Monday, April 8, 2013

Zombies

Greetings good citizen,

Still ‘disoriented’ by this ‘backwards schedule’ (I’m up but I haven’t had breakfast yet because coffee will keep me awake and I need to go back to bed later!)

The posts are fewer but the message remains the same, the destruction of our civilization proceeds apace.

When it finally does collapse it will be swift and (insanely enough) unstoppable…mostly due to massive stupidity…but it is really just widespread ignorance.

Talk about your ‘dangerous games’, there will be no ‘recovery’ from the downward spiral our self-professed ‘betters’ have put us in until ‘justice’ has been served/restored.

And that is the one thing the guilty have no interest in…but they need to be tracked down and eradicated all the same.

Or they will serve as an example to a new generation of thieves, just as the ‘robber barons’ of old are the ‘heroes’ of today’s plunderers.

(You see, our grandparents thought they could ‘tax’ the robbers into compliance when letting them live [while keeping their plunder] was the original mistake.)

[And] justice won’t be restored until the link between prospering personally is severed from the exploitation of what we all need to live. (Forcefully creating a huge ‘underclass’.)

But I digress, let’s have a quick peek at today’s headlines:
Sponsors Now Pay for Online Articles, Not Just Ads
By TANZINA VEGA
The strategy of advertisers sponsoring or producing content that looks much like traditional editorial content has become increasingly common as publishers try to create more sources of revenue.
Who needs ‘truth’ when you can pay to have your, er, ‘point of view’ published as the ‘truth’?

How ‘Orwellian’ (and I’m thinking Orson and not George) when we see this kind of ‘abuse’ of the system we rely upon for our information.

War of the Worlds (the radio broadcast) was an ‘example’ of the power of the media. People believe what they see or read in the media because it is our ‘trusted source’ for news.

They aren’t obliged to advise you that 99% of what they publish as fact is actually the opinion of the paper’s management/revenue department.

So, as you now know (kinda) you should only believe half of what you see and even less of what you hear (because most of it is BS.)

More disturbing was an article on one of the ‘top rated’ TV shows on cable…The Walking Dead.

Besides ‘outperforming’ almost every other major broadcast in its Sunday night time slot, the scientifically improbable event is also used as an allegory for our current political climate…if not our society’s entire political philosophy!

[Leading to my earlier comment regarding the ‘ocean of stupidity’ our civilization is being drown in…thanks to the same ‘profit driven’ media.]

Moving on we have this ‘obvious outcome’ making headlines once again:
Greek Banks Suspend Merger Talks
By NIKI KITSANTONIS 9:45 AM ET
National Bank of Greece and Eurobank said they could not raise the necessary capital under the terms of Greece’s agreement with foreign lenders.
Remember when we actually worried and fretted over how we would ‘pay’ for things?

This is that ‘revisited’. How unfortunate is it, good citizen, that the scoundrels who (and remain at large) bankrupted the global banking system (with impunity) have proven what we all only suspected, that all ‘money is ‘funny’, essentially meaningless.

Why else would Geithner’s replacement be taking this position (given the US’s new found role as being ‘on top’ of the world’s remaining fossil fuel reserves?)
U.S. Treasury Chief Talks of Growth in Europe
By ANNIE LOWREY 11:53 AM ET
On his first trip to Europe as Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew met with European officials to discuss protecting the global recovery.
Difficult for me, after two years of being unemployed, to dismiss the nascent ‘recovery’…BUT, I returned to work by virtue of a skill that has all but disappeared from these shores, manufacturing.

I’m now in the position of being one of the few that knows how to do this stuff.

So my ‘good fortune’ isn’t due to a tide that is lifting all boats. I caught a lucky niche, bully for me!

Not so good for everyone else I’m afraid.

In our final snippet, let us examine yet another inescapable fact of the ground that is rushing up to meet us…
DEALBOOK
G.E. to Buy Lufkin Industries for $3.3 Billion
By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED 12:27 PM ET
The deal is the latest by G.E.’s oil and natural gas unit, one of the fastest-growing parts of the conglomerate.

So Mr. Dillenger, why DO you rob banks?

And he quipped, “Because that’s where the money is!”

Now how many of you are agree with Mr. Dillenger?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Morning in America

Greetings good citizen,

Still not up to regular posting but I thought you shouldn’t miss this excellent post by the incomparable Digby.

As many are noting of late, ‘the Reagan Revolution’ serves as a historical benchmark in the, er, ‘hi-jacking’ of the US government and its subsequent criminal takeover.

The ‘run it into the ground’ policy of the criminals (who disguised themselves as conservatives) becomes evident when we examine what they fondly refer to as “Morning in America.”

Tens of millions of US jobs flowed out of the country while imports flowed freely to hide the drop in GDP.

Our entire economy for the past 35 years has been an exercise in ‘creative accounting' (that has resulted in global bankruptcy.)

Which will soon manifest itself in the collapse of the global supply chain.

Sorry if I seem to be ‘cutting to the chase’ but my powers of concentration are greatly diminished by this disorienting shift change.

Shorter posts will likely be the rule until the situation stabilizes…or should I say ‘if the situation stabilizes.’

Time is running out.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Hell, Circled

Greetings good citizen,

Largely because it’s the middle of the night and I don’t have to go in tomorrow I’m taking advantage of my ‘down time’ to create a new post.

Probably how it will go for the next couple of weeks until I adjust to a ‘regular’ 3rd shift pattern.

That said there have been MANY disturbing news items I have wanted to expound upon, including the typical beating of the war drums surrounding North Korea (and how the hopelessly stupid believe we are in danger of ‘eminent attack’!)

Seriously…but the same thing happened when W was drumming up support for an invasion of Afghanistan, followed thirty days later by a totally irrational invasion of Iraq!)

Which is to return to our main theme…the one where I belabor the obvious and point out the destruction of our civilization by the hopelessly greedy (and stupid.)

But let’s see what the ‘guardians of truth and justice’ have for us?
We’re One Big Team, So Run Those Stairs
By JED LIPINSKI
CrossFit, the workout fitness program, is viewed by some companies as a way to improve worker production and morale.
Yes siree, you are a ‘member of the team’ until it becomes more profitable to ship your job to Timbuktu (where your replacement will do what you do for two cents A DAY!)

Lying corporate America keeps insisting that they ‘value’ their employees until they don’t.

The rats have no loyalty.

Your circumstances hinge largely on their inability to replace you with a competent meat puppet that they will also tell what a valued member of the ‘team’ they are!

As long as stupid keeps getting the work out the door, they will remain a ‘valued member of the team’.

But if they start angling for a better, fairer deal, suddenly they are a ‘liability’.

Although complaining about working conditions will also result in ‘early termination’:
As OSHA Emphasizes Safety, Long-Term Health Risks Fester
By IAN URBINA
OSHA, the watchdog agency that many Americans love to hate and industry often faults as overzealous, has largely ignored long-term threats.
Video: A Dangerous Trade
Documents: Investigating a Chemical’s Hazards
Why do workers ‘hate’ OSHA? Because the typical capitalist will terminate employees who complain about unsafe working conditions, often telling the media those workers were ‘unwilling to work’.

In our ‘desperation’ to hold on to our paycheck, many people will throw their would be savior under the bus, ultimately aiding no one.

It’s not until the ‘true blue’ employee loses an appendage and gets terminated for being disabled that they learn who their real ‘friend’ was.

But hey, we have bigger things to worry about:
Oil Pipeline Ruptures in Arkansas
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ 11:16 PM ET
An Exxon Mobil crude oil pipeline ruptured near Mayflower, Ark., spilling as many as 10,000 barrels of oil, the company said.
Somehow I don’t think it is particularly helpful to point out that a barrel of oil only has 33 gallons in it. When it’s 33 gallons of black guk it still mighty nasty business.

But locally two water department employees were terminated for ‘dressing’ deer they had shot at one of the town wells.

Now the paper is saying the town may have to pay a fine for ‘contaminating’ the drinking water along with not reporting the incident to the state environmental protection agency.

MORE LUDICROUS is the fact that the town wells are over 1,500 FEET deep…long way for deer blood to ‘seep’ into a portion of the town’s water supply (and the well in question is just down the street from where I live. So theoretically I’d be drinking ‘contaminated water’.

Mind you, Exxon Mobil probably WON’T be fined for spilling crude oil in Arkansas but two town employees who happened to take advantage of a public water source got fired for letting deer blood run 1,500 feet above the town water supply!

You know what the chances are of that blood even reaching the water table, pretty much nil!

Soil bacteria alone will gobble that stuff up long before it even begins to get under the earth.

So why are our environmental police so stupid?

Oh, that’s right, they don’t have to know anything about biology! All they need to know is law, which is written by equally as ignorant legislators!

Did I mention we have a problem with the ‘maladministration’ of our society?

Which probably explains why this myth persists:
Freed From Its Cage, the Gentler Robot
By ANNE EISENBERG
New factory robots, designed to work and play well with others, no longer have to be fenced in to protect workers from accidents.
Let’s leave aside the reality that robots don’t consume the products they make. Once again the ‘trend’ (driven by the greedy and short-sighted capitalist) is towards ‘total automation’.

You no longer have to keep robots isolated if you eliminate humans from the factory altogether!

Thus do we continue to read ‘happy talk’ about robots learning to operate ‘safely’ around their human counterparts.

How many robots will the capitalists need when nobody has a job anymore?

(Or the ONLY jobs left are in healthcare and law enforcement…) It’s a bit too nightmarish to even contemplate a healthcare environment utterly devoid of humans, sort of re-defines the innermost circle of hell, doesn’t it?

It certainly redefines being trapped with no way out.

And this is from Saturday’s NY Times.

How bad does it need to get good citizen?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Monday, March 25, 2013

Useful idiots

Greetings good citizen,

Once again I apologize to my faithful readers for the scant postings of late but adjusting to this 3rd shift schedule at my age is proving quite the feat.

You don’t know what to do when (and you pay dearly for your mis-steps) you are also perpetually playing catch-up in the sleep department. (No matter how much you get you still wake up addled!)

I thought I had outgrown the wish that someone would bottle ‘rest’ but there it is!

This constant state of fatigue isn’t conducive to writing coherently and I deal in that which is barely coherent on a good day!

I am tempted to throw in the towel but after two decades I refuse to let a small thing like a change of shift defeat me.

That said, I am praying for your forbearance as I adjust my internal clock to its new schedule.

But enough with the ‘excuse shirt’, my inability to remain lucid does nothing to alter the predicament faced by our civilization.

Although some curious ‘background music’ has come to mind and it makes one reflect upon the world stage with a renewed sense of alarm.

IF we ‘assume’ a global capitalist take over (a coup if you will) then the world’s nuclear arsenal is all in the hands of a single ‘team’ so to speak.

This goes a long ways towards explaining the nuclear ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ (aside from the ‘useful idiot’ argument we are currently expected to swallow.)

So what does Putin’s third term say to us?

Odd how we immediately return to the ‘useful idiot’ argument, don’t we?

Even more disturbing is the question of who is behind these ‘meat-puppets’?

Undoubtedly the one percent but who among them has the clout (to both remain anonymous AND push these otherwise powerful leaders buttons as well?)

Naturally the quick response would be to point out that NO ONE on the world stage is what we could traditionally call a ‘leader’.

And the one calling the shots is too smart to step into the limelight. (It means instant death.)

(See what I mean regarding the product of an exhausted mind? But these are the thoughts that occupy my weary head of late…)

So, are the men with their finger on the button really so spineless as to defy their lord and masters?

I suppose you’d be chicken too considering what these entities are capable of.

Which brings me to the darker still side of my musings…do these fools realize what they are unleashing upon themselves if they continue on their current course?

Even anonymity won’t save them! (Because the beast is mindless and can’t be reasoned with once it is loose!)

So these fools are relying on ‘luck’ (or worse, money) to save their sorry backsides.

We can only hope Darwin was right…(the stupid will eliminate themselves from the gene pool!)

How sad is it that these fools will take a lot of good people with them?

On that note my feeble powers of elucidation are giving it up…so I will (once again) thank you for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Thursday, March 21, 2013

For Dummies

Greetings good citizen,

This night shift thing is kicking the crap out of me and posting is suffering. Again I apologize for slacking but at the end of the day health comes first (and I’ve gotta sleep!)

Anyway, one of the seldom touched upon topics…I don’t point to it often because if YOU visit THIS site (regularly and habitually) it doesn’t apply to YOU.

What doesn’t apply to you? The fact that a shockingly large percent of the adult population is STUPID.

Not just here in that ‘Awesome bastion of freedom and liberty, the good ol’ USA but around the globe, the hopelessly gullible are the rule rather than the exception.

As This article from Alternet points out:
In sum and all averaged out, it’s safe to say about 37 percent of Americans are just are not very bright. Or rather, quite shockingly dumb. Perhaps beyond reach. Perhaps beyond hope or redemption. Perhaps beyond caring about anything they have to say in the public sphere ever again. Sorry, Kansas.

Did you frown at that last paragraph? Was it a terribly elitist and unkind thing to say? Sort of. Probably. But I’m not sure it matters, because none of those people are reading this column right now, or any column for that matter, because reading anything even remotely complex or analytical is something only 42 percent of the population enjoy doing on a regular basis, which is why most TV shows, all reality shows, many major media blogs and all of Fox News is scripted for a 5th-grade education/attention span.

OMG LOL kittens! 19 babies having a worse day than you. WTF is up with Justin Timberlake’s hair?!?

It is this bizarre, circular, catch-22 kind of question, asked almost exclusively by intellectual liberals because intellectual conservatives don’t actually exist, given how higher education leads to more developed critical thinking (you already know the vast majority of university professors and scientists identify as Democrat/progressive, right?) which leads straight to a more nimble, open-minded perspective. In short: The smarter you are, the less rigid/more liberal you become.

And if you aren’t a meat puppet of the bloviating right wing noise machine, you already knew this…which is why you’re here, reading my blog.

The typical conservative can’t get through two paragraphs here without their heads exploding.
Seriously.

If we were to seek out this massive cognitive dissonance we’d need look no further than the invisible economic recovery that only exists in the corporate owned media.
We usually assume that economically distressed areas exist only in inner-city slums or rural backwaters. But areas plagued by persistent high unemployment almost never fit into conventional categories. Distressed areas share characteristics that make them unlikely to recover if the remedies offered rely only on the standard approaches to boosting the economy.

In distressed areas , government aid provides nearly one-third of residents’ incomes, compared to 17 percent nationwide. Upwards of 40 percent of the population in these areas lives on $30,000 a year or less, and the workforces there have low educational-achievement rates, with more than half possessing just a high-school degree or less. Most jobs are in low-end service industries, especially prisons, casinos, nursing homes, and retail. Such jobs offer few chances for upward mobility or skill enhancement.

For instance, unemployment in Yakima, Washington, has averaged 4 percentage points above the national average over the past 20 years—57 percent of its adult residents have only a high school degree or less. Similarly, in Rockford, Illinois, where the average unemployment rate has been 2.4 percentage points above the national standard for over 10 years, 53 percent of the population has no education past high school. To take one more example, a staggering 62 percent of the population in Danville, Virginia, has only a high school degree or less, and its unemployment rate has hovered 2.1 percentage points above the national average over the past five-plus years. In the country as a whole, by comparison, 43.3 percent of the adult population has no post-secondary education; in some thriving areas, the figure is much lower—for instance, Cambridge, MA (22.7 percent) and Seattle, WA (25.8 percent).
Oddly today’s headlines were crowing about a ‘building boom’ that has taken contractors ‘by surprise’.

This is (once again) a total ‘mis-reading’ of the housing situation. The few who can afford it want to buy ‘new’ houses, which has absolutely nothing to do with economic recovery and everything to do with economic outliers!

Time presses good citizen so I have to wrap this up, as disjointed as it may read.

I promise to do better come the weekend (although I have another ‘mandatory Saturday’ this week so my weekend is (virtually) non-existent.

I (once again) laud my readers mental alacrity and ability to read between the lines…if you couldn’t do that you wouldn’t be here (nor would you keep returning.)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, March 18, 2013

Unicorns

Greetings good citizen,
The, er, ‘stress’ of acclimating myself to a reversed schedule has rendered me more ‘incoherent’ than usual.

Doesn’t help that my perspective is contrary to the BS you’ve had hammered into your head since childbirth. [A phenomenon I find extremely curious because once it is confirmed, you should see it for the ‘self-serving tripe’ that it is without my coaching.]

For those of you not so quick on the uptake I will be more specific, I’m talking about that illusion that increasingly makes less and less sense, money.

I was reading an article online the other night where this professional ‘money manager’ was telling his readers that he charges his kids ‘rent’ (forcing them to ‘save’) so they will learn about the ‘value’ of money.

Understand dipstick’s ‘lesson’ is centered on the no longer viable idea that money pays interest (although that wasn’t the ‘example’ he used, he was using his ‘savings’ to buy stocks!)

So he equated spending money with ‘firing’ his personal money making ‘robots’ (what he referred to them as.)

He went on to claim that he had ‘earned’ $3,000 in annual ‘dividends’ from his holdings.

Do you know how few stocks pay dividends or that companies are under no ‘obligation’ to pay a dividend AT ALL? (Even if they’re crazy profitable.)

Well if you didn’t you weren’t about to be ‘educated’ by this idiot’s article!

Which is to reflect just how ‘unreliable’ professional monetary advice can be.

Worse, the most prominent ‘risk’ when it comes to investing is listening to advisors peddling their own self-interest!

Naturally, you’d expect ‘financial advisors’ to focus on the traditional ‘backbone’ of investment, that of ‘savings’. These days ‘ordinary’ savings vehicles don’t pay spit, which is why chucklehead is ‘speculating’ in the market WITHOUT telling you…although he does ‘volunteer’ what stocks HE invested in (hoping YOU will be STUPID enough to buy them!)

Now, back to reality. Markets around the globe are bleeding from the eyesockets today (which has nothing to do with nothing. Wall Street is so far divorced from Main Street as to be on a different planet, as disturbing as that realization and what it implies means to the average citizen.)


Which leads us to this headline:
To Reassure Investors, Fed Stresses It Will Not End Stimulus
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
Concerns about the effects of the Federal Reserve’s stimulus policy can dilute the policy’s impact by causing investors to doubt that rates will remain low.

What do you suppose the Fed is going to do when people realize the Fed is inflating away their purchasing power?

Can you say Banana Republic?

How are our two stories ‘related’?

Note the extremely poor ‘quality’ of what passes for ‘investment advice’ these days and how shamelessly the pundit uses his (probably already grown and gone) ‘kids’ as a ‘teaching tool’?

How bizarre is it good citizen that this is a perfect example of ‘what you don’t know’ causing insurmountable harm?

Once again your (deliberate) ‘ignorance’ only aids the grifters the government has failed to protect you from.

Not that ‘government the concept’ failed, it was (of course) the humans running it that have failed.

We’re back to ‘weakest links’…as you well know.

How can ‘The Bernank’ maintain this false façade?

Let us return to lesson one shall we?

ALL MONEY IS FUNNY!

I don’t mean just paper or coins, I mean ALL of it!

How ‘astonished’ would you be if I told you our financial system is based on Unicorns?

You’d probably think I was kidding but think about it.

You’ve seen money but you’ve never seen a unicorn so how can this be?

The whole concept of ‘debt’ is imaginary; that’s the first thing you need to wrap your head around!

The next step is really simple…there is absolutely zero difference between debt and unicorns…so there you are!

Even more disturbing is how prevalent the belief in Unicorns (debt) is.

Do you honestly believe Ben Bernanke has an endless supply of dollars at his disposal? (Especially after his masters have hollowed out the US economy?)

Of course you don’t!

But it works today because the price of disbelief is too stiff.

And there’s the rub!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Friday, March 15, 2013

What the...

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we have the corporate owned media using trivia to distract us from the real issues at hand.
JPMorgan Ignored Warnings in Loss, Inquiry Finds
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and BEN PROTESS 49 minutes ago

JPMorgan Chase ignored risk controls and withheld information from regulators during big trading losses last year, a Senate inquiry found.

A Senate panel report says that Jamie Dimon, chief of JPMorgan Chase, withheld details about the bank's daily losses.
Then our ‘guardians of society’ double up the information, attempting to confuse the matter even worse than it already is.

How inconvenient the very next article points to the real issue?
Pearl Brady of Brooklyn worries that it will be years before she will be able to put money away.
Younger Generations Lag Parents in Wealth-Building
By ANNIE LOWREY 49 minutes ago

A study finds that younger working adults are not doing better financially than the previous generation.
With ‘wealth management experts' opining we need to set aside at least a half a million dollars to retire ‘safely’ and with most workers earning less than 25 to 30 thousand dollars annually, the only way the majority can retire ‘comfortably’ is magic.

They’d fall short of the mark even if they saved every penny they ever earned!

In order to be a low wage drone for corporate USA, retirement must be an impossibility. (Not that this is news to the people being compared in this article.)

We have been saying all along we’d have to work ‘til we drop’ (IF we were lucky enough to find work after being ‘churned’ into pauper-dom!)

But the 4th Estate knows thinks YOU are STUPID.

How pathetic is it good citizen that a majority of the corporate owned media’s Blarney is insulting to the average person’s intelligence?

If we back up to our first post we have to scratch our heads and wonder what anyone is supposed to make of the banking sectors alleged ignorance.
Which is to point to what ‘everybody knows’. The crash of the financial system was deliberate and these clowns drove it off a cliff KNOWING the taxpayer was going to ‘bail them out’!

So what’s this nonsense about the banks ‘ignoring warnings’?

We’re talking the biggest heist of all time here!

It sure takes a lot of chutzpah to pretend (never mind actually assert) that they had no idea this whole situation was going to end in bankruptcy.

Sort of like this next headline…where once again we are played for ignorant chumps powerless to stop what’s going to happen next:

The drilling rig Kulluk was grounded in January 40 miles southwest of Kodiak City, Alaska.
Interior Dept. Warns Shell on Arctic Drilling
By JOHN BRODER 8:32 PM ET

The government wants a detailed plan on how the company plans to address safety issues before allowing it to resume exploration.
A REAL government would never have permitted this nonsense in the first place but we all know the political lapdogs are ‘going through the motions’ of pretending to protecting the public while they allow private enterprise to doom our civilization.

We don’t need MORE fossil fuels, we need to use what little there is left much more judiciously.

But the >One Percent doesn’t do privation well (if at all.) Isn’t it bad enough they have to ‘put up with’ the rest of us using THEIR stuff?

Speaking of which:
DealBook
Fed Rebukes Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase Over Capital Plans
By PETER EAVIS

The Federal Reserve cited “weaknesses” in capital plans of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, while Citigroup and Bank of America got a green light.
Doesn’t God ‘rebuke’ people? The rest of us get called on our baloney. How sad is it that the other two thieves got away with their ‘plans’?

We’re back to the ‘appearance of propriety’ as opposed to actual legal oversight.
If YOU were this incompetent you’d be on the outside looking in already!

BUT if this clowns did what they were elected to do they’d be ‘pushing up Daisy’s’ in a remote field somewhere.

You are right to fear a government that has suspended both your right to a fair trial along with any prohibition against executing you out of hand but you SHOULD fear the MEN who made this possible even more!

But I digress, what do you suppose the deal is with this story?

The Galaxy S IV.
Samsung Introduces New Galaxy Phone
By BRIAN X. CHEN and NICK WINGFIELD 7:31 PM ET

Increasing the stakes in the smartphone battle, the South Korean manufacturer showed off the Galaxy S IV, the latest version of its flagship device.

comment iconPost a Comment | Read (1)
Since this is YESTERDAY’S Business section you won’t be able to ‘backtrack’ any of this but there was an article this morning’s news about Samsung being a giant ‘pretending’ to be a scrappy start-up like Research in motion. Or that other tiny company…Apple.

Seriously, good citizen…
New Jobless Claims at a 5-Year Low
By REUTERS 7:38 PM ET

The report on unemployment added to a range of data that suggested higher taxes were having a limited impact on the economy.
Like the whole theme of today’s reporting is ‘insult their intelligence!

The most prosperous time the US have ever known came when the marginal tax rate was at over 90% of income over a million dollars…so employers paid their people instead of handing it over to Uncle Sam.

And what we’re seeing today is the ‘blow-back’ of that policy.

Which is to opine that there is going to be a whole lot of ‘punishment’ going on before we get this ship back on an even keel.

Last but not least we have a token of open rebellion on display!
Media Decoder
Editor Charged With Aiding Hackers Group
By AMY CHOZICK 8:51 PM ET

Matthew Keys, a 26-year-old social media editor, was charged with assisting the hacking collective Anonymous in an attack on The Los Angeles Times Web site.
Perhaps someday we will be able to give Mr. Keys the medal he richly deserves for standing up to our tyrannical overlords.

But for now he’s going to have to live with being black-balled by an industry that insults your intelligence.

Maybe this one is a net win from a realist perspective.

How this landed in the business section remains a mystery but it is the ‘re-surfacing’ of ‘old news’.
Hoping to Save Bees, Europe to Vote on Pesticide Ban
By DAVID JOLLY 4:08 PM ET

European officials plan to vote on a proposal to sharply restrict the use of chemicals that have been implicated in the decline of global bee populations.
Once again good citizen we are witnessing the side effects of failing to prosecute the corporate guilty for playing God recklessly.

What do you suppose this ban on pesticide is going to accomplish?

Most likely it will result in a plague of pests! Then they’ll be spraying twice as much pesticide!

But you (evidently) aren’t smart enough to figure that one out…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner