Reflexive (knee-jerk)

Greetings good citizen,

It seems like only yesterday the ‘great communicator’ (who was hard pressed to stay awake during cabinet meetings) was telling us, after 220 years, that we had finally arrived at ‘Morning in America’ (we should dig the bastard up and hang him, just on general principles!)

Do you know what the last election proved? The people who bought the ‘Morning in America’ horseshit (the so-called ‘Reagan Democrats’) are all DEAD!

And by today’s conservo-whacko standards, St. Ronnie would be a flaming liberal!

Which brings us to the shortest day ever and where we are now, something akin to ‘Midnight in the garden of supreme evil…’

Our utter lawlessness at the top has reached crisis proportions, thus do the ‘fiscally responsible’ (read self-interested thieves) propose we:

1. “Fix” means cut: When they say “fix” Social Security, they mean cut Social Security. Fixers want to convince the public that a well-managed, hugely popular program that does not add to the deficit (it’s self-funded) is somehow in crisis and requires intervention in the form of various cutting schemes.

2. “Reform” means rob. When the say “reform” the tax code, they mean “make taxes even lower for the rich.” The wealthy do not pay their fair share of taxes in the United States, which is a major reason there is a large deficit in the first place.

3.“Bipartisan” means all of the rich. Fix the Debt is a pro-business ideological movement pretending to be a bipartisan group of concerned citizens. But the group is really just a coalition for the greedy, unpatriotic rich.

4. “Concern” means covet. There was a time, a couple of generations ago, when business leaders would not dare to go public with their desire to increase income inequality and stick it to hard-working Americans

5. “Fiscal conservative” means economically confused. Longtime Wall Street executive Steve Rattner, one of Obama’s auto bailout czars, has been using his influence to attract tycoons from the financial industry to the Fix the Debt movement.

6. "Strip-mining is not leadership." Fixers present themselves as magnanimous, responsible leaders doing what they believe is best for the country. But that’s a tough sell when you’re advocating policies that mainly benefit…yourself.

No irony should be lost on the fact that our failure to prosecute the criminals responsible for the first global depression 80 years ago has led to the criminal looting of our civilization today, unfortunately labeled as ‘bank bailouts’.

Well good citizen, we’ve been 'bailing out the banks' for the past five years (while basically gutting the global economy) and we’re still not done.

When do you suppose it will be time to shut down the banking industry and institute a more responsible system?

Will that be never (because nobody is ‘smart enough’ to figure out a different way? Or so the criminally rich would have you believe.)

Step one, before we shut down the banks is we have to lock all of the criminals up, starting with the ones in charge of our so called ‘justice system’.

In a bizarre juxtaposition, possessing a law degree will bar you from ‘practicing law’, actually ‘practicing’ what you have been taught will become an ‘exile offense.’ (Because the law is the people’s domain and NO ONE shall claim to speak for all of the people! Which is a direct violation of the human anti-exploitation law.

Understand that ‘lawyering’ is something most politicians do and as a profession is almost universally loathed.

Again, while some make a good living for themselves, most rue the day they decided studying law was a good idea.

All they have to show for that decision is a mountain of student debt.

(Which collides ‘face first’ with the notion that ‘more education’ is the solution to our massive unemployment problem and desperately unbalanced economy.)

Just because you study to become something doesn’t mean there will be a (good paying) job available after you graduate (and wasn’t that the whole point of going to college in the first place?)

Your ‘hard won’ degree will likely get you a job…as a barrista at Starbucks…where the tips (like the coffee) suck.

So it will be a doubly bitter pill to slave your life away, scraping and saving to keep a roof over your head and food in your stomach (forget marriage, neither of you can afford it) only to reach retirement age to find that the cupboard is empty.

Yup, after they ‘reduce the deficit’ (not by raising taxes or cutting the trillions they are spending on drone warfare…no!) by shredding social security and pauperizing those who have spent their whole lives paying into the system.

What do you suppose they will do with the ‘savings’?

They’ll pocket them of course!

And they’ll flip you the bird if you say anything about it!

(Are we testing these motherfuckers yet?)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Buckle Up!

Greetings good citizen,

Seems to be something about the ‘kill off’ message that readers find too disturbing to contemplate.

Which is sort of a shame because finding it ‘distasteful’ doesn’t lessen the likelihood of it happening a single iota.

Make no mistake about it good citizen, YOU are being ‘undermined’ at every critical juncture. Every aspect of your life is being flushed away so you WON’T have a crack at the ‘mating game’…even if it’s just to scratch your itch.

(Because we have to face the reality that most kids are conceived not when we’re calling the stork but when we’re getting our freak on! By the time most of us get around to actually calling the stork, the doctor is needed to lend a ‘helping hand’. Do you know a married couple who ISN’T in a fertility program? And for some bizarre reason THIS is NOT NEWS!)

But we digress, let us proceed with today’s offering

Feelings of decreased self-worth and desirability go hand-in-hand with job insecurity—and they make you feel about as alluring as an Uglydoll. The 2011 blockbuster film Bridesmaids follows the sexual and romantic mishaps of Annie Walker, a 30-something woman who lost her bakery in the Great Recession and finds herself working at a dead-end retail job at a jewelry store that makes her feel miserable. And even that goes down the tubes when she mocks the relationship commitments of customers. Annie hooks up with jerks and feels unworthy of a nice guy when he finally comes along. Her mojo returns only when she begins to see the possibility of restarting her business. For her, meaningful work and a satisfying love life are indissolubly linked.

Our bodies –and our hearts -- were not made to cope with long-term job insecurity. To fully open ourselves to the right person and let go physically, we need a measure of safety in our lives. But three consecutive years of unemployment over 8 percent – the worst such run since the Great Depression – is leaving us fearful and forlorn. Shredded social safety nets and weak bonds of community and kinship mean that there’s little to mute the intensity of anxiety that never seems to fade.

It’s even worse than it seems good citizen, the kids are being told that we did this to them ‘on purpose’, that we gave birth to them solely so we could collect our ‘entitlement programs’.

Another reason we should ‘cap’ all registered Republicans on sight.
What a viscous fucking lie to tell our kids! (But it is sadly consistent with everything else these deluded bastards do!)

Minds that can only hate have no time or room for thinking.

Which is to point out it would be mighty fucking stupid of us to have all of these kids then EXPORT all of their jobs! (So Wally-Mart could charge ‘lower prices’ by paying less than a living wage in a third world economy based of rampant fraud!)

Worse, this practice has destabilized the global economy…and the fuckers (think) they are going to just sit there and snicker when it all implodes.

(I think the ones who aren’t smart enough to run should be killed where we find them!)

Not that the responsible parties are particularly obvious.

It will take some research to ferret out the people behind Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’…that robs us all blind!

Anyway, stock markets around the globe are bleeding red ink (again) and nobody is ‘surprised’ except stock analysts but that’s what their paid to do…

How nice is it, being paid to be Mickey the Dunce?

Stock markets should be shut down tomorrow and all of the operators tried for treason and crimes against humanity.

But that’s just my opinion.

And almost nobody gives a flying fig what I think…more or less.

Anyway good citizen, I’ve got crap to do and people to comfort in the hour of their loss…yes, the ‘death watch’ ended this morning. She’s gone to a better place!

Hold a place in your heart for a moment for the good souls who pass through our lives too quickly.

Only the good die young, the rest of us had best buckle up, it’s gonna be a long, bumpy ride!

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

Edible?

Greetings good citizen,

On occasion I see fit to compose ‘free-hand’, without reference to the decidedly gloomy influence of the corporate owned media.

So, will today’s post be sunshine, lollipops and rainbows everywhere?

Isn’t all of this ‘doom and gloom’ a matter of perspective? If you think positive, things really aren’t that bad…in a relative sort of way.

Which brings us to the ‘deceptive happiness’ that small things bring.

Chirping birds, a warm gentle breeze and sunshine are often enough to provide a feeling that all is right with the world, despite evidence to the contrary.

We can start today’s offering with the observation that the stock markets around the world are all in the red, we can even take comfort in the fact that this is how they should be.

Once again the discussion has turned to the central question of if a ‘return to normal’ is even possible.

And the consensus is no.

The last three ‘jobless recoveries’ reveal the ‘new normal’.

A new normal where fewer and fewer benefit from the efforts of the many and a blind eye is turned to the consequences of this kind of recklessness.

Yet the scribblers of the corporate owned media continue to ‘pretend’ that ‘happy days’ are waiting to return; that prosperity is hiding just around the corner and will pop into view…any moment now.

And they keep on repeating it, as they have for the past four years, like it is possible to ‘will it to be true’ via repetition.

It has become so bad good citizen that even decidedly disturbing economic developments become fodder for the ‘spin machine’.

The rising price of energy is viewed as a non-existent rise in manufacturing activity when it really only indicates more kids around the world have drivers licenses now than ever before…not that many of them are ‘joy riding’ at $4 dollars a gallon.

Finally, like a sleeper waking up from a long and troubled nap, the corporate owned media is finally starting to ask a question it should have been asking for the past forty years…

How do you squawk about there being no jobs when commerce has been off-shoring everything that isn’t nailed to the deck for the past forty years?

Is anyone else ‘shocked’ to see those two realities finally converge in the same news item?

Because for the past forty years it’s been ‘taken for granted’ that the mighty engine of capitalism would provide MORE JOBS than we could off-shore, if only we’d let ‘the markets’ work their magic!

It was bullshit then and its bullshit today.

No irony should be lost on the effect this ‘indiscriminate off-shoring’ has had on the Euro-zone nations that have become known as the PIIGS.

The real irony lay in stupidity of what these countries were supposed to ‘trade’ their productive capacity for: ‘tourism!’

Imagine, a world of tourists after the conclusion of the ‘global race to the bottom’.

There will be what, three of them?

Funnier still, imagine tourists in a time of energy scarcity! Around the world in eighty years!

Imagine what a best seller ‘Siberia by foot’ would be?

If you ran, non-stop, I doubt you could make the journey from the Bering Sea to the Caucasian Steppes in a single summer, even doing a four-minute mile, uphill and down.

No known creature has that kind of stamina.

But hey, just surviving today’s predatory social model warrants a degree of congratulations…even if you have to congratulate yourself.

To a degree they have made this easy…but they are about to snatch the proverbial ‘teat’ away from you.

Then we shall see just how many television viewers absorbed what they were watching when they sat glued to Doomsday Preppers.

Because no where in that show does it EVER mention that 99% of the vegetation that grows wild around your neighborhood is DEADLY!

And you need a GOOD guide book to pick out which plants are poisonous and which ones aren’t.

In fact, picking wild edibles is such a hazardous hobby that most survivalists eschew even trying, guess wrong once and it’s automatic game over.

I’d even posit that there are cases of desperate people dying from eating something they shouldn’t have happening every day but the capitalist, corporate owned media doesn’t want that sort of thing becoming common knowledge.

How would it play in Peoria if it were reported that people were starving to death because capitalism had left them no alternative but to ‘eat the poison’?

If you don’t know what you’re doing then the odds of finding wild edibles are worse than playing Russian Roulette.

The old rule still stands; if you don’t know what it is then don’t put it in your mouth!

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

Deeper than it looks

Greetings good citizen,

As I recently commented, the more you reflect, the harder it is to escape the circus-like atmosphere surrounding the major events unfolding around the world.

Those perpetrating the crimes/events are the first to defend their actions with comments like, “It’s a crazy world where crazy things happen all of the time.”

Which isn’t entirely true and we all know it.

The ‘bizarre’ doesn’t smack you in the face until somebody tries to pull the rug over something…that is usually why the ‘explanation’ doesn’t quite fit what you’re witnessing.

What should be dawning on most of you by now is the, er, ‘cover-ups’ are getting lamer mostly because of the undeniably criminal nature of what’s being covered up.

Usually it is violations of your constitutional rights that are being ‘tread’ upon…by, of all people, those flag waving patriots, the Tea Partiers!

At a Republican candidate forum outside Fort Worth last week, a Tea Party activist turned Senate candidate proclaimed the Occupy Wall Street protesters “unemployed, uneducated and uninformed.” To which the conservative radio host moderating the panel added, mirthfully, “This is the first occupation many of these people have seen in years.”

I will once again draw your attention to the decidedly ‘Libertarian’ quality of the Cato Institute spawned Tea Party. Somewhere down the line what formerly passed for ’political opposition’ morphed into a totally illogical movement to abolish government altogether…

And Tea Partiers don’t see anything ’wrong’ with this.

Probably because Tea Partiers DON’T KNOW what ‘the purpose of government’ is.

But let us digress a bit for a moment.

Doesn’t it strike you as ‘ballsy’ that the mostly retirement aged (and SENILE) Tea Partiers are calling the youthful “Occupy Wall Street” crowd ‘out of touch?’

There is also another glaring difference between the Tea Partiers and the Occupy Wall Street crowd. The Tea Partiers (again due to their stunning display of ignorance, although it COULD BE ‘stupidity’) DON’T blame those running the FIRE economy for bringing our civilization down around our ears.

No irony should be lost on the fact that Tea Partiers value freedom higher than civilization, worse, most think the two are 'unrelated'!

Um, the bad news is ‘the kids’ of OWS are tarring ALL, er, ‘seniors’ with the same brush.

A factor the largely aged and senile Tea Partiers aren’t helping with.

Let us take a mental step backwards and refocus on the Big Picture for a moment.

It seems Mr. Obama isn’t ‘weaseling’ when he says they’re pulling ‘everybody’ out of Iraq…(although Sec. Of State Clinton says we won’t ‘abandon’ Iraq, whatever that’s supposed to mean.)

Ironically, let’s take a peek at why ‘negotiations’ broke down:

Pentagon lawyers insisted that the Iraqi Parliament grant soldiers immunity from legal prosecution. In recent weeks, American negotiators in Baghdad concluded that it would be impossible to obtain that protection, essentially scuttling any chance of a substantial troop presence there next year.

Um, aren’t we right back where we started good citizen with legal ‘wrangling’ over what was, up to this point, settled law?

Worse, good citizen, now other criminal organizations are taking advantage of the gaping holes left in the justice system by those who DON’T want ‘financial crime’ prosecuted.

Gangs like the Bloods and the Crips are engaging in crimes, such as identity theft, counterfeiting, selling stolen goods and even bank, credit card and mortgage fraud, said a new FBI gangs threat assessment.

“We’ve seen it, but we’ve seen them doing it even more now and we attribute to the fact that the likelihood of being caught is less, the sentences once you are caught are less, and the actual monetary gain is much higher,” said Diedre Butler, a unit chief at the National Gang Intelligence Center.

Did you see that/ the crimes are more lucrative, harder to prosecute AND it is less likely you’ll do time IF they catch you.

Why do you suppose THAT is?

Do you think it has a connection to our ‘anti-government’ Tea Baggers?

Ask yourself; how demented ARE these people?

They make no secret of it:

Obama and Dems have seized on other reactions from audience members — the “let him die” moment, the booing of the gay soldier — to build a larger case about the clash of visions and values the 2012 election campaign will embody. Obama has taken to claiming that “we’re all in this together,” and has framed his call for tax hikes on the rich as an argument over national unity and the social contract, while deriding GOP opposition to shared sacrifice as a Darwinian “you’re on your own” worldview.

I end today’s…‘puzzle’ with the mental image of the world that the Tea Partiers would saddle you with is IDENTICAL to the place I would ‘exile’ criminals to…

Chew that one over as you ponder who to vote for.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Red Herring

Greetings good citizen,

It seems I was mistaken to think the debt ceiling wasn’t important enough to keep congressional staffers chained to their desks, monitoring ‘public opinion’…

And naturally there is another ‘compromise’ in the works.

Does anyone think that Wall Street DOESN’T want the nation to default?

The media wants you to think that but this is a ‘Red Herring’. Wall Street is really interested in avoiding prosecution for the mess they’ve made of the global economy…(which, as I have frequently pointed out, doesn’t exist!)

You want a Kabuki Dance? Check this out:

Bankers have deluged Congressional staff members with research reports outlining the bleak consequences of a default, or even a downgrade of United States government debt by the major rating agencies. And in corporate America’s version of grassroots mobilization, Allstate e-mailed 45,000 employees urging them to call their local members of Congress and demand a deal.

Hedge fund managers, normally among Wall Street’s most secretive tribes, have been stepping out of the shadows, too.

Marc Lasry, a major Democratic fundraiser who manages the $14 billion Avenue Capital hedge fund, said he spoke to half a dozen members of Congress from both parties on Thursday and Friday with blunt warnings that failure to compromise on the debt ceiling risked permanently damaging the nation’s financial standing.

What’s the ‘best case’ scenario here? That Washington crashes and burns! (While Wall Street melts back into the slimy shadows it sprang out of.)

“Every time Wall Street raises its head, there are a lot of people ready to chop it off,” said one senior banking industry official.

But as the deadline approached, anxiety began to take hold. A turning point came on July 11, when top officials from some of Wall Street’s most powerful lobbying groups filed into an ornate conference room opposite Mr. Geithner’s office on the third floor of the Treasury Building to make their case about the danger of inaction.

Just imagine, good citizen, if this were true.

These are MAJOR campaign contributors here, if they REALLY wanted to avoid default (like such a feat were possible in a finite world) the political ‘lapdogs’ would be doing whatever it took to make their master’s wishes a reality.

How sad is it good citizen that there is NO POSSIBLE ‘fix’for our shattered economy that doesn’t involve a complete ‘reshuffle’ and reboot of the entire economic system!

Which is precisely what will happen once the laws protecting the old economic order are swept away.

Sure, many of the ‘old players’ will come out of the reshuffle just fine…but some won’t.

Who’s your Daddy? (Same as it ever was!)

Then we have this bullshit, which pretends there is still such a thing as a Democrat

The same is true today. In our recent Web survey of 2,000 respondents, voters respond strongly to Democratic messages on the economy only when a party leader declares, “We have to start by changing Washington. ... The middle class won’t catch a break until we confront the power of money and the lobbyists.”

Why is that?

You do not have to look very far. If there is an article of faith among contemporary center-left leaders, it is that investment in education will pay dividends with increased productivity and increased income. And yet the evidence is piling up that the economy is not working for the middle class. Productivity and education increase but wages do not follow.

When presented with vivid descriptions of income inequality in America, people are deflated, rather than empowered to bring change. In surveys, they tell me that they think the politicians and the chief executives are “piggybacking off each other.” They think that the game is rigged and that the wealthy and big industries get policies that reinforce their advantage. And they do not think their voices matter.

Isn’t this the same question I asked a few posts back…actually I don’t recall putting it in the form of a question, it was more of a statement.

And the statement made the point of the total absence of sanity in today’s political dialog…no ‘question’ about it.

As we recently witnessed in Wisconsin, the 'scam artists' ran 'true believers' in the recall elections.

What we don't know is how deep this corruption has spread over the past thirty years?

Is there still such a thing as a Democrat?

I seriously doubt any true supporter of the public interest would pass the 'party machinery sniff test' so necessary to receiving the 'party endorsement'.

Which brings us full circle to what I consider the ‘crux’ of our current problem…the corporate owned media.

Without ‘reliable sources and objective reporting’ you wind up with the media circus we have today…with parts of the media pointing the finger at other parts with zero effect.

Our new motto has become ‘Trust No One’.

It is more than a little incredible that since Republicans are responsible for this toxic environment we find ourselves in that voting for more Republicans (according to guess who) is the answer to this conundrum?

It becomes even more ‘mysterious’ when the 1 in 5 factor is taken into consideration.

Can you say ‘puppet government?’

Which is really neither here nor there, what DOES matter is what are you willing to DO about it?

Because this circus won’t end until ‘the Rubes’ stop paying attention…

The mission at hand good citizen is to restore justice and the ‘rule of law’ over the recent incarnation of ‘the rule of man’.

It doesn’t start at the point of a gun but with the tip of a pen.

Are you game?

Because you’re ‘playing’ whether you want to or not!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

What do you want for a Monday?

Greetings good citizen,

Yet another election has come and gone and still we have failed to, er, ‘correct’ the flaws in a system that was designed to always lead to perpetual gridlock.

Which is to point out that some of us don’t want the system ‘fixed’, it works beautifully for them.

The way things are going, certain parts of the country will continue to use this badly broken system long after it has been abandoned elsewhere.

Left to your imagination is precisely ‘what’ it will be abandoned ‘for’?

If history is any guide, our ‘Faux’ democracy will be abandoned for very real despotism.

The ‘Masters of the Universe’ will simply, er, ‘dispose of’ anyone or anything that dares to get in their way.

(Such is the power of [meaningless] money over those too stupid to realize it is a ‘fiction’!)

Worse, those who ‘flaunt’ the power of money will be ‘stupefied’ when their ‘sacred cash’ is suddenly ‘no good’!

Once the banking system seizes solid those multi-colored pieces of paper become worthless.

Preposterous, says you? It has happened, REPEATEDLY!

The ‘true’ economy is a ‘barter’ economy where you trade what you have for what you need, no funny colored paper or bits of metal required.

Here we bump into something the capitalists don’t like to talk about because it proves their way of doing things doesn’t work (or can only work under carefully ‘controlled’ circumstances…)

How do you participate in a ‘barter economy’ when nobody wants to trade with you?

Short answer, you don’t!

And this is capitalism’s main flaw; it can’t cover all of the bases (even though it pretends to.)

Now good citizen, how do we ‘fix’ this?

Understand that failing to fix this means you will continue to be ‘ripped off’ (until you’ve outlived your usefulness, then you’ll be ‘discarded’…)

Is this what you ‘signed up for’?

Worse, good citizen (and believe you me, it IS going to get A LOT worse!)

You have managed to, er, ‘survive’ into a time when it has no place to go but, er, BOOM!

The infamous ‘Crack-up Boom’ to be precise.

When the payments stop, the supply lines shutdown.

When there’s ‘no supply’ it becomes ‘scramble time’ where ‘grab & go’ becomes the new game in town.

It is the oldest of playground rules, ‘possession is nine/tenths of the law.’

This is where people will relearn that there is strength in numbers…sadly, this will be a ‘hard’ lesson, one that many tears will be spilled over.

Which is not to suggest that the law will have much to do with anything once the wheels come flying off.

Welcome to the ‘Wild, Wild West!’ where a quick draw (or better, getting ‘the drop’ on your opponent) trumps pretty much everything.

The new game is really a game as old as nature itself…kill them before they kill you.

Simple to learn, an (abbreviated) lifetime to master.

You have to be mighty crafty to survive once your reflexes are no longer up to the job…

Consider this fair warning: IF we fail to depose the criminals currently in charge of our civilization, the game is going to get very nasty indeed.

[Hey, what do you want for a Monday?]

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Pauperized!

Greetings good citizen,

We can only wonder how (the irrelevant) stock markets decided to reverse yesterday’s losses during this morning trading, the mysterious uptick hasn’t been attributed to anything (Not that this particularly matters; movements of the markets seldom make sense.)

Nor is the ‘trading day’ over, markets may well end where they started and we’d be none the wiser.

Who cares about the corporate sponsored Kabuki Dance put on for your benefit by the MSM?

Makes you wonder what the ‘real news’ would look like, doesn’t it?

Well, tonight’s first offering is a refutation of ‘the dance’ itself, not that you, Dear reader/Good Citizen is in need of such enlightenment…

No. 330: September Production and Housing Starts: Subscription required: October 19th, 2010

• Third-Quarter Production Growth Slowed and Housing Contracted
• Third-Quarter GDP Should Have Slowed, But the Heavily-Politicized and Guesstimated Series Is Virtually Worthless...

How’s that for ‘short and to the point’?

We are left to ponder if misery can exist in the absence of official recognition?

Would Marie Antoinette have kept her head if she had today’s media to put a positive spin on an otherwise retched economy?

How retched is it?

5 Pieces of Advice for the New Paupers

Tonight’s second offering is but the most fleeting of glimpses of today’s economic reality. What the writer shares here fails to hammer home what the actual experience is really like.

I have often railed about how much we take things for granted. When we walk over to a light switch, we expect something to happen when we toggle it.

When nothing happens, we are genuinely perplexed! The light switch is a relatively recent invention yet they have become so ingrained into our existence that we expect them to function whenever we encounter one (within reason.)

Naturally, the light switch doesn’t function if there isn’t one to flip, a situation many of the homeless find themselves confronted with. Then there’s the ‘running water’ situation, which also has multiple aspects to it.

You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone.

Worse is the realization that your ‘privation’ (being deprived of these, er, ‘basic necessities’) was caused by some greed head’s decision to ship your job to a third world cesspool! (This assumes you had a marketable skill at some point in the past, many recent grads don’t even have that…which is a whole other can of worms!)

Yes good citizen, it all comes down to choices AND YOU HAVEN’T BEEN GIVEN ANY THAT MATTER!

Knowing what you know today, would you have voted Republican EVEN ONCE over the past forty years?

Many of you are too young to remember (and conservatives conveniently ‘forget’) that the first time anybody EVER heard the acronym NAFTA, it was being touted by none other than ‘The Great Communicator’ (of ‘Bedtime for Bonzo’ fame!)

Don’t know who that is? Probably better forgotten anyway.

No amount of Monday morning quarterbacking can alter the past, but it is even more disturbing to acknowledge that it is already too late to alter the political landscape (via the political machinery provided) too.

You won’t get to ‘vote’ for who will run things or what laws you will forced to live under; history has shown we are used to being the victims of tyranny.

MAYBE future historians will ask how, in such an interconnected society, we let it all slip away? Why didn’t we use the resources available to us to unite against this obvious threat?

Like any of us had a choice!

Our ‘problem’ in a nutshell is the same one we’ve always faced, Treason.

It is far too easy to ‘buy off’ those elected to defend the public from the criminals among us.

Worse, the criminals have an astounding number of, er, ‘defenders’.
It is not until the criminals start to prey upon the people who ‘thought’ they enjoyed the criminal’s protection that the cries for justice are heard.

Yes, once upon a time politicians would run on ‘Law & Order’ issues, now that there is going to be a huge uptick in, er, ‘criminal activity’ they’ll be at it again.

Unfortunately you will NOT be given the option of prosecuting the criminals responsible for the increase in ‘social unrest’.

And that’s beyond being a damn shame.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner