Friday, November 30, 2012

Bug Out

Greetings good citizen,

Markets are cliff diving this morning although they are not currently at serious negative levels…but the average person stopped caring about what happens on Wall Street years ago. They abandoned it along with the hope of ever seeing their retirement money again…fucking thieves!

But that is not the topic of the day, today I want to address a bizarre practice that the media has turned into a ‘reality show’ and that practice is known as ‘prepping’.

You can see the potential for comic relief when you listen to the disasters these ‘seemingly ordinary’ people are preparing for (provided complete with ‘expert rebuttal’ by the show’s producers…who call themselves ‘Practical Preppers’.

Um, perhaps the point is the show is produced as ‘entertainment’ but the people highlighted in each episode are deadly serious…

And, in a highly litigious world you have to wonder who bears the liability of someone imitating what they see on these shows and killing a lot of innocent people because of it?

Never once do they mention the NEED to ‘rotate’ the food they are stockpiling, instead they feed the ‘it’ll keep’ mentality by not brining up the issues of perishability and contamination at all. (Probably because they are unqualified to speak ‘authoritatively’ on the subject.)

So who’s libel if a bunch of people get poisoned due to the, er, ‘incomplete’ information they get from the show?

Well, if the world goes to pot the answer is simple, nobody…because there won’t be anyone around to hold court.

We’ll all be too busy keeping our sorry asses alive to be bothering with jury trials…besides, under ‘gun rules’ things are intensely ‘simplified’, the one with the gun makes the rules.

(If both parties are armed, the one who deals a fatal wound to his target first wins! However, USUALLY both parties will succeed in wounding one another and they will both die due to the lack of medical attention societal collapse will precipitate…(written in the interests of ‘full disclosure’.)

We won’t go into strategies to avoid being critically injured in a gunfight here, let it suffice to say I am trying to be more ‘responsible’ than the Fox News owned TV channel that produces the, er, ‘entertainment’.

(Talk about your fucking ‘legal fig leafs’ because that’s the one they’re hiding behind!)

As you might suspect, most of these ‘doomers’ fear social collapse brought on by a collapse of the monetary system…which is always ‘pooh-poohed’ by the producers/self-appointed ‘experts’.

Worse, they cite ‘economists’ as their source for their denial…like economists saw the collapse of the banking system coming! They’ve been in denial for five years that it has already happened, what would you expect them to say?

ONE MORE TIME for those of you too thick to ‘get it’ the first time or to figure it out for yourself…

THE GLOBAL BANKING SYSTEM COLLAPSED FIVE YEARS AGO AND NOBODY HAS DONE ANYTHING TO FIX IT!

That’s why the banks need perpetual ‘taxpayer bailouts’…they will eventually bankrupt the treasury and the whole shooting match will collapse, virtually ‘instantly’ (in a matter of hours.)

IF the current, er, failed system remains in place.

But you don’t care about that, do you good citizen?

More importantly, you’ve only watched one episode of ‘Doomsday Preppers’ and you were drunk so you thought it was funny as hell…and you haven’t thought about it since.

Despite being aware that the ‘bug-out’ movement has been around for a long time, people have been ‘preparing’ for a nuclear war since 1945 so ‘prepping’ isn’t ‘new’.

The thing that’s disturbing about our modern preppers is they somehow think they stand a chance against hoards of ‘disenfranchised’ fellow citizens who aren’t as well ‘prepared’ but stand a mighty good chance of being ‘equally’ (if not better) armed.

My ‘advice’ regarding being ‘prepared’ is to know where to find wild edibles, stockpiles of ANYTHING will only make you a ‘high value target’ and groups of well-armed and probably somewhat well trained individuals will make short work of you and your puny defenses.

Best not to have anything they can take…simple as that (if not particularly ‘entertaining’…funny, when the show first aired, they had ONE GUY in California on who was ‘doing it right’ and they haven’t had another since…what does that tell you?

Brings us back to our ‘fig leaf’, doesn’t it?

It’s just ‘entertainment’ (that some people choose to take VERY seriously, albeit, this doesn’t prevent them from doing all of the ‘wrong things’.)

Don’t know what to tell you good citizen. It disturbs me that the corporate owned media would use such a phenomenon for its ‘entertainment value’ (although they are careful not to, er, ‘discredit’ any of the preppers.)

It’s the piss poor advice their ‘experts’ hand out at the end of each episode (and I’ve only seen a handful because the show is painful to watch.) that really gets my goat.

I’m waiting for them to come right out and say ‘Hey, why don’t you all paint bulls-eyes on your backs and go running through that open field over there and let the audience see what happens next?

Well good citizen, what do YOU think will happen next?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Thursday, November 29, 2012

Bondage

Greetings good citizen,

Did the markets close ‘up’ yesterday because this morning the Dow was back over 13,000 for no reason whatsoever! (Which is to assume that the markets ‘rallied’ yesterday towards the end of the session.)

And yeah, people are back to their old tricks, going ‘in the hole’ for Christmas because they believe the electoral rhetoric that assured them the economy was ‘improving’, when it isn’t.

So, in a not too surprising ‘repeat’ of the old ‘boom-bust’ cycle, people will spend what they don’t have followed by a renewed raft of foreclosures/repossessions…and we’ll all be the worse for it.

But as Jon Stewart (of Comedy Central fame) sarcastically put it, at least there isn’t a bill of sale with your name on it (yet)
I’m sitting here wearing clothes made by modern-day slaves and probably so are you. I’m lit by studio lights assembled in countries where workers who try to organize are imprisoned, as are many of the lights in your home.

We rationalize all the products of distant slaves we use – after all, we don’t have to look into their faces like Jefferson did – but it’s still just a rationalization.

The stark reality is that we in America didn’t “end” slavery. We simply exported it.

And it’s so much more comfortable for us to criticize Jefferson and his peers for agonizing over – but still using – slave labor 200 years ago, when we don’t have to look into the faces of today’s slaves who are toiling and dying at this very moment to sustain our lifestyles.

It’s the ugly truth good citizen, the one they don’t want you to know about…that ALL CAPITALISM is ‘predatory’ (which is why it NEEDS slavery to operate!)

You education ‘omits’ this basic fact because the only thing separating you from one of those slaves is a law the fuckers can rip up whenever it suits them.

And when they decide to rip up that law, you instantly become something the oligarchs’ fear more than anything else; you become somebody with nothing left to lose!

Worse good citizen, every day we inch closer and closer to the day when the slave market re-opens and your kids go up on the block to the ‘highest bidder’.

What are you going to do when that day comes?

Grab your favorite ‘peace now’ banner and go march in front of the Statehouse?

Will the cops NOT arrest you for creating a ‘public nuisance’ because your cause is just and they know it?

(They will if they want to keep their jobs!)

You’ve been around long enough to know how this fuckaroo works. First you have to act up and then you have to take out whoever tries to stop you…because there’s no such thing as ‘half-way’.

People ‘died’ fighting for the forty-hour workweek. They were ‘killed’ (read murdered) by guys who were ‘just doing their job’.

It’s an indelible stain on our society that those murderers were never prosecuted for their crimes, it also makes the beginning of the end of what passes for justice…pretty much anywhere on this planet.

Which is to point out the unethical exploitation of others through money is another form of ‘slavery’ we aren’t even close to ending.

Capitalists don’t like it when we refer to ourselves as ‘wage slaves’…because it’s TRUE!

Capitalists, like cops are NOT you ‘friends’. They do what they do because that’s what they are paid to do. (They try to trick you because it makes their job that much easier, once the key turns in the cell it’s ‘fuck you, idiot!’)

Ironically, A Simple Plan and the Human Anti-Exploitation Law will be the first time in human history that slavery will be truly outlawed…and attempting to ‘enslave’ anyone is an instant one way trip to exile (a decidedly nasty place.)

Naturally there will be those ‘twisted’ bastards who will charge that those who run A Simple Plan are ‘exploiting’ the rest of us; but their ‘compensation’ is not under their control so their actions don’t benefit themselves personally.

But I digress…

Once again we should flip this issue over and explore the ‘real implications’ of Modern Slavery.

Why would Bwana ‘hire you’ for a salary he can keep in his pocket when he can ‘buy’ a slave for a fraction of that?

And when the slave is ‘used up’ he just cuts it loose to fend for itself, what happens to it after that isn’t their problem…just like employees!

Yet another ‘plague’ visited upon our society by rapacious capitalists…and our ‘legal system’ turns a blind eye to the problem.

Well good citizen, what are you sitting there for, you didn’t win Powerball and you’re already a month late to the revolution!

Snap to it!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Immigrant's Song

Greetings good citizen,

As predicted, the Dow has handed back the irrational 175 point gain it made a little more than a week ago and is currently plumbing new depths as the emptiness that is US productive capacity remains hollow.

But fear not good citizen as we see from this ‘fluff piece’ written to demonstrate to the rest of us ungrateful slobs how foreign nationals still have the ‘drive’ to make lemonade with the lemon that is ‘The American Dream’.
PHOENIX — Hussein Al Hamka is going to farm his famous cucumbers on a 15-acre vacant lot in the heart of this city, where nearly half of all lots sit empty and unused.

If his piece of fertilized dirt had a price tag, it would cost much more than he could ever dream of affording; the lot is valued at $25 million, or at least it was before the housing market collapsed and it was left undeveloped. To survive, Mr. Hamka, 50, an Iraqi refugee three years into his life in the United States, grows and sells cucumbers just like the ones he ate in his home country.

On Friday, Fidele Komezusenge, 25, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, picked rocks from the loose soil in the raised beds next to Mr. Hamka’s. Mr. Komezusenge was planning to plant carrot and cabbage seeds, his first farming foray since arriving in the United States in June. Nearby, Safala Chhetri, 50, a refugee from Bhutan who arrived in 2009, wavered between planting spinach or kale, but then decided to give onions a second chance.

Left unstated is where the time to tend these garden patches is coming from (are they all unemployed, like half of all working aged US citizens) or do they work the night shift at the local convenience store?

Then there is the other issue, only briefly touched upon by the vegetable garden writer…what was the lot BEFORE it was abandoned?

(Did they house the shops that Wal-Mart drove out of business?)

Can’t say as I’ve never been to Phoenix.

But it’s the same old story, everywhere you go.

What (like so many things) ‘disturbs’ me about this story is the clear evidence it provides regarding the ‘pauperization’ of our civilization.

There was an article that I should have jumped on yesterday, an article explaining (actually debunking) the conservative position that we don’t possess enough trained manufacturing personnel to fill the open jobs.

I am living proof that the problem is NOT the lack of personnel but the unwillingness of the employer to pay for that talent!

Just yesterday I was passed over for a job I low-balled! It can’t be the ‘experience’, I’m a twenty year man and 3 times a foreman! (not only can I do the job, I can run it as well!)

They just didn’t want to pay…

Which reflects on our current situation.

Do you KNOW why our economy is ‘stalled’?

Too many of us only earn enough to keep us alive. This excludes us from being able to participate in and thereby 'expand' the economy...our other needs go 'unfulfilled'. (This is what happens when (idiot) ‘entrepreneurs’ decide they are going to become billionaires too!)

They screw their employees until they are forced to close because NOBODY can afford to work for them anymore.

Worse, good citizen, the well-trodden path has a name. Do you know what that name is, when the vast majority of the population lives in abject poverty while a, er, ‘fortunate few’ live in the ‘lap of luxury’?

When this happens they call that place a Banana Republic.

Well don’t look now. Worse, the people responsible for this phenomenon honestly believe it is not their fault…(they just played the game better than everyone else!)

And THAT’S part of the problem too…considering the very real business of life ‘a game’ where winning is accomplished by pauperizing all of the other players…

I’m going to stop right here so you can ponder the wisdom laid down for you to absorb…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Bad to the Bone

Greetings good citizen,

As I approach my second (full) year of unemployment (this most recent odyssey started in 2011.) it occurs to me that it might be easier for me to see the unraveling of our civilization more clearly than the rest of you because I’m caught in the center of the storm.

It is important to point out that I am not alone on my perch that provides me a ‘birds-eye view’ of the situation, there are millions of us (if not billions…depending on how far you cast your net and there is a disturbing tendency to ‘stop’ when one reaches the number of people in YOUR country, like the rest don’t matter.

Part of the problem with the ‘banking crisis’ is people don’t understand these trillions of dollars…are owed by nations with populations the size of a small US state!

Adding to this ‘cognitive dissonance’ is the purposeful ignorance on how these systems ‘interact’ (because of the need to fudge the fuck out of certain factors most people never consider.)

today’s offering attempts to provide us with a glimpse of that larger, more than somewhat fuzzy, picture:
Any reforms which seek to address growth in the context of private sector debt deleveraging and demographics ought to be made with a focus on increasing the economy’s capacity to produce real goods and services today and in the future, rather than on ensuring positive actuarial balances through eternity. Unlike the case with individuals, social policy can provision for the future in real termsby increasing productive capacity in the intervening years. For example, policies that might encourage long-lived public and private infrastructure investment could ease the future burden of providing for growing numbers of retirees by putting into place the infrastructure that will be needed in an aging society: nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, independent living communities, aged-friendly public transportation systems, and senior citizen centers.
(Screeching, ear-splittingly loud, halt!)
Read the above again, slowly and let it sink in.

Makes sense doesn’t it? EXCEPT for the ‘how do we pay for it?’ part, it’s all too beautiful!

Did you notice the blinders on the topic of ‘over-capacity’? Our economy is at FULL STOP because the consumer can’t afford any more debt…why don’t these boneheads devise a solution that deals with this problem first?

It is articles like this one that basically prove that tired old ideas are not the path we can follow into the future…(but you can’t tell the One Percent that, they don’t want to hear it.)
Education and training could increase future productivity. Policies that maintain high employment and minimize unemployment (both officially measured unemployment, as well as those counted as out of the labor force) are critical to maintain a higher worker-to retiree ratio. Policy can also encourage seniors of today and tomorrow to continue to participate in the labor force. The private sector will play a role in all of this, but there is also an important role to be played by government.
Um, back to the ‘cognitive dissonance’ problem (which is not limited to us mere peasants.)

The creators and issuers of ‘funny money’ are the ONLY ONES capable of fixing this problem…that the PRIVATE SECTOR CREATED!

If you read between the lines here you will see that ‘Libertarians ‘R’ Us’ sees the private sector filling it’s usual role of collecting rents and oppressing the general welfare for its own safety.

But I digress…
On balance, if we were to focus on only one policy arena today that would best enhance our ability to deal with a higher aged dependency ratio tomorrow it would be to ensure full employment with rising skill levels. Such a policy would have immediate benefits, in addition to those to be realized in the future. This is a clear “win-win” policy, unlike the ugly trade-off promoted by both parties, who only differ in the degree to which today’s workers and future seniors are to pay for the mistakes of the banksters through misguided proposals to “reform” entitlements and put our future on a “fiscally sustainable” path.

Do you see the ‘win’ good citizen or has the gloss worn off that old banner promoting ‘unlimited, perpetual growth’?

Make no mistake about it good citizen, it is precisely this belief in ‘voodoo economics’ (also known as ‘wishful thinking’) that has led us to where we are today.

A sustainable future does not consist of turning our former manufacturing facilities into (fake) ‘state of the art’ assisted living facilities (and training ALL of our kids to be candy stripers and orderlies…)

You can’t pay for extended care if you earn minimum wage and your taxes don’t cover the nut either.

All economies are LOCAL.

That’s were it starts and that’s the key feature behind A Simple Plan, creating robust local economies that nurture a healthy, well educated public.

But you have to read and understand it before you can successfully advocate for it!

You not only will be doing yourself a favor but your kids will thank you for freeing them from the cycle of exploitation YOUR PARENTS condemned YOU to!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Monday, November 26, 2012

Whittled away...

Greetings good citizen,

Markets just opened here in the capital of capitalism where the simple act of opening the NYSE is enough to drive markets around the globe upwards for no reason whatsoever…which is pathetic considering what this says about their ‘regard’ for ‘investor intelligence’…such as it is.

But then we return to the ever-present dilemma of a media that treats the rest of us with similar contempt. And while it has become my habit to point at Alternet and to label it the ‘Libertarian press’ they really are only a half a step removed from Fox news…where stories about bigfoot and what the ancient aliens knew dominate.

Under the category of, (what else) ’book reviews’ we have the following, er, ‘proposal’.
If we’re going to take the time to slow down, we want quality. Slow democracy doesn’t mean we have to attend every poorly advertised, badly run city council meeting. What slow democracy can help us do is learn to identify authentic, healthy processes; participate judiciously and with the patient confidence that real change takes time; and support the people who engage us in meaningful decision making, so they’ll do it some more. Inclusive, well-run deliberations with effective follow-through can make an enormous difference in the life of a community.

Slow food advocates know that a sustainable food system must offer healthy food in an ecologically viable way, but there’s more. As journalist Ben Hewitt describes in The Town That Food Saved , “It must feed the locals.” Just as slow food cannot only feed the rich and elite, slow democracy must be open to all. The people, or demos in Greek, are at the heart of the word “democracy.” 

Finding a place in the life of the already overburdened and underprivileged—such as single working parents, or low-wage workers who string together two or three jobs—is one of the greatest challenges of slow democracy. But these are the populations most often shut out of the democratic process, and most in need of what it has to offer. Slow democracy incorporates people from all walks of life and the full range of the human condition: from talkers to doers, from those who value charts and graphs to those who love chatting over coffee. It makes room for those who like to talk at microphones but also celebrates the vast majority of us who would, frankly, rather die than make a speech. It builds on the already-existing web of relationships that form a community, recognizing that some of our best ideas come while taking a walk with a neighbor. And it forges new relationships, introducing us to people we might have avoided but come to appreciate.
What SHOULD hit you in the eye is the futility of trying to make things work using a thoroughly corrupted system.

Do you see the first pissing contest already?

Knot-head would fight you tooth and nail over whether or not the system was corrupt, totally ignoring how we got where we are today and why it happened at all.

Don’t bring up the subject of why NOBODY has been prosecuted for a whole laundry list of offenses, (with the financial ones being the least of the charges!) because you’ll be ‘talking to the hand’, they just don’t want to hear it.

Are you prepared to have this battle with EVERY corrupt motherfucker getting greased by the current system?

Because that’s how it’s going to go, everybody is a ‘corruption fighter’ until it benefits them…then it’s okay, its not really stealing, it’s, er, taking the edge or some other harmless euphemism.

So what a stupid idea it is to try to use the system to ‘fix’ the system, it can’t be done.

Do we sit here and suffer with a thoroughly corrupted system or do we REPLACE IT with one THAT CAN’T BE CORRUPTED?

Because replacing what exists is the ONLY road to salvation, if we don’t scrap the whole electoral system and the totally corrupt practice of voting for people who vote for us without ever consulting us then 'change' will remain impossible. (Why is it so difficult to convince people the current method of so-called 'democracy' is a BAD idea?)

ESPECIALLY TODAY, when only one ‘entity’ has a seat at the table and that entity is the soul-less corporation. Where the relentless pursuit of profits trumps the very health of civilization…an entire world where only a few can ‘live’ (everyone else suffers.)

And while I preach to the choir, I may as well be talking to the fucking wall!

Yes, you’re keeping your powder dry…which is all fine and well, can’t fight them if they have you locked up.

Which brings us to a secondary problem, when the shit hit’s the fan will you be ready?

Chances are the answer will be no.

It’s already too late when tanks are parked in your driveway. (Although it is a perfect opportunity to kill the asshole who parked a tank in your driveway…and you don’t have to hunt him down either!)

Most of you (around the world) are aware that you are being ‘penned in’, corralled as it were as your ‘legal standing’ is whittled down to nothing.

Soon, you poor son of a bitch, there will be a bounty on your sorry ass…and then it will really be too late!

So if you’re wondering when would be a ‘judicious’ time to strike, I’d say you’re already a month behind schedule!

Be that as it may, there’s no time like the present.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Friday, November 23, 2012

Ten Points

Greetings good citizen,

Um, in tandem with today’s ridiculous stock market performance (Dow + 173) we have this article from today’s Alternet

Basically, none of what Alternet reveals is particularly shocking, it’s a rehash of what I’ve been telling you for decades now (This all started in the nineties.) Most of the uber wealthy are BORN into it!

What should sicken most of you is their great-grandfathers made it and even if their grandkids spend it stupidly they can’t spend it all!

But I’ll let you decide which aspect raises your hackles:
1. Only THREE PERCENT of the very rich are entrepreneurs.
According to both Marketwatch and economist Edward Wolff, over 90 percent of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), personal business accounts, the stock market, and real estate. Only 3.6 percent of taxpayers in the top .1% were classified as entrepreneurs based on 2004 tax returns.

2. Only FOUR OUT OF 150 countries have more wealth inequality than us.
In a world listing compiled by a reputable research team (which nevertheless prompted double-checking), the U.S. has greater wealth inequality than every measured country in the world except for Namibia, Zimbabwe, Denmark, and Switzerland.

3. An amount equal to ONE-HALF the GDP is held untaxed overseas by rich Americans.
The Tax Justice Network estimated that between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden offshore, untaxed. With Americans making up 40% of the world's Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, that's $8 to $12 trillion in U.S. money stashed in far-off hiding places.

4. Corporations stopped paying HALF OF THEIR TAXES after the recession.
After paying an average of 22.5% from 1987 to 2008, corporations have paid an annual rate of 10% since. This represents a sudden $250 billion annual loss in taxes.

5. Just TEN Americans made a total of FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS in one year.
That's enough, according to 2008 estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN's World Food Program, to feed the 870 million people in the world who are lacking sufficient food.
For the free-market advocates who say "they've earned it": Point #1 above makes it clear how the wealthy make their money.

6. Tax deductions for the rich could pay off 100 PERCENT of the deficit.
Another stat that required a double-check. Based on research by the Tax Policy Center, tax deferrals and deductions and other forms of tax expenditures (tax subsidies from special deductions, exemptions, exclusions, credits, capital gains, and loopholes), which largely benefit the rich, are worth about 7.4% of the GDP, or about $1.1 trillion.

7. The average single black or Hispanic woman has about $100 IN NET WORTH.
The Insight Center for Community Economic Development reported that median wealth for black and Hispanic women is a little over $100. That's much less than one percent of the median wealth for single white women ($41,500).

8. Elderly and disabled food stamp recipients get $4.30 A DAY FOR FOOD.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) has dropped significantly over the past 15 years, serving only about a quarter of the families in poverty, and paying less than $400 per month for a family of three for housing and other necessities. Ninety percent of the available benefits go to the elderly, the disabled, or working households.

9. Young adults have lost TWO-THIRDS OF THEIR NET WORTH since 1984.
21- to 35-year-olds: Your median net worth has dropped 68% since 1984. It's now less than $4,000. That $4,000 has to pay for student loans that average $27,200. Or, if you're still in school, for $12,700 in credit card debt.

10. The American public paid about FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS to bail out the banks.
That's about the same amount of money made by America's richest 10% in one year. But we all paid for the bailout. And because of it, we lost the opportunity for jobs, mortgage relief, and educational funding.

Make no mistake about it good citizen, the (in relative terms) ‘fabulously wealthy’ have been with us since colonial times, the thing that’s ‘different’ between now and then is the uber-wealthy are no longer content to be far and away richer than everyone else.

Nope, today the uber rich want to flex their ‘money muscles’ and show the, er, ‘ingrates’ that they rob blind with impunity who is REALLY ‘The Boss’.

How tragic is it good citizen that the last time the uber wealthy decided to prove what everyone only suspected (that they were bone stupid) the end result was the Terror of the French Revolution?

Now what does today’s ‘irrational rise’ in stock prices mean to you and I? It means our purchasing power is being pissed down the drain…while the super rich ‘float’ in place.

Well, how long can you ‘tread water’ good citizen?

Sadly the answer is not long enough. If you don’t revolt against those who are robbing you blind you and yours will drown in an ocean of debt, inflicted upon you by criminals (that are the uber rich!)

But once again I belabor the obvious…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Thursday, November 22, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!

Greetings good citizen,

Happy Turkey Day for those of you lucky enough to be somewhere that can cook a bird and share it with you!

We threw a 22 pounder in the oven and went to my in-laws to cook it because my mother in-law needs a handicap ramp to get into pretty much anywhere (and my father-in-law’s house is the only dwelling so equipped.)

The story gets more complicated the deeper we delve into it so we won’t…(delve into it.)

They’re there, enjoying each other’s company while I’m home again. Enjoying my solitude…and typing this rather than watching this years edition of Pumpkin Chunkin on Discovery…but what do you want from a channel owned by Fox, intelligent programming?

I scanned Alternet looking for a suitable story but it was loaded with dreck…just the kind of stuff that convinces you we, as a society, are totally rudderless.

Half of the time preoccupied with stuff that happened so long ago it’s a little late to do anything about it now while living in denial about the stuff we can and should be doing something about!

Worse, no one will deny that there are scads of things that need doing…the problem, as usual is agreeing on what needs to be done first!

I didn’t bother with a post yesterday because not one of you bothered to read the post from the day before (I sure hope that has changed since the last time I looked!)

Although, bizarrely, I don’t mind being ‘irrelevant’. If you think YOU’VE got a ‘better way’ then hey, we’re all ears ‘cuz I think we all would love to hear it.

How sad is it good citizen that the vast majority of these ‘alternatives’ are only half baked and haven’t been completely thought through?

Can’t say that about A Simple Plan though. It’s not only complete soup to nuts but it’s ‘holistic’ AND SUSTAINABLE too!

But none of you clowns has any questions (wisdom on your part, better to hold your tongue and have people think you a fool than to open your yap and prove it!)

Speaking of ‘looking like a fool’ my predicted bloodbath surrounding the election didn’t happen and I’ll bet your all expecting an explanation.

I’m here to tell you we’re not out of the woods yet. Things could still go sideways with frightening speed and abnormal intensity! And as you know I’m not talking meteor strikes or super volcanoes or mega-earthquakes/superstorms.

What we’re on the lookout for is massive mismanagement coming from the very top of our, er, ‘food chain’.

CK has hinted at it a couple of times in the past week and I’d like to think most of you are trig enough to know what he means when he makes the distinction that should be clear to us all, you’ll be able to get all the energy you want…IF you have unnaturally DEEP POCKETS!

The counterweight to this line of thinking is the fact that the rich do none of the ‘heavy lifting’ that brings the world as we know it to your door every day. Without that ‘heavy lifting’ the lights don’t come on and the trains don’t run on time…and the people who actually do things for a living don’t show up on the assembly line floor to mate slot A with tab B so worker C can screw the motor onto the assembly and hand it off to station D…you get the point.

And that’s how the ‘cascading systemic collapse’ will start.

And make no mistake about it good citizen, once it starts it will be damn near impossible to stop (Especially with the pinheads taking the ‘if they don’t like it they can sue me’ attitude once the president orders wage/price controls (again.)

You see, your employer will be ordered to roll back prices while also being ordered to pay YOU more…and it’s something he just can’t do, he has plans too you know (and the freaking president isn’t about to ruin them!)

He didn’t pay all of that money into that SuperPAC just to be bossed around by the guy who should have LOST in November.

Understand good citizen if this attitude wasn’t the prevalent one we wouldn’t be where we are today…on the ragged edge of cascading systemic collapse.

Those of us living ‘hand to mouth’ or worse, off of the ‘kindness of others’ will be the first to feel the energy pinch as other, er, ‘luxuries’ are sacrificed to the ‘energy god’, like eating regularly and being warm, even for brief periods of the day.

Yes good citizen, your employer has no commitment or concern for your comfort which means you’ll work in the cold and like it!

So you’d best banish the idea that you can stay warm at work, when the price of energy goes up you can bet that thermostat will be getting turned down!

If you don’t work in an industry where ‘waste heat’ is one of the occupational features (like in a power plant or a metals refinery…glass kilns come to mind too!) otherwise, tough!

Again, comfortable working conditions weren’t part of the negotiations when Mr. Employer agreed to exploit you for his personal enrichment.

Something else you’d best have NO ILLUSIONS about.

Mr. Nice Guy didn’t give you a job out of the ‘kindness of his miserly heart, No! he gave you a job because he makes money off of YOU and what you do for the tiddley-winks he pays you!

Um, me and guys like me try to provide you, the average reader with a different point of view than the nonsense put forth by the corporate owned media.

Read it, don’t read it, I don’t care…

Gegner

Oh, Happy Thanksgiving…such as it is.


Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Wisdom

Greetings good citizen,

The markets are doing their damnedest to hold on to yesterday’s gains, which is troubling by itself. But, it becomes even more disturbing when you factor in the idea of Are we, as a species, getting dumber?
Crabtree’s central thesis to back his claim up is, according to PopSci , that “each generation produces deleterious mutations, so down the line of human history, our intelligence is ever more impaired compared to that of our predecessors.”

He argues that you can see evidence of this process in humans sense of smell. Now, humans are largely guided by intellect when it comes to what we eat, for example. Humans have “far fewer olfactory receptors than other animals,” according to Crabtree. Dogs, on the other hand, have more olfactory receptors (the neurons responsible for smelling things.)

“Once you place pressure on intellectual abilities, and take it off of olfactory abilities, the olfactory genes deteriorate,” PopSci quotes Crabtree as saying.

But other geneticists have raised questions about Crabtree’s work. In an interview with The Independent , geneticist Steve Jones said that Crabtree’s paper was like “arts faculty science...Never mind the hypothesis, give me the data, and there aren’t any. I could just as well argue that mutations have reduced our aggression, our depression and our penis length, but no journal would publish that. Why do they publish this?”
I am making a leap here and ‘assuming’ Mr. Crabtree is basing his findings on the ‘if you don’t use it you lose it’ premise.

However, we don’t really have a good definition for intelligence (or wisdom for that matter, not that anyone values that, er, ‘virtue’ any longer…)

Intelligence can provide us with a hundred ways to fling ourselves against a brick wall…it is wisdom that tells us to go around the wall.

But are we getting dumber?

Theoretically the answer is yes (following the ‘if you don’t use it you lose it’ theory.)

Look at how much hogwash the average individual is forced to swallow to remain a viable member of civil society.

First he has to ‘make himself useful’ (usually at his own expense.)

Then he must buy everything he needs to survive from people who have no right to sell it to him!

But that’s ‘okay’, that’s their business, you not supposed to concern yourself with things that aren’t your business…even when they directly effect how YOU live!

So the ability to ignore YOUR best interests has to be suppressed so somebody else can act in THEIR best interests…and FUCK YOU.

This is where they wheel out the old ‘nobody said the system was perfect’ bullshit on you…and who tells you this, the same dickheads who are getting a marginally better deal than you’re getting!

Keep you nose clean and MAYBE you can be one of them!

Wait, did you just feel your IQ drop another ten points?

Have you abandoned all hope of ever possessing even a shred of wisdom?

Wisdom tells us to ‘go around the wall’…

So maybe it’s time to ‘wise up’!

They only fuck you because you let them.

How friggin’ sad is that?

Well good citizen, now they want to fuck you without having to pay you at all…and there ain’t a fucking thing you can do about it…except go around the wall.

What is wisdom telling us to do here?

The ‘goal’ is to ‘level the playing field’ and in order to achieve that we have to stop giving and start TAKING!

It really is ‘simple’ as A Simple Plan.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Monday, November 19, 2012

Canned

Greetings good citizen,

In case any of you were wondering the collapse of our civilization proceeds apace, as evidenced by the continued dilution of the money supply for the benefit of the >One Percent.

Because when the nonsense markets do this for no apparent reason, guess who is playing the role of ‘fuckee’?
Stocks Leap on Budget Optimism
By REUTERS 12:03 PM ET
Wall Street stocks made large gains on signs of progress in talks to resolve the fiscal crunch in Washington.
Talk about ‘blowin’ smoke’, every time they jump share prices like this it dilutes the money supply.

But don’t be cozened good citizen, the markets are going to resume their ‘death spiral’, if not tomorrow then by the end of the week.

As you can see, the >One Percent is throwing a hissy over having their taxes go up to where they used to be before the ‘MBA president’ trashed the global economy.
Investors Rush to Beat Threat of Higher Taxes
By NATHANIEL POPPER and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
With potential changes in the tax code set to take place on Jan. 1, investors and business owners have begun to protect their income before the end of the year.
Where do you suppose the >One Percent are going to do with their money now that they will have to give so much of it to the government? You don’t suppose the shiftless bastards will keep it off-shore (like the jobs those tax breaks were supposed to create) do you?

Naturally, as we sit here (five years and counting) for SOMETHING to be done about the financial abuse that bankrupted the global finance system, we get this news:
New York Fed Wins Dismissal of A.I.G. Bailout Lawsuit
By REUTERS 1:10 PM ET
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York won the dismissal of a $25 billion lawsuit by the former chief of American International Group, Maurice R. Greenberg, who argued that the A.I.G. bailout was unlawful.
How fucked up is it good citizen that the only guy with deep enough pockets to bring suit against the Fed for bailing out AIG was it’s former CEO?

Now show of hands good citizens, how many of you are ‘surprised’ by this outcome (considering who was the ‘counterparty’ to all of that bad paper AIG, er, ‘insured’?)

Less surprising is who ended up ‘on the hook’ for the whole kit and kaboddle…vous and moi!

While the ‘commander-in-chief’s’ Attorney General has thus far found ‘no cause’ to pursue criminal action against anyone involved.

Needless to say it casts this man’s qualifications to perform the task entrusted to him in a rather poor light…but for some strange reason the corporate owned media isn’t saying a word…and neither, suspiciously enough, are the Republicans…

Thus are we left to wonder how much success they expect to have with this legislation:
European Countries Seek More Taxes From U.S. Multinational Companies
By ERIC PFANNER
European governments are going after American companies, like Google and Amazon.com, that pay little or no taxes in Europe, despite generating billions of dollars in revenue on the continent.
I’m laying odds in the same vicinity of a snowball’s chance in hell. They don’t pay any taxes here so why should they pay them there?

Oddly, smaller, non-multi-national companies are facing a different set of circumstances:
SAS Avoids Bankruptcy After Unions Approve Plan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 11:28 AM ET
All eight unions signed new collective agreements that will see jobs, salaries and pensions cut in the hope of restoring the company’s competitiveness and profitability.
Is it just me or do you see a pattern developing here? Why is it that companies, especially ‘old-line’ companies, lay the burden of making themselves ‘competitive’ on the backs of their hapless employees?

Wouldn’t cutting their prices and slashing the compensation of the front office (who can more readily afford it) be a more sensible approach?

But no, when if comes to executive pay cuts it’s time to ditch the venture! If a VP has to take even a ten cent an hour pay reduction it’s time to abandon ship.

Suppose the company commit blasphemy and stop paying for the staff’s country club membership, oh the scandal!

Cut one and you might as well cut them all! How could you show your face once you’ve proven your company is a piker?

But that’s nothing compared to this news:
Change in Negotiators Shakes Up U.S.-China Trade Policy
By KEITH BRADSHER
Chen Deming, who has led China’s policy on trade negotiations as commerce minister, failed to win a seat on the Central Committee and will be replaced.

How humiliating? The man failed to bring the lapdog to heel and now he’s being ‘replaced’.

This could prove interesting but not nearly as interesting as the revolt that is brewing in China’s countryside.

Will the US decide to send ‘peacekeepers’ in to protect US Interests?

Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Sunday, November 18, 2012

Dream On!

Greetings good citizen,

Every once in a while the ‘Libertarian Book Review’ stumbles upon a worthwhile article usually defined by the articles willingness not to kick capitalism in the chops too hard. [Libbies LOVE capitalism!]

I can only assume they have to run a couple of articles like this one to throw off the stench of rabid conservatism that lies just beneath their faux liberal sympathies.

Worse, they hate liberals so much they don’t use the term! The call themselves 'progressives' instead...(like the Nazis.)

But that’s another matter to be dealt with later. On with the article!:
5 Ways Most Americans Are Blind to How Their Country Is Stacked for the Wealthy

1. Americans believe that the poorest 40 percent own about 10% of the wealth.


Most people greatly underestimate the level of inequality in our country, guessing that the poorest 40 percent own about 10% of the wealth, when in reality they own much less than 1% of the wealth. Out of every dollar, they own a third of a penny.

2. Entitlements are the problem.

No, they're not. The evidence is overwhelming. Social Security is a popular and well-run program. As summarized by Bernie Sanders, "Social Security, which is funded by the payroll tax, has not contributed one nickel to the deficit, and according to its trustees, can pay 100 percent of all benefits owed to every eligible American for the next 21 years." Dean Baker calls it "perhaps the greatest success story of any program in US history." [Truth be told, good citizen, if it weren’t for ‘government handouts’ we WOULDN’T HAVE AN ECONOMY!]

3. Welfare benefits are a drag on the economy.

Critics bemoan the amounts of aid being lavished on lower-income Americans, making dubious claims about thousands of dollars going to every poor family. But despite an ever-growing need for jobs and basic living necessities, federal spending on poverty programs is a small part of the budget, and it's been that way for almost 50 years, increasing from 0.8 percent of GDP in 1962 to 1.2 percent of GDP in 2007. [SEE ABOVE: WELFARE BENEFITS ARE THE ECONOMY!]

4. The American Dream is still alive, if you just work hard enough.

The Horatio Alger tale has been a popular one for conservatives, but the OECD, the Economic Policy Institute and the National Journal all came to the same conclusion: the future earnings of a child in the U.S. is closely correlated to the earnings of his or her parents. This lack of mobility is more prevalent in the U.S. than in almost all other OECD countries. [George Carlin, may he rest in piece, nailed this one, “you have to be dreaming to believe in the American Dream!”]

5. Prison puts away the bad guys.

Despite a falling violent crime rate in the U.S., there are now, as noted by Adam Gopnik, "more people under 'correctional supervision' in America -- more than six million -- than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."

Um, good last point but you know that premise is faulty because I saw a politician on the TV just last night (and he wasn’t wearing prison orange!)

Like I said, the writer makes a good point (and the only reason the LBR ran it is because he did everything but point at the ‘cause’ of all of these woes…capitalism and it’s mismanagement of money/resources!)

Scarier still all of a sudden the LBR is brimming with ads for ‘doomsday preparations’.

When 12/21/12 comes and goes (as most of us expect it will) we can only wonder what will be the next ‘doomsday trigger’ that will jump out of the woodwork.

Another ‘chicken little’ perhaps? (killer asteroids are everywhere!)

Worse, this doomsday bullshit is becoming BIG business…fostered, once again, by predatory capitalism!

Ironically, it’s bullet point number 4 that most of us have become ‘disenchanted’ with…NOBODY believes the claim that we all have a ‘million dollars in each arm, all we have to do is work it out!’

It doesn’t take long even for the morons among us to work out that you will NEVER get ‘rich’ working for somebody else!

How many of you DIDN’T know that?

Good, stupid people aren’t welcome here.

Everybody knows but nobody does anything about the stranglehold the criminal wealthy have on the resources we all need to live…until now.

Life itself has forced our hand good citizen. Will we just stand there while the selfish rich kill our children?

I think not…but I could be proven wrong, TV and movies have you all shaking in your socks because the One Percent ‘know all and see all’…their ninja assassins are prepared to strike down anyone who challenges their rule.

The hapless objector will never see it coming nor will his/her murderer ever see ‘justice’…(because ’right & wrong’ are the sole domain of the One Percent.)

Like the Israelis, no one has the authority to tell them they’re wrong…not even ‘spirit on the sky’, because they are his ‘chosen people’…thus are they free to ‘murder at will’ AND claim it is ‘divine vengeance!’

I don’t know about you but it seems to me we got a little problem here…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Friday, November 16, 2012

The Wicked...

Greetings good citizen,

Again it is curious to note that the (Madly inflated) Dow has dropped 600 points since this time last week and apparently this is NOT NOTEWORTHY!

Um, since the only noticeable useful information to be provided by the stock markets are as a gauge of the One Percent’s feelings regarding global affairs in general, perhaps they are supposed to be ‘sulking’ over the loss of their ‘alternate’ candidate.

An unhappiness that will certainly be as shortlived as it is undeserved.

How unfortunate is it for the rest of the public that the media plays us for stupid regarding the One Percent’s ‘relationship’ with the world’s largest purchasing organization (who regularly pays through the nose for literally EVERYTHING! )
Nation Building: Public Talk, Secret Action
In the final days of the presidential campaign, President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that it was time to reap a peace dividend as America’s wars wind down.  Nation-building here at home should, he insisted, be put on the agenda: “What we can now do is free up some resources, to, for example, put Americans back to work, especially our veterans, rebuilding our roads, our bridges.”

Setting aside just how slipshod or even downright disastrous Washington’s last decade of nation-building projects in Iraq and Afghanistan have been, the president’s proposal to rebuild roads, upgrade bridges, and retrofit the country’s electrical grid sounds eminently sensible.  After all, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gives America’s infrastructure a grade of “D.”  If, in the era of the $800 billion stimulus package, $1 billion at first sounds paltry, ask the mayors of #Detroit, Belmar, New Jersey, or even New York City what that money would mean to their municipalities.  America may need $2.2 trillion in repairs and maintenance according to ASCE, but $1 billion could radically change the fortunes of many a city.

Instead, that money is flowing into the oil-rich Middle East.  Unknown to most Americans, thousands of State Department personnel, military advisors, and hired contractors remain at several large civilian bases in Iraq where nation-building projects are ongoing; hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been flowing into military construction projects in repressive Persian Gulf states like Bahrain and Qatar; and the Pentagon is expanding its construction program in Central Asia.  All of this adds up to a multifaceted project that seems at odds with the president’s rhetoric.  (The White House did not respond to TomDispatch’s repeated requests for comment.)

Just as the, er, ‘progressive media’ has predicted, the Republicans, supporters of tax cuts for the uber wealthy, are also HUGE ‘patriots’ in their support of military spending.

This wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t distort the economy beyond recognition…but that’s one of the ‘side effects’ of predatory capitalism (over-concentration of money at the top of the social ladder, leaving wretched poverty below.)

What’s that? Still don’t think we need to replace the rules regarding money and its single useful purpose to society?

Again I will remind you that ALL money is funny…the only true cost is opportunity cost, the things we COULD HAVE DONE with those resources had they not been squandered to feather somebody’s personal nest.

In most cases a whole lot of nests would be a lot nicer than they are if those resources had been utilized in a wiser fashion.

Unfortunately, in these trying times it is difficult if not impossible to come to agreement on what constitutes ‘wisdom’.

Wise to me is outrageously stupid to a conservo-whacko! (who would rather not do anything with the resources in case the military needs them later!)

“Let society lounge in its own cesspool, the military will pay ‘top dollar’ for those resources that you want to waste on people who neither deserve or appreciate them…”

How do you deal with ‘whackos’ like that?

No irony should be lost on the fact that the ‘holy military’ (conservo-whackos literally ‘worship’ active duty service personnel, after they’re discharged they become ‘fucking civilians’ again so ‘fuck ‘em!) was established to protect us ALL.

But again I belabor the obvious when I point out that when it comes to conservo-whackos, ‘nothing go up top’ (may as well be a block of wood.)

They think what they think because that’s what they think!

Worse, they believe what they believe because somebody else told them that how things should be…so please don’t ask them to explain it, believing it is difficult enough!

But I digress…and I sincerely apologize for parading around on my favorite hobby horse in front of you all, shamelessly.

And you have to admit, it is difficult to cement your attention on the issue of ‘austerity for you’ while we waste billions on a military that serves the interests of the One Percent, coming from someone who preaches that ALL money is ‘funny’.

But my point isn’t ‘false austerity’ nor is it a bloated, useless military. It is GROSS MIS-MANAGEMENT!

And the real kicker is there ain’t a fucking thing we can do about it!

And I’m sure, by now, some of you want to slap me for reminding you AGAIN precisely how ‘powerless’ you are…

Well, I’m right here…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Thursday, November 15, 2012

Cascading Systemic Collapse

Greetings good citizen,

We can be sure the unmentioned and therefore ‘inconsequential’ drop of the Dow below the 13,000 point level will be laid at the feet of ‘Superstorm Sandy’

But other evidence points in in a more disturbing direction

The ‘Euro-Zone’ has officially returned to ‘recession’:
Official figures Thursday showed that the eurozone contracted by 0.1 percent in the July to September period from the quarter before as economies including Germany and the Netherlands suffer from falling demand.

The decline reported by Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, was in line with market expectations and follows on from the 0.2 percent fall recorded in the second quarter. As a result, the eurozone is officially in recession, commonly defined as two straight quarters of falling output.

"The eurozone economy will continue its decline in Q4 and probably well into 2013 too — a good backdrop for another debt crisis," said Michael Taylor, an economist at Lombard Street Research. Because of the eurozone's grueling three-year debt crisis, the region has been the major focus of concern for the world economy. The eurozone economy is worth around €9.5 trillion, or $12.1 trillion, which puts it on a par with the U.S.. The region, with its 332 million people, is the U.S.'s largest export customer, and any fall-off in demand will hit order books.
Um, hope you have your waders on good citizen because that tune you’re hearing in the background is Lenny Cohen’s ‘Everybody Knows’.

Isn’t it interesting that the Corporate owned media is telling us that the US exports anything? Although it shouldn’t surprise us in the slightest that corporate USA still PRETENDS its Chinese subsidiaries are just insignificant divisions of US, er, ‘based’ corporations.

Like fucking Apple!

How many of you sooth your consciences with the thought ‘at least it’s not American workers committing suicide due to the unbearable demands of their supervisors’ as far as Foxcon is concerned?

Is it a good thing because they used to be the jobs us workers did, that this is the technology that US engineering perfected?

But hey, what is the US when we living in a ‘globalized’ world? The Chinese would have done it themselves…eventually…once we showed them how.

But wait a minute slim, why is the global economy broken?

Or more succinctly, why has ‘innovation’ stopped dead in its tracks?

Is our badly broken justice system stifling creativity? Why bother breaking new ground if your idea will be stolen and you won’t get anything for it?

(You can’t sue the thief if you aren’t already a gazillionaire…sad simple fact.)

Which is to say the ravenous capitalists will make a fortune and if you’re very lucky, you might get credit for it…somewhere.

Let’s just say that the greatest argument against ‘socializing’ the workplace fairs no better under the largely lawless ‘free markets’.

And under a socialized workplace at least innovation can be pursued, bizarrely the capitalist isn’t interested in killing yesterdays ‘cash cow’ a minute before it is absolutely necessary.

Take a good look at the stagnant, job-starved marketplace and tell me this is a ‘good thing’.

Because civilization itself is on the verge of tearing itself apart, largely due to the abject failure of innovation.

But, again, the capitalist doesn’t give a flying fuck about civilization, oddly the idiot also fails to understand that they only prosper during times of peace (and relative plenty…)

Which is to point out that if this stuff doesn’t piss you off, it will never get addressed…

And if it never gets addressed then we are doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes, over and over again…because we will keep failing to punish the perpetrators and they will keep right on taking advantage of what has proven to be our ‘stupidity’.

Even now there are those among you who don't believe in ‘decisive and irrevocable’ punishment, nor do you connect today’s debacle with the failure of our grandparents to prosecute the criminals who trashed the global economy the last time!

That’s why it keeps happening…because they keep GETTING AWAY WITH IT!

But by now most of you have convinced yourselves I’VE got a problem/fixation with punishment.

And to a degree you’d be correct!

Sad as it may be SOMEBODY has to stand up and do the right thing because the fearless and unpunished fuckers don’t even pretend to be sorry for what they’ve done!

But, naturally…I digress.

So, do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?

Who gives a fuck?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Mad World

Greetings good citizen,

Just as yesterday’s story about the ‘ascendancy’ of US energy reserves warned me that Saudi (real and easy to extract) supplies were approaching exhaustion, today’s headlines regarding the Soviet’s ‘redefinition’ of the term ‘treason’ speaks to me of the global assault on civil liberties.

First we must ask ourselves how unfortunate it is that the most famous Vladimir in modern history is ‘Vlad the Impaler’ and then we need to wonder if there’s a dubious connection in there somewhere.

Let’s have a look!
The law, which was drafted by the Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency known under its Russian acronym of FSB, also introduced a punishment of up to eight years for simply getting hold of state secrets illegally even if they aren't passed to foreign hands.

The FSB explained in a statement run by the ITAR-Tass news agency that the new clause better protects confidential information. It said the previous law, which dated back to the 1960s, failed to provide an efficient deterrence against foreign spies.

"Tactics and methods of foreign special services have changed, becoming more subtle and disguised as legitimate actions," the spy agency said. "Claims about a possible twist of spy mania in connection with the law's passage are ungrounded and based exclusively on emotions."

It may be helpful to first settle on a ‘true definition’ of what constitutes ‘treason’…often restricted, politically at least, to aiding ‘foreign enemies’ in ‘undermining’ the state.

Ironically, the rest of us have a simpler definition…one that makes the politicians among us, er, ‘uncomfortable’.

To the average citizen, treason is (and always has been) another word for betrayal. Our politicians are uncomfortable with this because much of what they do could easily be interpreted as ‘betrayal’…and we all know the penalty for treason is death.

So, somewhat bizarrely, few people have ever been, er, ‘officially’ prosecuted for betrayal because the people prosecuting them are as guilty as criminals they are judging.

I suspect most of you will agree that it is our failure to hold people in positions of public trust accountable for their action that has resulted in the, er, ‘dismantling’ of our civilization (by those who falsely claim to ‘own it’…a false claim their attorney’s placed in their heads!

Which is how these cretins will defend their actions…but we digress.

The ‘situation’ is disintegrating once the ‘traitors’ start redefining treason to cover their treachery!

This isn’t about betrayal, it is all about ‘discovery’ and keeping ‘treason’ hidden!

Would the revelation that Russia had a ‘stolen election’ on their hands lead to the ‘suspicion’ that it had also occurred in other countries as part of a global conspiracy to manipulate currencies and strip Western cultures of their hard won civil rights?

All for ‘the greater good’ (of the criminals?)

In case you haven’t noticed good citizen, this ‘national security state’ is a global phenomenon and it is omnipresent.

The question we must ask is who is being protected from whom? And the answer is disturbing because there is a whole boatload of criminal activity that isn’t being prosecuted, never mind reported while whistleblowers across the spectrum are being jailed without recourse!

Because that’s the ‘new reality’ good citizen.

You go along with the ‘big rip off’ or YOU get put away and they throw away the key because they don’t need a reason to lock you up.

If you make waves, they silence you.

Which brings us full circle to the question of ‘what kind of world do YOU want to live in?

One where criminals run roughshod over your life with impunity or one with ‘Justice for all’?

Because the ‘choice’ is YOURS!

Justice for all starts with YOU…but we digress, the real issue here is WHY treason is generally understood to mean one thing but isn’t actually defined that way…something it has in common with another ‘popular’ commodity…money.

How fucking odd is it that we all ‘think we know’ what money is but if you ask ten different people to define it, you will get ten different answers (and some of them considerably freaky!)

Well we have the same problem when it comes to ‘betrayal’…(which also gets bizarre treatment under the law.)

Which is to point out that our legislators have no problem with betraying the general public…worse, it is considered ‘common knowledge’ that anyone running for public office is in the ‘betrayal business’.

Which ISN’T what anybody is thinking when they mark their ballots. They expect the politician to be, at least generally, ‘true to their word’.

And most politicians would quibble that they are…generally…in the broadest sense of the term, and that they at least agree whole heartedly that they spoke words…albeit some of them ‘truer’ than others…

How do you try a weasel like that for treason?

Not by their words but by their actions, of course!

Since much of politics is ‘quid pro quo’ the ‘corresponding’ campaign donations and subsequent voting record tells the story.

But nobody is prosecuted for this easily traceable treason and we can only wonder why?

Would politicians suddenly abandon public service if they were held accountable for their voting record…or would the one percenter’s who regularly ‘purchase’ favorable legislation dislike the, er, ‘scrutiny’?

It’s a mad world good citizen and it will only get madder if you continue to do nothing.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Energy Independence!

Greetings good citizen,

Stock markets around the globe are bleeding from the eye sockets this morning as investors allegedly cope with fear of new taxes.

(Like the problem ISN’T all of the money in our economy is sitting in the bank accounts of the uber wealthy, doing nothing.)

Well, that ain’t the half of it good citizen…seems as though the psycho’s on Wall Street now believe that the US will soon replace Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest energy exporter.

And what the hell, like the Arabs, WE (here in the economic desert) won’t be using it! good thing for the Chinese, huh?

Even if it never crossed your mind to wonder how the Arabs felt about foreigners sucking all of the oil out of their country, you’re about to find out how just it feels!

That increased oil production, combined with new American policies to improve energy efficiency, means that the United States will become “all but self-sufficient” in meeting its energy needs in about two decades — a “dramatic reversal of the trend” in most developed countries, a new report released by the agency says.

“The foundations of the global energy systems are shifting,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the Paris-based organization, which produces the annual World Energy Outlook, said in an interview before the release. The agency, which advises industrialized nations on energy issues, had previously predicted that Saudi Arabia would be the leading producer until 2035.

The report also predicted that global energy demand would grow between 35 and 46 percent from 2010 to 2035, depending on whether policies that have been proposed are put in place. Most of that growth will come from China, India and the Middle East, where the consuming class is growing rapidly. The consequences are “potentially far-reaching” for global energy markets and trade, the report said.

Um, the important thing to keep in mind here good citizen is this is NOT a ‘yippee-ki-yay motherfucker event.

Nowhere in this article does it say we will return to the days of ‘cheap & abundant energy’. Neither the oil shale nor the tar sands are A.) easy to extract or B.) economical to process.

Which is to point out that scarce and expensive energy (which will further shrink markets) will be ‘exportable’ by virtue of its ‘unaffordability’ by the average 'peasant' in the nation that produces it. (But assumedly by then 'puny things like countries' will be 'irrelevant' [to the uber rich.])

Perhaps now you can see the foolishness of allowing the self-interested to control the value of your money!

Maybe now you can see the wisdom in that notion that certain things should never be ‘monitized/commodified’.

But you idiots will pay for water and think nothing of it!

How long will it be before you are buying ‘designer’ air?

We could really go off the reservation over water and our long history of fighting over it but that is not the subject of this post. We are parsing the ‘common good’ vs., the predations of capitalism…because it is capitalism and capitalism alone that allows the capitalist to claim for his (or her) own what belongs to us all.

And guess how we landed in this sorry state of affairs?

By deferring to Kings and Queens…(who put their own interests ahead of the people’s…)

By now the capitalist is foaming at the mouth, raving about the ‘injustice’ of being attacked by an obvious ‘godless commie’ (who would have you all work for the same pay and force you to ‘give away’ the ‘fruits of your labors’ [rather than let the generous capitalist buy them from you for a fraction of their worth…] which is why the capitalist is rich and you can barely pay your bills, which isn‘t the capitalist‘s problem…it‘s yours!)

First point, Anarchy is in NO WAY related to communism, it is a political philosophy, not an economic system…and A Simple Plan is in no way ‘communist’ (which you’d know if you bothered to read it!)

But again I digress…

What does it take, good citizen, to get you to stop shooting yourself in the foot?

Is it that ‘heat of the moment thing’ when the New Boss pulls that last minute change out of his hat, just when victory is within your grasp?

In something that would make a wonderful farce, if it weren’t so tragic, we have perpetually witnessed crushing defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, repeatedly throughout history.

Mostly because the ‘forces of evil’ (a.k.a. greed) never sleep.
Worse, it seems our would be saviors aren’t immune to its influence, and if they are they get killed.

So is it a battle we ‘can’t win’…?

Definitely not…because soon circumstance will dictate that we either choose to start doing things the right way or we head down the path towards extinction…

Which brings us full circle to the growing effects of climate change and the desperate need to stop consuming as much fossil fuel as we can scrape out of the ground and throwing it into the atmosphere.

It is time for A Simple Plan and the sweeping lifestyle changes it will bring.

Simply put good citizen, the ultimate goal of A Simple plan is to make crime no longer pay…across the board.

No more getting fucked by employers, no more getting fucked by merchants, no more getting fucked by politicians and no more getting fucked by criminals…because there is no more money! (read cash)

Your money truly is ‘for you’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Parting thought: Energy Independence (under capitalism) will be virtually meaningless to YOU.

We are long overdue to stop using this badly broken system as the basis of governing our society…which, in case you haven’t noticed, no longer counts YOU…

Like the song says: There ain’t no commies and there ain’t no yanks, just common criminals, with guns and tanks!


Monday, November 12, 2012

Sustainable Future

Greetings good citizen,

Here, in the ‘aftermath’ of the election we find some disturbing indications regarding what it means to be ‘progressive’

Mind you this divisive mindset ISN’T coming from the decidedly twisted conservative side of the fence…it comes from the (Libertarian leaning) ‘progressive’ politicos.

If you aren’t ‘down with brown’ then you’d best find someplace to hide, honky! (because you’re about to be made politically irrelevant…)

And one would have to admit, this isn’t how, er, ‘democracy’ is supposed to work.

Just one more reason why we desperately need to overhaul what we do and why we do it.

The latest ‘cage match’ between the Conservo-loonies and the Tax & Spend Libruls is all the proof anyone needs to see that we are going off the political rails into ideological warfare…a war only the very rich can A.) win and B.) afford.

And our source of ‘intellectual reflection’ (C.K. Michaelson) points out, the issue is deeper than just the stewardship of our one and only home, it is about the survival of our (entire) species (and not just the few who have laid clam to what we all need to live!)

To that end any new social model needs to be ‘sustainable’…which could explain why the current pinheads are driving our civilization over the cliff.

They are indeed trying to kill off as much of the ‘surplus population’ as they think they can get away with.

YOU have been led to believe that the planet is ‘over-populated’ rather than grossly mismanaged.

Most of you believe we need to reduce the human ‘footprint’ to a more manageable level…and are you aware of what is behind that backwards kind of thinking?

A deeply entrenched desire to ‘preserve’ (predatory) capitalism!

Worse, it is the, er, ‘desire’ to make money, er, ‘meaningful’ once more!

While I have failed to sell A Simple Plan to the general public on the basis of Justice and Equality, maybe I could garner some support by drawing on one of the other ‘pillars’ of its creation…sustainability.

By design A Simple plan dramatically reduces energy consumption…by, er, ‘making it unnecessary’ to commute. It will also build new structures designed to conserve energy by using geo-thermal building techniques, reducing the usage of both heating and cooling resources.

Note how I avoid the term ‘cost’…because NOTHING ‘costs’ ANYTHING! The ONLY real costs are ‘opportunity costs’ and squandering those should be avoided by careful planning!

How difficult is it to understand that we could reduce what the world spends on ‘anti-terror’ to ZERO if we’d simply treat people better?

Worse, why is that concept a ‘non-starter’?

Am I a ‘dreamer’?

I don’t think so…I (perhaps mistakenly) believe most people think as I do but their ‘practical side’ gets in the way of their (very weak) desire to ‘do the right thing’.

We must stop voting for ideologies (especially the ones that preach hatred!) and start voting for equality and justice!

Albeit those abstract concepts are difficult to quantify even if they are universally understood.

And this is where we run into problems. When people start to ‘quibble’ over the definition of universally understood concepts.

It is not unusual for these quibblers to become ‘lawyers’ (a profession that is outlawed under A Simple Plan.)

It is the current failure to evaluate the common good from what’s good for the self-interested that has led us to where we sit today, on the verge of social collapse.

We can’t continue to allow the self-interested (read >One Percent) to decide what is ‘good’ for the rest of us.

Good luck finding someone who disagrees with THAT statement of fact (that ISN’T a freakazoid Libertarian!)

Correct me if I’m wrong good citizen (because if I am wrong and the majority of our species is ignorant and greedy then we are already doomed!)

But (fortunately) this is not the human race I encounter every day.

So the problem must be confined to the ‘people (wrongly) in charge’.

And it has been, unfortunately, my experience that people elevated to that level of trust are usually shiftless and untrustworthy.

So what should be a simple exercise of doing what is IN YOUR BEST INTEREST becomes an exercise in not wanting to be the ‘odd man out’!

(So get back in the corner as start fucking yourself, like everyone else is!)

It seriously doesn’t get much sadder than that good citizen,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Sunday, November 11, 2012

Not If but When?

Greetings good citizen,

As a testament to how much I loathe using this keyboard I have blown off my scribe duties for two days now.

Which is to complain that my new router still hasn’t arrived.

But anyway, guess when life hands you lemons…

So what the hell is up with the former darling of the military (come head of the CIA) ducking out once his, er, ‘relationship’ with a ‘high-achieving, former machine gun model’ is, er, ‘exposed’?

I didn’t think the dude was even married, so WTF?

I can see the ‘epic fail’ here but we are faced with the conundrum of who leaked this and why?

And you aren’t going to find any answers from this clueless corner…just the question that I’m sure is on everyone’s mind.

Why couldn’t the guy in charge of America’s ‘assassination bureau’ keep this under wraps?

Pretty fucked up if you ask me…at least on the surface.

What this speaks of to me is there are powerful forces behind the already draped in secrecy government bureaucracy calling the shots.

Forces powerful enough to ruin powerful men…with impunity.

When a civilization finds itself confronted with secrecy for the sake of secrecy it has met its doom.

Because you KNOW what comes next…
America Is Turning into a 3rd World Nation

Step 1: Destroy Manufacturing

From 1791, when our nation's first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton created an 11-point plan for American manufacturers, all the way until just the last few decades, the United States protected its manufacturing base with high tariffs on imports and government support for domestic industries.
This "protectionist" approach to trade transformed the United States into the world's largest exporter of manufactured goods, which built and sustained an enormous middle class of Americans working in factories collecting high wages.

Step 2: Harvest the Middle Class
America's working class no longer builds TVs or computers or furniture on assembly lines; they now flip burgers at McDonalds and turn down the sheets at Holiday Inns. And those high-skilled workers who used to design the marvels of manufacturing now manufacture credit default swaps and mortgage-backed securities on Wall Street.

Step 3: Export American Wealth
There's a hefty price tag associated with transitioning from the world's largest exporter of manufactured goods to the world's largest importer of manufactured goods. That price comes in the form of trade deficits.

Step 4: Recolonize
With American workers desperate for any kind of opportunity to work, Foxconn and other foreign corporations now have access to a brand new pool of cheap labor.
We've seen other companies before Foxconn take advantage of these new low-wage American workers.

Besides the ‘less than obvious’ distinctions between the ‘working class’ and the ‘middle class’ (which many members of the working class mistakenly believe they are a subset of)

The ‘cloak of secrecy’ is most noticeable in the ‘4th Estate’ (or the ‘Corporate Owned Media as I like to refer to it.)

The world piped into your living room is intended to provide you with this mistaken ‘homogenizing’ idea. That we’re all the same when in fact many of us suffer here in the land of increasingly desperate dreams.

If I had a nickel, actually, most statements these days are preceded by If I had, then (your wish here) followed by a reasonably rational outcome.

If I had shoes I’d walk to town! (But THAT doesn’t make the nightly news…yet you can regularly see ads for shoe drives for the needy of (fill in your needy foreign country here) like this is ‘unnecessary’ here.

Back to that damn ‘cloak of secrecy’ and the One Percent scoundrels hiding behind it.

Seriously good citizen, our civilization is suffering from all of the ‘ills’ of a monarchy because we have ‘lost control’ of global banking!

Which we are being told (again) is ‘cured’.

It is NOT!

The consumer is (still) tapped out and the world’s factories still stand idle because of it.

Worse, this is the product of ‘mis-management’, the deliberate failure to abolish the wholesale theft of the commons by the One Percent.

If justice is not re-established and secrecy banished our species is faced with extinction!

It is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Thursday, November 8, 2012

Dodged Bullets

Greetings good citizen,

It’s almost a week since Verizon promised me a new router and it still hasn’t arrived. Well, after nudging my favorite source of inspiration to come out of seclusion I decided I shouldn’t play the ‘waiting for parts’ card any longer either.

(Although I truly do not like the keyboard on my wife’s computer! My fat fingers are wearing out the backspace key…)

Worse, I suspect my problem is the Ethernet cable and the router is working just fine. So I’m really dogging it.

Um, here in the ‘afterglow’ of the election I can say I am not displeased with being ‘wrong’. I didn’t want to cope with the changes a Romney victory would have held.

That said the, er, (fucking) >One Percent still ‘won’ as their boy Obama is still licking their boots.

And what is the FIRST THING stupid did?

Why he ‘reached out’ to his Republican cohorts…like that has ever worked in the past.

But that is neither here nor there, the next four years he is free to do his masters bidding without fear of reprisal from the voting public.

Which leaves us the question of why did the, er, ‘democrats’ not challenge the incumbent, especially considering how unhappy a majority of the public has been with his, er, ‘performance?’

Oh, he got re-elected all right…because the alternative was too ugly to contemplate!

Which is to point to the exact same thing all of the other political pundits are saying, that the electoral process is broken.

Oh, just for full disclosure, I DID NOT vote for the incumbent…I voted for those who were jailed for protesting their exclusion from the presidential debates!

And I’m no Greenie.

How curious is it that under anarchy there are no ‘candidates’? (You vote directly on the laws!)

It is what Anarchy is all about, ‘rules WITHOUT RULERS!’

But that is not what I want to focus on.
Tonight, after nearly a week of silence, I want to direct your attention to the rail car you’ve been chained to.

Let’s start with the Republicans sudden craving for ‘introspection’…what went wrong and how can we fix it?

Well, I’ll tell you what I think ‘went wrong’.

They somehow sensed that people weren’t buying their horseshit anymore…and if they stole another election that they would risk a violent revolt the likes of which haven’t been seen in over two hundred years!

So they ‘engineered’ the lesser of two evils instead. They got their lapdog re-elected so they can ram their unpopular policies down the public’s throat while the ‘Democrats’ held power…like the NAFTA fuck job, passed by the first Republican controlled congress in nearly a hundred years! With a (so-called) Democrat in the White House.

Well, what happens next is going to make that look like a Sunday Picnic.

Which is to point out that the bullet we thought we dodged is still racing towards out heart. The animals who fired it are still in charge and they can take us out any time they want to.

When it hits it will literally knock the stuffing right out of us…and there won’t be a thing we can do about it.

Short of track down and execute the bastards responsible.

But it’s tough to remember when you’re up to your ass in alligators that your original intent was to drain the swamp…

And that’s right where we’re going to find ourselves…just as we will be able to find them; herding the alligators in our direction.

I admit to being wrong about another stolen election…but I suspect the ONLY reason it didn’t happen is because the perps realized (maybe at the last minute) that it hasn’t been ‘morning in America’ for almost thirty years.

In fact, I suspect the Republicans woke up and suddenly realized that their Reaganite followers are either dead or dying…and their numbers were shrinking instead of swelling.

You’d think the 25,000 or so Tea Partiers (almost all ‘older than dirt’) that showed up at that rally in DC last year showed them where the bear shit.

So the pricks have all of the money…they DON’T have a large enough of a following to convince anyone they are capable of a legitimate political victory.

Sure, they’ve got the Religious Right and other ‘End Timers’ on their side…which is yet another scary reminder of what happens when you try to mix religion with politics…

But it is important that you, the regular citizen, not lose sight of what’s important and that would be removing thee criminals from power BEFORE they loot the planet and throw civilization onto its own cesspool to cover their crime.

Now.

Will YOU hold the incumbent’s feet to the fire and MAKE HIM PROSECUTE the criminals who let Wall Street ruin the pensions of millions of workers while the banks get a free ride on the public’s purse?

Not having that conversation…WHY?

We have to return to the business of caring for our growing population, and we must do it RESPONSIBLY! (WE ALSO HAVE TO DO IT NOW!)

Um, thanks for letting me inside your head,

Glad to be back!

Gegner


Friday, November 2, 2012

Update

Greetings good citizen,

I’m halfway back. I’ve got my computer up and running BUT, for reasons unexplained (and still unknown) it will not connect to the internet.

My ISP is sending me a new router…but until it gets here I’m stuck.

I have a laptop (that has locked up four times since I started typing this) and the ‘family’ computer that the kids use to do their homework with…which is why I am struggling with the laptop…

Um, the markets gave back most of yesterday’s gains today despite the, er, ‘good’ jobs report. (I’m from the school that believes every month you don’t add 200,000 jobs, you’re falling behind.

It used to be 150,000 back in the Nineties but the population has grown considerably since then.

All right, this bad boy has locked up a half dozen more times since I mentioned it earlier so I’m gonna post this and that’s that until I can get on the family machine.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner