Preoccupied

Greetings good citizen,

Happy Saturday (to those of you who still have jobs.) Funny how the final symptoms of the death spiral have put the job situation front and center as our civilization dies.

More interesting is how the, er, Alternative Press has suddenly embraced (half) of the solution I have been promoting since this whole fiasco started back in 2008.

[The idea of a reduced workweek, and idea that needs to be coupled with ‘free’ housing in order to work. You can’t reduce hours without reducing expenses!]

Um, I confess to not even clicking on the link to the article so I don’t know if the practical side of this proposal was even addressed.

It can be done BUT it will deprive the renegade bankers of their reason for existing, which is why it WON’T be done!

Or, perhaps it will, but you already know YOU can’t survive forty hours of expenses on fifteen hours of pay.

Maybe that’s how they plan to corral us all into debtor’s prison when they re-introduce outright slavery…

Which brings us to another question that has likely evaded most people’s awareness; WTF happened to OWS?

It's unfair to blame Sage, who claims he was "born in a mental hospital". Virtually every occupation was beset by the same types, though New York seemed to have a surplus. Nonetheless, one seasoned Occupy organizer, by way of the Middle East, does blame the wayward behavior of a minority for "destroying Occupy as a functioning entity". He claims after the eviction of the Zuccotti Park occupation last November, there would be meetings of up to 300 people groping for a path going forward, but constant disruptions would "suck the energy out of the room".

The Middle East organizer mentioned that in Tahrir Square; Egyptians would surround provocateurs and disrupters (both of the voluntary and involuntary kind) chase them out of the square. If they came back, then a beating was in order. He said, "While it's a different political culture, the Egyptians and Syrians have had to deal with people shooting them from windows. Occupy Wall Street couldn't even deal with a few crazies."

That moment in Franklin Square encapsulated why Occupy Wall Street crumbled. It was not – and still is not – able to negotiate between conflicting rights. Occupy's child-like view of politics – how consensus and participatory democracy will free the angels within every one of us – was a big reason for its success because it offered a palpable alternative to our cynical, acquisitive society. Yet it apparently hasn't dawned on the hive mind that it is impossible to satisfy all rights, every time, everywhere.

One minute they were everywhere, the next the cops are dragging them away and the media is pretending like they never existed.

The last paragraph contains the stark truth, the movement that took the nation by storm last year lost the publics attention when it was discovered that it stood for ‘nothing’.

How sweetly innocent to protest unfairness without putting even the slightest effort into defining what specifically was ‘unfair’.

An executive pulling down 300 times what the lowest paid worker gets is deemed ‘unfair’…so how about 299 times? Are we all good now?

While OWS ‘nominally supported’ the general issues of the day, their failure to take a stand made them irrelevant.

They were reduced to being just so much ‘noise’ in an already noisy environment that most of us had tuned out of already anyway.

Do we really need a protest movement that stands for nothing?

Isn’t the major malfunction around here an over abundance of shaking heads and clueless shrugs?

We all KNOW ‘what’s wrong’. What we need is someone willing to DO SOMETHING about it!

[How disappointing is it that electing 'Mr. Change' netted us nothing either?]

And as you have seen, ‘protesting’ gets us absolutely no where.

Well, it gets you an arrest record and a place on a government watch list that’s going to come up and bite you on the ass when you least expect it…(like when you find out you need organ replacement surgery.)

More vexing is how we have an over abundance of people willing to do THE WRONG thing about our current pressing problems.

What should truly amaze you is how these people manage to land national media attention for themselves.

Whatever happened to ‘the public trust’?

You don’t need a lot of imagination to figure out that the powers that be are more interested in ‘covering their tracks’ in any way possible…so the public trust can go twist in the wind!

Yeah, so OWS was ‘conspicuous in its absence’ from any 4th of July ceremonies.

I am inclined to think that the ‘leaderless’ movement was a failed attempt at ‘manufacturing blind protest’.

It was set up as an avenue of protest where one could speak their mind, get it off their chest and then SHUT UP AND GO AWAY!

Ironically, OWS started to turn violent…right around the same time the cops started shutting them down wholesale (also violently.)

IF the police DIDN’T ‘get ahead’ of the violent protests they would have spread like wildfire.

Now the, er, ‘Authorities’ are afraid to let OWS ‘re-assemble’.

Because the situation has gotten worse since last fall and NOTHING has been done (outside the busting up of the OWS movement) to remedy the now out of control economic desert.

Since Occupy Wall Street didn’t, maybe it’s time somebody should…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: Occupying Wall Street was always a ‘bad’ idea. From a ‘tactical’ point of view, occupying anything is a bad idea because you end up making (yourself) an easy target.

We aren’t going to ‘win’ this thing by getting ourselves killed off, er, ‘stupidly’.

Think for a moment just who is ‘influencing the public’ with bad propaganda and figuring out a way to squelch the lie machine would be as good a place to start as any.

Armed Thugs

Greetings good citizen,

I went to the local supermarket this morning and, as is often the case, I saw people holding up posters, taking up a collection for…more tents for Haiti.

The earthquake was what, three years ago? Don’t you think in that time anyone who needed a shelter had taken care of the issue by now?

So what are we seeing, a new, predatory ‘permanent aid mission’ bent on milking a now ancient natural disaster in perpetuity?

One thing is clear, they will keep on soliciting as long as people are STUPID enough to keep giving…

But wait…things are tough in Haiti, worse, things have been tough in Haiti for a long time, just like Somalia.

What we’re really seeing in Haiti is the same gross mismanagement that has become the ‘standard’ in our own ‘let ‘em starve’ society.

So when I came upon this ‘hit the panic button’ article I decided it was time to lay it on the line, but first, ‘Nervous Nellie’:

But looking toward the national political conventions, the hurdles are more formidable, she said, because the police and various federal agencies are not discussing their plans.

“We are working with legal teams in Tampa and Charlotte who are looking at ordinance challenges, permitting issues, etc.,” Verheyden-Hilliard said. “As it unfolds I would expect there to be legal challenges, but part of the initial hurdle is trying to pin down from law enforcement what the restrictions are going to be. One of the tactics that the government uses is to try to wind down the clock and not provide information on restrictions until the last minute so that you are only able to go to court on a short time-frame and without opportunity to develop a record to overcome the pretextual and untested security claims that will be presented to the judge. The fact is they know well in advance what they are planning to do.”

There are other major factors the police cannot control, however. The first is the number of people who will protest—whether it is in local Occupy protests or national political events. When enough people take to the streets, police cannot arrest everyone. Nor can they control the media from covering police overreach and excessive force. Together those factors can change the political climate and force governments at the local, state and national level to adopt reforms—not because legislators are feeling benevolent, but because they are worried about what is happening in the streets.

Ahem, let me clarify (once again) that THE PEOPLE ARE THE LAW!

We’ve been being cowed by the men in the blue uniforms for far too long…and they do whatever makes their job easier. (So fuck your ‘rights’, you want to sue? Knock yourself out…)

Which is to say we are far beyond playing by what the ‘enemy’ tells us is ‘legal’.

Do you understand that the law, as it currently stands, is meaningless?

How many times to you have to see them ‘flaunt’ the law to understand that ‘legal’ has become whatever these shiftless assholes say it is?

So YOU don’t have to listen to what Officer Dickhead says.

He’s protecting HIS PAYCHECK, the fuck with YOU!

Um, the hard choice here is on Officer Dickhead. He can remember what he was sworn to do OR he can follow orders so he keeps getting his paycheck…and probably get, er, Severely Socially Ostracized, which could mean any number of vile acts that would threaten the safety and well being of themselves and their families.

(Don’t think it will come to that? Keep ‘following orders’ against your own better judgement, we saw how well that worked out the Nazis…the people ‘know’ AND they’re watching you!)

What does it take for you to wake up to the fact that the police aren’t there to protect YOU or what you think are YOUR RIGHTS!

They work for their paychecks and the elected officials whose orders they follow NEVER seem to take YOUR RIGHTS into consideration…because it’s not about what you’re entitled to, equal treatment or equal protection, it’s about what the One Percent wants and how far they’ll push (you) to get it!

UNTIL there is JUSTICE FOR ALL, ‘the law’ is null and void.

So the guy in the street dressed in body armor and pointing a ‘riot gun’ at you is nothing more than a hired thug who I being paid to do YOU harm…

Something to keep in mind should you ever be placed in a position of having to defend you or yours against a raving lunatic with a badge…

Um, the best thing to do about this situation is DON’T PROTEST, it’s useless.

If you want to change how things get done around here you are going to have to ATTACK!

A broken legal system filled with blind and deaf judges is NEVER going to lead a crusade to restore JUSTICE!

You won’t see the return of justice (or your rights) until YOU make it happen!

Until then all of this is just a waste of so many electrons (not that they had anything more important to do.)

It seems most people don’t think their ‘rights’ are under attack…and maybe that’s the one positive outcome of the, er, ‘non-violent’ protest…but all of the ‘protesting’ in the world will do you no good until it gets violent. Which will signal to the other side that they had better back off before things get nasty…and as pissed off as people are right now, it’s a little too late to be backing off.

Until we can restore ‘justice for all’ the guys with the guns are just armed thugs following orders.

Don’t let that slow you down!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Preoccupied?

Greetings good citizen,

Markets are up slightly after trading sideways for the past three days…and I have absolutely no friggin’ clue what to make out of that.

So we shall turn our attention to this little tidbit that provides some follow-up on the more or less defunct OWS ‘movement’.

The security threat is very real here. At least 30 percent of the crowd is a mix of chronically homeless, drug-addicted people, some of whom suffer from "psychological issues," as several protesters put it delicately. Among other rules, the pastor has demanded that the Occupiers station at least one mental health expert "within easy reach" of the church every night.

Even some of the church dwellers themselves are fed up with their fellow pew mates. Chris Allen, 36, is working on a backup plan in case they get kicked out. "I feel people are messing up the church and we're not gonna have it much longer, so I'm worried about putting money in my pocket," said Allen, an unemployed construction worker from Long Island who lives here with his wife. "Because when it snows and I have nowhere to go, I'm not gonna be stuck on the streets like everyone else for being idiots."

Who is allowed to stay at the church is a source of contention and perpetual infighting. If you're not on the official list kept by Occupy organizers, you're not allowed inside. But it's unclear what distinguishes the general populace from an Occupier.

One night in December, police officers were called to the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew when people who weren't on the list came to the door and refused to leave. "I was turned away one night in the cold and rain," said David Everitt-Carlson, a 55-year-old unemployed former advertising executive who lived in a tee-pee at Zuccotti Park. "And I slept at Grand Central Station. I found a place behind a Christmas decoration."

The ‘kiddies’ in the movement were reabsorbed (for the most part) back into their former living arrangements with their parents, as we can see here.

The ‘remains’ of the movement, the ‘hardcore’ occupiers appear to have had no place else to go.

Not that there’s any shame in this, they are the detritus of social system that no longer has a productive use for them…it is NOT their fault.

And they number in the tens of millions! (Placing a significant strain on the rest of society.)

Who is this set of circumstances more stressful for?

It may be a ‘nuisance’ to the relative caring for these ‘abandoned people’ but it is far more stressful for the people who have no choice but to accept this, er, charity that they want no part of.

But them damn few, they NEED to be RICH! and tens of millions of people living in a gutter don’t mean a damn thing to ‘em!

In both world wars, even a Harvard man or a New York socialite might know the weight of an Army pack. Now, the military is for suckers from the laboring classes, whose subprime mortgages you just sliced into CDOs and sold to gullible investors in order to buy your second Bentley or rustle up the cash to employ Rod Stewart to perform at your birthday party. Courtesy of Matt Taibbi, we learn that the sentiment among the super-rich toward the rest of America is often one of contempt rather than noblesse; Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, says about the views of the 99 percent: "Who gives a crap about some imbecile?"

Steven Schwarzman, the hedge fund billionaire CEO of the Blackstone Group who hired Rod Stewart for his $5 million birthday party , believes it is the rabble who are socially irresponsible. Speaking about low-income citizens who pay no income tax, he says: "You have to have skin in the game. I'm not saying how much people should do. But we should all be part of the system." But millions of Americans who do not pay federal income taxes pay federal payroll taxes. These taxes are regressive and the dirty little secret is that over the last several decades they have made up a greater and greater share of federal revenues. In 1950, payroll and other federal retirement contributions constituted 10.9 percent of all federal revenues; by 2007, the last "normal" economic year before federal revenues began falling, they made up 33.9 percent. By contrast, corporate income taxes were 26.4 percent of federal revenues in 1950; by 2007, they had fallen to 14.4 percent. Who has skin in the game now?

As we can see, the ‘statistics’ can be twisted to support whatever argument you’re trying to make…but the people in the streets, they’re real.

How ironic is it that Mr. Schwarzman is correct, those he so callously refers to as ‘rabble’ SHOULD have ‘skin in the game’…but assholes like him won’t hire them!

It is somewhat ironic that assholes like Mr. Schwarzman have people who do nothing but make sure that they don’t have even one more person on his payroll than is absolutely necessary…which is truly ironic all by itself!

But let us return to the ‘point’ of this particular article, have the ‘truly wealthy’ already, er, ‘withdrawn’ from (and this is a pretty loose fitting adjective) normal society?

Which is in itself a rhetorical question because the rich have ALWAYS lived apart from the…er, ‘rabble’ (perhaps more commonly known as 'the hired help'…)

Worse, good citizen, it only takes a tiny bit of wealthy for people to start thinking they’re ‘better’ than the rest of us.

What do you think makes up the Republican base?

That said, shit rolls downhill…

The difference between them and us is at least we have enough sense to not eat it!

But I am unable to conclude this piece here so bear with me for a while longer…

If we posit that the ‘center’ of the OWS movement is a long overdue protest by those, er, ‘displaced’ by globalization then the ‘occupy’ piece of the puzzle was only phase one. The Homeless have been ‘camping out’ in public spaces for decades now and it hasn’t done them a single lick of good!

The next phase…(and it will likely get you ‘disappeared’ if you try it) will be to shut down our imported economy by crippling the seaports.

Coupled with the, er, ‘spanking’ our lying media by knocking out large swaths of the communications network. It won’t be until people are forced to decide that they will free themselves from their ‘electronic babysitters’ (to take part in the time honored tradition of burning and looting!)

They’ll ‘Barbados’ you for sure for pulling their ‘security blanket’ off of the sleeping sheep…and I use the ancient term Barbados to demonstrate that there is nothing ‘new’ about ‘extraordinary rendition’.

The ‘mistake’ good citizen lies in thinking it can’t happen to YOU!

You can bet the rebellious Irish never saw that one coming…

But hey, Barbados is nice this time of year, no?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Follow the Leader

Greetings good citizen,

Sort of on a deadline this morning with the Holiday season upon us and our social obligations piling up, I’ll be ‘partying’ most of the day.

So as I browsed this morning’s mail, a story about OWS caught my eye…

And it started me thinking just who are these people?

In an excellent article by Digby (of Hullabaloo fame) she notes that most US citizens are beyond ready to go ‘toe to toe’ with the One Percent (and their blue-uniformed minions)

Needless to say, the freedom part is literally compromised by decisions to legalize indefinite detention without trial, but for the purposes of this discussion, it's the groceries that are causing the problem --- or rather lack thereof. The Democrats are simply not responding to the immediate concerns of a majority of Americans. Even health care, which is a great anxiety producing issue, is still fraught with confusion (although its early benefits are beginning to register a bit.) The more immediate issues of a foreclosure fraud crisis and all the problems associated with it, unemployment and job insecurity and massive numbers falling into poverty while the wealthy pig out (and whine about it) is what has people up in arms. They need government to deliver some groceries and the government is instead putting them on a diet.

Conservatives don't believe in delivering groceries, of course. When they aren't stealing the milk money and handing it out to their rich friends to pay back their donations, they're indifferent at best. It's liberals who are supposed to deliver at times like this and instead of doing that they are cutting deals to shrink the existing, tattered safety net in the future in order to keep the economy from sinking further in the present. (It's not all their fault, but being ineffectual doesn't rally the troops.)

What Digby is trying to say here is our grandparents didn’t ‘negotiate’ the New Deal, they DEMANDED IT…

And if they DIDN’T get what they wanted, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN ‘hell to pay’

Let’s turn the clock back 70 years and ask if the ‘Greatest Generation’ would have sat around twiddling their thumbs while the CRIMINALS in Congress colluded with one another to draft the heinous ‘arrest on suspicion and detain indefinitely without a trial’ legislation?

No, they’d have SHUT THIS NATION DOWN COLD!

FULL SCREECHING STOP!

So who are these namby-pamby milquetoasts that don’t dare stand up to obvious criminals?

(The OWS crew is obviously not included in that group, they’ve shown their courage, despite their, er, ‘caution’.)

I suspect the OWS movement has been ‘tolerated’ because the bulk of its constituents aren’t who we think they are…most of them are the children of the 20 percent…the top twenty percent.

Which also explains their, er, ‘soft-pedaling’. They don’t want to make trouble for their well-off parents.

In case any of you thought this ‘we are the 99%’ bullshit was actually going somewhere…

It’s not.

But not to worry, the ‘troops’ are coming home…to the land of the jobless.

How do you suppose THAT’S going to work out?

All things being even good citizen, civilization itself is only 9 meals deep…think about it?

3 days isn’t a long time.

Left for us to ponder is whether or not THEY are going to force a ‘stand-off’ or if we will?

Especially when the trick is not to be the first one to ‘blink’.

You can bet most of the 1 percent is already well provisioned for an extended stand off.

It is the vast majority of ‘the working poor’ that live hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck.

The ‘strategy’, such as it is, is based on the ‘supposition’ that a majority of the poor will prey upon each other before they attempt to take on a hardened, well-defended bunker…more colloquially called a ‘compound’ these days.

Where leadership exists there will be less ‘internal predation’, A good leader will keep his troops focused on ’high value’ targets; this is the ‘weak link’ in the management’s planning.

And despite evidence to the contrary, there is no shortage of competent leadership among the rank and file…it is ironic that commerce has no use for such people!

It also provides proof to the contrary that commerce would ‘shut down’ without their, er, ‘expert guidance’ (when anyone will tell you the shop never runs smoother than when the owner is out of town!)

It truly is frightening how dramatic the improvement can be.

But that’s another subject altogether.

Where were we?

Oh yeah, who are these ‘wimps’ and why do they call themselves Democrats?

I’ve already opined on the topic so I will not bore you by repeating myself…

Which is to say I only bring it up because the subject is too important to be allowed to fade into the background.

Without competent leadership our civilization is doomed!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Statistically skewed...

Greetings good citizen,

The next couple of days will tell us whether OWS is dead or just re-grouping.

This has the POTENTIAL to be the spark that ignites a long overdue conflagration…but I don’t get the sense that the 99% understands what’s at stake.

While we wait to see how things will play out in Peoria, er, (Zurcotti Park) we get this evidence that the gulf grows ever wider

Whether their consumers are feeling pressured or flush now, the retail executives indicated they did not expect things to change soon.

“In the U.S., we still do not see, and do not expect to see in the near term, any meaningful tailwind from the housing market,” said Frank Blake, Home Depot’s chairman and chief executive.

“I feel good about the luxury consumer,” Mr. Sadove of Saks said. [He would, wouldn’t he?]

Referring to the Wal-Mart shopper’s dependence on paychecks and government-assistance payments rather than savings, Mr. Davis said that “going forward we really would not expect anything different.”

Understand that the ‘initial report’ SAYS retail sales are ‘up’…but a fraction of a single percent could be nothing more than inflation.

Now a ‘gain’ in the upper end of the retail sector does, by no stretch of the imagination, mean the economy is recovering in ANY meaningful terms.

As an ‘indicator’ this data is totally worthless.

While it is possible to base a business on a particular class of consumer, you had better not configure your economy on the same basis if you don’t want a huge criminal class on your hands.

One of the advantages of ‘civil society’ is a reasonable degree of security and freedom from being victimized by the desperate (who generally wouldn’t exist under a ’well-managed’ social system.)

But nobody is calling the current predatory system we suffer with today ‘well-managed’.

And perhaps that’s what is ‘holding us back’, the common belief that what we’ve got is as good as it gets.

While the criminals couldn’t hope for better, the rest of us can easily imagine significant improvements across the board (without entertaining ‘la-la land’ extremes!)

Hell, A Simple Plan instantly elevates prospects for all ‘non-criminals’ considerably (at, ironically, the criminals’ expense.) It also involves absolutely NO ‘magic or magical thinking’ whatsoever!

Left to our imagination is whether or not the coordinated, multi-city ‘take-down’ of the OWS movement will be the last we hear of the desperate kids who correctly identified themselves as members of the ‘silent majority’, silent because they have had their voices stolen from them by a political system that ignores them completely (and with impunity no less!)

Which may be the least of our problems if Europe erupts into civil war…

Considering the potential outcomes, better there than here.

Because if Europe falls, the US is right behind it.

Oh, and guess what will happen once the banking system collapses? The government will be, ‘dismissed’ and a military junta established to ‘protect’ the guilty from being prosecuted.

The curious part is who will be ‘fed to the wolves’ to placate the angry public?

At the moment it looks like the cops are being served up on a silver platter…(along with the rest of the corrupt justice system.)

Is OWS really protesting Wall Street or are they protesting the Justice System’s utter failure to prosecute ‘White Collar’ criminals?

Few of us delude ourselves, we KNOW our leadership as well as our political system are corrupt beyond repair. What we don’t know is what to do about it…and even that’s a ‘cop-out’, we know what needs doing but we lack the necessary ‘unity’ to actually do it.

Until some brave people martyr themselves for the cause (25,000 died for the 40 hour work week, just as an example) the lack of positive motion will unbroken…and that’s all ‘evil’ needs to thrive.

Ironically, it is the worthless corporate owned media this is preventing people from martyring themselves. Why let yourself be murdered for a cause if no one will ever know?

That is why the initial target should be the worthless media itself.

As Alternet comments, the ‘social media’ pulled off a complete ‘black-out’ of the police action to, er, eradicate the OWS encampments.

So is the ‘status quo’ strangling the baby while it still fits in a bathtub?

Sure looks that way.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are living in a defacto ‘dictatorship of the privileged, the criminally privileged but privileged none the less.

The problem with the criminally privileged is they refuse to recognize law of any kind so they are, by default, ‘out of control’.

Worse, they are ‘in charge’ of this nation’s military-industrial complex (which is how they got away with dismantling it right under our noses!)

But it’s one thing to own something and quite another to bend that thing to your will.

Mercenaries aside, I don’t believe they have cracked the problem of ordering civilian soldiers to fire on their own people…yet.

That’s why the ‘propaganda machine’ has to go first!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Running for cover?

Greetings good citizen,

As usual, stock markets around the world are bleeding from the eye sockets…until you arrive at the NYSE, which, naturally, is up slightly.

The part that should baffle your ass is how a nation that imports pretty much everything manages to be the only country on the planet with a rising stock market value?

I know, like faith in ‘God’, the answer remains a mystery (which is shorthand for the question of ‘how much bullshit are you willing to swallow?’)

Anyway, our lead story for today is a ‘two-edged sword’ because it can be interpreted two ways.

At ‘face value’ it spells a shrinking economy, underneath it intimates that some rats are deserting the sinking ship…which one is it is for you to decide:

Adding to the pressure on the partnership is the fact Goldman itself is shrinking. Over the last year the firm has laid off more than 1,000 employees as part of the cost-cutting drive and its total head count at the end of September was down 1,200 from the year-ago period.

Goldman has 34,000 staff members, according to regulatory filings. But this number includes several thousand consultants and temporary workers. The firm does not release how many actual employees it has, but the number is closer to 28,000, according to a person briefed on the matter who was not authorized to speak on the record.

The committee that oversees the partnership process tries to keep the percentage of partners to employees at 1.8 percent, according to people with knowledge of the process. So as Goldman shrinks, it is likely to shrink the size of the partnership pool.

Not that I have much faith in the prevailing Mayan Calendar thing, there is a very good chance that our civilization WILL NOT SURVIVE 2012!

From where we are today it seems unlikely that we will make it to 12/21 either.

The End will arrive sooner and perhaps more violently as the guilty have proven they will risk/dare anything to escape prosecution.

Which is to point out that the nuclear strike survivability calculator is making the rounds again.

Sadly, we are ‘more likely’ to be nuked by the criminals in charge of this nation than by a foreign power that will have their hands full with their own ‘dissidents’…

And, as I am fond of doing we have this story where Ilargi agrees that the solution to our problems is as simple as facing the truth.

In fact, the problems won’t end until the truth prevails…

It's high time to come clean, to stop the incessant lying. To stop pretending things are a bit hard right now, but otherwise just fine. They're not. Extend and pretend works only so long. Then it snaps back in your face with a vengeance. That's why the bond markets are so successful in bringing down Italy and Greece. Not because the ECB doesn't step in, since that would only serve to cover up reality for a little bit longer, but because they've both lied for so long about their real predicaments.

No, just stop lying. The consequences and challenges will be formidable, but they’ll be that anyway. You can't cover up the debt and the losses forever. And the chances of growing your economies out of the cesspit are zero, if not below.

One thing no more lying will achieve is this: it will re-establish confidence in the markets -or what'll be left of them-. And isn't that what you guys always say you want to accomplish? Well, I can assure you, it's the only way to do it: cut the fairy tales. Take a breath of fresh air and get to work. Do something real and rewarding for a change, and for a living.

Instead of ‘truth’ from our so-called leaders we are getting a nationwide ‘crackdown’ on the 99% as state governments send cops in body armor after its own citizens…who are protesting ‘government inaction’.

How ‘ironic’ is that?

Confrontations like this force people to choose sides.

The criminals in government are taking a HUGE risk by forcing this situation now.

But stupid is as stupid does and we’ve got no shortage of stupid hanging around.

Still, I suspect there aren’t enough people willing to sacrifice their current level of comfort for an uncertain prospect of justice.

You’d think even a tiny victory would be enough to demonstrate what can be done but no, the current group of protestors aren’t equipped to go toe to toe with the criminal’s protectors…and that’s a shame.

Because the odds are NEVER going to get better, nor will the situation become more even.

We have NUMBERS on our side while they have ‘firepower’.

Using that firepower to protect criminals will NOT bode well for the defenseless relatives of the people responsible.

Which brings us to the same question faced by people confronted with marauding hoards face; do you have enough ammunition to kill them all?

If the answer is ‘no’ then don’t shoot, HIDE!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Irrelavant

Greetings good citizen,

After closing mixed yesterday the markets finished with a flourish today to put a cap on a fairly positive week of unrelentingly negative economic data.

Perhaps more interestingly is the buzz surrounding the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street Movement.

Not only has it not impacted share prices (meaning ‘investors/thieves’ aren’t ‘worried’) but are in fact quite the opposite.

The banksters can barely conceal their contempt for the OWS demonstrators, on the other hand they seem unable to find the right word to describe the protestors although Irrelevant seems to be the word they’re searching for

Some on Wall Street viewed the protesters with disdain, and a degree of caution, as hundreds marched through the financial district on Friday. Others say they feel their pain, but are befuddled about what they are supposed to do to ease it. A few even feel personally attacked, and say the Occupy Wall Street protesters who have been in Zuccotti Park for weeks are just bitter about their own economic fate and looking for an easy target. If anything, they say, people should show some gratitude.

“Who do you think pays the taxes?” said one longtime money manager. “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services. This is just disgruntled people.”

He added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is,” he said.

Later in the same article they go on to opine that the movement will soon be a ‘distant memory’ that the cold weather will drive the protesters away…

And you know what? They’re right!

To a degree.

Only the most desperate and destitute would persist in ‘symbolically’ occupying (a block from) Wall Street in the dead of winter.

Although we could draw parallels to Washington’s winter in Valley Forge.

Which would REALLY make the shallow and clueless Wall Street types, er, ‘nervous’.

I am stricken by how both the members of the media and the privileged few really don’t ‘get it’.

The protesters are there looking for the same thing the Egyptians were looking for, jobs!

And the fuckers who are preventing these kids from getting on with their lives seem unable to comprehend their part in why these kids have singled them out.

Which isn’t 100% true, they have a vague sense of why the kids are pissed at them…they read the papers, they know what’s going on.

Hell, some of the protesters are their kids (or their kids friends.)

They know these kids did everything ‘right’, took on a whole boatload of student debt and now a minimum wage job is as good as it gets, (IF they are patient!)

Many of them are in their second year of unemployment and the collectors are calling them daily looking for student loan payments.

Funny thing about unemployment, you have to have had a job before you can collect anything…which sort of makes it all suck that much more.

And these Wall Street types are the first ones to take the position of ‘if you don’t have a job it’s YOUR FAULT!’

Which is to point out that those fucking Libertarians are EVERYWHERE!

What you need to understand is who ISN’T a Libertarian. There aren’t any ‘poor’ Libertarians, Libbies are ‘boots strappers’ who make their own way! You will find the occasional fool who isn’t exactly ‘well off’ (but likes to pretend they are) that profess as well as spout Libertarian viewpoints but they’re pretty rare, although they do have one thing in common with the ‘real deal’, they’re just as stupid as real Libbies are!

It takes a mighty special kind of asshole to turn into someone who fails to appreciate the privileges they were born to.

These, unsurprisingly, are more common than you’d imagine…a ‘side effect’ of the post WWII prosperity brought on by the devastation of Europe.

If ‘American Exceptionalism’ flows from anywhere it comes from this twisted variety of superiority born out of NOT being bombed back to the stone age!

Did I mention the ‘stupid part’?

So what do you think good citizen?

Will the OWS movement, er, ‘unexpectedly’ morph into ‘class war’ or will the kids blow away with the autumn leaves?

One thing is for certain, their student debts aren’t going anywhere, just as nobody else’s is either…leaving us to wonder just how ‘massaged’ those retail numbers really are?

Are the top one percent spending their asses off just to maintain the ‘illusion’ that the economy is ‘recovering’?

Because that has, thus far, proven to be precisely the case good citizen. Almost ALL of the, er, ‘increase’ in retail sales has been coming from the ’top tier’ stores, the rest is inflation.

Seriously good citizen, it is a good thing they didn’t ’attribute’ any of the comments in this article because these guy’s houses would be a pile of cinders tomorrow morning.

What the fuck was he thinking, berating his state Senators for not coming to the rescue…because that’s PRECISELY the sort of shit the 99% are pissed off about!

In a related ‘road to hell’ article in AlterNet, a fellow tried to explain ‘why’ OWS was three years late to the party.

He, (I’m sure) was all ‘good intentions’ of sharing his reason why it took these kids so long to get organized…but it looks like he got lost in the ‘backstory’ of why the 99% is pissed at Wall Street.

He never gets around to explaining the 3 year delay.

Which means he probably didn’t have a firm grip on why the protestors have held back so long.

Oddly, my theory is it circles back to the student loans they can’t pay!

The kids want relief and they don’t know where to find it so…

Here we are.

The danger in this thing going global is that different regions have different levels of tolerance for, er, ‘civil disobedience’.

Some places have a reputation for downright ’heavy-handed’ policing, especially when it comes to ‘peaceful protesters’.

Normally a little bloodshed is both expected and tolerated on both sides…but this tinderbox is a lot hotter than your typical anti-war protest.

These people feel like they’re getting screwed and the people on the other side of the picket line are protecting the people that screwed them.

We literally have a ’just doing my job’ attitude isn’t going to cut it, good citizen.

There is already a general perception that the justice system is broken…meaning that the cops have lost their authority because they’re part of that broken system.

Can’t you just hear the cries of the angry mob?

What are you hassling US for? Where were YOU when these assholes were ripping the country off?

If you’re not going to do anything about it, stand aside or we’ll take you down too!

Like I said, it becomes one of those ‘fine line’ issues that puts the average officer in a bad place of having to decide WHO, precisely, they really work for, the public or the politicians?

Choose the politicians and you’d best hope the Chief lets you move your family into the Police Station because it won’t be safe for you among the general population…

Just saying, ya know?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Short and Sweet

Greetings good citizen,

Let us begin with the AM rally being enjoyed by the stock markets. The official cause of the rally is said to be due to the ‘superior performance’ of the retail sector.

Just look at this load of BS:

Analysts noted that the retail sales numbers had beaten expectations. Sales rose 1.1 percent in September from August, and 7.9 percent from the previous year — the fastest monthly growth since February. Total retail sales were $395.5 billion.

The report was another sign that the United States economy may be in better shape than many economists thought, said Dan Greenhaus, the chief global strategist at BTIG. The recent rise in stock prices reflects the change in the prevailing outlook, he added.

You know as well as I that the above figures were subjected to some rather serious massaging to produce the, er, ‘desired results’.

Unsurprisingly, data from the nation’s largest retailer casts this data in an entirely different light:

It seems that cash-strapped consumers are not only trading down to stores like Walmart. They are also trading down at stores like Walmart, choosing cheaper brands and smaller sizes.

Of course, the Wall Street crowd sees a silver lining in there somewhere. Otherwise, why else would they be so upbeat on the retailing sector?

How’s that for a ‘reality check’ good citizen? I’m thinking the second story runs a lot closer to actual experiences of the majority of us.

While the NY Times may be the nation’s ‘paper of record’ it is obviously written for a considerably, er, ‘smaller’ audience. (and I’d dare say a more ‘elite’ one than I write for, no disrespect intended, gentle reader.)

Which brings us to the ‘bear trap’ we find ourselves caught in.

We are roughly a year away from the next presidential elections and we find ourselves saddled with an, er, ‘ineffective’ incumbent that is running ‘unopposed’.

How fucking sad is it that we are powerless to do anything about this? (Which is to ask how the hell the ragtag 99% of us is going to cough up the nearly billion dollars it takes to mount a presidential run?

Worse, who the hell are we going to run against the (Libertarian) ‘stacked deck’ entrenched in Washington?

We can all pretty much surmise how we ended up with a Congress filled to the brim with ‘representatives’ who aren’t who they say they are…

Come election day you only have two choices. Half of the time, after you scrape away the paint job, you end up with none.

Of course, we got to this sad state of affairs through the ‘Party System’, where if you want to run as a candidate for either party you must first pass a ‘sniff test’.

The people who perform this process get to decide who gets to run (with Party funding) and who doesn’t.

Politicians are no longer free to respond to the public mood, in fact, so fearful are they of deviating from the ‘Party Line’ that one would suspect they have all been threatened with assassination!

Maybe they’ve been, er, ‘assured’ that straying from the script will result in an unfortunate and unforeseen ‘accident’.

But this crap isn’t pulled until AFTER they win the election…which is why most challengers can still talk a good game.

IF, as the evidence suggests, our political process has been ‘hijacked’ by the self-interested, what, pray tell, should we do about it?

(Here’s were we get our ‘in a nutshell’ version of A Simple Plan.)

As you can see, the problem of ‘captive government’ is a legal one and not a fiscal one. (Although seizing control of the government by default gives you ‘control’ of the monetary system since money is nothing but a ‘legal construct’.)

But I still haven’t answered the question, have I? What the hell are we gonna do about it?

We can’t ‘talk about it’, the captors own the ‘public square’.

The only viable option is to use the ‘power of numbers’…

It will take twenty or thirty MILLION of us ‘parking’ in Washington DC, demanding the elected government ‘stand down’…just like the Egyptians ousted Hosni Mumbarak.

Let’s indulge our fantasies for a moment and suppose like a dog chasing a car, we get what we’re after, the media arranged elected government indeed stands down…

What next?

We make a ‘Leap of Faith’, the ONLY way an equitable system will EVER be established is over the still kicking and screaming corpses of the privileged.

While it would be ‘nice’ to think A Simple Plan would enjoy near universal support, it doesn’t have a prayer of being ‘voted in’, the ‘entrenched interests are too powerful.

We have been played for dupes for so long that there is no reason in the world ANYONE should trust the ‘level playing field’ promised by A Simple Plan.

So, like EVERY OTHER ‘alternative’ out there, A Simple Plan would have to be enacted ‘by decree’.

Just like the founders of the deeply flawed system we are currently saddled with did to us.

Understand, the, er, ‘survivors’ of the Revolutionary War fully expected ‘somebody’ to declare themselves King.

But our founders had been thinking of the ‘bulls-eye’ royalty traditionally hung on the nobility and opted for a ‘different’ solution. A ‘half-measure’ if you will.

The fear being that a government truly run ‘by the people’ would vote itself ‘free food’ (a sentiment that persists to this very day) was avoided by allowing the public to elect ‘representatives’ that would vote for them…

Which was a sham from the start considering the total lack of accountability the current system has.

Worse, they dare to call it an ‘oversight’ (with nothing being done about it for more than two hundred years! That’s some ‘oversight’!)

No-no, you were distracted with the wonderful (although imaginary) Balance the new ‘trilateral’ system possessed!

How do you like that ‘balance’ now?

I could spend hours tearing the current system apart but it doesn’t answer the problem of replacing it so back to the matter at hand.

We ‘establish’ A Simple Plan by fiat/decree with MORE PROTECTION than our humble forefathers had when ‘mock democracy’ was sprung on them.

What protection is that you might ask?

It is the protection of large numbers knowing how things are supposed to work.

In the beginning there will be a minimal number of laws as laid out in A Simple Plan.

Once you familiarize yourself with the plan you will note that few activities are ‘illegal’, because Anarchy is one of the ‘freest’ forms of government possible.

Protection number one is the law itself is beyond the reach of the ‘self-interested’ Beyond the basic precepts that establish Division Society, no one has the authority to decide either what is or isn’t a law or when a law will be enforced and when a law will be ignored.

So we have this ‘blueprint’ that explains how our new civilization operates but we have no new ‘chiefs’…yet.

Life as we know it can be ‘divided’ into 12 broad ‘fields of endeavor’ All of the jobs necessary to maintain a happy, healthy human civilization come from these 12 fields.

Which is to explain that ‘rich people’ ARE NOT ‘job creators’ (given their preference they are in fact ‘job destroyers’!) Only Mother Nature can create a job, wealth has nothing to do with it!

In fact, wealth is EVER and ALWAYS the end result of CRIMINAL ACTIVITY!

In our, ‘reformed’ world EVERYBODY gets a paycheck and NOTHING more, the very act of ‘buying and selling’ [for personal profit] is prohibited/criminal!)

You don’t need to set aside funds for ‘retirement’ (that most of us won’t live to enjoy.) Our new society provides cradle to the grave security at zero ‘cost’ to you!

But that’s an extra.

What about our currently ‘saturated’ markets that are being choked off due to excess profit-taking by the financial sector?

Jubilee, Baby!

All personal debt ‘disappears’ along with ‘unemployment’.

Thanks to the highly predatory capitalist system, some people have NEVER had a job and probably CAN’T adapt to becoming a ‘worker’ at this late stage of the game.

HOWEVER, there is absolutely NO LACK OF THINGS THAT NEED DOING!

And EVERY job will pay ‘a living wage’! (Mostly because your expense picture will shrivel to almost nothing!)

So, everybody works with the work day/week being adjusted to accommodate ‘full employment’. You aren’t going to get ‘rich’ working for the common good but you will enjoy a better life than your parents did. (Unless you’re one of those twisted bastards who gets off on making everyone else miserable…then you’re out of luck!)

No credit and no property ownership so the two biggest drains on your income disappear.

Um, one of the final ‘wrinkles’ of the new system will be the responsibility to vote (directly) on the laws you will live under since ‘legislators’ no longer exist.

Yes, good citizen, we will have ‘leadership’ but they will NOT have the ability to create or alter the law. (Much less exempt themselves from them like they currently do!)

The law belongs to those who must live under it and all laws MUST pass ‘The Golden Rule’ to be a law to be enforceable.

Sounds ‘dumb’ doesn’t it? A rule we all learned as children governing our society but think, good citizen, would we be in the trouble we’re in today if we paid heed to this very basic premise?

I didn’t name it ‘A Simple Plan’ because I thought the phrase was catchy. It really is based on some very simple premises.

One is it is impossible to build a ‘sustainable’ social model if we permit even one person to claim they own ANYTHING we all must share!

(The first fucktard who insists on ‘sharing’ their dirty underwear will be strangled with them!)

(Learn to LOVE that Golden Rule Bucky or you’ll find yourself exiled before you know what hit you!)

Two, the purpose of civilization is to provide its MEMBERS with the bounty of nature, commerce DOES NOT exist to make a few rich!

IF we fail to adopt a system that levels the playing field, we WILL NOT survive as a species.

And if you doubt that just keep on doing what you’re doing.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

History repeating itself

Greetings good citizen,

Another ‘first Friday of the month' is upon us and once again the unemployment figures are, er, ‘disappointing’.

So what do the pundits say (in a feeble attempt to turn a pig’s ear into a silk purse?)

That the number was ‘higher than expected’.

How fucking pathetic is that?

I don’t have any ‘hard figures’ on the kind of jobs created over the past thirty days but I can say with reasonable confidence that the vast majority of them paid minimum wage…it is the beginning of the holiday hiring season.

Which, interestingly enough, brings us to the other tiny bright spot on the economic horizon

“One of the questions as we go into holidays, frankly, is where margins end up,” said Chris Donnelly, an executive in the retail practice at Accenture, a consulting company. “I think you’re going to see more aggressive discounting to make sure they capture as much of the holiday sales as they can. And you’ve seen it in some of the folks that reported today, where they said sales have gone up but margin and average selling prices have gone down a little bit.”

Generally, stores that go after higher-end shoppers fared better than those focusing on middle- and low-end customers.

The top performers among department stores was Nordstrom, where same-store sales rose 10.7 percent, beating estimates by more than 5 percentage points. Shoppers seemed drawn to luxury purchases; Nordstrom said its top categories for the month were designer clothing, dresses and handbags.

The caveat I omitted from this headline is how ‘upscale stores’ lead the way during the recently passed ‘back to school’ shopping season.

What does this mean good citizen?

It means the rich are stupid!

I sure as fuck wouldn’t be ‘flaunting’ my wealth when everybody else was struggling…but these assholes are…and it is likely they will pay the price for their foolishness.

But the cluelessness doesn’t stop there!

Because Obama is ‘supposed to be’ a Democrat and the Occupy Wall Street movement is definitely not Republican/Tea Party based, the media has tried to, er, ‘align’ the rudderless ship with the progressive movement…and the occupiers are having none of it!

Which does my heart a world of good!

(It has long been my conviction that people aren’t nearly as stupid as the corporate owned media would have you believe they are!)

Which brings us to our next bit of ‘infotainment’

September’s number of new jobs was well more than analysts had expected — one consensus predicted a gain of 55,000 jobs — and the Labor Department also revised the August figure of zero job growth to a gain of 57,000 jobs.

Still, the report came on the heels of disappointing data about consumer confidence and the housing market. Economists have also grown increasingly concerned about a ballooning European debt crisis that could send ripples across the Atlantic.

In a news conference on Thursday, the president urged Congress to act to prevent weaker growth and more job losses. “There are too many people hurting in this country for us to do nothing,” Mr. Obama said. “And the economy is just too fragile for us to let politics get in the way of action.”

Remember good citizen, it takes 150,000 new jobs EVERY DAMN MONTH just to offset the number of new entrants into the labor force…so the ‘additions’ since Obama took office really represent the failure of capitalism to provide employment for all who need it.

Which is to point out there hasn’t been a SINGLE month since the incumbent took office that job creation has exceeded the number necessary to ‘break even’…which is why we have, young workers in the streets, protesting globalization that is DENYING them the ability to get on with their lives!

Switching mental gears here, we run the full spectrum of, er, ‘definitions’ concerning money. There are pundits who believe in a system of rational and finite money and there are those who realize a vast majority of what passes for money is in fact confetti!

The ‘we can’t pay’ crowd, like the ’deficit hawks’ don’t get it.

Money is the most ‘abused’ utility in existence, it is really only ‘useful’ to the ‘end user’.

Why is our civilization falling apart?

Understand good citizen, we DON’T have a MONEY PROBLEM…we have a LEGAL PROBLEM!

Here's one version of today's economic reality:

"CEOs Say U.S. Unlikely to Slip Back Into Recession" (Reuters)
Corporate America's chiefs do not expect the nation to slip back into recession, but say political gridlock in the United States and Europe could make for a long, slow recovery.

Top chief executives including General Electric Co's Jeff Immelt and ExxonMobil Corp's Rex Tillerson said on Thursday that the U.S. economy could remain sluggish but will likely avoid an outright double-dip downturn.

"Recovery is underway, but it's a long, slow recovery. Slower than we'd like," the head of GE (GE.N) told a group of about 500 executives from mid-sized U.S. companies.

While conditions are making executives nervous, the situation does not seem nearly as dire as it did during the credit crunch during the last recession.

"This is a lot different than 2008," said Immelt, chief executive of the largest U.S. conglomerate. "There's liquidity; there's pockets of growth."
And here's another:

"Is US Economy Flirting With 'Modern-Day Depression'?" (CNBC)
“Here we are today, with a severe recession (2007-09) followed by the weakest recovery on record and now on the precipice of another economic downturn,” David Rosenberg, senior economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff in Toronto wrote in a special analysis. “This is a modern-day depression, not entirely dissimilar to Japan’s post-bubble experience of the past two decades.”

As I has stated previously, for all of our financial woes, we don’t have a money problem, we have a huge ‘legal problem’…which is to say the situation won’t be addressed until the laws are changed.

And as the public is starting to realize, that isn’t going to happen until we alter HOW we go about making those laws…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Another WTF moment...

Greetings good citizen,

Have you ever noticed that every day the world’s stock markets tank until the sun rises over the NYSE? Then, as if by miracle, stocks all over the world start ‘rallying’…FOR NO DISCERNABLE REASON!

What is it good citizen, what could it be? Is the answer as simple as we have lunatics in charge of our money supply? UNDERSTAND, the ONLY thing the stock market tells you is how wealthy the criminal class says they are (considering stock ‘values’ have absolutely ZERO foundation in REALITY!

Go ahead, prove me wrong!

But that isn’t the half of it good citizen, the global economy is teetering on the edge of a meltdown and what do our so-called ‘leaders’ do? They EXPORT more of our jobs!

In a recent post I asked the question that has plagued most of us and that question was: Who are these idiots PRETENDING to be Democrats/Progressives?

Observe

The Obama administration moved Monday to complete free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, submitting the deals for Congressional approval after resolving a standoff of months with Republicans over the details of a package both sides said they favored.

By one estimate, a pact with South Korea could increase the annual sales of American goods by as much as $10.9 billion.

Under special rules that govern the consideration of trade deals, Congress has 90 days to approve or reject the agreements, but it cannot amend the terms. The House speaker, John A. Boehner, said Monday that the deals were a “top priority” and promised to move quickly.

“Today we have overcome a crucial hurdle to helping put Americans back to work,” Mr. Boehner said. Then he took a swipe at the White House. “While the delay was unacceptably long and likely cost jobs, I am pleased the Obama administration has finally done its part.”

Talk about clueless and out of touch! Is the first, er, requirement for a politician of either stripe be being brain dead/solid concrete from the shoulders up?

Because one thing is becoming increasingly clear, we are INCAPABLE of electing competent leadership as long as the corporate owned media retains its lock on official information.

Once again I level the charge of treason against those charged with providing the public with accurate information.

Just how clueless do you have to be to miss the connection between these two events?

A loose-knit populist campaign that started on Wall Street three weeks ago has spread to dozens of cities across the country, with protesters camped out in Los Angeles near City Hall, assembled before the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago and marching through downtown Boston to rally against corporate greed, unemployment and the role of financial institutions in the economic crisis.

With little organization and a reliance on Facebook, Twitter and Google groups to share methods, the Occupy Wall Street campaign, as the prototype in New York is called, has clearly tapped into a deep vein of anger, experts in social movements said, bringing longtime crusaders against globalization and professional anarchists together with younger people frustrated by poor job prospects.

Welcome to ‘The New Normal’ good citizen where the ‘Fuck you, pay me’ system of commerce refuses to employ more than half of working age citizens…because it cuts into THEIR profits!

You don’t need me to tell you that this is a social model that doesn’t hunt!

So why do our politicians keep voting us out of our jobs?

Worse good citizen, how do we stop our politicians from voting us out of a job (and turning the nation into a Banana Republic in the process?)

Because that’s precisely what the ‘less government regulation crowd’ wants. They WANT you to reject the government so they can import EVERYTHING and if you can’t afford it, tough!

Once you’re thirty they’ll send you to the farm…once you pass forty the mother fuckers will turn you into compost! (Not them, mind you, their minds are too valuable, it is YOUR now aged and ‘weak’ back that can’t keep up…society shouldn’t be ‘forced’ to carry YOU!)

Our species will not survive if the predators among us are given free rein.

We either get this right (via A Simple Plan) or we can just hang it up because we are NOT going to evolve beyond what we’ve become…a species that is perfectly content to cannibalize its own kind.

The choice, as they say, is yours.

Do nothing and suffer the consequences.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Seized!

Greetings good citizen,

If you step back and look at the bigger picture it is really getting quite frightening out there. Our ‘economy’ is imported and unable to support itself, our, er, ‘Constitution’ no longer exists if you, er, stand up for your rights and this 'anything goes' shit (the rich commit crimes unimpeded while the cops tread on our civil liberties…)

Add it all up and what have you got good citizen?

You’ve got FUBAR good citizen, a system that is both broken and collapsing at the center!

We are literally inches from martial law…which is to ask why, all of a sudden, almost 5 years after the fact, they are ‘protesting’ on Wall Street?

Under the ‘general anger’ and anti-bank sentiment the public is harboring the, er, guilty are getting nervous, ‘anticipating’ if you will.

For yea, verily, there WILL be RETRIBUTION and the guilty KNOW it.

Worse, they live in abject terror of a repeat of what has become to be known as ‘The Horror’ (see French Revolution.)

I’m here to tell you good citizen that it is likely to be worse…on both ends!

Understand that martial law will be the criminal’s ‘declaration of war’ on the general public, and it will be followed by a ‘pre-emptive strike’ to jail the potential ‘leaders’ of the festering uprising.

The list of crimes I experienced locally in the past week is NOT an isolated incident. The ‘desperation’ of the struggling masses is boiling to the surface, disrupting what passes for ‘order’.

While the media currently ‘pretends’ it is not happening they will soon do a 180 and put the spotlight on, er, ‘crime’ (that they themselves are responsible for.)

These crimes are the direct result of THEIR mismanagement!

Justice needs to be re-established…sadly, the ‘go-along to get along’ crowd will (stupidly) engage the rest of us in a battle they cannot win.

Um, I think this sets a record for going ‘off the reservation’ I normally save these tirades for page 2!

ASSUMING the ‘march on Wall St/the banks’ ISN’T a media ploy (And I, for one, think it is) then the criminal class would be getting ‘nervous’, there’s no running from ‘The Giant’, it is everywhere and it sees everything.

Sadly, The Giant is also a little stupid, the criminals have been fooling it easily for…well, time out of mind. However, as The French Revolution proves, every once in a while the criminals overplay their hand…

Then there’s hell to pay.

This, bizarrely, leads us to the ‘end game’. What do the criminals hope to gain by killing off the ‘surplus population’?

The most effective way to, er, extend our rapidly dwindling resources is to kill off as many of the ‘end users’ as you dare.

Kill too many and you endanger future generations (by making the gene pool too shallow…and we can only hope chuckle-head has considered this.)

Unfortunately, we aren’t dealing with the sharpest tools in the shed (or they wouldn’t be attempting this crazy maneuver!)

For once again we need to accept the fact that these people are ‘socio-paths’, they aren’t all there up top.

So…we need to stop them!

Naturally sooner would be better than later.

Let’s get to it!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Not clear on the concept...

Greetings good citizen,

How does that old saying go, “there are none more enslaved than those who THINK they are ‘free’’…or something like that.

In retrospect, I am ‘down’ on a number of institutions in, er, ‘this society’ (since most of us are ‘victims’ of our rulers I hesitate to call this society ‘ours’.)

I am down on political parties (if we’re all in this together then who the hell is the ‘opposition’?) as I’m down on ‘voting’ (as it is currently practiced. Voting is a decision-making process so voting for who will make decisions for you without EVER consulting you is more than a bit illogical.)

I am also down on ‘protests’. While we see ‘high profile’ protests in other countries most of the time protests go without media coverage (unless hundreds of them are arrested for ‘civil disobedience’.)

Sadly, this ‘petitioning the government’ over (both) real and imagined grievances produces zero results.

So when I encountered this article in my morning reading I selected it as the subject for my own peculiar variety of ‘contrary’ reasoning.

The article ends thus:

Progressives need to offer an analysis that gives citizens the confidence to challenge the economic policy of Wall Street. At the same time, we need to provide an inspirational vision of the kind of society we are working to create. And we need to seriously plan how to achieve that vision by fighting for and winning transformative economic change that redistributes wealth and power. We can restore an arc of history that bends toward justice, equality and greater opportunity for us all, if we have the courage to challenge the most powerful and together take a step closer to the promised land. Otherwise, we may soon watch 100 years of victories disappear.

My readers are aware that recent events in the Middle East are NOT the ‘cry for democracy’ our bought and paid for corporate media would have you believe.

These mostly African nations are revolting against the corrupt governments they have no say in. While US supported ‘democracy movements’ are claiming responsibility, the ensuing riots have more to do with economic hardship and perceived government, er, ‘incompetence’ than the publicized desire to ‘imitate’ their Western oppressor.

While the writer is correct in stating we need to, er, ‘insist on’ our goal of a more equitable society, a protest is just as likely to get you shot as participating in a riot will.

In fact, the Sixties proved the only way to ‘get noticed’ was for ‘demonstrations’ to turn violent…much the same way our great grandparents did when protesting for fair wages and a more humane work week.

If it bleeds, it leads…which says something mighty pathetic about the people in charge of our ‘public information systems’.

In fact, information is, in my opinion, too precious to be ‘comodified’, especially by sensationalist hucksters.

But I digress.

Is the writer calling for ‘confrontation’ or is she merely seeking people willing to ‘peacefully’ rally around progressive causes?

Because even the suggestion that people unite less than peacefully is a crime.

How sad is it that only confrontation will draw the necessary attention to the issues at hand BUT advocating confrontation is a crime!

Not that it should matter, the way our affairs are being mis-managed is a crime too!

And it’s high time we start prosecuting those crimes.

Which is to belabor the obvious, we can hardly expect the criminals to prosecute themselves. They also have an annoying habit of ‘pardoning’ both the perp as well as those who ‘masterminded’ the crime.

Something that won’t stop until we put a stop to it.

Call it ‘blowback’ but some (relatively innocent) parties are going to suffer ‘retribution’ due to an ‘unfortunate choice of career paths.’

One would hope they’d all get a ‘fair trial’ but you know how ugly mobs can get…

Not to be mean but this sort of talk is already percolating through the affected industry.

Naturally, those who feel offended by being tarred with the same brush the ‘more guilty’ of their profession have attracted, scorn the ‘unfairness’ of such threats.

Sadly, protesting alone achieves nothing.

The unfairly judged will be compelled to fight fire with fire…if they can pull it off.

But I once again digress.

This is about the ‘effectiveness’ of protest. Due to the criminality of advocating violent protest, we can only ‘read between the lines’ and ‘fill in the blanks’ for ourselves.

I am down on protests, conversely, I am the first to endorse ‘confrontation’ as the only effective means of instituting ‘change’.

Even if those ‘changes’ are the ‘cleaning out’ of now corrupt regimes that infest public office.

As the Egyptians are learning, throwing out one despot and replacing him with his right hand man is, er, ‘beyond useless’.

Which is to say that a ‘clean sweep’ is useless if we fail to modify the process used to replace that which has been swept clean.

Again, not what to think but something to think about…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner