Sunday, October 31, 2010

If there is a 'landslide'...

Greetings good citizen,

Here we are on the eve of a, er, ‘historic’ election, one that the ‘party of no’ is, er, ‘screaming’ will change the face of politics in the USA.

I’d posit that ‘change’ took place a few decades ago. What is really ‘new’ about the ‘Tea Party’?

The (fucking) republicans have been ‘de-funding’ government (via tax breaks for the wealthy) for the past forty years, What’s this ‘Tea Party’ Bullshit? How does making the rich, richer help anything?

The very definition of INSANITY is doing the same thing repeatedly, each time expecting a different outcome.

As we have all suspected If there is a Republican/Tea Party landslide on Tuesday… it will be more than ‘miraculous’

Tea Party Patriots has claimed anywhere from 2,300 to nearly 3,000 local affiliates, but even with its assistance, The Post could only verify a total of only 647 Tea Party groups nationwide. Most had fewer than 50 members. The median amount of money each group had raised in 2010 was $800, nowhere near the entry fee for the country club.


647 X 50 = 32,350 [Nation-fucking-wide!]

Now if we take that one step further and add in the likelihood that a majority of ‘Tea Partiers’ are also ‘registered Republicans’ we’d end up with some portion of our 1 in 5 voters that admit to being ‘psycho’ er, Republican. (Now that ‘conservatism’ has been proven to be a certified ‘mental disorder’.)

But naturally, we have bigger fish to fry…

Also from today’s NY Times editorials is this pointless rant that merely serves to belabor the obvious.

Is it just me or does it appear that no matter where you look, the fucking capitalists don’t have any solutions to offer?

If this isn’t bad enough, Mr. ‘Flat Earth’ (the billionaire, gone green) continues to beat Western capitalism bloody with its own creations.

Is it really ‘Morning in India’ so soon after the sun has set on the USA? One thing is obvious; Mr. Friedman has more cash than brains. He rather astutely ‘shut up’ about the earth being flat once globalization proved to be a bust. Why he’s back to beating that same hobby horse must have more to do with his own stock portfolio than anything useful to continued human civilization.

An THAT good citizen is yet another piece of a much larger hell.

People looking to escape prosecution for their crimes against society have thrown our whole civilization under the bus.

Will the ‘Day of Reckoning’ ever come?

It will for some and they will wail the loudest about those who were allowed to escape.

So here’s the ‘strategy’ (whether you like it or not.)

Vote the Dems a ‘no fucking excuses super majority’, then see what they do.

If we fail at this we will continue to suffer the ‘opposition effect’. Shit will continue to go the ‘wrong’ way and the opposition will keep getting blamed.

If there is no ‘opposition’ THEY CAN’T do as they please!

Sadly, we can’t do this with the ‘worthless’ Republicans…they ‘don’t believe’ in government so they ‘can’t govern’. (This has boiled down to a ‘refusal’ to act in the public’s interest, which they sell as being in the public’s interest!)

As feeble as this is, it is also our best short term solution.

Get to the polls, you know what lever to pull (box to check or whatever you do where you vote.)

Even if you want to ‘punish’ the Democrats, removing their ‘opposition’ and watching them squirm will be far more 'satisfying!'

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, October 29, 2010

Be Afraid...

Greetings good citizen,

We are about to find out just how badly broken our political process is.

There is no reason in the world to hand ‘victory’ to the, er, ‘party’ responsible for our broken economy, none whatsoever and yet you already know they won’t ‘lose’ the upcoming mid-terms.

We ‘know’ that because we’ve been told repeatedly by the bought and paid for MSM just how ‘strongly’ the ‘Tea Party’ conservatives have been ‘polling’…like we all haven’t asked ourselves just who (if anyone) was ever polled?

Be afraid, be very afraid good citizen!

What’s the ‘worst case’ scenario we’re looking at here? The Democrats lose a couple of seats in both houses but still retain, er, (slender) ‘majorities’ in both so the next (and last) two years of the Obama administration will go like the previous two have…’political gridlock’ will reign supreme.

IF the conservatives score a political upset and win back one or both houses of Congress you will see rioting/major social unrest sweep the nation.

People are already ‘suspicious’ of the thinly disguised corporate ‘vampire squid’ that is running this nation.

Face it, ‘one in five’ does NOT win elections, even when half of voters stay home!

Yet it happens all the time!

So you heard it here first. The, er, ‘conservatives’ will NOT retake either house of Congress (because they have already proven it is ‘unnecessary’, the Democrats take their marching orders from the same people the Republicans do.)

And the next two years will be ‘indistinguishable’ from the past two.

I have predicted in the past that the last election would be the ‘last’ one…and I’m standing by that prediction because it is unfathomable that ‘anyone’ (in their right mind) would run for the job of being the head ‘sock puppet’.

I can think of a few ‘entertainers’ who would do it for the right price now that the whole purpose of holding elections has been permanently undermined.

This is a cup of coffee that few have gotten an eye-opening sniff of. The last election proves conclusively that it doesn’t matter who you vote for if they all take their marching orders from the ‘same people’.

So the ‘mid-terms’ will change what? It will only make continued Republican ‘opposition’ more, er, ‘credible’ as we inch closer to full-blown Banana Republicdom.

Naturally this isn’t what any of us, er, ‘signed up’ for, but hell, this is precisely what happens when your ‘choices’ are made for you…

When do you get to ‘make some choices’ of your own?

You’ll get to vote with your gun as soon as you realize you’re screwed no matter what you do. (But there’s still a chance you can save your kids…)

Because that’s what it’s all coming down to…there will be those with guns and those who don’t…and you don’t want to be in the ‘don’t’ column.

Shifting ‘mental gears’ (haven’t done THAT in a while) here we come to the question of What should you ‘sacrifice’ to land a new job?

Bizarrely, this question is somewhat ass-backwards because it has finally become an issue of at what point is it ‘worthwhile’ to sell your time to an employer?

If the commute makes the trip back and forth to work, er, ‘nonsensical’ then accepting the job is a non-starter.

If the pay doesn’t ‘crack your nut’ (or relies on overtime to reach that goal) you’re probably ‘fucked’ as it is.

Understandably, looking for a job that offers a ‘future’ has become an exercise in futility if you’re not the owner’s progeny…

Ironically, many people don’t, ‘analyze’ what they’re being offered against what they ‘need’ which leaves people stranded in jobs that only dig the hole deeper.

Have I mentioned that there is no way out of this pickle using capitalism?

And THAT’S the GOOD NEWS!

The BAD NEWS is we’re stuck dealing with this self-serving system until it is, er, ‘eradicated’…

Hey, things look bleak but that only serves to re-enforce the point of ‘what have you got to lose (except your chains?)

While the (real) ‘opposition’ has yet to be organized, it will form in due time. The thing to be cautious of is the ‘fake’ opposition like the flaky ‘Tea Partiers’ (these people haven’t got a clue what they’re fighting, never mind fighting for!)

A Simple Plan…look for me when the time comes, I’ll be out there as I’m one of the few who doesn’t need a gun to defend themselves…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, October 28, 2010

The perception deception...

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we have to ask ourselves what good is ‘eyewash’ when A.) nobody understands what they’re looking at and B.) nobody believes what the numbers supposedly represent?

The thing to ask yourself good citizen is how do these assholes get away with this? The ‘global economy’ is sucking pond water because its ENTIRE customer base is so overloaded with debt that the ‘growth’ the media continues to report is basically an accounting trick, it doesn’t exist.

The ‘profits’ we keep hearing about are gains made by customers using ‘remaining’ sources after their ‘usual’ suppliers have been driven out of business.

And yes, good citizen, the ‘deal makers’ have been kept ‘busy’ tying up the loose ends as the deep-pocketed gobble-up the assets of their former competitors.

(Capitalism 101, it really IS all about ‘market share’!)

Which is to point out that the ‘perception management’ game has taken a dangerous turn. You are now expected to believe ‘prosperity’ has returned when it obviously hasn’t.

UNDERSTAND, nothing will be, er, ‘corrected’ as long as you ‘sit on your hands’.

The REALLY ‘bad news’ good citizen is this ‘automation’ thing has chewed up tens of thousands of jobs, jobs that are never coming back.

So how can the Stock Markets ‘reflect’ the prosperity of a nation?

As you well know, it doesn’t, so it can’t.

This is like a pocket IQ test. Whenever you hear somebody (and there was just such a [conservative] twat in yesterday’s local rag) who points at the stock market as ‘proof’ of our continuing prosperity. That individual just proved beyond any doubt that they are an idiot!

It’s bad enough the media uses the stock market as a yardstick of, er, ‘economic success’ but we have all learned that the ability to gauge how well the already wealthy are doing has no relationship to the economic health of society as a whole.

The Forbes 400 is NOT our entire society (although those listed probably aren’t aware of this…)

Worse, the MSM seems to subscribe to that, er, ‘opinion’ as well (That the Forbes list constitutes our entire society…at least the ‘newsworthy’ portion.)

Just how much of a social disconnect do you need to see before you understand that our civilization is being grossly mismanaged by a few clueless incompetents?

Although, you have to admit, they do a great job of convincing the gullible that everything is going to be ‘just fine’.

[As long as you don’t ask them what they mean by ‘everything’, they won’t let on about what ‘just fine’ entails…]

Perception management on a civilization wide scale is a very dangerous game to play…especially when YOU KNOW you are being gamed by KNOWN LIARS.

That is the hell of it good citizen.

You know they’re lying but there isn’t anything you can do about it…A.) legally and B.) for now.

Later on the ‘legal’ part won’t matter…

After the current cluster fuck collapses the ancient rules will return to the fore and under the ancient rules, the people are the law.

You’ll ‘vote’ with your war cry and attack anyone or anything your leaders ‘demonize’.

This is why ‘Tea Party’ nation is so disturbing…they’ve already demonstrated their willingness to ‘attack on command’ when ordered to by known liars.

Yup good citizen, this is a ‘two-edged’ sword…and both sides will think they’re, er, ‘right’.

Sadly, it ALWAYS comes down to this.

The most recent example of this phenomenon in Western Civilization is ‘the terror’ of the French Revolution…where the ‘elite’ were rounded up and executed, wholesale.

It is plenty disturbing that we find ourselves at this identical junction once again such a short time later…

And this time ‘the elite’ believes they are going to ‘win’!

Of course, that could be just ‘Let them eat cake’ bravado…

Time will tell good citizen.

‘The numbers’ don’t favor them, so maybe they think flushing the whole species down the drain will achieve what their everlasting treachery has failed to do…

While it is truly better to die on your feet than to live on your knees, conservative ‘thinking’ (such as it is) goes along similar lines to that of Satan…Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven!

AND THAT is what we’re up against!

Now what side are you on?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Time

Greetings good citizen,

How long can you hold your breath? The question becomes meaningless when there is no available oxygen in the vicinity.

But let’s continue as a thought experiment…the actual amount of time doesn’t matter. You’re no better off if you can hold your breath for three minutes or five, even if you’re a ‘pearl diver’ and can hold your breath for seven minutes without turning blue it’s fairly universal that in ten minutes, no matter who you are, you’re dead!

I’m going to stick my obligatory ‘fuck Republicans’ here to get it out of the way (let me throw in a gratuitous ‘fuck Democrats’ since most voters today are ‘independents’ because they caught on to the asshole conservatives running as liberals deception.)

What’s this have to do with being able to hold your breath?

The question is intended to focus your attention on a crucial factor that brain dead economists keep ignoring and that is ‘we don’t have ‘forever’ to play with here!’

The clock keeps fucking ticking, once the timer hits zero…KABOOM!

Maybe we should phrase it like Bill Cosby did…(Noah:) how long can you tread water?

Which is to ask how long you can survive in an economy that has no need for you?

This is a serious dilemma and it requires a damn near immediate solution!

The ONLY reason it is not a problem this second is because most idiots still think their inability to find a job is ‘their fault’.

Not true! I heard some douchebag on NPR last night talking about how not having a college diploma made you ‘unemployable’.

Yet another told a ‘joke’: ‘in the future every company will only have two employees, a man and a dog. The man’s job will be to feed the dog. The dog’s job is to make sure the man doesn’t touch the equipment.’

How idiot economists can even theorize, much less joke about this situation draws our attention to a species threatening problem…if all jobs become ‘automated’ who the fuck is going to ‘buy’ the output from the automated facilities?

Does the obvious answer (nobody) mean that in the very scary future, the only ones alive will be the ‘owners’? Can our gene pool survive that much ‘shrinkage’?

I personally have a problem with the ‘peaceful euthanization’ of the non-owning population. Anyone who thinks time will not be a factor in the upcoming collapse of civilization had better think again.

Time is a toughie; here we are, three years into the (most recent) economic ‘meltdown’ and ‘the wheels’ haven’t come off…yet. (Winter is coming and tens of millions are homeless…)

Every night it’s the same bullshit, when will the housing market recover?

I can answer that one…and the answer is NEVER!

YOU aren’t going to find anyone who makes enough to qualify for a loan to buy your home (should you still have one.)

The international ‘race to the bottom’ has made sure of that.

No jobs = no qualified buyers.

See how easy that was?

Um, in case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t any jobs on the horizon either. Our population continues to grow but the, er, ‘need’ for labor continues to, er, ‘shrink’.

This, amazingly enough, is not the government’s (a.k.a. Commerce’s) problem, it’s YOURS!

Do you understand that without ‘government intervention’ this, er, ‘imbalance’ isn’t going to get fixed?

Hell, it isn’t even part of the ‘national dialog’!

A Simple Plan addresses this crisis by shortening the workday/week and making housing a ‘freebie’ (meaning you no longer pay for it but you also no longer own it, you just get to ‘use’ it.)

See how easy that was?

[Um, that popping sound you hear is just the sound of capitalist’s heads exploding, don’t let it worry you…unless yours in next.]

There is no room for ownership in a world that MUST BE shared!

If that statement confuses you, even a little (capitalist upbringing aside), your god is calling! Do us all a favor and ‘self-expedite’ your face to face meeting with your deity!


This brings us to ‘mass lunacy’ (social conservatism) part two…taxes.

The cash-strapped governments across the country are facing local referendums to reduce taxes.

The question of whether or not the ‘tax rebels’ are stupid has already been answered, they are, profoundly!

If you ‘cut’ taxes, they’ll just raise ‘fees’! How much will you pay for your driver’s license now? The puppy already costs $70, (here) why not make it an even C-note?

Um, ‘ironically’, there are zero ‘taxes or fees’ under ‘A Simple Plan’. Why is this? Because ‘A Simple Plan’ was engineered with ‘the one useful purpose of money’ in mind.

All ‘money’ is funny and simply changing government won’t alter that fact.

The government (even now) doesn’t ‘need’ your money to function, it is simply used as an ‘excuse’ not to act.

How many times have you heard ‘we don’t have the money’? [We have no money to relieve poverty or cure disease, but we have an endless supply to make war!]

Why aren’t you entitled to a ‘free’ college education? (Because it removes the ‘college premium’ [rarity] from the college ‘selling points’.)

Um, ironically, college is ‘removed’ from ‘A Simple Plan’ entirely; your ongoing ‘education’ is free, on the job.

Um, considering the reduced workweek, ‘higher education’ will continue to be available on a part-time basis, for free, for life.

A Simple plan really is ‘simple’, it is commerce for the purpose of enriching all humankind (since we are all, er, ‘shareholders’.)

DON’T neglect to go to the polls next Tuesday and if you can’t figure out who to vote for, write my damn name down in the space provided!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, October 25, 2010

Unbelievable...

Greetings good citizen,

I marvel that the (Corporate financed) ‘Party of No’ thinks it can convince the public it will (legitimately) win more seats in both houses of Congress next week.

Who (save the willfully blind) doesn’t know who is responsible for the destruction of our economy?

The ‘Party of No’ loves to trot out their ‘poster boy’ for this (Bill Clinton,) once again ignoring the fact of who was President the first time anyone ever heard the acronym ‘NAFTA’. For those of you too young to remember, the first time anyone EVER muttered the term it came spewing from the mouth of the ‘B’ movie actor (and conservative Saint) Ron Reagan…a whole decade before anybody knew who Bill Clinton was!

Naturally, getting up off of your dead ass and dragging yourself down to polls is merely ‘sleight of hand’…or you’re stupid enough to believe that you live amongst the stupidest people on the planet.

Given what the ‘conservatives’ have done (with no discernable ‘opposition’ from the so-called ‘liberals’) there is no way in hell ANY of them would EVER win elected office again.

They may as well wear warning signs that read: ‘Caution I am a certified mental case, vote for me at your own peril!’

Is there ANYONE who feigns ignorance of what will happen should conservatives win control of either house of congress again?

More disturbing good citizen is the fact that there isn’t a fucking thing we can do about it if the bought and paid for media announces that the ‘fly-over states’ elected conservative legislators.

Why vote then? If only to prove to yourself that the fuckers are lying! You know who you voted for! (I have no love for the worthless, spineless Democrats but I hate their opponents!)

If we are indeed the subjects of ‘government by decree’ then the illusion will not be lifted until somebody ‘catches them in the act’.

As awareness of past, er, ‘unlikely outcomes’ grows it becomes more probable that someone will ‘blow the lid’ off of crooked election manipulation.

Probably my ‘fracture’ that I have more faith in my fellow humans and their reasoning ability than is generally accepted.

How sad is it that the media, through its constant bombardment of the public with manipulated data, has destroyed our faith in one another to make rational decisions?

It is not a question of whether or not YOU believe the lying government statistics, it is your acceptance that others believe it that damns you!

This is your ‘free speech’ in action. This is where liars can’t be held responsible for the damage they do to the public trust because it is their ‘right’ to lie.

In this respect, ‘free speech’ without regard for the truth is not a ‘right’ at all, it is a curse!

Ironically, the ‘liars’ are very careful with their ‘mis-representations’, they are scrupulous in reporting their findings; the lie is contained in how they measured the data.

So as you head for the polls on November 2nd (and you SHOULD vote,) consider your predicament…here you are, ‘trapped’ in a land run by oligarchs where you are of no benefit to their ongoing well-being.

You (and by extension, yours) have gone from the asset column to the liability column…and this was a conscious decision made by the ‘manipulators’ of money.

Sadly, this means (eventually) you and yours will suffer the fate of all useless, redundant, obsolete things…you’ll be left to rot.

Once you’ve ‘rotted’, you will be ‘disposed of’.

Nothing personal, it’s just that they have no use for you.

Repeat that to yourself and ask if this is what you signed up for?

Now confront the fact that there is no place to run, no place to hide.

You have one choice and it’s pretty daunting…

Are you up to the job? (Because ‘dead is dead’ regardless of how you get there!)

Get out and vote…oh and don’t forget to cast a ballot or two while you’re at it!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Criminals

Greetings good citizen,

I know I’m grasping at straws when I cite an article by a mainstream commentator that agrees with my own point of view, but that’s how national conversations get started.

today’s commentary by that accomplished wordsmith, Frank Rich points directly to the same ‘theme’ I’ve been pounding on all week: “What do we do when we discover our government has been hijacked by criminals?”

He even, in his own delicate way, asks the question that vexes us most: “Why haven’t the people we elected to take care of this crisis been unable to act?”

Bizarrely, the answer to that question is just as ‘frustrating’ as the oft used ‘cloak of national security’ enigma.

Were we to ‘prosecute’ these criminals it would, quite literally, destroy the industry of law as it is currently practiced. (Just as prosecuting those who act under ‘presidential authority’ would significantly diminish ‘presidential prestige’ (like this is somehow more important than justice?)

This leads us to a stumbling block those who worship power have become entangled in, one where the ‘appearance of propriety’ takes priority over actual performance.

As long as the records show the ‘right thing’ was done, the facts become immaterial.

Sadly, good citizen, it is the facts that we are left to deal with.

As was inevitable, the ‘deficit hawks’ have come out of the woodwork demanding ‘austerity’ in government spending (like the money wasn’t ‘funny’!)

No irony should be lost on the fact that this (totally unnecessary) crisis was caused by the irrational principles attached to ‘money’.

Seriously, all of the other ‘symptoms’ of the pending collapse of civilization are being driven by ‘insane’ monetary claims!

From the multi-billion dollar ‘bonuses’, er, demanded by banking, er, professionals to the hundreds of dollars a minute being billed by, er, ‘healthcare professionals’ it is a small wonder that these people haven’t been dragged before a court and sentenced to hang!

Yet there is nothing ‘wrong’ going on here. Why YOU don’t warrant a multi-million dollar bonus for sweeping the floors or answering the phones remains as much a mystery as why the people who get paid these princely sums DO warrant them.

In the end it’s ‘because I said so’.

And if you don’t like it, go suck a rock!

Which is to ask why our ‘law makers’ are incapable of putting an end to these damaging practices that have eviscerated our economy?

Are they too STUPID or are they simply substituting themselves for the current bonus recipients, thinking, "that could be my bonus someday!"

Naturally, there is zero mention of this in the corporate owned MSM. Nowhere (save the occasional OP/Ed piece) is the voice of reason to be found.

The world is FULL of clever people…sadly, most of them are wearing a muzzle.

Perhaps the conversation we NEED to be having is the one where it is acknowledged that WE (as a species) ARE ‘the law’ and the ‘legislative process’ cannot be ‘stream-lined’ or ‘delegated’ because the end result is indeed the ‘tyranny of the minority’.

Obvious to more than a few of us is the desperate need to institute a completely new way of doing what we do.

A Simple Plan, it’s an idea whose time has come.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

(Author/creator of ‘A Simple Plan’)

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Pauperized!

Greetings good citizen,

We can only wonder how (the irrelevant) stock markets decided to reverse yesterday’s losses during this morning trading, the mysterious uptick hasn’t been attributed to anything (Not that this particularly matters; movements of the markets seldom make sense.)

Nor is the ‘trading day’ over, markets may well end where they started and we’d be none the wiser.

Who cares about the corporate sponsored Kabuki Dance put on for your benefit by the MSM?

Makes you wonder what the ‘real news’ would look like, doesn’t it?

Well, tonight’s first offering is a refutation of ‘the dance’ itself, not that you, Dear reader/Good Citizen is in need of such enlightenment…

No. 330: September Production and Housing Starts: Subscription required: October 19th, 2010

• Third-Quarter Production Growth Slowed and Housing Contracted
• Third-Quarter GDP Should Have Slowed, But the Heavily-Politicized and Guesstimated Series Is Virtually Worthless...


How’s that for ‘short and to the point’?

We are left to ponder if misery can exist in the absence of official recognition?

Would Marie Antoinette have kept her head if she had today’s media to put a positive spin on an otherwise retched economy?

How retched is it?

5 Pieces of Advice for the New Paupers

Tonight’s second offering is but the most fleeting of glimpses of today’s economic reality. What the writer shares here fails to hammer home what the actual experience is really like.

I have often railed about how much we take things for granted. When we walk over to a light switch, we expect something to happen when we toggle it.

When nothing happens, we are genuinely perplexed! The light switch is a relatively recent invention yet they have become so ingrained into our existence that we expect them to function whenever we encounter one (within reason.)

Naturally, the light switch doesn’t function if there isn’t one to flip, a situation many of the homeless find themselves confronted with. Then there’s the ‘running water’ situation, which also has multiple aspects to it.

You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone.

Worse is the realization that your ‘privation’ (being deprived of these, er, ‘basic necessities’) was caused by some greed head’s decision to ship your job to a third world cesspool! (This assumes you had a marketable skill at some point in the past, many recent grads don’t even have that…which is a whole other can of worms!)

Yes good citizen, it all comes down to choices AND YOU HAVEN’T BEEN GIVEN ANY THAT MATTER!

Knowing what you know today, would you have voted Republican EVEN ONCE over the past forty years?

Many of you are too young to remember (and conservatives conveniently ‘forget’) that the first time anybody EVER heard the acronym NAFTA, it was being touted by none other than ‘The Great Communicator’ (of ‘Bedtime for Bonzo’ fame!)

Don’t know who that is? Probably better forgotten anyway.

No amount of Monday morning quarterbacking can alter the past, but it is even more disturbing to acknowledge that it is already too late to alter the political landscape (via the political machinery provided) too.

You won’t get to ‘vote’ for who will run things or what laws you will forced to live under; history has shown we are used to being the victims of tyranny.

MAYBE future historians will ask how, in such an interconnected society, we let it all slip away? Why didn’t we use the resources available to us to unite against this obvious threat?

Like any of us had a choice!

Our ‘problem’ in a nutshell is the same one we’ve always faced, Treason.

It is far too easy to ‘buy off’ those elected to defend the public from the criminals among us.

Worse, the criminals have an astounding number of, er, ‘defenders’.
It is not until the criminals start to prey upon the people who ‘thought’ they enjoyed the criminal’s protection that the cries for justice are heard.

Yes, once upon a time politicians would run on ‘Law & Order’ issues, now that there is going to be a huge uptick in, er, ‘criminal activity’ they’ll be at it again.

Unfortunately you will NOT be given the option of prosecuting the criminals responsible for the increase in ‘social unrest’.

And that’s beyond being a damn shame.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Dream World...

Greetings good citizen,

In another stunning display of WTF! After tacking on 80 points yesterday, the markets dropped more than a hundred on, er, ‘reverse news’.

Yesterday’s gain was attributed to the tidy profit reported by JP Morgan, so when BOA reported an even larger loss today, the numbers took a ‘nosedive’.

What SHOULD BE disturbing here is just how much a bank’s profitability is affecting the entire (world’s) economy. [After BOA ‘announced’ its third quarter results markets around the world crashed in tandem!]

Which is to point out that when (non-productive) banking is your nation’s largest industry, something is definitely ‘fucked up’ and the people in charge got some ‘splainin’ to do…

UNDERSTAND, this is not ‘magic’ nor is it ‘a mystery’ nor is it a major fuck-up…it’s all actually pretty simple (as well as being amazingly stupid—from a tactical point of view.)

Start with the ‘foundation’ of all industry…Mother nature doesn’t have a fucking cash register so all ‘inputs’ are ‘free’. You can make anything, anywhere and ship it around the world TWICE and STILL make a profit on it because it essentially costs you NOTHING!

The ‘trick’ lies in how much the ‘rubes’ are willing to pay for the ‘free to you’ item.

It should be free to them too but hey, if they don’t get it from you, they ain’t getting the sum bitch!

And that, my friends, is ‘fuck you, pay me!’ capitalism in a nutshell.

The ‘middleman’ is superfluous…most of the time.

Alas, there is indeed such a thing as ‘scarcity’, which provides us with money’s one useful purpose, to regulate access to ‘scarce’ items.

Understand good citizen, all that talk about money being a ‘storehouse of value’ is just that…talk!

If we’re EVER to pull our heads from our collective behinds, we must lose these false notions about what money is and what it does!

Whether you realize it or not, money is indeed used as a ‘regulator’. What’s wrong today is the system is sinking under the weight of all of the ‘freeloaders’ (The children’s children’s, children of the original founders.)

If there was ever a reason why no, er, ‘civilization’ has survived longer than 400 years, this is it.

The founder’s kids do it in.

Every time.

It’s not their endless greed that tears things apart (although that is a big part of it) it is the irresistible desire to ‘one-up’ their forebearers that usually spells doom for the established, er, ‘culture’.

Sadly, their ‘role models’ are usually Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar or Napoleon, none of whom were known for ‘peaceful’ conquest.

While tonight’s offering offers a feeble explanation for how citizens are coping with our current malaise, I’d opine that our collective ‘Dream World’ is a lot closer to home than most of you realize.

If you don’t recognize it as a dream it's because it is more like a nightmare that refuses to end.

You can fill person’s head with an incredible amount of nonsense and they are still capable of functioning ‘adequately’ (although they’ll probably never recover full use of their mind…)

Look closely in the mirror good citizen and try not to frighten yourself…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, October 18, 2010

Exonerated (again!)

Greetings good citizen,

It is one thing to ‘speculate’ what the, er, ‘owners’ of our society are up to and quite another to have that speculation confirmed.

Goldman Forecasts ‘Substantially Higher’ Prices for Crude in 2011, 2012

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecasts “substantially higher prices” for oil in the second half of 2011 and 2012 as the global inventory surplus is exhausted.

“We believe that forward price levels offer good hedging opportunities for calendar 2011/2012 for consumers despite the recent rally,” Goldman analysts led by Allison Nathan and Jeffrey Currie said in a note to clients yesterday.

“We expect the supply-demand balance to continue to tighten in the fourth quarter of 2010 as continued global economic growth, albeit likely at a slower pace than in the first half, continues to strengthen demand,” the note said. “Moving into the second half of 2011 and 2012, we expect the global inventory surplus to be exhausted and OPEC spare capacity to be drawn on to balance the market, leading to substantinally higher prices.”


Naturally, this is only half of the story. My ‘source’ for this story has this to add:
The Old One – Two: While Goldman sees “substantially higher prices” for oil in late 2011 into 2012 as global petroleum surpluses are drawn down, OPEC Members are disinclined to wait, seeking $100 a barrel oil soon to compensate for the 13% decline in the dollar.


So, show of hands good citizen, how many of you saw a 13% raise to offset this corresponding drop in YOUR purchasing power?

Notice how only those who own their own businesses have their hands up? Which only goes to prove, if you work for a paycheck, regardless of how big it is, YOU’RE A FUCKING PEASANT!

(Don’t go getting all pissy now, I work for a paycheck too, and a tiny one to boot!)

Please note: this Bloomberg article does NOT announce ‘TEOTWAKI’. This is mostly because life will proceed as it always has for the owners of ‘Bloomberg terminals’. The ‘read between the lines’ here is: Warning, life is about to become much more dangerous!



Hopefully I don’t need to draw you pictures to prove that even a modest increase in energy prices will wreak havoc on a large segment of our domestic population.

Case in point, when fuel prices only briefly flirted with $4 a gallon, foreclosures went through the roof! In the past couple of weeks gasoline has bounced from roughly $2.50 per gallon to $2.75…this is just the opposite of what it did during Republican administrations as we approached Election Day.

If you’re retarded enough to vote Republican in the coming election, you’re going to get what you deserve!

(Not that I think voting for either ‘party’ will do you any good, regardless.)

Since our entire civilization is based on ‘cheap and abundant’ energy, our entire ‘social model’ ceases to function when energy is neither.

However, it is highly debatable just how ‘real’ the crisis is since there is no way to know for sure just how much energy remains.

The current crisis is all about ‘comfort levels’. I suspect the plan is, since it is eventually going to happen anyway, to ‘pull the plug’ early so the ‘pirates’ who rule us have a fighting chance.

This means killing as many of us as possible.

Sorry but there is no way to ‘candy coat’ this. The rich have already proven that they don’t give a fuck about you and yours.

If I don’t quit here I’ll launch into a tirade about letting criminals rule us…and that’s a sure way not to win the hearts and minds of the people I’m trying to help.

I guess the difference would be that I wouldn’t ‘point a finger’ at you for something you have no choice in.

The elections are ‘fixed’ and only serve to provide ‘the illusion’ of participation, in the end you decide nothing.

And perhaps that’s the most damning condemnation I can lay at society’s feet.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sunday, October 17, 2010

The Rage Won't End...

Greetings good citizen,

I find it interesting to observe an unintentional ‘echo chamber’ forming on the, er, ‘non-conservative’ side of the fence.

Unsurprisingly, the consensus in the ‘Doom-o-sphere’ is “Put a fork in it, it’s done!” yet, it certainly isn’t ‘over’.

As the astute Mr. Rich so succinctly points out The Rage Won’t End on Election Day [because handing over your right to decide solves nothing!]

Unlike (fabricated) Republican ‘Talking Points’, the similarities coming out of the, er, ‘non-conservative’ media have their basis in ‘observable truth’.

Are people pissed? (A resounding YES!) Do the largely duped ‘Tea Partiers’ have anything to do with it? (No, although the RWNM says otherwise. The Tea Partiers are too addled to know just what they’re supposedly ‘protesting’! This is linked with the discovery that conservatism is a mental disorder!)

Understand good citizen that the ‘Tea Partiers’ are a splinter of the 20% of the overall population that self-identify as ‘conservatives’.

Mathematically, 20% isn’t enough to win an election…but they do, and we can only wonder ‘why’?

Most conservatives are ‘wealthy’, but that is only one percent of the population, so the other 19% are merely ‘wannabes’. (Or worse, they simply ‘think’ they’re rich.)

Unfortunately, this problem is larger than one would think.

Too many people (thanks to conservative brainwashing) think they are on their way success and coincidentally, fame.

Hell, they dutifully do all of the things they were taught lead to success, they can’t fail, right?

If it were as simple as ‘doing the right thing’ we’d all be ‘rich and powerful’.

Sadly, if you want to, er, ‘succeed’ you must be totally self-absorbed, relentless in the pursuit of greed and absolutely without so much as a speck of remorse. You must absolutely loathe every human who crosses your path, even the 'useful' ones, because ‘utility’ is only a temporary condition.

You realize the more useful someone is, the more danger they represent.

This is why conservative ideology is the most direct route to becoming a full-blown socio-path.

Your willingness to dispose of anyone and everyone that stands between you and your, er, ‘destiny’ causes you to believe everyone wants you dead. While this is not an unreasonable assumption (people want you dead for very good reasons!) it is your own ‘self-absorption’ (feeling of self-importance) that fuels this aspect of your mania.

‘Birds of a Feather’ flock together and I see far too many campaign posters for conservative candidates here in my own back yard but that merely proves my point.

Real Estate in this neck of the woods (still) ranges between the upper six figures and lower seven figures…SO, conservative candidates enjoy strong support from the crowd more interested in their own net worth than the quality of life of the area’s public servants.

A conservative will howl like hell when they are assessed to pay more taxes yet the same conservative is the first one to sue the town when his property is damaged because there are no funds to keep the roads in good repair…

Which brings us full circle to the recent ‘non-conservative’ consensus, an almost universal agreement that what passes for our government will inevitably grind to a halt once the conservatives regain control.

Naturally, this begs the other, er, ‘conundrum’ that I raised earlier. How can conservatives win if only one in five of us are conservatives?

Mathematically this don’t work, yet it happens.

Which brings us back to the ‘reliability’ of the ballot box/MSM.

Since the MSM ‘announces’ the results of an election (yes, the same MSM that lies to us on a regular basis at the behest of their corporate/conservative owners.) how much faith can we have in the accuracy of that announcement?

I’d say next to none…but I’m a hard marker.

Maybe you’ve never been in a position where you’ve had to lie to keep your job, but most of us have.

If you don’t think promotions are handed out on the basis of nepotism rather than merit you’re walking through life blindfolded!

That one percent of the population that claims fifty percent of the nation’s income for themselves are, er, ‘over-represented’ in our ‘one dollar = one vote’ government.

This brings us to our last sorry subject

The much abused invention that is at the root of our impending collapse…money.

Now, the linked article is focused on a specific kind of, er, currency and I strongly agree with Jesse, if you think gold is at a ‘top’, think again!

This DOES NOT alter my opinion that gold is no better than ‘paper money’, it is even more frightening to see them ‘linked’ so that one is equated with so many/much of the other when nothing is further from the truth/reality!

Yet my opinion will not stop the mentally challenged from bidding gold to the moon. Nor will it stop millions of suckers from being ‘fleeced’ by the market makers in this commodity.

I’m inclined to say those of us who don’t own gold will be ‘unaffected’ by the coming ‘bull market’ in gold but that would be wrong.

Since gold is still tightly linked to paper currency, as gold rises, so will the price of all commodities.

It will be this, er, ‘illusion’ that will be pointed to when the price of oil shoots over two and then three hundred dollars a barrel!

As I’ve said right along good citizen, the money is all ‘funny’ and none of this should be happening.

What we’re really seeing is the biggest ‘heist’ of the world’s riches ever committed

Left to our imagination is whether or not they’ll get away with it?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, October 15, 2010

There is no 'Plan B'

Greetings good citizen,

As the world’s economy continues its death spiral (regardless of what the stock markets does,) we can only wonder what our, er, ‘leaders’ are thinking?

(For the sake of argument we will ‘assume’ the ‘announced winners’ of the most recent elections are our so-called ‘leaders’, even if that isn’t how things have worked out…)

As I have pointed out many times before, there is NO WAY to use capitalism to ‘save’ capitalism. It ain’t gonna fly!

What you’ll get is ‘privatized profits’ with ‘socialized losses’, a rather devastating combination when it comes to the overall welfare of society.

The question nobody is asking is do you want to live with 299 million starving, desperate people?

The short answer is ‘no!’ well guess what? Our politicians don’t want to live with millions of destitute people either…that’s why they take the money! (Although ‘the joke’ is going to be on anyone who thinks they can ‘buy’ their way out of the coming fiasco…)

There are indeed some things money can not buy.

Which is to ask if trillions of dollars worth of additional ‘public debt’ (remember, privatized profits, socialized losses…) will put the economy ‘back on track’?

Sadly, that’s not ‘the plan’…worse, the last thing they want is for you to get an inkling about what the plan really is…because saving you isn’t part of that plan.

As I explained a couple of days ago, ‘the plan’, as it stands, is to let our elected government simply ‘disappear’ amidst a cloud of finger pointing and ‘epic legislative gridlock’.

Which is to say that those we elect to make decisions will be incapable of performing even that simple task.

I’ll even go as far as to predict that ‘the party of no’ will initiate the ‘walk out’ that ultimately ends government ‘by the people’.

The thing to ask is ‘why would they do something like that?’

Well, good citizen, what do you suppose the answer is?

By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD.

Imagine that? As early as the year after next the ‘demand’ for oil will ‘outstrip’ supply.

What does that mean for you?

…letting prices determine which industries idle back may not be the best plan. Consider the case of agriculture. If full 'pass-through pricing' is the mechanism of rationing, which it currently is, then less food will be grown. With world grain stocks at historic lows, this is one area where we might not want to let Mr. Market dictate the activities of farmers based on fuel price. To do otherwise would require a plan of some sort, and none appear to be in effect.


Now imagine the ‘double whammy’ of an ‘absent government’ AND an energy crisis…

Whole sections of the nation will become ‘uninhabitable’ because the ‘average person’ (who is already living on some kind of food assistance program) will be ‘unable’ to afford to buy enough fuel to report to work, never mind heat their home or cook their food…much less heat water to wash and bathe with!

Funny how this energy scarcity thing ‘cascades’ through your entire life…

And, as the title of the article points out…THERE IS NO PLAN ‘B’!

So if you’ve been looking for a ‘definitive timeline’, now you have something to work with!

Bad news… I dunno when this particular conference was held but I doubt it was last week. So, tick-tock good citizen, civilization has ‘roughly’ two years from this past summer until pretty much everything ‘crashes and burns’. In many cases literally.

While we were dancing through the individual’s ‘woes’ and saw how ‘out of sight’ energy prices…I’d say ten dollar a gallon gasoline coupled with ten dollar a gallon heating oil (just for starters) would pretty much preclude most people from even reporting to work.

You can see how this, er, ‘problem’ could quickly, er, ‘eradicate’ most of the economy. Ultimately, it would also decimate the population. And the soon to be ‘non-existent’ government wouldn’t lift a finger.

Which is to point out that you should really ‘vote’ with your trigger finger in the upcoming mid-term elections.

Or you may want to save your ammo for when it will really be needed…during the upcoming food riots/raids.

What ‘food riots’ you ask? The food riots that will come inevitably when the trucks stop delivering to the local supermarket, of course!

Here’s where the job becomes difficult.

I need to convince you that the, er, ‘rich’ have already made their choice. They have already elected to throw the rest of us under the oncoming bus.

What is not being reported is there’s more oil out there than they’re ‘admitting to’. After the, er, ‘collapse’ of Western Civilization there suddenly won’t be a ‘crisis’ anymore.

[Mostly because the number of end users will have shrunk dramatically.]

One can only suspect that the currently wealthy intend to, er, ‘wipe out’ any survivors that resist being enslaved.

Bizarrely, if their plan succeeds, they will outnumber us after the dust settles…sadly, this won’t make them any smarter.

They’ll still be too greedy and stupid to manage things without causing riots or uprisings…

Again, I risk much by walking the extreme edges of credibility but they have been ‘experimenting’ with social collapse in the Banana Republics for decades now. They have a pretty solid idea as to what happens when you pull certain levers.

No accident or coincidence, not by a long shot!

But, being the ‘rational person’ that you are, you will still give them the benefit of the doubt, regardless of how many times they’ve screwed you over!

And THAT good citizen is the hardest thing to fight!

You SHOULD know better but unfortunately you still tend to buy their ‘happy talk’ rather than what your own mind tells you.

Well, I can’t tell you what to believe…but that little voice inside your head isn’t necessarily ‘wrong’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Descent

Greetings good citizen,

In what can best be described as ‘no surprise to nobody’, unemployment ticked up again…so the markets, that sole barometer of ‘economic health’ dropped a whole 15 points.

But no matter, we have already concluded that the stock market is only of consequence to the already rich. It is totally useless as far as the real people are concerned.

The Stock Market is merely a ‘prop’ the MSM uses to support their baseless ‘Happy Talk’ on.

But again, I digress…

As I touched upon yesterday our ‘social operating system’ is on the verge of collapse. The financial system is already toast and once the workers stop getting paid, things will go downhill quite rapidly indeed.

The thing to keep in mind is this could happen any second now. We are literally waiting for that ‘one more thing’ which will prove to be too much.

Today’s ‘unemployment report’ is the best ‘economic barometer’ we have, good citizen. When the rate remains, er, ‘unsustainably high’ for too long a period, collapse is not far behind.

Doomers like myself believe we have already crested the limit of time a large segment of the population can remain without funds without severe social blowback.

Did I mention ‘any second now’?

The return of cold weather sure isn’t helping the situation…

But hey, what am I saying, according to the MSM, everything is just peachy keen! Those 99’ers will find a job any day now that they no longer have their unemployment checks to fall back on!

The glass is way more than half-empty and only an asshole would say otherwise. For the sake of argument, it would be the same asshole that dismisses ‘class war’ out of hand.

The same asshole that needs their neck stretched…

But hey, that’s just my opinion.

Sounds vicious good citizen but ‘the lack of consequences’ is precisely how we got to be where we’re standing today…

Just saying, ya know?

The bark doesn’t mean anything if the dog don’t bite.

So, citizens of the ‘wounded land’, how do you propose to deal with your situation once the system ceases to function?

Sadly, the most common response to that query would be shock/surprise! Most people weren’t aware that the ‘Dead Sea’ was ever sick…(which is to point out that most people do not realize that the financial system ‘has failed’, and only a few knew it was, er, ‘ill’.)

This is all pretty silly considering the, er, ‘fabricated nature’ of money, we’re all gonna feel pretty damn stupid dying for a lie!

Worse, there isn’t a fucking thing you can do about it. Either you know how to survive in the wild or you don’t.

And this ain’t gonna be no ‘walk in the park’. You will have thousands of ‘competitors’, many that believe it is easier to take it from you than it is to get it for themselves! If you can’t bring yourself to ‘do the necessary’, be prepared to be somebody else’s bitch!

Yeah, this is probably why most of you question whether or not humanity is worth ‘saving’.

Because so many of the helpless are only too willing to ‘prey’ upon their fellow humans…except when you cross that line you cease being a fellow human and become a feral parasite.

Which is a totally different take on the ‘employer/employee relationship, isn’t it?

But anyway…

I’ll reward your patience by acknowledging that I’m not pushing the panic button…today.

I am only testing your awareness that it is much later than it appears and it’s going to be a mighty rough ride whether you’re ready or not.

I have often raised the question of whether or not the MSM would tell us that we only had moments to prepare…and the obvious answer to that question is NO.

The ensuing panic would kill more people than whatever the approaching calamity would claim…with the possible exception of nukes…

Which is to ask if the last drop of oil on the planet were running through the refinery as I type this, would they tell us?

You can bet your sweet ass they wouldn’t…although it can be fairly argued that the panic they hope to avoid will occur anyway, so informing the public wouldn’t likely make things much worse…

Well, then there are those questions that don’t have good answers, like ‘How long have you known we were running out?’ and ‘Why didn’t you do anything about it?’

Since both questions are essentially ‘moot’, the proper answer is silence.

Just remember good citizen, The End of the World as We Know it marks the beginning of a whole new world!

Will the people win this time or will the parasites continue to prevail?

We’ll see.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

The mists of history...

Greetings good citizen,

Like money, the ‘origins’ of capitalism are murky and hidden in the mists of time and history.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to determine with any authority if the entity credited in this article titled Peak Capitalism was the ‘first’ multinational corporation or if it was indeed the mother of all corporations; because it is neither here nor there.

I suspect most would agree where it all started isn’t nearly as crucial as where it is all heading.

I find the article very enlightening from the respect of its ‘implications’ for larger society. It is easy to see that society has not been ‘managed’ for the benefit of (all) humanity for a very long time…why nobody thinks this is peculiar is the disturbing part.

In fact, I find it particularly disturbing that there aren’t more writers asking the kind of questions you will regularly find here…

Different drummer aside, we are all living pretty much the same existence with pretty much the same set of experiences, so why is nobody else complaining?

Perhaps it is the conundrum of ‘genius’…Einstein was astonished to learn that most people didn’t think in ‘pictures’ like he did. Perhaps this is the same phenomenon, what is ‘obvious’ to me has been successfully indoctrinated out of you.

Because most of us no longer ‘buy the lie’ that is ‘representative democracy’ better known as government by those who can pay for it, for the rest of us.

YOU surrender your ‘right to decide’ to someone who will make decisions in your name without ever consulting you.

Now we stand on the brink of losing even that little ‘veneer’ of ‘participation’ because we know it isn’t worth the effort.

Should we be ‘upset’ that our vote will soon be, er, ‘denied’ to us or should we secretly be thankful that we have finally been forced to confront the truth?

Voting for others to vote for us is WORSE than not voting at all!

One need only look at the all of the poverty that this has created to see how well that has worked over the past two-hundred and thirty years…


We hold these truths to be ‘self-evident’…but like people themselves, apparently some truths are more evident than others...

Worse is the level of rejection one receives when you propose that we return the decision making process back to where is belongs, in the hands of those who must live with the consequences of their actions (or inaction, it works both ways.)

Bizarrely, from the time you were old enough to comprehend, others have made decisions for you. What isn’t adequately explained is they do this in preparation for the day when you will have to make decisions on your own!

Understandably, it is much ‘easier’ to have someone else decide ‘for you’. All you have to do is comply. It is also ‘easy’ to convince yourself that the decider is ‘in tune’ with you, that they would decide pretty much the same way you would so it’s no big deal…

BUT, the decider gets to determine a lot of things you never even get to look at or consider…and Shazam, you’re stuck with the ‘consequences of those decisions’ (while he or his successors have ‘excused’ him from being prosecuted for his ‘official acts’.)

Understand good citizen, YOU have been RAPED and LOOTED while the perps accomplices simply turned their heads like nothing happened…and then they presented you with the ‘bill’ for what was stolen.

About that bill…it isn’t really a demand for payment so much as it is a list of the destruction that was done to our civilization.

The truly disturbing part is the damage is ‘global’, there is no place you can go to escape the carnage. (Which might explain why so many legislators/superrich have bought ‘floating palaces’ recently…)

Like the author of the article points out, corporations are the foundation for ‘legalized plunder’. If we as a species are to protect ourselves from the ‘pirates’ (who would kill us all) we MUST reform civilization and hunt down the predators before they exterminate us.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS. I am fully aware that the posts are ‘trespassing’ on the ‘incredible’ BUT there is ample historical evidence for this and worse, so don’t be so quick as to dismiss this as ‘speculative fancy’…

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Zombieland

Greetings good citizen,

You ought to know by now that I never run back to back scare the pants off of you offerings, so don’t be mislead by the title. We aren’t talking about ‘real’ zombies (although I suspect some of you would take that topic somewhat more seriously than the wholesale trashing of your constitutional rights come T.E.O.T.W.A.K.I.)

No, today’s examination of figurative zombies extends only as far as the financial system and their largest debtors…

Um, Ilargi rightly points to something we ‘Doomers’ have been saying all along. Our, er, ‘system of commerce’ is dead and desperately needs to be replaced, pronto!

Then we encounter this kind of dangerous speculation which assumes demand will somehow recover in the absence of customers…(apparently the few that remain employed will buy ‘more’, for some foolish reason. Perhaps the plan is to ‘gift’ their [surviving] unemployed relatives?)

YOU don’t realize anything is ‘amiss’ because life today carries on like it always has. You go to a place of business, tender payment and they accept it without question…for now, anyway.)

BUT (and it’s a mighty big but!) the banks that clear/collect what everybody owes everybody else are in fact ‘insolvent’.

Were this to become an issue (and in the real world it would be) banks would be ‘unable’ to foreclose on anyone because the bank would have gone out of business.

Naturally, the greed heads would have devised a way to get their hands on your property without having to pay for it…but since they ‘wished’ the money into existence in the first place, its sort of the same difference.

But that is neither here nor there. The real problem is the banks can NEVER recover the money they lent on these properties IF the current (nominal) owner DOESN’T pay off the balance.

And most people who bought at these sky-high prices never intended to be the ones who would ‘pay off’ the mortgage! (The next sucker would perpetually be the one who would be ‘on the hook’ for more than the property was worth.)

‘Cept they ran out of suckers…permanently.

Stop paying the suckers enough to afford/qualify for million dollar mortgages and you’d be amazed at how quick the ‘supply’ of buyers would outstrip the ‘demand’ for houses!

Fast forward to today.

Now we have a HUGE inventory of houses that the current owners owe more on than they anyone is willing to pay. Since most mortgages are ‘non-recourse’, this is not the owner’s problem but the banks.

Understand good citizen that this is only a single symptom of a much larger and more disturbing situation.

The home situation is eminently solvable. (Make the stack of lumber ‘free’.) The crisis of the ever-expanding economic desert is not as easily solved; ‘work share’ is only a partial solution.

As you know, ‘A’ is directly tied to ‘B’.

The ‘scary’ part of this zombie story is ‘why’?

Ignorance don’t fly. There is no way that these people can honestly claim they were ‘ignorant’ of the outcome.

So why did they do it?

And that’s the puzzle I’ll leave you with good citizen as I’ve already shared my theory as to ‘why’ they did what they did.

It’s odd how peak oil and peak population can be tied together in such a destructive fashion.

But we have already determined that we aren’t dealing with particularly ‘bright’ people here…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, October 11, 2010

Where's your share?

Greetings good citizen,

There are a hundred ways to explain how the economy became ‘lopsided’…but nobody is doing a good job with ‘why’…

Although you do find a dandy explanation (again, ‘of mechanics’) here in an article that asks the question of what happened to “ The Peoples’ Slice of the Pie”? [emphasis mine.]

40 years ago the Dow was under 2,000 AND it had ‘real’ industrials listed! Today the economy SUCKS, the Dow is over 11,000 and nobody can tell us why…not without lying through their teeth, but hey, by now we’re sort of used to that.

How did you get 90 cents on the dollar picked from your pocket?

One would be tempted to point to mis-management but sadly the real reason is outright fraud.

This entire fiasco is due to ‘because I said so’. (Understand, I don’t mean ‘me’ in particular. We’re in this crisis because ‘the guardians of the law’ lacked the intestinal fortitude to utter the shortest statement in the English language…No!)

(You could argue that ‘I’ is shorter but it has no context. If you shouted ‘I’ it could be construed as a complaint there was something wrong with your optical sensory organ…which is to say it’s not really a ‘statement’…)

This [achievement] in itself boggles the mind, how somebody was able to subvert a thousand years of legal precedent (as well as legal ‘machinery’ that spans the globe) to enrich themselves while destroying the world’s economy.

Worse, this started forty years ago, back when the words ‘the population explosion’ first captured the public imagination…

What SHOULD really frighten the crap out of all of you is how our self-appointed ‘betters’ have proven repeatedly that they are not very ‘bright’…

BUT they have an extremely long and disturbing track record of putting their own self-interests first.

So…what do you suppose the ‘self-interested’ would do to preserve their grip on the world’s resources?

The first thing you need to understand is these fuckers know it won’t be their ‘finger on the trigger’ when it comes to murdering millions of innocent civilians.

They’ll just command their bought and paid for lapdogs to ‘make it so’.

Which brings us full circle to the ‘equality’ conundrum…how some of us are ‘more equal’ than the rest…

Strictly speaking, the rich shouldn’t exist.

Which begs the question of where the hell are the brave and the strong in a world where the rich have the upper hand?

Money is meaningless…just as those who worship money are worthless.

People who will do anything for money are MORONS…

But you know that!

Yet here we are! Sitting in a steaming pile of shit because those entrusted with upholding the law instead SOLD US OUT for a few crummy dollars!

If you don’t have a problem with that, hang on a while longer, you soon will!

Worse good citizen, all the money in the world will not buy your way out of the catastrophe that is headed our way.

A catastrophe that will be caused by (ironically enough) the value of money becoming ‘uncertain.’

What we haven’t explored yet good citizen is what might be called the ‘worst case scenario’…the government of the US ‘disappears’ and is replaced with…nothing.

Try to wrap your head around a ‘lawless’ land, a place where you are truly ‘on your own’…

It will literally be one hundred times worse than a dictatorship…the part that should frighten the fuck out of you is our ‘nuclear stockpile’ being turned over to whoever holds them at the time of the government, er, ‘dissolving’.

Now it would literally be true that the captain of a nuclear-armed submarine would be one of the most powerful men on the planet…a law unto himself.

Here’s something to make the nightmare even more frightening…imagine the corporate oligarchy ‘taking custody’ of the world’s biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Would the corporate yahoo’s ‘make an example’ of North Korea? (To ‘prove’ their willingness to use nuclear weapons to advance their agenda…)

While a ‘conservative dictatorship’ is plenty frightening, it is even more disturbing to have no enemy at all!

And THAT good citizen, is precisely what we will be up against.

Bizarrely, this is not to say that those who take over will be disorganized or ‘independent’ of one another. Their leadership will remain ‘phantom’ so it cannot be held responsible for the atrocities they commit to, er, ‘restore order’.

[It goes without saying that the atrocities will ALL be pinned on the ‘rebels.’]

Yes, our ‘nightmare’ outcome will be made even worse by rival factions that will have the ‘support’ of the remaining ‘legitimate governments’ of the world.

Bizarrely, each of these factions will represent some sector of the economy…such as it is.

This will make for some very, er, ‘curious’ bedfellows but in the end it will all be, er, logical.

Worse, this ‘factionalization’ will get worse as the ‘legitimate governments’ of the world collapse due to the lack of support from the corporations.

We can only wonder what will become of the world’s Banana Republics without the support they receive from ‘sympathetic governments?

Um, it’s mighty damn spooky to imagine a world where nobody is held accountable and the powerful can do pretty much as they like…

Oh wait…it used to be like that in the crazy days before capitalism, they called it monarchy!

How much do you want to bet that the stupid bastards will try to bring it back?

I say ‘stupid’ because ‘faux democracy’ removed the bulls-eye from the monarch’s back. Bringing back monarchy will resurrect ‘regicide’ lickity split!

Apparently they think their bodyguards are up to the job…

Here’s to proving them wrong!

Now do you see the need to remove the decision making process beyond the reach of those who would turn it to their advantage?

Thanks for letting me inside your head…(as scary as that can sometimes be,)

Gegner

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Kindergarten

Greetings good citizen,

On and on it goes…

No consensus, no meeting of the minds (as if such a thing were possible!) which is to point out that as long as we don’t have a reliable ‘feedback mechanism’ the ‘self-interested’ will continue to what seems ‘good’ to them and damn the consequences!

Baseline situation: millions of people have lost their jobs and are defaulting on their debt.

YET, nobody is ‘focusing’ on why these people were made ‘redundant’ NOR are they doing anything to put a stop to the carnage.

The (heavily massaged) employment data continues to sink through society’s molten core while the party of ‘the owners’ (also known as The Party of No) cries for their tax cuts to be made permanent!

Worse, these selfish pigs who persist in refusing to invest in the US economy (which is what they claim the tax cuts are for) have also succeeded in defeating the repeal of the subsidy for off-shoring US jobs!

Ignorance is a terrible thing but this is well beyond ‘stupid’.

How do you know when your government has been hijacked by criminals?

Take a good look at what has become of our electoral process. These fuckers should be executed at the polls! (Just a ‘suggestion’, I’m not telling anyone to do anything AND you did ‘opt in’ to read this so it’s ‘shame on you’!)

So we return to the topic of how you, er, ‘restore’ the rule of law to a nation gone berserk?

The media has usurped the ballot box so we can’t ‘vote’ the fuckers out. (The corporate owned media isn’t obliged to provide any news that disagrees with the ‘opinions’ of those who ‘own’ it.)

Just an opinion of my own here but ‘eradicating’ the lying media would be an excellent place to start the bid to return this nation to the rule of law. (It is a proven fact that you can’t make informed decisions without accurate information. 99% of what comes out of the ‘advertiser supported’ corporate media is, er, ‘questionable’, to put it kindly. In fairness, they point to blogs such as this one and level the same charges…so it really is up to you when it comes to deciding whom to believe.)

I think the ‘facts’ speak for themselves…


To have ‘accidentally’ arrived at where we are today beggars belief, what we are currently suffering is neither an accident nor a coincidence!

But you already know this argument so I’ll spare you a rehash.

Strange logic BUT if you don’t want to live a lie you can’t tolerate a ‘lie machine’ to operate in your presence.

Sadly good citizen, those who ‘own’ the media also ‘own’ free speech.

For truth to prevail it cannot suffer the ‘yoke’ of ‘ownership’. Think about that one for a minute because it is in no owner’s best interest to admit this is the truth!

And if owning a media outlet is what it takes to ‘enjoy’ free speech, then only the owners of the media can speak freely! (Worse, free speech is not necessarily ‘true speech’.)

While Mr. Rich rightly slams those who point to the Internet and claims that the ‘ultimate freedom’ now exists are lies because the ‘anonymity’ of the Internet hides the identity (as well as the agenda) of some powerful (and deceitful) players.

Which is to argue once again that the truth suffers mightily when it conflicts with the agenda of the self-interested.

Which brings us to an interesting argument, one regarding your own status as a ‘self-interested’ individual.

You are most definitely ‘self-interested’ when it comes to enjoying ‘equal footing’ in both the marketplace as well as in the eyes of the law.

Yet the ‘owners’ don’t see it that way. They believe ‘ownership’ has its privileges.

Ironically, they’ve always believed/espoused such doctrine; so if you find it offensive they will turn the tables on you and it becomes everybody’s favorite game…’I was here first’ (like that has anything to do with it!)

For all of its ‘complexity’ life really never really gets too far from the damn playground. The principle difference being the schoolyard bully has somehow become the Judge.

This somewhat explains the popularity of the recent book “Everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten.”

But this ain’t kindergarten anymore and such simplistic reasoning can no longer be used to guide civilization.

It’s time to ‘grow up’ good citizen and spank the kids who grab whatever they want and scream ‘I had it first!’

It wasn’t a good reason then and it definitely didn’t become one after you put your hand picked puppet into the judge’s seat!

A stacked deck is still a stacked deck and there is too much at stake to ‘appease’ the spoiled and privileged among us…

Okay, time for a nap!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, October 8, 2010

Until the Fat Lady sings...

Greetings good citizen,

My hopes for our civilization grow dimmer with each passing day. It has become apparent that the quicksand of greed has consumed what little bedrock there was holding up the foundation of our society.

We are in ‘uncharted waters’ here, good citizen. By the ‘hard and fast’ rules of commerce, our civilization has already passed the ‘point of no return’.

Tonight’s offering is only true if ‘the rules’ are followed. (Our current financial system is ‘fried’, there’s no way to repair it without writing off huge amounts of debt.)

What should be obvious to us all is ‘the rules’ no longer apply. We’re currently skating along in a ‘nobody’s doing anything about anything’ mode where we all pretend there’s nothing wrong (mostly because we can’t fix the problem on our own!)

As the wiser heads among us opine, the banking sector is still strangling to death with the public sector close behind.

As he points out, the housing sector will not ‘recover’ in the former industrialized West, EVER! (Um, neither Mr. Whalen nor Mr. Panzer actually says this but it is ‘implied’.)

Since the banking system is supported by ‘perpetual’ mortgage payments on properties that are hundreds of years old…wages need to keep ‘pace’ or the whole artifice collapses, as we have so recently witnessed.

No buyers means no price support…lower prices equals less ‘income’ all the way down the line.

So, to paraphrase the title of the article: And You Thought Last Time Was Bad...

Like death itself, there is no way to avoid collapse---we have merely sidestepped the inevitable for the moment.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this whole fiasco is the ‘too little too late’ part where absolutely NOTHING has been done to stop the ‘race to the bottom’.

Sadly, when the ‘cause’ of this fiasco is finally addressed, it will indeed be ‘too little, too late!

Naturally, I marvel over the fact that ‘Neutron Jack’ is still alive! (Perhaps we should be more amazed that he’s still ‘at large’…)

‘Turn the earth to glass and still commit no crime…’

Unfortunately, the print media isn’t the only source of global insanity. I apparently don’t have many readers in the UK or the BBC would have debunked (instead of reporting) how British schools are teaching pre-schoolers to be more ‘entrepreneurial’.

They are teaching these youngsters the mechanics of commerce in hopes that they will grow up to be more ‘self-reliant’.

Naturally, what these FUCKTARDS are missing is the principle reason why we don’t already live in ‘capitalist utopia’…

FUCKING MARKET SHARE!

What part of ‘there isn’t enough market share to go around’ don’t these idiots get?

Oh well, stupid is what stupid does…

Worse, ignorance can be fixed…stupid is permanent!

Again, we have to believe that the real problem here is the perpetuation of ignorance by those too stupid to know they are doing anything wrong.

Most of you have no idea how frightening it is to realize your entire world is held together by little more than ‘myth and superstition’ (enforced at the point of a gun.)

You’re actually supposed to buy into these little ‘fantasies’ (without the benefit of the fucking ‘ruby slippers’!)

It is important to understand good citizen that most of what you’ve been taught to believe is a self-serving LIE!

The other part that is paramount for you to understand is that the liars are in charge!

Nothing changes until you recognize this truth!

The mis-management that is bag and baggage with capitalism is not nor will it ever be sustainable. No system based on infinite resources is!

Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that if resources were indeed ‘infinite’ there would be no need to ‘buy’ them from anybody, would there?

We have to put an end to this vicious exploitation of our fellow humans if we are ever to advance beyond being our own worst enemy…

The reasons we DON’T kill one another on sight are getting fewer all the time…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, October 7, 2010

'Stealing Home'

Greetings good citizen,

Although few would purposefully draw your attention to the relationships (government often being referred to as a ‘noble’ or ‘civic-minded’ calling rather than the ‘referee’ job it really is.)

If we are ever to see anything that even remotely resembles ‘prosperity’ again you have to get your head on straight.

So we start with ‘the rules’:

All economies are LOCAL, bar none!

Commerce exists to enrich society (not just the owners of commerce!)

Government exists to ensure things are properly managed.

3 basic principles; that’s all it takes to put civilization ‘back on track’.

Sadly, there are some ‘definition deficiencies’ that could be problematic.

Local means local…so being in the same ‘solar system’ doesn’t count.

Society means everybody; not the ‘Bill Gates walks into the room’ effect…so ‘on paper’ everybody is richer…

And ‘properly managed’ means ‘effective distribution’ and not ‘maximized profits’.

There are other ways to ‘twist’ the above definitions but neither of us has all day to bat this ball until it no longer bounces.

No, there is a much more disturbing ball to bounce around, it’s the ‘what kind of fuckhead do you take me for?’ ball.

Let’s shift our attention to the ‘storehouse of value’ for a moment, shall we?

The USA is the number 1 economy in the whole world (based on consumption.)

The media never tires of marveling over how much crap we ‘consume’ (although ‘waste’ is probably closer to the mark.)

I forget the actual statistics but you’ve heard it all before…we make up just two percent of the world’s population and we consume some twenty percent of the world’s output…something like that.

With that as a given, this fuckin’ shithole is along way from being El Dorado, baby!

Being the world’s ‘dumping ground’ makes this the world’s biggest DUMP!

You see, it really is all in how you look at it!

So the relentless cheerleaders of expansion without end want you to believe that we are ‘number one’; just don’t pay any attention to which finger they use to signify this exalted position…

Anyway, we’re ‘top of the heap’ and because of this our ‘storehouse of value’ is also, er, ‘top of the heap’ too.

But is it really?

Our money is (supposedly) worth the difference between what we produce and what we consume.

Well, we know we are the world’s most prodigious consumers but are we really the world’s most prodigious producers?

Hard to believe considering what the unemployment rate looks like, isn’t it?

Worse good citizen, 40% of all people counted as ‘employed’ only work part time…so we are not just ‘good’, we must be fucking ‘great!’

Or we are really, really, really gullible…

Which one do you think it is?

So, how much is the buck in your pocket worth now (considering we consume much more than we produce?)

Understand good citizen, this is the same worthless buck you’re being forced to jump through hoops for…which should make you ask ‘what the fuck am I doing?’

I’m an ‘older’ guy and I’ve seen a lot of changes in my time.

The ‘trend’ that started when I was just a kid has almost reached its final outcome the nation continues to be ‘gutted’ so the wealthy can enslave the net bunch of trusting saps with their credit cards!

This article is from today’s Alternet titled:

19 Mind-Blowing Facts About the Deindustrialization of America

Well, good citizen, you don’t need me to tell you that there is far more than 19 damning facts about how rapacious capitalism has scorched the earth beneath our children’s feet.

Death is too good for these selfish fucks, exile is the only fitting punishment.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Conservative Logic...

Greetings good citizen,

Let’s put ‘oblivion’ on hold for the time being (it will be here soon enough.)

Which is not to say we are going to put a stop to ‘crazy talk’ because there’s plenty of that masquerading as ‘sane commentary’ in the MSM.

Let’s start with our ‘usual’ dose of schizophrenia, shall we? As recently as Yesterday the markets tacked on almost 200 points. This was ‘attributed to’ the (barely perceptible) ‘uptick’ in service sector employment. A mere few hundredths of a single percent good citizen and our stock markets went absolutely NUTS!

So what’s the ‘buzz’ today? Retailers project that they won’t be hiring much seasonal help this year…somewhat reinforcing predictions of yet another ‘poor’ holiday season.

Needless to say the markets are ‘flat’ on this news…

So what the hell was yesterday all about?

Truth be told good citizen, if it weren’t for the activity of the big trading desks themselves, the stock market would be ‘flat-line’.

Moving on, I read some conservative pundit who was bemoaning the expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts, like making the rich even richer has done such wonders for the US economy! WTF is wrong with these people?

Don’t they understand that NO AMOUNT of money is going to make the US more attractive to invest in as long as the ‘cheaper elsewhere’ fiction persists?

Apparently, nothing goes up top…which is sort of a ‘hallmark’ of conservatism.

Well, here we have another fine example of bullet proof conservative logic…

Sadly good citizen, this brings us to the chicken or the egg conundrum.

What the fuck is the point of extending more credit when people can’t pay for what they’ve already borrowed?

You know what endless ‘rolling’ leads to don’t you? It leads to debt that will NEVER be repaid!

It turns the ‘fuck you, pay me’ scheme into just the ‘fuck you (stupid)’ part.

If you’re dumb enough to let me keep ‘rolling over’ my debt, I’m never going to pay you!

THAT’S what the ‘oughts’ were about!

Guess what the ‘only way out’ is?

That's right, Jubilee!

Cuz, bizarrely, if you ‘prosecuted’ all of the people who took advantage of the situation (a situation that shouldn’t have been created in the first place.) You would also be able to address your ‘surplus population problem at the same time…except who is going to build (never mind pay for) all of those prisons?

Are you beginning to see the ‘scope’ of the problem good citizen?

This is ‘mis-management’ writ large, nay ‘writ colossal’!

Who ever ‘approved’ this wanted, nay, WAS BEGGING FOR a crisis!

(One can only assume the ‘infamous they’ arrived at the same conclusion their ideological opponents reached long ago; there is no way to use capitalism to ‘save’ capitalism.)

So they faced their second choice, to serve in heaven or to rule over hell?

Sadly, they have chosen the latter.

I’ll stop here because I promised not to go there at the beginning of this piece…

It is curious how many of our thought experiments conclude in ‘oblivion’.

If you thought the ride had been ‘interesting’ up ‘til now, wait!

It’s going to get a lot more than ‘interesting’…trust me!

Some of these pieces are surprisingly short but there really isn’t anything else useful to say on the subject other than to point out the obvious, that ‘conservative logic’ is an oxymoron.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Contradictions...

Greetings good citizen,

In an ‘unusual’ combination, both gold AND the stock market are rallying strongly today, leaving us to wonder what the fuck the ‘tiny’ uptick in service sector employment really means?

You know the service sector pays shit; these are menial jobs that are mostly part-time. Our economy is not ‘saved’ because the service sector expanded by a few hundredths of a percentage point, yet Wall Street is acting like we have just witnessed the ‘second coming’!

Worse, these assholes are supposed to be ‘on top of things’…why the fuck are they buying (probably their own) stocks when the private investor is headed for the exits?

Understand, gold is a ‘safe haven’ bet. You only ‘buy’ (nearly $1,400 an ounce) gold when you need to ‘park’ your money somewhere. Remember, gold shot up to $800 an ounce back in the 80’s…but it didn’t stay there.

Which is to point out that ‘parking’ your money in gold is still plenty risky but apparently less so than watching it erode to nothing while the stock markets climb irrationally.

Which is to ask whether or not the stock markets are rising or if we are really witnessing the ‘value’ of the dollar sinking like a rock?

Because that is the only ‘rational explanation’…stocks are rising because the dollar is falling. Worse, it also explains the sudden ‘surge’ in gold sales…

And there ain’t a fucking thing you can (legally) do about it!

It is during times like these that ‘hyper-inflation’ takes hold as people ‘race’ to trade their ‘trash’ (cash) for ‘treasure’ (useful items priced in dollars.)

The ‘squeeze’ I pointed to yesterday is ‘on’. Just in time for ‘the winter of our discontent’.

I predict right here and now that this will be a very different nation come Spring.

I will refrain from going into specifics at this time beyond saying it will start with a whimper and build to a roar.

There will be an ‘eye-opening’ event that will galvanize the public as to just how serious our situation has become…and it will be ‘game on’ from there.

You know I’m not ‘psychic’. I’ve made dire predictions in the past that didn’t happen so I’m just shooting my opinionated mouth off (again.)

My point is you can only juggle so many balls for so long before somebody somewhere ‘fucks up’ in a way that can’t be ‘spun’.

Worse, even the ‘spin’ looks bad.

Sure, you’ll convince those who don’t want to accept how rotten things are with barely credible ‘spin’ but their numbers are dwindling with each passing day. Give the public just one piece of concrete evidence that you can’t spin away and let the royal fuckaree begin!

You gotta give these guys credit though, so far they have managed to spin their way out of some pretty tight spots…but that was mostly because people weren’t as suspicious as they are today.

Pretty soon that ‘get out of jail free’ card is gonna expire and then the fun will begin.

Every act of ‘retaliation’ against the ‘insurgents’ will require increasing amounts of spin until public sympathy for the rebels overwhelms the ‘official government position’.

Which is to point out that there is a downside lying to the public. Do it often enough and you loose credibility.

So, how many of you believe the ‘Great Recession’ ended last summer?

Worse, how many of you believe the Great Recession started in 1980?

See what I mean? (If you were there you know this is true!)

Well, what goes around, come around good citizen and you don’t need me to tell you that.

The bad news is the damage is already done. It is not possible to ‘fix’ it without discarding the old, corrupt system and replacing it with a new one.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner