For Dummies

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

As This article from Alternet points out:

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

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

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

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

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

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

If we were to seek out this massive cognitive dissonance we’d need look no further than the invisible economic recovery that only exists in the corporate owned media.

We usually assume that economically distressed areas exist only in inner-city slums or rural backwaters. But areas plagued by persistent high unemployment almost never fit into conventional categories. Distressed areas share characteristics that make them unlikely to recover if the remedies offered rely only on the standard approaches to boosting the economy.

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

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

Oddly today’s headlines were crowing about a ‘building boom’ that has taken contractors ‘by surprise’.

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Unicorns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Which leads us to this headline:

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

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

Can you say Banana Republic?

How are our two stories ‘related’?

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

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

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

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

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

How can ‘The Bernank’ maintain this false façade?

Let us return to lesson one shall we?

ALL MONEY IS FUNNY!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course you don’t!

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

And there’s the rub!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

What the...

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we have the corporate owned media using trivia to distract us from the real issues at hand.

JPMorgan Ignored Warnings in Loss, Inquiry Finds
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and BEN PROTESS 49 minutes ago

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

A Senate panel report says that Jamie Dimon, chief of JPMorgan Chase, withheld details about the bank's daily losses.

Then our ‘guardians of society’ double up the information, attempting to confuse the matter even worse than it already is.

How inconvenient the very next article points to the real issue?

Pearl Brady of Brooklyn worries that it will be years before she will be able to put money away.
Younger Generations Lag Parents in Wealth-Building
By ANNIE LOWREY 49 minutes ago

A study finds that younger working adults are not doing better financially than the previous generation.

With ‘wealth management experts' opining we need to set aside at least a half a million dollars to retire ‘safely’ and with most workers earning less than 25 to 30 thousand dollars annually, the only way the majority can retire ‘comfortably’ is magic.

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

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

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

But the 4th Estate knows thinks YOU are STUPID.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The government wants a detailed plan on how the company plans to address safety issues before allowing it to resume exploration.

A REAL government would never have permitted this nonsense in the first place but we all know the political lapdogs are ‘going through the motions’ of pretending to protecting the public while they allow private enterprise to doom our civilization.

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

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

Speaking of which:

DealBook
Fed Rebukes Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase Over Capital Plans
By PETER EAVIS

The Federal Reserve cited “weaknesses” in capital plans of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, while Citigroup and Bank of America got a green light.

Doesn’t God ‘rebuke’ people? The rest of us get called on our baloney. How sad is it that the other two thieves got away with their ‘plans’?

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

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

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

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

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

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

comment iconPost a Comment | Read (1)

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

Seriously, good citizen…

New Jobless Claims at a 5-Year Low
By REUTERS 7:38 PM ET

The report on unemployment added to a range of data that suggested higher taxes were having a limited impact on the economy.

Like the whole theme of today’s reporting is ‘insult their intelligence!

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

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

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

Last but not least we have a token of open rebellion on display!

Media Decoder
Editor Charged With Aiding Hackers Group
By AMY CHOZICK 8:51 PM ET

Matthew Keys, a 26-year-old social media editor, was charged with assisting the hacking collective Anonymous in an attack on The Los Angeles Times Web site.

Perhaps someday we will be able to give Mr. Keys the medal he richly deserves for standing up to our tyrannical overlords.

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

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

How this landed in the business section remains a mystery but it is the ‘re-surfacing’ of ‘old news’.

Hoping to Save Bees, Europe to Vote on Pesticide Ban
By DAVID JOLLY 4:08 PM ET

European officials plan to vote on a proposal to sharply restrict the use of chemicals that have been implicated in the decline of global bee populations.

Once again good citizen we are witnessing the side effects of failing to prosecute the corporate guilty for playing God recklessly.

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Rope

Greetings good citizen,

Contrary to the Happy Talk being spewed by the Corporate Owned Media, the destruction of our civilization proceeds apace (to better protect the guilty from prosecution.)

Ironically our first headline is yet another exercise in ‘misdirection/manipulation’:

U.S. Retail Sales Jump
By REUTERS 8:44 AM ET

The Commerce Department said retail sales increased 1.1 percent, the largest rise since September, after a revised 0.2 percent gain in January.

Shares Slip Despite Economic Data

Given a how our entire economy (these days) is based solely upon ‘creative accounting’ it is somewhat disturbing to see the totally fabricated stock markets tanking in light of this alleged ‘good news’.

Can’t these people get on the same page?

But the whole ‘teamwork’ thing doesn’t work for the ‘rugged individuals’ these shills take their marching orders from.

More curiously, we have this bizarre headline focused on a topic that mostly affects the One Percent’s minions…seriously?

Europe Seeks Update of Law on Fliers’ Rights
By NICOLA CLARK 8:57 AM ET

For flights originating in Europe, new rules would clarify passengers’ rights to compensation for delayed or canceled flights.

How will this face-off between two One Percenter’s play out? (One who is picking up the tab for airfare and the other who owns the airlines…)

We may never know.

But this story is increasingly ‘in the news’

Chinese Solar Panel Maker on Financial Brink
By KEITH BRADSHER 8:10 AM ET

Suntech Power, a U.S.-listed company that is closing its Arizona plant, is poised to be taken over by the government of its hometown in China.

Where are the conservo-loonies (that basically chased this US company into the waiting arms of the Chinese?)

The management of this company should be drawn and quartered for treason…but that’s beside the point. Where are you going to sell Chinese made solar panels if you can’t sell them in the US?

And if you try to sell them here, a hundred million unemployed US citizens will tear them apart (along with whoever buys them!)

Then we have the point/counterpoint exercise that follows in two separate headlines:

Blessings of Low Taxes Remain Unproved
By EDUARDO PORTER

Paul Ryan of Wisconsin recycled an argument for lower taxes that surfaced in the ’80s and ’90s, but recent history suggests that higher taxes might help the economy.

The very definition of ‘insane’ is doing the same act repeatedly and each time expecting a different outcome…like conservo-loonies (by definition insane) for steadfastly advocating tax cuts for the rich as a vehicle for ‘prosperity for all.’

Is hasn’t worked in the past yet they somehow think it will work if we give it just one more try!

But wait, the conservo-whackos aren’t done!

We have one last headline from an arch Dumbo!:

Today's Economist
Hidden Costs of the Minimum Wage
By CASEY B. MULLIGAN

The federal minimum wage should be lowered, not raised, so as not to compound the damage it causes.

Lower the minimum wage so as not to ‘compound’ the damage to the economy presumably caused by the US’s ‘uncompetitiveness’

Is this dolt crazy?

You know it is a rhetorical question good citizen, Bobo is a conservative so it stands to reason that things like logic and truth are meaningless to him.

He expects Leprechauns to bring pots of gold to all of the good employers who make their workers suffer the most to better insure ‘class purity’.

How twisted is it good citizen that a certain segment of our society believes there are ‘good people’ who ‘own things’ and needy-greedy people who demand things like living wages and enough to eat.

These same people feel the needy greedy people have to be taught their proper place, that they are ‘entitled’ to nothing.

While those of us condemned to the One Percent’s dung heap think shills like this guy belong at the knotted end of a stout rope with their feet at least twelve inches off the pavement.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Uncommonly Good

Greetings good citizen,

I have no idea what we’re going to do when this fine fellow moves on from our midst.

He has consistently expressed with unusual (and enviable) clarity the real issues facing our civilization and done so unflinchingly.

Look up the word courage and you’d find his picture next to it.

To say he is an ‘inspiration’ is an understatement.

Even his opening paragraphs cut right to the point:

Whether public education contributes to the Common Good depends, of course, on what kind of education it is, to whom it is available, and what we take to be the Common Good. There’s no need to tarry on the fact that these are highly contested matters, have been throughout history, and continue to be so today.

One of the great achievements of American democracy has been the introduction of mass public education, from children to advanced research universities. And in some respects that leadership position has been maintained. Unfortunately, not all. Public education is under serious attack, one component of the attack on any rational and humane concept of the Common Good, sometimes in ways that are not only shocking, but also spell disaster for the species.

All of this falls within the general assault on the population in the past generation, the so-called “neoliberal era.” I’ll return to these matters, of great significance and import.

The ‘liberalization’ of trade relations that has effectively ended global capitalism (turning it into a global monopoly) and crucified the global economy.

Um, he points to (without specifically saying so) the twin ‘illusions’ of liberty and prosperity and how the corporate owned media dispenses ‘dis-information’ (which benefits the oligarchs.)

Two crucial changes were financialization, with a huge explosion of speculative financial flows, and de-industrialization. Production didn't cease. It just began to be off-shored anywhere where you could get terrible working conditions and no environmental constraints, with huge profits for the Masters. Within the US that set off a vicious cycle, leading to sharp concentration of wealth, which translates at once to concentration of political power, increasingly in the financial sector. That in turn leads to legislation that carries the vicious cycle forward, including sharp tax reduction for the rich and deregulation, with repeated financial crises from the ‘80s, each worse than the last. [The Reagan ‘revolution’] The current one is so far the worst of all. And others are likely in what a director of the Bank of England calls a “doom loop.”

There are solutions, but they do not fit the needs of the Masters, for whom the crises are no problem, they are bailed out by the Nanny State. Today corporate profits are breaking new records and the financial managers who created the current crisis are enjoying huge bonuses. Meanwhile, for the large majority, wages and income have practically stagnated in the last 30-odd years. By today, it has reached the point that 400 individuals have more wealth than the bottom 180 million Americans.

In parallel, the cost of elections has skyrocketed, driving both parties even deeper into the pockets of those with the money, corporations and the super-rich. Political representatives become even more beholden to those who paid for their victories. One consequence is that by now, the poorest 70% have literally no influence over policy. As you move up the income/wealth ladder influence increases, and at the very top, a tiny percent, the Masters get what they want.

Or as I like to phrase it, the deliberate mismanagement of our planet’s resources for the benefit of the privileged few.

How we remove these parasites from our midst is simple, we unite and purge them…but they will endeavor to use our lack of information against us.

Yes, the oligarchs have been ‘careful’ not to show their faces and only the faces of their proxies are in jeopardy.

It will take a lot of ‘sifting’ to ferret out the guilty. Removing their hands from the levers of power is the easy part, stopping them from committing further atrocities will be the difficult part.

Thanks to the human proclivity for stupidity, the guilty will enjoy the use of their proxies long after they’ve lost the ability to reward them.

This is the danger of ‘entrenchment’. The name alone will be enough to compel otherwise good people to perform treacherous acts…as we see repeatedly in Harry Potter.

Thus we must be ruthless in rooting out the turncoats who would risk the stability of civilization itself to curry favor with those who would cheat even them.

Funny how the ‘proclivity for stupidity’ is a self-fulfilling loop.

The sad part is how the greedy conspire to strengthen this ‘failure of reason’.

If we were all ‘born smart’ we wouldn’t be having this sad discussion.

Perhaps that is the last obstacle for natural selection to overcome. Oddly we are born with the ‘seed of wisdom’ (or at least most of us are…it is what the conservo-whackos are trying to snuff out via ‘quibbling’.)

We instinctively know the difference between right and wrong. Yet ‘political expedience’ twists our inborn views to favor the unscrupulous.

Throw ‘spirit in the sky’ into the mix and pretty soon even otherwise ration adults no longer know which end is up…

Once you realize you are parroting the words of those who would stick it to you in a heartbeat, you somewhat regain your bearings.

But if they fool you into thinking they are your ‘friends’…then you’ve got trouble…possibly bigger than you know.

With that chilling thought, thank you for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Holes

Greetings good citizen,

I am still struggling to adapt to a work routine (two years of being a slug doesn’t help) I am, er, ‘worried’ by this first sure sign of ‘economic recovery’.

Unemployment at 4-Year Low as U.S. Hiring Gains Steam
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

The joblessness rate sank to 7.7 percent as 236,000 positions were added across a broad range of sectors, but analysts warned that federal budget cuts could slow the recovery.

Jobs Fuel Stock Rally
Economix: The Rise of Part-Time Work | Shrinking Government

Why would I be ‘worried’ good citizen? Because I’ve seen this before…many times.

They ship work overseas and the ‘customer base’ collapses. (The unemployed can’t afford your product.) As local economies ‘adjust’ (the unemployed pull up stakes and head to where the work is) ‘recovery’ is declared and they start farming out work again!

As you can see, the so-called ‘recovery’ is the final stage of this cycle.

Now how much longer can they keep this up is unknown, they’ve almost completely hollowed out the US and Japanese economies (and completely destroyed the Real Estate markets in both countries in the process.)

Now, I count myself as fortunate. I landed a ‘real job’; 40 hours with full benefits and not the part-time/no insurance or benefit purgatory that most of the ‘inexperienced’ find themselves condemned to.

And the looming energy crisis seems to be driving a movement to restore some local capacity in basic industries while there is still some talent who remembers how to do it!

Whether or not this movement can sustain itself when a renewed contraction strikes remains to be seen.

But we’re talking patterns here.

Now the ‘new normal’ can form the basis for a real recovery BUT you need to ‘let it ride’ and establish itself.

Why don’t I think this is what they have in mind for us good citizen?

Would that it were that we have finally reached the end of the global race to the bottom that was completely 'unnecessary’ in the first place.

But you know as well as I that this thing won’t be over until the oligarchy can protect itself from prosecution.

And short of wiping out an entire generation I don’t see how they can do that.

But it’s not stopping them from trying:

Blocked Bids to Fill Judgeships Stir New Fight on Filibuster
By CARL HULSE

Republican senators have so far kept President Obama from filling any of the four vacancies on the nation's most important appeals court, reviving talk of a change in Senate rules.

Graphic Graphic: Filling the D.C. Appeals Court

Our best, er, ‘indicator’ of social health has been our badly broken political system. The very fact that most of the commerce system is in private hands contradicts the precepts of a ‘democratic’ society.

We even have our ‘activist’ (conservo-loony) judges to prove this argument.

No civilization can stand without justice…sometimes they take a long time to fall but in the end the final destination remains unchanged.

The bad apples use the ‘holes’ left in the legal system by the founders to drive civilization off a cliff.

Why do those holes exist?

Because the founders didn’t want to leave themselves open to prosecution!

No society founded on theft can survive for long so how sad is it that the backbone of capitalism is the ‘fake ownership’ of that which belongs to us all?

Understand good citizen, the ‘well, it’s not yours’ argument leads directly back to the ‘why don’t I kill you where you stand?’ question.

Were I writing this for the firewalled version, there would be some mighty choice expletives employed here.

Especially surrounding the argument as to whether or not lynching someone for being a greedy blockhead is ‘justifiable’…

Or perhaps just for being a blockhead as we can observe in our final offering:

Law Backs Guns in Class for Teachers in South Dakota
By JOHN ELIGON

South Dakota became the first state to enact a law explicitly authorizing school employees to carry guns on the job, under a measure signed Friday by Gov. Dennis Daugaard.

Um, as I commented repeatedly and I’m sure you have noticed the same phenomenon in your own local news organs, the local rag exists to highlight the bad behavior of people in positions of public trust.

No doubt this is sometimes ‘witch hunts’ like the recent attack [by Fox News] on a local animal control officer but half of the stories center on malfeasance and inappropriate behavior of wide range of, er, ‘public servants’.

Now we hire (and supposedly psychologically screen) our police forces to carry guns…and our most recent nation headline shows once again that the ‘screening process’ isn’t ‘infallible’. [re: the Park Ranger who blew away the reality show host for being in the company of his wife while he was elsewhere.]

The ‘green-eyed monster’ is probably the most powerful of them all but it still provides an case in point. Kids are designed to frustrate you, even if you’re taught to deal with that, kids can ‘get under your skin and push your buttons’ because you’re in the protectors role.

They trust you not to harm them.

They even have the chutzpah to give you that knowing little smirk after they’ve twisted the knife and you’ve retaliated by suspending them (although you’d prefer to have had them drawn and quartered!)

Do you really want to add handguns into that volatile environment?

Not that we humans are overly smart…like the young lady who wanted to ‘play with the kitty’…what part of ‘wild’ didn’t she understand…because she sure understands it now!

Mother Nature is VERY ‘unforgiving’ and we need to respect that…or we will pay.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Deficit

Greetings good citizen,

Naturally the rhetoric behind these mysterious ‘budget cuts’ appears to be as ill-informed as the rest of us are.

Is what’s happening now the end result of not reading what you’re being forced to vote upon?

Common ‘trick’ in modern politics…funny how one of the ‘advantages of democracy' was its alleged ‘deliberateness’, that everything was discussed and debated BEFORE it was put to a vote.

But (like many Republican budget appropriation bills) they get slipped into other, unrelated legislation and voted into law…’unwittingly’.

And that SHOULD BE illegal…but under our current system of ‘anything goes justice’, it is not.

So we are faced with (apparently) ‘indiscriminate’ cuts across social welfare programs…(gee, wonder WHO would have done THAT?) while the civilian branches of the military (that provide oversight) are bearing the brunt of cuts to the Pentagon’s budget.

Once again it looks like the Conservo-Whackos have been (as they will undoubtedly claim later) 'framed perfectly' for this crime against civilization.

We all know it’s those commie, (code) pinko, One Percent lovin’ LIBERALS that want to slash social security and throw poor, defenseless old people out in the streets!

Sure…

Liberal isn’t quite right…it’s those never met a tax cut they didn’t like LIBERTARIANS that ‘sneak’ stuff into other legislation so it can get passed into law unread and undebated.

In fact, the Libbies are so unpopular they can’t get a candidate elected beyond the state level.

And this ‘underhandedness’ is the reason why.

Their ideas (that even their rank and file are ignorant of) are so radical as to border on criminal.

You’d never voluntarily live under Libertarian rule but the cannibal capitalists (who already own everything) think it would be ‘fun’.

That’s why our bought and paid for justice system ignores ‘irregularities’ like unread legislation being slipped in with legitimate business and getting passed ‘en masse’.

Again our much-criticized corporate owned media has ignored this issue completely because their corporate masters want it this way.

The evidence that our government has been hijacked continues to mount while the vaunted ‘4th Estate’ remains mute.

Even more bizarre is how if you read this fact on the Internet, it automatically becomes a conspiracy!

Only the paper you pay two bits for tells you ‘the truth’ (as our corporate masters see it…reality be…oh well.)

And somehow this is NOT a ‘conspiracy’…

Let’s set aside the fact that nobody knows/can explain where these ‘budget cuts’ come from (although we can guess fairly accurately.)

And turn our attention to ‘the deficit’ (that the Republicans have quintupled since Reagan took office.) [And somehow this escapes being a conspiracy too…curious, don’t you think?]

If we start from the basis that ALL MONEY IS FUNNY and compound that with the fact that MOTHER NATURE DOESN’T HAVE A CASH REGISTER we have to ask the obvious question ‘WHAT DEFICIT?’

Actually no such thing exists…it is ‘faulty accounting’ driven by capitalist economics but the ‘conservo-whackos’ like to pretend it matters!

How unfortunate is it that this whole charade is a power trip made worse by extreme mis-management?

Even more disturbing is how this entire ‘conspiracy’ to push our current civilization off of a cliff can be chalked up to ‘Social Darwinism’ by the very ones who have been marked for extinction!

Even more ironic is how they’ve marked themselves (although in most cases their parents did it for them.)

Naturally I’m hoping for a public debate…how sad is it good citizen that my chances of success are roughly equal with Bradley Manning’s chances of being acquitted (despite not having committed a crime.)

Once again I end a piece with the admonition ‘what happens next is up to YOU!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Terrorists

Greetings good citizen,

The ‘nonsense markets’ are off to a fine start, you can’t explain/justify the Dow being over 14,000 but it’s there regardless.

Which only sends up one more ‘red flag’ concerning the stability of our civilization.

So it is that today’s offering once again asks the question of ‘why are they telling us this?’

On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story white office tower, sits a People’s Liberation Army base for China’s growing corps of cyberwarriors.

The building off Datong Road, surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a wine importer, is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398. A growing body of digital forensic evidence — confirmed by American intelligence officials who say they have tapped into the activity of the army unit for years — leaves little doubt that an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower.

An unusually detailed 60-page study, to be released Tuesday by Mandiant, an American computer security firm, tracks for the first time individual members of the most sophisticated of the Chinese hacking groups — known to many of its victims in the United States as “Comment Crew” or “Shanghai Group” — to the doorstep of the military unit’s headquarters. The firm was not able to place the hackers inside the 12-story building, but makes a case there is no other plausible explanation for why so many attacks come out of one comparatively small area.

Further along the article explains how Coca-cola was hacked by these, er, ‘professionals’…which might give us a clearer picture of why our ‘proxy’ in the Far East is ‘keeping an eye on the competition’.

Yes, the conspiracy to destroy our civilization is global but no, it is not (yet) universal…and you’d think the guys at Coke would be on board but I guess some companies were too successful to suborn quickly and quietly…thus the subterfuge.

But it still doesn’t explain why they are pointing to this particular situation.

Does our shadowy global elite ‘own’ the Chinese government? Of course it does! (At least the parts that matter.)

So why give the unwashed rabble a ‘peek under the skirt’?

So when the ‘surprise’ cyber-attacks begin we can rule the Chinese out…because everybody knows about them?

Um, it is disconcerting to sit here and ‘speculate’ about an obvious global conspiracy but there is NO OTHER ‘explanation’ for what’s going on.

History’s ‘accidents’ are anything but.

It if waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s not a mongoose!

But that’s not what the conspirator owned media is going to tell you.

In fact the ‘truth challenged media’ has become a standing joke among anyone paying attention, making us all ‘conspiracy theorists’.

We all know something nasty is afoot and it’s not ‘state sponsored terrorism’ as our truth challenged media would have you believe.

While the pundits sit and complain about the effects of money in politics, we have done nothing to reign in this ‘loose cannon’ on civilization’s decks.

(Because the conspirators OWN the media!)

Here’s a news flash to no one: we won’t enjoy ‘factual reporting’ until NOBODY ‘owns’ a media outlet!

The owner has an agenda and gets to decide what is and isn’t news!

Until that stops we are all well and truly…

So why did the ‘conspirators’ decide to share the source of cyber attacks on US companies?

I suspect it is so they can hide ‘in plain sight’…or more sinisterly, so when someone reports an attack they can pooh-pooh it pointing to the news article and saying, would they do that since we know they’re doing it?

And the answer is YES!

Just because we know doesn’t mean they are going to stop!

Just as the ‘war on terror’ is being executed by the world’s largest terrorist group!

No irony should be lost on that (bad) joke!

When a recruiting commercial for the Armed forces comes on do you look in the face of that earnest young person and imagine it barking at you to lay down or I’ll blow your head off from the other side of your living room window?

Just as YOU can’t make informed decisions without accurate information, neither can they.

So what do you think they are going to do when their superiors ORDER them to arrest innocent civilians whose only crime is to protest their abusive treatment at the hands of some corporation?

What would YOUR kid do if he or she were on the team that comes to get YOU?

Talk about ‘scarred for life’…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Entertainment

Greetings good citizen,

As oil remains stuck in the $96 dollar a barrel range, the Dow has dropped a hundred and fifteen points in just a shade over an hour’s trading.

Which is to point out that the destruction of our civilization proceeds ‘on schedule’.

I have selected three headlines from today’s business section for your, er, ‘amusement’:

News Analysis
A scene from the 1954 film “Tobor the Great.”
Raging (Again) Against the Robots
By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Robots have once again gripped the nation’s imagination, stoking fears of displaced jobs and perhaps even a displaced human race.

Many is the story about ‘machine intelligence’ and a robotic ‘takeover’ of our planet, or even our galaxy since robots aren’t subject to the same narrow band of operating conditions organic life is restricted to.

Like time travel this is a bogeyman that will remain a staple of the fiction writer. While we have already created machines that can ‘learn’, we have yet to imbue one with ‘a sense of purpose’ nor has one developed this uniquely human trait on its own (yet.)

Our ‘problem’ with a ‘pile of bolts’ is limited to the capitalists love of a tireless worker that you only pay once.

This ‘displacement’ of humans from the fabrication of commodities severely damages the economy (all of which are local!)

Not that the robot is to blame. It is the, er, ‘skewing’ of the distribution process robots cause (profits go up because prices DON’T go down, yet you have significantly reduced the number of people able to buy the product!)

Cost to produce has gone down but the number of buyers has also shrunk…so where’s the ‘win’?

The CEO grabbed it because he’s paid based on ‘production efficiency’!

The rest of your civilization LOSES!

Did I mention that the serious mismanagement of our civilization is rapidly reaching ‘critical mass?’ The people making decisions are getting paid to act AGAINST the interests of society at large?

And the owners don’t care because the books (which are thoroughly cooked) look fine.

Which leads us to their puzzlement over why their employees are ‘unhappy’.

A job has become its own reward in our resource scarce environment…(if you can’t live on what it pays tough!)

No need to hand out pay increases when your workers are thankful to be getting a paycheck at all while so many of their peers aren’t.

Beginning to see the problem? It’s not the robots at all…it’s the crazy capitalists and their gross incompetence!

Which provides an excellent segue to our next article:

Vast Oil Reserve May Now Be Within Reach, and Battle Heats Up
By NORIMITSU ONISHI

Monterey Shale deposits, which could turn California into the nation’s top oil-producing state, is stirring conflict between drillers and environmental interests.

Map Map: California’s Hydraulic Fracturing Hotbed

Did the first thing that popped into my head also pop into yours? Which is to ask is it a particularly wise idea to be ‘fracking’ in a ‘seismically sensitive’ area like the Island just off the coast of Los Angeles?

But apparently the capitalist don’t care! Or worse, we are a lot closer to the end of our energy rope than media would have you believe.

Can you imagine the ‘Wile E. Coyote moment’ when the gas pumps go dry and the public sits there dumbfounded because they didn’t know we were close to running out?

Which brings us to the age old question if the world was going to end tomorrow would they tell us?

Probably not…imagine the chaos if they did! (And no, it would NOT be ‘anarchy’.)

Even this, the expansion of the wasteland that passes for ‘entertainment’ speaks volumes regarding the mindset of those in charge (and their endless incompetence.)

The Media Equation
Shunning the Safe, FX Indulges Its Dark Side
By DAVID CARR

Behind FX’s recent success is its willingness to give its shows creative freedom.

Between decidedly reckless ‘reality programming’ (that plays fast and loose with the facts) and the merging of the fantasy world with the real world via computer graphics…the ‘credibility gap’ is growing enormous!

Which is to point out that shows no longer ‘entertain’ as much as they tax the imagination.

There are several shows out there now that have what can only be called incredible ‘plot holes’ in them…and this is due to the ‘failure of imagination’ coupled with capitalist censorship.

Yes good citizen, TV has become a vapid wasteland because of the zero tolerance policy the corporate owned media has towards anything that challenges the ‘supremacy’ of capitalism.

When you are confined to a very narrow and contradictory box, the creative process is either stifled or it increasingly defies logic.

If Bram Stokers original demon had half of the powers he is currently endowed with (by hack writers) we’d ALL be vampires!

But the things impressionable young girls believe should never be confused with reality…

So why is dumbbell ‘praising’ Fox?

Could it be that ‘corporate owned media’ thing (that cuts HIS paycheck too?)

Something to ponder while you wait for a vampire to grant you the invincibility you’ve longed for your whole life!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Shelf Life

Greetings good citizen,

Welcome to Super Sunday. I don’t follow sports although I know the local team blew it this year…which is part of the reason I don’t follow sports.

It’s not the failure but the influence of money that disturbs me regarding so-called ‘professional sports.’

I won’t watch the game (because I don’t care about the outcome.)

Ironically, the ‘owners’ don’t care either. It’s all about backsides in seats.

Well, my backside will be in a seat all right but it won’t be parked in front of ‘the idiot box’ (it will be parked in front of idiot box jr…which YOU happen to be sitting in front of.)

Here’s the world according to the business section of the NY Times on 2/3/13:

The Most Wanted Gun in America
By NATASHA SINGER

Aggressive marketing and savvy manufacturing have helped recast the place of guns in American life, turning AR-15-style rifles into a fast-growing profit center.
At the Pasadena Pawn and Gun Shop in Maryland, customers can join a waiting list to buy an AR-15-style rifle. “It’s kind of fashionable,” Frank Loane Sr., the shop’s proprietor, said of the gun.

Nothing like the threat of a weapons ban to make people go crazy buying them up!

Like a lot of other things in life, people don’t think things through. Who are they going to shoot with their ‘new toy’?

Probably one of their relatives…or (surprise, surprise) they’re going to take the bad boy and go hunt down A.) Random strangers in a mall or B.) Their former co-workers or C.) An event sponsored by some civic group that has shunned them (or someone they know) in the past.

But they are really buying them so they have something to ‘defend their home with’ (when the cops come knocking…)

Not that they actually have the, er, ‘intestinal fortitude’ to face down the local PD…when it comes to that a majority of these heroes turn the gun on themselves.

But when you’re talking tough down at the bar you have to provide ‘the appearance’ of being willing to back it up.

So you take your buddies and your new toy down to the range to demonstrate your prowess with firearms…and use the excuse ‘it’s new and not sighted in yet’ when you indeed stink at hitting the target!

And you all walk away, confident in the knowledge that if Bambi is more than ten feet away, he will most likely escape (as he has countless times before.)

Oddly nobody questions the need to buy/use a weapon with a fifteen round clip to gun down a defenseless animal. And the light 223 caliber was designed to reduce recoil, improving your aim recovery time on human targets.

While the ability to bring the weapon to bear again more swiftly is a positive in both instances, you’d probably want to use a heavier caliber to knock the animal down (also eliminating the need to shoot it twice.

But people don’t think these things through.

Next on today’s list is this story, which I know all too well:

Susan Zimmerman, 62, has three part-time jobs.
In Hard Economy for All Ages, Older Isn’t Better ... It’s Brutal
By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Recent data present a strong case for baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

Ask an Expert: How Does Job Loss Affect Life Expectancy?

To belabor the obvious, job loss prior to retirement really just kicks the crap out of your SSI account. And we all know we won’t be able to ‘make ends meet’ on that tiny amount so it’s just the difference between ‘doomed’ and ‘scroomed’.

Left unaddressed is what can be done about this rampant ‘age discrimination’? You WON’T find an attorney willing to take your case because (unless you’re the Virgin Mary incarnate) there’s always something in your past that the defense can point to and say ‘that’s the reason we didn’t hire them!’

Since you have no ‘legal standing’ your only real remedy is to employ yourself…(or you can buy an assault weapon and ‘deploy’ yourself…)

We all know what the deal is.

Mr./Ms. ‘employer’ is afraid old and gray can’t keep up with the kids. Often these weasels are as old as you are (and use that as proof YOU can’t do the job because THEY CAN’T!)

Well, the real issue is shelf life. How long do you have to make your heap before you’re discarded like yesterday’s newspaper?

It started getting bad around the time I turned forty and now that I’m over fifty, it’s proven impossible.

I’ve got to survive ten more years before I can apply for my SSI…the only good news is I will be ‘well accustomed’ to living on nothing by then.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: Retirement age under A Simple Plan is fifty…at full pay!

United

Greetings good citizen,

Good news, the weekend is here! But that doesn’t stop the bad news and, if we pause to consider that most of what they tell us serves to distract us from other issues, the bad news only becomes that much more poignant.

These are headlines drawn from the front page of today’s NY Times:

As Suicides Rise in U.S., Veterans Are Less of Total
By JAMES DAO

The convergence reflects the fact that suicide numbers are rising slightly among both veterans and everyone else, but has increased more in the general population.

How does this headline sit with you good citizen? I’d opine that my favorite hobby horse, ‘desperation’ is on the rise and this is proof.

If you don’t go on a rampage, ‘the alternative’ is to destroy yourself.

Is this the kind of society we want to hand over to our children? Increasingly, Hollywood (or more correctly Bollywood) has focused on an endless stream of dystopian futures.

I watched Looper last night and I have to admit, it was beyond grim…although the ‘lynchpin’ of the story (by my way of thinking) will always be ‘impossible’ because the past doesn’t exist! We remember what happened but that doesn’t mean it’s still there. Same thing with the future, it doesn’t exist (yet) so it is impossible to ‘travel’ there because we live in the perpetual ‘now’. It was now a moment ago and it will still be now in a couple of seconds but you can’t rush it. Time (as mankind understands it) is a mental construct…that has some very detrimental side effects for the environment.

Man (read capitalists) foolishly believes that given enough time the environment will ‘repair’ itself…not true.

But, as usual, I digress.

Don’t believe in God, don’t believe in time and I definitely don’t believe in money so what DO I believe in?

I believe in YOU (and by extension, myself.) May not be much but it’s all we’ve got.

The keyword there, good citizen, is ‘we’.

Speaking of words we come upon this one often enough but it is so context sensitive and flexible that it’s hardly useful:

BUSINESS
As U.S. Growth Lags, Some Press the Fed to Do Still More
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Federal Reserve officials believe the bank could do more to increase the pace of inflation and aid growth. They simply are not persuaded that the benefits outweigh potential costs.

While not necessarily a ‘one time’ trick, the idea is to skin everybody in the economy via inflation. Last time they did this trick it cost me fifty percent of my purchasing power.

Purchasing power that I have never regained.

Now they are contemplating doing it again…and here we are on the cusp of an energy crisis.

Needless to say the death toll will be horrendous considering the unemployment situation. (40% + of the population on some type of ‘food assistance’ because their jobs pay poverty wages AND OUR POLITICIANS DON’T THINK THIS IS AN ISSUE!)

Once again I propose that we ‘string ‘em up’ but it seems nobody likes that idea…

Yet somehow just letting them walk away after what they’ve done just doesn’t seem proper.

Unless that walk leads them to a peaceful and contemplative place where they had all of the time in the world to weigh the impact of their bountiful deeds. (The one way walk nobody survives, a.k.a. ‘exile’.)

But I’m doing it again, ain’t I…

The thing is we have no way to stop them from ‘poisoning the well’, something they’ve already done. Thanks to the funniness of money they have been able to keep the economy ‘alive’ (on life support) which has the exact same effect as ‘inflating away’ our debts.

The problem here is the tens of millions of people who don’t have an income stream to tap.

Part of the ‘inflate away’ process is raising everybody’s pay (literally absorbing) a portion of the inflation while they raise prices.

Most people get fooked in this process, their paycheck doubles but their expenses quadruple.

And the bailed out bankers (the cause of this whole mess) happily hand out loans to the soon to be bankrupt workers.

Then the economy crashes (like it did on Carter) and another Reagan comes along with more ‘voodoo economics’ and things get better…for the one tenth of one percent.

Needless to say, given our starting point, this is how you wake up one morning to realize you’re living in a Banana Republic!

In fact, you’re three quarters of the way there already.

Understand good citizen, nobody is keeping the ‘tyrants’ in check. They’re going to run you down and you have no place to turn to but your neighbor.

How pathetic is it that there’s a fifty-fifty chance they are in ‘denial’ that anything’s even wrong (thus would they be disinclined to help you.)

United we stand but united we aren’t good citizen…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Horns

Greetings good citizen,

Our lead story from the business section of today’s New York Times was ‘almost as shocking’ as the news of Jim Neighbors tying the knot with his long-time boy toy in Hawaii…

U.S. Economy Unexpectedly Contracted in Fourth Quarter
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ 51 minutes ago

Weaker exports, a drop in military spending and a slower buildup in inventories combined to pull the economy down at the end of the year.
The government said economic output in the quarter fell at an annual rate of 0.1 percent.

So we are once again faced with the conundrum of rising stock prices while the ‘real economy’ continues its ‘death spiral’…

Can I get a WTF?

Oh yeah!

Military spending was down so (what passes for) the economy ‘slipped’?

Is it just me or does anyone else think our civilization is being grossly mismanaged?

I don’t think I going to find the answer here:

Boeing Battery Was a Concern Before Failure
By CHRISTOPHER DREW, HIROKO TABUCHI and JAD MOUAWAD 19 minutes ago

Even before battery failures led to the grounding of all Boeing 787 jets, there were problems that raised questions about their reliability.

Timeline: A Rocky Path for the 787 Dreamliner
Graphic: Battery at Center of Inquiry

How ironic is THIS, good citizen?

Boeing Earnings Exceed Estimates
By CHRISTOPHER DREW 25 minutes ago

The company said it did not expect the problems with the batteries on its new 787 Dreamliner to have a significant impact on its earnings in 2013.

Seriously?

DealBook
Chesapeake Energy Chief Steps Down
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED 41 minutes ago

After months of investor dissatisfaction, Aubrey McClendon, a co-founder of the oil and natural gas producer, will give up management duties immediately and will retire on April 1.

Don’t know about you good citizen but it don’t look like ‘stepped down’ isn’t the proper description here, looks a lot more like ‘shoved aside’. Wonder who’s corn flakes he pee’d in?

Chrysler Earnings Soar
By BILL VLASIC 8:00 AM ET

The automaker’s profit in the fourth quarter jumped 68 percent and for the year was about nine times that of the year before.

Again, looks like a classic case of if you made a dollar last year and you made two dollars this year, your income is up 100% but you still only have two bucks to show for a years’ worth of effort!

So why is it that only US carmaker still standing after the collapse of the global banking industry still can’t get any respect?

European Cloud Over Ford
By BILL VLASIC

Ford Motor posted a 54 percent gain in adjusted fourth-quarter profit, despite heavy losses in the troubled European market.

In apparently ‘related news’…
Appeals Court Suspends Peugeot's Job-Cut Plan
French Automakers’ Biggest Problem? French Consumers

The next headline simply screams ‘mismanagement’!

DealBook
MF Global's Bankruptcy Nears a Happy Conclusion
By BEN PROTESS

The push to make MF Global customers nearly whole, a goal now surprisingly within reach, is a remarkable turnaround for the brokerage firm.

And nobody is happier than the management of MF Global, who didn’t have to do a minute of jail time…

And our final headline…

Media Decoder Blog
CNN President Tries to Repeat Success in A.M. News
By BRIAN STELTER

Jeff Zucker, who formally took over CNN Worldwide last week, is assembling a new morning show, the first of several building blocks for the ailing cable news channel.

Correct me if I’m wrong here good citizen but isn’t this the same guy that used to be in charge of primetime programming at one of the major networks?

All I’m trying to say here is the wasteland that is TV just keeps spreading…

Returning us to our ‘theme’ of the day, gross mismanagement.

If we don’t grab the bull by the horns it’s going to drag us over the cliff with it…although most would opine that it is far too late for that…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Accountable

Greetings good citizen,

Yesterday’s ‘milestone’ for the financial markets appears to be more evidence of the criminal’s favorite pass time, fraud.

IF you think the economy has ‘recovered’ I’ve got some nice ‘drainage challenged’ real estate you’ll be interested in…

In the meantime, to consider stories such as this one anything more than ‘jaw-boning’ is a tragic error.

TOP NEWS
As Worries Ebb, Small Investors Propel Markets
By NATHANIEL POPPER

After millions of people all but abandoned the markets after the 2008 financial crisis, individual investors are pouring money into stock mutual funds for the first time in years.

Left to our imaginations is precisely who this ‘small investor’ is? He certainly isn’t the newly re-employed worker, stoking up for retirement. We already know 90% of ‘new jobs’ aren’t even full time and 80% of those pay minimum wage! So WHO is this ‘small investor’ they are referring to?

Could the answer be as unfortunate as Wall Street, in it’s usual fashion, is merely transferring funds from real estate hedging vehicles back to mutual funds, ‘ringing the cash register’ so to speak?

Because you don’t need me to tell you that this is not cause for rejoicing! This is sticky fingered Wall Street churning (and helping itself) to money that was already there.

So, small investor recovery? Hardly, small investor fleecing is more like it but Wall Street has this ‘truthiness’ problem where honesty only creates hard feelings.

Just because the ‘deterioration’ of the employment situation has slowed doesn’t mean it is ‘improving!’ (But that’s the message the meatheads would have you believe. That ‘less-worse = better!’)

It’s the same idea of when the economy contracts, that return to stability is sold by the pundits as ‘recovery’ when in fact after ‘leveling off’ for a brief period, it falls again and the talking heads pretend it’s a mystery.

But it’s not. There was a headline in the local rag the day before yesterday that one of the city’s largest employers is laying off half of its workforce AND sending the work to its plants in China and Mexico.

Still feeling ‘optimistic’, Bunky?

It seems every time they declare ‘the recovery is at hand’ I feel compelled to jump in and cry foul!

And it looks like they got me again.

The question is did they get you?

For every nineteen people who reject hogwash like this there is one who embraces it. Maybe not as quickly as they used to, they are starting to catch on to the fact people are laughing at them behind their backs…

Understand good citizen, the corporate owned media HAS TO report the economy is on the mend, even if it isn’t in order to quell social unrest and dampen ‘animosity’ towards ‘our betters’.

But as I am tiring of pointing out, no amount of jaw-boning is going to alter the facts on the ground.

Our economy (or that limp dishrag that passes for our economy) is broken and nobody has done a single thing to repair it…nobody!

So ‘recovery’, such as it is, amounts to a lesser rate of descent. We merely aren’t sinking as fast as we once were.

What do you suppose should happen to the employer who cut 70 out of 150 jobs and sent the work off-shore?

One of my other ‘hobby-horses’ has been the need to redefine what constitutes a ‘crime’.

Under our current goofy calculus, the owner can send the work wherever he pleases. He is seen as ‘owning’ the work.

But isn’t he also a citizen and doesn’t that citizenship carry a responsibility to the society he lives in?

He’s quick enough to demand justice (or the protection of society) when disaster strikes…so how come he feels no obligation to keep the society that protects him healthy and vibrant?

Because, until such feckless acts like the global race to the bottom are criminalized, our ‘global’ economy (and all but it best connected participants) is doomed.

Not the kind of world I want to raise my kids in and I’m sure many of you feel the same way.
This ‘competition’ baloney is all fake. Worse, it is the old canard of ‘I can teach a monkey to do your job’ writ large!

Which is to point out that the ‘quality problems’ that served as an excuse to cover early job exports have resurfaced in the cheaper there, indicating the problem didn’t lie with the craftsman but with management.

Which tells you what, good citizen?

It’s time to hold management accountable.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Educate

Greetings good citizen,

How pathetic is it that many of the following headlines are either ‘spin’ or rely on accounting gimmicks for their veracity?

But the lead story belabors a point I have been making for decades:

The Education Revolution
Next Made-in-China Boom: College Graduates
By KEITH BRADSHER

China is making a huge investment in its universities, hoping to leverage its enormous population into 195 million college graduates by the end of the decade.

No irony should be lost that China has overtaken the US as the world’s premiere ‘economic superpower’ on the strength of its ‘blue-collar’ workforce.

Shifting back to our curiously missing OWS protestors, what does this (capitalist profiteering) mean to those who already got soaked big bucks, studying for jobs that will not appear anywhere near here?

I repeat, All economies are LOCAL and no amount of ‘koom-bye-ya’ can alter that!

Let me take it one step further and state unequivocally that it is ‘impossible’ to establish global capitalism as the world’s economic system because of its predatory nature. Resources must be ‘managed’ not ‘exploited’!

Global capitalism gives us stories like this one:

The 787 that made an emergency landing in Japan on Wednesday. All 137 passengers and crew members were evacuated safely.
Regulators Around the Globe Ground Boeing 787s
By CHRISTOPHER DREW, JAD MOUAWAD and MATTHEW L. WALD 51 minutes ago

The directives in Japan, Europe and India follow a Federal Aviation Administration ruling Wednesday that it was grounding the planes operated by U.S. carriers.

Design errors, easily corrected or the by-product of the decades long ‘global race to the bottom?’

This is what happens when you put psychopaths in charge of ‘shaking up’ your supply chain. All of the routine safeguards get thrown to the winds in an effort to ‘bull’ their way to a profit. (by bringing their part of the project in under deadline and under cost, thereby maximizing their ‘bonus’!
Seriously good citizen, these people have lost sight of the rationale behind the awarding of ‘bonuses’ (especially considering half the time management rewards itself for failure!)

And remember, THESE PEOPLE CONSIDER THEMSELVES OUR ‘BETTERS!’

They are ‘superior’ to us…at least in their own minds.

But hey, after Wells Fargo made money producing mortgages, we have the (alleged) ‘dummies’ foundering in the same pond…so who are you supposed to believe?

DealBook
Profit Drops 63% at Bank of America After Mortgage Settlements
By BEN PROTESS 6 minutes ago

The bank’s widely expected drop in fourth-quarter profit comes after it settled legal claims over its mortgage business. It earned 3 cents a share, narrowly beating estimates.

Um, talk about lunacy! Here they are, bleeding from the eye-sockets, settling billion dollar claims against them (for mortgage fraud.) Somehow they still ‘beat the estimates’…and Wall Street is giving them a spanking anyway!

Seriously good citizen, if this story isn’t complete and utter, I don’t know what is!

Somebody’s getting robbed and I have a bad feeling about who that somebody is…

In a related story:

DealBook
Facing Legal Costs, Citigroup Disappoints in 4th Quarter
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG 9:30 AM ET

As the bank works to clean up its mortgage mess, it reported fourth-quarter profit of $1.2 billion, or 38 cents a share, significantly below analysts’ estimates.

Did Vikram empty out the main vault as part of his ‘separation package?’ You know how these ‘Master of the Universe’ types operate…

“Sure, I’ll leave…just make sure my golden parachute has a platinum liner!”

Apparently this is something ‘the analysts’ aren’t privy too.

And yet more ‘disappointment’ from the global stage…

DealBook
Rio Tinto to Book $14 Billion Charge; C.E.O. Replaced
By JULIA WERDIGIER and NEIL GOUGH 8:27 AM ET

The mining giant blamed challenges in the aluminum business and at its coal unit in Mozambique for the write-down, and said Sam Walsh would succeed Tom Albanese as chief executive.

I may have dubbed the local rag as the Daily ‘cops behaving badly’ gazette but the business pages of the world’s media are dominated by the details of CEO’s behaving badly (and getting fooked for it…sometimes.)

Then we have this last ditty that lead me to my previous musing regarding the veracity of today’s reporting:

Economic Data Lift Stocks
By REUTERS 52 minutes ago

Wall Street opened higher after some cheery economic reports on unemployment and housing starts.

It’s been two years good citizen and no change as far as my unemployment status. I’m still twiddling my thumbs as are many of my over fifty peers.

Seems the girls of the over fifty club have joined us recently and if you think that’s a coincidence, tell it to Santa Claus!

Part of what I do here is shine a light on the stories the corporate owned media ‘neglects’ and the other part is providing some much needed ‘food for thought’ that should be fueling public debate.

The corporate owned media is paid to ‘pretend’ that things couldn’t be better, our problems are largely in our heads…and they’d be correct about that because it is their fault our head isn’t pointed in the correct direction!

But that’s an issue for another day,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Safeguards

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With its more chilling implication of ‘incurability’.

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

Short answer…you don’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If we don’t test we won’t know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Fact, Fiction and News...

Greetings good citizen,

Once again you just can’t make this shit up! Which is to opine that the truth really is ‘stranger than fiction’.

Naturally our evidence comes from the twisted thinking of the bought and paid for shills of the corporate owned media…making it all that much more hilarious!

We begin with the ‘Everybody Knows story of the week:

Your Money
Piecing Together a Tax Plan’s Effects
By RON LIEBER

The recently concluded federal budget agreement could raise the tax bill for people with incomes over $250,000 by thousands of dollars.

Graphic: How the New Limits on Deductions and Exemptions Might Work
A Gigantic Sigh of Relief as Tax Uncertainty Ends
Lawmakers Gird for Next Fiscal Clash, on the Debt Ceiling

The fucking Dow tacked on 300 points yesterday due to ‘relief from tax uncertainty’…can you give me a WTF! ?

How much more ‘divorced from reality’ does it need to get before you are convinced that the idiots in charge of the financial markets are robbing us all blind?

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg:

Some Breaks for Industries Are Retained in Fiscal Deal
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and MATTHEW L. WALD

Hollywood, the railroad industry and rum producers benefited from some obscure provisions that survived the deal between the White House and Congress.

What do stories like this prove? It proves that our ‘elected representatives’ don’t take the time to READ (and therefore comprehend) what they are voting on. (Supposedly an ‘aide’ does the heavy mental lifting but if a lobbyist cleans that aides plumbing he/she might be inclined to give a less than honest/accurate report of what a piece of legislation does or does not contain. Thereby forcing the legislator to commit treason because he/she is too fucking lazy to read their own stuff!

Um, I make no secret of my loathing for ‘representative politics’, it is little different than monarchy, where the few decide for the many…often against their well known wishes.

I would view ‘representative politics’ more kindly if the representative were ‘held accountable’ for their misdeeds, er, ‘actions’.

Vote against the wishes of your constituency and face the hang man…that would foster a modicum of ‘trust’ in the process.

We can appreciate that this would lead to an ‘unusual’ number of ‘abstain votes’ so one would have to extend the rule to cover this contingency as well.

Abstain when the people of your district are decided and face the hangman…which would (rightly) make the majority of modern politicians ‘rethink’ their career choices.

Naturally Gegner is an anarchist with a small ‘a’ who believes in direct democracy and desires to scrap the political process entirely.

Our next news item is another ‘reminder’ of just how badly broken our political system has become:

Media Decoder Blog
Al Gore, a co-founder of Current TV, which will be shut down by the Qatar-based news organization Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera Seeks a U.S. Voice Where Gore Failed
By BRIAN STELTER

Al Gore’s low-rated cable channel will provide the pan-Arab news giant with something it has sought for years: a pathway into American living rooms.

Is it just me or do you detect a note of hostility in the way this headline is worded? The euphemism usually used in this situation is ‘bought out’ not ‘shut down’…but I guess it depends on who is doing the buying, eh?

Is our corporate owned media that fearful of having a different perspective offered to US viewers? They don’t (to our knowledge) muzzle the BBC.

But what do we know about the motivations of our media?

5-Hour Energy says users will not experience letdowns later.
Energy Shot’s ‘No Crash’ Claim Is Disputed by Watchdog
By BARRY MEIER

An advertising watchdog group says it told the distributor of 5-Hour Energy years ago that a claim that the drink did not cause a letdown once the effects wore off was unfounded.

Dunno, never touch the stuff myself…weird that kids go for it though…
And yet more evidence of (false) ‘economic growth’ through increased market share…

DealBook
Hormel to Buy Skippy Peanut Butter
By JEFFREY CANE 27 minutes ago

The Hormel Foods Corporation said on Thursday that it had agreed to buy the Skippy peanut butter business from Unilever for $700 million.

What do you suppose the end result of that move will be? Could it be Hostess all over again?

More Americans Seek Jobless Benefits
By REUTERS 55 minutes ago

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 10,000 last week, the government said, but the data was skewed by the holidays.

Again, nobody is commenting on the badly broken global economy that benefits too few. Unless we look at stories like this one:

Bank Lending in Euro Zone Slumped in November, Data Show
By JACK EWING 7:12 AM ET

The report could fuel expectations of an interest rate cut when the European Central Bank meets next week.

Left to our feeble imaginations is what good cutting already negative interest rates is going to do, economically?

Maybe it’s the ‘psychological benefit’ they’re trying for…maybe it will make the investors ‘feel better’.

How fucking sad is it good citizen that there are no ‘concrete benefits’ to be reaped by cutting already too low interest rates…

Did I mention you can’t make this shit up?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

All Hail the Tin Man!

Greetings good citizen,

The markets are cliff diving but this is part of their ‘expressing the will of the One Percent’ to our politicians, er, 'function'.

When our ‘investor class’ is displeased, they express their…er, ‘displeasure’ by driving the markets down (literally taking money out of the politicians pockets.)

What works for management works doubly well for political pawns, ‘behave’ and the value of your ‘gimme’ shares increases, displease us and the value drops.

But hey, this isn’t about the no longer has anything to do with anything markets…which begs the question of how long the infamous ‘they’ can keep this charade up? (The answer is, of course, for as long as you buy into it!)

Let us commence our examination of today’s snapshot of social mayhem with this lead story:

The iEconomy
ON THE LINE Workers assembling Hewlett-Packard computers at a plant in Chongqing, China, operated by Foxconn of Taiwan.
Signs of Changes Taking Hold in Electronics Factories in China
By KEITH BRADSHER and CHARLES DUHIGG

After the hardships of workers in China’s electronics factories were exposed to a global audience, working conditions have changed.

More interesting is how the ‘well’ of young Chinese workers isn’t as ‘bottomless’ as was originally assumed.

Treat people like livestock and they will soon refuse to take your wages…which is only the beginning of the revolt.

Now, for another story that refuses to die!

Toyota Agrees to Settle Lawsuit Tied to Accelerations
By BILL VLASIC

Toyota would pay more than $1 billion, giving cash to vehicle owners for the loss of value from multiple recalls and installing special safety features on up to 3.2 million cars.

Must be the reason why the rest of the world thinks (knows) Americans are STUPID, didn’t YO already ‘settle’ this suit once? (And aren’t STUPID Americans still buying YO’s?)

Number ONE in reliability and safety…

WHO IS J.D. Powers and why should I give a fuck what they think?

Which is to point out that I had NEVER heard of ‘J.D. Powers BEFORE they named Toyota the number one quality car manufacturer in the world.

Ask around…you’ll get the same results. Nobody else has either despite a whole generation having grown up with this piece of fiction being repeated until it became undisputed fact.

ALL HAIL THE TIN MAN (and his empty head, filled with the ‘knowledge’ the deceivers want him to have.)

At the risk of repeating myself, here is more proof of the ‘markets as whip’ theory.

Shares Edge Down After Reid’s Remarks
By REUTERS 9:45 AM ET

Stocks on Wall Street stepped back after breaking the fiscal impasse in Washington looked more unlikely.

Weekly Jobless Claims Fall 10:08 AM ET

Liberal press, what liberal press? (Yet conservo-loonies won’t even click on the NY Times because of it’s ‘liberal bias’, like a fuckwit conservo-loonie would know a liberal from libertarian!)

Note it isn’t ‘Beaners’ stonewalling that is blocking the path to compromise but that asshole Reid, (the flaming ‘liberal’) that is blocking the possibility of ‘reasonable compromise’ according to our Corporate Owned Media…

Methinks the muthafucka’s has overplayed this card a bit much…and it’s gonna blow up on ‘em.

House Republican leaders called on the Senate to act on fiscal legislation, which focused new attention on Senator Mitch McConnell,

Senators to Return With 5 Days Left and No Clear Fiscal Path
By JONATHAN WEISMAN and JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Adding to the tension over a pileup of threatened tax increases and spending cuts, the Treasury secretary notified Congress that the government would hit its borrowing limit on Monday.

Now, have you asked yourself which Republican would be WORSE than Beaner? That’s right it’s Bitch McConnell!

Which (naturally) makes him next in line!

Now can we all sit here and do a big WTF!

Are you sick and tired of the One Percenters using their influence to block change (never mind justice) at every turn?

Isn’t it time we got to vote DIRECTLY on the laws we ALL must live under?

Then it’s time for A Simple Plan!

But no! The idiots the Too Wealthy To Ignore allow to run (and they do ‘sniff test’ every one!) will NEVER straighten things out on their own.

And that’s today’s snapshot of the collapse of western civilization.

Which, I would opine, it is no longer possible to save all of it but it should be possible to save key pieces…if we hurry and act swiftly.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Happy Solstice!

Greetings good citizen,

It’s not everyday that one gets to wish their readers a Happy Solstice AND a festive TEOTAWKI at the same time but today just happens to be that day!

Naturally, the first thing I look at after being subjected to that annoying Hilfiger advertisement is how the ‘Fraud markets’ are performing.

We long ago established that they no longer reflect the real economy but rather the ‘sentiments’ of the >One Percent.

Apparently the GOP is having a hard time delivering their promised cuts to social entitlements (that people have paid into all of their lives for, so your damned right they’re ‘entitled’ to them!) and this morning’s markets reflects ‘investor disappointment’:

Wall Street Slides After Fiscal Setback
By NATHANIEL POPPER 9:41 AM ET

Stocks slumped at the start of trading, depressed by the setback late Thursday in Washington on progress toward a budget deal.

Like the new axiom goes, if it’s bad for the real economy the stock market likes it and vice versa.

[The ‘logic’ here is the quicker the US becomes a Banana Republic the ‘safer’ the robbers will be, thus all this slashing of the safety net is key.]

The New York Stock Exchange at Broad and Wall Streets in Manhattan was not as crowded Thursday as it once was.

Exchange Sale Reflects New Realities of Trading
By BEN PROTESS and NATHANIEL POPPER

The takeover of the New York Stock Exchange’s owner illustrates starkly how trading in commodities and derivatives has become much more lucrative than trading in corporate shares.

[Rumor has it the big trading houses have been throwing people out of the windows wholesale since the markets tanked five years ago…odd that they should bring up the hole this has created now.]

DealBook: At the Big Board, Seeking Rejuvenation in Consolidation 1:42 AM ET
*ICE Deal for N.Y.S.E. Creates Global Powerhouse 8:59 PM ET
Graphic: Smaller, But Growing Fast

*Wasn’t I just saying a few days ago that this ‘private ownership’ thing isn’t a good way to make decisions for an entire civilization?

Don’t let the weasels get away with telling you they were suckered…the one being suckered is YOU!

$1,200 a Pound, Truffles Suffer in the Heat
By DAVID JOLLY

Black Périgords are becoming scarcer and more expensive, and some scientists say it is because of the effects of global warming on the fungus’s Mediterranean habitat.

Geez Bud I wouldn’t know a Black Perigord if I tripped on one (and have about the same chance of one ever crossing my lips at THAT price!) So if we’re talking climate change, the fate of the ‘Black Truffle’ is down around the bottom of my list (as it would be for most people…you don’t miss what you never knew in the first place and too few people know what Black Perigords taste like.)

But that’s our corporate owned media for you…

News Corp Says Publishing Wing Lost Money
By REUTERS 31 minutes ago

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp said the publishing arm it plans to spin off from its entertainment assets would have lost $2.08 billion in the last fiscal year if it were a standalone company.

This is news? Seriously good citizen, would YOU ‘pay’ to read that bullshit? Most of you don’t watch it either but there’s no way to prove that. News Corp exists not as a public utility but as the mouthpiece of the fucking One Percent (and should be boycotted as such!)

Peter Madoff Is Sentenced to 10 Years for His Role in Fraud
By PETER LATTMAN and DIANA B. HENRIQUES

Peter Madoff, Bernard L. Madoff's younger brother, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Thursday for his role in enabling the extensive fraud that swindled investors out of billions of dollars.

Um, we can either opine it took ‘em long enough or we can once again look at it as a ‘token arrest’ while the real criminals walk away unmolested…and there’s no saying we can’t render both judgements.

Next (was deleted for relevance) so we have this story instead…

Boehner Cancels Tax Vote in Face of G.O.P. Revolt
By JONATHAN WEISMAN

Speaker John A. Boehner abruptly halted efforts to pass fallback legislation to prevent a fiscal crisis after conservative Republicans refused to allow taxes to rise even on the most affluent.

with the general election behind them and the mid terms two years away these guys can afford to be assholes, they have a year and a half to pretend it never happened.

That’s part of the problem with the conservo-whacko mind, the rest of us don’t forget who is responsible for this mess. But come the next election cycle and they will be convinced that it is the other parties’ fault, despite (concrete) evidence to the contrary.

And this brings us full circle to the ‘free pass’ the media gives the conservo-whackos.

The evidence is there but the corporate owned media refuses to air it…and that’s not what ‘public utilities do’ it is against the public’s interests…but our corrupt justice system turns a blind eye to this issue, damning them all to the executioner’s crosshairs as they flee for their lives into the Badlands.

But I digress…last but not least:

Faltering Budget Talks Hit Markets
By REUTERS

Currencies held to tight ranges in thin preholiday trade, and the euro seesawed against the dollar.

Um, all I have to say good citizen is if disaster strikes it will show up here (in the currency markets) first.

Thanks for letting me inside your head, have a nice TEOTAWKI!

Gegner