Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Legally Goofy

Greetings good citizen,

The collapse of civilization proceeds apace, which is to say ‘unabated’. I would like to take this opportunity to clarify that statement with the caveat of there is no hiding place, when Western civilization ‘falls’ it will take everything else with it.

Thus is the ‘collapse of civilization’ is intended to be ‘universal’. This is an ‘all-in’, nobody is exempt situation. This is not to say there won’t be the occasional (heavily policed and severely restricted) ‘oasis’ scattered here or there.

It will be from these ‘secure compounds’ that our betters intend to reassert their control over the rest of us…after they’re finished ‘spanking’ us for being ‘uncooperative’.

(It’s not too late to run their ungrateful asses up their own flag pole! By the neck, for those of you who require a more specific mental image.)

Where were we? Oh yeah, the collapse of civilization!

The question on some of your minds might be ‘what evidence do we have that civilization is collapsing (everything seems to be running ‘fairly smoothly’?)

Does the term ‘boob-proof’ mean anything to you?

99% of what we consider ‘normal’ has been boob-proofed so the world will always appear to be operating ‘normally’ if you don’t know what to look for.

Like yesterday’s little rant about (out of control) National Park service cops.

Or this article, which asks if we are living in a ‘post legal’ society?

Is the Libyan war legal? Was Bin Laden’s killing legal? Is it legal for the president of the United States to target an American citizen for assassination? Were those “enhanced interrogation techniques” legal? These are all questions raised in recent weeks. Each seems to call out for debate, for answers. Or does it?

Regular readers know I’ve been pointing to our ‘legal problem’ for decades now, just to give you an idea how long this (am I) go back.

The collapse of our civilization starts with the collapse of our legal system.

What was initially a little decay has blossomed into full-scale rot.

Our laws have always had a price tag, all they needed was a willing seller…and the top authority’s willingness to look away on cue. Now they no longer need to pretend, they have the ‘top authority’ tucked away in their own vest pocket.

How fucked up is it considering that all money is ‘funny’ (which is to say ‘fake, counterfeit’?) Our freedom and future well being were sold for a handful of virtual confetti!

There is no ‘suitable punishment’ for a crime like this, which is why I developed ‘exile’.

But I digress.

Next up, we have this bit of Ivory Tower drivel as a reminder that ‘academics’ have no ‘real world’ foundation with which to build upon.

This, in turn, leads to an emphasis on institutions whose priorities are broader than those that typically flow from the corporate emphasis on the bottom line. At the cutting edge of experimentation are the growing number of egalitarian, and often green, worker-owned cooperatives. Hundreds of “social enterprises” that use profits for environmental, social or community-serving goals are also expanding rapidly. In many communities urban agricultural efforts have made common cause with groups concerned about healthy nonprocessed food. And all this is to say nothing of 1.6 million nonprofit corporations that often cross over into economic activity. [snip]

Along with the rapid expansion of small and medium-size businesses committed to building the new economy has come a sense of community and shared mission. Staff, managers and owners at many of these companies are finding more opportunities to share ideas and pool resources with like-minded professionals. The American Sustainable Business Council, a growing alliance of 150,000 business professionals and thirty business organizations, has emerged as a leading venue for such activity. Most members are “triple bottom line” companies and social enterprises committed to the environment and social outcomes as well as profits.

How many of you are looking at this bullshit and thinking ‘SSDD’?

Because that’s what we have here, I’m amazed this asshole isn’t advocating starting up a ‘charity’ economy because when it’s all said and done we would be right there. The only ‘social good’ to come from these ‘special corporations’ will be the ‘special drawing rights’ and ‘preferred stock’ the directors will bestow upon themselves.

Which is to remind you that the original idea behind the corporate charter was to insure that these for profit ventures ‘served’ the public rather than preyed upon it. So Bobo’s proposal is far from ‘new’, it’s the same old bullshit ‘re-treaded’ and fitted with a few (soon to be forgotten) bells and whistles.

We’re back to ‘lipstick on a pig’.

Speaking of which we have yet another article pronouncing the death of the American Dream

Housing is in persistent trouble, industry analysts say, not only because so many people are blocked from the market — being unemployed, in foreclosure or trapped in homes that are worth less than the mortgage — but because even those who are solvent are opting out.

The desire to own your own home, long a bedrock of the American Dream, is fast becoming a casualty of the worst housing downturn since the Great Depression.

Show of hands now, how many of you are ‘surprised’ by this story? No one? I think a few of you are fibbing! You’ve been eyeing those foreclosures and thinking it’s almost time to realize your dream of becoming a real estate tycoon!

You’ve even dusted off your old Tom Vu seminar materials (not without wondering what the hell you were thinking at the time) boning up on the ‘right way’ to build your empire!

Schmacky, good citizen, guess what’s NEVER coming back?

One would like to think that our species would ‘mature’ by the time we figure out how to reach the stars (because that’s what it is going to take for the idea of ‘personal real estate’ to come back into fashion.)

There’s a reason I developed A Simple Plan as a ‘cashless’ society, chief among these is the fact that all crime is cash and carry BUT (and it’s a pretty big one) by the time we get around to implementing ASP, people will no longer ‘trust’ fiat currencies.

Worse, there isn’t enough ‘hard currency’ (which is also ‘fiat’…think about it) to establish a viable economy.

Speaking of which here we find 8 financial advisers who are all on the same page… as I am.

Just in case you were thinking it might be a ‘happy’ article.

We are faced with some daunting problems, none of which are ‘insurmountable’ IF we can get the self-interested to step aside while we apply the necessary repairs.

And that is ‘the challenge’ good citizen, just one of many.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, May 30, 2011

Escalation (of the class war)

Greetings good citizen,

Power corrupts and you know the rest. Every day we deal with the decisions of people with too much authority and not enough brains.

Which is to ask who thought THIS was a ‘good idea’?

Um, we can only speculate that it is a good thing for the rest of us that the prohibition against videotaping cops was just recently overturned or the mere act of posting this on the web would be a crime!

Clearly, these kids we doing no harm (and you can bet your backside there’s a job opening at the Jefferson Memorial for the position of ‘head of security’…which, disturbingly enough, was probably a political ‘plum’ handed out by some politician’s chief of staff!)

What do you suppose the new Park Service police officers uniforms should look like? Which is to ask how you ‘offset’ the big bulls-eye the asshole in charge just painted on his people?

Understand good citizen, wars are fought over this kind of ‘oppression’, better known as tyranny.

Bizarrely, it wouldn’t be the first time a minor political appointment has gone horribily and disastrously wrong.

But if we consider the powder keg the conservative movement has become, this sort of outcome starts to look inevitable.

How many of you DON’T think the conservatives are just spoiling for a fight?

In the beginning of the video we see the ‘nice’ police officer come and ‘warn’ the kids they will be arrested if they ‘protest’ at this National monument. They aren’t doing anything, none of them has a sign or a placard denouncing anything!

If anything they are guilty of being the correct age to engage in a political protest.

AFTER the cop ‘warns’ them they do exactly what any kid would do, they start doing what the cop told them not to do!

You see, their parents made the common parrental mistake of telling these kids they had rights and one of those rights was due process, that they couldn’t be arrested for nothing.

As we can see in the video, these kids got a reality check.

Guess what, you CAN be arrested for ‘disobeying’ a cop! (A cop who KNOWS he’s perilously close to trampling YOUR rights just to make his boss happy!)

So what did WE learn here today good citizen?

Either you roll over and play dead or you go ‘all in’.

These, er, ‘officers’ have just set a very dangerous precident. The next time people start ‘dancing’ at a public monument, some of them will be armed and ready…and it will turn into a firefight.

Just think good citizen, the revolution will begin when we start dancing in public!

Which is to ask just how far off the deep end have our overlords gone?

Up ‘til now we’ve pretty much let them get away with murder…and that is the very next line to be crossed, murder: personal.

The question good citizen is whether or not (now that you know it is coming) you will stand there and take it or whether or not you are willing to give it right back?

We do have numbers on our side.

They, unfortunately, ARE the law, which is what needs changing.

Speaking of laws and escalation the foolish GOP in Utah has decided to make the already murky issue of money even murkier.

Now, however, Utah has passed a law intended to encourage residents to use gold or silver coins made by the Mint as cash, but with their value based on the weight of the precious metals in them, not the face value — if, that is, they can find a merchant willing to accept the coins on that basis.

You think $2 bills were a flop, watch what happens here, it will be a fiasco!

This is a situation ready and waiting for the greater fool to come along.

Doesn’t this bring us directly to the point I often use, where the merchant first checks the ‘spot price’ before proceeding with the transaction?

How much ‘time and energy’ will be wasted verifying the unknowable? If the quote is off you could be out thousands if the transaction is large enough.


Worse, it is a ‘two-edged’ sword.

Let’s suppose for a moment our merchant uses two quoting services just to be, er, ‘safe’ and he gets two wildly divergent numbers…what does he do? Proceed, hoping the number that benefits him the most is accurate or does he decline the transaction and demand a more ‘stable’ form of payment?

What would the customer do? Go next door to see if that merchant is willing to be more ‘reasonable’?

Talk about a pickle!

Anyway, we arrive at today’s dose of ‘happy talk’ where reality is twisted beyond recognition…

After years of being outgunned by Japanese rivals, the American auto industry has made small cars a central part of its strategy, seeking to capitalize on a fundamental shift in the preferences of consumers in an era of fast-rising gas prices.

By refocusing on small cars and de-emphasizing the gas-guzzlers that had long sustained the industry, General Motors and Ford in particular are preserving jobs and positioning themselves to prosper. Their efforts are already paying off in the marketplace. Ford’s tiny Fiesta is the best-selling subcompact in the United States this year, and G.M.’s Chevrolet Cruze outsold every other compact car in America last month except the segment-leading Honda Civic.

They are selling fewer cars than ever (because ‘working American’ is still an endangered species AND they ARE NOT ‘giving’ the fucking vehicles away!)

Do you suppose the ‘buying public’ (as few of them as there are) is taking comfort from the fact that the ‘New Chevrolet’ has ‘hencho in China’ stamped all over it?

Which is to ask how much of this is being driven by sky-high gas prices combined with the growing danger presented by ‘conspicuous consumption’?

Which is to point out that the people buying these over-priced econo-boxes COULD afford to buy new Hummers but that wouldn’t be ‘prudent’ for reasons that have little to do with ‘frugality’.

Lastly, we arrive at a topic that has been so overshadowed by other horrendous global events as to have ‘disappeared’ from the news cycle now that the campaign season is getting underway.

In pointing out that we could be doing much more about unemployment, I recognize, of course, the political obstacles to actually pursuing any of the policies that might work. In the United States, in particular, any effort to tackle unemployment will run into a stone wall of Republican opposition. Yet that’s not a reason to stop talking about the issue. In fact, looking back at my own writings over the past year or so, it’s clear that I too have sinned: political realism is all very well, but I have said far too little about what we really should be doing to deal with our most important problem.

As I see it, policy makers are sinking into a condition of learned helplessness on the jobs issue: the more they fail to do anything about the problem, the more they convince themselves that there’s nothing they could do. And those of us who know better should be doing all we can to break that vicious circle.

I’d defend Mr. Krugman by pointing to the ‘muzzle’ he wears as a nationally syndicated columnist. He has to be exceptionally careful of what he writes or it won’t get published at all.

The truth be damned, you can only push the advertisers so far!

Which is to once again ask how unfortunate it is for our society to have the dissemination of information rely on a ‘for profit’ business model?

This would not be the case under A Simple Plan and ‘unemployment’ under ASP would be non-existent…because ‘profit’ is calculated differently than it is today.

Yes good citizen, Mr. Krugman is correct in observing that ‘solving’ the capitalist created ‘employment crisis’ has been a ‘low priority’ for the people responsible.

Now that they are arresting people for assembling in groups larger than three, we are all ‘on notice’.

Happy Memorial day good citizen, how ironic is it that the evidence we have been seeking just happens to turn up today?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Storehouse of what?

Greetings good citizen,

After yesterday’s rant about the ‘higher than originally suspected’ number of stupid people on the planet, explaining why the ‘LCD’ has fallen so low, today’s post on how you came to be ‘trapped’ by the same strategies used to gull the mental midgets among us should come as no surprise.

Um, no apologies here. If this line of reasoning is ‘offensive’ to you, tough!

If you’re looking for an ‘all-inclusive’ plan to save our species, join a religion!

Something that is going to have a prayer in hell of working WON’T be reliant on the universal ‘conversion’ of all humans into saints (considering that in most cases, sainthood is usually awarded/achieved ‘posthumously’.)

All of us dying first sort of defeats the purpose creating a sustainable society/lifestyle.

The phrase ‘all men were created equal’ has a nice, elegatarian ring to it but that doesn’t make it true and it also leaves more than half of humanity out of consideration in the process.

Some axioms are true and if you fail to plan then you are indeed planning to fail!

If you’re seeking an apology that’s as good as it’s going to get.

Onward with ‘stupid is as stupid does’ which is to ask, “How’s that ‘storehouse of value’ bullshit working out for you?”

Amid rising costs, increasing competition, and Wall Street's myopic focus on short-term profitability, many firms are fine-tuning business models. But instead of figuring out ways of giving more for less, a growing number of them are taking the easy way out. A key component of today's remarkably short-sighted "'value' proposition": deceiving and cheating customers. Here are four articles that highlight the "strategies" corporate America is increasingly relying on:

As you are well aware, we are experiencing what happens to a ‘captive audience’, even if most of you won’t admit it.

I have been ranting for decades that once you ‘give away’ the ability to produce what you need for yourself, you place yourself at the ‘mercy’ of those who still can produce that thing.

And ulitmately it becomes a game of ‘how much will you pay?’

Worse, you already know the answer to that riddle, how bad do you need it?

There are some things you CAN’T do without and those are the things they hold your feet to the fire with.

Notice how they have excluded energy and food from how they calculate inflation? Like nobody eats and nobody heats/drives!

And this is considered a ‘failure’ of government rather than a reflection of a ‘captive government’.

And the two do, by necessity, go hand in hand.

In order for the merchants to turn our nation into a captive audience they first had to capture the one entity capable of preventing it.

Which is to point out that they do indeed possess today the ‘monopolies’ we prevented more than a hundred years ago.

So it would be more correct to point out that our forefathers merely ‘delayed’ the inevitable outcome of capitalism and that is a captive marketplace.

People LOVE to quote Marx’s observations on capitalism because he totally MISSED the main points! Along with creating a system that is virtually indistinguishable from capitalism as an alternative to capitalism because the dope totally misunderstood money!

The term ‘couldn’t see the forest for the trees comes to mind’…as does ‘re-defines the term stupid!’

How sad is it that I tend to overuse certain ‘derogatory’ terms. I seem obsessed with hanging everybody with their own necktie and labeling every mainstream pundit as an idiot…not that I’m 100% wrong in either case.

I have also grown fond of calling people ‘useful idiots’.

If I’m not careful, people will start calling me a ‘hater’.

How sad is it that speaking the truth, by necessity, tends to make one self-conscious?

I’m gonna step away from the soapbox and leave behind (for now) the subject of ‘mental deficiency’ for a while.

We have a civilization to rebuild and we don’t have the time to fret over the minor details/inconvenient facts.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Low Q...

Greetings good citizen,

I periodically mention that I live in a conservative enclave here in normally ‘blue’ state of Massachusetts. Living here on the seacoast we have a pretty fair concentration of ‘old money’.

I don’t generally delve too deeply into sociology but I had a chance encounter today at the grocery store that had me mentally chanting the mantra ‘only one in five’…

Yes good citizen, only one in five self identify as Republicans.

It sort of took the adage, ‘ignorance is curable but stupid is permanent’ to a whole new level.

In retrospect I can only marvel over the fact that this fellow managed to survive for almost eighty years.

Why this old buck hasn’t fallen into a hole and snapped his neck remains a mystery.

Which is to acknowledge that you can fill a man’s head with a great deal of nonsense and he will still be able to function adequately.

He may not know why he does what he does…but that apparently doesn’t matter.

In a sidebar article we have this piece that makes a similar observation

Hard-charging Republicans who rallied voters last year with cries of "Stop the spending, ban the earmarks" are quietly offering a more familiar Washington refrain now that they're in Congress: not in my backyard.

The massive, $553 billion bill providing a budget for the Pentagon boasts millions of dollars that President Barack Obama didn't request for weapons programs, installations and other projects in districts from Illinois to Mississippi represented by House GOP freshmen. The additions look suspiciously like the pet projects that Republicans prohibited when they took over the House and that the new class of lawmakers, many with tea party backing, swore off in a promise to change Washington's spending habits.

Heated campaign talk of reining in spending and barring earmarks often cools once candidates get to Congress and face the needs and demands of their districts, especially in times of wobbly economic recovery and a widespread shortage of jobs.

Not so obvious is the underlying question of whether or not one in five of us is really THAT stupid?

I have to conclude from my own observations that the answer is ‘probably’.

I’d also opine that ‘the stupid’ will retain whatever ‘attitude/point of view’ you deposit in their empty heads, they simply don’t know better.

They are incapable of higher thought so they ‘gravitate’ towards empty platitudes and flag waving with zero understanding of what is behind it.

I don’t know about you good citizen but stupid people scare me.

I mean people who can’t remember what happened six months ago have no business running a society.

This clown was WAY off when it came to the simplest facts…maybe it was old age and maybe it failing memory…I don’t know and I’m unlikely to find out as I inherited an unusually short fused ‘self-destruct’ system.

I’m sort of skipping over the article here but my main point is the curious case of whether conservatives are REALLY that dumb and are also too ‘STUPID’ to figure out that they’re being exploited…

If the remaining four (that don’t consider themselves conservatives) don’t step up to the plate and bring the, er, ‘stupid’ to heel our civilization is doomed.

Nah, I don’t believe that. The numbers just aren’t there, even with a lock/muzzle on the media.

An extremely unscruplous few are playing a mighty dangerous game that can be easily upset by any mis-step.

They’ve had a few close calls already.

However, stupid is as stupid does.

How do we address this genetic deficiency?

Because guess what? That’s exactly what it is.

Worse, there is no cure!

As bitter as such a reality check may be, we will not be capable of moving forward as a species until we ‘limit the participation’ of the, er, less capable.

Those incapable of thinking for themselves have fallen victim to those who would exploit their weakness for personal gain.

What do you think the ‘Tea Party’ is all about?

We’re talking 30,000 MORONS without enough mental horsepower to realize they’re being played!

Such exploitation should be illegal…but those who take advantage of the situation don’t want their ‘followers’ enlightened to the idea they are being exploited.

Not that you could convince these not too swift people that they were being exploited, Certain concepts don’t mean anything to them.

And that is just one more log on a whole bonfire worth of stupid.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, May 27, 2011

Stocks rise, insanity suspected!

Greetings good citizen,

Peak oil has come and gone so the economic insanity is only going to get more pronounced going forward.

As I have postulated earlier, what we are seeing is the ‘death throes’ of those who derive their ‘power’ from the fossil fuel industry.

We can feel fortunate that these self-centered cretins have so far failed to incite an all out nuclear exchange (because the one sure way to extend their reign as ‘masters of the (human) universe’ is to significantly reduce the number of ‘end-users’, preferably those made redundant via automation/off-shoring.)

How fortunate is it that radiation, like communicable disease, isn’t ‘selective’ enough to eradicate ‘the problem’?

Which is not to say that either has been ruled out, desperate people will dare desperate things when pushed far enough.

Lynch someone who richly deserves it and we may just win a local detonation of a weapon intended to defend us from attack!

Never underestimate the ‘reach’ of corruption. The same assholes who bought our government also bought the keys to our nuclear arsenal…just in case you were under the false impression that the military couldn’t be bought.

Not that anyone would ever admit to detonating one of our own nukes on a US target. Even if you found a piece of the bomb with traceable serial numbers on it, the CIA would claim the weapon was ‘stolen by terrorists’ to protect their masters.

How do we know that?

If the corruption DIDN’T go all the way to the top then why hasn’t anybody been prosecuted?

Still ‘gathering evidence’ eh?

Well, here’s some evidence that things are rotten in Denmark!

Stocks on Wall Street traded higher on Friday after a report showed that Americans’ income edged up last month.

Before trading began, the Commerce Department said that both personal income and spending rose 0.4 percent in April, in line with what economists expected. Higher food and gas prices accounted for most of the spending increase.

A cut in the amount withdrawn from paychecks for Social Security has given incomes a boost this year. But that extra take-home pay has been pinched by higher prices for gasoline

Um, does anyone read this shit before it hits the presses?

Once again we have to ask ourselves if they think we’re that stupid or if they are (that stupid?)

One suspects ‘ass covering’ when you read ridiculous claims like this.

Left to your imagination is who thinks this is saving anybody’s face?

Actually, this is the media throwing the goofy government statistics under the bus…’proving’ the Republican meme that government doesn’t work.

And when is government at its worst? When the corporate dick sucking Republicans are in charge! (Not that the Democrats have acquitted themselves any better in recent memory.)

For our next trick we have a look at the true state of the economy:

No. 370: GDP Revision, Revised Durable Goods, Home Sales
Subscription required May 26th, 2011

• Major Downside Revisions to GDP Loom in Upcoming Benchmark
• Durable Goods Orders Revised Lower by 8% in Trough-Year 2009
• Housing Activity Disaster Exacerbates Systemic Solvency Issues

The elephant in the room good citizen is how the housing debacle has not been rectified, even a little, making the global economy ‘insolvent’.

Er, there is, however, a bit of irony here considering it was the ‘elephants’ who created ‘the elephant problem’

The ‘crisis’ we will face with the return of cold weather THIS YEAR is how many millions of people will have to choose between freezing to death and/or starving to death?

Naturally, we are faced with the ongoing question of whether or not a government that is not answerable to us would admit a crisis is in the works?

One of the most frequently repeated themes in the independent blogosphere is the high degree of ‘irregularity’ present in the world’s financial sector.

Here’s Jesse with his take on the subject:

Power indeed corrupts all, and their thinking, even in the well intentioned.

And this is what I fear the Federal Reserve is becoming, or more likely, has already become. And so I would not necessarily argue that an independent central bank is a bad idea per se, although such an argument can certainly be made.

But I would propose that the Greenspan-Bernanke Fed itself has outlived its lifespan as an effective organization, and is in dire need of reform and refocusing, and it must come from outside the group think of their bureaucracy. And the Congress and the Executive seem insufficient to the task having been severely compromised over the years through participation in the Fed's decisions and its control of money flows.

So the question of reform is problematic. The current government, both Republicans and Democrats, seem to be up to their elbows in the muck, beholden to a powerful elite and their vested interests that operate behind the scenes, and too often outside the law.

Terrible thoughts in their implications, and so most cannot bear to even think them. In times of the big changes people may desperately cling to the familiar, even if it is a rotting corpse of what it had once been. Reform is hard and often tedious work, never easy, and it has it own dangers. The cure may be as dangerous as the disease, and so it bears much thought and careful action. But action is required, it must be done.

Perhaps more telling is the uptick in the frequency with which we are hearing calls to action.

We know this situation isn’t going to fix itself but most of us are waiting for the catalyst, that one clarifying event that says undeniably where the bear shits.

So which will come first, the nuke or the lynching?

Guess we’ll just have to wait and see…although, ‘tick-tock’ good citizen, we don’t have forever here to ride the fence.

And when the temperatures are sub-zero it will be a lousy time to wish we had acted sooner.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Who you calling 'liberal'?

Greetings good citizen,

As the destruction of our civilization progresses we are seeing what might be called ‘cognitive dissonance’ among the champions of, er, ‘democracy’.

Which is to point out that merely paying ‘lip service’ to enlightened ideals doesn’t alter which side of the class war you’re on.

The pillars of the liberal establishment—the press, the church, culture, the university, labor and the Democratic Party—all honor an unwritten quid pro quo with corporations and the power elite, as well as our masters of war, on whom they depend for money, access and positions of influence. Those who expose this moral cowardice and collaboration with corporate power are always ruthlessly thrust aside. [snip]

The same thing happened to Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, Jeremiah Wright and others who defied the political orthodoxy of corporate capitalism. The corporate forces, which have taken control of the press and which break unions, run the universities, fund the arts and own the Democratic Party, demand the banishment of all who question the good intentions of the powerful. Liberals who comply are tolerated within the system. They are permitted to busy themselves with the boutique activism of political correctness, inclusiveness or multiculturalism. If they attempt to fight for the primacy of justice, they become pariahs.

There exists a whole class of tree-hugging conservatives out there who don’t give a fuck about people or social justice, they are only interested in preserving ecology so THEY can exploit it later!

Which is to point out there is no shortage of so-called ‘liberals’ out there working their own agenda!

For the last time good citizen, there’s no such thing as a ‘rich liberal’, it's an oxymoron!

Naturally, this begs the question of who the hell are those assholes running as, er, ‘democrats’?

The answer, as the current incumbent shows us is, “ I dunno but they sure aren’t liberals!”

In yet another, er, ‘unclaimed’ (and therefore likely to disappear) AP piece.

Stocks Fall on Weak Economic News
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 26, 2011

Stocks fell in morning trading after two disappointing economic reports revealed a weak United States jobs market and sluggish overall economic growth.

The Labor Department said more people applied for unemployment benefits last week, the first increase in three weeks. The number of people seeking benefits rose by 10,000 to 424,000, more than analysts were expecting.

Applications are above the 375,000 level that is consistent with sustainable job growth. Applications peaked at 659,000 during the recession. Employers stepped up hiring this spring, but some economists worry that rising applications indicate hiring is slowing.

The Commerce Department said the economy grew at a sluggish 1.8 percent in the January to March quarter as surging gasoline prices and sharp cuts in government spending overshadowed strong corporate earnings. Consumer spending grew at just half the rate of the previous quarter, less than previously estimated. A surge in imports widened the United States trade deficit.

Not necessarily ‘good news’ but they seem to occasionally balance the happy talk with some less than glowing reports, spun to make the reader think they are outriders rather than what they really are…data that is as good as it gets!

But, be that as it may, we have this insightful article that ventures bravely into the swamp of what is or isn’t ‘money’.

The culture imperative of the developed world was financed consumption and apathy, while its political imperative was the concentration of wealth and the appeasement of those being continuously plundered. All of those lacking control of productive assets, including both "debtors" and "savers", found it impossible to maintain their wealth, purchasing power and/or service their debts over time. These people were all "workers" who sold their productive capacity in the marketplace, and received increasingly less value for it over time.

Superficial concessions were frequently granted by the controlling class (i.e. minimum wages, union benefits, bankruptcy process, welfare, wage-arbitraged prices, etc.) and their propaganda was planted deeply in the minds of middle-class dreamers, but that has not stopped the middle-class from relentlessly fading to black. It then becomes clear that any other global monetary system, including "Freegold" (a synthesis of physical gold-based money and debt-based currencies; briefly described in Part I), would serve as a lie for the masses.

Shorthand good citizen, whosoever controls (the value of) your money; controls you.

Gold never was nor will it ever be ‘real money’, there actually is no such thing (much to the chagrin of the pseudo-rich.)

The, er, ‘unreality’ of money has been the topic of many posts but, for some bizarre reason, nobody believes the truth.

Well, okay, a few of you ‘get it’.

Even I have to abide by the ‘When in Rome’ axiom.

Which, as many will point out, makes money the ultimate ‘mindfuck’.

It is also behind my repeated admonishments that the collapse of our civilization is totally ‘unnecessary’ (from a purely practical point of view.)

The imbalances wrought by the ‘fuck you, pay me’ system are easily correctable so what we’re really dealing with here is ‘mismanagement’ (and some pretty deep rooted and disturbing psychosis as well!)

The handwriting is on the wall, how unfortunate is it that most are ‘illiterate’?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The (abandoned) Rule of Law...

Greetings good citizen,

As usual, yesteday provided a veritable Bonanza of evidence regarding both the moral and physical collapse of our civilization. Today we only have a a recycled piece from yesterday

As the Atlantic inquiry observes, “The decision to kill bin Laden outright was the clearest illustration to date of a little-noticed aspect of the Obama administration's counterterror policy. The Bush administration captured thousands of suspected militants and sent them to detention camps in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. The Obama administration, by contrast, has focused on eliminating individual terrorists rather than attempting to take them alive.” That is one significant difference between Bush and Obama.

The authors quote former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who told German TV that the U.S. raid was ‘quite clearly a violation of international law’ and that bin Laden should have been detained and put on trial.” Contrasting Schmidt with US Attorney General Eric Holder, who “defended the decision to kill bin Laden although he didn't pose an immediate threat to the Navy SEALs, telling a House panel on Tuesday that the assault had been ‘lawful, legitimate and appropriate in every way.”

Like a lot of things in life, people have a problem with ‘due process’, they are all too willing to deny it to those painted as monsters by the Corporate owned media and equally as quick to demand it when the spotlight shines on them.

This is why due process exists in the first place, (not that it can’t be ‘gamed’, in fact they do it all the time, which is why I’m down on ‘judges’.)

Like the improbable label ‘expert’, nobody is qualified to sit in judgement of anyone else.

Juries do not judge the accused, they loan the court their ‘moral compass’ which is used to ‘weigh’ the context and legitimacy of the act in question.

Is the law a ‘slippery slope?’

Only when you have to defend yourself or your actions does it become ‘complicated’, we seem completely at ease when it comes to deciding the rightness or wrongness of another’s actions.

So, should they have ‘executed’ Osama?

Let’s take a walk down memory lane and ask the same question of Adolph Hitler.

Most will agree Herr Hitler was a ‘beast’ when it came to human rights. Should he have been ‘summarily executed’ upon his capture or should he have been granted the same, er, ‘rights’ other members of The Third Reich received?

Hell, we even gave Saddam his day in court…(a kangaroo court) but he got his day in court all the same.

Which is to point out that ‘going through the motions’ doesn’t mean ‘justice’ was served by any stretch of the imagination.

The issue here is NOT for us to decide whether or not Osama deserved to die, none of us is qualified to make that judgement.

What you are being asked here, good citizen is the straightforward question of whether or not you think our ‘justice system’ is broken?

Oh, and P.S. by the way, it is only in pieces like this one that you are asked such questions. Those who make decisions in your name without ever consulting you would sooner take cyanide than ask for your ‘approval’ of their job performance.

Does this matter? Why bring it up if it is meaningless?

Most of you are aware that ‘equal treatment under the law’ is the glue that holds our society together.

So what does it mean when we witness these, er, superjudicial events that make a mockery of that concept?

I know most of you ‘don’t give a fuck’, you’ve got bigger problems to deal with.

It’s one of those ‘frog in the pot of cool water’ problems. It’s not an issue until some asshole decides to put the pot on top of the fire.

Understand, if they don’t do their job properly under ‘normal’ circumstances then they can’t be relied upon to suddenly do it ‘by the book’ the moment you get swept up into the system.

Perhaps more disturbing is to witness top officials claim that the ‘hit’ on Bin Laden was both ‘legitimate’ and perfectly legal.

Um, one of the issues that inevitably surfaces under these circumstances is just how far do US laws extend? Do they extend beyond the borders of the US and do they apply to foreign nationals?

Which is beside the point if the perpetrator/actor is in the US (at the time) and under the jurisdiction of US law.

Understand that this little drama would not have happened if it weren’t first sanctioned by (as it turns out) the President hisself.

(Please forgive my bizarre ‘wit’, I know ‘hisself’ is a misspelling of the pronoun himself.)

Talk about your ‘slippery slope’, just where does a president’s ‘power’ end?

An even more perplexing problem if we take the ‘puppet government’ issue into consideration, (meaning the man making the decision is really just ‘following orders’.)

But, as you know, I digress…

Hell, it wouldn’t be one of my posts if it didn’t go screaming like a liquored up warrior straight off the reservation!

Disturbing BUT it is what it is.

For your consideration is the danger this presents for you and yours good citizen.

The time to act is BEFORE you have been condemned to 30 years hard labor…(for violating the fucking seat belt law!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Greetings good citizen,

Once again I will preface today’s post with the (now) standard comment that our civilization is collapsing, er, right on schedule.

Although having a schedule implies that there is a plan for all of this, and while I suspect that such a thing exists, I confess that I am not privy to either its content or its specifics.

I am merely ‘intuiting’ our civilizations’ progress as we slide forward into the same ‘oblivion’ where so many previous civilizations have gone before.

And that is the hell of it good citizen. I am NOT warning you of an ‘unprecidented’ event, (like last weekend’s ‘rapture’.) I am merely predicting something that has occurred repeatedly throughout history.

You’d think we’d be ‘better prepared’ for this sort of thing because while history seldom repeats itself, what we are experiencing definitely ‘rhymes’ with multiple events of the past.

While we face the ‘end’ of the central premise of our current civilization (cheap and abundant energy) and the none too swift among us prepare for this outcome the only way they know how (by rolling back the social clock a thousand or more years.)

What better way to segue into today’s first offering than with this article, which asks the question that is on far too many lips:

Are Republicans Losing Their Grip on Reality?


Jacob Weisberg tackles one of my favorite subjects in his latest column, asking, “Are Republicans losing their grip on reality?” As Weisberg sees it, “the current state of the national Republican Party” is burdened by a disturbing dynamic: “magical thinking trumps rationality.”

Some of this, he suggests, is the result of pandering. For example, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) refuses to say whether he accept the foundations of modern biology, probably because he knows his anti-science party wouldn’t like it if he said he acknowledged the reality of evolutionary biology.

What we have to ask ourselves good citizen is why we sit still for the obvious ‘fixing’ of the election process via the corporate owned media?

Who votes for these nutjobs?

Is it possible to ‘save’ ourselves by implementing ‘competency testing’ as a requirement for running for public office? (If you’ve even scanned A Simple Plan then you know I favor such a policy despite being against ‘electoral politics’.)

Leaders MUST BE both competent AND qualified!

It is outrageous that we don’t demand the passing of at least some kind of basic competency test.

Then maybe we could avoid outrageous situations like this one!

Just because the US is having so much success convincing the world its debt is money good (but don't anyone dare count the $6+ trillion in GSE debt to the total US debt), the good old US of A has now decided to backstop the debt of... Egypt.

Bloomberg reports: "Egypt plans to raise $1 billion by selling Eurobonds this year to diversify borrowing and finance a widening budget deficit after its economy was rocked by the worst political crisis in 30 years. The five-year bonds will be backed by a U.S. “sovereign guarantee,”

Finance Minister Samir Radwan said by telephone from Cairo today...President Barack Obama promised last week $2 billion in loan guarantees and debt forgiveness." And when it comes to Uncle Sam giving his assurances to the developing world, size does not matter: "The size is not significant but the backing from the U.S. will help raise the money at a relatively inexpensive cost."

Uh, should Congress perhaps have something to say about the fact that America is now somehow the guarantor of recently revolutionary African countries? Because if, heaven forbid, should the extremely stable and economically viable, but otherwise revolutionary Egyptian country suffer default and bondholders demand to be made whole, guess out of whose pocket the deficiency claims will have to be funded...

Um, in case you’re wondering, the article leaves the answer to that last rhetorical question open.

And if you still don’t know just find a mirror, whoever stares back at you will be the one on the hook. (Make sure you use as small a mirror as possible and make sure the mirror is located in the USA when you fix your gaze upon it.)

Prison as a tool of ‘reform’ is a very expensive proposition when the states are having their coffers drained by off-shoring.

None the less, since the Republican ‘contract with (on) America’ began the nation’s prison population has skyrocketed!

WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court ordered California Monday to free thousands of prison inmates, saying chronic overcrowding violated inmates' rights -- but one judge warned the ruling was "outrageous."

In a narrow 5-4 majority ruling upholding a lower court decision, the top US court said the release is the only way to address the constitutional violation of cruel and unusual punishment.

More disturbing is how this civilization (that most of us are only marginally attached to) is turning a large number of us into felons as illustrated by this bit of economic data from that 'bastion of capitalism' the Wall Street Journal.

Lusardi, Schneider and Tufano also looked at the ways in which people coped with an unexpected expense. Most would use multiple methods ranging from dipping into savings, asking for help from family and friends, using loans or credits cards, taking out payday loans or selling possessions. “Taken together with those who would pawn their possessions, sell their home, or take out a payday loan, 25.7% of respondents who were asked about coping methods (equal to 18.6% of all respondents) would come up with the funds for an emergency by resorting to what might be seen as extreme measures,” the authors write. “Along with the 27.9% of respondents who report that they could certainly not cope with an emergency, this suggests that approximately 46.5% of all respondents are living very close to the financial edge.”

But this is nothing ‘new’ for the vast majority of us who have grown up in a ‘hand to mouth’ existence.

More ‘truth’ is said in jest, such is the term ‘wage slave’ more meaningful than a majority is willing to accept.

Lastly, we have this offering which amounts to unnecessary overkill in rebuttal to all of the ‘happy talk’ that there is anything resembling an economic recovery anywhere in the global wasteland!

If there’s a point to be expounded upon, that is it good citizen. We tend to focus on the world of ‘I’ assuming the rest of the world is taking care of itself.

What you need to recognize is the same people that are fucking up your life are fucking it up for everybody else too!

You see, that plan we spoke of in the beginning is something that has been repeated time and time again.

So if you recognize what is going on, you have a good idea as what to expect!

The ‘plan’ is to push us into our own cesspool, a dark place where there is no ‘safe haven’…and they fully expect to survive this vicious exercise by being the ‘owners’ of the only lantern around.

That is how we keep ending up with such fowl, unworkable government. Because the same assholes responsible for the destruction of the old society are the same ones who oversee the erection of the new society as it rises from the muck.

Insuring that the ‘new boss’ is indistinguishable from the old boss!

Anyway, for what its worth, the ‘bucket’ containing our civilization is currently in ‘free fall’ good citizen.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, May 23, 2011

People don't think...

Greetings good citizen,

Stock markets around the globe are bleeding from the eyesockets (for the second consecutive week.) First it was chalked up to ‘fears’ surrounding the crippled Japanese economy and now it seems we are back to an issue that was supposedly ‘put to bed’ nearly a year ago.

I’m certain it doesn’t help to remind you that there were people saying it wasn’t enough even before the deal was sealed…but they were ‘brushed off’ and not heard from again.

Hell, even I have been saying for more than two years now that there was 'no possible solution'. It is impossible to ‘head-off’ a total financial collapse without a complete overhaul of the financial system.

And no, I am not trying to say I was ‘ahead of the curve’ on the European situation (even though I was in the respect of no solution here, by extension, means there is no solution there either.)

Any, onwards with today’s first offering

Investors fretted that the debt crisis was turning more acute because of mounting speculation Greece would have to restructure its debts, a warning from a leading credit ratings agency over Italy’s public finances, and a heavy defeat for Spain’s governing Socialists in regional elections.

The renewed jitters were particularly visible in stock markets, where most leading indexes around the world shed over 1 percent of their value. The euro was also in the firing line, briefly dropping 2 cents on the day to $1.3976 before recovering a bit to $1.4032, the first time since March it traded below $1.40.

Why the big fuss over, of all things, Greek sovereign debt?

You’ll have to shift mental gears with me if you want to chase this improbable chimera down because it really is ‘fuck you, pay me’ at its finest!

Because the biggest question that is continually ‘glossed over’ by the corporate owned media is precisely who (individual(s) or entities) is all of this debt owed to?

The ‘general’ answer is the banks, with no particular bank being painted as any more guilty/responsible than any other.

Um, also ‘not up for discussion/debate’ is who is liable for the bad decision to make these ginormous loans?

And guess who ends up taking it in the shorts regardless of who signed on the line…

Yup, the taxpayer! (Read: non-wealthy resident. Wealthy people don’t pay taxes.)

So, do we have a ‘political problem’ on our hands or do we have a legal problem…or, wait a minute, it could be BOTH!

The greatest ‘scam’ ever pulled is the banks putting the public on the hook for loan(s) it never should have made!

The ‘solution’ here is to prosecute the banks but the banks ‘own’ too many politicians.

Leaving the only viable solution as hanging the politicians for treason!

I keep repeating and honestly believe we will see the day when the key figures involved in this scam are sent to the gallows to be publicly executed.

Um, the ones who manage to survive the not so public lynchings. Sadly we can only hang them once.

In today’s second offering we have a fresh perspective:

On one side, Germany is taking a hard line against anything resembling aid to its troubled neighbors, even though one important motivation for the current rescue program was an attempt to shield German banks from losses.

On the other side, the E.C.B. is acting as if it is determined to provoke a financial crisis. It has started to raise interest rates despite the terrible state of many European economies. And E.C.B. officials have been warning against any form of debt relief — in fact, last week one member of the governing council suggested that even a mild restructuring of Greek bonds would cause the E.C.B. to stop accepting those bonds as collateral for loans to Greek banks. This amounted to a declaration that if Greece seeks debt relief, the E.C.B. will pull the plug on the Greek banking system, which is crucially dependent on those loans.

At the end of the day good citizen, this whole fiasco of transferring all of this ‘bad debt’ onto the taxpayers is being justified in order to ‘save’ the global financial system!

Like it is worth saving!

Hey boys and girls, ‘banking’ is not ‘rocket science’ (as long as your not trying to swindle the average customer.) Push comes to shove the government could ‘step in’ and be our new interim ‘banker’.

It’s not like we will stand there, confounded as to what to do if the banks who made those reckless loans go out of business!

In fact, failing to put them out of business is a major legal/political failure!

The laws are not being upheld, so the public is not being served!

But I belabor the obvious, don’t I ?

With ‘default’ already in the cards in Europe, what do you suppose is the next step in the ‘funny money’ house of cards?

Left to our imagination is ‘who precisely’ gets to decide what each Utah gold or silver coin is worth in, er, ‘real money’?

His idea isn’t to return to the gold standard, when the dollar was backed by gold instead of government goodwill. Instead, he just wanted to create options for consumers.

“We’re too far down the road to go back to the gold standard,” Galvez said. “This will move us toward an alternative currency.”

will the new gold and silver ‘alternative currency’ be payable in Euros, Dollars or Whiskey and Gunpowder?

Bad enough people are losing faith (as well as purchasing power) with their (enforced) reliance on ‘fiat currency’. It is a no brainer that the backers of this devisive legislation are…you guessed it, ‘nothin’ go up top conservatives’ who (obviously) don’t understand money at all.

How sad an indictment is it that the ‘Don’t understand money club’ includes most of the world?

How fortunate is it for the governments of the world that their people DON’T THINK?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Periodic reality check...

Greetings good citizen,

Every once in a while it is wise to preform a ‘Reality Check’ (personally) just to see if things are ‘as advertised’.

Most of you have, for quite some time, experienced the ‘where did THAT come from?’ phenomenon (and brushed if off thinking it was probably YOU who didn’t understand what was going on the first time.) But it keeps happening.

It’s like the ‘recovery’ where we hear that companies are flush with cash; but none of them are hiring. Worse, the company you work for is killing the ‘survivors’ of the last round of lay-offs, screaming for production while refusing to hire more help!

No wonder profits (and bonuses) are up, eh?

Naturally the massively ‘under-reported’ level of inflation only serves to make things look better than they actually are.

How fucking bizarre is it good citizen that 99% of the ‘improvement’ in retail sales comes from the spike in the price of energy?

How fucking stupid is it that the price of food and energy ‘don’t count’ when it comes to measuring inflation but it is okay to use these same figures when measuring gross retail sales?

WTF! (something you must exclaim at least a dozen times a day even if you are only paying minimum attention to the outlandish events that regularly unfold in the corporate owned media.)

What was that about a reality check?

Which is not to enter into a debate over who could make good use of one. Worse, there are dozens of sides to every story, so we can only wonder why the media keeps getting it consistently wrong?

In this particular instance we encounter a ‘battle of the pundits’ that, as close as anyone can tell, is totally divorced from ‘reality’.

Sustained Recovery in Housing Remains Elusive: Fannie Mae (HousingWire)

A sustained recovery in the housing sector remains elusive as distressed home sales continue to dominant a large part of the sector's activity, Fannie Mae said in its May 2011 Economic Outlook report.

Single-family homebuilding activity was weak in the first quarter, while housing starts and new home sales remained flat at already depressed levels, suggesting a state of optimism in the housing sector of the economy is difficult to maintain. [should we cap that observation with the caveat of ‘without looking like a raving lunatic’?]

The economy slowed dramatically in the first quarter, dipping to a growth rate of 1.8% from 3.1% in the final quarter of 2010. Despite that drop, Fannie Mae's long-term economic forecasts predict more than 3% growth in the next few years. [Funny how that ‘creative accounting’ prevents them (or anybody else) from getting an accurate picture of the economy, doesn’t it?]

Fannie's Chief Economist Doug Duncan said despite low prices, low interest rates and improving job numbers, consumer attitudes have yet to rebound in a way that turns the tide.

Since this is a ‘reality check’ I heard that last WTF! Escape from your trembling lips.

Since when did ‘attitude’ have anything to do with what’s in your checking account?

Or did we ‘miss the point’ again and the economist in question was referring to the employers’ attitude?

Nope, dummy specifically said ‘consumer attitude’…that means you and me.

Maybe we need to look at what ‘adjusts’ our ‘attitude’?

A big number one in the reality check department is the question that should be on every homebuyer’s mind…who is going to buy this dump from me when the time comes?

IF we are honest with ourselves, the ‘real estate market in this country is ‘finito’, there’s no such thing as Real Estate in Banana Republics.

Which is to say we would be STUPID to pay the bank nearly a million dollars for a property we will be unable to sell for less than half of what we paid for it.

That’s precisely what anybody currently holding a mortgage is looking at down the road, a dearth of buyers.

What you NEED TO get for your property is not what the ‘average person’ is paid, creating a ‘financing problem’ that is not the banks but YOURS!

But we would be remiss if we didn’t point out that real estate may soon be the least of our problems…

Ironically, thanks to ‘real estate’, the rest of the global economy is about to collapse.

"We now know that there has been a dramatic reversal in world central bank thinking, and instead of selling gold as they have been doing, world central banks, on balance, are buying gold. We know that China, Russian and many Asian countries are urgently increasing their gold-to-reserves ratio. [This ‘weird’ reversal is stupid on a grand scale, although we must remember that they are the only entity that can buy gold with ‘funny money’!]

Rising gold is also putting pressure on the silver shorts. I've heard that there is now more silver shorted on the COMEX than is available in physical silver.

A few weeks ago, shorting silver was considered a "no-brainer." In this business, if you run with the crowd, you're liable to get trampled to death...

But more powerful than anything else will be the trend of the stock market. If the bull market dies here or even if it corrects severely, the pressure will fall heavily on the administration and the Congress. [But this will somehow not effect Bobo’s chances of getting re-elected!]

For this reason, I expect the rest of the year 2011 to be 'wild and wooly.' I expect government lies and propaganda to reach a crescendo. I'm bracing myself for a parade of surprises. Politicians love power and perks. But to keep those two, they must also keep their jobs. Therefore, coming up, I expect an extreme in dirty politics and internecine political battles.

The year 2011 should wind up as a banner year for political and economic propaganda, all lies and bull-shit.”

Um, once the bottom drops out of the energy situation there won’t be any point in keep up ‘pretenses’, our skulking ‘masters’ will emerge from the shadows and seize control…and it will be ‘game on’.

So the ‘slap upside the head’ for most of us will come in how soon we will all be chasing down our next meal and beating it to death with a stick.

Taking the phrase ‘do or die’ to a whole new level.

No irony should be lost on the fact that for millenia, before commercial agriculture, this was the way things were.

It remains to be seen just how much ground we will lose when the proverbial collides with the rotating device.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Saturday, May 21, 2011

In for a Penny....

Greetings good citizen,

One of the famous lines from the movie ‘Thunderbolt and Lightfoot’ is when Jeff Bridges opines to Clint Eastwood, in for a penny, in for a pound.

This is supposed to allude to the idea that there is no such thing as being a ‘little guilty’ just as there’s no such thing as being ‘a little pregnant’.

If you’re gonna commit a crime, be sure you do as big a crime as you can because you're facing the same prison sentence if you steal two-hundred as you would be if you stole two million.

No irony should be lost on the fact that the odds you would ‘walk away’ from a two million dollar robbery are far greater than that of a ‘petty’ theft, (largely due to the methods employed.)

But I digress…

Let us return to the, er, ‘highly optimistic’ plan to stand up to the captors of our government.


Many Americans know that the United States is not a democracy but a "corporatocracy," in which we are ruled by a partnership of giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite and corporate-collaborator government officials. However, the truth of such tyranny is not enough to set most of us free to take action. Too many of us have become pacified by corporatocracy created institutions and culture.

What do you suppose is WRONG with all of the proposed solutions to our ‘captive government problem?

Like the capitalist’s disturbing tendency to set resources to ‘infinite’, those who believe what we currently have is ‘fixable’ keep doing the same thing with the timeline.

You WILL suffocate in roughly three minutes.

You WILL die of thirst in roughly a week

You WILL die of starvation in roughly thirty days.

Worse, all of the above are ‘best case’ scenarios, most of you would die sooner.

What is the common factor in all three statements?

Time.

Given ‘forever’ the idiots running our economy would ‘extend and pretend’ for the next thousand years (although it only took them forty years to crash the global economy.)

And THAT is the other ‘damning factor’ most ‘we can fix this’ boneheads fail to take into consideration.

It’s not ‘just us’, the whole world is FUBAR, so there’s no where to hide from the coming disaster!

So far there hasn’t been a single news report linking Japan’s loss of nuclear power to the sudden spike in oil prices but think about it, Japan HAS TO get the energy from somewhere!

Why? Because unlike the vast economic desert known as the US of A, Japan has managed to retain it’s ‘leadership’ in IC chip technology (that originated here.)

And the world has found out for the umpteenth time what a bad idea ‘sole sourcing’ is!

No irony should be lost on the fact that (taxpayer bailed out automaker) GM has been virtually shut down by the snipping of its Japanese supply lines.

But hey, what’s $50 billion and a couple of hundred thousand blue-collar assembly jobs between, er, ‘cronies’? (Because these people are NOT your ‘friends’ by any stretch of the imagination.)

It probably helps to keep in mind that the ‘self-important few’ don’t consider the majority of us to be on the same level of the food chain as they are.

How ironic is it that we would have very different opinions on the depravity of being willing to prey on your own kind?

Naturally we have the blind and tone deaf media to thank for this outcome.

Man, one of the difficulties of writing about the subject of ‘society in general’ is it has a bad habit of being all over the social map!

So, back to the article in question; if we had ‘forever’ (or could count on the situation remaining ‘static’ for, well, a really long time) MAYBE we could ‘outlast’ the rotten apples that infest our political processes.

Sadly that process starts with seizing control of the ‘party machinery’.

We seriously DON’T have the time this would take. All the conservatives would have to do to seize power right now is to force a stand-off.

Which is to point out that you won’t be focused on supporting the ‘anti-authoritarians’ when the truck from the supermarket warehouse is a week overdue.

Geez, there’s that ‘time’ thing again!

Speaking of a game of dominoes we have this piece from today’s Automatic Earth that lays out how global finance will collapse in a near textbook 'cascade'.

In yet another ‘watch and learn’ exercise, we will witness Europe erupt in violent class war long before similar ‘incidents’ start to take place here.

And, naturally, the corporate owned media will dismiss the unrest as the acts of ‘domestic terrorists’ and applaud the overly violent (military) response to it.

Face it good citizen, once the battle lines are drawn, negotiations will be a ‘non-starter’.

It will, on the other hand, be a damn good time to get in touch with your inner savage.

What they lack in numbers they will attempt to make up for in ferocity.

Are you up for the challenge?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, May 20, 2011

Whackos!

Greetings good citizen!

It is not often we get to visit both sides of an argument in the same post, even if those two sides are only not ‘directly’ related.

We begin with:

What the three men have in common, [Schwarzenegger, DSK, and Gingrich] aside from wielding more influence than they can handle or deserve, is that their serial misbehavior went unchecked for years. In fact, it was rationalized as mere exuberance, frequently excused in “exceptional” people, when it actually demonstrated something else – ruling class impunity.

Ask yourself: Is it possible that these were isolated lapses in judgment? In other words, was this the only time Dominique Strauss-Kahn went after the help, or the only instance of Arnold Schwarzenegger cheating on his wife and exploiting those beneath him? Not too likely. And it’s surely not the only time Gingrich has excused his own bad behavior as a side effect of patriotism – while simultaneously trashing the basic humanity of a political opponent.

But perhaps more importantly:

If these are patterns, why are millions so fascinated, often even seduced, by people whose behavior actually points to pathology? Perhaps we are wired to be attracted by psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, people so focused on their own central role in whatever takes place that the rest of us are sucked into their reality.

Never one to pass up a ‘teaching moment’, you don’t suppose there could be a reason for these obviously disturbed individual’s behavior?

The common thread the article studiously avoids is how all (intentional) ‘public figures’ are ‘pathological liars’. Worse, they are, er, ‘hired’ to both disseminate and defend lies, requiring a certain, er, ‘moral flexibility’ that most people are ill equipped to deal with.

If we take our current set of circumstances, your basic ‘puppet government’ scenario, you’d be correct to observe that most players are indeed accomplished ‘actors’.

The ‘psycho’ part comes from the fact that this is not ‘acting’ in the strictest sense where the player knows the outcome ahead of time, something that can’t help but effect the actor’s overall mental performance/health.

Which is to point out that doing other than what your conscience dictates will, by necessity, fuck you up in the head!

This is not speculation but fact.

However, if we take the original premise and turn it on it’s head (from is the world ‘run’ by psychopaths to is the world ‘filled with psychopaths’) then what does that give us here?

“My mom has told me directly that I’m not going to get into heaven,” Grace Haddad, 16, said. “At first it was really upsetting, but it’s what she honestly believes.”

Thousands of people around the country have spent the last few days taking to the streets and saying final goodbyes before Saturday, Judgment Day, when they expect to be absorbed into heaven in a process known as the rapture. Nonbelievers, they hold, will be left behind to perish along with the world over the next five months.

It will be great fun come Monday when we can rag on the asses of those who are less ‘holier than thou’ because they were ‘left behind’.

Will the next five months be a time of ‘great upheaval’…probably but I seriously doubt ‘spirit in the sky’ has anything to do with it.

Men are ‘evil’ enough without the great Satan!

Then we come to Ivory Towers and the disturbing fact that those inside are still too far up to witness actual circumstances on the ground…

Manufacturing, once America’s greatest strength, seemed to be in terminal decline. But that may be changing. Manufacturing is one of the bright spots of a generally disappointing recovery, and there are signs — preliminary, but hopeful, nonetheless — that a sustained comeback may be under way.

Understand good citizen there is and always will be a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE between ‘Made in the USA’ and ‘Assembled in the USA.’

For those of you who fail to appreciate the distinction, the ‘money’ ISN’T in ‘turning the wrenches’; the money is in the actual fabrication of the parts!

Quite a weekend ahead, let’s see how things turn out.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Conventional 'Wisdom'?

Greetings good citizen,

Welcome to this edition of ‘mythbusters’.

No, this is not that popular show on the Discovery channel. This edition is brought to you by the corporate owned media, that occasionally publicly admits that a widely advertised ‘belief’ has been proven to be ‘wrong’!

First up in our in our parade of debunked ‘conventional wisdom’ is the belief that a college education will ‘guarantee’ access to a comfortable, middle class lifestyle.

Why blow all of that cash on a college education if you’re doomed to end up pushing a broom for the bulk of your (brief) productive life?

Which is to point out what we already know, if you haven’t ‘made it’ by 40, you ain’t gonna!

But don’t take my word for it:

Now evidence is emerging that the damage wrought by the sour economy is more widespread than just a few careers led astray or postponed. Even for college graduates — the people who were most protected from the slings and arrows of recession — the outlook is rather bleak.

Employment rates for new college graduates have fallen sharply in the last two years, as have starting salaries for those who can find work. What’s more, only half of the jobs landed by these new graduates even require a college degree, reviving debates about whether higher education is “worth it” after all.

How sad is it that if you DON’T put your hard won degree to work ASAP, you will be ‘competeing’ with next year’s graduates who possess the ‘latest and greatest’ (knowledge) in your chosen field of endeavor.

You may be able to ‘underbid’ them when it comes to an open position but the fact that you weren’t hired right out of the box marks you as ‘damaged goods’, diminishing the ‘likelihood of success’.

Bringing us back to the other old truism, it isn’t WHAT you know but WHO that matters when it comes to your ‘career path’.

Once upon a time a ‘useful idiot’ with a college degree (and a generous dose of chutzpah) could ‘break in’ to the lower reaches of the highest stratum of society…but you had to be the ‘real deal’, a modern day Machiavelli if you will.

Today, not so much.

Automation and the trend of ‘renting’ brainpower on an ‘as needed’ basis serves to leave those precious openings at the ‘golden trough’ for the offspring of the ‘deserving’.

But this is not the the time or place to discuss the ‘worthiness’ of our future leaders, whose first best qualification to lead us is being ‘born to greatness’ (by virtue of being born to the criminal ‘ruling class’.)

I’ll bet you thought we got rid of that royalty bullshit, didn’t you…

Surprise!

Anyway, the second myth to get busted in today’s paper is one of those ‘what the hell are they smoking’ deals in the first place.

Which is to point out that it didn’t ‘make sense’ in the first place.

The conviction that private prisons save money helped drive more than 30 states to turn to them for housing inmates. But Arizona shows that popular wisdom might be wrong: Data there suggest that privately operated prisons can cost more to operate than state-run prisons — even though they often steer clear of the sickest, costliest inmates. [snip]

“There’s a perception that the private sector is always going to do it more efficiently and less costly,” said Russ Van Vleet, a former co-director of the University of Utah Criminal Justice Center. “But there really isn’t much out there that says that’s correct.”

Such has been the case lately in Arizona. Despite a state law stipulating that private prisons must create “cost savings,” the state’s own data indicate that inmates in private prisons can cost as much as $1,600 more per year, while many cost about the same as they do in state-run prisons.

The first thing to hit the average person in the eye was the idea of doing ‘prison on the cheap’.

How the hell do you ‘reform’ a convict ‘on the cheap’?

Which is to ask how much ‘emphasis’ is being put on ‘reforming convicts’ (which is the actual ‘purpose’ of prison in the first place!)

Why even bother sending felons to prison if they don’t benefit from it?

Getting criminals ‘off the streets’ is a temporary solution at best. I’d posit that if the goal was to remove those unwilling to obey the rules from society that the removal process should have a more permanent methodology employed.

Naturally, those who favor ‘privatizing’ prisons are more interested in milking the public than they are in providing a ‘necessary service’.

Worse, punishment for profit isn’t even remotely ‘humane’. We already know what bloodthirsty employers do to their employees and the employees are ‘free’ to find less onerous employment, inmates are not!

Naturally, this brings us full circle to the central problem facing our civilization, that it is being run by ruthless criminals.

If we can’t keep our own house in order, do we ‘deserve’ what becomes of us?

Because that’s what THEY think!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Adios Bible thumpers!

Greetings good citizen,

Just when I thought I wouldn’t have much to write about today this wacky news item pops up on my e – mail homepage.

Camping is not hedging this time: "Beyond the shadow of a doubt, May 21 will be the date of the Rapture and the day of judgment," he said in January.

Such predictions are nothing new, but Camping's latest has been publicized with exceptional vigor — not just by Family Radio but through like-minded groups. They've spread the word using radio, satellite TV, daily website updates, billboards, subway ads, RV caravans hitting dozens of cities and missionaries scattered from Latin America to Asia.

Hmmn…I’m not going anywhere (at least I don’t think my heathen backside is slated for salvation…I can no sooner conceive of eternal bliss anymore than I can get my head around eternal damnation.)

But for you believers out there, maybe you should be tending to your final arrangements and saying good-bye to those you’re reasonably sure you won’t be seeing on the other side.

Although, talk about your ‘slippery slopes’, thinking poorly of others might be enough to jeopardize your salvation…which pretty much guarantees nobody is going!

In fact, this particular sect that is calling this coming Saturday as ‘R’ Day is of the opinion that it is already too late to make amends.

If you didn’t recognize Jesus Christ as your savior before 1994, you’re too late.

Actually, the article says it is too late for the Church to save you after 1994, apparently you can still save yourself by staying away from the ‘corrupt’ churches.

Um, if the rapture is indeed this coming Saturday then who the hell was the Anti-Christ?

Conservatives say the current incumbent is the anti-christ but if this is true then he is an even bigger disappointment as the ‘epitomy of evil’ as he was as Chief Executive!

The words ‘epic fail’ come to mind.

A milque toast as the Anti-Christ…go figure?

Anyway, I admonish all of you to bid the ‘Holier than thou’ among us a heartfelt ‘good riddance’ just in case we really are quit of them as of this weekend.

This could make for a very interesting Monday morning, don’t you think?

Show of hands; how many of you are twisted enough to call in to the local morning radio show DJ and wish all of the Jesus Freaks a hearty ‘adios!’?

I would piss my pants laughing if any of you did!

Sorry, I’m just a little twisted myself.

Okay, maybe more than a little…

And speaking of ‘twisted’, how about those Republicans?

The ‘local rag’ (for those of you not familiar with my local newspaper, it is, er, decidedly [and unapologetically] Republican leaning.) ran a story concerning our newly minted Republican Senator, Scott Brown.

It seems Mr. Brown ‘gave the impression’ that he WOULD vote for the Ryan budget during a speech he made to (who else) but the local Chamber of Commerce.

AND wasn’t the local rag ‘covering his tracks’ today, re-interpreting his statement to mean that ‘yes, he would vote on the Ryan budget but he was still ‘undecided’ as to whether or not he was going to vote in favor of the very unpopular legislation.

Well, the astute among you don’t need to know anything more about Mr. Brown apart for the fact that he’s a Republican and so is Mr. Ryan.

How many of you think FOR ONE STINKING SECOND that it is not a foregone conclusion that Mr. Brown WILL VOTE IN LOCKSTEP with his fellow Republicans?

You have to be SOME KIND OF STUPID to even imagine otherwise!

How sad is it that ‘some kind of stupid’ accurately describes the ‘one in five’ crowd? (only one in five self identifies as a conservative/Republican.)

Yes good citizen, it is, er, ‘remarkable’ that Democrat dominated Massachusetts ‘somehow’ elected a Republican Senator to replace a Kennedy no less!

Which serves as more proof that those who own the media throughly control our politics.

Need more ‘proof’? how about this story from today’s Alternet ?

Senate Vote to End Subsidies for Big Oil Fails--Blame Ben Nelson

The U.S. Senate had a vote tonight on "a bill to reduce the Federal budget deficit by closing big oil tax loopholes." Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins actually voted for it. But no other Republicans did. And three Democrats voted against it. Can you guess who they were? Two of them are kind of obvious. Mark Begich of Alaska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana represent petro-states. But Ben Nelson represents Nebraska. The Department of Energy says that Nebraska's oil reserves are "small." So, why did Nelson oppose the bill? Anyone want to guess?

How convenient is it for the elite that a few stupid rules make it simple for them to defeat the entire process of democracy?

Did I mention that the system is broken beyond repair?

But I didn’t have to, you already knew!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

And a hearty ADIOS to all of you Bible thumpers!

Gegner

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Winning by default

Greetings good citizen,

While I don’t often focus specifically on politics, almost everything I write is ‘politicized’.

This may strike you as strange considering I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Worse, I’d opine that people who accept/self-identify as either ‘label’ have very different opinions of what being either means.

You hear some pretty bizarre stuff, the most common being ‘socially liberal and fiscally conservative’, which is, astonishingly, most often equated with having ‘libertarian’ leanings.

Perhaps it is that root word ‘liberty’ that makes the socially predatory ‘Libertarian’ philosophy attractive to the, er, ‘ignorant’.

Libertarians are indeed all about the ‘free’, which makes it all the more ironic that freedom is in no way related to 'liberty'.

Strictly defined, ‘liberty’ is ‘freedom from tyranny’, which is defined as being ‘bent to the will of another’.

In this respect what modern ‘Libertarians’ really seek is ‘freedom’ from their social obligations.

But I digress, (with the caveat that Libertarianism can be easily summed up as a philosophy that places no value on the ‘benefits of civil society’.)

They foolishly believe that the ‘individual’ is complete unto his/her self.

Grind mental gears with me as we return to politics as they are currently practiced.

While I have opined that there will not be elections in 2012 due to a government shutdown that is followed by a conservative coup, led by the Religious Right.

However, as with many times in the past, I could be wrong!

Not that this changes anything…we are still scroomed.

Be that as it may, press on we must!

Here we have the world famous Digby to tell us what we already know.

And what is it that we already know?

Considering the field he's facing, Obama will very likely win regardless of any of this so it will be impossible to disprove the theory. But color me skeptical that anyone, Independents included, judge a president running for re-election on something like this when the country is still so stressed by fundamental financial challenges and long term angst about rapid social and cultural change.

Um, the above is a bit confusing, taken somewhat out of context as it is.

What Digby is pointing out is how Mr. Obama, faced with no ‘real’ competition, is likely to win re-election ‘by default’.

Considering the piss poor job he’s done to date; how fucking sad will that be?

Sort of redefines that sign hanging over the gates of hell, ‘abandon all hope, ye who enters here.’

Naturally, nobody was more amazed than me when Reagan and W were re-elected.

Although I have a sneaking suspicion I’m not the only one to find such an outcome ‘incredible’.

Anyway, after ‘dangling’ that (at the moment) strong probability in front of your nearly blind, glazed over eyes for a moment we return to the equally as probable outcome of our civilization being altered beyond all recognition by November 2012.

Where is it, how much of there is it, and what are they going to do when and if the supply of silver bullion drops below 30 million ounces deliverable, which is really a pittance given the size of the market? A silver futures contract on Comex is 5,000 ounces, and so that represents a mere 6,000 contracts. There are a total of 123,000 contracts open today. Last Friday the volume was an eye popping 126,000 contracts! This at times seems less a market, and more a game of musical chairs, or a shell game. And if the allegations are true about the LBMA, and their leverage, then what we have here may be a recipe for a severe market dislocation.

And this is why I expect the silver market to remain highly volatile, with some amazing moves ahead, both up and down. And stretchers perhaps, to carry out some players from the pits, as they get caught offside in high frequency moves, and an increasingly disorderly trade. And this due to the failure to reform the financial system.

Which is to ask, seriously, whether or not you have given any thought to what would happen if the financial system ‘seized solid’?

I have written countless essays on precisely this theme but none of them captures the helplessness YOU would feel at being suddenly bereft of ALL of your so-called ‘assets’.

Fortunately, with nobody being able to pay anybody, the ability to collect would be seriously diminished. Therefore we would revert to a state of ‘possession’ being considered lawful ownership.

Not that there wouldn’t be some battle-royal’s over ‘posession’ of certain choice bits, after having been forcibly taken from their previous claimants.

That ‘free for all’ is perhaps more frightening than the possibility of being evicted from a premises by someone with no greater claim to it than you have!

If the ‘Fuck you, pay me crowd’ returns to power, you WILL find yourself dispossessed of what you formerly ‘owned’. (Not that you ever ‘needed’ to own it in the first place, you only need the ‘use’ of a place while you’re there.)

The fact that you will be charged a ‘token’ amount to cement your claim is of little comfort as it is your children who will be forced to cough up ‘in full’.

But once again we stray from the point being made.

Jesse, besides being a wise individual is also a ‘goldbug’ who follows the markets in precious metals.

I can overlook this shortcoming in exchange for the insight he provides into the insane world of money and ‘money-like’ substances.

First and foremost money is ever and always a ‘concept’. It is an idea, nothing more and nothing less!

As the article illustrates, ‘money’ is being manipulated without regard for the balance it needs to retain ‘value’.

Which is to say money will soon become ‘valueless’ (which is just what it looks like, ‘worthless’ would also fit.)

You will be faced with a ‘double conundrum’, you can’t earn enough to make ends meet along with the price of everyday items soaring out of reach.

While the two phenomenon look like two sides of the same coin it will have two separate causes. On one hand you will have soaring prices and on the other you will not find an employer willing/able to pay you enough to keep up.

While these appear to be the same problem, they will have two separate sources.

Which, naturally, is a moot point.

Together, the two phenomenon will combine to make money ‘worthless’. You will only be able to trade ‘in kind’ (barter) if you can trade at all.

Understand good citizen that in a world without money you will be obliged to do as much for yourself as possible. If fate should have it that you have nothing worth trading for, heaven help you.

My take on Jesse’s article is that a pending ‘crash’ of global financial markets is closer than anyone imagines, making the Mayans look mighty prescient.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, May 16, 2011

Civilization Held Hostage

Greetings good citizen,

For all of our collective shortcomings, America Held Hostage is a more ‘apt descriptor’ than the more derogatory terms the corporate owned media commonly uses to describe the general public.

What Mr. Krugman is pointing out is how the Republican threat to shut down the government hasn’t ‘gone away’.

He also uses the very valid example of how things went down the last time our erudite but spineless leader faced off with the underdog Republican’s.

Six months ago President Obama faced a hostage situation. Republicans threatened to block an extension of middle-class tax cuts unless Mr. Obama gave in and extended tax cuts for the rich too. And the president essentially folded, giving the G.O.P. everything it wanted.

Now, predictably, the hostage-takers are back: blackmail worked well last December, so why not try it again? This time House Republicans say they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling — a step that could inflict major economic damage — unless Mr. Obama agrees to large spending cuts, even as they rule out any tax increase whatsoever. And the question becomes what, if anything, will get the president to say no.

Do you think he can say ‘no’ if he asks his handler’s ‘pretty please’ first?

It doesn’t even have to really mean ‘no’, it would just be to show the public that he still has a pair!

He could ‘say no’ but have it happen anyway, like a lot of other ‘mysterious’ government action.

Let the legislative ‘ghost squad’ take the hit for once!

Everybody already knows that we have a ‘puppet government’, why do they have to keep making Barry out to be such a wimp?

You know good citizen, the more we see the more confirmation we get that we are living under a government we have no control over.

Since the same people who own the government also took over control of the media we have been 'well and truly ____.'

You can fill in the blank yourself.


One thing is indisputable, Richie Rich and his lawyers have run the nation into a ditch after first having snapped the backbone of the legal system.

Yup, the ‘I paid to get you elected’ has turned into ‘now you have to protect me from prosecution!’

Who does the law take its orders from? The fucking politicians!

So, who should we run up the flagpole?

The WHOLE answer please.

Because hanging the treasonous politicians is only half of the equation, ‘the money’ needs to be similarly punished if justice is to be served.

Worse, the corrupted mechanisms used to pervert justice must also be dismantled and new, stronger systems put in their place.

How fortunate is it that A Simple Plan provides exactly that?

Um, yeah…I too have an ‘agenda’ to push.

I don’t spend countless hours doing this because I like to bitch or I’m deluded enough to think you actually care what I think.

The main thrust of what I do is to provide you with an alternative when our oppressors try to ram the next big swindle down your throats (or up your ass, they really don’t care!)

For centuries we have been told that there isn’t ‘a better way’. Turns out that is a lie.

There is a better way, a different way.

A way where you don’t have to choose between being an oppressor or one of the oppressed; (and if we had the courage to admit it, it really is a choice…but you have to be a certified sociopath to choose the path of oppressor!)

And most people who choose it end up in prison!

Not to be blowing anyone's notion of ‘social mobility’ out of proportion but the truth is never as kind as the fantasy.

It has long been my belief that if you didn’t have an alternative to offer then you were out of line to complain about the way things are.

Ironically, not many of you favor the ‘level playing field’ I propose which only speaks to the power of the lie you first heard at your parent’s knee.

A lie that, although unfulfilled, they repeated to you nonetheless.

Ah, the crimes we commit in the name of raising ‘normal’ children!

Can’t have our kids running around the schoolyard telling the truth, can we? Think about how unpopular it would make them…

Not that it would particularly matter, our failure to act has already damned and doomed them.

Although running off ‘half-cocked’ may well have done more harm than good, so perhaps doing nothing was indeed a ‘kindness’.

Then there’s that murky, mucked up moral compass to contend with. That’s going to create a lot of problems for future generations, especially if the ‘Fundies’ seize power.

But, (and it would be highly unusual If I didn’t) digress.

Mr. Panzer is amazing when it comes to debunking ‘happy talk’ he seems to have the inside track on factual economic data.

Truly, I’d like to believe in the revival of manufacturing as much as the next person. Manufacturing, in the broadest sense, is an essential part of the U.S. economy, and any good news would be welcome.

Unfortunately, the latest figures do not back up the cheerful rhetoric.

Among other things, Mandel notes that the real (inflation-adjusted) value of factory shipments has only recouped about a third of the decline that occurred in the wake of the financial crisis. In the meantime, he adds,

“Imports have recovered far faster and more completely than domestic manufacturing. Goods imports, adjusted for inflation, are only about 1% below their peak. That’s according to the official data. If we factored in the import price bias, we would see that real imports are likely above their peak.”

There are, er, ‘quite a few’ manufacturing positions on the local jobs website but (and I’m a thirty year man) I haven’t gotten so much as a single response from any of them.

And no, I don’t use my ‘pen name’ when applying for a job!

Which is to say ‘employers’ aren’t interested in hiring the unemployed.
If we were interested in ‘opinions’ here, I’d have to opine that Mr. Panzer’s source is correct. Claims that manufacturing is up are based in the same ‘creative accounting’ that is keeping our financial sector solvent.

On that cheery note, it IS a time to worry!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner