Choke

Greetings good citizen,

Around the world the ‘insufficiently connected’ are being forced into unacceptable situations while the people commonly responsible for these circumstances are routinely ‘bailed out’ at the taxpayer’s expense.

The price of food and fuel continue to spiral upwards as the financial sector loots the ‘real’ economy.

Understand, the financial sector isn’t eating all of the losses reckless lending by ‘imprudent’ bankers caused a certain degree of ‘cascading systemic failure’…

TREVISO, Italy — On New Year’s Eve, Antonio Tamiozzo, 53, hanged himself in the warehouse of his construction business near Vicenza, after several debtors did not pay what they owed him.

Three weeks earlier, Giovanni Schiavon, 59, a contractor, shot himself in the head at the headquarters of his debt-ridden construction company on the outskirts of Padua. As he faced the bleak prospect of ordering Christmas layoffs at his family firm of two generations, he wrote a last message: “Sorry, I cannot take it anymore.”

The economic downturn that has shaken Europe for the last three years has also swept away the foundations of once-sturdy lives, leading to an alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in the most fragile nations like Greece, Ireland and Italy, small-business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon some European newspapers have started calling “suicide by economic crisis.”

There’s a weird saying in the business world that goes like this, You’ll get yours when I get mine. Most of the time our entire (screwed up) economic system operates ‘on credit’; everything is billed ‘net 30’ and actually paid between 90 and 120. Worse, you know ‘squeezing’ the people who owe you won’t expedite the process because they are in the same position you are; they don’t have it…(yet.)

This is why the feckless banks went, hat in hand, to their politicians and told them in no uncertain terms that they needed to be ‘bailed out’ or the financial sector around the world was going to ‘collapse’.

Well, the politicians (idiots that they are) took these bankers at their word, never realizing that the bankers WOULDN’T extend the same kind of consideration to their customers…

So the banker got a ‘pass’ courtesy of the taxpayer but the bank’s debtors got what they always get, ‘fuck you, pay me!’

Understand good citizen, NONE of these banks ‘skipped’ paying their staff ‘bonuses’ (They HAD TO or these ‘highly skilled’ technocrats would go ‘elsewhere’…)

Like the entire banking sector around the world DIDN’T (and believe me, it DID) ‘collapse’.

The, er, ‘government (taxpayer) bailouts have been the ONLY thing keeping the (crooked) banking system afloat for the past four years!

Worse, the banks have had TRILLIONS pumped into them and they’re STILL BROKE! (Because the ‘shadow banking system’ had created a quadrillion dollars worth of debt that the brick and mortar banking system is ‘trying’ to make good on…)

Instead of telling the fuckers that created this garbage to go piss up a bent rope!

But that’s okay, that quadrillion dollars will ‘vaporize’ when we institute the new monetary system A Simple Plan uses! (Partly because ALL DEBT will be illegal and mostly because placing someone in YOUR debt will be an EXILE OFFENSE!)

Um, under ‘fair use’ you are only permitted to use three paragraphs of someone else’s work. So if you don’t click the link and read the entire article you will remain ignorant of the fact that the article goes on to (briefly) examine the ongoing effects of this, er, ‘perpetrator free’ phenomenon.

Yeah, if not for my rant about the bankers getting ‘rescued’ but the people who owe bankers not making out so well, you’d be left to your own devices to try and determine who was responsible for this, er, ‘collateral damage’.

In the first three paragraphs of this article it is made out that the ‘fragile economies’ of the affected countries is to blame for this banker created carnage.

Well, good citizen, the bankers are at least ‘partly correct’ that they don’t deserve ALL of the blame, the fucking politician’s hands are dripping with blood as well.

While yesterday’s post examined what it takes to ferment revolution, we should take a moment to examine the miniscule amount of corruption it takes to implement widespread oppression!

The first key is money. Take over a nation’s money supply and you ‘control’ that nation. If you want to ‘simplify’ this process then you ‘manipulate’ the other bankers into agreeing that one currency will be the world’s ‘reserve currency’, making the manipulation process easier.

One you control the ‘printing presses’ you proceed to ‘buy’ control of the ‘business friendly’ political party in each nation.

After you have control of half of the total political ‘pie’, you ‘exterminate’ the other half, keeping it alive only as a ‘sock puppet’ so you will have the only ‘opposition’ in your pocket.

Now that you control the political process, it is a simple matter of co-opting the courts and you have true ‘free rein’.

There is no need to add the ‘rinse and repeat’, this ‘winning formula’ has been repeated throughout the entire (now) capitalist world.

Understand, good citizen, this wouldn’t be possible under any other system. It was only by turning communist China capitalist that they were able to ‘co-opt’ the formerly communist government.

The part we all should get a kick out of is that they did it all with ‘funny money’ (and the cooperation of some REALLY STUPID people.)

I’m gonna drop this one right here and you can try to work out whether or not I just called YOU stupid…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Invisible Sun

Greetings good citizen,

As I commented in my ‘American Empire’ post, much of the, er, ‘prosperity’ we allegedly enjoyed during the post WWII era was in fact, ‘propaganda’…

No different from the ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT they are spreading today.

Investors will be closely watching for another rise in interest rates when trading resumes on Monday, after the bond market’s sharpest move in nearly six months caught some traders by surprise last week.

Despite the sudden swing higher, most Wall Street strategists are playing down the danger of a surge in interest rates, which have been historically low because of demand for bonds from both the Federal Reserve and private investors wary of all but the safest assets.

The sell-off last week was caused by increasing signs that the economy might finally be gaining steam, lifting the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds to 2.31 percent on Friday, from 2.04 percent a week earlier. That was the biggest move in bond yields, which move inversely to bond prices, since October, when rates briefly topped 2.4 percent.

I doubt it is just me who chokes when he reads a corporate owned media article that cites a ‘recovery’ that only the corporate owned media can observe…through their super secret, bought and paid for ‘privileged information’ connections.

In fact, when it comes to the bullshit game, it is nearly impossible to decipher who tells who what.

Does the media tell the government what to report or vice versa?

Allegedly it is the other way around but does it matter when the report is incapable of withstanding even the mildest scrutiny?

But then again, we have become a society that ‘rewards’ fucking up!

Which is to point out what we all already know, bankers aren’t clear on what a bonus is, never mind why you would be granted one!

So I guess it isn’t ‘helpful’ to point out that falling applications for ‘NEW’ unemployment claims HAVE NO RELATIONSHIP to HIRING!
Just because fewer people are getting axed DOESN’T mean more are getting hired!

Never mind the fact that the recent upswing in hiring has been restricted almost exclusively to minimum wage, part time employment!

For some STRANGE REASON, you don’t hear the LYING FUCKS ‘crowing’ about that little FACT, do you?

NOPE, all YOU get is ‘less lay-offs mean more jobs’…(If you can’t live on what the job pays it’s not their problem, it’s YOURS!)

WTF, good citizen!

All right, moral outrage mode /off:

What does higher bond rates mean to you and me good citizen?

They mean it is getting more expensive to borrow money…certainly unhelpful when your money buys less and less, isn’t it?

Funny how that works, the less your money buys the more of it you need!

Which brings us to the other side of the madly unbalanced equation, which is, what have we been trading for our almost totally imported economy?

Um, like most ‘emerging economies’, we have been trading raw materials, natural resources and basic commodities for our Japanese cars and Chinese everything else…(If you’re an American Executive, you get a German car!)

It’s like yesterday’s nitwits that are still collecting to buy TENTS for Haiti!

It’s been three fucking years, wake the fuck up!

Of course, in the case of the (seriously conflicted) American nitwit, it has been three fucking decades, what’s wrong with you?

Are you living fucking proof that ‘stupid is permanent’?

(Sorry, I’ll have to get the ‘moral outrage’ switch looked at…off again.)

Fair warning, there is no guarantee it will stay ‘off’.

It is unnecessary to remind you that I’m not getting paid for this, not now and not ever.

While Marx got royalties for his multiple ‘manifestoes’, he still died broke.

So in the extremely unlikely event that A Simple Plan does take off and I get the (thankless) job of overseeing its implementation. Neither my heirs/progeny, nor I will exit office ‘rich’ by anyone’s (conservatives don’t count, they think you’re fucking King Midas if you’re still breathing upon exiting ‘public service’!) standards.

But that is neither here nor there good citizen, I should stop screwing around and take advantage of the gorgeous early summer like conditions that have graced us here in New England as winter draws to a close…

I know better than to get too used to such a thing. We often lament in mid-May that the weather was more ‘hospitable’ in mid-March!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Watching and Waiting

Greetings good citizen,

It’s not particularly productive to review, over and over again, the madness that passes for, er, ‘leadership’ in our two-bit society.

A madness reflected in in the global economy

Here is the ‘situation on the ground’ today:

Despite successful bond auctions on Thursday in France and Spain, investors still harbor a huge amount of uncertainty relating to Europe’s debt crisis, analysts said, so recent economic data from the United States has been a positive.

"The fact that the U.S. is growing has been another source of relief," said Jane Foley, an analyst at Rabobank International. "A disappointing number tomorrow could spark a retrenchment in appetite for risk."

The consensus in the markets was that the American economy generated around 170,000 jobs during January. Though that would be unspectacular for an economy recovering from its worst recession since World War II, the amount of jobs being created would be up from levels seen just a few months ago.

We’re going to tackle this a line at a time (because it definitely needs ‘translating.’)

Successful bond auctions (to themselves) only provides the ‘appearance/illusion’ positive market activity so this is meaningless, like shuffling a deck of cards without dealing any.

Investors have ZERO ‘uncertainty’ regarding the European debt crisis, they KNOW the situation is totally hopeless, the ‘uncertainty’ is centered on the assurances they have been given that the people won’t revolt when the inevitable restructuring deal is presented to them.

Another aspect of this ‘uncertainty’ is centered on the United States and its current ‘reserve currency’ status.

The lack of an alternative is the ONLY factor providing an otherwise empty vessel with ‘the appearance of prosperity.’

The ONLY thing growing in the US is the Fed’s balance sheet, why this should be a ‘relief’ to anyone shall likely remain a mystery.

Perhaps the ‘relief’ comes from the fact that there isn’t ‘blood in the streets’ (yet.)

A ‘disappointing’ number? Is 170,000 anything to be pleased with when the economy needs to add 150,000 jobs EVERY MONTH just to keep up with population growth?

Um, the amount of jobs is ‘up’ from the numbers posted just a few short months ago…

What does the (corporate shill) overlook here?

Um, we could start with this being the THIRD CONSECUTIVE ‘jobless recovery’ in a row, (dating back to 1990.) Should we also point out that the labor force today remains smaller than it was BEFORE the second ‘jobless recovery’?

Would it be ‘nit-picking’ to point out that the bulk of the jobs, er, ‘created’ are both minimum wage AND part-time?

Would it be ‘partisan’ to point out that nearly HALF of all US households are participating in some kind of food assistance program (because, increasingly, their jobs don’t pay them enough to cover their living expenses AND buy food…)

The list goes on and on.

Yet each day the corporate owned media does its best to spin a positive outlook on an increasingly dark future.

More with less does indeed have an ‘end’ good citizen…and it ain’t pretty!

If you’re lucky, the ground won’t come up and hit you while you continue to ‘weigh your options’, such as they are…or aren’t.

The part that’s going to suck about your inevitable ‘face plant’ is that you won’t be ‘flying’ immediately prior to the Earth smacking you in the kisser!

Your ‘bite the dust’ moment will be due to (extreme) hunger combined with a degree of ‘over-exertion’.

You will (inevitably) ignore the hunger far longer than is healthy, causing/resulting in a collapse from exhaustion.

The only thing more difficult than experiencing this personally will be watching it happen to your kids and knowing that it is YOUR fault!

Which is to point out that it is not just the country that is suffering from an acute lack of leadership…the exact same problem ORIGINATES in the home!

YOU are NOT in a position to put a stop to this ‘lunacy/mismanagement’…but you are far from ‘powerless’.

If YOU are not prospering in the current economy then YOU and YOURS have been ‘marked for death’!

And if you don’t think this is a life or death situation, I beg you to think again!

We’re ALREADY in a position where a vast majority of people CAN’T AFFORD to buy food and pay their other expenses…

So what do you suppose is going to happen when the price of oil doubles this summer?

Fuel oil expense will make crops ‘unprofitable’ to cultivate much less harvest, so farmers will cut back on what they sow…resulting in food shortages…which will drive up prices.

Since a lot of the world’s food supply is now global this sort of a ‘cascading collapse’ won’t necessarily start here in the ‘world’s breadbasket’…

More, er, disturbingly the famine won’t quite be ‘global’, nor will farmers themselves be much effected by it (because they sell their produce on the ‘global market’.

No, the famine will be centered here, in the world’s newest Banana Republic and it will be caused directly by ‘currency manipulation’.

How this will occur with the US retaining the world’s reserve currency status defies logic…but so does the Dow hovering in the 12,000 point range.

This is why the ‘everything’s fine’ meme is so disturbing (and why I keep putting that bee in your bonnet!)

If not you, who and if not now, when?

One thing is certain, we can’t wait much longer.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Kick in the head...

Greetings good citizen,

It is difficult to remember (and THEY sure as hell aren’t going to remind you) that once upon a time there was an ‘alternative’ to ‘working for the man’.

Understand, especially when you see articles like this one that they continue to ‘pretend’ you have a choice.

You do not, they have seen to that.

Unemployed workers have long suspected that the gaping holes on their résumés left them less attractive to employers. But with the country in the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression, many had hoped employers would be more forgiving.

“I feel like I am being shunned by our entire society,” said Kelly Wiedemer, 45, an information technology operations analyst who said a recruiter had told her that despite her skill set she would be a “hard sell” because she had been out of work for more than six months.

Legal experts say that the practice probably does not violate discrimination laws because unemployment is not a protected status, like age or race. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently held a hearing, though, on whether discriminating against the jobless might be illegal because it disproportionately hurts older people and blacks.

Like the last two ‘economic downturns’ the US economy ‘shrank’ while the labor force grew. We are rapidly approaching the point where we have as many workers counted as ‘not in the workforce’ as those who are.

Before this latest, er, ‘downturn’ we were already very close to ‘equal’ (if we backed out the taxpayer supported public sector and the military.)

Did I mention ‘mismanagement’?

Couple that with ‘creative accounting’ you get a real pickle!

Sort of redefines ‘extend and pretend’.

While many corporate media articles point to the high employability of the over fifty crowd, most of us are experiencing exactly the opposite…we’ve come to call our condition ‘over fifty disease’ (which is, unfortunately, terminal) [pun intended.]

What better way to save on pension funds than to throw people who are in their prime contributing years out of the workforce?

While you are expected to believe this is a ‘coincidence’, it is not.

Sure, you’ll still draw a pension but it will be a fraction of what you would have gotten if you hadn’t been forced out due to the, er, ‘lousy economy’.

And whose fault is the lousy economy?

Did I mention ‘mismanagement’?

Which brings us full circle to the mystery of why the officers of EVERY US based multinational aren’t swinging from the flagpoles in front of their corporate headquarters?

Understand that ‘legal’ shares the same criterion, as ‘sane’ with whatever the ‘majority’ thinks is right being the determining factor.

How sad is it for the rest of us that a rather ‘warped’ minority currently gets to decide this critical social factor?

Which is to say, in truth, there isn’t a jury in the land that would convict you for meting out justice in such a manner. (As long as one of THEIR judges didn’t interfere.)

Which bring us to the other ‘unspoken complaint’ of how the wealthy ‘won’ the class war by buying the government…but that was just a battle, we have not yet begun to fight!

But they know that…which makes what’s coming that much more frightening because SOMEBODY has done some serious underestimating…

Which is also neither here nor there as far as the larger picture is concerned.

What is of paramount importance is the, er, wiping out of this treasonous element from our midst.

Those who would throw our entire civilization under the bus (primarily) to extend THEIR rule do not deserve to survive!

Not that we will get them all, some will run and the others will be ‘assimilated’ when the mechanisms that gave them power are dismantled.

It is somewhat bizarre to call what is happening now an ‘opportunity’ but when they ‘make their move’ the Internet will shut down and nobody knows when service will be restored.

That’s why I posted A Simple Plan online, so you could read it NOW and tell others about the ‘third way’, one that puts ALL OF THE PEOPLE in charge because the law stands alone!

This is a feature I seldom address because few of you understand its importance. We lost our freedom once ‘interpretting the law’ became a commodity that licensed practioners made their living off of, if you could afford a good lawyer, you could ‘buy’ yourself some justice.

This is NOT how it is supposed to be, the laws belong to us ALL, just as they apply to us all.

There is no such thing as a ‘special understanding’ of the law, that is a lie that has been used by cheats everywhere to rob us of our freedom AND justice!

That is why under A Simple Plan NOBODY will be permitted to make their living by ‘interpreting the law’ just as NOBODY will have the title ‘judge’, nobody is worthy of it.

YOU ARE THE LAW good citizen, the LAW IS whatever we all agree to…and I think I speak for the majority that most of us didn’t agree to what we are currently cursed with, a land where justice is for sale to the highest bidder!

If we are to enjoy the rule of law, we must set it free from those who have taken control of it!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Food for thought

Greetings good citizen,

By this point in the game I am reasonably confident that nobody is paying much attention to the irrationally priced, plunging stock markets.

The game of ‘pocket pool’ intended to enrich the already wealthy no longer holds the unwashed masses in thrall.

The stock market never made sense to them and the closer they watched the more the ‘hocus-pocus’ aspect became clear.

Which is to point out that the markets AREN’T real, they ARE ‘theater’, an act put on to beguile the gullible while their pockets are being picked.

A ‘godlike’ (think imaginary, all powerful and therefore, irrational) structure used to hide criminal wrongdoing, which brings us to the topic of today’s first offering

This modern Corporate Police State differs from what we call "corporatism" in that it is not merely about funneling public dollars to private interests à la the Wall Street bailout. Indeed, this new monster has bigger goals than the occasional bailout. It is all about using the government's position as society's supreme rule maker and law enforcer to create a fully- functioning corporate state -- one that doesn't just channel police power into crushing the occasional protest, but constructs an entire legal and military framework around preserving and expanding private profit. And, as we're now seeing, that includes a radical reimagining of the U.S. Constitution.

Yes, good citizen, the ‘difference’ between the Hollywood version of a police state and the real deal is we don’t see jack-booted thugs goose-stepping down Main Street like you see in the movies.

The ‘goons’ dress discretely and seldom draw attention to themselves while they keep them close, they seldom ‘flash’ their ‘get out of Jail free’ cards (otherwise known as ‘badges’) if they don’t have to.

Whilst Mr. Sirota speculates that the Police State veneer is simply becoming more obvious, I suspect the more prominent presence is proportionately related to the measurable increase in public anger. (The criminals fear retribution)

By this point in the game it has become apparent we are no longer dealing with a ‘few bad apples’ or a ‘whoopsie’ how did that slip past us situation.

Whether you believe it or not, our ‘betters’ have taken it into their heads that it is time to ‘cull the herd’ and this time they’re going to do it without a ‘world war’.

They’ve already deployed mass sterilization techniques but given the way things are headed they see no reason to stop there.

You can bet there is a hotly contested debate going on as to whether or not to deploy nukes against the ‘surplus population’ (their term, not mine!) and so far the ‘no nuke’ crowd is winning…but we don’t know for how long.)

Understand good citizen, we will mourn the passing of democracy when it finally occurs, not that most of us would notice the difference, considering the farce democracy has become.

We can use all the statistics in the world, appeal to every historical parallel, bring out every expert, cite every non-partisan study, and it isn't going to matter. We will not convince them that their way lies destruction.

And there is no stopping them. When Reagan's tax cuts ballooned the deficit, they forgot it happened. When Poppy's tax hike fixed the problem, they were happy to see him go. The success of Bill Clinton's economic recovery act did not impress them. They learned nothing from Dubya's destruction of the global economy. They didn't change their beliefs or behavior after getting drubbed two straight times in 2006 and 2008. They just doubled-down on the obstruction and the propaganda and the poison, and repeated a now well-worn pattern of exploding the debt only to turn around and blame the Democrats and social programs for the deficit.

Until ‘direct democracy’ is enacted, we will not be free to control our destiny, nor will we enjoy anything even remotely resembling 'justice'.

Understand that the ‘centerpiece’ of A Simple Plan is ‘direct democracy’, there are no ‘legislators’, the laws will be made and passed by the same people who must live under them.

It is only right and just.

As I have asked repeatedly in the past, since we are all in this together, just who the hell is this ‘opposition’ we keep seeing in our political affairs?

Well, guess who it is? It’s the mo-fo’s who are ripping our asses off blind!

Worse, they have placed themselves ‘above the law’.

Just one more ‘common practice’ to be guarded against…which is to point out that the choice to go with ‘representative democracy’ wasn’t ‘accidental’.

So as we speak of our collapsing civilization
We are once again ‘treated’ to a display of Corporate Capitalism at work:

Foreigners and the wealthy have moved their dollars offshore, forcing Yemen’s Central Bank to hold onto its declining foreign reserves. [Sound familiar?] That in turn is causing the Yemeni riyal to slide in value. On the black market, the price of a dollar rose to 250 riyals from 217 in just a few weeks. [Did I mention the ‘irrational, nonsensical aspect of modern monetary management/valuation?]

Economists say that if the riyal reaches 300 to the dollar, an additional 15 percent of Yemen’s 23 million people will be under the poverty line, living on less than $2 a day. Already, an estimated 40 to 50 percent of Yemen’s people are under that line, though reliable statistics are difficult to obtain in Yemen and some economists put the figure even higher. [And these people are NOT groaning under the yoke of Communism, or Islamism (which is a religion and not an economic system.) what is the source of Yemen’s pain? Why International Capitalism, of course!]

Since mid-March, when tribesmen allied with the opposition blew up a pipeline and disabled one of Yemen’s two main oil-production facilities, the government has been forced to import almost all of its fuel. (The other main complex is used for exports.) That has further strained the government, which depends almost entirely on dwindling oil reserves for its revenues.

Let’s see, gas lines at home while the ‘other’ port exports domestic oil to the Western world and their economy is in chaos?

Can you say ‘mismanagement’?

It boggles the mind to see criminal acts like this go unpunished…but that’s ‘capitalism’ for you!

In case you have ‘forgotten’ (considering how the media has long since ignored the ongoing unrest in Yemen) neighboring Arab states have intervened militarily to keep the (US centric) monarchy in power.

These are, as I’m sure patriotic Republicans would urgently downplay, your tax dollars at work!

‘You’d be paying $5 a tomato if we didn’t have migrants willing to pick ‘em for nothin’!’

Fuck heads!

Which, naturally, segues nicely into our next story of financial ‘hocus pocus’.

Back when the original 2009 Obama stimulus was enacted, some of us warned that it was both too small and too short-lived. In particular, the effects of the stimulus would start fading out in 2010 — and given the fact that financial crises are usually followed by prolonged slumps, it was unlikely that the economy would have a vigorous self-sustaining recovery under way by then.

By the beginning of 2010, it was already obvious that these concerns had been justified. Yet somehow an overwhelming consensus emerged among policy makers and pundits that nothing more should be done to create jobs, that, on the contrary, there should be a turn toward fiscal austerity.

Um, I’m hellbent to inject relevant portions of ASP into my essays to illustrate what a holistic, workable system looks like.

As I have criticized many times, money is only useful to the individual.

Sit back and think about that one for a moment. Neither the state nor the commercial sector needs ‘profits’ to operate!

This is contrary to what you’ve been taught but money has been ‘abused’ (by the self-serving) for a mighty long time.

Understand that removing the requirement for both the state and commerce to generate profits eliminates the need for ALL taxation!

Taxes exist to enrich the owners of resources at the public’s expense!

It’s a ‘scam’ and all taxing bodies should be exiled…oh and P.S. by the way, Libertarians and Randites right along with them!

This ‘scam’ was dreamed up by the ‘owners’ of the world (quite literally the kings started this tax bullshit…and Pharoah was nothing more than a king pretending to be god!)

Where has the practice of paying for civilization gotten us?

The Labor Department reported on Friday that the United States added 54,000 nonfarm payroll jobs last month, following an increase of 232,000 jobs in April. May’s job gain was about a third of what economists had been forecasting.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 9.1 percent from 9.0 percent in April.

“The economy clearly just hit a brick wall,” said Paul Ashworth, chief United States economist at Capital Economics. “It’s almost as if it came to a complete standstill.”

Did I mention ‘mismanagement’?

Do you have ANY idea on how grand a scale our collapsing civilization is being mismanaged?

You already know this but these people have a lot of nerve calling themselves our ‘betters’!

They are the scum of our society, the worst of the worst who somehow manage to claw their way to the top…mostly because we are too nice to stop them!

And THAT good citizen, is the hell of it!

I don’t know about you but from here on out it’s ‘no more Mr. Nice Guy!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Police State (an offshoot of the Class War)

Greetings good citizen,

If you haven’t already I want you to picture in you head what ‘Class War’ would look like.

Would there be riots and confrontations with the Police State in your mental image?

Or would it be a day like today, where the stock market dropped a hundred points due to ‘fear’ of bad news?

Seriously good citizen, the class war is blazing all around you and it has been for the past ten years but thanks to our closely muzzled media, most of you remain ignorant.

The biggest ‘giveaway’ is the 30,000 strong Tea Party (funded by billionaires! Real ‘grassroots’ organization, isn’t it? And popular too, the fucking media can’t stop fretting over them…which should tell you something all by itself.)

Then, like the last administration’s penchant for torture we have this bullshit, which has been building for quite some time.

Those who suggest that the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Kentucky is ‘no big deal’ or that it’s ‘alarmist’ to think otherwise, must not understand the extent to which the boundaries are pushed when the Court makes exceptions to our rights. Nor do they comprehend that once lost, civil liberties are impossible to reclaim. With SWAT teams already injuring and at times killing the wrong people to serve warrants, just imagine the abuse to come given the increased power the Court has bestowed upon the state.

Considering the level of brutality we have been dishing out around the world, from the “war on drugs” to the “war on terror,” the erosion of our civil liberties is sadly inevitable. Did we really think that we could wage war and occupy other nations with checkpoints, invasive surveillance, and brutal violence without these same policing tactics spreading to our country?

Like many things that have happened over the past thirty years, the ever expanding Police State started out as concern for the ‘safety’ of the officers…and as the (civilian) death toll mounted, the ‘blue wall’ got more funding and less accountable.

Sadly good citizen we have already seen ‘the next step’.

It happens every day in Afghanistan and Iraq and soon it will be happening in El Paso and Tuczon. In the interests of ‘officer safety’ police will soon start lobbing missiles into ‘suspect neighborhoods’, Hell, the Isrealis do it all the time!

Should you object (or worse become the victim of such an attack) you will be shit out of luck! Because their goofball ‘supreme court’ has deemed their actions ‘perfectly legal’.

Which is to ask how rapt you will be watching THEIR trial for treason? (I’ll bet you’ll be glued to the set!)

When the justice system starts to unravel ‘justice’ takes some pretty bizarre bounces.

Understand that the idiots responsible for this latest twist towards ‘do as I say not as I do’ don’t intend to ‘lose control’…so when the backlash comes they will be taken pretty much by surprise.

And they will know full well that ‘sorry’ isn’t going to cut it.

Also under the header class war, we have this article that until only recently was being billed as the salvation of all who made the effort.

Young people between the ages of 16 and 24 face an unemployment rate nearly twice that of the rest of the population, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. 2010's 18.4 percent rate for youth was the worst in the 60 years that economists have collected such data. ColorLines notes that in 2010, 8.4 percent of white college graduates were unemployed, 13.8 percent of Latino graduates, and a dismal 19 percent of black graduates.

Those bright, shiny new degrees simply aren't worth the paper they're printed on all too often. The cost of a college degree is up some 3,400 percent since 1972, but as we all know too well, household incomes haven't increased by anything close to that number -- not for the bottom

Worse, most are at a loss when it comes to deciding what to study. Why spend a fortune for a low paying service industry job? (And you WILL spend a fortune because like most loans, it’s not the principle but the interest that drains you dry!)

Just how ‘fucked up’ is our badly broken economy?

I think most of you know the answer.

And if you don’t this excellent article from Jesse’s crossroads café provides a good primer:

When this natural progression of change can no longer be resisted, things might start moving more quickly, perhaps remarkably so.

But until then bear in mind that these big changes happen slowly and for the most part quietly. With sudden bursts of change and release of energy, often over a period of years, until the pressure breaks into the public arena, and then voila, a full-blown crisis appears as if out of nowhere. And most swear that it could not have been foreseen or predicted.

I am telling you, again, that it is happening now. With this continuing resistance to change and reform it may very well break upon the world financial system in the next few years with what could be a terrific. An astonishing effect that will sweep away whole institutions and many long held beliefs and assumptions, old lessons that have been unlearned, and must be accounted for again.

While I have not asked him I’m reasonably sure Jesse doesn’t like being the bearer of sad tidings any more than I do.

We (the paycheck peasants of the modern world) are under attack, good citizen.

While they’d like us to march willingly into the gas chambers, most of us will resist once we know what’s going on.

Are they gassing people? I dunno but they sure as hell are sterilizing the next generation wholesale and there isn’t anything being done about it! (Because fertility clinics are cleaning house!)

Do you doubt there is a class war raging all around you?

All they need to win is for you to do nothing…

Wake up…and then spark it up!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Whackos!

Greetings good citizen!

It is not often we get to visit both sides of an argument in the same post, even if those two sides are only not ‘directly’ related.

We begin with:

What the three men have in common, [Schwarzenegger, DSK, and Gingrich] aside from wielding more influence than they can handle or deserve, is that their serial misbehavior went unchecked for years. In fact, it was rationalized as mere exuberance, frequently excused in “exceptional” people, when it actually demonstrated something else – ruling class impunity.

Ask yourself: Is it possible that these were isolated lapses in judgment? In other words, was this the only time Dominique Strauss-Kahn went after the help, or the only instance of Arnold Schwarzenegger cheating on his wife and exploiting those beneath him? Not too likely. And it’s surely not the only time Gingrich has excused his own bad behavior as a side effect of patriotism – while simultaneously trashing the basic humanity of a political opponent.

But perhaps more importantly:

If these are patterns, why are millions so fascinated, often even seduced, by people whose behavior actually points to pathology? Perhaps we are wired to be attracted by psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, people so focused on their own central role in whatever takes place that the rest of us are sucked into their reality.

Never one to pass up a ‘teaching moment’, you don’t suppose there could be a reason for these obviously disturbed individual’s behavior?

The common thread the article studiously avoids is how all (intentional) ‘public figures’ are ‘pathological liars’. Worse, they are, er, ‘hired’ to both disseminate and defend lies, requiring a certain, er, ‘moral flexibility’ that most people are ill equipped to deal with.

If we take our current set of circumstances, your basic ‘puppet government’ scenario, you’d be correct to observe that most players are indeed accomplished ‘actors’.

The ‘psycho’ part comes from the fact that this is not ‘acting’ in the strictest sense where the player knows the outcome ahead of time, something that can’t help but effect the actor’s overall mental performance/health.

Which is to point out that doing other than what your conscience dictates will, by necessity, fuck you up in the head!

This is not speculation but fact.

However, if we take the original premise and turn it on it’s head (from is the world ‘run’ by psychopaths to is the world ‘filled with psychopaths’) then what does that give us here?

“My mom has told me directly that I’m not going to get into heaven,” Grace Haddad, 16, said. “At first it was really upsetting, but it’s what she honestly believes.”

Thousands of people around the country have spent the last few days taking to the streets and saying final goodbyes before Saturday, Judgment Day, when they expect to be absorbed into heaven in a process known as the rapture. Nonbelievers, they hold, will be left behind to perish along with the world over the next five months.

It will be great fun come Monday when we can rag on the asses of those who are less ‘holier than thou’ because they were ‘left behind’.

Will the next five months be a time of ‘great upheaval’…probably but I seriously doubt ‘spirit in the sky’ has anything to do with it.

Men are ‘evil’ enough without the great Satan!

Then we come to Ivory Towers and the disturbing fact that those inside are still too far up to witness actual circumstances on the ground…

Manufacturing, once America’s greatest strength, seemed to be in terminal decline. But that may be changing. Manufacturing is one of the bright spots of a generally disappointing recovery, and there are signs — preliminary, but hopeful, nonetheless — that a sustained comeback may be under way.

Understand good citizen there is and always will be a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE between ‘Made in the USA’ and ‘Assembled in the USA.’

For those of you who fail to appreciate the distinction, the ‘money’ ISN’T in ‘turning the wrenches’; the money is in the actual fabrication of the parts!

Quite a weekend ahead, let’s see how things turn out.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

How long can you tread water?

Greetings good citizen,

Here in the land of ‘spin’ where almost everything you see, read or hear has to be passed through a major bullshit filter, we encounter this story that asks How long can you tread water?

The ‘average’ US consumer is buried under a mountian of credit card debt. Over the past three years people have shied away from hitting their cards because A.) they were already max’d out or B.) the amount they had available was insufficient to buy ‘goodies’. Credit cards have reverted to their ‘original’ use/selling point…’emergency cash’.

Most of you are aware that prices are spiraling upwards, some would even say they are ‘out of control’ but the ‘creative accountants’ that use wishful thinking to keep our financial sector solvent disagree.

According to them inflation is almost ‘immeasurable’.

So good citizen, I ask you, not for the first time and definitely not the last, how long can you tread water?

Ever since the United States emerged from the recession, economists have been watching for signs that Americans are spending again.

The most recent data show that revolving credit was up 2.9 percent in March compared with February, only the second monthly increase since late 2008.

This year, evidence is building that they are — with every swipe of their credit cards.

In the most recent quarter, covering January to March, American Express, MasterCard and Visa all reported increases in card spending. Business and consumer spending in the United States helped propel that growth, along with global growth and an increase in merchants that accept cards.

So, is the US consumer ‘recovering’ or are they instead, ‘up against it’ again and resorting to their credit cards to ‘stretch’ their anemic paychecks?

In a related story Mr. Williams over at SGS has the following to report:

No. 368: April Inflation, Retail Sales, Trade Deficit
Subscription required

May 13th, 2011


• April Year-to-Year Consumer Inflation: 3.2% (CPI-U), 3.6% (CPI-W), 10.7% (SGS)
• Fed’s Dollar Debasement Efforts Boost Three-Month CPI Inflation into 6% to 7% Range
• Official Double-Digit Consumer Inflation Possible in Third-Quarter
• With Rising Prices Dominating Sales Gains, “Core” Retail Sales Were Unchanged in April

This is a piece of the puzzle they don’t want you to connect. That ‘quantative easing’ translates directly into ‘diluting your purchasing power’, something the ‘deflationista’s’ don’t get!

YOU won’t see falling prices. What YOU will see is (madly) shrinking purchasing power, cleverly disguised as irrationally rising prices.

And your employer will claim he ‘can’t afford’ to pay you more…which will mean you ‘can’t afford’ to continue working for him!

Worse, you won’t have the luxury of ‘toughing it out’ until something better comes along, you’ll just have to bite the bullet and stop digging the hole deeper.

The ‘answer’ of when to cut and run lies in your expense picture. When the expense you incur getting to and from your job leaves you with a ‘heat or eat’ decision, it’s time to quit and get your ass down to the local food bank!

If you’re ‘making it work’ by eating bread filled with cat food you should have quit the cheap bastard a long time ago!

Sounds pathetic but this is where the situation is headed.

How sad is it that the most ‘efficient’ way for a company to increase its bottom line is by squeezing YOU the employee/customer?

MOST people aren’t on bread and cat food (yet)

I suspect, truth be told, that the number of people just one medical emergency from homelessness is far greater than anyone imagines…

It is a ‘no brainer’ that a vast majority of us are living ‘hand to mouth’. It cracks me up to hear investment professionals sagely advise that one should have 2 million dollars set aside if they hope to enjoy a comfortable retirement.

Bubba, the minimum wage was $1.35 an hour when I started working, even if I saved EVERY PENNY I ever earned, I’d be a million and a half light!

Naturally, one would have to have ‘invested wisely’ when building their nest egg. How sad is it that only a rather substantial inheritance or a lottery hit would provide you with the necessary capital to be sitting on 2 million dollars on the day you are eligible to hang up your spurs.

If not for social security, most of us would be faced with abject destitution upon our ‘forced’ retirement, thanks to the ‘fuck you, pay me’ commerce system we have been saddled with.

Couple that with the ‘unemployability’ of most people over 50 and you’d have a real crisis waiting in the wings!

And if you don’t think that is indeed the case go back and read my opening statement again.

These cold-blooded reptiles lie for a reason! (The truth would get them lynched!)

Hell, I’m predicting necktie parties, real soon!

Are you ready?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Default!

Greetings good citizen,

Chalk it up to ‘lag time’, no matter where you look today the main story is the same…and you know how I feel about ‘going along with the crowd’.

Which is my way of assuring you that you won’t find ‘more of the same’ here.

As far as I’m concerned, $4 a gallon gasoline is what has me spooked. I’m in the process of searcing for a new job and every time I pass a gas station the minimum acceptable wage rises.

Although I’m beginning to think I’m all through working for somebody else…If I’m going to ‘get a job’ I’m gonna have to make my own.

I’m also getting a little sick and tired of being the first one let go because I’ve got a few grey hairs and a pot belly.

At least I’ve got hair!

But I digress.

We need to rewind a couple of yards here and start again.

The collapse of our civilization proceeds apace. The various ‘like-minded’ financial sites are all…ooo, there’s that bad word again…anyway, they’re all ‘predicting’ that there is a second ‘leg down’ just around the corner.

The old double whipsaw of rising commodities and falling wages promises to put the economy into an unrecoverable tailspin that will crash the financial sector.

Repeat that one to yourself until it sinks in…“crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”, “crash the financial sector”,

Okay, you got it?

Naturally, some of you need me to ‘splain’ it more clearly so there is no mistake what ‘crash the financial sector’ means. (To the average Joe in the street.)

You know the FDIC was founded to ‘guarantee’ all bank deposits, right?

Well, it turns out John Q. Public isn’t the only one with a ‘mountain of bad paper’ that he must ‘somehow’ make good on.

Seems the banks, through their ‘off balance sheet vehicles’, also have billions (if not trillions) that need to be ‘rolled over’.

If they can’t find a way to roll this debt over, they will be forced to default.

IF THEY default, it will result in the dreaded ‘cascading systemic failure’ hinted at in the parable ‘for want of a nail’.

Riding the razor’s edge right now is whether or not the scandalously greedy actually WANT their debtors to default.

There is the small matter of their being guilty as sin of high treason that they THINK bankrupting the nation will make go away, (if not permanently, at least long enough to make good their escape.)

Although the financial sector is globally interconnected, with many parts being held up by the flimsiest of pretenses.

I’d posit that once it starts to go they will be unable to ‘save’ it, even if they wanted to.

And right about now I’m not so sure they want to.

We seem to be looking at the classic ‘brick on the accelerator’ ploy, the thieves have long since abandoned the vehicle. Worse, by now they have ringside seats from which to witness the spectacular ‘ka-boom’.

As I have grown fond of saying, this is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’.

Think about it good citizen, is anybody making even the most feeble of efforts to head off certain disaster?

Who will put the other HALF of our working aged population back to work?

Who will declare the ‘jubilee’ we so desperately need to put the economy back on a secure footing?

Who will remove the boot of the tyrannical owners from our collective necks?

I will.

But you know I can’t do it without you!

None of what’s coming is ‘necessary’, those who profess to be interested in ‘saving’ you are in fact only interested in saving themselves…

Wake up and smell the coffee good citizen, we’re going into the fourth year of this bullshit and they haven’t done anything!

Which is to point out that you are NOT expected to take the news of the financial sector’s collapse ‘stoically’.

They want bloodshed and confusion, and yours in preferable to theirs.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Still waiting...

Greetings good citizen,

Today’s first offering would be incomplete without prefacing the story with the fact that the crisis is going on its fourth birthday and there still hasn’t been been a single thing done to correct the problem

In fact, it has become a recurring theme throughout the blogosphere.

What are we doing wrong that we are unable to elect a single individual capable of standing up and jailing the criminals that are raping this country?

Are Mr. Prince’s forces so efective that the US military is no match for them?

We can only imagine it must be so. More the pity that they’re on the public payroll, isn’t it?

Anyway:

The first case study focuses on Washington Mutual (WaMu), the nation’s largest savings bank, and its overt strategic decision to go big into selling high risk, high profit mortgages. Here you will find a detailed description of every type of dangerous mortgage foisted onto the public. Your blood pressure also will climb when you read how the bank used focus groups to help its mortgage brokers find better ways to sucker customers into risky mortgages even though the applicants had qualified for and wanted safer fixed-rate mortgages. [criminal activity that went (naturally) unprosecuted]

The report also details outright fraud committed by brokers – forging documents, making phony loans, stealing money – who then got rewarded again and again by the bank for their high sales records, even after they were caught! Nobody cared because the loans quickly were sold to Wall Street – the riskier the loan, the higher the interest rates and the more Wall Street would pay.

The part that should disturb most of you is how this all occurred ‘eyes wide open’, the fuckheads KNEW what would happen and did it anyway!

And we STILL can’t find a blessed soul willing to prosecute these criminals?

Well, no matter…few will escape when the lynching starts.

And maybe that’s the only way anyone connected to this clusterfuck will pay the price.

But considering the consequences, it won’t be near harsh enough.

Our children have been deprived of the nation they were born into. It is up to us to give it back.

The Galts of the world need to pay for their ‘myopia’.

How ironic is it that those who believe the world wouldn’t survive without them completely miss how much better off the world would be without them?

Nobody needs a self-centered tyrant, nobody.

That said, nobody is well served following the advice of the clueless.

Why do foreigners come up with stupid ideas (and pretend they are life altering revealations?) Why does the MSM keep granting them column space?

If your experiencing problems with your budget knothead’s here to tell you that you’ve been doing it all wrong!

Forget Frugality: Focus on Earning More
By RAMIT SETHI

[Ramit Sethi runs the Web site I Will Teach You to Be Rich.]

Why is it that 99% of the time the ‘secret formula’ involves getting saps to send you money so you will ‘reveal’ to them the secret of success, (which is conning saps into sending you money so you will reveal the secret of success!)

Or worse, they make insipid suggestions like buying a gold mine, oil well (or other ‘capital intensive’ endeavors one would need to have a lot of money for in the first place…)

Don’t even get me started on the ‘your fortune in Real Estate’ scam…especially now.

Again, shifting mental gears we come to another disturbing revelation about the corporate owned media

If this shit is going on, just how ‘micro-managed’ is the BULLSHIT they fabricate for your consumption?

Sadly, this has been going on for decades…and like the criminal activity, NOBODY DOES ANYTHING about it!

Fuck up on your taxes and they’re on you like white on rice, do 70 in a 65 and expect to cough up big to both the State and the Insurance company, but fuck millions of people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and you’ll walk away unmolested!

How sad is it that it is considered ‘business as usual?’

Broken record time (another way of acknowledging you’ve read this here before.)

If not YOU, WHO and if not NOW, WHEN?

Injustice serves nobody except the criminal who gets away with their crime.

It is time to restore ‘justice’ to our slender package of civil rights.

Fail this and civilization itself fails.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Mr. Stiglitz sounds the alarm...

The Kabuki shuffle…

Talk about being ‘slow on the draw!’ I bow to Jesse, who has already posted the piece I, er, ‘intended’ to write…thus will I ‘lead off’ with a link to his piece

Naturally, Jesse didn’t say EVERYTHING I want to say so, after reading his brilliant commentary, we can press on.

My original lead story was intended to be a ‘bitch fest’ on the topic of the recent multitude of, er, at best ‘recent arrivals’ that somehow feel ‘qualified’ to tell the rest of us how to ‘fix’ our ailing republic. Sadly, the fact that they even THINK it is ‘repairable’ demonstrates their massive ‘ignorance’…

An ignorance bordering on ‘stupidity’.

But whatever. I think I’m more disturbed by the fact he managed to get by/win over supposedly progressive editors…raising a ‘red flag’ as to what they truly support

Moving on, we have a disturbing look at the Gov’t shutdown ‘averted’ and how the article goes on to say it could still ‘blow-up’. The actual agreement hasn’t even been drafted yet, never mind put to a vote.

‘richocheting’ back to the original topic of our broken justice system we have this article, which asks the question Is executive pay a sign top executives are being ‘bought off’?

here’s the ‘money quote’:

“There has been a massive wealth transfer from middle-class America’s retirement accounts to the bank accounts of the privileged few. The social consequences of this wealth transfer bear scrutiny.”

How many of you remember St. Ronnie declaring us all ‘millionaires’ thanks to the sky high interest we would all earn on our IRA’s?

Naturally, this all ‘ends’ with More self-aggrandizing spin that isn’t what it is being made out to be.

But what do you care about ‘thrift stores’?
No irony should be lost on the fact that these ‘recyclers’ of ‘other people’s trash’ will soon deplete their inventory of ‘gentlely used’ items, causing a crash of epic proportions

What I find, er, curious is the ‘silly money’ the dealers are asking for some downright ancient automobiles? How Stupid will you feel after paying damn near the price of a new car for some decrepit wreck that you can’t even afford to put gas into?

These chiseler’s are still asking five figures for 10 year old pick-up trucks!

My point being that fuel prices are rising again, despite high unemployment and lower overall demand around the globe.

Now look at the double whipsaw of rising fuel prices and rising inflation…throw in stagnant wages and stir well.

It won’t be the first time we’ve played ‘stick ‘em up!’ with the socially clueless but we can hope that we are inching towards ‘the last time’ we will be forced to bow down to economic blackmail.

We CAN fix civilization but I’m unable to even imagine why anybody would want to repair the barbarous system of exploitation we have suffered under for more than 200 years.

You may not like change, hell, you might now want change but one thing is certain, change is coming. If you don’t start making alternatives to choose from, it will be another game of their way or the highway.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

No way out

Greetings good citizen,

While the corporate media spews its incessant stream of continous ‘happy talk’, the fact remains that NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE to repair the ‘economic imbalances’ that are tearing human civilization apart.

Note I am not singling out Western or Eastern civilization as global commerce is So intertwined these days there is literally no place to hide.

Which is another way of saying there will be ‘no survivors’.

You can imagine what the reaction would be if the corporate owned media came right out and admitted this obvious fact…we’d finally see for ourselves that the normally complacent US Public does indeed know how to ‘riot’.

Um, it is, er, ‘unhelpful’ to point out that since the problem is ‘unsolvable’ using conventional methods that the choice has been made to, er, ‘ignore’ the problem as long as posssible.

Guess what? Time’s up!

You can only keep ‘life support’ going for so long before it causes the whole scheme to collapse.

It’s that all out and no in thing that eventually leaves you with an empty bag.

We’ve been running on less than nothing for more than three years, how much longer we’re going to be able to keep up the ruse is answered as ‘not much’.

Worse, the ‘budget battle’ I predicted would end up in a ‘failed government’ is upon us. It is no longer a question of ‘if’ the bastards will shut down the government but for how long?

I find it curious that the stock market has ‘recovered’ most of its losses while the real economy continues to lie in tatters, how the hell does Wall Street ‘justify’ this?

Because they said so.

And what do you suppose is going to happen when people stop believing what Wall Street says?

You read it here first; it won’t be pretty. How will you know? Mr. Merchant will no longer accept your ‘greenbacks’, he’ll demand something of ‘comparative value’ instead.

Understand good citizen, people are already thinking ‘these guys are full of shit’ when it comes to Wall Street, it won’t be long before they are ‘marginalized’ out of existence.

Those foolish enough to stick around after the ‘jig is up’ that is.

This is definitely a situation where you don’t want to be ‘the last man standing.’

Anyway, we have this article from the Automatic Earth for your consideration which begs the question of what do you do when there’s No way out

The massive U.S. debt problem that we have been discussing so often for many years has now become widely known both to investors and the general public. It has been a major topic of discussion in the media as well as a key issue in last November's elections.

To take just one recent example, Gregg Fleming, the head of Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney, stated on CNBC that the total debt (including government, individual, corporate, and financial institutions) in the U.S. has increased by over $40 trillion since 1984 [which was, coincidentally, the beginning of Saint Ronnie’s second term] ($11 tn to $52.4 tn).

He stated that, in his opinion, the unusually sluggish recovery we are now experiencing is a result of the deleveraging of this debt. Furthermore, he did not even mention the "impossible to keep" promises that have been made by our federal government for entitlements, and by state and local governments' for health care and pensions. If these were included it would increase this country's total obligations to over $150 trillion.

You’ve heard both sides of the ‘entitlement’ argument, understand that the 150 trillion dollar figure is a ‘projection’ of what the debt will become if ALL members of the Baby Boom generation survive until they’re 75 years old!

It should also be obvious that the ‘fuck you, pay me’ system is ripping us off! Our entire healthcare system is riddled with prices that have no basis in reality, which is what the conservatives are basing their projections on.

Sadly there is ‘no way out’…short of revolt!

Prices won’t return to ‘realistic’ levels until we force them to.

If you have time, read Ilargi’s commentary above the linked article if you want a good chuckle.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Not for nothing...

Greetings good citizen,

I have long ‘bemoaned’ (whined, vetched, you get the picture…) the base ‘dishonesty’ resorted to by the government when it comes to economic reporting.

As I, er, ‘predicted’ when this whole shit-storm started, the infamous ‘they’ (I have a brother-in-law this vague term drives insane…and you guessed it, he’s a conservative.)

Little exercise in logic here, do any of you REALLY not know precisely who ‘THEY’ are?

Anyway, if we take the ‘plutocracy’ and our ‘captive government’ as ‘givens’, it is THAT ‘they’ we’re referring to, the ones who have gained great fame by putting a ‘positive spin’ on every reported news item. Them fuckers there…yeah, those ones!

It is ‘those fuckers’ who, as predicted, have (via blatant looting of the Treasury through the Federal Reserve.) er, ‘engineered’ a THIRD CONSECUTIVE ‘JOBLESS RECOVERY’.

Not to belabor the obvious but what, precisely, is a ‘jobless recovery’?

We’re told the stock markets continue to climb because of economic activity ‘elsewhere’.

The problem with that LIE is THE WHOLE FUCKIN’ PLANET IS ON ITS ASS!

There isn’t a single ‘economic indicator’ that explains the otherwise irrational rise in stock prices, it’s all been ‘quantative easing’!

This brings us full circle to the issue of who, precisely, ‘owns’ 99% of all available stock and what is it, precisely, the stock markets tells us besides how rich the already wealthy are?

‘Stock valuations’ have NO BASIS IN REALITY, but you knew that, right?

Let’s shift perspectives here for a moment and ask another simple question, given what passes for ‘wealth’ in our fucked up system, why are YOU busting your ass (basically for nothing)?

The only thing you ‘get’ for your efforts is the, er, ‘opportunity’ to return the next day for even more abuse.

And you do/put up with it BECAUSE the alternative is even worse.

Now how much does that SUCK?

But I ‘preach to the chior’ as far as the wretchedness of our circumstances is concerned.

You all know intimately the degradation we must all endure for the, ‘luxury’ of living indoors and eating regularly.

Which is precisely what a psychopathic Libertarian considers such basic human rights, they are a luxury (that you don’t deserve!)

But we shouldn’t be too surprised, many ‘famous’ scholars ‘couldn’t concieve’ of society without slavery.

How ironic is it that they also ‘couldn’t concieve’ themselves as slaves?

They, like their Libertarian/Conservative counterparts were much ‘too valuable’.

If these ‘worthys’ were made slaves, who would concoct bullshit like this?

It would be useless to rage over such trivia. We are into the THIRD YEAR of the fucking (but they don’t dare admit) ‘New Normal’, so naturally the ‘unemployment rate’ is falling.

They don’t pay benefits ‘forever’…which is going to cause some deadly serious problems in the not too distant future.

The ‘sand in the ointment’ here is the, er, ‘inference’ that hiring is actually ‘up’ (again, somewhere…likely over the damn rainbow!)

Again, it’s the ‘new normal’, I remember there being pages and pages of help wanted ads, now ALL of the help wanted doesn’t fill a half a page!

Understand, that was ‘prior’ to the Internet. For all of the strides we’ve made, there still isn’t a computer in EVERY household, so telling us that there are thousands of jobs ‘online’ (which nobody keeps up to date) is worthless.

Of course, if you WANT TO WORK ‘bad enough’ you can find a computer that you can use to search for work.

Naturally, there is no correlation between ‘wanting to work and the availability of work’.

Yet another ‘sticking point’ that has deadly potential for the not too distant future.

Speaking of which, the US media is sticking with its story that the ‘revolts’ sweeping the Arab world are an expression of the strong desire for ‘democracy’ (as opposed to ‘freedom from oppression’ which is definitely NOT the same thing.)

Worse, it is the ‘tipping point’ where the global economy will first come unraveled. It’s more than a bit ironic that the greatest source of wealth in our modern world is located in such an economically repressed region.

Which is not to say there isn’t a reason for this, albeit a feeble and racist one…but the ones with the guns makes the rules!

Which is to once again point out that war IS NEVER ‘the answer’.

Not for nothing good citizen but I can’t help but notice that our own house is in a serious state of, er, ‘disarray’.

The collective ‘we’ need to get our shit together and put the brakes on the idiots who are driving our civilization over a cliff (largely to escape prosecution!)

Hard to say what’s sadder, the fact that it is this obvious or that we aren’t doing anything about it?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

A Decade (+) of Pain...

Greetings good citizen,

Let’s begin with the stock market, shall we?

What’s that? You don’t give a rat’s ass about the stupid stock market?

As well YOU shouldn’t. It is still deeply disturbing to consider that most of the Dow is now comprised of (bankrupt) financial companies.

Yet the Dow is up 140+ points at the moment (after shedding more than 200 yesterday.)

Which tells you what, good citizen?

It tells you that whoever controls the ‘value’ of shit will never go broke. It tells you that ‘their paper’ (as long as they remain in power) will always appreciate in value even when everything else (like the dollar in your pocket) sinks like a rock.

Well good citizen that ain’t the only thing that has ‘stagnated’ over the past decade

"A Decade of Labor Market Pain" (Mandel on Innovation and Growth)
In February 2001, nonfarm payrolls hit their business cycle peak of  132.5 million. Ten years later, the latest data pegs February 2011 payrolls at 130.5 million, a 1.5% decline. To put this in perspective, the ten-year period of the Great Depression, 1929-39 saw a 2.3% decline in nonfarm employment, roughly the same magnitude. [snip]


Although unemployment remains very high, at this point that’s mainly due to lack of hiring; layoffs are quite low. This means that people who still have decent jobs aren’t feeling much at risk of losing them. So any urgency would have to come from concern about those who don’t have jobs — those who lost them in the slump, and of course young people trying to get started on their working lives.

And those people — at least one in six workers, judging by U6 — don’t seem to have much political or psychological visibility. In effect, they’re being written off.

What’s wrong with this picture good citizen?

To the extent that the market for goods expands in tandem with the population, the labor market must expand by 150,000 jobs A MONTH just to stay even.

Now, thanks to globalization, our labor force has actually shrunk by 2million over the past ten years…not counting the 120 months of 150,000 per month the labor force should have grown by.

Understand, the people were added, we made ‘em right on schedule. What’s missing is their ‘income/input’.

Yes good citizen, contrary to conservative rhetoric, people who can participate in society pull their own weight.

No jobs (because they were farmed out/eliminated) means no contribution.

Worse is the ‘captive audience’ this turns domestic consumers into.

We keep hearing about how our economy is being hollowed out yet nothing is done about it…because trade protectionism is ‘bad’. We’d lose all of the jobs making the stuff we export!

Hello, anybody home? What jobs do you think the shiftless bastards are farming out?

Worse, guess who controls the purchasing power OF YOUR FUCKING MONEY?

Yes, good citizen, food (here in the US) is jumping by leaps and bounds as energy prices (like stocks) approach their historic highs…and guess what our financial overlords are saying?

That’s right, ’inflation’ is ’tame’.

Um, it’s hard to say which we’ll run out of first, rope or light poles?

Which is to say if the ’solution’ lies in culling the population, the only ones we need to ’lose’ are the unproductive rich.

Just saying, ya know?

Anyway, thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Not far enough...

Greetings good citizen,

Perhaps I’m just suspicious by nature…I mean, who am I to criticize Michael Moore?

Does the fact that the corporate owned media ignores him nullify the, er, wishy-washy nature of his message?

Don’t take my word for it, judge for yourself how many times he has pulled his punches while ‘grandstanding’ for the protestors in Madison, WI.

Understandably, if you want to be considered one of the ‘serious people’ then you can NEVER tell it like it is because your own words will be twisted and used against you.

In this respect I sympathize with Mr. Moore’s position, maintaining credibility must be a constant battle…that said, I am not nearly as ‘sanguine’ as he is regarding the, er, ‘stability’ of the republic…notice how I refrained from calling it ‘ours’.

This place isn’t being run FOR us, this is being done TO us!

Which is to ask since when has the ballot box ever been the ’working tool’ of the masses? Ever wonder why your ballot is ‘secret’? It is so nobody can verify HOW you voted.

We are constantly being told we are a nation divided, that half of us are ‘liberals’ and the rest are conservatives, yet only one in five of us self-identify as Conservative.

This would be ‘consistent’ with the ‘top twenty percent’. People who aren’t necessarily ‘rich’ themselves but honestly believe they stand a good chance of someday becoming so.

This is no ‘secret’, people know that voting Republican is voting to protect those who already have more than they can spend, at the expense of everyone else!

No one should be ashamed or fearful of others knowing how they voted so why keep it ‘secret’? Made sense when how you voted could be used as evidence of treason but there’s nobody threatening you with a noose these days (unless you’re not ‘patriotic’ enough…then you have to watch out for them Tea Partiers, all fucking 33,000 nation wide!)

But I digress.

Let it suffice to say you should listen to Mr. Moore’s message with a critical ear and draw your own conclusions.

To an extent, good citizen, he personifies the very ‘wishy-washiness’ used to criticize the Democratic party, even while criticizing that lack of leadership/decisiveness himself.

Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Moore could give our current spineless elected officials lessons on how to stand up for the people they were elected to represent.

He makes a fine speech…it is just a little too ‘vague’ for my tastes. There’s a lot to be done, if we can’t even talk about what needs top be done then it won’t happen, it’s that simple.

I do not quibble or equivocate in A Simple Plan, I did reverse myself on summary executions because they are ‘unjust’ and I firmly believe that the primary function of government is establish ‘Justice for All’.

Not ‘my’ justice or justice for the talented or the lucky but justice for ALL, meaning everybody!

But I digress again! (Not that anyone should be surprised by this, it’s what I do…)

Interestingly, there is a part of Mr. Moore’s speech that clearly displays his lack of understanding of economics

Even our Nobel prize winning NYT editorialist knows better than to keep trotting out the same old lies (although I’d posit in Mr. Moore’s case this is merely ‘ignorance’.) In today’s editorial he even attempts to set the record straight albeit, too late to do anyone any good.

While we’re on the topic of economics we have this remarkable story which raises the often overlooked issue of ‘compared to what’?

The weakness with this US Dollar DX index is that it is highly weighted to the developed economies of Europe and Japan. As such it may not reflect erosion of dollar purchasing power vis a vis the BRICs, and external measures such as gold, oil, and silver. It may be masked by the mutual weakness of central banks all inflating their currencies in unison.

YOUR purchasing power is being flushed down the toilet by those who have so much money they can’t spend it all!

Since this is the end result of ‘mis-management’ it is a little late to go back and fix it now.

We’re talking about the futility of digging up dead people so we can ‘execute’ them…which makes absolutely no sense.

But it should give you an idea how long this has been going on.

All I can say is things are certainly coming to a head, good citizen.

Taking that one step further, it’s gonna be a long, hot summer…followed by and even longer and colder winter.

As things continue to fall apart events will occur with accelerating velocity, raising awareness of long ignored decay.

Until then good citizen,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Other considerations

Greetings good citizen,

While most of you realize ‘something’ is amiss there is a disturbing tendency to ‘oversimplify’ the situation or worse, to dismiss it as one of those things you have no control over.

Not that you (or anyone else) would be wrong in thinking that way.

You DON’T have any control over what gets done, er, ‘technically’ in your name.

Worse, you have lost what little ‘leverage’ you had when it came to influencing the conditions under which you will live once the, er, ‘elite’ succeeded in setting up their own gated version of America

The Obama administration and corporate executives saved American capitalism. The U.S. economy may never recover.

It is that last remark which is the ‘money quote’. The US economy isn’t supposed to recover! You know as well as the rest of us that the next stop for the US economy is ‘Banana Republicdom.’

More frightening, good citizen, is your powerlessness to prevent or even mitigate bullshit like this.

the U.S.-backed government of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq has resorted to imprisoning 300 journalists, intellectuals, and lawyers in order to stop ongoing protests, according to a well-reported Washington Post dispatch from Baghdad.

Which leaves the still unanswered question of ‘what does victory look like?’ almost ten years later.

Yet another ’reminder’ of how badly broken this nation is. (Mostly because the law remains within the reach of the ’self-interested’…which is another term for traitor in case you weren‘t aware.)

I will once again raise the very practical consideration of whether or not this crisis is ‘fixable’ using the ballot box?

After failing for over 230 years, why would we expect it to suddenly start working?

In order for the ballot box to start working again we would have to ‘liberate’ the fourth estate. (Under A Simple Plan the media would not need ‘profits’ to operate…actually, no industry would.

Being freed from having to serve ‘two masters’, we would finally be able to hold them to the ‘higher standard’ they are always bragging about but seldom deliver.)

And I know I’m being ‘charitable’ using the word ‘seldom’ when ‘never’ is closer to the mark.

How the hell do we ‘de-rail’ the Crazy Train?

Which isn’t really a problem, we already know it will de-rail itself…it’s what comes after that will prove ’problematic’…

Where do we start cleaning up the mess being made by our self-professed ’betters’?

Here we have more evidence that the fish rots from the head down.

Here are six charts from USA Inc., a comprehensive (and absorbing) new report by former Morgan Stanley analyst and current Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Mary Meeker that looks at the U.S. federal government (and its financials) as if it were a business, which seem to say one thing: FAIL.

Are our elected officials doing their jobs…period?

Short answer, no.

It would be closer to the mark to point out they are avoiding doing what they we elected to do in order to avoid being persecuted by the corporate owned media.

Which I’m sure you would all agree makes a very effective ‘whip’ in the hands of the ‘unscrupulous’, doesn’t it? Worse is the ‘burden of proof’, AFTER the media tars and feathers you an apology doesn’t do you much good.

Sadly nothing short of the execution of your accuser is going to repair your damaged reputation…(provided Jerky doesn’t really have to goods on you.)

This is the ‘landmine’ advocates of ‘free speech’ pound with a sledge hammer regularly. There are no consequences for telling outright lies…which suit’s the liars just fine.

This also ‘changes’ under A Simple Plan…if you can’t prove it, you better not say it. Not being able to back up your scandalous accusations wins you a free, one-way trip to the badlands.

This too is another, er, ‘overlooked’ aspect of our decaying society.

Which is to ask what kind of society would give Glen Beck a national platform and defend their actions by calling what he does ‘entertainment’?

How fortunate is it for me that I don’t have the audience that would attract unwanted attention to the, er, points of view expressed here?

Perhaps this is the ‘plus side’ of being the base for a workable alternative to rapacious capitalism, they can’t openly attack me without raising awareness of what I advocate!

Just something else to occupy your mind as you settle in to watch the wheels come flying off of our civilization…

Have you picked up your bow yet?

Just asking…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Practical considerations

Greetings good citizen,

It all started out kind of gradual like (back in the 1970‘s)…here a little nick, there a little cut, next thing you know you’re bleeding out.

Some of you ‘young’ uns’ are probably wondering why us old farts seem so fixated on the 70’s and the best response is ‘you had to be there’.

How did this whole shitstorm get rolling? It all started in the late 60’s with the ‘re-appearance’ of the much dreaded ‘market saturation monster’.

With the ‘recovery’ of the bombed out European manufacturing sector, US markets stopped ‘growing’ (causing the stock markets to panic!)

It was the cause of the first ‘Great Depression’ and it is the cause of the current one that they are pretending isn’t happening as well.

Which is to point out that this isn’t the first time (or the second if you’re counting) that we have found ourselves on the jagged edge of economic collapse.

Nor is it the first time we have experienced a ‘global’ economic collapse, that’s happened more than once as well.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be considering the ‘victors’ write the history books. Small wonder that one of the most destructive forces known to man (mercantilism/capitalism) would be, er, ‘withheld’ from the ‘living memory’ of our species.

Unlike tobacco, which only kills a third of its users, capitalism kills all of its worshipers, 100% of the time!

It’s like going bungie jumping with the cord wrapped around your neck…

It ain’t the fall that kills you, its that sudden snap…

How frightening is it that there isn’t a (well known) workable alternative we can switch to?

Communism isn’t the answer, it has already been proven to be just as corrupt as capitalism/mercantilism…and the ‘party politics’ serve the same purpose they do in allegedly ‘free‘ societies, to muzzle dissent.

If we were to couple this, er, ‘coincidental’ collapse of the global economy with the inevitable shortfall of fossil fuels we would indeed see the necessity of abandoning what has gone before.

Worse, the inevitable collapse of the latest ‘incarnation’ of global empire has resulted in this fiasco

This is no accident. This is no error in judgement. This is not philosophy. It is a calculated white collar crime, that has co-opted many elements of society. It hides behind slogans like 'small government' and 'libertarianism' and 'free markets' but its real intent is to subvert the law and corrupt the processes of the economy and society. It is a type of financial coup d'etat.

I was tempted to put the whole passage in bold but that sort of defeats the purpose of ‘highlighting’, doesn’t it.

Jesse’s ‘point’ (indirectly) is that when ‘normal’ markets fail, fake markets take their place.

The point he goes on to make in fact states that once normal markets collapse there is no room left for the honest dealer/consumer, you become either a predator or you become a victim.

Sadly, since nobody has your back, if you’re not connected you’re most likely ‘road kill’.

What’s an ‘honest dealer’ to do?

Run away!

Which brings us full circle to the issue I raised in yesterday’s post, ‘what do we do now that it is (officially) game on?’

My ‘advice’ (for what its worth) is to convert as much of your ‘funny money’ into non-perishable food stuffs as you can…not that most of us actually HAVE any ‘surplus income’. Depending on your circumstances, you will soon be better served buying food than paying for shelter if you are in a position to keep the landlord/bank at arms length for a little while.

Although MY Plan is to ‘forage’ rather than to create a stockpile that needs defending. I can get away with that because I live near the ocean and the marshes contain a lot of wild edibles.

Looks like the southerly portions of the country can take advantage of the ‘wild hog’ situation (I would if they were this far north.)

And if you haven’t already done so, buy/make a ‘silent’ weapon to both hunt as well as defend yourself with. A bow or a crossbow are number one choices followed by wrist rockets and other ’industrial strength’ kinetic energy weapons.

Take the necessary time to learn how to use them. Pulling a bow more than three times in succession is a unique form of exercise that requires getting used to. Practicing will also do wonders for your accuracy!

There are more ‘practical issues’ to discuss and the time to do so is shrinking rapidly.

You need to ‘prepare’. Regardless of what you learn here it is still all up to you once crunch time rolls around.

Which leads us to a more urgent issue.

In the not too distant future it will be necessary to keep your mouth shut as far as criticizing either the government or the media, hell, pretty soon ‘mean mouthing’ the boss will land you ‘under the glass’ as a ‘potential hostile’.

They fucked us all hard and they know it so they won’t be taking any chances once the wheels fly off (and martial law is declared…for YOUR safety, of course!)

DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT NOTHING if you don’t trust EVERYBODY WHO CAN HEAR YOU with YOUR LIFE!

Did the Boss force you to work an extra hour ‘off the clock’? Put a sock in it!

Worse, when the boss ‘proposed’ that you ‘finish up’ after he saw you punch out, did you quit?

Guess what, you’re going to be ‘blacklisted’ and it will take a whole lot of money to clear your name.

Your only ‘safe bet’ was to ‘walk away’ and take what comes in the following day.

[More ‘advice’] Corner the prick before work and put it on him, your last day of work because of him will be his last day of work because of you!

It is highly unlikely you will get him fired but there are many ways you can fuck him up!

IF he’s bigger than you it is unlikely he’s bigger than your car…even if you drive an eco-box.

NOBODY is tougher than the laws of physics!

Just a little something to think about,

Gegner

What comes after 'Happy Talk?'

Greetings good citizen,

Like everyone who asks ‘what comes after a trillion, I find myself pondering what the next logical progression of ‘happy talk’ is?

It would appear the answer is ‘Silly Talk’ or wishful thinking out loud

The wise do not suffer fools gladly, you would do well to emulate the wise.

One of today’s other, er, news items was how the economy has begun shedding jobs again. (How sad is it that I am on the cusp of joining in that statistic once again?)

Next week I will file a new unemployment claim due to the company I work for ceasing operations…

So my already mostly ‘phantom’ resume will add another ‘phantom’ entry to its already ponderous length.

With that as a given, just how ridiculous do the Bernank’s claims appear?

Top Fed officials now expect the output of goods and services to grow by 3.4 to 3.9 percent this year, up from the previous forecast, released in November, of 3 to 3.6 percent. But their grim outlook for the job market was largely unchanged: 8.8 to 9 percent unemployment this year, only one-tenth of a percentage point lower than its November forecast.

If the Fed’s most optimistic forecast were realized, it would be the fastest annual growth since 2004, when the economy expanded by 3.6 percent. But experts say even that rate of growth would only bring unemployment, now at 9 percent, down slowly — to slightly less than 8 percent by the end of 2012, when President Obama will seek re-election.

The forecasts did not change the view that the Fed should continue the $600 billion program to stimulate the recovery by buying government securities, a step begun in November and scheduled to run through June. The Fed said it based its expectations on an improvement in consumer spending in the fourth quarter, though Fed officials were uncertain how long that would last, according to minutes of the Fed’s last policy meeting in late January, released on Wednesday. [Expected ‘improvement’ during Christmas! WTF, good citizen! Let us not forget that the actually data is VERY HEAVILY ‘massaged‘ these days, just like the ‘balance sheets’ of the bankrupt banks!]

“On the one hand, the additional spending could reflect pent-up demand following the downturn, or greater confidence on the part of households about the future, in which case it might be expected to continue,” the minutes noted. “On the other hand, the additional spending could prove short-lived, given that a good portion of it appeared to have occurred in relatively volatile categories such as autos.” [There has been a recent ’rush’ to replace SUV’s with more ’fuel efficient’ vehicles that has nothing to do with an ’improving economy’.]

At the January meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s main policy arm, voted unanimously to continue the $600 billion Treasury purchase plan, the second round of a strategy that is intended to push down long-term interest rates to ease credit and spur growth. The strategy, known as quantitative easing, has been controversial — critics say it could set the stage for future inflation and asset bubbles — but the Fed has been fairly unified behind it. [‘monetizing’ the debt is driving up asset prices while your purchasing power takes a pounding, it is ‘why’ the stock market keeps rising!]

The minutes indicated that Fed officials saw a diminishing risk of deflation, a protracted fall in prices of the sort that has afflicted Japan for more than two decades. That fear of deflation was a principal factor behind the decision in August to set the stage for the bond purchases.

Wait a minute good citizen, you know like I know the ‘economy’ is toast. If it weren’t for ‘creative accounting’ the banking system would have crashed and burned already!

We’re talking major panic here good citizen, padlocked doors, the whole nine yards!

IF the banking system had to ‘reconcile’ their books the exact same way you and I do, they’d ALL be bankrupt…AND THE BERNANK KNOWS THIS!

So what’s he trying to pull claiming the economy is ‘on the mend?’

(He’s pulling your finger…did you fart?)

This is the Kabuki dance the serious people are all pointing to…but for some unknown reason, nobody is willing to stand up and say ‘hey, what the fuck?’

Our economy, along with the economies of the rest of the developed world, are all smoking wrecks. We all know this but nobody is willing to ‘embrace’ this frightful truth.

That Wile E. Coyote moment economists keep hinting about, we’re there babe!

Is it going to take the total collapse of our supply lines to bring this fact home to the rest of the financially illiterate world?

Apparently so.

So what do we make of ‘Silly Talk’ like tonight’s offering?
This is beyond ‘denial’, it is something more perverted that defies definition.

I leave what to name this travesty up to you, good citizen.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner