The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Cliff Varnell]

PIERS MORGAN: President Trump's painfully deluded train-wreck HBO interview proved he hasn't just lost control of the coronavirus - he's lost control of reality 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8591593/PIERS-MORGAN-Trumps-deluded-train-wreck-HBO-interview-proved-hes-lost-control-reality.html
 

[Steve Thomas]

My new five words.

It. Is. What. It. Is.

Donald Trump's response to the coronavirus death toll.

From Piers Morgan in the Daily Mail,

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8591593/PIERS-MORGAN-Trumps-deluded-train-wreck-HBO-interview-proved-hes-lost-control-reality.html

"'It is what it is' - that was the President's staggering response to the ongoing horrific slaughter of Americans by a deadly virus.

No empathy, no apology, no expression of sorrow.

Just a heartless, dismissive shrug."

 

Condensed down to two words, "&^%$#  happens!"

Steve Thomas

[Ron Ecker]

That describes Donald Trump. "It is what it is."

 

 

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

I always liked Biden's common working person relating and caring speaking style.

Telling sentimental working class stories of sitting on his boy's beds and telling them "Champ, you just give it your best honest shot, and everything will work out."

Or, "Folks, I know what it's like to worry about the basic bills, to worry about getting basic health care, of worrying whether your kids will get a fair shot at life..."

"I care...about plain working folk."

It's better than listening to a life long, spoiled rotten, platinum spoon fed, ego maniac bully like Trump who couldn't care less about or relate at all to working class and poorer Americans and their real life concerns, worries and needs if he tried...which he never has...and never will. 

 

Edited August 4, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Douglas Caddy]

Michigan ballots tangled in mail delays in advance of Tuesday primary

Washington Post

August 4, 2020

Mail problems marred the delivery of absentee ballots in Michigan in the run-up to Tuesday’s primary in the state, testing election administrators and ramping up fears of political pressure on the U.S. Postal Service just three months before Nov. 3.

Across the state, where polls opened Tuesday at 7 a.m., some voters reported not receiving their absentee ballots with just days left before the vote for several congressional primaries, as well as state and local offices. Election officials advised voters to submit their absentee ballots in person at election offices or dropboxes by 8 p.m. Tuesday, rather than risk delayed delivery by the Postal Service.

The difficulties in Michigan — one of five states holding primaries Tuesday and a crucial presidential battleground for the fall — offer a potential warning ahead of the general election, when millions more votersthan in past yearsare expected to vote absentee to avoid possible exposure to the novel coronavirus at in-person polling locations.

 

[Steve Thomas]

Why the idea of jobless benefits scares the conservative mind

By Sonali Kolhatkar

https://www.salon.com/2020/08/04/why-the-idea-of-jobless-benefits-scares-the-conservative-mind_partner/

 

$600 a week correlates to $15.00 per hour for a 40 hour week. The Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour.

“Conservative talking points for years warned against an economic apocalypse resulting from a higher minimum wage, saying that corporations would cut jobs—as if under the current status quo they are keeping on more workers than they actually need. Such notions have done deep damage to the economy.”

"According to one estimate, the benefits comprise 15 percent of all wages in the nation, and "unemployed people are spending more than they did before the pandemic, while those who have jobs are spending less."

“If tax dollars ensure that the poorest Americans have a basic income, it is likely to stabilize consumer spending. Even some billionaires see value in the idea. Tilman Fertitta, a restaurateur and owner of the Houston Rockets, said, "You're going to see this economy go backwards when we cut out this $600 a week."”

Steve Thomas

[Ron Ecker]

5 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Have you ever closely watched his body language as he leaves the stage? His head is slumped and his shoulders are sagged. He knows what he is doing is wrong. He looks guilty as hell.

 

I don't think it's guilt. How does a narcissistic sociopath feel any guilt? If I knew one, I would ask him.

 

[David Andrews]

4 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Why the idea of jobless benefits scares the conservative mind

By Sonali Kolhatkar

https://www.salon.com/2020/08/04/why-the-idea-of-jobless-benefits-scares-the-conservative-mind_partner/

 

$600 a week correlates to $15.00 per hour for a 40 hour week. The Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour.

“Conservative talking points for years warned against an economic apocalypse resulting from a higher minimum wage, saying that corporations would cut jobs—as if under the current status quo they are keeping on more workers than they actually need. Such notions have done deep damage to the economy.”

"According to one estimate, the benefits comprise 15 percent of all wages in the nation, and "unemployed people are spending more than they did before the pandemic, while those who have jobs are spending less."

“If tax dollars ensure that the poorest Americans have a basic income, it is likely to stabilize consumer spending. Even some billionaires see value in the idea. Tilman Fertitta, a restaurateur and owner of the Houston Rockets, said, "You're going to see this economy go backwards when we cut out this $600 a week."”

Steve Thomas

I was going to say previously: What the jobless benefits controversy highlights is the fact that American workers have been underpaid for decades.  Where politicians come down on the jobless benefits illustrates their general regard of American society, and of their constituents.

A little Jonathan Swift here (re: "A Modest Proposal," the satire in which Swift suggested cooking the Irish and feeding them to Britain):

Americans have stood by in unconcern while, after WW II, their government has slaughtered and exploited, in no particular order, Koreans, Vietnamese, Indonesians, Timorese, Central Americans, South Americans, Mexicans, Congolese and other Africans, Iraqis, the peoples of the Balkans, more.  (Feel free to add your favorite outrage to the list.)  For their acquiescence in butchery and oppression abroad, Americans should be living like kings upon the earth, or like Antebellum slaveholders.  Instead, Americans are now discovering that their governors, employers and police are entirely willing to treat them as badly and dispose of them as readily as any "citizens" of our manufactured banana republics or "gook" domains abroad.  No one here has gotten their peace dividend; no one has gotten their war dividend.  We have only gotten wage slavery, abandonment in old age, and the threat or reality of police murder.  The Reign of Terror in revolutionary France, with its riots and guillotines, seems a more rational societal response to such mistreatment than does putting on a MAGA hat.

Edited August 4, 2020 by David Andrews

[Douglas Caddy]

Blue State Genocide: Is Acting President Jared Kushner Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity?

 

https://gregolear.substack.com/p/blue-state-genocide-is-acting-president?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo5NTk5NDEyLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo4MDcyNTIsIl8iOiJCQ0FoYiIsImlhdCI6MTU5NjU2NDMxMSwiZXhwIjoxNTk2NTY3OTExLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjA2OTUiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.7LcQBrOGY0sQwfqITFmmuw1emL34Ft26xcmaqQKa4Kk

[Douglas Caddy]

The Pandemic Is a Dress Rehearsal

The world is entering a transformative era. Prepare for more chaos and instability.

By

Walter Russell Mead

Wall Street Journal

 

 

Aug. 3, 2020 6:52 pm ET

• https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pandemic-is-a-dress-rehearsal-11596495140

Eight months after the novel coronavirus burst out of Wuhan, China, it has created unprecedented economic and social disruption, with economies cratering across the globe and more destruction to come. Tens of millions have lost their jobs, and millions more have seen their life savings disappear as governments forced restaurants, bars and other small businesses to shut their doors.

Wealthy societies are able, for now, to print and pump money in hope of limiting the social and economic damage, but such measures cannot be extended forever. For the first time since the 1940s, political authorities around the world face a flood of economic and political challenges that could overwhelm the safeguards built into the system.

In poorer countries, the situation is worse. The pandemic rages unchecked through countries like South Africa and Brazil, where low commodity prices, falling remittances and falling demand for industrial products are intersecting with capital flight to create an unprecedented economic shock. Countries like Lebanon and Ethiopia, facing grave crises before the pandemic, struggle to maintain basic order.

Science will, we must hope, come to the rescue with a vaccine or a cure before our resources are exhausted. But as the world wrings its hands and waits for a deus ex machina, we must recognize that the end of the pandemic does not mean a return to the relatively stable world of the post-Cold War era.

Governments and other institutions have always had to deal with difficult challenges that they couldn’t predict. Disease, famine and barbarian invasions fell unexpectedly on societies that often struggled merely to survive. The Industrial Revolution brought new perils like financial panics, the business cycle and social upheavals. Millions left the land and learned to depend on the modern economy for sustenance. Revolutionary political movements that challenged the old order could be as destructive and mysterious as the plagues and famines of earlier times.

After World War II, as the threat of nuclear war glowered in the background, the assumption that humanity could deal with most natural disasters, health problems and the business cycle took hold. It wasn’t utopia, but life seemed more predictable than in the past. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the threat of nuclear war receded into the background and Western self-confidence reached new heights. Over the past 30 years, the world has developed an intricately organized, massively complex, extraordinarily effective and extremely dynamic global civilization.

The pandemic, which is mild as the great plagues of history go, demonstrates that the complexity of this global civilization has become a source of new vulnerabilities. And with the legitimacy of many institutions resting on their ability to solve problems quickly and effectively, Covid-19 challenges political leaders and institutions in ways that they cannot easily manage.

The world needs to get used to that feeling. The pandemic’s legacy will be crisis and chaos—and the trajectory of human civilization has shifted in ways that will test political leaders and economic policy makers more severely than anything since World War II. This is partly because the return of great-power competition introduces new risks and complications into the international system. More fundamentally, it is because the information revolution is beginning to disrupt the world as profoundly and traumatically as the Industrial Revolution disrupted the 19th-century world.

The transformation of the workplace by information technology has been a bright spot in the pandemic, allowing many businesses and important institutions to continue functioning even as key employees stay home. But the same transformation is also driving many of the forces destabilizing society: declines in stable manufacturing jobs, whole regions hollowed out by economic change, the collapse of professional journalism and the rise of social media, the implosion of traditional retail, and looming job threats as self-driving cars and other new technological innovations move into the marketplace.

A host of 21st-century problems threaten to overwhelm the institutions of both national and global governance: the emergence of China as a new kind of economic and geopolitical challenger, the escalating arms races in cyber and biological weapons, the global surge of populism and nationalism, and the growing risks from poorly understood vulnerabilities and relationships in volatile and rapidly changing financial markets. Any one of these could push the world into a cycle of crisis and conflict resembling the first half of the 20th century.

Covid-19 is less a transient, random disturbance after which the world will return to stability than it is a dress rehearsal for challenges to come. History is accelerating, and the leaders, values, institutions and ideas that guide society are going to be tested severely by the struggles ahead.

 

Edited August 4, 2020 by Douglas Caddy

[Cliff Varnell]

4 hours ago, Robert Wheeler said:

. Biden's dementia though has diminished any "regular guy" appeal at this point,

The Robert Wheeler comedy tour continues.

Yo Semites!

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/idiot-trump-mocked-after-struggling-to-pronounce-yosemite-and-he-questions-bidens-cognitive-abilities/

[Kirk Gallaway]

1 hour ago, Cliff Varnell said:

The Robert Wheeler comedy tour continues.

Yo Semites!

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/idiot-trump-mocked-after-struggling-to-pronounce-yosemite-and-he-questions-bidens-cognitive-abilities/

 Yo Semites! some of my best friends are Semites! Me and Jared are like this! ll

Itiz wot itiz!

Both sides can make an embarrassing tape of the other sides gaffes. In an era of tribalism, In many sites I've seen, it seems the opposition to Trump is much more well informed about what the other side is thinking, and is much more aware of Biden's liabilities than Trump supporters are typically aware of Trump's liabilities. To think that Biden is so vulnerable and Trump isn't, just illustrates that massive blind spot. Maybe it's because of  the desire to read and dissemble information comes more naturally to the opposition.

Edited August 4, 2020 by Kirk Gallaway

[Douglas Caddy]

Greg Palast on Wisconsin's November election

https://www.gregpalast.com/wisconsin-eats-its-young/

[Joe Bauer]

4 hours ago, David Andrews said:

I was going to say previously: What the jobless benefits controversy highlights is the fact that American workers have been underpaid for decades. 

BINGO!

It's that simple David.

I was making $10 an hour as a manual laborer in 1980.

Apartments were $250 to $400 a month back then. Gas was 1/3rd or less than what it is today. Groceries were less than half what they are today, etc., etc.

Today, non-union manual labor might pay $15 an hour ( 10's of millions make $12 or less in retail, hospitality, fast food jobs etc.)  yet all the basic necessities cost 3 to 5X more than 1980.

Do the math. 

Income for half the country has risen 50% in 40 years while the cost of basic's has increased 300% to 500% in this same time frame.

50% increase in wages ... compared to 300% to 500% in basic expense costs?   

Uh ... HELLO!

So easy to see and understand what has gone wrong here.

You'd have to make $30 to $40 an hour now to afford what you could in 1980.

This massive income versus cost of living disparity fact is the big white elephant in the room that our ruling class ( and a compliant press ) keeps out of our national stress priority spotlight.

It's a hidden crushing reality.  10's of millions of lower wage workers in this country live in a constant and exhausting state of monthly bill paying shortage stress.

 

Where politicians come down on the jobless benefits illustrates their general regard of American society, and of their constituents.

 

 

Edited August 4, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[David Andrews]

14 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

It's a hidden  crushing reality.  10's of millions of lower wage workers in this country live in a constant and exhausting state of monthly bill paying shortage stress.

Demand reparations to US citizens calculated by the capita of non-Americans killed or oppressed since WW II.  Plus an extra 0.25% of the total, per American, for the lives of JFK, RFK, MLK.

We've earned our murder bounty.  Pay it like they used to pay for wolf hides or scalps in old New England.

Extract the money from the oppressed countries themselves.  It's their fault if they were stupid enough, or religio-pacifist enough, to let us run roughshod over them.

Edited August 4, 2020 by David Andrews