Choo-Choo Ch'Boogie!

(Click here to listen to the fabulous Louis Jordan)

Too Kewl for Gruel
-Obama tells us to go to School-

...and then tells educated Americans to eat cake

After a brief glimpse of Obama’s address to Congress earlier this week, the only impressive note I can make on the president’s engaging, smooth delivery (as I had noted during the primaries here) is that the man could sell ice to Eskimos. Unlike a certain former leader with a penchant for stumbling over words and bleachers at the China Olympics, Obama deservedly scores points for his ability to read the teleprompter from L to R in such a sweeping fashion as to not look like he is actually reading it.

In her recent post entitled Obama Wants Us To Go To School, Economic blog diva journalist Elaine Meinel Supkis at Culture of Life News writes about Obama’s ominous statement during his address to Congress earlier this week that Americans should ALL go back to school! Ominous, in that he offered no explanation or suggestion as to what millions of us who hold degrees from the World’s finest universities in America should learn or how this would make greedy corporations start hiring Americans instead of cheap, imported workers. No, no, not only did he not elaborate on why the growing millions of unemployed educated Americans would go to school when many already hold advanced degrees, he also pledged to sell out more jobs to the third world.

With a flick of Let Them Eat Cake-ism and sheer disregard for American workers, Obama revealed without remorse his intention to put America’s workers out of high paying jobs -- or any jobs at all. Like some shady magician’s trick, is the buzzword “school” meant to lull the plebes into some false sense of security on their way to slaughter? Or did he reveal (wittingly or unwittingly) some stealth “industry of privately held educational enterprises” as Citizen Carrie describes in her post One World School Policies lurking in the tech lobby backed Obie plan that are designed to educate foreign labor on the American taxpayer’s dime?

Ominous, in that during Obama’s address, he pledged more military budget spending and also, most disturbing of all, trumpeted free trade during this economic depression, confirming his “declaration of war against American workers” which had Congress applauding wildly. Elaine explains:

“He disarmed all possible ways we could improve our basic industrial situation and made it clear to all the creditor nations who happen to be also the biggest export-profit centers, that we will do absolutely nothing to stop this. We will not protect ourselves. Period. Congress, being corrupt and in the pay of foreign powers, applauded this declaration of war against American workers.

With such blatant disregard for the citizens of this country, it would appear that the Neo-Frat Boy Fascist State of America, led by President Obama and his cronies have now officially declared war on America’s white collar middle class.

Obama also talked about “rebuilding” this country with “alternative energy systems”, but, as Elaine points out, this would be great if we – not imported workers from third world countries but our own citizens -- were the ones chartered to do the building:

“Putting up many alternative energy systems is a wonderful thing. But ONLY if we produce the energy systems we buy to install. This is where the rest of the world comes in: our trade rivals do not want us to build systems here, they want us to consume their imported systems. The Chinese and Japanese have been very intent on building solar energy factories, for example. Putting up many alternative energy systems is a wonderful thing. But ONLY if we produce the energy systems we buy to install. This is where the rest of the world comes in: our trade rivals do not want us to build systems here, they want us to consume their imported systems. The Chinese and Japanese have been very intent on building solar energy factories, for example.

This country’s underutilized, underemployed and unemployed smart Americans want to rebuild this nation’s corporate and civic infrastructures up and all he can tell them is “go to school” as he pledges to sell out their jobs to foreign workers?

Why does Obama not want to support white collar middle class citizens? He has signed up for the job of The Great Leveler. As evinced from his speech, our insulated and out of touch president, beholden to the Neo-Frat Boy, Have and Have-Not Society committed to the extermination of this country’s thriving middle class, apparently sees educated Americans in the same gruel lines as the peasants of third world countries, some who happen to be floating our debt.

-2Truthy

Zombie Banks

(Special thanks to Mark Fiore)

-Click here to watch Mark Fiore's Zombie Bank-

The Zombie Banks

Paul Krugman says that it looks as if we’re headed for the decade of the living dead in his article All the President’s Zombies.

The comments are the best part. Here is one to ponder:

“It’s safe to say that this is intentional.
The people in the administration must know that their pursuing the Japanification of our financial system, and the subsequent concrete-filled sunken frigate that places in the way of economic recovery.
I’m unwilling to chalk this up to incompetence, and there’s simply no wiggle room left for plausible deniability.
So, the question becomes. Knowing full well that this is an incredibly bad plan that is going to completely undermine the efficacy of any movement toward recovery, why are they pursuing it?”
— Nathan Aschbacher

As long as the Goldman Sachs foxes & Obama’s private sector Economic Advisory Board are acting in their personal best interest as judge, jury and executioner of taxpayer funds get to keep guarding the Henhouse, how long will Americans be content with such rampant socialism for the Plutocracy?

Patrice Ayme wonders why The People continue to allow themselves to pay for the hyper rich to fleece them in this excellent article. Ayme describes how America’s “thick, plutocratic layer” has established for themselves “fiscal paradises, places where their money was channeled to escape the IRS” and suggests that those “geniuses”, the “outstanding” friends of Obama’s advisers who contrived the greatest Ponzi scheme of all times (the derivative system) be held accountable by pushing for RICO (The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.)

When it comes to making them accountable, it is crystal clear that any talk of “transparency” coming from the private sector Economic advisory board and the Obama administration is first filtered and distilled to make it palatable for select Pigs at the Trough.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

Pilot Sully Has No Pension, Pay Cut by 40%

National Hero, Pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger

Suspected Terrorist Geese

More (Possible) Bird Striking News

Weeks after LWOH reported how our own hero, U.S. Airways Pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger expertly ditched an Airbus A-320 into the Hudson River after both its engines were knocked out by two suspected flocks of Canada Geese and saved the lives of all 155 passengers onboard, another possible bird strike and engine failure may have also caused a Turkish Airlines jet to crash in Amersterdam today, killing at least nine people and injuring 50.

Before we describe today’s Turkish Air crash, Pilot Sully has testified today (click on above video) that his pay has been cut by 40% in recent years and his pension plan has been terminated. Given the outcome of his masterful and miraculous crash landing, Pilot Sully deserves a lifetime of compensation and benefits. Plus, he has done a great service for the promotion of the Airline.

Surely, the marketers at U.S. Airways can’t argue with the expert product placement.

But with the airlines’ corporate push for profits over people potentially jeopardizing passenger and civilian safety, shouldn’t this be the nation’s wake-up call to reform the airline industry? Pilot Sully explains how the skimping has gotten so bad that he and his peers would not recommend the profession of “pilot” for their children:

“…the terms of our employment have changed dramatically from when I began my career, leading to an untenable financial situation for pilots and their families. When my company offered pilots who had been laid off the chance to return to work, 60% refused. Members, I attempt to speak accurately and plainly, so please do not think I exaggerate when I say that I do not know a single professional airline pilot who wants his or her children to follow in their footsteps.”

Since 1993, under the greatest assault against educated Americans when the H-1B visa spigot flooded the tech industry, millions of American computer scientists and engineers are now unemployed and vastly underemployed, without benefits and pensions, too. Many now have kids in college who are not in the CS and Engineering departments for the same reason: Corporate greed directed against middle class Americans.

Although Pilot Sully saved the lives of 155 passengers and crew, some onboard today’s Amsterdam crash met no such fate. Airport authorities said the plane, Turkish Airlines Flight 1951, left Istanbul at about 8:20 a.m. and made a crash landing near the airport with 128 passengers and 7 crew members on board. Although the cause of the crash has yet to be confirmed, bird strikes have not been ruled out.

The 737-800, part of Boeing's "next generation" family of aircraft, was introduced in 1998 and is powered by CFM engines produced by General Electric and the French manufacturer Snecma. Turkish officials said the plane was built in 2002. It last underwent maintenance checks in December.

Low-cost airlines including Europe’s Ryanair has an entire fleet of 737-800 models and it along with Southwest Airlines both have outstanding orders for more. The 737-800 could be referred to as the People’s Plane. According to one aviation consultant in Barcelona:

"This is the Ford or Volkswagen of the skies - it is the equivalent of the Airbus A320 - the real workhorse of the current generation of aircraft.”

The fear is that as airlines continue to cut services (Southwest now has the passengers cleaning up the planes, among other things) outsource maintenance and lose their best and brightest pilots, passenger and civilian safety will be increasingly jeopardized.

Let’s hope that these low-cost airlines add mechanical safeguards against the potential for bird strikes and compensate their pilots to reward the best and brightest stewards of the skies.

-2Truthy

How the Economy Was Lost: Casting Off America

Slumdog Millionaire actors visit Disneyland

-Casting Off America-

"If truth be known, the "banking problem" is the least of our worries.
Our economy faces two much more serious problems. One is that offshoring
and H-1b visas have stopped the growth of family incomes, except, of
course, for the super rich."
-Paul Craig Roberts

“It’s not the Economy, Stupid. It’s YOUR JOB!”
-2Truthy

Why are American citizens allowing elites to hand over jobs to India? The stimulus bill has U.S. citizens, not Indians, picking up the tab, too! Why don’t the failing banks get their bailout from India, instead? From the white collar job sectors of technology to medicine to finance to journalism, corporate elites in this country are rejoicing in selling out American jobs. We can’t even seem to appreciate our own movies anymore, either. Unless you troll the trough of the hubris diseased, “ordinary” educated Americans are no longer deemed eligible to partake in corporate and local community building. Oh Hell. Even Hollywood can’t stop itself from succumbing to the hubris opiate, slumming and skimping on quality as evinced by the Academy’s all out political promotion not of at least two Oscar worthy Hollywood films (IMHO Milk and Frost/Nixon) but an unarguably mediocre film to instead hand over eight Oscars to, one for Best Film. But that’s OK. We have a reputation as being a great, gracious nation - only these days, just not to each other. Have the disastrous Bush years so thoroughly eroded our collective sense of national pride and camaraderie to warrant this “kick me please” sign on the backs of our own citizens?

In his article entitled How the Economy Was Lost, Paul Craig Roberts summarizes what yours truly has been writing over and over and over and over and over and over and over again about the distinct, hate thy neighbor brand of hubris and greed in this War on America’s white collar middle class that has been led by America’s corporate elites and their fawning “new media” sycophants.

Roberts reports that while U.S. financial regulators abandoned integrity and “fled their posts” while MSM and “New Media” outlets drummed the lie of an American “skilled labor shortage” to promote H-1B visa workers to replace Americans, outsourcing’s “inner circle” has deep roots in GE and McKinsey, among others that have promoted the sell out of America’s white collar middle class. After all, citizens can afford a Depression only if they have jobs. But that is not part of the blueprint by a few CEOs and elites in this war on America’s white collar middle class:

“The pressure of jobs offshoring, together with vast imports, has destroyed the economic prospects for all Americans, except the CEOs who receive “performance” bonuses for moving American jobs offshore or giving them to H-1b work visa holders. Lowly paid offshored employees, together with H-1b visas, have curtailed employment for older and more experienced American workers. Older workers traditionally receive higher pay. However, when the determining factor is minimizing labor costs for the sake of shareholder returns and management bonuses, older workers are unaffordable. Doing a good job, providing a good service, is no longer the corporation’s function. Instead, the goal is to minimize labor costs at all cost.”

So far, that goal appears to be working out just great. With a little help from a few trough slopping “New Media” hacks to pick up where the Old Media left off, Meet the New Boss Same as the Old Boss has never sounded so good for a few greedy corporate elites and their “leading a movement” sycophants.

Party on, plebs!

-2Truthy

Sean Penn May Play Joe Wilson: Sing along to The Plame Game

-Sean Penn Takes on Plame Game, May Play Joe Wilson-
(Congratulations Sean, Best Actor 2009 in Milk)

Breaking News


No deal has closed yet, but Variety reports that Oscar winner Sean Penn (yay!) is in negotiations to play the role of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, husband of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame in director Doug Liman’s retelling of Plame’s story, currently known in deal-making circles as “Fair Game.”


Before you read further, click here, turn up the volume, and sing along to the lyrics of THE PLAME GAME which yours truly provided in February, 2007 when the buzz was that Scooter Libby could do the time for the crime in the Bush administration’s despicable hand in outing covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame.

Fast forward to June, 2007 and click here to sing along to “Scooter Libby Gets his Prison Number.”

And who are the other rumored casting picks?

Click here for 2Truthy’s casting picks (updated to include Sean Penn as Dennis Quaid was the original pick – Sean is perfect!)

-2Truthy

IBM Seeks Stimulus Funds

IBM Seeks Stimulus Funds, People Seek Jobs and Homes

(Heart)Breaking News

Armonk, NY Mega-behemoth American white collar job outsourcer IBM says it wants federal stimulus money to make the intertubes available for an estimated 200,000 “rural” people. Unconfirmed and anonymous sources reveal that the stealth program “Operation Homeless Hillbilly” will provide a souped up, yet barely “C” class brand of internet services that will run over power lines – a connection that’s dubiously faster than dial-up but painfully slower than the traditional fiber connections that guys like Tim Geithner get to use.

Although broadband over power lines isn’t a new technology, “it’s been around for the better part of this decade and has yet to gain much traction” which may explain why IBM seeks the “rural” population to load it off on AND get Joe Taxpayer to keep them in Prada loafers at the same time!

So what if the connections are slow? Who’s in a hurry these days, anyway? Especially when pro- labor arbitrage/outsourcing corporations like IBM have gone so far as to want their employees to offshore themselves to India through Project Match, as LWOH previously reported here.

President Obama’s plan includes $2.5 billion that will go toward enhancing Internet services in rural areas, despite the fact that the unemployed and homeless usually don’t typically come across money (via legal means, anyway) to pay for such wired extravagances.

“IBM didn’t say how much money stimulus money it is seeking for its $9.6 million deal with IBEC, which initially will provide broadband services to co-ops in Alabama, Indiana, Michigan and Virginia. But the project will move forward even if the company doesn’t get stimulus funding, a statement says.”

-2Truthy

The Gay Swami Times: Stimulus Saves Microsoft Billionaire Hundreds of Millions

“The noble soul drinks poison with a smile, detached and desireless, he needs no fame or recognition.” –Lord Shiva

“Everyone smiles when they are offered Sees Candy, but what happens when people throw eggs at their avatars?” –The Gay Swami

Welcome to The Gay Swami Times, Vol. 1, Issue 6. Click here for prior issues.

This week brings victorious news that Billionaire Paul Allen, a Microsoft cofounder and owner of both the NFL's Seattle Seahawks and the NBA's Portland Trailblazers is going to be about ONE BILLION DOLLARS RICHER thanks to President Obama’s stimulus bill!

As the ancient, tantric-wealth saying goes,

“when the ego becomes completely insipid, even if the Self becomes complete, the bank account becomes horribly dry.”

But as most CEOs and executives in-the-know embrace the Gay Swami’s celestial message “spiritual progress is made possible by opening your hearts to others, and getting them to open their wallets even wider” at the deepest, most intimate levels, true enlightenment and success can only be achieved by a one-time income windfall to fall in your lap.

Don’t forget to sign up for The Gay Swami’s upcoming, stimulating seminar in the Financial District:

-DEEP DHARMA – CEOs EXPLOITING ETERNAL BLISS-

The Master’s Narrative: 8 Moves towards CEO transnational positioning to bring you closer to your dreamy H-1B.

-2Truthy

Google Investor Sits on Obama's Economic Advisory Board

-First Step: Gore, Doerr, Powell, and the Back Door: Who Owns Obama?-

Millions of newly minted and old unemployed plebs alike across the country can now breathe a sigh of relief as Obama’s first ever, ominous broadcast of “first steps” is available to all captive American taxpayers who have questions about which wealthy private citizens are getting their American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money. (The video above was made by (Americans United for Change.)

One of the leading corporations (Google) which will receive over $20 billion plus in subsidies for privacy invasive e-health plan development approved in the Stimulus Bill has one of its lead investors on Obama’s economic advisory board, just to make sure Joe Taxpayer’s money is being spent the right way. The Washington Post’s Cecelia Kang reports that President Obama's newly formed economic advisory board includes some high-tech heavyweights who will have a “direct line of communication” to the new administration as it races to stem the worsening economic crisis.

The members include Silicon Valley venture capital veteran and Google funder John Doerr, and Chuck Phillips, president of database software giant Oracle. The Obama administration said that there will be 15 advisers to “regularly provide direct advice” to Obama "to jump-start economic growth and facilitate economic stability." The announcement states that this also includes specific advice for “immediate solutions to the crisis.”

Kang observes that John Doerr’s significant investment in Google (he is a partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Beyers venture capital firm, which also includes Al Gore and Colin Powell) “only widens the pool of executives and other employees of the Internet search firm who are working for or advising the Obama administration.”


The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, in his article Feeling Good About What You’ve Bought, describes Obama’s “first step” video:

“One calls to mind Charles Grodin's character in Dave, wondering why the country needed to spend money making Americans feel good about cars they already bought? The answer, I think, lies in two words: "first step." They were used by President Obama today at the bill signing. They're used by Obama in an e-mail to his presidential campaign list. And they're in the new ad. The goal, I think, is to condition elites, and then the American people, to see the economic recovery act as one of several significant, expensive, complicated (or, to keep the metaphor, high, risky and precarious) steps that the government needs to take in order to right the economy.”

Change we can use or more corporate welfare, labor arbitrage and outsourcing? The ARRA mentions nothing about taxpayer money appropriations for single payer healthcare, but instead offers subsidies to corporations like Google whose investors and executives stand to prosper from. With all of these wealthy private industry experts advising Obama on how to spend our taxpayer money and which corporations to spend it on - *shock* like their own -- it’s a safe bet that we will be treated to more ominous, brief videos from Our Leader to keep us posted of the next steps in this finely tuned, corporate welfare, middle class wealth redistribution agenda-pitch.


-2Truthy

Happy Valentine's Day

“Love makes the world go ‘round, and if you’re in a hole, keep digging to bury white collar jobs for your middle class in.”
-Obama’s Tech Czar-

Bush Bails Out Bankers, Obama Bails Out Ditchdiggers: America’s White Collar Middle Class Prepares to “Get Over Itself”, Get "Shovel Ready"

Stimulus Bill Update: “What” middle class? I see that all those bank and hedge fund executive level jobs are already taken, but there are shovel ready jobs, galore for all those pink-slipped white collar professionals. Slam dunk for tech lobby, financial elites, and “shovel ready” laborers, disaster for America's middle class. Below is a breakdown by subcommittee which of course, omits pesky details so don’t worry - it’s a quick read.

The Bill, Part A

The Bill, Part B

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Mathematicians Discover the Largest Integer So Far...

(Reprint in entirety below/Special thanks to commenter “Gary” and Elaine Meinel Supkis at Culture of Life News)

PALO ALTO, CA - An international mathematics research team announced today that they had discovered a new integer that surpasses any previously known value “by a totally mindblowing shitload.” Project director Yujin Xiao of Stanford University said the theoretical number, dubbed a “stimulus,” could lead to breakthroughs in fields as diverse as astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and Chicago asphalt contracting.

“Unlike previous large numbers like the Googleplex or the Bazillionty, the Stimulus has no static numerical definition,” said Xiao. “It keeps growing and growing, compounding factorially, eating up all zeros in its path. It moves freely across Cartesian dimensions and has the power to make any other number irrational.”

Jean-Luc Brossard, a researcher with the European consortium CERN, said the number is so staggeringly large that it is difficult for even mathematicians to grasp, let alone lay people.

“The number itself is incomprehensible by human minds, and can only be theoretically understood in a fractional parallel universe which we refer to as the DC dimension,” said Brossard. “The best way to understand a stimulus is to imagine a dollar sign followed by a packed string of hexidecimal nanodigits, wound into a triple helix, woven into a dodecahedron, and stacked on top of one another. Now imagine you were a black hole on the far edge of the universe, trying to escape the stimulus at 30 times the speed of light. The stimulus would still catch up to you and ram your black hole with such furious, repeated force that it would cause your entire reality itself to collapse.”

Xiao said the team discovered the number with the help of an international network of 24 nitrogen-cooled Cray Ultracluster supercomputers, the CERN particle accelerator, and “three pounds of Humboldt County Chronic.”

“The exciting news is that with more powerful computers and drugs, we believe we are on the verge of discovering an even larger number, which we refer to as a ’stimulusconferencebill,’” said Xiao. “Speaker Pelosi has already promised us the funding.”

Comment by Gary — February 13, 2009 #

-2Truthy

U.S. Stimulus Bill Pushes E-Health Records