SAR #15142

Everyone is subjective, even me, I fear. 

 
Felonless Felonies: A handful of big banks have been fined $5.7bn for rigging foreign exchange rates for years and years. Decades. Barclays alone got hit with a £1.5bn fine. No guns were used in killing the savings, dreams and futures of tens of millions, so no one goes to jail. Steal $23.74 from the local 7/24 and you'll do hard time. Equality.

Paradise Found: While celebrating the low unemployment numbers, keep in mind that 40% of unemployed Americans have given up looking for work and do not count. This suggests that the effective unemployment rate is easily double that claimed by the government. It many also explain why Uncle Sam spent $100 billion feeding his citizenry last year, and why the US (along with its Little Buddy Israel) has the greatest inequality in the developed world.

Read None About It! A federal court has ruled that the Senate's 7,000 page report on CIA torture will remain secret, not because it should but because it is a Congressional report and is under the Senate's control and not subject to FOI demands. Remember that the CIA destroyed the videotapes of torture sessions (and how clever was it of them to record criminal acts?) because “the reaction around the world would not have been survivable.”

Cart/Horse: Obama has signed a bill designed to protect the police from threats. That man can't get anything right.

Humor: Saudi Arabia, which is currently auditioning candidates to find eight more executioners and has beheaded 85 people so far this year, wants to move up from simply being a member of the UN Human Rights Council to being the head of the Council.

Market Fresh: Recently a family member had surgery and a 4 day hospital stay. The hospital billed $48,000, the insurance company paid $1,480 and we paid $370 . Who knows what the true cost was? Wouldn't a price list be nice? And flat-rate pricing?

Democracy Be Damned: In case you hadn't noticed, Germany is still bigger than Greece, which thinks it is David and just might be. Stay tuned. 
 
Our Gang: Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, waving his hand all-encompassingly, declared "This land is ours. All of it isours." Said they may just repeat the ‘Nagasaki and Hiroshima’ bombings. One supposes that's the same mind-set that leads to Israel telling the Swiss court that it will not pay Iran the $1.1 billion it still owes Iran over a pipeline dispute years ago. Didn't claim they did not owe the debt, just that they were not going to pay it.

Ratio: In the last 30 years, Chicago cops have killed over 1,600 people, more than one a week. Not a single one of these shootings have been found to be unjustified. But in Baltimore, six officers have been indicted in Freddie Gray's death. Publicity matters.

Regrouping: Ukraine has passed (or issued, democracy being a debatable concept in Ukraine) a law honoring nationalist groups that worked with the Nazis – some of which are now training with US troops. It's all in service of looting the country, so whatever...

The Mirror: Cops in Britain say there are 1,400 suspects in the belated but ongoing investigation into the sexual abuse of children over the last 30 years by senior politicians and various celebrities. In Berlin, there are allegations that in the 1980's and 90's the Berlin branch of the Green Party sexually abused as many as 1,000 minors.

Free Is Free: The enemy has gathered enough votes to shove Fast Track authority through the Senate. John Kerry tells us “Globalization has no reverse gear, my friends.” and “Corporations are people, my friends.” 'My friends' my ass.

Good Question: “What if everybody didn’t have to work to get paid?” Maybe we could cure unemployment and inequality in one swell foop. Nah, it'd never work; Americans don't want government benefits for others, just for themselves.