Truthiness

Greetings good citizen,

Nonsense (stock) markets around the globe are bleeding red this morning (while the sneaks on Wall Street managed to ‘paint the tape’ and cause the Dow to have a positive finish at the very end of trading yesterday…

So much for ‘truth’ in financial transactions…in fact it is the prevalence of ‘truthiness’ in today’s business headlines that caught my eye:

E-Mails Suggest JPMorgan Knew Flaws of Some Loans
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

E-mails and employee interviews filed as part of a lawsuit show that JPMorgan Chase flouted quality controls as it bundled mortgages into financial instruments.

A trove of internal e-mails at JPMorgan Chase, filed as part of a lawsuit, offers a glimpse into how the bank bundled mortgage securities.

Are you ‘shocked’ by this ‘revelation’ good citizen or are you like the majority of the public and more than a little steamed that it’s been five years since this obvious fraud and NOBODY has swung for it…yet.

Which is not a declaration of the people’s justice so much as the Devil will indeed ‘take the hindmost’.

Who may not be particularly ‘guilty’ of anything except of being in the wrong place at the wrong time…like so many of society’s victims.

In yet another (non) shocker, we have the following:

European Central Bank Leaves Interest Rate Unchanged
By JACK EWING 10 minutes ago

The strength of the euro is a sign of confidence, the bank’s president, Mario Draghi, said after the announcement. There have been concerns about the rising value of the currency.

Bank of England Leaves Interest Rate Unchanged
Wall Street Takes a Step Backward 9:49 AM ET

The Euro zone is flatter than a pancake so I will remind you that we are discussing the ‘relative strength’ of the Euro as compared to other ‘lackluster’ currencies.

Which tells you something about what Mr. Bernanke is doing to the dollar (to make our stock market rise ‘senselessly’.)

Which is just what it looks like good citizen, the people who ‘own’ the world see their purchasing power increase while the people who work for them see their purchasing power, er, ‘watered down’.

This explains why there are 7 million people who call themselves ‘self-employed’. (It’s better to be the employer than the employee.)

European Leaders Gather for a Trillion-Euro Budget Debate
By JAMES KANTER 9:47 AM ET

The budget represents only about 2 percent of total public spending in the European Union. But it still involves furious horse trading.

The ‘debate’ (such as it is) must be over how long they can keep the shell game of propping up the banking system using the taxpayer’s money?

There is an ‘urgent need’ to return banking to profitability but it’s not going to happen in this generation.

Not much to debate really. Maybe they’ll discuss what might happen to them if they are found out but there really isn’t much point on dwelling upon such unpleasantness.

If the ‘jig were up’ good citizen I’d say the environment is ripe for a ‘hostile takeover’, something similar to how the Nazis swept to power.

I’m also going to predict that it is exactly what will happen…but none of my predictions come to pass. Not yet anyway.

DealBook
K.K.R.'s Earnings Rise 22% on Investment Gains
By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED 25 minutes ago

K.K.R. said on Thursday that it earned $347.7 million in the fourth quarter, as all of its businesses showed strong gains. For the year, the firm reported earning $2.1 billion.

DealBook: Lazard's Profit Surges as Deal Assignments Pick Up 9:17 AM ET

You know as well as I good citizen that there’s nothing ‘new’ under the sun so what we’re witnessing here is the simple consolidation of market share resulting in the consumer being squeezed ever tighter, while their purchasing power sinks into the basement.

You don’t suppose these guys could be on to something?

DealBook
Ireland to Liquidate Anglo Irish Bank
By MARK SCOTT 8:59 AM ET

The government passed emergency legislation to liquidate Anglo Irish Bank, one of the country’s largest, as part of a plan to restructure debt payments.

What do you suppose would happen if we tried that will ALL of the ‘troubled banks’?

If we listen to the pundits it would mean the end of banking as we know it! I, for one, would not be ‘upset’ by the demise of ‘modern banking’.

If I slip my swami turban back on for a moment I see that ultimately there will only be one bank and they will dictate to us how much it will cost to do business.

And if you can’t afford it, tough!

Or our next story:

Weaker Yen Helps Sony Trim Losses for Quarter
By HIROKO TABUCHI 7:13 AM ET

The earnings at Sony reflect a revival in the fortunes of other struggling Japanese electronics manufacturers, and its shares have surged almost 60 percent in 2013.

Funny how currency devaluation can be a two-edged sword, depending on how you ‘cook the books!’

Finally:

Alcatel-Lucent Chief Resigns as Company Posts Loss
By KEVIN J. O’BRIEN 8:10 AM ET

The telecommunications equipment maker said it lost $1.85 billion in 2012, and announced the resignation of Ben Verwaayen, its chief executive since 2008.

DealBook
Credit Suisse Returns to Profit and Plans More Cost Cuts
By JULIA WERDIGIER 28 minutes ago

The chief executive, Brady W. Dougan, is targeting hundreds of millions of dollars in additional cost reductions after Credit Suisse reported a profit of $436 million for the fourth quarter.

Okay so I snuck two in there. The first tells of what ‘globalization’ has done to the former ‘sole source’ of telecommunications equipment in the world.

Bet you’re all pleased as can be that hundreds of thousands of jobs and our future prosperity have been replaced with cheesy plastic phones that won’t stay on the table when you pick up the handset!

Oh and don’t forget, those old indestructible phones that stayed put were free with the service!

But the free market chuckleheads felt you needed to ‘buy’ your equipment!

Which leaves our final story and one comment...do you suppose they can return to profitability if they fire everybody? (It's the 'free-market way!')

Long live the free markets! (Read: death to capitalism!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Due Process

Greetings good citizen,

Who cares what nonsense is going down on Wall Street, it’s what’s happening to/in Washington that has most of us, er, ‘alarmed’…

Today’s top story took me back a few steps…maybe the conservo-whackos from East Redneckistan are cheering but I find it more than somewhat disturbing that the person ‘credited’ with creating the US ‘death, sans due process’ program has been NOMINATED TO HEAD THE FREAKING CIA!

TOP NEWS
Drone Strikes' Dangers to Get Rare Moment in Public Eye
By ROBERT F. WORTH, MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE

The chief architect of a clandestine campaign of targeted killings, John O. Brennan, will face a Senate hearing Thursday as President Obama's nominee for C.I.A. director.

Probably a waste of time to point out that I am firmly against ‘electing’ our leaders, especially when our most recent choice was a KNOWN INCOMPETENT that didn’t merit re-election.

So here we are, a couple of months after said election and the guy who refused to prosecute the Bush administration continues to advance its agenda!

Naturally, I will be denounced as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ for pointing that little tidbit out but isn’t that how Nazi Germany got started, with it’s independent media bought out so only the corporate media remained?

This is one of those ‘turning points’ historians will look back on and cry ‘why didn’t anybody do something to stop them when this happened?

Which mistakenly assumes that ‘anybody’ has a gonad between the bunch of them…

Oh they’ll fight all right, some of them for the wrong side but they’ll fight when their hand-picked leaders tell them its time to ‘take out the trash’…

And you’ll never guess who they’re talking about good citizen but that sinking feeling in your gut is trying to tell you it’s you.

Will son exterminate their own families? If it means being on the ‘winning team’ they might.

And the ones who are shocked by this will be executed for their lack of patriotic frevor! (Which will keep the rest of them pulling the trigger, regardless of if they hit anything.)

What these refuseniks will eventually do is start ‘fragging’.
Amazing what a couple of grenades in the command tent/bunker/armored vehicle can do.

Did I mention our leaders are a bunch of cowards?

Why do you think their preferred soldier is a robot? The song says cannonball ain’t got no mind…well a robot doesn’t need to ‘understand’ what its doing either.

It kills what it’s pointed at.

The one doing the pointing is the one we need to watch.

Now our Mr. Brennan sold his idea on saving the lives of countless soldiers and not the flip side of this nightmare, which is untold ‘collateral damage’.

In countless cases the murder of civilians has been ‘justified’ because these people were the ‘friends or relatives’ of people previously killed by remote control and without a trial.

The abject failure of due process redefines the term ‘life is cheap’…to the point of tripping the ‘kill on sight’ switch.

Which is what a murderer like Mr. Brennan actually wants. But how do we block this man from becoming the head of the world’s most notorious spy agency?

Do we, er, ‘petition’ our leaders?

Fat lot of good that did when Obama–boy named Timmy Geithner as Treasury secretary!

Don’t look now good citizen but the Nazi-capitalist war machine is being rebuilt here in the US.

Now we can look at our next article and ponder precisely which ‘cuts’ he is trying to ‘stave off’?

Obama Urges Congress to Act to Stave Off Cuts
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and JACKIE CALMES

President Obama pressed lawmakers on Tuesday to pass a package of limited spending cuts and tax changes to avoid the across-the-board reductions set to take effect on March 1.

We already know the incumbent thinks ‘entitlements’ should be cut so we can eliminate that from the list.

What’s left but tax breaks for the uber rich and military spending?

And the uber-rich must be idiots not to realize that the military they’re building up will eventually be used by the next Hitler to cut them down with too!

That’s when you’ll see what can politely be termed as a ‘popular uprising’, when their worthless hydes are at risk of extermination…

But we have our last article to thank for the rise of the ‘Neo-Nazis’

DealBook
E-Mails Show Alarm at S.&P. as Mortgage Crisis Exploded
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH and RON NIXON

Court documents offer a look at the inner workings of Standard & Poor's, which the government says inflated credit ratings with dire consequences for the entire economy.

DealBook: U.S. Contends S.& P. Purposely Used Faulty Models

Which is to imply that the uber-rich were complicit in the ‘looting’ of the global financial system.

How sad is it good citizen that none of them ‘understand’ money?

And with that chilling thought…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Degradation

Greetings good citizen,

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

(and Anarchists are nothing if not liberals!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you know what word it is?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I digress…

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Entertainment

Greetings good citizen,

As oil remains stuck in the $96 dollar a barrel range, the Dow has dropped a hundred and fifteen points in just a shade over an hour’s trading.

Which is to point out that the destruction of our civilization proceeds ‘on schedule’.

I have selected three headlines from today’s business section for your, er, ‘amusement’:

News Analysis
A scene from the 1954 film “Tobor the Great.”
Raging (Again) Against the Robots
By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Robots have once again gripped the nation’s imagination, stoking fears of displaced jobs and perhaps even a displaced human race.

Many is the story about ‘machine intelligence’ and a robotic ‘takeover’ of our planet, or even our galaxy since robots aren’t subject to the same narrow band of operating conditions organic life is restricted to.

Like time travel this is a bogeyman that will remain a staple of the fiction writer. While we have already created machines that can ‘learn’, we have yet to imbue one with ‘a sense of purpose’ nor has one developed this uniquely human trait on its own (yet.)

Our ‘problem’ with a ‘pile of bolts’ is limited to the capitalists love of a tireless worker that you only pay once.

This ‘displacement’ of humans from the fabrication of commodities severely damages the economy (all of which are local!)

Not that the robot is to blame. It is the, er, ‘skewing’ of the distribution process robots cause (profits go up because prices DON’T go down, yet you have significantly reduced the number of people able to buy the product!)

Cost to produce has gone down but the number of buyers has also shrunk…so where’s the ‘win’?

The CEO grabbed it because he’s paid based on ‘production efficiency’!

The rest of your civilization LOSES!

Did I mention that the serious mismanagement of our civilization is rapidly reaching ‘critical mass?’ The people making decisions are getting paid to act AGAINST the interests of society at large?

And the owners don’t care because the books (which are thoroughly cooked) look fine.

Which leads us to their puzzlement over why their employees are ‘unhappy’.

A job has become its own reward in our resource scarce environment…(if you can’t live on what it pays tough!)

No need to hand out pay increases when your workers are thankful to be getting a paycheck at all while so many of their peers aren’t.

Beginning to see the problem? It’s not the robots at all…it’s the crazy capitalists and their gross incompetence!

Which provides an excellent segue to our next article:

Vast Oil Reserve May Now Be Within Reach, and Battle Heats Up
By NORIMITSU ONISHI

Monterey Shale deposits, which could turn California into the nation’s top oil-producing state, is stirring conflict between drillers and environmental interests.

Map Map: California’s Hydraulic Fracturing Hotbed

Did the first thing that popped into my head also pop into yours? Which is to ask is it a particularly wise idea to be ‘fracking’ in a ‘seismically sensitive’ area like the Island just off the coast of Los Angeles?

But apparently the capitalist don’t care! Or worse, we are a lot closer to the end of our energy rope than media would have you believe.

Can you imagine the ‘Wile E. Coyote moment’ when the gas pumps go dry and the public sits there dumbfounded because they didn’t know we were close to running out?

Which brings us to the age old question if the world was going to end tomorrow would they tell us?

Probably not…imagine the chaos if they did! (And no, it would NOT be ‘anarchy’.)

Even this, the expansion of the wasteland that passes for ‘entertainment’ speaks volumes regarding the mindset of those in charge (and their endless incompetence.)

The Media Equation
Shunning the Safe, FX Indulges Its Dark Side
By DAVID CARR

Behind FX’s recent success is its willingness to give its shows creative freedom.

Between decidedly reckless ‘reality programming’ (that plays fast and loose with the facts) and the merging of the fantasy world with the real world via computer graphics…the ‘credibility gap’ is growing enormous!

Which is to point out that shows no longer ‘entertain’ as much as they tax the imagination.

There are several shows out there now that have what can only be called incredible ‘plot holes’ in them…and this is due to the ‘failure of imagination’ coupled with capitalist censorship.

Yes good citizen, TV has become a vapid wasteland because of the zero tolerance policy the corporate owned media has towards anything that challenges the ‘supremacy’ of capitalism.

When you are confined to a very narrow and contradictory box, the creative process is either stifled or it increasingly defies logic.

If Bram Stokers original demon had half of the powers he is currently endowed with (by hack writers) we’d ALL be vampires!

But the things impressionable young girls believe should never be confused with reality…

So why is dumbbell ‘praising’ Fox?

Could it be that ‘corporate owned media’ thing (that cuts HIS paycheck too?)

Something to ponder while you wait for a vampire to grant you the invincibility you’ve longed for your whole life!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Shelf Life

Greetings good citizen,

Welcome to Super Sunday. I don’t follow sports although I know the local team blew it this year…which is part of the reason I don’t follow sports.

It’s not the failure but the influence of money that disturbs me regarding so-called ‘professional sports.’

I won’t watch the game (because I don’t care about the outcome.)

Ironically, the ‘owners’ don’t care either. It’s all about backsides in seats.

Well, my backside will be in a seat all right but it won’t be parked in front of ‘the idiot box’ (it will be parked in front of idiot box jr…which YOU happen to be sitting in front of.)

Here’s the world according to the business section of the NY Times on 2/3/13:

The Most Wanted Gun in America
By NATASHA SINGER

Aggressive marketing and savvy manufacturing have helped recast the place of guns in American life, turning AR-15-style rifles into a fast-growing profit center.
At the Pasadena Pawn and Gun Shop in Maryland, customers can join a waiting list to buy an AR-15-style rifle. “It’s kind of fashionable,” Frank Loane Sr., the shop’s proprietor, said of the gun.

Nothing like the threat of a weapons ban to make people go crazy buying them up!

Like a lot of other things in life, people don’t think things through. Who are they going to shoot with their ‘new toy’?

Probably one of their relatives…or (surprise, surprise) they’re going to take the bad boy and go hunt down A.) Random strangers in a mall or B.) Their former co-workers or C.) An event sponsored by some civic group that has shunned them (or someone they know) in the past.

But they are really buying them so they have something to ‘defend their home with’ (when the cops come knocking…)

Not that they actually have the, er, ‘intestinal fortitude’ to face down the local PD…when it comes to that a majority of these heroes turn the gun on themselves.

But when you’re talking tough down at the bar you have to provide ‘the appearance’ of being willing to back it up.

So you take your buddies and your new toy down to the range to demonstrate your prowess with firearms…and use the excuse ‘it’s new and not sighted in yet’ when you indeed stink at hitting the target!

And you all walk away, confident in the knowledge that if Bambi is more than ten feet away, he will most likely escape (as he has countless times before.)

Oddly nobody questions the need to buy/use a weapon with a fifteen round clip to gun down a defenseless animal. And the light 223 caliber was designed to reduce recoil, improving your aim recovery time on human targets.

While the ability to bring the weapon to bear again more swiftly is a positive in both instances, you’d probably want to use a heavier caliber to knock the animal down (also eliminating the need to shoot it twice.

But people don’t think these things through.

Next on today’s list is this story, which I know all too well:

Susan Zimmerman, 62, has three part-time jobs.
In Hard Economy for All Ages, Older Isn’t Better ... It’s Brutal
By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Recent data present a strong case for baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

Ask an Expert: How Does Job Loss Affect Life Expectancy?

To belabor the obvious, job loss prior to retirement really just kicks the crap out of your SSI account. And we all know we won’t be able to ‘make ends meet’ on that tiny amount so it’s just the difference between ‘doomed’ and ‘scroomed’.

Left unaddressed is what can be done about this rampant ‘age discrimination’? You WON’T find an attorney willing to take your case because (unless you’re the Virgin Mary incarnate) there’s always something in your past that the defense can point to and say ‘that’s the reason we didn’t hire them!’

Since you have no ‘legal standing’ your only real remedy is to employ yourself…(or you can buy an assault weapon and ‘deploy’ yourself…)

We all know what the deal is.

Mr./Ms. ‘employer’ is afraid old and gray can’t keep up with the kids. Often these weasels are as old as you are (and use that as proof YOU can’t do the job because THEY CAN’T!)

Well, the real issue is shelf life. How long do you have to make your heap before you’re discarded like yesterday’s newspaper?

It started getting bad around the time I turned forty and now that I’m over fifty, it’s proven impossible.

I’ve got to survive ten more years before I can apply for my SSI…the only good news is I will be ‘well accustomed’ to living on nothing by then.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: Retirement age under A Simple Plan is fifty…at full pay!

United

Greetings good citizen,

Good news, the weekend is here! But that doesn’t stop the bad news and, if we pause to consider that most of what they tell us serves to distract us from other issues, the bad news only becomes that much more poignant.

These are headlines drawn from the front page of today’s NY Times:

As Suicides Rise in U.S., Veterans Are Less of Total
By JAMES DAO

The convergence reflects the fact that suicide numbers are rising slightly among both veterans and everyone else, but has increased more in the general population.

How does this headline sit with you good citizen? I’d opine that my favorite hobby horse, ‘desperation’ is on the rise and this is proof.

If you don’t go on a rampage, ‘the alternative’ is to destroy yourself.

Is this the kind of society we want to hand over to our children? Increasingly, Hollywood (or more correctly Bollywood) has focused on an endless stream of dystopian futures.

I watched Looper last night and I have to admit, it was beyond grim…although the ‘lynchpin’ of the story (by my way of thinking) will always be ‘impossible’ because the past doesn’t exist! We remember what happened but that doesn’t mean it’s still there. Same thing with the future, it doesn’t exist (yet) so it is impossible to ‘travel’ there because we live in the perpetual ‘now’. It was now a moment ago and it will still be now in a couple of seconds but you can’t rush it. Time (as mankind understands it) is a mental construct…that has some very detrimental side effects for the environment.

Man (read capitalists) foolishly believes that given enough time the environment will ‘repair’ itself…not true.

But, as usual, I digress.

Don’t believe in God, don’t believe in time and I definitely don’t believe in money so what DO I believe in?

I believe in YOU (and by extension, myself.) May not be much but it’s all we’ve got.

The keyword there, good citizen, is ‘we’.

Speaking of words we come upon this one often enough but it is so context sensitive and flexible that it’s hardly useful:

BUSINESS
As U.S. Growth Lags, Some Press the Fed to Do Still More
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Federal Reserve officials believe the bank could do more to increase the pace of inflation and aid growth. They simply are not persuaded that the benefits outweigh potential costs.

While not necessarily a ‘one time’ trick, the idea is to skin everybody in the economy via inflation. Last time they did this trick it cost me fifty percent of my purchasing power.

Purchasing power that I have never regained.

Now they are contemplating doing it again…and here we are on the cusp of an energy crisis.

Needless to say the death toll will be horrendous considering the unemployment situation. (40% + of the population on some type of ‘food assistance’ because their jobs pay poverty wages AND OUR POLITICIANS DON’T THINK THIS IS AN ISSUE!)

Once again I propose that we ‘string ‘em up’ but it seems nobody likes that idea…

Yet somehow just letting them walk away after what they’ve done just doesn’t seem proper.

Unless that walk leads them to a peaceful and contemplative place where they had all of the time in the world to weigh the impact of their bountiful deeds. (The one way walk nobody survives, a.k.a. ‘exile’.)

But I’m doing it again, ain’t I…

The thing is we have no way to stop them from ‘poisoning the well’, something they’ve already done. Thanks to the funniness of money they have been able to keep the economy ‘alive’ (on life support) which has the exact same effect as ‘inflating away’ our debts.

The problem here is the tens of millions of people who don’t have an income stream to tap.

Part of the ‘inflate away’ process is raising everybody’s pay (literally absorbing) a portion of the inflation while they raise prices.

Most people get fooked in this process, their paycheck doubles but their expenses quadruple.

And the bailed out bankers (the cause of this whole mess) happily hand out loans to the soon to be bankrupt workers.

Then the economy crashes (like it did on Carter) and another Reagan comes along with more ‘voodoo economics’ and things get better…for the one tenth of one percent.

Needless to say, given our starting point, this is how you wake up one morning to realize you’re living in a Banana Republic!

In fact, you’re three quarters of the way there already.

Understand good citizen, nobody is keeping the ‘tyrants’ in check. They’re going to run you down and you have no place to turn to but your neighbor.

How pathetic is it that there’s a fifty-fifty chance they are in ‘denial’ that anything’s even wrong (thus would they be disinclined to help you.)

United we stand but united we aren’t good citizen…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wildly Optimistic

Greetings good citizen,

I was watching the idiot box by myself last night and what should come on but a show about global warming titled 2100. I am fully aware that the Discovery network is a subsidiary of NewsCorp, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by the amazingly optimistic timeline presented as a ‘worst case scenario.’

Turns out this little ‘made for cable’ pseudo horror show was produced in 2009 in association with ‘Mr. Flat-Earth’ himself (Thomas Friedman, a bonafide >One Percenter.)

The premises put forth were optimistic in the extreme. Fantasies such as commercial air travel (in futuristic jetliners and not dirigibles, which would have been more ‘realistic’) still existing in a post energy scarcity world, a topic which was, for the most part, ignored!

I shouldn’t say that, they did include a mention of gas stations being out of fuel but the knock on effects of this event weren’t factored it.

Oh, the real icing on this fantasy cupcake was that the nation’s most populous city (and the hometown of Mr. Flat Earth) was showcased as a shining example of sustainability!

The (cartoon) buildings all had wind turbines on them and the rooftops all had gardens to sustain the residents below…which is total BS, the numbers don’t work.

Another ‘curious’ feature of this ‘countdown to doomsday’ (after Humanity becomes sustainable it still manages to collapse!) is how the global population keeps dropping as the true bogeyman of global warming and over population is revealed to be water shortages.

Incidents of civil unrest are met with lethal force by the, er, ‘government’…and nobody protests. (Although in the show our protagonist protests a rate hike by the privately owned desalination plant and the people ‘win’…and she meets her future husband…

But again, like most ‘capitalist fairy tales’ this too goes against its own principles!

Anyway, the hero of this epic has a baby girl of her own, which she and protest boy (both allegedly ‘liberal do-gooders’, she’s a nurse and he’s an engineer.) move to NYC to raise…(it’s now around 2040)

This is during this cross-country trek that the energy situation is touched upon, yet they make the trip in a gasoline-powered vehicle!

Oh, and they show gas stations advertising $5 a gallon gasoline…when as soon as this summer we will be hit with pumps that can’t handle the new ten plus dollars a gallon prices.

And if you can’t pay…or worse, how much more ‘irresistible’ will this increase in prices make knocking over convenience stores?

Remember, all crime is ‘cash and carry’!

The same people who can’t afford double-digit gasoline will likely be the ones robbing the place after dark.

The ‘wildcard’ here is next generation ‘gangs’.

Will outlaws start traveling in numbers again?

But this, er, ‘eventuality’ wasn’t explored in last night’s (wildly optimistic) ‘worst case scenario.’

After the sustainable grid fails (inexplicably…well, okay, there is a plague but the assumption that it only kills the people maintaining the equipment is a bit far fetched…(although you can see one of the deep seated fears of the One Percent in this situation.)

The plague won’t get them (or the damn liberals) they’re ‘too good’. It will be their faithful servants who will be struck down by the terrible disease, leaving them helpless and alone in the dark and the cold.

Funny how this whole scenario circles back to the inability of the wealthy ‘to conceive of a society without slaves.’

More ironic is how these worthless creatures will perish without someone to do the heavy lifting for them…

This is how it will end for the champions of the ‘rugged individual’.

But not so for our liberal protagonist! At 75 years old (and recently widowed, her husband dies when the dam he designed fails…) She sets out through the wasteland on foot to find her long lost daughter living in upstate NY.

And like most capitalist ‘feel good’ disaster films, she finds her…and isn’t she widowed too!

I wonder how much of this story Tom’s wife contributed? I’m seeing a pattern here.

So, back to reality…

The ‘slow fizzle’ depicted in this 2009 ‘dramatization’ wasn’t even close to how it will likely go down.

They use the (failed) global warming summit of 2009 as the ‘turning point’ that sets mankind on its path to doom.

Makes you wonder how disappointed the One Percent are that the retail economy collapsed, basically shutting down worldwide consumption?

Somehow the pinheads don’t see this as an ‘opportunity’.

Remember what I keep saying, ALL ECONOMIES ARE LOCAL! Here is the ‘chance’ to rebuild local economies around the globe, considerably lightening their ‘carbon footprint’.

It starts with LOCALLY PRODUCED ‘renewable energy products’. You know the capitalist pinheads want to sell you CHINESE wind turbines and solar collectors…but unemployment is too high!

So the turbines and panels need to be built locally (maybe incorporating A FEW ‘imported parts’) Unfortunately the idiots don’t understand what ‘a few’ means but this can be straightened out at the border, so to speak.

Maybe the capitalist pinheads will figure out that the Chinese need solar panels and wind turbines too…

But for this to work the rest of us need to abandon capitalism and its predatory ways…and we may want to put the boots to communist leaders whose ‘cats don’t hunt’ as well.

Because the worst case is a lot closer and much worse than the >One Percent ‘imagines’ it will be…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner