These figures are disturbing, but the good news is that Americans American Reincreasingly reject the old myth that CEOs make so much money because they’re just that much smarter and harder-working than the rest of us. Public outrage over these extreme pay gaps is now so high that a majority of Americans across the political spectrum favor a cap on CEO pay relative to worker pay, regardless of company performance.
What would be the global ramifications of America going full fascist after the midterms, and entrenching severely anti-democratic outcomes by notionally democratic means?
We might be about to find out.
The results of next week’s midterms could represent the endgame of a frankly fucking terrifying strategy carefully implemented by the likes of Mitch McConnell as he let the world be distracted by the performance of a grifting gimp as President.
Earlier this week, the National Center for Health Statistics revealed in a study that the average life expectancy in the United States suffered a noticeable decline in 2021, from 77 to 76.1 years. It marks the second year in a row US life expectancy has fallen, according to the New York Times: in 2020, the average lifespan dipped from 78.8 to 77.
If it seems like nothing works anymore in the US, you’re not imagining things. Record-low public investment and declining private investment have given us a failing, decrepit infrastructure.
Covid and the Flu are nothing compared to the Right-Wing Media fury backing Trump and their effort to take control of America.
The baseless claim that the FBI may have planted evidence while carrying out a court-approved search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Monday has surged through right-wing media, as the former president’s allies continue their effort to turn their audiences against the probe and shield Trump from accountability.
Meanwhile Putin is doing to the Ukraine what Trump wished he could have done to America.
Former federal prosecutor Michael Stern suggested that TrumpWorld is trotting out the claim because the FBI may have found damaging evidence at his home.”I have written hundreds of search warrants. Lawyers and people whose homes are being searched are routinely not present during the search,” he wrote. “That Trump is now talking about ‘planted’ evidence means he knows there is something damning they found.”
Freshman GOP Rep. Mary Miller, standing next to former President Donald Trump at a rally to boost her re-election bid in downstate Mendon — and reading from a notebook — said the Supreme Court decision to overturn the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade was a “victory for white life.”
The “good guys” have the guns to “stand by” and “be ready” as Trump always pointed out and Texas Senator Cancun Cruz is echoing. However, there is one major problem they are about as organized as ANTIFA. Unfortunately, the guys with most of the guns in America aren’t good. Meanwhile, NRA and the GOP advocate guns need be a compulsory accessory for all Americans in exchange for the financial support of the manufacturers?
Maybe this year Wayne will explain to us that the reason we’ve had all these school shootings and mass killings is because we don’t have enough good guys with guns. More good guys! More guns! That’ll show these mass murderers! Next time one of them shoots up a school, we’ll have even more people standing around outside picking their camo-clad asses as the bodies of the dead lie there inside submitting to the ministrations of the crime scene investigators.
During an NYC Town Hall on April 20, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained that if the Republicans had control of the House on January 6, 2021, the insurrection would not have been thwarted and Trump might still be in office. “This is no joke. January 6 was a trial run and a lot of people don’t seem to understand that,” AOC said.
“Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill, a member of the Select Committee, characterized the January 6 attack on our democracy as a “dry run” – implying it could happen again – perhaps successfully. It will happen again – unless we put mechanisms in place to constrain a corrupt president from exploiting the absolute power presently conveyed by the Insurrection Act. That change needs to happen now – before yet another authoritarian – or even the same one – tries another Jan. 6 and succeeds,” he argued.
Most Americans, however, are waking up to the damage Reagan’s 40-year-long experiment with Friedman’s neoliberalism has done to America. In these days of dark news ranging from the rise of great power militarism to a crushing new wave of Covid, there are green shoots growing through the cracks: neoliberalism is finally being replaced by social democracy around the world and in many states in America. “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind,” Thomas Paine told us in 1776. “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” Our work has just begun.
But, because we like lists when it comes to opinions about how to fix things, here’s a list of ten dreams that, by dreaming them, might make it possible to improve things. You’d think a rich and great country could nourish such dreams, and even accomplish them. In random order, then, here are some pretty obvious things necessary to allowing us to think outside the box we’re in.
In his latest journey to the edge of extreme, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser and felon Michael Flynn called for a single religion in America. “If we are going to have one nation under God — which we must — we have to have one religion,” Flynn said in San Antonio at a stop for the far-right “ReAwaken America” tour. “One nation under God, and one religion under God.”
Bernie Sanders, who’s fighting to pass his ambitious $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill in the Senate, spent the past weekend on the road, doing something his Democratic colleagues seldom do: selling his ideas in swing states.
Political unrest within the White House led to a domestic terrorism event some in the media have compared to the attack on Pearl Harbour, writes Dr Lee Duffield.
Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory claimed that a video of President Donald Trump admitting his presidency is ending is actually a sign that he will stay in office. In reality, it’s more of a sign that the community is dedicated to its delusion of a Trump second term in office regardless of the facts.
Can the Democrats afford to have him jailed? (ODT)
“Live from Palm Beach, it’s the Power Hour with Donald Trump!” The studio audience erupts in cheers as the former president ambles on to his Oval Office set and takes his place behind a replica of the fabled Resolute desk. The walls are lined with portraits of Trump and posters with the words “rigged” and “stolen”.
And then, there was the true hero: a sixth grade boy, invited by the President, who slept his way through much of the 82-minute, 51,000-word speech.
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania invited several special guests to the address, which ran well past 10.30pm on a school night.
Advertisement
Myths that are ingrained in our social programming from birth, deeply entrenched, like an impacted wisdom tooth. These myths are accepted and basically never questioned.
I’m going to cover eight of them. There are more than eight. There are probably hundreds. But I’m going to cover eight because (A) no one reads a column titled “Hundreds of Myths of American Society,” (B) these are the most important ones and (C) we all have other shit to do.
Research shows that poor people in the US are 20 times less likely to believe hard work will get them ahead than their (poorer) Latin American counterparts – with white Americans particularly pessimistic. What’s driving their despair?
As the wealthy continue sucking the country dry, the question now isn’t if the US will cease to provide a decent standard of living for its people. Rather it is how many people will be sacrificed on the way down.
In America, the richest nation in the world when measured by raw GDP, children are getting sick from living by open pools of raw sewage. This was one of many shocking findings by the United Nations late last year, following a two-week investigation into extreme poverty in the US.
The UN report was issued last December by a team of investigators who visited California, Alabama, Georgia, Puerto Rico, West Virginia and Washington DC.
“The United States is one of the world’s richest, most powerful and technologically innovative countries; but neither its wealth, nor its power, nor its technology is being harnessed to address the situation in which 40 million people continue to live in poverty,”wrote Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
In a dramatic interview, the Guardian’s Gary Younge speaks to white supremacist Richard Spencer about why he wants to create an ‘ethno-state’ for white people, and why he believes that Africans have ‘benefited from white supremacy’
At a gathering of alt-right followers in Washington over the weekend, audience members gave the Nazi salute as a speaker railed against Jews and immigrants.
olddogthoughts 