Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Forgive me, folks... more procrastinating!
What can I tell you...? Yesterday Obama gave his State of the Union Address. This of course focused me upon contemplating the state of the union. Suffice it to say that while I couldn't bring myself to blog yesterday, at least I didn't kill myself out of profound depression! (Any... I'm homicidal... not suicidal...)
So... speaking of profound depression... let's do a bit of newsbiting...
Monday, February 11, 2013
I... Want... Them... Dead...!!!
No... let me rephrase...
I want them beaten around the head...
(*PAUSE*) (*PURSED LIPS*)
No... I just...
(*MUMBLING TO MYSELF*)
OK. So. Monday's my 10:45 a.m. BodyPump class. Only... today it's not.
I head to the gym this morning... get a decent parking space... walk to the front entrance of the gym to find a sign tapped up saying that "Due to today's two-hour school delay all morning classes are cancelled."
I enter the gym. Staff are manning the desk. I begin my rant...
Point 1) IT SNOWED ON FRIDAY...!!!
Point 2) TODAY IS MONDAY...!!!
Point 3) WE'RE IN NEW YORK... NEW YORK IN FEBRUARY... CHANCES ARE IT'S GONNA SNOW OCCASIONALLY...!!!
It's raining, folks. It was raining when I left my house at 10:15 a.m.
Tomorrow I'll be up probably around 4:15 a.m. in order to make a living driving a customer to an airport. Had his flight been today I would have been up at 4:15 a.m. today and on the road by 4:30 a.m.
Mary went to work. She left here at 7:55 a.m.
WHY WAS THERE A TWO-HOUR SCHOOL DELAY TODAY...?!?!
WHY ARE PEOPLE BEING PAID TO NOT WORK...?!?!
WHY ARE STUDENTS NOT BEING EDUCATED...?!?!
Apparently it was... er... "icy" this morning.
WHICH BRINGS ME BACK TO POINT THREE...!!! IT'S NEW YORK...!!! IN THE WINTER...!!! IT GETS COLD...!!!
America has become the land of the faggot. The fem. The ballless wonder.
No... I'm not talking about what hole - or whose hole - you wanna shove something in. I'm talking temperamentally. I'm talking stereotypically risk-averse wimp behavior which says nothing good about America 2013.
God help this once great nation and our once proud and competent People.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Censor the Truth...? Or Just Ignore It...?
"He Whose Name Dare Not Be Mentioned" responded to one of yesterday's newsbites.
He sent me an email with the subject header titled, "Really?"
His commentary... "Black! Black Teens! Black Teens! Blackity black black blackeis!"
My response: "I suppose you'd rather they'd ALSO censored the video?"
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Just a Quick Note...
Folks... what can I tell you? Over the last couple days the news I'm hearing, watching, and reading leaves me simply too disgusted to blog.
Case in point... the following headline from NBC News reporting which was featured via The Drudge Report yesterday: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department Memo Reveals Legal Case for Drone Strikes on Americans.
And it goes on and on and on, folks...
We've lost America. We need to face this.
There is no functional national Republican Party in a meaningful ideological sense. We're on our own, folks.
The Constitution means nothing. There is no "Constitutionist" majority faction of Supreme Court Justices whom "We The People" can count upon to protect our Rights and enforce the Constitution. Indeed, four of the Justices would like nothing more than to shred the Constitution in the sense of the Constitution of our Founders and their ideals.
The Senate... the House... the Executive Branch... filled with actual criminals and degenerates.
I could go on... but what's the point?
Nope. I'm not thinking of throwing the towel in. As I've always said, I maintain this blog for my own purposes. The fact that I have readers is simply a bonus. No... the last couple days of no newsbites is just a hiccup in my continuing coverage of the Decline and Fall of the United States of America.
I wish people cared. They don't though. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
Hell... "He Whose Name Dare Not Be Mentioned" will never share my thinking and analysis and he's one of the smartest guys I know. How then to expect the average schmuck to see things as I do.
Hey... maybe "He Whose Name Dare Not Be Mentioned" is right and I'm wrong. Time will tell.
Back to newsbites tomorrow!
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Feb. 2 & 3, 2013
Eating... drinking...
Being social... having sex...
Perhaps some television... some radio...
A nap!
What is life all about? Pursuing one's dreams? Being a spouse... being a parent... being a good son or daughter?
Life is the BIG stuff... and life is the SMALL stuff. Milestones on one end of the scale, momentary pleasures on the other.
I love to read! My writings come out of my readings! Much of the pleasure of a lifetime have come out of my readings - both factual and fictional!
Right now I'm getting a lot of pleasure out of reading Robert B. Parker's "Jesse Stone" series; right now I'm about a third of the way through "Trouble in Paradise."
Perhaps some of you have read Parker's works - if not the "Jesse Stone" novels, then perhaps the "Spencer" novels?
Over the past few years CBS Television has aired a series of "Paradise" novels starring Tom Selleck as "Jesse Stone." (And of course anyone my age or thereabout will remember the mid/late '80's ABC Television Series "Spencer For Hire" starring the late Robert Urich.)
Robert B. Parker died in 2010. His works live on.
Anyway... enjoy the Big Game this Sunday, folks. And perhaps on Monday... drop by your local library or a bookstore and pick up a good book!
Friday, February 1, 2013
And We're Back! Dow 14,000 Fuels a New Wealth Boom!
Yep... that's the headline, folks... direct from CNBC!
This one deserves its own stand-alone newsbites so here we go... starting with paragraph one:
The next American wealth boom has officially begun.
Wealth boom for whom...??? For those who are already rich? For the insiders? For the oligarchs? For those who make hundreds of thousands... millions... tens of millions... and even on occasion billions in a single year yet who pay most of their taxes at a rate of 15% on their first $400,000 in capital gains and 20% on capital gains "income" above that extremely generous threshold...???
Hey, folks... remember the last "American Wealth Boom" cheered on by the insiders... the oligarchs... the mainstream media? Well, folks, that last "American Wealth Boom" was called the "Housing Boom!"
Remember, folks...??? Remember "wealth" being created out of sheer irrational exuberance cheered on by Wall Street... by politicians of both parties... by the mainstream media... by the bankers... by governmental and pseudo-governmental organizations such as the Federal Reserve... the IMF... Freddie and Fannie Mae...???
It may not feel like it for many Americans. But with the Dow breaching 14,000, shareholders and investors have recovered the more than $8 trillion in wealth lost during the recession and attained levels of paper wealth they haven't seen since the Roaring Oughts.
What bullshit!
The value of a stock is only "real" once that stock is sold. In the meantime, unless the stock pays dividends, it has only "listed" value. What you paid for the stock is real. The "opportunity cost" of having bought that stock instead of spending/investing the money elsewhere is also real - though often impossible to quantify.
No wealth has been "recovered." The market goes up, the market goes down. Again... what matters is what you paid for a stock... what dividends (if any) you realized over the course of ownership... the opportunity cost of the particular investment... the sale price (and hopefully profit)... and what effect the tax code has had and will have over the course of the investment from buy to sell.
The stock market has gone from wealth destroyer to the nation's largest manufacturer of new millionaires and billionaires.
Again... paper millionaires and paper billionaires... but besides reiterating that fact, we've been "manufacturing" new millionaires and billionaires at a much slower rate than we've been adding literally millions of people to the food stamp (SNAP) rolls and the millions who have left the work force!
The market moves are creating a new virtuous cycle of confidence for the wealthy.
Yes... for the wealthy...
A new survey from Spectrem Group shows that millionaire confidence in the economy hit the highest level in two years, led by their bullishness on the economy and corporate earnings.
So... in other words... class separation is proceeding apace during the "Age of Obama" and the winners are... the wealthy... the millionaires... and the billionaires.
The big question now is what the next Gilded Age will look like, who will benefit and how long the market-fueled prosperity will last.
Not much question about all this, is there? The insiders, the oligarchs, the rich... they'll all benefit. The American People? We're screwed.
Folks... read the friggin' daily newsbites...
Folks... gas up your vehicles...
Folks... head to the supermarket and do some food shopping...
Folks... pay your health insurance... pay your kid's college tuition... keep up with your ever-rising property taxes and enjoy paying that $12 cash toll for the "privilege" of crossing the George Washington Bridge!
The total wealth of the Forbes 400 hit $1.7 trillion in 2012, topping the record of $1.58 trillion in 2008. The average net worth of the Forbes lister topped $4.2 billion – the highest ever.
And this signifies...??? (That the rich are getting richer...???)
The population of millionaires in America is now at or above its 2007 high.
But... but... but... the Bush years... weren't they the bad years...? (But... now we're celebrating their return... their return in terms of more and indeed wealthier millionaires and billionaires...???)
Prices for highly prized art, wine, vintage cars, jewels watches and other collectibles are soaring past their 2007 highs.
And the price of a pound of roast beef...? The price of a six-pack? The cost to fill up your car's tank? The price of milk... eggs... beef...???
This year's collectible-car sale at Scottsdale blew past its pre-crisis sales record, racking up $223 million in sales, compared to $163 million in 2008.
And yet thanks to "Cash for Clunkers" and the governmental policies connected to it (crush the "junkers," don't recycle parts) Americans who aren't in the "collectable car" market or even the new car market pay more for spare parts to keep their older cars running and when that gets too much they're often forced to buy new cars which they can't really afford and which eat up an inordinate portion of the family budget?
I don't know, folks... clearly CNBC views the "Obama Recovery" as real. I don't. Nor would I if the president were Romney yet the newsbites were the same.
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