1/ A long, detailed and stark evaluation of the state of the middle class in the US, and the conclusion is we are falling behind at an accelerating rate. The headlines from this study were that Canadians are now better off than we are, but that's not the whole story. The top 20% of Americans are the richest in the world, but the rest of the middle class are losing ground fast.
I am sure this story wasn't covered in the right wing media, and probably not too many other places either, but it's important. Knowledge is power........
The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest
The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction.
While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.
After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.
The numbers, based on surveys conducted over the past 35 years, offer some of themost detailed publicly available comparisons for different income groups in different countries over time. They suggest that most American families are paying a steep price for high and rising income inequality.
Although economic growth in the United States continues to be as strong as in many other countries, or stronger, a small percentage of American households is fully benefiting from it. Median income in Canada pulled into a tie with median United States income in 2010 and has most likely surpassed it since then. Median incomes in Western European countries still trail those in the United States, but the gap in several — including Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden — is much smaller than it was a decade ago.
In European countries hit hardest by recent financial crises, such as Greece and Portugal, incomes have of course fallen sharply in recent years.
The income data were compiled by LIS, a group that maintains the Luxembourg Income Study Database. The numbers were analyzed by researchers at LIS and by The Upshot, a New York Times website covering policy and politics, and reviewed by outside academic economists.
2/ A good Jon Stewart where he comments on the recent NRA convention and the messages from the podium, including La Palin who seems to have drifted into an interesting mental state......Jon gets into this one, and seems a little more serious than usual........two segments, three and six minutes......
Jon Stewart went after Sarah Palin and the NRA on Tuesday night for projecting incredible paranoia about a supposed war against them by the rest of the country, responding not with a desire for more electable candidates but with “lock and load, motherfuckers!”
After indulging in a fair bit of Donald Sterlingschadenfreude, Stewart lambasted Palin forlinking a Christian sacrament like baptism to something like torture before going after the NRA and the “in-no-way undermedicated” Wayne LaPierre for projecting victimization against the “haters” and literally everything President Obama is doing, with the implication that everything from Obamacare to gay marriage can only be caught if you have a gun.
Stewart also took on a Georgia law being called the “guns everywhere law” because it allows guns in bars, churches, and schools. But not the state capitol, because apparently, as Stewart put it, they’re just gun voyeurs enjoying the show, like someone who goes to an orgy just to watch.
3/ An excellent Paul Krugman column on the new book from Thomas Piketty, and the consternation this has caused in the right wing media.
The Piketty Panic
“Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” the new book by the French economist Thomas Piketty, is a bona fide phenomenon. Other books on economics have been best sellers, but Mr. Piketty’s contribution is serious, discourse-changing scholarship in a way most best sellers aren’t. And conservatives are terrified. Thus James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute warns in National Review that Mr. Piketty’s work must be refuted, because otherwise it “will spread among the clerisy and reshape the political economic landscape on which all future policy battles will be waged.”
Well, good luck with that. The really striking thing about the debate so far is that the right seems unable to mount any kind of substantive counterattack to Mr. Piketty’s thesis. Instead, the response has been all about name-calling — in particular, claims that Mr. Piketty is a Marxist, and so is anyone who considers inequality of income and wealth an important issue.
I’ll come back to the name-calling in a moment. First, let’s talk about why “Capital” is having such an impact.
Mr. Piketty is hardly the first economist to point out that we are experiencing a sharp rise in inequality, or even to emphasize the contrast between slow income growth for most of the population and soaring incomes at the top. It’s true that Mr. Piketty and his colleagues have added a great deal of historical depth to our knowledge, demonstrating that we really are living in a new Gilded Age. But we’ve known that for a while.
No, what’s really new about “Capital” is the way it demolishes that most cherished of conservative myths, the insistence that we’re living in a meritocracy in which great wealth is earned and deserved.
For the past couple of decades, the conservative response to attempts to make soaring incomes at the top into a political issue has involved two lines of defense: first, denial that the rich are actually doing as well and the rest as badly as they are, but when denial fails, claims that those soaring incomes at the top are a justified reward for services rendered. Don’t call them the 1 percent, or the wealthy; call them “job creators.”
But how do you make that defense if the rich derive much of their income not from the work they do but from the assets they own? And what if great wealth comes increasingly not from enterprise but from inheritance?
4/ I didn't know what to expect in this seven minute clip, so was pleasantly surprised how entertaining it was......Jimmy Fallon and Emma Stone having a lip-synching contest.
She is amazing! She's an actress, starring in Spiderman 2, and she nails her songs. Fallon is good, but she's wonderful......
If you haven't had the chance to watchEmma Stone take down Jimmy Fallon in an epic lip sync battle on "The Tonight Show," then you're seriously missing out. The famous redhead proved to be his toughest competitor as she wowed the crowd with her rendition of Blues Traveler's "Hook" followed by DJ Khaled's 2010 jam "All I Do Is Win."
Fallon put on quite the show too, as he took on Iggy Azalea's "Fancy" and Styx's hit "Mr. Roboto." But alas, Stone stood out, shocking everyone with her beyond impressive rap-lip syncing skills.
5/ Populism is the term used when politicians side with 'the people" against "the elites", and this fascinating story explains why even though populism is being talked about, noone from either party is doing anything populist.
Americans are in a surly mood, confronting rules they feel are rigged against them. President Barack Obama captured this populist temper in his re-election campaign. He then launched his second term declaring that inequality is the “most pressing challenge of our time,” and laying out a popular agenda to raise the federal minimum wage, provide pay equity for women, establish universal pre-school and other initiatives that polls show the public strongly supports.
Republican obstruction, however, has blocked progress on all these — even as the House GOP last week passed Representative Paul Ryan’s budget, which cuts taxes for the rich and corporations, turns Medicare into a voucher program, slashes spending on education and protects subsidies to Big Oil.
Yet it is the president’s popularity that has cratered. Republicans are expected to easily retain control of the House in the November midterm elections — though Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) refuses to move bills on any of the public’s agenda. The Democratic Senate majority appears endangered. Data maestro Nate Silver is making the Republicans favorites to take the Senate in the fall midterms. The New York Times reports Democrats are “scrambling to avoid disaster.”
Why can Republicans block politically popular measures without paying a political cost? Is populism merely entertaining froth, all the rage in Berkeley salons but impotent in real-world politics?
In fact, populist sentiments are on the rise. But the stunted economic recovery — and big GOP money — makes it hard for Democrats to exploit them. Disarray on message pulls the populist punch. All this, ironically, helps conservative candidates peddle their own populist poses, often confusing voters.
6/ A pretty good Bill Maher closing segment, where he blasts both sides of the political spectrum...... a decent five minutes......
Bill Maher blasted Republicans in his show-ending New Rule Friday, but also had some choice words for the “political correctness Nazis” and other “obnoxious” liberals who give people an excuse to support Republicans in the first place. Maher admitted he has no earthly idea how Republicans could possibly be this popular in this day and age, short of “cheating.”
However, Maher had to admit liberals have made the “cultural resentment” on the right much easier to grasp, with the PC police telling people like him to censor jokes, Facebook providing over 50 genders, atheists suing over crosses, and all the rest of it. Maher admitted “liberals can be obnoxious” and people don’t like political “nagging.”
However, Maher warned that liberal paternalism is no reason to “cut off your nose to spite your face.” He said, “For every liberal with a cause who makes you go ‘Oh, shoot me,’ there’s a conservative with a gun who will.”
7/ Net neutrality is a subject guaranteed to make almost everyone's eyes glaze over, but it's important to us as consumers paying Comcast for the broadband, and for the overall freedom of the Internet. The FCC made a decision last week in favour of the companies running the content, and it just shows again how these seemingly minor decisions have become corrupted by the oligarchic corporations.
The new head of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, was formerly a lobbyist for the cable and cellular industries, and he of course decided for the big boys. If you read about this in the papers, or saw it on the news, they don't mention this backstory......of course not, the big media benefit from this decision.
It's a seamless tapestry of corruption, wherever you look......
Technology-land is abuzz these days about net neutrality: the idea, supported by President Obama, (until recently) the Federal Communications Commission, and most of the technology industry, that all traffic should be able to travel across the Internet and into people’s homes on equal terms. In other words, broadband providers like Comcast shouldn’t be able to block (or charge a toll to, or degrade the quality of), say, Netflix, even if Netflix competes with Comcast’s own video-on-demand services.*
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the FCC is about to release proposed regulations that would allow broadband providers to charge additional fees to content providers (like Netflix) in exchange for access to a faster tier of service, so long as those fees are “commercially reasonable.” To continue our example, since Comcast is certainly going to give its own video services the highest speed possible, Netflix would have to pay up to ensure equivalent video quality.
Jon Brodkin of Ars Technica has a fairly detailed yet readable explanation of why this is bad for the Internet—meaning bad for the choices available to ordinary consumers and bad for the pace of innovation in new types of content and services. Basically it’s a license to the cable providers to exploit a new revenue source, with no commitment to use those revenues to actually upgrade service. (With an effective monopoly in many metropolitan areas and speeds already faster than satellite, the local cable provider has no market pressure to upgrade service, at least not until fiber becomes more widespread.) The need to pay access fees will make it harder for new entrants on the content and services side; in the long run, these fees could actually be good for Netflix, since it won’t have to worry as much about competition. The ultimate result will be to lock in the current set of incumbents that control the Internet, ushering in the era of big, fat, incompetent monopolies.
8/ Interesting - I wasn't aware the European Union has banned US chicken from being sold in Europe......
Yet another article about how Big Ag is desperately trying to keep their cheap meat and chicken from becoming toxic - the way they do it? Chemicals, lots of chemicals.......
And by the way, "pink slime" is coming back......don't ever, ever buy anything associated with Cargill or Tyson......
1. Chlorine Baths
If you want to know the most problematic ingredients in our food supply, just look at the items the European Union boycotts, starting with GMOs, hormone beef and chicken dipped in chlorine baths. U.S. Big Food lobbyists are pushing hard to circumvent the European bans, says MintPress News, especially "bleached chicken." They claim the “many unwarranted non-tariff trade barriers… severely limit or prohibit the export of certain U.S. agricultural products to the EU.”
That's the idea. In fact, the EU has not accepted US poultry since 1997.
Why do U.S. poultry processors use chlorine? It "kills bacteria, controls slime and algae, increases product shelf life [and] eliminates costly hand-cleaning labor and materials" in addition to disinfecting "wash down" and "chilling" water. "Pinners" in the slaughter facility who remove the birds' feathers by hand wash their hands with chlorinated water to "reduce odors and bacterial count" after which the birds are sprayed to "wash all foreign material from the carcass." Meat is similarly disinfected with chlorine, says one industrial paper, especially because conveyer belts are "ideal breeding grounds for bacteria."
In a 2014 directive, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) admits the many uses of chlorine in poultry and meat production, none of which are required to be on the label under the "accepted conditions of use" (which limit the parts per million of chlorine allowed). And it gets worse. The FSIS directive also reveals that chlorine gas is used on beef "primals," giblets and "salvage parts" and for "reprocessing contaminated poultry carcasses." Bon appetit.
2. Ammonia
It has only been two years since the nation's stomach churned when it saw photos of "pink slime" oozing out of processing tubes and bound for U.S. dinner tables and the National School Lunch Program. Looking like human intestines, "lean, finely textured beef" (LFTB) was made from unwanted beef "trim" and treated with puffs of ammonia gas to retard the growth of E. coli. While the company making most of the nation's LFTB, Beef Products Inc. (BPI) shuttered three plants and laid off hundreds of employees two years ago, it is since fighting back and has brought a lawsuit against ABC news.
9/ Four lady musicians, with some wonderful music and a comedy routine.....an amusing three minutes......
From the moment these four women walk out on stage and start to play I was completely mesmerized!
These musicians form the Salut Salon Quartet and they not only bring on the music, they bring on the laughs too! This is great!
10/ Did you know Walmart controls 25% of national food sales? But it's not enough - they want more.....
By Stacy Mitchell
Shutterstock
Walmart’s latest organic scheme is just part of its plot to take over our food system
Shutterstock
Walmart recently announced that it would stock a selection of lower-cost organic packaged foods. A storm of positive press followed, including two U.S. News columns (here and here) by David Brodwin of the American Sustainable Business Council, who argued that, despite Walmart’s many sins, it was doing good in this case by legitimatizing and mainstreaming sustainable products in the eyes of consumers, investors, the media, and other companies.
I’m a big fan of David’s work, and of ASBC, but I think he’s got this one backward. The story that Walmart created with its announcement was not: Wow, organics have changed. They’ve gone mainstream. (That’s not really news, after all.) Instead, the story was: Wow, Walmart has changed. It’s gone organic. In other words, Walmart is not legitimizing organic foods so much as using organic foods to legitimize its own business model.
To me, the pivotal question that ought to frame any discussion about Walmart’s role in our food system is: Will people and the planet be better off if Walmart grows to control 50 percent of the U.S. grocery market?
Growth, after all, is what this is ultimately about. In 2005, staring down bad headlines and organized opposition in one city after another, Walmart realized that it faced a hard ceiling on its expansion if it did not improve its public image, particularly in the liberal-leaning areas of the country. Itlaunched its sustainability campaign that year, pledging to be a leader on climate change and shift completely to renewable power. Walmart has not made much progress on those ostensible goals. Indeed, its greenhouse emissions are higher than ever and it derives just 4 percent of its electricity from its wind and solar projects.
But Walmart has succeeded spectacularly in the real purpose of this project. The company is 37 percent bigger in the U.S. today than it was in 2005.
11/ This could be the most expensive music video ever made....or at the very least the biggest costume budget ever for this Katy Perry /Juicy J song "Dark Horse" - set in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, with surreal images and touches of magic CGI.....quite fascinating, La Perry looks even more beautiful than ever and the song isn't too bad.....
12/ It just goes on and on - almost all apples from the US cannot be sold in Europe because of a pesticide the majority of growers use on their apples.....
Buy organic apples exclusively......
“While it is not yet clear that DPA is risky to public health, European Commission officials asked questions that the chemicals’ makers could not answer,” said EWG senior scientist Sonya Lunder. “The EC officials banned outright any further use of DPA on the apples cultivated in the European Union until they are confident it is safe. Europe’s action should cause American policymakers to take a new look at this chemical.”
Of particular concern to EC officials was the possible presence on DPA-treated fruit of nitrosamines, a family of potent carcinogens.
13/ Guy video time - our monthly compilation of pain, expensive things breaking pain and hospital pain.......the March TwisterNederland fails......8 minutes of [you guessed it] pain.....
http://www.twisternederland.
14/ The final word on the revolting old billionaire Donald Sterling goes to Stephen Colbert, in a funny five minute riff on his mistresses etc......
Now that racist Clippers owner Donald Sterling has been banned from the NBA for being racist, what’s he going to do? Stephen Colbert has a suggestion: start a white people-only basketball league! “If this man still wants to own a team, I believe he should be consistent and start his own all-white league,” said Colbert.
Come to the “Colbert Report” for the jokes about Sterling’s racism, stay for Colbert’s reenactment of Sterling describing a woman licking him (consider yourself warned).
15/ Lake County's lakes are at historically low levels, and this story in the Orlando Sentinel doesn't give us any comfort either. The Water Authority worries that this may be the "new normal", as they handed Niagara Bottling another permit to suck the Clermont area even drier.
There is also a video - think we have it bad? Look at Lake Minneola......
The unfunny joke heard around south Lake County's shriveled lakes is that the only things wet there are the tears of real-estate sellers because waterfronts look like the weedy edge of wasteland.
What's been happening to lakes near Clermont has been blamed on drought, waste, stealing and incompetence. But the drama 20 miles west of Orlando also may be the unfolding of a water future for much of the state, one that runs head-on into the subject of weather turmoil.
The average amount of rain each year in Florida is more than 4 feet. But during the past decade, Lake County has fallen behind by about 5 feet. The statewide amount also has been significantly less than normal since the mid-2000
16/ An absolutely delicious story - the unspeakable Rick Scott went to a senior center in Boca Raton to find Obamacare horror stories, but all of the old people there were happy with Medicare and their treatment........needless to say he cut it all short. One of those "yesssssssss" moments!
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Florida Gov. Rick Scott met with senior citizens on Tuesday to talk about how Obamacare-mandated cuts to Medicare Advantage were ruining their lives. They didn't know what he was talking about. “I’m completely satisfied,” Harvey Eisen, 92, a West Boca resident, told Scott, according to The Sun Sentinel.
Most of adults in the audience hadn't experienced any changes to their insurance and argued that, “if, as you say,” there are cuts to Medicare, they didn't see why they shouldn't share the wealth of government subsidized health care. “We’re all just sitting here taking it for granted that because we have Medicare we don’t want to lose one part of it. That’s wrong to me. I think we have to spread it around," Ruthlyn Rubin, a 66-year-old from Boca Raton said, according to The Sentinel. "This is the United States of America. It’s not the United States of senior citizens,” she added. (Though maybe it's close, given how reliably senior citizens vote in midterm elections.)
Unfortunately for Scott, older Americans are not reliably anti-Obamacare. “As I travel the state and I listen to seniors they tell me stories about how their plans are being changed, how they are losing their doctors, the coverage is changing, and so what I’m here to do is just hear your stories,” he said.
Todays video - one of the best card tricks I have ever seen, not least because of the story the magician relates while manipulating the cards.....amazing.......
Todays mysogynistic guy joke
I received a phone call from a gorgeous ex-girlfriend who this morning called 'out-of-the-blue' to see if I was still around.We lost track of time, chatting about the wild, romantic times we used to enjoy together.I couldn't believe it when she asked if I'd be interested in meeting up and rekindling a little of that "old magic"."Wow!" I was flabbergasted."I don't know if I could keep pace with you now", I said, "I'm a bit older and a bit grayer and balder than when you last saw me. Plus I don't really have the energy I used to have."She just giggled and said she was sure I would "rise to the challenge"."Yeah." I said. "Just so long as you don't mind a waistline that's a few inches wider these days. Not to mention my total lack of muscle tone...everything is sagging, my teeth are a bit yellowed and I am developing jowls like a Great Dane!"She laughed and told me to stop being so silly.She teased me saying that tubby, gray haired, older men were cute, and she was sure I would still be a great lover.Anyway, she giggled and said, "I've put on a few pounds myself!"So I told her to piss off.
Todays bar joke
The local bar was so sure that its bartender was the strongest man aroundthat they offered a standing $1000 bet.The bartender would squeeze a lemon until all the juice ran into a glass,and hand the lemon to a patron. Anyone who could squeeze one more drop ofjuice out would win the money.Many people had tried over time (weight-lifters, longshoremen,etc.) but nobody could do it.One day this scrawny little man came into the bar, wearing thick glasses anda polyester suit, and said in a tiny squeaky voice "I'd like to try thebet."After the laughter had died down, the bartender said OK, grabbed a lemon,and squeezed away.Then he handed the wrinkled remains of the rind to the little man.But the crowd's laughter turned to total silence as the man clenched hisfist around the lemon and six drops fell into the glass.As the crowd cheered, the bartender paid the $1000, and asked the littleman, "What do you do for a living? Are you a lumberjack, a weight-lifter,what?"The man replied, "I'm an IRS Agent."
Todays vaudeville Jewish jokes
* A car hit an elderly Jewish man. The paramedic says, "Are you comfortable? " The man says, "I make a good living."* I just got back from a pleasure trip. I took my mother-in-law to the airport.* I've been in love with the same woman for 49 years. If my wife finds out, she'll kill me!* Someone stole all my credit cards, but I won't be reporting it. The thief spends less than my wife did.* We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.* My wife and I went to a hotel where we got a waterbed. My wife calls it the Dead Sea .* My wife and I revisited the hotel where we spent our wedding night. This time I was the one who stayed in the bathroom and cried.* My Wife was at the beauty shop for two hours. That was only for the estimate. She got a mudpack and looked great for two days. Then the mud fell off.* The Doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn't pay his bill, so the doctor gave him another six months.* The Doctor called Mrs. Cohen saying, "Mrs. Cohen, your check came back." Mrs. Cohen replied, "So did my arthritis!"* Doctor: "You'll live to be 60!" Patient: "I AM 60!" Doctor: "See! What did I tell you?"* A doctor held a stethoscope up to a man's chest. The man asks, "Doc, how do I stand? "The doctor says, "That's what puzzles me!"* Patient: "I have a ringing in my ears. " Doctor: "Don't answer!"* A drunk was in front of a judge. The judge says, "You've been brought here for drinking. "The drunk says, "Okay, let's get started."*Why do Jewish divorces cost so much? They're worth it.* Why do Jewish men die before their wives? They want to.*The Harvard School of Medicine did a study of why Jewish women like Chinese food so much. The study revealed that the reason for this is because Won Ton spelled backward is Not Now*There is a big controversy on the Jewish view of when life begins. In Jewish tradition, the fetus is not considered viable until it graduates from law school.Q : Why don't Jewish mothers drink?A : Alcohol interferes with their suffering.*Q : Have you seen the newest Jewish-American-Princess horror movie?A : It's called, "Debbie Does Dishes."*Q : Why do Jewish mothers make great parole officers?A : They never let anyone finish a sentence*A man called his mother in Florida . "Mom, how are you?" Not too good," said the mother. "I've been very weak "The son said, "Why are you so weak?" She said, "Because I haven't eaten in 38 days. "The son said,"That's terrible. Why haven't you eaten in 38 days? "The mother answered,"Because, I didn't want my mouth to be full in case you should call."*A Jewish man said that when he was growing up, they always had two choices for dinner - Take it or leave it.*A Jewish boy comes home from school and tells his mother he has a part in the play. She asks, "What part is it?" The boy says, "I play the part of the Jewish husband. "The mother scowls and says, "Go back and tell the teacher you want a speaking part."Q : Where does a Jewish husband hide money from his wife?A : Under the vacuum cleaner.Q : How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb?A : (Sigh) "Don't bother. I'll sit in the dark. I don't want to be a nuisance to anybody."A Jewish mother gives her son a blue shirt and a brown shirt for his birthday. On the next visit, he wears the brown one. The mother says,"What's the matter already? Didn't you like the blue one?"Did you hear about the bum who walked up to a Jewish mother on the street and said, "Lady I haven't eaten in three days." "Force yourself," she replied.Q : What's the difference between a Rottweiler and a Jewish mother?A : Eventually, the Rottweiler lets go.Q : Why are Jewish Men circumcised?A : Because Jewish women don't like anything that isn't 20% off
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