Up yours, Jim.

Sometimes it's all about the follow-through.



Why does it take a comedian with a fake news show to point this shit out? How sad is that? As Mr. Stewart says, "it's not a fucking game."

UPDATE:Watch all the segments. Trust me.

I don't find anything funny about the interview. It's really nothing more than a pithy display of "truth" speaking to "power". But it is eye opening to see a clown get his bullshit smile wiped clean off his sad fuckin' face right before our eyes by a professional clown.

In the parlance of our times. . .

A proper and well earned Bitch Slap™.

Watch the whole thing.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

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Yeah, no really. . .

We. Are. Fucked.

I'm not kidding when I say I am actively working on becoming a licensed hand-gun owner.

(Obviously, I'm not feeling quite the way I was in my last post.)

Henry F. Potter

Seriously.

Rot in Hell - you fetid, vacuous, authoritarian piece of shit.

"The Fundamentals of the economy are strong."

"Smell that? Of course you do, it's your 401K."
(Henry Paulson juxtaposing a fart as a private retirement plan)

Nobel-laureate economist, Joseph Stiglitz (not the guy pictured above) provides an interesting, though abridged, historical layout of the economic meltdown and the importance of the getting our history correct so as to smartly deal with the potentially disastrous economic depression we are facing today.

The more I read, the more it seems to be apparent that the problem is not the cyclical (and somewhat predictable) downturn that occurs in any large economy. Instead, the problem is the very infrastructure of our economy. There has been a major flaw in the way we have done business over the last 20 years, at least. As Dr. Stiglitz sees it:

In 1987 the Reagan administration decided to remove Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and appoint Alan Greenspan in his place. Volcker had done what central bankers are supposed to do. On his watch, inflation had been brought down from more than 11 percent to under 4 percent. In the world of central banking, that should have earned him a grade of A+++ and assured his re-appointment. But Volcker also understood that financial markets need to be regulated. Reagan wanted someone who did not believe any such thing, and he found him in a devotee of the objectivist philosopher and free-market zealot Ayn Rand.

Greenspan played a double role. The Fed controls the money spigot, and in the early years of this decade, he turned it on full force. But the Fed is also a regulator. If you appoint an anti-regulator as your enforcer, you know what kind of enforcement you’ll get. A flood of liquidity combined with the failed levees of regulation proved disastrous.

Can we all finally say, "Fuck Ayn Rand and her followers!"? If there ever was an ideology that needed a thorough, brutal and final rebuke, it's that horseshit. . .

Either way, Dr. Stiglitz wraps up his piece, I think, rather succinctly. Even if you haven't been following the minutia of the economic crisis, this is a good set of ideas to have in your head as you do. . .

Was there any single decision which, had it been reversed, would have changed the course of history? Every decision—including decisions not to do something, as many of our bad economic decisions have been—is a consequence of prior decisions, an interlinked web stretching from the distant past into the future. You’ll hear some on the right point to certain actions by the government itself—such as the Community Reinvestment Act, which requires banks to make mortgage money available in low-income neighborhoods. (Defaults on C.R.A. lending were actually much lower than on other lending.) There has been much finger-pointing at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two huge mortgage lenders, which were originally government-owned. But in fact they came late to the subprime game, and their problem was similar to that of the private sector: their C.E.O.’s had the same perverse incentive to indulge in gambling.

The truth is most of the individual mistakes boil down to just one: a belief that markets are self-adjusting and that the role of government should be minimal. Looking back at that belief during hearings this fall on Capitol Hill, Alan Greenspan said out loud, “I have found a flaw.” Congressman Henry Waxman pushed him, responding, “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right; it was not working.” “Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan said. The embrace by America—and much of the rest of the world—of this flawed economic philosophy made it inevitable that we would eventually arrive at the place we are today.

Down with the Trickle Down™.

For the Love of God. . .

Please read this.

About 30 years ago, the socially embedded corporation of the post-World War II period was reconceived as a giant money machine. This started innocently enough. As global competition began to affect American industries, many wondered how to make managers more accountable for the firm's performance. The idea was that managers were not acting in shareholders' interests to maximize profits. Theorists suggested all kinds of reasons why this might be so, from inertia and self-interest to community loyalty and even "honor."

One solution eventually dominated all others: markets for corporate control. A new breed of activist investors led tender offers, often hostile, to take over companies whose share prices were regarded as underperforming. Most stockholders responded simply by choosing the highest offer. Leveraging up debt and driving new economies of scale by combining or reorganizing resources were seen as ways to impose discipline on teams of managers and limit their divergence from shareholder-wealth maximization. New compensation and incentive systems linked executive pay to the performance of the company's stock price.

The company became a transaction machine designed to maximize profit, untethered from its community, society, and country. Jobs were outsourced, work was automated, assets were concentrated, costs were cut to the bone, and balance sheets depended on increasingly arcane financial engineering. Takeovers gave way to mergers. Industries consolidated, limiting consumer choice. The inward focus to which management had always been vulnerable became pathological, banishing the needs of customers and employees to a distant horizon. Job security became tenuous, and most families depended on two incomes. A large majority of employees wanted more flexibility at work than their employers allowed. Working parents, and especially mothers, foundered. Customers were treated as anonymous and expendable.

Two comments: 1.) The current situation is not just a result of the cyclical nature of any functioning economy. It is about the way we do "business". 2.) Personally, I think we're all fucked - rich and poor, alike. Whether you earn and/or make money. . . See ya in the Soup Line™.

Welp, there goes my vote. . .

What I am about to propose is crossing some lines that we can’t step back across. It’s a two-step solution.

Step One: Bury the corpse of the Democratic Party.
Step Two: Make a corpse of the Republican Party.

- Lighting the Fuse - Stan Goff 2006

That quote has always stuck with me for some reason. Now I know why.

Sorry Senator, you lost a supporter today. (Actually, I'm pretty sure you're gonna, deservedly, lose a shitload of supporters after letting that submissive trash out of the press shop.) Seriously, if you're going to act like a little bitch to, quite possibly, the most loathed minority party in modern history, you have no business calling yourself a leader or being the President of the United States. If I didn't know any better I would have swore that statement was written by a fucking Republican. Good day and good riddance.

UPDATE: I realize there is a difference between arguing principle and arguing politics. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is not a questionable subsidy or some other form of horse trading common with politics. It's the God damned Fourth Amendment to the Fucking Constitution of this seemingly cursed country! A principle of liberty if there ever was one. This is not comparable to an earmark or some corporate give-away. It is a right, guarantee and liberty enshrined in the very document that makes this society possible.

But since, it appears, immunity is for sale, who do I have to pay and how much so I can smoke a joint without worrying about my legal liability?

Well that didn't take long. . .

Pictured above is a candidate for Federal office who's either the dumbest politician on the fuckin' planet or dumber than the aforesaid politician. I'm not sure which. Tony Zirkle is this guys name. He's a candidate in the Republican primary for the 2nd Congressional District in Indiana. This historically unaware candidate gave a speech at the National Socialist Workers Party's birthday celebration held in honor of Adolf Hitler's April 20th birthday. Let that sink in for moment. . .

When confronted with this he explained it away as such, "[t]his is a great opportunity for me to witness." (For the uninitiated, "to witness" is to profess your faith, love, trust and whatever else in Jesus to a group of people. I'm sure there may be more to it, but that's all I've ever walked away with.)

Zirkle was there to talk about porn. More specifically, pornography made by Jew's that victimizes Christian women. So I guess it makes sense to go in front of a group of people who were celebrating the birthday of the guy responsible for exterminating 1/3 of the Jews on the planet.

[I know this is dated, but I still shake my head in disbelief looking at that picture.]

Dear Senator Clinton,

You are becoming a parody of yourself. I won't ask you to stop, because it is not my place to do so. However, when you say this:

“Senator [Barack] Obama is a good man and he is a very talented and gifted man. But I think his comments were elitist and divisive. And the Democratic party has been unfortunately viewed by many people over the last decades as being elitist and out of touch. . . ”

Please do not turn around and weasel around like so:

After a weekend spent making direct appeals to gun owners and church goers, Hillary Clinton said Sunday a query about the last time she fired a gun or attended church services “is not a relevant question in this debate” over Barack Obama’s recent comments on small town Americans.

“We can answer that some other time,” Clinton said at a press conference held in a working class neighborhood here. “This is about what people feel is being said about them. I went to church on Easter. I mean, so?”

Um. . . Can I try? Hey did you know I'm a bona fide professional musician. For real. What's that, you ask? Have I ever made a living as musician? I don't see how that is relevant, I've played trumpet before. Truthfully: I haven't picked up and played a trumpet since college and I am a musician (a pretty damn decent one, in my opinion,) but unfortunately I've never made a real living as one. . . yet.

Those last two sentences are so fucking priceless. You go to church? So? (see what I did there?) Hmm. . . where have a heard another politician use a potentially condescending™ dodge like that? Oh yeah, right here.

When this election campaign started (sometime during the late 80's, it seems,) I sat back and tried not to pick any candidate to declare, essentially to myself, my support for. The three candidates, I guess, I ranked the highest didn't make the final cut. But so goes politics. Even as it became a two person race, I tried to stay objective. But you more than helped make up my mind for me.

As an ex-Democrat, I feel no real loyalty to the party and should you somehow garner, by hook or crook, the nomination. I will not be voting for you. Ralph Nader says thank you. And, like him, I kind of wonder when the Democrats running for office will actually try to appeal to their base, ya know the almost half of the nation that considers itself progressive?

Meanwhile, keep wasting your time trying to prove your poor rural bona fides (start by hiding your tax returns.) Though I'm sure you must know that most of those people you are pandering to with guns and church mixed together wouldn't vote for you if you promised to water-board 'sand niggers' in the Rose Garden every Friday at 5 pm. Frankly, they're not that dumb. Bitter and/or mad? Sure. That dumb? Mostly likely not.

Hopefully, the base of the party (the people who attend the conventions and do the nominating) will come see you for what you really have become. A joke and a sad, pandering parody of former progressive who knows of no bus too small to throw her base under.

You're not being condescending, you're being outlandishly fake. (We're talking John-Boehner-crying fake.) Condescending, however? No. Just an insult to my intelligence.

Sincerely,
jack fate

Just gotta say. . .

The War of the Democrats™ is both is both fascinating and revealing. It's odd when longtime bedfellows finally get a chance to fight about their differences. Viva la flame. . .

Let us begin. . .

One year till teh worldz change. . . for the better. . . hopefully. . . not holding my breath or anything. . .

(h/t: Sadly, No!)

Our Fucked Country.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. - H. L. Mencken

We're fucked. We really are. There's no two-ways about it. When the only candidates speaking any kind of truth to power are considered totally inconsequential and/or unelectable side-shows and the most pandering, vapid, triangulating and/or authority-addicted are the only real candidates, it's only getting worse. It doesn't matter what "image" we decide to elect, we'll all "get it good and hard."

Viva la pointlessness. . .