Chuckleheads

Greetings good citizen,

For the massive size of yesterday’s rally, today’s ticker indicates the Dow only added 20 points for the week.

However, if you look at the chart you would see that yesterday’s rally merely restored what the market had sold off the previous day.

Leaving us with the uncomfortable knowledge that theft is theft and the ‘paper rich’ have been robbing us blind via their control of the stock markets.

Which brings us to a much more vexing problem: But it’s only vexing if you think something should be done about it…and apparently most people don’t or worse, don’t know what to do about it.

And what problem is that? It’s finding yourself being held in a dungeon with no means of escape, never mind rescue.

The ‘dungeon’ is your life and YOU have lost all control over it.

This November they are going to dangle the keys to the dungeon in front of you but you already know one of the two, er, ‘candidates’ won’t lift a finger to help you. He’s been in a position to set you free for the last four years but so far the only thing he has succeeded in doing is sit on his thumb.

But wait! listen to ‘chucklehead’ make his case on why YOU should vote for someone you already know isn’t going to do Jack for you!

Instead of doing something practical to mitigate the harm that the U.S. does in the world – by voting for the person who might be less likely to overuse the U.S. military or who might restrain the emission of greenhouse gases – these folks sit on the sidelines basking in their perfection. They won’t make a call.

The hard decision is to support the imperfect candidate who has a real chance to win and who surely will do some rotten things but likely fewer rotten things than the other guy – and might even make some improvements.

I know that doesn’t “feel” as satisfying. One has to enter a morally ambiguous world. But that it is the world where many innocent people can be saved from horrible deaths (though not all) and where possibly actions can be taken to ensure that future generations are left a planet that is still habitable or at least with the worst effects of global warming avoided.

Um, I’d start by pointing out the people calling themselves ‘progressives’ MOST DEFINITELY ARE NOT in any way, shape or form Democrats.

The democrats are GONE, they no longer exist…which is to point out the obvious, the vast majority of us don’t even have a horse in the upcoming presidential election.

The whole electoral process has been hijacked by the >One Percent. There are NO ‘honest brokers’ in this contest.

And understand good citizen, governments are formed with the ‘EXPRESS PURPOSE’ of protecting the public from the predations of the Rich!

So what do you do…or more succinctly, who do you vote for when nobody in the race represents you?

Chucklehead says you should vote for the one who will do ‘the least harm’.

Makes you wonder if that was his thinking when W. was running for a second term?

Which all the proof you’ll ever need that the electoral process is corrupt beyond repair!

The fact that W. got a second term in defiance of all logic proves the electoral process is corrupt and in the control of the >One Percent!

What do you do when the government no longer protects your interests?

The >One Percent knew what to do, they ‘bought’ the government.

The question is how do we rid ourselves of a corrupt government?

Can we ‘vote them out?’

Can’t, the >One Percent owns the ballot box (actually they own who reports the election results…so it doesn’t matter who or what you vote for because the reporters are going to report whatever they guy who cuts their paycheck tells them to report!

And it IS ‘that damn simple!’

Because there is NO WAY you can prove that ISN’T what happens!

So are we ‘stuck’…are we doomed to be shackled under an unresponsive government?

Now you have to ask yourself if you want to live on you knees for the rest of your natural days.

And most of you are thinking, ‘if this is living on my knees then I don’t have it too bad.’

Even though, comparatively speaking, you live like an animal compared to the >One Percent.

Still, life on your knees is preferable to dying in just about any position…and you’re willing to put up with the ‘occasional frisking’ if that’s as bad as it gets.

But you already know it isn’t going to stop with friskings and being hassled about what you’re up to and why you’re outside. It will be the ‘disappearings’ that are going to eat you alive.

When people you know start vanishing and you know that they got picked up by the cops, then is when you’ll start wondering, ‘will I be next’?

The time to put your foot down is BEFORE ‘the disappearings’ start…try to organize resistance AFTER they start and you’re probably gonna get it.

So, good citizen, who do you think you’ll be voting for this November, Mr. Sat-on-his-thumb for four years or Mr. One Percent, who really only wants to be in the history books?

Not a real ‘inspiring’ set of choices, are they?

I wonder who the Socialists are running this November?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Criminally Insane

Greetings good citizen,

Talk about a fucked up world, the Dow is up as of this moment and the only thing keeping it there is the ‘safe haven’ phenomenon…people consider US bank stocks the ‘safest’ investment out there because they have the ‘full faith and backing’ of a decidedly corrupt US government!

Or at least that is what the latest bungled banking crisis has proven.

Makes you wonder how long it will be before people realize the government is even more corrupt than the banking system?

Perhaps the more interesting question is how many of the politically ignorant will get roped in by the lies of Libertarianism?

But hey, our ruling class would shit a brick if any of that wealth redistribution stuff happened over here. Which is why “this is a center-right nation” has been a favorite Fox News talking point for over 10 years. It’s only now—after Occupy Wall Street forced their hand—that the media is finally willing to admit that it might be bullshit.

But libertarianism? Our ruling class is totally fine with that. Smoke your reefer and sodomize whomever you please, just keep your mouth shut and hand over your Social Security account.

When a Red like me wants to argue for something like universal healthcare or free college tuition, we can point to dozens of wealthy democratic societies doing just that. The Stalinist left is nothing more than a faint memory. But where (are) the libertarian Utopias?

I have made no secret of my intense dislike for Libertarians, who are nothing more than thinly disguised, social Darwinist, Randites.

In my humble opinion the whole article is a fairly accurate, if somewhat ‘lenient’ description of the Libertarian movement.

When you see idiocy like this, you know you’re listening to a moron: “The libertarian line: “No, no: the problem isn’t that we’re too capitalist. It’s that we’re not capitalist enough!”

Seriously? Rape the planet until it can’t support anyone, eat the unproductive until there’s no one left to breed with anymore and wail at the moon as you die alone of starvation because there is nobody to cook for your rugged individualistic ass!

If someone says “I’m a Libertarian’, hit ‘em over the head with the heaviest object you can find and don’t stop until their ears bleed (profusely)

Because the motherfucker has just admitted that he has absolutely NO PROBLEM with EATING YOU!

That’s what it means to be a Libertarian!

And if you know someone who spouts this pro-capitalist bullshit, forward this post to them, then sit back and listen to the back-pedaling.

There’s ‘freedom’ and there’s ‘fucked up’ and Libbies are FUCKED UP!

The whole idea of a generation (or even an individual) ‘gone Galt’ is a serious mental defect only the One Percent could praise.

But now we’re talking a whole different breed of ‘defective’.

So yeah, there is a close relationship between the >One Percent and the Libertarians (also known as the ‘Rabid Capitalist wannabes’.)

Neither gives a fig for the bulk of humanity, who in their mind deserves what happens to them because they don’t fight back.

Which leads us to the difficulty we are in today. We don’t execute the > One percent out of hand today because they have ‘rights’, rights they regularly deny the rest of us but we’ve been brought up to believe that it is ‘due process’ that separates us from the animals of this world.

It is only when the situation gets out of hand as it is today that due process should be temporarily swept aside.

Yes, it is extremely dangerous to even suggest forfeiting the rights of others but they swept them aside first by repealing Habeas Corpus.

By denying you your legal rights to question your imprisonment, they forfeit their right to a trial or a jury of their peers!

Did I mention this is going to get extremely ugly before it’s over?

It is the little things like this that have led me to conclude that the objective of throwing our civilization into its own cesspool is to kill off as much of the ‘surplus population’ as they can.

As much as many of you may not agree with that assessment.

I think the ONLY thing saving us from abrupt nuclear obliteration is the uncertainty factor. The fuckers don’t want to poison the WHOLE planet, killing off their own (largely worthless) progeny

Nor are they keen to kill off the ‘hired help’, the enablers who make ‘the good life’ possible.

So the sledgehammer is out…unless we ‘mud-people’ start getting the upper hand.

Just an opinion here but if we can’t rein in our (criminally) insane then perhaps we don’t deserve to survive as a species.

But how sad will it be if we allow the criminally insane to decide for the rest of us?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Progressives

Greetings good citizen,

Stock markets continue to rally for no apparent reason but considering the rampant fraud in the financial markets maybe this is a case of ‘getting while the getting is good’…

Because one need not be a genius to see that there will soon not be any financial markets, anywhere.

And yes Virginia, it will be ‘fallout’ from the collapse of the global banking network.

Um, it staggers the mind to consider what life will be like in the hours after they drop that particular WMD?

But wait! Our ‘saviors’ in the in the ‘progressive party’ want us to turn off our computers because they are making us ‘depressed’.

(Sadly, thinking has a way of doing that.)

To stay sane, Americans just might have to return to a 40-hr work week and ditch our screwed-up attachment to E-mail. According to a new study, spending too much time on the internet is disastrous for your mental health.

From CBS Charlotte:

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg recently studied more than 4,100 Swedish men and women between the ages of 20 and 24 for a year and found that a majority of them who constantly use a computer and mobile phones can develop stress, sleeping disorders and depression.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this is about as ‘out of context’ as you can get but the headline for this article reads ‘Get off the computer, it may be making you depressed!’

Not study shows, not the pressure of being available 24/7, just ‘get off the computer!’

WTF!

Most people will never read that article but almost everyone will skim that headline…

How did CK phrase it the other day? Incompetence is not a diagnosis--it’s a verdict!

Let’s parse this one just a teeny-tiny bot more, shall we? They conduct a study during one of the worst economic downturns IN HISTORY and arrive at the conclusion that some of the people in this study were ‘depressed’…

How fucking remarkable is that?

More remarkable, perhaps is the number of people who buy into the conservative meme that social contracts are no longer valid!

Recent events trace a threatening trajectory, sufficiently so that it may be worthwhile to look ahead a few generations to the millennium anniversary of one of the great events in the establishment of civil and human rights: the issuance of Magna Carta, the charter of English liberties imposed on King John in 1215.

The first scholarly edition of the Magna Carta was published in 1759 by the English jurist William Blackstone, whose work was a source for U.S. constitutional law. It was entitled “The Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest,” following earlier practice. Both charters are highly significant today.

The first, the Charter of Liberties, is widely recognized to be the cornerstone of the fundamental rights of the English-speaking peoples – or as Winston Churchill put it more expansively, “the charter of every self-respecting man at any time in any land.”

Let us parse Mr. Chomsky’s last comment because I have already told you about the affirmed conservative position on social contracts.

Both charters are indeed ‘highly significant’ if you want to live in a ‘civil society’.

Without a ‘social contract’ civil society is impossible…or at the very least disturbingly inconsistent.

The adhesive in a ‘non-contract society’ is fear. You live day by day doing your utmost to not be the one who pisses-off the nominal ‘head of the table’ of the day.

And I do indeed mean ‘of the day’.

Usually, the biggest and the meanest have SOME staying power (and contrary to popular belief, not everyone WANTS to be ‘king’.)

In fact the ‘head oaf’ is usually a bit of an enigma. He has a bigger and stronger rival who bosses him around behind everyone else’s back but the obvious leader let’s the Oaf wear the crown.

This is a way of protecting oneself against (stupid) rivals.

And mind you, this does absolutely nothing for the ‘average individual’. The Oaf is too stupid to care about the common man and his ersatz ‘handler’ can’t do more than suggest what the Oaf should do…and if things go poorly, he once again has the oaf for cover.

Understand what it means to live in a world without a ‘social contract’. It is Darwinism taken to the extreme.

You, right here and now in fact, would be wise to KILL everyone you see before they get an eyeball on YOU…because when they see you it is in their ‘best interests’ to kill you too.

That is life under the ‘no social contract’ mandate.

This is NOT the first time the human social contract has come under attack, nor will it be the last.

It is regularly shredded by governments of both sides during armed conflicts but it is not just governments who 'disavow' the basic human social contract, movements and whole ideologies have sprung up around the notion that there is ‘no such thing’ as a ‘human social contract’.

I also hope I don’t need to remind you that during the last global economic recession, the people who called themselves ‘progressives’ had another name…

A name that is now ‘infamous’…they called themselves Nazis.

How ironic to see the Nazi inspired Libertarians calling themselves ‘progressives’ again?

Oh, PS, by the way…guess who ISN’T defending the human social contract?

You got it! (The progressives!)

Any questions?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Neutron Bombing

Greetings good citizen,

Today we are treated to a disaster in the making masquerading as a success story

Let’s take a look at our ‘fair use’ snippet to see what kind of Republican hit piece the so-called ‘liberal media’ can get away with:

Mr. Porter, a retired AT&T engineer, was an advocate of the town when it was a hopeless cause, during the many years when Democrats blocked efforts to let a largely Republican and white suburb cleave itself from Fulton County. One Democratic legislator vowed that Sandy Springs would incorporate “when pigs fly,” a phrase that Mayor Galambos has since adopted as the name of her blog.

After an election in 2004, both houses of Georgia’s legislature were controlled by Republicans for the first time since Reconstruction.

“It was like a dog that’s been chasing a train for years and finally catches it,” Mr. Porter says. “The question was, What do I do with it now?”

As a fan of Ronald Reagan and the economist Friedrich Hayek, Mr. Porter came naturally to the notion that Sandy Springs could push “the model” to its nth degree. His philosophical inclinations were formed by a life spent in private enterprise, and cemented by a visit to Weston, Fla., a town that had begun as a series of gated communities.

Mr. Porter tells this and other stories in “Creating the New City of Sandy Springs,” a book that will leave readers with one indelible lesson: incorporating a city is dull. Superduper dull. The book is composed mostly of the codicils, requests for proposals and definitions of duties that were required to jolt Sandy Springs to life. Without a love of minutiae and a very long attention span, forget it. But this is intended as a blueprint, not a gripping narrative. Mr. Porter regards the success of Sandy Springs as a way out of the financial morass that has engulfed so many cities in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Left unmentioned here was something else St. Ronnie [Reagan] was a big fan of, the fucking neutron bomb! [Kills the people but leaves the buildings intact…see the connection?]

Naturally this Libertarian pinhead wouldn’t ‘justify’ his work, he'd just tell you how to copy it; then it’s your bad when the downside of this idiotic idea slams you upside the head!

Immutable fact number one, you can’t do ANYTHING cheaper ‘second-hand’, adding a ‘middle-man’ adds cost.

So where do the ‘cost savings’ of privatizing government come from?

It sure isn’t cheaper for the municipality, the chiseling capitalist pockets most of the ‘savings’ for themselves.

And what ‘savings’ are these? First is the considerable reduction in wages paid then there is the near total elimination of ‘benefits’.

As you gaze drifts across the economic desert, caused by a decimated consumer base, you have to question the wisdom of slashing salaries and benefits further.

Benefits the, er, company (in our privatized example) don’t pay for have to be made up out of the private sector worker’s considerably lower salary.

This wasn’t ‘the right thing to do’ when the private sector exported our manufacturing capacity and it certainly isn’t the ‘right thing to do’ now…

Unless you really WANT YOUR CHILDREN to squander the rest of their lives in a banana republic!

Again I will remind you that this is not only mismanagement in the highest degree, it is also ‘treason’ of the highest order!

(Before you object, saying this is ‘only business’, placing your own selfish interests ahead of the interests of society IS and FOREVER will be TREASON!)

And you KNOW what the penalty for treason is…

And this is how we know our justice system is broken beyond repair!

(Sorry good citizen, I haven’t gone off the reservation like this in quite some time but seeing this Libertarian BULLSHIT being pedaled in the corporate owned media as a ‘good thing’ makes my blood boil!)

True, the public sector now makes the kind of salaries you can only dream about in the private sector (although that was NOT the case forty years ago.)

Worse, that should give you pause to consider just how badly beaten down the private sector in this nation has become.

And the > One Percent aren’t complaining…hell, they’re laughing all the way to the bank, the very same bank that is about to foreclose on your home!

Um, I am well aware that the conservo-whackos have been accusing the imaginary ‘libruls’ of treason for the past decade…but that accusation was only to cover their own treachery!

Again, truth be told, the conservo-whackos don’t know what treason really is!

Bizarrely, when they accuse someone of treason what they are usually doing is calling them ‘unpatriotic’ FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW…

And Treason has NOTHING to do with PATRIOTISM!

Nope, the ‘traitors’ among us don’t believe in ‘Nation States’ and thereby are convinced they are ‘incapable’ of treason.

While they sell out the future of every man woman and child in this country to enrich their ugly, selfish selves.

They are the ones who exported our jobs while elimination tarrifs around the globe.

And you won’t hear one of them ask, who cares if we unbalance the world’s economy as long as WE get rich!

Not their fucking problem, man…

But it sure as shit is gonna be yours…and fucking soon!

I am predicting they WON’T get away with it…but stopping them is up to YOU!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

History

Greetings good citizen,

Markets opened ‘up’ on Wall Street despite disastrous news for the global banking system…but the ‘pocket stuffers’ don’t give a shit about reality. You can bet your boots the day the economy does a face-plant in the dust, the ‘traders’ will be busy bidding up the price of worthless stocks.

It’s what they do…how fucking pathetic is that?

Now, before you think I’m going schizo on you let me clarify the insidiousness of the Libertarian mind. They are more than willing to parrot popular memes if it helps to hide their true agenda from a very confused public.

I would also point out that Libby Central didn’t compose this particular article, they lifted it from the Booman Tribune:

What I Know About Our Corporate Overlords

To understand the last 40 years, and how we got to the place we are now is hard to understand on the macro level for many people. That's why a simplified lie - give more to the rich and all will benefit -- has worked so well, even though history has shown us again and again that this well worn myth is untrue. So why does it work on so many people? Well, Americans are peculiarly ignorant of history, their own and the history of other nations and cultures. Our own culture preaches self-reliance, independence and the rejection of charity. Follow these simple rules and you too can achieve your goals, you too can have the "American Dream" of wealth and comfort.

And that is why the lie is so appealing. We want to believe that in America there is this dream that anyone can make it rich. We feast on stories of hard working individuals who came out of poverty, who came literally from "nowhere" to become rich and famous. We live under the hazy mists of a cloud cuckoo land, one where the individual is all powerful and controls his or her own fate. A myth that has never been true for the vast majority of people. Yet even today, we here from the generations that benefited the most from government programs and subsidies that whatever they accomplished they did it all by their lonesome.

Yes, you will always find stories of individuals who made it up from the depths of poverty (though most of them these days seem to be sports stars), but more likely than not you, if you dig hard enough will find that those who allegedly "made it" on their own were actually the children of rich people who became even richer than their parents. And those who do become extremely rich typically do so with the support of governments and by exploiting the labor and health of others. In general, the rich as a class are more ruthless, less generous and more willing to act illegally and immorally than the poor. Just ask any one who works for a hedge fund manager or a major company's CEO and ask them how they got to the position they did. In general, most of them did it by stepping on other people (especially subordinates but also their peers), and by practicing the arts of lying, cheating, deceit, fraud and ruthlessness.

I recommend you click through and read the rest, it is seldom that you encounter such refreshing ‘directness’.

If the Libby’s didn’t throw you the occasional piece of ‘red meat’ like this, you would, as I have, begun to ask just who are these people?

And the answer would eventually come back as the ‘triangulating centrists’ that got us into this mess in the first place!

Because I have indeed come to the conclusion that the ‘thing’ that swallowed up the Democratic party and turned it spineless is in fact a branch of the Libertarian assault on humanity.

All of this ‘triangulating’ is intended to mis-direct you from the valid arguments you SHOULD BE MAKING by convincing you there is a ‘compromise’ in a situation where there really isn’t any acceptable ‘middle ground’.

They don’t need to be ‘right’; all they need to do is prevent YOU from acting!

Their whole goal is to get you out of action mode and into listening mode. If you ‘buy’ their bullshit, mission accomplished. If you don’t buy, then they start in on how ‘unreasonable’ YOU’RE being.

Again, they can be wronger than wrong but the problem is (as far as they’re concerned) YOU!

You’re not agreeing with them is ‘wrong’ and they simply won’t have it!

The second someone starts handing you the ‘let’s not be hasty’ line you have to shut ‘em down, immediately! (And in most cases forcefully.)

You may be forced to shoot them to get them to shut up!

I do NOT recommend you shoot anyone (if you can avoid it) but when push comes to shove, you do what you’ve gotta do.

In the end it all comes down to choices and anyone who interferes with your freedom to choose isn’t doing you any favors.

Which brings us full circle with the ‘free market’ assault on the workers of the world.

It comes down to the old split between producers and sellers.

The producer knows what it ‘cost’ him to produce a given thing in terms of time, inputs and sacrifice.

The seller doesn’t. He only knows he has to win the difference between what he pays and what his non-producing customer is willing to pay.

This ‘ignorance of cost’ produces some outlandish, er, ‘market fluctuations’.

Which in turn produces some pretty bizarre variances in the ‘value’ of money.

(It’s part of what makes ALL money ‘funny’.)

This ‘separation’ between producer and seller is decidedly ‘unhealthy’ for the rest of society.

You see, the (immensely) ‘ignorant’ seller concentrates his attention on the ‘ownership’ of the thing without regard of its true value (a matter of pure perspective even at the best of times!)

The producer is more mindful of the ‘demand’ for the item they produce as well as the overall benefit that item provides to society…(something the seller could care less about.)

What you should really ask yourself, good citizen is just how much do you buy ‘direct’ from the source?

You’ll be surprised at how little this actually is…and it should make you wonder why you are being subjected to the predations of the ‘middleman’.

The human anti-exploitation law, an idea whose time has come!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sustainability

Greetings good citizen,

For the third time this week I feel compelled to take AlterNet to the woodshed for (this time) ‘over-complicating’ what already exists!

Will the existing structures have to change? Yes, but we can take our time! Part of the ‘beauty’ of A Simple Plan is it DOES NOT attempt to ‘remake’ a failed world from scratch, overnight.

It takes what we already have and applies a different set of rules, the processes don’t change right away, nor do they have to.

Maybe the tree huggers will have a problem with that but Rome wasn’t built in a day so converting to ‘sustainable practices’ will probably take a while…(remember, How Long is a Chinaman!)

Worse, good citizen, they start off claiming capitalism is dead then they go right back to advocating unsustainable capitalistic principles and policies!

Ironically, most of these schemes share capitalism's biggest flaw, which is its inherent reliance on growth. As a business owner, it's very hard to say, "We're big enough now. Let's stop here." (Though some, like Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, have done just that.) Most businesses have competitors who, if they're allowed to get bigger than you, will swallow you whole. If you don't stay big enough to compete, you don't survive -- and since the competitors are facing the same imperative, the race can never really end.

As noted, this kind of constant growth simply isn't sustainable on a finite planet. People will always trade -- it's an essential human activity -- but going forward, we need small-scale businesses that can stay happy and healthy without being pushed to grow. Worker ownership doesn't really address this problem, though relocalization, which roots businesses deeply in their own local markets, limiting their reach beyond those boundaries, may provide one natural brake on growth.

For many large and necessary enterprises (utilities; essential centralized manufacturing; big, capital-intensive tech industries; and so on) public ownership may be the only way to ensure that they grow no bigger than they need to be to fulfill their mission. If there are other solutions that will allow us to have complex enterprises minus the growth imperative, they're still lurking out beyond the horizon.

Read my words (because you can’t see my lips!) Share = Good, Own = Bad!

These idiots can’t seem to escape the artificial construct of ‘ownership’, it’s NOT ‘yours’ so get the fuck over yourself, Damn it!

And if you CAN’T abide by the need to ‘share’ what there is, we have a special place for you where you will be ‘free’ to accumulate all your little heart desires. (Not that there’s a lot there to accumulate, they don’t call ‘em the Bad Lands for nothin’.)

Think you’re gonna be the ‘big fish in a little pond?’ Think again, grabbing as much as you can for yourself is another way to secure a one way trip to ‘Me-ville!’

So don’t ‘obsess’ about the ‘competition’ because there WON’T BE ANY!

Commerce will no longer exist to enrich the ignorant sons of bitches that claim to ‘own’ it, commerce will exist to serve all humanity! The number one goal of sustainable society is to ERADICATE POVERTY!

A fact that appears to be MISSING from AlterNet’s, er, ‘proposal’ and something you’re NEVER going to see under capitalism.

I will once again point out that there is NO LACK of things that need doing, that is why A Simple Plan guarantees 100% employment (by literally ‘eliminating’ the ‘employer’!)

How fucking sad is it good citizen that capitalism RELIES on a certain level of poverty to keep the rest of the population ‘motivated’?

If one were to read the article with a critical eye one would see that these so-called ‘architects of the future’ sneer at the idea of ‘localization’ (and then proceed to distort it out of all proportion!)

I again ‘belabor the obvious’ when I point out that resources are not ‘evenly distributed’ around the planet, and that simple fact will, er, ‘dictate’ what a particular locality focuses on.

It is also ‘simplistic’ in the extreme to even allude to the idea of any locality being a ‘one trick pony’.

There will be a lot of ‘duplication’ but almost no ‘competition’ because the purpose of commerce is NOT to ‘compete’ but to ‘serve’!

I believe I have made it abundantly clear that our civilization, such as it is, is extremely mismanaged.

We do all of the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Now that there are more of us we must stop being so wasteful…and we also need to put the brakes on the damn multiplying!

Because it is becoming apparent that Mother Nature has already stepped in to correct this phenomenon.

Which is not to say she didn’t have some ‘help’ from some seriously mis-guided and more than a little deranged, er, ‘elites’.

Almost ALL married couples in Western societies are in ‘fertility programs’!

And their offspring are, er, ‘weaker’ than those conceived ‘naturally’.

But not to worry, after the kill-off kids will go back to having kids younger than they do now…should solve the problem. (Or so the seriously deranged seem to think…)

But that’s another ‘landmine’ our species is tap-dancing on without realizing it…and we can thank the ‘corporate owned media’ for our ignorance.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Capitalism 2.0

Greetings good citizen,

It seems the ‘slaver assholes’ are on a roll because AlterNet is at it again today with another version of Capitalism 2.0!

It is already a given good citizen that we CAN’T trust the same people who fucked up the original version to create its replacement!

Until we implement the Human Anti-exploitation law, no one (except the owners) is safe:

Our economy is dominated by a monoculture business model, Kelly says, driven largely by publicly traded corporations that have built in pressure from Wall Street for maximum short-term earnings. But a healthy, living economy needs biodiversity. We can find this if we begin to look around -- across the U.S. and the world -- where there are businesses designed not for maximum profit, but with a mission-driven social and economic architecture. One of these models is the "social enterprise."

The Social Enterprise Alliance defines these organizations as "businesses whose primary purpose is the common good. They use the methods and disciplines of business and the power of the marketplace to advance their social, environmental and human justice agendas." And one of the defining characteristics is that "The common good is its primary purpose, literally 'baked into' the organization's DNA, and trumping all others."

Here's an example. Remember Working Assets? Starting out as a progressive-minded credit card company in the '80s, it added phone service -- first long-distance in the '90s, then cellular in 2000 -- and now it has created the subsidiary CREDO Mobile. The company operates as a for-profit business, which is privately owned, with most of the employees owning the stock, so it doesn't have to bow to Wall Street pressures. They use their profits to help support causes they believe in -- so far the amount of money donated is $70 million and counting.

Geez Louise, what’s ‘wrong’ with this picture?

Do YOU see ANYTHING ‘new’?

Short answer, no.

Is this another version of the same old ‘make the employees stakeholders’ scam?

Yup.

You see, ‘stock’ is a funny thing and it definitely isn’t what you’re led to believe it is.

An example would be your checking account, ‘do it yourself’ money…with a banker to keep you ‘honest’ (although if you do it right you can ‘kite’ money until the cows come home.)

You give somebody ‘a share’ of stock, it’s not ‘immutable’, it can change, radically, as time goes on.

It seems there is no limit on who much you can ‘dilute’ a given ‘class’ of stock, which is a horse of another color entirely.

So this ‘not bowing to Wall Street’ is BULLSHIT and so is the ‘joint ownership’ ‘pretense’.

After it is all said and done you end up ‘owning’ the dust under the doormat!

Just as there is NOT and WILL NEVER BE enough ‘market share’ for capitalist utopia to exist (it is even ‘metaphysically’ impossible!) there are not enough resources on this or any group of planets for ANYONE to OWN ANY of them!

This much we know to be true, Own = bad, Share = good!

(Which is absolute heresy to a Libbie! Their whole philosophy is based on ‘ownership’, hell, the idiots even equate ‘freedom’ with ownership!)

How fucking stupid can you get?

Don’t answer that because we live in a world chock full of stupid!

It says something (pretty dark) about our society when you contemplate how readily the starkly anti-social precepts of Libertarianism are accepted within our crumbling society.

Let me state once again that there are no Democrats…and we can take that a step further and point out that there aren’t any (old time) Republicans left anymore either.

So what’s left?

Fucking whacko Libertarians! (Pretending to be Democrats)

Don’t tread on me (nutjob) Tea Partiers (who are also Libertarians!)[Pretending to be Republicans.]

This is perhaps the only thing more frightening than the monolithic communists, a single deck stacked with ‘jokers’ which is Libertarianism.

No irony should be lost on the fact that despite the name, Libertarianism has nothing to do with ‘personal liberty’…

Only ‘owners’ can be ‘free’…(yet another stunning contradiction!)

IF YOU are NOT an OWNER then you are advocating YOUR OWN ENSLAVEMENT!

Did I mention we are living in a world chock full of stupid?

Or at least that’s what the corporate owned media would have us all believe.

And it’s time to, er, ‘purge’ that blight from our midst too.

(Boy, when I digress I REALLY go ‘off the reservation!)

Back to the subject at hand.

Capitalism 2.0 is INDENTICAL to the original, worse, if we didn’t have a badly broken justice system then we would/could easily have ALL of their (corporate charters) revoked.

WHY do these boneheads think things will be different ‘next time’?

It ALL (straightening this mess out) starts with A Simple Plan and law number 1, the Human Anti-exploitation Law, which outlaws the ‘employer-employee relationship’. It makes it illegal for anyone (entity) to buy and sell you labor for their benefit!

The ‘answers’ lie within A Simple Plan

Don’t listen to the lying Libertarians, capitalism only benefits the owners…and if you don’t like it, tough!

How many revolutions do we need to fight before we smarten up and stop turning over the keys to the treasury to people intent on fucking the rest of us out of our share?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Dumb and Trusting

Greetings good citizen!

Happy Monday! In a disturbing display of ‘nowhere else to go’ the stock markets (around the globe) are on the rebound once again…for absolutely no discernable reason!

Hard to say what is more disturbing, the fact that the markets are rising irrationally or the fact that this phenomenon has occurred in ‘lockstep’ for years?

Add to this the question of why no one is crying ‘stop thief’ and you have a real puzzler on your hands. (Which SHOULD direct you attention to the strangely mute corporate owned media. But by now this surprises no one.)

(Whenever stocks rise ‘irrationally’ your purchasing power gets diluted…sadly, when stocks fall your purchasing power does NOT increase…it’s a one way street.)

Anyway, I find myself, once again, cast in the role of ‘naysayer’. Alternet (one could suppose) in an attempt to be ‘proactive’ regarding the economy is promoting the ‘capitalist solution’ to the current capitalist created debacle.

Unknown is if this is due to the irrational belief that ‘free markets are self correcting’ of if there is some other twisted and tortured logic in play, let me repeat, there is NO CAPITALIST SOLUTION for our economic woes!

You can no sooner spend your way out of debt than you can drink yourself sober.

Yet we have this tripe to contend with

The New Economy Movement is already energetically involved in an extraordinary range of activities, but it faces large-scale, daunting challenges. The first of these derives from the task it has set for itself—nothing less than changing and democratizing the very essence of the American economic system’s institutional structure.

Even viewed as a long-range goal, the movement obviously confronts the enormous entrenched power of an American political economic system dominated by very large banking and corporate interests—and bolstered by a politics heavily dependent on the financial muscle of elites at the top. (One recent calculation is that (the) 400 individuals at the top now own more wealth than the bottom 160 million.)

[Er, needless to say there are more than 300 million US citizens so who are these 160 million they’re referring to? There are 230 million working aged US citizens, which again, misses the mark by a wide margin…Chilling thought, is the 160 million the total US population LESS the 'surplus population' this so-called 'new economy' has no use for? This leaves the deeply disturbing question, good citizen, of precisely 'who' is 'surplus'?]

A second fundamental challenge derives from the increasingly widespread new economy judgment that economic growth must ultimately be reduced, indeed, even possibly ended if the dangers presented by climate change are to be avoided—and if resource and other environmental limits are to be responsibly dealt with.

So it that it? All we need do is ‘democratize’ the decision-making process and whamo, all will be well?

How much you want to bet when it comes to dividing up the work, management is going to take the standard position: you guys baby sit production, we’ll shuffle the papers (for twice what they pay you!)

Does anybody else notice a certain ‘sameness’ about this arrangement? What is ‘democratization’ supposed to ‘solve’ precisely?

It is suppose to provide workers with a ‘stake’ in the company, an incentive to do more and to do it better.

To lift them above the ‘Cog in the machine’ feeling perpetuated by the management attitude ‘You could all be replaced by trained monkeys’.

What does the worker get out of this ‘democratization’?

NOTHING!

You get a ‘bonus’ instead of a raise and you get more of your heath insurance expense dumped on you, (by a company making billions!) and then you get ‘downsized’ the moment they decide to sell your business group.

WTF!

Oh, and you think they are going to let YOU ‘vote’ on issues like hiking your own health insurance or cutting your vacation/sick time?

Never happen!

So what are these turkeys preaching besides the old conservative canard of ‘patience asshole, patience’.

The problem with being ‘too patient’ is you wind up dead before anything gets done…if ever.

And that’s part of the problem we’re facing right now.

People see the global financial system is on the rocks and they get hopeful, thinking ‘they’ll have to fix things now’ (and assholes like Alternet aren’t helping any!)

When in fact those who counsel ‘patience’ like things just the way they are! They’ll make you wait forever if you’re dumb enough!

And sadly, there ain’t a lick of difference between dumb and trusting…

Just because they have proven they don’t know what they’re doing (well actually they DO know what they’re doing, the problem is they don’t give a shit!) doesn’t mean they are suddenly going to start listening to you!

There is no ‘capitalist’ fix for the situation we’re caught up in. ‘Broken’ goes beyond the financial piece of the puzzle all the way to the justice piece.

If we don’t fix the justice system our species is screwed, plain as that.

A Simple Plan accomplishes this goal in a way EVERYBODY can understand (although, admittedly, not in a way EVERYBODY is going to like!) [The caveat being if you don’t like A Simple Plan then YOU are a CRIMINAL.] How about them apples?

Bad news boys and girls, this ain’t Heaven, we can’t all have it the way we wants it, all of the time.

If we can just get past our personal desires this place doesn’t have to be a notch above hell either…

The decision, as always, is yours.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Elected?

Greetings good citizen,

Almost as disturbing as yesterday’s post about the ‘conservative tri-fecta’ assualt on the White House is today’s story expressing ‘guarded optimism that the party of ‘1 in 5’ can wrest control from the Democrats if THEY DON’T SCARE TOO MANY INDEPENDENTS!

For Senate Republicans, 2012 is starting a lot like 2010.

They have a shot at taking control away from Democrats as long as insurgent conservatives who are defeating the party's more establishment candidates in primaries don't frighten too many independent voters like they did two years ago.

Deb Fischer, a little-known state senator, became the latest unexpected Senate GOP nominee Tuesday, rallying late to upset the favored — and better funded — choices of both the party's mainstream and tea party establishments: Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning and state Treasurer Don Stenberg.

Her victory occurred just a week after tea party and other conservative groups embraced Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who scored an arguably bigger upset — knocking off six-term Sen. Richard Lugar, the Senate's longest-serving Republican.

USA today prints some pretty outrageous stuff and this is just another example of how far ‘off the rails’ the predominantly conservative media has become.

Worse, it is this very same media that tells us who won the election.

So the answer to ‘gridlock’ in Washington is more ‘Tea Partiers’, eh?

How fucked up is it good citizen that the only 30,000 member strong ‘Tea Party movement’ is (well) financed by the > One Percent?

Just who are the ‘rank and file’ members of the Tea Party movement? Why they are the denizens of the dementia unit at the local nursing home!

And yet the corporate owned media has the audacity to claim this is the wind beneath the Tea Party’s wings…people who forget what the inside of a voting booth looks like!

Worse, the last person they REMEMBER voting for is Ike. (One of the last ‘true’ Republicans.)

Which only belabors the main point, Tea Partiers are OLD (and I’m no spring chicken myself!) hardly ‘representative’ of the general public but isn’t that just how the deep pocketed like it?

Yes, good citizen, just how much bullshit will you sit still for while the corporate owned media spoon-feeds it to you?

Because we’re going to be fed shovelfuls of it between now and November, then we’ll be expected to believe it happened again.

Then it’s four more years of waiting for another…chance.

When the truth is we don’t stand a chance. The cheaters have stolen the entire process and we have only one way to deal with it and this is to reject what can politely be called ‘the chute’.

Understand we’ve gotten where we are today via ‘non-participation’ so merely ‘ignoring’ the voting booth will do us no good.

We’ve got to ‘reject’ the entire process, vigorously!

Which, of course, assumes we even get that far. Last election I predicted we wouldn’t make it that far and was proven wrong…but what the hell, I never said I was psychic.

THIS time we have even less reason to subject ourselves to ‘more of the same’ but we can already see that is all there is going to be on the, er, ‘menu’.

Greece, Italy and France have all, er, ‘rejected’ austerity but we haven’t seen any lasting results. The Greeks can’t form a government and the Italians can't arrive at a consensus and the new French Prime Minister has already started ‘back-pedaling’ on some of his campaign promises…

Which is also what happened when Obama took office.

Worse, letting Obama be re-elected sends exactly the wrong message to Wall Street (who has contributed mightily to Obama’s re-election campaign…)

So, do YOU see an ‘alternative’ here to more of the same?

No…because you aren’t supposed to.

THAT is the message the > One Percent is sending to US!

So HOW do we reject this blind chute that robs us of our choices?

Do we petition THEIR courts?

Like the faux America United ploy, who do we get to run against such a ‘stacked deck’?

Who would be, er, ‘selfless’ enough to go and stand up against a brick wall of bought and paid for opposition?

Because YOU KNOW there isn’t a chance in hell of our man occupying the White House for longer than a few months before the ‘money power’ paid to have him (and his family) assassinated.

Nope, good citizen, the ‘old way’ of doing things is gone for good!

Which is both good news and bad news.

Good because the old way was corrupt beyond belief, bad because the current supporters of the old way want to go back to the ancient way of doing things, which will really suck!

Think they are ‘insufferable’ now…just wait until we HAVE TO address them as Your Lordship or Sir!

Then we’ll all have to ask ourselves if it isn’t better to die on our feet rather than live on our knees…(and we all know ‘feet’ wins, every time!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Dreams

Greetings good citizen,

Looks like it’s a ‘long weekend’ for the markets as the NYSE has shut down for Good Friday, the prelude to Easter Sunday.

Not that this stopped the (decidedly conservative) corporate owned media from crowing about the market’s lousy week despite the economy’s ‘vibrant performance’.

Dunno what they’re babbling about but whatever it is they’ve got I hope it ain’t catchy…

And from the, er, Alternative media (who may get more corporate funding than we realize) we get this tripe!

First the prelude and opening statement, followed by the closing argument:

We caught up with Van Jones, former special adviser to the Obama White House and long-time activist, to talk about his much-anticipated new book, Rebuild the Dream. Part memoir and part blueprint for an economy that works for the 99 percent, the book analyzes mistakes made by Democrats and presents a vision for how to energize a mass movement to restore the American Dream. [snip]

A: Why do you believe so strongly in the American Dream?

VJ: Because it was the dream that sustained my great grandparents, my grandparents and my parents. It is the dream I have for my sons, even now. My community has put too many martyrs in the ground in this country to walk away from the American Dream of opportunity for all. We certainly should not throw an idea like that in the garbage can, just so that the richest people ever born don't have to pay a penny more in taxes. We built this country by pooling our resources and working together, sacrificing for the next generation. At our best, we are a nation of neighbors. I reject Social Darwinism as barbarism. We are either going to turn to each other -- or on each other. Rebuild the Dream is working to create a way for us to work together -- the 99 percent fighting for the 100 percent.

Wait a fucking minute there Slim! He REJECTS the idea that Social Darwinism is barbarism?

It may not be what he means but that’s what it says!

And let me tell you, Social Darwinism is barbarism on a grand scale, the first ‘assumption’ that Social Darwinism makes is those NOT ALREADY WEALTHY are ‘inferior’ and therefore should be ‘wiped out’/made extinct!

Now maybe our Libertarian numbnuts is trying to ‘dance between the cracks’ by saying he doesn’t favor ‘exterminating’ the non-wealthy…which doesn’t excuse him or Social Darwinism for its barbarism.

Um, it is fairly common for Libertarians to believe that a majority of US Citizens share their decidedly predatory philosophy, given the nation’s long-standing worship of ‘rugged individualism’.

Which has no more ‘basis in fact’ than the religious dogma of ‘spirit in the sky’.

Um, I hesitate to kick Alternet in the shins for being true to its mandate of becoming a ‘marketplace of ideas’.

I can only criticize them for holding lax standards by failing to recognize conservatism in ‘sheep’s clothing’ that is Libertarianism.

Or worse, trying to sell Libertarianism as a ‘progressive’ idea…

But I digress, the real ‘point’ this article attempts to make is that the ‘American Dream’ is real and we should do utmost to ‘preserve’ it.

So I ask you good citizen, why isn’t Alternet running stories about truly sustainable social models (Like A Simple Plan)?

Do I need categorically debunk Mr. Jones’s thesis item by item…no, because the answer is all around you.

IT CAN’T BE DONE!

THERE IS NO WAY TO ‘SAVE’ CAPITALISM USING CAPITALISM!

Worse, the strategy of ‘privatized profits and socialized losses’ ain’t gonna do it either (or should I qualify that as ‘for much longer’…)

Sometimes this task of attempting to enlighten the public is akin to pounding your head against a rock wall.

I often feel as though I am not making any progress but the notion that I MIGHT BE reaching a few of you is enough to keep me going.

The answers are right under your nose if you can turn off the ‘contrary programming’ and open your eyes!

In the mean time I’ll just keep pounding away…

And yeah, it’s actually ‘fun’ if you look at it the right way.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner