Do NOT Piss Off a Marine

Read this.

Any idea whose side our Armed Forces will be standing on if the unimaginable happens in this country?  I used to wonder, but now I take solace in knowing they've got OUR backs; not the backs of the 1%, the Corporate Scumbags who think they can continue business as usual.

Have they never seen V for Vendetta?

For Chrissake, have they never read history?

Your Moment of Zen

Four moons, as seen by the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. (The fourth is a pinprick dot in the middle of the Enke gap in the rings if you haven't spotted it.)

(Click to embiggen.)

Spreading the Gospel

We're getting our CEO a MacBook Air.

Seriously.

A series of failures-at-the-most-inopportune-times by his HP laptop led to this decision. He wanted an iPad, but both my boss and I convinced him that it really wouldn't satisfy his requirements while he was on the road.  He wanted something lightweight and easy to carry. (The HP is a brick.)

When my boss (who from previous comment I thought was an avowed Apple hater) suggested the Air it was all I could do to keep my jaw from dropping.

Since we really don't have the infrastructure in place to support Apple products (yet) and certain compatibility issues between OS X and our network exist (believe me, I've tried to resolve them), what we ultimately decided on was replacing his HP lapop with a new desktop and providing the Air to take on the road.  With VPN and Remote Desktop, anything he can't do natively on the Mac will be available from his desktop.

Tom (my boss) has been asking me a lot about Apple lately, and admitted the other day that he thinks I'm turning him.  Today after getting this plan squared away he said, "I guess I'd better buy one for myself now."

What Is #OCCUPYWALLSTREET About?

Scott gets it exactly right:

And why do the powers that be fear it?

I have my own personal take on it and in my mind it comes down to one simple word:

CHEATERS

These fuckwitted clowns at Faux News and elsewhere who are beshitting themselves in fear over the possibility of finding themselves like Marie Antoinette — neck stretched out with Madame Defarge knitting away madly in the front row before the blade falls — are trying and saying anything to discredit the #OWS movement including accusing it of not having a coherent message or of even being anti-success and anti-capitalism.

That is complete and utter bullshit!

If there is any one religion that pretty much every single American shares it's the religion of success.

We, as a people, adore success stories. We venerate people who have achieved stuff.

Even a venal asshole like Donald Trump gets looked up to by a large swath of America because of his ability to successfully play the role of the Comeback Kid.

We don't hate success and we don't hate the billionaire who makes his money through his brilliance and hard labors.

We hate the cheater.

We hate the wall street bankers from Goldman Sachs who sell to their customers a financial product that they know is going to fail with the representation that its gonna make their client money.  And then, if that were not bad {criminal} enough, these same Goldman Sachs bankers turn around and take out insurance AGAINST their client knowing that the client will lose his shirt and when the client goes bust the bank will get paid by the insurer {AIG} for betting against the client.

And when behavior like that destroys the economy these very same bankers in their Too Big to Fail banks go hat in hand to the American people who promptly hand over to them free fucking money which they then take and pay themselves tens of billions of dollars in bonuses — making for the biggest year end bonus in the history of Wall Street.

And then — if that were not obscene enough — these same bailed out, unindicted felons and grifters who produce NOTHING of value for this country are then gifted — GIFTED! — by Treasury Secretary Geithner and Fed Chairman Bernanke the never previously bestowed present of being able to walk up to the Fed Discount Window and borrow taxpayer money at ZERO FUCKING PERCENT INTEREST.

Which they then loan back to the government at 3% interest.

We hate the cheater!

We hate the fact that the Seattle taxi driver who honked his horn the other day down at Westlake Center to show his solidarity for the #OWS protesters camped out there has been forced by the city of Seattle to pay a bigger fine than any of the Wall Street bankers who stole from us and then destroyed our economy.

We hate the cheater!

We hate that corporations are able to use unlimited amounts of money in order to buy and sell politicians of both political parties who then write laws that allow the richest among us and the biggest corporations to pay virtually no taxes but then, when the government needs money because of the cost of its wars {wars that a majority of the population do not support} and the fact that it has cut taxes to the richest, we are told that the poorest among us and the suffering middle class must pony up and pay more in order to make up the difference.

We hate the cheater.

We hate that there are apparently two very different sets of laws for people in this country — a law for the rich and powerful that allows them to do anything and get away with virtually any crime without any consequences attached to their actions. And a law for the rest of us that results in prison time for the most inconsequential of offences.

We hate the cheater!

We hate that there is at present a supreme court justice named Clarence Thomas who, for the period from 2003 to 2007 filed a joint federal tax return with his wife and on that return declared UNDER FUCKING OATH that she had no income during those years.

When the reality was that she was working as a highly placed and highly paid political operative and lobbyist  making almost three quarters of a million dollars in that work.

We hate that.  And yet, as much as we hate that we especially hate that the organization she was working for and being paid by {while at the same time she and her husband the supreme court justice were each committing at least five counts of perjury on a federal document} was an organization that stood to directly benefit from her husband ruling in favor of allowing corporations to make unlimited donations to political causes.

We hate that under the very law that justice Thomas' wife got paid to lobby for, and for which the Thomas' evaded taxes and perjured themselves, huge corporations have been given the same rights as human beings in the eyes of the law but those same corporations can neither be drafted into the military nor can they be executed.

We hate the cheater!

The #OWS movement has been accused of hating the 1%.  But we we don't hate the 1%.  We hate those people in the 1% who cheated to get there and who cheat to stay there.

We hate the gaming of the system.  The rigging of politics. The buying of politicians and supreme court justices. The undermining of Democracy and the fact that the little guy is always the one being told to bend over and take in the ass.

And we hate that our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines fight for this country and risk their lives for it in far off lands and then come home only to be shot in the head by American police officers.

SHOT IN THE HEAD FOR DOING NOTHING MORE THAN WHAT THE CONSTITUTION GUARANTEES THEM THE RIGHT TO DO —

Peacefully assembling as provided for under the First Amendment.

God, do we hate the cheater!

And if things don't change this nation is gonna burn.

And that's why the cheaters and the malefactors of great wealth and their paid shills, propagandists and whores are going to so much trouble to try to discredit #OWS.

Because we know they're cheaters and they're fucking terrified that they'll be made to finally pay for what they've done to the rest of us.

Change in the Weather

Months of anticipation have finally come to an end. This is the view from the top floor of our apartment's parking garage this morning as I was leaving for work. (Thankfully I have a spot in the covered portion.)

I actually made it to work in the same amount of time I normally do; the only difference being that the usual level of crazy was conspicuously absent from the commute.  People on the freeway were actually allowing sufficient space between them and the car ahead to actually stop in an emergency, something I have not seen in this city since our arrival last June.  It was a pleasant relief.

I realized while driving to work however, that one item missing from my winter kit is a windshield scraper.  Since I don't have the luxury of covered parking at work (unless I want to pay $35 a month), Anderson is sure to be covered by the time I leave this afternoon.  My boss also forgot his, so I guess I'm going to have to improvise…