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The Billionaire Bonanza report stated: “Our wealthiest 400 now have more wealth combined than the bottom 64 percent of the U.S. population, an estimated 80 million households or 204 million people.” That’s more people than the population of Canada and Mexico combined.
IPS’s Chuck Collins and Josh Hoxie know it is not a “natural phenomenon,” how the rich got rich at the expense of the rest of the population. They say it’s the result of “unfair economic policies that benefit those at the top at the expense of those at the bottom.”
This IPS report, "Billionaire Bonanza," says “All combined, households in the bottom one percent have a combined negative net worth of $196 billion. For comparison, the top one percent, a category holding the exact same number of people, have positive $33.4 trillion in combined net worth.”______________
Republican House Members Think a $450K Salary is Middle Class
In China, Trump Becomes the Capitulator-in-Chief
Paying Off Post-9/11 U.S. War Debt Could Cost $8 Trillion
The Assault On RT America*____________
This is America today. And the incompetents ruling incompetents want war with Iran, Korea, Russia, China. Considering the extraordinary level of incompetence throughout the United States, I guarantee you that we will not win these wars.
Just to start with the good news:
In other words, the First Amendment, along with the rest of the US Constitution, has been repealed by Washington’s assertion of raw power, not limited by law or even morality.
I am not being facetious when I tell you “don’t expect to live much longer.” We are ruled by mindless, insane, psychopaths who believe that the US is invulnerable. These dumbshits are likely to get us all blown off the face of the earth.
So, there's a possibility there's a more important national issue than Hillary Clinton's book tour on our agenda right now.
Wouldn't it be mildly humorous if her media-oriented book chat, Trump's international reconciliation farce and the RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA! orchestrated furor were all just smoke and mirrors for those eager to put the Russians out of the energy biz?
Those pipelines. Almost like memories from a distant past. But . . . wait . . . .
The U.S. did so much good in Afghanistan, and Iraq, and Libya, and Syr . . . .
The future awaits those not already totally consumed by the smoky mirrors.
One more powerful thought:
Having grown up during the second half of the 20th century, I don’t recognize my country today. I experienced life in a competent country, and now I experience life in an incompetent country.
Everything is incompetent. The police are incompetent. They shoot children, grandmothers, cripples, and claim that they feared for their life.
Washington’s foreign policy is incompetent. Washington has alienated the world with its insane illegal attacks on other countries. Today the United States and Israel are the two most distrusted countries on earth and the two countries regarded as the greatest threat to peace.
The military/security complex is incompetent. The national security state is so incompetent that it was unable to block the most humiliating attack in history against a superpower that proved to be entirely helpless as a few people armed with box cutters and an inability to fly an airplane destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon itself. The military industries have produced at gigantic cost the F-35 that is no match for the Russian fighters or even for the F-15s and F-16s it is supposed to replace.
The media is incompetent. I can’t think of an accurate story that has been reported in the 21st century. There must be one, but it doesn’t come to mind.______________
Want to know the real story of why Hillary Clinton lost? Don't consult the "National New York Times Enquirer."
The Clinton/Obama wing of the party has historically leaned toward reducing government deficits, public/private partnerships, means testing for government services, and as global, interventionist military presence. Politically, it has sought to align itself (and raise money from) corporate interests, Wall Street, and the national security establishment.
Expediency, self-interest, and cynicism play a role in this thinking, but I believe it’s often based on sincerely held beliefs about how the world works — economically, politically, and in foreign policy. I think it’s wrong, but I think it’s sincere.
For their part, many Democrats in Clinton wing judge the left harshly. They’ve stoked false “Bernie Bro” memes, dismissed progressive proposals as unachievable “ponies,” and liberally thrown “Putin’s Puppet” accusations at those with whom they disagree. They’re dismissive of policies such as Medicare For All, a new Glass-Steagall, the breakup of big banks, an end to job-killing corporate trade deals, and the downsizing of our military and national-security complexes.
My buddy Lee has the rest of the story.
Not to mention the infamous Lionel!
Don't read the comments attached to these videos. They are just TOO RICH (and well-informed)!!!
(e.g., Inisfad My exact impression: Brazile did this with the full knowledge and support of the DNC and Democratic elites. They knew of no other way to extricate themselves from the Clinton machine, where they saw that they were losing all support due to this relationship. Brazile was basically ‘used’ to start the severing of this relationship.or:
SheLikesSteel Donna Brazile was brought in to sweep the Bernie issue under the rug, and to get him quietly onboard with the Hillary game - which she did. She was also the tried and trusted captain of the DNC who could be counted on to help Hillary cheat her way through the campaign - which she did. Now she releases a book that basically helps the DNC, Clinton, Obama, et al. thumb their noses at America. There's a plot yet to be uncovered in this story.)
And then there's Jimmy Dore (doubling down on the last damage control? P.S. Evidently, according to her memory, she did not write "her" book):
The shouting will not stop until after the hi-jinks of the last election have been truly exposed, and it's difficult to see its normal culmination in lawsuits and/or jail time as almost every institution in the USA! USA! USA! is involved in the charade.
What are the odds of actually disemboweling this beast?
99 - 1?
And why is this dilemma so incredibly important now?
* . . . Put the censorship campaigns together and the message is clear: Left-wing critics, already marginalized by the state, must be silenced.
It would seem, given how we are locked out of the corporate media and public broadcasting, that the assault is overkill. But the ideology that sustains the corporate state, the “free market” and neoliberalism has lost all credibility. The corporate state has no counterargument to its critics. The nakedness of corporate greed, exploitation and repression is transparent across the political spectrum. The ideological fortress erected by corporate power and sustained by its courtiers in the press and academia has collapsed. All it has left is a crude censorship.
Complicit in this censorship is a bankrupt liberal class. The institutions tasked with defending press freedom — including the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists and PEN — along with major news outlets such as The New York Times, have served as the corporate state’s useful idiots. Only a handful of journalists, including Truthdig Editor in Chief, Robert Scheer, grasp and decry the very real danger before us.
The charge that RT and these left-wing sites disseminate “foreign propaganda” is the beginning, not the end, of a broad campaign against press freedom. Once this precedent of state censorship is normalized, far more tepid and compliant media outlets will be targeted. Max Blumenthal wrote two good pieces on AlterNet about the puppet masters behind the censorship campaign. [Click here and here.]
The venom of the state toward its critics was displayed in a report by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections,” issued Jan. 6. In the report seven pages were specifically directed at RT America, much of the language focused on the journalist Abby Martin. Martin became one of the best-known critics of the corporate state during the Occupy movement. Her show on RT, “Breaking the Set,” which had been off the air for nearly two years when the report was published — a glaring error for an intelligence community awash in budgets of tens of billions of dollars — was denounced as a disseminator of “radical discontent.” The report complained that RT gave airtime to third-party candidate debates. The document attacked RT hosts for asserting that the two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a sham. It excoriated the network for covering Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and fracking.
The report charged:
RT’s reports often characterize the United States as a “surveillance state” and allege widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use.
RT has also focused on criticism of the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the US national debt. Some of RT’s hosts have compared the United States to Imperial Rome and have predicted that government corruption and “corporate greed” will lead to US financial collapse.
The “Alice in Wonderland” quality of the report would be laughable if it was not so ominous. The United States, in fact, is a surveillance state. Civil liberties have been eviscerated. Police brutality is endemic. Our drone wars have made us state terrorists. The economic structure serves the wealthiest corporations and oligarchs. Wall Street is run by a criminal class. Our debt is unsustainable, especially once the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, and like all decaying empires we are headed for collapse. The DNI report clarifies what the ruling elites fear — not fake news but the truth. And the truth is that the elites have destroyed the country and are traitors to democracy.
The DNI report was followed by a congressional hearing on “Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online,” held Oct. 31. Executives of Facebook, Twitter and Google were grilled about their roles in distributing fake news and extremist content that in the words of Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley included “spread[ing] stories about abuse of black Americans by law enforcement.” The executives promised to double down on their censorship, and they did so.
The ruling elites are desperately trying to shift the focus away from the cause of the political insurgencies on the left and the right — extreme social inequality. It is for this reason that critics who highlight and explore the roots and causes of social inequality must be discredited or silenced. If social inequality is accepted as the driving force behind the decay of the American state and the mounting rage of much of the population, then the structures that profit from this inequality will come under assault. All the elites have left is to paint their critics as “agents of a foreign power.”
The United States increasingly resembles a totalitarian state. Our anemic democracy is on life support. A reasoned debate about social inequality or the crimes and misjudgments of empire is becoming impossible. This presages a frightening future. There will be many “good” Americans who, when the history of this moment is recorded, will be responsible. And one day, to their surprise, they too will be victims.
And these testimonies have absolutely nothing to do with why the U.S. has gone to war against most of the world since 9/ll.
Max and Stacy let us into what sophisticated investors think of gold and other old-fashioned investments:
Lee Camp and Company at "Redacted Tonight" provides the last bit of insight we really need to enjoy the irony of existence today in the USA!
Applause! Applause!
But where is Himmler when we need him?
