Me First!

Greetings good citizen,

This morning’s news caused me to do a double take because it is that incredible, like we need more ‘evidence’ of which letter SHOULD come after the incumbent’s name…

WASHINGTON — When President Obama nominates Chuck Hagel, the maverick Republican and former senator from Nebraska, to be his next secretary of defense, he will be turning to a trusted ally whose willingness to defy party loyalty and conventional wisdom won his admiration both in the Senate and on a 2008 tour of war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The choice of Mr. Hagel, the first Vietnam veteran to be nominated for the post, would add a prominent Republican to Mr. Obama’s cabinet, providing some political cover for the president’s plans to exit Afghanistan and make cuts to a military budget that has roughly doubled since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

But Republicans made clear on Sunday that they would give Mr. Hagel a rough ride on his path to the Pentagon, questioning his support for Israel, his seriousness about the Iranian nuclear threat and his commitment to an adequate defense budget. And Mr. Obama may also face difficulties from some Democrats who are wary of negative comments that Mr. Hagel made more than a decade ago about gays.

Quick point before we smack ourselves silly with disbelief would be, you don’t suppose the corporate owned media HAD TO throw in that BS about Mr. Hagel’s past ‘anti-gay’ comments, do you…I mean who gives a fuck?

The infamous ‘they’ handed the election to Obama because appointing their boy Mitt would have created too much backlash. You’d have had open revolt in the streets.

While I am tempted to shout ‘see, he really is a DINO!’ I had ‘forewarned’ that this day was coming.

And it doesn’t satisfy me in the slightest to be both correct and to have NOT voted for the lapdog. (At least the girls got arrested for protesting their exclusion from the presidential debates!)

Naturally the curious part will be seeing the ‘rubber stamp’ in action as the One Percent’s will is fulfilled, as commanded.

Sort of redefines the term, ‘so let it be written, so let it be done.’

Never mind all of the ‘criminals’ who have skated for the past (3)5 (yeah, that’s thirty-five!) years (probably longer.) I am sure I’m not the only one who finds this ‘homogenous’ government (that acts in lockstep) disturbing.

Barking like rabid dogs until something the One percent favors comes along then it is rubber stamped without even the pretense of debate and it back to being ‘mortal enemies' again!

Are we ‘over the edge’ good citizen? Is it the corporate owned media’s intention to infer that we are all insane because we refuse to acknowledge the inconsistencies (that they routinely gloss over…)

More disturbingly is the ‘revolving door’ of the ‘usual suspects’ being awarded cabinet posts by members of the opposite party.

Does party affiliation mean ANYTHING anymore? (Or are those piddling trifles only of concern to the ‘riff-raff’ and the rabble?)

Worse, we’re being told the same thing we are getting mighty sick of hearing…and that is ‘What are YOU going to do about it?

And we all know the answer to that one, don’t we?

Nothin’.

The criminals are in charge and there isn’t a thing we can do about the mismanagement of our civilization...and you'd think by now somebody would have come up with a solution to that problem.

And we have…it's just not one the criminals ‘like’…but since when are the criminals supposed to be ‘okay’ with justice?

Isn’t it their reckless disregard for the common good that marks them as criminals in the first place?

They know this and try (uselessly) to move the ‘goalposts’ of justice further down the field…by inventing improbable scenarios…like the GWOT.

It takes a truly sick mind to invent something so nebulous…and now we have our national leaders appointing said fabricators to top cabinet posts!

FULL STOP

WE ARE FACING A CRISIS OF CIVILIZATION ENDING IMPORTANCE

But it’s being handled dead wrong!

I will once again point out that MONEY does not equal INTELLIGENCE.

Although it is a sad indictment of our society to feel compelled to point that out because too many people make that erroneous connection.

(Jack Ass is rich so Jack Ass must be smart!)

The ‘criminals’ are protecting their ‘privileges’ at our expense.

It is time we jail the criminals and their co-conspirators in the legal and financial communities.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Class confusion...

Greetings good citizen,

Were someone to ask you what you thought (believed) your ‘class membership’ was, how would you answer?

Tragically, many of you would mistakenly identify yourself as ‘middle class’, hell that’s the catch phrase all of the politicians use…(so it must be true!)

If you’re homeless you MIGHT suck it up and admit to being ‘poor’ (not that this helps or proves anything, circumstances change all of the time.)

Unsurprisingly, there is just as much confusion/mis-identification when it comes to accurately classifying the ‘upper classes!

Life Among the Plutocrats -- What Unimaginable Wealth Does to a Person
They control our politics, shape our societies, outsource our jobs.

January 4, 2013 |

Reviewed:Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, by Chrystia Freeland (Doubleday, Canada 2012)

Last year the Occupy movement brought the subject of inequality into public debate, and especially the inequality between those of us in the 99 per cent and the happy few in the one per cent. But Chrystia Freeland has been studying the happy few for years, and has spent many hours talking with some of their most famous and powerful members.

The result is a book full of surprises and insights. Today's plutocrats are the latest variation on an old theme, and at the same time they're strikingly new in many ways.

Societies have supported plutocratic classes at least since ancient Rome, and the Gilded Age of the US after the Civil War presaged our own: A rising class of self-made men, imaginative exploiters of new technology and wider trade. Then it was the telegraph and the railroad; now it's the internet and the container ship.

So, now we have ‘plutocrats’ being (mis) identified by their tychoonish traits rather then their inherited and very much ‘entrenched wealth’.

So Joe Bootstrapper is a ‘plutocrat’ (which is antithetical to the term ‘self-made man’.)

It is not my intention to kick the author in the shins for abusing a term, I regularly do it myself.

My point, such as it is, is how muddy the waters of ‘class’ have become. Most people ‘self-identify’ as being ‘middle class’ whether they are or they aren’t.

Like I said, you only ‘might’ get a homeless person to admit to being poor, just as you’d be equally as hard-pressed to get a ‘well-born’ individual to admit he was a ‘plutocrat’.

S/He’ll readily admit to being ‘upper class’ but vehemently deny being a ‘One Percenter’ (given the amount of bad press associated with the term recently.)

While the real fox in the hen house is the ONE TENTH of One Percent!

What do we call them (besides peckerheads) if not ‘plutocrats’?

Most would agree that ‘plutocrat’ is pretty much interchangable with ‘oligarch’ as both terms exemplify entrenched wealth AND power…both political and legal…(such as it is.)

Perhaps it is my personal conviction that ‘all money is funny’ that is giving me this quaint ‘comprehension problem’…

While money has often been equated in the ignorant person’s mind with power, money is actually meaningless. Tens of trillions of it can be whipped up instantly with the stroke of a pen! (Our failed banking industry has proven that by ‘conjuring’ a quadrillion dollars US into existence out of thin air!)

Just because the bought and paid for corporate owned media ignores this doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Nope, the ‘real problem’ is our house is burning down around us and while we all know this, nobody is doing anything to put the fire out…

Soon all that will be left are ashes…and memories.

Why is this seeming unthinkable thing happening?

Could it be because we have surrounded ourselves with traitors (who are in it for themselves) and our so-called ‘academics’ don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground?

How stunningly stupid is it that the ‘smartest guys in the room’ are running around with their hair on fire?

Re-directing once again, I am compelled to ask how we can expect to solve the problem if we can’t agree on the cause?

The OWS movement put the One Percent into the crosshairs…but failed to pull the trigger.

Now we have works like this one attempting to muddy the waters by calling innovators ‘plutocrats’ simply because they’re rich…

Mr. Zuckerburg is ‘rich’ but he’s hardly the ‘menace to society’ most of his ‘cousins’ at Harvard are.

In fact you have to wonder just how successful Facebook would have been if it hadn’t gotten its start in the ‘plutocracy’ (entrenched climate of wealth and power) that IS Harvard?

Money does not a ‘plutocrat’ make.

In the end it’s about old family ties and the ability to bend reality to your liking that makes one a ‘plutocrat/oligarch’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Kindness?

Greetings good citizen,

As usual, when the opportunity to flog one of my pet concepts presents itself I hop on it.

How sad is it that the opportunity comes wrapped in ‘nice gesture’ that is likely to end in tragedy?

A California lawyer is giving up his fully-furnished home in Los Angeles for a homeless family to live in for a year, according to the New York Daily News.

Tony Tolbert, 51, says that his act of kindness just feels like the right thing to do.

“You don’t have to be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or Oprah,” Tolbert told CBS News. ”We can do it wherever we are, with whatever we have, and for me, I have a home that I can make available.”

Tolbert will move back in with his mother for the year and continue working. It was in his mother’s house that Tolbert says he learned to be a giving and caring young man.

While I laud the Esquire’s noble gesture, I deplore its necessity. Push come to shove I’ll bet Tony doesn’t like it either.

He’s probably going to find himself in a real difficult place once the year passes and the folks he ‘gifted’ his home to are forced to return to the streets.

(One would hope the ‘advantage’ of having an address could be parlayed into a steady job. The homeless frequently cite that not having a ‘real address or a phone number’ prevents them from getting a ‘good’ job.)

I have both but still can’t find work…and the jobs I apply to be still begging for help…must be conservo-whackos!

AS A SOCIETY, we must ask ourselves why we don’t shelter all members of our species and why we don’t make room for them to contribute and be a part of our community?

Sadly good citizen, the answer to that terrible question is capitalism and it’s ‘fuck you, pay me’ mode of operation.

This is what comes from allowing ‘a few’ people to ‘own’ what we all need to live.

A Simple Plan erases that ‘inequity’ of capitalism and restores the economic balance that is destroyed by ‘fuck you, pay me!’

Think about it good citizen, the ‘exit door’ from the nightmare that has been your life until now is beckoning!

What do you suppose the nice Mr. Tolbert is going to do when it comes time to return the unfortunates to the street?

Will he have to sic the cops on ‘em?

He’s an attorney and obviously smart enough to have his beneficiaries’ sign a quit agreement nullifying their ‘squatters rights’.

How friggin’ sad is that?

Sadder still is this entire masquerade. Mr. Tolbert should not sacrifice his home nor should there be any homeless people in the first place!

Shelter is a human right.

In fact capitalism denies us all many of our rights (so the capitalist can enrich themselves at the public’s expense.)

The part that SHOULD surprise you good citizen is how the capitalist KNOWS what they are doing SHOULD BE a criminal act…but isn’t because they are in cahoots with law enforcement!

And you wonder why you can’t catch a break?

You’ll never catch a break if you play by THEIR RULES…and you will NEVER prosper working for somebody else.

Mathematically impossible…although there are some extremely well compensated ‘toads’ out there.

While they are not criminals themselves, they do the criminals bidding (while fueling the plot lines of many a writer’s speculative scripts!)

Sadly it is the actions of these toads that are responsible for our species’ deplorable state.

But I digress.

While it is ‘wonderful’ that this individual is willing to help the needy, it is tragic that he feels compelled to do so.

We can play the ‘what if’ card here and speculate, ‘what if the people he initially ‘helps’ succeed in improving their circumstances. Has he ‘done his share’?

Libertarians and conservo-whackos would both opine Mr. Tolbert has gone too far and that these people should find their own way to prosperity…because the word ‘gratitude’ is lost on either brand of ‘psycho’.

But let’s suppose that through judicious selection of who receives aid, let’s suppose a ‘few’ families get back on their feet, thanks to the ‘loan’ of Mr. Tolbert’s house.

Should he stop?

Is he ‘poisoning the well’ and wrecking the hired help? (By giving them what capitalism refuses to?)

That is a question society will have to decide…sooner than you think in an energy starved world…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

After posting I encountered this 'must read' article over at Jesse's crossroads cafe...enjoy!

Safeguards

Greetings good citizen,

Today we take a journey to find the birthplace of stupid.

RH: Your book is based on the idea that most of us don’t understand the true roots of political differences. What are we missing?

Haidt: People often assume that politics is primarily about self-interest. They wonder why someone would vote for a candidate who’s going to raise their taxes or cut their benefits. But politics, especially at the presidential level, is more like religion than a shopping excursion. Despite all the individualism and materialism within our culture, our group affiliations matter deeply to most of us. Politics begins to make more sense when you understand it as a tribal phenomenon.

RH: So, in politics, group membership trumps individual need?

Haidt: Yes. The more we care about our ethnic group, our city, our state, our occupational group, the likelier we are to vote for politicians who we believe will advance those interests, even when they diverge from our individual interests. For example, it’s striking how many liberal parents with children weren’t more opposed to forced school bussing in the 1970s. Politics is largely about moral missions for the nation, and the president is expected to be the high priest of the American civic religion. It can be illuminating to see the left and right in this country as practicing different civic religions, and looking to very different high priests.

In yet another ‘book review’, Alternet has provided a useful starting point for examining the issue of why rationality is so rare when it comes to politics.

While it is plain to see that these ‘wedge issues’ abound, the majority of the ‘body politic’ is fundamentally on the same page.

The Mexican standoffs displayed by conservative politicians are for the benefit of the One Percent and their bought and paid for Corporate owned media.

The vocal minority, otherwise known as ‘the Right wing noise machine’ provides the ‘illusion of popularity’ that the corporate owned media uses to hoodwink their viewers.

I suspect the authors findings point to a far more dire outcome…that the phenomenon known as ‘emotionally hard of hearing/deafness’ is more widespread than currently believed.

With its more chilling implication of ‘incurability’.

How do you ‘manage’ a society where a full fifth of its members are ‘certifiable’?

Short answer…you don’t.

Interesting to arrive full circle at the same problem the founders faced two centuries ago (when the Church kept most of the loons in check.)

How unfortunate is it for us that the founders established our current system BASED ON THE BELIEF that the system (of quasi religious dominance) would remain ‘intact’?

More disturbing is how modern conservatives mistakenly believe the system can be restored by more vigorous support of outmoded beliefs. (Thus their ‘partnership’ with the evangelicals.)

(It don’t have to make sense, all you have to do is ‘BELIEVE’!)

I don’t know about you good citizen but the sooner we start testing for this disturbing genetic defect (and isolating those who test positive) the better off we will all be.

Left unaddressed is how many of our fifth ‘learned’ their behavior from their crazy parents/siblings?

If we don’t test we won’t know.

Worse is the danger of this exercise in wisdom turning into a witch-hunt. The whole process, like government, relies a bit too heavily upon ‘honesty’.

Brings us full circle to the question of if it is even possible to rid ourselves of the psychopaths if we fail to reform money first?

Psychopaths are far more resourceful than we give them credit for…which has the potential to create really big trouble.

And they have zero problems with sacrificing the rest of us just to save their own worthless neck.

While the ‘safe’ thing to do is simply ignore the problem, we have arrived at a point in history that won’t allow us to pretend anymore…

Worse, too many of the unbalanced have seized positions of power capable of destroying civilization.

Which for some of them has always been their ‘goal’. (Remember, these people are not just insane, they are incurably insane and view the rest of us as the ‘enemy’!)

Did I mention that our current method of ‘screening’ for socially sensitive positions is woefully inadequate (if not wholly non-existent in most cases!)

But I belabor the obvious, don’t I good citizen?

Which is why the ONLY way to advance under A Simple Plan is through ‘testing’…which tests BOTH your job knowledge and your ‘psychological fitness’ to hold the job!

Given the ‘complex’ world we inhabit, you have to marvel at why we don’t have such safeguards in place right now?

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

Re-think

Greetings good citizen,

As we start a New Year it might be helpful to re-think some of our beliefs (because the people pitching so-called ‘solutions’ have their heads up their asses!)

Thus is today’s offering a vivid example of precisely that phenomenon (I’ll explain after the excerpt.)

Robots Don't Destroy Jobs; Rapacious Corporate Executives Do

Worrying about automation distracts us from the real problem: misuse of corporate profits.

December 31, 2012 |

Americans are understandably upset about profits without prosperity. Corporate executives seem to be the big winners, while the middle class is declining and young people face a bleak economic future. How did this happen? It's easy to blame technology, especially the automation that supposedly displaces workers. But that's not the real story. The fact is that automation creates jobs. It's the misuse of corporate profits that is destroying them.

There was a time when high corporate profits meant bright employment prospects for most members of the US labor force. That relation between profits and prosperity was strongest in the immediate post-World War II decades when US corporations led the world in manufacturing, provided workers with career-long employment security, and reinvested profits in productive capabilities in the United States. For the past three decades, however, the pursuit of corporate profits has been at the expense of prosperity for an ever-growing proportion of the American population.

This disconnect between profits and prosperity began in the 1980s with permanent plant closings that cost production workers their middle-class jobs. It increased in the 1990s as major US corporations scrapped the career-with-one-company norm that had prevailed for salaried employees, and it became common even for college-educated people with a couple of decades of work experience to find themselves on the wrong end of the pink slip. Then in the 2000s, as US corporations accelerated the globalization of production activities, the jobs of all members of the US labor force, no matter what their level of educational attainment, became vulnerable to competition from qualified people in lower wage areas of the world.

The article ‘essentially’ asserts the truth, although it is a stretch indeed to think how automation ‘creates’ jobs (it always ends in ‘net’ job destruction, otherwise it wouldn’t be doable.)

Um, again, the sights are set a bit too low as far as pointing to the true culprits here as well. The front line supervisors do what they’re told, just as unit managers are merely glorified ‘yes men’.

You need to venture into the boardroom and then follow the link to Wall Street, that’s where these irresponsible marching orders originate.

It’s also where the legislation that permits such foolishness starts.

Want to find out who destroyed the US economy…look at who was behind NAFTA…and its primary champion, Ronald Reagan.

Funny how much of what is wrong with today can be traced back to the Reagan Revolution…and the ‘rise of the >One Percent.’

More disturbing are the commercials trying to sucker you into going back to school for a job that most likely doesn’t exist.

Have you seen the college ad that speculates we could ad 20 million new jobs if we only ‘prepared’ for them?

Sort of short for the fucking 230 million working aged people who need work, isn’t it?

This is what I mean, we need to strengthen our grip on ‘reality’ before we become reality’s ‘road kill’.

I’m pretty sure good citizen that the only place on the whole net that you will find pointing to this factor is right here…everyone else either clueless and doesn’t care or assumes you already know and have come to terms with it.

Speaking of the origination of irresponsible concepts we could ‘follow the money’ into the Ivory Towers of Academia to learn who is behind the Randite/Friedman school of economic idiocy.

Rumor has it ‘twas the renowned monopolist Rockefeller…funny (and not necessarily ‘humorous’) the things you can do with ‘money’…

Which only strengthens my case against the current laws governing the uses of money today.

In a ‘more equitable’ world assholes like Rockefeller would be unable to ‘buy legitimacy’ for his pet prejudices.

In a more equitable world you wouldn’t be able to buy the truth either…

But, naturally, I digress…
If I were to share one thing with you good citizen it would be the ‘awareness’ that those who lord over us as our ‘betters’ stopped caring about the welfare of society long ago and focus only on what is good, to and for, THEM.

The ‘fatal myopia’ that I have warned of repeatedly has become so widespread and rampant as to become uncontrollable.

Small comfort that will be when the preppers go on the offensive after squandering their store bought existence…

Again, money gone horribly wrong (but you won’t hear that from Faux News.)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Justice & Civilization

Greetings good citizen,

As expected, the fiscal cliff turned into an easily surmounted molehill as the Senate did what the Republican controlled House refused to do:

Senate Passes Legislation to Allow Taxes on Affluent to Rise
By JONATHAN WEISMAN

The Senate easily passed the measure, which also put off cuts in spending, early on Tuesday after the deadline on the so-called fiscal cliff had passed. Republican House aides said a vote Tuesday was possible.

Voting on New Years Day? Is this so the Republicans can claim they weren’t there when those sneaky liberals raised taxes on their constituents?

The ‘lame-stream media’ has to quit playing the majority of the population for chumps. We all know why it’s going down this way, to provide the media with the claim that the nation is more divided than it really is.

That little lie is key to maintaining ‘the tyranny of the minority’. A full half of us have to be A.) clinically insane or B.) impossibly stupid to believe half of the shit the Corporate owned media claims.

Speaking of ‘Barking Mad’:

Shares End Higher on Hope for Fiscal Deal
By NATHANIEL POPPER

Stocks surged after reports emerged that an agreement might be near in Washington.

As I mentioned yesterday, markets climbed ‘irrationally’ after falling below the 13,000 point mark for the fourth time in as many weeks.

Again, the significance is mostly psychological.

Speaking of ‘Psycho’:

A Year of Market Gains, Despite Turmoil
By FLOYD NORRIS

Stock markets in Europe and the United States turned out to be good investments in 2012, even as governments battled economic problems that threatened disaster.

The thing to keep in mind good citizen is how one thing and one thing only enabled the thieves to, er, ‘dummy up’ the markets and it is something I am constantly reminding you of:

ALL MONEY IS FUNNY!

This ‘success’ they speak of is simply moving the goal posts around to reflect a different picture that doesn’t necessarily reflect ‘reality’.

And speaking of reality:

Amichai Shulman, the chief technology officer at Imperva. The data security firm recently found that antivirus software programs perform poorly against new viruses.
Outmaneuvered at Their Own Game, Antivirus Makers Struggle to Adapt
By NICOLE PERLROTH

Consumers and businesses spend billions of dollars a year on antivirus software, but these programs rarely block freshly minted strains, because the malware creators move too fast.

Um, probably wouldn’t be a good time to bring up the subject of ‘why’ malware developers do what they do, would it? It’s because the hackers pay handsomely…something they wouldn’t be able to do under A Simple Plan ‘cuz money wouldn’t work like that anymore.

Our next headline is creepy all by itself because the ‘as compared to what?’ question is left unaddressed:

Chinese Manufacturing Sector Expands for a 3rd Month
By BETTINA WASSENER

The results of a closely watched survey underline the view that the world’s second-largest economy has settled into a mild rebound that is likely to extend into 2013.

STOP!

A ‘rebound’ that is ‘likely to extend’ into 2013? What does this line tell you good citizen?

It tells me the global economy is fubar.

If you start stacking up the implications of this statement a chilling reality is revealed.

Or perhaps we need look no further than our final headline:

Visa Issue in China Forces Out Times Reporter
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Visa troubles for the reporter and for the new Beijing bureau chief of The Times come amid government pressure on the foreign media over investigations into the finances of senior Chinese leaders.

I know this is the first time (this year) I will suggest such impossibilities as corruption on a global level, indicating collusion around the globe to rob civilization blind…simply because they CAN!

Understand that these, er, ‘miscreants’ have no intention of ‘getting caught’ or paying the price for their crimes, they’d sooner turn the world to glass.

In fact, I suspect nuclear blackmail is one of the key levers they use to keep the authorities at bay.

But the failure of justice is the failure of society, there is no ‘two ways’ about it.

More so than ‘love and marriage’, you truly can’t have one without the other.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner