According to news reports, regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission suddenly started spending hours viewing pornographic material, just as the financial system was beginning to tumble into its collapse in 2008.
While this appears to be a scandalous, outrageous neglect of their duties, I wait for their legal counsel to put forward the only possible defense.
"These regulators were actually doing work-related research. They knew the economy was about to be completely fucked, so they were studying what happens in that situation."
Friday, April 23, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Liberty Logic
If external laws and regulations enacted by your elected government keep you from doing whatever you want, whenever you want, you have been coerced into giving up your freedom.
If your own voluntary self restraint keeps you from doing whatever you want, whenever you want, you've been brainwashed into giving up your freedom.
The only way to know you are truly free is to rip, tear, grab, guzzle, reproduce and lay waste like there's no tomorrow. Even if you don't, you can be assured that plenty of people will.
If your own voluntary self restraint keeps you from doing whatever you want, whenever you want, you've been brainwashed into giving up your freedom.
The only way to know you are truly free is to rip, tear, grab, guzzle, reproduce and lay waste like there's no tomorrow. Even if you don't, you can be assured that plenty of people will.
Angry Sign Wavers
The words Tea Party make me want to take up alcoholism.
I don't like angry sign wavers, no matter what they represent. If your political position will fit on a sign, you haven't thought hard enough about it. If you're thinking, you probably aren't yelling. By extension, if you are yelling, you probably aren't thinking, unless your yell is tactically calculated to create noisy confusion to mask the advance of a more complicated agenda behind that screen of unthinking sign wavers you have recruited.
The only thing worse than an unthinking sign waver is a cunning one. They are most likely no more honest with their followers than they are with their adversaries. So don't talk to me about who is more likely to set us up for fascism or lead the country into ruin. What will lead the country into ruin is the preference for angry sign waving over well-reasoned plans, articulately presented.
Too many big words.
TOO MANY BIG WORDS! TOO MANY BIG WORDS! TOO MANY BIG WORDS! LET ME HEAR YOU NOW! TOO MANY BIG WORDS! TOO MANY BIG WORDS! TOO MANY BIG WORDS! HOLD THOSE SIGNS UP! ALL THE NETWORKS ARE HERE!
I could ignore it as long as it stayed on the television. I could drive past the shiny new Don't Tread on Me flags hanging from poles in front of scattered houses around the area. Then I heard one of my employers asking about getting a Tea Party tee shirt. If I have to listen to it every working day I may go insane.
I'm too responsible to go to work drunk. Honestly, though, when faced with the human race's ineradicable narrow mindedness and tendency to threaten violence over almost any disagreement I go home every night and seek the solace of ethanol.
I don't like angry sign wavers, no matter what they represent. If your political position will fit on a sign, you haven't thought hard enough about it. If you're thinking, you probably aren't yelling. By extension, if you are yelling, you probably aren't thinking, unless your yell is tactically calculated to create noisy confusion to mask the advance of a more complicated agenda behind that screen of unthinking sign wavers you have recruited.
The only thing worse than an unthinking sign waver is a cunning one. They are most likely no more honest with their followers than they are with their adversaries. So don't talk to me about who is more likely to set us up for fascism or lead the country into ruin. What will lead the country into ruin is the preference for angry sign waving over well-reasoned plans, articulately presented.
Too many big words.
TOO MANY BIG WORDS! TOO MANY BIG WORDS! TOO MANY BIG WORDS! LET ME HEAR YOU NOW! TOO MANY BIG WORDS! TOO MANY BIG WORDS! TOO MANY BIG WORDS! HOLD THOSE SIGNS UP! ALL THE NETWORKS ARE HERE!
I could ignore it as long as it stayed on the television. I could drive past the shiny new Don't Tread on Me flags hanging from poles in front of scattered houses around the area. Then I heard one of my employers asking about getting a Tea Party tee shirt. If I have to listen to it every working day I may go insane.
I'm too responsible to go to work drunk. Honestly, though, when faced with the human race's ineradicable narrow mindedness and tendency to threaten violence over almost any disagreement I go home every night and seek the solace of ethanol.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Capitalist Leaders with Socialist Defenders
Looking at graphs on the Campaign for America's Future website depicting the federal deficit and the relationship of its rise and fall to tax rates and defense spending, I imagined a future in which a small private sector commands a large defense force made up of what used to be the working class. The system could work quite well.
The power class, the elite private sector families who control all wealth, would pay taxes only to fund a huge defense department. Since these wealthy families would control all real estate, and all other citizens would be employed by their government, the country would not need to fund parks, welfare or public transportation for the messy lives of free-range citizens who can't or won't afford their own cars, medical care and sprawling estates. As military personnel, the working class would receive a fair wage, uniforms, medical care and housing, as well as job training and assigned tasks. Even in wartime, military personnel get R&R. In peacetime it's just another job. Children would be raised on military bases, taught in base schools, using a standardized curriculum that would prepare them for the life of service ahead of them.
Assuming that the majority of people have no great ambition and don't really care what they do for a living, this would keep that large segment of the population occupied and controlled. The power class could then do what they wanted with the environment and the economy, because the dutiful military would not be allowed to bargain for better terms.
Success depends on good management to keep the military from taking over completely. It would depend on the perfect balance between threat and actual destructive warfare. Terrorism provides an excellent adversary to stimulate nationalistic paranoia. They really could do something tragically nasty. We don't need to be attacked by lizards from space. We have plenty of cold-blooded killers right here on our own planet. If we choose to focus only on that we can easily justify the militarization of most of our population to protect our wealthy minority.
The wealthy minority will see much more direct benefits for their tax dollars with a virtual mercenary army looking out for them.
The reason this won't happen is simple. The wealthy in this country won't want to employ everyone else in their citizen army. We will always have more people than we need. In the finest tradition of business, the bean counters will lay off the extra personnel, creating unattached workers again.
The power class, the elite private sector families who control all wealth, would pay taxes only to fund a huge defense department. Since these wealthy families would control all real estate, and all other citizens would be employed by their government, the country would not need to fund parks, welfare or public transportation for the messy lives of free-range citizens who can't or won't afford their own cars, medical care and sprawling estates. As military personnel, the working class would receive a fair wage, uniforms, medical care and housing, as well as job training and assigned tasks. Even in wartime, military personnel get R&R. In peacetime it's just another job. Children would be raised on military bases, taught in base schools, using a standardized curriculum that would prepare them for the life of service ahead of them.
Assuming that the majority of people have no great ambition and don't really care what they do for a living, this would keep that large segment of the population occupied and controlled. The power class could then do what they wanted with the environment and the economy, because the dutiful military would not be allowed to bargain for better terms.
Success depends on good management to keep the military from taking over completely. It would depend on the perfect balance between threat and actual destructive warfare. Terrorism provides an excellent adversary to stimulate nationalistic paranoia. They really could do something tragically nasty. We don't need to be attacked by lizards from space. We have plenty of cold-blooded killers right here on our own planet. If we choose to focus only on that we can easily justify the militarization of most of our population to protect our wealthy minority.
The wealthy minority will see much more direct benefits for their tax dollars with a virtual mercenary army looking out for them.
The reason this won't happen is simple. The wealthy in this country won't want to employ everyone else in their citizen army. We will always have more people than we need. In the finest tradition of business, the bean counters will lay off the extra personnel, creating unattached workers again.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Early Monday Morning
The cats clustered nervously around the living room stove. A mysterious creature scrabbled in the stove pipe. I'm guessing the Easter Bunny got trashed at the after party and started dissing Santa Claus. This led to the inevitable challenge bet. Guess who lost.
I opened the clean-out door on the outside of the chimney. Two cats tried to enter, but pulled back quickly. When I inserted a mirror to look up and down, I heard a hissing noise. An unidentifiable appendage flicked up toward my hand, so I withdrew it. I draped an old towel over the lip of the door as an escape ladder. I'll check it later.
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