Thursday, January 28, 2010

sigh

i posted about this... hrm... before there were blogs...
1995 i think...
said 'this is what's coming'
now - well after the reality and into the 'lets look at the data' phase...
we're finally coming back to the truths -- technology was deskilling... that toffler had it wrong... etc etc...

"There are multiple ways to explain why permanent job-losers represent a higher share of the unemployed this time around. Maybe, as others have suggested, many of the jobs gained in the boom years were built on phantom wealth. Or maybe the culprit is a corollary of Moore’s Law, the idea of exponential advances in technology over time. That might suggest that innovation and automation displace more and more workers by the time each recession rolls around."

Both.
And we haven't really corrected yet - because the banks are allowed to value the cesspools in their books away from market value... the massive wave of govt spending has delayed the reckoning... but a reckoning is coming and it will be a disaster.

"Workers whose entire occupations — not just the previous payroll positions they held — are disappearing (think: auto workers) will need to start over and find a new career path. But the new skills they will need take a long time to acquire."

Wrong. The jobs will take very little time to train for... but i dont know why anyone would pay $60k a year for someone to do them in america when you could pay someone in Mexico $12k. What you're seeing is the reasonably rapid destruction of the middle class - and though you can blame Reagan, it was Clinton and Obama who've dropped the ball correcting.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

I was reading one today

from boingboing about how the govt is buying commercial database data on people to get around some of the rules related to domestic tracking of citizens - and i laughed. They've been doing this for years - hell - there are entities in the govt that went out of their way to create private firms to track data like this with the only idealized customer being the US Govt... lol - go check out Acxiom. The reality is that with the email reading/archiving crap out there, and the stuff idiots post into their facebook accts and to twitter - of course they're going to use it.

1) get you name off your blog
2) get your friends off your facebook/twitter acct
3) if you insist on having your name - dont post anything work/politics related
4) pictures of yourself? no... bad idea...

Let's put it this way. The internet is a serial murderer... only put information there that you dont mind that guy having.

Edit: actually... considering how the internet works... getting your name off these things isnt going to help. Delete them. Start over. Make new accounts with fake names and totally different email addresses... once you've created the join to that old data you need to get away from it.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Wow

seriously...
eliminate the pre-existing conditions aspect of the health care bill? sure - why not...
why dont you freeze spending while you're at it
our president is as big a talentless hack as ghostcrawler
all that's left is for obama to promise me a pony

with your wars expanding overseas... with a massive percentage of the military's gear canibalized, in dire need of repair, or working but stuck thousands of miles from anywhere we might want it... with increasing health care costs and decreasing revenues from taxes how, exactly, do you think you're going to manage this? I mean sure - cutting into that deficit is huge - but i dont see how you manage it with a 500m war outlay and an ever increasing debt service one...

Mondays...

they're so much fun
whether it's covering up the past...
pretending the future is rosy
we're guaranteed to build politically pragmatic solutions to the problem that will result in abject failure

seriously - when the number of uninsured grows over the next 3 years do you really think that there wont be disastrous repercussions? This is exactly what happens when you take a dump on your political base, pass a bill that papers over the problem, shovels a boatload of cash into your campaign coffers, and furthers the rot at the core of the nation. supporting dems at this point wont make it worse faster - but it sure as hell isnt much of an improvement over the crazy alternatives

Friday, January 22, 2010

Let's Go After the Banks!!!

sure... sure you will... just like you delivered on healthcare...

In the end... if anything is passed... it will give billions to bankers, tax breaks to banks, encourage predatory lending practices, limit usurious interest to no more than 770% per year (it's actually 780% now), and give Ken Lewis a pony -- and they'll call it 'reform'.

Obama's attack on wall street is merely a ruse
That struts and frets it's hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

so...

i made a remark today to jake that elicited a comment about orangutans, and how i might could use one because Clyde had a mean right hook... which lead me to search on Clyde... which brought me to...

According to "Visions of Caliban: On Chimpanzees and People" by famed primatologist Jane Goodall and Dale Peterson, the original "Clyde" was trained with a can of mace and a pipe wrapped in newspaper. He was viciously beaten the day before filming started to make him more docile. Near the end of filming the sequel "Any Which Way You Can," the orangutan was caught stealing doughnuts on the set, brought back to the training facility and beaten for 20 minutes with a 3 1/2 -foot ax handle. He died soon after of a cerebral hemorrhage.

People suck.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Musings on Coakley

For the dems to say they didnt pull out all the stops in trying to win Kennedy's senate seat is absurd - but that's what the whitehouse is busy trying to sell as they turtle and cover their ears. The lesson the tea party crowd will take from this is 'we're right - people hate this health bill'... the lesson the dems will take is they need to compromise more with big business (this from the voters in John Kerry and Ted Kennedy's state...).

What dems should take is 'when we act like republicans, it turns out the democratic voters dont vote for us' - but they wont... if they voted the way progressives wanted them to vote they wouldnt be in this mess.

Now you have Franken saying 'we're going to just pass a health care bill regardless'... well - ok - but if you're going to just pass a 51 vote bill, why not scrap the shit bill you have and toss one out there that only gets 51 votes... single payer... tax the rich... go nuts.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Personal Rant

Dont do this much...
i find i'm going through an OCD phase the last couple days... it's a little weird finding myself wandering around the house moving books and cleaning shelves and organizing. Perhaps a function of having had the rents here for 2 weeks - but I think perhaps the whole Yuki thing has emerged from the 'fun to think about' to 'ok... i really like this girl and this is getting serious' and that's beginning to have an impact. I've got a mess on my hands again it seems... i was getting used to living out here in the forest - but I dont see how i could pursue something with a girl 8000 miles away and stay here. I'm good with turmoil - but man what a mess... work needs to sort itself out soon - so i can figure out how to play these cards.

A Friendly Reminder

That crap healthcare bill is still crap. It will make this graph worse.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Once upon a time

there were fishermen in somalia...
then westerners came along - italians with ships laden with barrels of european toxic waste... mitsubishi corp taiwanese flagged fishing vessels with long lines and driftnets vacuuming the fish up out of their coastal waters - all to the point that many families simply couldn't feed themselves anymore
So things changed - and the fishermen turned pirate - made some money - and scared the foreigners away. This is the result.

oh sure - it would smell a lot more like justice if the rogues were catching the illegal dumpers and fishing vessels instead of innocent bystanders - but the net effect has been pretty damned good.

The general rule is 'people are going to do things that benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else until someone stops them'. You can use a religion to press mores on people - fear of eternal damnation works wonders in terms of keeping people in line - or you can use draconian governmental authority (good ole Draco... he knew how to impose harsh rules)... but either way if you just lounge about and say you're going to think about things you're pretty well guaranteeing nothing gets done to solve the problem.

Friday, January 08, 2010

I may bitch

and our government might well just be an extension of oligarchs squeezing the last drops of blood from the stone... but at least you dont get arrested for being raped. Why exactly do we put any effort into helping regimes like this? oh... right... kinda goes back to that first problem doesnt it...

Friday, January 01, 2010

Happy New Year

now be careful out there...