Social Security

     Here is one situation where the media and the education system have totally failed the people.  So many middle-aged and older folks are saying these days, "I paid into the system.  I deserve to get my money back."  But the system does not and never worked that way.  There is no real "social security trust fund".  There even might be some accountants somewhere who spend their productive hours working out how much "money" should be in it, however, there is no such fund and never has been and there are no managers managing it.  The money is gone already.  Every single penny which has been paid in has already been paid out again.

     Instead, social security has always been a pay-as-you-go system.  In the first years, there were some 50 people working and paying in, for every retiree who was drawing benefits.  Where the system began to have problems came about as life expectancies became longer and longer, resulting in far more retirees drawing benefits for far longer.  Thus now we have the situation where there are less than two workers paying in for every retiree pulling out.  And the two workers are supposed to be able to carry the one worker?  Hardly possible, is it?

     The young people today may not understand what a Ponzi scheme is, how it works, how to set one up.  But all the ones I talk with are at least cognizant that its highly unlikely that they will ever be able to draw any social security when they get old.  To a man they have the expectation that one way or another the system will collapse by then or at least, Congress will find ways to deny them any payments.

     and here is the rub with the current unemployment issue today.  While it may be true that employers do not want to offer the minimum wage plues the employer social security tax plus the employer health insurance benefit required by Obama's new law plus the unemployment insurance payment plus the workers' compensation benefit....all told that's a whole lotta money.  But it is equally true that the kids do not want to work for it.  They are more or less on strike.  Many of them will mow lawns, shovel snow, babysit, or what have you for cash.  but they are not about to do what's required for a salaried job.  Not when they know that a third to a half of what they are earning is going into other people's hands and they don't expect to ever see it.

     In effect, the young people are on strike.  I wonder if any of the old people, who have been systematically robbing the young, for several generations now, are listening?   Because with nobody working, the net wealth of the country as a whole is in decline.  It affects everybody.  With so many pikers, who wants to work?

God

I searched for God using google.

I got back 1,820,000,000 results.

so I tried to search for Him in mapquest.

I got back two locations within 15 miles.

finally I tried google earth.

God is in Hungary.

I don't know what this means .....

authority

     There is a simple problem with all human authority.  The problem is universal and sooner or later, always devastating.  This problem arises with every single government instituted among men, whether it be national, provincial, or municipal.  It arises with every single corporation or other business enterprise.  It arises with every single religion ever constituted and organized.  Certainly it is endemic to boy scout troops and football teams.

      Baron Acton's famous quote, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." has actually been said over and over again.  Not that anyone ever learns.

     The problem, as I see it, is that once control is tasted, individuals tend to begin to believe in themselves as actually being superior or better in some way or other than the people they are controlling and impacting.  This belief seeps into their thinking, slowly and insidiously, gradually taking over in every process of their living, until even their own excrement smells to them like perfume.  The finest expression of the problem is the observation that people of authority regress to earlier and earlier stages of childhood to where they forget or never learn how to admit to mistakes or errors, how to apologize, how to regret, and thus, how to fix or improve anything.  Thus empowered, every organization, no matter how powerful and righteous its origins, reaches some kind of zenith and then, first faltering ever-so-slightly in the breeze, stalls, luffs, and turns slowly downward until, too late, it finds itself hurtling towards the earth, tracing over and over again Icarus' fateful journey and bringing all mankind, again, to the depths of depravity and destruction.

     Enjoy the ride, folks, because the end of this one, globalization and worldwide central planning and trade, is a doozy.

personality

     I just got done with thiis trash novel, something Oprah recommended so, well, lets not go there.

     anyway, this "psychological thriller" makes the point, several times, and with, um, emphasis, that a person, any person, is not the same as who he was a minute ago, before such-and-such traumatic event occurred.

     I was just thinking, again, about the mental health industry in the US, psychiatry and counselors and all those poisonous substances that they call medicines, and all the hypocrisy.  What a stupendous dismal failure they have perpetrated upon us ... not to mention how expensive it has been.  Sandy Hook.  sigh ....

     anyway, its really a very simple formula.  Any person, crazy or not, or whatever, you can add to his experiences, his wisdom, his understanding.  Its just that no one can take away from him, not anything, not any of his experiences and memories, not really.  What can be done is to add to them.  Even, at least in my experience, that's all that God does for people either.  There's no real such thing as rebirth, a clean slate, starting over.  You can always add but you can never subtract......

charts

     You know what?

     I just looked at about a dozen stock charts, one or two year, picked almost at random.  Soncor Oil.  SLV silver bullion fund.  ECA Encana.  IBM.  Weyerhauser paper, for goodness sake.  JPM, we all know who they are, right?
    ... and you know what?  Every single one is exhibiting very similar behavior.... long, strong bullish trends, punctuated with "cliffs", in other words horrendous, breath-taking drops, the kind where for nearly everyone, your throat becomes indecently acquainted with the pit of your stomach.
     How the heck can anyone make money in this market or even stay in it "for the long run"?  Unless, of course, you happen to be situated somewhere along the news flow just ahead of the rest of the markets, enough ahead so that you can take a small, levered short position just before the headline comes out, whatever it might be.....

     I'm just asking .... anyone got any ideas?

Pain

I spent the day yesterday just feeling pain. Like always I was surrounded with things that would like to be done, items to fix, clean up, renew, improve, and so forth, all of them quietly calling for my attention, to no avail. I did manage to feed myself. Mostly there was emotional pain of unspecified source, no reason that I could attribute beyond simple “balancing” after a series of successes. Perhaps there was some physical thrown in, I have drunk enough lately to begin to introduce a little dependency in my system, enough so that going without induces a little agitation and discomfort. But the emotional pain arrived first and was clearly insistent about dominating my attention.  I "wasted" the entire day, doing nothing that could possibly be construed as useful or beneficial to anyone.

Such an event won't move the Richter Scale needle in my life. My very first lover disappeared out of my life after a delightful summer. It was only a year later that I learned: she had parked her mom's car in the garage and gone to sleep in the front seat while leaving the engine running. Most likely intentionally. And so long ago  my second wife, the love of my life, the woman who was going to “save” me, well, she started to have an affair with my bestest best friend, actually a few weeks BEFORE we married, and, well, she asked me to teach her how to say “No” and that was a pretty tall order (even for her, over 6 feet tall ….), I mean I could say no to him but that's not the same thing, and they kept on, and kept on, and one day she took a paper clip, unwound it, and stuck it through her cervix to puncture the placenta and kill my only child … in good time, the pain that I expressed was finally sufficient to induce her to say “no” to me and leave my life …. so I have known some pain …

I was meditating upon my pastor's remarks, the previous day of rest. There was, again, that little issue that black folk can get up and speak in a crowded room and say something to one person that no one else will hear or understand, though all speak the same language. That little code which makes fools, again and again, out of our military or any source of arrogant, capricious power. He was angry with me on a couple of accounts, including my sinfulness but also including my rejection of his authority over me. While he was berating, his wife was massaging my shoulders from the pew behind me, which was kind of amusing too.

What he was saying to everyone is that there is this world and then there is the “other” world and he identifies this world, this carnal, temporal, chaotic world as being temporary and worthy of disdain while his “other” world is the world of salvation and eternal joy and peace.

Psychiatrists have long known that children who endure any kind of sexuality imposed upon them by adults, learn how to escape into an “other” world where their sense of self is fully protected and insulated from this world. Everybody has such a place in their secret souls, but its just that us'ns like me and pastor have had to spend more time in that place of refuge. It just means that while everybody can understand a little bit about a secret room, ours just happen to have furniture, particular paintings and even tapestries on the walls, mouldings, nooks and alcoves, rugs, drapes, windows, and probably a bookshelf or two with a selection of favourite works.

So it occurred to me that maybe here is where most or all Christians went wrong, starting of course with Paul. Jesus never, in fact, said that He was going to eliminate all pain for all of us or for all of us who “believed” in him. We misunderstood his healing and we totally misunderstood his resurrection. He did not promise to eliminate pain. He did not conquer death in that way, not any more than he defeated the Romans, as Judas had so fervently hoped and prayed that he would, he didn't even stop Nero from coming back a few years later and literally leveling Jerusalem, leaving no stone upon another, killing every single soul who wished to remain, and salting the earth. He really, really, did not ask us all to retreat forever into our personal private refuge.

It occurred to me that this is where “scientism” has failed and this is also where capitalism has failed. There was the promise, implicit or explicit, that either or both of those disciplines would eventually conquer all pain and make life to be eternally easy and blissful. And what those two have done is to take away all of the little irritations and aggravations of life but in their place, virtually everybody has succeeded in engendering artificial disputes so that we still have terrific arguments and discomforts with one another over issues which are total fabrications, such as the supposed differences between red and blue politicians, all of whom are on the take. And what they have decidedly NOT accomplished is to prevent total social breakdown and chaos, which is the reality that we all face today although quite a few are still hiding out in their “other” world, the fantasy one that we all have....

Me, I love life. I love this world, the real one. I happen to love booze but don't do that all the time. I love sleeping and petting my pussy and listening to her purr and keep my lap warm. I love new tools, clean, oiled, and ready to sharpen exquisitely. I love eating and I love the fact that I have enough food and drink in my house so that I can eat for the rest of my expected days, regardless of whatever happens to all you fools. I do not like pain. I mean, yes, I cut myself or get clawed or my muscles ache from exertions or arthritis or my nose runs or my head aches or whatever, all the thousand little nuisances which flesh is heir to, some of them can be rather debilitating. But none of them can completely snuff out life, or joy. Even, when mine passes away from me, I will die knowing that I have put in place things which will help to enable others survive and carry on. And therein is joy that is unquenchable. Therein is Jesus' joy, therein is his victory. NOT in the other world, but right here and right now.

just a reminder

to Polonius and all the other pompous asses and self-appointed apostles out there:

King James

was a faggot.