Most of you already know the global economy is ‘fried’. With that as a given, the only thing remaining to be revealed is when the idiots who got us here are going to ‘pull the plug?
If we were to be honest with ourselves, the only reason we keep a keen eye to the otherwise worthless media is to hopefully get a ‘heads up’ when the bottom drops out.
Well, if you haven’t been paying attention, that bottom is dropping as we wait.
Yes, good citizen, the eminent collapse of the Euro zone will drag the ‘rest of the West’ into the abyss with it.
Which is probably a bit misleading. There remains a possibility that the ’agents of the status quo’ will simply refuse to stand down (even after their ‘enablers’ bid them adios!)
Understand good citizen these crackers are some kind of crazy as we can see from these videos…
While it is generally understood that Mr. Stewart deals in political satire, sometimes it’s just not ‘ha-ha’ funny, but funny in the sense that makes you wonder what is WRONG with these media types?
Does anyone else think that 50% of the population that DOESN’T pay Federal Income taxes isn’t INTENTIONAL? (Think ‘starve the beast’, then remember it is government’s PRIMARY PURPOSE to protect US from the very people who have hijacked the government! )
And isn’t that a kick in the head?
Actually, this is a kick in the head made that much worse by the kitschy tone of this creepy piece that attempts to make light of the fact that the alleged ‘uptick’ in business for these ‘rock bottom retailers’ is the fact that they accept food stamps and not the sudden surge in ‘crafters’ from the top 20% of the income distribution.
We are awakening to a dollar-store economy. For years the dollar store has not only made a market out of the detritus of a hyper productive [read: poorly managed and highly wasteful] global manufacturing system, but it has also made it appealing — by making it amazingly cheap. [the other ’downside’ of taxes, the ability to turn waste into profits!] Before the market meltdown of 2008 and the stagnant, jobless recovery that followed, the conventional wisdom about dollar stores — whether one of the three big corporate chains (Dollar General, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree) or any of the smaller chains (like “99 Cents Only Stores”) or the world of independents — was that they appeal to only poor people. And while it’s true that low-wage earners still make up the core of dollar-store customers (42 percent earn $30,000 or less), what has turned this sector into a nearly recession-proof corner of the economy is a new customer base. “What’s driving the growth,” says James Russo, a vice president with the Nielsen Company, a consumer survey firm, “is affluent households.”
The affluent are not just quirky D.I.Y. types. These new customers are people who, though they have money, feel as if they don’t, or soon won’t. This anxiety — sure to be restoked by the recent stock-market gyrations and generally abysmal predictions for the economy — creates a kind of fear-induced pleasure in selective bargain-hunting. Rick Dreiling, the chief executive of Dollar General, the largest chain, with more than 9,500 stores, calls this idea the New Consumerism. “Savings is fashionable again,” Dreiling told me. “A gallon of Clorox bleach, say, is $1.44 at a drugstore or $1.24 at a grocery store, and you pay a buck for it at the Dollar General. When the neighbors come over, they can’t tell where you bought it, and you save anywhere from 20 to 40 cents, right?”
So instead of telling how many families are eating dollar store food to get by, instead we have a tale of how those who can afford more are driving up the profitability of these discounters.
Gee, I make that sound like a ‘bad thing’ when what I’m really trying to say is ‘who gives a fuck’? (about the bargain hunting rich as well as the purposefully blind/opaque reporting of the corporate owned media?)
But didn’t Alternet run a story this morning about TV shows that conservatives say are ‘destroying’ our society when we all know the true culprit is ‘hooray for me and fuck you Libertarianism!’ the ‘gospel’ of the GOP.
In fact, it is a little bizarre how the ‘minority’ political party got ‘co-opted’ by a fringe group and how those fringe groups’ outlandish beliefs became the ‘law of the land’.
No irony should be lost on the fact that the Chicago School was established by the original ‘monopolist’ J.D. Rockefeller…and that there isn’t so much as a sliver of daylight to be found between Libertarian (Chicago School) philosophy and the philosophy of the monopolists.
But that smacks of a ‘conspiracy’ and we can’t have that!
There are no such things as conspiracies! The media destroys conspiracy theories every time they pop up (although they seem unable to completely crush the one that speculates they all ‘collude’ on national news.)
Nor do they have any explanation for why we are supposedly so divided all of a sudden?
If we’re all in this together, why (as well as how) do so many ‘contrary’ politicians win office?
Are these people chameleons, skilled at hiding their true ambitions like president Obama?
I tend to seriously doubt that, there are too many ‘gatekeepers’ for this to be an accident.
I’d even bet good money that ‘they’ (the upper echelons in the media) already know who will be victorious in the next election…if there is another one…if Washington DC isn’t under siege by then.
Why do these pieces always end up darkly?
Is it me or is it the times?
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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