS

The Federal Reserve cited “weaknesses” in capital plans of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, while Citigroup and Bank of America got a green light.

Doesn’t God ‘rebuke’ people? The rest of us get called on our baloney. How sad is it that the other two thieves got away with their ‘plans’?

We’re back to the ‘appearance of propriety’ as opposed to actual legal oversight.
If YOU were this incompetent you’d be on the outside looking in already!

BUT if this clowns did what they were elected to do they’d be ‘pushing up Daisy’s’ in a remote field somewhere.

You are right to fear a government that has suspended both your right to a fair trial along with any prohibition against executing you out of hand but you SHOULD fear the MEN who made this possible even more!

But I digress, what do you suppose the deal is with this story?

The Galaxy S IV.
Samsung Introduces New Galaxy Phone
By BRIAN X. CHEN and NICK WINGFIELD 7:31 PM ET

Increasing the stakes in the smartphone battle, the South Korean manufacturer showed off the Galaxy S IV, the latest version of its flagship device.

comment iconPost a Comment | Read (1)

Since this is YESTERDAY’S Business section you won’t be able to ‘backtrack’ any of this but there was an article this morning’s news about Samsung being a giant ‘pretending’ to be a scrappy start-up like Research in motion. Or that other tiny company…Apple.

Seriously, good citizen…

New Jobless Claims at a 5-Year Low
By REUTERS 7:38 PM ET

The report on unemployment added to a range of data that suggested higher taxes were having a limited impact on the economy.

Like the whole theme of today’s reporting is ‘insult their intelligence!

The most prosperous time the US have ever known came when the marginal tax rate was at over 90% of income over a million dollars…so employers paid their people instead of handing it over to Uncle Sam.

And what we’re seeing today is the ‘blow-back’ of that policy.

Which is to opine that there is going to be a whole lot of ‘punishment’ going on before we get this ship back on an even keel.

Last but not least we have a token of open rebellion on display!

Media Decoder
Editor Charged With Aiding Hackers Group
By AMY CHOZICK 8:51 PM ET

Matthew Keys, a 26-year-old social media editor, was charged with assisting the hacking collective Anonymous in an attack on The Los Angeles Times Web site.

Perhaps someday we will be able to give Mr. Keys the medal he richly deserves for standing up to our tyrannical overlords.

But for now he’s going to have to live with being black-balled by an industry that insults your intelligence.

Maybe this one is a net win from a realist perspective.

How this landed in the business section remains a mystery but it is the ‘re-surfacing’ of ‘old news’.

Hoping to Save Bees, Europe to Vote on Pesticide Ban
By DAVID JOLLY 4:08 PM ET

European officials plan to vote on a proposal to sharply restrict the use of chemicals that have been implicated in the decline of global bee populations.

Once again good citizen we are witnessing the side effects of failing to prosecute the corporate guilty for playing God recklessly.

What do you suppose this ban on pesticide is going to accomplish?

Most likely it will result in a plague of pests! Then they’ll be spraying twice as much pesticide!

But you (evidently) aren’t smart enough to figure that one out…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Dirty Deeds

Greetings good citizen,

Most of us (now graybeards) draw a straight line from our current troubles to the ‘Imperial Presidency’ of ‘Tricky Dick’ Nixon and his hapless follow-up act, Ronnie Reagan (a lifelong ‘paid corporate shill’.)

What disturbs us (graybeards) most is the ignorance surrounding the criminal activities of both administrations

The corporate owned media still lionizes both men as ‘great (albeit misunderstood) leaders’ serving during ‘difficult times.’

But the evidence shows otherwise:

Indeed, newly disclosed documents have put old evidence into a sharply different light and suggest that history has substantially miswritten the two scandals by failing to understand that they actually were sequels to earlier scandals that were far worse. Watergate and Iran-Contra were, in part at least, extensions of the original crimes, which involved dirty dealings to secure the immense power of the presidency.

Shortly after Nixon took office in 1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover informed him of the existence of the file containing national security wiretaps documenting how Nixon’s emissaries had gone behind President Lyndon Johnson’s back to convince the South Vietnamese government to boycott the Paris Peace Talks, which were close to ending the Vietnam War in fall 1968.In the case of Watergate – the foiled Republican break-in at the Democratic National Committee in June 1972 and Richard Nixon’s botched cover-up leading to his resignation in August 1974 – the evidence is now clear that Nixon created the Watergate burglars out of his panic that the Democrats might possess a file on his sabotage of Vietnam peace talks in 1968.

The disruption of Johnson’s peace talks then enabled Nixon to hang on for a narrow victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey. However, as the new President was taking steps in 1969 to extend the war another four-plus years, he sensed the threat from the wiretap file and ordered two of his top aides, chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, to locate it. But they couldn’t find the file.

What do you suppose happened to that (and countless other) ‘files’, good citizen?

Everybody knows the rubric of ‘National Security’ is regularly abused to shield the guilty from prosecution.

Can you think of a more bullet-proof office than that of the presidency?

When your justice system breaks down to the point of protecting criminal wrongdoing as a subset of guarding the faux‘honor’ of elected office, then your justice system is indeed FUBAR.

When national security trumps justice you find yourself living in an ‘anything goes’ society…where the rule of law has been replaced by the rule of man.

I don’t think I sit on my ‘high horse’ when I opine that most of us want no part of an unjust society.

Especially one that favors the criminal element so brazenly (in the interests of commerce [and against the interests of our species!])

While our first ‘anecdote’ points to Nixon’s mischief as ‘commander in chief’ even before he was one, let’s look at how Saint Ronnie’s ‘handlers’ manipulated the voting public to elect an ‘unlikely’ candidate:

At the start of the Iran-Contra investigation, Attorney General Edwin Meese had set the time parameters from 1984 to 1986, thus keeping outside of the frame the possibility of a much more serious scandal originating during Campaign 1980, i.e., whether Reagan’s campaign undermined President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free 52 American hostages in Iran and then paid off the Iranians by allowing Israel to ship weapons to Iran for the Iran-Iraq War.

So, while congressional and federal investigators looked only at how the specific 1985-86 arms sales to Iran got started, there was no timely attention paid to evidence that the Reagan administration had quietly approved Israeli arms sales to Iran in 1981 and that those contacts went back to the days before Election 1980 when the hostage crisis destroyed Carter’s reelection hopes and ensured Reagan’s victory.

The 52 hostages were not released until Reagan was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1981

If you didn’t live through these times and these particular incidents, you are likely ignorant of them. Worse, it plainly shows evidence that ‘somebody’ had control they shouldn’t have had BEFORE either (hand-picked meat puppet) was elected.

(In case any of you were ‘wondering’ where I come up with some of my crazier sounding ideas! [Like the entrenched wealthy ‘conspiring’ to kill off as many of us as they can get away with.] We’re dealing with some first class, above the law ‘sickos’ here good citizen!)

But the corporate owned media maintains its silence regarding this conspiracy that hides ‘in plain sight.’

If we don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t exist.

Which is to ask, do you really need to be told (by Oprah) that the bear poops in the woods?

With that chilling thought I leave you to yours...

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Holes

Greetings good citizen,

I am still struggling to adapt to a work routine (two years of being a slug doesn’t help) I am, er, ‘worried’ by this first sure sign of ‘economic recovery’.

Unemployment at 4-Year Low as U.S. Hiring Gains Steam
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

The joblessness rate sank to 7.7 percent as 236,000 positions were added across a broad range of sectors, but analysts warned that federal budget cuts could slow the recovery.

Jobs Fuel Stock Rally
Economix: The Rise of Part-Time Work | Shrinking Government

Why would I be ‘worried’ good citizen? Because I’ve seen this before…many times.

They ship work overseas and the ‘customer base’ collapses. (The unemployed can’t afford your product.) As local economies ‘adjust’ (the unemployed pull up stakes and head to where the work is) ‘recovery’ is declared and they start farming out work again!

As you can see, the so-called ‘recovery’ is the final stage of this cycle.

Now how much longer can they keep this up is unknown, they’ve almost completely hollowed out the US and Japanese economies (and completely destroyed the Real Estate markets in both countries in the process.)

Now, I count myself as fortunate. I landed a ‘real job’; 40 hours with full benefits and not the part-time/no insurance or benefit purgatory that most of the ‘inexperienced’ find themselves condemned to.

And the looming energy crisis seems to be driving a movement to restore some local capacity in basic industries while there is still some talent who remembers how to do it!

Whether or not this movement can sustain itself when a renewed contraction strikes remains to be seen.

But we’re talking patterns here.

Now the ‘new normal’ can form the basis for a real recovery BUT you need to ‘let it ride’ and establish itself.

Why don’t I think this is what they have in mind for us good citizen?

Would that it were that we have finally reached the end of the global race to the bottom that was completely 'unnecessary’ in the first place.

But you know as well as I that this thing won’t be over until the oligarchy can protect itself from prosecution.

And short of wiping out an entire generation I don’t see how they can do that.

But it’s not stopping them from trying:

Blocked Bids to Fill Judgeships Stir New Fight on Filibuster
By CARL HULSE

Republican senators have so far kept President Obama from filling any of the four vacancies on the nation's most important appeals court, reviving talk of a change in Senate rules.

Graphic Graphic: Filling the D.C. Appeals Court

Our best, er, ‘indicator’ of social health has been our badly broken political system. The very fact that most of the commerce system is in private hands contradicts the precepts of a ‘democratic’ society.

We even have our ‘activist’ (conservo-loony) judges to prove this argument.

No civilization can stand without justice…sometimes they take a long time to fall but in the end the final destination remains unchanged.

The bad apples use the ‘holes’ left in the legal system by the founders to drive civilization off a cliff.

Why do those holes exist?

Because the founders didn’t want to leave themselves open to prosecution!

No society founded on theft can survive for long so how sad is it that the backbone of capitalism is the ‘fake ownership’ of that which belongs to us all?

Understand good citizen, the ‘well, it’s not yours’ argument leads directly back to the ‘why don’t I kill you where you stand?’ question.

Were I writing this for the firewalled version, there would be some mighty choice expletives employed here.

Especially surrounding the argument as to whether or not lynching someone for being a greedy blockhead is ‘justifiable’…

Or perhaps just for being a blockhead as we can observe in our final offering:

Law Backs Guns in Class for Teachers in South Dakota
By JOHN ELIGON

South Dakota became the first state to enact a law explicitly authorizing school employees to carry guns on the job, under a measure signed Friday by Gov. Dennis Daugaard.

Um, as I commented repeatedly and I’m sure you have noticed the same phenomenon in your own local news organs, the local rag exists to highlight the bad behavior of people in positions of public trust.

No doubt this is sometimes ‘witch hunts’ like the recent attack [by Fox News] on a local animal control officer but half of the stories center on malfeasance and inappropriate behavior of wide range of, er, ‘public servants’.

Now we hire (and supposedly psychologically screen) our police forces to carry guns…and our most recent nation headline shows once again that the ‘screening process’ isn’t ‘infallible’. [re: the Park Ranger who blew away the reality show host for being in the company of his wife while he was elsewhere.]

The ‘green-eyed monster’ is probably the most powerful of them all but it still provides an case in point. Kids are designed to frustrate you, even if you’re taught to deal with that, kids can ‘get under your skin and push your buttons’ because you’re in the protectors role.

They trust you not to harm them.

They even have the chutzpah to give you that knowing little smirk after they’ve twisted the knife and you’ve retaliated by suspending them (although you’d prefer to have had them drawn and quartered!)

Do you really want to add handguns into that volatile environment?

Not that we humans are overly smart…like the young lady who wanted to ‘play with the kitty’…what part of ‘wild’ didn’t she understand…because she sure understands it now!

Mother Nature is VERY ‘unforgiving’ and we need to respect that…or we will pay.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Self-Defense

Greetings good citizen,

Does anyone else find it curious that these clowns understand economics (some of the time) but do things they know will hurt (what’s left of) the economy anyway?

Let’s start with our top story from today’s NY Times:

Recovery in U.S. Is Lifting Profits, but Not Adding Jobs
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Experts estimate so-called budget sequestration could cost the country about 700,000 jobs, but Wall Street doesn’t expect the cuts to substantially alter corporate profits or threaten stock markets.

.7 percent of the much-modified workforce will lose their income source but this WON’T affect the ‘bottom line’ of US based corporations?

Which is to point out that 700k is in fact a much smaller percentage of ‘working aged citizens’ but the workforce isn’t measured ‘rationally’ considering the bizarre idea of if you don’t have a job you don’t count skews the whole picture…

Is Wall Street ‘right’ about this assessment?

Sadly yes. Your job was exported and you were made ‘redundant’ to the new global economy. The individual they gave your job to ‘replaced’ you as a customer as well…making you totally superfluous.

The only reason there hasn’t been blood in the streets is because our ‘globalization is good’ cheerleaders haven’t been telling YOU the whole story.

They concentrate on the ‘lower prices’ part of the story (won through lower wages/benefits) as a ‘win-win’ situation.

The part where you lose is the few hundred million competitors who (completely) took YOUR place via the heavily manipulated ‘funny money market’ (which is about to collapse!)

In this respect it is more than a little amazing to see the corporate owned media laying this fact out in a way that shows everyone what capitalism has done!

How else can the US workforce lose such a large percentage of its workforce and not affect profits an iota?

This is where the rubber meets the road good citizen, If you have never considered yourself as ‘surplus’ before…it’s time to LOOK AGAIN!

Did I not point out that the policies of the past three decades point directly towards an effort to kill off as much of the 'surplus population' as possible?

Headlines like today’s TOP STORY should leave you with NO DOUBT who the cannon is pointed at…

It points at YOU!

If you aren’t a bona-fide member of the >One Percent, you’re toast.

Like things weren’t desperate enough, it gets more interesting:

Chinese Stocks Fall on Steps to Curb Property Prices
By DAVID BARBOZA 5:13 AM ET

China’s cabinet, or State Council, said home sellers would soon pay a 20 percent capital gains tax.

You don’t suppose Chinese equity prices are being ‘propped up’ by a ‘real estate bubble’ do you?

What do you suppose is going to happen when that little episode plays itself out?

Can you say ‘cascading systemic collapse’?

I knew you could!

For our last installment of ‘belaboring the obvious’ (seems to be the day for it.):

As Hacking Against U.S. Rises, Experts Try to Pin Down Motive
By NICOLE PERLROTH, DAVID E. SANGER and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

Motives for a cyberattack, which could range from industrial spying to disabling the power grid, remain obscure.

Given what we have already discussed, especially the part where it becomes obvious that YOU are being played for a patsy however you slice it, are YOU ‘mystified’ as to why ‘the capitalists’ are under heavy attack from the cyber-warriors?

I’d say it was ‘self-defense’.

The curious part of this unforeseen development is just how far will they let it go?

You know they’ve been looking for an ‘escape hatch’ for quite some time…could this be it?

Get out of dodge under the cover of a crippling (and likely self-inflicted) cyber attack?

We all know today’s capitalist/opportunists are a little light in the honesty department so I’d opine that it wouldn’t ‘surprise’ me.

But the corporate owned media is repeatedly astonished by such mundane occurrences as sunrise.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Bucket

Greetings good citizen,

Nothing is more poignant than the daily headlines for driving home the point that our civilization is scroomed!

We need look no further than the top story in the business section for proof:

DealBook
Obama’s Nominee for S.E.C. Tries to Allay Skepticism
By BEN PROTESS

Mary Jo White, President Obama’s choice to lead the agency, is telling Congress she can avoid conflicts of interest despite her Wall Street clients.

I’m not kicking the poor woman in the shins but who do you place in a sensitive position like that who ISN’T an ‘insider’?

My ‘problem’ with this choice is not the chosen but the chooser, who has proven to be Wall Street’s boy from day one.

We have already witnessed some well qualified appointees resign in frustration…and if this woman has integrity it is likely she too will go the way of her predecessors.

But it gets better:

The budget cuts scheduled to start taking effect on Friday would affect all facets of the federal budget, including aviation and military spending.
Austerity Kills Government Jobs as Cuts to Budgets Loom
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

The federal government is cutting back at a pace exceeded in the last half-century only by the military demobilizations after the Vietnam War and the cold war.

Graphic: Austerity Is Here

Um, that last headline is a bit deceptive considering the government has been spending at an ‘unprecedented clip’ since this whole ‘War on Terra’ thing got started.

How ironic is it that if they were serious about reducing ‘terrorism’ in the world they’d make their most promising progress by slashing their own budget?

Not only has the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan lasted TWICE AS LONG as WWII but it has also been TWICE AS COSTLY!

Yet you don’t hear the conservo-whackos screaming to cut the Pentagon’s budget, do ya?

No, instead we get headlines like this:

Durable Goods Orders Drop as Aircraft Demand Falls
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 47 minutes ago

A sharp drop in demand for commercial aircraft caused overall durable goods orders to drop 5.2 percent last month, but orders for core capital goods like machinery, equipment and software rose 6.3 percent.

How ironic is it that the same sort of ‘phenomenon' accounts for the recent ‘surge’ in home prices (after years of flat lining.)

When the whole economy is deader than a door nail, a 5% reduction in orders for commercial aircraft really spanks you in the bottom (line that is.)

Housing prices are up ‘relative to what they were last year’ (and not 6 years ago when things were booming.

It may be ‘the biggest increase’ SINCE then but what are they really saying?

I saw some twit last night proclaim that if they could keep up the pace the current ‘inventory’ would be ‘sold out’ in just 4 months.

What a crock! Guess who’s buying all of the houses?

Why it’s our old pal Flipper, (betting he’s finally going to find renters at long last!)

Guess what?

Flipper is…WRONG AGAIN!

And like the last ‘bubble’, Flipper is going to ‘walk away’ when the renters fail to materialize.

But our next headline shines a light on the current state of economic affairs:

DealBook
Regulators Block Ryanair’s Latest Attempt to Buy Aer Lingus
By JAMES KANTER 19 minutes ago

As the European Commission blocked the attempt by Ryanair for competitive reasons, the Irish carrier reiterated that it would appeal the decision in court.

In a ‘saturated market place’ the most you can do to boost the bottom line is ‘buy market share’ (by buying our the ‘competition’…then sticking it to the customers!)

Turning down this merger is the right thing to do…however, it isn’t over yet.

If you can’t soak the public you can always take the sure route of soaking the government:

EADS Profit Soars 19 Percent
By NICOLA CLARK 7:28 AM ET

The company says it made about $1.56 billion in 2012 thanks to commercial aircraft sales, even though its military segment struggled amid budget troubles in the United States and Europe.

What’s the old saying, ‘war is good business.’

Wrecking stuff then getting paid to rebuild it…can’t beat that racket.

It’s a ‘self-reinforcing circle’.

Better shake a leg here, we’ve still got a lot of ground to cover.

Fed Defends Stimulus in Testimony to Senate
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Ben S. Bernanke told senators that the central bank saw its campaign as necessary and effective, reassuring them that its benefits outweighed any risks.

Economix Blog: Does Bernanke Have the Best Inflation Record? | By Unemployment, Not So Good
Home Sales and Bernanke Calm Market

How does Helicopter Ben justify bailing out the world’s financial system (to the tune of 22, we don’t have ‘em, trillion) to a financially incompetent legislative body?

If there were a half a brain between the 500 plus of ‘em, they’d know the system was bankrupt without even asking ‘the Bernank’…

The only reason the home sales are calming the market is because they (the corporate owned media) believes the average citizen is too stupid to figure out there is no ‘recovery’ in the housing market (nor will there ever be!)

And again we are expected to be shocked by this latest revelation:

News Analysis
Italian Deadlock Rekindles Anxiety About Euro Zone
By LIZ ALDERMAN and JACK EWING

The apparent political gridlock signaled by its elections raises new fears that the euro crisis may be far from over.

European Markets Dip Amid Uncertainty
Italian Parties Maneuver After Electoral Split

Does ANYONE truly believe the Euro-zone crisis is over, seriously?

Then we have this ‘gem’:

Officials have recommended that nuclear plants like Nine Mile Point in New York install new safety equipment.
Post-Fukushima, Arguments for Nuclear Safety Bog Down
By ERIC LIPTON and MATTHEW L. WALD

A dispute is developing between the nuclear industry and regulators, and among the regulators themselves, about the necessity of more safeguards at power plants.

Graphic: Tasks Remain for the American Nuclear Industry

Let’s ‘cut to the chase’…the only ‘safe’ nuke is a cold one…but if you shut down the nukes without first installing adequate renewables the entire grid would shut down in less than a day.

Better to let the candle remain lit than to curse the darkness.

And finally:

DealBook
Wall Street Pay Rises, for Those Who Still Have a Job
By SUSANNE CRAIG 6:39 AM ET

The average cash bonus for people employed in New York City in the financial industry rose by roughly 9 percent, to $121,900, in 2012, the New York State comptroller said.

U.S. Banks in 2012 Posted Highest Profits Since 2006,

The Litany of Woe was quite detailed today, a rather good ‘capture’ if I must say so myself.

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

Land of Broken Promises

Greetings good citizen,

The rubric of ‘gradualism’ crept into public awareness during the (largely fabricated) ‘Red Scare’.

The analogy of a frog in a pot of water was used to exemplify how ‘gradualism’ worked (by the time you realized you were being boiled alive it was too late.)

We’d go about out lives and the insidious ‘commies’ would be infiltrating American Institutions and ‘contaminating’ them with their evil socialist poison!

(Which is what capitalists call every social ‘protection’ you have that they are required to fund.)

At the end of the day Bubba, it’s not their money but yours! But they still ‘view’ your social welfare as money THEY could have kept.

Who gives a fig what happens to you when you stop working? (Or at least that’s how the typical capitalist thinks.)

How disturbing is it that you can easily exchange the word capitalist for the word Republican? Even more disturbing is how the label Republican is now synonymous with the notorious >One Percent!

Now let’s bring the two concepts home

Water Torture, as American as Apple Pie
What does it mean when torture, already the definition of “cruel,” becomes usual?
February 24, 2013 |

[To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.]

Try to remain calm -- even as you begin to feel your chest tighten and your heart race. Try not to panic as water starts flowing into your nose and mouth, while you attempt to constrict your throat and slow your breathing and keep some air in your lungs and fight that growing feeling of suffocation. Try not to think about dying, because there’s nothing you can do about it, because you’re tied down, because someone is pouring that water over your face, forcing it into you, drowning you slowly and deliberately. You’re helpless. You’re in agony.

In short, you’re a victim of “water torture.” Or the “water cure.” Or the “water rag.” Or the “water treatment.” Or “ tormenta de toca.” Or any of the other nicknames given to the particular form of brutality that today goes by the relatively innocuous term “waterboarding.”

How evil is it that you are being denied your RIGHT to ‘due process’ while the (hijacked rogue) government reclaims the right to torture its ‘enemies’ with impunity?

Even more disturbing is how even you might come to find yourself on the ‘enemies list’.

The question creeping through the back of everybody’s mind these days is whether or not, somewhere in their murky past, they may have (unknowingly) befriended a current Enemy of the State…and how that accident of fate has made YOU a ‘Person of Interest’.

Put two and two together. Let’s suppose this ‘old acquaintance’ that you haven’t laid eyes on IN DECADES is blamed for some act of civil disobedience. For the sake of argument let’s say this act resulted in the loss of a multi-million dollar facility and some first responders were injured will doing their job…but nobody died.

Guess who becomes a lightening rod if they can’t find a more recent ‘acquaintance’ of the suspect?

Let’s make it even more interesting…let’s suppose you never said a word to this geek, the only thing you’re guilty of is being a member of the same high school class as he/she was.

They’re not about to water board you…unless the suspect was one of those people you stayed in touch with after leaving school.

Now it gets more ‘interesting’…guilt or innocence is irrelevant, so is the, er, ‘intensity’ with which they pursue clues to the suspects whereabouts.

You get to take a ride on the government’s new toy whether you know anything of not!

“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Your lawyer can’t get you out of this because you won’t be allowed to contact him…yes good citizen, in the name of ‘national security’ you’ve lost that right too.

Counsel will be advised he/she will be disbarred if he/she files any action against the torturers…and that should be the end of your search for ‘legal representation’.

Welcome to the NEW U.S.A. good citizen, (if you’re smart you’ll find the nearest exit before you’re trapped here and can’t escape!)

THIS is what those commie hating, capitalism loving patriots were trying to create to block the insidious spread of ‘socialism’.

Sort of puts the >One Percent thing in a whole new light, doesn’t it?

Bad enough they made you struggle through seven years of college and didn’t even offer you a job. Now you’re supposed to be ‘happy’ they’re not water-boarding you!

Yessiree Bob, the good ol’ U.S.A. has become precisely what the Native Americans called it long ago, “The land of broken promises.”

With that chilling thought in mind good citizen, I’d be extremely careful about who you cross.

The point of a gun is the only ‘law’ these psychos understand.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Cinderella Liberty

Greetings good citizen,

Among the many signs that our civilization is rotting away from the inside is the return of crippling interest rates.

As I mentioned yesterday, the Republican’s ‘repealed’ anti-usury legislation just prior to the economy collapsing. how opportune?

Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based payday lenders that offer short-term loans with interest rates sometimes exceeding 500 percent.

[Enlarge This Image
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Subrina Baptiste of Brooklyn says JPMorgan Chase allowed payday lenders to seize child-support funds in her account. ]

With 15 states banning payday loans, a growing number of the lenders have set up online operations in more hospitable states or far-flung locales like Belize, Malta and the West Indies to more easily evade statewide caps on interest rates.

While the banks, which include giants like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, do not make the loans, they are a critical link for the lenders, enabling the lenders to withdraw payments automatically from borrowers’ bank accounts, even in states where the loans are banned entirely. In some cases, the banks allow lenders to tap checking accounts even after the customers have begged them to stop the withdrawals.

Laws? We don’t need no stinking laws!

Did I mention that our (global) banking system is already F.U.B.A.R.?

Understand good citizen, the emphasis in that statement of fact rests in the ALL part. There is no way to ‘repair’ the banking system without totally re-wiring how it works.

[Like A Simple Plan does.]

How hard do you have to be whacked over the head good citizen? This is war (and they’re holding all of the ammo!)

They have ‘spy in the sky’ while all you’ve got is a Zippo and a can of fluid.

How ironic is it that you have a lot less to lose?

Even more ironic is how ‘fire cleanses’…cuz we could sure use some ‘cleaning up’ around here!

Once again we confront the question of how did it come to this?

And the answer is our government was ‘hijacked’ long ago by the very people it was established to protect us from.

EPIC FAIL.

Now how do we prevent that from happening (again) because it HAS HAPPENED EVERY TIME, sometimes even before the revolt is over!

That’s why revolt for the sake of revolt is stupid.

YOU, the average citizen, needs to know AHEAD OF TIME, PRECISELY what you’re buying into.

Which is why A Simple Plan is laid out for you examination, so you can learn the specifics of what’s at stake BEFORE a single drop of blood is spilled.

Not that Mao’s ‘little red book’ did anything to preserve the purity of ‘the people’s revolution’. But capitalism has a way of ‘perverting justice’, as today’s headlines show.

You should all find it most disturbing that the first ‘constitutional convention’ was an ‘invitation only’ event.

Worse, our ‘representatives’ to that historic event were ‘self-selected’ (and thus did they do their utmost to protect THEIR interests…to the doom of the rest of us.)

The idea behind gaining popular support for a new way of running things is so the ‘assassins’ can’t kill the revolution’s leaders (another ‘curious’ historical phenomenon) before they can alter the people’s situation too radically.

Yes sir, things are the way they are because the ‘entrenched interests’ will murder anyone who attempts to change them…

Which should give you some idea as to why you are being denied your right to ‘due process’ (again) after 900 years.

Worse, according to the deceptively named Libertarians, you are endowed with NO Rights. None what so ever.

What gives you ‘rights’ under a Libertine banner? Money.

How STUPID IS THAT? (Considering ALL money is FUNNY!)

So the, er, ‘authority’ who coins the money has a monopoly on rights!

Can you say Seig Hiel?

How ironic is it that the absolute dictatorship championed by the ‘Libertarians’ is indistinguishable from monarchy?

Which is to point out that today’s royal wannabe’s hide behind a ‘mask of liberty’.

Liberty for them; tyranny for you.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Shame on You!

Greetings good citizen,

I received a rather bizarre e-mail yesterday inviting me to attend an economics ‘summer school’ in Italy.

Five Nobel Laureates will teach the class in English, so the Italian setting is merely to make the surroundings more…’realistic’ (While not currently in the headlines, Italy is one of the PIIGS in case anyone was wondering why they spelled pig with two i’s.)

How ‘appropriate’ that these five, er, ‘nitwits’ expound upon their economic theories in a country that likely practiced (and definitely suffered) from them?

Which brings us to yet another long neglected hobby horse…the one that each of these ‘Nobel Laureates’ needs to have hammered into their squeany little heads…

(Sing it choir!)

ALL ECONOMIES ARE LOCAL!

(Now give me an Amen!)

Hallelujah!

(Where the heck is MY Nobel Prize?)

Yes good citizen, I would ‘opine’ that you don’t know squat about economics if you turn a blind eye to this most basic of economic facts.

(Apparently my opinion is worthless to the rabid capitalists who hand out Nobel Prizes.)

Neither YOU (nor anyone else) can live in an ‘economic wasteland’.

That’s why the ‘global economy’ is in the tank (and it going to stay there until it gets ‘re-balanced’.)

Somehow these, er, ‘gentlemen’ believe this problem is going to solve itself. (and it very well might…however, the fabric of society can only take so much tearing before it shreds completely.)

Which is to ‘opine’ that IF society is ‘left to its own devices’ the fabric of civilization will be ‘obliterated’.

How complete will the destruction be?

Total (barring last minute intervention…which may or may not be successful.)

Sort of boggles the mind to see who’s still drinking the Kool-Aid after all these years.

Considering how lethal that stuff is you have to be amazed that they’re still lining up to down a shot or three!

But that’s all part of another ‘self-correcting’ genetic defect, the tendency to trust people who don’t have your best interests at heart.

Add in the ‘stupid factor’ and we find an endless line of potential Kool-Aid drinkers!

What Kool-Aid is that, you ask?

It’s the kind that blinds you to the existence of the ‘economic desert’.

“There are plenty of jobs out there! You’re just not trying hard enough.”

Yeah, the hundred million unemployed are just a figment of your imagination, especially considering how they ‘don’t want to work’…(which is right next to deciding you no longer want to live…but conservo-whackos will swallow anything regardless of how jagged the hooks are.)

How sad is it good citizen that these facts are also being ignored by the (alleged) alternative media thus our current political dialog is centered on NOT trimming the military budget?

Mighty sad.

Even more disturbing is this headline from today’s NY Times:

White House Tactic for C.I.A. Bid Holds Back Drone Memos
By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI

The administration may deny Senate Democrats information on targeted killings but tell Republicans more about a militant attack in Libya to win confirmation for John O. Brennan as C.I.A. director.

Um, correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t Obama run as a Democrat?

WTF is going on here?

Seriously good citizen, how far gone is our situation?

It’s looking mighty tough to me…but who cares what I think, surely not the rabid capitalists!

Which makes me ask, just who has to live among these animals?

Why, (by gum) YOU DO!

And if you don’t do something to help yourself (hint, it all starts with the politicians) then shame on you!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Terrorists

Greetings good citizen,

The ‘nonsense markets’ are off to a fine start, you can’t explain/justify the Dow being over 14,000 but it’s there regardless.

Which only sends up one more ‘red flag’ concerning the stability of our civilization.

So it is that today’s offering once again asks the question of ‘why are they telling us this?’

On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story white office tower, sits a People’s Liberation Army base for China’s growing corps of cyberwarriors.

The building off Datong Road, surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a wine importer, is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398. A growing body of digital forensic evidence — confirmed by American intelligence officials who say they have tapped into the activity of the army unit for years — leaves little doubt that an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower.

An unusually detailed 60-page study, to be released Tuesday by Mandiant, an American computer security firm, tracks for the first time individual members of the most sophisticated of the Chinese hacking groups — known to many of its victims in the United States as “Comment Crew” or “Shanghai Group” — to the doorstep of the military unit’s headquarters. The firm was not able to place the hackers inside the 12-story building, but makes a case there is no other plausible explanation for why so many attacks come out of one comparatively small area.

Further along the article explains how Coca-cola was hacked by these, er, ‘professionals’…which might give us a clearer picture of why our ‘proxy’ in the Far East is ‘keeping an eye on the competition’.

Yes, the conspiracy to destroy our civilization is global but no, it is not (yet) universal…and you’d think the guys at Coke would be on board but I guess some companies were too successful to suborn quickly and quietly…thus the subterfuge.

But it still doesn’t explain why they are pointing to this particular situation.

Does our shadowy global elite ‘own’ the Chinese government? Of course it does! (At least the parts that matter.)

So why give the unwashed rabble a ‘peek under the skirt’?

So when the ‘surprise’ cyber-attacks begin we can rule the Chinese out…because everybody knows about them?

Um, it is disconcerting to sit here and ‘speculate’ about an obvious global conspiracy but there is NO OTHER ‘explanation’ for what’s going on.

History’s ‘accidents’ are anything but.

It if waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s not a mongoose!

But that’s not what the conspirator owned media is going to tell you.

In fact the ‘truth challenged media’ has become a standing joke among anyone paying attention, making us all ‘conspiracy theorists’.

We all know something nasty is afoot and it’s not ‘state sponsored terrorism’ as our truth challenged media would have you believe.

While the pundits sit and complain about the effects of money in politics, we have done nothing to reign in this ‘loose cannon’ on civilization’s decks.

(Because the conspirators OWN the media!)

Here’s a news flash to no one: we won’t enjoy ‘factual reporting’ until NOBODY ‘owns’ a media outlet!

The owner has an agenda and gets to decide what is and isn’t news!

Until that stops we are all well and truly…

So why did the ‘conspirators’ decide to share the source of cyber attacks on US companies?

I suspect it is so they can hide ‘in plain sight’…or more sinisterly, so when someone reports an attack they can pooh-pooh it pointing to the news article and saying, would they do that since we know they’re doing it?

And the answer is YES!

Just because we know doesn’t mean they are going to stop!

Just as the ‘war on terror’ is being executed by the world’s largest terrorist group!

No irony should be lost on that (bad) joke!

When a recruiting commercial for the Armed forces comes on do you look in the face of that earnest young person and imagine it barking at you to lay down or I’ll blow your head off from the other side of your living room window?

Just as YOU can’t make informed decisions without accurate information, neither can they.

So what do you think they are going to do when their superiors ORDER them to arrest innocent civilians whose only crime is to protest their abusive treatment at the hands of some corporation?

What would YOUR kid do if he or she were on the team that comes to get YOU?

Talk about ‘scarred for life’…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Burn

Greetings good citizen,

While some of you are appalled that the problems of the world CAN’T be solved with a spoonful of sugar. Let me offer the comforting thought that I designed the plan more so with an eye towards what most of you WOULDN’T like done to you rather than the conservo-whacko way which is we’ll do this, this and this…but ONLY to BAD PEOPLE.

Weirdly, everybody can get behind castrating a hypothetical stranger…but it’s not such a good idea anymore when you find YOURSELF on the receiving end of the bargain.

This is why A Simple Plan was designed to be ‘HUMANE’. We don’t ‘execute’, er, those who refuse to live by some pretty basic rules. We merely strip them of their right to live among us.

Not that playing ‘defense’ has helped. You either support the plan (which is holistic, it’s ALL or NOTHING) or you don’t.

If you take nothing away from this web page take that. You can’t ‘cherry-pick’ A Simple Plan and get anything even approaching the correct/workable results.

(And if you want the creator here to guide its implementation, you all had better shake a leg ‘cuz I haven’t got a lot of time left.)

Not much of a sales pitch but it is the truth.

Readership would rapidly dwindle to zero if all I did here was pitch A Simple Plan, I’ve taxed your patience enough.

today’s offering tackles the issue of the ‘dehumanizing’ nature of capitalist society.

The human body, with its need for rest, nutrition and hydration, is such an inefficient tool for capitalist production. But while machines are unlikely to replace human workers anytime soon, new technologies can deftly strip workers of their humanity!

The Irish Independent reports that grocery giant TESCO has strapped electronic armbands to their warehouse workers to measure their productivity, tracking their actions so closely that management knows when they briefly pause to drink from a water fountain or take a bathroom break. These unforgivable lapses in productivity impact workers' performance score, which management then apparently uses to terrify them into working faster.

"The devices give a set amount of time for a task, such as 20 minutes to load packets of soft drinks. If they did it in 20 minutes, they would get 100pc, but would get 200pc if they were twice as fast," writes the Independent. Although TESCO denied that bathroom breaks impact productivity scores, one former staffer the Independent spoke with said he got a "surprisingly lower" score when he took a bathroom break.

"Sometimes, management would call staff to an office and tell them they had to do better if their scores were low."

"I had really easy assignments and when I'd come back after a break, I would get a horrendous score and wonder why," he said.

The rational mind screams ‘how did we come to this?’ While the capitalist sees nothing wrong with ‘squeezing as much value’ as he/she can out of their workers.

What’s ‘wrong’ with this picture is why we do what we do.

We ARE NOT ‘machines’, tied to a specific task for certain number of hours BUT that is how our COLLEGE EDUCATED MORONS are taught to treat us.

When we ‘work for money’ the purpose becomes secondary…despite money being an invention, a tool.

It is tool that is all too commonly abused. More often used as a hammer than a reward.

What do you suppose management’s ‘complaint’ was when the employee took a bathroom break?

You’re costing me MONEY! When the correct employee response would be, ‘I was keeping your floors clean which, overall, saves you money.’

(Get a clue fathead, ALL money is FUNNY!)

Yet we are evicted from our homes and have to subscribe to supplemental nutrition programs for a lack of the ‘funny stuff’!

Which is to point out that our social model is broken and headed for collapse…because the bean-counters have decided to see how far they can ‘push it’.

Weirdly, they are pushing for riots in the street.

What would those charged with ‘protecting us’ from exactly this sort of treatment think if they knew what our self-professed ‘betters’ had in store for them?

You KNOW this ends with cops in body bags (more civilians than cops but still…)
All because ‘stingy’ wants to see how much he/she can get away with (and it secretly ‘tickles them’ to wield this kind of ‘raw power’.)

For some reason they don’t believe ‘The Horror’ lurks just beneath the (mostly placid) surface of a (‘desensitized’) modern civilization.

What do I mean by ‘desensitized’?

Let’s just say ‘mercy’ isn’t one of modern societies strong suits.

They have shown none so they shouldn’t be too surprised when they don’t receive any in return.

Somewhat surreal to frame the coming debacle as similar to admonishing a child not to play with matches.

They do it and they get burned for their…impudence.

How sad is it good citizen that this time they are going to ‘burn’ us all?

Thanks for letting me inside you head,

Gegner

M & A

Greetings good citizen,

As it has for the past quarter century, the global marketplace continues to shrink and the capitalists continue to call this ‘progress’.

Now let’s conduct a thought experiment to see how many of you understand what’s happening.

You all know what the objective of the game of monopoly is, don’t you?

And nothing yet invented demonstrates capitalism in action better than this straight-forward board game!

The objective is to ‘bankrupt’ all of the other players.

Now marvel for a moment, once over the game’s popularity and marvel again that it is the WORLD’S primary operating principle!

NOT that you had any say in this…our self-professed ‘betters’ laid out the ground rules and have ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ regarding who gets what, when so nobody (except the hired help) really ‘loses their shirt’.

What do you make of this headline?

TOP NEWS
DealBook
With Confidence on an Upswing, Mergers Make a Comeback
By PETER LATTMAN

Merger activity has suddenly roared back to life, with the latest megadeal being the Berkshire-led acquisition of Heinz.

Berkshire and 3G Capital in a $23 Billion Deal for Heinz

Are you ‘happy’ that you are being pushed closer to insolvency by being denied yet another choice?

The Heinz ‘merger’ is bad enough but after losing Eastern and United now we see American Airlines ‘merging’ with US Air…and what do you suppose the first thing they’ll do will be?

Why it will be ‘eliminate redundancy’!

Tens of thousands will lose their jobs and my, oh my what a fine job market it is to be cutting thousands of ‘service industry’ jobs in!

What do you suppose corporate controlled Washington will do about this?

Same thing they’ve always done, of course…launch more drones and have the cops beat more protesters!

Here I am, protesting ‘monopolies’ when, under A Simple Plan there will only be one, er, ‘airline’ (But you can fly for free! Restrictions apply…) just as other public utilities will be operated ‘monolithically’ to better serve mankind.

The difference between monopolistic ownership and no ownership is the ‘profit’ angle.

Under A Simple Plan, public utilities (like Airlines) exist to ‘serve the public’, under capitalism they exist solely to enrich the capitalist.

The ‘affordability’ of airfare never even enters the calculation (under the current system.)

If you’ve gotta get there quick, they’re the only game in town and you’ll pay what they tell you to pay…until the pool of paying customers shrinks to the point where it can no longer support the industry, then the industry will collapse catastrophically!

But that’s capitalism for ya!

(Actually it isn’t ‘for you’; it’s for them!)

Back to the original question, does the sudden appearance of the Heinz merger mean the M&A drought has ended?

HA!

Seriously?

Well, you can believe what you like but Bubba, there isn’t enough ‘market share’ out there to fill a thimble, but knock yourself out…try to buy more!

We can only assume the ‘logic’ behind the take-over of Heinz is not only is it a condiment, it can double as a soup!

Heck, hit it with some Italian seasonings and you’ve got spaghetti sauce, who knew!

Which represents the ‘danger’ of capitalist tampering. The drive to maximize applications often ruins the product across the board.

Which is to say after ‘cost reducing’ the production process the product will taste like watery tomato juice and there will be no ‘going back…’

Am I belittling one of the fundamental processes of the free market? You bet I am!

If you’ll allow me the liberty I would backstep to yesterday where we discussed money’s one useful function.

And yet Heinz will be ruined in a futile attempt to squeeze more ‘money’ out of the basic set up.

If you like your ketchup, best to head out and buy a few cases now, before they wreck it chasing ‘imaginary’ gains.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Pillars (1)

Greetings good citizen,

It is not unusual for the news cycle to ignore the issues we should be discussing, so it was today when I couldn’t find an ‘appropriate’ article that would allow me illustrate (one of) the pillars of A Simple Plan.

Thus today’s ‘lecture’ will be on ‘what are the ‘pillars’ of A Simple Plan?’

The first pillar is equality, without equality there is no justice…

Naturally, nature doesn’t do ‘equal’ and NOBODY is qualified to ‘adjust’ perceived ‘natural inequalities’.

So it is, for our purposes in this discussion, 'equal' refers to the principle of ‘equal treatment under the law’.

This is not ‘new’ however, like anarchy it also has never been tried, never mind achieved.

Because the concept of equal treatment (under capitalism) stops exactly there, at the courtroom door…because that’s where ‘equality’ under capitalism (allegedly) exists…in the courtroom, everywhere else, class war reigns.

(And you KNOW our current inoperative economy is the way it is because the elite ‘own’ the courtroom too…so there goes ‘equality’…)

Which would be to opine that equality is non-existent, under our capitalist rubric at any rate.

Thus the base of the first pillar under A Simple Plan is the Human Anti-exploitation law.

How does equality figure into ‘anti-exploitation’?

What applies to one applies to ALL, that is equality.

So the Human anti-exploitation law makes it illegal for one human to make his/her living from the ‘sweat’ of another human.

This, in fact, outlaws the entire employer/employee relationship.

It also bans selling as a means of making a living. (Your ability to buy cheap and sell dear exploits the buyer.)

So if you can’t buy and sell and you can’t hire anyone (for a profit) how do you make a living?

You cut out the middleman and work for society.

Yes, good citizen, humanity is the customer and the resources to make what humanity needs belong to all of us…so this ownership nonsense should have gone out the window with the collapse of monarchy…but it didn’t.

Now we have a worse situation on our hands…we may have rid ourselves of ‘absolute rulers’ of the lands we live in but we still have them ruling our places of employment!

Worse, this is happening in a time when there aren’t enough jobs to go around!

How do we fix this?

Under (every owner a king) capitalism, we can’t! (Short of the Lord Creator [of Christianity] appearing in the sky and commanding it, it ain’t gonna happen!)

Imagine if Allah appeared in the heavens over Washington DC? What do you think the Israelis would do?

But I digress…(although certain ‘thought experiments’ are irresistible! I also feel compelled to remind you that Gegner is an atheist so the only thing Gegner expects to appear in the sky is rain…in its various forms.)

While the capitalist defends the indefensible by insisting it’s not their fault there isn’t enough ‘market share’ to drive ‘full employment’, this merely flips the problem on its head.

Their unwillingness to pay their employees is what is driving the global ‘demand drought’. (We need not even go into the massive mismanagement issues that are evident through out the commerce system world-wide.)

So how ironic is it that the solution to our broken economy lies in the ending of predatory capitalism?

What the clueless among you (and those damn Libbies really are clueless) need to understand is much of what we do NEEDS DOING (and we’d do it regardless of if we got paid to do it!)

Again, STUPID Libbies would interpret that as an argument against paying because they don’t understand money’s ONE (count ‘em) ‘useful purpose’.

Money is a ‘regulator’; it restricts access.

Without money you’d never get within a hundred yards of a restaurant…although the ‘lack of help’ (nobody would work there for any amount!) might make you give up your booth.

Ironically (again) the (stupid) Libbie’s solution to this problem is slavery, which they are perfectly cool with (until the chains are slapped on THEM!)

Then it’s ‘tragically unfair!’

So under the pillar of Equality, you would work ‘for society’ and your money would be for YOU! When you went to procure the necessities of life NOBODY (not even society) would receive your ‘money’, it would simply be erased from your account, having served its one useful purpose!

Um, I didn’t intend to expend an entire essay on a single pillar but the first is the ‘foundation’ of A Simple Plan.

Without ‘equality’ there isn’t a civilization that is worth squat…and the only way we know that is by the ‘success’ of past races.

While our education is ‘Euro-centric’ in this nation, the most successful civilization on the planet to date was the Native (North) Americans.

Native American history is an embarassment of riches yet we shun it in favor our blood-thirsty European heritage…at the behest of the capitalists among us.

(Full Disclosure, Gegner is NOT [to the best of his knowledge] even ‘part’ Native American, my admiration of their culture is completely unbiased.)

No irony should be lost on the fact that the Native peoples used banishment as a punishment for bad behavior, so Exile is rooted in ‘custom’ as a sensible solution.

And then, like now, the assumption was that you couldn’t be ‘fixed’…so your genes were excluded from the gene pool.

Sort of makes you wonder where humanity would be today if it had adhered to this passive ‘process of elimination’?

How sad is it good citizen that the genes that should be eliminated from our society belong to the powerfully stupid?

No irony should be lost on the fact that this is where the idea that criminals were ‘salvageable’ was born.

Which opens a different door, many of today’s criminals have done no wrong, while many who have done wrong haven’t been prosecuted for their crimes (Thanks to their criminal relatives!)

Which is all leading to the second of our three pillars, justice.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS. We cannot address the world’s problems if we are unwilling to face the world as it really is.

While it appears I advocate certain unorthodox beliefs, it is the casting out of these beliefs that coincides with the disintegration of the fabric of human society.

Like the Libertarian/Republican insistence that there is no such thing as a human social contract.

Peculiar because this is how slavery became widespread.

While the capitalist points to our (ever) diminished ‘faith in God’ (as the reason our society is failing), the realist points to Justice!

Funny how the capitalist is the first one to defend and invoke ‘god’s right’ to retribution.

If I’ve done wrong, let God punish me! (Knowing full well it won’t happen.)

I say it’s time we give the capitalist God the helping hand he has always needed.

When the capitalist is thirsty for justice he has no patience with God. When the shoes are reversed, it’s the other way around.

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.

Shelf Life

Greetings good citizen,

Welcome to Super Sunday. I don’t follow sports although I know the local team blew it this year…which is part of the reason I don’t follow sports.

It’s not the failure but the influence of money that disturbs me regarding so-called ‘professional sports.’

I won’t watch the game (because I don’t care about the outcome.)

Ironically, the ‘owners’ don’t care either. It’s all about backsides in seats.

Well, my backside will be in a seat all right but it won’t be parked in front of ‘the idiot box’ (it will be parked in front of idiot box jr…which YOU happen to be sitting in front of.)

Here’s the world according to the business section of the NY Times on 2/3/13:

The Most Wanted Gun in America
By NATASHA SINGER

Aggressive marketing and savvy manufacturing have helped recast the place of guns in American life, turning AR-15-style rifles into a fast-growing profit center.
At the Pasadena Pawn and Gun Shop in Maryland, customers can join a waiting list to buy an AR-15-style rifle. “It’s kind of fashionable,” Frank Loane Sr., the shop’s proprietor, said of the gun.

Nothing like the threat of a weapons ban to make people go crazy buying them up!

Like a lot of other things in life, people don’t think things through. Who are they going to shoot with their ‘new toy’?

Probably one of their relatives…or (surprise, surprise) they’re going to take the bad boy and go hunt down A.) Random strangers in a mall or B.) Their former co-workers or C.) An event sponsored by some civic group that has shunned them (or someone they know) in the past.

But they are really buying them so they have something to ‘defend their home with’ (when the cops come knocking…)

Not that they actually have the, er, ‘intestinal fortitude’ to face down the local PD…when it comes to that a majority of these heroes turn the gun on themselves.

But when you’re talking tough down at the bar you have to provide ‘the appearance’ of being willing to back it up.

So you take your buddies and your new toy down to the range to demonstrate your prowess with firearms…and use the excuse ‘it’s new and not sighted in yet’ when you indeed stink at hitting the target!

And you all walk away, confident in the knowledge that if Bambi is more than ten feet away, he will most likely escape (as he has countless times before.)

Oddly nobody questions the need to buy/use a weapon with a fifteen round clip to gun down a defenseless animal. And the light 223 caliber was designed to reduce recoil, improving your aim recovery time on human targets.

While the ability to bring the weapon to bear again more swiftly is a positive in both instances, you’d probably want to use a heavier caliber to knock the animal down (also eliminating the need to shoot it twice.

But people don’t think these things through.

Next on today’s list is this story, which I know all too well:

Susan Zimmerman, 62, has three part-time jobs.
In Hard Economy for All Ages, Older Isn’t Better ... It’s Brutal
By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Recent data present a strong case for baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

Ask an Expert: How Does Job Loss Affect Life Expectancy?

To belabor the obvious, job loss prior to retirement really just kicks the crap out of your SSI account. And we all know we won’t be able to ‘make ends meet’ on that tiny amount so it’s just the difference between ‘doomed’ and ‘scroomed’.

Left unaddressed is what can be done about this rampant ‘age discrimination’? You WON’T find an attorney willing to take your case because (unless you’re the Virgin Mary incarnate) there’s always something in your past that the defense can point to and say ‘that’s the reason we didn’t hire them!’

Since you have no ‘legal standing’ your only real remedy is to employ yourself…(or you can buy an assault weapon and ‘deploy’ yourself…)

We all know what the deal is.

Mr./Ms. ‘employer’ is afraid old and gray can’t keep up with the kids. Often these weasels are as old as you are (and use that as proof YOU can’t do the job because THEY CAN’T!)

Well, the real issue is shelf life. How long do you have to make your heap before you’re discarded like yesterday’s newspaper?

It started getting bad around the time I turned forty and now that I’m over fifty, it’s proven impossible.

I’ve got to survive ten more years before I can apply for my SSI…the only good news is I will be ‘well accustomed’ to living on nothing by then.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: Retirement age under A Simple Plan is fifty…at full pay!