Shearing the sheep - again!

[Image from Magic_Foundry]

Station Charon had an excellent and thought-provoking post yesterday entitled "Inviting the Sheep for Another Shearing." Here are a couple of excerpts:

"In the ongoing madness of an America in terminal decline, the great Surge II is now underway. This one has nothing to do with mass brainwashing that all is well in Iraq and that we are indeed winning thanks to our shining medal festooned superstar quarterback otherwise known as General God (aka David Petraeus) to divert the flocks attention away from a doomed imperialist crusade. Nope, this one hits closer to home, it started last Monday with a sly piece of internal propaganda from Citigroup's CEO Vikram Pandit having its best quarter since 2007 which triggered a sucker rally in the Wall Street casinos that dictate to the inhabitants of chumpland. The pocket media once again did their job, selling this latest call for the sheep to come and be sheared with all the effectiveness that they pimped the murderous lies of George W. Bush, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. Things - ARE getting better you see, the gloom-doomers, the glass is half-empty pessimists, the neurotic nervous nellies and the naysaying Eyores are all wrong, it's a disease, in their heads, the economy is rocketing its way back to robustide. The most incredible example of just how thoroughly corrupt that the corporatist media has become is the pernicious cover story of the latest edition of Newsweek magazine that has a picture of good ole Uncle Sam saying that he want YOU to START SPENDING!... YOU need to INVEST in America - before it's too late."

Station Charon continues by detailing the Newsweek story by Daniel Gross which suggests that at this frightful time, we need more spending, spending, spending and risk-taking! Or in Gross' own words:

"As consumers hibernate and investors hoard cash, the economy is withering. This new age of thrift is understandable. But for a recovery to take hold, Americans will need to start taking risks again."

Gross goes on to suggest that this is the time to invest your money - "the mountain of cash has to be put to work."

Station Charon has something to say about that:

"Great solution, just trust Wall Street with that money, think long term, be patriotic even if the malefactors of great wealth do not and are more than happy to wallow in international troughs and then come back to shit on America. Gross, a highly-paid, high profile stooge is just playing his part in the ongoing relaunch project to save Wall Street looters and protect their plunder. ..."


There's much more of substance and much more edible food for thought in Station Charon's article.

Read it all here. (Before you rush out to hand your money to the Wall Street thieves).

Class war - the rich against the rest?

[Image from Wall Street Trader]

Justin Fox, writing in Time magazine's March 2 issue, tells of a study done by two finance professors at the University of Chicago, the purpose of which was to determine "who was behind the spectacular rise in the very top incomes in the U.S."

Turns out it wasn't "corporate chief executives and their lieutenants," nor was it "highly paid athletes and entertainers."

It was those folks working on Wall Street.

"At least 2,500 people at major investment banks made more that $2.5 million a year," estimated professors Steven Kaplan and Joshua Rauh. They also surmised "that the actual figure was probably substantially higher."


"Overall," says Fox, "the top 0.1% of the income distribution in the U.S. in 2006 -- the most recent year for which data are available--was made up of 148,361 taxpayers who took home more than $1.9 million each. This top 0.1% accounted for 11.6% of personal income..."

Two things to remember: These folks produce nothing, they create nothing. The move money around for their own benefit! In other words, they could be considered leeches.

Secondly, as Fox notes, "the scads of lushly paid Wall Streeters have driven the financial sector into a ditch, and taxpayers around the world are spending trillions of dollars to fix the problem."


And the problems have just begun. The world is on fire, from China to Europe, from Russia to India, and all places in between.

Michael Kare, in an article for Salon, says "The global economic meltdown has already caused bank failures, bankruptcies, plant closings and foreclosures and will, in the coming year, leave many tens of millions unemployed across the planet. But another perilous consequence of the crash of 2008 has only recently made its appearance: increased civil unrest and ethnic strife. Someday, perhaps, war may follow."

All because a bunch of con artists without portfolios, who neither create nor contribute any good thing to the world, lined their pockets at the expense of the rest of us.

Sounds like class war to me.

Wall Street CEO's should live on the minimum wage...

in Kansas!

Currently, the federal minimum wage level is $6.55. It is to increase to $7.25 on July 24.

Our paragons of financial disaster on the street of Wall are crying because a few of them - and only a few - are going to be forced to make-do with a mere $500k for a whole year! Omigod! Some of their nannies' wages run as high as $40-45,000 alone!

I think Wall Street CEO's and other nogoodniks responsible for this global financial crisis should be forced to live on Kansas' minimum wage - for a year, at least. Kansas' minimum wage is $2.65 per hour.

That works out to a whopping $5,412 every single year!


Evidently, some people, like labor advocates and Kansans with disabilities are trying to raise Kansas' minimum wage. It is an "embarrassment," says Kansas AFL-CIO exec Andy Sanchez. You think?

Who could possibly oppose raising the minimum wage in Kansas? Yes, you're right! According to Kansas Jackass, the opposition is coming from "Kansas business interests- and, interestingly, my favorite anti-government tax group Americans for Prosperity."

Raising the minumum wage, they weep, will "hurt Kansas workers."

Yup.

Chamber of Commerce types, like Kent Eckles, claim the "free market" should determine wages. Unfortunately, that's been the mantra of the anti-people, anti-union, anti-worker SOBs since the beginning of time.

Or, as Kansas Jackass put its: "God bless the heartless idolaters of 'The Market' - they really just are clueless, aren't they? The minimum wage was established to correct the failing of the Market - to make sure greedy business people couldn't take advantage of their employees who were desperately in need of work by only paying them, oh, $2.65 an hour."

Actually, I don't think these "heartless idolaters" are clueless, at all. They know exactly what the hell they are doing. And what they are doing is keeping almost all the loot they con out of the people in their own sweaty, greedy, little hands! Hell, they'd pay workers NOTHING if they thought they could get by with it.

In fact, in some areas of Florida, I've heard that's exactly what happens to migrant workers, who have, of course, no recourse at all!


Andy Sanchez, of the Kansas AFL-CIO, says only about 20,000 Kansas workers are paid according to the Kansas minimum wage because in most cases, the Kansas minimum wage is co-opted by the federal minimum wage.

Still, 20,000 is one hell of a lot of people living at 50% percent BELOW the poverty line!


I think the first person to be forced to live on $2.65 an hour should be Mr. Eckles of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce. We'd hear him howling all the way to Florida!

Christians are full of bull - on Wall Street

The Lord [Jesus] spoke to Cindy Jacobs during a church service. The Lord [Jesus] said: "Cindy, the strongman over America doesn't live in Washington, DC - the strongman lives in New York City! Call My people to pray for the economy."

Now when "the Lord" talks to you and tells you to do something, you sure as hell better do it! So, Cindy called "His" people "to converge on New York City the week of October 29 for an emergency prayer rally to cry out against economic collapse ... "

Oh, the Lord also told her that "October 29 was Black Tuesday, the day the stock market crashed and Satan wants to do it again."

Cindy, no slacker, cried out, "we need to P.U.S.H. (pray until something happens to avert financial judgment."

Why would god send financial judgment on his favorite people, the United States Americans? "[B]ecause" said Cindy, " ... not only for our stance towards Israel, but our blatant sin against Him in passing laws such as the one allowing homosexual marriage."

But it's not just Amurricans who have to worry. The Lord is sending his judgment on "the ideologies of nations. He is moving to put the fear of the Lord not only on His church, but upon the nations of the world."

Whew! That IS scary!


Not to worry. Cindy had an answer, a way out of the mess: "We are going to intercede at the site of the statute of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the 'Lion's Market,' or God's control over the economic systems."

She gets crazier: "While we do not have the full revelation of all this will entail, we do know that without intercession, economies will crumble."

So, these freaks went to the site of the bull and prayed for money.


Evidently, they don't bother actually reading the Bible they claim to revere. I'd suggest they gather at the site of a ass and have do a study on Mark 10:17-22. Methinks they might think twice about praying for money in front of a bull; actually, they might think twice about praying for money at all!

Now I know "good" Christians don't believe that the Law, which Jesus, the Jewish peasant, said he had come to fulfill and must be obeyed, applies to them; but they still go the Hebrew Bible to pull out select verses when they want to castigate some poor sinner, like a gay person.

Perhaps they should read more than one verse calling homosexuality an abomination. They would find that praying to a bull for money is right up at the top of the list of No-No's that God gave Moses - something about graven images, as I recall. Plus, there's a story in Exodus 32 which tells what happened to the Israelites when they collected all their gold and fashioned a "molten" calf. It wasn't pretty:

God told Moses his people were "a stiffnecked people." But more than that, in the scathing words of the KJV, God said, "Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them..."

Yikes!

Cindy Jacobs and her idolatrous cretins that followed her to pray before the bull better make tracks for some safe place, 'cause god is gonna get 'em! The bible says so!


Jesus Cristos! What a bunch of morons!

Did I hear a heavenly "bullshit!"?

h/t to Wonkette and Pharyngula