Monday, December 31, 2012

2013

Greetings good citizen,

It appears I have a lot of competition for your attention this New Years Eve…although I suspect the boys and girls on Wall Street hope nobody notices that the markets have tacked on 150 points for nothing (again.)

2012 is over and it turns out the dire predictions that started the year didn’t come to pass…as advertised.

Which is to opine that we are NOT ‘out of the woods’ yet. It’s probably more than a little disturbing to still be sitting right where the financial sector dumped us five years ago.

But you’re not supposed to notice that. You’re supposed to believe we’ve put all that nastiness behind us, the ‘recovery’ (that only the pundits and certain rare breeds of parrots can see) is ‘well underway’ and the future looks bright…(or is that a fire on the distant horizon?)

If it gets much darker (socially speaking) we are going to have to re-define ‘black’.

Funny how hopelessness has a way of intensifying the dark. There was a brief and somewhat blinding flash of illumination five years ago, a fleeting moment when a brilliant flash showed us that our economy was hollow…to the point of being non-existent.

Once the market for ‘faux’ financial services collapsed, nothing remained.

Sure, it still looks like we do stuff here but that is the satellite offices of foreign manufacturers, the rest is just what you'’ find in any other Banana Republic, ‘extractive industries.’

Oh and when the rest of the world runs out of oil and the One percent decides to cash in its US shale reserves, guess who won’t get any? (Because our currency will be worthless.)

But you’re reading that literally when in fact nobody will openly ‘deny’ you access to US produced energy…they will just charge you through the nose for it AND OUR TRAITOROUS POLITICIANS WILL SAY THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT!

I’m telling you right now good citizen, every damn one of them is a traitor (and should therefore pay ‘the traitor’s price.’

How unfortunate is it good citizen that treason, like sanity, is determined by the mindset of the ‘people who matter’.

Even more unfortunate to know that YOU are not among them. (Because YOU KNOW they’re bat-shit crazy!)

Bizarrely, like turning on a light switch, you’ll go from being ‘insignificant’ to being the arbiter of sanity, right after civilization falls off the proverbial cliff.

The question for 2013 is whether or not that cliff is nearby?

And I’d opine yes, good citizen, it’s a lot closer than you’d think. The as yet ‘unresolved’ fiscal cliff that the buttlicking corporate owned media mistakenly characterizes as a ‘failure to compromise’ threatens to push an already fragile economy over the edge.

Implying the (still spineless) Dems won’t give in when we all KNOW it is the conservo-whackos who won’t do what needs to be done. This could be the trigger the robbers have been waiting since ‘Morning in America’ to pull.

Which is to opine that the conservo-whackos are patient if nothing else…

But it’s the ‘persistent’ part that has the rest of us worried (to the point of questioning their sanity.)

That and their ‘no compromise’ attitude. Here they are, begging for compromise just like their capitalist heroes do (my way or the highway!)

We, as a society, can no longer afford (read tolerate) this variety of myopia.

It literally leads to an ‘us vs. them’ mentality that is toxic to social creatures like ourselves.

While this seems like little more than ‘sound advice’ we seriously need to take the matter to heart and literally ‘weed out’ those unfit to lead because THAT is where the problem is rooted.

Those who lead DO NOT have the best interests of society in their minds when they pass judgement…often on topics they have no right deciding and they are the same people who are ‘leading’ our society over a cliff we will not recover from.

The breakdown in trust alone may become insurmountable. We are already in danger of that happening with the financial system.

One of today’s headlines was on precisely this topic. As the ‘government guarantees’ expire on certain classes of securities, bankers are slicing the funds up into FDIC insurable amounts to protect themselves.

From what remains uncertain.

I don’t need to remind you that ALL money is FUNNY (regardless of who backs it!)

Which is why these gyrations to recover ‘government protection’ are actually amusing.

Our government is as broke as the rest of us…and that’s the doing of the One Percent!

The thing YOU need to remember is whosoever controls YOUR money, controls YOU!

Do you think a bunch of self-centered opportunists should be in charge of YOUR cash?

Let’s ring in 2013 as we ponder what to do about this pickle…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Sunday, December 30, 2012

Seriously?

Greetings good citizen,

Sunday night and I’m just getting around to posting…because it snowed, then it rained and then is snowed again…and then the whole shebang froze, making for a miserable clean up.

But my frostbitten backside really gets burning when the ‘disarm-niks’ sit on their high horse, claiming mass murder ‘doesn’t happen’ in cultures that have banned guns.

Naturally these assholes ignore the bombings that replaced the gun attacks.

And if the One Percent decided they wanted us, er, ‘defenseless’ we wouldn’t be talking about their ‘right’ to instruct their lapdogs to collect all of the registered guns, we’d be talking about how long it would take for them to criminalize the ‘unexplained loss’ of a weapon.

Because that’s what ‘bans’ do, they create criminals.

Let’s see what zipperhead has to offer regarding the ‘impossibility’ of tougher weapons legislation as we wonder what side of the political fence ‘Fair Vote’ rides on… Aren’t the Republicans overly concerned with ‘stolen elections’?
Why America Can't Pass Gun Control
Hint: It's not the NRA or a gun-loving culture.
December 24, 2012 |

This article originally appeared at The Atlantic.

The horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., is the latest grisly episode in what has become a muted debate in the United States: what to do about gun violence and well-armed mass murderers. But we will make a prediction: Even in the face of this national tragedy, President Obama will have little success enacting substantive gun control.

Here's why: Obama can read the political map as well as anyone, and he knows that, just as in the past after previous brutal tragedies, the politics of gun control rest on complicated terrain. Many gun control advocates blame the lack of policy action on America's gun-loving culture and the influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA), but that's too simplistic. Already in the wake of the Newtown carnage we have seen aslew of pundits drawing the wrong conclusions, just as they have after previous tragedies.

Sure, Americans like their guns more than other nations, but polls often have shown majority of Americans wanting more gun control, with two-thirds calling for more regulation following the Columbine massacre in 1999. But the political system - including the Democratic Party -- has failed to respond. And it's not because Democrats and Obama are afraid of the NRA's deep pockets, as so many pundits are wrongly concluding. Quite the contrary, the NRA has money because it is powerful, not the other way around. And the NRA is powerful because it is clever at working the clunky architecture of our political system, which gives immense clout to a tiny slice of swing voters in a handful of congressional districts. [snip]

[About the author:]

Steven Hill (www.Steven-Hill.com) is a political writer, cofounder of FairVote and former director of the political reform program at the New America Foundation. Besides Alternet, his articles have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, The Nation, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Ms., Sierra, American Prospect, Truthdig and many others, and he has quoted and interviewed by media around the world, including the BBC, Democracy Now, C-Span, Fox News, Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio, Sirius and many others.

Robert Richie is the executive director of FairVote.

At the end of the day this has NOTHING to do with guns. The shooters in every case didn’t do what they did BECAUSE ‘they could get their hands on guns!’

They did what they did because they had a problem with how they were being treated and saw no other way draw attention to the matter.

EVENTUALLY (because it almost happened this last time…until buttheads like Steve Hill turned up, pointing in the wrong direction, as usual.)

And what almost happened this time? We ALMOST acknowledged that the common thread between the massacres and that was the desperation a sense of nothing left to lose by the perpetrators.

Adam Lanska went into that school knowing ahead of time he was going to blow himself away, making him no different than a suicide bomber.

And, as usual, these ‘desperadoes’ are dismissed as ‘loner lunatics’. Isolated cases that won’t happen again…until next time.

How bad does it have to get good citizen, we are barely making it a month without some new incident of somebody ‘going postal’ because they’ve had enough (of being treated like they are human debris.)

Yeah, it’s pretty sick to be using this type of social backwash to hype my own agenda but don’t you think it’s beyond time for a change?

And I mean real change and not Obamaesque ‘lip service’.

It is only a matter of time before you (or worse, someone you love) becomes capitalism’s ‘collateral damage’.

When a ticking timebomb set off by a capitalist socio-path blows your world away, what are YOU going to go after, the tool the perp used OR THE CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM?

Make no mistake about it good citizen, the longer they ignore this the worse it has become…

And just think this is the DAY BEFORE New Years Eve!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Saturday, December 29, 2012

Brinksmanship

Greetings good citizen,

What a week to round out a year spent waiting for the other shoe to drop, eh?

Seems we aren't the only ones incapable of rolling back the tax structure:
French Council Strikes Down 75% Tax Rate
By SCOTT SAYARE 11:33 AM ET

A council opposed a plan to impose a 75 percent marginal income tax rate on the wealthy that would have applied to annual income above 1 million euros, or about $1.3 million.
Like I said in yesterday’s post, this ‘criminal elite’ shit transcends the ‘Nation State’ (via the global banking cartels.)

Which, ironically, leaves us here:
If a deal is reached, votes in the Senate could begin Sunday.

Obama Urges Senate Leaders to Put Together a Tax Deal
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and ANNIE LOWREY 12:03 PM ET

In his weekly address, President Obama again urged lawmakers to find a last-minute solution to avert a fiscal crisis that would begin Jan. 1.
As many of my contemporaries point out, the ‘fiscal cliff’ only exists in the ‘neocons’ heads.

It is being used as an excuse to extend tax cuts the wealthy should never have received and to cut desperately needed social programs as the global economy continues to tank.

The question none of our so-called ‘betters’ is prepared to answer is what they intend to do about the badly broken and now largely rogue criminal banking sector.

It CAN’T be ‘repaired’ (and certainly not by the criminals currently in charge!) so it has to be ‘replaced’…and none of the chiselers has given this predicament a single moment of thought.

So we get bullshit stories like this:
Several of Walmart's suppliers had used the factory in Bangladesh where 112 workers died last month.

As Walmart Makes Safety Vows, It’s Seen as Obstacle to Change
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and JIM YARDLEY

After a deadly factory fire in Bangladesh stirred soul-searching around the apparel industry, critics say Walmart has not done enough to improve safety standards.
And naturally those ‘critics’ will be dismissed as being ‘anti-capitalist’ and ignored.

Business always does the right thing (for the company, if some employees become collateral damage, so what?)

There was an interesting story in the local rag praising a recent government decision to make restitution to the families of workers who unwittingly handled highly hazardous material (which proved fatal for almost all of them!)

And the decidedly conservative local rag was praising the government for doing the ‘right thing’…while totally ignoring the private sector employer who murdered these people (by failing to disclose, never mind failing to provide adequate safeguards so these workers might have had a fighting chance.

Again it is being swept under the rug under the mantle of ‘state secret’ and the situation does involve The Manhattan Project and how the uranium was processed.

And the private sector contractor didn’t pay these people a single cent extra…(probably terminated them when they got sick!)

(I know, nothing personal, it’s just business! Where are your fucking ‘job creators’ when people die because of their recklessness? Sadly the twits are still thumping their chests, damn proud of what they’ve done!)

Stupid is as stupid does…

Did I mention capitalism is a bad idea? How about another example:
Utility workers in Seaside Heights, N.J., making pole repairs after the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy.
Hurricane Sandy Alters Utilities’ Calculus on Upgrades
By DIANE CARDWELL, MATTHEW L. WALD and CHRISTOPHER DREW

It is typically much cheaper for a utility, and its customers, to skip prevention measures and just clean up the mess after a catastrophe, but Hurricane Sandy has changed that thinking.

This particular headline sends a chill up my spine because of what’s implied here. The US no longer ‘needs’ its robust power infrastructure (as our ‘betters’ continue to export our jobs wholesale.)

Will our ‘private sector’ power companies take the ‘cheap out’ once again and only replace what is needed to restore service, even if that means reduced capacity?

What the hell, the peasants don’t need it (and can’t pay for it anyway…)

Have you ever wondered what would happen if our mostly imported economy stopped?

Unlike the fiscal cliff, the fuckers in charge bowed to the longshoreman’s demands…partially anyway.
Ports in Newark and more than a dozen other cities will stay open after longshoremen reached an agreement with shipping companies to avert a coastwide strike.

Partial Deal With Union Averts a Strike at 14 Ports
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Shipping companies and dockworkers reached a deal on their main dispute, and the longshoremen’s union agreed to drop its threat of a strike this Sunday.

Probably just a mistaken perception that ‘brinksmanship’ has become the watch-word of the day. Fiscal cliff on one hand with a shutdown of the real economy looming on the other.

Yeah, it just ‘looks like’ they’re playing ‘hardball’ (because if they really try it there can be ‘no escape’ for most of them.)

And stiffing so many of their minions would leave them in a bad way when it came to cleaning up the mess the peasants are going to make.

Yeah, life can really suck when you look down on everyone like they’re beneath dirt.

Just something to ponder as we head off the non-existent ‘fiscal cliff’…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Friday, December 28, 2012

Super-Weapon!

Greetings good citizen,

Money is ‘omnipresent’, I don’t need to remind anyone that money makes the world go round because it does.

What I DO need to disabuse you of is the notion that money is wisely managed and our global economy is ‘safe’…it is NOT.

Uh, most of you tune out when I hop on this particular hobby horse so if you want to check out early, consider this ‘fair warning’

For decades (sadly, A Simple Plan is 20 years old…) I have been pointing to the One (tenth) of One Percent and accusing them of plotting ‘genocide’.

And idea that is roundly scoffed at…(at the disbeliever’s peril.)

Every once in a while a story comes up that supports my seemingly spurious claims:
At the heart of the Libor scandal is the simple, primary function of banks: facilitating the borrowing and lending of money. They do this job and still turn a profit using a nifty little trick called interest rates, which essentially means if I borrow money from a bank, I pay back a little extra for their service. Simple? Sort of, except once again the banks have fixed this simple game so that--as in a casino--the house always wins.

As Robert Reich at Business Insider explains:

How is this interest rate determined? We trust that the banking system is setting today’s rate based on its best guess about the future worth of the money. And we assume that guess is based, in turn, on the cumulative market predictions of countless lenders and borrowers all over the world about the future supply and demand for the dough.

But suppose our assumption is wrong. Suppose the bankers are manipulating the interest rate so they can place bets with the money you lend or repay them – bets that will pay off big for them because they have inside information on what the market is really predicting, which they’re not sharing with you.

That would be a mammoth violation of public trust. And it would amount to a rip-off of almost cosmic proportion – trillions of dollars that you and I and other average people would otherwise have received or saved on our lending and borrowing that have been going instead to the bankers. It would make the other abuses of trust we’ve witnessed look like child’s play by comparison.
Some would dismiss this as corruption and collusion between ‘a few bad apples’…but they ALL ‘went along with it!’

Which is to point out, good citizen, that this went on for YEARS and nobody opened their mouths (thanks largely to a GLOBAL ‘neocon’ takeover.)

The One Percent, through their minions, effectively eliminated ALL oversight…so when the bottom dropped out, the only one left to catch it was the public.

And there was no one to complain to, justice, as we have witnessed, became a wholly owned subsidiary of the criminal class.

And since I’m literally screaming ‘off the reservation’ now, the only way to ‘fix’ this is full out civil (class) war.

And it will be war, good citizen, those who have ‘taken liberties’ with commerce won’t willingly stand trial for their ‘misdeeds’.

Especially when their best defense is ‘everybody else was doing it!’

Does anyone else find it curious that we are (five years AFTER the Global financial markets collapsed) standing on the edge of a so-called ‘fiscal cliff’?

Did I mention that the One (tenth) of One Percent is plotting mass genocide? A feat they intend to accomplish through ‘cascading systemic collapse.’

Guess what the ‘trigger event’ is going to be?

Worse, for idiots in the truest political sense (the word literally means ‘political know nothing’ a.k.a Republican…) it is happening on the Democrat’s watch…like any such animal still exists.

We have Republicans and Libertarians pretending to be Democrats…and the befuddled and dazed masses who (rightly) believe both parties are bat-shit crazy.

But this is what happens when the One Percent usurps the power of the State for itself.

They bite off considerably more than they can chew.

And now they are going to be faced with the consequences of their actions.

They stymied attempts to bring them to justice peacefully so now they have built their own ‘trap’…and they’re inside with the rest of us.

The ride is almost over good citizen and the fiscal cliff hitting in the dead of winter is no coincidence either…they did this for ‘maximum carnage’.

But no one wants to believe the One Percent is capable of such a vicious act (yet they witness their heartless cruelty on a regular basis!)

It blows the mind to see such duplicity!

Perhaps that is the human condition, we are forever ‘projecting’ our personal values where they don’t exist.

Let us hope this foolishness doesn’t lead us to extinction…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Thursday, December 27, 2012

All Hail the Tin Man!

Greetings good citizen,

The markets are cliff diving but this is part of their ‘expressing the will of the One Percent’ to our politicians, er, 'function'.

When our ‘investor class’ is displeased, they express their…er, ‘displeasure’ by driving the markets down (literally taking money out of the politicians pockets.)

What works for management works doubly well for political pawns, ‘behave’ and the value of your ‘gimme’ shares increases, displease us and the value drops.

But hey, this isn’t about the no longer has anything to do with anything markets…which begs the question of how long the infamous ‘they’ can keep this charade up? (The answer is, of course, for as long as you buy into it!)

Let us commence our examination of today’s snapshot of social mayhem with this lead story:
The iEconomy
ON THE LINE Workers assembling Hewlett-Packard computers at a plant in Chongqing, China, operated by Foxconn of Taiwan.
Signs of Changes Taking Hold in Electronics Factories in China
By KEITH BRADSHER and CHARLES DUHIGG

After the hardships of workers in China’s electronics factories were exposed to a global audience, working conditions have changed.

More interesting is how the ‘well’ of young Chinese workers isn’t as ‘bottomless’ as was originally assumed.

Treat people like livestock and they will soon refuse to take your wages…which is only the beginning of the revolt.

Now, for another story that refuses to die!
Toyota Agrees to Settle Lawsuit Tied to Accelerations
By BILL VLASIC

Toyota would pay more than $1 billion, giving cash to vehicle owners for the loss of value from multiple recalls and installing special safety features on up to 3.2 million cars.

Must be the reason why the rest of the world thinks (knows) Americans are STUPID, didn’t YO already ‘settle’ this suit once? (And aren’t STUPID Americans still buying YO’s?)

Number ONE in reliability and safety…

WHO IS J.D. Powers and why should I give a fuck what they think?

Which is to point out that I had NEVER heard of ‘J.D. Powers BEFORE they named Toyota the number one quality car manufacturer in the world.

Ask around…you’ll get the same results. Nobody else has either despite a whole generation having grown up with this piece of fiction being repeated until it became undisputed fact.

ALL HAIL THE TIN MAN (and his empty head, filled with the ‘knowledge’ the deceivers want him to have.)

At the risk of repeating myself, here is more proof of the ‘markets as whip’ theory.
Shares Edge Down After Reid’s Remarks
By REUTERS 9:45 AM ET

Stocks on Wall Street stepped back after breaking the fiscal impasse in Washington looked more unlikely.

Weekly Jobless Claims Fall 10:08 AM ET
Liberal press, what liberal press? (Yet conservo-loonies won’t even click on the NY Times because of it’s ‘liberal bias’, like a fuckwit conservo-loonie would know a liberal from libertarian!)

Note it isn’t ‘Beaners’ stonewalling that is blocking the path to compromise but that asshole Reid, (the flaming ‘liberal’) that is blocking the possibility of ‘reasonable compromise’ according to our Corporate Owned Media…

Methinks the muthafucka’s has overplayed this card a bit much…and it’s gonna blow up on ‘em.
House Republican leaders called on the Senate to act on fiscal legislation, which focused new attention on Senator Mitch McConnell,

Senators to Return With 5 Days Left and No Clear Fiscal Path
By JONATHAN WEISMAN and JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Adding to the tension over a pileup of threatened tax increases and spending cuts, the Treasury secretary notified Congress that the government would hit its borrowing limit on Monday.

Now, have you asked yourself which Republican would be WORSE than Beaner? That’s right it’s Bitch McConnell!

Which (naturally) makes him next in line!

Now can we all sit here and do a big WTF!

Are you sick and tired of the One Percenters using their influence to block change (never mind justice) at every turn?

Isn’t it time we got to vote DIRECTLY on the laws we ALL must live under?

Then it’s time for A Simple Plan!

But no! The idiots the Too Wealthy To Ignore allow to run (and they do ‘sniff test’ every one!) will NEVER straighten things out on their own.

And that’s today’s snapshot of the collapse of western civilization.

Which, I would opine, it is no longer possible to save all of it but it should be possible to save key pieces…if we hurry and act swiftly.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Et tu?

Greetings good citizen,

Hope you had pleasant holidays. The cranky old man made out better than usual this year for reasons unknown…perhaps the need became too great to ignore.

And the list of stuff we ‘need’ (as a family) grows unabated (the refrigerator is a disaster waiting to happen and the water heater is right behind it! Oh and we have yet to replace the blown out idiot box.

The reason for all of the above is ‘lack of funds’.

And while I am crying ‘bonanza’ here in the gift department, the single most expensive item I received was a badly needed warm coat that must have cost all of $25.

The rest can be listed on one hand and I’d still have fingers left over…(normally all I get is one gift. Like a DVD of a movie the kids liked.)

But wait good citizen, before you dismiss my grumblings as a self-absorbed ‘pity-party’ have a gander as to what has slipped into common civil discourse
Her musings were suddenly interrupted when her date asked a decidedly unromantic question: “What’s your credit score?”

“It was as if the music stopped,” Ms. LaShawn, 31, said, recalling how the date this year went so wrong so quickly after she tried to answer his question honestly. “It was really awkward because he kept telling me that I was the perfect girl for him, but that a low credit score was his deal-breaker.”

The credit score, once a little-known metric derived from a complex formula that incorporates outstanding debt and payment histories, has become an increasingly important number used to bestow credit, determine housing and even distinguish between job candidates.

It’s so widely used that it has also become a bigger factor in dating decisions, sometimes eclipsing more traditional priorities like a good job, shared interests and physical chemistry. That’s according to interviews with more than 50 daters across the country, all under the age of 40.

I’ve always been something of a Neanderthal when it comes to matters romantic and there were certain things you didn’t look at when considering a potential mate…but fucking credit scores?

Anthropologically speaking good citizen were scroomed!

Looks like this ‘insensitive lout’ got what he deserved (kicked to the curb!) but still, has it all come down to something as artificial as credit score?

Understand good citizen, the fucking thieving One Percent don’t worry about their credit score. Anyone stupid enough to downgrade their credit wouldn’t survive to see the sun rise again. (They largely DON’T pay so their ‘credit’ should suck! Why do you think they are ‘rich’ in the first place?)

In fact, you won’t find the One Percent picking their children from the bottom of a test tube, they can ‘afford’ mates of prime breeding age that don’t need to jump through hoops to conceive.

This, species-wise, is a decidedly disturbing development.

Maybe once we ‘regress’ to Banana Republic status our breeding pool will ‘level off’ (return to where it ‘should be’.)

Of course, this will do little to relieve the over-population crisis, which is at the root of all of our social ills.

Yes, good citizen, it is even behind the incredible shrinking dollar.

The nabobs who have set themselves above us don’t possess the intestinal fortitude to deal with the problem, so they ignore it while it festers.

How sad is it that they are correct in their assumption that the problem will be ‘self-correcting’?

Because the coming disease and death is totally unnecessary.

But, as has been demonstrated amply in the past, our betters don’t think…it hurts their little heads too much.

Is it frightening to you that these paragons of logic believe mother nature will contrive to have some of our species survive a killer plague (despite other species being wiped out completely in the past?)

It’s a risk they’re willing to take (although SOME of them are preparing to avoid the plague entirely…again with crossed fingers.)

In fact, some have confined themselves to their ‘safe havens’ already. They (and theirs) will not venture forth until the ‘Old World’ has passed.

The weak link here is whether or not the Haven is self-sufficient. If they are having goods imported from the outside to maintain a so-called ‘modern lifestyle’ they are as dead as the rest of us.

Which is to opine that stupidity can’t be stopped with dollar signs…or credit scores.

Et tu, good citizen?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Sunday, December 23, 2012

Happy Holidays

Greetings good citizen,

As the old saying goes ‘that didn’t take long’ (in reference to November’s election changing nothing in Washington.) What we’re seeing now is just Kabuki theater.
Obama Will Ride to the Rescue ... for Republicans

The Republicans have put themselves in a holy mess with this Plan B debacle. They now have less than zero leverage. They are a national laughingstock. A majority of the country now thinks they are "too extreme." They just got walloped in the election. And with the tax cuts set to expire the laws are rigged against them as well.

There is only one person who can rescue the Republican Party now -- Barack Obama. And he will. I have been saying for over two years now that President Obama is dying to do the Grand Bargain. He will do it at any cost. In fact, he actively wants to cut Social Security and Medicare. He can't wait for that pat on the back from the establishment when they finally call him post-partisan, above party politics, and a statesman for screwing over his own voters. This is by far his greatest wish.

I couldn't believe that people couldn't believe that President Obama offered to cut Social Security again in this round of negotiations. What are you still surprised at? The man has offered to cut these so-called entitlements every time. When are you going to get it through your head -- he wants to cut them!

You take that last paragraph and hold it up next to Mitt flipping off half of the nation’s voters a month before the election and tell me it was a ‘coincidence’.

They (the One Percent) just didn’t want to have (another) ‘one of their own’ in office being associated with the dismantling of the US economy.

Not that anyone at this late stage of the game has any illusions about who is responsible for turning this once great country into an economic desert…

Only Republican ‘true believers’ think otherwise and persist in blaming long extinct ‘liberals’ for their own failed policies.

(Which is to opine that the ‘hard core’ of this group will test positive for the incurable genetic defect that revokes their membership in civil society.)

As you can see I am back atop yesterday’s hobby horse of whether or not the One Percent is obliged to admit they have, er, ‘usurped’ the government.

The obvious answer is no, no they don’t (or the blow-back would be incredible…as well as tragic. The ‘rag-tag’ can’t tell the merely prosperous from the uber-wealthy.)

Of course, when that barrier tumbles it will be a little late to draw up a list or to even put the brakes on the bloodshed, which will flow in both directions…copiously.

But I digress…

The article asks, as I have repeatedly, what are we going to do with a chief executive that doesn’t have the public’s best interests in mind?

NOT doing what we elected him to do IS HIS PEROGATIVE. It’s a risk built in to the stupid system we were saddled with. (Which assumes, had we been given a choice, we wouldn’t still be doing it this way BUT this is how the ‘One Percent’ (entrenched wealth) wants it.)

Worse (isn’t it always worse?) we have NO WAY to fix the problem ourselves.

We must, er, ‘convince’ our legislators to fix it for us and as you can see, three weeks after the general election, our useless politicians are fighting like the election never happened…or worse, didn’t turn out as it did!

What do you do when the people elected to serve you flip you the bird?

You won’t even get the ‘pleasure’ of voting Obama out of office he can’t be re-elected! (Which is a mighty dangerous thing push come to shove…and who do we have to thank for that little headache? The Republicans, naturally!)

So, still don’t think we need to scrap our political system?

Don’t worry, it’s falling apart by itself.

Inaction will be enough to institute change but as we have seen it will not be the ‘change’ you were hoping for.

Nor, if you aren’t a member of the One Percent, will it be changes that will do you any good.

In fact a whole world of ‘bad’ is waiting to fall upon the heads of those too…‘stubborn’ to see what’s happening and thereby fail to act.

There’s another word that begins with ‘st’ to describe this phenomenon but it doesn’t win you any friends (not that you’d want to ally yourself with the stupid…)

If you’re hoping all of this is going to ‘go away’ then you are living in a dream world and actively participating in the same kind of behavior that got this nation stolen from us in the first place. (My apologies to the Native Americans who need no schooling on this topic…)

It’s the idiot Europeans who came in the ‘second wave’ chasing the ‘American Dream’ that need a stiff slap upside the head.

You aren’t in Kansas anymore and the flying monkeys ate Toto so you’re on your own little girl.

What are you going to do now?

On that note, advance warning, I will not be posting tomorrow and the day after isn’t looking good either.

Try not to get yourself killed and I’ll see you here again on Wednesday,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Saturday, December 22, 2012

Still here!

Greetings good citizen,

Aren’t you sick and tired of being treated like an idiot? And not just by everybody but by the one source you should be able to trust…the fucking media.

Gunplay aside, how do we deal with nonsense like this?
TOP NEWS
Obama Presses Stripped-Down Plan to Limit Tax Increase

By JACKIE CALMES and JONATHAN WEISMAN

President Obama, conceding that a "grand bargain" for deficit reduction with Speaker John A. Boehner is unlikely, called for Congress to approve a more modest measure by year's end.

Video: Fiscal Cliff Looms
Seriously good citizen, if there were any such thing as a ‘fiscal cliff’ we would have fallen off/over it five years ago when the financial markets seized solid!

As I have stated many times before, our global financial markets are bankrupt and nothing short of the ‘reset button’ can save them…

So what the fuck have the thieves been doing for the past five years?

(Actually they’ve been doing exactly what you suspect they’ve been doing, living good while the fraud lasts!)

It brings us full circle with the issue of, “If the >One Percent took over, would they tell us?”

Why many of you would opine the answer would be yes, they have no compelling reason to…just as Voldemort was perfectly content to let the rest of the world believe he didn’t exist, so it is with the One Percent.

I keep pointing to the ‘ease’ with which the ‘masters of all they surveyed’ stepped down from the throne (and locked themselves in their treasuries) without a fight.

The greatest gift they ever gave themselves is the illusion of someone else being ‘in charge’.

Think the ‘kings’ are gone? Think again.

Where has the law gone? It has gone to the men whose word IS law…a world we rebelled against long ago…but failed to extinguish the poisonous roots of a persistent and noxious weed.

Again, it was mistakenly ‘assumed’ that ‘dethroning’ them was all it took to remove them from power.

Not so because even ‘deposed’ royalty still has, er, ‘followers’ (mostly those who owe their positions to the royals.)

Odd how denouncing the old ways is enough to protect what loyalty gained for the shiftless…and being shiftless, they play both ends against the middle, switching allegiance as necessary.

Under A Simple Plan these ‘shifting allegiances’ won’t help because power will be in a constant state of flux.

Those who have it this year will be somewhere else next year…by design.

Naturally, only the mentally competent will be permitted to become citizens under A Simple Plan, it you test positive for the gene that causes ‘zero-empathy’ you will be, er, ‘isolated’ from society, placed where you can not harm others or yourself.

Sounds harsh but there is no cure…and no amount of ‘coaching’ can change that.

(If we fail to cull the predators from among us our civilization will be consumed…how’s that for your ‘dry, intellectual opinion’?)

How do I get you to respond to the gravity of the situation?

I can’t.

Are you scared?

You damn well better be!

The psychopaths in charge will soon run what passes for our civilization off a cliff and, as we have seen, it won’t be a financial one, per se.
News Analysis
Events Recall a More Bipartisan Era, and Highlight Gridlock of Today

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

A political opposition that is still bitter about President Obama's victory remains unwilling to compromise on social policy, economics or foreign affairs.

So I ask you again, good citizen…

Are the >One Percent compelled to tell us that they have hijacked our government?

Obviously not (nor is it in their interest to do so.)

Instead you are expected to believe that we are suffering from the ‘side-effects’ of our ‘imperfect’ system of government. A system made more imperfect by those with a vested interest in convincing the pubic that ‘self rule’ is a ‘bad thing’.

(The alternative of voting for representation will be no representation at all.)

Look at all of the criminals the current system ignores! (Mind you, these criminals are the same people that don’t want you to have a say in your own affairs!)

They are, in fact, our politicians…corrupt to the core and criminals one and all.

But you didn’t need me to point that one out, did you?

Under A Simple Plan there are no more ‘politicians’ nor are there any ‘elections’. The only thing you’ll cast a ballot for is to weigh in on what should or should not become law of the land.

(And there is a very specific process to safeguard against ‘heads I win and tails you lose’ legislation from even getting proposed, much less put up for consideration. That’s what Leadership is about.)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Friday, December 21, 2012

Happy Solstice!

Greetings good citizen,

It’s not everyday that one gets to wish their readers a Happy Solstice AND a festive TEOTAWKI at the same time but today just happens to be that day!

Naturally, the first thing I look at after being subjected to that annoying Hilfiger advertisement is how the ‘Fraud markets’ are performing.

We long ago established that they no longer reflect the real economy but rather the ‘sentiments’ of the >One Percent.

Apparently the GOP is having a hard time delivering their promised cuts to social entitlements (that people have paid into all of their lives for, so your damned right they’re ‘entitled’ to them!) and this morning’s markets reflects ‘investor disappointment’:
Wall Street Slides After Fiscal Setback
By NATHANIEL POPPER 9:41 AM ET

Stocks slumped at the start of trading, depressed by the setback late Thursday in Washington on progress toward a budget deal.
Like the new axiom goes, if it’s bad for the real economy the stock market likes it and vice versa.

[The ‘logic’ here is the quicker the US becomes a Banana Republic the ‘safer’ the robbers will be, thus all this slashing of the safety net is key.]
The New York Stock Exchange at Broad and Wall Streets in Manhattan was not as crowded Thursday as it once was.

Exchange Sale Reflects New Realities of Trading
By BEN PROTESS and NATHANIEL POPPER

The takeover of the New York Stock Exchange’s owner illustrates starkly how trading in commodities and derivatives has become much more lucrative than trading in corporate shares.

[Rumor has it the big trading houses have been throwing people out of the windows wholesale since the markets tanked five years ago…odd that they should bring up the hole this has created now.]

DealBook: At the Big Board, Seeking Rejuvenation in Consolidation 1:42 AM ET
*ICE Deal for N.Y.S.E. Creates Global Powerhouse 8:59 PM ET
Graphic: Smaller, But Growing Fast
*Wasn’t I just saying a few days ago that this ‘private ownership’ thing isn’t a good way to make decisions for an entire civilization?

Don’t let the weasels get away with telling you they were suckered…the one being suckered is YOU!

$1,200 a Pound, Truffles Suffer in the Heat
By DAVID JOLLY

Black Périgords are becoming scarcer and more expensive, and some scientists say it is because of the effects of global warming on the fungus’s Mediterranean habitat.
Geez Bud I wouldn’t know a Black Perigord if I tripped on one (and have about the same chance of one ever crossing my lips at THAT price!) So if we’re talking climate change, the fate of the ‘Black Truffle’ is down around the bottom of my list (as it would be for most people…you don’t miss what you never knew in the first place and too few people know what Black Perigords taste like.)

But that’s our corporate owned media for you…
News Corp Says Publishing Wing Lost Money
By REUTERS 31 minutes ago

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp said the publishing arm it plans to spin off from its entertainment assets would have lost $2.08 billion in the last fiscal year if it were a standalone company.
This is news? Seriously good citizen, would YOU ‘pay’ to read that bullshit? Most of you don’t watch it either but there’s no way to prove that. News Corp exists not as a public utility but as the mouthpiece of the fucking One Percent (and should be boycotted as such!)
Peter Madoff Is Sentenced to 10 Years for His Role in Fraud
By PETER LATTMAN and DIANA B. HENRIQUES

Peter Madoff, Bernard L. Madoff's younger brother, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Thursday for his role in enabling the extensive fraud that swindled investors out of billions of dollars.
Um, we can either opine it took ‘em long enough or we can once again look at it as a ‘token arrest’ while the real criminals walk away unmolested…and there’s no saying we can’t render both judgements.

Next (was deleted for relevance) so we have this story instead…
Boehner Cancels Tax Vote in Face of G.O.P. Revolt
By JONATHAN WEISMAN

Speaker John A. Boehner abruptly halted efforts to pass fallback legislation to prevent a fiscal crisis after conservative Republicans refused to allow taxes to rise even on the most affluent.
with the general election behind them and the mid terms two years away these guys can afford to be assholes, they have a year and a half to pretend it never happened.

That’s part of the problem with the conservo-whacko mind, the rest of us don’t forget who is responsible for this mess. But come the next election cycle and they will be convinced that it is the other parties’ fault, despite (concrete) evidence to the contrary.

And this brings us full circle to the ‘free pass’ the media gives the conservo-whackos.

The evidence is there but the corporate owned media refuses to air it…and that’s not what ‘public utilities do’ it is against the public’s interests…but our corrupt justice system turns a blind eye to this issue, damning them all to the executioner’s crosshairs as they flee for their lives into the Badlands.

But I digress…last but not least:
Faltering Budget Talks Hit Markets
By REUTERS

Currencies held to tight ranges in thin preholiday trade, and the euro seesawed against the dollar.

Um, all I have to say good citizen is if disaster strikes it will show up here (in the currency markets) first.

Thanks for letting me inside your head, have a nice TEOTAWKI!

Gegner


Thursday, December 20, 2012

Tar & Feather

Greetings good citizen,

Either tonight at midnight or tomorrow night and it’s ‘game over’ for the world as we know it…

But Mayan jokes aside, we keep letting this bullshit slide and it won’t be long before we find ourselves cheering on a world ending catastrophe!

Like the, er, ‘unfortunately worded’ Second Amendment, it seems the givers of ‘corporate person hood’ (our thoroughly corrupt judiciary) have decided that ‘freedom of the press’ rests solely in the hands of he who OWNS the press.

How frightening is it good citizen to live in a society that seems to have developed an insatiable appetite for ‘secrecy’?

What is it that they are so intent on ‘hushing up’?

Or are we back to the now ancient argument that only the (proven incompetent) can be trusted to judge what is ‘good’ for society.

Well if Citizen’s United and our recent string of unfunded and unsupported foreign adventures are any indication of our ‘betters’ social superiority then we are well and truly good citizen.

Perhaps more telling is a goodly percent of the average citizenry is already hoping for some type of catastrophe (which they and theirs will escape unscathed, of course!) that will remove THEM from being a ‘bug under the glass’ (fuck the rest of you!)

(Did I mention selfishness is a primary driver behind the lack of action we’ve seen as our entire society is swept into it’s own cesspool and nobody lifts a finger to stop it?)

Who me?

I’m doing my part…and keeping my powder dry until the time is right…

Anyway, on with the story…

Tuesday in California, the Federal Appeals Court ruled against a group of journalists at the Santa Barbara News-Press who had been fired for demanding editorial integrity and a union. Rather than uphold their rights both to unionize and to speak out against bad editorial practices, the federal court instead said their dismissals were protected by the publisher's First Amendment Rights to print whatever she wanted.
The dispute began in 2006, when nearly all the top journalists and editors at the Santa Barbara News-Press quit because the paper's owner and publisher Wendy McCaw was interfering in the editorial content. As Melinda Burns, one former journalist at the paper wrote in the Santa Barbara Independent about that period:

"Spring had barely turned to summer that year when Editor Jerry Roberts and four other editors resigned, citing what they said was McCaw’s unethical interference in newsgathering and reporting. A dozen reporters quit, too, including one who had been covering a neighborhood dispute over the development plans of Rob Lowe, an actor friend of McCaw’s who wanted to build a mansion on a vacant lot in Montecito. Following standard newsroom practice, the reporter reported the address of the lot. Lowe’s assistant called the paper to complain, saying Lowe was going to cancel his subscription. McCaw fired off harsh letters of reprimand to the reporter and three editors, who all eventually resigned. Those of us who chose to stay in the newsroom knew we needed a written contract to protect our job security and integrity as journalists from McCaw’s arbitrary attacks."

Looks like a tempest in a teapot, doesn’t it? But the ‘precedent’ is set…owners rule and workers can go pound or better, quit if they don’t like it!

Which is to opine that ‘ownership’ is a terrible way to decide anything, yet our whole legal system is founded on that idea…

Which is to opine that for more than three hundred years, we’ve been DOING IT WRONG!

But not according to the ‘owners’ (and if you don’t ‘own’ then you don’t even belong at the table never mind deserve a seat!)

That’s how the game has been played for all of these centuries…but now there’s nothing left to own, all of the good stuff is gone…so a vast majority of us are on the outside looking in...

And the owners don’t give a fuck!

So here we sit, wondering just what ‘secrets’ they are keeping from us?

Could it be as petty as the example of ‘journalistic harassment’ given in this article or do you suppose the cloak of ‘national security’ could be covering up some major ‘errors in judgement’ that could make the One Percent look very bad indeed.

Didn’t Bush the First comment (like the founder Washington) that if the people knew what they had been up to they would ‘tar and feather’ us (and run us out of town on a rail!)

Oh and in case you didn’t know, tar and feathering (which sounds benign) was often fatal. (The tar would block the skin’s pores, killing them and causing gangrene to set in.)

So, when you’re sitting there, wrongly thinking ‘live and let live’ as far as the One Percent are concerned, don’t be foolish enough to think the feeling is mutual.

As far as they’re concerned you are the biggest threat to their continued mastery of the world’s resources. (Which they will continue to dole out as benefits THEM the most and the rest of us can go do the anatomically impossible!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Wednesday, December 19, 2012

No Men

Greetings good citizen,

Today will be one of my ‘free form’ pieces where I don’t use any Corporate Owned Media reference points…although I will use topics I found in today’s online posts, both friend and foe.

Let’s start with the not too helpful observation that, to date, all ‘rampage shooters’ have been male.

So instead of outlawing guns maybe we should just outlaw men and be done with it…

No men, no killing. (Which ignores a long and tragic history of murderous women, but the author doesn’t hold woman blameless, she merely points out the obvious, that women ‘don’t prefer’ to go on shooting rampages (although they might learn to like it if they only gave it a try…)

A couple of articles later and the teachers (unionized teachers no less) are declared the ‘heroes’ of Sandy Hook…

Um, apparently tragedy provides the opportunity to drape your favorite hobby-horse in the cloak of ‘heroism’ when, at the end of the day, there were NO heroes at Sandy Hook, just frightened people doing whatever occurred to them during moments of extreme duress.

No heroes, only victims and survivors. This compulsion to glorify the participants in what was really a tragic social backlash borders on the sociopathic…

It is not the kind of behavior you need or want to encourage.

If we start celebrating ‘victim hood’ the next thing you know we will be taught to ‘cherish’ our slavery (as a proud part of who we are…in the minds of the >One Percent!)

Short hops or as the Soviets liked to call it, ‘gradualism’.

Which only belabors the obvious on my part, we must be very wary of the ‘for profit’ media.

Look at the mess they have made of the relatively benign playground politely called ‘entertainment’.

Nothing ‘too intellectual’, we don’t want them to think…or worse, ask questions! Then we don’t want them to, er, ‘dwell’ on their own wretchedness so we have to have reality shows drawn straight from the casting couch of ‘the Beverly Hillbillies.’

How ironic that most viewers of the relatively new ‘Alaska, the last frontier’ watch it with a degree of ‘envy’.

More ironic is how the show Yukon men displays what happens when too many people decide to live ‘off the grid’…

Mother Nature can’t support that many predators, which is why the farmer supplanted the hunter/gatherer.

Now we need to take farming to the next level…because we didn’t stop growing.

IF there is a second season of Yukon men it will show the ‘rugged individual’ choking on his ‘self-sufficiency’. If you watched the first season with a jaded eye you can see it is happening already.

Then there are the, er, comedic escapades of the Gold Rush crews…I wouldn’t follow Todd Hoffman across the street, never mind to the Klondike!

Like Sr. in American Chopper, apparently Fred (the claim jumper of Porcupine creek) doesn’t care how he comes across on TV.

Or maybe reality TV runs on assholes…it’s hard to tell.

I don’t think I’m alone in believing that in order to have your own ‘reality show’ you must first be a selfish jerk…which is not true on all cases. Otto on Alaska the last frontier and the rest of the Kilcher clan are not ‘full of themselves’…(although the bozoes of the Amish Mafia appear to be.)

Parker Schnaubel is the only worthwhile figure on Gold Rush (even in the throws of ‘gold fever’ he retains his sense of self and what’s important (far better than many of the so-called adults on the show! And his Grandpa is the true ‘salt of the earth’ type who is always pleasant to deal with.)

But you don’t need me to expound upon the wasteland that has become ‘primetime TV’…you see it for yourself.

And these days everybody with a keyboard is shaking the finger of shame at the corporate owned media…which is having zero effect, in case you didn’t notice.

What I find particularly disturbing is the trend of ‘off-shoring’ (so far mostly ads) to Bollywood, although there are some ‘test ballons’ flying right now of Bollywood produced ‘sitcoms’…as if they weren’t already pitiful enough!

(Take a closer look at the stars if you don’t know which ones…)

Um, the NYSE has opened since I started writing this, let’s have a peek at how the other end of the ‘entertainment industry’ is faring…

And the US market opened and headed straight for the basement…must be time for some ‘profit taking’ (given the recent irrational rise in share prices…)

Yurp is still in the green and the markets to the South of us haven’t tanked…yet, but it’s still early.

Um, this is why I don’t do ‘unscripted’ very often…it produces rambling pieces…which is not a good thing if you consider the range of my ‘normal’ posts…

Um, that said I will leave you to parse this mess as best you can,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Save the Children

Greetings good citizen,

Still at the top of the current news cycle is the recent massacre in CT…and just as I predicted, they are only feeding the fire with their self-centered rhetoric.

Which is to say the (idiot) opinion-makers are already talking like dialing up the punishment is all it’s going to take to solve this problem

So we are left with this highly rhetorical question:

Does America Hate Its Children?

We do not protect them from poverty, disease, or guns.

December 17, 2012 |

America’s children seem to be shortchanged on almost every issue we face as a society.

Not only are we failing to protect our children from deranged people wielding semi-automatic guns.

We’re not protecting them from poverty. The rate of child poverty keeps rising – even faster than the rate of adult poverty.

And we’re not protecting their health. Rates of child diabetes and asthma continue to climb.

If we go over the “fiscal cliff” without a budget deal, several programs focused on the wellbeing of children will be axed — education, child nutrition, school lunches, children’s health, Head Start. Even if we avoid the cliff, any “grand bargain” to tame to deficit is likely to jeopardize them.

At the same time, states and localities have been slashing preschool and after-school programs, child care, family services, recreation, and mental-health services.

Why?

Conservatives want to blame parents for not doing their job. But this ignores politics.

I have already pointed out why Johnny has (ADD, Aspergers or fill in the blank social disorder…along with a plethora of physical discomforts…it’s because Johnny wouldn’t be here if not for a friggin’ test tube!)

And that’s because Mommy and Daddy couldn’t afford to ‘settle down’ to raise a family until they were in their late 30’s, pushing their biological clocks to the limit…and often beyond.

And why?

So ‘a few’ could be rich. (Although those few were already rich…so it is THEIR CHILDREN that we have sacrificed the health of the next generation for!)

Understand the logic here…they never worked a day in their lives so it would be ‘irresponsible’ of them to put their children in the position of having to take orders from an asshole like themselves!

Thus did they feel compelled to multiply their fortune so their children wouldn’t be forced to work for assholes like themselves…(and the rest of civilization be damned!)

They can teach their children how to BE THAT ASSHOLE but they can’t put them in the position of having to take orders from one!

What would the relatives say?

Those are just stories they scare one another with around the family dinner table when the cousins come over…right?

Imagine the horror of actually having to work for somebody else…

A horror the rest of us relish…because without employment, your prospects are mighty thin.

Um, I am not ‘gloating’ over being correct…we all knew up front nobody had any intention of ‘doing the right thing’, least of all a president you can’t punish.

Looking ahead to 2016 (and supposedly Hillary’s turn…), given our current plight, do you still believe the ballot box isn’t utterly useless?

Hopefully by 2016 we will be voting directly on the laws themselves, this voting for someone to decide in your name is for the birds! It hasn’t worked in 240 years!

In a ‘better’ future, ‘rich’ will become a word used too describe our culture and not any individual.

NOBODY will ‘own’ fifty millimeters (never mind fifty miles) of pristine oceanfront, patrolled by attack helicopters (with orders to shoot trespassers on sight.)

‘Tis the Season of Hope, is it not? Well if we’re going to hope we need to do it right…and yes Virginia, there are ‘right and wrong’ things to hope for.

The cursed Libertarians think all ‘rights’ stem from ownership…but fail to define where that ‘right’ comes from…

They say stupid things like they own themselves…which, not to surprisingly, leaves the door open to others owning them too.

Or them owning others…which would suit that selfish bunch just fine.

AFTER we get through screening for psychopathy (a requisite in our ‘hopeful future’) there won’t be any Libertarians left…because it’s core beliefs are identical to the symptoms of incurable mental illness.

Unsurprisingly, I suspect the Republicans will be decimated by this weeding out process as well.

That’s the ‘sugar plum fairy’ that dances around in my head…

And thanks for letting me into yours…

Gegner


Monday, December 17, 2012

The King's Speech

Greetings good citizen,

Just five more shopping days ‘til 12/21/12! Make sure you get your ‘End of Days’ gifts early…you wouldn’t want to find yourself ‘left behind’.

But all joking aside the stock market continues to (as the neocons put it) ‘make its own reality’ as stock prices rise in defiance of reality on the ground.

Be that as it may, I think we finally have an answer to the niggling question of what’s the ‘common thread’ behind all of these shooting rampages?

And while the President (to his credit) went on national TV last night and promised to do ‘everything in his power’ to change things…how much change do you think the president can make?

Sadly I strongly suspect his speech is the only thing we’ll get.

The ‘hope of change’ is going to have to sustain us for now.
The newly re-elected president offered few specifics about how he planned to proceed, saying only that he will engage with law enforcement, mental health professionals, parents and educators in the coming weeks. Just days after the shooting at an elementary school, Obama is already facing pressure from fellow Democrats and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to tackle gun control legislation, a contentious issue he avoided as he sought a second term.

But Friday's shooting, which left 20 children and eight adults dead, appears to have spurred some soul-searching by Obama, who told Connecticut's governor that Friday was the most difficult day of his presidency. Speaking to families of the victims and first responders, Obama said Sunday that he had been reflecting on whether the country was doing enough to give its children "the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose."

"And if we're honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We're not doing enough, and we will have to change," Obama said. Sunday marked the fourth time in Obama's presidency that he has traveled to a community shaken by a mass shooting. Just this summer, he made a similar visit to Aurora, Colo., where a dozen people were killed in a movie theater attack.
What’s next ‘bomb control?’ (Once gun control is proven ‘ineffective’…)

And that’s the sad reality good citizen, take away the guns and the ‘disenfranchised’ will be forced to kick their game up a notch…and that means bombs.

Do you REALLY want to trade guns for bombs? Because the problems this gruesome phenomenon represents isn’t going to ‘go away’ just because you took the law abidings ability to defend themselves away?

As this article (miraculously) alludes to, this is NOT a gun issue, legislation to outlaw guns would be just as effective as outlawing insanity! It won’t work.

You want to stop mass murder? Take away the murderer’s reason to act out!

It is finally becoming apparent precisely what all of these ‘kids’ have in common…kids with their ‘whole lives’ ahead of them.

But what if all you saw was a future without hope, being a debt slave until the day you dropped…and if you DON’T agree to play that game the alternative is how many bugs can you catch (‘hopefully’ without having to use yourself as bait?)

Yup, one thing we can credit our school system with is their success in pounding the message ‘you’re on your own’ into our young people’s brains.

Worse, they all come from homes that have seen their parents struggle to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads…and the kids think ‘if my parents can’t do it then how the heck am I going to make it?

And they arrive at their own conclusion.

How fucking sad is it that the kids are usually right?

Worse, that they decide suicide is the only way out.

As a 'parting shot' what do you suppose these people’s kids are learning?
For Spaniards, Having a Job No Longer Guarantees a Paycheck
By SUZANNE DALEY

With Spain’s ongoing economic crisis leaving local governments in debt and businesses struggling, workers sometimes have to resort to legal measures simply to be paid.

Will they grow up hating a tax-starved government or will they loathe themselves for not being ‘higher born’?

Because, ironically, these poor kids see the government and not the tax dodging wealthy as the problem.

The kids are too young to realize that the problem stems from the lawyers of the wealthy taking those unpaid tax dollars for themselves.

Did I mention our entire (global) legal system is totally fubar?

Well, last night’s announcement was indeed as outstanding as it was awe inspiring…too sad that it is also ‘as good as it gets.’

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Sunday, December 16, 2012

Blind Eye

Greetings good citizen,

For this week’s episode of ‘descent into the maelstrom’ we have this purposefully vague and more than a little hopeful article on why the stock market is seemingly ‘divorced’ from the real economy.

Observe:
THAT may help explain why, despite all the storm clouds hanging over this economy, professional investors appear willing to look past the poor data. In fact, money managers say they are more bullish about domestic blue-chip stocks than about stocks in emerging markets or the rest of the developed world, according to a recent survey by Russell Investments.

John S. Osterweis, chairman and chief investment officer of Osterweis Capital Management, says that the economic head winds notwithstanding, several long-term trends could support a new leg to the bull market in domestic stocks.

Among them are a possible rebound in the housing sector, a potential revival of domestic manufacturing as wage growth accelerates in China, and the tail wind that could arise from the boom in domestic energy production.

Mr. Dorsey at Sanibel points to yet another possible tail wind. “Think about what uncertainty causes,” he said. “It causes low expectations. And when is typically a good time to buy an asset class? When expectations and valuations are low.”

The above are the closing paragraphs from this NY Times article…trust me, you won’t find anything more concrete in the whole package.

Especially, er, ‘hopeful’ is the third paragraph where they cite a list of (highly relative) possibilities.

Loan me your blind eye so I can point to some of the features they, er, ‘gloss over’…

Let’s start with the ‘Only game in town’ part of the puzzle. And what they don’t want to point to is the ‘Secret of their success’.

Have you noticed the never-ending procession of mergers and acquisitions? That’s why stocks are doing well while the rest of the economy is at a dead stall.

Capitalism is all about Market Share and when you reach ‘market saturation’ capitalism turns cannibal.

That alleged ‘opportunity for everyone’ turns into market share for those who can afford to buy it.

Oh, and how do you ‘justify’ spending tons of cash for market share that would have been yours if you had just waited?

You throw a ton of (suddenly redundant) people out into the streets (and pocket all of those ‘salaries and benefits’!)

Which as we can see from the ‘labor force participation rate’ actually shrinks the overall economy!

Thereby increasing social unrest…but the peckerheads who wrote this article don’t take that into consideration…

Since you absorb the shares of the ‘target’ company, your shares naturally ‘rise’ because you have captured market share you didn’t have before…by eliminating a competitor.

But, as these assholes know, there is a downside to this variety of economic predation that walks hand in hand with diminished opportunity.

Eventually a very small handful of not necessarily intelligent people end up owning everything…and they don’t feel your pain. You lost, so you should sit down and shut up.

Didn’t get your turn ‘at bat’, not their problem!

Until you make it their problem!

Like yesterday’s ‘disenfranchised’ young man who did something totally senseless because he had absolutely nothing to lose!

And if that doesn’t bug you…you may not pass the test.

Worse…since this ‘nothing to lose’ phenomenon is spreading, things could get mighty frightening, mighty quick (and the idiots currently in charge have no clue how to fix it, except by playing to the ‘nothing left to lose’ crowds strength.

Did I mention our civilization is self-destructing faster now that the process is picking up steam?

What I’m really curious to see is what kind of ‘New Deal’ they are going to offer the marauders who threaten civil order?

The first couple of passes will be ‘Band-aids’ at best. Discounts on mortgages and guarantees on jobs that are so conditional as to be worthless.

We all know how the HMO bullshit ended up, you’re two bucks a week became two thousand a month (and rising!)

But not until after the publicly funded healthcare system was dismantled…thanks St. Ronnie!

No what I’m curious to see is if the people will fall for the same old crap they’ve been ‘force-fed’ for centuries or whether civilization will self-destruct due to the massive decay of trust and good will?

Pretty fucked up thing to be pondering during the season of peace and goodwill…but considering how commercialized it’s all become, maybe it’s not that fucked up after all.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Saturday, December 15, 2012

First Person Shooter...

Greetings good citizen…

I’m sure many of you are ‘anticipating’ how I will address the most recent wave of violence erupting across our crumbling civilization...

And I’ll repeat what I’ve been screaming about all along…although you’ll now see certain ‘between the lines’ and ‘assumed’ universals (things everybody knows but few acknowledge) brought to the fore.

First let’s look at the ‘culture of violence’ we are expected to shrug off like it doesn’t effect us.

How many of you are connecting yesterday’s gunning down of Connecticut school children with drones killing civilians halfway around the planet (who are ‘posthumously’ labeled ‘terrorists’ by the corporate owned media to justify this ‘murder’?)

But a little closer to home we need look no further than the prevalence of ‘first person shooter’ video games that kids like Mr. Lanza grew up playing.

What doe this do to a child’s Id?

Sure as hell ‘desensitizes’ them to the idea of shooting someone to death…doesn’t it.

And what was one of the headlines on my homepage news feed this morning? How violent video games are the ‘top seller’ at retailers this Christmas.

How much of this is caused by Halo, Call of Duty or Assassin’s creed?

More succinctly, what drove this anti-social loner to first KILL HIS OWN MOTHER and THEN take up arms and drive down to the local elementary school (as opposed to a shopping mall) and open fire?

Do you think we should start mandatory testing (for psychopathy) now or should we wait until a few more thousand are murdered?

Will the next psycho cut to the chase and blow the whole school up?

Hell, we’ve already let the ‘high functioning’ psychopaths destroy the global economy so what’s the senseless murder of a few dozen innocents matter?

When there’s a ‘free for all’ out in the streets it will be too late. The bonds that prevent us from killing one another on sight are wearing perilously thin.

How many times do I need to repeat this before SOMETHING (like TESTING) is done?

Or would we discover that drawing our children from the bottom of a test tube (another crisis that the media purposefully ignores) is adding to what Mother Nature might naturally screen out? (Like the sudden surge in nut allergies and the insane jump in asthma rates?)

But no, we couldn’t possible be talking about the same thing…except we are now coming into the ‘maturation’ of the first generation of ‘test tube’ babies.

And with it nobody wants to connect the alarming rise in the rates of ADD and other ‘socialization’ problems that have been ignored…because the source of every one of these afflictions is…rabid capitalism (profits before people!)

Why are females ‘waiting’ so long to start families? Because they want to establish their careers first…so they go to school and work during their prime childbearing years, leaving most of them barren by the time they make their heap (or say yes to the guy who has been chasing them since they were in High School.)

No money, no family!

What do you suppose our young shooter saw that the fucking asshole corporate owned media is doing its damnedest to ignore?

He saw a system that didn’t have a place for him and determined that no matter how he sliced it, he had nothing to lose!

He killed his mother for bringing him here in the first place and he killed those kids as a ‘favor’ to them. While he’s not here to ask I would bet he believed he was doing them a ‘kindness’ (albeit a left-handed one.)

Which also shines a spotlight on just what kind of monsters we’re dealing with here (and I mean that figuratively because we are factually doing nothing about this.)

So, I have pissed off my female readers and all of the parents in my audience…but like I have said repeatedly, I’m not here to be ‘popular’, nor is it my purpose to tell you what to think.

My ‘mission’ is to provide you with things to think about by offering up a different perspective than the corporate owned media serves up.

Yes, they lie to you religiously and you don’t hate them…(you may catch yourself muttering ‘bullshit’ under your breath a lot but you don’t begrudge them doing you the disservice of lying to you in order to protect the oligarchs.)

Yup, nobody questions that the stacked deck has become obvious just as nobody questions the futility of living from lottery to lottery, hoping you can set yourself free from the debt trap you were born into.

I’ll ask (rhetorically) if our shooter was ‘wrong’ in his assessment of the future that led him to act so…

Rationality is a very fragile thing, what seems senseless to you may appear perfectly logical to someone else.

If we back up a few steps, the society that bred this killer is NOT blameless…

I say the ‘root’ of this disease lies in a predatory social structure that leaves the individual on their own to deal with problems that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

We would be very lucky indeed if the Mayans were right and this predatory mess we are snared in ‘died’ on 12/21/12…

So what do you say good citizen, are you feeling lucky?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, December 14, 2012

Killer prescription...

Greetings good citizen,

Probably more than you, I wish I’d wake up one day and not find anything to write about…but we both know that isn’t going to happen!

Today’s nominee for ‘Stooge of the moment’ is this nitwit:
Today's Economist
The Trade-Off Between Economic Growth and Deficit Reduction
By LAURA D'ANDREA TYSON

The extremely slow recovery from the recession would be dealt a deadly blow if a rigid austerity plan was imposed on government spending.

Let’s test this one shall we?

Why is the alleged ‘recovery’ failing to materialize? Because all of the customers are BROKE.

So we slap the world’s BIGGEST CUSTOMER with a spending freeze and somehow, magically (it must be assumed) the economy will start rolling again.

And better, the alleged ‘deficit’ will (also magically) ‘melt away’.

Without inquiry we can conclude one thing, that Ms. Tyson is a conservo-whacko who believes in ‘magical thinking’ (because the mechanics of her proposal are totally ‘counter-intuitive’.

Would that we could find an energy source that obeyed the same principles (the less you used, the more it produced!)

To understand idiotic assertions like this made by allegedly ‘educated’ individuals we need look no farther than the >One Percent.

You see, there is no ‘fiscal crisis’ for the uber wealthy and as far as they are concerned, ANYTHING that drives taxes down is a good thing (even though they don’t pay any!)

It may not make sense to the average individual why the super rich, who don’t pay taxes in the first place, would be so focused on tax reduction…unless you look at it from the criminal’s point of view.

Who pays the cops?

Your tax dollars.

Wait, they own the cops (or at least the people who tell the cops what to do) why would they want to strangle the government?

Because then there would be NO ONE to come to your rescue (kind of like now.) You’d have to eat their shit and like it because you would have no choice…just like the old days.

How sick is it good citizen that there are people who pine for ‘the bad old days’? (When a king could have you hung, rape your wife and sell your kids into slavery for no reason other than BECAUSE he was king (and had no special need of you or your services…)

In these twisted bastards minds, they are kings and YOU are insignificant peasants that are a pestilence upon HIS land.

Which brings us (ironically) full circle to psychopaths…did you know there’s a test for that?

More curiously, would you take the test? I would. I already know I wouldn’t test positive.

Which should not be construed as a claim of superior mental health…I’ve got a few loose screws (as constant reader knows…)

We’ve gotten (considerably) off of the beaten path (again) but would it be one of my posts if we DIDN’T ‘digress’?

So we have yet another ‘so-called economist’ claiming austerity for an already reeling society is the prescription that will return us to robust health (despite ALL of the evidence pointing in the exact opposite direction…

Which brings us to the other conservo-whacko claim when their bizarre proposals produce the predicted results…

“You didn’t do it right!” usually followed by claims that so and so wasn’t a ‘real conservative’.

How bizarre is it that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, EACH TIME expecting a different result!

And when the same result occurs they reach the obvious conclusion, ‘you didn’t do it right’…

Worse good citizen, you drive by a (rabid) conservative’s home and the sign on the front lawn admonishes you to ‘Save America, vote Republican!’

How much of an IDIOT do you have to be to NOT recognize that 40 yeas of Republicanism has resulted in the cluster fuck we have on our hands today?

And the answer, sadly, is a mighty big one…because about one in five people profess conservative inclinations (again a surprising outcome as conservatism and insanity are rapidly becoming synonymous!)

Sort of the same thing as wearing an “I’m an idiot” sign (although they don’t wear a sign…which is unfortunate.)

I have been tempted to pull up in front of one of these properties and knocking on the door and inquiring if they are indeed the residents and if they had anything to do with the signage…

If they answered in the positive I’d probably thank them and walk away, it’s what I’d be thinking that would shock them.

“I’ve just survived an encounter with a class A lunatic and lived to talk about it…now I know what one looks like.”

On that note I’ll leave you to your own devices…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Thursday, December 13, 2012

Wow!

Yow! Wow! Kapow…good citizen, my fucking head just exploded!

(Oh, ‘Greetings’, by the way…)

The cause of said explosion?

(careful now…)
Fed Ties Rates to Joblessness, With Target of 6.5%

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve made it plain on Wednesday that job creation had become its primary focus, announcing that it planned to continue suppressing interest rates so long as the unemployment rate remained above 6.5 percent.

It was the first time the nation’s central bank had publicized such a specific economic objective, underscoring the depth of its concern about the persistence of what the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, called “a waste of human and economic potential.”

To help reduce unemployment, the Fed said it would also continue monthly purchases of $85 billion in Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities until job market conditions improved, extending a policy announced in September.

But the Fed released new economic projections showing that most of its senior officials did not expect to reach the goal of 6.5 percent unemployment until the end of 2015, raising questions of why it was not moving to expand its economic stimulus campaign.

Last question could be directly related to the DINO in the White House and his >One Percent ‘handlers’…but that’s not the topic, is it?

No, sadly good citizen, what made my head blow up was the bold pronouncement of ‘The New Normal!’

Do you have a clue what 6.5 % of our 230 million person workforce is? (a number that is twice the size of the one the fed uses to measure the working aged population, but that’s another ‘problem’ closely associated with being treated like a mushroom!)

Bizarrely, the math calls for almost 70 MILLION working aged citizens to be ‘unemployed’ and that’s supposed to be ‘acceptable’?

IF we use the census’s table of working aged citizens…which isn’t how the Department of Labor counts the workforce…considering the 58% ‘labor force participation rate’ (and how 50% of that 58% is ‘part-time’) leaves us on some seriously shaky ground, good citizen.

Backtracking momentarily, we know full well why there hasn’t been an effective ‘economic stimulus’ launched…it’s the same reason why it wasn’t done 5 years ago…NO FUCKING CUSTOMERS!

Boosting sales here only increases demand over there, so it doesn’t do you any good here! (But the fucking quacks who call themselves ‘economists’ can’t figure that out!)

This is why they call it ‘pushing on a string’…something our bought and paid for media thinks we’re too stupid to understand…

Um, if this morning’s serious uptick in violence against law enforcement is any indication of the direction things are headed in, we don’t have much time left.

I’m referring to local incidents…which I am reasonably certain are being ‘echoed’ around the globe.

If it’s quiet where you are, enjoy it! (Just understand you’re the exception and not the rule!)

Those ‘holding pens’ Halliburton won the contract for are starting to look a lot more ominous considering the tendency towards ‘zero tolerance’ that is running in both directions (a certain recipe for a bloodbath!)

Perhaps we should bow our heads in memory of those brave souls who will gladly die on their feet rather than live on their knees in the upcoming battle of freedom vs. oppression…

Because this is the answer to today’s ‘declaration of war’ on the 99% by the One Percent’s toads in Washington.

(How sad is it that the top 20% remain clueless that they will be ‘thrown under the bus’ in a futile attempt to save the one percent’s ass?)

Well, does the ‘topmost dectile’ deserve better? No, it does not. They are the sheep who carried out the psychopaths’ orders without question…they will be the same ones who turned a deaf ear to the pleas for mercy of those they, er, ‘cut-off’ from the means of being able to support themselves and their families.

So shall we ‘turn a deaf ear’ to their pleas of ‘I had no choice, it was them or me!’

Sure sounds like a ‘choice’ to me, doesn’t it?

They just chose poorly.

And for that they must pay.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Wishes!

Greetings good citizen,

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder, they (naturally) surprise the fuck out of you by becoming downright surreal!
The logic of Schuller’s philosophy, which is the doctrine of positive thinking at its most distilled, isn’t exactly complex: decide to think happy and successful thoughts — banish the spectres of sadness and failure — and happiness and success will follow. It could be argued that not every speaker listed in the glossy brochure for today’s seminar provides uncontroversial evidence in support of this outlook: the keynote speech is to be delivered, in a few hours’ time, by George W . Bush, a president far from universally viewed as successful. But if you voiced this objection to Dr. Schuller, he would probably dismiss it as “negativity thinking.” To criticize the power of positivity is to demonstrate that you haven’t really grasped it at all. If you had, you would stop grumbling about such things, and indeed about anything else. [snip]

In reality, mine is up in the nosebleed section; it is a hard plastic perch, painful on the buttocks. But I am grateful for it, because it means that by chance I’m seated next to a man who, as far as I can make out, is one of the few cynics in the arena — an amiable, large-limbed park ranger named Jim, who sporadically leaps to his feet to shout I’m so motivated!” in tones laden with sarcasm.

He explains that he was required to attend by his employer, the United States National Park Service, though when I ask why that organization might wish its rangers to use paid work time in this fashion, he cheerily concedes that he has “no fucking clue.” Dr. Schuller’s sermon, meanwhile, is gathering pace. “When I was a child, it was impossible for a man ever to walk on the moon, impossible to cut out a human heart and put it in another man’s chest … the word ‘impossible’ has proven to be a very stupid word!” He does not spend much time marshaling further evidence for his assertion that failure is optional: it’s clear that Schuller, the author of “Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking” and “Tough Times Never Last, but Tough People Do!,” vastly prefers inspiration to argument. But in any case, he is really only a warm-up man for the day’s main speakers, and within fifteen minutes he is striding away, to adulation and fireworks, fists clenched victoriously up at the audience, the picture of positive-thinking success.

The organisers of Get Motivated! describe it as a motivational seminar, but that phrase — with its suggestion of minor-league life coaches giving speeches in dingy hotel ballrooms — hardly captures the scale and grandiosity of the thing. Staged roughly once a month, in cities across North America, it sits at the summit of the global industry of positive thinking, and boasts an impressive roster of celebrity speakers: Mikhail Gorbachev and Rudy Giuliani are among the regulars, as are General Colin Powell and, somewhat incongruously, William Shatner. Should it ever occur to you that a formerly prominent figure in world politics (or William Shatner) has been keeping an inexplicably low profile in recent months, there’s a good chance you’ll find him or her at Get Motivated!, preaching the gospel of optimism.

As befits such celebrity, there’s nothing dingy about the staging, either, which features banks of swooping spotlights, sound systems pumping out rock anthems, and expensive pyrotechnics; each speaker is welcomed to the stage amid showers of sparks and puffs of smoke. These special effects help propel the audience to ever higher altitudes of excitement, though it also doesn’t hurt that for many of them, a trip to Get Motivated! means an extra day off work: many employers classify it as job training. Even the United States military, where “training” usually means something more rigorous, endorses this view; in San Antonio, scores of the stadium’s seats are occupied by uniformed soldiers from the local Army base.

Technically, I am here undercover. Tamara Lowe, the self-described “world’s No. 1 female motivational speaker,” who along with her husband runs the company behind Get Motivated!, has been accused of denying access to reporters, a tribe notoriously prone to negativity thinking. Lowe denies the charge, but out of caution, I’ve been describing myself as a “self-employed businessman” — a tactic, I’m realizing too late, that only makes me sound shifty. I needn’t have bothered with subterfuge anyway, it turns out, since I’m much too far away from the stage for the security staff to be able to see me scribbling in my notebook. My seat is described on my ticket as “premier seating,” but this turns out to be another case of positivity run amok: at Get Motivated!, there is only “premier seating,” “executive seating,” and “VIP seating.”

It is only months later, back at my home in New York, reading the headlines over morning coffee, that I learn the news that the largest church in the United States constructed entirely from glass has filed for bankruptcy, a word Dr. Schuller had apparently neglected to eliminate from his vocabulary.

Um, not for nothing but you don’t suppose it’s a coincidence that the list of sponsors of this whole ‘voodoo prosperity’ gimmick reads like the Who’s who of the conservo-whacko movement?

We knew these people were ‘gone’ but until now we weren’t certain just how far the ‘Kool-Aide’ went…

Well, this article wraps things up nicely!

And to be honest, good citizen, I didn’t read any further.

I don’t need anybody to define ‘success’ for me (nor do I attempt to define it for others, a decidedly Republican pass time.)

I think the most disturbing ‘revelation’ this article makes is the extent of the US government's’ ‘support' for these carnival barkers.

It’s the story line of the >One Percent they are actively defending…why should tax dollars be expended to spread useless propaganda (while the conservo-whackos are howling about the deficit and ‘entitlement’ spending.)

Which brings us full circle with that pesky ‘management problem’ I keep bitching about.

Did I mention our civilization is woefully ‘mis-managed’?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Making a list...

Greetings good citizen,

Considering the increasingly fragile socio-economic situation we can only be puzzled by this morning’s headline in today’s business section of the NY Times:

Stocks Start With a Gain
By REUTERS 9:37 AM ET

Wall Street opened higher as it enters a traditionally quiet period heading into the end of the year.

Irrationally, the market is up almost 150 points this morning alone and almost 250 points over its recent lows.

Have YOU heard ANY economic ‘good news’ that might justify the trillions of dollars in stock valuations this translates into?

Nope, you didn’t miss it because it don’t exist.

While I’m tempted to go screaming off the reservation on a tirade blasting public apathy over this blatant theft…it will do no good, so I’ll shut up (about this particular topic.)

More succinctly, I think you all know a rising market by no means indicates the salvation of our civilization.

Quite the contrary in fact.

In a rather ‘fitting’ article for the season that has become so closely associated with ‘conspicuous consumption’ we have this tidbit for your consideration
6 Things Money Shouldn’t Be Able to Buy

1. Prison Cell Upgrade


In America’s two-tiered justice system, the rich get access to high-priced attorneys and special privileges, even in the form of a more comfortable prison cell.

2. Internships

It has long been easier for children of the wealthy to secure internships in hot industries, whether through the indirect financial contributions of their parents or the luxury of being able to take unpaid positions. But outright purchase? That's the new normal.

3. Leadership Positions in Congress

No other legislature in the developed world does it. But in America, congressional parties now post prices for key slots on committees. It wasn’t always so, but in the last few decades, the old seniority system that used to govern leadership selection and committee assignments has been swept away. As political scientist Thomas Ferguson explains, “In its place, the parties copied practices of big-box retailers like Walmart, Best Buy or Target…You want it – you buy it.”

4. Airport Security Checks

While the folks in coach are standing in long lines, wealthy customers zip through security at lightning speed. Why? Because they can afford to.

5. Doctor’s Cell Phone Number

Our private healthcare system has clearly failed us. We have by far the most expensive system in the developed world, and many of us still can’t seem to get basic services or see a doctor when we need one. But the doctor is always in if you’ve got the dough.

6. Human Organs

It used to be considered an urban legend, but yes, there is a robust black market for human organs which often involves violence. Criminals in the organ trade can make many times what they pay; a kidney, for example, may cost $10,000 and be sold for up to $150,000.

I love lists like this because of what they omit.

Before I go ‘off the reservation’, do you find the above list to be fairly inclusive, touching on the ‘high point’s of what has become ‘socially acceptable’?

Because naturally ALL OF THE ABOVE would be illegal under A Simple Plan.

How fortunate is it that the last would be impossible…

In a world full of unjustly rich and extreme desperation don’t you think it’s time we ‘re-examine’ the how and why we do what we do?

How fucking sad is it that we have morphed into ‘Libertarian paradise’ thanks to thirty years of morally bankrupt Republican leadership?

What does it tell you when we see the marriage of the concepts ‘If you don’t have a job then society has no use for you’ joined with the idea of ‘paying’ for work…

Where does that leave you?

Could you afford to ‘buy’ your job?

(If you could your employer would be out of business! Chew on that!)

Oh, got that covered…you’re ‘self-employed’.

Guess what? Self-employed with no paying customers is no different than being ‘unemployed’.

Like I said, the above list is a good start but it should be MUCH longer.

Can you think of anything you’d add?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner