Going nowhere and nowhere fast

Richer man and poorer man

One of the side effects of the shit show that is Donald Trump's Presidency is the fact that important stories fall by the wayside in the interim of whatever the Idiot-In-Chief is tweeting.  Just last week the Federal Reserve released a study that showed the top 1% of Americans have gained $21 trillion in wealth since 1989, while the bottom 50% of us lost $900 billion.

This is not sustainable.

This shows that the American Dream is out of the reach of a majority of Americans.

But the media will  keep on reporting Trump's tweets so they can sell more papers and more ad time.

They just shouldn't be surprised when their empires burn to the ground in the coming economic firestorm.

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Deja vu all over again

Seems the House Democrats are funding a major research program to figure out how to get Democrats to the polls in 2014--and they have discovered that republicans are the party of the rich and don't care about working class families.  And when you run against them on it, Democratic voters turn out.

You know, I've been following politics since 1976 when I was a wee lad of seventeen--and even back then, republicans were the party of the rich.  It's not like the discovery of this research is akin to the discovery of penicillin.

Don't get me wrong--I'm all for Democrats running on income inequality.  But it's news like this that sometimes makes you wonder what the worldview must be like for the powers that be in the Democratic Party, who apparently live on Planet Oblivious.

Peace,
emaycee

Speaking of maggots

You know, it's not surprising that some psychopath passing himself off as the CEO of JPMorgan gets treated like a Faberge egg by Senate republicans during his testimony--hell, those numbnuts would blow the Koch brothers and let them post the video on Youtube for a fucking nickel.  But other than Sens. Menendez and Merkley, the Democrats were equally feckless.  Don't suppose it has anything to do with the money JPMorgan has given the Banking Committee members (republicans got $265,000, Dems got $252,000), do you?  For a party of the working man (and woman), it was a pretty pathetic performance by the Dems, and is a fine case in point for why Dem enthusiasm doesn't equal that of the republicans.

More pathetic, though, was Jamie Dimon offering to get an apartment in D.C. to help Congress with banking regulations.  I can often be a sarcastic smart ass on this blog, but I say this with all seriousness:  I would truly, truly rather entrust banking regulations to Charles Manson than Dimon and his cronies.  At least, 99% of us can agree that Manson is out of his mind--Dimon actually has people who believe he's good at what he does and isn't the cancer on society that he is.  After the fiasco that was 2008 on Wall Street, it's utterly amazing to me that people like Dimon even have a seat at the table.

Peace,
emaycee

Da Yoopers

The Free Press recently gave front page space to the advocates for the Upper Peninsula (U.P.--for non-natives, it's that section of Michigan above the mitten, separated by Lakes Michigan and Huron) seceding from Michigan and becoming the 51st state.  The U.P. is a largely rural area, fairly conservative (though Bart Stupak, a conservative Democrat, did represent them for many years) that's known mostly for being cold (some areas average over 400 inches of snow a year) and barren (less than 3% of Michigan's 11 million citizens live there, and it represents 30% of our land mass).

Needless to say, before I had read the article, it was, "Gee, I wonder what goofy redneck reason they have for that desire?"  but after reading it (it remains highly unlikely that the U.P. will secede) you can see that they are raising legitimate concerns that the republicans in Lansing are overstepping their bounds when it comes to mining rights in the U.P.--the article doesn't mention it, but one has to believe the republicans are trying to kiss some corporate ass somewhere on this deal, even though taxes being collected by Lansing are part of it as well. 

What was interesting, though, is that it isn't just down here where Gov. Snyder isn't all that popular.  I would have figured that the U.P. was one of his safe havens, but judging from the people's reactions (and Gov. Snyder's spokesman's defensive response) he isn't all that popular up there, either.

I still think it's a very longshot that he is defeated in 2014 (too much money, too much of the major media believing the hype that Snyder has actually accomplished something, all evidence to the contrary), but it does give some hope that we might be able to at least make his campaign have to work for it.

Peace,
emaycee

Pretty please?

So the republicans want to bring extending the Bush tax cuts to a vote before the elections in November...

...Oh, please, please, please, please, please, please do.  With income inequality in the American people's consciousness for perhaps the first time ever (thanks to the Occupy Movement), and a solid majority of Americans in favor of taxing the wealthy more than they currently are, I think the time is ripe for republicans to hand over even more money to millionaires and billionaires.

And, by extension, give the Democrats an even better shot at holding the Senate and taking back the House.

Peace,
emaycee