Housing is now unaffordable for a record half of all U.S. renters, study finds
And yet the rich, all the economists in the media, and everyone in government has no idea why so many Americans feel that the economy is shit. After all, isn't Wall Street doing great? What else do those filthy subhuman peasants WANT, after all?
I just hope I live long enough to see some of these aristocratic pricks lose their heads.
There's a simple insight which will completely change your view of Donald Trump: he's a heel. Not in the sense of being a bad person, although no doubt he is. Rather, he's a Heel in the sense of professional wrestling.
Do you know about professional wrestling? They offer a timeless battle between good and evil, using stage personalities. Faces are the good guys, the ones the audience cheer and applaud. Heels are the bad guys, the ones who hit the good guys from behind with a folding chair or illegally double-team a Face. It's all an act, of course. Sometimes Faces become Heels, or Heels become Faces...but it's all part of the show.
Trump is a Heel. He's always been on TV, even back when I was a teenager. He claims to be a businessman, but his real role has always been media personality. That's what he loves more than anything. That's why he can't shut up, even when a judge orders him to. He's a professional Heel, and he just might be the best one in the world.
Which is probably why Bill and Hillary Clinton approached him before the 2016 election with their Pied Piper scheme. Donald would run for the Republican nomination, supplanting all of the "legitimate" competitors. But he'd be so odious that Hillary, the designated Face, would crush him in the general election. Except...
I'm inclined to think that Hillary simply underestimated just how loathsome she was, and how much people hated her. Any experienced wrestling impresario could have told her that she wasn't Face material. They could have also warned her that even though audiences love to boo Heels, they also love them.
You know the rest. Donald Trump was probably as surprised as Hillary on Election Day. But he still did his best to play the part. And the Democrats shrugged and decided that they could raise LOTS of money for four years, campaigning against President Heel. Which is exactly what happened.
He's actually a narcissist, cunning but not all that intelligent. But he's great at being a Heel, which means he's great at judging an audience (in this case, about half of the American electorate) and giving them what they want. His Hitler quotes are a bit over-the-top, but that's what a good Heel does sometimes. The one thing a Heel dreads more than anything else is boring the fans. And of course when the media and the Democratic elite clutch their pearls and squeal, well that's just music to a Heel's ears.
The DNC makes money, the oligarchs make money, and the only people who get hurt are the ones who don't matter: the poor, refugees, civilians in far-off countries...the nobodies.
The DNC is still playing that game, of course. Donald Trump is Hitler. George W. Bush was Hitler. Ronald Reagan was Hitler. Don't get me wrong, these are shitty and evil people who did a lot of terrible things. But they were all in service of the oligarchs, who always get their way no matter who's in office. You'll never see a candidate on the ballot who doesn't have the approval of the oligarchs.
That said, it's worth remembering that for all of his bombast and threats, Trump (unlike most of his predecessors in office) never tried to start a new war. I suspect that his show-business instincts told him that a real war (unlike an occasional assassination) would be dangerous business, something that could turn the rubes against him fast. If he'd been President during this genocide in Gaza, he'd have made some grandiloquent speeches. The media would have clutched their pearls and squealed, right on queue. But he'd have shut down Netanyahu within a few weeks. For one thing, he and Netanyahu basically hate each other. I think the problem with them is that they're too much alike.
But in any case dying children is bad press, and unlike the mainstream media and the Democrats, Trump knows social media. A Heel has to know his fans; they're his bread and butter. More than that, they give him the attention he craves more than anything else.
My guess is he's going to be President again. Biden and the Democrats have managed to make themselves the greater evil; there's just no way to smooth over 10,000 dead children, not even with bulldozers (ask Israel!). He'll be a bad President, that's for sure. Hell, he might even try to stay in office past his term, assuming he lives that long - although with his diet and weight, that would be a surprise. But he's not the second coming of Hitler, and he's not going to start any concentration camps. He'll put refugees in camps, yes, and that's a terrible thing. But just a reminder, those camps were started by...Barack Obama.
All of which is just my way of saying, try not to freak out. The DNC is spending millions of dollars to terrorize you into supporting #GenocideJoe through sheer terror of Donald Trump. But bad as he is, I'm sure the next designated Hitler will be even worse!
Back in the days when Bob Dole was last running for President, there was a bit of a fad on Usenet: the "BOB DOLE IS SO OLD THAT - " joke. They started out funny and/or stupid, but quickly got really weird and incredibly stupid.
Now, I've been maintaining files to store funny bits that I find online over the years, and sure enough there are some BOB DOLE IS SO OLD THAT - jokes in them. But after looking them over, there's nothing there that...oh, hell.
BOB DOLE IS OLD
BOB DOLE IS SO OLD THAT THE BIRTHDATE ON HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE IS IN ROMAN NUMERALS.
BOB DOLE IS SO OLD THAT HIS FAVORITE SPICE GIRLS IS OLDY SPICE
BOB DOLE IS SO OLD THAT WHEN HE WENT TO SEE THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS THE LEAD ACTORS NAME CHANGED FROM CHOW YOUNG FAT TO CHOW OLD FAT
BOB DOLE IS SO OLD THAT THE GRIM REAPER DIED WAITING FOR HIM TO DIE
BOB DOLE IS SO OLD THAT WHEN HE PEES HE PEES DUST
And those are the relatively less-embarrassing ones!
Anyway, if you want to plumb the depths of Bob Dole old jokes, here's a link. But it's on you.
I posted this because I suspect that there aren't a lot of people who remember this lame internet fad. But I'm also posting it because it seems incredibly appropriate for the upcoming Presidential election, in which two of the oldest and most senile candidates in history will be inflicted on the American people yet again. Maybe it's time to resurrect and repurpose those jokes!
I am, it seems, the last of the Boomers. An early adopter, I'm more comfortable with technology than the majority of my age cohort. So here are three products that elderly Boomers will desperately need in the years to come:
1. Hearing-aid headsets. Some of these exist, but they're rare, insanely expensive, and not well-made. Most hearing aids seem to be designed for people who want to hide the fact that they're wearing them. This isn't just stupid and hopeless, but I believe it cripples the basic functionality of the devices. A hell of a lot of boomers grew up listening to music with earphones, unlike previous generations. That's probably part of the reason that so many of us are going deaf now! So "hearing aids" that are full-sized headsets would work for my generation, I believe. They'd also be a lot harder to lose, and I know from personal experience with my father that losing (incredibly expensive) hearing aids is a huge problem for the elderly. I also believe that a larger hearing aid device could be far more effective. More size offers more potential power to work with. That's common sense, isn't it?
2. Easier TV remotes. Given the increasingly-boring wasteland that is modern cable TV, easy access to streaming services is critical - but a lot of tech-illiterate seniors simply can't cope with the mystery of HDMI1 vs HDMI2. Hell, my mother has serious trouble pressing the "ON" button on her TV remote! There has to be an easier way to switch from broadcast TV to YouTube to Netflix-etc. Some sort of really simple remote with buttons the size of quarters.
3. Cell phones. Okay, I know that simplified cell phones for the elderly exist. They're advertised by the AARP, among other places (which I have NOT joined, despite constant junk mail). But while they have large buttons, they're not designed with a real understanding of how easily confused the elderly can be by technology. Handing a Jitterbug to my mother would be like handing her a real phaser from Star Trek. She'd put it in a drawer and never use it again. Which was the literal fate of the cell phones she's been given, by the way. Want to make a phone that tech-hesitant seniors can use? Make it talk. "I am low on power. Please plug me in.", for example. Would that be so hard?
Okay, those are three devices which are needed, and which will only be MORE needed in the years to come. I hope someone makes them. And if they do, I hope I never need them.
For some reason as of today I can ONLY reply to comments here from Chrome. Brave (my current default browser) and FireFox both produce the following results even if I've already logged in:
And then:
I'd also like an alternative to YouTube Music, but we're a little trapped in that one because we've uploaded so much of our music on it. And I created a playlist that replicated the tapes I'd recorded in the 1980s; it has nearly 800 songs on it, and took a huge amount of time to make. Although Google keeps deleting songs off that list (and others), which screws everything up.
The world needs publicly-owned, democratically-operated online services of all sorts. Big Tech needs to be demolished. They contribute nothing but problems and keep milking us for every last penny. Come to think of it, the exact same thing applies to Big Pharma!
I'm not sure how they did it, but overnight my Google account storage went from about 70% full to 110%. Big red warnings tell me that my photos won't be backed up and I'll soon lose the ability to receive email - unless I start sending Google money every month for more storage.
I tried deleting all Promotions emails, but after I deleted them all they were all still there and my storage was unaffected. I deleted my largest video, which in itself should have brought me well below 80%, but that too had apparently no effect.
My guess is that Google has decided that it's time for them to leverage their monopoly to just outright steal from the peasants.
White America only looks up to revolutionary black leaders after they have put them 6 feet underground.
You are using our tax dollars to mass-murder children - CHILDREN! - in Gaza, Joe Biden. Exactly how do you reconcile that with your supposed conscience?
Meanwhile you and your family (and every Congressperson and Senator) are receiving the best medical care for life, paid for with - once again - our tax dollars. You didn't ask our permission; you just took that money for yourself. Meanwhile you've promised to veto Medicare for All if it were ever to reach your desk, which the Democrats in Congress will never allow anyway. Why? Why are you willing to make us pay for your healthcare while denying it to the rest of us - including America's children?Have you considered a ceasefire in Gaza? You've killed well over 10,000 children in Gaza, so maybe it's time to stop that. How about Medicare for All? You and your family enjoy the finest medical care in the world on the taxpayer's dime, so it seems odd that you've promised to veto health care for us. Hey, how about running fair primaries? There's something a little strange about a party named for democracy being against the whole concept.
You could stop persecuting Julian Assange while you're at it. Journalism isn't a crime. How about not using our tax dollars to arm Nazis in Ukraine? That's a bad look for a US President. Americans are drowning in debt, Joe. A lot of that is because of the bankruptcy bill that YOU pushed for.
If you want our votes, give us something to vote FOR. As it is all you seem to have is endless fearmongering about Trump, Trump, Trump. You're literally trying to scare us into voting for you. I don't think that's going to work this time.
The only way to believe that Israel has a "right" to exist, is to believe that God is a real-estate broker.
You don't have to compromise your principles or accept complicity in the cold-blooded murder of thousands of children. You can vote for Jill Stein or Claudia de la Cruz. They both have great stances on Gaza, and you'll find that their policies are outstanding across the board - far more in line with what Americans want, rather than the oligarchs.
No matter what we do, Trump's going to win anyway. But we don't have to accept the DNC's cynical forcing of another Biden/Trump contest on America.