Monster(s)

Greetings good citizen,

Stock markets are once again bleeding from the eyesockets…BUT, in case you haven’t noticed, the ‘needy-greedy’ grab inexplicable one to two hundred point jumps in share value while giving back a paltry ten or twenty points over the following days…a net win…for them.

Um, as is my custom I latch onto the first thing that grabs my eye, like this story about the alarming surge in homelessness in NYC. and how the whiny ‘One Percenters’ are reacting…

New York's Boom in Homelessness

The crisis stems from a lack of affordable housing and the city's ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor, one of the widest in the U.S. and comparable to that found in sub-Saharan Africa. Unlike in other cities, New York is required by law to provide shelter to every person who seeks it. As the crisis escalates, the city has used its power of emergency authority to create shelters as quickly as possible, bypassing the typical community approval process. And that has created turmoil in neighborhoods like the Upper West Side, where a shelter opened in August among apartments occupied by the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the shelter is right across the street from P.S. 75, an elementary school which also has a playground. "There definitely seem to be more people hanging around the street corners, at the subway stops, panhandling," said Jen Zunt, a mother of a fifth-grader at P.S. 75. "There's not enough supervision. And these are going to be people who have mental health issues, possibly."

Anxious parents say they've seen homeless men urinating in doorways and loitering near the school. (Does anyone wonder why, considering the general scarcity of public restrooms in metropolitan areas across the nation?) Many mothers have stopped letting their children walk home alone. The parent-teacher association is working with local police to increase security on the street, which is a pedestrian corridor to Riverside Park's soccer fields and playgrounds.

You can click through to read the whole article but I can save you the time good citizen, you won’t find a single sentence questioning the origins/source of this flood of homelessness.

How does it make YOU feel that the >One Percent who destroyed our economy now expect to be ‘protected’ from the consequences of their actions?

Is this just another symptom of ‘failing to think things through’?

While it seems as though I’ve been on a ‘homeless kick’ lately I’m going to ask you to switch mental gears with me as we confront the daunting if not insurmountable issue of how we fix this whole ‘corrupt to the core’ situation.

Let us first take a moment to assess the collapse of classical ‘liberalism’

Um, you’re going to have to watch the video that accompanies this link to the end to get to the part where we are once again advised to ‘protest and not cooperate’ in our own enslavement…which is bullshit.

This is a failure I have witnessed repeatedly in liberal circles. These people don’t want to threaten their comfortable lives so they encourage a ‘peaceful’ negotiation that will ‘gradually’ improve conditions for all.

Now, Mr. Hedges is being granted an international stage (albeit one that is in the back room of a dark and poorly lit studio that nobody pays attention to. If not for Jesse I would not have seen this.) Which might explain his ‘non-violent’ stance…and we could also chalk it up to his being a ‘man of God’.

Which totally ignores the true situation. We are not having a ‘dialog’ with the oligarchs, they are in fact, as Chris points out, ‘dictating’ ‘how it’s going to be.’ With no opposition or opposing alternatives intruding on that narrative.

Yes, loss of lives will be senseless and the resulting carnage wasteful…but only an IDIOT believes the same results could be achieved through ‘negotiation’.

The people who stole our civilization DON’T NEGOTIATE. And will only give lip service to anything resembling compromise UNDER THE THREAT OF DEATH, PERSONAL!

And that threat has to be more ‘real’ than mumbling the words ‘or we’ll kill you!’ Which is how our failed liberal ‘protectors’ would put it.

All our uncompromising greed-heads would hear is the ‘or’ and it would be ‘game on’!

The line we need to enforce, good citizen if we want to regain control of our civilization and our children’s future is “You and anybody who aids you WILL BE EXILED!”

And if you haven’t read the section of A Simple Plan that covers Exile, now would be a good time to look it up.

But since most of you won’t, I’ll spare you the work of finding the appropriate section by providing a thumbnail sketch here:

Exile is a one way trip where the ‘rights’ of civil society are stripped from the individual convicted by a jury of the people.

Once stripped, the convict will be released, naked and alone to live out the rest of their natural days as best they can.

Hell, it’s hard to imagine that some of these boot-strapping boot-strappers wouldn’t have electricity and running water by sundown of the first day, such gifted and talented individuals…oh wait…there is the ‘alone’ part in there.

How are these greed-heads going to get by without anybody to do their heavy lifting for them?

Short answer, they won’t.

Now we come to the second, more diabolical part of exile. These boot-strapping bootstrappers WON’T be alone! They will have tens of thousands of likeminded (albeit naked) individuals…many of them in the early stages of starvation and dehydration.

Forgot to mention that they won’t be exiled to a tropical paradise…they will be exiled to the badlands, which is what our bootstrappers were best at creating, fucking deserts!

Take what you know about the ‘charitable tendencies’ of the >One Percent and imagine a few acres of ‘likeminded individuals’ left to share what the land has to offer?

How cruel of us to teach these ingrates what socialism (the sharing of resources) is the hard way?

We shall not see how much more ‘noble’ the savages among us will be towards one another because their depravity will be unbearable to witness.

But it must be done…not to ‘cleanse’ the species but surely to preserve it.

How ironic to see social Darwinism turned upon those who would exterminate the weak? (Without a second thought or the slightest twinge of regret.)

There’s a certain justice in letting the exterminators exterminate each other.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS. If this makes ME a monster, what does what they are doing make them?

More pointedly, what does it make YOU if you refuse to act?

At least the last question is easy; it will make you and your children ‘extinct’.

Whacko!

Greetings good citizen,

Happy Monday/Tuesday to you! (For many of you it’s Tuesday/Tuesday because your capitalist bosses have become stingy about giving you, er, ‘unnecessary’ paid days off.

Columbus Day USED TO BE a holiday (back when the tax rate on people who earned more than a million a year was over 90%…now that the pricks pay lower taxes than you do they suddenly can’t afford to pay YOU for holidays anymore! (Hint, they no longer need the ‘write off’ your holiday pay used to represent!)

I mean understand the logic behind high marginal taxes. Either treat your employees better OR we’ll take it from you and pay it out in welfare!

And understand, poverty has always been a problem but it was NEVER as bad as it is now.

Which isn’t absolutely accurate. Back before the New Deal kids went without shoes because their parents didn’t earn enough money, but those kids had a warm house and food in their stomachs!

But after the New Deal that variety of grinding poverty ‘almost’ disappeared…because the capitalist had his feet held to the fire. Either pay your employees or Uncle Sam will do it for you!

And it worked…at first.

Business owners learned they could get the unions to cheat their own people if they cozied up to the mobsters who ran them.

This turned into a two-edged sword because it gave the union a bad name and it let the capitalist play ‘hardball’ with the help.

But nowadays the boss doesn’t have to worry about the unions anymore…because once the bosses bought the justice system, they didn’t need to play footsie with the mob anymore.

They had (have) the judges in their pockets.

Now they can let their stooges in the financial sector pull stunts like this one:

I.M.F. Forecast Discourages Investors
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 34 minutes ago

The International Monetary Fund lowered its world economic growth outlooks for 2013 and 2014.

why do you suppose the IMF is lowering it’s already abysmal projections for the foreseeable future?

Could it be because we are ALL JAPANESE now?

Which is to ask if Japan isn’t the latest economy to join the ranks of the World’s Banana Republics?

But what’s up with this?

Japanese Car Sales Plummet in China
By KEITH BRADSHER

Japanese automakers have cut manufacturing by up to half in China after violent anti-Japanese protests over disputed islands in which Japanese-brand cars and even their owners were targeted.

More curious is what the US car buying public is making of this phenomenon? Don’t the Chinese KNOW that the Japanese produce the highest quality cars in the world?

(Not that the typical American would recognize quality if it bit him on the noggin!)

Ask your typical US Japanese car buyer what quality is and they’re likely to respond ‘shiny!’

Some might respond ‘reliable’ not that the typical US Japanese car buyer understands this concept because they have NOTHING to compare it to!

All he knows is what the Japanese tell him…and he believes it! (He also thinks his own experiences are ‘outliers’ and therefore not typical.)

But we digress because the Chinese aren’t attacking ‘Japanese quality’ there are attacking Japanese aggression!

But let us move on:

Draghi Sees a Ray of Hope for Euro Zone
By JACK EWING 3:04 PM ET

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, along with a growing number of economists, argue that there are tentative signs that adjustments are beginning to pay off.

Why is it the high priests of money are the only ones capable of detecting the ‘fruits of their labors?’ (Especially troubling because the average person believes the central bankers are full of shit…and the average person isn’t wrong!)

Yet this idiot (like Bernanke) sees the ‘green shoots’ of recovery everywhere while the facts at hand tell us all that the economy is still locked in a ‘death spiral’.

Yes, Mario sees ‘blue skies’ while the average citizen is being torn apart in a tempest of epic proportions:

Greek Leader Greets Merkel as Protests Rage in Streets
By RACHEL DONADIO and NICHOLAS KULISH 35 minutes ago

Greek authorities sought to shield Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany from protesters angered by painful austerity measures during a visit to Athens aimed at showing solidarity with the country.

And yet what is the ‘first inclination’ of the typical US observer? He thinks the Greeks haven’t given the austerity measures enough of a chance.

Because the typical Fox News viewer doesn’t remember that this ‘bailout’ of the Greek economy is entering its forth year.

But fear not…soon the typical Fox News viewer will get their own opportunity to try out ‘austerity’ first hand as the cities they live in collide with the balanced budget features of their city and town charters.

How does your town ‘live within its means’ when the owners of commerce have off-shored the reason the town existed in the first place?

Short answer is they don’t.

And you learn a lesson in civics 101, that your safety and your children’s welfare are directly proportional to your community’s ability to support itself.

Now ask yourself if a capitalist ‘has the right’ to export a community’s foundation to make themselves ‘richer’?

Let’s take a look at someone who got wildly wealthy by taking hundreds of community’s ‘engines’ and sending them to China:

Jack Welch Will Stop Writing for Fortune
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY 10 minutes ago

Mr. Welch made his decision after the magazine ran articles critical of his suggestion that the Obama administration had manipulated the monthly jobs numbers from the Labor Department.

Apparently the retired head of the world’s (former) largest manufacturer and also the former largest corporation…because GE is neither now, didn’t learn anything from his twenty years at the helm of the company Thomas Edison founded.

Except how to throw hissy fits when people point out the truth!

If only he has decided to keep his mouth shut thirty years ago when he dismantled the most successful company ever established for his own personal greed.

But no, instead we have this conundrum to ponder:

Wall Street Pay Remains High Even as Jobs Shrink
By SUSANNE CRAIG and BEN PROTESS 4:57 PM ET

Total compensation rose 4 percent last year to more than $60 billion — an amount surpassed only by total pay in 2007 and 2008, according to a report.

What? There are fewer brokers but the ones that remain are making MORE MONEY?

HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT WORK IN AN OBVIOUSLY BROKEN GLOBAL ECONOMY?

Can you say thievery?

Because that’s the only rational explanation…and where is our justice department?

Killing innocent civilians!

And you think we’re going to ‘bounce back’ from this?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Apocalypse...on the near horizon

Greetings good citizen,

Stock markets around the world bled from the eyesockets today as the global economy continues to hemorrhage cash.

Um, this uncontrolled bloodletting is showing up throughout the economy, especially at the edges of the safety net

Costa Mesa formed a homeless task force last spring and came up with a "carrot and stick approach," said Muriel Ullman, the city's housing consultant. The city hopes to build more affordable housing using federal grant money and county resources and has hired a mental health worker to connect with the chronically homeless. It has also partnered with local churches to set up a storage facility where the homeless can keep their belongings to avoid having them confiscated, Ullman said.

But Costa Mesa has also passed a slate of new ordinances, including bans on parking a bike anywhere but on a city bike rack, smoking in the park and sleeping in the park after dark, she said. The city also spent $60,000 to tear down a gazebo that attracted large numbers of homeless people, asked churches to stop soup kitchens there and hired two rangers to patrol the park.

The mayor last week stoked anger by calling soup kitchens nuisances and asking the city to investigate some decades-old charities there. Critics say that Costa Mesa is "just trying to get rid of our homeless, but what we're trying to do is help those who want help and if somebody doesn't want help — and they have refused help on numerous occasions — we want the courts to deal with them," Ullman said.

Communities throughout the sun-belt have stepped up enforcement of vagrancy and other laws in efforts to keep the homeless at bay.

Because…if you’re gonna be forced to live ‘outside’ you’d best be doing it where it’s warm (ish)

Which is not to say that homelessness is primarily a southern phenomenon, it is not. There are plenty of homeless who call the frigid north home.

Hell, I was watching Alaska State Troopers on National Geographic (a subsidiary of NewsCorp…sadly) and they were, er, complaining about the homeless population.

So it’s NOT ‘isolated’ and it’s not, er, minimal or by any means ‘temporary’.

What is causing large numbers of citizens into the streets good citizen?

I know the answer…and so do you.

And if you’re not a brain-fried conservo-whacko then you know the growing homeless problem is a symptom of the Global Race to the bottom.

Which is driven by…(can you give me an Amen?) Global Capitalism!

You heard the Mittster, those people (certainly the homeless) think they’re ‘entitled’ to live indoors and eat regularly (fucking moochers!) They believe society owes them a job that pays them a wage they can live on! (How fucking totally ridiculous is that? How would people like Mitt be able to afford homes around the world and the staff to run them if he actually had to pay people LIVING WAGES?)

Now, if that isn’t bad enough…let’s take a moment to acquaint ourselves with the ‘future’ of space exploitation (oops) exploration

The company's unmanned Falcon rocket roared into the night sky right on time, putting SpaceX on track to reach the space station Wednesday. The complex was soaring southwest of Tasmania when the Falcon took flight.

Officials declared the launch a success. In more good news, a piece of space junk was no longer threatening the station, and NASA could focus entirely on the delivery mission. NASA is counting on private business to restock the space station, now that the shuttles have retired to museums. The space agency has a $1.6 billion contract with SpaceX for 12 resupply missions.

Especially exciting for NASA is the fact that the Dragon will return twice as much cargo as it took up, including a stockpile of astronauts' blood and urine samples. The samples — nearly 500 of them — have been stashed in freezers since Atlantis made the last shuttle flight in July 2011.

The Dragon will spend close to three weeks at the space station before being released and parachuting into the Pacific at the end of October. By then, the space station should be back up to a full crew of six.

one point six BILLION buys an awful lot of cookies, don't ya think?

And then the fucking freemarket Republicans have the fucking blazing BALLS to complain about 'the deficit'!

Um, geez louise, who foots the tab for this little captive audience?

One guess and it ain’t Santa Claus, it’s You and me!

Not only did the >One Percent abandon the shuttle program but they are going to abandon NASA itself in favor of what, 5 guys in the desert with a fucking laptop?

You already know why there isn’t a ‘moonbase’

It's because the fucking greedheads couldn’t figure out how to line their pockets from the hostile environments offered by ‘near space’!

Once we figure out how to visit other solar systems (quicker than a lifetime of space travel or spending the next century in suspended animation) all of those twinkling lights up there become ‘Real Estate’…with all that entails.

Which should freak you out a little considering the cluster fuck it’s become here on earth!

The pace of Wall Street’s war against the 99% is quickening in preparation for the kill. Having demonized public employees for being scheduled to receive pensions on their lifetime employment service, bondholders are insisting on getting the money instead. It is the same austerity philosophy that has been forced on Greece and Spain – and the same that is prompting President Obama and Mitt Romney to urge scaling back Social Security and Medicare.

Unlike the U.S. federal government, most states and cities have constitutions that prevent them from running budget deficits. This means that when they cut property taxes, they either must borrow from the wealthy, or cut back employment and public services.

For many years they borrowed, paying tax-exempt interest to wealthy bondholders. But carrying charges on these have mounted to a point where they now look risky as the economy sinks into debt deflation. Cities are defaulting from California to Alabama. They cannot reverse course and restore taxes on property owners without causing more mortgage defaults and abandonments. Something has to give – so cities are scaling back public spending, downsizing their school systems and police forces, and selling off their assets to pay bondholders.

Um, because of this {ahem} bullshit there won’t be a Real Estate Market in the future. In fact it was shit like this back when private ownership of property first became ‘lawful’ (it wasn’t always so kiddos…) that put a significant damper on Real Estate for centuries.

Worse, this whole scheme of using property taxes to fund municipal functions, it’s that sort of thing that blew up in their faces.

Which is to point out that NONE of this is ‘NEW’.

The shame of it all is that they keep on pulling it…and they keep getting away with it!

What cha gonna do good citizen?

Seriously…what ARE YOU gonna do?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Rinse & Repeat

Greetings good citizen,

For most of us life is centered on doing what we need to do to keep the wolves from the door. We slave away at unrewarding jobs (even good jobs don’t ‘reward’ YOU…) never giving much thought to the NITWITS in charge!

Which is somewhat off base…we think about the MORONS all of the time…but there’s nothing we can do about the incompetents at the top.

We don’t ‘vote’ for them and, push come to shove, we don’t have the luxury of choosing not to work for them, the job market has been tight (and getting tighter) for years.

It’s generally accepted we ALL work for idiots and that we’re also led by incompetents. While we may get to ‘vote’ for who leads us we are powerless to ‘fire’ them…(although these same imbeciles can have us killed for no reason whatsoever!)

But let us not get distracted by the subtleties involved.

Again, I am pointing to something YOU aren’t supposed to be thinking about…

Leadership that is responsive to YOUR needs…(so why would your government need the power to KILL you without reason? Could we be back at the original issue of ‘whose government is it anyway?’)

(Not that it’s going to be an issue much longer.)

Well, here’s something for you to ponder while your figuring out whether you want pork or chicken in the ‘barf bag’ tonight.

This whole ‘investor charade’ only works in the ‘one size fits all’ mode!

Thus, starting last year, Goldman began to offer an N-11 Equity fund to complement its BRIC fund. Ms. Koch said both funds could have roles in retail investors’ portfolios, either as someone’s full emerging-markets allocation or as an add-on, particularly for a person invested only in an emerging-markets index fund. That’s because the leading emerging-markets index, by MSCI, excludes Nigeria, Vietnam and Bangladesh — three countries that Goldman counts as promising.

“We’re saying that the default is suboptimal,” she said. “You have to ask which countries are really going to drive growth.”

BUT William S. Rocco, an analyst for Morningstar, advised caution when considering a BRIC fund or any narrowly targeted emerging-market offering. Investors who haven’t invested in emerging markets before should consider a broader offering, he said. “Generally, at Morningstar, we don’t like the idea of artificially limiting a manager’s choices,” he said.

And if they already own foreign or emerging-markets funds, they probably have exposure to the BRICs and several other emerging and frontier countries, he said. “Why would you want so much Brazil and China?” he asked. “You’re really doubling down.”

DO you understand what you’re seeing here good citizen?

This is taking the ‘Western Lifestyle and ‘making it fit’ around the globe.

And guess what good citizen, in order to pull this off the idiot capitalists’ need one and a half more Earth’s to exploit!

But that doesn’t stop them or even slow them down.

A lack of resources only means higher prices for those who can afford such things.

Remember money’s ‘one useful purpose’, that of ‘regulator’.

You don’t think about it that way but believe you me, those who can help themselves to as much as they want think about it precisely like that…because NOTHING is beyond THEIR reach!

Um, just to verify something that has been troubling you, the impression that you’re trapped on a ‘runaway train’…it’s true…and there is NO SAFE EXIT!

Why are YOU being ‘priced out’ of the market for goods your parents could easily afford? Because they are being sold to hundred of millions more customers than they were back in your parents day…because ALL ECONOMIES ARE LOCAL!

And a sidebar to the priced out argument is we no longer make those things here…which has a huge bearing on their ‘affordability’.

But as I pointed out in yesterday’s post, we will soon be unable to afford the ‘Western Lifestyle’ at ANY price!

Energy scarcity is a real ‘game changer’.

How frightening is it that if we don’t carefully manage the transition to energy scarcity that we could quickly find ourselves in a ‘kill on sight’ situation?

Which is to point out that those of you playing the ‘don’t rock the boat card’ are in for a real ‘hard landing’ when they pop the ‘energy surprise’ out of the box…(likely this winter.)

Which brings us to another issue.

We are far from ‘out’…BUT there isn’t enough to keep things rolling at ‘the current rate of consumption.’…the ONLY way to stretch what remains is to KILL OFF the ‘surplus population.’

Not that is matters to the rest of us but the only way to do this AND maintain the ‘status quo’ is to follow the above recipe…

We can quite easily convert to an energy scarce economy…but we’d need to ‘re-shuffle the deck’ considerably. (Starting with the Human Anti-Exploitation law! When viewed in this context, it’s importance becomes apparent.)

Um, don’t look now but the fucking >One Percent has drawn a bulls-eye on the back of ALL Western (industrialized) nations.

Our masters think we have been ‘too free’ and aren’t ‘sufficiently disciplined’ to meet the challenges of an energy scarce world. Spoiled as we all are by unions and coddled by frivolous civil protections.

So if you’ve been wondering why the West is in decline…it isn’t the regular people who have gone ‘decadent’…it’s the >One Percent who believes we will be ‘unmanageable’.

So your desire to ‘hold on to what you’ve got’ will prove futile…change is coming whether you fight or you lay down and die.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Seconded (post 1100)

Greetings good citizen,

While I am the local ‘crank’ who appears to be ‘discontent’ with just about EVERYTHING, on certain topics I am not alone.

Seems Mr. Chomsky agrees that we are on the brink and the current system of leadership (if that’s what you want to call it) is , er, ‘unacceptable’.

There are two issues of overwhelming significance, because the fate of the species is at stake: environmental disaster, and nuclear war. The former is regularly on the front pages. On Sept. 19, for example, Justin Gillis reported in The New York Times that the melting of Arctic sea ice had ended for the year, “but not before demolishing the previous record – and setting off new warnings about the rapid pace of change in the region.”

The melting is much faster than predicted by sophisticated computer models and the most recent U.N. report on global warming. New data indicate that summer ice might be gone by 2020, with severe consequences. Previous estimates had summer ice disappearing by 2050. “But governments have not responded to the change with any greater urgency about limiting greenhouse emissions,” Gillis writes.

“To the contrary, their main response has been to plan for exploitation of newly accessible minerals in the Arctic, including drilling for more oil” – that is, to accelerate the catastrophe. This reaction demonstrates an extraordinary willingness to sacrifice the lives of our children and grandchildren for short-term gain. Or, perhaps, an equally remarkable willingness to shut our eyes so as not to see the impending peril.

That’s hardly all.

A new study from the Climate Vulnerability Monitor has found that “climate change caused by global warming is slowing down world economic output by 1.6 percent a year and will lead to a doubling of costs in the next two decades.”

Okay, then he goes into an in depth look at the ‘nuclear hypocrisy’ being displayed by both the US and Israel.

Or the infamous ‘do as I say and not as I do’ doctrine.

I educate no one by saying this brand of ‘high-handedness’ has started more wars than any other single reason.

Or maybe it is me who is being obtuse when I recognize the fact that they have been simply itching for a reason to invade Iraq…and the disturbing question is who would stop them? [The ‘indefinite ‘them’ in this case is the military industrial/energy complex who brook no defiance to their desires. Wait, there’s just another dash of gasoline for this inferno, guess on whose behalf this complex operates?

But I don’t need to draw you pictures.

Unfortunately this backs us into the same old corner we’ve been backed into for the past thirty years.

You know which one I’m talking about, right?

It’s the ‘what are YOU gonna do about it’ corner.

And you will eventually have to accept if YOU don’t do ANYTHING about it, it won’t stop.

And as Mr. Chomsky points out, the survival of our species hangs in the balance.

Kind of funny really. We all know things will go downhill quickly when this ‘false peace’ gives way in a couple of months…then there will be nothing for it…because you literally will be ‘fighting for your life.’

Um, most of you probably haven’t noticed but the crap the Oil Drum keeps harping on…well, that shit is already happening.

Remember the second law of thermo dynamics? Also known as ‘the law of diminishing returns?

Simply put there is a point where you will expend more energy that you get back then extracting the energy is a counterproductive exercise.

They won’t admit it but we’re already there with these oil sands and oil shale.

We’re probably roughly level. We’re probably expending as much energy trying to mine these ‘incomplete’ energy sources as we are reaping from the effort.

Which is to say we are expending a barrel of oil to extract one…and that’s already a losing proposition…

But the fuckers HAVE NO CHOICE!

And they can’t let YOU know that we’ve reached the end of the line because it means abandoning everything north of the Tropic of Cancer and everything south of the Tropic of Capricorn!

The bad news is seven billion people AREN’T going to fit in that tiny space…(considering much of it is desert.)

WE COULD start a ‘crash’ program to build solar and wind facilities to offset our oil and coal energy plants, and we could also beef up our national rail system and rebuild our sailing ship industry…and you can even add ‘airships’ back into the mix.

But that would require a mindset that isn’t intent on the extermination more than half of the human race…which is what the >One Percent has determined it needs to do to maintain THEIR status (the rest of us can go pound!)

Which is to opine that the quicker we, er, liberate these 'owners of all they survey' from their leadership responsibilities and give them something more pressing to deal with (like survival: personal) the better off we will all be.

I can’t be that crazy if members of the ‘serious people’ crowd are echoing my sentiments…

But then again, crazy is ‘relative’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Scuttled

Greetings good citizen,

The unemployment numbers are out and it looks like both sides are claiming victory.

Now the same photo Alternet used to crow about the drop was used by USA Today to advertise that the drop is mainly due to people dropping out of the workforce (combined with exhausting their UE benefits.)

Um, personally speaking it’s been a year and a half now and I’m still unemployed…but I chalk that up to ‘over fifty disease’.

Sadly I cannot pass for forty anything anymore (despite having a full head of hair!)

That said, it could be worse

I’m not exactly punching the panic button and we all know that thanks to strict environmental laws, Californians pay a premium for their gasoline.

But if you follow that sort of thing the price per barrel has been falling but the price at the pump has remained stubbornly high…a bit unusual for and election year, wouldn’t you think?

Which brings us to today’s top story, the unemployment rate

Since Obama took office, Republicans have sought to game the unemployment numbers at the state and local levels by forcing layoffs of public employees through anti-union austerity measures. According to an analysis by Moody's Analytics (reported by the New York Times in June), unemployment figures would be a percentage point lower were it not for all the public-sector layoffs.

Understand good citizen, the unemployment rate fell two tenths of a percent. As most experts would point out, the data is within the ‘margin of error’ where there might not be ANY drop when the figures are revised next month.

But still we have this ‘over-reaction’ when the rest of our civilization is crumbling all around us.

Let’s take a closer look at how our civilization is collapsing.

And this is something you’ll NEVER see in a ‘presidential debate’.
Now, the cost of living keeps increasing while the average worker’s purchasing power keeps decreasing…meaning kids are getting started on building their lives later than they used to.

To the point of do you know ANYBODY who IS NOT in a ‘fertility program?’

Short answer, no. because they’re all waiting until their forty to have their first kid…which has produced a bumper crop of kids with food allergies!

But you don’t hear about these ‘tragedies’ in the corporate owned media because people are ‘choosing’ to start families later.

And then we come to the sky-high cost of healthcare…and them fucking fertility treatments ain’t cheap!

But wait, aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves here? Why are people choosing to wait to start their families?

Well, partially because they are staying in college until they’re thirty getting an advanced degree so they can get a ‘good job’ that will keep them ‘financially secure’.

Something that a lot of kids today are discovering has become an exercise in futility.

These days you can stay in school until you’re fifty and still not have enough ‘qualifications’ to land a secure job!

Because those jobs are going to the ‘cheaper there’, especially if they can be done ‘over a wire’.

So, good citizen and future refugee from the economic desert…what are you going to do knowing that the deck is stacked against you?

Start your own country out in the middle of the ocean?

Let’s flip back a second to those fertility treatments and the, er, ‘stress’ it puts on a woman’s reproductive system.

Again you don’t see it discussed but the facts are that many woman who undergo fertility treatments also happen to contract cancer at a much higher rate.

But your insurance company turns a blind eye to that, hell, there’s good money in the for profit treatment of cancer.

Which is another reason why medical professionals doubt there will EVER be a cure for cancer…and it’s the same you WON’T see a cure for the common cold, there’s more money to be made treating the symptoms!

Did I mention that capitalism was PREDATORY?

The bastards would rather get paid a hundred thousand dollars treating you than collect ten thousand for curing you!

Um, I’d like to think you see where I’m going with this.

If we keep on pricing decent people out of the gene pool the only ones left will be the defective ‘hot house plants’ born to the thieves and criminals!

Yessir, those who get theirs by sealing yours.

I will once again put in my usual pitch for the human anti-exploitation law and all that it entails…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Disclosure: Both of Gegner’s children were conceived naturally but more than half of his nieces and nephews got their start in a test tube…just saying.

Inevitable

Greetings good citizen,

Looks like ‘the fix’ is in. The same guy that gave half of the voters in this country the middle finger last week is now being said to have ‘won’ last night’s debate…

We can just forget that Willard already ‘dissed’ half of the voting public and somehow, nothing is going to be made of that.

Um, disturbingly, in a shocking case of cognitive dissonance, I read an editorial tonight in the local rag that practically made my head spin completely off.

But then again I don’t call ‘em ‘conservo-whackos’ for nothing.

And, not for nothing, but this particular dizzy Republican is in the editorials all of the time, whining about liberals and warning about Obama being a foreigner…she’s only a half a step away from claiming to have been abducted by aliens…

Which WOULD explain a lot.

Um, what did she say?

SHE said that Obama tried and failed to fix the economy…but Mitt was a ‘businessman’ and he and Paul Ryan knew what to do.

Um, does this woman KNOW what Willard DID for a living?

Oh, and she also claimed that Mitt was a ‘normal middle class family man’…

Like she’d know (because she’s a fucking billionaire WANNABE!)

Earth to crazy lady, we know your full of crap…but apparently the editor of the local paper is also clueless.

And yes, they do ‘filter out’ editorials they don’t agree with.

But they chose to print that tripe!

But I digress…as usual.

So, let’s begin with full disclosure: I DID NOT watch the debate Well, not all of it anyway. I stepped in about midway through, where they were once again rehashing the ‘necessity of mandating’ health insurance.

As I predicted, Romney didn’t ask Obama why nobody on Wall Street was prosecuted for fraud (although supposedly no laws were…er, ‘broken’.)

And Obama didn’t ask Romney how many of the homeless he was personally responsible for?

You’d think it was at least a couple of hundred thousand of ‘em…and the other twenty million were ‘dispossessed’ by fellow Republicans who were seeking to improve ‘shareowner value’ (any fucking way they could! Even if it meant neutron bombing their own communities.)

But no, we couldn’t possibly be so, er, ‘blunt’ on national TV?

Worse, wouldn’t something like that be construed as putting the >One Percent on trial by proxy?

They continue to insist that NONE OF THIS is ‘their fault’. (Despite they’re being the ones who profited the most from these reckless practices.)

Those who secretly ‘monopolized’ the media so their takeover of the government would remain a secret also spread the disquieting meme that ‘globalization was inevitable’…

Just like the fucker holding a gun to your head is inevitably going to walk off with your wallet…

As we inch closer to the, er, ‘inevitable’ Romney victory in a few weeks I find myself getting more and more pissed off.

I don’t mind so much MY future being ‘stolen’ but if they think they’re going to pull the same bullshit on MY KIDS they’ve got another thing coming!

A little something you’d best be thinking about too.

Ask yourself, good citizen just WHO ‘represents’ YOU in this disconnected whitewash they’re calling an election?

Doesn’t it bother you even a little bit that Obama is following the exact same ‘roadmap to prosperity’ he said he would follow last time (but didn’t lift a finger on?)

And you can understand that given the Republican agenda…which meshes perfectly with the agenda of the >One Percent.

So, if the answer to the question of who represents you is NOBODY, then it’s time to stand up and be counted!

Because the country is in ashes right now due to our inability to resist Republican policies that laid our economy bare for the rapacious to loot…and enrich themselves at our expense they have!

Now NOBODY wants a Republican victory come November (except the > One Percent!) BUT you aren’t being given a choice

Worse, no matter who (even a third party candidate) the One Percent wins…because the >One Percent owns the electors!

Not that there will even be a pretense of a choice.

I’m telling you right now, Romney is the winner…and I’m NOT psychic!

I am not predicting the future but belaboring the obvious.

The >One Percent is going to put Romney/Ryan in the White House so they can finish the coup!

Which means finish dismantling the social safety net and sparking a revolution that will allow them to ‘cull’ millions from the available ‘herd’.

Don’t feel like fighting?

Tough, you’re gonna fight whether you want to or not.

Which is to say that those who don’t fight will be slaughtered…by the forces controlled by the ‘government’…before the old government (complete with it’s Republican leadership) is declared ‘rogue’ and abolished…and a new government replaces it…filled with the same old assholes.

Who will (allegedly) all be killed when the ‘coalition forces’ wrest control of the White House from the, er, criminals.

But this revolution stuff is just speculation.

What you need to worry about for now is the ‘inevitable’.

Thanks for letting me inside our head,

Gegner