Hell in a Bucket

Greetings good citizen,

Nothing is more poignant than the daily headlines for driving home the point that our civilization is scroomed!

We need look no further than the top story in the business section for proof:

DealBook
Obama’s Nominee for S.E.C. Tries to Allay Skepticism
By BEN PROTESS

Mary Jo White, President Obama’s choice to lead the agency, is telling Congress she can avoid conflicts of interest despite her Wall Street clients.

I’m not kicking the poor woman in the shins but who do you place in a sensitive position like that who ISN’T an ‘insider’?

My ‘problem’ with this choice is not the chosen but the chooser, who has proven to be Wall Street’s boy from day one.

We have already witnessed some well qualified appointees resign in frustration…and if this woman has integrity it is likely she too will go the way of her predecessors.

But it gets better:

The budget cuts scheduled to start taking effect on Friday would affect all facets of the federal budget, including aviation and military spending.
Austerity Kills Government Jobs as Cuts to Budgets Loom
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

The federal government is cutting back at a pace exceeded in the last half-century only by the military demobilizations after the Vietnam War and the cold war.

Graphic: Austerity Is Here

Um, that last headline is a bit deceptive considering the government has been spending at an ‘unprecedented clip’ since this whole ‘War on Terra’ thing got started.

How ironic is it that if they were serious about reducing ‘terrorism’ in the world they’d make their most promising progress by slashing their own budget?

Not only has the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan lasted TWICE AS LONG as WWII but it has also been TWICE AS COSTLY!

Yet you don’t hear the conservo-whackos screaming to cut the Pentagon’s budget, do ya?

No, instead we get headlines like this:

Durable Goods Orders Drop as Aircraft Demand Falls
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 47 minutes ago

A sharp drop in demand for commercial aircraft caused overall durable goods orders to drop 5.2 percent last month, but orders for core capital goods like machinery, equipment and software rose 6.3 percent.

How ironic is it that the same sort of ‘phenomenon' accounts for the recent ‘surge’ in home prices (after years of flat lining.)

When the whole economy is deader than a door nail, a 5% reduction in orders for commercial aircraft really spanks you in the bottom (line that is.)

Housing prices are up ‘relative to what they were last year’ (and not 6 years ago when things were booming.

It may be ‘the biggest increase’ SINCE then but what are they really saying?

I saw some twit last night proclaim that if they could keep up the pace the current ‘inventory’ would be ‘sold out’ in just 4 months.

What a crock! Guess who’s buying all of the houses?

Why it’s our old pal Flipper, (betting he’s finally going to find renters at long last!)

Guess what?

Flipper is…WRONG AGAIN!

And like the last ‘bubble’, Flipper is going to ‘walk away’ when the renters fail to materialize.

But our next headline shines a light on the current state of economic affairs:

DealBook
Regulators Block Ryanair’s Latest Attempt to Buy Aer Lingus
By JAMES KANTER 19 minutes ago

As the European Commission blocked the attempt by Ryanair for competitive reasons, the Irish carrier reiterated that it would appeal the decision in court.

In a ‘saturated market place’ the most you can do to boost the bottom line is ‘buy market share’ (by buying our the ‘competition’…then sticking it to the customers!)

Turning down this merger is the right thing to do…however, it isn’t over yet.

If you can’t soak the public you can always take the sure route of soaking the government:

EADS Profit Soars 19 Percent
By NICOLA CLARK 7:28 AM ET

The company says it made about $1.56 billion in 2012 thanks to commercial aircraft sales, even though its military segment struggled amid budget troubles in the United States and Europe.

What’s the old saying, ‘war is good business.’

Wrecking stuff then getting paid to rebuild it…can’t beat that racket.

It’s a ‘self-reinforcing circle’.

Better shake a leg here, we’ve still got a lot of ground to cover.

Fed Defends Stimulus in Testimony to Senate
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Ben S. Bernanke told senators that the central bank saw its campaign as necessary and effective, reassuring them that its benefits outweighed any risks.

Economix Blog: Does Bernanke Have the Best Inflation Record? | By Unemployment, Not So Good
Home Sales and Bernanke Calm Market

How does Helicopter Ben justify bailing out the world’s financial system (to the tune of 22, we don’t have ‘em, trillion) to a financially incompetent legislative body?

If there were a half a brain between the 500 plus of ‘em, they’d know the system was bankrupt without even asking ‘the Bernank’…

The only reason the home sales are calming the market is because they (the corporate owned media) believes the average citizen is too stupid to figure out there is no ‘recovery’ in the housing market (nor will there ever be!)

And again we are expected to be shocked by this latest revelation:

News Analysis
Italian Deadlock Rekindles Anxiety About Euro Zone
By LIZ ALDERMAN and JACK EWING

The apparent political gridlock signaled by its elections raises new fears that the euro crisis may be far from over.

European Markets Dip Amid Uncertainty
Italian Parties Maneuver After Electoral Split

Does ANYONE truly believe the Euro-zone crisis is over, seriously?

Then we have this ‘gem’:

Officials have recommended that nuclear plants like Nine Mile Point in New York install new safety equipment.
Post-Fukushima, Arguments for Nuclear Safety Bog Down
By ERIC LIPTON and MATTHEW L. WALD

A dispute is developing between the nuclear industry and regulators, and among the regulators themselves, about the necessity of more safeguards at power plants.

Graphic: Tasks Remain for the American Nuclear Industry

Let’s ‘cut to the chase’…the only ‘safe’ nuke is a cold one…but if you shut down the nukes without first installing adequate renewables the entire grid would shut down in less than a day.

Better to let the candle remain lit than to curse the darkness.

And finally:

DealBook
Wall Street Pay Rises, for Those Who Still Have a Job
By SUSANNE CRAIG 6:39 AM ET

The average cash bonus for people employed in New York City in the financial industry rose by roughly 9 percent, to $121,900, in 2012, the New York State comptroller said.

U.S. Banks in 2012 Posted Highest Profits Since 2006,

The Litany of Woe was quite detailed today, a rather good ‘capture’ if I must say so myself.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Degradation

Greetings good citizen,

Seems the so-called ‘alternative press’ isn’t completely dominated by clueless libertarians. Some of the so-called ‘progressives’ do indeed cling to traditional liberal values.

(and Anarchists are nothing if not liberals!)

So it is that I present to you this argument as further evidence of the destruction of our society.

Laws that restrict panhandling are designed to target poor people living on the street. Other examples of laws that apply almost exclusively to the unhoused include bans on sitting or lying down on the sidewalk, eating in public, setting up camp or sleeping in a park or other public places. Advocates say these laws are used as a tool to drive the homeless out of sight.

Take the case of Gary Williams. Williams just spent 30 days in jail, because on two occasions a San Francisco police officer found him slumped over, asleep, on a milk crate. He did not have any camping gear with him -- not even a blanket -- yet he found himself charged with public nuisance, unauthorized lodging, and obstructing the sidewalk, his lawyer, Andrea Lindsay, tells AlterNet. The first two are misdemeanors, which carry up to a year of jail time each. On Monday, Williams pled guilty to one count of unauthorized lodging after the judge warned him that he could end up in jail for two years. The plea deal Williams opted for means he's banned from the two blocks where he used to reside and will be on probation for three years.

"This is a dude who ended up in jail for the heinous crime of sitting," Paul Boden, organizing director for the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) tells AlterNet. "When poor people stand for their rights, they sit in jail."

Your typical conservative believes the homeless and destitute are ‘well provided for’ and the people you see in the street ‘choose to be there’.

You see, good citizen, it is ‘inconceivable’ to the conservative mind that capitalism can fail anyone.

If you fail at capitalism (so conservative wisdom goes) it’s YOUR FAULT!

This, as most of us know, is a boldfaced lie.

Truth be told the first few times capitalism was tried it failed miserably…to the point where ‘the survivors’ had to be rescued from those who, er, ‘played the game by their own rules’.

Which is to point out (once again) that capitalism isn’t designed to meet the needs of our whole society, it only ‘takes care of’ those who control society…

And the short definition of cheating others to help yourself is a word those who indulge in this practice dislike passionately.

Do you know what word it is?

Sort of synonymous with the term ‘hang ‘em high’ is the word ‘treason’.

So what do we do with the ‘just doing my job’ crowd (in this case the cops)?

Cops don’t make the laws though, do they? (Well they do on the streets but that’s not the topic at hand…) it’s the politicians who can’t manage resources (the capitalists) keep cutting from them.

Yes, good citizen, campaign contributions do have a ‘cost’ and most times that cost is lower taxes (for the business community.)

After ‘giving away the store’ to the wealthy few, those who rely (somewhat) on public opinion for their jobs begin to fret that if one of ‘those people’ makes trouble, the incumbent will be viewed as ‘weak on crime’.

So we end up with the BS described in this article.

The difference is Mr. Politician can always find ready funding for more policing, he can’t get more than his share of ‘alms for the poor’.

As we all know, life under the ‘corporate agenda’ is far less safe (for everyone involved) than when life was ‘more equitably’ managed. (You may now shed a silent tear for FDR.)

Worse, good citizen, at the end of the crazy train, who do we find?

Why by gosh, by gum, it’s the shareowner!

All of this (madness) is occurring to, er, ‘produce’ (boost/maximize) ‘profits’ for the poor, hapless shareowner…

Which is to once again ask that rhetorical question, isn’t it time we take capitalism (along with those who control it) and throw it on the scrap heap?

In fact we are long overdue for a major overhaul of our ‘proven defective’ economic system.

I’d even accept the task of changing it over, knowing full well that I won’t get anything for my trouble except a far more equitable and humane society.

Even I, the new system’s creator, would be unable to ‘cheat’ the system. (Under the new system even the creator would not be ‘above the law’.)

But I digress…

It should be interesting to follow the rest of this series (not that I intend to devote my future posts to them) to examine the ‘decay’ in the leadership of our society.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Horns

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

Can I get a WTF?

Oh yeah!

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

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

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

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

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

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

How ironic is THIS, good citizen?

Boeing Earnings Exceed Estimates
By CHRISTOPHER DREW 25 minutes ago

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

Seriously?

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

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

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

Chrysler Earnings Soar
By BILL VLASIC 8:00 AM ET

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

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

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

European Cloud Over Ford
By BILL VLASIC

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

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

The next headline simply screams ‘mismanagement’!

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

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

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

And our final headline…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Self-Extermination

Greetings good citizen,

The hard won holiday has ceased activity on the NYSE, sparing the world from its toxic influence.

Um, a (now long neglected) common theme of my posts is desperation. People will do unimaginable acts of violence if they are ‘desperate’ enough.

It underlies everything I predict, such is the incredible ‘power’ of desperation. Increasingly we are seeing the acts of the desperate and the cowardly corporate owned media is covering them up as the random acts of the ‘psychologically unstable’ (which the feckless capitalists abandoned shortly after ‘privatizing’ health care.) Yet another stick pin on the social map with St. Ronnie’s name on it!

It may be just me but ‘gold bugs’ are very practical when it comes to money (although they don’t get the ‘funny’ part, which sort of erases the appeal of their arguments regarding the ‘conservation of value’.)

Then we have guys like Mr. Hedges here, who have their fingers firmly on the pulse of civilization but take the same ‘wicked left’ when it comes to solving those problems.

How blind do you have to be to see that only the truly wicked claim to ‘speak for God’?

Republicans regularly go ‘on record’ as having had ‘personal dialog’ with ‘the supreme being.’

In most circles this is evidence of insanity but not in US politics where the feckless corporate owned media is involved!

But I, as usual, digress. Let us move forward with today’s offering:

Complex civilizations have a bad habit of destroying themselves. Anthropologists including Joseph Tainter in “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” Charles L. Redman in “Human Impact on Ancient Environments” and Ronald Wright in “A Short History of Progress” have laid out the familiar patterns that lead to systems breakdown. The difference this time is that when we go down the whole planet will go with us. There will, with this final collapse, be no new lands left to exploit, no new civilizations to conquer, no new peoples to subjugate. The long struggle between the human species and the Earth will conclude with the remnants of the human species learning a painful lesson about unrestrained greed and self-worship.

“There is a pattern in the past of civilization after civilization wearing out its welcome from nature, overexploiting its environment, overexpanding, overpopulating,” Wright said when I reached him by phone at his home in British Columbia, Canada. “They tend to collapse quite soon after they reach their period of greatest magnificence and prosperity. That pattern holds good for a lot of societies, among them the Romans, the ancient Maya and the Sumerians of what is now southern Iraq. There are many other examples, including smaller-scale societies such as Easter Island. The very things that cause societies to prosper in the short run, especially new ways to exploit the environment such as the invention of irrigation, lead to disaster in the long run because of unforeseen complications. This is what I called in ‘A Short History of Progress’ the ‘progress trap.’ We have set in motion an industrial machine of such complexity and such dependence on expansion that we do not know how to make do with less or move to a steady state in terms of our demands on nature. We have failed to control human numbers. They have tripled in my lifetime. And the problem is made much worse by the widening gap between rich and poor, the upward concentration of wealth, which ensures there can never be enough to go around. The number of people in dire poverty today—about 2 billion—is greater than the world’s entire population in the early 1900s. That’s not progress.”

As Mr. Hedges indicates, there WILL be a ‘kill-off’ that will be disguised as a ‘Die-off’ (through gross mismanagement.)

Worse, the bought and paid for media will play it as a ‘natural disaster’…although the capitalist’s deliberate mismanagement of the economy has already begun the nutritional squeeze that will lead to the most devastating ‘global pandemic’ the world has ever seen.

Slip an unintended whoopsie in there (such as a real ‘natural disaster’) and it could spell extinction for our already ‘reproduction challenged’ base population.

But the ‘What if’ game is always a ‘dead-end’, we won’t ‘know’ until we get there.

Worse, the rhetoric surrounding climate change has taken on a harder edge, which is making it less credible. Global warming didn’t kill the dinosaurs and it sure isn’t going to kill us!

Which is to opine that we won’t ALL drown and sustainability (along with what it takes to get there) remains an ‘unknown’.

If we are to save ourselves from extinction (by self-extermination) we must manage the resources that remain to reduce desperation to an absolute minimum. (It wouldn’t hurt to put the brakes on the predatory capitalist's worship of gratuitous violence either! The hatred and the killing of your own species is a learned thing, it is NOT natural.)

The article misses another important point and that has been the cessation of all ‘forward scientific advance’ to preserve the ‘patents’ (profitability) of past discoveries.

Again, we need to refocus on the definition of ‘progress’ as the benefit reaped by all mankind from discovery and research rather than the imaginary benefit reaped by a few over the rest of us.

So we have it that stagnation, driven by self-interest, has resulted in creeping ‘desperation' that is shredding the fabric of our civilization…so ‘a few’ can be ‘rich’.

When true progress makes us ALL rich!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Overdue

Greetings good citizen,

What does it say about our society when the headlines make more interesting reading than the BS stories that follow?

Which is to ask just how much ‘spin’ is too much?

You decide:

Fed Is Likely to Sustain Its Stimulus Program
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

The Federal Reserve must still determine what to buy and how much to spend, and officials continue to debate the best way to describe when the agency is likely to stop buying.

Who do you suppose is ‘surprised’ to read that headline? Even a conservo-whacko would cluck their tongue and mutter ‘what did they expect?’ under their breath.

The disturbing part of this little ‘fluffball’ is what would happen to our badly broken economy if the Fed stopped pumping the banks full of free cash?

It’s almost as disturbing as what’s going to happen as a result of the Feds pumping the economy full of ‘funny money’…can you say ‘Zimbabwe’?

Not to mention that the fuckers have been at this for the past FIVE YEARS…yet it’s going to ‘sneak up on us’ overnight…that’s what ‘spin’ and failure to report the truth does to you!

But wait, there’s more!

Mortgage Crisis Presents a New Reckoning to Banks
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

A torrent of lawsuits could add significantly to billions of dollars of settlements in mortgage securities cases.

Um, geez…isn’t the real estate market making a 180 (according to the National board of Realtors?)

Oh, that’s right! Labor force participation is off 5% (which sort of spells doom for civilization itself, you can only carry so many unemployed before the wheels come flying off.)

More succinctly, who do we tell their ‘dreams’ (and any prospects for a better life) are ‘over’? We’ve been doing it to the ‘graying’ population (while enacting toothless anti-discrimination legislation…just try to get an attorney to take one of those cases!)

But now our kids are being told their race is already run and they’ve got no place to go…and no prospects either.

This most definitely won’t end well and is the result of piss poor management!

(Fortunately, A Simple Plan fixes this, providing that perfect ‘Happily Ever after ending’ we all come to expect.)

Um, there is nothing I can say that will mentally prepare you for this next piece of tripe so here goes…

Chinese Exports Slow, Even as Economy Recovers
By BETTINA WASSENER 1 minute ago

The 2.9 percent annual expansion in exports fell far short of the average of 9 percent that economists had expected, but analysts say that China avoided an economic hard landing.

Does anyone else suspect that these assholes wouldn’t recognize an ‘economic recovery’ if it were dancing naked in front of them?

Has the US press become so ‘jaded’ to economic bad news that they can no longer tell the difference…or is ‘down’ the new ‘up’?

We all know our corporate owned media has zero interest in the truth and (worse) those in public office are more interested in protecting their own backside than protecting the public from predation even THEY WILL SUFFER FROM!

Not that the media has treated ‘truth tellers’ with the respect and admiration they deserve…which brings us to the conservo-loonies and their version of the ‘truth’…which turns this whole argument on its ear!

Take a gander at the next article and tell me the global economy isn’t on life support…

Italian Political Turmoil Weighs on Markets
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO and DAVID JOLLY 6:37 AM ET

European stocks fell and borrowing costs in Italy and Spain rose Monday on fears that Italy was headed for another period of instability.

Next Steps for Italy Uncertain After Departure of Monti
Greece Extends Buyback Offer to Reach 30 Billion Euro Target 8:44 AM ET

For reasons unknown, the typical US citizen thinks the US economy will keep humming along despite what happens in Europe…which speaks volumes regarding the depth of economic ignorance among the general population…

I’m not qualified to say what the average European thinks about the tightrope their nation is walking (again due to gross mismanagement and extremes in economic imbalances.) But if I were a European I’d be shitting Twinkies…if only because we keep getting hit with the evidence that our old commerce model is FUBAR…(and you know what FUBAR means don’t you? [Fucked Up Beyond All Repair…])

Like most newspapers, The Financial Times is struggling with an industry-wide decline in print advertising revenue.

Bloomberg Weighs Making Bid for The Financial Times
By AMY CHOZICK and MICHAEL BARBARO

Michael R. Bloomberg, who has an affinity for The Financial Times, is said to be weighing the wisdom of buying the newspaper if it is put up for sale by Pearson.

The music industry is scroomed, the telecom industry is fooked, even the damned post office is threatened with extinction…

YET none of our so-called ‘leaders’ sees the need to change how we do things…so we are faced with changing even that aspect of our society!

What do we get instead? More fucking ‘reality programming’…has even one of these idiotic shows produced a single ‘star’?

Short answer…NO!

Blake Shelton, left, Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green and Adam Levine judging a contestant on
NBC Rides ‘The Voice’ From Worst to First Place
By BILL CARTER

With its prime-time schedule in tatters, NBC bet on the singing competition show “The Voice” by adding a second weekly edition. The gamble paid off.

Yes good citizen and the next step is to proclaim a day of national mourning for our lost ‘entertainment industry’ (which seems to be going to Bollywood in case you haven’t noticed! Take a close look at the actors in the commercials.)

How fucking pathetic is it that ‘scarioke’ has become the primary source of new programming for the over-worked and underpaid housefrau?

(You see, she thinks she can sing too!)

More disturbingly we have this headline, which casts the future in a very dim light indeed…

Sundar Pichai of Google, which is hoping that its mobile Chrome browser can continue Chrome’s personal-computer success.
Browser Wars Flare Again, on Little Screens
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Shaping the browsers of the future has become a spirited struggle among the big tech companies that see the mobile world as a make-or-break business.

And that, good citizen, is news from the cutting edge of the manufacturing industry…whose browser will more people adopt (qualifying that system’s creator to receive lucrative contracts from the governments of the world to spy on its citizens?)

Is anyone STUPID enough see the millions of JOBS this relentless pursuit of, er, ‘technology’ (isn’t) going to create?

Why have you got your thumb up your ass? Because THIS is ‘state of the art’!

We went from building cars to ‘consuming’ electronics.

We are SO overdue to change operating systems but the keepers of the status quo don’t want to hear it…

So we’re going to have to ‘make them listen.’

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Not I

Greetings good citizen,

The NYSE opened moments ago but it seems ‘the action’ is in Washington this week rather than on Wall Street.

Where we are, once again, having a ‘fight’ that shouldn’t be happening.

DECEMBER

Democrats led by Obama and Republicans led by House Speaker John Boehner say it's critical to reach a deal this month. Yet both sides appear dug in over taxes. And their two plans are far apart on how much to cut spending while the economy is still recovering from the last recession.

So far, Boehner said, "we're nowhere." If compromise were easy for this bunch, they wouldn't be in this jam. A good chunk of the fiscal cliff — the automatic spending cuts known as the "sequester" — is an artificial deadline created by Congress in hopes of forcing itself to come up with a deficit-cutting plan. It arrives at the same time as the expiration of the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts and other temporary tax breaks scheduled to end unless Congress extends them. Together the taxes and cuts would equal close to $700 billion in deficit reduction over 2013.

Congress could vote to override all this and essentially freeze taxes and spending where they are now while the economy heals. But Obama and lawmakers, especially Republicans bent on budget-cutting, see the fiscal cliff as the critical moment to overcome inertia on the nation's long-term debt crisis.

How ironic is it good citizen that, if the two parties involved were on more ‘amicable terms’ NONE OF THIS would be happening?

But no, the Republican’s (suffering from their usual ‘post election amnesia’) have decided to make the rest of the nation regret allowing Republicans a place on the ballot!

(We should seriously test these people, if not for psychosis then for competency!)

Do we need to pass legislation that bars psychopaths from holding elected office?

WHO would disagree with mandated testing? (Besides Republican’s and their backers?)

Same thing with the ‘fiscal cliff’.

Although perhaps the first question that we’d need to address is WHY we keep returning to this same spot every few months?

Is it because the government is incapable of ‘managing money’ or is it this broken economic model the One Percent prevents us from abandoning?

Understand good citizen, the only time a nation EVER ‘pays off’ its debts is when it is liquidated!

Supposedly the former Soviet Union drown in a sea of ‘red ink’, which ‘disappeared’ once the Soviet Union was no more. (One of those weird things regarding changes in management…even when the old boss becomes the new boss…and nothing but the packaging changes.)

Did I mention that our civilization is SEVERELY ‘mis-managed’?

And the only way to correct this is to throw out the old regime and establish a new way of doing things.

It’s not that hard and we DON’T need to re-invent the wheel, we just need a new way of restoring justice, perhaps we can even reach that surprisingly elusive goal of ‘justice for all’.

But no, we keep letting the psychopaths among us decide what needs doing and how it needs to be done.

Did you know there’s a test for that now?

Have YOU noticed the corporate owned media is ignoring this important medical breakthrough?

Being capable of screening for psychosis HUGE! It SHOULD alter the course of human destiny…unless the psychopaths are allowed to, er, ‘prevent’ their detection (and summary demotion/exile from society.)

But I digress…

More disturbing to me is the ‘line in the sand’ over ‘new taxes’.

How about going back to Old taxes?

A MAJORITY of the nation agrees that the >One Percent isn’t paying their ‘fair share’ (neither at tax time nor at the payroll office.)

Those millions they keep for themselves are all raises YOU never got and lower prices you don’t pay.

WHY do we let these people FUCK us like this? (Worse, why does the government let them get away with it?)

Is it because someday we hope to be able to fuck our fellow citizens the exact same way?

(That’s the ‘excuse’ the conservo-whackos are sticking with…we all want to fuck the public so we can be rich! [thus do we deserve the screwing we get!])

Is this the kind of society you WANT to belong to?

Not I said little goat gruff!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Energy Independence!

Greetings good citizen,

Stock markets around the globe are bleeding from the eye sockets this morning as investors allegedly cope with fear of new taxes.

(Like the problem ISN’T all of the money in our economy is sitting in the bank accounts of the uber wealthy, doing nothing.)

Well, that ain’t the half of it good citizen…seems as though the psycho’s on Wall Street now believe that the US will soon replace Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest energy exporter.

And what the hell, like the Arabs, WE (here in the economic desert) won’t be using it! good thing for the Chinese, huh?

Even if it never crossed your mind to wonder how the Arabs felt about foreigners sucking all of the oil out of their country, you’re about to find out how just it feels!

That increased oil production, combined with new American policies to improve energy efficiency, means that the United States will become “all but self-sufficient” in meeting its energy needs in about two decades — a “dramatic reversal of the trend” in most developed countries, a new report released by the agency says.

“The foundations of the global energy systems are shifting,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the Paris-based organization, which produces the annual World Energy Outlook, said in an interview before the release. The agency, which advises industrialized nations on energy issues, had previously predicted that Saudi Arabia would be the leading producer until 2035.

The report also predicted that global energy demand would grow between 35 and 46 percent from 2010 to 2035, depending on whether policies that have been proposed are put in place. Most of that growth will come from China, India and the Middle East, where the consuming class is growing rapidly. The consequences are “potentially far-reaching” for global energy markets and trade, the report said.

Um, the important thing to keep in mind here good citizen is this is NOT a ‘yippee-ki-yay motherfucker event.

Nowhere in this article does it say we will return to the days of ‘cheap & abundant energy’. Neither the oil shale nor the tar sands are A.) easy to extract or B.) economical to process.

Which is to point out that scarce and expensive energy (which will further shrink markets) will be ‘exportable’ by virtue of its ‘unaffordability’ by the average 'peasant' in the nation that produces it. (But assumedly by then 'puny things like countries' will be 'irrelevant' [to the uber rich.])

Perhaps now you can see the foolishness of allowing the self-interested to control the value of your money!

Maybe now you can see the wisdom in that notion that certain things should never be ‘monitized/commodified’.

But you idiots will pay for water and think nothing of it!

How long will it be before you are buying ‘designer’ air?

We could really go off the reservation over water and our long history of fighting over it but that is not the subject of this post. We are parsing the ‘common good’ vs., the predations of capitalism…because it is capitalism and capitalism alone that allows the capitalist to claim for his (or her) own what belongs to us all.

And guess how we landed in this sorry state of affairs?

By deferring to Kings and Queens…(who put their own interests ahead of the people’s…)

By now the capitalist is foaming at the mouth, raving about the ‘injustice’ of being attacked by an obvious ‘godless commie’ (who would have you all work for the same pay and force you to ‘give away’ the ‘fruits of your labors’ [rather than let the generous capitalist buy them from you for a fraction of their worth…] which is why the capitalist is rich and you can barely pay your bills, which isn‘t the capitalist‘s problem…it‘s yours!)

First point, Anarchy is in NO WAY related to communism, it is a political philosophy, not an economic system…and A Simple Plan is in no way ‘communist’ (which you’d know if you bothered to read it!)

But again I digress…

What does it take, good citizen, to get you to stop shooting yourself in the foot?

Is it that ‘heat of the moment thing’ when the New Boss pulls that last minute change out of his hat, just when victory is within your grasp?

In something that would make a wonderful farce, if it weren’t so tragic, we have perpetually witnessed crushing defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, repeatedly throughout history.

Mostly because the ‘forces of evil’ (a.k.a. greed) never sleep.
Worse, it seems our would be saviors aren’t immune to its influence, and if they are they get killed.

So is it a battle we ‘can’t win’…?

Definitely not…because soon circumstance will dictate that we either choose to start doing things the right way or we head down the path towards extinction…

Which brings us full circle to the growing effects of climate change and the desperate need to stop consuming as much fossil fuel as we can scrape out of the ground and throwing it into the atmosphere.

It is time for A Simple Plan and the sweeping lifestyle changes it will bring.

Simply put good citizen, the ultimate goal of A Simple plan is to make crime no longer pay…across the board.

No more getting fucked by employers, no more getting fucked by merchants, no more getting fucked by politicians and no more getting fucked by criminals…because there is no more money! (read cash)

Your money truly is ‘for you’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Parting thought: Energy Independence (under capitalism) will be virtually meaningless to YOU.

We are long overdue to stop using this badly broken system as the basis of governing our society…which, in case you haven’t noticed, no longer counts YOU…

Like the song says: There ain’t no commies and there ain’t no yanks, just common criminals, with guns and tanks!

Pig Lips

Greetings good citizen,

If you thought the wheels were ready to come flying off this rickety old broken down economy wouldn’t you step up the spending to prepare for a time when you couldn’t spend even if you wanted to?

Worse, wouldn’t the nincompoops who monitor and misdiagnose the economy all of the time say it was something stupid like the consumer is through deleveraging’…so now we can all take on more debt and everything will be just marvelous…(until we find ourselves overextended again!)

For the first time since the Great Recession hit, American households are taking on more debt than they are shedding, an epochal shift that might augur a more resilient recovery.

Many American households had cut back spending on cars, food and other goods.

For two of the last three quarters, American households’ total outstanding borrowing on things like credit cards, mortgages and auto loans has increased after falling for 14 consecutive quarters before then. Some economists even see an end to the long, hard process of deleveraging — as they refer to the cutting of debt relative to income or the nation’s economic output. That process, they say, has been a central reason for the extraordinary sluggishness of the recovery.

“We’re at an inflection point,” said Kevin Logan, the chief United States economist for HSBC. “Debt is less of a burden” for households, he said.

Closely watched economic figures released Friday underscore households’ nascent sense of strength. Despite tepid growth and still-high unemployment, consumer confidence has soared to a five-year high, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters and the University of Michigan. And economic growth numbers for the third quarter showed household spending picking up pace as well.

Let’s look at the facts for a moment good citizen, prices are rising and nobody is getting pay increases…add the push to the shove of a family has to live and you’ve got ‘increased debt!’.

Now wait a minute, numbnuts SAYS people are taking on debt to finance things they were doing without…like transportation.

You know ‘wheels under your ass’ is part of the equation that makes up the debt cycle, right?

You get a job so you can have the things you need to live. If you can’t get to the job you don’t get paid and a whole avalanche of bad things happen. So spending money on cars is considered a necessity (despite being charged an ‘excise tax’…which translates directly into a ‘luxury tax’ because the butt-head capitalist thinks you don’t NEED a car to get to work!

You COULD ride a horse!

Now, almost nobody rides horses as ‘basic transportation’ these days yet everybody gets charged excise tax on their automobile as if they did (or could if they wanted to.)

Just another example of the flawed thinking that has led to the mismanagement of our civilization.

You know, the capitalists do get ONE THING RIGHT…it is the assertion of ‘how can we expect you to do the big things right when you can’t manage to do the little things correctly?’

Which is to opine that we have overwhelming evidence of their incompetence…what’s taking so long putting corrective action in place?

And you’d (rightly) ask ‘What corrective action?’ Belaboring the obvious fact that nothing is being done to correct the imbalances throughout our civilization so nothing is ‘getting better’ regardless of what these scatter-brains say!

So what about you, good citizen? Do YOU think the tapped out US consumer is ‘on the mend?’

And would your belief do anything to affect reality?

Short answer, no.

How long would you continue to ‘believe’ while the situation continues to go ‘downhill’? As poverty rises and desperation becomes widespread would you allow yourself to be ‘deluded’ by those paid to lie to you?

As this train wreck progresses we are increasingly going to see pigs wearing so much lipstick you won’t be able to tell what the hell they are.

And THAT will be pointed to as more evidence of the non-existent recovery!

Um, enough is enough and it’s time to put this post to bed.

You deserve a break,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Snowjob

Greetings good citizen,

Markets were predominantly down in industrial nations and up in developing nations. Does this mean there is a recovery going on in the lesser developed nations?

I seriously doubt it. What we’re seeing is the same thing we’ve been seeing for the past forty years. A dearth of investment opportunity that is making the few there are look good.

Are there any customers for those investments?

No (but they have to do ‘something’ with the money.)

Again, the corporate owned media doesn’t what to explain what their One Percent masters are doing. They’d rather let you guess or better yet, ‘imagine’ what the rich and the shameless have up their sleeves.

Sadly it is a gambit such as this that leaves the state of play in our society seriously lacking.

[Dinesh D’Souza]
The second point is that if you look at anti-colonialism is India, it has taken two forms. There was a socialist anti-colonialism of the first 40 years and there’s the free market anti-colonialism of now and you can just ask yourself empirically, which one works better. When I was growing up in India, we’d learn about the five-year plans and how much we improved the previous year and so on. And this was all copied from the Soviet Union and it was as economic disaster and it deprived a whole generation of (crony capitalist) Indians of their birthright.

[The Indian economy is one of the most corrupt in the world.]

So the problem between me and Obama is that he’s following this kind of third-world collectivism. It’s all about redistributing this income. It is completely ignorant about the concept of economic growth. India on the other hand recognizes the stupidity of all of this and started imposing liberalization, modernization, free market and you could see India now having growth rates that are comparable to Malaysia and Singapore and China. So look we’ve had this debate, we can look around the world to see that it is the free market that is allowing countries that are previously colonized to come up in the world. For Obama and the sense of implementing the discredited policies of fifty which he gets essentially from his father’s failed dreams.

Talk about a clueless dirtbag! Being a college president does not mean he isn’t an idiot!

In fact, this movie of his proves the point.
Better to keep your mouth shut and have people ‘think’ you’re a fool than to open your mouth and prove them correct!

But Mr. Hedges has his own point of view to share:

SK: Chris Hedges, how do you respond to that?

CH: Well, his father left him when he was two and met him once when he was 10. You know Dinesh comes out of the Christian community of the state of Goa. There are all sorts of pockets including the Sikhs who comprise 40 percent of the Indian army and the British, who allied themselves to their colonial rulers and did the dirty work for their colonial rulers. And I look at this film and Dinesh’s stance is essentially like that. You know it is the stance of the Judenrat. It is those who feel that if they obsequiously bow before the power of white supremacy and white imperial supremacy and are willing to express and they can get away with it because of course they are not white, racist opinions that white supremacists feel or the white power elite feels but is unable to utter. They can somehow ingratiate themselves and enter into that world of white power.

I sort of drop you into the middle of an, er, ‘discussion’ of the new movie due out next month that is basically a hatchet job against President Obama titled, ‘2016’

Thus do we have the above, er, ‘observations’ being shared…by a man who isn’t necessarily ‘defending’ the current POTUS.

No, Mr. Hedges instead uses the film to point out the ‘emptiness’ of intellectual thought in this country at this time.

Worse, most of the movie is comprised of boldfaced lies…but even the sitting president would be unsuccessful in having Mr. D’Souza charged with ‘defamation of character’…because the movie was ‘blessed’ by the One Percent.

In case you still don’t believe how bad things have gotten.

And you have to agree, Mr. D’Souza is the most reprehensible brand of ‘Uncle Tom’ there is!

Which is to point out (once again) that the privileged few have been getting bolder and bolder as we draw closer to the ‘end game’.

Let’s just say that they no longer care that the public at large has noticed their ‘what are YOU gonna do about it?’ attitude.

They KNOW what YOU’RE gonna do…nothin’.

You have people and things you’re trying to protect…and as long as ‘playing stupid’ keeps them from throwing you out on the streets…well, stupid it is!

Don’t know…don’t want to know.

The fucked up part is that’s what most of the poor slobs currently being labeled as ‘freeloaders’ did to land ‘em where they’re at now.

And when the time comes, it will be how it hammers you too.

Sort of a ‘bolt from the blue’.

But don’t despair good citizen because we have reached the ‘tipping point’. The useless freeloaders now comprise a majority of the population!

And somehow Ol’ Mitt will still win!

Go figure?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Gegner

Greetings good citizen,

Nothing like a trip to the old boneyard to put life into perspective. Um, and that’s as much as I’m gonna say about that particular incident.

Putting things ‘in perspective’ is something humans seldom do on a regular basis, which might account for all of the crazy things we do because the fraudsters among us convince us it’s what we need to do.

If I were to ask you ‘what do you consider to be the ‘center’ of your life?” most well adjusted people would answer ‘family’…like that little old timey jingle Subaru recently adopted to sell it’s cars with…

“When I see you, I see me.”

But those well-adjusted people would be lying…both to me and to themselves.

Sure, the most important thing in their lives may be their family BUT their life is even more focused on supporting that family.

If we were to ask a criminal what was the center of their life, they’d give us the honest answer…money.

It’s all about the cash, sun up to sun down and all of the time in-between; it’s all about the money (because it dictates how your all-important family lives.)

Without the money you’re useless to your family.

And that is just plain wrong.

So, who are these fraudsters I referred to earlier?

Why they are your infamous ‘job creators’, money’s biggest supporters!

They are the very people who maintain that if you don’t earn money that you have no right to anything!

And how do you earn money? By selling your labor to THEM! (Which is why A Simple Plan operates on the human anti-exploitation law basis, which outlaws the buying and selling of anyone else’s labor…(along with the practice of taking ‘em long and deep’ for basic necessities like a place to live and/or the means to get around.)

It’s YOUR labor, only YOU should reap the benefit of it!

But no!

You aren’t given the option of not selling your labor…although the assholes like to pretend you’ve always ‘got a choice’.

You don’t HAVE TO breathe…you can suffocate if you don’t want to pay me!

And the other side of that same coin, If you’re starving to death on what I pay you it’s not my problem, it’s yours!

You know what people like that need?

A ten-pound boulder dropped on top of their head from about fifty-feet up.

Actually, what they really need is exile. (Because a crushed skull is too quick for these suffering loving bastards.)

But I digress; the grocery bill is the trump card they like to claim doesn’t exist. Like you can get food without working for it; and you can. It’s called SNAP and you have to jump through hoops to get it.

And if you stay on SNAP, be prepared to keep having your gonads busted because hey, it’s ‘free food’ so we get to mess with you since you don’t want to work.

And this says nothing of the tens of millions who are on SNAP and DO work (making some motherfucker rich while they can’t afford to eat on what they’re not being paid!)

But for some unknown reason nobody thinks this is a ‘problem.’

In fact, what do the conservo-whackos keep braying about? They keep parroting what the One Percenters’ say about US ‘competitiveness’. How US workers want ‘too much money!’

We have to stop and ask ourselves why don’t these assholes understand that if they want the economy to turn around YOU HAVE TO START PAYING PEOPLE ENOUGH TO AFFORD YOUR PRODUCTS!

In this respect Western civilization is extremely ‘mis-managed’.

Yet our Ivy League MBA’s are taught that they have to earn a profit for their shareowners or they are guilty of ‘malfesance’.

And if you can’t capture more market share, where do you capture the most profit? FROM YOUR EMPLOYEES!

Let’s stop for a moment and ask the question that is just begging to be asked right about now.

How do we change this? How do we ‘educated’ our mis-guided managers and make them realize their myopia is only making the problem worse?

Who the hell is gonna slap Bernanke upside the head and tell him to stop bailing out the bankers because it isn’t doing any good?

Short answer to both questions good citizen is no one.

We can’t get their ear.

Which is to belabor the obvious, it’s not us they listen to. So how, if at all, do we ‘fix’ this run-away train?

Again the answer is obvious, we don’t.

We literally have to wrestle the engine of commerce to a dead stop…then and only then will we be able to ‘make them listen to what they already know.’

Which naturally means there will have to be some executions and more than a few exiles.

Um, just a question here good citizen but are we really going to wait until the sham elections in November to do what should have been done five years ago?

Seriously?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Bombs Away!

Greetings good citizen,

Stock markets finished in the red this afternoon…although not significantly. Which only means they have yet to detonate the ‘scuttling charges’ they have planted throughout what passes for our ‘economy’.

Some of you may have noticed I am posting at a different time, that is because I am trying to ‘maximize’ my post’s ‘hang time’ by shifting to when Blogger starts a new day…right around 8:00 PM locally.

I started last night and it seems to be working…so far.

That said, it’s tough to get anything meaningful out of blogger data tracking as it appears to be continuously updating, not just day to day but hour to hour!

Anyway, without setting out to do so it looks like this week’s ‘theme’ is class war and isn’t today’s top headline all about the effects class war is having upon our crumbling civilization.

For generations of Americans, it was a given that children would live longer than their parents. But there is now mounting evidence that this enduring trend has reversed itself for the country’s least-educated whites, an increasingly troubled group whose life expectancy has fallen by four years since 1990.

Researchers have long documented that the most educated Americans were making the biggest gains in life expectancy, but now they say mortality data show that life spans for some of the least educated Americans are actually contracting. Four studies in recent years identified modest declines, but a new one that looks separately at Americans lacking a high school diploma found disturbingly sharp drops in life expectancy for whites in this group. Experts not involved in the new research said its findings were persuasive.

The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance.

Uned-ju-kated white men is dying young cuz them working stiff jobs don’t offers no in-sure-ants!

So when they turn up in the emergency room, the doctor lets ‘em die rather than busting his butt trying to keep ‘em alive…

(Although he gets paid regardless. It’s that fight with his supervisor he’s trying to avoid.)

But we can’t call THAT ‘class war’…noooo.

The >One Percent wants you dead but they don’t want you to be able to prove it’s their fault that YOU didn’t get the treatment you needed in a timely fashion.

Because guess who owns the for profit healthcare industry? It sure as shit ain’t you or me!

And guess who’s pay is tied to the profitability of the unit he works for?

Think Daktari doesn’t stick it to ya if you’re uninsured?

Next time one of those fuckers is pinned in his car under a telephone pole, waiting for a minimum wage tow truck driver to free him…maybe the driver should remember that the doctor WOULD NOT hustle to treat him if the shoes were on the other foot.

How about that? The corporate owned media even has the chutzpah to say the reason for the rising death rate is ‘unclear’.

Seriously? What do YOU think is causing it?

And isn’t it a sin that we find ourselves right back to the beginning of the circle, fighting over essentially worthless ‘money’.

You (and yours) are being allowed to DIE because of your inability to pay, with essentially worthless dollars.

The fat cats don’t need it, they’ve already got more than they can spend. So why are people being denied treatment (and left to die) because they can’t pay (the insane prices the for profit healthcare industry charges?)

Worse, we can’t even charge the healthcare industry with ‘criminal neglect’, not with the court system the way it is now.

Did I mention that the ‘cold war’ has been raging for the past twenty-five years?

Nobody remembers that you never heard the acronym HMO before the Reagan administration.

In fact, Reagan is responsible for ‘privatizing’ US Healthcare and the subsequent dismantling of a once robust public hospital network.

Just one more reason to vote for the conservo-whackos…let’s see what else they can ‘fix’ for us?

Of course, I’ve already told you that despite the political mis-steps of the past week, the Romney/Ryan ticket will be triumphant come November…because that’s what ‘the masters of the universe’ want.

And it will be ‘sold’ to us by the corporate owned media as one of history’s greatest political upsets; a phenomenon that will remain ‘unexplained’ because the resultant revolt will eclipse the entire issue.

But I digress.

Alongside the healthcare battle zone is another ‘hot spot’ that the average worker has been forced to dance around for decades now and that’s been the ‘hold on to your job’ front.

For the past THREE DECADES you have been getting ‘short-sheeted’ by the minions of the >One Percent by being told ‘Be thankful you still HAVE a damn job!’

Which has all too often been followed up with by a ‘raise’ that didn’t keep pace with the supposedly non-existent inflation rate.

If you got a two-percent raise, YOUR cost for healthcare went up five!

And the next year it was something else.

All the while you’ve been getting nickel and dimed by the town you live in as they cried to override the tax cap to fund the schools and to buy every department head in town a new vehicle.

Or upgrade the computer system or to upgrade the communications system so they could all talk to FEMA at the same time…

I say the ‘minions of the >One Percent because the >One Percent no longer have any business interests in this economy.

The only ones left are their ‘vendors’ (a.k.a. minions.)

The US is just about done being the ‘dumping ground’ for all of the shit they now make elsewhere with ‘artificially cheap’ labor.

I’m telling you good citizen, what we have seen during our lifetimes is nothing less than the ‘crime of the century’.

Never have so many been so ripped off by so few and been so powerless to put a stop to it.

The very real danger here good citizen is that the ‘backlash’ from this deception will destroy our civilization…as the criminals slink off to their luxury hideouts…

Laughing all the way…

Until the bombers show up…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Concept Vehicle

Greetings good citizen,

Everybody jumped on Romney’s latest gaffe and again the number of people defending him was sobering…but that’s what the corporate owned media does, it puts its thumb on the scale to make you think wrong is right and that the majority doesn’t care.

Well, how, er, gratifying is it that the ten highest states for tax non-payment also happen to be bastions of conservatism?

Yup, almost to a one they are ALL what we have come to call ‘Red’ States.

I am not going to excerpt the article itself, there really isn’t anything else to add except a different perspective.

Something I touched upon in yesterday’s post…a cautionary note.

In today’s local rag the ultra-conservative ‘retired business manager’ (who never tires of bashing liberals for everything from late postal delivery to a rainy day) was on his favorite hobby horse again, defending our former governor.

BUT apparently his deadline for the local rag must have preceded the latest flub by the Mittster because he didn’t even elude to it.

Although his post did prove most comical in light of his hero’s blatant insult to nearly half of the electorate.

And that’s where the caution comes in.

You know the elite (and their brain-dead followers) could care less about what happens to you and yours.

In the Mittster’s own words, you have brought this upon yourself…by not voting Republican! (Or so posited the ultra-conservative moron in the local rag tonight!)

SOME pundits are too young to know better but this nitwit is already drawing his SSI, and is shaking in his socks that OBAMA is going to water down his Medicare! (like the Ryan voucher program will be so much better, idiot!)

All I can say is this guy was asleep during the entire Reagan administration. For some bizarre reason no conservo-loonie remembers that person most responsible for NAFTA was St. Ronnie himself!

By the time Slick Willy signed the bill into law, NAFTA was a 'done deal'. He also had a Republican congress so vetoing the legislation would have proven fruitless (but it WOULD HAVE made the Rethugs take responsibility for their treachery.)

And how did they ‘thank’ Billy boy for his service? They impeached him…and then they made his wife a senator from New York…go figure!

Oh, and PS by the way, Slick has been ‘swimming in honorariums’ since he left the White House.

That po’ boy is a lot richer than he was…but like our pal Barrack, he had that ‘silver spoon’ thing happening even before he hit the big time.

And in retrospect, Billy’s two terms read like an entry into the ‘Hall of Shame’ for political sell-outs.

Which is to point out (again) that the people pulling the strings around here are starting to get pretty sloppy as far as keeping the public ignorant.

That said, the public (obediently) doesn‘t see anything it don’t want to see.

That annoying itch at the back of your skull is asking you how long you should play stupid…because it’s only a matter of time before YOU draw the ‘short straw’ and find yourself being thrown under the bus.

Wait too long and you’ll be one of the Mittster’s ‘victims’.

I’m interlacing this with tonight’s editorial by the ultraconservative lunatic…who paraphrased his idol, St. Ronnie when he closed his piece by stating, just as Ronnie famously did, that government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem!

Now ask yourself if YOU want to live in a society that has NO government.

Which is tricky because technically, you’re already there. YOU, the average citizen, no longer have a government that is cognizant of or responsive to, your needs.

But would you voluntarily live in a society that answered to no one?

Short answer, isn’t it…definitely not!

Now all simple-minded conservatives think the government is the enemy because the government makes you pay taxes.

If we didn’t have a government, we wouldn’t have taxes…that’s their logic anyway…like this is a ‘good thing’!

Um, there are no taxes under A Simple Plan either but that’s because the laws governing money are radically different than they are under predatory capitalism.

You see, the conservo-loonies flunked civics 101 because they don’t have the faintest clue what the ‘purpose of government’ is.

Which is why they make these insane claims that we’d all be ‘better off’ without government.

Do YOU know what the ‘purpose of government’ is?

Essentially, it is a ‘pact’ among the members of a nation that they will defend each other’s rights and care for one another as if they were one big family (despite how messy that can be in actual practice…)

A Simple Plan assumes a ‘universal’ pact the transcends borders and frontiers, encompassing ALL mankind...and imbuing its members with ‘inalienable rights’…the ones the founders of this nation only gave lip service to…because they didn’t get the money piece of the puzzle right!

I don't have megalomania, I just want to put an end to the bullshit...and if the concept isn't adopted 'universally' it will leave the door open for a later showdown...and the fucking opportunists that have oppressed us for so long don't deserve another crack at us!

In essence good citizen we are faced with a choice. Do we choose peace and learn to live together in harmony or do we choose death and destruction at the hands of the ‘rugged individuals’ among us who call themselves the Masters of the Universe (‘One Percent’?)

How will you choose?

Because the choice, as always, is YOURS!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Extravaganza!

Greetings good citizen,

Ready for the annual ‘extravaganza’? It’s my Birthday…(and my twin’s; can’t forget her!)

If some of you are confused it’s okay, Gegner is male and has a female twin…not all that uncommon as there are three sets of male/female twins in my extended family alone.

What really screws people up is that I’m married to an identical twin (and no, since we BOTH have twin sisters, our twins are NOT married to each other…although it would be possible here in Massachusetts.

Speaking of ‘double trouble’, markets around the globe are swimming in red ink, likely because the latest spike in energy prices has caused the ‘tenuous at best’ recovery to be extinguished (again.)

Did I mention ‘gross mismanagement’?

Of course, that assumes that none of this is ‘intentional’…and I posit that it is, in fact, intentional!

Although I am fond of pointing out that our affairs are being (intentionally) ‘mismanaged’ by our self-professed betters!

Sorry about the full circle there but sometimes that’s what it takes to fully appreciate the spectacle as it unfolds.

This whole C-F is all about ‘perception management’ as demonstrated by the insane disconnect on display during the Republican National Convention.

How these criminals can face the nation and soberly intone that they are the only ones who can save us from their own disastrous policies is hypocrisy in its most odious form!

They truly exemplify what it means to be a psychopath (as well as being sociopaths!)

And no, the two terms are not mutually exclusive, it is possible to be both!

But the ‘mental state’ of what passes for our leadership is a topic for another post. Right now we have bigger problems (albeit brought on by the ‘diminished capacity’ of those who are our leaders as well as those who want to assume the role.

How fucking disturbing is it to you good citizen that the man responsible for our current plight and his ideological successor are BOTH card carrying members of the >One Percent?

What does that say to you about the current state of electoral politics in this nation?

How can a member of that class even HOPE to stand a chance of being elected and if he is, how does he expect to NOT have his legitimacy questioned?

To give you an understanding of just how much this stinks, over the past forty years we have had five Republican presidents and during that same period the number of people who ‘self-identify’ as Republican number at less than twenty percent.

How does a political party that only one fifth of the voters subscribe to puts their candidate in office five times out of seven?

Sure looks like broken ballot box to me.

Especially when the party in question represents the nation’s ‘rich minority’.

We WON’T accept that outcome.

Which is why they have their boy Obama waiting in the wings. His re-election is probably the only thing standing between a deeply troubled populace and a new civil war.

Although the ‘mouse’ we call the conservo-loonies has pledged armed insurrection if the incumbent receives another term.

And you know that is just ‘lip service’, the conservo-loonies love the man for saving them (temporarily) from the hangman’s noose.

(Um, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s my birthday and I am invoking my right to ‘rant’!)

Before we get too far afield, let me just quickly review these headlines:

Prosecutors Link Money From China to Iran
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

Prosecutors say they found evidence that banks may have been flouting United States sanctions against Iran.

Um, we have ‘prosecutors’ who go after sovereign nations who don’t ‘obey’ the imperial edicts of the mighty US empire?

Can you give me a WTF!

Consumer Spending Rose in July
By REUTERS 9:25 AM ET

The increase was the biggest in five months, offering hope that economic growth could pick up this quarter.

How come they never acknowledge the loud sucking sound of your pockets being sucked dry at the fuel pumps? Since when is this ‘magic?

Under the ‘no shit Sherlock’ category:
Wall Street Turns Lower 9:55 AM ET

And the beat goes on:

DealBook
Carlyle to Acquire DuPont Performance Coatings for $4.9 Billion
By EVELYN M. RUSLI 6 minutes ago

The Carlyle Group has agreed to buy DuPont Performance Coatings for $4.9 billion in cash, as the private equity firm continues a deal-making binge.

Just another bite in the relentless pursuit of market share!

Remember, competition is ‘good’ for the Consumer…until there isn’t any, then you’ll pay whatever they demand…or you’ll do without…and the fuckers who stole your government from you will thumb their noses at you.

And lock you up for rioting if you protest.

Um, I’m off to ‘enjoy’ the rest of my day, Hope you have a good one too!

Gegner

Lovely Ladies

Greetings good citizen,

Today we tackle the idea that this coming election will be decided by the nation’s female population…as they do, indeed, out number the males AND they’re more likely to vote!

Unhelpful is the fact that a large portion of the ‘conservative base’ is both female and elderly.

However, the largest segment of the female population in the US is militant and liberal.

The GOP’s corporate owned media has the task of convincing us that ‘enough’ men combined with the elderly women of the conservative movement will be sufficient to swing the election in the GOP’s favor.

Despite having a party platform drafted exclusively by men from the Religious Right.

The official 2012 Republican Party platform is a far-right fever dream, a compilation of pouting, posturing and policies to meet just about every demand from the overlapping Religious Right, Tea Party, corporate, and neo-conservative wings of the GOP. If moderates have any influence in today’s Republican Party, you wouldn’t know it by reading the platform. Efforts by a few delegates to insert language favoring civil unions, comprehensive sex education and voting rights for the District of Columbia, for example, were all shot down. Making the rounds of right-wing pre-convention events on Sunday, Rep. Michele Bachmann gushed about the platform’s right-wing tilt, telling fired-up Tea Partiers that “the Tea Party has been all over that platform.”

Given the Republican Party’s hard lurch to the right, which intensified after the election of Barack Obama, the “most conservative ever” platform is not terribly surprising. But it didn’t just happen on its own. Here are some of the people we can thank on the domestic policy.

As you can imagine, the article goes on to name names and provide the pedigree of each ‘contributor’…which can only make us wonder who will be drawing up the planks of the, er, ‘progressive’ party platform?

What will Libertarian Lou include to attract the ladies to the progressive banner besides NOT being republican?

Because the way things are going, not being Republican has a lot going for it already!

Twitchier still is how Republicans are predicting armed insurrection if THEIR BOY Obama is re-elected…

While those of us who will be voting for WHOEVER ELSE IS ON THE TICKET that ISN’T a ‘conservo-whacko’ (a category that includes the unchallenged incumbent) are predicting the same thing if their boy Mitt gets the ‘win’.

It's the classic 'Heads I won, Tails you lose' situation...(and we're all getting more than a little tired of it!)

I think I speak for the majority, the 99% if you will, regarding the consequences of a conservative victory this November.

The global economy was DESTROYED by ‘conservative policies’, further conservative, er, ‘rule’ will destroy our society and see a return of slavery to this world!

You’re already some ‘employer’s bitch’…how would you like to see that asshole handed a bill of sale with YOUR name on it?

What, you’d be thrilled?

Naturally, you’re thinking of the ‘upside’…if he ‘owns you’ he has to take care of you.

Take a fucking minute to consider the fucking downside of that.

Once your ‘upkeep’ exceeds your extractive value your more likely to be sold as ‘dog food’ (or perhaps the gross equivalent of ‘soylent green’, the fucking capitalist doesn’t care!) than to be allowed to muddle along in a ‘diminished capacity’.

Say watering the lawn or weeding the flower beds. It is far more likely you will end up ‘feeding the flowers’, literally!

That is what ‘hangs in the balance’ in the upcoming election, the one where all choices SUCK!

Of course, since I have ‘no control’ over the situation, I’m probably ‘exaggerating’ the situation a teensy bit.

But I’m willing to bet that more than a few of you find my ‘point of view’ at least within the realm of belief.

Because of ‘gradualism’.

You remember what ‘gradualism’ is, don’t you?

It’s that series of small, nasty steps the large institutions use to get you to accept the unacceptable.

Once upon a time the, er, ‘government’ used to sacrifice YOUR CHILDREN to ‘appease’ the ‘gods’!

Naturally that was BEFORE the separation of Church and State…now consider if you will just WHO wants to see them ‘reunited’…

Here we are, throwing a lot of shadows on the walls because the truth is only the ‘old’ vote. Kids don’t have (or don’t bother to ‘make) the time’.

And, ironically, there are now more ‘old people’ than ever before (the first wave of the Baby Boom has already retired!)

So how do YOU think ‘cutting entitlement programs’ is going to go?

Which is to ask, just how much faith do YOU have in the ballot box?

The ballot box did absolutely ZERO when it came to protecting your job OR your pension fund!

And we really can’t level the electric gattling gun at either political party…but there is a target right behind those ‘meat puppets’…the > One Percent.

Guess who is ‘responsible’ for off-shoring YOUR job and POCKETING your pension savings?

I know, don’t remind you…but hey, this is all going to be laid at ‘the girls’ feet, isn’t it?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tard-y

Greetings good citizen,

Sorry for the tardy post, dealing with a frustrating problem with my vehicle, spent some serious dollars and it’s still not fixed.

Must not be looking at the correct factors…and trying to get information out of a dealer is futile.

Not that it particularly matters. Won’t need a vehicle after the shit flies and neither will pretty much anyone else.

What shit is that good citizen?

How about trying on a cascading systemic collapse for size:

China Confronts Mounting Piles of Unsold Goods
By KEITH BRADSHER

The severity of the country’s inventory surplus has been masked by the blocking or adjusting of economic data by the government.

Graphic: Chinese Sales Lag
Manufacturing in China Slows

No surprise here good citizen, even the stock markets tanked mightily today in reaction to this economic hard landing.

No customers has a way of causing these ‘gridlock’ situations.

Piles of finished goods nobody can purchase because they lost their jobs to offshoring…

This is ‘why’ the government (used to) protect the rest of society from monopolies

I think it is a valid question to ask why it no longer does…

But look at what’s coming after November’s ‘theft’:

News Analysis
Mitt Romney campaigned on Thursday in Hobbs, N.M., discussing his energy plan at Watson Truck and Supply.
Giving Reins to the States Over Drilling
By ERIC LIPTON and CLIFFORD KRAUSS 9:10 PM ET

Mitt Romney is proposing to end a century of federal control over oil and gas drilling and coal mining on government lands to court western voters and supporters from the energy industry.

Energy is sold on the ‘world market’ meaning no matter where it is found, the price per barrel is set on the ‘open market’ and it ‘doesn’t matter’ if you pumped it yourself, the retailers are going to mark it up to the current price per gallon regardless.

Thus is Willard’s plans for ‘energy independence’ full of shit!

In case you’re wondering (or are just plain absolutely stupid) the reason why energy continues to climb steadily is because the numbers of end users keeps growing!

It also reflects the fact that modern life itself is very ‘energy centric’ you use a lot of energy living a ‘western lifestyle’.

So what’s the Mittster really up to? He’s going to make all of the GOP wannabes sell the oil rights (even if there’s no oil) in all fifty states.

And in many cases this will be a massive fraud…but that’s okay, the justice system is already FUBAR! So none of these politicians will be ‘prosecuted’ for selling what isn’t theirs.

And why does the Mittster want energy independence (that is completely unachievable under capitalism?)

The first 2013 Cadillac ATS left the line at G.M.’s Lansing Grand River assembly plant in Michigan on July 26.
G.M. Has High Hopes for New, Smaller Cadillac
By BILL VLASIC 9:14 PM ET

Three years after General Motors hobbled out of bankruptcy, it is betting that the new Cadillac ATS will become a global contender in luxury cars.

Rapidly vanishing from the global scene is the American Success story…probably why GM is headed back towards bankruptcy.

Apparently they can’t build a car that competes with the Japanese (for monopolistic reasons, they’ve already promised the Japanese our domestic business in exchange for being the ‘guinea pig’ for the bankrupting of western civilization.)

Mind you, ‘the deal’ is between their one percent and ours so everybody else is ‘scroomed’.

Until we start stringing up the one percent from the nearest lamp posts…

Bullshit says you…

You got a better explanation?

What you capitalist attack dogs don’t understand is you’re asking everybody else to commit suicide for your inability to comprehend the mechanics of rampant monopolism!

And naturally, you see nothing ‘wrong’ with this situation:

The company is trying to find ways to show lucrative ads to mobile users without cluttering up their hand-held screens and driving them away in frustration.

Bits Blog: Facebook Speeds Up iPhone and iPad Apps | Deal Will Allow One-Tap Purchases Through Facebook

Let me once again thank my lucky stars that I don’t have a facebook account!

How do such bright people keep coming up with such idiotic ideas?

Could it be because they aren’t particularly bright?

Facebook is proof of the dearth of investment opportunities.

And what we have here is the end result of the ‘death of creativity’:

Economix Blog
Big Income Losses for Those Near Retirement
By CATHERINE RAMPELL 7:25 PM ET

The typical American between the ages of 55 and 64 has a household income almost 10 percent less than it was when the recovery began three years ago.

And this is shocking, why?

Talk about a generation of people who have had the rug pulled out from underneath them and they think the conservatives are the best thing to come along since sliced bread…

Because those worthless assholes really know how to ‘stand up for themselves’.

Which is to say I find it deeply disturbing that reasonably nice people support an ideology that is destroying their way of life.

Leading us back to the old saying, “Stupid is permanent, ignorance can be fixed.”

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Famine?

Greetings good citizen,

Once again global stock exchanges are bleeding from the eye-sockets (which is as it should be considering the severe degree of mismanagement global capitalists are inflicting on a vehicle created to serve us all.)

Tangential to this is the warnings coming out of, er, ‘progressive’ media regarding the detrimental effects the drought will have on the global food supply.

So the > One Percent are going to starve, eh?

Of course not…but the starving masses may well lash out at the fortunate few who can still ‘afford’ food.

(Naturally, worse than people being able to afford retail prices on obviously scarce commodities will be those who steal food intended as relief for the poor so they can sell it to those who can’t afford to pay full price!)

But there will be numerous ‘Robin Hoods’ guarding against precisely that sort of thing.

I find it curious that the closeted Libertarians think we will suffer from a food crisis when energy prices are climbing radically. Could it be they know something the rest of us don’t?

Which begs the question ‘How do they know this?’

They would respond…just look at the drought, it’s everywhere (in the WEST, not so much in the East or the South east, where the bulk of our food is grown.

But that isn’t what’s deviling us. It’s never been a case of whether or not the US can grow enough food to support itself. It can!

The ‘problem’ is the cheaper there…which would starve to death without the heavily subsidized food they receive from the US.

That’s what’s gonna put the bite on the US food supply.

Once we start questioning why so much food is being shipped overseas it will suddenly become ‘humanitarian aid’ for people ‘much worse off’ than starving Americans.

The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America’s counties designated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is guaranteed to fall far short of predictions. This, in turn, will boost food prices domestically and abroad, causing increased misery for farmers and low-income Americans and far greater hardship for poor people in countries that rely on imported U.S. grains.

This, however, is just the beginning of the likely consequences: if history is any guide, rising food prices of this sort will also lead to widespread social unrest and violent conflict.

Food -- affordable food -- is essential to human survival and well-being. Take that away, and people become anxious, desperate, and angry. In the United States, food represents only about 13% of the average household budget, a relatively small share, so a boost in food prices in 2013 will probably not prove overly taxing for most middle- and upper-income families. It could, however, produce considerable hardship for poor and unemployed Americans with limited resources. “You are talking about a real bite out of family budgets,”commented Ernie Gross, an agricultural economist at Omaha’s CreightonUniversity. This could add to the discontent already evident in depressed and high-unemployment areas, perhaps prompting an intensified backlash against incumbent politicians and other forms of dissent and unrest.

Now compound this with sky high energy prices and you have a real fuckaree on your hands!

Sort of redefines the ‘heat or eat’ question and plays directly into the hand of those of us preaching about the existence of a kill off conspiracy.

Yes, that ‘members only’ club you have to be born into has proven (repeatedly) that it doesn’t give a rats ass about the rest of humanity.

And they only have one solution to every problem…‘exterminate ‘em’!

If you weren’t fortunate enough to be born into this exclusive club you are automatically classified as a member of the ‘surplus population’, a vast majority of which is considered ‘expendable’.

Don’t get the wrong impression here…can’t ‘rule in hell’ if there isn’t anybody to ‘bow and scrape’…a certain amount of the surplus population is considered ‘valuable’ as servants/slaves.

Otherwise known as ‘useful idiots’.

But once again I digress.

Food is the great stabilizer as civilization is only nine meals deep. Three days without food and civilization is ‘toast’…

You want to add the lack of heat and light into that equation the time frame shortens considerably…for those of you looking ahead to 12/21/12.

Not that anyone’s calendar has anything to do with any of this BS…

Which is not to say the criminals in charge didn’t leap on the chance to misdirect the superstitious masses into thinking this fuckaree was ‘divine intervention’.

But you know I hold no truck with ‘spirit in the sky’.

Shorthand?

I’d opine the US ‘would be’ just fine despite the drought in the west…it is the capitalist supported cheaper there that will tip the scales against us, creating a ‘world-wide’ famine because our (barely sufficient) food will be shipped overseas to ‘protect their investments.’

Capitalism is NOT your friend.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Crazy Money!

Greetings good citizen,

In a decidedly disturbing start to the week the markets are picking up where they left off Friday, rallying irrationally.

You know, the more ‘fluff’ they build into the stock markets, the shorter YOU are going to get caught when ‘real world’ prices ‘adjust’.

But once again this is a hoodwink that carries the advantage of a ‘delayed reaction’.

You can see the market going up but you don’t realize what’s going down (or south) is your purchasing power!

And they can only drive food down so far. It is already ridiculously cheap; something that should have you seriously alarmed.

So as I keep (seemingly irrationally) tracking stock market performance there are indeed ‘other things’ we can glean from these otherwise meaningless numbers.

When will this ‘other shoe’ drop?

Dunno, but it’s a safe bet it will bare its teeth right before the election.

Speaking of ‘Indecision 2012’, let’s have a look at the long range forecast:

Today on Business Day Live: Readers respond to the migration of jobs from Nissan to the United States. | Marcus Samuelsson, the chef and the brand. | NASA's $2.5 billion adventure.

Is there anything more to the Nissan story than increasing profits by reducing a six thousand-mile long supply chain?

GE has lead the way with the on-shoring of jobs it previously off-shored (because under the tone deafness, they really are aware of the resentment building over the dismantling of America’s future.

People see what happened to the Brits (when their Empire folded up shop) and they’re thinking, No way Jose! A handful of filthy rich cocksuckers walked away with the UK’s wealth safely stashed away in ‘tax havens’ while the nation sinks into poverty.

I don’t believe GE or any of the other ‘former/nominal’ US based corporations have any plans of returning to the US. What we’re seeing is largely ‘smoke’.

GE’s Aircraft engine business group never left the US and is unlikely to as the future of air travel is, er, ‘dim’ at best. Just as the future of sea travel lies in its past.

We can skip the pathetic story about the celebrity chef, once again fucking capitalists glamorize one of the lowest paying professions there is to attract new (sucker) superstar wannabes!

What the knotheads ruining our civilization need is a nice cup of hemlock tea and an Oleander omelete.

Which brings us to our last entry, the Mission to Mars. Talk about schizophrenia, we have ‘theoretical physicists’ who make the case for colonizing Mars and we have planetary biologists who warn us that trying to colonize a planet without an magnetosphere is like trying to build a house in an x-ray machine.

We can live…more or less, BENEATH THE SURFACE of Mars and we would have to grow our food there as well…and I’m really doubtful as to how ‘healthy’ eating organisms that have never seen sunlight would be.

We MAY be able to culture something that resembles ‘sludge’ but there will be ZERO livestock, the Martian atmosphere won’t support it.

But the fucking capitalist don’t care!

He’s gonna get you to go by selling you a one way ticket off of the garbage dump he’s turned this planet into and you’ll buy it, thinking everything is ‘as advertised’ on your destination.

It won’t be until it’s too late to come home that you’ll realize you’ve been screwed.

And if things remain unchanged, ‘your’ government won’t lift a finger to help you, much less bring you home or prosecute the bastards who, er, ‘mis-represented’ what they sold you.

But I belabor the obvious…

Um, as a ‘counterpoint’ to headline regarding Wall Street further down we have this gauge of economic sentiment:

“The fiscal cliff is the primary driver of uncertainty,” said Timothy Powers, the chief of Hubbell Inc., a maker of electrical products.

Fearing an Impasse in Congress, Industry Cuts Spending
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Executives at a wide range of companies fear paralysis in Washington will force hundreds of billions in tax increases and budget cuts in January, leading them to cancel new investments and put off new hires.

The largest customer in the entire world, bar none, is the US government.

So Republican’s tying a knot in Uncle Sam’s purse strings puts a world of hurt on not just the US economy but the world’s economy.

This is not a contradiction of my ‘all money is funny’ position…if you follow capitalist rules then money is real (but only when they want it to be real!)

[And the fuckers only want it to be real when they’re choking the shit out of YOU!]

So we have the money to go to mars but we don’t have the money to keep the space shuttle program running?

We have the money to fight two wars, rotating our volunteer army into a record number of suicides but we don’t have the money to build our own cars?

We have the money to pay unemployment for a year and three-quarters but we don’t have the money for single payer healthcare?

The money is funny all right because they DON’T have the money to do HALF of the things they’re doing…and it’s not stopping them!

Someone needs to remove these idiots from power before the blood starts to flow but sadly it’s already too late for that.

And what are the people responsible for driving our civilization over a cliff doing about their reckless behavior?

Security Start-Ups Catch Fancy of Investors
By NICOLE PERLROTH and EVELYN M. RUSLI

In the last year, the initial public offerings of once obscure security start-ups have outperformed the offerings from household names like Facebook and Zynga

Like I have said repeatedly, it’s not what they SAY, it’s what they DO!

This isn’t alarm boxes to private individuals or surveillance cameras to survivalists, these are elite 24/7 protection forces who will fly in with a helicopter and airlift you and yours to safety once the shit hits the fan, good citizen…

And like a fancy restaurant, if you have to ask how much, you can’t afford it.

Ironic that investors are piling into start-ups that have a very limited ‘window of opportunity’ although if you want your family to survive the bloodbath, you’d best be prepared to ‘pony up’ because it ain’t gonna be cheap.

The ‘trick’ will be owning enough of the company so you get yours gratis. Trickier still will be insuring that you don’t have to wait until everybody else has been served before you get yours.

Um, sorry about the late/early post, the natural conclusion of the recent death watch played itself out today and tomorrow…which is a warning tomorrow’s post is likely to be tardy also…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner