Season of Peace

Greetings good citizen,

Asian markets bled from the eye sockets overnight and their European counterparts followed suit…but (as usual) no sooner did the sun rise over Manhattan (to shine on ‘God’s country’) did the markets miraculously reverse direction.

For, once again, absolutely no reason.

But wait, the ‘investors’ among us march to the beat a ‘different drummer’; could this morning’s ‘rally’ be attributed to the joy they feel over there now being one less dictator on the payroll to worry about?

Since there truly is nothing for investors to take stock in, they are, by necessity, reduced to betting on the outcome of these ‘regime changes’.

But this is meaningless for the rest of us, back in the land of reality we have bigger problems to ponder.

There was an economic, er, ‘downturn’ after the US Civil war that lasted until the turn of the century.

While the parallels are ‘remarkable’, I personally ‘disagree’ with this, er, ‘rosy’ assessment that all will be well come 2031...

First, depressions can last a very long time, and when their origins are in a debt bubble they should be measured in decades not years. For a century or more, depressions have been relatively short, sharp episodes. They are like having a tooth pulled, rather than a chronic sickness — painful, but over quite quickly. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In the U.K., for example, this is already the longest recession since records began — in the sense that output is still below its 2008 peak. It is more enduring than the depression of the 1930s. That is true of many other countries, as well. If, as seems likely, Europe, and perhaps the U.S., slips back into recession in 2012, it will be clear to everyone we are witnessing something far longer than the conventional economic textbooks allow for.

Second, this depression is structural. The Long Depression of the 19th century had its roots in financial speculation, technological change, and the arrival of a massive new player in the global economy. Our current depression likewise has its roots in three huge crises coming together at the same time. We have a debt bubble that had been building up over three decade and which burst spectacularly in 2008. The dollar is in long-term decline as a reserve currency, and as the anchor for the global monetary system, but there is still not much sign of what will replace it. And in the euro, the biggest single economic bloc has created the most dysfunctional monetary system in human history, threatening financial collapses on an unprecedented scale. Think of it as the world economy’s suffering a heart attack, then a stroke, then getting picked up by an ambulance that crashes on the way to the hospital — it is hardly surprising the patient isn’t in good shape.

Three, it’s uneven. The Long Depression of the 19th century was a sustained period of lower growth compared with what came before and what came afterward. Germany, for example, grew 4.3% annually between 1850 and 1873 and then at 4.1% between 1896 and 1913. But in the Long Depression years, it only managed a growth rate of just over 2% a year. It was similar in other countries. The markets remained volatile, with repeated booms and busts, regularly collapsing back into recession. They did grow occasionally, just as Japan has sometimes grown in what is now its second decade of slump. But the growth is never sustained.

Yes good citizen, now Japan slips back into view. Two decades of economic stagnation and instead of pulling the number two economy in the world out of its funk, the rest of the world has slipped to join it in the economic quagmire of globalization.

Yet for some unknown reason…(like being instructed to specifically avoid mentioning it) both the (corporate owned) media and (corporate sanctioned) economists have failed to even nod in the general direction of the ‘Elephant in the room’.

Perhaps it is the Western predilection for ‘neat’ endings but you’ll note that the ‘end of the century’ has been reason enough to throw caution to the wind, creating monstrous economic cesspools that last until the middle of the next century…

But this time things have gone too far (and I’m pointing at ‘peak energy’!)

For many this would have been unthinkable only a few months ago. They had been cautioned and warned repeatedly, but chose to trust the financial system. And now they are suffering loss and anxiety, frozen assets, and the misappropriation of their wealth.

How more plainly can it be said? The US financial system as it now stands cannot be trusted to observe even the most basic property rights as it continues to unravel from a long standing culture of fraud.

Get your money as far away from Wall Street as is possible.  And if you want to own gold and silver, take delivery and store it in a secure private facility outside the fractional reserve system.

What does this brazen level of criminality have to do with ‘peak energy’?

Like all ‘end times’ scenarios, it fosters a WTF environment that is totally out of touch with, er, ’consequences’.

Worse, what do you do to someone that has come right out and told you, ’go ahead and kill me, we’re all gonna die anyway?’

Which, naturally, is one hundred percent incorrect.

In all scenarios (save the comet strike that brings on another ice age) there will be (human) ‘survivors’.

And it is likely there will be millions of survivors of an economic collapse despite the criminals worst efforts. (And you’d better believe they are trying to kill as many of us off as they can!)

Why people doubt this fact blows my mind.

Think about the current ‘deal’ these very same people, er, ‘offer’ you. You either accept their money and their shitty working conditions or you try to make it ‘on your own’. (But lately you are being told 'we don't need you' so you'd best not piss off mommy and daddy or you'll got straight to the following:)

This entails competing for scarce seats at soup kitchens, beds at shelters and (if your big enough,) first dibs on what gets tossed into the dumpsters of our wasteful ‘hospitality’ industry.

There simply isn’t enough ‘wildlife’ to live off of, nor could you effectively cook it without running afoul of local law enforcement on those occasions when you did ‘get lucky‘.

In fact, refusing to work for their money becomes a perpetual exercise in avoiding ‘run-ins’ with local law enforcement.

Now, consider these facts and tell me honestly that these people DON’T ‘want you dead’?

Here, in the ‘Season of Peace’, take some time to fully appreciate the predatory behavior of those who call themselves our ‘betters’…

Those who richly deserve to have their world brought crashing down around their ears!

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

Criminals Escape Justice!

Greetings good citizen,

Apparently yesterday morning’s market rally ‘ran out of steam’ before the trading day ended.

For those of you who could, quite literally, ‘care less’, this bouncing around in the markets is nothing more than meaningless ‘eyewash’, intended to give the rubes a sense that the contrived valuations have SOME foundation in reality…

Let me assure you, good citizen, they do not.

But you knew that! A factor that places you on considerably more stable ground than the average conservative…although that’s not saying much, is it? (You could believe the Earth was flat and still be better ‘grounded’ than your typical conservative!)

Thus are we prone to wonder (once again) just who is the target of this exercise in belaboring the obvious

With its elegant marble floors, ornately carved wooden ceiling and flattering lighting, the central meeting point of Italy’s Lower House is arguably one of the most beautiful political arenas in the world.

But in recent weeks, Italians have come to view those who frequent the hall — known as the Transatlantico and modeled on the great room of an ocean liner — as a pampered elite, as sheltered from the global economic turbulence as the palazzo’s inner courtyard.

On Friday, the month-old government of Prime Minister Mario Monti easily won a confidence vote on a $40 billion set of austerity measures, including tax increases, changes to the pension system and some growth incentives, with 495 votes to 88. After the vote, the prime minister told lawmakers that Italy was at “maximum risk.” He added, “A lot is at stake; we cannot permit ourselves to live the way we did before.” He said that much would depend “on our capacity to present ourselves as united and credible before the markets.”

Don’t you love it when politicians vote for themselves/ideas? What the fuck does a show of hands by the same set of chiselers prove…consensus among thieves?

Does anyone else wonder if Mario has a mouse in his pocket? Who is this ‘we’ he refers to? He most definitely isn’t talking about himself!

Why is it that these ‘elected representatives’ consistently keep missing the main point?

What is that ‘main point’, you ask?

Naturally, the ‘main point’ is ‘the job they were elected to do’

No, not make new laws, ENFORCE THE ONES WE ALREADY HAVE!

But no…in an amazing demonstration of ‘myopia’, they apparently consider themselves ‘lawmakers’, enforcing the law is someone else’s job.

(Thus have the criminals gone ‘unprosecuted’, lo these many years/decades…globally.)

Perhaps more interest is the ‘universality’ of this particular article.

While Italy’s may be particularly nice, the ‘halls of power’ are ‘plush’ pretty much wherever you go.

Which brings us to the ‘disconnect’ most citizens (rightly) make between their pleading politicians and themselves.

“You aren’t gonna suffer even a little, I’m the one that’s fucked!”

Case in point is this proposed ‘lock ‘em up on a whim and let ‘em rot' legislation.

The only known ‘safeguard’ against this abominable legislation is to be a Congressman/Senator (who are automatically exempt from ALL of their own laws!)

Your ‘get out of detention free’ card remains your Senate/Congressional ID.

Don’t have one? Tough! Looks like you’re going ‘bye-bye’.

I’m going to guess an expired badge from either house will continue to function, if only out of ‘professional courtesy’.

Although the cops are keenly aware of who is and is not a ‘player’.

The only thing the ID protects you from is being randomly detained (forever.) If a warrant with your name on it is issued, then all bets are off.

Which is to acknowledge that our ‘posturing politicians’ are on an understandably ‘short leash’…which is why they behave as they do.

It may LOOK ‘illogical’ to you or me but it is perfectly ‘logical’ to them!

It is not the slightest bit ironic that the current landscape of governments around the globe EXACTLY RESEMBLES what it would look like if CRIMINALS hijacked the world’s governments!

Which is to point out that criminals have indeed been ‘in charge’ for a rather long time. Look at Bush’s highly illegal invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq.

The public still marvels that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING was done after the pretenses used to justify the invasion of both were PROVEN FALSE!

Naturally, that was just a ‘warning shot’ good citizen.

It was the local bully whispering in your ear (as his Neanderthal buddies kept you pinned to the ground) ‘What are YOU gonna do about it, huh?’

Well, what ARE you gonna do about it?

The problem with ‘Lumpy’ is there are only a handful of them…and he knows it.

For the moment he’s moping the floors with you and yours.

What you don’t see is that nervous sweat on his lip, that tells you that he is frantically trying to figure out where he and his crew is going to go where nobody will ever find them.

And the answer is, ‘Criminal Island’ (Lumpy is not that smart, he got where he is today via brutality alone.)

Although he is smart enough to realize his second big problem is figuring out a way to prevent the people he has screwed over from nuking Criminal Island off the face of the earth.

Well, that’s where the ‘throwing civilization into its own cesspool' part comes in (a.k.a. the plan to collapse the global supply chain.)

MOST people will be too busy saving their own ass to be bothered with chasing criminals and their political minions around. Nothing like a little widespread chaos to keep you occupied while the bad guys make their escape!

It’s a disturbing little puzzle, good citizen and it’s just as ‘plausible’ (actually more so) than the ‘random incompetence’ explanation offered by the criminal owned media.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

War Declared!

Greetings good citizen,

Every once in a while you end up doing a ‘me too’ story but, naturally, nobody will write this article from my ‘point of view’.

So buckle up good citizen We’re going in!

Indefinite detention will now be law, not some emergency measure that history will judge to have been a mistake made in a crisis. It is a well thought out codification of certain views that have become commonplace in American society --- that "terrorists" (to be defined by whomever sits in the White House) are not to be allowed the due process allowed to other human beings because our government just *knows* they are so dangerous we cannot even take the chance that they won't be found guilty. That turns the rule of law on its head.

Digby provides us with a rather poignant snapshot of the nearly ten years Jose Padilla has been, er, ‘entombed’ by an unaccountable military/government.

Left to our imagination is the question of ‘what if they decided to, er, exterminate you, would they need anyone’s approval?’

Hell, would they even be required to TELL anyone?

Understand good citizen, your so-called ‘representatives’ are going to vote on this ’bipartisan’ piece of garbage without ever consulting you…and the abomination currently occupying the White House has already refused to veto this vile legislation that will allow bureaucrats the power to instantly create ‘non-persons’.

Not only is this a clear ‘declaration of war’ against the citizens of the US, these idiots just declared war on the bulk of mankind!

We can only take comfort in the fact that the punishment will fit the crime…

But not until millions suffer ‘indeterminate detention’ without even know what they’ve been accused of or by whom.

No irony should be lost on the fact that this is how ‘ancient royalty’ conducted business.

Does this mean we will we soon be ‘treated’ to the return of ‘courtly behavior’ (at the behest of a few barely closeted ‘royal wannabes’?)

Narcissism IS a psychiatric condition good citizen, largely due to the destructive tendencies it fosters within its victims.

If only we were so lucky as to have that tendency confined to the victim pining away with a mirror in hand…but no! Often the opposite is true, it is the narcissist that wreaks revenge on those ‘not as beautiful’ as they are.

And how can we tell there’s a narcissist behind this plot? A Narcissist KNOWS they’re sick and that their ideas are not ‘socially acceptable’…thus do they cling to the ‘cloak of anonymity.’

So our last president was a ‘cheerleader’ and this one used to moonlight as a model…what does that say about either of them, psychologically speaking?

But that’s just the icing on the cake…the impetus behind this ‘imprison at will’ legislation is being driven by something even murkier, something that wants to break down the very foundations of society itself…

Mostly so they won’t be hunted down and exterminated themselves.

Which brings us full circle to the downside of playing with ‘Overton Windows’.

Are the criminals really trying to provoke an ‘overreaction’ in the public psyche with this kind of overreaching legislation?

More disturbingly, what ‘middle ground’ are they really shooting at?

Will it end up being a considerable lowering of the bar as far as who is or isn’t a ‘terrorist’ or are we more likely to end up with stiffer sentencing requirements for ‘terrorist linked’ activities?

Flipping this entire terrorist rock over good citizen we arrive face to face with the fact that our patriot forefathers were, in fact, ‘terrorists’ as far as the British monarchy was concerned.

Yez good citizen, one man’s ‘freedom fighter’ is another man’s terrorist!

Which rolls the clock back ten years when ‘the cheerleader’ started the ‘global war on terra’!

Which isn’t nearly as fucked up as our legislature voting (in our names) to go along with it!

More, er, ‘distressing’ is how, even with these facts in evidence, the so-called Democrats have not A.) withdrawn their endorsement from the incumbent or B.) chosen a challenger to run against him!

I mean WTF good citizen!

What the hell does it take?

They’ve already assaulted the citizens protesting government, er, ‘inaction’ against Wall Street across the nation.

How much you want to bet everybody ‘arrested’ in one of those protests will turn up on a list of terrorists once this evil legislation passes?

Our prisons are already overflowing….so much so that ‘real’ criminals are being released because the state (s) can’t ‘safely’ incarcerate them.

So where will they, er, ‘house’ these newly discovered ‘terrorists’?

Why in those brand, spankin’ new, ‘for profit’ Haliburton detention centers, of course!

Is it just me good citizen or is the Crazy Train starting to look downright ‘demented’?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Slipping into darkness...

Greetings good citizen,

Needless to say, the destruction of our civilization proceeds apace. In a surprising display of ‘market panic‘, both gold and its liquid equivalent, oil dropped considerably yesterday. Jesse of Crossroads Café opines that the sell-off (in gold) is being driven by margin calls linked to the, er, ‘collapse’ of the Euro-zone.

So…what’s happening in the Western half of western civilization?

Do you really want to know? Sure looks like the same old, same old

Bat-shit whacko Republicans are holding our government hostage to their demands that programs intended to help the needy are ‘unfunded’ so they can pass even MORE tax breaks to the very people who need them least!:

The day began with Mr. Reid sparring with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, on the Senate floor, with Mr. Reid expressing bafflement over Mr. McConnell’s refusal to let the Senate vote on the House payroll tax bill that passed earlier in the week.

Mr. Reid wants to quickly vote the bill down because while it would extend a cut in Social Security payroll taxes for 160 million workers, it also eases the way for an oil pipeline opposed by environmental groups, blocks certain air pollution rules, freezes the pay of many federal employees through 2013, increases some Medicare premiums, and greatly reduces unemployment benefits and adds a host of new rules for receiving them.

Mr. McConnell said he would not permit a quick vote on the measure until the spending agreement was passed in the Senate.

For their part, Senate Democratic leaders met with President Obama at the White House and resolved to prepare a new offer that would exclude their earlier plan to pay for the payroll tax holiday with a surcharge on incomes over $1 million, seeking savings instead from a variety of federal programs, with many of the cuts culled from the failed bipartisan committee’s list of things both sides agree upon.

What is becoming increasingly incredible to me is that anyone (in their right mind) actually votes Republican…

But your typical ‘dyed in the wool’ republican doesn’t follow the hi-jinx of the modern republican party. As far as they’re concerned, Ike is still a contender (and by extension, those running today hold Ike‘s ideals dear.)

Which is to belabor the obvious; ‘your typical’ republican is so ‘out of touch’ with reality that they are indeed a hazard to both themselves AND society!

Sadly, we know the ‘true story’, the Party of one-in-five is kept viable by the corporate owned media and the upper 20% of the pay distribution.

Understand good citizen, these are the same people that brought us this disaster

“We don’t put official paperwork in the trash,” said the commander, Maj. Gen. Thomas Richardson, at the meeting at the American Embassy in Baghdad.

The documents were piled in military trailers and hauled to the junkyard by an Iraqi contractor who was trying to sell off the surplus from American bases, the junkyard attendant said. The attendant said he had no idea what any of the documents were about, only that they were important to the Americans.

He said that over the course of several weeks he had burned dozens and dozens of binders, turning more untold stories about the war into ash.

“What can we do with them?” the attendant said. “These things are worthless to us, but we understand they are important and it is better to burn them to protect the Americans. If they are leaving, it must mean their work here is done.”

So good citizen, will the UN zip in there and scoop them up so they can conduct a formal investigation into ‘war crimes’ or has that ship already sailed?

Pardon my sarcasm good citizen but once again we are confronted with the ‘scale’ of the corrosion that is decimating our civilization.

The global justice system, like the global economy, is corrupt beyond salvation. Both must be scrapped entirely and replaced with a new, equitable system.

The ‘trick’ is making sure the, er, ‘usual suspects’ don’t become the arbiters of what is ‘equitable’.

Because they think the current arrangement is perfectly ‘equitable’…from a ‘who deserves what’ point of view…

Understand good citizen, a majority of Republicans BELIEVE the rest of us are a waste of perfectly good toilet paper!

What is wrong with this nation that one in five are STUPID enough to PUBLICLY admit this?

Hard to say, good citizen…but it looks like it might be contagious (from a political leadership point of view)

Last year, there were as many as 180,000 outbursts of what sociologists here describe as “mass incidents”: strikes, sit-ins, rallies and violent clashes that have mushroomed alongside China’s breakneck economic expansion. Government figures from the mid-1990s put the number of such episodes at fewer than 10,000.

“People don’t have sufficient faith in legal procedures or the media and feel they have no redress when bad things are done to them,” said Martin K. Whyte, a Harvard sociologist who studies Chinese social trends.

Some protests are prompted by worsening pollution, claims of unpaid wages or police brutality. A major source of unrest, including in Wukan, is the seizure of land by well-connected private developers or government officials, which involves forced evictions for meager compensation.

More than just unalloyed greed, these seizures are supported by local governments that have come to rely on proceeds of land sales and development to pay for day-to-day operations.

[In an effort to save your wrists from carpal tunnel and your poor eyes from screen glare I omitted yet another link to an article about the ‘one way street’ so-called ‘free trade agreements’ are.] (China has raised it’s tariff on US motor vehicles…)

Um, back to the last article…

Sort of looks familiar, doesn’t it?

You get shit on and there isn’t a fucking thing you can do about it.

Um, it’s time we turn that around, don’t you think, good citizen?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Drowning in an Ocean of Debt

Greetings good citizen,

It was a toss up yesterday between this story and the one on politics I decided to run with.

It seems I do quite a few of these ‘what the fuck have you been smoking’ pieces, but the ‘headline’ caught my eye…

Retail sales rise for sixth straight month

Then there were the the two photographs that accompany the article…

Is it just me or is that a ‘genuine’ alligator bag by her feet?

More demand has helped boost hiring. Employers added a net total of 120,000 jobs last month. The economy has generated 100,000 or more jobs five months in a row — the first time that has happened since April 2006.

Still, many economists question how long consumers can continue increasing their spending without more jobs and higher pay. Unemployment remains high, and inflation-adjusted incomes shrank in the July-September quarter.

Consumers might also have to cut back on spending if Congress doesn't extend a Social Security tax cut or emergency federal unemployment benefits. Both expire at the end of this year. The Social Security tax this year boosted take-home pay for the average family by $1,000.

It is also interesting to note how the entire article seems to lose its ‘overly optimistic’ tone it starts off with by the end of the piece. (The above paragraphs are from the END of the article.)

So, retail sales are up for the past six straight months…hmmn…what do you suppose could be causing That?

Could it be the same thing that is holding the rest of this clusterfuck in place…‘creative accounting’? (Pumping up prices while denying inflation by calling the end result ‘growth’!)

No doubt about it good citizen, the upper 20% are doing just fine…the further up the ladder you go, the ‘finer’ it gets!

And yes good citizen, the top 20 percent IS large enough to show up on the economic scales. In fact they are driving what is being passed off as ‘growth’ (be it over last month or last year, the article doesn’t tell us.)

And many of these ‘what the fuck have you been smoking?’ articles are guilty of precisely this…er, ‘lie of omission’.

They fail to accurately answer the question: compared to what?

People are getting fatigued by the perpetual reports of green shoots that nobody else can see!

The labor force is smaller today than it was in 2001...but somehow our corrupt media doesn’t think that is, er, ‘newsworthy’.

More disturbing good citizen is how the stock market keeps rising while the overall situation continues to deteriorate.

This tells us what, precisely?

Not that stocks are getting ‘more valuable’, it tells us that our money is becoming ‘less valuable!’

And still nobody does anything to prosecute the fraudsters!

The question without answer is how long can you tread water?

You’re being drown in an ocean of debt, mostly for the privilege of staying alive…and that shouldn’t be!

Then there’s the case of doing what needs doing.

Currently the fraudsters are protected by the Blue Line, that one in a thousand that earns their paycheck from our taxes.

Now, they despise the fraudsters as much as we do…but how do you arrest the guy who cuts your paycheck?

Oh, they’ll do it all right…but not until they throw their shields on the ground and take the side of those they were originally sworn to protect.

Some of them anyway. Some of them are too far gone. They’ve been on the take for so long that they have come to believe it is the way things ought to be.

They KNOW it is not how things ‘should be’ but they like the lives they’re living just fine, thank you. And if being ‘flexible’ provides them and their families with a ‘better life’ then they won’t see the need to ‘do things differently’.

Even as their former ‘benefactors’ swing from the nearest light post alongside their immediate supervisor, they still believe the ‘Blue Wall’ will protect them.

But the Blue Wall is riddled with holes and the thirst for Justice will bring forth a zeal not seen since the last crusade!

Which is to point out it likely WON’T be your ‘brother officers’ that do you in…it will be your own relatives!

The same people you sneered at for slaving away at menial private sector jobs!

The very same people you suspected of laughing at you behind your back for taking a ‘joke job’ in the public sector.

You think people ‘didn’t notice’ when you looked the other way? They noticed…and they remember.

Did you ever consider the consequences of looking the other way?

Here’s a small sample of what went down while YOU were ‘twiddling your thumbs’!

Report: Child Homelessness Up 33% in 3 Years" (USA Today)

One in 45 children in the USA — 1.6 million children — were living on the street, in homeless shelters or motels, or doubled up with other families last year, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness.

The numbers represent a 33% increase from 2007, when there were 1.2 million homeless children, according to a report the center is releasing Tuesday.

"This is an absurdly high number," says Ellen Bassuk, president of the center. "What we have new in 2010 is the effects of a man-made disaster caused by the economic recession. … We are seeing extreme budget cuts, foreclosures and a lack of affordable housing."

Without equality there can be no justice, without justice there can be no peace and without peace there can be no prosperity.

Which is to remind you if you want justice it starts with equality and not with ‘turning a blind eye’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The Sad State of Modern Politics

Greetings good citizen,

As one might expect, the state of politics is no better than the state of the economy.

Yet some believe that with the ‘right’ (and I do mean RIGHT and not ‘synonymous with correct’) leadership this whole disaster can be, er, averted.

No irony should be lost on the fact that these people don’t appreciate the gravity of the situation. (They vote Republican solely because ‘that’s who they are’…)

Sadly, this is what happens when you apply a ‘Damn the torpedoes’ psychology to EVERYTHING, thereby eradicating the fine line between brave and STUPID!)

Yes, while there are those who naively believe the ‘right candidate’ is capable of ‘fixing’ everything, there exists an even, er, ‘dimmer’ subset of the electorate that has no idea anything is even amiss.

So much the better for the politicians/criminals…

Which brings us to today’s offering , an exercise in seeking an ‘elect-able’ candidate after the failure of both political parties.

The basic pitch of Americans Elect goes like this: We’ll go through the expensive and time-consuming process of getting ballot access in all 50 states. Then we’ll hold an online convention in June in which any registered voter can participate. Participants will nominate a presidential ticket including one Democrat and one Republican who will then enter the general election fray.

Here’s what the group is not so upfront about: It’s fueled by millions of dollars of secret money, there is a group of wealthy, well-connected board members who have control over Americans Elect’s nominating process, and the group has myriad links to Wall Street.

Americans Elect has been getting periodic bursts of support from prominent commentators.

We are ‘led to believe’ that this new variant on the now Libertarian dominated ‘sniff test’ is NOT led/funded by, er, ‘progressives’.

In fact the ‘strange’ part of the whole exercise is the, er, ‘focus’ on keeping the two party ‘charade’ intact! (If we’re all in this ‘together’ good citizen then WHO is ‘the opposition’?)

So WHO is behind this, er, ‘search for a suitable puppet?’

You don’t suppose it is the same people who hijacked the electoral process in the first place, do you?

I mean, who else could it be?

Then there’s the flipside of this coin, one that I have raised a few times before, the quandary of electing an honest player into an already corrupt game.

Without the, er, ‘support’ of the courts there is no way our ‘honest man’ can clean up, much less prosecute the corrupt.

This is similar to the bizarre Republican victory in the House, just in time to block legislation that would, er, punish the financial sector.

I mean Bubba, they’ve already ‘tipped their hand’, do they have to beat you over the head with it too?

So, what should the ‘winner’ of this popularity contest do?

If they had any ‘integrity’ at all, he/she would tell them to go fuck themselves!

Anyone with half a brain would!

Political puppets have extremely short life spans…it’s a ‘credibility thing’.

They run on promising to take this or that currently popular action, knowing their campaign contributors are paying him/her to DO precisely the opposite!

While those who ‘control’ electoral politics also control the media (which is how they ‘insure’ that the ‘right’ candidate, er, wins) people will stop believing the charade if a ‘spent’ candidate keeps winning re-election.

This is the downside of rigging the ballot box, if you don’t do it carefully, you WILL breed a revolt!

Case in point; here we are, less than a dozen election cycles since they started ‘fixing’ elections and they’ve succeeded in destroying the credibility of BOTH parties…so now they’re hunting for an ‘elect-able’ candidate…

WTF good citizen, WTF!

If we were to ‘assume the best’ and take it on faith that this is the efforts of a ‘concerned’ citizens group, interested in keeping our ‘two party system’ alive < sarcasm on >(Because it has ‘worked so well’ for the past two hundred years…)< sarcasm off > we’d still be faced with the ‘already corrupt system’ conundrum, making the whole exercise one in futility.

While this Alternet article also questions the ‘motives’ behind this sinister ploy it doesn’t take the extra step and ask ‘who wins if this succeeds?’

It sure as hell won’t be YOU!

Which is certainly a sign that it is once again time to embark on a, er, campaign for a New Deal.

Only this time we won’t stop until we get a total makeover…like the one laid out in A Simple Plan…

No, not the Movie or the Rock band…the PLAN that is posted here on this website!

It is our first best hope…to the point that we can’t afford to not make it a reality!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner