Investors Asking For Obamacare For 401ks Even If They Don't Realize It

The results from a Wells Fargo/Gallup pull, I see potential conflict of interests, a few months back that investors want governments to 'enhance' 401k accounts isn't surprising. Over sxity nine percent of those polls wanted the president and congress to find ways to every company to offer a 401k plan as well as encourage every American to invest into their company 401k. I can think of one way the government could 'encourage' 401k investment, and that would be to simply create laws and regulations requiring companies over a certain size to offer them.  Investors, businessmen and liberty minded individuals would balk at the suggesting of forcing companies to offer 401ks, however, considering what happened with health care, what else are we to expect?

Eventually the government is going to come after our 401k, I am fully convinced of this. In fact, when the government finally does I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were at the behest of the public.  The poll results simply illustrate that the trend has already started but it simply confirms that many investors don't think about the long term. So here is what I wonder.  How long until companies are effectively required to offer 401ks, or until the public is forced to contribute to retirement accounts, lest they incur fines and penalties à la Obamacare?

Why Didn't The TSA Just Do This Earlier?

The TSA received a lot flack, well deserved in my opinion, for the implementation of body scanners that would generate a digital nude image of the person being scanned.  As of May 16, the TSA has announced that all airport scanners will no longer display digital nude image of a person, instead it will show a generic outline.  The move by the TSA was prompted by a ruling from the courts mandating that the the scanners be removed by May 31st, originally it was to be June of last year but the TSA was able to get that date extended.

While we still have to parade convicts in front of a digital machine, despite the near nonexistent threat of attacks prior to the implementation of said devices, we at least no longer have to suffer the indignity of being rendered naked digitally.  I have one question though, why didn't the TSA have the scanners display a generic outline from the get go? It doesn't take much foresight to see that the implementation of these type of devices are controversial enough by itself, and that the way the images would be displayed would only needlessly anger Americans. Why wasn't the TSA proactive? The answer, as we all know, is that government agencies are rarely proactive. But rather than be a Debie Downer we should count our blessings, after all, it only took them five years and a court order.

Damning Failure: Washington Bridge Collapse

Given that I live in Washington I suppose I should comment on the recent bridge collapse along I-5. Thankfully no one was killed, and traffic hasn't been affected at all in Seattle proper, and it looks like a new temporary bridge should be up in relatively quick order.  But a slue of news organizations are talking about what why this happened, who is responsible and what needs to be done. My opinion is that this bridge collapse is evidence of a damning failure of our government.

A Culture of Vamparism

The original Dawn of the Dead was released in 1978, and critics at the time hailed it as, not only a wonderful horror movie, but also a great criticism of America's growing consumer culture. Today we often we refer to the American masses as zombies, living purposeless meaningless lives and doing nothing but consume.  I'd like to expand on that idea. I believe we live in an age of  the vampire.

Vampires, or creatures like vampires, are an almost universal item of lore throughout all human cultures throughout all our epochs.  The current, and most popular idea, of the vampire stems from the European tradition, specifically the Balkans, and that tradition expressed vampires as the most terrifying thing on the planet. Zombies are scary, if only because it entails massive societal breakdown, but they do not hold a candle to vampires. Zombies are not evil,  they are mindless and something cannot be evil if it is unaware of it's actions, and the latest iteration notwithstanding, cumbersomly slow, and only pose a threat in large numbers, and can be overcome rather easily. The real theme of zombie movies is what humans do to each other in an impossible situation. You never see zombies infiltrating a compound, city, or settlement that has it's act together and is ready. You see zombies where you see a broken dysfunctional society. That is the threat of zombies, nothing more, nothing less. However, Vampires are a different being entirely. They are the very embodiment of evil, they know what they do, they simply don't care.

It took the very things wonderful and sacred about the christian faith and turned it on its head. Whereas God, and Jesus, promised eternal life that can be freely accepted, vampires forced eternal life, and damnation on their victims, doomed to forever wander the earth a prisoner to their unholy desires. Where consuming the body and blood of Christ, in the Catholic tradition, was symbolic of becoming one with God and gaining spiritual strength, vamprisim reflects the opposite. A victim of a vampire becomes weaker, not stronger, and their blood is taken, not given. They could command werewolves, possessed super human strength, preyed on the young and innocent, and even worse, doomed the victim to eternal damnation. They robbed you of your day, your life, and your very salvation. To the peasants of the Balkans there was no more terrifying than a vampire.

It is something that the west has forgotten about vampires, and perhaps it is fitting that a morally corrupt society would turn pure evil into the sexual fantasies of middle aged women and teenage girls, they do not 'sparkle', they do not agonize, they do not care. They only live to feed their perverse and insatiable desires. And that is where we are now, feeding off each other. Aurini is right about narcissism and the Captain is right about shamming, they are all products of the vampiric culture we have today. 

Look at any part of our society, men and women's relations, civil rights, entitlements, corporate welfare, even popular culture, and you see the manifestations of a vampiric culture.  Harlots, sluts, and women with no scruples use 'nice' guys as emotional tampons, fuck men who would have been losers in any other age, rob them of their riches in divorce court, or even worse, force them to pay for bastard spawn.  In return you have the degenerate men of society using psychology and dark triad traits to seduce and use women, many of those women are the sluts and will garner no sympathy as they wail alone in their 40's, but there also many decent girls, whose only crime is being born in an age of advice contrary to the human condition, and with their naivete, have their hearts broken and ruined. Even the men's rights movement has become nothing more than a vampiric movement itself. Rather than seek to restore man's proper place, and the societal respect for manly virtue, they seek to sit at the table of the victim, even though they will forever be denied the place they seek.

We now have an entitlement system that consumes us. The producers are sucked dry, I am not a rich man, not even close, but my own federal tax burden is 27% of my gross income and that does not include the additional burden I pay in sales taxes in my home state, I can only imagine the sucking sound the job creators hear every day they wake from their slumber. We have the government, all too gladly, taking the place of fathers and enabling the creation of baby mommas. Their damaged progeny often become wards of the state, which costs us even more money. We have the old sucking future earnings from the young and the young mortgaging their futures so they can extend their adolescence and when the check comes due they cry foul.

Businesses, rather than focus their time creating products and wealth, now have to contend with a myriad of obscure regulations. Commerce is no longer about production, but about nuzzling up against the government teet like a new born cafe and sucking away with abandon.  We have multi-national corporations that use lobby groups to block out their competition and lower their tax burdens. We have non-profit organizations that do nothing but seek government handouts. We have entire industries that only exist because the government funnels money, which they do not have, to ensure their existence.

The analogies are endless. Find any aspect of society and you will most likely see, if you look hard enough, evidence of how our degenerate culture has turned it on it's face and perverted it. Every time I think about our current society I imagine something right out of Dante's Inferno. I see a tangle of bodies, intertwined with their fangs biting into the flesh of their neighbor. Frantically, they are forever sucking blood in efforts to try and counteract those who are sucking their very life blood from their flesh, as they suck blood drips out of their orifices, they gourge themselves on the blood of their neighbor, and all the while it is for naught. They continue to shrivel to nothing. Around that jumbled mass of intertwined bodies are screwtapian demons dancing and laughing as they scoop up the blood oozing from the body pile. What is most insidious, and terrible, is that we are all vampires now, we do not get a say in the matter. Society has now been organized that you must become a participant, short of retiring to the wilderness and becoming totally self sufficient, you have no choice.

It certainly seems hopeless but a day will come when no more blood can be extracted, when the last drop has been collected, and the buckets will run empty. On that day the laughing demons will wail and gnash their teeth. Some of them, their desire for blood so insatiable, will turn on their fellow demons and try to take their blood from them. It is on that day that we might be able to build anew and we relearn the wisdom of our forefathers. Until then we must steel ourselves for the vampiric culture that we now live in.

2nd Amendment Activists Akin to Hitler? True Danger of Fienstein Bill

I was browsing through google analytics and looking at some of the websites that have sent me traffic flow when I noticed a website called policymic. I had never been there before so I decided to check it out, and was greeted with an opinion article saying how US gun rights advocates had more in common with Hitler than they believed.

Naturally the headliner was incendiary to try an round up some more hits from angry individuals incensed at the utter ludicrousness of the statement.  I read the article, honestly it wasn't a bad article considering the topic and intentionally incendiary headline, there was some interesting bit of historical information that I had previously not been awar of, but as some of the commenter's posted below, I think the author missed a major point. (The same online journal also has an article defending the 2nd amendment)

When individuals mention Hitler as an example of gun control it isn't necessarily to try and compare those passing gun restriction, or outright prohibition, to a totalitarian despot; though I know some individuals who would say exactly that, it is to illustrate the potential danger suchs laws entail. The point we are trying to make is the dangerous to ever allow a government entity decide who warrants carrying a weapon and who doesn't. While I am not very sympathetic towards convicted felons, there lies a very real danger of individuals being denied their rights simply because they happen to be at odds with whoever is in charge. Remember, some of the earliest gun control laws in America were laws preventing newly freed blacks from owning firearms. Like it or not, the US, like any other nation, has had a history of oppresive behavior towards select groups in society.

Case and point, the no fly lists. There are people who have been put on the no fly lists who have never had a criminal record, but are suspected of being terrorists. They have little to no recourse, and no one, from the general public, knows what reasons someone lands on said list. It isn't too hard to conceive a list were military styled rifles can be refused to those the government deems 'potentially dangerous'.  In fact I think that is what it will happen, and that is the real danger of the Fienstein bill. There is no way, as it is currently written, it will pass. The real danger lies in the little traps that they lay in what ever 'compromise' is made with so called 'republicans'. Our rights may be contingent on whether or not some local official deems us worthy of exercising them.

This is my true fear. Individuals were still able to own firearms in Nazi Germany, but only those the fuher and his cronies deemed good little national socialists. Undesirables like the jews, which the author throws in as if it was just an after thought, gypsies, and political dissidents were denied their rights. While there is no guarantee that things would have been much different if the Jews were armed,  but if the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was any indication, it would have been far more difficult for the National Socialists. Let us not ignore that Hitler avoided invading Switzlerland, despite the little nation being entirely ensconsed by the his new reich, because the Swiss were armed to the teeth.

We must never forget. Democratic nations can turn totalitarian. And being a democracy doesn't preclude a nation from acting oppresively to others. We either stand as free men, or kneel as slaves.

A Great Day to Be An American!

Odin Lounge correctly points out that you cannot get something for nothing to everyone who is estatic about getting 'free' birth control.  Moreover, to add insult to injury, everyones taxes are going up despite promises by our politicians that only the rich will see tax increases.  Sounds all well and good until you realize that the tax increase is coming out of Social Security, which means that it gets first dibs on your hard earned money. Just saw my paycheck and while $ 20 a paycheck isn't a big deal, it amounts to nearly a thousand dollars of my money taken away from me to support a ponzi scheme. Truly a great day to be an American!