So…now that the Republicans have settled on a Speaker, they’ve decided to get down to doing the important things – like investigating Hunter Biden. Great. That really needed to be done, didn’t it? Here’s a primary difference between the conservative base and a left-leaning base: do your investigation. If you find something, follow it up and pursue a proper coarse of action. If Hunter committed a crime, he should be punished accordingly.

I’d guess the attitude displayed here is common among progressives and Democrats. Contrarily, the attitude from the conservative base when one of theirs gets caught committing crimes? Ignore it. Deny it. Defend it. Under NO circumstances is a conservative to be made to take account of their actions.

I’ll tell you this: Progressives and liberals believe in the rule of law more than conservatives…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The other day, the Federal government released a jobs report. It said that companies had added workers. It also said that the wage gains those workers had been enjoying were slowing down. The Dow responded by jumping UP 700 points. Reducing wages for workers causes the Dow to jump UP? Of course it does. The other thing the Dow has gone up for recently was when the Fed announced they were not going to lower interest rates as a means to raising unemployment. My, that seems…counter-intuitive.

Do you know WHY the Dow goes up when life gets worse for the working man? Because the Dow is not the economy. The Dow is more of a CEO Happiness Index. When workers gain, profits slow. Profits don’t disappear. In America these days, multi-national corporation’s profits are obscenely high. (In this case, I can’t define “obscene” but I know it when I see it…) One could cut the profits in half and give the money to the workers who produce the wealth. The company would still be profitable. But not AS profitable. Lower profits means lower stock price and lower stock price means the CEO’s compensation goes down. (CEO’s get “paid” in stock, commonly, because the only get taxed at the Capital Gains rate of 15% percent rather than paying the working man’s rate of 32%.)

Every day on my morning news they “report” on what the Dow is doing as though that has something to do with anything, complete with a little pre-orgasmic shudder when the Dow goes up. Then they cut to stories about homelessness and deaths of despair and rising crime rates as though the two are not directly related. The “news” offers a wide variety of explanations as to why quality of life in America has consistently gone down for the working class while the owner class lives better than ever – and never once touch on the real reason: desperation and poverty. They’ve even tricked much of the population into applauding increases in the Dow and fearing the drops.

I’ll tell you this: All of this is the direct result of policies pushed by conservatives for the last forty years. “Deregulation,” they call it. It’s been lovely for the people with money and market power. Less so for everyone else. Every tick UP of the Dow is a tick DOWN in the quality of life for the working man…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Human beings are not the fastest animal on earth. We can’t fly at all. We can only swim short distances, not too far from shore and not too deep. We don’t have weapons (tools?) attached to our bodies. We, the species, weren’t given any of the tools the other animals have yet, over time, we’ve out-done them all. We can cross greater distances at greater speeds in our machines. We can fly higher and faster than any naturally flying animal. We can “swim” across – and to the bottom of – oceans. We can destroy even the fiercest of creatures before they can get their natural weapons anywhere near us. We’ve out-done them all. How? Our brains, the gift we received from nature.

Not one of those achievements is frowned upon by the church. We used our brains to figure out solutions to every one of those concerns and everybody just cheered. But when we also used our brains to understand and figure out how to manage our reproductive process, the church stepped in and called that a sin. “Leave it up to our God,” they pretended. One can trace just about every problem the world faces today to the simple fact that there are just too many of us.

In 1970, the world population was estimated to be 3.6 billion people. Today? 8 billion. See, religions know that the best way to get new people giving them money is to have them born to that particular religion. It’s harder to convert someone than just raise them up in the “tradition.” The result? They disapprove of managing reproduction. Sure, the world would be a better place but the church(es) would lose money. The churches aren’t alone, though. Businesses also know that more people competing for jobs means less compensation required to get those jobs done. Overpopulation serves business in the same way it serves religion; it’s good for profits. But it’s all bad for the common man. We need fewer people. Period.

There’s a current trend among “the youngs” where they’re not having babies and people are hand-wringing and trying to find out why. Of course, pure Capitalism demands that the “answer” may NOT include “it’s just too expensive to try to raise kids anymore” so we’re told it’s probably social media. Oh, we’re also not supposed to mention that the world has become – again, thanks to corporate profit pursuits – far too dangerous and unstable to risk bringing children into it. Okay, so…video games! Let’s say it’s video games.

Corporate media will point their grubby little fingers at anything and everything except the real reason: overpopulation. Not having babies is the right thing to do. Not having babies should be encouraged by governments, not lamented. Not forced, mind you. That doesn’t work. Just…encouraged.

I’ll tell you this: I’m glad to see it happening and I hope the trend continues. It may prove to be too little, too late but if there’s going to be any chance at all of the human race continuing much longer, it will be found in having FAR fewer of us competing for increasingly scarce resources…