Shit. I almost forgot to do this. Okay, after running all available data, polls, surveys, polisci Dr. Phil drive-by psych 101 vulcan mind melds through my oil filter (now with flavor crystals!) I am ready to announce my post mortem facts:
The Republicans lost because they are a bunch of corrupt, greedy fuckers carrying water for big oil, big pharma and vultures getting fat off of the war. Their policies suck only slightly less harder than they do. They have been taking money out of our back pockets, selling our jobs off to multinational corporations in the downward leveling termed "free trade", and financing their lying assed campaigns from funders getting rich from misery; war profiteers and big pharma. Conservatism is exposed for the authoritarian cult that it really is. They enjoy torture, and the elimination of privacy and human rights for individuals. They admit by their policies that free-trade and raw capitalism is the inherent right for corporations to follow the path of least regulation; exploit the powerless, pollute the unregulated and shelter where taxes don't exist.
Down this path is an America reduced to flabby shoppers who produce nothing except servants for the upper crust and quickly vanishing middle class. Make no mistake, this is a battle of epic proportions. The rich are serious about being rich, and power to them. I still hope to be rich myself one day. But populism is on the upswing, and those anti-American fascists are on their way out.
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8 comments:
There is one problem with your theory.
The middle class isn't moving downward, it's moving upward.
(as is the poor)
The same place you said you want to end up... as one of the rich fat cats you are complaining about.
The other problem is that you fail to hold Democrats responsible for their failed policies.
They were in power of the house and the senate for over 40 years straight.
There should be no poor people today if not for the failed policies of the politicians who claim to be helping only the poor.
You are buying into the biggest lie in the history of our country.
Democrats keep poor people poor in order to have someone to promise to help if they will only vote for them.
Democrats lie to the sick and elderly with promises of cures that don't exist if only they will vote democrat.
No more poor, no more rasism and no more diseases.
If only the Democrats could get elected one more time...
and you swallow it?
lol
c'mon oilfield, wake up.
red
Red,
you are living on the banks of denial. Here on the blogosphere, we back up our claims with links.
That one is to "The Google" for my search query of keywords Middle class squeeze, of which you will note about 1,120,000 results were found in .17 seconds.
Here is but one example, written by Jacob S. Hacker, an assistant professor of political science at Yale, and a fellow at the New America foundation.
Published at WaPo
[...]
But the commentators,(This includes you, red) and the numbers, are missing the deeper story -- a story reflected in the continuing anxiety about the economy that survey after survey shows. Over the past two decades, two great transformations have been on a collision course -- the rise of the two-earner family and all but stagnant real wages for most workers. The sluggish economy of the past few years has made the resulting strains unmistakable. By many measures, American families in the middle of the income ladder are stretched thinner today than at any point since the early 1980s. Perhaps more important, their economic situation has, in ways both big and small, become notably more precarious.
This may come as a shock, but it shouldn't. Middle-class earnings are up, but this is mostly because women have moved into the workforce. Without the huge one-shot boost of a second breadwinner, according to Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, most families would barely have moved upward since 1980.
[...]
In other words, we are caught in an economic riptide swimming harder and harder...
[...]
My own recent analyses of income statistics, for instance, suggest that family incomes have become two to three times more unstable in the past three decades, even for well-educated workers and two-earner families. The causes are multiple: Jobs are less secure, wages are more volatile, government programs and employment-based benefits have been cut, and families with two earners in the workforce are more exposed to job instability than one-earner families. But what seems clear is that many of the arrangements that once protected the middle class from economic risk -- not just public programs but also private workplace benefits and help from within communities and families -- aren't doing the job today.
If America is to remain a nation in which economic security isn't just the province of the affluent, these arrangements must be rebuilt. The most daunting task will be to encourage strong, broadly distributed growth, and this goal will require private leadership as well as public policy. But government can and should deal with the pervasive risks that mark our postindustrial economy -- and, indeed, only government can deal with many of them. America's ever more creaky structures of risk protection must be adapted to the new realities of work and family. Expanding health coverage and helping families with major expenses is an important start. But the task we face today is greater, and more necessary, than even Kerry and Edwards may realize.
The Republicans answer free trade and unfettered capitalism, which in every instance in the history of the world has resulted in the very same conclusion, wealth and power is consolidated into the hands of the few, and a powerless and terrified everybody else.
The ownership society means you are on your own.
Democrats feel Government does play a role in economic fairness. Administration of the commons, such as clean air and water.
As far as the existence of poor people go, all one can do is provide opportunities. We have, to some extent, but much more needs to be done.
In America, you have the right to live in a mansion or under a bridge. The idea is, all you have to do is do what it takes to live where you want.
Abject poverty still exists, stubborn and entrenched. It is a struggle we must undertake, publicly, privately and from the church.
To think Democrats want to keep people poor is beyond reason. That's just crazy talk, like Republicans not wanting to outlaw abortion so their fundies will sing "Onward Christian Soldiers" as they head to the polls.
If you want to convince me of the error of my ways, you should back up your hollow talking points with links to real articles, and I don't mean LGF or NRO or Maulkkkin or any of those batshit crazy racist homophobes that rightards slobber over.
A few Links you might have missed:
a little graph about real income distribution hint it is not about the poor
Thom Hartmann Discussion that lays out how and why middle classes emerge and fail.
this is not so much about economics as much as the origins of the problems we face
For most else there is this place
And of course My own blog has a few articles that reframe the whole discussion in ways that IMHO make the winners, losers, crooks, and victims all the more obvious.
sorry there oil, but here in the blogosphere there are a thousand links to any position you like... including insane ones.
I can backup everything I claim is fact with "links" to sites that agree with me... (like you did). And sometimes I do. (check my blog)
But unlike you, I have my own opinions... not someone elses that i linked to most of the time.
I can find a link to any halfbaked idea you want, that doesn't make it true.
The fact is that the rich are richer, the middle class is richer and the poor are richer than they were just 12 years ago.
Like it or not, this is one of the strongest economies this country has ever experienced.
Sure, like any good accountant you can go and find the right facts till you get the story you like.
You want to be rich, but want to punish those who have already made it.
So go out and cherry-pick more "links" to those just as closeminded as yourself and see how that expands your horizons.
(lol)
But if you insist, here are some "links" for ya' I found 1,100,000 results for "poor getting richer" on google, take your time.
http://libertyissues.com/wrong.htm
http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=111256&speeches=1
http://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/kyklos/v52y1999i2p239-58.html
http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/D5901EAC30JCJ6M0.pdf
http://www.oddly-normal.net/archives/000193.html
http://www.census.gov/prod/3/98pubs/p23-196.pdf
one more thing on "how things are done here in the bogushpere".
too many blogs do the same thing which is rely too heavily on links to other peoples opinions. You are more interested in telling me what other people think than what YOU think.
I don't need you to google a subject for me. Thanks anyway.
It's simply lazy to do a .17 second search and grap the stories that support your view and post it as ultimate proof you are always right and above question.
Do the research come to a conclusion and express it as your opinion.
Your not teaching a class in school, you are simply debating opinions.
LAZY BLOGGERS
Is blogging now just a contest of who can get the most links to back-up his/her take on an issue?
(lol)
And one question, when you are discussing politics with someone in person,do you link to everyone elses opinion and hide behind it or have your own opinions?
too many blogs do the same thing which is rely too heavily on links to other peoples opinions. You are more interested in telling me what other people think than what YOU think.
This is where you are confused. There exists such a concept as an objective fact. This is entirely different from an opinion.
Two plus two equals four.
This was true before man had the wisdom to know it. It is true in the dark and light and heat and cold.
It will remain true long after we are gone.
It is what is called a "fact".
Those who deny science and facts rely on opinion and spin. They are stupid and only like the sound of their own voice.
I try to avoid speculation in the abscence of facts. Sometimes I reach a conclusion that is wrong, and it is shown to be wrong based on facts, not someone elses opinion.
the problem is that Democrats and liberals want to use your own set of "facts" and treat any opposing set of facts as "stupid".
Science only deals in "facts" as they know them at the time. "facts" change when new information is discovered.
We are not arguing over 2+2.
we are arguing over "X=?".
I don't have to "link" to someone else to know that Democrats were in control of the house and senate for nearly 40 years and there is still poverty and still racism and according to Democrats themselves there is more of it than now than there was 50 years ago.
...and YES, you can "link" to my comment for future reference if you need to.
You said...
"I try to avoid speculation in the abscence of facts. Sometimes I reach a conclusion that is wrong, and it is shown to be wrong based on facts, not someone elses opinion."
Maybe we have gotten to the root of your problem oil.
you see, (how do I break this to you gently) unless you were personally at "the scene of the crime" etc. then YOU ARE basing all your conclusions on "someone else's opinion".
Unless you are under the misguided assumption that the media doesn't have opinions and that those opinons don't end up in their reporting.
Oh yeah, I forgot you don't base your conclustions on what the media say's either... you base them on jon stewart and alfranken's "facts".
(lol)
-red
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