austere debauch

"an advertisement in my sunday paper sets forth in the form of a picture the four things that are needed for a successful christmas. at the top of the picture is a roast turkey, below that a christmas pudding, below that a dish of mince pies; and below that a tin of_...'s liver salt...implied in the above-mentioned advertisement is the notion that a good meal means a meal at which you over-eat yourself. in principle i agree. i would only add in passing that when we gorge ourselves at christmas, if we do get the chance to gorge ourselves, it is worth giving a thought to the thousand million human beings or thereabouts who will be doing no such thing. for in the long run our christmas dinners would be safer if we could make sure that everyone else had a christmas dinner as well...a deliberately austere christmas would be an absurdity. thew whole point of christmas is that it is a debauch-as it was probably long before the birth of christ was arbitrarily fixed on that date..."
george orwell. as i please 66, london tribune 20 december 1946


certainly my sunday paper carries on the tradition of the christmas debauch...there have been full page color ads running in it since before thanksgiving and today's christmas edition of the new york times has ads for after christams sales at sak's fifth avenue, lord and taylor, macy's, kia, at&t wireless...on and on...retailers competing to come out on top in the commercial contests at the end of the year...well...i ate at mom's today along with my kids, sons in law, and extended kin...and i didn't stuff myself...we drew names and set a spending limit...and sat and ate and talked...took photos...said our goodbyes...and went on our separate ways...no-one felt cheated because we didn't engender unrealistic expectations the way advertisers and politicians do...we set limits and stuck to them...christmas may well have been an end of harvest/beginning of winter festival intended to utilize the foodstuffs that would not keep through the winter in an orgy of eating ... understandable when it was a matter of use it or lose it but i don't have to do that...i usually find myself in agreement with george on most things he chose to write about...he was wary of intellectuals and utopian teleologies...me too...and he had serious issues with the way politicians behaved and mangled the language to serve their deceptive ends...same page here...but not on the need to debauch at the end of the year...i don't have the religion and this isn't an evangelical rant...if it's a rant it's a rant about limits and how capitalists and their economist flunkies think we don't have any...fools and idiots...and that's on a good day...i suppose only some sort of trauma will bring that point home...you'd think the last three or four years would have left them with some inkling...seems not...happy holidays.

7:03 p.m. 25 december 2011
sak's fifth avenue even had a full page ad in the sports section...just saying

havel and a derelict

"thanks to the apparent disadvantage of coming form a bourgeois background and growing up in a communist state i had the opportunity, right from the start, of seeing the world form below."
vacalv havel. open letters

"i would tend to favor an economic system based on the maximum possible plurality of many decentralized, structurally varied, and preferably small enterprises that respect the specific nature of different localities and different traditions and that resist the pressures of uniformity by maintaining a plurality of forms of ownership and economic decision-making."
vaclav havel. disturbing the peace.


"my co-workers should probably learn multitasking: they should be interchangeable, they should take turns; and those that have already been somewhere should provide exhaustive written information to all the others so that the sum of acquired experience becomes the property of all."
vaclav havel. to the castle and back.

i was never a big fan of vaclav's...largo desolato reads like a reworked version of kafka's book "the trial" and his quotes sound like a small-time ceo and bureaucrat...anointed a "dissident" by the cold warriors he was really a frustrated capitalist longing for the life of his father and grandfather...he might not have torn the castle down but he would have parked euro-disney next to it if he could have...lionized by the sodding mouthpiece of armed reaction ronald reagan...and friend of the miserable clintons and goddamned maddie albrecht i won't be missing him much...his books and plays go into the bottom file box.

i was sitting in the truck in the wiseway parking lot waiting for mom today when a derelict guy who looked to be in his twenties somewhere walked across ridge road and into the parking lot wearing worn jeans, sneakers that flopped on his feet like flip-flops because the shanks were broken out, and holding his coat closed because the zipper had failed...he inopportuned no-one for anything and didn't speak...just walked across the lot with his head down to the ashtrays located outside the doors...he scavenged some likely looking butts...lit one up...and exited the way he entered...one of the 13 million "officially unemployed"? ( or the more like 20 odd million if you discount the politically expedient government figures and count those who have flat given up) humans may have started out as egalitarian bands of foragers but the neolithic revolution and its attendant social stratification burned that right out of us...the industrial revolution and the unfortunate rise of capitalism with its resultant consumerist utopia has isolated us in mounds of stuff to the extent that those with very little become invisible behind the heaps...merry christmas...a "false and commercial festival" if ever there was one...organized religion is never up to any good but their rites have been hijacked by something even more foul.

who's jobs...at what cost?

how much longer will this lame shit go on? isn't the federal government bankrupt in all but name? yet this whore of a congressman can use my tax dollar to mail me propaganda about what a staunch defender of american jobs he is and how he is fighting in washington to bring home dollars for local communities to invest in sustainable energy projects...tapping into the methane generated by munster's landfill and converting it to electricity is laudable...no question...i have to ask how large the landfill is and how long it will produce methane in quantities large enough to prove useful...but someone has already looked into that...right? the inside of this mailing deals mainly with pete's efforts to provide tax incentives to corporations to move into his district...when the whores use the magic word "jobs' that's usually what they're really talking about...supporting corp[orate entities with federal cash and rationalizing it with the creation of "jobs" that won't make any substantive impact on regional unemployment much less the politically expediently cooked numbers that come out of the bureau of labor statistics...$9.5 million to create 512 jobs...that's about $18,554 a job...the federal debt clock pegs the "official" unemployed at just over 13,000,000 so...$241,202,000,000 is all the feds have to spend to end unemployment forever...a bargain compared to some of the stupid things they're up to now...where's that job program at? as a counterpoint to the "green" project on the front, the back sports a photo of the expansion going on at bp/ammoco ( pete's biggest single donor) to process canadian tar sands...a filthy process that will foul the air and dump toxic, carcinogenic waste into lake michigan ( a key reason for pete's resistance to the american clean energy and safety act)...fuck these people.

my union right or wrong

i got a lovely lime green postcard from the folks at the head office in indianapolis today...more "important information"... at least from a viewpoint of the financial health of the union anyway...it would seem that a goodly number of my union brothers are being suspended for non-payment of dues ( the company i work for has a dues check-off agreement with local 20 so my dues are paid even if the local doesn't get the cash on time...i said it could be deducted from my check so my hands are clean...if they try to suspend me for non payment while i'm working it's off to the nlrb and some nasty recriminations about "failure to represent" and any other ulp i can come up with) lay-offs in the construction industry are still running above the national average and the unemployed seem to be using their dues as a cost-cutting measure to make ends meet...this impairs the union's cash flow so in an effort to goad the unemployed into forking over their ( admittedly reduced) non-working dues the union has layered on a surcharge to be added onto arrears dues when a member seeks reinstatement...$100 for the first suspension...$200 for the second and so on to infinity of yankee bucks for the duration of the euphemistically termed "slump" ( wait til the euro implodes...just because leadership endorses treaty changes doesn't mean they won't get their nuts ripped off at home...the backlash is building...nick and angie's days are numbered)...this was done on may 14th, 2011 to take effect on january 1st 2012 by the action of local 20's executive board and "concurrence form the membership"...which membership, i wonder, was that? the boards? once again the union is putting the interests of the organization ahead of those it purports to represent...a special interest to the core run like a business and leaving union leadership closer to management in philosophy than with rank-and-file...thorstein veblen's "leisure class" has made inroads everywhere...ask the fucking democrats

a niche economy

"the abolishing of royalty, the extinguishment of patronage and dependencies attached tot hat form of government, were the exalted motives of many revolutionists and these were the improvements meant by them to be made...These ends and none other were publicly avowed, and all our constitutions and public acts were formed in this spirit. yet there was not wanting a party whose motives were different. they wished for the loaves and fishes of government, and cared for nothing else but a translation of the diadem and scepter from london to boston, new york, or philadelphia; or, in other words, the creation of a new monarchy in america, and to form niches for themselves in the temple of royalty."
william maclays journals 1789-1791 1 may 1789

well...with the counter-revolution embodied in the constitution they succeeded in transplanting an aristocracy and the "patronage and dependencies" as they legislated themselves money from the public purse...james madison (hereafter known as "his littleness") and "that damned ass hamilton" (evil bastard and a combination of martin borman, joe geobbles, and what lenin would have been if he had been a monarchist...and always an ass) created a government by and for special interest to diffuse the political will of and "interested and overbearing majority"[his littleness]...by refusing to seriously address issues brought to them by anything other than an interest group the framers of the constitution subverted energy that might have been applied in a direct confrontation with government by directing it into the confines of an interest group where it was harmlessly expended ( from the ruling elite's perspective) inside those groups as they hashed out their agenda...the ensuing proliferation of interest groups was a conscious strategy to make the political process somewhat predictable...by dividing the polity against itself they set in motion a host of bureaucratic and budgetary nightmares and they did it to protect and expand their position of economic advantage...nothing if not capitalists...we are where we are because they were what they were...the system aint broke, it's functioning as the designers intended...it disenfranchises the masses from any meaningful input into what the elite do to foster their wealth on a daily basis...until the polity gets its collective head out of high school civics...where it was placed by the benign impact of a "free" public education...the whores will continue to have things entirely too much their own way...where's daniel shay's when you need him? pressure needs to be applied from outside the system.

i loathe a conspiracy theorist

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/11/21/opinion/100000001183275/the-umbrella-man.html?scp=1&sq=the%20umbrella%20man&st=cse

they waste my time...they distract people from more immediate issues that require their attention in the here and now...they crave attention and are prepared to distort fact and manipulate emotions to get it...i don't care who killed kennedy or if mozart was poisoned or if lincoln was gay...doesn't make on damn bit of difference to my life...lincoln's unconstitutional behavior and the precedent he set for a presidency that was above the law had a direct impact ( especially on nixon) but his sexual orientation was his business....all that speculation is pointless conjecture...as the video points out in its own way, causality is so complex...made up of so many decisions by billions of people each and every day that no-one can have more than the most general idea of what's going on...this guy is correct...you cannot, on your own, think of every possible explanation for any given act...speculation isn't a sound basis for decisions on events...crackbrained speculation even less so...media has been replete with pundits with an agenda ( the freak freidman leaps to mind )...the internet and television only let them reach more people in a more timely matter with this pointless stuff...get a grip.

culture

"development...was, at its core, merely a continuation of colonialism by other means. since two-thirds of the world's nations were defined as 'underdeveloped' this meant that people in most countries needed to look outside their own cultures for economic, agricultural, and educational models."

"nations whose subsistence farmers still form a significant proportion of their overall population, though in recent decades termed 'underdeveloped', may in fact have some advantages in the post-growth world. rather than continuing with ruinous attempts to install fuel-guzzling food and transport systems, these countries should be adopting 'appropriate' or 'intermediate' technology...appropriate technology (at) is typically labor and knowledge intensive rather than capital, resource, and energy intensive. examples include the use of local materials for building, the small-scale generation of power from methane digesters, and the purification of water in households with porous ceramic filters,"

from "the end of growth" by richard heinberg,

colonialism specialized in destroying the traditional cultures it came in to contact with because those cultures gave their members the wherewithal to defy colonial powers...the cultural practices adapted to local conditions provided a reasonably stable way of life...the groups colonialists came across didn't need what the colonizers had so their way of life had to be destroyed for the imperialists to profit...globalization is colonialism disguised with free market propaganda and the missionary urge to "develop" in those poor, backwards souls an appreciation of the wonders of capitalism...as western economies implode and , of necessity, become smaller those that were too remote or too small to be converted may, as heinberg says, be the fortunate ones who haven't lost touch with local ecological realities because they can get strawberries from argentina in winter...they know where they're at and how to make things work...as long as climate change doesn't alter the niche too radically ( and that may be where the idea of "appropriate technology" comes into play)...i started the garden in my back yard as an overflow/control of an anthropology project that i started on campus ( see the garden blog) but it has become something more...aside from something that keeps me occupied it has put me in touch with human endeavor that pre-dates the industrial revolution and mercantile capitalism...adapting to the local conditions through work and thought...choosing the most productive and useful plants to grow in the local environment ( jerusalem artichokes for instance) using those adaptations to the fullest possible extent to be as self-sufficient as possible...in a very small way i am trying to create a culture...and not a minute too soon since i never had one...only consumerism...relentlessly rammed down my throat...i have turned off the tv...picked up some books, seeds, tubers, and gardening tools and tried to reinvent a part of myself that's free from capital and its self-aggrandizing machinations...pretentious? perhaps...but it beats waiting for the hammer to fall and doing nothing more than whistling to scare away the ghouls...no more debt...no more propaganda...you can find me in the garden.

hamilton indana

if there ever was anything remotely resembling democracy in this low rent state it has fled elsewhere...howling into the night...haunted by the visage of a cheapjack low-life governor and his whore minions...i just received this little informational pamphlet concerning the legal status of referendums, re-call elections, impeachment, and voter initiatives here in the hoosier state...referendums are only allowed if the state legislature enacts a law that enables a specific referendum on a specific issue...it is up to the legislature to decide if the referendum is binding or only a"advisory"...like any legislation it should be subject to a gubernatorial veto...the road to a referendum leads to nap-town....there is no such thing as a recall election in this state. "the indiana constitution permits state and local officials to be removed only 'in the manner provided by law' (article 6, section 8[how fitting]) there is currently no indiana law to permit recall elections." officials can be removed for felony convictions of if they show up for work drunk...which could just about eliminate every politician in the state...but you'd have to prove it first, and guess who controls the courts? all very politically convenient...and lastly there is no legal way for voters to initiate a voter initiative, bypassing the legislature to create citizen written laws...the elite is firmly in control of the levers of power...the state apparatus is safely insulated from the fickle and wayward fancies of the mob...the vanguard is in the saddle and they know what's best for us...we can sleep peacefully tonight...wherever he is that rat bastard hamilton is smiling about this.

hours of hobbes and de quincey

"indeed, so great an epicure am i in this matter, that i cannot relish a winter night fully if it be much past st. thomas's day and have degenerated into disgusting appearances of vernal tendencies."
thomas de quincey

the rat bastards at the chamber of commerce and their whore servants in washington gave me back the hour they stole last march...they give it back later and take it earlier every year...the lake of fire is too good for them...bring on the scorpions and ebola virus...and perhaps a dose of guinea worm as a bonus for the wealthiest..a fitting scourge to cleanse the scum from the melting pot...but what's important is it's five o'clock in the evening and it's dark...the weather is set to turn this week as well...i have been outdoors since march and it's time to come inside and sit in a comfortable chair with a good light and do some important reading...and not on a goddamned kindle either...a real book with real pages and a real binding i can crack when i throw some ineffable dreck written by some globalitarian whore across the goddamned room and listen to it hit the wall with a satisfying thud...freidman leaps to mind as a seriously mistaken lapdog of wealth and power and a fine candidate for a fling across the library...there is a season for everything.

"fear of an invisible power, if publicly allowed, is religion, if not allowed, superstition. thus the decision as to what is religion and what is superstition rests with the legislator."
from bertand russell's chapter on thomas hobbes philosophy in "a history of western philosophy."

an astute judgement on religion from a 17th century english tutor and part time philosopher whose book "leviathan" i wouldn't wish on anyone ,except, perhaps, george w. bush...with a stringent and fiercely graded essay test at the end...religion...superstition...in the words of someone i know, "that stuff is all made up anyway."...made up by congressmen according to hobbes...or the 17th century equivalent...whores through the ages still worked in national bagnios...the religious and secular holidays (scrooge's "false and commercial festival" he may have been an avaricious miser but he knew crass commercialism when he saw it)are well and truly upon us...i can tell because the sunday n y times has grown fat with full page color ads for the joys of the consumerist utopia that can still be ours in the wondrous time of contracting economies and tightening credit...how, exactly, the consumer is supposed to pull this miracle out of their collective ass may be best answered by jimmy stewart and donna reed...the 36% of the times devoted to full page advertizing is about desire not financing..."we have the goods, please want them...go out and take one for the retailing team...black friday is just around the corner...make or break time for wal-mart, target, and kohl's...spend like there's no tomorrow...the market needs you."

whoever is prime minister tonight you'll still be exploited

at first i was a bit disappointed that papandreou wasn't tossed out on his ass by parliament but then i got to thinking about politics here in the empire and i realized that the disconnect between the seat of power and the street is pretty much a human universal and that the anarchists are correct when they say it doesn't matter who is in charge...it's the system that produces the politicians and real decision-making takes place in institutions removed from the control of the people...unless the street completely overwhelms the system....and how often does that happen? the same is true here...as i recall there was a lot of rhetoric about change when obamaland assumed the mantle (a somewhat frayed cloak splattered by the mud of tiresome campaigns and endless circuses...less dignified than anyone who wants the job believes) of old george in 2008...how'd that work out? the more things change the more they stay the same...the republicans are indulging themselves in the time honored political pastime of character assassination as only they can do it...mostly because the traditional republican combination of arrogant hubris, strutting, almost il duce-like, exceptionalism, and bedrock stupidity lend themselves so well to it...with that much raw material it's difficult to resist picking up that first handful of mud...so the greek "crisis" continues and the foul stench of the current political death spiral here at home isn't going to do anything but strengthen and intensify...people are taking to the steets here as well...one wonders how their determination will hold out as the weather cools and the nfl playoffs and a new "second season" on hbo beckon...a lot, i suppose, depends on whether or not the economy continues to sour...i haven't been tear-gassed in ages ( i wonder what improvements have been made in its effectiveness in the last thirty-eight years or so? progress marches on) if things continue as they are i may have to leave the garden and join them.

11-5-2011 8:10 am
as a side note i was just reading in the times that papandreou survived with a six vote plurality 153-147, so his survival may not be a true reflection of the greek polity's attitude towards him or his government...you can rely on whores everywhere to vote against the interests of "the voters" most of the time because the interests of their true constituents are inimical to those of the rest of us...he may have survived parliament...the streets are a different matter.

where's mcluhan when you need him?

http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/


"before he and his lawmakers walked out of parliament thursday night mr.samaras accused the prime minister of backing off the referendum plan only after european leaders had 'reproached him.' "
n y times 11-3-2011

"everyone to the general strikes!"
from the greek street 11-3-2011

from what i have read the greek prime minister said he dumped the referendum after the opposition in parliament agreed to back the austerity measure that come as the price tag of angela hauling their chestnuts out of the fire again...(this could be the last time she can do that...her days are as numbered as the euro's)...and that rumors of him impending resignation are just that...that may change tomorrow and the folks at occupied london say the street has already erupted as anarchists loot supermarkets and redistribute the food in public squares...so what next for greece...state of emergency? capitalism morphs into fascism when faced with substantive change form below because you can't have the mob taking away your yacht, your porsche, your mansion, your coke, your mistress, or your thousand euro an hour hookers just because they're hungry now can you? let loose the ss or whatever the lapdogs of armed reaction are calling themselves these days and damn the consequences..."i took it and i'm keeping it"...so...who the fuck do you believe? it's like using the stock market as an indicator of what the economy is doing...there's a serious disconnect somewhere...the greek prime minster is a whore politician so i can safely assume anything that warped fucker says is a bald faced lie...no issue there...mr.smamras wants to be prime minister so we can eliminate him as an oracle of the truth as well...the anarchists are...well...anarchists, and while my sympathies are almost always with the underdog and they are clearly correct about the rapacity of capital and fucking central banks, they are prone to say just about anything that comes into their heads if it sounds good or even plausible..their motives may indeed be more pure than those of whore politicians, but they have a tendency to think in teleological terms despite their rants about personal freedom think they know what's best...i'm inclined to whack every european i can find over the head with a kendo stick and shove a copy of "the proper study of mankind" by isaiah berlin under their arrogant noses and tell them to get a grip...(you would have to reduce old isaiah's philosophy down to a thirty minute cartoon[probably starring the simpsons] you could loop through the congressional youtube channel before any of those pathetic louts would pay attention...the empire has doomed itself through its dependence on electronic media for the "truth"...print is dead and so is intellect..you read it here first)...i am called a cynic who believes in nothing and simply sits back and sneers unceasingly...this is patent bullshit but a widely held belief...i am convinced of entropy and the inevitable decline of anthropogenic structures...the euro zone, capitalism, empire, the republican party...all doomed to wear out and suffer massive systemic failures as they grow too complex for even evolved ape's brains to maintain, much less understand...as energy goes so goes the complexity of human systems of thought, production, and control...don't let the techno-optimists confuse you...they only think they have answers...in the end it's safer to believe no-one.

we must be nearing the holidays...

...clues pointing to that abound...christmas decorations out at lowes and walgreen's...yahoo jabbering on about "black friday" steals i should make myself aware of...and the n y times has been including "style" magazines for "fall and winter fashion" for the well dressed social climber or just social scum...no doubt an electronics issue is forthcoming, but today we are burdened with the watch supplement...tissot, longines, jager-le coultre, gucci,audemars piguet, omega, chopard, and the half naked model wearing the dior men's watch, presumably to call my attention to what i am missing out on by not wearing ( or buying her) one of their fine time pieces ( i have been married for thirty-four years and blondes have never been especially attractive to me...i am a demographic wasteland for advertizers...mutual hatred everywhere...fuck these people...)what i did notice about this expensive bit of glossy advertizing is there's not a single price listed anywhere...zilch...unlike the ads for condos with a view of the manhattan skyline that are keen to advertize their value as a status symbol by boldly proclaiming the price per square foot of this valuable real estate, the watchmakers seem to be subscribing tot he "if you have to ask the price you can't afford it" philosophy of excluding ( or, perhaps enticing ) the proles from taking up the limited counter space at their boutiques...i have had an analog casio that i paid thirty bucks for five years ago and it keeps good time...i have a times "ironman"digital that i beat the crap out of at work...it's about the same age and if you discount some interesting gouges out of the crystal it's fine too...so much for tissot, dior , and hot blondes...i will become increasingly cranky ( come on people that's why you read this ) as the season progresses and my neighbor drags out the million candlepower industrial candy cane decorations that fade the curtains in my front window and disturb the bird with a false sunrise for a month...i am aging and it is enhancing my already formidable reputation as an eccentric weirdo and curmudgeon...i wouldn't be this way if they didn't deserve it...their insistence on extremist holiday behavior obligates me to demand concessions by creating a black hole of non-observance...almost time to watch a clockwork orange.

it's a sunny day for the end

i hesitate to make so bold a statement as "harold camping and his evangelical peers are manipulative shits making a living ( and a fairly comfortable one i'll wager) by playing on the fears and demons of those who, for whatever reason, are not in a psychological position to tell them to go fuck themselves"...but i'll do it anyway...cheapjack scumbags to a soul... another set of likely candidates for a special lake of fire...another failure harold...and you've put your fellow revivalists on the tent circuit in the difficult position of denouncing one of their own because you're about to screw up the prophecy business with your goddamned specifics...keep it general harold...so open-ended and non-committal that the rubes will never notice that it's all bronze age nonsense repackaged with all the slick pr that dr. goebbels pioneered back in the greatest generation and the consumerist utopia refined to a hard, sharp alloy of desire and wishful thinking that "the market" thrives on because it makes the proles such chumps...addictive as fine china white and legal to boot...life goes on harold...whip out the texas instruments calculator and rethink your math..we're waiting for answers.

rapturefail

jesus! it's october already? seems like just last may that harold camping was backtracking and explaining a "miscalculation" in the date for the rapture as "bad math"...it's sort of cruel to pick on just another refugee from the acid generation who found god in a sheet of windowpane blotter...but the sectarian warfare in the name of the son o' god goes on apace as the folks at rapturefail.org have sent me an email inviting me to join them in jeering at old harold and celebrating their wisdom and jesus' love in not letting them fall prey to crackbrained prophecy...i am asked to download a copy of their flier and then have a photograph of me holding it taken next friday which i should then upload to their flicker account to add to all the other photos of "true"believers they will then post...this is,of course, nonsense on stilts and i'll be goddamned if i'll participate...the rapturefail folks have a really neat sideline in t-shirts going at cafe press if you're interested in what the fashionably moderate fundamentalist yahoo is wearing this season ( it's really no worse than what the n y times style magazines have been flogging to the fashion challenged over the last month...this week's was a corker...but that's another blog) and their blog is unbiased and informative in a snarky, sectarian kind of way that would resonate with some people i know...but that's a journal entry, not a blog...some things are too vitriolic to print on the interweb...even for me...with the holiday season just around the corner it's good to see the god fearing folks dragging out the heavy artillery of hellfire and damnation to cure a wicked and weary world...too fucking bad they'll be out gunned and outspent by the desperate retailers of the consumerist utopia who are far more concerned with black friday than their immortal souls...business is business despite "the reason for the season"...damnation you say? tish tosh...the entrepreneurs will just license the ice water concession...religion at work...in the words of an anthropologist i know, "that stuff is all made up anyway"...humans are entirely too easily taken in by loony ideas...see you in hell...all the cool people will be there anyway.

union matters

my mailbox has been stuffed with all sorts of weird mailings from both the local and international union...it's election time again and they are sending out lists of local whores that are our "friends" and for whom i should cast my ballot when i do my civic duty...there's a "meet the whores" called meeting later this month...and they've sent me voter registration applications as well as ones for absentee ballots...all fine and good, but pointless since i vote on my own terms not theirs and we seem to agree on so little anymore...like a marriage gone bad...but without the first blush of romance...just the baggage and burdensome recriminations...i'd get an attorney but i think it's too late for even that...anyway...today i got my dues receipt and a nice letter from the international telling me they're concerned about my health...what a great bunch of guys! today's missive concerns the perils of high blood pressure which, apparently, "...more than one-third of people who work in non-office environments are not aware that they have high blood pressure, and many do not get treatment. please bring this letter along with you to your next doctor visit. it can help you discuss your heart health with your doctor." ( great bunch! always on the lookout for ways they can help me overcome my deficiencies)..it goes on to gently inform me that high blood pressure can be caused by smoking or secondhand smoke, lack of exercise, poor diet, obesity and overweight, drinking too much alcohol, and stress...chiding me mildly to set aside these vices and lead a healthier lifestyle...but ( and this is the real kicker here ) what if that just isn't enough? then my good friend joe j. nigro ( general president of the smwia...honest)tells me that i should ask my doctor about the blood pressure medication EDARBI ( sounds like a demented baseball stat ) which is a trademark of the takeda pharmaceutical company ltd....who, incidentally prepared and paid for the distribution of this letter ( with a kick back to the international? just asking) i bet they're the ones who included the nifty spec sheet with all the chemical composition and possible side-effects too like dizziness, muscle spasms, diarrhea, and, in some "rare" cases, "increased hypertension"...neat trick for a drug that's supposed to palliate it...so...things are so god-awful bad in the sheetmetal industry that my union has taken to shilling for pharmaceutical companies as a sideline...dues must be down ( not that you'd know it from the looks of my receipt)...those poor bastards are making do in these tough times...an inspiration to us all.

every late empire needs a senate

"the u s needs to elevate its response"
lindsey graham..clapped out imperial whore.

christ on a bike people...we need another war...yep...this broke ramshackle wheezing fribulating ( thanks for the image dick!) empire can't afford muffins and coffee for bureaucrats' meetings and this clown wants to consider "all option"...put the poor sod out to pasture and inject some people who can think rationally into the senate...oops...asking a bit too much aren't i...forgive me...i forgot, momentarily, about al hamilton and the fact that we're in somewhere around the fifth republic...the latest variant of what the empire has called itself since the get go...realistically, 1) pakistan is a sovereign state, 2) isi will not let go of islamic extremists...they are an asset against india and the ongoing struggle over kashmir...there's a quid pro quo there someplace...3)pakistan does have thermonuclear weapons and delivery systems...i know the arrogant imperial legions will scoff but all it take is one lucky shot and those guys have their weaknesses...all you hear about is elite troops...talk to someone who's been in the military recently...the bulk of it is a s fucked up as it always was...american exceptionalism isn't going to do anything but mislead a lot of people ( this is , of course, the point of politics, the media, and the very existence of the senate...to sell you a bill of goods that enhances the wealth of a few, coating it in some bullshit about patriotism, duty, and fucking honor...there is no honor in wars for imperial ends only comeuppance...linsey graham can kiss my ass...fuck these people.

tiny doctor tim and the new economy

"mr. geithner should listen rather than talk."
didier reynder. belgian finance minister

well..the jury is still out on the whole euro-zone thing..the chinese have been bitten once already and are in no rush to help the italians or pull the krauts' chestnuts out of the fire...obviously they have no patience for american exceptionalism and the brits are broke...europe on its own...and who can blame them? it's where they belong...they have made a fairly astute assessment of what dr. tim would have to offer in the way of advice...he has his own problems and that's probably why he took off for europe anyway...getting aw ay to reflect on problems that don't kick him in the nuts on a daily basis and enjoy the specter of an out of control swiss trader...who says economics is boring? closer to home ( in my home town actually...about a mile and a half away) a much more telling commentary on the state of the economy here at home has cropped up out on central avenue...when the fifth third bank began to experience the impact of the financial wizzardry emanating from the investment bankers on wall street feverishly working to create wealth out of nothing more than bad debt they started shuttering branches including the one here...it's been empty for better than a year but recently there have been contractor's trucks outside and noticeable activity...last week i drove by and the neon signs were glowing, banners fluttered in the late summer breeze, and a new liquor store was born...some of the safest coolers anywhere and a realistic reflection of the newly enhanced need for escapism in the american population...with the utter freak show that the next presidential election is shaping up to be i predict the re will be a significant spike in the sale of alcohol...illicit drug sales will be peaking in about a year but there is no data available besides the untrustworthy propaganda supplied by the dea...still i have no doubt we will all hanker after a bit of numbness before we finish slogging through the shit, whatever the source.

augustulus is not a mis-spelling

"in populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures, the middle rank of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the dexterity or labor of their hands, are commonly the most prolific, the most useful , and in that sense, the most respectable part of the community."

edward gibbons. the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire. chapter 31

ed was a contemporary of adam smith and they hailed from a day when working people were paid more than political lip service by imperial senators and bureaucratic spokespersons....an early version of the labor theory of value so sneered at by the thieving thugs on wall street and their marionette minions in the halls of congress...whores are whores and irredeemable in any sense...deep in denial and following the trajectory that that denial has set for the late empire...they squirm as plan after plan to jump-start growth prove effective at only redistributing public wealth into private hands...quantitative easing my ass..the rich gorging themselves at the public trough and unscrupulous politicians manipulating people's fears of the end of days with an evangelical subtext ( rick perry belongs on the 700 club)...the romans tried to make their debts go away by inflating their currency...introducing more and more base metal into the alloy that made up the coins until they were almost worthless and could pay off the burgeoning public debt for next to nothing..all under the leadership of desperately inept latter emperors trying to keep the barbarians ( read non-roman former clients who had some serious grudges to settle after a long period of imperial exploitation...they sensed their moment had arrived)...avitus , maximus, majoram, severus, clybrius, glycerus, nepos, authenius, and the fore-mentioned augustulus...nixon, ford, carter, reagan,bush, clinton, bush, obabma, and whomever is next on the list...something of an unknown as we slide deeper into the foul freakshow of the 2012 presidential campaign...it doesn't matter much ho wins really, but the temptation to resolve the sovereign debt crisis by hyper-inflating the dollar will be hanging over the next administration...they will preside over imperial decay and blame the people, not the system...it's always decadence, not the fundamentally flawed ponzi scheme design of empire that gets the blame...if we'd only worked harder and been more true to the virtues of the founding fathers we would still be on top of the world...fuck these people...i refuse to accept the blame for what their unbridled avarice has done.

on september 11, 1973 the chilean military with the covert assistance of the cia overthrew the legally elected government of salvador allende and instituted a military dictatorship that killed thousands of its own people...everyone has their memories

delusional thinking

"somehow we need to get back to the president we thought we elected in 2008."
bill mckibben. senior fellow at the post carbon institute.

bill's a pretty smart guy, which shows that intelligence is no proof against crack-brained thinking...doesn't anyone remember that obamaland was a senator ( from illinois , no less, remember the blago business?) , no matter for how short a time, and that he is ivy league educated...a complete insider...nothing remotely populist about this guy...he is as nearly "for the street" as pelosi is...bill...he was never on your side...he pretended to be...he is a fucking politician for christ's sake...drill it into your skull...these people do not represent you they represent wealth and privilege....the democratic forms are just a rationalization for holding power...just like "the vanguard of the revolution" or "lenin's heirs", that "we the people" stuff is just for the proles consumption...real power lies elsewhere and isn't really worried about your concerns...you're on your own...get a grip

the psychosis on wall street continues along with the utter disconnect witht he reality of people's everyday lives...they were all bummed out friday because there were no new net jobs created in august...what a shocker!! maybe these geeks should actually go to work for a living rather than designing elaborate ponzi schemes...some road construction on a georgia chain gang for iinstance...earlier in the week they were all happy because retail sales had shown some moxie in august...haven't these clowns ever heard of "back to school"? there are necessities involved in sending children off to be indoctrinated into the wonders of the consumerist utopia...part of which is generating expectations of new stuff when late summer rolls around...they will never move past avarice into any sort of understanding...manhattan is an island off the coast of the u s...disconnect it politically...exile all investment bankers, stock brokers, hedge fund operators, stock jobbers, day traders, and the rest of the foot soldiers of the economic apparatus there and let rising sea levels do their work...then, perhaps, we can work on supporting one another rather than them.

banking with criminals II

have i said fuck j p morgan chase recently? if i haven't then i have been remiss and need to take steps to correct the omission...since their books have been terribly disfigured by all the asset-eating toxic and esoteric derivatives that are papering the walls of their titanium-lead alloy vault walls ( stylishly rendered in a neo-medici/borgia "vincenzo will eat your children" motif ) they have decided that among other asset regenerating schemes they will raise my house payment by twenty-six bucks a month for the next year...not because of a "bookkeeping error" ( nearly as i can tell the entire economy is the result of a "bookkeeping error" that and statistics cooked to mush by every fucking body who wants me to think there is someone who actually has a clue running things ) or a sudden, sharp increase in property taxes ( although that wouldn't come as such a surprise either)...no they just want three hundred and twelve more dollars to add to the somewhat diminished "fractional reserve" they have laying around for sundry beer bashes and trolling for wall street hookers...soon i will be out from under this mortgage...at that point j p morgan chase can kiss my ass goodbye...i will find a locally owned bank to be bilked by.

we all knew there was a bunker

"remember, in a system in which money is created through bank loans there is never enough money in existence to pay back all debts with interest. the system only continues to function if it continues growing...consumers can't create more money the way banks do and can't take on more debt if no one will lend to them...as we have seen , the actual inflation-adjusted income of american workers has not risen substantially since the 1970s, but home values did rise during the 2000-2008 period, giving many households a higher theoretical net worth. many homeowners used their soaring home value as collateral for more debt-in many cases, substantially more. at the same time lenders found ways of easing consumer credit standards and making credit generally more accessible....the result: household debt increased from less than $2 trillion in 1980 to $13.5 trillion in 2008.this borrowing and spending on the part of u s households was not only the major engine of domestic economic expansion during most of the last decade, but a major component of worldwide economic growth as well. but with the crash in the u s real estate market in 2007 household net worth also crashed...and as unemployment rose from 4.6 percent in 2007 to almost 10 percent ( as officially measured) in 2010, average household income declined. at the same time, banks tightened their lending standards , with credit card companies slashing the number of offers, and mortgage lenders requiring much higher qualifications form borrowers...less debt meant less spending ( household usually borrow money so they can spend it-whether for a new car or a kitchen upgrade). this is a potentially short-term problem, however, the only way the situation will change is if somehow the economy as a whole begins to grow again ( leading to higher house prices, lower unemployment, and easier credit). here's the catch: increased consumer demand is a big part of what's needed drive that shift back to growth."
from "the end of growth: adapting to our new economic reality" by richard heinberg.

i never used my home equity as debt leverage and as a child of people who came of age during the depression of the 1930s i don't enter into cycles of debt readily...in fact in the last 25 years ( since i sobered up) i have done so only when some critical facet of my existence would have failed with out it ( transportation mostly)..i am almost out of debt...a few more vehicle payments, clean up the last of the credit cards form the 1980s ( compound interest is usury and criminal...i would expropriate the expropriators ) a few years more on the mortgage and then i will be somewhat freer...so as a philosophical position i refuse to take on any more debt to bail fucking wall street out of the hole the greedy degenerates dug for themselves with all their esoteric derivatives...let the market work its stringent discipline on the avaricious shits... i have guns and a garden i don't need wall street...if it weren't for the innocent in the way i would hope irene would scrub the bagnio clean.

so it's been revealed that cheney had a bunker full of "electronic communications equipment" ( what? no semaphore flags or flare guns?) behind a "steel door" in the vice-presidential residence...joe biden probably stumbled into it in a drunken stupor one night and though it was the death star...well...we knew there was a bunker...it is standard fuhrer equipment along with bitter hatre4d and a penchant or violence ( remember the shotgun business)...old dick looks a bit cadaverous these days...the pasty-faced bastard has spent too much time in his montana shadow-fuhrer bunker...somebody should help him.

the n y times raises the bar for consumerist propaganda

the palpitations on wall street are a marker of capital's inevitable contraction in the face of resource depletion and a mass of debt that far outweighs the world gross product ( irregardless of joe bidens earnest assurances to the new mandarins) and by extension is impossible to repay...reliable economic sources place the outside date for hyperinflation of the u s dollar at 2014...the political landscape is a cesspit of manipulative degenerates, disbarred lawyers, defrocked clerics, and used car salesmen from pomona...and there is a miasma of political suicide hovering over the swamps of whoretown as the kendo sticks and nail guns are being cleaned and oiled in anticipation of the debt reduction battles and the foregone conclusion that the automatic cuts written into the debt deal will go into effect because there can be no ideological rapproachement in congress thus dooming all those shits to town council pergatory...despite all this the fall style magazine of the n y times has either raised the bar on propaganda or lowered the standards of acceptable journalism ( if indeed such a thing is possible) by running a howler of an article entitled "youth quake: what do you wear when protest and mayhem rock your world? reports form three epicenters of street style: london, cairo, and tokyo." ( top photo is one accompanying this goebbelistic nonsense) christ on a bike people..one would have to consider that those struggling for their political future on the streets of egypt or overcoming an unacceptable political reaction to disaster in japan might be more concerned with events than what the n y times thinks of what they are wearing ( i never thought the n y times assumed that i was anything but an automaton programmed to shut up, consume, and be fucking grateful for the opportunity...but what can you expect from a yellow rag that gives the incomparably smug and arrogant dimwit thomas l friedman column space?)...what looters and arsonists in london are wearing ( and let me distinguish them from the crowds of the underclasses that have legitimate grievances with the excessive use of police power in their communities...violence begets violence...some thugs just took advantage of the situation because they thought someone else would take the heat) is of little interest except to the stylistas at the times who are always up to hawk some dreadful crap labeled "style" to the unwary and impressionable among us...not since capital turned earth day into a marketing bonanza has there been such a transparent, low-life piece of subhuman manipulation...the census of denizens of the longed for lake of fire has just expanded.

everything's a business

"usury changes things. with interest money is no longer a simple and stable commodity that just happens to have been chosen as the medium of exchange. projected through time it multiplies, and this without any toil on the part of the usurer. a man can borrow money, buy a loom, sell his wool at a higher price. change his station in life. another man can borrow money, buy the first man's wool, ship it abroad, and sell it at an even higher price. he moves up the social scale. or, if he is unlucky or foolish, he is ruined. meanwhile the usurer, the banker, grows richer and richer. we can't even know how rich, because money can be moved an hidden, and gains on financial transactions are hard to trace. it's pointless to count his sheep and cattle or to measure how much land he owns. who will make him pay his tithe? and who will make him pay his taxes? who will persuade him to pay some attention to his soul when life has become so interesting? things are getting out of hand."
from " medici money: banking, metaphysics, and art in fifteenth cenntury florence" by tim parks


whoa! so many ways to go with this...a full bore assault on using religion as a vehicle to scare the sinners into opening their purses to the princes of the church ( or the swaggarts of tv evangelism ) and ease their earthly burdens through an upward redistribution of wealth ( and creating said cleric aristocracy)...financial speculation...selling short...bubbles...esoteric derivatives...credit default swaps...hedge funds...insider trading..currency manipulation ( or treason in the sick twisted utterly profane mind of the yahoo governor of texas...rick perry has to be close to the bottom of the political sump...the shit is thick down there)...how can one think of shady financial dealings with out dragging the whores into the discussion? plutocracy disguised as republicanism that calls itself democracy ...the dissembling reaches down even to the most general of labels...reality is somewhere else...waiting to kick humanity in its collective nuts...i can almost understand the messianic who lust for the end of days...sometimes people are just too fucking stupid to live..i really need a CULTURE...i am so weary of things being quantified and qualified by their monetary worth and knowing that the whole house of cards will collapse in chaos because it is an entire society based on an abstraction...the medium of exchange has traded places with the goods or services it is meant to represent and become the ultimate good...what is gold but shiny lead? insane...how do you eat that? there is no such thing as a post-agricultural society...we may be in for the real post-industrial....post-wal mart even...grow your own may take on new meaning as petrochemical agricultural inputs become exorbitantly priced or unavailable and food prices spiral upward ( have a look at index mundi or just stroll the supermarket aisles and think back a bit)...shadowstats puts the outside date for hyperinflation of the u s dollar at 2014...the next election ( not that it matters ) could be the last...the interest level keep rising.

shadowstats

http://www.shadowstats.com/


one for the one or two lost souls out there who thinks that anything political could possibly be honest...democrat...republican...tea party...lying scumsucking whores addicted to political expedient.

http://www.shadowstats.com/imgs/sgs-emp.gif?hl=ad&t=1312554111

class treason or just the truth?

"leading active members of today's economics profession...have formed themselves into a kind of politburo for correct economic thinking. as a general rule- as one might expect from a gentleman's club- this has placed them on the wrong side of every important policy issue, and not just recently but for decades. they predict disaster where none occurs. they deny the possibility of events that hen happen...the oppose the most basic, decent, and sensible reforms, while offering placebos instead. they are always surprised when something untoward ( like a recession) actually occurs. and when finally they sense that some position cannot be sustained, they do not reexamine their ideas. they do not consider the possibility of a flaw in logic or in theory. rather, they simply change the subject. no-one loses face in this club for having been wrong. no-one is dis-invited from presenting papers at later annual meetings. and still les is anyone form outside invited in."
james k. galbraith

jim is setting out to be the smedley butler of economists and i have to wish him well...anyone one who turns on the established doyens and doges of their particular societal niche is in for a rough ride...especially with a group capable of such wonderful self-deceit as economists...how they can continue to foul their own nests and still retain any shred of credibility is a tribute either to their refined and convoluted academic thinking or to their utter irrelevance to the real world...either way the come second only to the whore politicians in their disconnect from the rest of us...mired completely in an economic system that has seen better days and may be shuffling off stage to a dirge as the rest of us try to work things out...current economic structures are at the mercy of the sunk costs of their infrastructure and their need for continued growth...the inertia of these two albatrosses is steering them away from even admitting the seriousness of their ( and by extension our ) situation much less addressing it...when leadership fails you have to lead yourself and the failure of leadership is glaringly obvious... people are veering off into odd tangents because of it and that may not bode well if the sociopathic elemment garners some influence ( as i recall hitler rose out of some economic distress...check out the novel "it can't happen here" for an imaginative view of the possibilities that were rife in the last great economic upheaval in the empire)...time to build a community and an inclusive consensus of who we are so we have something to fall back on when all this comes crashing down...clearly we will have to do this ourselves.

i always wanted to be a generalist...

"these experts are all working within certain conceptual and administrative conventions that parse reality into bite-size chunks that journalists, researchers, officials, and policy makers can cope with . the specialization seems to help them get abetter grasp of the issues.

in a generalized system the opposite is the case; the compartmentalization that specialization brings with it precludes a clear overview, one that would tell us that things are far more dangerous , and the dangers likely more imminent than we thought. thus specialists can tell us that a 1 degree celsius rise in global temperatures will probably lead to a fall in global crop yields of 10%. but to calculate figures like these specialists have to make assumptions about the context in which a 1 degree celsius rise will happen. the normal assumption is ceteris paribus: all other things being equal or staying the same. however, in a general system crisis, most relevant 'other things' are not staying the same. they are changing and very often in an unfavorable way, because one problem exacerbates the others in a chain reaction that becomes a cascade of knock on effects. thus, for example, plants grown in warmer temperatures that they are acclimatized to will need adequate water to suit those altered conditions, and if there is a depleted level of fossil water to draw upon, then crop yields may fall a lot more. "
"danger ahead" prioritizing risk avoidance in political and economic decision making." by brian davey

capital is boxed in by its need to generate continued growth to insure continued profit. growth and profit are both centered in what is happening "now" which leads to a myopia in long-term vision. the focus on what is happening now is a root cause of the volatility in the stock markets, making them sensitive short-term events. since long-term vision is secondary it leads economists, analysts, and investors into what economic historian werner abelshauser calls a lack of "catastrophe consciousness". a more holistic view of economic activity, its limits and impacts, is missing. long-term events such as climate change and resource depletion are discounted or dismissed. inapplicable because of time scale or the placebo of a technological fix that may or may not exist. then again given their tendency to panic being mired in the short-term thinking may save them from simply giving up and going home...the end will be a surprise for them...something of a mercy in its own way...they have enough angst in their zeitgeist at the moment...why burden them with a wider view

radioactive nixon

"transcripts of the tapes were released on august 5 and the president went on television one more time, admitting that he had listened alone to the june 23 tape in may 1973, an admission that confirmed he had knowingly lied-to the nation, to the courts, to congress, to his staff and lawyers, to his family, and probably to himself day after day, month after month, for more than two years. 'whatever the mistakes i made in the handling of watergate,' he said,' the basic truth remains that when all the facts were brought to my attention, i insisted on a full investigation and prosecution of those guilty. i am firmly convinced that the record, in its entirety, does not justify the extreme step of the impeachment and removal of a president.' the statement was not true. it also came too late. on august 8 nixon went on television to announce that he would resign the next day at noon."
from "president nixon: alone in the white house" by richard reeves.

i missed nixon's resignation...i was camping in the colorado rockies southwest of denver and did not find out until the tenth that he had resigned ( see "nixon and the cowgirls" for details) i only marginally regret that...he was the last act in the destruction of any sort of respect for the presidency, the courts, the constitution, congress, politics, and the rest of the detritus of organized authority that began with johnson and the escalation of the war in vietnam...clearly authority was seriously deranged and delusional...they continue to reinforce that point...don't have a fucking clue..just arrogance and bluster...he had been exposed for what he was long before the endgame...anti-climax..a foregone conclusion...just another overgrown ward hack concerned more about his "historical legacy" than his ethics...you can find them on any town council.

"the first mass attack against tokyo put the city in a state of shock. with a maximum amount of coordination between their military and the diplomatic actions, the allies could have used this state of shock to offer concrete terms for peace. the only condition that they already knew the japanese would not negotiate-keeping their emperor- would also serve allied interests. there was no reason for either side to prolong the war."
from "a history of bombing" by sven lindqvist.

"japan would have surrendered even if atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. the hiroshima and nagasaki bombs did not defeat japan, nor by the testimony of the enemy leaders who ended the war, did they persuade japan to accept unconditional surrender."
u s strategic bombing survey. july 1946

no...those people were incinerated to make stalin blink...all he did was build his own weapons...what has ( and what will ) all that time, effort, expense, fear, distrust, mendacity, and outright hatred cost? sometimes i wish i didn't read so damned much history...sometimes i need to projectile vomit rage and disgust...august is such a vile month.


the dow pukes up 634.67 points...pundits and politicians dither and point fingers..yeah..the degenerate wisdom of "leadership" is reassuring in interesting times...imagine my relief.

wall street has the fear...

"money, credit, and debt can be created with no underlying physical foundation whereas energy and scarce natural resources, not dollars are what we have to budget and spend...in a world increasingly constrained by energy and increasing environmental limitations, but with a growing human population, adherence to accounting frameworks based on natural capital will be essential for policymakers to assess water, energy, and other limiting factors. such a framework would help us discard energy dead-ends and, perhaps equally important, our time and effort. the world as a whole needs to build a renewable supply investment portfolio that achieves the highest return on scarce inputs rather than money that is based on nothing scarce at all."
nate hagens and kenneth mulder, "energy and water. the real blue chips."


...and a monetary system that is based on "enlightened self-interest" may be an impediment to our adaptive abilities as a species...mired utterly in the short-term...subject to irrational panic attacks ( was today a "relief rally"? there was one of those day before yesterday and you see where that got)and based on nothing but speculation geared toward self-aggrandizement it is only going to obscure the reality of the situations we face to favor a narrative that maximizes profit...a somewhat more collectivist and egalitarian mindset that takes the future's welfare into account is what is needed along with some grassroots education to overcome the institutional bias built into the system...systemic failure could be an ally in this, but only if there is a parallel system that is well developed enough to assume the responsibility...capital is resilient as long as events remain reasonably predictable...it is boxed in by its need to generate profit and pursue the holy grail of "growth"...that mindset has always ignored the finite nature of the planet and the financial system may finally be finding those limits without the ability to understand or respond to them in a timely fashion...next week should be interesting.

AT LEAST THEY WAITED UNTIL THE MARKET CLOSED
7:56PM 8-5-2011

so...standard and poors ( irony) downgraded the credit rating of the empire proving that perhaps the "american century" is finally over...we can join the euro zone now and the germans can bail us out along with the other struggling economies...it'll be good for us...i wonder how the day traders and hedge fund managers are going to spend the weekend...the vip lounges will see a lot of alkaloid lines cut and snorted as the economic elite go for the gusto before they're downgraded to pcp and morning glory seeds...stay tuned...there's still along way to fall