Good News! The Currency is Signed Stylishly!

Posted on by
Reply

Good News to report today fellow Americans. The horrible insult to the currency of the United States of America, committed by Jacob Lew, has been amended and what was once an immature doodle of a scribble of a signature is now almost legible! The New York Times reported today that Jacob Lew, Secretary of the Treasury and also the “Chairperson, Financial Stability Oversight Council” has been practicing his long hand signature and has perfected it to such a degree that it is now worthy of imprinting on all denominations of American currency. Turns out that he will be starting with five dollar bills to be released later this fall.

Perhaps he is aiming to stabilize our finances slowly with such an approach. Now about that other title of his.The Financial Stability Oversight Council was established by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Apparently, we the people, now have another federal agency making sure we are safe from financial idiocy and greed! Just imagine avoiding what occurred during the derivatives fiasco that brought the worlds financial markets to its respective knees. The world is a better place now, the financial markets have been made secure and stable! We actually have an ace on the case! Finally a man whose signature we can almost read is on the job! He will stick up for the little guy who was run over by the “Too Big to Fail” fiduciary institutions that so bitterly failed us in the past.

With news like this our minds should be at ease. Hopefully everyone had a Happy Father’s Day. Now we can embrace the upcoming summer solstice with a renewed sense of hope, trust and diplomacy. Someone who can write in script is in charge of printing money and protecting the consumer. Hooray for America and Wall Street!

“Gotta get down to the cumberland mine.
Thats where I mainly spend my time.
Make good money, five dollars a day. made anymore, I might move away.”  — The Grateful Dead Cumberland Blues

The author is saddened by the loss of a brother from Jersey, James Gandolfini. He will be fondly remembered at the end of his television show driveway, in his P.J.s, retrieving the morning paper as showed in the opening scenes of The Sopranos. Arrivederci Goodfella!

Get off the cell phone and Drive! — Jake Shween

Edward Snowden and the Game of Phones or What’s the Price of Information?

Posted on by
Reply

Another week another scandal. The United States runs itself like a corporation out of control at times. It’s nice to believe this country has it all together but apparently that’s not even close to what reality is behind closed doors. Does the National Security Agency really know what is going on? Well if they did why couldn’t they have stopped the wall street fiasco of 2008? If the NSA were actually intercepting and reading all those emails between the gigantic financial institutions that have a stranglehold on the world economy they would have clearly smelled a rat in the works of the derivatives market. They would have been able to help all those “muppets” who were bankrupted and set out to dry when Lehman Brothers went belly up.  Maybe they knew and decided not to say anything!

So who are the smartest guys in the room? Are the smartest ones just observers who watch as the financial world spins out of control? Maybe they have a piece of the action and have been bought out, you know the saying, everybody has a price. What can all this information possibly be worth? Apparently the world economy that’s all. Or maybe they kind of knew but just didn’t want to be definitive about anything and let the proverbial cat out of the bag! Playing dumb to let someone else take the hit. Maybe this was the plan to redistribute the wealth after all! It stands to reason that if an intelligence agency is actually intelligent wouldn’t they be able to not only stop terrorist activity but also to decrease crime in every sector? Wouldn’t the banks who now launder money for the drug lords now be held accountable for their misdeeds? How about the banks that let elderly people be bilked out of their retirement funds by telemarketers? Suddenly wouldn’t the potential murderer become suspect by their google searches, emails, insurance purchases etc.? Should we call the NSA and ask them? Does Facebook know more than the NSA?

Corporate spying is nothing new. Carly Fiorina of Hewlett Packard was spying on her people back a decade ago. Never mind that the fall guy was Patricia Dunn. That must be the way to do it perhaps. Have some one else take the hit when the skullduggery is exposed. In other words just spy for your own teams self interests and well being and if something else turns up either ignore it or if you just can’t ignore it have a fall guy be the whistle blower to step forward and expose the sordid truth! We often complain about bribery and corruption in other less well developed industrial countries but here in the United States  we call it democracy.

Sadly none of this is really new. It seems now that the increasingly popular “Game of Thrones” series on HBO, based on the book Fire & Ice by George R. R. Martin, is surprisingly relevant to the worlds’ current state of affairs. It is all represented, the corruption, the horrendous scandals, the strife and war. Of course there is also the value of information gathered by whatever means necessary be it prostitution, torture or even murder. Yes indeed art is again a reflection of reality. These are interesting times for the kingdom. Tune in to see the fate of Edward Snowden and the Game of Phones!

“My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can’t prove it, but you can’t disprove it either.” — Christopher Hitchens

“I became a journalist partly so that I wouldn’t ever have to rely on the press for my information.” — Christopher Hitchens

Get off the cell phone and Drive! — Jake Shween

The Last Flight

Posted on by
1

It was a brilliant spring morning the breeze blowing gently in off the coast. The dew drops drying in a slightly sticky way on the end of the juniper branches. She flew as she always flew on these mornings to the clusters of flowers that her sisters had told her about. Working tirelessly, churning and gathering masses of pollen from the bright yellow flowering squash plants that swayed seductively in the sunlight. Growing slightly drunk from the work and the pollen as well as the heat of the late spring morning. Soon she was headed back to the hive with the results of her gathering. The golden rays on her shoulder and the trail of scent in the air let her know she was going the right way. Back and forth she swayed magically through the wafting heat from the meadow.

The hive was bustling today. She flew in to the mad frenzied dance of her extended family. On to the honeycomb to regurgitate her prize. As she flexed and regurgitated her pollen she noticed a strange feeling, the back of her head felt sore. She had not noticed this feeling ever before and it itched uncomfortably. After she deposited her treasure she noticed her sisters seemed strange as well. Something wasn’t right, something had changed. The hive was not playing the right jazz she had become accustomed to. The jazz was disjointed, the dance had become slower than it should have been. The honey was wrong. It was tainted. It was as if someone had introduced an insidious poison into their unwitting midst. She flew away without recharging. She need to escape this feeling on the back of her head. Maybe if she flew fast enough!

She flew as this great feeling of dread crept over her. The sun had become darker even though it still shone brightly. The world was harsh and sharp, it cut into her perception like glass. She headed for the blue on the horizon. Maybe the blue would still the dread and kill the buzzing inside her head. Her wings seemed to move without her conscious thought. Somehow they seemed to be slowing down but in actuality they were speeding up. Over the junipers she soared, higher than she had ever flown before. Over the black top road along the shore where the heat now rose in billowing zephyrs. The sand now beneath her like an endless ribbon bordering the blue, the blue. The salt pierced her eyes and nose now. She was miles from the hive but she did not care. Only to escape the feeling in the back of her head, that’s all that mattered.

The sound became muffled and slowly faded to silence. Her energy now ebbed and a dying calm came upon her. Things were dimming, dying, darkening. The engine sputtered as the train ran out of track. She hit the hot sand just as a wave from the incoming tide broke over the masses of her dying sisters beside her. There was nothing now but the rumbling of surf and the churning of sand. Her sisters and herself no longer.

“Honeybees are responsible for approximately 80% of all fruit, vegetable and seed crops in the United States.” — Beebrothers.org

Watch: The Dance of the Honey Bee
image

Get off the cell phone and Drive!

China and The Reign of Error

Posted on by
3

We should look to China as a harsh and toxic example of what can happen in a society where industrialization is left unchecked. “Man must conquer nature” was a popular slogan of Chairman Mao and the carryover of such an attitude and the consequences of such values are quite evident today. The air in the country is so polluted that in many cities it is unwise to go outside without some form of respirator on to clean the air you breathe. Recent photographs of China are tinted in a strange yellowish haze attesting to the huge amounts of particulate matter that is in the atmosphere there as a direct result of coal fired generators powering their factories. Eventually the dust of all the extensive heavy industry settles and now much of the rice in China is tainted with very dangerous amounts of heavy metals. One metal in particular, cadmium, is quite toxic to the liver and kidneys as well as being a carcinogen that is also proven to weaken bones. The government, as is typical in China, is of course denying there is any problem but the public result has been for consumers to switch to rice grown in Thailand when available.

Quality control in China suffers as well as is evident in the proliferation of failing solar panels. Today the New York Times reported on such defective panels that are failing after only two years of operation when their reported durability is twenty five years. It was several years ago that they flooded the market with cheap panels and drove many of their competitors, particularly those based in the United States out of business. One can only conjecture if those panels had a higher trade tariff imposed and perhaps were not subsidized by the Chinese government that a better quality, made in the U.S.A. product would have emerged as a longer lasting reliable product! This is what happens when corners are cut and deregulation runs rampant. It is also a clear illustration of ways that government can impose safety regulations and minimum production standards in a manner that is beneficial to the environment and the consumer as well. Cheaper is almost never better in the long run!

Now a Chinese company,  Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd. has made a bid on a United States company for the acquisition of Smithfield Foods Inc. for 4.7 billion dollars. This deal, the largest purchase to date of a U.S. company would take the worlds largest pork producer private. Let’s hope that the food contamination issues as well as the incredible lack of quality control issues that are mentioned above don’t carry over to taint the food supply in the United States. At this point in the purchase it is up to the regulators to examine this deal and make sure that the food supply remains safe. As consumers we should look at this deal with a skeptical eye. We have seen what happens when regulations are overlooked and business is allowed to run rampant. Suddenly that ham on rye doesn’t sound so appetizing!

“Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.” — Ronald Reagan

“Ronald Reagan really said that. No wonder he is the figure head of the Republican Party. Remarks like that are quite frightening and damn ignorant in their lack of scientific fact.” — Jake Shween

Get off the cell phone and Drive! — Jake Shween

Have You Hugged Your Corporation Today?

Posted on by
1

This past week we were entirely shocked and literally gobsmacked to learn that huge corporations have been receiving huge tax breaks by hiding out in Ireland where they can avoid paying what they owe in United States taxes. This arrangement is perfectly legal and why shouldn’t it be? Corporations have feelings too. We wouldn’t want to hurt the “job creators” now would we? Imagine how sad and lifeless our great country would be without such loving corporate entities as Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Citigroup, Google and Facebook? We need to care for and nurture these conglomerates before they turn on us and fire us for biting their hand. How could we fornicate without Pfizer providing blue pills to keep Limbaugh’s dick hard whilst he wrestles his favorite prostitutes? What lube would we use without Johnson & Johnson? How would we know where to put it without Googling it? Thankfully too, we can record it on our I-Phone and post it to Facebook  and finance the entire operation through Citigroup!

Dear friends take care of these dear corporations that have been so good to us! Clearly there would be much less “Job Creation” without these paladins of corporate benevolence. How desperately we need to fawn over them when they appear in our civilized senate to testify as to their innocence and life sustaining benefits. What better way to bring the senate and house together than in a bipartisan round of corporate fellatio! It’s all good boys. It’s all legal! Corporate Democrats welcome to the party, come and share with the Grand Old Party! Let’s circle around and jerk to the beat! Never mind that the poor guy who cashes in his 401K early gets his ass shot off in taxes when he is trying to pay the rent! He never pays the greens fees at the club! He is just a nobody!

These are the glory days of corporate irresponsibility. We now have a government that seems to be nothing more than an arranged puppet show of bureaucracy. The strings are being pulled by a shadowy oligarchy couched in some sick dark corner of the District of Columbia. The good of the people has been replaced by the good of the corporation. The legislative branch is deep in it, just watch they way they drooled at the Apple CEO Mr. Cook. The judicial branch decided months ago that corporations are indeed entitled to rights, the same rights as an individual. Now the executive branch has sided with Monsanto and signed H.R. 933 which included the “Monsanto Protection Act” which means that food that has been genetically altered and may actually be quite dangerous and carcinogenic does not even have to be labeled to show this fact! Wow these are sad days indeed for the democracy imagined by our country’s founders! The illusion of profit being the ultimate goal must be replaced by real sustainability. Otherwise the outcome is bleak  and perhaps non-existent for future generations.

“True terror is to wake up one morning and realize that your high school class is running the country.” — Kurt Vonnegut

“I like people who shake other people up and make them feel uncomfortable.” — Jim Morrison

Get off the cell phone and Drive! — Jake Shween

The author expresses great sadness at the loss of Ray Manzarek. He was an invaluable member/founder of the Classic Rock Group The Doors. It was his music and genius that brought the mad and beautiful poetry of Jim Morrison to life. Ray we hope to see you when we “break on through to the other side”.

District of Crazy; Why the Two Parties Deserve Each Other!

Posted on by
1

Another week, another scandal, what else is new while the sequester festers? Waiter I’d like to order a burnt mash of stale Benghazi with a salad of tossed Internal Revenue Service and a little Associated Press sauce on the side, hold the justice please. Press please make sure you run with these scandals and beat them into the dirt whilst other, larger shenanigans continue unchecked. Who cares if good programs to help people in need are cut if we can stir up the muck? Meals on wheels, no way! We want arguing and investigation, we are lawyers dammit not cooks! What do you think this is a breadline?

International news? Banking scandals continuing? Elections looming in Iran? Who cares! We’ve got meat head Democrats against dick weed Republicans in a cage match here! So very sorry if you registered to be a stand off snob Independent and choose not to participate in blatant bipartisan stupidity. You can’t be helped in the District of Crazy! We need reasons to do nothing and then have a Congressional investigation as to why nothing was done! Let’s spend the taxpayers money dammit! Make them forget all about the plan we have to obscure the real pertinent issues that actually affect everyone’s quality of life while we slowly pilfer every nook and cranny until there is nothing left for the sad, so called, commoner!

Go to it you fools! Please don’t let any rational thought stop you from your chosen path of hostility and obfuscation. This kind of news feed makes the Fox news team orgasmic! It is their finest hour! The culmination of their meticulous research, their fastidious fact finding and magnificent truth telling. Truly we should be thankful that there indeed are a wonderful few left who proudly make it their task to provide us with reasons to survive in this declining civilization where the coming zombie apocalypse is imminent and threatening us every day! The smart money is on the party that can tell the biggest whopper.

Let no banker be convicted! Let the hedge funds rape and pillage! We need profitability above all! Sustainability? Yes we will sustain our supply of stupidity until the planet is on the very brink. Green? Watch us put the Keystone Pipeline through while you fools are caught in a rapture of scandal. You are green and naive already so what are you possibly worried about? You idealists and environmentalists should give up now. Accountability? Dream on you dimwits! The District of Crazy has assumed control!

“Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.” — Joseph Conrad

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” — Jospeh Conrad

Get off the cell phone and Drive! — Jake Shween

 

Keep Your Identity; Be Wary of the Machine

Posted on by
1

In this day and age of Facebook and Google we tend to easily lose ourselves in a barrage of endless information. Caught up in being part of what we regard as “the Pack” we tend to engage ourselves by participating in an electronic reality where it is dangerously easy to become lost in a morass of sometimes meaningless data. Not only can this become a sad way to express our own identity it can also quash our sense of individual worth. Some of us end up believing that we need to emulate the people we see on reality television to succeed or even the boobs on you tube doing various and assorted ridiculous stunts to draw attention to themselves in hopes of creating a “viral video”. The younger generation seems particularly vulnerable to this kind of exploitation.  Unfortunately the very same tools which can bring about so much potential good are the very same  ones that can bring about a devastating evil.

Not only are we being exploited on reality television we are also being exploited by what has become to be known as “Big Data”. As the use of electronic devices becomes necessary for our very existence in this highly competitive and technologically oriented world it is nearly impossible to “go off the grid”. Thus we are exposed to being tracked and marketed in every sense. Every website we go to, every store we make a purchase at, the types of products we use are tracked and recorded for future use. Our friends are tracked as well, the products they use, our interests, their interests — all of this information becomes valuable marketing data which is bought and sold like so many sacks of potatoes. Our privacy is gone.

The time has truly come to fruition were the marketers can now predict our behavior to a frighteningly large degree. Why is this new method of marketing so frightening? Simply because we are now considered commodities — as opposed to being individuals with unique thoughts and needs — we have now become the property of “Big Data” and are under their control with customized advertising geared to tell us what we need before we even know it ourselves. The ancient Chinese proverb says: “May you live in interesting times”. Well indeed we are and let’s keep up our vigilance to not lose our identity or our children’s identity in a pile of “Big Data” sponsored by your friendly neighborhood Google and Facebook where we voluntarily “feed the machine”.

1871-Samuel_Clemens.jpg

“America’s Facebook generation shows a submission to standardization that I haven’t seen before. The American adventure has always been about people forgetting their former selves. Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac went on the road. If they had a Facebook page they wouldn’t have been able to forget their former selves.” — Jaron Lanier

“All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.” — Marshall McLuhan

Get off the cell phone and Drive! — Jake Shween

Screw Healthcare; Buy a Gun!

Posted on by
1

If more people owned guns the great citizens of the United States could do away with the need for healthcare altogether. After all when a horse becomes lame it is usually shot to death. Certainly the cost of a bullet is much cheaper than a statin drug, an aspirin, chemotherapy or any of the drugs prescribed for depression. Heck a bullet cost less than a stalk of broccoli. Just think of the billions of dollars that could be saved if we simply shoot people who are ill or depressed.

Perhaps the Supreme Court should enact a law that to be a citizen of the United States one must own a gun. (After all they pick Presidents don’t they?)  There could be classes in schools where we could teach our progeny to shoot first and ask questions later. If there were any unfortunate accidents in this process we could simply say that we were “decreasing the surplus population” just like the famous character of Ebenezer Scrooge did in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Now there was a man ahead of his time!

Imagine what a better place this country would be. The waiting lines everywhere would become so much shorter. No more listening to drug ads ad infinitum on your favorite television shows. Instead we could listen to the testimony of a husband who cured his wife’s depression with a single shot from his brand new .357 magnum:

“She started complaining again that she felt like the walls were closing all in around her. I just went to my gun case and whipped out my shiny pistol and gave it to her right between the eyes! The silence was golden! I think grandpa is next, his Alzheimer disease is rubbing me the wrong way! God Bless America!”

So listen up and stay ahead of the curve. If you have any spare funds invest them immediately in arms manufacturers. Take to the streets and extoll the virtues of guns and live ammo. The world could be such a better place without all the sickos walking around! The new slogan is “Bullets not Broccoli!”

“If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.” —- Mr. Bumble in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist

“You can make people buy broccoli!” —- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Get off the cell phone and Drive! — Jake Shween

U.S. Constitution Is Like the Bible; Keep What You Like Ignore the Rest!

Posted on by
2

Ever notice how certain manipulative people edit out parts of books that might endanger their credibility? Take that old glorious manual written by men out in the desert all those thousands of years ago, the Holy Bible. How many times have you heard that book edited and rewritten, misquoted and selectively cited? Usually it is cleverly manipulated in the name of raising more money for one or another ministries that promise to provide you with abundance if you send them some ridiculous tithe of your hard earned cash. Did Moses ever refer to tithes? No. Did Elijah or Elisha ever ask for one tenth of your earnings? No. How about the big guy, the number one, the lord, the Savior, did Jesus Christ himself ever ask for a tithe? No, in fact he turned over the tables of the money changers who were selling sacrifices with which the Jews were using to make atonement. In fact in only one book of the Bible is the tithe ever mentioned and that is in the book of the lesser prophet Malachi but when you listen to the television evangelists or hey, the pastor down the street from your house, more often than not they won’t straight up tell you like it is. They want your hard earned cash to gas up their tax exempt Mercedes Benz!

It seems now the United States Constitution is now open to the same selective interpretation. In light of the recent Boston bombings some would now redefine the rights of United States citizenship and try the one surviving psycho as a “military combatant”. Interestingly, but not coincidentally, these are the very same people who take the second amendment to read that United States citizens have the right to bear arms including Bushmaster rifles and AK-47s which are weapons designed with killing people in mind and nothing else. Thank goodness these very same people, mainly the strange conglomeration of vitriol filled dunces on Fox News, were not the people who drafted the Constitution to begin with. However, they are very reminiscent of these crazy ministries that want you to think their way lest you be ostracized and left out in the cold where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”. They support the seedy misinformed party that would manipulate you right into the nineteenth century.

To continue on the idea of tithing it is now past April 15th. We have paid our dues to Uncle Sam. So our sense of nationalism and patriotism is to some degree defined by our willingness to continue to fund the governments of our cities, states and nation. It is up to each of us then, as citizens, to carefully oversee where this money is spent. In a democracy such as ours the majority should rule. How is it that we cannot enact a stricter gun control statute when the majority of people overwhelmingly approve of such a measure? Suddenly we are being taxed without representation! The slick and slimy elected officials are ignoring the demands of the people and trying once again to manipulate our freedom! We need to be sure the money we have paid into the system is well spent and we aren’t being swindled and lied to! Let’s stop paying these fast talking elected officials who ignore the people and serve the plutocracy. Don’t waste our tax money dammit! It is time to change the number of senators elected per state to reflect the population of each state. We’re paying for this!

“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.” — Margaret Mead

Get off the cell phone and Drive! — Jake Shween

Dear Senator You’re Fired

Posted on by
1

Shame. Shame on you sad senators who are too cowardly to represent the interests of your people. The people of the United States have collectively agreed that we need to upgrade our nation’s gun control laws. Simple common sense would require background checks to insure that mentally unstable persons, not to mention convicted felons, would not be able to purchase guns!

Instead you evil and venal elected officials have once again been led by the nose by the ever present National Rifle Association. You have illustrated again and again that you have no spine to stand up to powerful lobbies and special interests. In reality many of you have become nothing more than highly paid prostitutes. The American citizen is ignored while you spread your legs for your chosen lobby of the week.

This will not stand. The current political climate is changing. Soon you will be out of a job. There are beds waiting for your legislative derriers at the home for old hookers. The best thing would be to take you ignoramuses off of the government payroll immediately!  If you can’t do the job you were elected to do you need to go and go now. In the real working man’s world you would be chopped meat quickly. Tax dollars should be spent wisely and not on a bunch of legislative buffoons!

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” — Winston Churchill

“Get off the cell phone and Drive!” — Jake Shween