Impending Crash?

Well, it looks like we're building up to that crash some of us have been talking about for far too many years. The folks on the right are just smacking their lips at the possibilities. The pirates at the top have every reason to anticipate it with glee. Further down the food chain they have the sort of optimism that the school yard bully has, right up until somebody takes him down.

Say what you want about Obama, but he has four years as POTUS and he is a quick study. The people who oppose him are a collection of the naive and the criminal. Mitt Romney doesn't know whether his butt is punched or drilled, but it is gold plated and that is everything to him. (it's his turn you know)

BTW, anybody who tells you that they know exactly what is going to happen is a liar, or a fool, or both.

In the end it doesn't matter if Obama is a great leader or not, it matters how many Americans have a grasp on what has been going on, and what to do about it. Not so much the details, but the full understanding that it is our country, not theirs, and we don't have to give it up.

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Interest rates

Right wingers often proclaim that interest rates need to go up to stimulate savings and that would revitalize the economy. It would do the opposite of course, but they have to say something. They can't say that we need to raise wages and start taxing rich people like it's 1953.

As for those that whine that their savings don't generate enough to live on, let me point out that while you may only be getting a fraction of a percent, you're actually doing pretty well. Say you had a $100,000 in the bank six years ago and the house next door was selling for $300,000, today you can buy that house with your cash. If you had bought stock at 6000 and sold at the top of the market, you would have doubled your money, and could buy two of your neighbors houses. Gold at $400/oz, and so on.

Not that I'm recommending these strategies, but that's what billionaires have been doing with their money. Why do you think they hold these "economic events". Herbert Hoover's Sec Treasury (one of the richest men to have ever lived), "Depressions are when assets return to their rightful owners".

Iceland just raised their interest rates a 1/4 point because their economy is heating up. They threw out the bankers after they crashed Iceland's economy, they gave the Europeans and the IMF the finger. Iceland is doing just fine. We could do that too.

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Inside tip

You might bet that the Supreme Court will strike down Obamacare now that their corporate masters have said they will continue most of the its features after it's gone. They'll suddenly play nice, like the Republican rank and file seem to be willing to believe about all corporations and rich people as a matter of faith regardless of all evidence.

The Court is notoriously hard to predict, seemingly swinging left and right without reason, unless you examine each case based on how it will affect corporate interests. Then the outcome is 100% predictable.

This time it might not be that obvious since you need to look at what they want and not what they say. The Insurance corporations may simply being giving political cover to Republicans who have realized these provisions are immensely popular. There is always a way for Republicans to shift power back to the corporations if they ever come back to power.

If the Court strikes down the law, it would free up the President to run against them by offering single payer simply lowering the age of Medicare.

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Obituary of a Small Town

Dateline Capital City: Word has reached us of the passing of the state’s rural icon Samuel Drucker at age 96. Sam, as he was known so fondly by the people of many small communities here abouts, was a civic leader and proprietor of the Hooterville General Store for many decades until its closing in 2001. He is reported to have died at his post greeting patrons at the Super Walmart in Pixley, which opened shortly before his own store closed.

Hooterville hasn’t fared well since Sam left along with most of its original residents. The houses that are still occupied provide shelter for the undocumented immigrant labor force that work at the sprawling hog confinement operation that occupies the former Ziffel and Douglas farms.

It’s also been reported that Sam was distraught over the death of Eb Dawson who was killed in a Meth lab explosion last year. It was his belief that Eb was really murdered along with Arnold Ziffel IV for organizing opposition to a natural gas fracking operation that has been rumored to be to blame for fouling the valley’s groundwater. Newly appointed Sheriff Haney assures this reporter from his office at the county seat that there is no truth to the rumor.

Sam’s family asks that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the Crabwell Corners Food Bank.

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A simple argument

When a right-winger tells you that we need to get government off the backs of the job creators, challenge him to do this: go to any town that has a Walmart and open a store. Space won't be hard to find, plenty of empty buildings the city will give him for free. They'll even throw in all the tax breaks they gave Walmart. Plenty of unemployed people there that will be happy to work for minimum wage, just like at Walmart.

Ask Mr Right-winger why he doesn't do this. If he still insists that government would stop him, ask how. There aren't really any regulations that impact retailers save the minimum wage, but Walmart pays that, so he should be competitive. Demand to know why he doesn't become a job creator and save his nation.

Mr Right-winger wants corporations to be completely unregulated so they can do to the rest of us what Walmart does to small towns. Ask him why he wants that. What Walmart does used to be prohibited, guys like him made it possible. Ask him why he did that.

If he says everything is cheaper at Walmart, ask him to prove that. It's just numbers, it should be easy to prove. Walmart couldn't, and was forced by the pesky government to stop claiming that.



Just as an aside, after the US and Canada, my largest readership is now in China. Hmmm

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