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.