America Is A Slack Jawed Beast
“For the last thirty years. America has become a slack jawed beast that devours it's own citizens on the behalf of a wealthy, privileged oligarchy who stand hidden behind the banks and media outlets which they control. The Republicans have pursued policy after policy to sharpen the teeth of the beast to make the process more efficient and the digestion easier. The bleeding heart Democrats, may God bless them, have made it their mission to seek policy changes that would at least anesthetize the victims before being devoured, to which the Republicans have consistently replied "That would be a waste of money, you fucking communists.”
Signs of the Times
As read on a military blog, passed along without comment, merely a sagely nod and a few puffs of the pipe.
"Detectors are simple enough to thwart. Throw a handful of fertilizer (which will almost certainly contain nitrates such as ammonium nitrate) onto the ground in the parking lot at the airport, where everyone walks through it. After the 600th false alarm, the detector is shut down as it's obviously defective. Once that happens, THEN you smuggle in your device. The detector-happy people are nuts with no sense of reality."
Along a similar line: “It's an interesting war. Billions of dollars worth of air strikes and covert operations versus exploding jock straps.”
As someone in the Nixon administration once said "Things that can't last, won't." This will be true about this stupid "War on Terror" , just hope that doesn't bankrupt our sanity and our society along the way. Far too many angles for people to make way too much money off of this shit* that would justify keeping it going.
On another side note, yesterday I read about a study that found that of the large majority of those with higher education degrees involved in either Fundamentalist Christianity or Radical Islam, that the propensity of those degree fields were all in Engineering. Fascinating. And there's probably something deep there. Politics seen as an engineering problem to whit is applied jerry-rigged explosives of some complexity and power on one side and high tech detectors and robot drones to thwart, on the other. Neither of which really conclude the problem or address the fundamental human questions underlying the conflict - mere false technological salves, which are eminently profitable, applied. It's a dumb engineers war, isn't it.
And lastly on a personal note - I have been pulled aside for "secondary screening" three times in airports. The underwear bomber, despite being on CIA watch lists, was not. I am starting to wonder if I need to be on one of those lists, you know for future travel expediency.
*see "Drugs, War On".
Obama Points Out the Obvious
Obama points out the obvious to the morons in attendance
usual crowd, via the Wall Street Journal:
Challenged by one Republican senator over the contents of the package, the new president, according to participants, replied: "I won.”
The statement was prompted by Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona , who challenged the president and the Democratic leaders over the balance between the package’s spending and tax cuts, bringing up the traditional Republican notion that a tax credit for people who do not earn enough to pay income taxes is not a tax cut but a government check.
Obama noted that such workers pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, property taxes and sales taxes. The issue was widely debated during the presidential campaign, when Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, challenged Obama’s tax plan as “welfare.”
With those two words — “I won” — the Democratic president let the Republicans know that debate has been put to rest Nov. 4.
Elections have consequences it seems.
Happy Inaugaration Day
President Obama's Inaugural Address and more on the flipside...
Let Them Burn
This just gets my goat. Seriously, fuck these financial institutions. I swear if we bail out one more of these fuckers I'm hitting the streets with pitchforks and torches. MSNBC reports:
In marketing, advertising and testimony before Congress, Countrywide Home Loans has said repeatedly that it is working hard to modify the mortgages of financially strapped borrowers caught up in the subprime meltdown. But in a New Hampshire court, attorneys for the lending giant are singing a different tune, describing such assurances as “mere commercial puffery.”
We give them money and they say "Why sure, we'll make all kinds of allowances for distraught and in trouble homeowners to modify their loans". And then in court they admit, "Well, that was just marketing bullshit, we're not modifying a damn thing."
Seriously? I love the smell of 21st century Class Warfare in the morning.
UPDATE Jan 16: OK, so let me get this straight regarding Bank of America. The company already got money from the Government, then what these Masters of the Universe, these Financial Genius Wizards do, you see, is go and buy up companies with vast amounts of toxic garbage on their books - Merill and Countrywide. And now they need more money because that was obviously a bad decision. No shit. I'm speechless. We give these fuckers money, good real American tax payer dollars, which they sink into more failing schemes without pause and then they come back demanding more money? Burn them down.
