Can’t We Just Get On With The Renaissance,

You know, skip the medieval?

More Drama On The Drama Of A Leak

I’m Not Sure If This The Most Ignorant Thing Dionne Has Written

Or just the most ignorant thing that he has written that I have read.

Let’s begin with what is a most painful fact for liberals: Conservatism, a doctrine that seemed moribund on election night in 2008, enjoyed a far more rapid comeback than all liberals and even most conservatives anticipated.

There may be something to what Greider is saying here.

WG: Yes. In the last twenty years, as media ownership became highly concentrated, the gulf between the governing elites, both in and out of government, and the broad range of ordinary citizens has gotten much worse. The press chose to side with the governing elites and look down on the citizenry as ignorant or irrational, greedy, or even nutty….

Admittedly I like to do freeky stuff to freek out the peeps that grew up in a time without a lot of freeky people still being around, but to think that I thought conservatism was dead or wouldn’t recover, or whatever, is just about as obtuse as anything I’ve ever read.

As much as I malign the media, I still think they are for the most part fairly intelligent and well read people, which is what I like about them, and why I like to zing them the way I do, because just saying things about individual brain farting is more pointed than I care to usually be, but Dionne is with the WaPo so I have to single him out, if for nothing else but old times sakes. I like to keep it general because it seems to piss more of them off, and you know me, I like bang for the bucks.

So Mr. Dioone is the first winner of the “Hangover Award” bestowed in honor of writing as if he had one.

Announcing The Duffle Bag of Balls Awards

In an effort to keep up with all the self important, and of course the self impotent people giving out top ten lists of the most whatever awards, I have decided to show my (expletive deleted) and will announce categories as the year wears on, and as I decide just how rude and inane those categories should be.

Edited to add, that is all.

And…

Continuing my anytime of year, ripping off other blogs.

US Companies Created 2.4 Million Jobs This Year

1.4 million overseas,

The trend helps explain why unemployment remains high in the United States, edging up to 9.8 percent last month, even though companies are performing well: All but 4 percent of the top 500 U.S. corporations reported profits this year, and the stock market is close to its highest point since the 2008 financial meltdown.

But the jobs are going elsewhere. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, says American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S. The additional 1.4 million jobs would have lowered the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, says Robert Scott, the institute’s senior international economist.

Before you get all bent, read the article, and then think about why Nissan or other foreign car companies build their cars over here, which has more to do with shipping costs, and consumer expectations of what a quality car might cost. After all, a Lexus selling for $14K isn’t exactly anyone’s idea of upscale, no matter what the metal and plastic are actually worth. We encounter this sort of perception value added pricing in food etc. too, name brand versus store brand. While quality will and does vary, there isn’t much you can do with a pea, and nutritionally there probably isn’t any difference between them at all.

But there are perceptions that the article points out from here,

For most of the 20th century, a symbiotic link existed between value creation and job creation. When businesses prospered, employment expanded and communities thrived. This virtuous circle was good for business and good for society.

This almost seems to be ingrained in our society, which attests to its’ recent industrial past, and its’ failure to cope with the globalization of the economy, by both business and society, and hence the growing anger at the government bailing out not only Wall Street banksters, but foreign banksters as well, with US taxpayers money. The good doctor doesn’t have an answer. So much for that Phd.

It would be easy to call bidness a bunch of traitors, to steal a phrase from Kudlow, of our Anglo Saxon values, but lets face face it, business is sociopathic. there is no bucket for putting these values into and so no attempt is made to do so. this isn’t anything new either, corporations were one of Abraham Lincoln’s major headaches when he was endeavoring to save the Union of the States.

I am often amused, albeit not much, by the heavy weighting of us over 55 Americans in the unemployment lines, as though we are no longer capable of grasping the modern world, which many of us have worked to create, and politicians managed to ship overseas at the behest of business interests which have never had the American people, society, or country as a primary concern of their own. It is as if they too, are either sociopathic, or retarded. or perhaps they just don’t grasp the dynamics of the world that they live in, or worse they have misguided loyalties and priorities than the rest of us that are accustomed to nation states, which seems unlikely given their pompous reactions to the Assange situation.

There is a certain amount of callousness in American life that we all seem to overlook, otherwise we wouldn’t be tolerating the living conditions in our own cities’ barrios and ghettos, which race and national origin kindly mask. Without being too altruistic, that situation has hardened us to the current decline in our own society on a larger scale.

When politicians, educators and business leaders have all abandoned the field, then there is very little that any of the rest of us can do to halt the decline. There is no longer a frontier to absorb the discontented, or provide opportunities for entrepreneurs of self sufficiency. There are no doors out for the growing number of displace American workers in the global economy, who unfortunately, remain well armed and easily lead astray.

It is in everyones best interests then to quite looking at the situation in either political or ideological ways, and start looking at in a societal way, and determine just what direction we want our society to actually go along the lines of just what do we consider those needs will be in the twenty first century, and not what those needs and directions were in the last one.

In short we need to define the future as we wish it to be, and then establish policies that lead towards those goals, and leave behind the retreading of ancient regimes and the old ways of the now dead past. I do not see the comfortable doing so, as they are quite content with the fruits they are gathering from the whithering trees of the industrial age.

Steal This House!

The banks do it, why not you?

In housing disaster regions like South Florida or Vegas, that nonsense excuse at least has a basis in fact. The reality is the mass volume of foreclosures act to reveal the flaws in the banks processing systems. If they engage in small illegalities in New Hampshire, for instance, its doubtful anyone would notice.

Hence, the assembly line perjury the banks have committed are harder to hide in mass foreclosure venues. Which is what makes this touching Christmas Eve story all the more peculiar:

Or you could do what Atrios says,

Do not buy a house until this behavior is stopped with criminal prosecutions.

If I were a gambling man I would bet on you thinking you’re the exception.

The only real difference between American capitalism and a Ponzi scheme is the spelling.

BREAKING NEWS!

Northern states in the US are reporting snow has fallen in December.

An anonymous government official said,

“No one could have known.”

No Collusion Here, Move Along

Airlines all raise ticket price by ten bucks one way, twenty bucks for a run around ticket.

According to an anonymous airline industry insider,

“The FAA wouldn’t let us make passengers load their own baggage, so we stuck it to them this way.”

I’ll buy that.

If A Frog Had Wings

It wouldn’t bump its’ ass when it landed.

If I Had Comments

This would be an open thread.

If This Was Twitter

This too would be a tweet.

Come, Let Us Speculate

Together. Above average, to say the least. The links are worth reading.

In other news.

And finally, the three letter boys can cipher TOR, etc, if you let them, which builds on this old exploit.

As I noted earlier, your ISP is a man in the middle, but then so is your router, etc. ISPs will sell this stuff to the highest bidder, if not all bidders, given your profile and who wants to know what.

I operate under the presumption that this box, and this network is pretty well covered. It’s either that, or fill it up with concrete and bury it in the backyard. Security is a bug, not a feature.