Tuesday, December 8, 2015

SAR #15342


At some point we will have to abandon what might have been for what actually is.
Keep On Keeping On: Hillary has joined the Clowns in promising ever more surveillance of ordinary citizens because the current regime of watching us damned near all the time, everywhere we go, watching every cent we spend just isn't stopping the bad people. So obviously more is needed, although I don't see how cameras in our bathrooms will actually stop nuts with guns. But Hillary insists that it has to be done so no one feels their privacy is invaded. What privacy?
Reminder: The richest 20 Americans now have more wealth than the 150,000,000 of us in the bottom half of the population. Strangely, both they and we think this is perfectly all right.
Perspective: Before you rush out to by yet another gun, remember that you are far more likely to be killed by medical errors in the hospital than you are by terrorists. You are also in greater danger from attacking deer, cows, dogs and brain-eating parasites than by crazed Muslims. Not to mention the danger you face from lightning, the cops, food poisoning and the idiot with a gun who lives next door. Relax, take a terrorist to lunch.
Tit For Tat: If Pfizer gets to pay Irish taxes, we should get to pay Irish drug prices.
Quoted: “Let’s be clear: The reason we haven’t solved climate change isn’t because we’re not doing our part, it’s because a small subsection of the one percent are hell-bent on doing everything in their power to block action” Bernie Sanders.
The Two Step: China is planning to automate the work now being done by millions of low-paid workers. What it is planning to do with the millions of unemployed is unclear.
Business Is Booming: Defense contractors and manufactures are enjoying a strong uptick in business and profits as conflict in the Middle East picks up. As the Secretary of the Air Force put it “We're in the business of killing terrorists, and business is good.”
He Said She Said: Iraq has given Turkey 24 hours to get its troops out of the country. Turkey refuses to withdraw.
Niche Marketing: Let your kids be the first in their classrooms to have their very own bulletproof blankets stowed under their chairs “to help them survive massacres.” You should also ask your school board to schedule ALICE training for all students, teachers, janitors and administrators in defensive techniques to survive school shootings. Huh? Oh: Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate. It's a proprietary program.
Food For The Thoughtful: The Fed's quarter per-cent rate hike is not meant to radically change the economy. It is meant to tell the market that wage hikes will not be tolerated, ever again.
Dog Eat Dog: Saudi Arabia has crumpled up and discarded the once-vaunted unity of OPEC and has brought the oil patch to an every producer for itself, devil take the hindmost, bare knuckled bar brawl. The winner will be the last man pumping.
Porn O'Graph: On The Border.

3 comments:

Gegner said...

Two Step: In the perfect capitalist company there are only two employees (and some would argue one, given the advent of telephone automation...which is to say if you don't want to talk to the robot then you're out of luck!)

The CEO and the automatons. What can't be automated is farmed out. Problem with this 'strategy' is robots don't buy what they make.

Automate the economy and you have zero customers (nevermind a madly energy reliant production system!)

But it seems the capitalists are too thick to pick up on this concept. They only understand 'efficiency', apparently pauperizing the customer base is somebody else's problem.

Few remember the original 'problem' (back in the Seventies) was 'market saturation' (as viewed from the perpetual expansion required to keep capitalism operational.)

How fortunate for our perplexed, money-obsessed betters that the bulk of the world's population lived under the yoke of communism or colonialism? A whole new market of western goods and (the extremely wasteful) western lifesstyle!

Switching gears for a moment, I marvel that anon @ 8:59 completely misses the point that THE VAST MAJORITY OF US, (ANON INCLUDED) are in very limited danger from terrorism, save the consequences of electing Trump and handing over the launch codes to him...there's something that will give you nightmares!

McMike said...

re anon. While I am sorry for your loss;

The fact that for example I personally know someone who got hit by lightning, does not change the overall statistical likelihood of other people nationwide getting hit by lightning.

And while it may create compelling personal motivation (not to mention emotional trauma), my personal relationship with a lightning victim does not warrant a complete reordering of national behavior.

In fact, stretching the metaphor, our national response to 9/11 seems to have been to strap metal rods to our backs and force march us all out onto golf courses and mountaintops, while the authorities scream in our ears every thirty seconds to assume the crouch stance, as they read our email messages.

And yet, despite all this standing around waiting for rain, we are still less likely to get hit by lighting than to get shot by a deranged wingnut or a cop while we stand there. (Or die in the car on our way over).

rjs said...

Quoted: “Let’s be clear: The reason we haven’t solved climate change isn’t because we’re not doing our part"

there is no one making Americans go out and buy 3 out of 5 of their personal transportation vehicles built on a truck body, as they've been doing recently at a record pace...

Anon @ 8:59 - i dont believe you. the odds that any one person would know two victims of terrorism are as likely as someone being struck by lightning twice while fighting off a herd of attacking cows deer...that such a hypothetical person would show up today at this blog to comment on it are next to impossible..