1. Wealth gap: Super-Rich vs class wars, death of democracy
The gap: In one generation, America’s wealthiest 1% has exploded from 9% to 23% of America’s income, while middle-class income has stagnated. Even Buffett admits: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and winning.”
But my rich friend tells the real story, of their social disconnect. The rich just don’t care. They live in a different world, live by a self-centered code lacking a moral compass. The public welfare is honored only if supported by tax benefits.
The wealth gap is widening and soon something unpredictable will ignite a Wall Street revolution.
2. Wall Street’s doomsday capitalism vs rule by anarchy
A key Supreme Court decision accelerated and codified Wall Street’s ability to use billions stolen from taxpayers to lobby Washington and solidify its power, all for its own self-interest, through campaign payola, senators’ votes, presidential access, manipulation of regulators, grabbing tax benefits, etc. And it’s every man and woman for themselves.
Don’t believe it? Know this, democracy is dead and you’re in denial. Wall Street CEOs and Forbes 400 billionaires are either engaged in a secret conspiracy, or a classic anarchy picking apart America, oblivious of the fact they are setting up the next big revolution.
3. Pentagon’s perpetual war machine vs America’s budget time bomb
The mathematics of our $75 trillion Social Security and Medicare deficits often seem insurmountable, but can be recalibrated. However, the war-loving mindset of America’s neocons — fueled by China’s military actions, the insatiable expansion of our military spending and a Pentagon prediction that global population growth — is putting more and more pressure on the world’s scarce resources, and will, in turn, increase global wars and the demand for more war spending, increasing the risk of sudden revolutions everywhere.
4. Global population explosion vs resources, jobs, better lifestyles
As the world population explodes from 7 billion to 10 billion in the next generation, the demand for more jobs and the pressure on scarce resources will increase, while expectations will fall as the ratio of haves to have-nots increases, making the world all around Wall Street a burning powder keg setting up a revolution.
Bottom line: Forget jailing Wall Street’s dictators. It’s naïve and too late. We missed that opportunity. But a revolution will do the trick, give us a second chance to jail the crooks.
Until then, remember, these four factors are building to a head, merging into a critical mass that will accelerate into a revolution and destroy Wall Street from within: The widening wealth gap, capitalism’s new rule-by-anarchy, the high cost of feeding the Pentagon’s costly war machine, and the huge global population explosion.
March 1, 2011, 12:01 a.m. EST
Is the revolt in the Middle East just the beginning?
ReplyDeleteThree billion more people is the equivalent of adding two more China's in the same time as when Clinton was elected president til next year when Obama faces the voters.
ReplyDeleteWhat impact will that have on demand for oil, food and social services?
Which parts of the global population will disproportionately contribute the 3 billion?
ReplyDeleteThe population of the US in the 1950's was 150 million. In half that time, the population will increase by adding twenty more USA's? That simply cannot happen in any comprehensible fashion.
ReplyDeleteIs the revolt in the Middle East just the beginning?
ReplyDeleteNo, it's the continuation.
Seriously, if you're asking is this the beginning of whirled wide unrest? It's very possible that the whirled has been pushed to the edge of sanity especially after colonialism, a century of world war, and fifty years of "population bomb and climate change" alarms. Add autocrats, dictators, Islamists, American hegemony and globalism and you have a volatile mix.
Mr. Farrell, though, strikes me as more stridently hysterical than serious.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it rich that the UN has suspended Libya from the UN Human Rights Council.
ReplyDeleteThe United Nations has suspended Libya from its Human Rights Council in light of recent “gross and systematic” violations.
The General Assembly said Muammar Gaddafi’s violent of repression of peaceful protestors constitute “flagrant human rights violations”.
The UN is a joke and an embarassment.
I will say that I am finding Susan Rice "hotter" by the day.
ReplyDeleteAustralia is roughly the same size as US.
ReplyDeleteThe population of Australia, today, is roughly 21 million.
The year the population of US was 21 million was roughly 1890.
Australia has it's share of problems but, by golly, there is a lot of wide open space to stretch your arms and take big deep breaths of fresh air.
I like this place.
ReplyDeleteBut I love my home.
Deuce: Three billion more people is the equivalent of adding two more China's in the same time as when Clinton was elected president til next year when Obama faces the voters.
ReplyDeleteThe solution, of course, is to make birth control more widely available to the third world. But the Vatican and social conservatives won't hear of it. Every sperm is sacred.
desert rat said...
ReplyDeleteMurdering the native born Jewish souls, so that non-Jewish adults can be allocated living space to facilitate their migration to Israel, that is a core part of Israeli State population policy.
There is only so much room, in Israel, those Europeon migrants need the space, more than the Israeli need native born Jewish souls.
Many of those 1.5 million Jewish souls that have been murdered in Israel, since 1948, cleansed so that Russians could migrate, south to the Mediterranean shoreline.
WiO:There is only so much room, in Israel, those Europeon migrants need the space, more than the Israeli need native born Jewish souls.
ReplyDeleteSo the Europeans need lebensraum. Check!
Sirhan B. Sirhan, convicted of the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, goes before a California parole board Wednesday for the first time in nine years.
ReplyDeleteTeresita said...
ReplyDeleteWiO:There is only so much room, in Israel, those Europeon migrants need the space, more than the Israeli need native born Jewish souls.
those are the rodents words...
not mine
Gag Reflex said...
ReplyDeleteSirhan B. Sirhan, convicted of the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, goes before a California parole board Wednesday for the first time in nine years.
Correction:
Sirhan B. Sirhan, THE PALESTINIAN, convicted of the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, goes before a California parole board Wednesday for the first time in nine years.
I thought the B. stood for Bostonian.
ReplyDeleteTeresita, of course, gives the correct response; and the problem.
ReplyDeleteBREGA, Libya – Rebel forces routed troops loyal to Moammmar Gadhafi in a fierce, topsy-turvy battle over an oil port Wednesday, scrambling over the dunes of a Mediterranean beach through shelling and an airstrike to corner their attackers. The daylong fighting blunted the regime's first counteroffensive against opposition-held eastern Libya.
ReplyDeleteVery good news indeed.
I think the last time Ghadaffi caused anyone trouble someone named Clinton sent a cruise missle up his ass as he was sitting in one of his tent homes. He went away for a few years after that.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that procedure needs repeating?
Cruise missle enema?
ReplyDeletePhilly pizza shop owner accused of 'food terrorism' after planting mice in competitor's restaurant
ReplyDeleteThe owner of Verona's went into the bathroom and saw a footprint on top of the toilet, and he alerted the two patrons, who happened to be police officers.
The officers found the mice in a bag on top of a ceiling tile in the roof cavity.
The officers then went outside and saw Galiatsatos walking into another pizzeria with a bag in his hand.
Officers said Galiatsatos entered and left the second pizza restaurant and officers found a second bag of mice in a trash can.
Galiatsatos is charged with disorderly conduct, harassment and animal cruelty.
Least free countries/territories in the world:
ReplyDeleteBurma
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Libya
North Korea
Somalia
Sudan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Tibet
Most free countries in the world:
Andorra
Australia
Austria
Bahamas
Barbados
Belgium
Canada
Cape Verde
Chile
Costa Rica
Freedom in the World
Doug, those two pizza shops are the only ones I use in the area.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe an adult would stoop to such a juvenile act. He looks like a creep.
ReplyDeleteAnti-Gay Christian Pastor Charged Over Public Masturbation
ReplyDeleteRev. Grant Storms, a renowned anti-gay Christian pastor from Louisiana, was arrested last week for masturbating at a public park, in the vicinity of a carousel and playground where children were present.
Family values!
It also leaves Libya's army lacking the capacity to contain civil strife and oversee a transition, as its counterparts in Egypt and Tunisia have done, or the ability to secure production from Africa's largest oil reserves.
ReplyDeleteMilitary weakness also makes it harder for the US and allies, who are backing the anti-Gaddafi rebels, to find interlocutors.
The lack of cohesion contrasts with the role of the army in Egypt and Tunisia. In those countries the military acted as a catalyst for the removal of leaders, a key demand of opposition movements, while discouraging continued protests aimed at more far-reaching democratic change.
May Hold Out For Months
Well, now the morons want to do a "no fly" zone.
ReplyDeleteAs Gates pointed out: A "no-fly zone" is a military operation. First, you have to knock out the air defenses; Libya has a Lot of air defenses.
You're going to end up with troops in Libya, dollars to doughnuts.
It's a Mug's game.
ReplyDeleteAbout 900,000 barrels/day of Libyan oil is off-line. This is roughly the same amount that we replaced with ethanol.
ReplyDeleteWe moved $24 Billion around in the U.S., and, now, we will NEVER AGAIN, EVER, have to send money offshore for that energy.
That's about $30 Billion/Yr that we keep at home building our Own Econome.
Reviewing the bidding: We "spent, locally" $24 Billion, and we cut our imports of oil by $30 Billion every freakin' year, for Eternity.
Now, wouldn't a "reasonable" person say, "Why don't we take that money you want to use to fight a war in Libya (just to retain the right to send them Hundreds of Billions of dollars in the future,) and use that money to double our ethanol capability?
ReplyDeleteBecause Exxon, BP, Chevron, and the Koch Bros wouldn't like it?
We're spending at least $240 Billion/Yr in the Middle East, and Afghanistan.
ReplyDelete$240 Billion (One years expenditure) could make us ENTIRELY motherfucking Independent of any other Country's Oil.
One Year's Expenditures.
Yes, we are, indeed, the dumbest motherfuckers in the Universe.
Louisiana Light Sweet closed at its high, today $121.93
ReplyDeleteThe shortened Presidents' Day week clouds the data but the decline in purchase applications, which fell 3.5 percent when unadjusted for calendar and seasonal effects, nevertheless adds to the building run of negatives out of the housing sector.
ReplyDeletePurchase Applications
Brent Crude - 116.84
ReplyDeleteSanto Domingo.- Venezuela ambassador Alfredo Murgas on Friday announced Caraca’s decision to contribute to mitigate the economic burden which the world’s skyrocketing crude prices may pose for Dominican Republic.
ReplyDeletePrice Burden
Hundreds of Omanis demonstrated on Wednesday in support of Sultan Qaboos as more than 400 activists camped outside the Gulf state's consultative council, in a counter-demonstration protesting corruption.
ReplyDeleteYemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh called a senior White House aide to express regret for his searing criticism of Israel and the United States over the Arab uprisings, officials said.
Saleh called President Barack Obama's top anti-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, a day after the White House complained he was scapegoating, after he described the Arab uprisings as an Israeli plot backed by Washington.
Warns of Bloodbath
There is 250 billion still not spent from the stimulus...
ReplyDeleteWaiting for Obama to give it away...
"There is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy," Roosevelt said in his 1941 State of the Union address. "The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple.
ReplyDelete...
So the next time you hear a conservative pundit or politician attack President Roosevelt and the New Deal, remember why they are doing so. It is not out of fear that President Obama will fail.
They are doing it because they are afraid Obama will succeed.
Hating FDR
Ms Kervin said she understood only a small number of Australians were in Libya and may not have warranted an Australian chartered flight but had expected better coordination with other countries.
ReplyDeleteTwo Australian officials met her in London and she said they were surprised to hear that she had been offered no support.
Ms Kervin said she would like to return to Libya when it is again peaceful and be reunited with her grade three students, most of whom she did not get to farewell.
Libya Bloodshed
Sirhan was one of the original Muzzie Terrorists.
ReplyDelete...taking out RFK as payback for aid to Israel.
PBUH
Kodachrome Slides and Retro Vacations#
ReplyDeleteWhen a sign from a Holiday Inn in Joplin, Missouri appeared onscreen with the words "Operated by Mickey Mantle", Phoenix shared this factoid with the audience:
When business partner Harold Youngman asked Mantle to create a slogan to advertise the chicken they served at their Holiday Inn, Mantle came up with this:
"To get a better piece of chicken,
you'd have to be a rooster."
Breaking Up the Union Racket
ReplyDeleteWhen Indiana governor Mitch Daniels ended collective bargaining and the automatic collection of dues in 2005, the number of members paying dues plummeted by roughly 90 percent. In 2007, New York City’s Transit Authority briefly stopped automatically collecting dues for the Transport Workers Union, and dues fell off by more than a third. Without these dues, the ability of public-sector unions to influence elections — what they care about most — drastically diminishes.
This is why Wisconsin Senate Democrats preferred to flee the state rather than stay and vote on a proposal that would curtail their fundraising and organizational base. They can dress up their opposition in the rhetoric of workers’ “rights,” but even if all collective bargaining were stripped from all Wisconsin public workers, they’d still have extensive civil-service protections. For Democrats, the issue is whether they can continue to rely on state government to grease an essential cog in their political machine.
Public-sector unions are a creature of government, and the Democrats are the party of government.
The two of them have identical interests and worldviews, and both want to leverage government to swell their campaign coffers.
How to characterize this?
The word “shame” comes to mind.
Habu here....Richard voted me off of his island. Seems too many contributors were emailing him after filling out the "Hurt Feelings Report"
ReplyDeleteHabu