Charlie Chaplin’s words are still very relevant…
By: James Burge
January 19th, 2012
Today’s video is a great example showing how the more things change, the more they stay the same. This is an old video of Charlie Chaplin, obviously imitating Hitler. It is amazing to me how his words still speak to us so many years later.
It is amazing to watch America’s recent slip into tyranny similar to pre WW-II Germany. I think the most amazing thing is I have heard a lot of people ask, when learning about the rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany, why didn’t more Germans speak out against the government and I guess the simple answer is, would you?
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak out because I was Protestant.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out.-Martin Niemöller
You have a government that has given itself the authority to capture and imprison anyone, even its own citizens, indefinitely, without trial, or even the ability to hear charges against you (isn’t this the kind of shit that lead to the independence movement in Amrica?). And now America, which had once considered itself a pillar of morality, can now use various methods of torture on those it suspects of ‘terrorism’ at a time when catching terrorists has become so important to those in the bowels of power in Washington, used as proof that fear is justified and encouraged. Does this seem overly convenient to anyone else? The US needed a war, they seemed willing to take any war with anyone (as long as it is in the middle east of course, those Arab bastards have a lot of oil), so they try to radicalize those who will eventually become their enemy to goad them into organizing hostilities (any hostilities) against the very nation that radicalized them through their egregious actions in the middle east over the course of the last century. And as Americans forget about the actions of their own government, they then use these hostilities to justify their heavy handed actions saying “how many people could have died had we not tortured those terrorists?” Are Americans so bad at history (thanks department of propaganda, I mean education) that they don’t know that the US (with help from the British) overthrew the last democracy in Iran because they were worried they would nationalize the oil industry thereby transferring profits from British Oil companies and to the Iranians, which of course started another middle east theocracy, and they have the gall to ask why Iranians aren’t demanding democracy, they did but you took it away from them, do you understand why Iranians might not be all that fond of the US? The US has been aided by Israel since it’s theft from the Palestinians, which some say are the true ancestors of Jesus (but these religious nuts don’t seem to care about Jesus anymore, take the booing of Dr. Ron Paul when he tried to use the golden rule to explain his stance on foreign policy during the South Carolina debate, wait isn’t that part of the Bible belt, I cant remember). It is amazing that in people’s apparent attempt to spread and strengthen their religion they seem to loose sight of its origin and what it claims to teach. Things like morality and acceptance and are replaced by judgments and dehumanization. Painting an entire culture in a false light to vilify them which somehow seems to justify their heinous treatment at the hands of their ‘liberators’ seems to be the true face of terrorism. I’ve heard it said, by those Jews involved in the Bombing at the King David hotel, that Israel is the founding father of modern day terrorism, and that the Israelis dressed up as Arabs, in order to confuse the issue and vilify their neighbors to help justify draconian policies that would never pass through a democratic government had the general public not been deceived into hating and fearing radical Muslims.
Anyway, enough rant for one day, here is the video…
Humanitarian Warfare…
By: James Burge
January 10th, 2012
This video is for those who claimed theUSwould be greeted as liberators.
This is what war looks like, we have no idea of this because in our lifetime, we have yet to see war and the pain it causes those who are left behind after these types of attacks.
To claim that these people welcome this type of intervention is a sadistic lie. We are not making our world safer by bombing the hell out of the Middle East; we are creating a generation who will come to loath and revile the United States and the ‘freedom’ they brought at the end of a bomb drastically affecting their livelihood, their family, and their collective history. It amazes me that people attack Ron Paul for saying that actions such as theses are what lead to 9/11. Yeah it seems much more likely they attack us because of our ‘freedoms’.
The problem is that more and more I realize that our ‘freedoms’ are pseudo-freedoms, they look good, and in some cases it makes us feel good and feel like a free people; but to put this in perspective, I’m sure you’ve heard that ‘the land of the free’ has the largest prison population in the world; mostly because rich men have found a way to make a lot of money protecting us from those we are taught to irrationally fear (like those suffering from substance abuse and various chemical dependencies) while stripping those same individuals of their rights and in some cases their dignity. Yet they let rapists and child molesters out only after a few years of incarceration, and those involved in petty drug crimes get 30+, (and of course bankers and politicians guilty of fraud, get zero) it seems obvious to me that this is completely bas-ackwards.
Over the years the US has had problems with multiple un-investigated allegations of voter fraud and stolen elections, high crime rates that are only increasing, high rates of mental illness and a population placated by mind-altering drugs with little to no admittance of any long term side effects all while ‘professionals’ prescribe them to younger and younger children. There has been an increase in rate of suicide (especially among those returning veterans) as people feel a sense of helplessness, feel isolated and see no light at the end of their tunnel. They have a health care system that is bloated and dieing forcing doctors to quit their practice or seek work elsewhere. A generation of mildly educated* individuals chasing the highly touted bachelor’s degree only to be stuck as an economic slave spending your first few years of decent pay to cover student loans used to pay for highly inflated costs of learning, and that’s if they are lucky. With no jobs in sight, since they have all been off shored to India and elsewhere because of the tax breaks congress has been providing corporations since the Clinton administration, new grads should count themselves lucky to have a job at all right now. Oh and did I forget to mention their crumbling infrastructure, once admired the world over, now a ticking time bomb, especially for those areas with high probability of earthquakes and other forces of nature. And, although it nearly never makes news, the nuclear reactors throughout theUSare not only old, they also routinely vent highly radioactive gases without any indication of risks to the public. Oh and since it’s inception in the early 1900s the Federal Reserve, a private (for profit) bank, which is allowed to legally counterfeit the dollar, has devalued the US dollar by over 95%. Oh and don’t forget the biggest threat to American Hegemony, Global Warming, or at least according to Al ‘Glutton’ Gore.
Is this the type of democracy we want to bring to theMiddle East?? A parasitic government more worried about maintaining world supremacy through debt money and endless wars, than those citizens who give them their mandate to lead.
I’m not sure if those in the bowels of power inWashingtonunderstand that without manufacturing jobs, how theUSwill support itself once it attacksIranforIsraelunleashing world war III on us all. Oh but it will beIran’s fault, and we will just have to buy our bombs fromChinaor something. (Oh what, they will be onIran’s side along withRussia, crap) okay we’ll have to get it fromIndiaorPakistan, (what, Obama has unleashed a silent UAV war inPakistan, crap). And what happens when Iran blocks the strait of hormuz causing the price of Oil to skyrocket (we can just use the strategic oil reserves, that is what they are for, assuming the war only lasts 30 days that is)
I just want to warn you this video has parts that can be disturbing.
(* sorry to those adequately educated Americans, you are a dying breed in my opinion)
How the 9/11 myth was sold..
By: James Burge
December 21st, 2011
Very good video which looks at the ‘news’ the morning of 9/11 and some of the interviews that ran on some of the major networks. The fact that the majority of the US mainstream media (as some are now rightfully calling the dinosaur media, which I like) had the entire narrative behind the attack within minuets of the second plane hitting the tower, sand even before the towers fell, is fishy at best. It uses some very familiar techniques to inject pseudo-science into the narrative about intense heat from fire as the cause of structural failure, which was the first time in history, fire took down a steal framed high-rise building (of course physics took the day off, because 3 buildings collapsed into their own footprint due to ‘intense fire’ that day). It always seemed strange to me on that day that at the same time I was learning about the attack, they already knew who did it, like they got a letter from Al-Qaeda that morning saying, our bad, sorry about the towers. Of course, the fact that they ‘knew’ it was Bin-Laden before the towers even came down, and that the Bin-Laden family was flown out of the US that morning, when all other flights had been grounded, stinks of an inside job. It tends to look like a bunch of unrelated coincidences, but every year that passes, the event seems to become a bit clearer. I wonder how much longer they will be able to successfully convince people of this official narrative? More and more people are waking up to this atrocity every day.
Keep questioning people, we are closer now than we have ever been.
Halliburton Destroyed Gulf Spill Evidence… interesting…
By: James Burge
December 6th, 2011
Was just reading an article where BP accused Halliburton of intentionally destroying evidence to conceal its role in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Rig Disaster.
For those of you that don’t know in the days before the well blew up, Halliburton were involved with setting a cement plug which would have temporarily sealed BP’s Moncondo exploration well. According to another article as early as February Halliburton knew there were problems with their recipe for the cement. They then kept this information from BP notifying them by email about only one of the tests, leaving out the tests with “unstable” results.
And get this:
Chevron recently carried out independent lab tests of a cement slurry that Halliburton said was the same as that used in the Macondo well. The commission staff said Chevron reported that “its lab personnel were unable to generate stable foam cement in the laboratory using the materials provided by Halliburton.
Not only that it seems like Halliburton lied about the unstable tests. Apparently to an inquiry on the explosion, Tomas Roth, Halliburton’s Vice President for Cementing said their results showed the cement mixture was stable, which of course seems to question the unstable results but apparently they didn’t make this issue known to BP, although they claim they shared the data in an email to BP, but apparently they never used the words “unstable” in that email.
Now that is has come out that they have destroyed evidence, I would bet money the lost documents also include these unstable test results in the days preceding the explosion. Which would be tough if they gave them to BP through email.
Now Halliburton is blaming BP because they only used 6 of the 21 centralizers, a device that ensures the drill pipe is properly centered.
And then this:
Robert Bea, a professor and oil industry expert at the University of California at Berkeley, said that drillers will often run one test on a cement mixture, then a second test as a backup. He called four tests “unusual.”
“Given that they are running four, that’s telling me they were having trouble getting to a stable design,” Bea said. “And so they continued to work with this witches’ brew until they got on to something they thought was workable.”
But I came across another article where Halliburton admits it never performed a test of the mixture, but that BP ordered them to change the mixture last minute meaning it could not perform the needed tests. Either way, sounds like negligence to me.
An interesting hypothetical to ponder…
By: James Burge
December 1st, 2011
Was just reading an really good article (which I totally recommend reading if you are still a bit fuzzy on the banking crisis) about how the banks got away with the secret bailouts to the tune of about $13 trillion dollars, how those involved told their buddies of the plan to centralize the banks, even before congress, so they could make billions on shorts while keeping the details of these secret bailouts from congress, and the American People, who have now been stuck with the bill.
I mean it really seams like you and a few friends are at a party and the table beside you is really partying it up, hooting, hollering, having quite the time, buying everyone drinks, they seems like okay dudes, and by the end of the night you think they are your new friends. But after they leave the waitress comes around with your bill and it’s about a ten times what you expect your bill to be, the waitress notices your shock and says “those guys you were partying with, before they left they said you were going to take care of the bill.” But just wait, it gets worse, in this scenario you realize that the waitress has to tip out to the guys who left you stuck holding the bill, so any tip you can afford give to the waitress, half or more goes to those guys. Then you find out these guys bet on the fact that you probably wouldn’t be able to pay the bill and they then use either the tip out or the money made on the bet against you, to give themselves and their buddies huge bonuses. Then they are back in the pub trying the same scam the next evening because heaven forbid they use those bonuses to pay for their own drinks.
That story would begin to express what has happened in the states only if you imagine the bill was for $14 Trillion dollars.
Just to get you interested, here are a few items he lists before giving the “6 Shocking revelations about Wall Street’s secret government”.
? The secret Wall Street bailouts totalled $7.77 trillion, 10 times more than the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) passed by Congress in 2008.
? Knowledge of the secret bailout funds was not shared with Congress even while it was drafting and debating legislation to break up the big banks.
? The secret funding, provided at below-market rates, gave Wall Street banks an additional $13 billion in profits. (That’s enough money to hire more than 325,000 entry level teachers.)
? The secret loans financed bank mergers so that the largest banks could grow even larger. The money also allowed banks to step up their lobbying efforts.
? While Henry Paulson (Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury) was informing Congress and the public that only minor reforms were needed to protect Fannie and Freddie from collapse, he met secretly with leading Wall Street hedge fund managers — among them his former colleagues at Goldman Sachs — to alert them that he was about to nationalize the giant mortgage companies – a move that would eradicate nearly all the stock value of the companies. This information was enormously valuable because it allowed these hedge funds to short Fannie and Freddie and thereby make a fortune.
? While Timothy Geithner was head of the NY Federal Reserve, he argued against legislative efforts by Senator Ted Kaufman, D-Delaware, to limit the size of banks because the issue was “too complex for Congress and that people who know the markets should handle these decisions,” Kaufman recalls. Meanwhile, Geithner was fully aware of the enormous secret loans while Senator Kaufman was kept in the dark. Barney Frank, who was authoring key bank reform legislation, was also not informed of the secret loans. No one in Congress was told.
So what does this all mean?
Interesting and Enlightening Comment…
By: James Burge
November 23rd, 2011
Came across this comment posted in an article titled “JPMorgan Sued by BayernLB Over Mortgage-Backed Securities” which is amazing in itself, because there have been no federal charges against the banks found to be lending toxic assets with AAA ratings, but a German Lending Company Bayerische Landesbank sues over losses totaling $2.1 Billion due to the mortgage backed securities fraud.
The comment from Michael Rivero, (should have known since it covers all the bases, as he usually tends to) reads as follows:
After the last Depression, Congress enacted a law, Glass-Steagall, which forbid banks, insurance companies, and investment houses to be in the same institution, to deter reckless speculation with depositors’ money, which was seen as a major contributor to the stock market instability of the time. Then in 1999, at the height of the “Deregulation” craze, Citigroup and Travelers merged, a clear violation of Glass-Steagall. But rather than enforce the law, Congress repealed the prohibitions of Glass-Steagall with the passage of the 1999 Financial Services Act.
That opened the floodgates for runaway financial speculation. Wall Street knew that if they made money they would be allowed to keep it, but if their investments lost money, the US Government would step in to transfer the losses to the American people, because that is what had been demonstrated during the S&L debacle of the 1980s.
Starting about in 2005, Wall Street started bundling mortgages together into investment bundles. The initial offerings were greeted with great success, and soon everybody wanted to get in this new “product.” So great was the demand for Mortgage-backed Securities (MBS, also called Collateralized Debt Obligations) that Wall Street started running out of mortgages to front-load the system! This led to the creation of the “sub-prime” mortgage; granting mortgages to people who normally would not qualify. Congress, themselves invested in the Wall Street firms that were profiting from selling MBS, passed an $8000 first-time homebuyer tax credit (actually a loan repaid in future taxes) to lure more buyers in which helped front-load the process even faster. This sudden surge in new homebuyers increased demand and home prices skyrocketed! This made investors and homebuyers even more confident, demand for homes and MBS soared even higher and a genuine bubble was being formed.
Demand for MBS was so great that as the supply of available mortgages began to dwindle, brokers started taking ‘shortcuts’. Bear Sterns was pledging the same mortgages into multiple investment bundles; a clear case of fraud. Other brokers were blending mortgages into the bundles that were already in foreclosure. As the returns from the MBS failed to materialize evidence surfaced that the earlier earnings had not been genuine, but were “ponzi” payoffs, using money collected from new investors to send dividends to older investors.
The whole scan started to unravel in 2008 and here is where things took a dark turn. Because Congress had their own fortunes invested in the companies at the heart of the fraud, Congress decided to prop up the scam with taxpayer money and block any efforts to investigate or prosecute. That is why TARP was passed by the Congress despite 90% popular opposition. Congress were saving themselves at the expense of the taxpayers. The phrase “toxic asset” was DC-speak for the fraudulent mortgages backed securities, which were being repurchased in order to avoid investors seeking to jail the Wall Street criminals, which would have brought all of Wall Street down. Despite claims that the US taxpayer would be refunded when the “Toxic Assets” were resold at some point in the future, the reality is that none of those assets will ever see a penny of repayment, because they are all the product of the biggest financial swindle in history. Bigger than Tulip mania. Bigger than the Great South Seas Company disaster.
These fraudulent mortgage-backed securities were being given triple-A ratings by the Wall Street ratings agencies, which were supposed to provide independent analysis of the value of investments. But as we saw with Arthur Anderson and ENRON, the supposed independent authority colluded to make the swindle look better than it was. Because the ratings agencies were giving triple-A ratings to the mortgage-backed securities, even as they reeled from losses, pension funds and retirement funds were allowed to purchase them, which is the real reason why public pensions for teachers, police, and firefighters have gone broke.
Together with having to cover the credit default swaps sold with those mortgage backed securities, it is estimated that the swindle has cost the nation $27 trillion, at least $16 trillion admitted to by the Federal Reserve in “loans” and “bailouts” (actually buy-backs) from foreign investors such as Credit Suisse, Deutchebank, the Bank of Libya (boy, did THEY get hosed; 98% of their sovereign wealth fund destroyed by Goldman Sachs aka Gold In My Sacks!), etc. Globalism took a major swindle in the US financial system and turned it into a global cataclysm from which we are all still reeling.
But while the “Too Big To Fail” banks were being bailed out by the US Government, smaller banks caught in the mess were struggling to stay solvent as cash poured out of their coffers to buy back all that bad paper they had sold to investors. Those monthly payments made by home-owners were not sufficient to cover the losses; the whole value of those homes needed to be returned to the banks’ balance sheets to keep the banks technically solvent. So again, starting in 2008, Washington DC sent out a private message to banks and mortgage companies that DC would look the other way if foreclosures to home loans were “short-cutted.” This kicked off the “Foreclosuregate” scandal in which phony foreclosure paper mills, bogus notaries, MERS were all used to facilitate a massive land grab from the American people. As Damon Slivers put it during Congress’ hearings into the foreclosure mess, “We can have a realistic discussion of the foreclosure mess, or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks. We cannot do both. Which shall we do?”
In hindsight, it is obvious which choice the government made. We are seeing wealth confiscation, no different than when FDR confiscated the gold from the American people to save the banks, only this time, done in a covert way to trick Americans into thinking it was their own fault they lost their homes. But again, this was the result of official US policy which gave tax credits to corporations that actually encouraged offshoring of American jobs. In short, the US Government took their jobs to make it easer for the banks to take their homes, to save themselves from going to prison over the mortgage-backed securities fraud.
Iceland had the right solution. They tossed the crooked bankers in jail and fired the government that tried to loot the people to save those bankers and Iceland’s economy is already on the rise. (Which is why you don’t see much mention of them any more in the American media)
That is it in a nutshell!
Mischigan passes ‘License to Bully,’ No, Really…
By: James Burge
November 7th, 2011
In what can only be described as theology gone amuck, Michigan has passed a new law called ‘Matt’s Safe School Law’ (so named for Matt Epling, a Michigan teen who tragically took his own life as a result of threats, hazing and bullying) although, as you will see in the video below, of comments by Minority Leader in the Senate Gretchen Whitmer, it would not have done a single thing to save those individuals where bullying played a crucial role in their eventual suicide. What it does do, is further cement bullying as a systemic issue that, however unfortunate and deadly, is encouraged by teachers and now justified by lawmakers. It allows for a bully to provide a “religious or moral reason for their actions” meaning, as the GOP lawmakers seem to have intended it, a child who is taught homosexuality is wrong as justified by the Bible, apparently has the right to bully any child who they perceive to be homosexual using the Bible as religious justification for their bigotry. Of course weather or not this child is gay, lesbian, bisexual or possibly born intersex, is of no issue to the case, all this does is provide bullies with a backdoor so that certain types of bullying are not only acceptable, but are encouraged by such legislation.
There can be no moral reason justifying bullying, period. The fact that lawmakers have allowed for such justification provides that they do not understand the stigma and systemic ridicule that usually accompanies bullying, and how this poisoned environment effects the vary people they are tasked with trying to protect. This seems to be a last ditch effort to revive archaic beliefs that they see as loosing favour, and to give children raised in religious environments a licence to bully.
Could you envision this law being used by Muslims ridiculing young girls for not wearing head scarves, or Satanists even? How does one define a “religious or moral reason?” Is it only religions recognized by the government? Does scientology apply? can I use portions of LDS teachings to justify making fun of people who only have one mother??
It is a slippery slope to bigotry no matter how one looks at this law. This kind of reminds me of this idea that killing one person is murder, killing thousands is diplomacy. The US is falling all over itself to show that certain wrongs are in fact right, and certain rights, like the right to feel safe are apparently reserved for religious bigots.
Shame on you Michigan, Shame….
This is kind of pathertic…
By: James Burge
November 3rd, 2011
It wont let me embed the video so click here. Watch as the reporter acts like, wait for it, a reporter!!! But she is very good at avoiding the bigger issue.
And of course, as Alicia Points out, “the harper government” has made the same decision, likely for the same reasons.
Can you imagine if the USA negotiated with King George I regarding their own independence. On a somewhat related note, look for Israel to invade Iran before the US withdraw from Iraq January 1st, as they cannot finish a scermish with Iran but they sure as hell can start one.
Some more Occupy Wallstreet Videos…
By: James Burge
October 13th, 2011
(for SJ..)
Okay so I am going to post some videos I have come across from the occupy Wall Street crowd and try to communicate their message as best I can.
Unfortunately, The Mainstream media (MSM) wants you to believe that they are a bunch of disorganized delinquents who are just trying to stir things up because they are selfish, entitled or self-centred and that you shouldn’t pay any attention to their message, you wouldn’t understand it anyway, GO BACK TO SLEEP. So I will attempt to post some videos of the Occupiers themselves and attempt to put some of their main criticisms here.
These people are not mad about global warming or any other distraction the MSM uses to try to discredit these individuals. These people represent the 99% of us that don’t run banks, countries, corporations or the like. We are THE PEOPLE. They are veterans, students, there views across the spectrum (not that many of us buy the left right paradigm anymore anyway). They are frustrated that after years of bad bets, the United States government with the help of the Federal Reserve stepped in to cover Wall Street’s losses to the tune of 14 trillion dollars, (which is apparently equal to last years US GDP) so that wall street and the too big to fail banks can save face.
Evidence Surfaces of Prompt Criticality at Fukushima
By: James Burge
September 6th, 2011
For those of us fully aware of what was going on at Fukushima, this probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise, but there is no question this is very troubling.
Below is a recording made last night (timestamp: 2011-09-05 approx. 4:30am) of the live camera set up to monitor Fukushima. This video shows multiple flashes of light emanating from the crippled plant. This suggests some sort of prompt criticality occurring at the reactor. The question remains regarding the source, weather or not the flashes came from the melted fuel rods or, more likely, the spend fuel pool.
Some have already postulated that the ‘hydrogen explosion’ which occurred in the days following the earthquake and resulting tsunami may actually have been an explosion due to criticality in the spent fuel pool.
The concept of criticality was discovered back during the Manhattan project and was one of the few reasons the US beat the Germans to the Atom bomb. Criticality is the mass required of radioactive material, which will drive the atomic reaction to completion (although it is a bit more complicated than that but you get the gist), and any time you approach this mass you approach criticality.
There was a story, back in the 60s I believe ( May 21, 1946 actually), which was the second criticality accident in the US, this was of course before they had what little knowledge exists on nuclear power today (I believe this was actually the early stages of the Manhattan Project, Louis Slotin, I believe), and two large pieces of uranium (according to Wikipedia placing two half-spheres of beryllium (a neutron reflector) around a plutonium core). Then, human error resulted in the two plutonium pieces coming into contact with each other. If left this probably would have produced the runaway reaction we know as an atomic bomb. However, true criticality was averted when Louis separated the two pieces of plutonium halting the reaction. Of course this scientist lost his life 9 days later due to the high dose of radiation he received, but it is unknown how many lives he saved by his actions although he is credited with saving the lives of the other 7 scientists present at the time of the incident.
Today’s modern atomic bombs rely on this same principal. A mass of highly enriched radioactive compound just short of critical mass is present in the bomb. Another piece which would put the mass over criticality is forced into the other piece at detonation, creating criticality and the resulting explosion of energy.
So from what I understand, the spent fuel pool has had similar criticality incidents which were the likely source of the ‘hydrogen’ explosion. So it is my hypothesis that these flashes (which seem to be Air Ionization) seen in the video below are likely due to minor criticality reactions (called Prompt critical reactions). Although my guess is that due to the fact the radioactive compounds are likely in solution (in the spent fuel pool), then these prompt criticalities seem to create enough force to push other radioactive ions away reducing criticality at the source. Unfortunately, if this is the case, I think it may be only a matter of time before these minor criticalities, add up to a total criticality that would sustain the nuclear reaction and send what is left of Fukushima sky high, and of course any radioactive debris leftover, including any HIGHLY deadly plutonium, into the upper atmosphere to be distributed around the globe.
Let us just hope this doesn’t happen and I get to look like a crazy person; although the odds of that seem to be getting worse by the day.
