Actually I think they'd taste terrible

 

The Great Prosperity vs The Great Regression. Or why we can't afford stuff.

 Posted on Reddit:

Feed the Rich, Starve the Poor

 

It's pearl clutching time

 

Yup.

 

Because soon they will push too far....

Is what is going on in the news right now the frantic flailing of the old white male patriarchy, the last fevered dream of the privileged upper class before all power and riches are stripped away? The horrific treatment in the concentration camps at the border. The refusal to acknowledge the humanity of the immigrants. The continual self-justification by the police for the shooting of men of color because they are so afraid that if those scary black men ever got into power, they would do unto the white man what has been done to them?

Judges declaring it was just 'one rape,' or blaming the woman, or giving out a mild slap on the wrist because he was from a good family? The Trumps, Epsteins, the Brock Turners? Is this using a woman's biology against her to hold her down, subjugate her, and force her to return to the kitchen? Deny access to abortion, the right to choose, birth control, or child care. Deny access to healthcare, equal pay, voting rights, civil rights?

The horrible inequity of the tilted playing field of the economy, where millennials are unable to afford housing or cars, unable to escape the incapacitating student debt, while the rich become richer and more indifferent to the other 90 percent?

Is this a desire to crush hopes and efforts for a better future and try and jam everyone back into the 1950s, where white men ruled and everyone else knew their place?

Because the world has changed.

We won't go back.

They have the right to be afraid.

Beggar man, thief....

It's happening already

Quoting the Daily Kos: (read this article in full!)

As John Nichols put it this week in The Nation, the Republican Party is no longer a political “party” per se, but a mere vehicle, a conspiracy for seizing and holding power on behalf of a tiny sliver of the wealthiest among us. If that wasn’t evident from the grotesquely skewed tax cut inflicted on the American population in 2016—the sole “achievement” of the Republicans’ entire tenure in this Congress-- then the assaults on Democracy underway in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina prove it beyond any doubt, as gerrymandered Republican legislators working in the dark hours of the night hastily rewrite the powers afforded to their newly-elected Democratic state governors.  An insolent autocracy heedless to the interests or well-being of the American people is no longer “creeping”  into government from the shadows. Let’s be clear: it is upon us.

THIS time she'll let you kick the ball, Charlie Brown!

Cut support of the middle class at your peril

Ultra-rich man’s letter: “To My Fellow Filthy Rich Americans: The Pitchforks Are Coming”

Thursday blues

Water shortages and drought worse than predicted.

Facts about the Zika virus... and did Monsanto have a hand in it?  (Apparently, no.)  But it will cost a lot to fight. And what about sex changes for mosquitoes?

Obama saves more land in California.

4 Commonly Prescribed Drugs That May Not Be Safe

Income inequality and how to fix it.

New California National Monuments.  Thanks, Obama!  Really.  Thank you!

Warnings to all federal employees and law enforcement because of backlash over the Malheur arrests.

Now you know where your missing socks go.

Being colorblind is not the point.

Well, we're certainly NOT.

George W. Bush: 'I'm Comfortable With What I Did'

You don't say!

A Brief History Lesson for Justice Antonin ‘Racial Entitlement’ Scalia

Baby elephant hugs.

Writing the Unwritten Handbook: Antifascism and Neighborhood Resistance in Athens

State Department’ Keystone XL Report Actually Written By TransCanada Contractor

Poor Jeb Bush.

Here Are Some Rich New Yorkers Whining About Feeling Poor (The comments are enlightening.)

Howard Fineman: We Are Living in the World Dick Cheney Made

The rich poor divide.

To help you win climate change arguments.

A veteran's remorse: what have we done to Iraq?

Stop it!

Being clueless and rich is hard!

Burns?  Or Romney?

Darrell Issa hits the big time...

Dealing with a troll.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

In Arizona, where anti-abortion crusaders have passed some of the most restrictive women’s health laws in the country, abortion rates seemed to have increased. 

And by the way, good Christian women? Shut up.

High Fructose Corn Syrup must be called that, not the 'disguised' name of Corn Sugar.

Maybe the Earth had two moons at one time?

Thor's day

How not to critique comics.

Bees and pesticides do not mix.

The problem with The Onion is that it is always too close to the truth;  take this one on Romney.  And now Romney has exposed what he really thinks and has pissed off the 47%....



West Wing. How we wish politics would be and how politicians would act ... as if they had our best interests at heart.  So here's an ad with the actors playing themselves, acting as we would have real politicians act, standing up for the good guys:



Speaking of good guys... you always need a bad guy for balance.  Darth Karl Rove.

Yum yum.  Monsanto's genetically modified corn causes tumors in rats.

Arctic thaw perhaps sped up by oil and shipping?

Facebook messages are protected speech.

But we're VIPs!

13 reasons why this is the worst Congress ever


Krugman: Who’s Very Important? (short answer: Not the super rich.)

What about the argument that we must keep taxes on the rich low lest we remove their incentive to create wealth? The answer is that we have a lot of historical evidence, going all the way back to the 1920s, on the effects of tax increases on the rich, and none of it supports the view that the kinds of tax-rate changes for the rich currently on the table — President Obama’s proposal for a modest rise, Mr. Romney’s call for further cuts — would have any major effect on incentives. Remember when all the usual suspects claimed that the economy would crash when Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993? 

Furthermore, if you’re really concerned about the incentive effects of public policy, you should be focused not on the rich but on workers making $20,000 to $30,000 a year, who are often penalized for any gain in income because they end up losing means-tested benefits like Medicaid and food stamps. I’ll have more to say about that in another column. By the way, in 2010, the average annual wage of manicurists — “nails ladies,” in Romney-donor speak — was $21,760. 

So, are the very rich V.I.P.? No, they aren’t — at least no more so than other working Americans. And the “common person” will be hurt, not helped, if we end up with government of the 0.01 percent, by the 0.01 percent, for the 0.01 percent.

Will we ever be able to learn from our experiences?

Or will we have to repeat them over and over and over....

After the storm.

Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Chernobyl

Internet virus

Libor's dirty laundry:

Yet, on these shores, the reaction has been mainly a shrug. Perhaps we’re suffering from bank-scandal fatigue, having lived through Bank of America’s various travails, and the Goldman Sachs revelations, and, most recently, the big JPMorgan Chase trading loss. Or maybe Libor is just hard to gets one’s head around. But the Brits have this one right. They may not understand the intricacies of Libor any better than we do, but they sense, powerfully, that banks have once again made a mockery of the role that society entrusts to them. “Why has the scandal created outrage in Britain? Because it truly is outrageous,” said Karen Petrou, the managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics. “They weren’t supposed to be fixing that rate — no matter what the reason.” She continued: “If I give you my money, I need to be able to trust you with it. If you can only be trusted via regulation, then you might as well be a utility. And if banks can’t be trusted to manage their trading desks, then we need to rethink our whole model of banking.” Petrou is not an advocate of returning to the days of Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law that separated investment banking and commercial banking. But with the Libor scandal, she said, she could certainly understand the growing calls for it. Barclays, of course, is hardly the only big bank that manipulated Libor for fun and profit. It is simply the first to admit its wrongdoing and settle with the government. The word is that just about every big bank is under investigation for playing games with Libor, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and other American-based financial giants. Which means there is going to be a lot more opportunities for Americans to become outraged over this scandal. And, maybe, to finally summon the will to change banking once and for all.

O brave new world

That has such people in't!

Food stamp president

We kinda figured that out, Mittens.

Romney: ‘I’m Not Concerned With The Very Poor’.

 Guess what? Mitt Romney Has No Idea That 50% of Americans Are Poor Or Low Income

 Surprise!

It's so difficult to connect with the rabble when you live in the rarefied air of the .01 percent of the 1 percenters....