Even the 99.9th% figured out that they are garbage to their oligarch owners. No wonder the rest of us are worried about electing an oligarch president.

One must stay together within one’s tribe.

As historian Jay Feldman describes in his brilliantly researched and artfully written new book, Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America, there have indeed been a great many things wrong with this country specifically with respect to government attacks on civil liberties. Feldman pulls together a jaw-dropping historical catalogue of 20th Century examples where the United States government not only trampled the Bill of Rights, but did so while whipping up class warfare, xenophobic hysteria, and political mob violence, all on the pretext that war or the threat of war necessitated the abrogation of liberty.

Across the board the American people overwhelming think too much power in this country is concentrated in the hands of a few very rich people and very large corporations. A full 77 percent of the country shares this opinion including even a majority, 53%, of Republicans.

I keep saying over at my home base that I don’t, actually, have anything against you making money and going home and enjoying your in-ground pool or your Lexus or whatever. Just don’t come to me and bitch about tough things are for you and ask for another tax cut. That’s all I ask.

Obama’s fighting the class war with nerf cannons and water pistols.

The government has pursued a wide range of policies over the last three decades that have had the predicted and actual effect of redistributing income upward. For example, it has adopted a trade policy that drives down the wages of much of the working population by putting U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in Mexico and China and other developing countries. By contrast, the most highly paid professionals, like doctors and lawyers, are still largely protected from the same sort of competition.

The late poet and Lutheran seminary professor Gerhard Frost once wrote “My check stubs are enough” to give you his autobiography. The former Chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Giles Fraser, wrote similar words in June 2010: the best way to assess what someone believes is to look through their bank statement. Forget fancy words and sermons, money is the way we mean it – or we don’t. Money is the sacrament of moral seriousness.”

Given the reactions of the MOTUs and Powers That Be to the Occupy Movement, I’d say they don’t enjoy having their morals examined.

In retrospect, the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement shouldn’t be all that surprising.  Millions of hopeful people flocked to the ballot box in hopes of reversing decades of pro-corporate, pro-wealth, anti-ordinary people policies, only to realize that they had voted in what they thought they had voted out.  Progressives who had dedicated themselves [...]

Gosh — preachers who have no problem railing about marriage equality and racial issues suddenly fall mute when they ponder preaching about the current economic mess. Can you say “Veal Pen Preacher”? Sure you can . . .

Add in a duplicitous visiting scholar from the Heritage Foundation who thinks Jesus preached predatory capitalism as the way of salvation, and you’ve got a nasty combination.

Whatever your thoughts on religion, that combination is truly toxic.