Pillar 3

Greetings good citizen,

Not much going on in the world today so I thought we’d wrap up our discussion regarding the three [main] ‘pillars’ that make up A Simple Plan.

As I commented yesterday, many of you would be just fine with one pillar, the middle one but that leaves too many ‘loose ends’.

So, how many of you think you know what the third pillar of A Simple Plan is?

Some would argue there is no ‘third pillar’ and others would guess anything from God to Money and everything in between (by filling the void with such nebulous qualities as ‘happiness’.)

While it is my job to ‘make you think,’ it is not my job to ‘jerk your chain’.

The ‘third pillar’ of A Simple Plan is the ultimate goal of the first two pillars (what they SHOULD produce.)

Come on good citizen, how many essays have I signed off, using those three principles linked together?

What do Equality and Justice produce?

PEACE!

How can Peace be a pillar of society? If you don’t know the answer to that question then you don’t understand the point of having all of the firepower sitting around, ready to go.

Without peace there can be no prosperity.

A Simple Plan is designed to ‘maximize’ conflict resolution and as a result, foster a more peaceful and unified society.

How does A Simple Plan promote ‘peace’?

It starts with prohibiting legislation regarding personal behavior.

Now the ‘simple minded’ are already envisioning a wild society where people drive on the sidewalks, either stoned to the bone or too drunk to see straight when the ‘wrong assumption’ here is that anyone will have anything to drive on the sidewalks with!

They are also underestimating the power of peer pressure. The foundation of peace is courtesy and consideration. Which is to point to the pendulum of social values and opine that like in the days of old, you will take great pains not to offend anyone, lest you provoke them to ‘defend their honor.’

Most would agree that we, as a species, have become far too ‘free’ with our tongues. This is why the media acts shocked when people are pushed beyond their limits and the quite predictable occurs.

Out comes the guns and there’s some ‘justifiable homicide goin’ on!

There is a demonstrable ‘link’ between removing the individuals ability to defend themselves and the rise in criminal behavior.

Most of this crap wouldn’t be happening if a ‘smart remark’ or other perceived ‘under-handed act’ carried with it the distinct probability of you staring down the business end of a .45 from ten paces at dawn.

We really should treat one another better but so far ‘legislating’ better behavior has proven ‘fruitless’.

Civility won’t return (nor will peace) until we learn to ‘respect’ one anothers feelings and personal preferences.

So far it looks as though I am advocating ‘trench warfare’ by removing the capitalists boot heel from the public’s neck.

Understand, the reason you get cheated, with impunity, every time one of these deep pocketed, er, ‘rodents’ decides you need to ‘sue him’ for what’s yours. He owns the judge, besides, even if he’s dead wrong it is one thing to be awarded a judgement and quite another to actually collect it.

However, things would be considerably different if Bozo’s ability to cheat you hinged on his prowess with firearms…or any of a variety of armaments (the challenged gets to choose.)

Then payment would be swift and certain, wouldn’t it?

Worse, not living up to your word would carry a considerable social cost. It could bar you from promotion in the tests permanently (even if you ace the exam!)

No easy way to be free good citizen…but it will never happen if you are stripped of your ability to defend yourself.

And that’s what the capitalist has done with his ‘control’ of the injustice system. He’s left you to pay fines YOU can’t afford with money he ‘wishes’ into existence. (Which is to point out that ‘fines’ can’t hurt those who control the money supply…)

Notice all of the ‘fines’ being handed out as atonement for the banks criminal behavior?

Which is to once again put the shoe on the other foot, how do we prevent a repeat of what laid waste to our current civilization?

It looks pretty ‘Simple’ to me…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: Again I apologize if these pillars offend anyone but we must deal with the world as it is rather than the world some of us pretend to live in.

While there are 3 ‘premises’, they actually unite to create one unbreakable pillar.

Why is this particular pillar unbreakable? It is the pillar of human love and the love of our species. Without that we are just animals being herded to slaughter by the ignorant and ruthless among us.

Chew on that before you point an accusing finger.

Hand Selected and Spoon Fed

Greetings good citizen,

Um, as disturbing as it is, I often complain about the STIFFS who ‘write for a paycheck’. Although half of the time I sympathize with them, they are no different than any other ‘paycheck hostage’.

I don’t care if your way is easier, I’m paying you to do it MY WAY!

And other nonsense we ‘non-stakeholders’ regularly put up with.

But…and some things are ‘unforgivable’, sometimes you just have to wonder how these fuckers sleep at night because NOT ONE ‘mainstream media outlet’ reported this story

Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein said Wednesday police handcuffed her to a chair during her eight-hour imprisonment following her arrest outside the second presidential debate.

“For most of the time it was just [running mate] Cheri Honkala and myself,” Stein told Democracy Now anchor Amy Goodman. “Yet they felt the need to keep us in tight plastic restraints tightly secured to metal chairs.”

Stein and Honkala were arrested Tuesday while sitting in the street to protest their exclusion from this year’s presidential debates between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney. They tried to enter the debate hall at the host site, Hofstra University, but were denied access because they lacked the necessary credentials

Raw Story (http://s.tt/1qjFK)

[Deep Sigh…]

Well good citizen, is this something you’d expect to find in the country you were raised to believe in freedom and equality…or is this the kind of BULLSHIT you’d expect to find in some tin pot DICTATORSHIP?

We aren’t talking some obscure demonstrators from OWS, we’re talking actual, on the ballot in all fifty states, presidential candidates!

What are the FUCKING >One Percent trying to hide (besides an alternative to two sides of the same coin?)

Um, should we be ‘surprised’ by this? Dennis Kucinich wasn’t invited to the presidential debates last time and despite some squawking from the alternative press, nothing was done about that either.

Which is to say it’s probably time for another piece on ‘fatal myopia’.

What is the sound of one hand clapping? If you want to know then all you have to do is look at the presidential race through the eyes of the corporate owned media…

Two guys who both answer to the same masters.

It has occurred to me that since Obama has become identified as a ‘do nothing’ president, The >One Percent are offering up the Romney-Ryan show to justify his second term.

Not that I’m voting for the worthless…(fill in your own blank.)

How sad is it that until this article I didn’t even know who the Greenies were running. (Never mind that they had been taken hostage by the >One Percent!)

While I am all for sustainability, my ‘greenness’ is tempered by practicality. I’m unwilling to sacrifice large numbers of humans on the alter of some ‘unachievable balance’ and carrying capacity estimates that are guesses at best.

Perhaps my biggest, er, ‘issue’ with the greens is their lack of awareness that economics is deeply tied to politics and their ‘values’ are predominantly capitalist.

I don’t know who it pisses off when I exclaim that predatory capitalism (and ALL Capitalism is predatory) must go, but that’s my position and I’m sticking with it.

The planet isn’t big enough for one capitalist and the rest of us.

Which is to express my support for the ‘Gone Galt’ project of transplanting this planets, er, assholes um, I mean ‘good people’/capitalists to their very own colony on the Moon!

Once there they can sort out who will do the heavy lifting for them…it won’t be our problem anymore.

And we MUST send them all, no matter how vigorously they protest that we NEED them to ‘take care of us’…

Since they are the self professed ‘best and brightest’ of us all they should easily overcome the, er, ‘oxygen deficit’ that will occur when we don’t send along any additional supplies.

This will also solve the problem of feeding them once they’re there too.

But let us not get too wrapped up in the details. They have long insisted they are better than the rest of us, maybe it’s time we put that claim to the test!

It was disturbing enough that the moderators basically ignored the one candidate who wasn’t a stooge for the One Percent…but at least they didn’t arrest him!

Although the War Criminal had ‘uninvited attendees’ to his campaign events arrested…which probably ‘set the precedent’ for this atrocity.

This tracks back to ‘authority’ good citizen, under whose authority did they arrest legitimate candidates for national office and detain them for 8 hours?

One would THINK there would be several job openings at THAT Police Department/Government agency by this time tomorrow!

Understand good citizen, a cop is YOU with a gun and a blue suit!

You can’t walk around and arrest anybody you like because you don’t agree with what they’re doing, can you?

Then why aren’t those security personnel under arrest awaiting charges of kidnapping and hostage taking?

Oh, wait…it’s because Obobo ignored his mandate and went for giving insurance companies a gift rather than prosecuting W, the war criminal!

Um, when it’s YOU being ‘illegally detained’ it will be far too late to do anything about it.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: do not ignore the elephant in the room, you are also being deprived of hearing alternative voices, so blatant has the ‘pay to play’ atmosphere become!

The deplorable state of what passes for justice in our society is sadly secondary…although it is primary to our society's restoration.

Rot

Greetings good citizen,

I pen literal dynamite last night and it does so-so…although ‘make believe’ got a slow start before taking right off!

And, as you well know, blogging isn’t about popularity. If it was I’d have given up a long time ago.

I (like Oh so many bloggers) have an agenda I’m pushing and this is my place to showcase my wares.

Apparently saving the civilized world isn’t a popular topic…mostly because people don’t think our civilization is in peril…yet.

Weirdly, they read headlines like this and shrug…

Rich as the Devil, but No Gordon Gekko
By GINIA BELLAFANTE

The income disparity in New York has hardly diminished, but pop culture’s recent portrayals of the class wars haven’t been indicative of the boiling debate.

Um, weirdly she is right, there is no acknowledgement of the class war by the corporate owned media. You get guys like El Rushbo spewing about ‘the liberal media’ (because chuckle-head thinks he’s the only one in the conservative media.)

But this only brings us back to the issue of how the One Percent controls the soapbox.

They don’t want to argue, much less justify their theft from the rest of us so of course there is ‘no discussion’ (or ‘debate’ as the corporate owned media puts it.)

Which brings us to…

Finding the Roots of Your Office Anger
By EILENE ZIMMERMAN

What’s really making you lose emotional control at work? Often, it’s not the upsetting situation at hand.

What’s this? Do you need someone to explain to you why you’re angry at work?

Could it be that you’re pissed off about not being able to feed your family on what you’re paid or that you are faced with the ‘heat or eat’ question here in the first week of autumn. Making you wonder what the situation will be like when ‘real winter’ gets here?

But no, that’s not it at all! It’s figuring out which one of the shiftless idiots you work with that is stealing your lunch!

Or any one of a million reasons why you loathe going to a job that doesn’t utilize your talents (because the cost of fucking up is too dear…)

You don’t need psychoanalysis, you need an even break. A job you actually find interesting and the training you need to do that job well!

But you aren’t going to get that under capitalism because the boss doesn’t want to foot the tab for training you. If you can’t pick it up on the fly then you might as well forget about it.

But you’re not a ‘victim’…just ask Mitt.

Nation’s Choices Needn’t Be Painful
By ROBERT H. FRANK

Many of America’s problems can be solved by putting idle resources to work, or redirecting wasteful spending, an economist writes.

Did your head just explode, good citizen? Mine did because that statement is both true and false.

As I have stated repeatedly there is no way to use capitalism to fix capitalism, that whole tool box is empty.

Now you will notice numbnuts doesn’t give us any example of what ‘idle resources’ we can put to work…because that would involve explaining why those resources are idle in the first place.

Nor does he address specifically what ‘wasteful spending’ we should re-direct…but you already know it WON’T be the military budget nor will it be the Security apparatus that is busier watching honest people than it is hunting down criminals.

Actually the bastards are hunting for ‘terrorists’…the homegrown kind.

Which sort of goes hand in hand with this headline:

C.E.O.’s and the Pay-’Em-or-Lose-’Em Myth
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

The argument that C.E.O.’s will leave if they aren’t compensated well, perhaps even lavishly, is bogus, according to a new study.

Now, did they actually do a new study or did logic tell these idiots that all of that ‘room at the top’ is there for a reason…because there’s no place else to go?

Worse, most of these psycho’s got the job they have through ‘connections’. They’re somebody’s butt-buddy and they have a screw loose…which is why they got the job of screwing the employees mercilessly!

Ironically, these same assholes ARE INCAPABLE of actually operating the companies they allegedly ‘lead’, they DON’T KNOW HOW!

But they DO KNOW how to slash and burn the payroll so that the remaining employees are left virtually paying to keep their jobs.

You and I both know that commerce was (originally) founded to serve the needs of society/civilization. It has only been in the last thirty years that commerce has been ‘re-purposed’ to serve the greed of Wall Street.

And the resultant instability you see all around you is the end result of this ‘re-purposing’. A few got very rich while civilization itself collapsed.

What, civilization HASN’T collapsed?

Wait a minute!

If you want to restore sanity and save yourself and your family in the process then A Simple Plan is for YOU!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Exploitation

Greetings good citizen,

It is a proven fact there is more, er, ‘profit’ in treating the symptoms of various diseases than there is in providing a cure…thus do we have numerous ‘treatments’ and few ‘cures’.

How fucking sad is it good citizen that this is a prime example of capitalism in action?

Not that ‘exploitation of the situation’ is limited to the healthcare industry:

Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas

But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity.

They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas. That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year.

That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high — a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer. That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty, but the effort has been a struggle.

This is the kind of thing that gives us millionaire farmers who grow nothing, although this variety of flagrant exploitation can be found throughout the worlds’ capitalist cultures.

How unfortunate is it for the rest of us that the world’s ‘capitalist cultures’ are restricted to the top > One Percent of the world’s population?

And make no mistake about it good citizen, these people are no smarter than you.

Why they get to exploit these situations and you don’t has more to their membership in a criminal network that they were born into than anything related to either luck or skill.

Worse, good citizen, is how these criminals are ‘one trick ponies’. When the surplus population gets too high they only have one solution for it and that is World War.

The ‘handwriting on the wall’ tells us that the next ‘global conflagration’ will center on the dual hubs of energy and food.

What vast majority of the global population is ignorant of the fact that large swaths of land we currently call ‘home’ will become uninhabitable during the winter months because we will lack the ‘cheap and abundant energy’ necessary to heat and light them.

Although we won’t necessarily be ‘out’ of them…it will just be a situation where a capitalist finds it ‘irresistible’ not to ‘take advantage’.

Who gives a fuck if billions die, there’s profits to be raked in!

Full Stop, good citizen.

Is THIS the kind of world YOU want to bring YOUR KIDS up in?

The > One percent have no problem with this because it won’t be THEIR KIDS SUFFERING!

Worse, the hard-hearted pricks will use their kid’s less fortunate cousins as an example of what will happen to them if they don’t adopt the hard line (and traditional) stance of ‘hooray for me and fuck everybody else!’

Even more sinister, they aren’t beyond ‘giving fate a hand’ when it comes to these nasty little scenarios.

We (in my opinion) desperately need to change our operating system, the status quo must go!

It was only viable when energy was cheap and abundant…now that energy is neither; the solution is NOT a return to feudalism…although that is the solution seen by those who can’t conceive of a society without slavery.

Yes good citizen, the > One Percent is more than just a pox on society, it represents everything that is wrong with our species.

A Simple Plan eradicates the One Percent. It also eradicates the criminal from birth society.

Do you want to give your kids a chance to live life their way? (Within reason.)

You won’t find a better vehicle to achieve that goal than A Simple Plan.

And if A Simple Plan ever becomes oppressive, it has been hijacked by the self-interested…and a ‘counter-revolution’ is already underway!

Equality fosters justice and justice fosters peace…and peace fosters prosperity.

That’s the equation and it can’t be deviated from.

Naturally, opponents of equality will lead the charge for change with a direct appeal to the personal ‘I’ in all of us…but this life isn’t about me or you, it’s first and foremost about ‘us’.

Putting personal prosperity first is a recipe for universal poverty…because for some people the wealth of an entire planet is not enough!

Ironically, that is how the ‘invitation only’ (met in secret and under armed guard) ‘founders’ justified THEIR theft.

‘We have all we want and want no more’ (a vicious lie than made even more vicious now by lying liars!)

And they proceeded to do nothing more than cement their theft of public property with a system of government designed solely to protect ‘ownership rights’.

A corrupt system we have, trust me, ‘suffered’ under for more than 230 years.

Every once in a while journalists are given an opportunity to cast a feeble light on the shit hole we live in I jump on it whenever I see an opening.

Naturally, a blogger’s lot is ‘triage’. I can’t write about everything and important is an extremely, er, ‘relative’ term.

Today’s post is nothing ‘new’, just a rare glimpse of the mud puddle we wallow in as we try to eek out a living and keep our families from starving to death.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

About Me

Greetings good citizen,

I have just perused the media offerings for today and concluded, amazingly, that in a world that is truly falling apart, they have nothing to say!

So for today’s ‘treat’, you can read me, ‘unplugged’.

Let’s start with my humble beginnings, shall we?

No, I’m not going to bore you with my tawdry upbringing because being raised poor has little to do with anything…although I doubt I’d be who I am today had I been born with anything even resembling a ‘silver spoon’ protruding from any orifice!

So yes, it is at least tangentially relevant that I was born poor and remain poor to this day.

Um, contrary to popular belief, I have never set myself on a path to ‘conquer the world’…and, unsurprisingly, might be accused of failing because I didn’t’ set my sights high enough.

But we can’t ALL conquer the world…and maybe that is my fracture because my goal always has been the ‘greatest good’.

Why is it in a world so full of bounty that only a few get to enjoy it?

And the answer comes back (quite quickly I might add:) mismanagement.

The system itself is deeply flawed and remains that way due to deep corruption!

But I preach to the choir, do I not?

Everybody knows.

So why doesn’t ‘somebody’ DO SOMETHING about it?

Have we all been so deeply indoctrinated with ‘go along to get along’ that none of us dare ‘rock the boat’ (even though it is headed over a cliff?)

Although I’d daresay we have already gone over that cliff, rocking the boat now would merely remove the only thing between you and the jagged rocks below.

As thin as that object may be,

And no, it is unlikely you will survive that sudden stop that follows every long fall.

But I digress…(and do so with such frequency that I fear few of you can follow my, er, ‘insights’ to their conclusions.)

Which is to announce that I suspect my son isn’t the only one with ADD.

Meaning he comes by his ‘honestly’.

So let’s return to the beginning (because we’re gonna end up there anyway) and try not to ‘squander the opportunity’ which the slavers among us are prepared to defend with their worthless lives.

Yes good citizen, there are those among us who support slavery so long as it is not they who are the slaves.

They will inflict a fate worse than death upon YOU if their children are spared.

Did I lose you again? Try to keep up, eh?

These ‘true believers’ form a singular barrier to a fair and equitable society. They must be eliminated OR those they follow/obey must be, er, ‘eradicated’ for subsequent generations to be free.

No ‘half measures’ here good citizen, this is not a ‘once and done’ proposition.

Which is to say vigilance is key. We may succeed in sweeping them aside (temporarily) but they will regroup and start over if we provide them with the mechanisms they need to corrupt society.

Their ‘tool of choice’ is (and always will be) ‘hard currency’. Without it, it becomes near impossible to ‘bribe’ others towards your way of thinking.

This is why you are ‘trained’ to demand money you can touch…while money itself remains an ‘idea’.

Fix this and we break the slaver’s back.

The other ‘trump card’ the slaver holds is their control of the workplace. They get to decide who ‘prospers’ and who starves.

A decidedly toxic power to have in a world where survival depends on ‘participation’.

If they don’t let you play, you can’t prosper…legally.

That is the ‘powder keg’ the unemployment situation has become.

Yet the conservatives (those who would enslave you) still preach that it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to make yourself ‘USEFUL’ to the employer.

And soon SOME OF YOU may be able to ‘redeem’ yourselves by being willing to DIE for people who wouldn’t ordinarily spit on the best part of you!

Oh, you’ll be a hero for taking a bullet for them but you can almost hear them shriek ‘idiot’ as you fall to the ground, clutching your vitals!

Um, I find myself apologizing after these solo flights if only because a trip through the landscape that is my mind can be a pretty disturbing experience for those who don’t usually think along those lines.

So, in short…(not that I’m particularly comfortable with the short version of anything) A Simple Plan was designed to facilitate the ‘equality’ we need to move forward as a species.

If we don’t learn to live together, we will not survive to go forth and meet new (and hopefully more intelligent) races across the cosmos.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Pardon Me?

Greetings good citizen,

As old as judges themselves, today’s topic will be the slippery slope of ‘pardons’…which may or may not be made public…at the discretion of the, er, ‘co-conspirators’.

Which is to wonder aloud, how much would you be willing to bet W. hasn’t been prosecuted for ‘war crimes’ BECAUSE he already has a ‘pardon’ in his pocket, issued by the sitting ‘jellyfish-in-chief’?

I mean his Dad (H.W.) ‘pardoned’ Reagan for his crimes against the state, so pardoning your predecessor is probably something that comes with the turf…done ’automatically’ on an ‘as needed’ basis.

But it begs the question, what does this say about our justice system?

One beneficiary, Burton Waldon, killed an 8-month-old boy in an alcohol-induced crash in 2001. Mr. Waldon, a high school senior at the time, pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence. He is a member of the prominent Hill Brothers Construction Company family, big-money political donors who give mostly to Republicans, including Mr. Barbour. An uncle of Mr. Waldon, Kenneth W. Hill Sr., sought and received a pardon from President George W. Bush in 2006, erasing a federal income tax conviction.

It is in this paragraph that we see the, er, ‘rationale’ behind the very existence of the, er, ‘executive pardon’…bad things sometimes happen to RICH/well-connected people.

(The understanding is seldom do you find a rich individual who IS NOT also ‘well-connected’…although the ‘soon to be bankrupt’ lottery winner is the only possible exception that comes to mind.)

Thus is it well-known THROUGHOUT HISTORY, that a ‘rich man’ will never see the inside of a jail cell…and, thanks to the rich man’s ‘connections’, he can also have the public record of his, er, ‘misfortune’ sponged clean…

To which I ask, Is THIS ‘Justice’?

You KNOW it’s not…but you can’t argue with (worthless) money, can you?

(This is one of the principal reasons why there will be no way to transfer funds between individuals under A Simple Plan.)

Equally as disturbing to some of you is that you will be judged ‘on your record’ your whole life through. If you’re a ‘miserable bastard’, difficult to get along with and do the absolute minimum required of you, don’t be surprised if you ‘reap what you sow’ come promotion time.

But I digress, we were discussing our badly broken justice system (and I get sidetracked when the opportunity to point out changes presents itself!)

I treat this subject delicately because people have an unfortunate tendency to ‘transfer’, they put themselves in the position of, er, ‘being able’ to buy justice…and it makes them more tolerant of the practice!

A pardon doesn’t make you a ‘better person’ it merely enables you to ‘pass yourself off’ as one.

How ironic is it that people (often the only ones) who venture into the public spotlight (not as ‘pop stars’ but as politicians) have the, er, ‘connections’ to, er, ‘sugar-coat’ their public images.

As we have witnessed, often these people’s private lives are, er, ‘exposed’ by those privy to the existence of such skeletons.

What we don’t know is how susceptible to ‘blackmail’ these people are. Who or what would they betray to keep their secrets, secret?

Because that’s where this sort of bullshit leads to.

It is also not the kind of thing you want ‘hidden’ in a decision maker’s closet.

(This is why this power will no longer rest with ‘select individuals’. Those who must live under the law will vote directly on the law!)

Legislators are TOTALLY UNNECESSARY! (In fact they are an impediment to Liberty!)

YOU cannot be ‘free’ if you are denied your ability to choose!

But again I digress! (Sort of a ‘hobby’ [although others may consider it a ‘fault’] of mine it seems.)

The very first ‘pillar of civilization’ is ‘equality’, the second pillar is Justice…to the point that we expect NOTHING LESS than ‘EQUAL JUSTICE under the law…and this ‘pardon bullshit’ makes a mockery of that!

I admit, it’s ‘nice’ to think that were we prosperous enough, we’d have the ability to ‘sanitize’ our pasts but I’d rather know about somebody’s skeletons than find out about them ‘after the fact’…(usually AFTER you’ve been sold down the river!)

Yet another ‘grievous flaw’ of our current political system.

But let’s back up a step or two and return to the ‘did he or didn’t he’ question of if Mr. Obama pardoned Mr. Bush?

Does the idea itself piss you off?

It should.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Oh, and if you want to alter the course of the current clusterfuck then your ongoing support for ASP would be appreciated.

Step one is to ‘spread the word!’

Truth be told...

Greetings good citizen,

After a day’s respite you should be eager for more…whatever it is that brings you back to this, er, ‘curious’ place.

It seems the ‘theme’ for this weekend is…’Truth be told.’

We kick off our ‘truth-fest’ with this piercing article which belabors what most of us already know all too well.

Under the ‘toeing the line for the sake of credibility’ dictum you will notice that Mr. Galbraith steers clear of the entire ‘puppet’ issue. Perhaps in some distant future historians will contrast the Bush and the Obama administrations to illustrate the difference between a willing puppet and a spineless one…

Moving on to the topic of economic recovery we have this damning commentary regarding what our eyes see as opposed to what the pundits claim is going on:

Cashing Out: Corporate America is sitting on the largest cash hoard it has had in 50 years, because they can see no profit in building more plants or hiring more workers or making more widgets. If a company cannot justify investing its own money back into its own operation, why should I buy stock in it?

That’s right good citizen, those we permit to gouge a living out of our sweat ‘can’t see the point’ in investing in our crumbling nation. A nation that is crumbling BECAUSE the ‘privileged few’ aren’t interested in investing here. Tell me again why extending the (thus far useless) Bush tax breaks are so critical to conservatives? (So critical that they’re willing to shut down the government until they get their way! And the Dinos are likely ‘STUPID’ enough to go along with them!)

Does ANYBODY see this disaster ending well?

It certainly isn’t hiding in this article! that makes a rather elegant argument that the creators of ‘Dollar Hegemony’ have literally ‘painted themselves into a corner’.

These fiscal deficits will eventually lead the U.S., the purveyor of debt-dollar discipline, into a sovereign debt crisis. Attempts to decrease the national debt have been rendered useless by the financial disciplinary system, as it requires private or public credit growth for economic health. Without the underlying private growth, cuts in public spending will most likely make deficits worse and debt servicing costs greater (the current Euro zone crisis is an ongoing example of this dynamic.)

President Obama's laughable plan to double U.S. exports in five years will not even come close to fruition, because debt-dollar discipline has come at the expense of the country's manufacturing sector, and the ability to suppress the dollar's value as explained earlier. The complex disciplinary system has also rendered the political apparatus inflexible, which is why many Democrats, claiming to be against tax cuts for the rich, and Republicans, claiming to be against public deficits, have both agreed to extend Bush's tax cuts (which will cost taxpayers $5T over ten years [2]). It is truly a predicament, an inherent contradiction of the system itself, and can only be resolved by a wholesale simplification of the structures within global disciplinary society [snip]

“advances in electronic communications technology, and have evolved right alongside them. Now, this technology increasingly serves as a means of communicating outside the panoptic gaze of disciplinary society.

WikiLeaks has released numerous electronic documents given to it by informants within the heart of the system, exposing some inconvenient truths about those directing foreign and domestic policies. [8]. These documents are especially threatening to disciplinarians because they are "raw dumps" of data and communications, at least before they are "vetted" and deceptively reported on by the mainstream corporate media. The leaks provide the disciplined public a rare glimpse into the "dark side" of the modern "democratic" state and its complex power structures. [snip]

As the complex structures supporting this financial discipline deteriorate, consumers will have to confront a profound new reality, one that they previously thought to be outside the realm of possibility. They must not only confront the fact that they have been deceptively enslaved, but simultaneously impoverished as well. Part III of this series will discuss the general ways in which financial power structures and disciplined consumers may react to the new realities faced by global society, introducing the insightful thoughts of Gilles Deleuze on what he ominously termed the "control society".

Can you say ‘Off with their freaking heads’?

It is truly no less than they deserve, the question is whether or not we have the ‘stomach’ for such ‘vengeance’. Understand good citizen, the perps are betting we don’t.

But they are also betting that there will be an outpouring of ‘sympathy’ for these predators who were only doing what came ‘naturally’ to them.

This is the identical ‘defense’ the warped and twisted Libertarians use to defend their unbridled ‘selfishness’. The ‘forwent’ their desire for ‘instant gratification’ and now that they ‘own’ whatever it is that you need, you have to pay whatever they ask, even if it is ridiculous!

So I ask you good citizen, is ‘hooray for me, fuck you’ EVER justified?

Not in a ‘just’ society it isn’t!

If you want to live with ‘bloodsuckers’ then be prepared to set aside any claim you may have to ‘justice’. You’ve already chosen to take whatever comes.

Understand it was the same ‘bloodsuckers’ that have perpetrated The Big Shrink upon our nation, making you a ‘captive audience’ in the process!

Remember, their entire ‘philosophy’ (if that’s what you want to call it) is centered on ‘hooray for me and fuck you!

In a telling sidebar we have this story from the world’s number 2 economy…

China’s Army of Graduates Struggles for Jobs

Geez Louise, I thought only students in the US were suffering from a chronic ‘lack of opportunity’ that conservatives keep confusing with ‘laziness’. Kids should stand up and take the bull by the horns like these ‘enterprising individuals’ did!

No Jobs? Young Graduates Make Their Own

But, alas! This brings us full circle to the reason ‘capitalist utopia’ CAN’T EXIST!

There just isn’t enough ‘market share’ to go around.

Most telling would be a follow up story about how these ambitious youngsters are doing this time next year. Should we take bets on how many of them will be ‘bankrupt’ by then? (Statistically, this figure already stands at 99 out of 100. an overwhelming majority of 'start-ups' DON'T SURVIVE their first year...for precisely the above stated reason, failure to capture sufficient market share!)

It takes a certain ‘ruthlessness’ (of the variety described in ‘The Godfather’) to ‘succeed’ in business.

This is a situation that can only get worse and has already ‘trickled down’ to the ‘Mom & Pop’ level.

The more ruthless this situation becomes the worse your standard of living gets. The ‘blood’ they suck has to come from somewhere and it’s all about ‘capturing’ markets.

Oh, but wait, I’m being ‘unfair’. Wittle capitalists are only trying to make a profit (if you bleed to death in the process, tough! Maybe you should have gotten a better paying job when you had the chance! Yeah, like that opportunity hung around for more than a nanosecond or was even remotely genuine in the first place!)

Because regardless of how things work out, it is ALL your fault! You shouldn’t have let these greedy pricks get away with ripping you off in the first place!

You should have demanded better pay AND lower prices, there should be no such thing as a ‘rich’ person but that assumes we live in a society that is far better 'managed' than the one we have…

Well, it’s never too late to try again…and I’d opine that the sooner we got cracking, the better!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

What's in it for you?

Greetings good citizen,

After plummeting last week the stock market is in positive territory as far as the eye can see this morning…I don’t need to caution you that a lot can change in a few hours.

For some bizarre reason, last week’s ‘losing propositions’ have, once again, magically transformed themselves into ‘bargains’ as ‘traders’ demonstrate their complete lack of rationality.

What if the whole world was subject to this utterly irrational behavior? Would civilization even exist?

The disturbing answer to the second statement is yes because the only thing that is ‘irrational’ about civilization is the totally arbitrary rules regarding money.

The true mystery is why we continue to tolerate this nonsense.

Sadly, the answer comes in the form of ‘you don’t have a choice’ and for some really bizarre reason, the topic never seems to come up in polite conversation…

I don’t need to rub your nose in the pile of excrement for you to make the connection. You ‘slave away’ for the same thing the assholes gets handed to them by the bucketful for doing nothing.

You want a ‘little more’? You are forced to prove you are ‘deserving’ of more, usually by knifing your co-workers in the back.

The self-serving chiseler that pays you has ZERO incentive to pay you a solitary penny MORE than anyone else…and (s)he pays all of them the least (s)he can get away with.

You know it’s not ‘worth it’ but it’s the ‘only game in town’, well there is another game but it isn’t nearly as much fun…if that’s what you want to call the daily exercise in humiliation you currently experience.

Which brings us to the ‘starting point’ of A Simple Plan, what’s in it for you?

If it takes more than a ‘leveling of the playing field’ to satisfy you then you aren’t going to like this; which is sad because you probably have never considered just how much better off you’d be if only you could catch an even break!

Think about this one for a minute…what if you WEREN’T someone else’s ‘income stream’? How many things are you forced to pay for (most of them perpetually) that should be ‘free’?

Understand that 99% of all personal income is derived from ‘paychecks’, only owners get to pay themselves, er, ‘creatively’.

Is the answer we’re looking for here to have everybody become ‘owners’?

There’s a damn good reason ‘capitalist utopia’ doesn’t exist and the simple answer is ‘market share’.

Here’s our ‘educational thought’ for the day…how many of you are aware that your employer charges more for your services than (s)he pays you? More interestingly, there is a ‘multiplier’ involved…this multiplier varies with the specific industry and in some cases it gets pretty outrageous.

For example Cisco Systems (a few years back) reported they ‘earned’ over $600,000 ‘per employee’…and you know damn well they don’t pay the rank and file anywhere near that much!

Why doesn’t ‘management’ accept the same conditions they force upon you?

If we flip that rock over we arrive at the price issue, how much more are you paying so the management at Cisco can ‘reap’ $600,000 each on every employee they have?

How is this NOT price gouging?

Just a little something to think about; worse, this is related to the ‘goofiness’ that is stock prices!

Essentially, everything is free (to the ‘owner’) and because of this, ‘stocks’ are worthless.

Stick ‘em up!

Which is another way of saying if ‘money’ doesn’t make any sense then working for money makes even less sense!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner