Every little bit helps

I see we're off to a ripping start, I got two page views over 24 hours and I'm pretty sure they were both me.

I'd better come up with something interesting or this bad boy is going to take a nosedive before it get's off the ground.

It's hard to crash into the dirt when you're already sprawled on it...but it's been done!

How sad is it that I speak from experience?

Anyway, the purpose of this particular Framus is to promote my latest book, Big Questions. Some of you may be wondering, why call it Big Questions? Why not Big Guns or Big Explosions? Nobody wants to answer questions...they want their questions answered!

I don't know this guy, he doesn't know what I need the answers to...

Or does he?

I know it's cheating but these are questions you've all pondered at one time or another and like all answers, these are neither definitive or complete.

Not all of my stories address societies burning questions but, like it or not, we need to put our heads together and create solutions to these troubles nobody is doing anything about because we don't have a lot of time.

This sad ol' jalopy is on her last legs, it can't be repaired because its fubar...you know it, I know it and more importantly they know it.

[And you know who 'they' are...they're the one pretending they don't exist.]

So in the infamous words of whoever (maybe me), "How will you get the answer if you don't even know what the question is?

Thanks for dropping by,

Unbelievers

Greetings good citizen,

As I opined in earlier posts, the destruction of our civilization proceeds apace. That said, the biggest illusion most of you suffer from is that they won’t get away with it when history shows they have, repeatedly.

Who is the source of this insidious oppression?

The man with the badge…the same guy that claims to be protecting YOU.

You know you’ll do time for a minor infraction while the privileged few walks away unmolested.

Especially galling is how a teenager in Missouri is shot to death for allegedly shoplifting while not a single perp has done a second of jail time for dealing in ‘collateralized debt obligations’.

Is this policing in action?

Is the message here ‘steal big?’ Or more troubling…how can they prosecute you for robbing our species ‘creatively’ with ‘imaginary’ products?

This, by the same people who call the lottery a ‘stupidity tax’.

But I’m still trying to figure out what a ‘bitcoin’ is…and how your computer can make/ ‘mine’ them…

It’s the old, “if you have to ask then you probably can’t afford the answer.”

It also deposits us back at the disturbing issue of how does a society that makes nothing support itself?

Because we all know the short answer here…it doesn’t…but I, along with a lot of other smart people, have been pointing the brazenness of those who mis-manage our civilization for decades.

So what are you gonna do when you find out you’re holding an empty bag…look for a buyer?

Worse, the bag will empty ‘on command’…one day there’s the crumbs you’ve managed to squirrel away and the next, poof!

Sad thing is the metal is no more secure than the paper is…and you idiots know who you are.



So to cut to the chase, we are and have been suffering from a major overload of BS. The disturbing part is those responsible for dishing out the BS are the same people pushing YOUR buttons!

Which is to belabor the obvious…most of what passes for ‘news’ these days can be filed under ‘who gives a shit?’ but they broadcast it anyway because the alternative is silence…and silence leads to thinking…and you know what happens when people start thinking.

We SHOULD be living in a ‘golden age’ but the ‘more for me’ crowd isn’t interested is sharing what’s left…and the sad part about that is they are screwing themselves (along with the rest of us) out of some wonderful developments.

Shift mental gears with me as we take on one of the more disturbing ideas put forth by our ‘mis-managers’…the concept of ‘why work’?

One need not look too far to find ‘forward-thinking’ individuals making a case against one of the most natural forces on the planet…the one money was invented to address.

The same nitwits who put forth the mistaken notion that money exists so we can pay taxes (or, conversely, taxes exist to ‘justify’ the existence of money) is absolutely wrong.

Money exists so YOU don’t have to do EVERYTHING yourself!

Put yourself in Libertarian hell for a moment and try to wrap your mind around what would be involved in providing yourself with EVERYTHING you need to be a productive member of society. (Helpful hint: start with naked and imagine what kind of clothing you could fashion for yourself if you were stranded in the wilderness…would you be hoping to run into a junkyard somewhere?)

YOU couldn’t do it…and neither could any of these self-made, self-reliant assholes who call themselves ‘job creators’ and appreciate nothing anyone does because it’s all them!

So why work?

Because working is how we ‘participate’ in society.

Shift gears again because that necessary social good has been bastardized into an income stream for the unappreciative. (Our so-called job creators’)

WE ALL NEED JOBS BUT THERE AREN’T ENOUGH TO GO AROUND!

One need only look at the aisles of any retail store to see how much of our efforts are wasted with ‘busy work’ (or worse, poisoning one another.)

But we do what we do to survive and still the vast majority of us live in wretched squalor (and the rest suffer a ‘hand to mouth’ existence.)

Why, you might ask?

So ‘a few’ can be rich.

How sad is it that the only ones who think that’s a ‘good idea’ are those (criminal) ‘lucky few?’

How do we, er, ‘dislodge’ the swine who control our fate from the corridors of power?

We must remove the corridors of power from their reach. [See A Simple Plan]

Which is to once again belabor the obvious and return full circle with the central issue facing our species.

We don’t have ‘money problems’…we have a HUGE ‘legal problem’ (and NOBODY to date has even nodded in the proper direction, not Marx, not anyone.)

Until now and I’m no hero.

Um, if I have to tell you to attack then I’m wasting my breath (figuratively speaking.)

The life you save will definitely be your children’s.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Breathtaking!

Greetings good citizen!

Getting settled in after a move is difficult at best but things are, er, ‘turning up’ after managing to get lost in the moving shuffle.

Still a few missing items but they too will resurface…eventually, most likely after they’ve been replaced; you know how it goes.

In my last post I put forward the ‘ground up’ solution since the top down is, er, ‘impenetrable’. You can’t talk to your congressman…(or even your local selectman for that matter) unless your pockets are deep enough to ‘buy’ some face time. Even then, have something to say that he/she doesn’t want to hear and you may as well take a match to the money.

Which is to point out the obvious…there is no ‘civilized’ way to effect change. Thus you are reduced to resorting to more barbaric (but far more effective) methods.

You can bet you’ll have Sparky’s undivided attention when you slip that rope over his/her head…and once he’s through promising that you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law he might even listen to you…not that this is important.

One of the factors you need to understand is those currently in charge are not the people you want managing things if your goal is to restore justice to our civilization.

Chances are excellent the person/elected official that studiously ignores you is guilty of crimes against humanity and will forfeit their membership in society as a result.

[A thinly veiled euphemism for ‘exile’.]

But I digress, shame on me for not taking advantage of this ‘teaching moment’.

We find ourselves in this unhappy predicament precisely because of our badly mis-managed ‘monetary system’.

Why doesn’t the corporate owned media expose the excesses of our thoroughly corrupt government? Because the criminal few hold their paychecks hostage!

The people who keep us informed are just like you and me…they do whatever it takes to keep their paycheck coming in and if that means lying to you well it’s nothing personal… it’s my job and it’s how the boss wants it done. (And if I don’t do it there are a dozen guys behind me that will…)

This is a largely ignored factor in our badly mis-managed society…worse, those guilty of crimes against society don’t give a crap because

WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?

(Short answer: nothing.)

Don’t get me wrong. People are riled and they’re taking to the streets but they are stopping short of causing real difficulty because of our heavily militarized police forces.

Thus do we return to the ‘bottom up’ piece of the puzzle. It is more difficult to change from the bottom but it is the only effective method if you want to initiate total systemic change/cleansing.

And we NEED that change, the old way is ‘fubar’ and cannot be repaired. We must initiate a truly NEW Deal.

How many of you are alarmed/amazed that our pal Flipper is back in action again nationwide?

We all know the real estate market is a bad joke but here comes flipper telling us the ‘greater fool’ is waiting to be fleeced again…probably because the corrupt legal system didn’t prosecute anyone for destroying the economy the last time they did it…

Guess what’s going to happen this time?

Hyper-inflation! Once the housing market is destroyed people will flee to wherever they think ‘true value’ lies and the price of food will go berserk!

But I get ahead of myself.

How do the criminals that prevent 99% of us from enjoying the security that our labors 'should provide us' keep that security from us?

Easy: they make it so you can NEVER afford it!

Is there enough to go around? Depends on the thing and that’s why we can all sense the ground rushing towards us at frightening speed.

(Please indulge ‘Captain Obvious’ for another moment or two, will you?)

Our entire social model is based on ‘cheap, abundant energy…once it is neither the whole model falls apart!

Why do I call for action? Because the boneheads in charge are grabbing as much as they can before the bottom drops out. (Not that they’ll succeed in keeping it but they could prevent us from recovering the lion’s share out of pure spite…and in case you haven’t noticed, it’s how they roll.)

No irony should be lost on the fact that this is being done utilizing the substance that is 100% ‘funny’…stuff the infamous ‘they’ fabricate out of thin air at will (because they can!)

It won’t be even a little ‘humorous’ when you and your loved ones are both starving and freezing to death while the tiny fraction of one percent is warm and well fed because their checking accounts are ‘limitless’…

More bothersome is how ‘too expensive’ only applies to you, not them.

This should not be, regardless of their imagined contributions to society.

But I should stop now because your fragile grip on reality (such as the Corporate media programs into you) can only tolerate the truth in very small doses indeed.

Up to and including the notion of if you truly thought for yourself then none of this would be necessary.

Which now has you questioning what I have just pointed out.

Stop, take a deep breath and ponder your circumstances while there’s still time.

As I have cautioned all along, it’s going to get very ugly amazingly quickly…

I’m still struggling to wrap my head around the idea that my poor son got laid off from a supermarket! (Due to a boycott instituted by a hostile takeover so it’s not quite as outlandish as it on the surface seems…but once again I belabor the obvious that NO INDIVIDUAL should have the power to inflict that much suffering on ANYONE due to ‘personal greed’.

Which brings us full circle to the ‘crimes against humanity’ issue I mentioned earlier.

Serious mis-management people and we need to step up while there is still something left to salvage!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Ripples

Greetings good citizen,

Long time…but nothing has ‘changed’ (which is to say we’re still going to hell in a bucket and our leadership [what passes for it] continues to pretend it is powerless to it.)

(sigh)

I stopped posting partly because I felt I was… ‘shouting at mountains’ (wasting my breath) and my third shift position really took it out of me…but last night I got evidence that my words/ideas aren’t so outlandish that they had best be kept to myself.

Which is not to say I had any (direct) influence on the views I saw expressed on the most recent episode of Real Time with Bill Mahar. What piqued my curiosity is Bill had a Marxist on in tandem with this spotlight on our failed social model and he, like me, asked the question, “What now?”

Anyhoo, the job, (like the fifty plus before it) ‘evaporated’ just shy of a year…which really sucks because I have seven more years to go until I can draw my SSI…but what are you gonna do?

Besides, the way things are going, I’m going to have a lot more to worry about than where to address my miniscule (compared to the cost of living) Social Security checks.

So what do you do when most of the people of this nation have been made ‘redundant’ (and the bankers have made off with all of their pension funds while our politicians studiously looked the other way?)

[Hint: clawbacks are NOT the answer; we have never needed to ‘get the money back’ (because ALL money is ‘funny’!)]

And to digress yet again…I’m not the only one faced with the predicament of being forced to survive in a broken society.

And NO ONE intends to save us.

Worse, the plans have already been laid to, er, ‘beat back’ the restless/dissatisfied masses. (What else would Homeland Security do with a billion rounds of 9mm? Are you really stupid enough to believe they’re preparing for a ‘terrorist invasion?’ Guess who gets to wear the terrorist uniform?)

(Can you say genocide?)

[Did I mention nothing has changed?]

Um, I have ‘danced to the border’ with most of my posts, always stopping just short of offering concrete, er, ‘opinions’ regarding what YOU should be doing about all this.

Left (for far too long) to your imagination is what SHOULD BE obvious to you.

It all starts with accountability.

Letting our ‘enforcement agents’ off the hook with the ‘I was just following orders’ excuse is what has led us to where we are today.

Don’t misinterpret…I’m talking a ‘bottom up’ approach.

The cops say they are doing what they’re told (by the judges and the politicians) but who do they all ‘work for/answer to?

YOU!

So when some ‘armed thug’ tries to pick your pocket (an exercise in intimidation/obedience) just smile, take the ticket and throw it away.

The thing YOU need to understand is Mr. Just following orders will put a bullet in you (and would secretly prefer to) if he is ‘ordered’ to.

Is that the kind of person YOU want carrying a weapon and brandishing a badge?

It’s EXACTLY the kind of person the weasels running us off a cliff want taking their orders…the kind that don’t think because it makes their little head hurt!

I refuse to candy coat this. Cops already hate me (even the ones who agree with me because they see it too!)

Correcting this situation starts at the bottom…which brings us back to the original question, what will we run out of first, rope or light poles?

Again, don’t misunderstand. It doesn’t stop with the cops. The politicians and the, er, injustice system needs to be, um, ‘cleansed’ along with it. And it doesn’t stop there! The entire corporate structure has to be overhauled and the self-serving eliminated from the process.

I’m not lifting the blinders off of anyone’s eyes. You all see it too.

Amazing how the silence is deafening (and I don’t expect that to change either.)

Well, now I’ve done it. It’s one thing to keep your mouth shut and have people think you’re a fool and quite another to express yourself and convince them it’s true.

Until next time,

Thank you for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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

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

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