Rope

Greetings good citizen,

Contrary to the Happy Talk being spewed by the Corporate Owned Media, the destruction of our civilization proceeds apace (to better protect the guilty from prosecution.)

Ironically our first headline is yet another exercise in ‘misdirection/manipulation’:

U.S. Retail Sales Jump
By REUTERS 8:44 AM ET

The Commerce Department said retail sales increased 1.1 percent, the largest rise since September, after a revised 0.2 percent gain in January.

Shares Slip Despite Economic Data

Given a how our entire economy (these days) is based solely upon ‘creative accounting’ it is somewhat disturbing to see the totally fabricated stock markets tanking in light of this alleged ‘good news’.

Can’t these people get on the same page?

But the whole ‘teamwork’ thing doesn’t work for the ‘rugged individuals’ these shills take their marching orders from.

More curiously, we have this bizarre headline focused on a topic that mostly affects the One Percent’s minions…seriously?

Europe Seeks Update of Law on Fliers’ Rights
By NICOLA CLARK 8:57 AM ET

For flights originating in Europe, new rules would clarify passengers’ rights to compensation for delayed or canceled flights.

How will this face-off between two One Percenter’s play out? (One who is picking up the tab for airfare and the other who owns the airlines…)

We may never know.

But this story is increasingly ‘in the news’

Chinese Solar Panel Maker on Financial Brink
By KEITH BRADSHER 8:10 AM ET

Suntech Power, a U.S.-listed company that is closing its Arizona plant, is poised to be taken over by the government of its hometown in China.

Where are the conservo-loonies (that basically chased this US company into the waiting arms of the Chinese?)

The management of this company should be drawn and quartered for treason…but that’s beside the point. Where are you going to sell Chinese made solar panels if you can’t sell them in the US?

And if you try to sell them here, a hundred million unemployed US citizens will tear them apart (along with whoever buys them!)

Then we have the point/counterpoint exercise that follows in two separate headlines:

Blessings of Low Taxes Remain Unproved
By EDUARDO PORTER

Paul Ryan of Wisconsin recycled an argument for lower taxes that surfaced in the ’80s and ’90s, but recent history suggests that higher taxes might help the economy.

The very definition of ‘insane’ is doing the same act repeatedly and each time expecting a different outcome…like conservo-loonies (by definition insane) for steadfastly advocating tax cuts for the rich as a vehicle for ‘prosperity for all.’

Is hasn’t worked in the past yet they somehow think it will work if we give it just one more try!

But wait, the conservo-whackos aren’t done!

We have one last headline from an arch Dumbo!:

Today's Economist
Hidden Costs of the Minimum Wage
By CASEY B. MULLIGAN

The federal minimum wage should be lowered, not raised, so as not to compound the damage it causes.

Lower the minimum wage so as not to ‘compound’ the damage to the economy presumably caused by the US’s ‘uncompetitiveness’

Is this dolt crazy?

You know it is a rhetorical question good citizen, Bobo is a conservative so it stands to reason that things like logic and truth are meaningless to him.

He expects Leprechauns to bring pots of gold to all of the good employers who make their workers suffer the most to better insure ‘class purity’.

How twisted is it good citizen that a certain segment of our society believes there are ‘good people’ who ‘own things’ and needy-greedy people who demand things like living wages and enough to eat.

These same people feel the needy greedy people have to be taught their proper place, that they are ‘entitled’ to nothing.

While those of us condemned to the One Percent’s dung heap think shills like this guy belong at the knotted end of a stout rope with their feet at least twelve inches off the pavement.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Fact, Fiction and News...

Greetings good citizen,

Once again you just can’t make this shit up! Which is to opine that the truth really is ‘stranger than fiction’.

Naturally our evidence comes from the twisted thinking of the bought and paid for shills of the corporate owned media…making it all that much more hilarious!

We begin with the ‘Everybody Knows story of the week:

Your Money
Piecing Together a Tax Plan’s Effects
By RON LIEBER

The recently concluded federal budget agreement could raise the tax bill for people with incomes over $250,000 by thousands of dollars.

Graphic: How the New Limits on Deductions and Exemptions Might Work
A Gigantic Sigh of Relief as Tax Uncertainty Ends
Lawmakers Gird for Next Fiscal Clash, on the Debt Ceiling

The fucking Dow tacked on 300 points yesterday due to ‘relief from tax uncertainty’…can you give me a WTF! ?

How much more ‘divorced from reality’ does it need to get before you are convinced that the idiots in charge of the financial markets are robbing us all blind?

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg:

Some Breaks for Industries Are Retained in Fiscal Deal
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and MATTHEW L. WALD

Hollywood, the railroad industry and rum producers benefited from some obscure provisions that survived the deal between the White House and Congress.

What do stories like this prove? It proves that our ‘elected representatives’ don’t take the time to READ (and therefore comprehend) what they are voting on. (Supposedly an ‘aide’ does the heavy mental lifting but if a lobbyist cleans that aides plumbing he/she might be inclined to give a less than honest/accurate report of what a piece of legislation does or does not contain. Thereby forcing the legislator to commit treason because he/she is too fucking lazy to read their own stuff!

Um, I make no secret of my loathing for ‘representative politics’, it is little different than monarchy, where the few decide for the many…often against their well known wishes.

I would view ‘representative politics’ more kindly if the representative were ‘held accountable’ for their misdeeds, er, ‘actions’.

Vote against the wishes of your constituency and face the hang man…that would foster a modicum of ‘trust’ in the process.

We can appreciate that this would lead to an ‘unusual’ number of ‘abstain votes’ so one would have to extend the rule to cover this contingency as well.

Abstain when the people of your district are decided and face the hangman…which would (rightly) make the majority of modern politicians ‘rethink’ their career choices.

Naturally Gegner is an anarchist with a small ‘a’ who believes in direct democracy and desires to scrap the political process entirely.

Our next news item is another ‘reminder’ of just how badly broken our political system has become:

Media Decoder Blog
Al Gore, a co-founder of Current TV, which will be shut down by the Qatar-based news organization Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera Seeks a U.S. Voice Where Gore Failed
By BRIAN STELTER

Al Gore’s low-rated cable channel will provide the pan-Arab news giant with something it has sought for years: a pathway into American living rooms.

Is it just me or do you detect a note of hostility in the way this headline is worded? The euphemism usually used in this situation is ‘bought out’ not ‘shut down’…but I guess it depends on who is doing the buying, eh?

Is our corporate owned media that fearful of having a different perspective offered to US viewers? They don’t (to our knowledge) muzzle the BBC.

But what do we know about the motivations of our media?

5-Hour Energy says users will not experience letdowns later.
Energy Shot’s ‘No Crash’ Claim Is Disputed by Watchdog
By BARRY MEIER

An advertising watchdog group says it told the distributor of 5-Hour Energy years ago that a claim that the drink did not cause a letdown once the effects wore off was unfounded.

Dunno, never touch the stuff myself…weird that kids go for it though…
And yet more evidence of (false) ‘economic growth’ through increased market share…

DealBook
Hormel to Buy Skippy Peanut Butter
By JEFFREY CANE 27 minutes ago

The Hormel Foods Corporation said on Thursday that it had agreed to buy the Skippy peanut butter business from Unilever for $700 million.

What do you suppose the end result of that move will be? Could it be Hostess all over again?

More Americans Seek Jobless Benefits
By REUTERS 55 minutes ago

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 10,000 last week, the government said, but the data was skewed by the holidays.

Again, nobody is commenting on the badly broken global economy that benefits too few. Unless we look at stories like this one:

Bank Lending in Euro Zone Slumped in November, Data Show
By JACK EWING 7:12 AM ET

The report could fuel expectations of an interest rate cut when the European Central Bank meets next week.

Left to our feeble imaginations is what good cutting already negative interest rates is going to do, economically?

Maybe it’s the ‘psychological benefit’ they’re trying for…maybe it will make the investors ‘feel better’.

How fucking sad is it good citizen that there are no ‘concrete benefits’ to be reaped by cutting already too low interest rates…

Did I mention you can’t make this shit up?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Overdue

Greetings good citizen,

What does it say about our society when the headlines make more interesting reading than the BS stories that follow?

Which is to ask just how much ‘spin’ is too much?

You decide:

Fed Is Likely to Sustain Its Stimulus Program
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

The Federal Reserve must still determine what to buy and how much to spend, and officials continue to debate the best way to describe when the agency is likely to stop buying.

Who do you suppose is ‘surprised’ to read that headline? Even a conservo-whacko would cluck their tongue and mutter ‘what did they expect?’ under their breath.

The disturbing part of this little ‘fluffball’ is what would happen to our badly broken economy if the Fed stopped pumping the banks full of free cash?

It’s almost as disturbing as what’s going to happen as a result of the Feds pumping the economy full of ‘funny money’…can you say ‘Zimbabwe’?

Not to mention that the fuckers have been at this for the past FIVE YEARS…yet it’s going to ‘sneak up on us’ overnight…that’s what ‘spin’ and failure to report the truth does to you!

But wait, there’s more!

Mortgage Crisis Presents a New Reckoning to Banks
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

A torrent of lawsuits could add significantly to billions of dollars of settlements in mortgage securities cases.

Um, geez…isn’t the real estate market making a 180 (according to the National board of Realtors?)

Oh, that’s right! Labor force participation is off 5% (which sort of spells doom for civilization itself, you can only carry so many unemployed before the wheels come flying off.)

More succinctly, who do we tell their ‘dreams’ (and any prospects for a better life) are ‘over’? We’ve been doing it to the ‘graying’ population (while enacting toothless anti-discrimination legislation…just try to get an attorney to take one of those cases!)

But now our kids are being told their race is already run and they’ve got no place to go…and no prospects either.

This most definitely won’t end well and is the result of piss poor management!

(Fortunately, A Simple Plan fixes this, providing that perfect ‘Happily Ever after ending’ we all come to expect.)

Um, there is nothing I can say that will mentally prepare you for this next piece of tripe so here goes…

Chinese Exports Slow, Even as Economy Recovers
By BETTINA WASSENER 1 minute ago

The 2.9 percent annual expansion in exports fell far short of the average of 9 percent that economists had expected, but analysts say that China avoided an economic hard landing.

Does anyone else suspect that these assholes wouldn’t recognize an ‘economic recovery’ if it were dancing naked in front of them?

Has the US press become so ‘jaded’ to economic bad news that they can no longer tell the difference…or is ‘down’ the new ‘up’?

We all know our corporate owned media has zero interest in the truth and (worse) those in public office are more interested in protecting their own backside than protecting the public from predation even THEY WILL SUFFER FROM!

Not that the media has treated ‘truth tellers’ with the respect and admiration they deserve…which brings us to the conservo-loonies and their version of the ‘truth’…which turns this whole argument on its ear!

Take a gander at the next article and tell me the global economy isn’t on life support…

Italian Political Turmoil Weighs on Markets
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO and DAVID JOLLY 6:37 AM ET

European stocks fell and borrowing costs in Italy and Spain rose Monday on fears that Italy was headed for another period of instability.

Next Steps for Italy Uncertain After Departure of Monti
Greece Extends Buyback Offer to Reach 30 Billion Euro Target 8:44 AM ET

For reasons unknown, the typical US citizen thinks the US economy will keep humming along despite what happens in Europe…which speaks volumes regarding the depth of economic ignorance among the general population…

I’m not qualified to say what the average European thinks about the tightrope their nation is walking (again due to gross mismanagement and extremes in economic imbalances.) But if I were a European I’d be shitting Twinkies…if only because we keep getting hit with the evidence that our old commerce model is FUBAR…(and you know what FUBAR means don’t you? [Fucked Up Beyond All Repair…])

Like most newspapers, The Financial Times is struggling with an industry-wide decline in print advertising revenue.

Bloomberg Weighs Making Bid for The Financial Times
By AMY CHOZICK and MICHAEL BARBARO

Michael R. Bloomberg, who has an affinity for The Financial Times, is said to be weighing the wisdom of buying the newspaper if it is put up for sale by Pearson.

The music industry is scroomed, the telecom industry is fooked, even the damned post office is threatened with extinction…

YET none of our so-called ‘leaders’ sees the need to change how we do things…so we are faced with changing even that aspect of our society!

What do we get instead? More fucking ‘reality programming’…has even one of these idiotic shows produced a single ‘star’?

Short answer…NO!

Blake Shelton, left, Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green and Adam Levine judging a contestant on
NBC Rides ‘The Voice’ From Worst to First Place
By BILL CARTER

With its prime-time schedule in tatters, NBC bet on the singing competition show “The Voice” by adding a second weekly edition. The gamble paid off.

Yes good citizen and the next step is to proclaim a day of national mourning for our lost ‘entertainment industry’ (which seems to be going to Bollywood in case you haven’t noticed! Take a close look at the actors in the commercials.)

How fucking pathetic is it that ‘scarioke’ has become the primary source of new programming for the over-worked and underpaid housefrau?

(You see, she thinks she can sing too!)

More disturbingly we have this headline, which casts the future in a very dim light indeed…

Sundar Pichai of Google, which is hoping that its mobile Chrome browser can continue Chrome’s personal-computer success.
Browser Wars Flare Again, on Little Screens
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Shaping the browsers of the future has become a spirited struggle among the big tech companies that see the mobile world as a make-or-break business.

And that, good citizen, is news from the cutting edge of the manufacturing industry…whose browser will more people adopt (qualifying that system’s creator to receive lucrative contracts from the governments of the world to spy on its citizens?)

Is anyone STUPID enough see the millions of JOBS this relentless pursuit of, er, ‘technology’ (isn’t) going to create?

Why have you got your thumb up your ass? Because THIS is ‘state of the art’!

We went from building cars to ‘consuming’ electronics.

We are SO overdue to change operating systems but the keepers of the status quo don’t want to hear it…

So we’re going to have to ‘make them listen.’

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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