Sunday, October 13, 2013

A job engine sputters as hospitals cut staff.. and lots of them cuts lots of jobs..


BOOM!


Another great week.


A job engine sputters as hospitals cut staff.. and lots of them cuts lots of jobs..

Miley Cyrus' back-up dancer reveals she was left 'shaking' after VMA's


I don’t know what to think of this.. everything lately associated with Miley Cyrus is a big giant freak show. This latest story only amplifies that fact..


Not to be TwerkJerk, but I’d still venture to say this Hollis Jane knew what she was getting into before …right?


Miley Cyrus' back-up dancer reveals she was left 'shaking' after VMA's

The photo you’re looking at is an example of Victorian post-mortem photography.


Our modern world may call this creepy and weird. But think of the times it happened in.. kids weren’t living very long due to disease and other issues. A big family of 10 could be taken down to much less due to some type of medical ailment. The photos, though taken so long ago, still reverberate with some bit of ‘strange’ quality.. but I find it to be just an example of how we, the living, deal with death. Maybe this does not happen now, but for it’s time, it was a touching tradition that was meant to honor the people taken too soon from life. Perhaps these photos are not for the squeamish..

The EBT crash.. 'Was it a dry run?' someone asked. Nah, said me. Then my brain started to ponder..

….but how long would it take before social unrest if they never did?


I asked this question of myself a number of times yesterday. If you didn’t know, the EBT system was down in much of the United States. The technological glitch stopped people from using their food stamps to purchase items at grocery stories across the nation. 


I heard one person asking, “Is this just a dry run?”


And that is a fascinating question, given the possibility that if our government can’t agree on anything, October 17 may be a very bad day in the markets, and the global economy. That’s the date we default.. on debt.. owned by lots of other nations.


China will be seeing red!


Nonetheless, the prospects of permanent inactive EBT cards—and social security checks that stop being sent—are possible Armageddon-like scenarios that the United States faces. About 49% of people live in a household that receives some type of government assistance.  that can be minor, to major. 


I have long held a belief that the people on welfare and other programs, though maligned and used as political fodder during election campaigns to divide voters, don’t pose much of a threat to anyone.. As a matter of fact, numbers back up my way of thinking: The government spends MORE on corporate welfare and programs than it does on the social end of it.. fat cats stay fat while stray cats pick at the garbage .. The same goes for humans, where big companies can achieve greatness with the held of a long arm  of Uncle Sam, while social programs seem to simply keep people in the darkness of a permanent lower class ..


But all of that aside, the prospects of the food stamp program going down …right now.. are interesting.


That comment, ‘was it a dry run,’ keeps sticking in my mind like glue. 


I don’t propose any form  of conspiracy theory that the government would use some sort of weird experiment to see how people would react (now they’d never do such things, right?), but it’s surely interesting timing. The week coming up when the system may actually halt, and this weekend a little 17-state issue for people trying to use their cards.. 


Corporations that rely on government have their safety net already. They bought it—often with money from the government.. but those relying on a weekly check or a pittance of money to live? They don’t have a safety net.. Their net is tattered and filled with holes.. filled with pitfalls. What would happen if the social security checks stopped? The EBT cards? The rest of it that 49% of Americans rely on? Some others have speculated on what would happen..  I will let them do the speculation. I am just asking questions—questions based on what we saw yesterday with the system crash.


And if you don’t believe me, or other non-experts in the field of anything, rely a little on the good word of CNBC. They know their money. And they also wrote about 7 doomsday default scenarios that the United States could experience should the house of cards fall down..


So was it a dry run?


Probably not.


But I sure bet the powers that be, whomever they be, are studying the outcome of just a few hours of a system crash to see what would happen if one of those seven disasters played out in a post October 17 world…

Great autumn nights in Jim Thorpe

I went to Jim Thorpe, PA, with a friend last night.. Coming up next week: I will be going there with my wife for our 6th wedding anniversary.. 


It’s a great place. Worthwhile if your visit, should you be inclined. This time of year, especially, is perfect for a visit to the OLD JAIL MUSEUM where Molly MaGuires were wrongfully hung in public for a murder they did not commit. The town is loaded with history,  mystery, culture,  great food,  great spirits, and maybe some real ‘spirits’ too..


I feel lucky to be so close in proximity to the gem in the refuse pile.. Jim Thorpe is a downright cool place.


I envision other towns in the coal region to be future great places.. I really do. Maybe that’s the hope in me..there is so much history in other locations—but the changing area and diminishing importance of it solidifies the role of backwards nothing, unless someone comes along and wants to make the town they live in the next historically preserved JIm Thorpe.

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

If federal workers 'cheat' and actually work during furlough, they face a $5,000 fine or time in federal prison

If federal workers 'cheat' and actually work during furlough, they face a $5,000 fine or time in federal prison

Committing Miriam Carey..

This should not come as a shock to anyone who has any inkling of knowledge of the Miriam Carey killing in Washington DC, but it’s finally official revealed that she possessed no weapons and had “no motive” to do what she did.. Of course, her action and the lack of a weapon didn’t help stop her demise. Police shot her and killed her in front of her one-year-old child after a wild day of varied news reports ..


I ask you this, though.. Why the silence? An innocent African American woman gunned down at close range by an army of police officers in the Nation’s Capitol.. and what occurs? Congress gives a standing ovation … no civil rights leaders speak up.. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton don’t say a word any of this.. Who will weep for Miriam Carey? Her family, for one… perhaps one day her young child, a child who will luckily not remember seeing her mother be shot dead as the nation’s media happily cheered on the state’s actions in making sure she didn’t live any more seconds to tell why she was acting the way she was the day she died. enough, the family of Carey has not been permitted to view her body.. They haven’t seen the child.. few are asking how her car slammed security gates, but didn’t have air bags deploy, and didn’t have any hardcore visible damage when cops finally cornered her. And finally, the big one, why are no media organizations concerned with the reality of events and why she actually died that fateful day in Washington D.C. ??

CONSERVATIVES IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Obama summons conservative columnists to the White House, including Krauthammer, Costa, Gigot, Parker, York.. 


Absent were people that readers actually read..

Where the lonely people in New York City go after they die..

Hart Island is reportedly the nation's largest taxpayer-funded potter's field -- a term used for a place where the unclaimed dead are buried.


What happens when a homeland New Yorker dies? SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE writes about Hart Island, a place you never want to be .. 


Hart Island is 131 acres and has been uninhabited for years..


It’s on the Western Part of Long Island.


And since 1869, the location has been used as a burial grounds for those who could not afford the luxuries of higher priced funerals and caskets..


According to the eerie report from SMITHSONIAN, 2,000 people a year are buried there, with about 850,000 in all over the past 100+ years..Even more: Dismembered body parts constitute a small minority of the burials. SMITHSONIAN REPORTS:



An estimated one-third of the burials are of very young children. With one exception—“special child baby 1 1985,” the first child to die of AIDS in New York City—the bodies are buried in mass graves.. 



McDonald’s worker arrested after telling company president she can’t afford shoes

You are reading that headline right. She was arrested—not told to stop, not removed—but arrested at the public event for heckling the President of McDonalds.


Even people who heckle the president don’t get arrested..that’s president of the United States. 


McDonald’s worker arrested after telling company president she can’t afford shoes

Famous paintings are turning black.. and it’s being blamed on mercury..Apparently elemental mercury, which forms under exposure to light and chlorine ions in the air, degrades paintings.. and some famous images painted by famed men of the past, are turning black..

Pentagon Withholding Death Benefits for Fallen Soldiers' Families

Pentagon Withholding Death Benefits for Fallen Soldiers' Families

No, this is not Newt Gingrich in drag. It’s Janet Yellen. And yes, she’s a woman.


Expect to see her face a lot more from now one.


Give em’ Yellen: Janet Yellen about to take over the Federal Reserve. Evans Pritchard writes: “The Fed will be looser for longer. The FOMC will continue to print money until the US economy creates enough jobs to reignite wage pressures and inflation, regardless of asset bubbles, or collateral damage along the way”


Today.. woman with lots of white hair. Tomorrow: Time Mag’s man of the year?

The Quiet Zone in West Virginia--where cell phones and WIFI are nonexistent for 13,000 square miles..


Interesting..


There is a lot  of ‘noise’ .. but real and white noise. Sometimes you can almost feel the electronic bursts of WIFI and cell towers flowing through your body like a cancerous disease.


But not in this location in West Virginia..


….though maybe some other things lurk in this same quiet zone..?



The Quiet Zone in West Virginia--where cell phones and WIFI are nonexistent for 13,000 square miles..

APEC 2013: All the world’s leaders gather for a picture.


Oh, and John Kerry..

Some days start beautiful..

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