1)Hurricane Arthur- Bad weather threatens the 4th of July for many this weekend, all the way up the East Coast. My fireworks in my hometown have been postponed already, which makes me thankful as I was going to miss them otherwise. Boston is hit or miss for Friday which makes plans hard to come by. If it pours, chances are I'll be home instead of there, which is looking more and more likely. Rats.
2)CGI and the US government- Can anyone name me any company anywhere that fucked up this bad and still got paid? Try this at your job. Screw up the most important project your company has through sheer incompetence and then demand your salary in full instead of getting fired. Good luck with that. Not only are we not suing CGI into the next dimension, we are paying them 75% of the amount we owed them, including states like MA which still doesn't have a functioning website. This is why this country is going flush with super-speed. We are literally giving money to people who should be paying us instead. Fan-fucking-tastic.
3)Robin Thicke- I may give the younger generation a lot of well deserved flack but I have to give them credit one particular area: music. The kind of music being played right now from new acts not only don't suck, some of them are pretty good. Foster the People, Courtney Barnett, and Ed Sheeran show that you don't have to use auto-tune, mindless lyrics and mind numbing music to make a good album any more. Even better, the losers from my generation like J-Lo, Jay-Z, and Mariah Carey to name a few, have watched their album sales just die on the vine. Robin Thicke's new album joined the graveyard, barely making the top ten on ITunes or Amazon, and 82nd in CD sales. Ouch. Here's a helpful hint to everyone overproduced, craptastic album for someone to put out: actual music is back. A lot of you, J-Lo I am looking directly at you, need to stop singing. You are really bad at it. My generation had some of the worst music taste of any generation ever. By the late 80's, music fell apart and other than a handful of great acts, like Nirvana, we had a steady stream of garbage. Thankfully, the latest generation has ears and has decided that they want to hear real music. If only we could get them to do the same with politics.
4)Obama, Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie- Pop quiz: What do these three all have in common? If you said presidential material, you would be dead wrong. The polls for these three are in free fall, with the later two looking less like a nominee than a year ago. Obama's polls across the spectrum now rate him one of the worst presidents EVER, either tying or beating his slightly worse predecessor W. 45% of the country say they now wish Romney had won. To be fair on that last part, it wouldn't have mattered which won because both are corporate stooges. I lost all faith in the President with his inability to lead on any major issue, and doing real damage by supporting SS cuts, the TPP and a continued push against legalized pot. I am done with this dick and so is America. Clinton is still reeling from her daily foot in mouth problem, the worst being her idiotic "dead broke" comment that is sticking to her like glue, her awful, awful book which is being savaged by all as unreadable and boring, and the fact that corporatists are becoming less and less popular by the minute. Christie, involved in yet another under-reported bridge scandal, is also earning the wrath of the teacher's union who are showing up at every public stop and screaming at him. His polls have plummeted in recent weeks. He'll be lucky to avoid jail, let alone be president. 2016 is shaping up to be the year of the populist who will win, whoever that might be, maybe Paul or Warren. If we make it there that is as the economy appears to be at death's door.
5)The world economy- This week, Spain declared a "mission accomplished" moment, as they declared their long, recession finally over. This is odd as unemployment has been stuck at 26% (like ours has been) and youth unemployment is at 52%. Yeah, you guys are out of the woods now. Here at home, the FED has declared inflation under control and the housing market and auto sales are through the roof. None of which is true. Our inflation rate, as seen below, is nowhere near what they tell us it is
See the problem. Even the CPI is woefully understating the obvious and this chart doesn't even include tuition or health care which are still out of control. We've fixed nothing since 2008. The stock market shot up this week on news housing and auto sales have gone up, but the figures say something far different. Housing sales have increased, but only for million dollar homes. Auto sales have gone up as well, but that is because of sub-prime auto loans for people who shouldn't qualify for a loan, now averaging 77 months for the first time ever, with an average payment of $444 a month. These are repo's waiting to happen. Our economy is fucked. Some of us just don't know it yet.
6)Hamas- After these idiots killed three teens in Israel this week, we may be seeing the final straw in the whole Palestinian/Israeli fight. Some have claimed false flag, but I see little evidence of that. The Israelis have taken matters into the own hands and have killed a Palestinian teen as the Israelis are gearing up for a major fight. It may come down to and "us or them" moment where co-existence is impossible. If extremists keep this up, Muslims may become am extinct species soon.
7)Nick Sarkozy- The former President of France is facing corruption charges, somewhat similar to what John Rowland went to jail for and what is currently hanging over the head of Chris Christie. This is from the NY Times:
The anticorruption authorities in France are looking into whether Mr. Sarkozy, abetted by his lawyer, Thierry Herzog, sought to obtain information from an influential appeals court judge, Gilbert Azibert, about investigations linked to the former president, including an inquiry into the financing of his 2007 presidential election campaign. Among the accusations against Mr. Sarkozy is that the campaign received up to 50 million euros, or about $68 million, in illegal funds from Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya. They are also investigating whether Mr. Sarkozy, Mr. Herzog and Mr. Azibert worked together to reward Mr. Azibert for his help in the case with a post in Monte Carlo.
I wish we could do that with our politicians. All of them.
8)The Supreme Court and Hobby Lobby- This week the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are not only people but religious ones. This will open a flood gate of pro-discrimination suits, coming soon to a courthouse to you. And considering our Supreme Court rules with corporations 80% of time since 2011, you can guess how those might go. Unions were dealt a bad blow, one step short of getting rid of them completely by allowing non-member to no longer pay does, even though they get the benefit of union power. Hobby Lobby deserves a lot of the blame for their self righteous bullshit for not wanting to pay for birth control that goes against their beliefs, even though neither the morning after pill or IUD creates abortion. The Supreme Court basically said you can believe nonsense, but as long as it's religious nonsense, we'll back you. Sigh. HL is a bunch of hypocrites because while they publically demonize the morning after pill, they seem to have no problem investing in companies that make these items or buying stuff from China and Saipan which demand forced abortions. So congratulation Supreme Court and Hobby Lobby you are both douchebags of the week.
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