Busy Beaver Friday

It looks like I got the job, but I never count my chicken before they hatch. I've had a few false starts of late and never want to jix anything. More details later. Sorry that's a pretty cheap looking beaver I've posted. Will do better next week maybe.

Bank failures later.

Update: Everything goes to hell on Fridays. Thought I could get away from politics by being at work. How wrong I was. Long story. I'll explain in a later post.
Bank failures: In GA FLA WA and OR five in all. I'm noticing that all these banks are small local banks.

Watch out Randal you may be next

The city of Dallas, Texas is set to fire 500, mostly people in the library system.
There'll be no hiding in the back stacks of unread National Geographics. No more trying to look busy while checking the email. And we know you've figured out how to circumvent that iron fisted porn filter. Librarians know all the tricks. So what will it be? Religated to a street corner? Pssst! Hey buddy I'll teach you how to download porn to your Kindle for a price.
What's to become of all our warehouses of books? Sent to Afghanistan to be glued together as a new type of green housing project? Oh the shame of it all.

Got to run... later gator

Off for another job interview wish me luck

In the mean time kitty must have missed Tuesday. Time flies when you have little to do.

The Great Depression of the 21st century

History is repeating itself yet again. How easily we forget history but it just seems to come back to bite us in the rear and we never learn. Years and years ago our lawmakers put in place laws many of which were fashioned as the result of some catastrophic event. It was so that "this will never happen again". But somehow the event and laws gets lost and forgotten, down the rabbit hole of memories. We'll get rid of this law or that only to have a history replay.
Back in the early 80s our acting president Ronald Reagan didn't like a law or form of spending that he didn't want to cut. And who would he cut? That was easy. He cut those that could not fight back politically, the poor and disabled. He cut the community action programs that were the very safety nets of society. With a rapier pen he slashed the budgets of any program offering assistance to the least of us. This time it's different. Back then states still had some money tucked away for such rainy days. Not so today. Today we're seeing Reagan on steroids. Those wonderful tax cuts that Bush put in place for the wealthy are sucking money right out of the poor. Where else do you think it comes from? Their Robin Hood (in reverse) will only work for so long. Eventually big business will have such deep pockets and no customers. Customers will be sucked dry and trying to make it on the streets if they aren't there already.
They call this the Great Recession but I beg to differ. The percentages may be a bit different from the Great Depression but the effects are exactly the same. I'll bet that you can't walk more than two blocks without seeing at least one empty house or not know of somebody out of work. The last recession of the 80s was short lived lasting about a year to 18 months. This one has lasted over two and a half years and counting with no end in sight.
Massive cuts have been made in state budgets and yet there are still shortfalls. What's left to cut? The only thing left would be essential services. They're already starting to do that. Roads are being left unrepaired. Police departments are seeing staff cuts. Fire departments are consolidating personnel with other districts. We'll see more cities go unincorporated with no services. So everything will be passed off to the counties that are already under great strain. This will be a libertarian's delight until they're in need of those services and then it will be "where's the government?"
Stop to think where you'd be without your home. You could live in your car if it was paid for but good luck finding a place to park it at night where sleeping in cars is okay. You could do the tent city route if you don't mind moving every 90 days. Head for the hills? Sorry no camping permit kindly pack your stuff and vamose you can sleep here.
So the next time you see one of those cardboard carrying sign guys at the side of the road stop and consider it just might happen you.

The insanity continues

Hey, I want a job with the Taliban. You get paid by the U.S. military not to attack our supply lines and you get paid by the Pakistan spy service to attack U.S. troops. So I wonder who's paying more? I've got an idea. Let's train them all to be hedge fund managers and nobody gets killed outright. They could amass large sums of money with nothing more than a few keystrokes on a computer. But, the death comes to the people they fleece. A slow painful death by slowly eliminating grandma's retirement fund.

Five billion a month is being dumped into this 'war' and not much to show. I'd say it's more like a robbery only nobody sees it as that. "But if we don't fight them over there they'll be crawling all over the place over here" is the cry. I say bull! Anyone who's studied history knows that eventually there'll be differences, more than likely a civil war of sorts and then somebody will come out on top. But with all the corruption there it'll be more than likely that one of the gangs will land up the leader. Then it will be just a matter of what deal can be struck for the mineral riches.

We can dump billions, no make that hundreds of billions trying to build a nation that doesn't care one iota about being a nation while millions here would like just a fraction of that money to be able to get on with our lives and maybe think of retirement. But no the middle class is being sucked dry as Wall Street continues it's Las Vegas ways. The gains you've seen in the Dow are imaginary, pumped up by yet more derivative sales. Find the country most likely to fail and bet that it will. Don't bother to actually put capital back in the markets because that is such a suckers bet. Or tout that your investment company is community owned therefore safe from the Wall Street wolves.

Maybe we should just change the ramblings of Marie Antoinette from "Let them eat cake" to the Right's "Let them eat dirt". Not so much as scraps for those who actually did all the work in this country. A few more weeks of checks and yet more food bank Top Ramen may get you through the fall but what then? There is no plan that I can see unless somebody is keeping it well underwraps.

Don't worry about your drums falling over because they're empty or soon will be.

Somebody's up for some serious jail time

A whistle blower testified that over his repeated objections and complaints that the fire alarm system was silenced aboard the Deep Water Horizon rig. Included in rebuff was the captain of the rig. Wouldn't want to wake the other mucky mucks while everybody's burning to death now would we?

I wanted to cut and past the actual coast guard rules covering the operation of fire alarm systems aboard sea vessels but as usual the print came out so tiny you can't read it. In short all fire alarm systems are not to be silenced when in the normal operating mode.
I'm not that up on my fire codes but I have studied our local ordinances so I know that if you park in a fire lane it's a $30 fine. If you're parked there and the fire department shows up it goes to $300. Nothing in the law if somebody dies because you were too lazy to park it but I'm sure with the rig this is being investigated. Can you say negligent homicide?

Cute furry creature

Busy digging up yet more environmentally damaging actions from our boys in the energy industry. Just today 2 more people died in the pursuit of cheap energy. More details later along with the latest bank failures.

Update: A three-man crew, employed by a maintenance contractor, were working on oil tanks at the well in Indiana Township when the blast happened at 9:50 a.m., rocketing one of the tanks more than 70 yards into the woods, said Allegheny County Emergency Director Robert Full. Two of the workers were killed.
Last week 20 workers were injured 4 in critical condition with serious burns when a section of a coke plant exploded near Pittsburgh. Workers said that workers were trying to stop a leaking gas line when something ignited the gas.
This is all about process safety and cutting corners. Any type of hot work on a tank must be done with the tank inerted (filled with co2 or nitrogen). Any gas lines need to be shut down before repairs. But no they never listen to reason, skip the safety and get her done only they are the ones who get done.

Failed banks: There were seven banks this week that bit the dust from FL to Ore.