Tuesday, July 31, 2012

BOTH TEAMS HAVE THE SAME UNIFORMS

Oh, wait , I was wrong one team has different color socks..Kinda like our two major political parties..

Both are spreading the same bullshit,, it's austerity were headed for gang, and they are going to start with Social Security , Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare and student loans..

With Social Security they are talking about raising the retirement age and changing the formula who how much you get..Last time they changed the formula it cost long term drawers a 50% reduction in benefits.

Raising the age, sure we have 22% unemployment now, shall we shoot for 25%?

Medicare and Medicaid cuts, most doctors won't take Medicaid now, so that's the same as cutting payments to the emergency rooms , which means there goes your insurance premiums , up some more..

Cutting Medicaid , todays rates for doctor fees are already ridiculous .  Where a doctor might bill $50 , Medicare pays $48, Medical $18 , and county health programs $12.  Sounds like a great way to fix a system already so fucked up nobody will take the clients..

So down the Austerity Hole we will go...

Monday, July 30, 2012

OH WILL IT NEVER END

JC Penny is fixing to eliminate all check out clerks by 2014.  They think this is going to save their asses.. They had better think again.. No more JC Penny in this house.. Hell I already have done enough damage by abusing my Amazon.com account..

Big chain stores have been on the path of self destruction starting way back in the late 60's when for instance Sears narrowed it's product lines to high end and medium end.. no more reasonably priced lines carried any more..then later on they started selling all appliance lines instead of their reliable ole Kenmore lines.. They had like something like 80% or the washer dryer lines at the time and now they are on the verge of going bust too.

It really bothers me when me and Mish Shedlock are on the same page, damn scary stuff..

Bad enough use Amazon for a lot of my purchases, but it certaintly isn't a clerks fault that I do.. In fact where possible I frequent stores that have good ole style clerks that know their product lines... Time's they are a changing, doesn't mean I have to like it.

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HOW LONG WILL THEY STAY

India just had a massive grid outage blacking out over 300 million people.. Just how long will our industries that split to India going to stay with an unreliable grid?

I've talked about this many times in the last couple of years that countries like India, China have had their day in the sun because of deficiencies in their industrial resources like power , water and raw materials...

Makes you kinda wonder (shit I already knew) our hot shots of industry were so short sighted they might have never thought about any of this.. I know the planned to move on to greener pastures but the pigs already ate all that up.. Tough shit big boys come on back to the country of renewed Union activity where you are going to have to pay big time for the screwing you gave us.. Welcome aboard, pay up you bastards...Oh you will look really good in our striped suits(  a little broader stripes ) than your use too.. Or perhaps a nice pink or maybe red jump suit..

PUTIN-STOP READING MY BLOG

In a post the other day I was commenting on our black brushing people and countries by painting their leaders as cruel and inhuman .So that we buy things like putting a missile shield up around Russia.

I gave my opinion that if I were Putin I would build a new fleet of missile subs.. And SOB read this..and NO I am not a soviet spy.. Just an ex sailor using logical thinking of what I would do to protect my nation if I were Putin.  Sorry to spoil your plans DC , the Russians are a lot of things but they are not stupid...If your looking for stupid (  just saying)!!

Sunday, July 29, 2012

WINNING THE WATER COOLER WARS-AN IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

We have all been there , most likely more than once.. For me it's been damn near an everyday event... I'm 75 and I don't think I have ever won one.. Oh maybe I made them stop and think or at best made them hide their bullshit statements but almost never have said ,,Geez I was wrong.

Listening to Mike Papantonio subbing for Ed Shultz on Friday he said "It is a waste of time to fight the Water Cooler Wars day after day " because you never change antibody's mind on their preconceived notions of current affairs..

For instance you can say "Did you agree on the invasion of Iraq"  answer NO

Do you think the deregulation of markets was a good for the country"  answer NO

Do you think gay marriage destroys traditional marriage.. answer NO

Do you think that gays should serve openly in the military ..answer NO

Do you think Trickle down economics has been good for the country...answer NO

At the end of your own personal list of questions that you get NO answers to then you get to ask "THEN WHY ARE YOU A REPUBLICAN"? ANSWER BECAUSE I AM..

You have just wasted part of your day, pissed your boss off because you spent an hour at the water cooler, and the only satisfaction at the end of the battle you get to think . WHAT A DUMB FUCK THEY ARE.. and that cost you an hour of your life.??  Smart bastard , aren't you??


Saturday, July 28, 2012

THE BIG PICTURE IN CHARTS

62 years of economic data in chart form showing % change year to year.  It's always a ball buster to put info into long term chart format using the same format. It gives you a clear picture of where we have been and of course you get to guess where we are going..

I suppose you could interpret some of this data to indicate that we are in some kind of recovery you probably are not right.. While some data is trending upwards it's a long way from hell to heaven .

Given that unemployment (the real one 22%) has been realitivity unchanged in years you may have to look at other reasons the charts might be a little skewed (not on purpose) just that you use certain inputs to your formulas and they can give you a false picture.

Anyway take a look , tis an interesting array of charts (you have to be a chart freak to enjoy ) perhaps, in that case I plead guilty.

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Thursday, July 26, 2012

A NOVEL SOLUTION TO THE HOUSING PROBLEM

Matt Tabbi explains a wild eyed plan to give people in foreclosure a way to save their home and the neat part is to screw the banks holding the mortgage .

Often a hated term "Imminent Domain" in this case works for the people.. A County seizes the property threw Imminent Domain and then pays (a standard) current market value to the banks for the property . The county can then offer the current or previous homeowner the opportunity to buy the property at current market value..The county would arrange financing for the owner.

Speaking of financing Pension Funds which have tons of money looking for decent returns could be a source for the money to finance the above programs.  That would return a better than they are getting right now

The fact that until the home bubble is fixed there won't be much recovery.

Monday, July 23, 2012

FOREVER STIRRING THE POT

The United States for most of my life has conducted clandestine operations in foreign countries under the guise of mostly false accusations when we know about the operation.. when we don't they don't think we need to know about it at all..

In the 80's and 90's it was the overthrow of most of Latin America to facilitate the takeover of their natural resources .. to the betterment of our corporations..

Some of these we know about, Castro was a bad dude and has been for 50 years. Putin , Chavez and others have been the faces placed on our messing with their countries..

Now we are operating in China, the ME. and most of Asia and Africa.. For reasons?

In recent days our attacks on foreign leaders and countries we are displeased with have surfaced everywhere.. Here are two of the most recent  Venezuela and add China, Russia, Egypt, Africa

The last word that the 4th aircraft carrier is headed to the Gulf once again raises the specter of war that Israel wants with Iran..
Rumors have been rampant that this war will happen before the election.. Only time will tell...HOLD YOUR BREATH!

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Saturday, July 21, 2012

PUTIN vs OBAMA

One of my favorite writers Mike Whitney compares Obama and Putin.  Now before you freak out and turn away , read this piece.  Remember the world views we are fed are entirely manipulated  so what we do really know about anything abroad has been tailored to the company line..An interesting read.

Putin and Whitney are on the same wavelength it would seem.. the previous links talks about outside organizations working to disrupt their government.. most of them are agents of?? you guessed it the good ole US.  Putin acts to make these groups register.

We should do some of the same with these Super Pacs and require that all contributions , who gave them and the amounts be  publically displayed.

Any all these stories are food for thought... soo  make it so..

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Thursday, July 19, 2012

FANTASY LAND

The financial markets of today are just that, mythical places where person, places and things are not real.. A market where prices are rigged by consortiums of  crooks who fix prices to serve preplaced derivative trades to Fast Track Trading companies who essentially manipulate the markets through the speed of their computers.. The small guy has no chance in a market like this and as we find out in this market the large financial institutions (like your mutual fund company) have to resort to places such as dark pools, and ultra dark pools to be able to make the trades they want ..

One might ask how do mutual fund companies given there team or researchers make investment decisions  in markets that are totally rigged.  When thinking on this I see folks in dark rooms wearing pointed hats, some with bones in their noses , throwing everything from dice to bones, some with fancy card decks, some just sitting puffing on fat cigarette looking things, crying out occasionally buy this, or sell that.. Not a comforting site when you are depending on your IRA for retirement..

I always have been a chartist when it comes to market speculation.. Mostly buying a conservative portfolio of mutual funds that have shown their wizard rooms are working pretty well for now.. don't marry them their luck could change tomorrow and which time you bail and find a better wizard room.
Or just go to Vegas , you have a better chance of winning..

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Wednesday, July 18, 2012

THE MARKETS- A TOTALLY RIGGED GAME

Over the last few decades you have been bewildered by the movements of all stocks bonds and commodities .  It just didn't make sense.. I have been saying for a very long time that I suspected that the markets (all of them) have been manipulated by Wall Street.. breaking all kinds of laws in the process.

This story of the extent of the Libor incident and how it played across all markets and was instrumental in the decline of pension funds demands jail time for all involved..

Got bucks, spend them now.. there is no place to invest them .. so you may as well blow it on fun stuff..

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

"OH SAY CAN YOU SEE" FUCK NO

A government for the people by the people..Not any more ..Here's the dudes with their feet on the pedals.

And here's why you don't see any of it.

Not much to say ??

Sunday, July 15, 2012

BUBBLE BUBBLE TOIL AND TROUBLE

Ye ole world bubble machine is blowing a big bubble once again..One most of us have not noticed since you could generally  say we don't pay any attention to the bond market..No glamor there , no Facebooks or other glamorous ventures, just staid ole windows and orphans who invest there.

Think again my friends , this is just one more thing the boys at the top  are manipulating to keep the Bubbble Machine running.. Libor that we have heard a little about was just one way they were gaming the system...They were also placing massive shorts(swaps-derivatives) driving bond interest down.. I know your yawning right now and saying so what .  Well the what is as they drive bond interest down , bond prices go up making their portfolios worth more . Libor was just the illegal way of doing it although all the the crap they use should be illegal .

I have said before that I have a suspicion that they have been gaming the commodities as well.. wild price swings often that we are unable to justify are the effect of the same kind of collusion as the Libor rates.  Best example lately is the petrol markets.. high , high prices while demand was at a 20 year low and production was stable and supposedly huge gains in locally produced fuels, yet prices were high as hell.. And Walla during the peak driving season when prices usually rise they fall a lot..

The only conclusion one can make is, we are being gamed (screwed if you like) out of every last dime we have... OH and the pension you thought you had,, think again..

Saturday, July 14, 2012

WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING REPORTERS!

And  here's whyhttp://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/reporters-are-an-endangered-species.html.
Algorithm's will write the stories. I've had it with algorithms running the world.. From controlling the stock markets, to manufacturing polling data.. When so many of the items controlled by these mathematical mafia have shown themselves to be either totally wrong ,crooked, or at best controlling it's time for people to get back in the game.. Do I think this is possible as long as the bottom line controls the world..

So logically the change can only be done by us.. Yeah I know group actions are impossible... but wait.. If you just take the news as an example...What would happen if we just didn't watch any attempt at news that we recognize as generated bullshit... It's already happening at our house... from being newsfreaks to only watching selective shows.. and damn few they are.... When enough of us quit watching the bottom line goes away and the Ted Turners of the world return.

One other little sidebar.. Craigslist did not destroy newspapers, they were on the way to destruction long before the list became a power... When the new owners of papers tried to push the normally staid earnings of a paper into competition with different industries the only tool available to them was to cut staff, cut pages, use obviously manipulated stories off the wire, article size to 300 words or less and keep add prices high... It was their own greedy selves that destroyed them... and reporters are paying the price.

Internet sites that do news, and progressive radio shows have a hard time generating income for a very simple reason, a lot of us out here can't  donate to every show we like... few can afford the 500 bucks a year it would cost to support all... So the end result is Journalism as a career at present is a dead end market..

Friday, July 13, 2012

ANN RANDROIDS TAKE OVER CATO INSTITUTE

The president of the Ann Rand movement is now president of the Cato institute.  Be  on the lookout for more hard right Libertarian economic ideas...

AS IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW PENSIONS UNDER ATTACK

And now your dear Uncle Sam has made the backup pension fund weaker. And now your dear Uncle Sam has made the backup pension fund weaker by changing the rules on what employers pay into the system.. So companies steal your pension and they have the government destroy the backup system... .Ain't life great?und weaker by changing the rules on what employers pay into the system.. So companies steal your pension and they have the government destroy the backup system... .Ain't life great?

Thursday, July 12, 2012

NUKE THEM ALL

The only prospect Washington has of prevailing in such an undertaking is first use of nuclear weapons, of catching its demonized opponents off guard by nuking them out of the blue. In other words, by the elimination of life on earth.

THE BELOW QUOTE FROM THE HEAD CONSERVATIVE MOUTH PIECE!
Is this Washington’s program revealed by the neoconservative warmonger, Bill Kristol, who had no shame to ask publicly: “What’s the good of nuclear weapons if you can’t use them?”




This Paul Craig Roberts piece is quite long but a very worthwhile read.. It spells out so much of our  current problems , how they got there , how they have managed hiding them till now.. The wars, the outsourcing, the job loss, the downsizing of our workforce , the reduction in benefits to not only the current employees  but the pensioners as well ..

And once again in November we are faced with pulling the lever for the
Worst or Almost that bad... Not voting or voting third party will definitely bring about another Worst choice as President..

NINTEEN REASONS TO HAVE NIGHTMARES

From a bunch of pro's -WHY THE WORST IS YET TO COME

ANTI SEMITIC - NO PRO HUMAN

I have been taken to task on other blogs because my statements against Israeli actions time after time amount to war crimes... No matter what the crime if you are against what they did you are anti-semitic.. SO BE IT.

When you can't condemn events like their attack on our Liberty spy ship in international waters  or bitch about their rounding up of 60, 000 Africans for deportation to maintain racial purity.  I feel in good company when Juan Cole stands with me in saying world opinion of their actions justify speaking out against their actions.

If I were running the show they would have received their last dime of American money..

One other problem I have is Juan is hitting close to home because the US (usn's) are guilty of some of the same things..

SCHOOL REFORM-A FAILING GRADE

This link is  a review of two different books , one by a teacher from inner city New York and the other from a Wall Street tycoon who poses as an educator..

It's no secret that our students are in trouble , not from lack of ability, but from a system that has been led astray by over educated smart asses who think that privatization  of everything is the way to go, that unions are bad and are the reason for bad teachers existence..  Any teacher and a lot of parents will tell you bad teachers could be flushed out if administrators had any balls , which most do not.. Politics filters down to this level especially to school boards and district level educators..

This madness of test, test , test dissolves to teaching to the test.. A system that does not teach to to face the everyday world much less your working world.  Thinking is verboten.

Add to the testing craze , the bullshit of NO TOLERANCE, none thinking actions that punish the good with the bad, stripping lockers out of schools and replacing them with 100 pound backpacks (does provide training for military ground pounders) but sure as hell doesn't teach trust and if they think that cuts down on the bad things they were trying to check they had better think again. Drug dogs, cops on the grounds, arresting of 6 year old by cops, strip searches , what in the hell are we doing..

A comparison of the philosophy of education in these two books should light a fire under you if you are a parent to fight the nonsense changes we are running our schools by... The fact that Obama buys into this crap and proved it by hiring Duncan as his Secretary of Education dismays me greatly.. Having read Duncan's theories put into practice in Chicago gave me ulcers from the git go..Anybody who has ever been responsible for training people knows that his theory is bullshit..

Back in my good ole nuclear sub days, we lived in fear of the nuclear hatchet squads who would show up to test our skills with oral and operational testing I was sad to see that the testing in now by written exam which of course they were caught cheating on..

Back to the good ole days I would go.. The teacher is the Captain of their classroom they will write the tests as they did in my day. Not a standard for sure but it gives the teacher and the kids a better feel of whether they are cutting it or not..  Throw out the Billions of dollar testing dollars of testing cost, buy paint and toilet paper, and hell maybe even a few new books or computer software that isn't 20 years old...

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

OH FOR CHRIST'S SAKE

The pictures of the neglect and abuse in  an Afghan prisoner hospital shown on CNN today show such cruelty it is almost unbelievable .  Bitch of it is we are paying 100 million a year to run this torture chamber.. I guess one way of torture is as good as the next to the good ole USA.

What makes the story much , much worse is the fact that a US general in charge of training Afghan doctors at this hospital a few years back reported the abuse up his chain of command.. A general or two above him hid the story and even had the balls tell him that they would not do anything about this abuse because they didn't want to embarrass Obama during an election year(2010).  So once again bad shit is covered up for political reasons (think the Tillman case) .  You can point to a zillion such cover ups. The Great victory in Iraq and the winning of Afghanistan being the big ones.

Yet the Tillman affair , torture, and now this abuse of prisoners make it really hard to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag that these outright cover ups cast a shadow on my 27 years of military service.

Interesting fact < I could not find picture one of this abuse..

Story 1  

Monday, July 9, 2012

IF CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE

Does that not make people corporations? If so , my data is my product (just like a poem or music composed by you) and the corporations are stealing my product and selling it for profit..Don't you think we should be paid for our data... ?

A VERY BAD IDEA

Suggesting an extension of some Bush tax cuts is a very stupid idea.. Now I am solidly middle class and I didn't see a dime from the Bush tax cuts.. to open the dialog of Bush tax cuts will you know create a climate to encourage the right to get the whole deal extended..Sometime or another we will have to pay the bills.

CLUSTER FUCK WORLD

In CLUSTERFUCK NATION Kuntsler paints a very harsh critique of the world and particularly of the US. With Some pretty ugly words used to describe the financial folks and the common folk in general. Read it and then tell me some of the same thought have not found their way into your mind.

In particular here in the US the excess evidence of something gone terribly wrong when our youth are covered with body pictures that maybe mean something to them but leave me wondering what was is their minds when a lovely young lady get a string of barbed wire tattooed around her lovely neck.. along with 27 piercings in nose , lips, tongue, ears and probably several other parts I don't want to see..accompanied by her boyfriend with his hat on backwards , his pants slung so low that his butt crack is clearly visible, also covered with tatts and piercing. Far to many are also overweight . Coupled to the world by their cellphones to their ears afraid to have the time to think they read other folks wandering thoughts on their twitter links.. A bleak picture of the world for us old guys to look out every day.

However , Kunstler paints such a picture of our corporate world maybe these kids have a point.. What are they trying to tell us? They at least have got our attention while the ones who are plundering the world dance around unnoticed.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

FINES WON'T DO IT.

OK, your about to either go to sleep or go to some girly website because this is just another economic story.. The rigging of Interest rates world wide. Robert Reich lays it out in plain English that the banks (all of them) were rigging the LIBOR rate on bonds so that their derivative packages paid off big time.. In other words we are getting fucked again..

And if Bob isn't deep or colorful enough for you try good ole Mattfor a more colorful version..

No matter which one you choose you will be left with no doubt that the world is being screwed big time..by the banking crooks of the world.

AND PLEASE DON'T FORGET AUSTERITY IS COMING SOON TO THE GOOD OLE US OF A NO MATTER WHO WINS THE ELECTIONS..WE WILL PAY BIG AND LONG FOR THEIR GAME OF THRONES.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

FIRST THEY BUILD A WALL

THEN THEY PUT UP TENTS, AND THEN THEY BUILT THE OVENS AND I SAID NOTHING... THEN Israel is rounding up Africans for deportation (they say) beacause they publicly say they want to maintain racial purity...Now isn't that what the Nazi's said their purpose of the roundup of the jews.. Sounds like it to me.. ANTI SEMATIC NO..PRO HUMAN RACE YES! Here's the story