Still busy

While I wait for life's usual way of getting in the way of fun some more fluff to fill your day.


Hey it beats elevator music. No?

Wed. funnies

Some Wed. funnies for your viewing pleasure. Busy right now. If I'm not back by Fri. send a rescue pussy squad would ya?

XL and I don't mean men's big and tall

                                     

I always thought conservatism meant to conserve to be frugal with ones resources. How diametrically opposed the republican party seems to be with that way of thinking. They were the ones who came up with the slogan "drill baby drill". And it's been the U.S. policy to do just that over the last 10 or 15 years. Our oil supply has increased substantially in spite of what they'd have us believe.   But what people fail to realize is that the building of the Keystone pipeline will have risks and potential damage to our environment that far outweigh the benefits.  The initial economic impact will be the creation of some construction jobs and maybe some maintenance positions later but the bulk of the profits will not be seen here in the U.S. but by foreign companies who have a strangle hold on the world's oil supply. I suspect that little if any of this oil will see the light of day in our country but be shipped to ports in China and other developing countries. It is after all dirty cheap oil. And there in lies another problem the pollution generated by burning this oil in China where environmental laws are lax. I can't think of a time when our factories here were required to shut down because the air pollution was so bad. It's estimated that a great deal of our air pollution on the west coast comes from China. One can only imagine what this is doing to the oceans as well. 

Another thing about this oil from what I'm hearing is that it's similar to Bunker C oil. For those that don't know Bunker oil is the crap oil that they use to run the oil tankers. It's about as thick as peanut butter and has to be heated to be used. To do an oil clean up you first have to spray it with diesel to break it down. That is after you've scraped the bulk off. It's a very messy job and takes far longer than a regular spill. 

People fail to realize the long term cost benefits of renewable energy and conservation measures. We see renewable energy projects crop here and there and some are even sponsored by the oil companies but this is just lip service to and a mere pittance of what other countries spend. There is no way we can compete with countries like China with things like solar panels because their labor costs are so low. 

Will it be built? I suspect it will, but it's going to take a bit more legal wrangling as more than one state is involved unlike when they built the Alaska pipeline. If you recall the folks in Alaska got so many royalties that they had no taxes and each resident got a check from the oil companies. I don't think that will happen this time around. The oil companies are just too greedy now.

So as they say (or used to) in the trucking business "Keep the shiny side up and the greasy side down".

News neatly hidden... not "for your eyes only"

                                         
                                                    Protests in Spain - Madrid central square

(Crowd estimates were in the tens of thousands. I'd put it at nearly a million with 30 cities participating)


While you were busily distracted by the latest diversion be it a NASCAR crash or the latest anticipation of who will be wearing what designer dress to the Oscars, the rest of the world was keenly focused on more important matters at hand. We here in the U.S. might be distracted with such mundane events all the while the rest of the world is scraping to get by. 

 Neatly hidden and not so much as a scrap of reporting is a protest that occurred in Spain yesterday. Why should we care? That's a spanish problem you're thinking. Ah but it's not. It's exactly the same problem in country after country from Greece to Iceland. As has been stated here before you can not eat yourself skinny and you can not bolster an economy by cutting away jobs. But this scenario has more sinister undertones. This is theft on a grand scale and yet those in power have so neatly hidden the fact that it's still going on. If austerity measures weren't bad enough the Spanish kings' son made off with $8 million of the people's money. Would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when he showed up recently at a Swiss bank wanting to make such a large deposit. 

 Trust it seems these days is a fleeting comodity. We're seeing the same with Ponzi schemes and embezelments here but on a minor scale. Easier to keep focus on low hanging fruit while the wales make off with the entire house if you know what I mean. It's getting harder and harder to dig for such nuggets of real news as the primary sources have been bought and paid for by those wanting to hide your prying eyes. They keep the fear machine going with you the victim as their primary suspect. It must be your fault because they are too busy pleading the 5th behind closed doors and in secret meetings all veiled as a "national security" issue. Yeah if we found out the facts we'd have their heads on a platter. 

So here we sit with baited breath waiting as hopes and dreams rest like an SUV balanced on the head of a pin. Will they or won't they push it when only a tiny nudge will do? No, my suspicions are that they'll once again keep it neatly balanced. After all the theft can't continue if drastic changes are made. 

 Stay tuned as we continue our quest for an honest man or woman, Sorry but we'll have to wade through quit a few wrap sheets to get there.

Friday pussy counting cat

                                              

Anymore the news is becoming a bean counter's wet dream. Anything that can does seem to boil down to numbers on a page if you just look close enough. And don't get me started on percentages. More lies have shown their ugly heads than a liar's convention on that.

Everything from prison sentences to daily mortality figures grace our headlines. A steady litany in every article. The important ones it seems are buried when it comes to actual numbers. Try finding out what a tax or fee increase will mean to you and the real figure is conveniently hidden at the end of the piece. That was definitely the case in the health care act. And who after all is going to wade through 600 plus pages to get to that little golden nugget?

Then there are the numbers that somehow don't make it to the nightly news. Conveniently erased like a Schwarzenegger movie their nowhere to be found. Let's talk 100,000,000 yes I said 100 m as in million. That's how many people who have been on strike in India for the last two days. And while attention has been on the "if it bleeds it leads" headline of a bomb explosion, the 100 million went unnoticed. And once again those purveyors of austerity would like nothing more than scalp the poor in India. The minimum wage (yes they have that there in some places at least) is a paltry $790 a month excluding taxes I'm sure. Try feeding a dog on that in this country. But somebody thinks that's spoiling the riff raff and would like to lower it. Guess times are tough there too when you can't dump your cheap duds off on Walmart.

It's true that on any given day that a certain number of souls leave this planet. We're hopeful they left at a ripe old age but then we know that's not the case. With gun shot wounds and bomb blasts the saints just keep marching in and no I don't want to be in that number. 70,000 here 100,000 there and soon the numbers add up. Almost enough to consider the mortuary profession. You sure don't run out of business there ever. And speaking of deaths...

Bank fails later
UPDATE: No bank deaths this week.

Still more news you can't use

Posting has been light I know. The news it seems goes round and round chasing it's tail and never winning. What would it do if it caught it anyway? So with that thought we present the latest and greatest washed rinsed and repeated of current events:

Freeze for Florida's citrus belt.

That happens. Crank up the sprinklers and hope it's not a long freeze. I bet those betting against orange juice futures are licking their chops.

Obama presses GOP to halt automatic spending cuts.

Not going to happen. Both sides of the aisle would have to answer to their wall street handlers. War is big business you know.

Nestle withdraws beef products.

Oh just run with it boys. N.E.S.T.L.E.S Nestle's makes the very best h o r s e  m e a t. Comes in chocolate covered too.

Russia asks: How to stop space objects from hitting earth?

Well if you wouldn't shoot so much junk up there in the first place might be a good first start. 

Seven reasons not to take a cruise vacation.

I can think of more than that. The idea of a cheap condom comes to mind for some reason. I'll let you make your own jokes on that thought.

Big diamond heist in Brussels.

Were they worried that maybe extremists might have gotten in and blown up air craft or the terminal? Of course not! In a statement:

"This is causing quite some unrest," said De Wolf. "It was incredible how easy it all went. This is worrying in terms of competitiveness, since other diamond centers are ready to pounce and take over our position."

Banksters gangsters and the government

It' been what something like six years since the banks took their fall from grace and were handsomely rewarded with buckets of "our" cash and yet not one frog walk to a federal pen for any one of them. Steal a loaf of bread can get you at least a couple of years for a repeat offender and in some states it's life. Steal the whole store chain and get a life of ease and a hefty bonus.

And what better way to make that job easier than to own the rule makers. Can almost hear it now. "Do what we say or next election cycle you'll be out on your can". And it doesn't matter which party you vote for they have them all tied up like a kidnapped victim. Be the party of the people and watch the other side booby trap your plans. Fil is such a Buster ain't he? And don't give me that bipartisan BS either. Break that one down you get "bi" meaning 2, "part" being the body and "I san" or I take away.

This week an agreement was reached or at least part of it about disclosure of those numbered Swiss banks accounts that everybody has talked about since we were kids. The act called FATCA is set to go into effect in 2014. After looking through the finer points of this, one might conclude that nothing will change. And you'd be right. It requires Swiss banks to disclose accounts but not necessarily to the IRS directly. They may choose to do so but that's not a requirement of the Act. They only have to disclose information to their government. It will be up to the IRS to seek the information from the Swiss government. You can just about smell that fishy smell in Geneva can't you? So once again the banksters have gained hold of the government. Maybe this bill should have been called by a better name like FATCAT. 

If we think this will change anything it probably won't. They may catch one or two of these tax cheaters but only the ones too slow to get their money out and off to a safe place in the Caymans before the amnesty program hit. And judging by how much our congress is tied up in knots I can only wonder what hold they have on the IRS. Keep your eyes peeled. That could be the next breaking story.