It's a long way down.

The week is closing with a double whammy. This could be a touchstone week; one we will be able to look back on in the upcoming months and years as the week where the tide turned. The real law is being laid out for us and the true nature of our government is crystal clear.

We started the week with our government providing us with the facts of how the laws of the United States really work. There are two sets of rules and laws in this country. One, which applies to the citizens and another, which applies to government and corporations. We have to follow our rules; they have no rules.

By giving the telecom industry total immunity for their complacency in spying on American citizens the government has told us loud and clear that our rights are nothing but a shadow. We have ”rights” as far as the government deems we deserve them and none of them are absolute. The telcos are immune because they were/are in effect, agents of the government by allowing the alphabet agencies into their COs.

I swear, if I could ditch the phone and an Internet connection and all means of communication other than face to face, I would. Why make it easier for the masters to keep tabs on me? Why add more of my data to their database? While I don’t subscribe to the philosophy of removing one’s self entirely from “the grid”, I do believe on lowering your footprint in the grid. Then again, a void of information on a person could, in itself, spark even more curiosity on their part.

Based on this outcome with the telcos, don’t be surprised in the upcoming years when you live down wind of a toxic energy plant, spewing God knows what into the air, and they have immunity from the government for polluting your air because the government deemed it vital. If the government deems it necessary, tough shit for you and me. You and I aren’t the shareholders in this country and we cannot command resources the government deems vital.

The double whammy is rearing it’s head this morning. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have been clinging to life for months, today the shit is hitting the fan in regards to their financial health. Rumors are flying, with even Charles Schumer piping in, that the feds are set to take control of both. When this happens our national debt doubles at the least…least.

What happens if this occurs? We fall off the cliff we have been toeing. All shares of stock in Freddie and Fannie would be worthless with shareholders getting jack shit in return, and who owns this stock? Every financial institution in America. Think the Bank of America buys stocks in $100 blocks? Hell no. They buy stock, bonds, commodities and derivative packages in blocks of hundreds of millions of dollars.

If this happens our government will take every mortgage under these financials into their portfolio. You will be paying your mortgage directly to the Federal Reserve. If this happens our government will double the national debt overnight and the value of the dollar will plummet. Think gas is high now? Wait until these fuckers bail out Freddie and Fannie. Think food is outrageously priced now? Just wait. The dollar and all treasury bonds will truly be Monopoly money at this point.

Who gets fucked? Everyone. Worldwide fucking. The largest owners of US Treasuries are China and Japan, bye bye Asian market values. The majority of OPEC nations peg their currency and the price of oil to the US$, their inflation skyrockets and the price of oil in dollars will inflate like a puff adder about to be stepped on. This snake will bite us all.

Pissed off because the Arab nations have been burning through money like it was cheap generic cigarettes? Don’t worry, they were spending dollars for all these years and Dubai bought the Chrysler Building with those same worthless dollars. If you own the largest pile of horseshit in the world, you might have a lot to spread around, but in the end you own a lot of horseshit.

What happens if Freddie and Fannie collapse with no government intervention? A lot of the same. The government will still take receivership of their assets and try to sell the crap to other financial companies, or like the Bear Stearns sweetheart deal, they’ll fund someone to take over the pieces of the pie that once was Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. We still pay for it, national debt still skyrockets and the dollar still plunges in value.

Time to put on that scratchy old 7” mono copy of Floyd Cramer’s “Last Date”, brace for the fall out and wait for the music to end. It is coming.

TSA screeners trained to be con artists on your dime

First we discovered that DHS Secretary Chertoff’s guts were the tool of choice to gauge whether or not a terrorist attack is immanent; now an article from the Washington Post, and posted on MSNBC’s website, give us a look at the latest security tactic, cold readings. A cold reading, for those who aren’t familiar with the phrase, is a technique used by con artists, salesmen and psychics as a method to manipulate a person into believing that the cold reader holds a special power. One of the skills involved in cold reading is identifying the meaning behind the body language of their mark.

Our tax dollars are now being spent on training TSA employees in the art of cold reading. At the moment there have been 600 trained in this skill with another 1000 that will be trained by the end of the year. The success rate for their work? An abysmal rate of less than 0.75%. Of the 40,000 travelers detained because a government trained cold reader spotted something, less than 300 were found to be guilty of any crime. I think it’s safe to say that a cop could pull a random sample of folks off the street, frisk them and run a warrant check and get a higher rate of arrests than this program.

What are the TSA employees looking for? Well, that’s a secret (what isn’t a secret these days?) but according to the article former screeners, current screeners and consultants say they are looking for, “people traveling without bags, sweating and constantly checking out every person passing by, especially those with badges and guns. People who avoid eye contact or veer away when police approach also draw their attention.” They just described a large number of folks at an airport on any given day.

Since the airlines started becoming major dicks about carry-on bags, a lot of travelers don’t have bags to carry on unless they have their laptop with them. Sweating? Well since we have to race across the airport in an attempt to make flights because the screening lines take so long to get through and connecting flight times are synchronized far too closely together, of course we are sweaty. Try running from the T concourse in Atlanta all the way over to the B concourse because your plane leaves in 20 minutes and tell me your ass won’t sweat.

Constantly checking out every person passing by. That is one I do all the time. I’m always looking at the women who pass and I always look to see if I see someone of celebrity status or a level of importance. The airport is one of the few places where the unwashed masses like me have a chance of seeing someone big. I once saw former baseball player Rickey Henderson at the Atlanta airport, waiting to get on the same plane as me. Then again, doesn’t our government heavily promote that we civilians “stay vigilant” and watch everyone closely? Don’t they want us to spy on one another? So we are put in a Catch-22 situation. Do we bury our head in the paperback we brought with us or do we people watch for entertainment and “National Security” purposes?

This also leads me to wonder if any of those TSA employees will use the knowledge they gain from the training for purposes outside the workplace. While the training period itself is too short to be of any real value it does give them the foundation to learning the ropes of the con game. OJT is a part of this program, where they can hone their skills and become good at it. Possibly even attaining a degree of skill to actually manipulate the thoughts, beliefs and actions of a person. Will the less than ethical and immoral members of the TSA use these newfound skills to run confidence games?

Once again the disappointment of our government in action is just depressing when you dig deeper into what they are doing. I’m waiting for the President to perform a séance and bring forth the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. Knowing these sociopaths it wouldn’t surprise me if they tried.