“What the heck is going on”? 

This is my daily round up of all of the stories that are sent to me through FaceBook, Twitter and e-mails. These stories will be the ones that I find interesting or informative.

Warning: The sarcasm meter is off the charts!

The world is going crazy and while it is in the process of so doing, and before it reaches its final destination, of “CrazyLand,” I am going to continue to be informed.  Feel free to join me, but be warned, as Margo Channing memorably declared in “All About Eve” – “Fasten your seat belts. It is going to be a bumpy night” – or day!

Variations of verbiage for today:

Yippee! All is well in the financial world! The Dow is dancing in the streets, or at least on Wall Street, all because the Federal Reserve and compatriots “lowered the cost of emergency dollar funding for financial companies in a global effort to ease Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis!” So that means that Europeans can more easily exchange their Euros for US dollars, and vice versa? Who gets the better deal? Somehow I think that since the US taxpayer is being made the patsy of the world, it will not be the US taxpayer, or investor for that matter.  I am going to begin my own version of swaps. I will swap my skills as a writer, faux gourmet chef, fairly articulate speaker for US dollars. I absolutely refuse to take any Euros. J

The good news keeps pouring in! Cyber Monday “was the highest-grossing online shopping day in U.S. history, with spending reaching $1.25 billion!” I am almost ashamed of myself. I did not contribute and “share the wealth,” or the buying. Here was history being made in the US and I did not participate. I wonder how many folks in Europe participated. I am going to have a hard time believing all of the other statistics about “economic uncertainty,” and “economic downturn.” There is money out there, just not in my wallet.

Instead of Cyber Monday, in Little Havana, Miami, "free holiday food vouchers" Wednesday? The crowd is described thus:

Some people began to line up last Friday. Many of those who waited in line for hours were either unemployed or they live on a fixed income and can’t afford any extras.

Still in Miami – stealing Continental breakfasts from hotels? This is a new one to me:

Times are tough, so many people search for hotels with free continental breakfasts. 

Folks walk into tourist hotels and pose as guests to gain access to morning chow. Who would do such a wacky thing? Lots of people it turns out.

If they keep coming back, he either charges $7.50 -- the estimated cost of the breakfast per person for the hotel, or calls the cops and have them charged with trespassing, but not stealing!

Still on the subject of meals – In San Francisco, McDonalds is outsmarting the Happy Meal toy ban? I love it! I don’t eat at McDonalds or any of the other fast food places, but anytime anyone can get one over on the “law happy leaders,” I am in that person or company’s corner. These lawmakers, at all levels of government, are out of control. Maybe they need more happy meals! Even better, maybe this situation is another plug for having part time legislators? “Healthy Meal Incentive Ordinance”? Why the heck don’t you people return to filling potholes and cleaning it parks, and leave parents to raise their children? You won’t because we, Mr. & Mrs. Citizen, are too busy to keep an eye on you.

On the other side of the euphoria street dancing are these S&P's downgrades “for many of the world’s largest banks, including Citigroup (NYSE: C), Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC).”

When I mentioned about the world heading for “CrazyLand,” I was kidding. Maybe I am onto something.

Henry Paulson “gave Hedge Funds advance notice of the rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” back in 2008? These folks must have financial STDs from their financial incestuous relationships! They, including politicians, are in that square footage in Washington, or that other square footage in NYC, in their “hallowed ground,” and we the “prey” are outfoxed, time after time, after time! I hope that this is not true.

I was going to include about Occupy LA being evicted from the grass of the Los Angeles City Council, or wherever the heck the occupation was, but I am just not that interested. Good luck to the occupiers, and the taxpayers who will be picking up the tab for the cleanup and the policing.

I wish that I could end this with a cute puppy story, but this one is about slaughtering horses. We may soon be eating horse burgers, with a side order of fries? Maybe I am betraying my lack of sophistication, but I do not envision having the equivalent of Trigger on my plate – ever! The GAO is presenting its case:

In June the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s official investigative branch, released a report saying the ban had shut down U.S. slaughter, but that only depressed prices for horses here while causing many of the animals to be shipped to “foreign slaughtering facilities where U.S. humane slaughtering protections do not apply.”

So, the bottom line is that the horses should be slaughtered, the only difference being that the U.S. has “humane slaughtering protections.” My bottom line is that humanely or not – the horses are murdered. Bred to be dead. L

On that less than cheery note, that’s it folks.