Sunday, July 31, 2011

Red Herring

Greetings good citizen,

It seems I was mistaken to think the debt ceiling wasn’t important enough to keep congressional staffers chained to their desks, monitoring ‘public opinion’…

And naturally there is another ‘compromise’ in the works.

Does anyone think that Wall Street DOESN’T want the nation to default?

The media wants you to think that but this is a ‘Red Herring’. Wall Street is really interested in avoiding prosecution for the mess they’ve made of the global economy…(which, as I have frequently pointed out, doesn’t exist!)

You want a Kabuki Dance? Check this out:

Bankers have deluged Congressional staff members with research reports outlining the bleak consequences of a default, or even a downgrade of United States government debt by the major rating agencies. And in corporate America’s version of grassroots mobilization, Allstate e-mailed 45,000 employees urging them to call their local members of Congress and demand a deal.

Hedge fund managers, normally among Wall Street’s most secretive tribes, have been stepping out of the shadows, too.

Marc Lasry, a major Democratic fundraiser who manages the $14 billion Avenue Capital hedge fund, said he spoke to half a dozen members of Congress from both parties on Thursday and Friday with blunt warnings that failure to compromise on the debt ceiling risked permanently damaging the nation’s financial standing.

What’s the ‘best case’ scenario here? That Washington crashes and burns! (While Wall Street melts back into the slimy shadows it sprang out of.)

“Every time Wall Street raises its head, there are a lot of people ready to chop it off,” said one senior banking industry official.

But as the deadline approached, anxiety began to take hold. A turning point came on July 11, when top officials from some of Wall Street’s most powerful lobbying groups filed into an ornate conference room opposite Mr. Geithner’s office on the third floor of the Treasury Building to make their case about the danger of inaction.

Just imagine, good citizen, if this were true.

These are MAJOR campaign contributors here, if they REALLY wanted to avoid default (like such a feat were possible in a finite world) the political ‘lapdogs’ would be doing whatever it took to make their master’s wishes a reality.

How sad is it good citizen that there is NO POSSIBLE ‘fix’for our shattered economy that doesn’t involve a complete ‘reshuffle’ and reboot of the entire economic system!

Which is precisely what will happen once the laws protecting the old economic order are swept away.

Sure, many of the ‘old players’ will come out of the reshuffle just fine…but some won’t.

Who’s your Daddy? (Same as it ever was!)

Then we have this bullshit, which pretends there is still such a thing as a Democrat

The same is true today. In our recent Web survey of 2,000 respondents, voters respond strongly to Democratic messages on the economy only when a party leader declares, “We have to start by changing Washington. ... The middle class won’t catch a break until we confront the power of money and the lobbyists.”

Why is that?

You do not have to look very far. If there is an article of faith among contemporary center-left leaders, it is that investment in education will pay dividends with increased productivity and increased income. And yet the evidence is piling up that the economy is not working for the middle class. Productivity and education increase but wages do not follow.

When presented with vivid descriptions of income inequality in America, people are deflated, rather than empowered to bring change. In surveys, they tell me that they think the politicians and the chief executives are “piggybacking off each other.” They think that the game is rigged and that the wealthy and big industries get policies that reinforce their advantage. And they do not think their voices matter.

Isn’t this the same question I asked a few posts back…actually I don’t recall putting it in the form of a question, it was more of a statement.

And the statement made the point of the total absence of sanity in today’s political dialog…no ‘question’ about it.

As we recently witnessed in Wisconsin, the 'scam artists' ran 'true believers' in the recall elections.

What we don't know is how deep this corruption has spread over the past thirty years?

Is there still such a thing as a Democrat?

I seriously doubt any true supporter of the public interest would pass the 'party machinery sniff test' so necessary to receiving the 'party endorsement'.

Which brings us full circle to what I consider the ‘crux’ of our current problem…the corporate owned media.

Without ‘reliable sources and objective reporting’ you wind up with the media circus we have today…with parts of the media pointing the finger at other parts with zero effect.

Our new motto has become ‘Trust No One’.

It is more than a little incredible that since Republicans are responsible for this toxic environment we find ourselves in that voting for more Republicans (according to guess who) is the answer to this conundrum?

It becomes even more ‘mysterious’ when the 1 in 5 factor is taken into consideration.

Can you say ‘puppet government?’

Which is really neither here nor there, what DOES matter is what are you willing to DO about it?

Because this circus won’t end until ‘the Rubes’ stop paying attention…

The mission at hand good citizen is to restore justice and the ‘rule of law’ over the recent incarnation of ‘the rule of man’.

It doesn’t start at the point of a gun but with the tip of a pen.

Are you game?

Because you’re ‘playing’ whether you want to or not!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Nature abhors a vacuum...

Greetings good citizen,

Apparently the debt ceiling issue isn’t urgent enough to warrant working through the weekend to, er, solve the impasse.

BUT, and this is something that has been pointed out many times by many people, the economy is so out of balance it will ‘crash’ regardless of what they do…which appears to be nothing.

I think I belabor the obvious when I point out that the ‘infamous they’ WANT the global economy to crash!

The only way they are going to re-establish monarchy (with them as the new monarchs) is to, er, ‘prove’ democracy doesn’t work.

And the ‘limited democracy’ we have been cursed with was extremely simple to ‘disable’ (in case the time would come that monarchy needed to be re-established. I suspect that was one of the conditions placed upon the founders, half of which wanted a Monarchy!

As I pointed out in yesterday’s post, woe unto us if they succeed in saddling us with ‘absolute power’.

Remember they have two objectives to meet by doing this, the primary one will be to eliminate as many, er, ‘surplus workers’ as possible, (a feat they will accomplish through ‘perpetual war’) and the secondary will be to prevent being prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

YOU don’t get to question much less put the ‘absolute ruler’ on trial…

Some of you might find these, er, ‘outlandish plots’ bordering on the incredible but how else would you interpret facts like this?

It appears that not all members of the financial establishment are uncomfortable with the truth.

In "Terry Smith Says the World Is Living in a Fantasy," FT Alphaville highlights 10 bleak -- and unusually blunt -- comments on the European sovereign debt crisis, the financial system, and our future economic prospects by the British CEO of Tullett Prebon, one of the world‟s largest inter-dealer brokers, taken from a BBC radio interview. Here are three of them:

We are all going to be very significantly poorer than we thought we were over the last 20 years, because we just simply won’t have the same standard of living.

From the government’s point of view, they should have fessed up at the outset, treated people as adults and told people the truth — that we are going to see a major shrinkage of the public sector and an awful lot of things are going to be worse than we thought they would be, including our pension entitlements.

There’s only one thing worse than living in fear, and that’s living in fantasy like we are now.

Um, I have stated repeatedly that the entire set of circumstances, from the ‘war on terror’ to the ‘financial crisis’ is a hoax, a scam intended to, er, ‘right-size’ the global population in light of the coming resource scarcity.

It is curious that they have even bothered with the ‘appearance of propriety’ but that might have triggered a counter-revolt when they weren’t ready.

And that’s the tightrope we walk today.

They’re preparing for the ‘adverse reaction’ that will be inevitable when they shut down the government.

Which is to point out if any of you think this debt ceiling issue will be over quickly, you had best think again!

Speaking of scams and hoaxes

And the revisions to the worst quarters of the "Great Recession" were even more depressing, with 4Q-2008 pushed down an additional 2.12% to an annualized "growth" rate of -8.90%. The first quarter of 2009 was similarly downgraded, dropping another 1.78% to a devilishly low -6.66% "growth" rate. And the cumulative decline from 4Q-2007 "peak" to 2Q-2009 "trough" in real GDP was revised downward nearly 50 basis points to -5.14%, now officially over halfway to the technical definition of a full fledged depression.

One of the consequences of the above revisions to history is that the BEA headline "Advance" estimate of second quarter GDP annualized growth rate (1.29%) is magically some 0.93% higher than the freshly re-minted growth rate for the first quarter. From a headline perspective, that makes for a far better report than the 0.63% drop from the previously published 1Q-2011 number -- since otherwise the new 2Q-2011 numbers would be showing an ongoing weakening of the economy.

Unfortunately, meaningful quarter-to-quarter comparisons are nearly impossible in light of the moving target provided by the revisions.

We all know the ‘Puppet Government’ is and continues to be full of it when it comes to ‘economic recovery’.

What you will soon be faced with, good citizen, is the fight of your life, for your life.

The bad news, for most of us, is our race is already run. We are actually fighting for our kid’s future!

We either teach them to play nice and share or what survives won’t be worth saving…

Worse, it will be incapable of saving itself.

Just something else to think about when the days begin to stretch into weeks.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, July 29, 2011

I warned you...

Greetings good citizen,

I take small comfort about being at least partially correct, the ‘opposition’ is doing it’s damndest to prove our now ancient system of government ‘doesn’t work’.

News of the prospect that the vote could be put off began circulating as Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader and former House speaker, was making her party’s closing argument against the plan on the floor. After the night of uncertainty, Ms. Pelosi said she hoped the struggle would make House Republicans more willing to give ground.

“Hopefully, now the Republicans will come back to the table to negotiate a bipartisan, balanced agreement that is overwhelmingly supported by the American people,” said Ms. Pelosi, who added that “Republicans have taken us to the brink of economic chaos.”

The delay caught Senate Democrats off guard. Harry Reid, the majority leader, had said earlier Thursday that once the House approved its plan, he intended to immediately set it aside and move ahead with his proposal for deeper spending cuts and a longer extension in the debt limit, which would ultimately be thrown back to the House.

While the corporate owned media unerringly points at the GOP as the ‘guilty party’ nobody should be surprised to see Republican’s winning re-election during next year’s presidential contest.

The ‘winners’, as you well know, are whoever the corporate owned media says they are…which is how we got to where we are today.

As ‘inexplicable’ as this will seem the ‘R’ and the ‘D’ haven’t mattered for quite some time. All that matters now is the ‘illusion’ of two opposing parties…who happen to take their marching orders from the exact same people.

Ironically, when the ‘new broom’ comes along there will be no room for ‘dissent’. The new rulers will not tolerate disagreement that leads to ‘divisions’ in their society.

In keeping with GOP philosophy, there will be a place for everyone and everyone will know their place…and they won’t complain about it if they know what’s good for them!

Yes good citizen, welcome to the world of the ‘birth lottery’ where only ‘useful idiots’ are socially mobile.

How will they keep the ‘poor’ from expressing dissatisfaction with their lot in life?

The true ‘old fashioned way’ perpetual war (with other neighboring nobles!) You’ll be kept busy fighting one another so you won’t have the time or the energy to fight their oppressive rule!

Which is to say, the more things change, the more they remain the same!

Piss off the local Lord high mucky-muck and you could find your murder being used as the excuse for the renewal of hostilities with the neighboring Lord Nitwit.

How glorious will it be when those presumed to be incapable of being wrong sit in judgment of our, er, ‘transgressions?

Can you say ‘Kangaroo court?’

But I digress.

Let us consider the number #2 news item for the day (according to the NY Times)

On Friday, when President Obama is scheduled to announce even stricter standards — in fact, the largest increase in mileage requirements since the government began regulating consumption of gasoline by cars in the 1970s — the chief executives of Detroit’s Big Three are expected to be in Washington again.

But this time they will be standing in solidarity with the president, who will also be surrounded by some of Detroit’s highest-tech — and most fuel-efficient — new vehicles.

While the American carmakers, as well as their Asian rivals, once argued against even minimal increases in government fuel rules, they are acquiescing without protest to an increase to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, from the current 27 miles per gallon.

Wasn’t there supposed to be a thriving colony on the Moon and one under construction on Mars by now?

Which is to ask how much do you think a gallon of gas will go for in 2025?

More succinctly, will there be anywhere to go in 2025?

You won’t have a ‘job’ per se in 2025, the global market will have priced you out of it by then. (So vigorous will the competition for paid labor be and so cut throat will the value of money be.)

Of course there will be larger problems to contend with long before then.

Like a largely unemployed but nuclear armed United States, not that the US will be the only nuclear armed ‘wildcard’ out there, the on ‘in play’ today is Pakistan!

Will the Pakistani’s be used as an ‘example’ of what happens when a nuclear arsenal loses its leash?

No matter how you slice it good citizen the future looks grim indeed.

Thanks to the ‘nuclear wildcard’ the failure to accept the return of Monarchy may well result in a rather nasty nuclear exchange between ‘noble wannabes’ attempting to make the ‘peasants’ more submissive.

It’s the old ‘rule in Hell rather than serve in Heaven’ routine…even if it means sending what remains of humanity straight to the Devil.

How ironic is it that this willingness to destroy our entire race is viewed (by them) as their fitness to rule?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Default, naturally!

Greetings good citizen,

I apologize for both today’s tardiness and yesterdays’ missed edition. My ‘puter has been acting up and you can’t compose on a machine that won’t stay powered up.

Which is to note that despite ‘good intentions’ I might still not post today!

Not that my message is seriously different from my last post…it is still looking like a default is eminent.

That said, apparently the dominoes this will set in motion will ravage our society in much the same manner the Eurozone is being decimated.

I have often warned that one of the chief dangers facing ‘mankind’ was the value of money falling into doubt.

The prohibitions against counterfeiting were strong for good reason, now ‘creative accounting’ has done nothing more than to create a new way to counterfeit!

Money is money, derivatives are NOT!

But they had to run with it because there was no other way to ‘cycle’ money fast enough to keep up with the ‘interest payments’.

But you’re not supposed to understand this…as far as you’re concerned, everything is just peachy!

Those rumors about capitalism being broken are just that, vicious lies!

Only they’re not…capitalism is toast!

And yeah, for that I rejoice!

Even though it is more likely the social clock will turn backwards instead of forwards (at least initially) New won’t happen until Old dries up and blows away.

Of course, the thing you need to understand is we DON’T have a ‘money’ problem, what we have is a LEGAL problem!

With the hope of picking up more votes, Mr. Boehner revised his deficit-reduction plan to achieve additional savings of $65 billion over 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office said the revised proposal would save $915 billion over 10 years, up from an estimate of $850 billion in savings from the original plan.

The revisions involved technical changes in annual limits on spending in 2012 and 2013, but they produced substantial additional savings.

In a meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday morning, Mr. Boehner and the majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor, scolded members for allowing Democrats to unify in protest against them. “This is the bill,” Mr. Boehner said, according to those who attended the meeting, who said he advised them to “get your ass in line.”

Who do you suppose Mr. Boehner was telling to get in line? Does he think his corporate media elected compatriots are ‘unaware’ of how they’re supposed to vote, even if it destroys any chance of their ever being re-elected?

No non-politician wants to see the US default on its debt (and technically it can’t.)

The Kabuki dance playing out before us is a ‘demonstration’ that our democracy is broken. That we are ‘incapable’ of governing ourselves (Not that we’ve ever been in any danger of actually deciding anything!)

From the founding of this nation the only thing we’ve been permitted to decide (and then only occasionally) was who would make decisions in our name without ever consulting us.

The charade is wearing thin good citizen. The people are tired of being lied to (and the liars know it)

So the liars are going to take matters ‘in hand’ before they suffer the consequences of their actions.

How successful this gambit will be remains to be seen…

For this offering and this one tell of the woe that lies in store for the ‘common man’.

Make no mistake about it good citizen, the ‘average American’ KNOWS they have been sold down the river, the lunatic fringe cheering from the sidelines, feeding their irrational fears.

Is the ‘average American’ afraid?

They most certainly are. They see how ‘wrong’ things are going and nowhere in the national dialog is the voice of reason.

You could pull just about anybody off of the streets and with a minimum of coaxing they would tell you precisely what was wrong with how this country was being run and precisely how to fix it!

I’d probably have to add the qualifier that the only ones who ‘know’ where this country went wrong are over 50, the rest don’t know any different!

Which is to point out they know something is wrong but they can’t put their finger on what…they can’t recognize what changed…but us old coots. We know!

Why there are no jobs and why you can’t buy anything ‘Made in the USA…you’d think you wouldn’t need to draw young folks a picture but they don’t remember when EVERYTHING was MADE HERE!

How sad is it that the number 2 and number 3 economies in the world earned their status by selling CARS into the US market?

WTF!!!

The REAL scary thing is both the US market and the Eurozone are both in serious decline.

And ‘Peak Energy’ is almost on top of us…

Now, our ‘elected pinheads’ are doing absolutely NOTHING about the alternative energy situation while the number of unemployed pretty much equals the number of employed (including part timers and the taxpayer supported ‘public sector’.)

If you consider for even a moment the way the powerful have screwed over the rest of this country, Ted Nugent’s admonition of ‘Eat the Rich’ starts to sound like real wisdom!

Although I do not advocate cannibalism, Hanging ‘em works just fine for me!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Kick in the head...

Greetings good citizen,

It is difficult to remember (and THEY sure as hell aren’t going to remind you) that once upon a time there was an ‘alternative’ to ‘working for the man’.

Understand, especially when you see articles like this one that they continue to ‘pretend’ you have a choice.

You do not, they have seen to that.

Unemployed workers have long suspected that the gaping holes on their résumés left them less attractive to employers. But with the country in the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression, many had hoped employers would be more forgiving.

“I feel like I am being shunned by our entire society,” said Kelly Wiedemer, 45, an information technology operations analyst who said a recruiter had told her that despite her skill set she would be a “hard sell” because she had been out of work for more than six months.

Legal experts say that the practice probably does not violate discrimination laws because unemployment is not a protected status, like age or race. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently held a hearing, though, on whether discriminating against the jobless might be illegal because it disproportionately hurts older people and blacks.

Like the last two ‘economic downturns’ the US economy ‘shrank’ while the labor force grew. We are rapidly approaching the point where we have as many workers counted as ‘not in the workforce’ as those who are.

Before this latest, er, ‘downturn’ we were already very close to ‘equal’ (if we backed out the taxpayer supported public sector and the military.)

Did I mention ‘mismanagement’?

Couple that with ‘creative accounting’ you get a real pickle!

Sort of redefines ‘extend and pretend’.

While many corporate media articles point to the high employability of the over fifty crowd, most of us are experiencing exactly the opposite…we’ve come to call our condition ‘over fifty disease’ (which is, unfortunately, terminal) [pun intended.]

What better way to save on pension funds than to throw people who are in their prime contributing years out of the workforce?

While you are expected to believe this is a ‘coincidence’, it is not.

Sure, you’ll still draw a pension but it will be a fraction of what you would have gotten if you hadn’t been forced out due to the, er, ‘lousy economy’.

And whose fault is the lousy economy?

Did I mention ‘mismanagement’?

Which brings us full circle to the mystery of why the officers of EVERY US based multinational aren’t swinging from the flagpoles in front of their corporate headquarters?

Understand that ‘legal’ shares the same criterion, as ‘sane’ with whatever the ‘majority’ thinks is right being the determining factor.

How sad is it for the rest of us that a rather ‘warped’ minority currently gets to decide this critical social factor?

Which is to say, in truth, there isn’t a jury in the land that would convict you for meting out justice in such a manner. (As long as one of THEIR judges didn’t interfere.)

Which bring us to the other ‘unspoken complaint’ of how the wealthy ‘won’ the class war by buying the government…but that was just a battle, we have not yet begun to fight!

But they know that…which makes what’s coming that much more frightening because SOMEBODY has done some serious underestimating…

Which is also neither here nor there as far as the larger picture is concerned.

What is of paramount importance is the, er, wiping out of this treasonous element from our midst.

Those who would throw our entire civilization under the bus (primarily) to extend THEIR rule do not deserve to survive!

Not that we will get them all, some will run and the others will be ‘assimilated’ when the mechanisms that gave them power are dismantled.

It is somewhat bizarre to call what is happening now an ‘opportunity’ but when they ‘make their move’ the Internet will shut down and nobody knows when service will be restored.

That’s why I posted A Simple Plan online, so you could read it NOW and tell others about the ‘third way’, one that puts ALL OF THE PEOPLE in charge because the law stands alone!

This is a feature I seldom address because few of you understand its importance. We lost our freedom once ‘interpretting the law’ became a commodity that licensed practioners made their living off of, if you could afford a good lawyer, you could ‘buy’ yourself some justice.

This is NOT how it is supposed to be, the laws belong to us ALL, just as they apply to us all.

There is no such thing as a ‘special understanding’ of the law, that is a lie that has been used by cheats everywhere to rob us of our freedom AND justice!

That is why under A Simple Plan NOBODY will be permitted to make their living by ‘interpreting the law’ just as NOBODY will have the title ‘judge’, nobody is worthy of it.

YOU ARE THE LAW good citizen, the LAW IS whatever we all agree to…and I think I speak for the majority that most of us didn’t agree to what we are currently cursed with, a land where justice is for sale to the highest bidder!

If we are to enjoy the rule of law, we must set it free from those who have taken control of it!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, July 25, 2011

Really Scary

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we find ourselves being ‘distracted’ by one of several issues that the powers that be keep boiling on the back burner.

Their latest ‘hobby horse happens to be the debt ceiling…no irony whatsoever should be lost on the fact that it was Republicans who are responsible for quadrupling the national debt…but that ‘assumes’ there is anything even resembling a (true) Republican still out there.

There should be zero doubt in your mind that there is nobody (in politics) who in any way, shape or form resembles a (true) Democrat.

So who ARE these people with the r’s and the d’s next to their names, claiming to ‘represent’ our interests while doing mighty well for themselves?

In a word, ‘opportunists’. Politics is just a job they do where THEIR personal interests ALWAYS come first.

(Which, PS by the way, is treason!)

Of course, nobody has been prosecuted for treson for a very long time…because to be in government is to be a traitor!

Which is why The Law ‘stands alone’ under A Simple Plan, there are no politicians/legislators OR judges, only juries. Only those who must live under them have the power to alter and/or interpert The Law(s).

But I digress, let us return to the issue of ‘distraction’, shall we?

Does the ‘debt ceiling’ really matter? Not to a ‘sovereign entity’! When you can print all the money you want, you won’t go broke until people start to refuse your ersatz confetti!

Like Zimbabwe.

There was nothing ‘wrong’ with Zimbabwe’s money, it’s just that the (bankers) of the ‘rest of the world’ refused to accept it.

Now, you want to talk about distractions and real problems, there is NO DIFFERENCE between the USA and Zimbabwe…except (for the moment) people are still accepting our ‘confetti’.

Does this put the ‘debt ceiling’ thing in perspecive for you?

Probably not.

IF you could wrap your head around the idea of just how bad the debt to income ratio is out of whack, your head would literally EXPLODE!



Let us digress for a moment and sidetrack to the recent revelation that the US, er, ‘loaned’ the ‘rest of the world’ 16 TRILLION dollars during the, er, ‘financial crisis’ (and this still didn’t ‘fix’ the so called problem!)

US GDP ‘was’ 14 Trillion…so where the fuck did 16 Trillion come from?

Understand this is on the same idea as experts telling us we can’t afford to retire if we don’t have a cool two million in the bank.

How the FUCK do you SAVE 2 million if you haven’t even earned ONE in your ENTIRE WORKING LIFE?

Sadly, YOU can’t…but a ‘sovereign entity’ can simply ‘SHAZAAM’ the money into existence. (This is ‘theoretically’ future taxpayer’s income and NOBODY is asking how long it will take 300 million people to accumulate 16 Trillion dollars, because it ain’t over yet!)

Is the ‘debt ceiling’ starting to look silly now?

Face it good citizen, we are bankrupt and the only thing keeping this crazy cart on the tracks is ‘creative accounting’.

Which leads us to some very disturbing questions.

Worse, these questions lead directly to YOUR worst nightmares!

Who ‘gets by’ and who gets the shaft under an ‘imaginary values’ scheme?

Those closest to the trough, of course!

What do you suppose is going to happen once people start to figure out that SOME are ‘taking advantage’ of their position and grabbing whatever they can get their hands on?

They’re going to start ‘grabbing’ too!

You think politicians are the ONLY ‘opportunists’?

No one is more amazed than me when it comes to the death toll…and I seriously believe we aren’t hearing it because it only proves the mounting evidence againt them.

But I have pointed out countless times that the Corporate Owned media wouldn’t tell us anything that cast an unfavorable light on the predatory capitalist system.

And I’m not the only one who is distressed by these circumstances.

So why is the president embracing these bad policy ideas? In a forthcoming article in The New York Review of Books, the veteran journalist Elizabeth Drew suggests that members of the White House political team saw the 2010 election as a referendum on government spending and that they believe that cutting spending is the way to win next year.

If so, I would respectfully suggest that they are out of their minds. Remember death panels? The G.O.P.’s most potent political weapon last year — the weapon that caused a large swing in the votes of older Americans — was the claim that Mr. Obama was cutting Medicare. Why give Republicans a chance to do it all over again?

Of course, it’s possible that the reason the president is offering to undermine Medicare is that he genuinely believes that this would be a good idea. And that possibility, I have to say, is what really scares me.

Truth be told, what passes for politics in this failed Republic is simply bad theater.

But don’t take my word for it

The dueling plans emerged after Mr. Boehner walked away from negotiations with the White House on Friday, leading to a frustrating weekend of talks in heat-scorched Washington. The leaders of both parties variously negotiated together over the phone, talked separately, conferred with their caucuses and tried to plot an end to the debt crisis that would assure the capital markets around the world that America would meet its debt obligations.

As the Aug. 2 deadline for lifting the debt ceiling nears, warnings are growing that the nation’s economy may be damaged by the protracted stalemate. A downgrade of the nation’s credit rating, which could raise the cost of borrowing, seemed more likely, deal or no deal.

Mr. Reid, the Senate’s top Democrat, was trying on Sunday to cobble together a plan to raise the government’s debt limit by $2.4 trillion through the 2012 elections, with spending cuts of about $2.7 trillion that would not touch any of the entitlement programs that are dear to Democrats or raise taxes, which is anathema to Republicans.

Is ANYONE surprised this is happening at the same time the Baby Boom generation is reaching retirement age?

Anyone, Bueller, anyone?

I don’t know about you but instead of ‘No new taxes’ the new battle cry should be

'NO NEW BILLIONAIRES!'

(Want to talk about something we REALLY can’t afford!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Future Tense

Greetings good citizen,

It’s one thing to make a ‘prediction’ (and you know I don’t shy away from sharing my ‘observations’ as my predictions are based on observation.) but it now appears we are going to witness at least a partial default with the incumbent taking the fall for the no longer existent Democratic party.

There aren’t any Democrats any more and the people who claim to be ‘progressives’ are a little, er, ‘suspect’ as well. Do they not dare to champion the people out of fear of touching off the powerkeg the corporate sympathizers have built?

Because there sure is a lot of ‘pussyfooting’ going on!

Although they’re right, once the lid comes off it will be the Devil’s own trying to set it back on again.

But I digress.

It is the ‘prediction’ thingy I wish to address.

For those of you who don’t remember or are disinclined to go digging through the multitude of posts searching for it I’ll recap the probable improbability here:

The budget ‘impasse’ will be used to demonstrate that ‘Democracy’ doesn’t work and the corporate puppets will use this impasse to ‘shut down’ our broken government…while the ‘Democrats in name only’ sit there dumbfounded.

Out of this ‘paralysis’ will come a ’new, take charge’ movement

Probably along the lines of this Republican proposed lunacy

Debt ceiling negotiators think they’ve hit on a solution to address the debt ceiling impasse and the public’s unwillingness to let go of benefits such as Medicare and Social Security that have been earned over a lifetime of work: Create a new Congress.

This “Super Congress,” composed of members of both chambers and both parties, isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, but would be granted extraordinary new powers. Under a plan put forth by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his counterpart Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), legislation to lift the debt ceiling would be accompanied by the creation of a 12-member panel made up of 12 lawmakers — six from each chamber and six from each party.

Legislation approved by the Super Congress — which some on Capitol Hill are calling the “super committee” — would then be fast-tracked through both chambers, where it couldn’t be amended by simple, regular lawmakers, who’d have the ability only to cast an up or down vote. With the weight of both leaderships behind it, a product originated by the Super Congress would have a strong chance of moving through the little Congress and quickly becoming law.

A Super Congress would be less accountable than the system that exists today, and would find it easier to strip the public of popular benefits. Negotiators are currently considering cutting the mortgage deduction and tax credits for retirement savings, for instance, extremely popular policies that would be difficult to slice up using the traditional legislative process.

I don’t know how closely you’ve been paying attention to what is put on the chopping block but a great deal of it could be described as ‘employer benefit expense’, which is to say the ‘winner’ of the proposed cut will be employers!

If they remove much of the mortgage interest deduction they will be removing most of the ‘incentive’ to purchase a home in the first place.

Understand there wasn’t a ‘real estate market’ when this whole capitalism bullshit got started, it is a reasonably ‘modern’ development that hasn’t worked nearly as well ‘as promised’.

Naturally, I’m still hunting for all of those millionaires Reagan promised would be around if we allowed him to slash and burn the private pension system!

Look where THAT left us!

But I digress (again!)

If a ‘Super Congress’ is all we need then why wasn’t it a good idea a long time ago?

Good idea or not (and I think not) WHO gets to choose which members get, er, ‘appointed’ to the 12 Super Congress seats?

And is ‘diluting’ our government processes further than they already are really a ‘good idea’?

Can’t you see it coming, “Senate Republicans walked out over the latest failure of Congress to pass legislation proposed by the ‘Super Congress’!”

The real danger we face good citizen is having what few rights that remain to us being legislated away by the self-interested few, some of them ‘pretending’ to be Democrats and others posing as Republicans.

While absolutely NOTHING gets done about the rapidly expanding economic desert!

Which is to point out, there WILL be WAR and because of the war there WILL be BLOOD, copious amounts of it too!

On both sides.

Your mission is to survive this bloodbath while refusing to be enslaved.

Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!

That’s how those who would entrap you think…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, July 22, 2011

Depressing

Greetings good citizen,

What do you call a ‘representative government’ where you can’t talk to your representative?

Which is to ask why YOU should surrender YOUR RIGHT TO CHOOSE to somebody that REFUSES TO TALK TO YOU!

Wouldn’t it be more ‘reasonable’ if you voted directly on the laws? (Fuck this middle man bullshit!) Oh, and talk about your ‘original intent’, there weren’t any ‘full time’ legislators for the first hundred years of this (now failed) experiment.

Which is to point out that the need for full time lawmakers coincides with the development of technology that would enable us to eliminate a ‘go-between’ altogether!

Naturally, if we eliminated, er, ‘representatives’ they would be unable to sell ‘your’ vote to the highest bidder (for perfectly legal ‘campaign contributions’ which they get to pocket when they retire from ‘public life’.)

Think I’m being ‘harsh’ good citizen? I suspect nobody would be more surprised than the founders that their original ‘contrivance’ lasted this long!

Which is to ask a more measured question, how long do you think the average ‘social contract’ is good for?

The current dumbfucks seem to think ‘forever’ but a lot has changed since colonial times…

Some would opine that the social contract was ‘re-written’ as recently as the 1930’s and that the conservatives among us, despite being a decided minority, want to ‘undo’ that last re-write, which would leave us where, good citizen?

Well, you don’t have to scratch too hard to find people who ‘imagine’ things were better in the friggin’ Dark Ages (strictly because people were more devoted to God than they are now, fuckwits!)

Said the man who thinks the current bunch are plotting to throw us all into our own cesspool (by forcing the supply lines to collapse…for those of you who always suspected JIT had a ‘dark side’…)

And believe you me, ‘cesspool’ is an UNDERSTATEMENT!

Um, the, er, ‘beancounters’ defend their actions by saying we haven’t had a ‘disaster’ in the past thirty years…which is more accurately stated as the US hasn’t had a disaster since JIT was implemented, elsewhere, not so good.

But let us return to the center ring where the dismemberment of our civilization proceeds unimpeded!

The disappearance of unemployment from elite policy discourse and its replacement by deficit panic has been truly remarkable. It’s not a response to public opinion. In a recent CBS News/New York Times poll, 53 percent of the public named the economy and jobs as the most important problem we face, while only 7 percent named the deficit. Nor is it a response to market pressure. Interest rates on U.S. debt remain near historic lows.

Yet the conversations in Washington and Brussels are all about spending cuts (and maybe tax increases, I mean revisions). That’s obviously true about the various proposals being floated to resolve the debt-ceiling crisis here. But it’s equally true in Europe.

On Thursday, the “heads of state or government of the euro area and the E.U. institutions” — that mouthful tells you, all by itself, how messy European governance has become — issued their big statement. It wasn’t reassuring.

The whole article is one of Mr. Krugman’s better efforts, well worth the time to click through if you haven’t already.

Not only does this whole ‘deficit dance’ look like a distraction, th question nobody is asking is what we are being distracted from?

Recent reports of the bleak jobs outlook for the United States brought to mind an eye-opening report for the Council on Foreign Relations by Michael Spence, a Nobel laureate, and Sandile Hlatshwayo. I highly recommend that report, at the very least its summary, “Globalization and Unemployment,” in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. It clearly explains our current dilemma in the labor market.

The authors break down our economy into those sectors whose output is traded across international borders (the tradable sectors) and is thus subject to competition from foreign producers, and those sectors whose output is not traded across international borders (the nontradable sectors).

In the tradable category are manufactured goods, farm products, raw materials and financial, consulting, educational, computing and other technical services. Prominent in the nontradable sector are government, health care, retailing, construction, restaurants and, for the most part, legal services.

Could it be the rapid expansion of the economic desert?

How many of you have considered what it will be like to live in a country where it is unsafe to step outside your door for fear of you or your home being robbed?

If you are one of the millions of ‘newly destitute’, you aren’t too worried about this as you have nothing worth stealing so nobody’s going to bother you.

But what of the, er, ‘blissfully ignorant’ who pretend not to notice anything is amiss?

Worse is how the budget axe will fall on public safety just as heavily as it falls on public education.

So your call to 911 will likely go ‘unanswered’.

How close is this tragic set of circumstances?

Consumers in the U.S. are increasingly using credit cards to pay for basic necessities as income gains fail to keep pace with rising food and fuel prices.

The dollar volume of purchases charged grew 10.7 percent in June from a year ago, while the number of transactions rose 6.8 percent, according to First Data Corp.’s SpendTrend report issued this month. The difference probably represents the increasing cost of gasoline, said Silvio Tavares, senior vice president at First Data, the largest credit card processor.

“Consumers, particularly in the lower-income end, are being forced to use their credit cards for everyday spending like gas and food,” said Tavares, who’s based in Atlanta. “That’s because there’s been no other positive catalyst, like an increase in wages, to offset higher prices. It’s a cash-flow problem.”

Rising costs of food and gasoline are leaving Americans less money to spend discretionary items, slowing the pace of the recovery, Tavares said. Household spending accounts for about 70 percent of the world’s largest economy.

After-tax income adjusted for inflation fell 0.1 percent from January through May, according to figures from the Commerce Department. The drop came as Labor Department data showed energy prices rose 8.2 percent and food climbed 2 percent during the same period.

While I have warned repeatedly about the ‘dire implications’ of putting ‘ordinary expenses’ on cards that charge upwards of 30% interest, it seems people are desperate, stupid or both.

Has anyone else noticed how the ‘micro-finance phenomenon’ has come unglued (around the globe?)

Seems as though the rules of creditworthiness and market share haven’t been suspended after all!

The first few did fine but once the market got saturated, the inevitable occurred.
And, surprise, nobody saw it coming!

Well I did and I assume a lot of you did but hey, what do I know?

Didn’t chucklehead win a fucking Nobel Prize for the idea? Goes to show you what one of those is worth!

But I digress, it is unfair to pick on what is just one of a multitude of examples of capitalist failures!

Which is to point out if you aren’t frightened you should be!

We’ve got some class A loons running the show and they’re intent on running it right off the cliff…so their butt-buddies can walk in afterwards and offer to ‘save’ the survivors.

Naturally this will come in the form of an ‘offer you can’t refuse!’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Mismanagement coupled with misdirection...

Greetings good citizen,

Are you just standing there like a deer in the headlights, unable to make up your mind about what to do?

Of course you are! So how many of you will be surprised to learn you are already ‘roadkill’ as far as our self-professed ‘betters’ are concerned?

Worse is how the media expects us to swallow the refusal of the, er, ‘opposition’ to raise what they have repeatedly raised for their own ‘sainted’ party leaders while they were president?

I guess it's okay if you're a Republican!

Perhaps more damning is how many of you are convinced that it won’t happen, that it would be political suicide rather than the genocide they are trying to foster?

Among my more ‘out there’ theories is the one where those currently in control are ‘conspiring’ to stretch out their dominion over us by eliminating a large amount of the ‘surplus population’.

If they play their cards right it could win them another hundred years…and if they get it wrong they could wipe out our species! (Which will happen anyway if we don’t seriously alter how and why we do what we do…)

Reading over the various offerings this morning gave me the distinct impression that the wheels were ready to fly off the cart at any moment.

But then I remembered that ‘all money is funny’ so what we’re seeing is all an act!

Yup, the collapse of the Eurozone, the (pending) US default…all FAKE!

But I get ahead of myself…

Today’s first offering is backed up by the major media outlets that Federal agencies are preparing for ‘default’.

"We are developing processes and procedures by which the Treasury communicates to us what we are going to do," Plosser said, adding that the task was manageable. "How the Fed is going to go about clearing government checks. Which ones are going to be good? Which ones are not going to be good?"

Very bullish reversal in the metals intraday, with closes in gold and silver above the psychological numbers of 1600 and 40 respectively.

If they can move higher and stick a close, and hold it through option expiration next week, you can say goodbye to these levels, the dollar, and quite a bit more.

Yes good citizen, the criminals will decide who gets paid and who gets stuck…and the rest of us will live with the consequences… but wait, it gets worse!

Even though many on Wall Street want YOU to believe that a default remains unlikely, the financial markets are starting to become agitated. Volatility in stocks has soared, and some investors say stock prices are falling because a United States default could severely raise companies’ costs of doing business.

In the Treasury market, investors are starting to sell, fearing that the government will not make good on some interest payments that will be due next month. And complex financial instruments that will pay out if the United States defaults have become twice as expensive to buy as they were at the start of the year.

Analysts say the signs of panic are small for now.

“The metaphor is a pile of sand,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “You keep putting one piece of sand on the pile, nothing happens, and then, all of the sudden it just caves.”

How ironic is it that the ‘sand’ Mr. Zandi refers to in his metaphor is easily replaced with ‘lies’…and it doesn’t alter the end result!

The real, er, ‘puzzler’ here is why our politicians are even plodding down this particular path when the solution lies in a different direction entirely?

Which is to ask What are our corporate sellouts up to?

The White House suggested for the first time that Mr. Obama might be willing to agree to a short-term increase in the debt ceiling by Congress — perhaps for a few days — if such a deal was in sight, stepping up the pressure on the two parties to come to terms.

Mr. Obama met separately at the White House with Republican and Democratic leaders. But neither side reported any substantive progress as they searched for a formula that would include deep spending cuts, cost-saving changes to entitlement programs and an overhaul of the tax code that would increase revenues by closing certain tax breaks and eliminating deductions but also lower some tax rates.

Politically, the main question remained whether House Republicans would be willing to negotiate over any package that could be construed as raising taxes, and throughout the day there were signs of internal debate among party leaders.

Conspicuously absent from this charade is the ‘purpose of government’ as well as a solid understanding of ‘the greater good’.

When does the greed of the owners outweigh the security (never mind the basic prosperity) of the people?

Short answer is IT DOESN’T!

But you (hopefully) don’t need ME to tell you that!

So WHY is our government even pretending to be at an impasse over taxation and government spending?

It’s a WTF moment good citizen and it is high time we demand to know WTF!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Stick a fork in it...it's DONE!

Greetings good citizen,

I have used, as a literary device, the idea that when the value of money fell into doubt, people would be startled to find their wedding rings contained enough gold to pay off their mortgages…

ASSUMING you could find a broker willing to pay you that amount.

What people living during these insane times need to learn is the only ‘value’ that matters is ‘use value’.

If you can’t eat it or screw it, piss on it!

Okay, that’s the canine ‘value chain’ but it is far more practical than the one most humans subscribe to.

So, what are we gonna do in a world plagued with high unemployment (although capitalism’s failure to provide workers with desperately needed jobs has become a ‘self-repairing’ problem…as people exhaust their unemployment benefits THEY NO LONGER COUNT AS UNEMPLOYED!)

How fucking ‘convenient’ is that?

Then there is the ongoing, er, ‘drama’ of the debt ceiling impasse being played out against the backdrop of an already ‘insolvent’ government.

But take heart, good citizen! A ‘bipartisan’ solution has been proposed (yet again)

What’s it going to take for these guys to wake up to the difference between famous and ‘infamous’?

The bipartisan proposal from the so-called Gang of Six senators to reduce deficits by nearly $4 trillion over the coming decade — and its warm reception from 43 other senators of both parties — renewed hopes for a deal days after talks between Mr. Obama and Congressional leaders had reached an impasse.

Financial markets rallied on the news. And with time running out before the deadline of Aug. 2 to raise the government’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, Mr. Obama’s quick embrace of the plan left House Republicans at greater risk of being politically isolated on the issue if they continue to rule out any compromise that includes higher tax revenues.

Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader who has led opposition to any deal including tax increases, later issued a statement saying the bipartisan Senate plan includes “some constructive ideas to deal with our debt.”

Methinks the pundits who dismiss a government shutdown as ‘political suicide’ aren’t facing reality. Not only is the government ‘broke’, it is also ‘broken’.

Let us take a moment to pause and consider the Elephant in the room, the looming energy crisis…which is a bit of a misnomer as there will be plenty of energy FOR THOSE WHO CAN AFFORD IT!

You’d think ‘alternative energy’ would be springing up like weeds across the countryside but no! If we were to deploy ‘windpower’ it would be, by necessity, ‘imported’.

The other, er, ‘blatant slap in the face’ to the citizens of the US is how ‘our government’ is abandoning its space program while China is launching theirs (with, make no mistake about it, technology developed HERE!)

So good citizen, how do YOU define ‘treason’?

When Atlantis lands Thursday, the famous room will seem even more ghostly. After 30 years and 135 missions, shuttles will no longer need controlling. NASA plans to turn the space into a training venue, mostly for astronauts going to the International Space Station and flight controllers working with the station.

Over the next couple of months, 800 or 900 people in the mission operations division will be laid off, said Paul Hill, head of that division and a former flight director himself.

"As proud as we are of our success ... I have to keep that in perspective with the 90 percent of the workforce that will no longer be part of that effort," Hill said.

Kwatsi Alibaruho, flight director for this final mission, said the specter of so many flight controllers without jobs is "kind of following us through the halls."

So we will have the ‘appearance’ of a space program without the apparatus of a space program. But wait, what’s that on the horizon?

Why it’s the ‘privatization’ of space…and guess who THE ONLY CUSTOMER IS?

We are living with the granduer of ‘privatized’ healthcare (thanks to the fucking Gipper!) have they privatized ANYTHING that has actually saved the taxpayer a single cent?

Short answer…NO!

The disturbing part is the ease with which this nation is being turned into a third world hell hole…because the ‘focus’ of our justice system has been quietly shifted from social welfare to the primacy of ownership.

Well good citizen, I got news for you. Nobody ‘owns’ nothin’!

And despite your best arguments we all, truly are, in this together!

Refusing to recognize your ‘commitment’ to the rest of humanity does not absolve you that responsibility.

Which is to invoke one of the central planks of A Simple Plan: Those who do not appreciate the benefits of civil society will have those benefits, er, ‘withdrawn’ from them.

Increasingly the ‘luxuries’ of living indoors and eating regularly rely on peace. As the world becomes more crowded, the processes that maintain ‘peace’ become, er, ‘strained’.

This brings us back to the basic social equation: Without equality there can be no justice and without justice there can be no peace…

In order for equality to be achieved the playing field MUST be leveled…which means NO ONE can be permitted to profit AT THE EXPENSE OF ANOTHER!

The world doesn’t need profit good citizen. No irony should be lost on the fact that the blind pursuit of profit is what’s tearing our civilization apart!

What the world needs more of is love good citizen.

If you can’t bring yourself to share then you surrender yours…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Where does it end?

Greetings good citizen,

While I usually make the case for our current downfall being centered on Reagan, he couldn’t have done what he did without the groundwork laid by Nixon…who only won office thanks to LBJ’s flat refusal to seek a second term.

Which is to ask if any of these assholes EVER wore ‘a white hat’?

And the answer is likely no.

Sadly, it doesn’t matter.

How we got here is moot compared to the question of how we are going to resolve this issue.

Yes, we need to understand who was behind this betrayal of our nation so we can insure they are incapable of, er, ‘sabotaging’ efforts to restore balance.

A Simple Plan sweeps away the old power structure completely, even the outdated and useless legal structure would be completely abandoned.

No more lawyers, no more judges and no more legislators.

Who polices the police? The leadership.

Better, leaders are NOT politicians, they have no, er, ‘authority’ to create or interpret the laws as they see fit. (Although they will have to prosecute the law to the best of their ability/understanding. Let it suffice to say ‘dummies’ don’t make leader, you have to be sharp to win!)

Laws will be simple and few, making the task ‘more manageable’.

The central premise behind anarchy is ‘rules WITHOUT rulers’ (and not the ‘anything goes’ no rules happy horseshit the conservatives [who live in the land of ‘make believe’ in the first place] generally contend.)

Who makes the rules? Those who must live under them! (And not just a handful who most often exempt themselves from prosecution in the first place.)

Which is to point out that the law would be a very different animal if EVERYBODY had to obey it.

And that’s the way it ‘should be’, isn’t it?

But we (naturally) digress.

The topic du juor is the aftermath of the ‘Reagan Revolution’ also known as ‘Morning in America’.

The article isn’t clear on who is being quoted here but they make a fair point:

Anyways, here is my take on things after being a long-time trickle down economics person. Awhile back, I came across tax data that showed while Reagan cut A LOT of taxes, he was also forced by threats of veto to also sign into law A LOT of tax increases.

These tax increase were by and large closing of loopholes and tax exemptions, which mainly affected richer tax filers. So much so in fact, that people in the higher tax brackets were paying more in taxes by the start of Reagan’s second term, than when Reagan was first elected.

After looking into this, I still haven’t figured out where history got distorted. However, it seems that what happened during the Reagan years to get things “jump-started” was taxing the rich more, and taxing the middle class less.

And that goes against EVERYTHING that “conservatives” say today.

Why the destruction of the nation’s customer base is suddenly ‘big news’ is mystifying to us older folks but if we keep in mind the younger generation doesn’t know any better the reason behind the current ‘shock and awe’ becomes clear.

Hell, there are adults who BELIEVE Clinton is responsible for globalization.

Why do adults believe this? Because they were too young to remember who first proposed the idea, the original (but by no means the first) corporate sock puppet, St. Ronnie Reagan!

Don’t anybody get the wrong idea about Slick Willy, he is a dyed in the wool conservative from the get go who was very adept at ‘playing the game’. (Unlike the current sock puppet.)

The appearance of bipartisanship is exactly that, appearance.

Just as voting provides the ‘illusion of participation’.

Well Bubba, we have to sweep aside these ‘delusions’ if we are to have any hope of restoring decency and justice to our civilization.

We have to have a framework that supports the ‘rule of the people’ (ALL of the people) if we are to avoid extinction by our own hand.

I have often invited (specific) critiques of A Simple Plan and have yet to receive a single specific quibble much less a problem.

The plan is bullet proof, that’s why nobody can come up with a more specific objection than ‘I don’t like it’ (mostly because you CAN’T get ‘rich’)

Naturally, rich is relative. Under A Simple Plan we would ALL be RICH (but we’d still have to work for a few hours a week.)

Are you all so hopelessly brainwashed?

I don’t think so.

Thanks for letting me inside your heads,

Gegner

Monday, July 18, 2011

Tip of the iceberg

Greetings good citizen,

You’d think this business of bitching about our badly mismanaged society (that we can’t get away from) would start to get repetitive, that one would run out of things to point at…

But NO! Every day there is fresh ammunition just lying there, asking to be picked up!

So, at the risk of repeating myself/belaboring the obvious, yes good citizen, the destruction of our civilization is proceeding apace.

The only ‘question’ is whether things will get better (unlikely, for most of us) or worse once the new regime seizes power.

Which is to ask how much more will the public tolerate?

Rip away their ‘rights’ (to a peaceful legal remedy) and that question becomes meaningless.

The ‘Divine right of Kings' were unspeakably cruel but his majesty could keep it coming as long as here were virgins to rape and peasants to exploit!

And showing ‘intolerance’ to the King was (and soon will be) fatal.

Left to your imagination is the question of what makes a man a King? and, increasingly, in our society the ‘kingmaker’ has become the ‘financial sector’.

A financial sector that would be seriously hard pressed to define the term ‘counterfeiting’…

Investors also remained wary about events in the United States, where President Obama is trying to get lawmakers to agree to a deficit-reducing package before an Aug. 2 deadline for increasing the debt ceiling.

On Wall Street, stocks were down in midmorning trading, with the Dow Jones industrial average off 136.57 points, or 1.1 percent, to 12,343.16 and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index losing 13.95 points, or 1.06 percent, to 1,302.19.

In Europe, the market jitters marked the start of an important week for the European Union as its leaders attempt to stem full-blown market contagion.

As of this moment the Dow is off 163…but, naturally, that makes ‘certain shares’ [hint: financial stocks] a ‘bargain’!

Just ponder that one for a minute and see if it doesn’t come up ‘screw job’ in your mind.

In yet another subject that is suddenly receiving a lot of attention, Mr. Krugman has some interesting observations to share regarding the housing market

Instead, these officials are pushing for a settlement with mortgage companies that, reports Shahien Nasiripour of The Huffington Post, “would broadly absolve the firms of wrongdoing in exchange for penalties reaching $30 billion and assurances that the firms will adhere to better practices.”

Why the rush to settle? As far as I can tell, there are two principal arguments being made for letting the banks off easy. The first is the claim that resolving the mortgage mess quickly is the key to getting the housing market back on its feet. The second, less explicitly stated, is the claim that getting tough with the banks would undermine broader prospects for recovery.

Neither of these arguments makes much sense.

The claim that removing the legal cloud over foreclosure would help the housing market — in particular, that it would help support housing prices — leaves me scratching my head. It would just accelerate foreclosures, and if more families were evicted from their homes, that would mean more homes offered for sale — an increase in supply. An increase in the supply of a good usually pushes that good’s price down, not up. Why should the effect on housing go the opposite way?

I definitely agree with Mr. Krugman although probably for a different reason. (Economists to date have yet to display a convincing grasp of ‘cause and effect’)

While he cites the effect of more foreclosed homes on an already saturated housing market, he ignores the ‘dearth of buyers’ situation…or maybe he assumes this is ‘self-evident’ and doesn’t warrant explaining (in that case, my bad!)

No buyers coupled with a rapidly expanding economic desert that will only get exponentially larger once heating oil rises north of $5 a gallon.

Too many units and too few buyers!

This will eventually make housing a ‘perq’ (a place to stay will be included in your, er, ‘job contract’.) This may create some serious downside the further down the food chain we venture, with, er, ‘low level’ workers being granted space on which to pitch their tents…near a communal restroom and water tap, of course.

Um, it remains to be seen whether or not the ‘rental value’ of these perqs will be taxable. This could vary from, um, employer to employer.

Which begs the reverse statement; the future’s so ‘dim’ I’ve got to wear night vision goggles!

[A parody on that old Huey Lewis tune, “The future’s so bright I got to wear shades!”]

I am sure many of you are taken back by my perpetual gloomy outlook, the constant ‘negativity’.

Honestly good citizen, is there a ‘bright side’ to this mess that I’m just not seeing?

While my posts often veer off into some mighty dark outcomes, every one of them is not only possible, but PROBABLE! (Dependent on where you land on the ‘value chain’)

So, as C.K. Michaelson so adeptly puts it While the ‘clowns’ are in the center ring fighting for ‘no new taxes’ our civilization is being flushed down the toilet.

The US Tax Burden Falls Disproportionately On Individuals and Small Business


Although the nominal US corporate tax rate of 35% seems high, and especially so given all the corporate funded propaganda promoting more tax cuts and givebacks, in fact the realized corporate rates are relatively low both in terms of historical experience and other countries. This is because of the many loopholes, subsidies, and accounting gimmicks available to its corporate citizens from the corporate friendly government.

One could make the case that the tax burden is falling disproportionately on smaller businesses and individuals that do not have the infrastructure and latitude to take advantage of the loopholes available to the bigger business lobby companies.

State and local taxes appear to be regressive. The top echelons of corporations and private individuals seem to be doing rather well for themselves.

Download Ten Charts from Center for American Progress

Follow the link to read the charts.

Today’s post is approaching the short side of long…if that makes any sense!

We wrap up today’s offering with another brief visit to Dystopia

Imagine if you will a world where most of what you know is a lie, worse, you know it’s a lie but there is little you can do about it.

You ‘tuned out’ a long time ago figuring that if things went too far off the rails, you’d ‘probably’ see it coming.

Bad news…it’s not as simple as it looks, is it?

Well, today’s headlines are only the tip of a much larger iceberg.

No irony should be lost on the fact that this is the same iceberg that has sunk our civilization!

Inside was a treasure-trove of evidence: 11,000 pages of handwritten notes listing nearly 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars, police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by The News of the World, a now defunct British tabloid newspaper.

Yet from August 2006, when the items were seized, until the autumn of 2010, no one at the Metropolitan Police Service, commonly referred to as Scotland Yard, bothered to sort through all the material and catalog every page, said former and current senior police officials.

During that same time, senior Scotland Yard officials assured Parliament, judges, lawyers, potential hacking victims, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the tabloid. They steadfastly maintained that their original inquiry, which led to the conviction of one reporter and one private investigator, had put an end to what they called an isolated incident.

How many of you saw that ‘isolated incident’ claim coming?

Starting to get a little ‘old’ don’t you think?

Pretty soon good citizen, even YOU won’t think it’s funny no more!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sunday, July 17, 2011

The symptoms are NOT 'the cause'

Greetings good citizen,

I’ve already posted once today but the more I thought about this one, the more it ate at me because the Symptoms are not ‘the cause’

But the real culprit — or at least the main one — has been hiding in plain sight. We are living through a tremendous bust. It isn’t simply a housing bust. It’s a fizzling of the great consumer bubble that was decades in the making.

The auto industry is on pace to sell 28 percent fewer new vehicles this year than it did 10 years ago — and 10 years ago was 2001, when the country was in recession. Sales of ovens and stoves are on pace to be at their lowest level since 1992. Home sales over the past year have fallen back to their lowest point since the crisis began. And big-ticket items are hardly the only problem.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently published a jarring report on what it calls discretionary service spending, a category that excludes housing, food and health care and includes restaurant meals, entertainment, education and even insurance. Going back decades, such spending had never fallen more than 3 percent per capita in a recession. In this slump, it is down almost 7 percent, and still has not really begun to recover.

As we all know, if we flipped this rock over we’d find richer rich (and more of them) mostly ‘created’ by stock market shenanigans!

We are told the, er, ‘astounding leaps’ in market valuation have been attributed to ‘increases in productivity’ and most of that has come from the ‘global race to the bottom’.

Since there is no such place as the ‘cheaper there’ (that doesn’t involve criminal money manipulation) most of these increases in valuation are…what’s the best word…FALSE!

This is the hell of the debt ceiling charade, the pretense that we are ‘solvent’ in the friggin first place! You know and I know the nation as well as the rest of the world is bankrupt (on paper.)

The ONLY thing keeping the wheels spinning is ‘creative accounting’.

Which is to say it is only a matter of time before someone comes along and demands their money, only to be told they can’t have it (or they can’t roll over their debt, same result.)

Then the trainwreck begins in earnest.

This is the part almost nobody is prepared for. We will all marvel over the ‘abruptness’ of ‘the crash’.

But still we haven’t touched upon the ‘cause’ of the current, er, drought of consumer demand that Mr. Leonhardt lays out for us.

As I have been lamenting for many years now, nobody can survive very long in an economic desert!

The classic ‘ghost town’ is the perfect example of the end result of failing to protect local/domestic workers.

And there are ghost towns everywhere across these United States, they are not ‘restricted’ to abandoned mining towns (as those flag waving idiots would have you believe!)

So, why is ‘consumer demand’ falling like a rock?

Because the ‘economic desert’ is spreading like wildfire and our useless politicians aren’t doing a damn thing to stop it!

Why is that good citizen? Why has our society allowed the ‘importers’ to hold the rest of us as economic hostages?

Like the title of today’s first post, ‘whatcha gonna do about it?’

It had better be a hell of a lot more than shrug, your kids are counting on you!

Thank you for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Whatcha gonna do about it?

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we see the prevailing attitude is, “Whatcha gonna do about it?” Which is right up there with, “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke!” for getting people’s hackles up.

Naturally, it is, after it is all said and done, up to you.

So good citizen, what ARE you gonna do about it?

I can tell you what NOT to do, don’t waste your time ‘protesting’. The time to ‘protest’ is long past.

And, if you haven’t figured this out for yourself yet, don’t waste your time voting…(go ahead and vote, just don’t expect anything to come of it.)

Contrary to the 'published results', there is no way in hell the Republican’s won a majority in the house in the mid-term elections, there is just no logical way, starting with the 1 in 5 argument!

The reason more than half of all voters are ‘independent’ is because the Democratic party was hijacked by corporate sellouts…

Which brings us to this debt ceiling bullshit

WASHINGTON — With talks on a big budget deal at a stalemate, Congressional leaders turned Friday to negotiating a fallback plan for raising the debt limit as President Obama and House Republicans intensified their efforts to win over public opinion for the long battle ahead.

Given the impasse, House Republicans scheduled a vote for Tuesday on a measure that would cut deeply into the federal budget, cap government spending for the years ahead and approve a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. The Democratic-controlled Senate may vote Wednesday on a balanced budget amendment.

While neither measure will become law, given Democrats’ opposition, Republicans are eager to show their conservative base that they are not retreating, and that they will press their case for vastly shrinking the government through the 2012 elections.

Understand that ‘conservative base’ are the one in five voters who self identify as Republicans.

If we are to believe what the corporate owned media tells us the majority of independent voters side with the ‘nuttier than squirrel shit’ Republicans.

In fairness, more than half of voting aged citizens ‘don’t’…vote that is. They have seen the writing on the wall and choose to use their time more poductively.

Just so we’re clear, we have, er, ‘one side’ telling us we can’t increase taxes and that we MUST reduce the deficit (caused by THEIR wars of choice/free trade policies.)

And we have their ‘opponents’, who are promising to shred the social safety net in exchange for tax increases!

What here doesn’t scream ‘corporate sell out’?

And the really bad news is numbnuts looks ‘on track’ to get re-elected!

If we have to live through four more years of this bullshit there is a high likelihood we will welcome the coming despot with deafening cheers and rose petals!

Um, as some commentators have pointed out, we are entering the fourth year since the meltdown of the mortgage market and we find ourselves on the verge of another collapse (because NOTHING was done about the first one!)

Worse, we all know WHY nothing is being done.

It is the uncontrovertble evidence that our government has been taken captive and needs to be ‘purged’…the only question remaining is whether WE will purge it (unlikely) or THEY will?

Since we aren’t making any moves to, er, ‘correct’ these ‘deficiencies’; the criminals aren’t in any hurry to announce investigtions (which will serve as the criminal’s cue to exit stage left!)

Yes, like the past four years we will be expected to believe that the trail has grown ‘too cold’ to follow and the deeds will go ‘unpunished’.

But, how fortunate for us that this sort of situation makes it the perfect time to prosecute those in charge of the justice system for turning a blind eye and sitting on their hands!

How ironic is it that those who are ‘summarily executed’ without a trial will cry about the ‘unfairness’ of their plight when it was they who created/ruled by precisely that premise (that ‘life is ‘unfair’)

Sort of a ‘reap what you sow’ situation…

Which leads us to our second offering for a look at the fruits borne by those who subscribe to the ‘life’s unfair’ doctrine:

No. 379: June CPI, Industrial Production
Subscription required
July 15th, 2011

• Economy Falters as Key Indicators Put in Worst Performances Since “End” of the Recession in June 2009
• Higher Energy Prices Create Broad Inflationary Pressures Across the Economy
• Despite Short-Lived Dip in Gasoline Prices June Annual Consumer Inflation Held at 32-Month High
• June’s Annual Inflation: 3.6% (CPI-U), 4.1% (CPI-W), 11.1% (SGS)
• Annual “Core” Inflation in a Steady Upside Move Since QE2

Without putting too fine a point on it good citizen the ‘economic dashboard’ is a solid wall of red lights!

The global economy is out of control and about to make a ‘hard landing’.

What you need to understand is that the same ‘incompetance’ behind the failure to prosecute the criminals responsible for this will also be invoked when the supply chain snaps into a million tiny pieces.

How tragic for the rest of us that the, er, ‘designers’ of capitalist society viewed the ‘fuck you, pay me’ system as a sort of ‘insurance’ against default.

You can hear them now saying, "I guess you had better make sure that nobody defaults!"

And now we are staring at defaults across the board!

Naturally, there is no way this is an ‘accident’.

Yet I find myself in the position of proclaiming that Humpty Dumpty was pushed!

It is perhaps fitting to point out that the collapse of our civilization proceeds, er, ‘unhindered’ and ‘as planned’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, July 15, 2011

Out here in the fields...

Greetings good citizen,

There are still two weeks before the ‘debt ceiling drama’ ends in the collapse of our government and the, er, ‘take over’ by conservative (backed) elements of the corporatocacy.

Interestingly enough, there has been almost no mention of the scandal created by News Corp in London for hacking the cell phones of government officials…weirder still is there have been NO arrests associated with these crimes!

Have you asked yourself why media outlets around the world are still standing?

‘Tis a mystery, is it not?

Let us return to to the current ‘showdown’ between the ‘corporate sock puppet’ and the self-styled heroes of ‘small government’

Underlying the budget drama between the White House and Congressional Republicans is another compelling drama among Republicans, which exposes an ideological and generational gap. On one side are older, more senior conservatives like the two top leaders, Speaker John A. Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, who remember the budget fights and Republican setbacks of the 1990s and want some deal.

On the other are the proudly uncompromising junior lawmakers, many of them Tea Party sympathizers, whose ranks were so inflated by Republican gains in the midterm elections. Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, has emerged as their standard bearer, debating Mr. Obama in the White House sessions and then boasting of it afterward.

So, the ‘sympathies’ of LESS THAN ONE PERCENT OF THE NATION are going to cause the US to default on its now massive debt?

Not that this particularly matters from the ‘what are they gonna DO about it perspective…

If the US defaults, it will lead a chain of defaults around the world, and the resulting chaos will slaughter millions! (Due to resource scarcity related conflicts.)

So yeah, if you’re a criminal looking to escape prosecution this turns into a ‘win-win’.

I find it disturbing how many people/pundits think this whole crisis will just blow over, that politicians ‘won’t let it happen’
Let’s talk for a minute about what Republican leaders are rejecting.

President Obama has made it clear that he’s willing to sign on to a deficit-reduction deal that consists overwhelmingly of spending cuts, and includes draconian cuts in key social programs, up to and including a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. These are extraordinary concessions. As The Times’s Nate Silver points out, the president has offered deals that are far to the right of what the average American voter prefers — in fact, if anything, they’re a bit to the right of what the average Republican voter prefers!

Yet Republicans are saying no. Indeed, they’re threatening to force a U.S. default, and create an economic crisis, unless they get a completely one-sided deal. And this was entirely predictable.

So, with the ballot box so obviously broken, who is ‘simple’ enough to believe that politicians are even modestly concerned about YOUR vote?

Honestly good citizen, why start now? Nobody in Washington or the corporatocracy has given a fuck what you thought for the last THREE DECADES!

Why would they suddenly start caring now?

The ONLY ONE who THINKS they give a shit is YOU!

Bad news good citizen, you’re wrong.

So, if you haven’t already, lay in a supply of non-perishable food to hold you over for the first couple of weeks. Most of the ‘yahoos’ will have killed one another off by then.

Ironically, this will leave only the cleverest to contend with. IF you have taken the additional precaution of establishing a ‘circle of trust’, you should be able to rid your area of, er, ‘poachers’ via the power of numbers.

If you have someplace to ‘bug out’ to, now (first week of August) is the time, in case you haven’t noticed there are bigger problems looming than whether the government can spend 13 trillion or 14 trillion worth of ‘funny money’ (keeping the already wealthy in the lap of luxury!)

In fact, one of those problems is exactly how ‘funny’ money has become!

Are you ready to ‘barter’? What can you get your hands on that is ‘tradeable’?

Don’t put all of your focus on precious metals, many pawn shops are turning away people who want ‘cash for gold’.

I haven’t checked but I’m willing to speculate they’re not paying half the current ‘spot price’ for an ounce of gold. Isn’t being a ‘distressed customer’ fun?

How much more fun will it be when ‘Sharpie’ finds out the ‘folding money’ is worthless too?

Get ready to chase down your next meal with a stick, if you don’t beat it to death, you don’t eat!

In the times to come, ‘potable’ (safe) water will become a ‘tradable commodity’ (although you’d be well advised not to trade for such a precious item with anyone outside of your circle of trust!)

But that is further down the road than we need to be looking for the moment.

So there you have it good citizen, I’m calling August 3rd ‘crunch time’.

If you assemble all of the evidence you will likely come to the same conclusion…which is not to rule out the possibility of an earlier collapse!

I told you back in June this problem hadn’t ‘gone away’…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Hog-tied

Greetings good citizen,

Every once in a while I feel compelled to kick the ‘we can fix this’ crowd in the gonads but I usually have to wait for a a piece like this, which offers actual solutions so I can, er, ‘illustrate my point.’

First, we'll exempt the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes for the next two years. This will put cash directly into American's pockets and boost consumer spending. We'll make up the revenue shortfall by applying Social Security taxes to incomes over $500,000.

Second, we'll recreate the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps -- two of the most successful job innovations of the New Deal -- and put people back to work directly. The long-term unemployed will help rebuild our roads and bridges, ports and levees, and provide needed services in our schools and hospitals. Young people who can't find jobs will reclaim and improve our national parklands, restore urban parks and public spaces, recycle products and materials, and insulate public buildings and homes.

How many of you can see the problem with the first proposal? Aw, come on! I expected more than that to get it! If you’ve been paying attention then you’d know that every cent in increased income has been offset by two cents of increased prices! Where the hell did you think all of those billionaires were coming from?

(REMEMBER: lower prices you never saw and pay raises you never got are what make the rich, rich! YOU work for them, not the other way around.)

Put more money in the workers pockets and the chiselers will simply suck ‘em dry!

This is why I preach revolution, jiggering the current crooked arrangement only yields more theft!

We must sweep away the corrupt institutions of the past and replace them with more advanced, just offices.

The ‘equation’ for this is really quite simple, it all starts with equality because without equality there can be no justice and without justice there can be no peace…and without peace there can be no prosperity!

How fucking sad is it that I can take credit for composing this idea thousands of years after the ‘founders of civilization’ (and the civilizations they founded) have perished?

Had (and I’m kind of tempted to be insulting here) the ‘so-called’ original ‘great thinkers’ utilized the above formula, their civilization may still be standing today…but no!

The great thinkers ignored the basic elements of civilization and the civilizations they founded collapsed, quite quickly.

Just as our civilization is on the verge of collapse.

But hey, what do you know, I’m off the reservation (again!)

Is our current civilization founded upon the ideals expressed above? Of course not!

In fact there isn’t a single society (currently) on this planet that was founded on ANY of those ideals…(Although the Native Americans came close!)

Why do you suppose the default foundation for every new society is fundamental inequality, enforced by injustice?

What kind of promises do you think have been made to those who will come out in support of the coming despot?

Was a ‘piece of the spotlight’ enough to make most of these worthless idiots sell out the rest of us?

Or like these fools did they sell us out in hope of hanging on to what little they had?

[The link leads to a video, the text doesn’t explain the article well enough.]

One of the first rules of firearms is if you have a loaded gun and a little patience, you can get all of the guns you want (because people are stupid!)

Are YOU stupid enough to kick somebody’s door in then you deserve to get ‘gut shot’!

All you have to do is wait for Mr. Clueless to stick his head out the door (he/she is probably not paying attention to their surroundings so you’ll be able to pop ‘em no problem.

Except if you miss, then you’ve got a big problem!

Even the hopelessly stupid won’t stick their head out the door without looking twice!

Which is to remind you that having a gun solves nothing if you aren’t smart enough to use it wisely!

Same goes for a pile of gold…you don’t want to die for a pocketful of basically worthless yellow metal!

Doesn’t matter how many ‘dollars’ an ounce of gold is allegedly worth when the dollars themselves become worthless.

But no, too many can’t see beyond the ‘shiny!’

Which is (largely) why we are where we are.

Okay, I can’t help it…stupid is as stupid does!

Worse, its not like we’ve got a lock on the market for stupid! There’s plenty to go around…

So, to recap…Mr. Reich is correct, we need to take ‘positive action’ to turn things around for our civilization. He is incorrect in taking the ‘easy’ path of attempting to ‘fix’ what we already have. It is not ‘broken’; it works exactly as it was intended to work!

This is why it must be replaced! (And the miscreants who benefited from the old way with it!)

Um, I shouldn’t have to point out that A Simple Plan IS based on the tenants I spell out above, in case you were wondering.

With that said, let the wild rumpus begin!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Seriously?

Greetings good citizen,

I marveled at first that this particular article is the second most e-mailed from the NY Times but here I am blogging about it so I expect it is attracting attention for the same reason it attracted mine.

What can Mr. ‘Flat Earth’ possibly have to contribute on the US employment picture?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is nothing useful

Whatever you may be thinking when you apply for a job today, you can be sure the employer is asking this: Can this person add value every hour, every day — more than a worker in India, a robot or a computer? Can he or she help my company adapt by not only doing the job today but also reinventing the job for tomorrow? And can he or she adapt with all the change, so my company can adapt and export more into the fastest-growing global markets? In today’s hyperconnected world, more and more companies cannot and will not hire people who don’t fulfill those criteria.

But you would never know that from listening to the debate in Washington, where some Democrats still tend to talk about job creation as if it’s the 1960s and some Republicans as if it’s the 1980s. But this is not your parents’ job market.

Left to our imagination is how we’re supposed to survive here in the economic desert that globalization (championed by Mr. Flat-Earth hisself!) has created for us?

Perhaps more importantly is how long the oppressed people of a desperately over-crowded continent are going to remain complacent in the face of a decidedly ‘raw deal’?

The ‘race to the bottom’ is over good citizen and the over-populated Asian subcontinent won!

The ONLY way to crank out additional value now is to screw these already oppressed workers into the woodwork.

Because at the end of the day good citizen there is NO SUCH PLACE as the ‘cheaper there’.

Wonder why the global economy is so out of whack?

It’s because the ‘fucking bankers’ invented the cheaper there through currency manipulation!

They too will pay the price for their ‘malfeasance’, likely at the end of a sturdy rope.

This leads us to another troubling topic that has been gnawing at me for the past couple of day…and don’t all of the articles disappear just when I’m ready to address the topic.

And the topic is not ‘new’.

I’m sure you’ve seen all of the headlines in the corporate owned media heralding the ‘end of the NASA era…

And I’m sure most of you have asked yourself just what the fuck they mean by that?

Is our bought and paid for media telling us that our race is run, that it is all over but the shouting, that ‘the world’ has moved to China?

I even saw a political cartoon in the local rag yesterday that pretty much said nobody from the US was going back to the moon for a ‘long time’ (with ‘if ever’ being implied!)

Um, the part that should gall each and every one of you is these dirtbags have used the worst of Western civilization to destroy Western civilization (both here and in Europe) BUT they expect to be protected from prosecution by the laws of Western civilization!

Well, they’ve cooked their own goose when it comes to legal protection. Since it is widely accepted that they ‘own’ the courts, they won’t be given the, er, benefit of a trial!

Nor will one of their bought and paid for judges be allowed to preside over the proceedings.

Moreso because there won’t be any survivors than any other reason.

But I digress into speculation!

Although I will say this much; failure to deal with the perps harshly WILL RESULT IN A REPEAT OF THE WHOLE AFFAIR!

You may not admit it but we stand where our grandparents stood less than a century ago and their ‘mistake’ was in not dealing with these criminals in the brutal manner they deserved!

Let the criminals go free and they’ll repeat the behavior they were given a pass on the first time!

Well, they got away with it last time, I doubt they will be so lucky this time.

Although it IS different this time, we weren’t facing peak oil and the resultant social collapse the end of fossil fuels will bring.

Which brings us back to the ‘useless’ corporate media that has continually failed to alert us to the massive changes that are closer than any of us imagine.

Worse, when the change is upon us it will be too late for many of us to act!

What ‘change’ am I babbling about?

I’ve been warning for years now that energy scarcity will make all non-tropical regions of the planet UNINHABITABLE!

Sure our ancestors survived in the wilderness using wood for heating and cooking…but that was when the nation’s population was a tenth of what it is today.

How long do you think the forests will last for a population of over three HUNDRED MILLION?

Those of us who live East of the Mississippi tend to forget just how ‘treeless’ it is West of the same landmark.

(‘Forget’ probably isn’t the best word here but you know what I mean.)

Not that this is any kind of an excuse for throwing Western civilization under the bus!

It’s definitely one of those times where ‘sorry’ just isn’t gonna cut it.

Worse, the pundits don’t know what to make of the ‘non-response’ coming out of the public.

We have some definite extremely negative indicators flashing here and we got nada coming out of the victim’s corner.

I tend to think this is the ‘calm before the storm’. First blood is coming and I think we’re all waiting to see what that is, then all hell is going to break loose!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner