Well….there is something that has been boiling my blood lately and that is the increasing erosion of our privacy by entities large and small ranging from the Onstar that keeps recording your driving actions even after you cancel the service to the one that spurred this one….the institution of a “card” that is necessary to receive the sale prices at the local Family Fare grocery store. I find this to be a particularly onerous requirement…having to give up your personal information and have all of your purchases tracked to be able to get these prices, if you don’t, you pay full price. I liken this to blackmail and I will never shop in that store again….the owners say that there is no use for the information other than to make sure you get the best deals…and haven’t we heard this from every other corporation that has sold personal information to make a profit? What’s next…you have to give up your firstborn to be allowed to set foot in the store? People…in this new world, about the only thing we have left of value is our personal information and to give it away to save a few pennies at a store whose prices are not competitive anyway is just stupid….boycott Family Fare until this farce is ended…geez….
Category Archives: Misc
It’s a lack of demand, stupid…
Well…I had to laugh the other day when the repubs continued to push tax cuts as the only way to create jobs here in the US….and you’ve heard me talk about how boneheaded that is considering the excess capacity that exists in the economy. Corporations will not add one job when there is no demand for the products that that job will create…and lowering taxes, even to zero, will do nothing to create that demand. What is the mechanism that tax cuts use to create jobs? I’ve never heard that described by any of the repub idiots out there…but they don’t believe in the science of economics any more than they believe in the science of evolution so why should anyone be surprised? I still think that the lack of demand in this economy is the direct result of the collusion between the repubs and business to cut the real wages of working people by making them compete with overseas workers that earn a dollar an hour and by the union bashing that is one of the central tenets of the repub philosophy. I’ll ask the same question I’ve asked many times before…”who is going to buy your 40 thousand dollar Suburban when everyone is making minimum wage?” Geez….
Wandering, wandering, wandering….
Well…haven’t been able to come up with one topic to fill this thing so I think I’ll just muse a little and wander around in my head a bit….I just love ole Rick Perry….as I said a few days back, he is going to be a hoot commenting on over the next year or so and yesterday, he did not disappoint. He told a youngster in new England that they teach creationism in Texas schools….something that is illegal in the US…nice job, Rick, you don’t even know what is going on in your state…how are you going to run the country? Okay, that one sounded better in my head but you get the idea….
I did want to talk about cars a little today…it has been on my mind for a couple of days. What was your first car? I still remember my white 1962 Comet that I inherited when my father died…144 cubic inch straight six with a three on the tree as we used to call it…the laws back then would let you get your license on the day you turned 16 and take off in your car with no restrictions that same day…and that’s what I did…it was so cool to get in that thing and go…and gas was only 24 cents a gallon so the 55 cents an hour I made at the Dog and Suds in Ada would pay for both gas and beer….can you remember pulling into a gas station and asking for a bucks worth? The next car was the family wagon…a 55 Ford that I took over after the Comet died…but that’s another one for later….
A few things…
Well…It’s been a long day already and I am a little disappointed with the turns today…I did get a bike ride in but I am so frickin sore that I can barely move and I can’t understand it…okay, I know, I can go take a couple of ibuprofen and I’ll be better but I just don’t want to have to go buy more…yeah, that’s as stupid as it sounds….but I have been feeling like that lately. Another month has gone by and I still haven’t done much this summer…I can’t afford to do much but there should be something to do that doesn’t cost a lot…
I still don’t understand this whole debt ceiling nonsense….it has been raised 47 times under repub presidents and now it can’t be done because we have a dem administration. Didn’t these guys understand that they have to govern after they got elected not just posture for their base? I am really glad that I’m getting older…I don’t want to see this once great country hijacked by the know nothings that dominate the repub party…they are the worst sort of true believers who see their election as a crusade and you take no prisoners in a crusade…some of these guys have even said they don’t need to do anything since god will take care of them and the country….geez…
More wandering….
Well….heard this lyric on the bike ride “now my bitter hands cradle broken glass of what was everything”….and, while I know it was a romantic lament from “Black” by Pearl Jam, I was struck by how it was a such a great descriptor of where my life sits at this very moment….and I still struggle to understand how age trumps everything that you’ve accomplished in your life…shouldn’t it be that all of that experience and education means something? Oh, well…I won’t bore you with any more musings about that…I’ve already done that enough….I’ve had this uneasiness that has settled over me the past couple of weeks and I know the core of it is this question “what if I never find another job?” This is a brand new sensation to me and I really don’t know how to cope with it yet….cripes, more musings…have to stop that.
I was going to talk about politics in this one but since I’m running behind in the count this month, I’m going to leave that for a later one today…probably in about an hour so come back after lunch…you really didn’t want to work anyway, did you?
Does anyone else find this disturbing?
Well…I just had to comment on the new Mercedes commercial that tries to sell their cars by pointing out that they will keep you safe in an emergency….but then they go one to have the people say that they fell asleep, wasn’t paying attention and other ridiculous anecdotes. All of this put a question in my head….”do only stupid people buy Mercedes?” Since when it is a selling point that your customers are so stupid or inept that they need the car to think for them? I find it disturbing that the skill and responsibility level of the American driver has sunk so low that they can’t even stay in their lane or keep from running up the back of a truck that stops in front of them….in all my years of driving, I’ve never found the need to have my car pay attention for me, or wake me up, or stay in the right lane for me….geez….
Not sure what’s going on….
Well…it’s been a struggle lately to find anything to write about….I wonder if it’s that a lot of the columnists that I disagree with are on vacation…I may have to start taking notes during the day so I remember anything that might get me started…I did see a turtle on the trail today which is really unusual; probably the first one I’ve seen in more than three years….I could go on about the Casey Anthony verdict but I just don’t care about it….the prosecutors didn’t prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt and that is how the legal system works…what I don’t understand is why everyone is so upset about it….why do people invest so much in things that have nothing to do with them? I do really like the crop of candidates that the repubs are putting forward for 2012…they all have so many flaws that it should be easy to beat them in the election….I am a little concerned what the dems are giving away in the debt talks….they still don’t get it that the repubs don’t want to do anything to help the middle class and will not compromise even if the country is going to go down the tubes….they and their rich buddies will survive even if they crash the economy so they just don’t give a damn…okay…..that’s about enough for now….the US women’s team is playing in the world cup this aft so I need to take a nap before that…I will try to come back and be a little more cogent but it just not that kind of a day…
Some thoughts on the 4th…
Well…when I was out on the bike I had some thoughts about the fourth of July and what it means to this country and what it has meant to the world for the last 230+ years. I won’t make this into a political rant, though..even though those on the right have been wrapping themselves in their misinterpretation Declaration for years now; trying to use it as a weapon to destroy the very government that this wonderful document set out to found. Okay, so that was a little bit of a slam…but when I read that these folks say that the single reason for the Declaration was to stop taxation as evidenced by the Boston Tea Party, they are just dead wrong….the founders had no problem with taxation or a central government…if they did, why did they write the Constitution that formed it?
That’s the last of the political part here….just wanted to add one last thing…that even with all of our faults and mistakes…this is still the best country that has ever existed on the face of the earth….and I hope it is forever….Happy Independence Day!
I predicted this one….
Well…there are a couple of things that I want to talk about today…the first is a neat little study that was done that compared the increase in productivity with the increase in wages since the 1980’s….where the projection of wage increases, if they had kept up with the increase in worker productivity, would have resulted in the median wage for the American worker being almost 100 percent higher than it is…what this says is that even though the American worker is working harder and longer, the fruits of this work increase has gone entirely to the top whose wages HAVE increased by 100% in that same time frame.
The second part of this nasty little secret is the sluggish performance of the American economy and my prediction that if the war on the American worker continued by slashing wages and benefits, and moving jobs overseas, there would be no one left to buy the 40 thousand dollar SUV’s and it would result in a feedback loop that would result in an economy that would never recover; but would remain stagnant over time since the majority of the economy is consumer spending. Exactly what is happening now; no one in the middle class is willing to spend anything since they don’t have any extra money anymore…it’s all in the hands of the rich and powerful who don’t purchase enough to keep the factories moving…and I am going to say this to the short sighted CEO’s out there who are lining their pockets at the expense of the entire American economy….I hope you feel good about yourselves…you’ve managed to destroy an economy that was the envy of the world…hope you can’t sleep at night…geez…
Some funny stuff…
Well…I don’t know if you’ve heard or not, but Georgia has recently passed on of the toughest anti-immigrant laws in the country that basically allows them to stop and arrest anyone that looks hispanic…that may be a little bit of hyperbole…I do that sometimes, as you know, and the wonderful rule of unintended consequences kicked in to bite them in the ass. What has happened is that all of the illegals that the farmers exploited to get their harvests in have fled the state, leaving them with no one to do the low paid, backbreaking work that Americans won’t do, leaving this years harvest rotting in the fields and costing the farming business there millions. I am just laughing my ass off since this completely dispels the tired old repub notion that the illegals are taking the jobs of American citizens….and shows these neanderthals what pandering the the fringe of their party without thinking about the consequences will do….now…I don’t support the idea of people being rewarded for breaking the law and coming here illegally, but couldn’t we do something like a documented guest worker program that would allow people to come and do those jobs? Just a thought….