Tinman 2

Greetings good citizen,

I feel good today (despite the gods having gone mad!) Which seems to be today’s theme. Yesterday I complained about society losing its values, today we will take in the leading headlines and scratch our heads, wondering what ‘our betters’ were thinking…because it is obvious they weren’t!

Robot Makers Spread Global Gospel of Automation
By JOHN MARKOFF

Manufacturers of robots and similar machines gathered in Chicago, casting automation as an indispensable engine of economic growth.

Read the last line and marvel over the twit who stated it! Employers LOVE robots, they will work around the clock without taking a break, doing whatever it is they were designed to do, until they break.

The fly in this ointment is a society filled with robots needs nothing but the energy to power them, there is no ‘economy’ for robots.

Do we really need to ask HOW STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE to not understand that?

And yeah, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t thoroughly enjoy kicking the capitalists in the shins every chance I get!

Because it is capitalist stupidity that gives us stories like this:

BUSINESS
Boeing's Battery Problems Cast Doubt on Appraisal of New Technologies
By JAD MOUAWAD and CHRISTOPHER DREW

The 787's difficulties have raised questions about how regulators certify new technology and how they balance advances in design and engineering with safety.

Hold everything! I thing we found the twit who think robots are the answer to the automation problem [idiots!]

Was it an accident or by design that the corporate owned media runs the ‘perfect’ follow up story next?

Share of the Work Force in a Union Falls to a 97-Year Low, 11.3%
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the percentage of American workers in labor unions fell to 11.3 percent last year, the lowest since 11.2 percent in 1916.

That’s the other thing employers LOVE about robots! They don’t join unions! So the union isn’t in their face demanding more humane working conditions and that demand they really hate, more wages!

Although it has become the hallmark of capitalist stupidity that people who can’t afford your products won’t buy them, so cutting heads when sales drop is not an ‘effective strategy’.

Oh, and since robots don’t get paychecks (or benefit packages) they also don’t buy your products!

Bottom line. The same people who can no longer afford to pay for your products will eventually STEAL them…but you’re insured, right?

And when the heads you’ve cut burn your plant down, same answer, right? (Naturally, you re-open in China!) But your new employee/customers won’t be able to afford our products either so what will you do?

Same thing as these guys?

Nokia Shows a Profit, but Shares Drop
By KEVIN J. O’BRIEN 50 minutes ago

Investor hopes were raised when the Finnish cellphone maker said it would turn a profit, but sales of its flagship Lumia were less than expected.

The homeless don’t need a phone, nobody they want to talk to that isn’t within arm’s reach…which is the fertile soil revolutions are sown in.

How sad is it good citizen that we lack a unifying ideology? [Like A Simple Plan?]

Like a ticking time bomb, how long do you think we have before this bad boy blows?

Euro Watch
Data Point to Slow Recovery in Euro Zone
By REUTERS

While the euro zone economy moved a step closer to recovery this month, Spain’s unemployment rate surged to 26 percent.

Sure looks to me like that headline is missing an ‘s’, should read ’points’ but hey, I just cut and paste, ya know?

What’s up with the mixed message? On one hand they are, er, ‘asserting’ that conditions in the euro-zone are ‘improving’ then they point to sky-high unemployment and shrug…

Did I mention our civilization is SEVERELY ‘mismanaged’?

These people shouldn’t just be fired, they should be made to walk the plank into shark infested water (but that would constitute cruelty towards sharks!)

No living organism can eat that many ‘empty calories’ without being adversely effected.

I am no Luddite good citizen. In many cases automation is a larger boon to the employee than it is to the employer.

What I am pointing to is SOME things can tolerate automation and others CAN’T. Wisdom needs to be exercised rather than idiotic profit/loss ratios.

Our civilization is collapsing because society has become unbalanced due to the reckless/relentless pursuit of profits.

When profits supercede people without mitigating factors it is beyond destructive, it is catastrophic!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Led by Charlatains

Greetings good citizen,

It is hilarious that the so-called ‘Progressives’ are accusing the conservo-whackos of living in a ‘permanent fantasy world’ when they persist in serving up tripe like this…

Before we begin this latest excursion into ‘wishful thinking’ let me repeat my ‘mantra’, there is NO WAY to ‘fix’ capitalism with capitalism! All of the fixes are ‘predatory’ too!

6 Economic Steps to a Better Life and Real Prosperity for All
We've got to break out of the old ways of thinking about the economy.

Step one.) A People’s Bank
One area where this logic can be seen at work is in the financial industry. At the height of the financial crisis in early 2009, some kind of nationalization of the banks seemed possible. It was a moment, President Obama told banking CEOs, when his administration was “the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” The president opted for a soft bailout, but that was not the only possible decision.

Banking is ‘personal’ yet the capitalists have turned it into a ‘profit center’ (for themselves) by forcing the rest of us to pay outrageous prices for what we can’t do without.

How do you think a ‘People’s bank’ is going to solve this?

It won’t because it can’t. Nationalizing the banks wouldn’t make them any less predatory. They would still operate on the principle of borrow cheap and lend dear.

The ‘real alternative’ to predatory banking is to make banking an internal function of the payroll process. Your money ‘stays put’. They don’t lend it to anybody (they don’t need to.) We won’t stop the capitalist ‘crazy train’ until we put the brakes on the insane practice of money making money!

Then we get banks out of the ‘lending business’ because all of the things you needed to ‘borrow money’ for are…‘gimmes’!

If you step back and look at it good citizen, the whole borrowing process is nothing but an elaborate extortion scheme…but what would you expect from CRIMINALS?

Moving on:

Step Two.) Move to Universal Healthcare

That austerity and failing reform might open the way to "evolutionary reconstructive" institutional change is also suggested by emerging developments in healthcare.

Cost pressures are also building up—and, critically, in ways that will continue to undermine U.S. corporations facing global competitors, forcing them to seek new solutions. The federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that healthcare costs will go up from the 2010 level of 17.5 percent of GDP to 19.6 percent in 2019. It has long been clear that over the long-haul cost pressures are ultimately likely to force development of some form of single-payer system —the only serious way to deal with the underlying problem.

Again, under a ‘sane’ system, healthcare would be FREE, but that’s not what dummy is proposing here, is it?

How sad is it that Plato’s ‘unimaginative worldview’ persists to this day? (He couldn’t imagine a world without slaves.)

But anyway:

Step Three.) Build Community Wealth

“Social enterprises” that undertake businesses in order to support specific social missions now increasingly comprise what is sometimes called a "fourth sector” (different from the government, business and non-profit sectors). Roughly 4,500 not-for-profit community development corporations are largely devoted to housing development. There are now also more than 10,000 businesses owned in whole or part by their employees; nearly 3 million more individuals are involved in these enterprises than are members of private sector unions. Another 130 million Americans are members of various urban, agricultural and credit union cooperatives. In many cities, “land trusts” are underway using an institutional form of nonprofit or municipal ownership that develops and maintains low- and moderate-income housing.

I find myself speechless with the utter ‘blindness’ the above bullet point displays. We’re talking ‘whales and tic tacs’ here! All I have to say is see my initial ‘mantra’ and hold that up to this (capitalism saving) proposal!

Those ‘pretending’ to be Progressives are in fact Libertarians, free-market lovers to the end!

But I digress:

Step Four.) Leverage City Assets [!!]

Yet another arena of institutional growth involves municipal development. By maintaining direct ownership of areas surrounding transit station exits, public agencies in Washington, DC, Atlanta and elsewhere earn millions, capturing the increased land values their transit investments create. The town of Riverview, Michigan has been a national leader in trapping methane from its landfills and using it to fuel electricity generation, thereby providing both revenue and jobs. There are roughly 500 similar projects nationwide. Many cities have established municipally owned hotels. There are also nearly 2,000 publicly owned utilities that provide power (and often broadband) to more than 45 million Americans, generating $50 billion in annual revenue. Significant public institutions are also common at the state level. CalPERS, California’s public pension authority, helps finance local community development needs; in Alaska, state oil revenues provide each citizen with dividends as a matter of right; in Alabama, public pension investing has long focused on state economic development.

Rope-a-dope has the whole situation wrong! The only reason the capitalists ‘gave away’ free internet and in some cases free electricity was to boost the sale of portables and hand helds!

There have been some mighty expensive ‘ruses’ perpetrated on the public to mask the fact that our economy was being gutted and this dummy is just keeps falling into the traps left and right!

Next!

Step Five.) Organize for the Long Haul

You can think of the slow buildup of democratizing strategies as the pre-historical developmental work needed to clarify new principles for larger scale application. Just as in the decades before the New Deal, state and local experiments in the “laboratories of democracy” may suggest new larger scale approaches. The new direction has four aspects; democratization of wealth; community, both locally and in general; decentralization in general; and substantial but not complete forms of democratic planning. Let’s take a look at each of these.

Follow the link to the main article…

Politics is largely ‘media driven’. Control the media and politics cease to matter…but these Ivory Tower types don’t seem to get that, thus do you get the above stupidity!

And lastly…

Step Six.) Cut Corporate Power Down to Size [!!!]

To deal with economic issues, ecological challenges and local community stability, we must also come to terms with corporate power dynamics. Public corporations are subject to Wall Street’s first commandment: Grow or die!” You can’t just wish or regulate that idea away.

If I could only remember where I put that magic wand…

What is this guy smokin’?

You are right to be wary of people offering to ‘save the world’ with a few simple changes…those changes need to alter the path of humanity and not just perpetuate what’s broken.

Ironically, we return to the age-old debate where on the surface it appears we have a ‘money problem’ when in reality we have a massive ‘legal’ one.

Until we can truly institute a ‘lawful government’ we will continue to be ‘mis-ruled’ by man…and the likes of unimaginative types such as this writer who thinks more of the same will fix things, somehow!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Brinksmanship

Greetings good citizen,

What a week to round out a year spent waiting for the other shoe to drop, eh?

Seems we aren't the only ones incapable of rolling back the tax structure:

French Council Strikes Down 75% Tax Rate
By SCOTT SAYARE 11:33 AM ET

A council opposed a plan to impose a 75 percent marginal income tax rate on the wealthy that would have applied to annual income above 1 million euros, or about $1.3 million.

Like I said in yesterday’s post, this ‘criminal elite’ shit transcends the ‘Nation State’ (via the global banking cartels.)

Which, ironically, leaves us here:

If a deal is reached, votes in the Senate could begin Sunday.

Obama Urges Senate Leaders to Put Together a Tax Deal
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and ANNIE LOWREY 12:03 PM ET

In his weekly address, President Obama again urged lawmakers to find a last-minute solution to avert a fiscal crisis that would begin Jan. 1.

As many of my contemporaries point out, the ‘fiscal cliff’ only exists in the ‘neocons’ heads.

It is being used as an excuse to extend tax cuts the wealthy should never have received and to cut desperately needed social programs as the global economy continues to tank.

The question none of our so-called ‘betters’ is prepared to answer is what they intend to do about the badly broken and now largely rogue criminal banking sector.

It CAN’T be ‘repaired’ (and certainly not by the criminals currently in charge!) so it has to be ‘replaced’…and none of the chiselers has given this predicament a single moment of thought.

So we get bullshit stories like this:

Several of Walmart's suppliers had used the factory in Bangladesh where 112 workers died last month.

As Walmart Makes Safety Vows, It’s Seen as Obstacle to Change
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and JIM YARDLEY

After a deadly factory fire in Bangladesh stirred soul-searching around the apparel industry, critics say Walmart has not done enough to improve safety standards.

And naturally those ‘critics’ will be dismissed as being ‘anti-capitalist’ and ignored.

Business always does the right thing (for the company, if some employees become collateral damage, so what?)

There was an interesting story in the local rag praising a recent government decision to make restitution to the families of workers who unwittingly handled highly hazardous material (which proved fatal for almost all of them!)

And the decidedly conservative local rag was praising the government for doing the ‘right thing’…while totally ignoring the private sector employer who murdered these people (by failing to disclose, never mind failing to provide adequate safeguards so these workers might have had a fighting chance.

Again it is being swept under the rug under the mantle of ‘state secret’ and the situation does involve The Manhattan Project and how the uranium was processed.

And the private sector contractor didn’t pay these people a single cent extra…(probably terminated them when they got sick!)

(I know, nothing personal, it’s just business! Where are your fucking ‘job creators’ when people die because of their recklessness? Sadly the twits are still thumping their chests, damn proud of what they’ve done!)

Stupid is as stupid does…

Did I mention capitalism is a bad idea? How about another example:

Utility workers in Seaside Heights, N.J., making pole repairs after the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy.
Hurricane Sandy Alters Utilities’ Calculus on Upgrades
By DIANE CARDWELL, MATTHEW L. WALD and CHRISTOPHER DREW

It is typically much cheaper for a utility, and its customers, to skip prevention measures and just clean up the mess after a catastrophe, but Hurricane Sandy has changed that thinking.

This particular headline sends a chill up my spine because of what’s implied here. The US no longer ‘needs’ its robust power infrastructure (as our ‘betters’ continue to export our jobs wholesale.)

Will our ‘private sector’ power companies take the ‘cheap out’ once again and only replace what is needed to restore service, even if that means reduced capacity?

What the hell, the peasants don’t need it (and can’t pay for it anyway…)

Have you ever wondered what would happen if our mostly imported economy stopped?

Unlike the fiscal cliff, the fuckers in charge bowed to the longshoreman’s demands…partially anyway.

Ports in Newark and more than a dozen other cities will stay open after longshoremen reached an agreement with shipping companies to avert a coastwide strike.

Partial Deal With Union Averts a Strike at 14 Ports
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Shipping companies and dockworkers reached a deal on their main dispute, and the longshoremen’s union agreed to drop its threat of a strike this Sunday.

Probably just a mistaken perception that ‘brinksmanship’ has become the watch-word of the day. Fiscal cliff on one hand with a shutdown of the real economy looming on the other.

Yeah, it just ‘looks like’ they’re playing ‘hardball’ (because if they really try it there can be ‘no escape’ for most of them.)

And stiffing so many of their minions would leave them in a bad way when it came to cleaning up the mess the peasants are going to make.

Yeah, life can really suck when you look down on everyone like they’re beneath dirt.

Just something to ponder as we head off the non-existent ‘fiscal cliff’…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Et tu?

Greetings good citizen,

Hope you had pleasant holidays. The cranky old man made out better than usual this year for reasons unknown…perhaps the need became too great to ignore.

And the list of stuff we ‘need’ (as a family) grows unabated (the refrigerator is a disaster waiting to happen and the water heater is right behind it! Oh and we have yet to replace the blown out idiot box.

The reason for all of the above is ‘lack of funds’.

And while I am crying ‘bonanza’ here in the gift department, the single most expensive item I received was a badly needed warm coat that must have cost all of $25.

The rest can be listed on one hand and I’d still have fingers left over…(normally all I get is one gift. Like a DVD of a movie the kids liked.)

But wait good citizen, before you dismiss my grumblings as a self-absorbed ‘pity-party’ have a gander as to what has slipped into common civil discourse

Her musings were suddenly interrupted when her date asked a decidedly unromantic question: “What’s your credit score?”

“It was as if the music stopped,” Ms. LaShawn, 31, said, recalling how the date this year went so wrong so quickly after she tried to answer his question honestly. “It was really awkward because he kept telling me that I was the perfect girl for him, but that a low credit score was his deal-breaker.”

The credit score, once a little-known metric derived from a complex formula that incorporates outstanding debt and payment histories, has become an increasingly important number used to bestow credit, determine housing and even distinguish between job candidates.

It’s so widely used that it has also become a bigger factor in dating decisions, sometimes eclipsing more traditional priorities like a good job, shared interests and physical chemistry. That’s according to interviews with more than 50 daters across the country, all under the age of 40.

I’ve always been something of a Neanderthal when it comes to matters romantic and there were certain things you didn’t look at when considering a potential mate…but fucking credit scores?

Anthropologically speaking good citizen were scroomed!

Looks like this ‘insensitive lout’ got what he deserved (kicked to the curb!) but still, has it all come down to something as artificial as credit score?

Understand good citizen, the fucking thieving One Percent don’t worry about their credit score. Anyone stupid enough to downgrade their credit wouldn’t survive to see the sun rise again. (They largely DON’T pay so their ‘credit’ should suck! Why do you think they are ‘rich’ in the first place?)

In fact, you won’t find the One Percent picking their children from the bottom of a test tube, they can ‘afford’ mates of prime breeding age that don’t need to jump through hoops to conceive.

This, species-wise, is a decidedly disturbing development.

Maybe once we ‘regress’ to Banana Republic status our breeding pool will ‘level off’ (return to where it ‘should be’.)

Of course, this will do little to relieve the over-population crisis, which is at the root of all of our social ills.

Yes, good citizen, it is even behind the incredible shrinking dollar.

The nabobs who have set themselves above us don’t possess the intestinal fortitude to deal with the problem, so they ignore it while it festers.

How sad is it that they are correct in their assumption that the problem will be ‘self-correcting’?

Because the coming disease and death is totally unnecessary.

But, as has been demonstrated amply in the past, our betters don’t think…it hurts their little heads too much.

Is it frightening to you that these paragons of logic believe mother nature will contrive to have some of our species survive a killer plague (despite other species being wiped out completely in the past?)

It’s a risk they’re willing to take (although SOME of them are preparing to avoid the plague entirely…again with crossed fingers.)

In fact, some have confined themselves to their ‘safe havens’ already. They (and theirs) will not venture forth until the ‘Old World’ has passed.

The weak link here is whether or not the Haven is self-sufficient. If they are having goods imported from the outside to maintain a so-called ‘modern lifestyle’ they are as dead as the rest of us.

Which is to opine that stupidity can’t be stopped with dollar signs…or credit scores.

Et tu, good citizen?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Happy Holidays

Greetings good citizen,

As the old saying goes ‘that didn’t take long’ (in reference to November’s election changing nothing in Washington.) What we’re seeing now is just Kabuki theater.

Obama Will Ride to the Rescue ... for Republicans

The Republicans have put themselves in a holy mess with this Plan B debacle. They now have less than zero leverage. They are a national laughingstock. A majority of the country now thinks they are "too extreme." They just got walloped in the election. And with the tax cuts set to expire the laws are rigged against them as well.

There is only one person who can rescue the Republican Party now -- Barack Obama. And he will. I have been saying for over two years now that President Obama is dying to do the Grand Bargain. He will do it at any cost. In fact, he actively wants to cut Social Security and Medicare. He can't wait for that pat on the back from the establishment when they finally call him post-partisan, above party politics, and a statesman for screwing over his own voters. This is by far his greatest wish.

I couldn't believe that people couldn't believe that President Obama offered to cut Social Security again in this round of negotiations. What are you still surprised at? The man has offered to cut these so-called entitlements every time. When are you going to get it through your head -- he wants to cut them!

You take that last paragraph and hold it up next to Mitt flipping off half of the nation’s voters a month before the election and tell me it was a ‘coincidence’.

They (the One Percent) just didn’t want to have (another) ‘one of their own’ in office being associated with the dismantling of the US economy.

Not that anyone at this late stage of the game has any illusions about who is responsible for turning this once great country into an economic desert…

Only Republican ‘true believers’ think otherwise and persist in blaming long extinct ‘liberals’ for their own failed policies.

(Which is to opine that the ‘hard core’ of this group will test positive for the incurable genetic defect that revokes their membership in civil society.)

As you can see I am back atop yesterday’s hobby horse of whether or not the One Percent is obliged to admit they have, er, ‘usurped’ the government.

The obvious answer is no, no they don’t (or the blow-back would be incredible…as well as tragic. The ‘rag-tag’ can’t tell the merely prosperous from the uber-wealthy.)

Of course, when that barrier tumbles it will be a little late to draw up a list or to even put the brakes on the bloodshed, which will flow in both directions…copiously.

But I digress…

The article asks, as I have repeatedly, what are we going to do with a chief executive that doesn’t have the public’s best interests in mind?

NOT doing what we elected him to do IS HIS PEROGATIVE. It’s a risk built in to the stupid system we were saddled with. (Which assumes, had we been given a choice, we wouldn’t still be doing it this way BUT this is how the ‘One Percent’ (entrenched wealth) wants it.)

Worse (isn’t it always worse?) we have NO WAY to fix the problem ourselves.

We must, er, ‘convince’ our legislators to fix it for us and as you can see, three weeks after the general election, our useless politicians are fighting like the election never happened…or worse, didn’t turn out as it did!

What do you do when the people elected to serve you flip you the bird?

You won’t even get the ‘pleasure’ of voting Obama out of office he can’t be re-elected! (Which is a mighty dangerous thing push come to shove…and who do we have to thank for that little headache? The Republicans, naturally!)

So, still don’t think we need to scrap our political system?

Don’t worry, it’s falling apart by itself.

Inaction will be enough to institute change but as we have seen it will not be the ‘change’ you were hoping for.

Nor, if you aren’t a member of the One Percent, will it be changes that will do you any good.

In fact a whole world of ‘bad’ is waiting to fall upon the heads of those too…‘stubborn’ to see what’s happening and thereby fail to act.

There’s another word that begins with ‘st’ to describe this phenomenon but it doesn’t win you any friends (not that you’d want to ally yourself with the stupid…)

If you’re hoping all of this is going to ‘go away’ then you are living in a dream world and actively participating in the same kind of behavior that got this nation stolen from us in the first place. (My apologies to the Native Americans who need no schooling on this topic…)

It’s the idiot Europeans who came in the ‘second wave’ chasing the ‘American Dream’ that need a stiff slap upside the head.

You aren’t in Kansas anymore and the flying monkeys ate Toto so you’re on your own little girl.

What are you going to do now?

On that note, advance warning, I will not be posting tomorrow and the day after isn’t looking good either.

Try not to get yourself killed and I’ll see you here again on Wednesday,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The King's Speech

Greetings good citizen,

Just five more shopping days ‘til 12/21/12! Make sure you get your ‘End of Days’ gifts early…you wouldn’t want to find yourself ‘left behind’.

But all joking aside the stock market continues to (as the neocons put it) ‘make its own reality’ as stock prices rise in defiance of reality on the ground.

Be that as it may, I think we finally have an answer to the niggling question of what’s the ‘common thread’ behind all of these shooting rampages?

And while the President (to his credit) went on national TV last night and promised to do ‘everything in his power’ to change things…how much change do you think the president can make?

Sadly I strongly suspect his speech is the only thing we’ll get.

The ‘hope of change’ is going to have to sustain us for now.

The newly re-elected president offered few specifics about how he planned to proceed, saying only that he will engage with law enforcement, mental health professionals, parents and educators in the coming weeks. Just days after the shooting at an elementary school, Obama is already facing pressure from fellow Democrats and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to tackle gun control legislation, a contentious issue he avoided as he sought a second term.

But Friday's shooting, which left 20 children and eight adults dead, appears to have spurred some soul-searching by Obama, who told Connecticut's governor that Friday was the most difficult day of his presidency. Speaking to families of the victims and first responders, Obama said Sunday that he had been reflecting on whether the country was doing enough to give its children "the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose."

"And if we're honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We're not doing enough, and we will have to change," Obama said. Sunday marked the fourth time in Obama's presidency that he has traveled to a community shaken by a mass shooting. Just this summer, he made a similar visit to Aurora, Colo., where a dozen people were killed in a movie theater attack.

What’s next ‘bomb control?’ (Once gun control is proven ‘ineffective’…)

And that’s the sad reality good citizen, take away the guns and the ‘disenfranchised’ will be forced to kick their game up a notch…and that means bombs.

Do you REALLY want to trade guns for bombs? Because the problems this gruesome phenomenon represents isn’t going to ‘go away’ just because you took the law abidings ability to defend themselves away?

As this article (miraculously) alludes to, this is NOT a gun issue, legislation to outlaw guns would be just as effective as outlawing insanity! It won’t work.

You want to stop mass murder? Take away the murderer’s reason to act out!

It is finally becoming apparent precisely what all of these ‘kids’ have in common…kids with their ‘whole lives’ ahead of them.

But what if all you saw was a future without hope, being a debt slave until the day you dropped…and if you DON’T agree to play that game the alternative is how many bugs can you catch (‘hopefully’ without having to use yourself as bait?)

Yup, one thing we can credit our school system with is their success in pounding the message ‘you’re on your own’ into our young people’s brains.

Worse, they all come from homes that have seen their parents struggle to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads…and the kids think ‘if my parents can’t do it then how the heck am I going to make it?

And they arrive at their own conclusion.

How fucking sad is it that the kids are usually right?

Worse, that they decide suicide is the only way out.

As a 'parting shot' what do you suppose these people’s kids are learning?

For Spaniards, Having a Job No Longer Guarantees a Paycheck
By SUZANNE DALEY

With Spain’s ongoing economic crisis leaving local governments in debt and businesses struggling, workers sometimes have to resort to legal measures simply to be paid.

Will they grow up hating a tax-starved government or will they loathe themselves for not being ‘higher born’?

Because, ironically, these poor kids see the government and not the tax dodging wealthy as the problem.

The kids are too young to realize that the problem stems from the lawyers of the wealthy taking those unpaid tax dollars for themselves.

Did I mention our entire (global) legal system is totally fubar?

Well, last night’s announcement was indeed as outstanding as it was awe inspiring…too sad that it is also ‘as good as it gets.’

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wisdom

Greetings good citizen,

The markets are doing their damnedest to hold on to yesterday’s gains, which is troubling by itself. But, it becomes even more disturbing when you factor in the idea of Are we, as a species, getting dumber?

Crabtree’s central thesis to back his claim up is, according to PopSci , that “each generation produces deleterious mutations, so down the line of human history, our intelligence is ever more impaired compared to that of our predecessors.”

He argues that you can see evidence of this process in humans sense of smell. Now, humans are largely guided by intellect when it comes to what we eat, for example. Humans have “far fewer olfactory receptors than other animals,” according to Crabtree. Dogs, on the other hand, have more olfactory receptors (the neurons responsible for smelling things.)

“Once you place pressure on intellectual abilities, and take it off of olfactory abilities, the olfactory genes deteriorate,” PopSci quotes Crabtree as saying.

But other geneticists have raised questions about Crabtree’s work. In an interview with The Independent , geneticist Steve Jones said that Crabtree’s paper was like “arts faculty science...Never mind the hypothesis, give me the data, and there aren’t any. I could just as well argue that mutations have reduced our aggression, our depression and our penis length, but no journal would publish that. Why do they publish this?”

I am making a leap here and ‘assuming’ Mr. Crabtree is basing his findings on the ‘if you don’t use it you lose it’ premise.

However, we don’t really have a good definition for intelligence (or wisdom for that matter, not that anyone values that, er, ‘virtue’ any longer…)

Intelligence can provide us with a hundred ways to fling ourselves against a brick wall…it is wisdom that tells us to go around the wall.

But are we getting dumber?

Theoretically the answer is yes (following the ‘if you don’t use it you lose it’ theory.)

Look at how much hogwash the average individual is forced to swallow to remain a viable member of civil society.

First he has to ‘make himself useful’ (usually at his own expense.)

Then he must buy everything he needs to survive from people who have no right to sell it to him!

But that’s ‘okay’, that’s their business, you not supposed to concern yourself with things that aren’t your business…even when they directly effect how YOU live!

So the ability to ignore YOUR best interests has to be suppressed so somebody else can act in THEIR best interests…and FUCK YOU.

This is where they wheel out the old ‘nobody said the system was perfect’ bullshit on you…and who tells you this, the same dickheads who are getting a marginally better deal than you’re getting!

Keep you nose clean and MAYBE you can be one of them!

Wait, did you just feel your IQ drop another ten points?

Have you abandoned all hope of ever possessing even a shred of wisdom?

Wisdom tells us to ‘go around the wall’…

So maybe it’s time to ‘wise up’!

They only fuck you because you let them.

How friggin’ sad is that?

Well good citizen, now they want to fuck you without having to pay you at all…and there ain’t a fucking thing you can do about it…except go around the wall.

What is wisdom telling us to do here?

The ‘goal’ is to ‘level the playing field’ and in order to achieve that we have to stop giving and start TAKING!

It really is ‘simple’ as A Simple Plan.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Cascading Systemic Collapse

Greetings good citizen,

We can be sure the unmentioned and therefore ‘inconsequential’ drop of the Dow below the 13,000 point level will be laid at the feet of ‘Superstorm Sandy’

But other evidence points in in a more disturbing direction

The ‘Euro-Zone’ has officially returned to ‘recession’:

Official figures Thursday showed that the eurozone contracted by 0.1 percent in the July to September period from the quarter before as economies including Germany and the Netherlands suffer from falling demand.

The decline reported by Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, was in line with market expectations and follows on from the 0.2 percent fall recorded in the second quarter. As a result, the eurozone is officially in recession, commonly defined as two straight quarters of falling output.

"The eurozone economy will continue its decline in Q4 and probably well into 2013 too — a good backdrop for another debt crisis," said Michael Taylor, an economist at Lombard Street Research. Because of the eurozone's grueling three-year debt crisis, the region has been the major focus of concern for the world economy. The eurozone economy is worth around €9.5 trillion, or $12.1 trillion, which puts it on a par with the U.S.. The region, with its 332 million people, is the U.S.'s largest export customer, and any fall-off in demand will hit order books.

Um, hope you have your waders on good citizen because that tune you’re hearing in the background is Lenny Cohen’s ‘Everybody Knows’.

Isn’t it interesting that the Corporate owned media is telling us that the US exports anything? Although it shouldn’t surprise us in the slightest that corporate USA still PRETENDS its Chinese subsidiaries are just insignificant divisions of US, er, ‘based’ corporations.

Like fucking Apple!

How many of you sooth your consciences with the thought ‘at least it’s not American workers committing suicide due to the unbearable demands of their supervisors’ as far as Foxcon is concerned?

Is it a good thing because they used to be the jobs us workers did, that this is the technology that US engineering perfected?

But hey, what is the US when we living in a ‘globalized’ world? The Chinese would have done it themselves…eventually…once we showed them how.

But wait a minute slim, why is the global economy broken?

Or more succinctly, why has ‘innovation’ stopped dead in its tracks?

Is our badly broken justice system stifling creativity? Why bother breaking new ground if your idea will be stolen and you won’t get anything for it?

(You can’t sue the thief if you aren’t already a gazillionaire…sad simple fact.)

Which is to say the ravenous capitalists will make a fortune and if you’re very lucky, you might get credit for it…somewhere.

Let’s just say that the greatest argument against ‘socializing’ the workplace fairs no better under the largely lawless ‘free markets’.

And under a socialized workplace at least innovation can be pursued, bizarrely the capitalist isn’t interested in killing yesterdays ‘cash cow’ a minute before it is absolutely necessary.

Take a good look at the stagnant, job-starved marketplace and tell me this is a ‘good thing’.

Because civilization itself is on the verge of tearing itself apart, largely due to the abject failure of innovation.

But, again, the capitalist doesn’t give a flying fuck about civilization, oddly the idiot also fails to understand that they only prosper during times of peace (and relative plenty…)

Which is to point out that if this stuff doesn’t piss you off, it will never get addressed…

And if it never gets addressed then we are doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes, over and over again…because we will keep failing to punish the perpetrators and they will keep right on taking advantage of what has proven to be our ‘stupidity’.

Even now there are those among you who don't believe in ‘decisive and irrevocable’ punishment, nor do you connect today’s debacle with the failure of our grandparents to prosecute the criminals who trashed the global economy the last time!

That’s why it keeps happening…because they keep GETTING AWAY WITH IT!

But by now most of you have convinced yourselves I’VE got a problem/fixation with punishment.

And to a degree you’d be correct!

Sad as it may be SOMEBODY has to stand up and do the right thing because the fearless and unpunished fuckers don’t even pretend to be sorry for what they’ve done!

But, naturally…I digress.

So, do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?

Who gives a fuck?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Web of Lies

Greetings good citizen,

Under the damn it, did it again! category, I just went to post this and found that I skipped the whole ‘intro’ portion of the post…

So now I have to duck back into my mail and check how the stock market did, and it was another weird one. Markets around the globe did, er, ‘okay’ today…except for the US which headed further into the basement.

Counterintuitively, yesterday’s dogs haven’t yet turned into tomorrow’s foxes…but you know its coming, especially for the ‘only game in town’.

But that is not the topic of tonight’s post, nope, tonight I use one of my precious 'ten clicks' to bring you this neglected topic from the corporate owned media which asks why neither candidate is addressing the issue of the West’s sinking standard of living.

Which should put tonight’s title into perspective for you…

What is the solution to this thicket of economic forces?

That question is the one that Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney are trying to convince voters that they can best answer. They both accept that the government and the market have a role, but they put a different emphasis on those roles.

It is hard to see how either globalization or automation can be stopped. The proposed solutions instead tends to involve managing them. [This is true. Even A Simple Plan uses automation for its ‘intended purpose’ of shortening the work week rather than trying to go back to the ‘old way’ of doing things…although the coming energy scarcity is going to force our hands in that department.]


If the economy can be made to grow fast enough, incomes can still rise across the board, as they did when the unemployment rate fell below 5 percent in the 1990s and briefly below 4 percent in 2000. If educational attainment rises, more people will be able to get jobs that benefit from technology and global trade, rather than suffer from it. [Huge pipe dream and fucking whopper of a lie!] And if inequality continues to soar, the government could choose to use the tax code to ameliorate it — a solution that Democrats favor and Republicans say will hurt economic growth. [Not that you didn’t notice but you know it was 'fucking around with the tax code' that got us here in the first place. Time to fix it for good and do away with taxes altogether…by eliminating the reason for taxes, ‘private ownership’.]

Maybe the biggest reason for optimism is that there is still a strong argument [by greedheads] that both globalization and automation help the economy in the long run. This argument remains popular with [improperly trained] economists: Trade allows countries to specialize in what they do best, while technology creates opportunities to extend and improve life that never before existed.

Let’s finish that last sentence because we all know it is incomplete…

The ONLY way technology ‘extends and improves life’ is IF you aren’t on the ‘wrong side of it’…and most of us ARE!

Read my lips: ALL ECONOMIES ARE LOCAL. No exceptions!

Need further clarification? Try living in an ‘economic desert’. (A place whose ‘economic engine’ has been exported.)

There is proof all around us the ‘myopia’ is often fatal, especially when that ‘tunnel vision’ afflicts the misguided and overly greedy decision-maker.

Whole regions of the US have been lain waste by the reckless decision of the greedy few.

Decisions that could have been prevented if those we elected to ride herd on the greed heads HAD DONE THEIR FUCKING JOBS!

But no, instead they are all guilty of treason and all need to be, er, ‘punished accordingly’.

And how many of our ‘One Percenter’ representatives…(now there’s a disturbing little factoid the corporate owned media often overlooks, that you can find a whole boatload of for real ‘one percenters’ wandering the corridors of Congress.)

Could THAT be the reason we can’t seem to alter our disastrous course?

Because we CAN’T elect people who actually have SOMETHING IN FUCKING COMMON WITH US?

This is the ‘ILLUSION OF PARTICIPATION coupled with the ILLUSION OF EQUALITY’.

Which brings us back to the decidedly disturbing reality of the political ‘sniff test’. Where those who, er, ‘oversee’ the ‘party apparatus’ get to decide who they will AND WON’T endorse.

The entire pool of political candidates comes from BEHIND CLOSED DOORS!

You get to choose from only a pre-selected pool, this keeps the riff-raff and the radical ‘non-capitalists’ off the ballot.

But it’s time to throw ALL of that nonsense on the scrap heap and cut to the chase.

From here on out we only vote DIRECTLY on the laws, which shall, by definition, be few. Fuck this bullshit of somebody deciding for you without ever asking you how you feel on the issue…or IF it is even an issue to you!

So where were we? Oh yeah, standing athwart the march of history screaming ‘halt!’ like a bunch of Luddites!

Or at least that’s what the conservo-loonies think.

This isn’t a contest between ‘personal prosperity’ versus the general welfare as the conservo-whackos have made it into.

This is about truly elevating the circumstance of ALL mankind, the ‘rich’ should be indistinguishable from the average individual, honestly.

If one is ‘truly exceptional’ they will ‘stand out’ in ways other than accumulating massive fortunes (that in turn ultimately decimate society.)

Money is a tool, not an end in itself.

How many of you are sighing right now and muttering ‘good luck with that’ under your breath?

Not that our salvation requires universal acceptance of this truth…but until we become hardcore about managing the use of money within our society, it will continue to do more harm than good.

This is why under A Simple Plan your money is for you. Only YOU can make it and only YOU can spend it…when you spend it, nobody gets it, it is simply erased. When you die your money dies with you. Everybody is on their own…in a society that meets your every need, from the cradle to the grave.

You no longer need to worry about your kids, they’re all set!

A Simple Plan, an idea whose time has come, and we could do it tomorrow (if the fucking greed-heads would roll over and play dead…)

Ironically, it IS ‘in their interest’ to do so!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Our fates are intertwined

Greetings good citizen,

I am unsure how to present this one because it poses the same problems we face when we look at the issue of what to do about the criminals running our government.

We certainly aren’t going to successfully separate money from electoral politics, we would need to create a ‘not for profit’ media to even attempt that.

More curiously, how far do you think a truly independent media organization would get before the capitalists crushed it?

Our Oligarchs (a.k.a. the >One Percent) don’t want the public informed of who is really responsible for our myriad problems!

If our oligarchs fear one thing it is a recurrence of The Terror…

With that fact firmly in mind, what are we to make of this latest exercise in ‘mental masturbation’?

As the 2012 election crests with all its chaos—billionaire-driven TV ad wars, legal fights over voter suppression tactics, endless fundraising e-mails and worries about stealing the vote—progressives need to remember what’s been destroying our democracy and what solutions are needed to restore the balance of power in America.

Now is the time to note precisely what’s wrong, what’s gotten worse and what’s completely broken in key corners of the electoral process. That’s because once the dust settles after Election Day, the impetus to fix things will wane among the political victors, media and much of the public, as it does after every big election. The winners will say there is not a problem because they won. The press will start covering the new administration. And weary voters will want to look ahead to solutions, not back to old problems.

That’s how our dysfunctional democracy may limp along until the next major election (the 2016 midterms) or a national crisis. But the first year of a presidential term is the most likely time that Congress might do anything on a big enough scale to touch the underlying problems because it’s the ebb tide in the electoral cycle.

And once again I have to sit here and contemplate why it is so difficult for the average person to understand that NONE of this will change WITHOUT A FULL BORE, BLOOD IN THE STREETS REVOLUTION!

You aren’t going to see a ‘non-profit’ press as long as the capitalists have something to hide.

C.K. Michaelson reminded me this morning that capitalists don’t have a ‘lock’ on unemployment, poverty and homelessness. The dictatorial regimes that called themselves ‘Communist’ in both Russia and China had their share as well…although it is interesting to note that the problems have gotten worse since they, er, ‘converted’ to capitalism.

At least communism nods at the notion of a shared fate. Wonder how the Chinese party brass reconciles that one to their rebelling public?

This presents a mathematical conundrum to those of us awaiting a ‘tipping point’. China has a roughly twenty percent prosperity rate with the eighty percent scraping by as subsistence farmers.

Um, is the key here the self-reliance factor, that a significant portion of the country still grows its own food?

Because we have a similar split labor force wise (considering half of our labor force is part-time) but the percentage of US citizens who are food self-sufficient is infinitesimal.

Across our ‘for profit’ culture only a tiny percentage of the population grows 100% of the food.

(Let’s not visit the issue of how much of it is grown and how much is whipped up in ‘vats’ just now…)

But let’s rewind a couple of steps to the idea of a ‘shared fate’.

This is something that the Capitalist and the Conservative both abhor and that is how our fates are 'intertwined.'

Ironically, they will be the last to admit that it is you (mostly your stupidity) that is responsible for ‘their’ success.

Your belief in their lies makes them rich!

Without you, they are nothing but common peasants, the very thing they abhor about YOU!

Worse, it is this point that they mince as proof of their ‘superiority’! YOU work for THEM! (They totally leave out the part where they sold you out to the king to obtain this envious position…no need to go there, right?)

But I digress.

Worse, I fear that even these simple concepts sail right over your heads.

There is nothing ‘natural’ about ‘the natural order of things’.

The self-important slime makes no objections to the idea of intertwined fates…as long as it is YOUR fate to SERVE them!

YOU weren’t born to be somebody else’s jackass!

Wake the fuck up, will ya?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Is it class war now?

Greetings good citizen,

I jumped on the Romney story the minute it broke last night…imagine my surprise to see it is the ‘talk of the town’ this morning…

Naturally, they had that other stuffed shirt (Donald Trump) ‘defending’ him on the Today show this morning.

The part that should make your head explode, good citizen, is that the >One Percent ARE GOING to make this idiot our next president…

Don’t go calling this ‘class war’ good citizen but you know that is just a ‘liberal excuse’ they throw out there whenever they hear something they don’t like.

So tell me, can you say un-be-fucking-lievable?

President Barrack Obama's campaign quickly seized on the video, obtained by the magazine Mother Jones and made public on a day that Romney's campaign conceded it needed a change in campaign strategy to gain momentum in the presidential race.

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what," Romney is shown saying in a video posted online by the magazine. "There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it."

"Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax," Romney said. [Because they have NO INCOME asshole!] Romney said his role "is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Romney's campaign did not dispute the authenticity of the video, instead releasing a statement seeking to clarify his remarks. "Mitt Romney wants to help all Americans struggling in the Obama economy," spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said. "He is concerned about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government."

Right…

How do you suppose they got that way Mitt? How many of them did you personally make ‘redundant’ by off-shoring their former job?

The private remarks are the latest in a string of comments from the multimillionaire Republican businessman whom Democrats have criticized as out of touch. During the primary campaign, Romney insisted that he was "not concerned" about the very poor, said he knew what it felt like to worry about being "pink-slipped," and said that his wife drove a "couple of Cadillacs." Aides to Obama's campaign said the latest video would help them continue to make the case that Romney doesn't understand the concerns of average Americans.

Voters say they believe Obama has a better understanding of their problems and concerns than Romney does. A CBS/New York Times poll showed 60 percent of likely voters said Obama understands the needs and problems of people like them, while 37 percent said he did not. For Romney, the same question found that 46 percent felt he did understand people's needs, 48 percent said he didn't.

Really? Does anyone believe a guy who believes the ‘average’ middle class household income is in the quarter of a million dollar range ‘understands their problems?

Who the fuck did they poll to come up with these numbers? The Ronald Reagan Home for the terminally senile? (more commonly known as the RNC Headquarters...)

Be that as it may, the article goes on in an attempt to ‘clarify’ Romney’s tactless tax remark by camouflaging the issue:

Many of the Americans who owe no income tax are reprieved because basic exemptions — such as the "standard deduction" — took their taxable income below the cutoff levels. The other half rely mainly on a variety of tax breaks, such as the credit that helps offset child care costs.

Because THE TRUTH is a lot uglier…they don’t pay taxes because they don’t make that much money!

Hell, for the past six years I didn’t pay Federal income tax because I earned spit! (But I paid into my SSI and FICA…unlike the One Percenters who stop paying in after they hit roughly a hundred thousand in annual income.

Guys like Willard stopped paying into SSI and Medicare in late January or early February of each year. Hedge fund nitwits stop paying in after their first paycheck…if they pay at all.

But that’s not the disturbing part here good citizen, the disturbing part is they are going to put this asshat in the White House regardless of how you vote.

Look at the ‘defense’ they are putting up on his behalf:

These Americans range from the very poor to solidly middle-class families with jobs, homes, cars and vacations. The Tax Policy Center says "relatively few nontaxable households" have incomes exceeding $100,000; families that make between $50,000 and $100,000 often owe no income tax because of breaks for their kids and for education.

Americans who pay no federal income tax still often pay an array of other taxes. They include payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, sales taxes, property taxes and state and local taxes. A handful of extremely wealthy families do not pay federal income taxes. This summer the Internal Revenue Service reported that six of the 400 highest-earning households in America owed no federal income tax in 2009.

Still, many are low-income Americans. According to the August 2010 AP-GfK poll, a majority of Americans who make less than $30,000 a year are Democrats. But 27 percent identify as Republicans, and 15 percent say they're independents. About 57 percent say they will vote for Obama, while 38 percent back Romney. About 43 percent identify themselves as conservatives.

As you well know, there has been a huge problem this election cycle with, er, ‘untruths’ flooding out of the corporate owned media on the behalf of their supporters, the conservo-loonies.

Worse, it is these same lies that will be used to justify his being named the winner.

You’ll hear, after the fact, numerous claims that the American people educated themselves and ‘chose the best man’.

Not that I’m voting for that (other) conservative doormat either. I’m looking at the alternative candidates and you should be as well.

I think ‘Rocky’ stands a good chance of beating both mainstream candidates and will, if necessary, hold new elections so he can get a Congress he can work with.

Which is to suggest the unlikelihood of his surviving until the inauguration, that’s how psycho the conservo-loonies are!

Yup, just how far are we going to let them push us good citizen?

Well don’t look down because ‘you’re standing in your grave.’

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Bondo!

Greetings good citizen,

As developments around the globe turn increasingly worrisome the corporate owned media persists in reporting everything BUT the facts…

Um, don’t allow your eyes to slide over the words ‘Corporate Owned Media’ good citizen, this fact rests at the very heart of the destruction of our civilization.

Gasoline is $4 a gallon (and climbing) now that the elections are less than two months away, you don’t suppose this has anything to do with this headline?

The Energy Rush
Fossil Fuel Industry Ads Dominate TV Campaign
By ERIC LIPTON and CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Major fossil fuel companies are financing an effort to defeat President Obama, while his former allies in promoting wind and solar power are disenchanted and sitting out the campaign.

A Shift in Energy Ads
Video Feature: Energy Takes Center Stage in Political Ads

Um, why do you suppose there has been zero progress in ‘upgrading’ the domestic energy production infrastructure? Could it be because all of that technology which was developed here was moved to China…and the act of installing Chinese made alternative energy products; here in the economic desert that the farm-out crazy capitalists made; would start a shooting war? Is THAT why there isn't a windmill on every speedbump in this abandoned wasteland?

Good luck getting the Corporate Owned Media to acknowledge that one!

However, the next entry presents something of a mystery:

Ben S. Bernanke, Fed chief
Fed Ties New Aid to Jobs Recovery in Forceful Move
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

The Federal Reserve opened a new chapter in its efforts to stimulate the American economy, saying that it intends to buy large quantities of mortgage bonds until the job market improves substantially.

Graphic: Action (and Inaction) by the Fed

Perhaps the anecdote added at the end of the article, pointing to action/inaction by the Fed best sums up my reaction to this latest attempt to jumpstart our dead economy.

What is buying mortgage bonds going to do ‘re-energize’ the tapped out consumer?

Must be fucking magic because nobody else know how it’s supposed to work either…except the stupid stock markets.

They lost no time hiking stock valuations as soon as the Fed announced what will effectively become QE3 :

Stocks Add to Gains
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 7 minutes ago

Shares on Wall Street traded higher after the Federal Reserve gave a green light to big asset purchases to boost the American economy.

Wait a minute Slim, ‘mortgage bonds’ are ‘assets’? Says who? A bond based on ‘junk’ is still junk no matter what you call it.

Of course these are the same assholes who believed you could ‘wish away’ risk…and look at where that landed them…

Can anybody explain to me how this is supposed to ‘stimulate the job market’? (Because I don’t see their logic…and if it’s THAT complicated, it’s not likely to work…which is what they ultimately found out about ‘wishing away’ risk.)

Naturally, they are relying on YOU not paying attention.

You are supposed to (half) hear about this last ditch effort to improve the economy launched right before the election (and if you’re paying even a little bit of attention then you already know it doesn’t stand the chance of a snowball in hell of working.

So when the elections roll around and you walk into the voting booth, you’re gonna say to yourself ‘didn’t Twinkie launch a big ‘asset purchase plan’ that was supposed to ‘fix’ the economy a couple of months ago?’

And you know today that the economy will be worse come November (because five years later and NOTHING has been done about our bankrupt financial system.)

Seriously good citizen, Bernanke, (who actually does work in the private sector…the Fed is a totally privately held corporation, SOLELY OWNED by the biggest BANKS in the world!) would have been FIRED if he were a public employee, accountable to the president...but that's not how things work here in 'capitalist utopia!'

Don’t see a little ‘conflict’ there, do ya?

Now we’re back to the old ‘I was just protecting my employer’s interests…(so fuck the rest of you!’)

Is that what runs through Ben’s mind every day when he sits down to go to work?

A huge F.U. that extends to the rest of the human race as well…but you knew that.

Speaking of sticking it to the balance of mankind…

Euro Watch
Spain and Greece Top Agenda of E.U. Finance Ministers Meeting
By JAMES KANTER 5:07 AM ET

A two-day meeting will focus on how urgently to channel aid to Spain and whether Greece should be given more time to achieve its budget goals.

News Analysis: Dutch and Germans Give Europe Reasons to Cheer

Um, have you actually READ any of the stories accompanying this ‘Happy Talk’?

There isn’t any real reason to ‘cheer’, good citizen. The Dutch are broke and the Germans are trying to take over control of the Euro…which will likely result in WWIII breaking out.

Pressing on, we have this final article:

Gas Prices Increase Consumer Inflation
By REUTERS 1 minute ago

Consumer prices in the United States rose in August by the most in three years, but underlying inflation was fairly muted. Retail sales also rose.

Yup, here we go again, YOU’RE paying more but fucking inflation is ‘non-existent’ because the price of the two most vital budget items on every humans shopping list are ‘too volatile’ to include in the inflation calculations!

WTF Good citizen? You can’t calculate the cost of living less the cost of living! IT DON’T WORK!

Yet the fucking ‘yo-yos’ in government do it all of the time, turning us back to the question of, how stupid do they think we are?

Which of course begs the question of ‘how stupid are they?’

How sad is it that the answer to both is ‘plenty stupid!’

Just because we sit here and take it doesn’t mean we don’t notice…and come November I’m predicting at least ‘some’ of the public is going to express their ‘displeasure’ over the ‘non-election’ regardless of who wins.

Which should be really curious because as I have pointed out before, there is only ONE sure ‘winner’ this November and that would be the >One Percent.

Heads they win, tails you lose…go figure.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Happiness...

Greetings good citizen,

Everybody knows most of what we consume from the corporate owned media is propaganda…

Which makes what I pump out a variety of ‘anti-propaganda’.

Is anti-propaganda any better than propaganda?

It is, after all, two sides of the same coin.

So it is that we have the ‘loosely closeted’ Libertarians over at Alternet struggling to get their message straight:

If you're on welfare or Medicaid or unemployment insurance or food stamps or some combination, it was obvious years ago that right-wingers hate you. But on Fox and Friends Weekend this morning, Michelle Malkin (and at least one of the hosts) reminded us that right-wingers consider you a contemptible inferior being if you "merely" pull down a paycheck:

... in the interview, Malkin slammed President Obama's supporters. "Romney types, of course, are the ones who sign the front of the paycheck, and the Obama types are the one who have spent their entire lives signing the back of them," she said.

That, to Malkin, is a withering putdown. Ha ha ha! Pathetic loser -- all you've ever done is work for a living!

Perfect evidence of why our entire financial sector is a mis-assembled abomination.

Without the grunts there wouldn’t be any paychecks to sign! If nobody does the damn work, nobody gets paid and they ALL ‘starve!’

So how is it that conservatives justify their ‘short-sightedness’?

Make no mistake about it, it is exactly this variety of short-sightedness that has destroyed the global economy!

And if you don’t think the global economy is FUBAR then economics is totally incomprehensible to you.

And again it is a simple thing, easy to understand. It is when you start projecting false motives to the actor’s actions that you produce the results you see today.

But that’s just the tip of the conservative iceberg. Turns out conservatives are ‘Happier’ than the rest of us!

Finally, there is the related argument that the conservative tendency to rationalize politically or economically unequal social systems — to overlook how the other half is forced to live, either through simple dismissiveness, or affirmation of the fairness of free markets and meritocracies — also confers happiness. In his New York Times op-ed, Brooks dismissed this argument, associated with New York University social psychologist John Jost, but that’s not so easy to do. In a 2008 study in the journal Psychological Science, Jost and Jaime Napier showed that conservatives were happier than liberals in nine countries beyond the United States (including Germany, Spain and Sweden) — and further demonstrated, through statistical analyses, that the rationalization of inequality was a key part of the explanation. “Meritocratic beliefs account for the association between political orientation and subjective well-being to a significant degree,” wrote Napier and Jost.

Naturally what ‘slick’ overlooks here is there is more to life than simply being ‘happy’. And it is NATURAL to worry, we’d all be dead if we didn’t.

There is another part of the conservative rubic that Bobo ignores, how happiness is often the ‘side effect’ of stupidity!

Morons are happy most of the time because they DON’T KNOW ANY BETTER!

If it were up to conservatives all children would be lobotomized at birth making the planet one big ‘happy’ place! Full of mostly dead humans.

So if someone is ‘too happy’ it is a fairly safe bet that they are more than a little ‘simple’.

And don’t get me wrong, simple is fine as long as you have someone competent looking out for you.

Turning to a more serious subject we have this story about how the super rich are ‘covering their tracks here in the land of ‘captive government’.

We have discovered that sometime after January of this year, the FEC deleted a whole set of contributions totaling millions of dollars made during the 2007-2008 election cycle. The most important of these files concern what is now called “dark money” – funds donated to ostensible charities or public interest groups rather parties, candidates or conventional political action committees (PACs). These non-profit groups – which Washington insiders often refer to generically as 501(c)s, after the section of the federal tax code regulating them – use the money to pay for allegedly educational “independent” ads that run outside conventional campaign channels. Such funding has now developed into a gigantic channel for evading disclosure of the donors’ identities and is acutely controversial.

As public opinion becomes more focused on the fact that our electoral system has been hijacked by the money interests, the very people the government was established to PROTECT US FROM IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Understand, good citizen, if we didn’t NEED to protect ourselves from the predations of the powerful, we wouldn’t NEED a GOVERNMENT AT ALL!

This is why I developed A Simple Plan. It removes the levers of power from the hands of the self–interested.

Oh, back to the beginning and the crack about ‘propaganda’. I watched the 1937 film Captain Courageous last night and it’s just the kind of film Hollywood would produce to show that the wealthy were merely a ‘victims of their own circumstances’.

Hooey!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Bad Joke

Greetings good citizen,

A quick check of the stock markets shows us another day of bleeding from the eyesockets for markets worldwide.

And what would one expect, the global economic desert isn’t restricted to just the labor markets!

The ‘source’ of our current worldwide financial collapse started twenty years after the end of the second world war, when the completion of rebuilding a bombed out Europe caused investment opportunities to ‘dry-up’.

This is the same source that created what became known as Happy Days for the sole survivor of that European war, the USA.

During the post war period, jobs went begging. There literally weren’t enough workers to keep things going.

This led to better benefits and the steady rise in living standards we all take for granted today.

But was this just a historic fluke? The short answer is no. We could have enjoyed lifestyle improvements introduced in the fifties long before then, but the same fucking greed heads who want to push us back to living in mud huts kept them from us.

They were ‘afraid they’d spoil us.’

With that thought firmly in mind we move on with today’s offering :

The title of Ferguson’s book certainly gets the reader’s attention, and he powerfully delivers the goods, with a scathing, detailed history of what led to the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression. Ferguson takes the reader on a revealing journey -- a sordid and corrupt trail that leads from the Pandora’s box of deregulation from 1980 through 2000, through the two major economic bubbles. The first was the dot.com stock market bubble of 2000, exacerbated by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Then came the much larger housing/mortgage bubble, fueled by sub-prime lending and the emergence of a host of new esoteric financial tools, meant to protect investments -- in fact, they did the opposite, provoking the financial crash.

The economic disaster was driven, Ferguson writes, by a combination of “very low interest rates, pervasive dishonesty through the financial system, massive lending fraud, speculation, demand for high yield securities, and not insignificantly, a squeezed American consumer desperate to maintain living standards, and told by everyone – including George Bush and Alan Greenspan, the brokers and the banks, that home borrowing was the way to do it.”

Along the way, Ferguson debunks the right-wing meme that Freddie and Fannie Mae caused the bubble; he holds the pure private sector responsible, especially its least regulated shadow banking parts.

As we can see, Reaganomics failed. All of the liberal hatred and gay bashing are intended to distract the rest of us from the failure of conservative ideology.

A conservative ideology so ingrained in the power structure that the media blindly protects it.

But wait a moment…what’s that you say? Reganomics WORKS?

It’s just that the outcome of Reganomics is so ‘anti-social’ that it would never sell if it weren’t camouflaged as something else!

Thus do we have the world’s greatest scam ever perpetrated upon a civilization.

And now that civilization is collapsing.

Which is neither here nor there good citizen because in the end the question remains; will YOU survive the collapse of civilization?

Yeah good citizen, at the end of the day the very same self-styled ‘pranksters’ are going to accuse you and I of failing to protect ourselves from being ‘scammed’.

Yup, this was all 'our fault'!

And somehow making it illegal to scam on such a scale would never occur our once fine legal minds…would it?

Free Speech is sacrosanct, you can’t muzzle Liberty (like you regularly muzzle the truth)…you despicable fuckers!

Which is to point out what you already know, we are dealing with unadulterated evil here, good citizen.

There is nothing to ‘redeem’ (although they would all offer us wealth beyond our wildest dreams if only we would spare their children…)

And it ain’t gonna happen because that wealth already belongs to ‘us’. It isn’t theirs to give.

Yet another thing they must laugh themselves breathless over.

Well, the day is rapidly approaching when they won’t be laughing much longer.

And they will learn the true meaning of the term 'being hunted to the ends of the earth’.

We have arrived at a ‘make or break’ point for our species. If we don’t turn our current situation around it will be ‘game over’.

And I, for one, actually like ‘us’ and think we have the potential to be great, someday.

But first we have to remove the few who think this whole thing is a joke from power.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PRIVATIZED!

Greetings good citizen,

How can our civilization be collapsing while we are still achieving technological breakthroughs like this one ?

“This is, I think, going to be recognized as a significantly historical step forward in space travel,” SpaceX’s chief executive, Elon Musk, said during a news conference. “Hopefully the first of many to come.”

Mr. Musk’s dreams are far grander than delivering cargo to the space station. Although he would like to carry astronauts to the station in a few years, that would still be merely retracing accomplishments that the American and Russian space programs achieved decades ago. “It’s evolutionary, not revolutionary,” Mr. Musk agreed in an interview last month.

To accomplish Mr. Musk’s very long-term goal — sending people to Mars, which he regards as essential for ensuring the survival of humanity — SpaceX must create new technologies that fundamentally change the current equation of space travel, in which most of the vehicle is thrown away each time.

What do you mean it’s not a ‘breakthrough’?

Because you’d be correct, it isn’t.

What does this latest travesty represent? More rape of the public purse at the hands of ‘private industry’.

They are eager to demonstrate the private sector’s new found ability to travel into space but don’t you think for a second that the keys to this particular venture are up for grabs or that YOU may be the next Fred Smith of inter-planetary transport.

Ain’t happening Buckwheat and you know it! You also know why you will never get this opportunity.

What I find hysterical is how the first launch failed…although you can bet they billed NASA for it anyway!

You KNOW this whole ‘private venture’ is strictly ‘cost plus’ (because there’s NOTHING a fucking capitalist hates more than risk! They even hate risk more than they hate competition!

Then there’s the other ‘PS by the way’ snuck in there, the part about going to Mars.

You ARE aware that Mars has no ‘magnetosphere’ (a built in magnetic shield that protects us from the sun’s cosmic energy, don’t you?) Mankind can NEVER live on the surface of Mars, anyone attempting it will die!

But numbnuts wants to send people there! (He also wants to charge them big money to get there, what happens after they’re there isn’t his problem!)

Let us not forget who is dreaming this shit up, it is (once again) ‘stupid conservatives!’ who don’t give a fuck who gets hurt by their consistent failure to think things through.

Stupid is as stupid does (so don’t give stupid your money!)

Simply put, without a protective magnetosphere, there is nothing to hold the atmosphere on Mars and the ‘cosmic wind’ will carry any atmosphere we manage to create away with it!

I watched a theoretical physicist try to build a case for ‘terraforming’ Mars on the Science channel and wouldn’t you know it, he’s a conservative (so his degree is essentially meaningless because ‘facts’ are optional to him!)

Sam Neil hosts a show based on science fact that pretty much explained why all of our planetary neighbors are uninhabitable (without protective environments) he also explained why terraforming Mars would be an ‘exercise in futility’.

Our ‘best bet’ for finding a habitable, earthlike world lies outside our own solar system.

And until we can crack the secret of interstellar travel journeying to our local neighbors is essentially pointless.

Except to find elements that don’t exist on Earth…and to use those elements to create the necessary technological breakthroughs to crack the interstellar travel ‘nut’.

Again, theoretical physicists have ‘ideas’ but they don’t possess the materials necessary to test those ideas with!

And it is possible (if not probable) that some of these materials may exist on the decidedly hostile environments of our nearby neighbors.

And we won’t know unless we go and look.

Which brings us back to the recent and totally unannounced ‘privatization’ of our space program.

People who have even gone as far as to call themselves ‘Space X’. I mean, seriously?

And what do you think is going to happen when how much this little boondoggle costs leaks out?

Will we be told to ‘stick it’ if we don’t like paying up to ten times what it cost NASA to do the same job?

Will those who attack this rape of the public be condemned as Luddites who are standing athwart of ‘progress’?

Um, in an unrelated ‘it is just too much’ moment I was listening to NPR this afternoon (who might as well change their call sign to the more fitting NRR because those assholes are ‘gone’ too!) The host of All things considered was interviewing the single largest private contributor to a ‘superpac’ on the air.

And this MORON went on to explain his ‘motivation’ for pissing away 19 MILLION dollars of his money on the Romney campaign.

He said he wanted somebody in the Oval Office who knew how to manage a business!

Um, I don’t know about YOU good citizen but I don’t want ‘a businessman’ anywhere near my civil liberties!

You see good citizen, my freedom naturally inhibits his ability to profit from my labor.

I don’t have to work 24/7 and I don’t have to buy his crappy products or listen to his idiotic media because I’m free to choose (as limited as that freedom often is.)

Worse, good citizen, this brings us full circle to the ‘purpose of commerce’…and while the Roberts Court has determined that commerce exists to earn profits for its shareOWNERS. What the Roberts Court didn’t specify was that commerce earns those profits AT THE EXPENSE of the nation’s citizens!

And for THAT the court is criminal! They have deliberately distorted the very meaning/purpose of government itself!

What do we do with a ‘criminal court’, good citizen?

We bring ‘em to justice…even if we have to mete out justice ourselves.

Because, good citizen, when the time comes we shall be judge, jury and executioner!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

O.O.C.

Greetings good citizen,

Considering the ‘Land of the Free’ also boasts the world’s largest prison population we probably shouldn’t be too surprised by this disturbing development

The case is among thousands across the country fueling a long-simmering debate over when educators should bring in the police to deal with disruptive students. A 6-year-old Georgia kindergartner became the latest test case last week when she was hauled off in steel handcuffs after throwing books and toys in a school tantrum.

"Kids are being arrested for being kids," said Shannon Kennedy, a civil rights attorney who has filed a class-action lawsuit against Albuquerque's public school district and its police department on behalf of hundreds of kids arrested for minor offenses over the past few years, including having cellphones in class, destroying a history book and inflating a condom.

Civil rights advocates and criminal justice experts say frustrated teachers and principals are calling in the police too often to deal with the most minor disturbances. But other teachers say a police presence that has grown in response to zero tolerance policies of the 1990s and tragedies like the Columbine High massacre is needed to keep teachers and well-behaved students safe.

Ironic as the topic of this morning’s radio broadcast on NPR (increasingly becoming National Republican Radio, gotta get that ‘P’ out of there!) was ‘racial profiling’ and the ‘problem’ this presents law enforcement personnel.

In defense of racial profiling (or more succinctly, in denial) was the statement that we all must think cops are outright racists if we were to believe they were being ‘bigoted’ in the performance of their duties.

No, the truth of the matter is we all KNOW cops are too fucking stupid to deal with juvenile offenders sensitively…

I mean, they busted a six-year old who was obviously having a ‘bad day’. WTF, good citizen!

There’s one ‘badge’ that needs to be flushed down the toilet, pronto! and, in fairness, a teacher who needs to find another line of work!

Just as bad as Out of Control cops are the O.O.C. teachers who call them into their classrooms!

Worse, good citizen, it appears we have an epidemic on our hands…and the fucking Corporate Owned Media doesn’t breathe a whisper about this heavy handed policing that is taking place right under our noses!

And what is the ultimate ‘verdict’ rendered here? Unfit parents. Not unfit teachers with hair triggers or idiot cops who will bust anyone (even a six-year old) on someone else’s say-so…

Do you think we have a ‘problem’ here…because it appears a majority of these kids are getting ‘records’ (although the fucking dickwads causing our children to be arrested instead of imposing detention or a more suitable punishment deny it) that will, because we’ve seen it ourselves, NEVER GET ERASED.

These juvenile offenses will follow these kids to their GRAVES, because that IS the ‘mentality’ behind busting kids for being kids!

Which is to ask, where is the criminal statute against ‘possession of a cell phone?’

What did the cop bust the kid for? Certainly not possession, so it must be a ‘civil disobedience’ charge.

And do YOU honestly think something like THAT is going to be ‘purged’ from your child’s ‘permanent record’?

You know how they ‘purge’ this stuff don’t you? They don’t remove the document and destroy it (unless you pay a crooked cop to ‘fix’ your records) No, they just make a note beside it, leaving it there for whoever pulls your records later in life, to haunt you.

Worse, future fucktard can read (and act on) this information, PRETENDING they didn’t see it because it was marked ‘deleted’.

Worse, if YOU ask to see your files, they WILL make sure to ‘pull’ all of the stuff marked as ‘deleted’ so all you see is the stuff you already know is there!

Which is to say you will NEVER succeed in asking to see your files, and have someone walk over, pull them up on a screen and print them out…

NO, you will have to file a information request and they will MAIL them to you…so someone can take the time to ‘edit’ the parts that they would surely be sued for if anyone else saw them!

But then we have the opposite end of the dilemma to deal with, good luck finding a lawyer willing to take THAT case!

Worse, good luck finding a court willing to hear it (because what passes for our ‘Justice system’ is totally corrupt.)

So today’s Big Red Flag is OOC policing in our classrooms that will/is making an appearance in our workplaces.

Since schools ‘main objective’ is to train you to be an OBEDIENT and (semi) competent worker (in that order,) how long do you think it will be before the boss has you arrested and fined for being late? (Or ‘stealing’ for taking too long to return from break?)

[Which is a rhetorical question, I am well aware that we are already there and beyond already! It has become so commonplace that it doesn’t make the news…which should surprise no one.]

We (sadly) already know that the cops ‘do what they’re told’. Heaven forbid they think for themselves! (Or they’d know better than to arrest a six-year old! But maybe I expect too much from a college educated adult with ‘public relations training’…I mean seriously, WTF!)

Equally as bad is how the corporate owned media thinks this ISN’T ‘newsworthy’!

The very foundations of our civilization are under attack by (ruthless) profiteers and our media is mute about it?

Well, that isn’t true either, is it? Because here’s a story about exactly that from a major national publication…

But it ISN’T a story about OOC teachers and cops, no! It’s a story about A FUCKING LAWSUIT against the STATE OF ARIZONA (in the Republic of Lunatics) about OOC policing!

This is, good citizen, a very damning indictment of our badly broken society.

It is not a question of whether or not we have crossed the line but if our knee-jerk reactions have driven sanity and judgement out of our daily affairs?

Which is to point out what we all know, the ‘search for excellence’ should remain, ever and always a ‘metaphorical’ pursuit.

The thing we need to have ‘zero tolerance’ policies for is zero tolerance policies!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Welfare

Greetings good citizen,

Oh what a tangled web we weave! It doesn’t cease to amaze me how much damage our civilization has suffered at the hands of the new (and constantly improving) ‘unitary executive’.

It’s been almost fifty years now that half of us have believed the other half was clinically insane or at the very least ‘stupid and gullible’. How ironic is it that it turns out both ‘halves’ were correct, not about the insanity but about the ‘stupid and gullible’…

It’s bullshit like this that clears up the mystery of why Hillary isn’t running this year…

Critics of the stringent system say stories like these vindicate warnings they made in 1996 when President Bill Clinton fulfilled his pledge to “end welfare as we know it”: the revamped law encourages states to withhold aid, especially when the economy turns bad.

The old program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, dates from the New Deal; it gave states unlimited matching funds and offered poor families extensive rights, with few requirements and no time limits. The new program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, created time limits and work rules, capped federal spending and allowed states to turn poor families away.

“My take on it was the states would push people off and not let them back on, and that’s just what they did,” said Peter B. Edelman, a law professor at Georgetown University who resigned from the Clinton administration to protest the law. “It’s been even worse than I thought it would be.”

How ironic is it that all the jobs created during the Clinton years evaporated with the ‘dot gone’ bubble?

And that, good citizen is a rhetorical question, there’s nothing ‘ironic’ about it at all.

Worse, we need to ask ourselves which ‘well-spoken individual’ will be next to step forward and claim the democratic mantle, only to totally sell out democratic ideals?

Closet Libertarians are amazingly adept at this...just as Cyrk Unger pointed out the other day that for a 'constitutional lawyer' Obama acts like he's never seen the document he supposedly 'specialized' in...

WTF?

I mean look at Willy Jeff, he got a mansion in NYC and his wife landed a seat in the Senate! How ‘lucky’ does a guy get?

How much are you willing to bet that luck had nothing to do with it?

Did I mention that our government is a bought and paid for illusion, sponsored by the >One Percent?

Or that our civilization will crash and burn in the VERY near future?

The ‘assault’ has been underway for the past four years, ‘disguised’ as the economic downturn.

Our ‘transition’ to a full-blown Banana Republic is almost complete.

Um, the above tale of ‘financial hardship’ underlines the fact that a rich man CAN live as cheaply (and sometimes even cheaper because of the exemptions they grant themselves) than a poor one.

This, as we are learning, is the ‘cause’ of the current, er, ‘depression’. When all (most of) the money in a society is ‘captured’ at the top of a hierarchical chain, there is no mechanism except revolution capable of restoring balance to the economy.

Notice the indicators, there is (nor has there been) ANY ‘new investment’ because the existing capacity is capable of supplying what is becoming a dwindling number of customers…

Which is to slap you hard in the face good citizen, hopefully to wake you up to the fact that you are, right this very second, being strangled with your own rope!

Understand the trick is to keep you lulled until you are no longer an enormous giant, capable of smashing them to pieces as you struggle.

By the time we organize to fight back most of what we would have had to work with will have been exported.

And there’s no ‘accident’ in play there.

The part that devils them to no end is that they can’t take the ‘bread basket’ with them. (But I think the plan is to cripple that capacity so we can’t use it either…)

It’s shitty little deals like the one in this article that shout ‘class war’ plain as day yet you refuse to believe it…

There is an ALTERNATIVE TO CAPITALISM that is far more efficient and effective but the CRIMINALS AMONG US don’t want you to know that!

And who ARE the criminals, good citizen?

They are the very same people who claim to be the ‘job creators’!

Understand, NO HUMAN has EVER ‘created’ a single job, they ALL come to us directly from Mother Nature!

Without nature, ‘need’ doesn’t exist.

And don’t fall for the Libertarian crap of ‘need doesn’t exist’, they fucking NEED YOU to believe it (even if they don’t themselves!)

Once they convince you that your needs are ‘wants’, you are no longer entitled to them!

You ‘want’ to breathe? Tough! I don’t think you deserve to!

I’m willing to pay more than you will for that air so it’s rightfully mine!

What a fucked up argument to make considering ALL money is funny…but the fucking Libertarian whack jobs don’t realize that!

They’re still little kids, bidding ‘an infinity’ dollars and are then willing to go to the mat over who bid it first!

When an ‘infinity dollars is still fucking ZERO!

How stupid can you get?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner